@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioI'm sure algorithms designed by people with biases and an agenda, based on data from people with biases and an agenda, marketed by people with biases and an agenda and used by people with biases and an agenda will act perfectly neutrally!
Anyway here's a good read on epistemic vigilance in [commercial] LLMs (tl;dr it's not possible) https://bsky.app/profile/mjcrockett.bsky.social/post/3mfrbukoy5c2s
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot“My father warned us, ‘When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind,’” Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote of Pretti’s murder. “What we are witnessing now (masked raids, people taken without due process, vigilante, Gestapo, and slave patrol-like tactics, normalized under the color of law) is a moral crisis.”
#Trump
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioVibe coding provides a tantalizing answer in that situation: maybe it’s too varied to •abstract•, but not too varied to •plagiarize• and call it good.
This is something subtly different from abstraction. It’s not “do this in the standard way.” Instead, it’s “just rip off whatever other people are doing right now.”
A lot of people really want that — and tbh, a lot of them are not wrong to want it. I personally love the craft of programming, but let’s face it, a lot of software out there just needs to look like everything else and be done with it.
@cdarwin@c.imThe Mississippi Public Records and Open Meetings Acts are called our “Sunshine Laws” for good reason.
They preserve the rights of citizens to know what their government is up to.
For whatever reason
—often at the behest of other politicians or public agency officials
—legislators will try to carve out exemptions to the acts.
Presumably they do this in good faith, ⚠️but it invariably ends up with the people elected to serve the citizens of our state being allowed to…
@yaxu@post.lurk.orgRE: https://slab.org/2026/03/25/good-old-internet/
Really happy with the blog workflow I've got going using RSS and the fediverse
@hex@kolektiva.socialThis is as good a time as any for a thought experiment.
You're in Nazi Germany. You know about the camps, you know what they do, you see the ash fall, you smell it. People who resist alone are killed, some are sent to the camps too. You're afraid to even talk to people about it for fear that they'll turn you in.
You think back to when the camps were being built. You had all the warning signs, but you didn't know how to interpret them. You could believe it would happen. You thought you'd have a chance to vote him out. You thought there might be another way. You thought maybe things would turn out differently if you just sat tight, kept your head down, kept yourself safe.
You see a family being dragged from their home. You know they will be killed. You want to fight, not just for them but for yourself. You opposed Hitler, and at any point you know you could be on the list... Even if you do nothing.
You wish you could rise up, shoot the SS, open the gates, fight it all. You know you aren't alone, but you don't know how to connect with the people who want the same thing.
Using the knowledge we have now, what should you have done in the preceding months and years to connect, to build a community that would open up all paths of resistance?
There were people who resisted. We know it wasn't enough.
Gun laws in Nazi Germany were very similar to US laws in that Nazis were largely free to own guns and everyone else was not. Unlike the US, where "others" have historically controlled using the fear that they might be randomly executed, Germany did codify it. Red flag laws were one more step in the US towards that codification, and there will be more.
When Nazis were taking away those guns, the social networks didn't exist to make resistance possible for most folks. But some Jews were able to resist.
It wasn't the guns that made the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising possible, though they definitely helped. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was made possible by labor organizing in the precessing years.
If there were more uprisings like that, the Holocaust could have been stopped if not prevented. Social networks make resistance possible. Guns are only useful tools to resist authoritarianism *after* you build a community able to support that resistance, and they are only one of many tools made useful by that community.
Getting guns is easy, and not always necessary. Building community is hard. Guns won't keep you safe. Community will.
Single acts of resistance may slow the machine down, but to actually bring down a monster you need to be able to attack more than once. You need a society of resistance. If you are afraid now, build that. Talk to people while it's still safe to do so. Ask them where their red line is. Talk to neighbors. Figure out your network.
Take the steps you need now to keep your neighbors safe, to keep yourself safe.
#USPol
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioWhen the AI ship crashes and burns it will be so painful for so many people (whether they were into it or not).
For my field (software) I’m hoping we’ll see a more hopeful era that instead of kLOCs cares about well-made and good (in the ethical sense) software that helps people kick ass instead of helping billionaires oppress and exploit people.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialAn extremely simple syllogism, for which the evidence is ample and has been easily available for over a decade:
ICE : white people in Minneapolis ::
regular police : Black people everywhere in America
If you're saying "Abolish ICE" right now (as you should be) but you're hesitant to say "Abolish the police" then you're okay with the brutality as long as it's reinforcing the racial hierarchy, and that's not a good look.
I understand that "Abolish the police" is a scary thing to think about if *your* experience has been that they keep you safe, but recognize how much of that is myth vs reality, e.g. have you ever personally had a positive interaction with police, or do those all happen in stories? Also, even if they do keep you safe, is it worth it if the cost is brutality to the marginalized? (No, it's not.)
At minimum we can see the following behaviors on both sides of the syllogism:
- retaliation for legally "protected" defiance or even just observation
- random killings, with mostly-nonexistent repercussions for the officers involved
- regular widespread harassment & surveillance
-more that I don't have time to list right now. Feel free to reply with your own examples.
