Tootfinder

One of the strongest factors in building and motivating an organization as a leader is saying out loud regularly that you care about people.
As Alicja frames, it's the difference between knowing what ice cream tastes like and actually eating ice cream.
It is so SO meaningful to tell people that you care about them, that you value their expertise and work, that they deserve to be respected and supported, and so on. Customize it to the individual situation: identify what someo…

How is it only lunchtime? It feels like it should at least be April by now! 🤔
#TimeCrystals

"Christopher Bishop’s 2006 book “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning,” arguably one of the triggers of the current popularity of machine learning, is quite literally a book about applied mathematics, diving into probabilities, linear algebra, neural networks, Markov models, and combinatorics. And rightfully so; if your objective is to find a job as an engineer at OpenAI, knowing a thing or two about eigenvalues and eigenvectors is definitely going to be useful."

In Praise Of Mathematics
How much math knowledge does a programmer need to know to fulfill their job? How deep should the mathematical knowledge of full-stack engineers, computer security experts, or large language model engineers be? The spectrum of possible answers to these questions is too large to be useful. Perhaps the eternal answer "it depends" is enough?

One I somehow missed last year and may have even made my top 20 because of how damn good it is, NYC punks KALEIDOSCOPE and their LP 'Cities of Fear' that was written and recorded in just a few days in 2024. Some KILLER, catchy, rough, angry hardcore punk the way it SHOULD be. ffo MDC, Poison Idea, Crucifix.
https://

At the beginning of every new semester, I reflect on how much work I have that my professorial forebears did not. Email is perhaps the most obvious, and it certainly occupies more time than I'd like. Attention to the bureaucratic demands on syllabus composition is also way more demanding than it should be. Canvas is the one, though, that rankles the most in terms of time suck.
I can't imagine any of the crusty old men who taught at my university in the mid-20th century doing an…

Real ID: Federal Mandate, National Card, or Something Worse?
The Real ID is now the law of the land, but it is not the law most Americans think it is, and the story of how it arrived at your local DMV is a twenty-year saga of congressional sleight-of-hand, serial postponement, and a quiet transformation of the American driver's license into something it was never designed to be. The question everyone should be asking…

Real ID: Federal Mandate, National Card, or Something Worse? | David Boles, Blogs
The Real ID is now the law of the land, but it is not the law most Americans think it is, and the story of how it arrived at your local DMV is a twenty-year saga of congressional sleight-of-hand, s…

Good Morning #Canada
Overnight news of Trump attacking another country in a blatant attempt to seize their resources should be a wakeup call for Canada. Does anyone here think a strike on Ottawa to remove the current government couldn't happen? Could the U.S. find a stooge willing to become the interim leader? How much oil, aluminum, uranium, hydropower or other resources would be looted before Trump strokes out from too many big macs. Yesterday I would have laughed at this scenario but today it starts to be less of a fantasy.
I glossed over this article when it was first published back in November but now I'm leaning towards support of developing a volunteer force in Canada. Perhaps a 2-year voluntary military service for our youth to provide employment and training. I don't want a volunteer military force to ever be used and hopefully it becomes a deterrent. But unfortunately a serious discussion is needed.
#CanadaIsAwesome #ElbowsUp
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/the-military-plans-for-a-volunteer-force-to-defend-canada/

This year my plan is not just to write more but also to write a bit out of my usual wheelhouse. Do something that's not just sociotechnological critique.
Not sure how to get the ball rolling there but I really love what Mike Monteiro is doing with his Newsletter ( https://buttondown.com/monteiro ). Bu…

Mike Monteiro’s Good News
“I fell asleep while reading it.” —Jim Christensen Hi. My name is Mike and this is my newsletter. Every week I answer one of your questions. The question can be about anything you want, but I'll only answer it if I think I can give a good answer. To ask a question, just fill out this simple form. Why the hell should I subscribe to this? Well, you shouldn’t. You should go outside and plant a garden. You should start a band! You should go explore every part of the world you’ve ever want…

8yo: "I just thought it would be funny if every contact on my phone started with the letter 'A'.."
8yo: "what should I call the Family Chat?" [that's our jabber chat room for the 4 of us]
13yo: "how about the Asshole Convention?"
8yo: 😂
8yo: "I love it!"
Me: "I.. don't love it. Choose something else."

