Tootfinder

US did not halt weapons shipments to Ukraine, Meloni says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/04/us-did-not-halt-weapons.html

Many professed concerns from the right about Israel or antisemitism are expressions of American identity politics and nativism
-- more than they are statements of genuine concern for the safety and well-being of minorities.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/if-not-now-when/

If Not Now, When? Contextualizing the White Supremacist Threat to Muslims and Jews
Much ink has been spilled in recent months debating comments by U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) regarding Israel. People have argued, sometimes in good faith, that they used antisemitic tropes, unintentionally or not. However, this discussion has lacked necessary cultural and social background to make

Jerry confident Parsons plays opener? 'Absolutely not' https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45910508/cowboys-jerry-jones-not-confident-micah-parsons-available-season-opener-vs-eagles

Should we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
Should AI coding be taught in undergrad CS education?
1/2
I teach undergraduate computer science labs, including for intro and more-advanced core courses. I don't publish (non-negligible) scholarly work in the area, but I've got years of craft expertise in course design, and I do follow the academic literature to some degree. In other words, In not the world's leading expert, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about course design, and consider myself competent at it, with plenty of direct experience in what knowledge & skills I can expect from students as they move through the curriculum.
I'm also strongly against most uses of what's called "AI" these days (specifically, generative deep neutral networks as supplied by our current cadre of techbro). There are a surprising number of completely orthogonal reasons to oppose the use of these systems, and a very limited number of reasonable exceptions (overcoming accessibility barriers is an example). On the grounds of environmental and digital-commons-pollution costs alone, using specifically the largest/newest models is unethical in most cases.
But as any good teacher should, I constantly question these evaluations, because I worry about the impact on my students should I eschew teaching relevant tech for bad reasons (and even for his reasons). I also want to make my reasoning clear to students, who should absolutely question me on this. That inspired me to ask a simple question: ignoring for one moment the ethical objections (which we shouldn't, of course; they're very stark), at what level in the CS major could I expect to teach a course about programming with AI assistance, and expect students to succeed at a more technically demanding final project than a course at the same level where students were banned from using AI? In other words, at what level would I expect students to actually benefit from AI coding "assistance?"
To be clear, I'm assuming that students aren't using AI in other aspects of coursework: the topic of using AI to "help you study" is a separate one (TL;DR it's gross value is not negative, but it's mostly not worth the harm to your metacognitive abilities, which AI-induced changes to the digital commons are making more important than ever).
So what's my answer to this question?
If I'm being incredibly optimistic, senior year. Slightly less optimistic, second year of a masters program. Realistic? Maybe never.
The interesting bit for you-the-reader is: why is this my answer? (Especially given that students would probably self-report significant gains at lower levels.) To start with, [this paper where experienced developers thought that AI assistance sped up their work on real tasks when in fact it slowed it down] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089) is informative. There are a lot of differences in task between experienced devs solving real bugs and students working on a class project, but it's important to understand that we shouldn't have a baseline expectation that AI coding "assistants" will speed things up in the best of circumstances, and we shouldn't trust self-reports of productivity (or the AI hype machine in general).
Now we might imagine that coding assistants will be better at helping with a student project than at helping with fixing bugs in open-source software, since it's a much easier task. For many programming assignments that have a fixed answer, we know that many AI assistants can just spit out a solution based on prompting them with the problem description (there's another elephant in the room here to do with learning outcomes regardless of project success, but we'll ignore this over too, my focus here is on project complexity reach, not learning outcomes). My question is about more open-ended projects, not assignments with an expected answer. Here's a second study (by one of my colleagues) about novices using AI assistance for programming tasks. It showcases how difficult it is to use AI tools well, and some of these stumbling blocks that novices in particular face.
But what about intermediate students? Might there be some level where the AI is helpful because the task is still relatively simple and the students are good enough to handle it? The problem with this is that as task complexity increases, so does the likelihood of the AI generating (or copying) code that uses more complex constructs which a student doesn't understand. Let's say I have second year students writing interactive websites with JavaScript. Without a lot of care that those students don't know how to deploy, the AI is likely to suggest code that depends on several different frameworks, from React to JQuery, without actually setting up or including those frameworks, and of course three students would be way out of their depth trying to do that. This is a general problem: each programming class carefully limits the specific code frameworks and constructs it expects students to know based on the material it covers. There is no feasible way to limit an AI assistant to a fixed set of constructs or frameworks, using current designs. There are alternate designs where this would be possible (like AI search through adaptation from a controlled library of snippets) but those would be entirely different tools.
So what happens on a sizeable class project where the AI has dropped in buggy code, especially if it uses code constructs the students don't understand? Best case, they understand that they don't understand and re-prompt, or ask for help from an instructor or TA quickly who helps them get rid of the stuff they don't understand and re-prompt or manually add stuff they do. Average case: they waste several hours and/or sweep the bugs partly under the rug, resulting in a project with significant defects. Students in their second and even third years of a CS major still have a lot to learn about debugging, and usually have significant gaps in their knowledge of even their most comfortable programming language. I do think regardless of AI we as teachers need to get better at teaching debugging skills, but the knowledge gaps are inevitable because there's just too much to know. In Python, for example, the LLM is going to spit out yields, async functions, try/finally, maybe even something like a while/else, or with recent training data, the walrus operator. I can't expect even a fraction of 3rd year students who have worked with Python since their first year to know about all these things, and based on how students approach projects where they have studied all the relevant constructs but have forgotten some, I'm not optimistic seeing these things will magically become learning opportunities. Student projects are better off working with a limited subset of full programming languages that the students have actually learned, and using AI coding assistants as currently designed makes this impossible. Beyond that, even when the "assistant" just introduces bugs using syntax the students understand, even through their 4th year many students struggle to understand the operation of moderately complex code they've written themselves, let alone written by someone else. Having access to an AI that will confidently offer incorrect explanations for bugs will make this worse.
To be sure a small minority of students will be able to overcome these problems, but that minority is the group that has a good grasp of the fundamentals and has broadened their knowledge through self-study, which earlier AI-reliant classes would make less likely to happen. In any case, I care about the average student, since we already have plenty of stuff about our institutions that makes life easier for a favored few while being worse for the average student (note that our construction of that favored few as the "good" students is a large part of this problem).
To summarize: because AI assistants introduce excess code complexity and difficult-to-debug bugs, they'll slow down rather than speed up project progress for the average student on moderately complex projects. On a fixed deadline, they'll result in worse projects, or necessitate less ambitious project scoping to ensure adequate completion, and I expect this remains broadly true through 4-6 years of study in most programs (don't take this as an endorsement of AI "assistants" for masters students; we've ignored a lot of other problems along the way).
There's a related problem: solving open-ended project assignments well ultimately depends on deeply understanding the problem, and AI "assistants" allow students to put a lot of code in their file without spending much time thinking about the problem or building an understanding of it. This is awful for learning outcomes, but also bad for project success. Getting students to see the value of thinking deeply about a problem is a thorny pedagogical puzzle at the best of times, and allowing the use of AI "assistants" makes the problem much much worse. This is another area I hope to see (or even drive) pedagogical improvement in, for what it's worth.
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Like other large #FreeSoftware projects, #Gentoo developers have varying degrees of activity. There are some people who dedicate a lot of their free time to Gentoo, maintain hundreds of packages, participate in multiple areas. Then, there are people with narrower interests, lower commit counts, but they are still putting an effort and making Gentoo a better distribution — and that matters. But then, there is the tail.
There is a few of developers whose main talents seem to be 1) finding packages that require absolutely minimal maintenance effort, and 2) justifying their developer status with long essays. I mean, this is getting beyond absurd. It is not just "my packages are all up-to-date". It is not even "my packages require very low maintenance, that's why I'm not doing much". It is literally "I deliberately choose low-maintenance packages, so I don't have to do anything". But of course, all these people definitely need commit access to Gentoo, and show off their Gentoo developer badges, and it's *so damn unfair*.
And in the meantime, other developers are overburdened, and getting burned out. And they step down from more things. And who takes these things over? Of course, not the developers who just admitted to not having much to do…