#AbolishICE #AbolishThePolice
@Cognessence@social.linux.pizzaDoes anyone know of a good CD replication service in the UK or Europe? A German artist is publishing a monograph and wants our joint audio work included as CD in a sleeve within the book. We won’t need jewel cases then - just good quality CDs replicated (with images on them) to go in the monograph’s sleeve.
Thank you for any help! It’s all new to me (if there’s been physicals the label always handles it), and the artist would rather I ask people that are likely to know rather than haph…
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsWhen you see someone with a "I don't like people" pin, and you're thinking "good that I identify as a cat".
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialFound "Secret Pizza" in Vegas, hidden pizza joint. Really is as good as people say & much better than Sirrico's or Slice of Vegas.
Excellent dough w/ a crispy base. Really high quality cheese & fresh made tomato sauce. Pepperoni is different. Spicy & very flavorful.
#LasVegas
@markhburton@mstdn.socialHannah Spencer's speech.
Good speech.
One criticism: why is it called the Green party? What about the ecosystem and climate emergency? You have to use opportunities like this to level with people.
"Working hard used to get you a house, a nice life, holidays": Green's new Gorton and Denton MP Hannah Spencer rails against life in modern Britain as she vows to do things differently - Manchester Evening News
@fgraver@hcommons.socialAI is McDonald’s. That Will Be Good, Bad, and Catalytic for Civil Rights Advocacy. | TechPolicy.Press https://techpolicy.press/ai-is-mcdonalds-that-will-be-good-bad-and-catalytic-for-civil-rights-advocacy
@cheryanne@aus.socialRE: #Hootsuite
@portaloffreedom@social.linux.pizzaThere are still good people in the world
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioStill, there are some other things Hypercard did we’d do well to study, even with full-scale tools. Off the top of my head:
- It richly rewarded unguided exploration. Unsuccessful experimentation had a way of leading to paths forward, not just dead ends.
- Much of it worked by direct manipulation: if you want the thing there, you put the thing there. (Unity and Godot both sort of kind of do some descendant of this, but not with the same discoverability and transparency.)
- There was a rich library of good starting points, modifiable examples.
- An empty but functioning new project had essentially zero boilerplate. You didn’t have to have 15 files and hundreds of lines of code to get a blank page.
- Its UI made it easy-ish for newcomers to ask “What can I do with this thing here?” Modern autocomplete and inline docs kind of sort of approximate this, but in practice only for people who already have tool expertise.
- HyperTalk (the programming language) is tricky to write (it’s a p-lang), but it’s remarkably easy to read. You can peer at it with very limited knowledge and make educated guesses about its semantics, and those guesses will be mostly correct. (HyperTalk syntax tends to get the most attention when people talk about this, I think at the expense of the other things above.)
@sean@scoat.esNice day today at #FediMTL. Good talks and good people. Met some folks I only knew from the Internet. Hope I can go again next year.
@UP8@mastodon.social🦻 Good listeners connect more easily with strangers, study finds
#social
@cdarwin@c.imJD "they really don't teach law at Yale" Vance
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mfpo3gnvyi22
@raiders@darktundra.xyzRaiders Receive Stern Warning About Drafting Fernando Mendoza https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/fernando-mendoza-dan-patrick-draft/
@crell@phpc.socialThe hardest part of being a moderator (of any community online or off) isn't dealing with the trolls, spammers, and assholes.
It's dealing with the personality conflicts between *mostly* well-meaning but not-handling-it-well people. It's the human aspect.
That doesn't scale to a billion-person platform, or allow for mods to be interchangeable cogs. Humans are hard, yo.
It takes time to train good mods for a particular community, and not everyone is up for t…
@davidaugust@mastodon.onlineClaiming a former FBI head who _LET POTUS SLIDE_ hurt innocent people is ghoulish. Perhaps Mueller hurt us all by failing to jail or stop potus.
#USpol
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioThe gist of this is that _even if code-generating LLMs work perfectly_, it doesn't have that much of an impact on how good the software works for people; which in turn means it won't matter for profits.
@geant@mstdn.social✨ Let’s continue spotlighting the next generation of #WomenInSTEM ✨
Meet a student in audiology, driven by a simple, powerful goal: helping people hear and live their lives the way they want to.
“I want to show how good I am at my job and prove that I will be the best audiologist they’ll have.”
🎥 Watch her full interview below and hear what inspires her journey
💬 An…
@PwnieFan@infosec.exchangeTo celebrate our #dayoftruthandfreedom, I wanted to share a moment of levity with ya'll from this week. I'm waiting in line to get into constitutional observer training. In front of me, a petite white woman in her seventies leans over to the black middle-aged security guard.
Woman: Good to see all of these white people out to help, right?
Guard: I love white peop…
@hanno@mastodon.socialI find it quite fascinating to watch the development of Starbucks and how it's crushed by some competitors.
I believe, for years, the cornerstone of the Starbucks business model was this: many people want coffee with reasonably good quality, they want it often, and they're willing to pay very high prices for it. I'm saying this as being one of those people. ☕ 🧵
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI was involved in web development in the early days. (The 1990s!) It was fun, exciting, it was good. What ruined it was people who did not love the web getting involved. People who didn’t use the web like they loved it, people who didn’t understand it, people who cared more about money than the web.
