Tootfinder

I printed a MIK adapter and it fits into the rear rack of the Level 3. Aventon will not say the rack is MIK-compatible.
Maybe it's a licensing issue? I've seen them post "Our racks are not labeled for MIK compatibility. For a rack to be 100% compatible, it must have the MIK or MIK HD logo on the rack." So maybe its a wink-wink situation.
Let's just unofficially say you can (probably) use MIK stuff on the rear rack of the Level 3.

During lockdown I was contemplating a move to France or maybe Greece.
The part of France I was considering was Angoulême, which hit a windless 40ºC today, and meanwhile large swathes of Greece are covered in wildfires and are almost as hot.
Maybe life isn't so bad in the north of Scotland, currently about 15ºC and clear (it rained a bit early this morning).
Dodged that bullet!

Speculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
2/2
#Democracy

Doing errands around (redacted) County this morning and saw a fair number of utterly blacked out SUVs (including illegally tinted windshields) with no markings of any kind save civilian California plates. External lights on the A-pillars.
Maybe CHP just added several boatloads of unmarked squad cars. Yeah, maybe that's it.

I did a short keynote for a bunch of composers and music people a few days ago on "AI". And since it landed well but wasn't recorded I'll try to redo it (maybe expand it marginally) and upload it.
It's about AI but more about the permission to to what feels right and humane anyways.
And it sounds weird to give people permission for something natural, but the reaction in that room felt like it was meaningful. That standing against the tide of "AI is wit…

@… I don’t think this is a bug (fwiw) but maybe an intentional choice, per https://front-end.social/@famulimas/115181215027069621
but it was a fun o…

Thinking if iPhone Air could trim even more battery out until like maybe ~1K mAh and shove more into the external MagSafe battery. Then the internal battery could just be a backup battery and the MagSafe battery can be the more-convenient hot-swappable "replaceable battery" like the old days 🤔

❝"This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution," one commander at Fort Bragg told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This was shameful.”❞
Yup.
❝“I don't expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term."❞
Oh, you naive fool.

You tweet about gatekeeping and #AI, and the next thing you know, you're obsolete. Maybe AI took his job? https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/goodbye-github/

Auf Wiedersehen, GitHub ♥️
I am stepping down as GitHub CEO to build my next adventure. GitHub is thriving and has a bright future ahead.

There used to be this deal between Google (and other search engines) and the Web: You get to index our stuff, show ads next to them but you link our work. AI Overview and Perplexity and all these systems cancel that deal.
And maybe - for a while - search will also need to die a bit? Make the whole web uncrawlable. Refuse any bots. As an act of resistance to the tech sector as a whole.