Nvidia says its GPUs do not contain backdoors, kill switches, or spyware, and hard-coded, single-point controls like kill switches undermine trust in US tech (David Reber Jr/NVIDIA)
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/no-backdoors-no-kill-switches-no-spyware/

No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware.
To mitigate the risk of misuse, some pundits and policymakers propose requiring hardware “kill switches” or built-in controls that can remotely disable GPUs without user knowledge and consent. Some suspect they might already exist. NVIDIA GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors.

Jerry Jones urged not to give Shilo Sanders a chance on Cowboys after Bucs release https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/jerry-jones-urged-not-to-give-shilo-sanders-a-chance-on-cowboys-after-bucs-release

Not Enough Of A “Talent Upgrade” For The Raiders This Offseason—CBS Sports https://raiderramble.com/2025/07/05/raiders-not-enough-of-a-talent-upgrade-this-offseason/

At this point, I’m not sure whether it’s better to warn people about buying a Tesla or not. Sure, people die horribly in them. But also, the only people buying a Tesla today are either full-on Nazis or people for whom fascism isn’t a deal breaker, so… 🤷‍♂️ https://raggedfeathers.com/@lilithsain

An interview with Newsquest CEO Henry Faure Walker on the regional publisher's focus on local news; paid digital subs have risen 35% YoY to 135K (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/

Focus on local, not 'trending', news fuels record Newsquest digital growth
Newsquest CEO Henry Faure Walker discusses how the publishers has reached record digital subscriptions and page views.