The web got wrecked because we let too many assholes get involved & call the shots but it’s not too late. We can still take back the web for us. We can continue to build out the web we…
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioIt’s going to be hard for the press to get their arms around everything going on. Honestly, it’s hard to get my head around it here on the ground: people are marching downtown, people are protesting at the airport, people are holding neighborhood protests, people are holding block parties out in the bitter cold…. It’s hard to even know where to be!
Good news is it will get up to -10°F / -23°C this afternoon.
@memeorandum@universeodon.comNick Fuentes suggests ICE killing Renee Good is "probably a good thing" because the "future is at stake, whether white people exist as a race" (Media Matters for America)
https://www.mediamatters.org/nick-fuentes/nick-fuentes-suggests-ice-killing-renee-good-probably-good-thing-because-future-stake
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p53#a260116p53
@curiouscat@fosstodon.org"Welcome to Nordstrom
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them. So our employee handbook is very simple.
We have only one rule: Use good judgment in all situations..."
@aral@mastodon.ar.alDamn it, Donald, you stole the line I had prepared for you.
@trochee@dair-community.social> for a large share of actual product work, the person who can say "here is what done looks like, prove it without seeing my rubric" is more valuable than the person who can write the code.
> Implementation is what AI is getting good at. Knowing whether the result actually solves the real problem is not an engineering judgment call, it is a domain judgment call.
Reposting to call out those two quotes and agree that this matches my experience as a staff developer…
@bobmueller@mastodon.worldThis is a Good Thing™ for Oklahoma Death Row inmates. Incarcerated people, even those under a death sentence, are still human beings. The definition of "custody" includes the concept of caring for the inmate, including their mental health.
https://reason.com/2026/02/23/okl…
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeEvery time I post a bunch about crazy inner layer rework I get a couple of reactions from people who think that being this good at bodging boards makes me some kind of EE god.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You know how you get this good at fixing board design errors? Yeah, exactly how you'd think. Making a lot of them :P
@LaChasseuse@mastodon.scotRE: https://mastodon.scot/@lindseylavender/116120093040525559
This kind of art will be enormously important in the future, when people wonder how we lived in the 21st century, what our houses and cities looked like. A good investment!
@Cognessence@social.linux.pizza- For those with severe tinnitus -
I'm really not very good at speaking into a camera, and this is far from an excellent presentation. At the same time, when I was in the throes of severe tinnitus, I longed to find accounts of people who had experienced a type as intense and reactive as mine, yet had learned, to some degree, to live with it. So I offer this spontaneous testimony just in case it helps anyone else…🙏
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialAn apparent disinformation campaign falsely identified Steve Grove, CEO/publisher of The Minnesota Star Tribune, as the ICE agent who shot a Minneapolis woman (David Gilbert/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/people-are-using-ai-to-f…
@anderelampe@chaos.socialIf you are looking for a good #scifi read: I just red "Derelict" by @… and I enjoyed all about it. I recommend it very much!
It is about young people, finding their own, struggle in a space faring world, music, hacking and... well independence and direction I have to say, an…
@ErikUden@mastodon.deblack lives matter crowd cares about renee good
“all lives matter” people justify her killing
Very interesting
@cdarwin@c.imAgents shot and killed a 37-year-old US citizen at about 9am on Saturday,
with other observers watching and videotaping their actions,
in an area called Eat Street,
a corridor of largely immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses.
Footage appears to show the moment man is shot dead by federal agent in Minneapolis – video
It’s the second killing in the city after 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by a federal agent in south Minneapolis on 7 January.
@hex@kolektiva.socialI've mentioned it before, and I'm sure I will again, but, as much as there's a reason why I reject Christianity, there were also a lot of good things. Churches have governing bodies (with varying degrees of democratic representation) that guide the ministry (preaching and actions) as well as managing logistics (building maintenance, accounting, etc). This provides opportunities for self-governed collective action.
Quakers are the most radical in terms of this, and are basically anarchists. Quaker circles often meet at people's houses and can be as small as 3 people. There is often no leadership. A Quaker service could easily just be everyone sitting in a circle and someone talking at one point.
I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and one of my first jobs (at 11 or 12) was landscaping there. Within the church there were a lot of different trades, which meant that you could volunteer time and learn basically any kind of maintenance. Basically everything that needed to be done was done in-house. This also meant that if you needed a plumber, an electrician, etc, that you could pick one from within the church.
I remember painting the church, learning how to paint, with a bunch of other members of the congregation at a work party. I also remember being volunteered for child care during choir. There were a few rooms around that were used for different things, such as music practice. But these rooms could be made available for any type of community activity. This can actually include community organizing. In fact, Seattle GDC was offered an occasional space for organizing in a church (we didn't take it, but appreciated the offer), and that same church hosted a lot of other community events. I actually went to a queer relationships skills class once hosted in a church, which was great.
What I'm saying is that churches often act as a kind of parallel society up-to-and-including acting as dual power structures....