How to Submit Comments on Satellite Applications to the FCC
Any member of the public can provide input to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as it considers satellite applications.
The AAS believes that its individual members (in addition to the Society as a whole) should be able to voice concerns about any proposed satellite system that might be harmful to astronomy and the night sky.
This process is also open to those outside the United States who may be impact…

After 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.

I may regret this at some point, but I felt the need to put down in writing how I feel about this moment in the tech industry.
It is not kind. You may well be insulted by it. If you are... then you really should question yourself.
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/selfish-ai<…

@… I agree: the measures should in principle cut down on excesses without hurting reasonable requests. But, as you say, we’ll see how it works out.
My fear is that funding for interdisciplinary projects will be even more difficult to obtain because the committees may tend even more to first fund their “core” disciplines.

@… I agree: the measures should in principle cut down on excesses without hurting reasonable requests. But, as you say, we’ll see how it works out.
My fear is that funding for interdisciplinary projects will be even more difficult to obtain because the committees may tend even more to first fund their “core” disciplines.

Hummm.
So I was thinking about how with a couple of caster-boards and straps, the bed could be upturned and stowed in the studio. Probably? I should have figured for a fold-away really.
Still. Could work...
Then, without a bed in there, the place could turn into a dining room.
I was thinking about a shape of a table for a dinner party in there.
Oh my god.
This semi-circle table curve of wood and attachable table-legs and fold-able stools might just fit, like, under the bed normally?
Looks perfect for a card-game or a Dungeon Master setup.
Could that table and it's legs and it's chairs all fit under the bed? Probably not at it's current height. But I want to raise it a bit anyway.
🤔
Oh my god, look at this though. The projector is pointed at the wall behind the throne surrounded by the seats for the council of seven.
This could be built.
Not right away, but eventually?

I think I'll try overclocking my battery-electric lawnmower. Higher voltage will make it spin (and spin up) faster which should mitigate bogging. Heat management will be a consideration, but first let's see how hot it gets with 16s2p LiFePo4 instead of 12s2p.

Whereas with our tiny not-for-profit, Small Technology Foundation, we set things up so we don’t have shares/ownership and we only receive a salary and pay all our taxes. Which is how it should be and would be perfectly fine if we taxed these motherfuckers their fair share also.
PS. I know I suck at advocating for ourselves but here’s your infrequent reminder that you can help us continue to exist, should you like to see that, by becoming a patron:

This 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

Because some of the replies, while good, have wandered a bit off the rails, please consider:
1. “We should study and learn from how Hypercard lowered the barrier to entry to programming.”
2. “Hypercard or something like it would be unsuitable for many / most modern applications.”
Please note that both these things can be true (and both are in my view). Upthread I’m pushing for (1). And…

Sources detail how the standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic escalated after discussions about using Claude during hypothetical nuclear missile attacks (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-…

The hypothetical nuclear attack that escalated the Pentagon’s showdown with Anthropic
Start-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill.

Imagine: You're a mastodon admin and this account signs up. How long do you wait till you are sure it should be suspended?

"How Do We Make Reading Truly Accessible? A Conversation With Thomas Kahlisch"
https://blog.degruyter.com/how-do-we-make-reading-truly-accessible-a-conversation-with-thomas-kahlisch/
"Whether for pleasure o…

I might be the minority here but I feel like if Firefox shipped with AI shit enabled but a huge "DISABLE AI" button you could press to turn it off... I might be okay with that.
If the alternative is (almost) every other browser having AI and no way to turn it off, is a "DISABLE AI" button a win?
It would let the people who care disable it. People who don't care could also disable it, we just need to tell them how and why they should.
1/n

Hey, guess what?
I just saw the first Small Web site (the Kitten Chat example¹ from Kitten²) running at a Web Number³:
https://91.98.66.193/
👉 Update: I’m shutting it down in a few moments so it might not be there when you try it :)
Come say hi (I don’t know how long I’ll keep it on for, will update this when I turn it off.)
🥳
PS. This is only in the ip-address-support branch of Kitten right now and should be considered experimental. Will likely make it in…

app
A web development kit that’s small, purrs, and loves you.

Does someone here know how to restore #signal messages from the cloud #backup?
It seems to be the only way to create a backup on #iOS. Unfortunately, the option from the documentation does not exist on the new

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115894798045761296
It should be noted that Ted Nelson here has a bit of a naive viewpoint, as the reasons for how a machine is designed and why it exists are because people made it and people literally always have an agenda.
In other words, a machine exists because it does something that a person actively decided it should—it is the embodiment of non-neutrality.