I may well have aphantasia to a degree in waking life as I cannot visualize voluntarily.
https://aethermug.com/posts/i-do-not-remember-my-life-and-it-s-fine

California National Guard Is Not Available For CA Wildfires | Crooks and Liars
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/07/california-national-guard-not-available-ca

'This is not chaos': PM's chief secretary defends reshuffle after Rayner's exit (Aletha Adu/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/06/not-chaos-darren-jones-defends-reshuffle-angela-rayner
http://www.memeorandum.com/250906/p5#a250906p5

Hätte Mario Alexander Müller damals in Schnellroda nur diese Hinweise gelesen...
https://jorts.horse/@Ananas/114972578639014632

Re: https://zeroes.ca/@broadwaybabyto/114804470667350177
Yeah, I still do most of my weekly shopping at one of the big UK supermarkets (Tesco currently, switched from Sainsbury's when they just Would Not Stop advertising on GB News), because I only have so many…

I may or may not load #ICEBlock. I’m unclear on the validity of the privacy claims and don’t have the time to dive into it deeply...
However, I found it amusing that someone complained about it wanting “Always On" location services. Clearly someone not getting the point that it is meant to *ALERT you when ICE is nearby. Not to tell you only when you ask.

This is the sort of crap that sounds smart until you think about it for five minutes.
Was the solution to COVID really ultimately technological? What about the social measures that got us to the point where the vaccine was ready? What about the different vaccination rates between Europe and the US? No social aspects to getting a population vaccinated? What about the emergence of Omicron: maybe luck was part of it?
The same goes for Ozempic, and the same will be true of Climate ch…

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson
=
"Everything happens so much."(horse_ebooks)

from my link log —
Three cases against IF NOT EXISTS / IF EXISTS in PostgreSQL DDL.
https://postgres.ai/blog/20211103-three-cases-against-if-not-exists-and-if-exists-in-postgresql-ddl
saved 2021-11-12

Three Cases Against IF NOT EXISTS / IF EXISTS in Postgres DDL | Postgres AI

What is this about?

Many DDL statements in PostgreSQL support modified IF EXISTS / IF NOT EXISTS. For example:

 test=# create table if not exists mytable(); CREATE TABLE test=# drop table if exists mytable; DROP TABLE 

I recommend using `IF EXISTS` / `IF NOT EXISTS`…

"Ask any developer working on Cloud, Mobile, or Web apps whether they would consider Windows a viable choice for their work, and their gasp would be heard from the Pitcairn Islands. And let us not even start talking about LLMs, AI, or other golden nuggets in vogue these days."
https://

Why Wait For The Best When I Could Have You?
Billions of people in this planet instinctively associate the concept of "operating system" to Microsoft Windows by antonomasia. Through perhaps resignation, corporate coercion, laziness, or just sheer ignorance, most cannot fathom a world in which laptops do not boot without a "Start" menu or do not randomly display a Blue Screen of Death every time they plug a new device.

Do you mysteriously not get emails - not even in your spam folder? If you're on a Microsoft system, this link might let you see emails invisibly held in quarantine: https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine?viewid=Email

A friend of mine (who is not a technology person) mailed me a thumb drive full of videos.
It took like a month to arrived. We were both convinced it was lost. I finally got it!
When I opened it I saw it had been "compressed" (not crushed) and I had to carefully bend the plastic back to plug it into a USB port.
Finally copying the files, which are 1990s era punk rock shows of local (and some touring) bands.
I'll probably publish them all at some point. Ma…

The easy access that scammers have to sophisticated AI tools means nothing -- from emails to video calls -- can be trusted.
https://www.wired.com/youre-not-ready/

You're Not Ready
Seems bad out there. Unfortunately, it can always get worse. From evil hacker AI to world-changing cyberattacks, WIRED envisions the future you haven't prepared for.

It's not your water bottle, honest. It's not your plastic storage containers. It's not the deli take out. It's not in the soil. (I mean, it is, but this isn't where so much of it gets into _us_.)
We breathe it.

Bad things are happening, but so are good ones. Demonstrations and protests across the country this last weekend did not get much press coverage from large outlets, but they happened. People are showing up. And they show us that Americans are not going gently into that good night, but are raging against the dying of the light. And more and more people each day are organizing and pushing back against this autocratic breakthrough.