@servelan@newsie.social"I learned that Renee Good still had a pulse eight minutes after she was shot by an ICE agent," Klein said. "And yet the offer to administer aid from a physician on the scene was denied. I can't say how much that stirs the blood of everyone behind me here as we try to fulfill our oath and duty to care for the people of Minnesota."
Calls mount to 'rise up' as doctors speak out against 'grotesque' ICE acts - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-ice-2674914793/
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itWhoever runs their account does more harm than good to their brand.
@migueldeicaza@mastodon.socialTroubling signs that the Linux demographic at the Register is now made up of people yelling at the clouds.
https://linuxmom.net/@vkc/115867723149851024
@fortune@social.linux.pizzaDon't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
@sean@scoat.es
@brian_gettler@mas.toChristopher Marquis on the academics in the Epstein files:
"Universities and academics like me need to face a hard truth about our own desires. The job is supposed to be about ideas, teaching and public knowledge. Epstein offered something else: prestige without peer review, and attention without consequence. Too many people – even those who were not involved directly in exploitation – took the deal because it was easy to do and because it felt good."
@jake4480@c.imI was thinking this morning, there should be more things like Goodwill, more thrift stores like that everywhere, for even LESS things going to landfills. Just people getting together, even as a trade or barter system, things like flea markets or garage sales-- people do some of this already.
Reusing things is so important, and repair, when possible-- I've been seeing some cool self-repair fix-it meetups on here, too.
As I was talking to my wife about it, and I remembered thi…
@scottmiller42@mstdn.socialWithout intending to do so, the orange shit bag gave us a gift today. Worried about how you might be criticized for your post about a certain special person’s death? Save this message as the template you can use. If you follow this wording exactly, not a single soul can object to your message.
#POTUS47
@grork@mastodon.socialMe, 2021, on Max Verstappen: Pfft. Crashstappen is a valid name.
Me, 2022-2024, on Max: He’s good, but… he knows people are scared
Me, 2025, on Max: A Goat. He’s on another level
Me, 2026, on Max: can he be in every racing series? dudes got skills.
@grumpybozo@toad.socialGood. Hopefully it means that they hired a few good admins.
The worst thing to happen to email was providers of other services bundling email at prices less than it should cost to provide high quality service.
It has deprofressionalized email. The pressure on email operations to cost nothing has squeezed out high competence admins and left the largest operations mysterious black boxes to the people who run them.
@stefan@gardenstate.social"Saturday night, a federal judge prevented the Trump administration from revoking “parole” as many as 15,000 people who don’t have legal immigration status but have been permitted to remain in the U.S. for family reunification."
- Joyce Vance
@aredridel@kolektiva.socialOkay here's my hot elitist opinion for the moment.
If you need the more expensive models, you're either not a very good programmer, or you're being lazy. (and sometimes there's good reasons to be lazy, I'm sure)
But it's _amazing_ how much better the cheaper, lighter, more economical and ecologically friendly LLMs are when you're actually working to craft a test environment, good guardrails and a solid inner developer loop.
You know: the same skills that make a safe, speedy environment for experimentation for people.
It's almost like throwing more brute force a things is actually brute force.
@pre@boing.worldInteresting and enjoyable read. Anything this specific can't be true, obviously. But maybe plausible i guess?
I reckon there's bubble in them their markets, but that even the size of the bubble is probably over-estimated because the gain from these machines is over-estimated because they're good enough to fool people.
Glad I'm closer to retirement than to the start of a career tho. And worried somewhat about that.
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialFor people that use LLMs regularly this is probably not a surprise. In my own environment i have seen examples where for example Gemini 3.1 (paid version) is very good in creating math excercises, customized to your need/demand. There is large potential for GenAI in education.
"Our work provides large-scale field evidence that student-chatbot interactions provide valuable signals for proactively optimizing and personalizing student learning."
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialI've seen a bunch of "the CA age verification law is the best way to do a bad thing and so we shouldn't oppose compliance" takes, which others are rightly pointing out is a bad stance because it's blindingly obvious that compliance now sets the stage for compliance later and the clearly set up later is mandatory verification of age data. Even if you think that, for example, California's current "progressive" government won't go there, we're all currently seeing just how easy it is for a new government to pick up the oppressive tools the "good" government was using "restraint" with and put them to worse ends.
On the other hand, I'll freely admit that distros *do* need a way to shield themselves from liability right now. The clear (to me; IANAL) correct solution is to say on your website "don't download this OS if you're in a jurisdiction where it's not legal for us to provide it."). Assuming this does put you in the clear liability-wise, it has several positive effects:
- Stops zero people from downloading it.
- Makes it clear that your project will not collaborate with fascists/oppressive regime enjoyers.
- Means that when the next law makes verifying user ages mandatory (and/or explicitly requires using Palantir-adjacent services to do so) you've already got a strategy in place and there's no need for a "debate" in your "community" about compliance.
- Gets users more practice with "the law is malicious/needlessly bureaucratic/oppressive; let's ignore it" which to be honest people in general clearly desperately need at this point.