As 2025 comes to a close, I thought it might be worth revisiting a fascinating social media post from the Silicon Valley pro-extinctionist #Daniel #Faggella.
He espouses the radical view that
👉we should build a
“worthy successor”
in the form of

Preparing for the Singularity: An Ethnographic Survey of AGI Apocalypticists
The world's end has been imminent since at least the time of Jesus (himself an apocalypticist). Here's how AGI true believers are preparing for the techno-rapture.

@…
Of course no.
What I meant is that you could try to split a country/state multiple times. The risk should be lower for it to be hostile because it's easier to migrate (like a company evading taxes).
I am rather referring to how the EU is built but each state should be its own country.

There’s a second wrinkle to the OP’s critique beyond “abstractions should be better.”
The fundamental thing that makes programming hard is bridging the gap between ambiguous natural language and an unambiguous programming language. That’s hard.
That’s hard partly because the things that make a language unambiguous make such a language deeply unintuitive to humans, no matter how much it resembles English. BUT…
…the other reason it’s hard is that it forces you to decide •exactly• what you want.

How can it be that a president of the United States, Darth Donald #Trump, decides for himself who should be killed? He murders people on boats and now in a faraway country.
He doesn't believe in courts, human rights, or international law. He thinks he's an absolute ruler and is only accountable to himself. What a jerk!
Why isn't the ICC officially launching an investigation? Trump…

«New security flaw found in Microsoft Notepad courtesy of its latest “innovative” additions»
Exactly in such places there should be no code errors. Markdown in text editor really shouldn't be the problem. But now Microsoft is showing us how AI coding (not) works and how error-prone it is.
P.S. I use Vim for the markdown, text & code files.
📝

A: "I don't understand how you're so relaxed when you don't hear from the kids. Everyone in my family is like, 'msg me right when you get home!'"
me: "Ah, [13yo] is fine. He went home and is 100% watching videos when he's not supposed to be, hoping we forgot about him so that he can get away w/ as much screen time as he can. If he were stuck on the subway or something, he'd have messaged. Actually, I'd be more worried if he DID message.&qu…

Not surprised. I found stuff that looked great. I am fairly experienced at baking and part of them didn't turn out. Going over them afterwards I should have clued in on the temperatures for the candies. I have made fudges and candies for decades and thought maybe they knew something that I didn't. They turned out to be almost as runny as cold syrup and will be used as a topping for fruit cake with ice cream.

Costly win. Isak looks like he’ll be out for a while. Szoboszlai will have a yellows accumulation suspension for some transgression I didn’t see and the coverage couldn’t be bothered to find. Wirtz hobbled off at the end.
It should have been done and dusted, but loose balls in the box continue to be #LFC’s undoing. They give up one and then forget how to play. Konate continues to have the yips an…

"The reality is that the views expressed in this US national security strategy are in many ways identical to the Russian viewpoints on Europe and the Russian goals of regime change in European countries." — @…
I think we should all consider the possibility that this may be because

New U.S. security strategy calls for regime change in Europe
In this video, I discuss the new U.S. national security strategy, which, to put it mildly, is concerning for Europe. It's largely a document about how the Trump administration sees it as a requirement for continued transatlantic cooperation that MAGA movements come to power in European countries. Watch the

I made a comment on a post in lemmy.world/c/linuxmemes about how a post might be should be deleted because it had NSWF and ilegal content(in text) and for some reason it got down-voted and received negative comments about how it was fine.
I visit some of the negative comment's account and who would have thought? They follow and upload regularly to 4chan related communities.
Well, after 15min the post was obviously deleted by and admin.

I decided that I can regrip my golf clubs without "professional" help from Golf Town. Instead of $130 my total cost is $60 for a kit from Amazon. Did my driver today just to see how tough it will be. Learned some stuff and the rest of my set should go smoothly.
#DIY #Golf

Posts today a tagging #NationalFlagOfCanadaDay which is news to me, didn't know we had one, but if so one should celebrate how it all came to be, which is to say, in usual Canadian fashion. With a banjo.
The Brothers-In-Law - Rally Around The Flag
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JrvCQTfY4wI&si=52sEo83aiPxLdJG0

Can Cowboys join Crosby trade war? Would it make Parsons loss better? https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/02/06/cowboys-maxx-crosby-trade-talk-micah-parsons/88544258007/

“So I guess what I’m trying to say is, the new workday should be three to four hours.“
Yup! That's what every worker knows and should have been fighting for with solidarity for decades. Every neurodivergent person knows that we can't do concentrated work for more than 3 hours, and that extended hyperfocus blocks drain our energy for the next day. It's not sustainable.
Steve Yegge writes about how AI Capitalism creates an energy vampire

The AI Vampire
This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.