Presidential Incapacity
We know already he can't do good things. Wag the Dog is a movie that was being made as Bill Clinton was doing the things he would later be impeached for. The impeachment timed out as taking place roughly when the movie came out. The movie depicts an American President

Unfortunately & conversely, this (below) is the same framing tech bros (and parts of the population) are finding so attractive to anthropomorphize LLMs: These are not machines, and them making mistakes is normal and expected... At the same time, the other card being played (by politics, military & law enforcement) is that AI-driven insights and decision making are _already_ considered superior, infallible and unchallengeable... in the middle of this two pronged rhetoric is the fate o…

Is this enough to shake some American lawmakers out of their foolishness and dump Musk and all his businesses?
Probably not, honestly, but one can hope.
“Dmitry Novikov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs
"I think that Musk has a completely different game, [so] he will not need any political asylum, although if he did, Russia, of course, could provide it," Novikov said, in remarks translated from Russian.”
#russiaukrainewar #musk #starlink
https://dmv.community/@jcrabapple/114636458312326546

They're not gonna turn up an opportunity to show Wendy James, are they. And Wendy's certainly not going to turn up an opportunity to appear on #TOTP
Transvision Vamp incoming, you mark my words.

Saints QB1 or not, Tyler Shough believes 'this is going to work out' https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45891959/new-orleans-saints-nfl-tyler-shough-not-rookie-quarterback-future-competition

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Gang of Four:
🎵 Natural’s Not in It
#GangofFour
https://borisnunes.bandcamp.com/track/natural-s-not-in-it-gang-of-four
https://open.spotify.com/track/6Rsf9POXEmgQHzxXr6ubTg

The airdrops on Gaza are a PR stunt, not a humanitarian operation | Opinions | @…
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/8/

"Calling your boss a dickhead is not a sackable offence, tribunal rules"
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/sep/04/calling-your-boss-a-dickhead-is-not-a-sackable-offence-tribunal-rules

Here's your annual warning to beware hanging out in person with Defcon attendees, because many of them have returned with asymptomatic COVID infections.
As in every year since 2021, Defcon is a super spreader event. Many COVID infections are NOT symptomatic: not showing symptoms does not guarantee not carrying the highly contagious virus.

The Quiet Republic - Secession: https://blog.rmendes.net/2025/08/05/the-quiet-republic-secession.html

Seit 1985 sind im #Amazonas #Wälder in der Größe Spaniens verschwunden.
Laut einer Studie verstärkt die #Abholzung

Some tropical trees cool their leaves to survive the heat — but not all species have ways to cope
In full sun, tropical leaves can become much hotter than the surrounding air. Their ability to cope can be a matter of life or death.

Not everything Bill Bonner writes about economics is particularly orthodox, but this clear, simple description of why this tariff policy is idiotic makes this short piece well worth reading.
https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/p/fire-and-ice-e21

#BlueskyBridge question: can you choose which posts to bridge or not?
Also, if you're using it, do you like it or not (and why)?

TIL that Microsoft Copilot is now trying to show a "face" with different "emotions". That it's not working right now is not my issue. That MS are even more explicitly trying to trick people into thinking they are having a conversation with an actual person, however, most definitely *is*.
Did this "feature" run through an ethics board review? Is the additional emotional deception of users intentional? Who actually wants that sh..?
I am getting ha…

Tom Warren (@tomwarren.co.uk)
I finally got access to the Copilot Appearance feature and Microsoft's AI assistant really doesn't wanna show off its facial expressions

Taktik-Shooter "Ready or Not" muss für Konsolen-Release entschärft werden
Für den Konsolen-Release von "Ready or Not" mussten die Entwickler den Gewaltgrad entschärfen. Einige Änderungen wirken sich auch auf die PC-Version aus.

No, Google did not warn 2.5 billion Gmail users to reset passwords
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/no-google-did-not-warn-25-billion-gmail-users-to-reset-passwords/

No, Google did not warn 2.5 billion Gmail users to reset passwords
Google has disputed a widely reported story about the company warning all Gmail users to reset their passwords due to a recent data breach that also affected some Workspace accounts.

Human stupidity knows no limits:
Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action
https://theconversation.com/experiencing-extreme-weather-and-disasters-is-not-…

Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action, study shows
A 70,000-person global study found understanding how events such as fires and floods are linked to climate change may be a key driver of support for climate action.

I was really angry last night about the fireworks being set off in our neighborhood. Our dog is severely traumatized by them. She hides under a chair and pants until about an hour after they stop going off.
However, my posts were much more generalized and that was not called for.
*** If I offended you with my posts, I apologize. ***
I do not apologize for wanting to end the use of fireworks.