- Is the most effective political move if you want to resist the way things are going. Forcing the other side to explain why "California bans Linux" is good rhetorical strategy. Make *them* try to explain "well it's actually not so harmful since we let users set it themselves" and answer your follow-up "but what if next year the requirements change; I just refuse to go along with this slippery slope stuff and I'm not bothered if that means you want to *ban* me."
#AgeVerification
@memeorandum@universeodon.comThe People Are Turning Against ICE. Will the Politicians Take Notice? (The Bulwark)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-people-are-turning-against-ice-democrats-senate-trump-minnesota-good-machado-nobel-prize?triedRedirect=true
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p44#a260116p44
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialIf you need some *good* stories about *good* people to lift your spirits...
▶️ Finding People with No Customers, Then Buying Them Out - Steven Schapiro
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IpkQ20i5qhs&si=GoCEFR1hvjH2B5gm
@fgraver@hcommons.socialWell. This does not seem like a good thing: «AI systems are built to function in ways that degrade and are likely to destroy our crucial civic institutions. The affordances of AI systems have the effect of eroding expertise, short-circuiting decision-making, and isolating people from each other. These systems are anathema to the kind of evolution, transparency, cooperation, and accountability that give vital institutions their purpose and sustainability. In short, current AI systems are a de…
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioA lot of arguments in community chats broke out about who was supposed to be where, about what community was asking for people to show up or steer clear, about age-old militant vs. pacifist debates that have basically been stuck on loop since the 1960s (and are, IMO, just •incredibly• boring at this point, sorry).
But that’s organizing. It’s messy. People argue. People find consensus. People chaotically self-organize despite lack of consensus. People make good things happen.
And in the end, the people who believe in inclusion and reaching across differences and •building• community instead of destroying it — they have an intrinsic advantage.
7/
@cdarwin@c.im @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotOK, #Zig language people, where's a good place online to ask dumb newbie questions about Zig?
What I'm thinking of trying to build as an experiment is this:
https://git.journeyman.cc/simon/post-s
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialSome of you people are just so good. 😁
@cheryanne@aus.socialThe Masters Of Ceremonies
Are you after your footy fix with a side of good laughs, good people and terrible analysis...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-masters-of-ceremonies/
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsSo I wanted to write a longer #NoAI piece but apparently my blog is down (and this time, miraculously, it might not be #AI scrapers), so I'll give you a sneak peek of what I wanted to say in the more hyperbolic part on how the #LLM discourse has all the common features of libertarian discourse.
"According to Google, LLM-backed searches don't consume much more energy than regular searches" [ignoring model training, surely.]
− According to carbrains, cars are actually cheaper than public transport, provided that you compare gasoline cost with ticket prices, and ignore the cost of buying and owning a car. Not to mention all the indirect costs of space waste (roads, parking lots, garages), environment pollution, accidents…
"AI is just a tool, people decide if it's used for good or bad."
− Ah, yes, and "guns don't kill people."
"AI has its uses."
− So does asbestos.
"Let's not judge contributions by whether they were created using AI, but on their actual quality."
− "Let's not judge contributions by whether they were created using slave work…"
"I do not use AI myself, but I don't want to block others."
− "I do not keep slaves myself…"
#NoLLM #hyperbole
@aral@mastodon.ar.alRE: https://mastodon.social/@AltTextHealthCheck/116043212772197701
In my experience, people who care about accessibility are usually good folks. So if you’re looking for a good Mastodon instance to join, this is likely a good guide.
@hex@kolektiva.socialOne more thought...
One of the more toxic elements of the whole "manosphere" thing relative to dating is the application of game theory to relationships. They've got people trying to "maximize their dating potential" or whatever, trying to find the "most attractive march" (which is it's own fucked up thing I'm not even going to dig in to). But that whole mindset is basically going to always leave you miserable.
Oh, you're single? You need a partner. Oh you have a partner? Could you get a "better" one?
It turns relationships into the endless pointless grind of capitalism. Fuck that. None of that shit makes sense. No matter how "well" you do in that game, you always feel like a loser. Everyone does. Fuck that game. Quit.
The constant desire makes you miserable and your misery makes you unlikable. When you let go of it, you leave room to experience what is instead of constantly imagining what could be.
You will always be able to imagine a better "could be" than what is now. By comparing your situation now to that "could be" you will always see your situation as bad because it's worse than your yardstick.
Is your situation good for you? Is it serving you? It can be good and it can also be possible to make it better. When was the last time you just experience your life instead of trying to strategize your way into "something better."
Throw away the yardstick. Something something Buddha.
Edit: all this is of course aside from the whole objectification thing, which is it's own whole set of fucked up. But yeah... All that shit is real bad news.
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioThroughout the story of the ICE invasion of Minneapolis, it’s been the helpers who’ve most captured international attention: the people keeping watch, the people delivering groceries, the people marching and raising their voices. There’s a lot of us.
Mr. Rogers said “look for the helpers,” and yes, that’s good advice. But in this case, it needs a second thought: don’t look so hard for the helpers that you forget the people we’re helping.
@cdarwin@c.imWhen an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026,
what happened next looked familiar, at least on the surface.
Within hours, cellphone footage spread online and eyewitness accounts contradicted official statements,
while video analysts slowed the clip down frame by frame to answer a basic question:
Did she pose the threat federal officials claimed?