What @… 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

A sloppy blog posted on how I spent $25 messing with Openclaw this weekend.
#openclaw

It should be easy to see how state escalation across the US (especially MLPS) is a strong indicator of a failing counter-insurgency effort.
Force escalations in other areas are, likewise, a strong counter-indicator of success. Given that Trump only know how to escalate, you can assess for yourself the direction of the next few years.

Asimov wrote his laws of robotics as a dramic device to show how difficult it is to write laws of robotics. How they always will contradict each other.
His laws are there to illustrate a problem, not as a genuine attempt at the solution. His laws are deliberately wrong.
#ai #anthropic

I 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…

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116063916168328402
It should also be noted that LLMs do not write code.
They assemble code from bits and pieces of a tokenized text corpus based on how they are statistically interrelated.
LLMs do not think, anticipate, cognize, abstract or have any theory of mind; they do not currently and will not ever have this ability.

Series A, Episode 05 - The Web
BLAKE: Increase power to compensate.
JENNA: It's getting worse all the time.
BLAKE: If there is a planet there we should be close enough to get signals now. Vila, go and see how Cally is, will you.
VILA: Must I?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/105/169<…

Oh the joys of a mainframe upgrade.
Defining what type of testing is needed and specific test cases to verify that all functionality for the system is available.
Also, a short briefing note for the upcoming board meeting to describe what is being done, why, when, where the backup will be running from, who is doing what portions and how we verify that it all went smoothly.
It should go smoothly (famous last words), but we will verify that the upgrade was completed and comp…

Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all ‘sanctioned’ oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela ports,
-- which is technically an act of war.
How seriously should we take this?
Trump has certainly threatened war with Venezuela in the past.
Former US National Security advisor John Bolton reports that Trump said during his first presidential term (2017-2020) that invading Venezuela would be “cool”
because it is “really part of the United States.”<…

Cynicism, "AI"
I've been pointed out the "Reflections on 2025" post by Samuel Albanie [1]. The author's writing style makes it quite a fun, I admit.
The first part, "The Compute Theory of Everything" is an optimistic piece on "#AI". Long story short, poor "AI researchers" have been struggling for years because of predominant misconception that "machines should have been powerful enough". Fortunately, now they can finally get their hands on the kind of power that used to be only available to supervillains, and all they have to do is forget about morals, agree that their research will be used to murder millions of people, and a few more millions will die as a side effect of the climate crisis. But I'm digressing.
The author is referring to an essay by Hans Moravec, "The Role of Raw Power in Intelligence" [2]. It's also quite an interesting read, starting with a chapter on how intelligence evolved independently at least four times. The key point inferred from that seems to be, that all we need is more computing power, and we'll eventually "brute-force" all AI-related problems (or die trying, I guess).
As a disclaimer, I have to say I'm not a biologist. Rather just a random guy who read a fair number of pieces on evolution. And I feel like the analogies brought here are misleading at best.
Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that evolution inexorably leads to higher "intelligence", with a certain implicit assumption on what intelligence is. Per that assumption, any animal that gets "brainier" will eventually become intelligent. However, this seems to be missing the point that both evolution and learning doesn't operate in a void.
Yes, many animals did attain a certain level of intelligence, but they attained it in a long chain of development, while solving specific problems, in specific bodies, in specific environments. I don't think that you can just stuff more brains into a random animal, and expect it to attain human intelligence; and the same goes for a computer — you can't expect that given more power, algorithms will eventually converge on human-like intelligence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what evolution did succeed at first is achieving neural networks that are far more energy efficient than whatever computers are doing today. Even if indeed "computing power" paved the way for intelligence, what came first is extremely efficient "hardware". Nowadays, human seem to be skipping that part. Optimizing is hard, so why bother with it? We can afford bigger data centers, we can afford to waste more energy, we can afford to deprive people of drinking water, so let's just skip to the easy part!
And on top of that, we're trying to squash hundreds of millions of years of evolution into… a decade, perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?
[1] #NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