Real freedom comes from the people themselves, not from any government or state authority. It does not matter if the flag they wave is red with a hammer and sickle or bears a swastika. Both are symbols of oppressive regimes that crush true liberation. Genuine change cannot be handed down from above. It must arise organically from the grassroots, from workers and communities organizing themselves directly.
Vanguardism is a scam designed to concentrate power in the hands of a self-appoin…

I really can’t think of AI agents as anything other than malware with articles like these:
#AI #tech #LLM

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has not spoken with Micah Parsons following public trade request https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/cowboys-owner-jerry-jones-has-not-spoken-with-micah-parsons-following-public-trade-req…

👩‍🏭College is not for every student. How schools are steering them to high-demand jobs
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-15/getting-students-moving-toward-the-strategic-entry-level-jo…

College is not for every student. How schools are steering them to high-demand jobs
Los Angeles Unified's "Earn & Learn" summer program pays students as they are introduced to vocational skills in high-demand jobs.

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

Nesting focusable elements is problematic. Have you seen any good blogposts, docs, or other #accessibility resources that go into *why* nesting is problematic?
I’m looking for something I could link to in a blogpost of my own, on a somewhat different topic. Preference is for something in-depth, and not marketing slop for a company (especially not for anyone affiliated with an overlay vendo…

For many of the days of my career, the most important task I’ve had was to say “no”.
It’s really more like “No, not that way, but let’s find a solution.”
Saying “yes, here’s some code to do the thing you asked, even though you should DEFINITELY not be doing that thing because it’s dangerous for you and your users” is how someone (or some machine) who is not [yet] good at this job acts.

The rose bush has been moved, so it's time for an extended rant about our HVAC journey. Remember, I am not an expert, and what follows is my personal experience and choices, which may or may not be relevant to you. I'll mostly leave company names out of the info, but I will mention how they were chosen. And if you find this thread overly long, then blame the people who requested it.
#HVAC #HeatPump #AirConditioning

i will not be getting 2025 nostalgia

Signed up for portrait photography workshop somewhere in October.
Cool thing is that it’s not about shooting professional models in studio with strobes and stuff. It’s more about working with people and making the most out of any given situation and that really resonates with me.
I’m not the greatest at portraits and I’d love to learn more.

"""
In melancholy, the spirits are carried away by an agitation, but a weak agitation that lacks power or violence, a sort of impotent upset that follows neither a particular path nor the aperta opercula [open ways], but traverses the cerebral matter constantly creating new pores. Yet the spirits do not wander far on the new paths they create, and their agitation dies down rapidly, as their strength is quickly spent and motion comes to a halt: ‘non longe perveniunt’ [they do not reach far]. A trouble of this nature, common to all delirium, does not have the power to produce on the surface of the body the violent movements or the cries to be observed in mania and frenzy. Melancholy never attains frenzy; it is a madness always at the limits of its own impotence. That paradox is explained by the secret alterations in the spirits. Ordinarily, they travel with the speed and instantaneous transparency of rays of light, but in melancholy they become weighed down with night, becoming ‘obscure, thick and dark’, and the images of things that they bring before consciousness are ‘in a shadow, or covered with darkness’. As a result they move more slowly, and are more like a dark, chemical vapour than pure light. This chemical vapour is acid in nature, rather than sulphurous or alcoholic, for in acid vapours the particles are mobile and incapable of repose, but their activity is weak and without consequence. When they are distilled, all that remains in the still is a kind of insipid phlegm. Acid vapours, therefore, are taken to have the same properties as melancholy, whereas alcoholic vapours, which are always ready to burst into flames, are more related to frenzy, and sulphurous vapours bring on mania, as they are agitated by continuous, violent movement. If the ‘formal reason and causes’ of melancholy were to be sought, it made sense to look for them in the vapours that rose up from the blood to the head, and which had degenerated into ‘an acetous or sharp distillation’. A cursory glance seems to indicate that a melancholy of spirits and a whole chemistry of humours lies behind Willis’ analyses, but in fact his guiding principle mostly reflects the immediate qualities of the melancholic illness: an impotent disorder, and the shadow that comes over the spirit with an acrid acidity that slowly corrodes the heart and the mind. The chemistry of acids is not an explanation of the symptoms, but a qualitative option: a whole phenomenology of melancholic experience.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

Ukraine will not be left alone! Is the US preparing to resume military aid?: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/04/ukraine-will-not-be-left.html

“Just as Nazi Germany’s crimes could not have been committed without the technology IBM provided to track, round-up and murder Jews, Romani people and the disabled, Israel’s apartheid and genocide of the Palestinians would not be possible without Microsoft.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/05/23/mi…