What’s changed since Minneapolis became a g…
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeBattery tech people: do Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries contain any kind of internal protection / fusing mechanism like good 18650s do? Or do they ever fail short or something?
Just pulled four out of a device. Three tested good at 1.5V and the fourth measured absolutely zero. Not like low, no voltage at all.
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioCory Doctorow sounds like he has been chatting to his chatbot therapist and they decided together it's a good idea to publish an article that attacks people for having valid criticisms about LLMs and the AI industry.
How dare he. This is such poor judgment.
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioWhat @… says is what a lot of us have been lamenting since the ICE invasion started. Shouldn’t local police protect citizens from ICE?? Why this hasn’t happened is a really good question. Factors to consider:
- “Obstructing a federal agent” is illegal, and local police / politicians feel constrained by that (even if the agents themselves don’t seem constrained by the actual law at all, only by what they think they can get away with)
- Police can in theory cite federal agents for e.g. traffic violations or illegal plate swapping after the fact, as long as they’re not “obstructing” the agents — but how do you cite a masked person with fake plates who refuses to give ID?
- Some police are visibly supportive of ICE, chumming it up with them and giving literal fist bumps; a nontrivial subset are outright closet Nazis. A lot of people don’t really see any need to go past “ACAB” as a full explanation for all of this — and certainly The ACAB Hypothesis is…um, not really being proved false right now in Minneapolis.
- I think some police quietly resent ICE for stepping on their turf, but that does not seem to have boiled up into actual confrontation in MSP. One police leader here painted it in early Dec as “some people want to instigate a confrontation between Minneapolis Police, and that’s not going to happen.” Police culture says that police should be a neutral party in a dispute between ICE and residents, and actually protecting residents would be taking sides. (Duh, yes, taking sides that way is your literal job, you dumbasses…but I digress.)
- Some police (especially leadership) really want to get on the community’s good side after the murder of George Floyd, and see this as an opportunity, but unfortunately this has materialized entirely as non-interventionist support: “We responded to a 911 call and help a distressed resident after her husband was abducted!” “We transported children left parentless on the streets by ICE safely back to their home!” “Our officers volunteered at the food shelf!” OK, nice, good for you buddy.
So yeah, I’m wondering this too, and am bitter about it. https://tilde.zone/@n1xnx/115928447564126393
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialRobin Vos has finally done something good for the people of Wisconsin. He’s announced his retirement. The announcement has brought joy to so many.
@aral@mastodon.ar.alJonathan E. Ross, 43, who murdered Renee Nicole Good, is an Enforcement and Removal Operations agent with ICE.
He has been granted “absolute immunity” by the fascist USian regime.
There’s a reason we have a system of courts and laws for dispensing justice. It’s to stop people from dispensing it using the barrel of a gun.
🤷♂️
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioI’d easily believe 20k–30k, but…I’m pulling numbers out of thin air there. Curious to see some good aerial video once I’ve warmed up a bit.
The tone was notable. Still plenty of witty signs: “Stay salty, melt ICE,” Noem’s head on Cruella de Ville’s body, that sort of thing. But lots of people just had “Fuck ICE.” Nobody was really laughing.
One sign said “ICE will melt in hell.” That kind of captures the mood.
#MInneapolis #MinneapolisProtests #ICEout
@memeorandum@universeodon.comSafeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People (President Donald J. Trump/The White House)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/safeguarding-venezuelan-oil-revenue-for-the-good-of-the-american-and-venezuelan-people/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260110/p56#a260110p56
@cheryanne@aus.socialIn Good Hands: Conversations With A Fertility Surgeon
Dr Alex Alexander will use expertise in his three fields — fertility, gynaecology and obstetrics —to give some clarity and hope to people facing infertility, as well as share his experience with managing high-risk pregnancies and complex gynaecological concerns...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory:
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialYesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@hex@kolektiva.socialIn the time I've been offline, I've been doing a lot and feeling a lot more mentally healthy. I've been exploring nomadnet a bit, looking at reticulum. I'm definitely going to go back to my break and being online much less regularly.
I actually totally forgot about the anniversary of the shooting, which is the first time that's happened since... uh... the shooting, I think.
I've definitely realized that, on some level, I've definitely used Mastodon (and formerly Twitter) as a coping mechanism, often in order to deal with the stressful things that I've found out about on Mastodon or Twitter.
But, again, none of those things really change our core job: build community. And that's part of what I've been neglecting, and what I can focus on more when I'm not spending as much time talking to people all over the world indirectly. Like, I can just chat directly with folks and talk about this shit.
Yeah, I do think there's value in this community. I don't think it's really screaming into the void (at least, not most of the time). But I know that I need the balance to be way farther on the side of direct engagement with comrades doing and building.
So that's what I'm gonna go back to. I feel as though it's a good sign that with all the writing about getting shot that I've been doing, and all the thinking about that, that the actual anniversary of the shooting I'm actually just thinking about bread.
And that seems like a good note to leave on. I'm gonna go back to some hacker shit.