Top 5 Positions for the Raiders to Spend Big On https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-top-5-positions-spend-big-on

The US military has always had a massive global advantage against enemies by having bases all over the world. There are bases in every NATO country. This would appear to be a powerful threat to anyone willing to oppose American hegemon, and under normal conditions it would be.
But a lot of those kids serving on those bases joined, not because they love America but, because they needed a ticket out of poverty. They joined for the education, for the money, maybe a bit for the adventure, but, more than anything, to escape the ghetto or podunk backwater that trapped them. Under normal times, this is the best deal they could expect. Maybe they risk their lives, usually they sit around being bored for a few years, and they get to come out with respect and paid college.
But what they are being offered is normal in most of the countries they're stationed in. Free healthcare, cheap or free education, is just what citizens in a lot of countries have come to expect. If the US attacked a NATO country, how many would snap up citizenship if they were given a chance to defect? Bonus points for taking some hardware with you, I'm sure.
But there are some who love their country. There are some patriotic Americans on those bases. Some of them joined specifically to protect the US from all enemies, foreign *and* domestic. Given a chance to fulfill that oath or violate international law, what happens?
There are a good number of former military folks too who now are unsafe in the countries they served, who would do just about anything for citizenship in any EU country and almost any NATO ally. Some of those folks know things they swore an oath to never share, but the country they swore an oath to has betrayed them. Today there's no value in leaking those secrets, but in a war between the US and NATO allies things would be different. Some of those former military folks still believe in their oath, and know exactly who the real enemy is. What happens when there's a real threat of war, when they can use their knowledge to fulfill that oath to protect the US against those domestic threats?
There are a bunch of civilian tech workers who have become targets of the regime. Some of them had clearance, or know about the skeletons in the closet. They know about critical infrastructure, classified systems, all sorts of things that would be extremely valuable to an opponent. But the opponents of the US have always been a frightening *other*, never familiar societies these folks look up to, have visited, have thought about moving to, are trying to escape to.
All I'm saying here is that invading Venezuela and kidnapping the president has a very different calculus than does attacking Greenland. I don't know if Trump or his people are able to understand that, but if he and his folks aren't then I hope European leaders are. But more than that, I hope it never comes down to finding out.
But perhaps we should all think about what we would do to make sure things ended quickly if American leadership ever made such an incredible mistake.

Progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to wreak further havoc.
“I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNNThursday.
“I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to…

Schumer, Jeffries Refuse to Join Democrats' Growing Calls to Slash ICE Spending | Common Dreams
The killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent sparks outrage as Democrats debate funding for the agency. Should they use their power to rein in ICE's violence? Progressive lawmakers demand action, but top Democrats seem hesitant. Is it time for a change in leadership to hold ICE accountable? #ReinInICE #EndViolence

Please — and I can't believe I have to say this — please do not lick your employees.

“Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the US Treasury. The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers,” Kavanaugh wrote. “That process is likely to be a ‘mess’, as was acknowledged at oral argument.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/20/trump-supreme-court-tariffs-ruling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Good Morning #Canada
I finished my breakfast this morning only to discover that it's National Maple Syrup Day. A missed opportunity but at least I can share some important facts about Canada's sweet and sticky sauce.
- Indigenous People taught early Canadians how to harvest maple sap and boil it down into a sugary liquid.
- A maple tree can yield sap for up to 100 years, but the trees must be roughly 45 years old before it’s first tapped for syrup making.
- It takes roughly 40 gallons (150 litres) of tree sap to produce 1 gallon (3.8 litres) of syrup.
- Quebec produces 72% of the world’s maple syrup. In 2021, that equaled 133M lbs from Quebec.
- The big bottle of Costco Maple Syrup is from Quebec.
- Maple Syrup only has 1 ingredient. Sap.
- Maple Syrup has an indefinite shelf life but should be frozen if storing for more than 2 years.
And regarding the great Maple Syrup heist, this is still the best report on that famous crime.
#CanadaIsAwesome #MmmmSyrup #MapleSyrup
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/maple-syrup-heist?srsltid=AfmBOoq7fMx3GguT20T9cNrpZgrtVue4leiYZpZibZT_7S9WHWDfI0Ln