How Microsoft became a hub for Israeli intelligence - The Grayzone
News and investigative journalism on empire

Chargers LB Denzel Perryman released from custody, will not face weapons violation charges https://www.nfl.com/news/chargers-lb-denzel-perryman-released-from-custody-will-not-face-weapons-violation-charges

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. - The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-republicans-cutting-medicare-not-only-medicaid/

Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a 'constitutional crisis' (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/amy-coney-barrett-says-country-not-constitutional-crisis-bari-weiss-rcna229238
http://www.memeorandum.com/250904/p149#a250904p149

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Nation of Language:
🎵 I'm Not Ready for the Change
#NationofLanguage
https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/track/im-not-ready-for-the-change
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ORQX1wOPqCP031V1CxjUq

The American president wrote, “Vladimir, STOP!” on his Truth Social account in April,
-- but the Russian president did not halt his offensive in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president called for an unconditional cease-fire in May,
-- but the Russians did not agree to stop attacking Ukrainian civilians from the air.
Donald Trump repeatedly promised, during his campaign, that he would end the war “in one day,”
-- but the war is not over.
He spoke to Vla…

America's Great Realignment Toward Putin
Donald Trump is giving Vladimir Putin every incentive to keep killing Ukrainians.

Recognizing Cowboys who not only wore The Star, but The Stripes as well https://insidethestar.com/recognizing-cowboys-who-not-only-wore-the-star-but-the-stripes-as-well

It Is Not Enough for States to Abolish the Death Penalty by Statute or Judicial Decree; They Must Make It Unconstitutional | Austin Sarat | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia
https://verdict.justia.com/2025/08/06/it-is-not-enough-for-states-to-abolish-the-death-penalty-by-statute-or-judicial-decree-they-must-make-it-unconstitutional

Cowboys' Jerry Jones not confident Micah Parsons plays Week 1 amid contract dispute https://www.nfl.com/news/cowboys-jerry-jones-not-confident-micah-parsons-plays-week-1-amid-contract-dispute

So I've found my answer after maybe ~30 minutes of effort. First stop was the first search result on Startpage (https://millennialhawk.com/does-poop-have-calories/), which has some evidence of maybe-AI authorship but which is better than a lot of slop. It actually has real links & cites research, so I'll start by looking at the sources.
It claims near the top that poop contains 4.91 kcal per gram (note: 1 kcal = 1 Calorie = 1000 calories, which fact I could find/do trust despite the slop in that search). Now obviously, without a range or mention of an average, this isn't the whole picture, but maybe it's an average to start from? However, the citation link is to a study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32235930/) which only included 27 people with impaired glucose tolerance and obesity. Might have the cited stat, but it's definitely not a broadly representative one if this is the source. The public abstract does not include the stat cited, and I don't want to pay for the article. I happen to be affiliated with a university library, so I could see if I have access that way, but it's a pain to do and not worth it for this study that I know is too specific. Also most people wouldn't have access that way.
Side note: this doing-the-research protect has the nice benefit of letting you see lots of cool stuff you wouldn't have otherwise. The abstract of this study is pretty cool and I learned a bit about gut microbiome changes from just reading the abstract.
My next move was to look among citations in this article to see if I could find something about calorie content of poop specifically. Luckily the article page had indicators for which citations were free to access. I ended up reading/skimming 2 more articles (a few more interesting facts about gut microbiomes were learned) before finding this article whose introduction has what I'm looking for: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3127503/
Here's the relevant paragraph:
"""
The alteration of the energy-balance equation, which is defined by the equilibrium of energy intake and energy expenditure (1–5), leads to weight gain. One less-extensively-studied component of the energy-balance equation is energy loss in stools and urine. Previous studies of healthy adults showed that ≈5% of ingested calories were lost in stools and urine (6). Individuals who consume high-fiber diets exhibit a higher fecal energy loss than individuals who consume low-fiber diets with an equivalent energy content (7, 8). Webb and Annis (9) studied stool energy loss in 4 lean and 4 obese individuals and showed a tendency to lower the fecal energy excretion in obese compared with lean study participants.
"""
And there's a good-enough answer if we do some math, along with links to more in-depth reading if we want them. A Mayo clinic calorie calculator suggests about 2250 Calories per day for me to maintain my weight, I think there's probably a lot of variation in that number, but 5% of that would be very roughly 100 Calories lost in poop per day, so maybe an extremely rough estimate for a range of humans might be 50-200 Calories per day. Interestingly, one of the AI slop pages I found asserted (without citation) 100-200 Calories per day, which kinda checks out. I had no way to trust that number though, and as we saw with the provenance of the 4.91 kcal/gram, it might not be good provenance.
To double-check, I visited this link from the paragraph above: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022316622169853?via=ihub
It's only a 6-person study, but just the abstract has numbers: ~250 kcal/day pooped on a low-fiber diet vs. ~400 kcal/day pooped on a high-fiber diet. That's with intakes of ~2100 and ~2350 kcal respectively, which is close to the number from which I estimated 100 kcal above, so maybe the first estimate from just the 5% number was a bit low.
Glad those numbers were in the abstract, since the full text is paywalled... It's possible this study was also done on some atypical patient group...
Just to come full circle, let's look at that 4.91 kcal/gram number again. A search suggests 14-16 ounces of poop per day is typical, with at least two sources around 14 ounces, or ~400 grams. (AI slop was strong here too, with one including a completely made up table of "studies" that was summarized as 100-200 grams/day). If we believe 400 grams/day of poop, then 4.91 kcal/gram would be almost 2000 kcal/day, which is very clearly ludicrous! So that number was likely some unrelated statistic regurgitated by the AI. I found that number in at least 3 of the slop pages I waded through in my initial search.