@cdarwin@c.imLast year Congress voted unanimously to force Trump to end his illegal cover up and release the Epstein files in one of the most significant rebukes of American President in our history.
In recent months both Houses of Congress voted to repeal his illegal, destructive tariffs.
Yesterday the Supreme Court ended his ridiculous “Liberation Day” tariffs
and reminded him their were limits to his powers.
The people of Minnesota have been standing up for their neighbors, …
@cdarwin@c.imFBI opened probe on Minneapolis shooting; -- but none exists now, Justice Dept. says
An agent in Minnesota conducted an initial review of the shooting of Renee Good and determined that sufficient grounds existed to open a civil rights probe into the actions of Jonathan Ross -- the officer who shot Good,
according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The existence of the civil rights investigation stands in sharp contra…
@memeorandum@universeodon.comDHS Officer Seen on Video Kicking Memorial Candle for Renee Nicole Good, Woman Killed by ICE: 'Don't Give a F--' (Liam Quinn/People)
https://people.com/dhs-officer-seen-kicking-over-candle-at-memorial-for-renee-nicole-good-11881658
http://www.memeorandum.com/260108/p102#a260108p102
@hex@kolektiva.socialThe people building LLMs are trying to kill all humans. Literally. They are exterminationists who want to replace human life with AI and upload their brains to the cloud. They're AI death cultists.
They are the enemy. Anything that empowers them, at all, in any way, is unethical and suicidal.
I don't think admitting that there can be good use cases for LLMs does that, because the use cases are not being served by all this training. The *reason* they keep training is that they're trying to make LLMs do something that isn't possible.... because they're cultists.
That's the point, IMHO.
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialFrancesca Hong interview…
“This campaign is about reclaiming the power of sewer socialism — how much it delivered for communities in terms of climate and clean water and investing in public education. This was a time where people saw that there can be a government for good.”
https://jacobin.…
@cdarwin@c.imLegal activist Emily Galvan Almanza chronicles the many ways in which the justice system targets the poor.
It’s not news that judicial outcomes are often tied to the wealth and influence of a defendant:
Not only do the well-to-do have the resources to hire good lawyers,
but juries themselves tend to be made up of older, wealthier, white people.
A predictable result, writes Galvin Almanza, is that defendants of color, represented by appointed public defenders, pull lo…
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioRE: https://vis.social/@infobeautiful/116092915176228917
Last time I posted this, I got a little spate of exceptionally low-quality replies about how it’s actually a good thing to misrepresent risk and old people will die anyway and who cares if they do.
I hope those people see this again and get even angrier.
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioRE: https://hachyderm.io/@boztek/115885366031881432
It’s so good to sometimes read about people with a true moral compass that stand for what the believe in. It’s uplifting to see people do the right thing even when it’s difficult.
@hex@kolektiva.socialAfter the whole Adam Something "dating advice for leftist men" thing, I realized I should probably write something about that. I didn't, but I realized I should. Here I am sort of getting around to it.
I had a friend call me an "elder" at one point. I was like 35 at that time, but like... a lot of old leftists are just dead or in prison, so we take what we can get I guess. Being also an elder in the sense that I'm an elder millennial, who is also a parent and married for almost 10 years and all that, I guess I'm technically qualified.
So here it is, dating advice for (straight cis) leftist men:
1. Don't.
That's it, actually. That's the whole thing. Let me explain a bit.
First of all, this is dating advice for neuroatypical folks. We're way overrepresented in both extremes because this system wasn't built for us. And that's who is *the most* confused by all the relationship stuff, and most likely to try to apply all this masculinity/manosphere bullshit. I'm also talking a bit from experience here, as a neruo-spicy trying to "figure out" how to date within a paradigm entirely built around neurotypicals and their relationships. It's garbage. Throw it out. There's nothing worth saving.
His video had some line comparing not having sex to your house being on fire. I'm not gonna bother to quote it because I'm busy with actual life. But like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I recognize that and it's horribly destructive. Men who buy in to patriarchy actually believe this, because those men value themselves based on (hetro) sex. Yeah, if you think you're worthless because you aren't "getting laid" then yeah, you're gonna feel like that's an emergency.
"Dating" as a paradigm turns humans into roles. It dehumanizes us all, and thus makes human connection much harder. It is a game that, like thermonuclear war, can only be won by not playing.
When you abandon "dating" and just act like a human, everything starts to be easier. There's no such thing as being "friend zoned" because you're just friends. Sometimes friendships become other things, sometimes they don't. It doesn't actually matter, because if you're actually there for friendship then you don't *need* anything else.
My grandma, at 98 I think, gave me some advice. My grandparents always got along well, and were married for enough decades that I listened really closely. She told me I should just do things I loved to do and everything else would work itself out.
And it kind of did.
I understand the fear, the idea that you'll die alone. I get that. I get the loneliness. It all hits a lot harder when you have ADHD emotions and past trauma. I get that. But that fear is self-manifesting. When you build your confidence, when you don't *need* to be "in a relationship," you have more room to actually build relationships. For me, dating was dehumanizing. When I abandoned that, I was able to actually be a good partner, and I was able to find my partner.