OpenAI says the tokenized OpenAI shares Robinhood has started offering are not equity: "We did not partner with Robinhood...and do not endorse it" (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/openai-robinhood-tokens.html

OpenAI says Robinhood's tokens aren't equity in the company
OpenAI said it was not involved in Robinhood’s launch of tokenized shares in Europe, warning users the assets were issued without its approval.

I am making an exception to my personal rule against victim-blaming. Notes:
1. “AI” is not to blame. This has been a thing that photo manager tools have been doing for many years. Google is just “catching up” with Apple…
2. Even if one has a reason to take such photos, such as for insurance purposes, it is a good idea to not leave them sitting around with vacation photos and selfies. Curate yourself for your own sake.

from my link log —
Current technology is not ready for proper alpha blending.
https://blog.pkh.me/p/43-the-current-technology-is-not-ready-for-proper-blending.html
saved 2025-07-19

The current technology is not ready for proper blending

I spent a relaxing afternoon rewiring our light fixture for the dining room that was not yet installed after our move. Our new dining room is over 2 feet taller, which necessitated a new longer lamp cord and chain. Tomorrow, I might hang it... or I might not. Gotta pace myself.
#Retirement #DIY

Titans' JC Latham: Cam Ward not expecting QB1 job to 'just be given to him' over Will Levis https://www.nfl.com/news/titans-jc-latham-cam-ward-not-expecting-qb1-job-to-just-be-given-to-him-over-will-levis

Antarctica Just Lost a Greenland's Worth of Ice — And That’s Not the Scariest Part
https://scitechdaily.com/antarctica-just-lost-a-greenlands-worth-of-ice-and-thats-not-the-scariest-part/

Fact Check: Video Game Footage Does NOT Show Actual Downing Of Israeli Plane -- Footage NOT Released by Iran: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/03/fact-check-video-game-footage.html

Should we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
2/2
To address the bigger question I started with ("should we teach AI-"assisted" coding?"), my answer is: "No, except enough to show students directly what its pitfalls are." We have little enough time as it is to cover the core knowledge that they'll need, which has become more urgent now that they're going to be expected to clean up AI bugs and they'll have less time to develop an understanding of the problems they're supposed to be solving. The skill of prompt engineering & other skills of working with AI are relatively easy to pick up on your own, given a decent not-even-mathematical understanding of how a neutral network works, which is something we should be giving to all students, not just our majors.
Reasonable learning objectives for CS majors might include explaining what types of bugs an AI "assistant" is most likely to introduce, explaining the difference between software engineering and writing code, explaining why using an AI "assistant" is likely to violate open-source licenses, listing at lest three independent ethical objections to contemporary LLMs and explaining the evidence for/reasoning behind them, explaining why we should expect AI "assistants" to be better at generating code from scratch than at fixing bugs in existing code (and why they'll confidently "claim" to have fixed problems they haven't), and even fixing bugs in AI generated code (without AI "assistance").
If we lived in a world where the underlying environmental, labor, and data commons issues with AI weren't as bad, or if we could find and use systems that effectively mitigate these issues (there's lots of piecemeal progress on several of these) then we should probably start teaching an elective on coding with an assistant to students who have mastered programming basics, but such a class should probably spend a good chunk of time on non-assisted debugging.
#AI #LLMs #VibeCoding

Elon Musk snubbed from invite list for Trump's Rose Garden event with CEOs (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-not-invited-trump-rose-garden-ceo-event-2025-9
http://www.memeorandum.com/250904/p75#a250904p75

Packers' Walker has full practice, talks ankle injury https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45909486/packers-walker-full-practice-not-concerned-contract

After the murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky in D.C.,
the Zionist organization JewBelong put up billboards stating,
“Make no mistake: if you screamed ‘Free Palestine’ you helped pull the trigger”
and “When will you learn? ‘Free Palestine’ is a death chant.”
The Republican-led congressional resolution condemning the Boulder attack labeled “Free Palestine” an
“antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish peopl…

Jewish Safety Will Not Come Through More Guns, Policing, and Repression
The best route to Jewish community safety lies in building solidarity with all marginalized groups.