I would advise against marriage as well, but we did get married for legal reasons. It can still be hard to maintain that, to see each other as people rather than roles. That becomes extra hard as parents. But the times that we cut through that are the times we're closest. Those are the times when it becomes easier to remember that we're both humans and all human relationships need tending.
Roles don't need to be tended because they are classifications. Classifications are static. But relationships between humans are not. Humans are messy and chaotic. Humans have all kinds of complex needs and desires.
So yeah, don't date. Just be a human and see what happens. Maybe google "relationship anarchy" and see where it takes you.
If you have ADHD, it can be especially useful to understand that relationships with neurotypical folks can be especially difficult. Assume you're incompatible with 90% of the population as your baseline, and you'll start to understand why the standard "dating" thing has made you feel so alienated and miserable.
Neurotypical folks generally have no idea that atypicality exists, much less how it impacts relationships. Having to conform to a neurotypical relationship just adds additional mental strain unless you find someone (really special) who can do at least some of the work.
The ADHD thing was especially important for me. There were so many things I was told to do in specific ways by neurotypicals that never worked for me. Their advice always made me feel like a failure. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized they were just giving advice for the wrong type of brain. It was advice I could never use. Basically all dating advice I ever got fell into this same category.
That's my braindump. Maybe I'll develop it more in the future, but I'm busy so maybe not. I hope it helps someone who is struggling like I was.
@cdarwin@c.imLiam’s mom dressed him in all those layers to keep her little boy warm and safe in this frigid weather,
packed his book-bag w/ everything he’d need for a good day at school,
and then our govt stole him out of their driveway.
Used her little boy as bait.
These people are monsters.
-- @thetirednurse.bsky.social
@cdarwin@c.im“This workforce has been fundamentally traumatized in the way that this leadership team said that they intended to do at the outset,”
Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service’s CEO, told Government Executive.
“That’s not good for anyone. It’s bad for the workforce, it’s fundamentally bad for the American people, and it will lead to us to be less safe, healthy and prosperous as a society.
The things that we want and need from government are not what we’ll get.”
The su…
@hex@kolektiva.socialThe fascist who killed Heather Heyer at Unite the Right helped turn the tides against the last Trump administration. He said there were "very fine people on both sides." The resistance grew, antifa doxxing fascists started getting those fash fired.
But some of those fash didn't stop. They kept organizing their terror cells. The fash who killed Heyer was with a group called Vanguard America. Patriot Front is a Nazi group that split off from Vanguard America. They started terrorizing people by loading up in box trucks and piling out for spontaneous marches.
That box truck tactic probably sounds familiar. Patriot Front basically disappeared at the same time that ICE started recruiting hard.
Let me make it more clear. The very same Nazis from UTR who killed Heather Heyer, who Trump called "very fine people," are now employees of DHS. They've been carrying out the ethnic cleansing they always dreamed of, and they're being paid by the government, *with your tax dollars*, to do it. And now, just like in Charlottesville, they've murdered an unarmed protestor.
This feels similar because it is. These are the same people killing daughters and mothers. Killing unarmed protestors, out of rage not fear, then lying and claiming self defense. This is the same tactic it's always been. This is the same thing they've always done.
It seems like we may have reached the Heather Heyer point of this administration early with Renee Good. Now would be a good time for everyone to get into the streets and stay there until this is over. Everyone turned the tides before, and now he's so much weaker.
This can all be over if we fight like hell to end it.
#USPol
@cdarwin@c.imAs Trumpism and technology erode our shared understanding of the world,
ordinary people in Minneapolis put their lives on their line to record the truth.
https://www.theverge.com/policy/859055/minneapolis-renee-good-ice-shooting
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioIt was when ICE murdered some of those helpers that our city catapulted to the front of global news.
But •who• were they helping? Don’t forget them.
We’re not just here to get justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We’re here to get justice for all the people they died trying to protect.
@cdarwin@c.imThe U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota -- one of the protest’s organizers -- shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting
“ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
@cdarwin@c.imMoney drives people nuts.
So can families.
Together they are combustible,
need and greed mixing with primal resentments and rivalries.
This is why, like the “marriage plot”, the inheritance plot is sometimes a staple of fiction.
Today’s tetchily unequal age is one of those times:
witness
“How to Make a Killing”,
a droll film released in America on February 20th and elsewhere soon.
@cdarwin@c.imOver the past year, the biggest victories against Trump have come
not from the elites or institutions,
but from college kids and office workers, cat ladies and Uber drivers.
When Trump tried to censor Jimmy Kimmel, it was the pumpkin latte drinkers whose ire forced ABC to bring him back on.
When the president sent National Guard troops to terrorize cities like Portland, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago, people who still wear skinny jeans turned off Netflix, inflated the…
@cdarwin@c.im @cdarwin@c.imIncreasingly the victims of the administration's campaign of terror are people just trying to survive when their daily life is upended by the presence of masked federal agents.
Those agents are ambushing immigrants after court appearances,
crashing into drivers while trying to escape protestors,
or abducting children if they seemingly impede the arrest of their own parents by dint of simply existing;
The people in the cities in which this is happening are just t…