Similarweb: since the launch of Google's AI Overviews, the number of news searches that result in no click-throughs grew from 56% in May 2024 to 69% in May 2025 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/chat

ChatGPT referrals to news sites are growing, but not enough to offset search declines | TechCrunch
Not surprisingly, organic traffic has also declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024 to now under 1.7 billion.

So tired of this bullshit...
Ya’know what ALL OF THOSE THINGS require? More D's in Congress. Whinging about people working towards that immediate goal is obnoxious and harmful.
https://pdx.social/@portlandy/114971733036422173

"When times are stable and the path is clear and well-paved, conventional thinkers thrive. They know the terrain, the tools, and the rules. Their expertise brings efficiency and stability – qualities that matter deeply in times of order. But we’re no longer living in such times."
The future demands trailblazers, not gatekeepers - Euractiv
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/opinion/the-future-demands-trailblazers-not-gatekeepers/

Eagles' A.J. Brown on repeating as Super Bowl champions: 'The Lombardi, she's not loyal' https://www.nfl.com/news/eagles-aj-brown-repeating-super-bowl-champions-the-lombardi-shes-not-loyal

‘Not many events like this left’ — A Ukrainian literary festival in a city falsely claimed by Russia: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/03/not-many-events-like-this.html

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare.
Not Only Medicaid, Medicare.
Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-0…

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare.
Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.

I always find the use of first person plural pronouns in discussions of the distant future to be too cute…
Humans didn’t exist a million years ago. There were some crafty hominid apes but not the sort you could clean up and mistake for a human.
There is no “us” 7 billion years from now. There is very likely no “us” in half a million years. We may or may not have descendants but they won’t be “us” in any sense.
A billion years is longer than Earth has had visible life

Cleveland Browns 'more likely than not' to keep four quarterbacks on regular season roster, per report

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/clevela

The rate of descent did not slow as much as expected,
and the spacecraft probably made a hard landing.
The laser instrument that measured how high Resilience was above the surface was slow in making its measurements,
which may have contributed to the problem.
“At this point, we do not know clearly about the cause,”
Takeshi Hakamada, the chief executive of Ispace, said in translated remarks.
The loss of the second mission could lead NASA to rethink its pla…

Ispace of Japan’s Moon Lander Resilience Has Crashed
The loss of the Resilience spacecraft by Ispace repeated a crash into the moon in 2023 of the company’s first robotic lunar landing mission.

You're not being forced to use AI because your boss thinks it will make you more productive. You're being forced to use AI because either your boss is invested in the AI hype and wants to drive usage numbers up, or because your boss needs training data from your specific role so they can eventually replace you with an AI, or both.
Either way, it's not in your interests to actually use it, which is convenient, because using it is also harmful in 4-5 different ways (briefly: resource overuse, data laborer abuse, commons abuse, psychological hazard, bubble inflation, etc.)
#AI

Micah Parsons changes his wardrobe, but not his stance, as 'Pay Micah' looms over Cowboys camp

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/micah-p

Dear Senator:
I am writing to urge you to take action on gun violence.
I have not always agreed with you over the years, but I have always respected your integrity.
I do not expect my elected officials to respond to polls, per se, but when 93% of the nation supports background checks,
I do believe that you should seriously consider the moral implications of betraying the will of the people.
Perhaps a story will help to clarify my views.
Just after gradu…

Active Shooter
A Personal Plea to End Gun Violence

skykiss ♾️🇺🇦 Vote Midterms: Russian parliament member Andrei Gurulev said that Russia will soon attack #Poland and that fortifying the border with mines will not help it.
Putin regularly lies that he is not going to attack NATO countries. However, all his politicians and propagandists openly say that Russia destroy Western democracies.
Listen to the KGB-cold blooded killers. Death to these cockroaches.
https://sfba.social/@skykiss/114798422842387005

Shedeur Sanders is QB4 for the Browns: Why it's not a big deal yet and what he needs to do to make the roster

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/shed…

The overall goal at "A New Social"
is to shift the power of social networks back to the people,
not the platform makers,
by giving them tools that let them
move their account and their followings,
and leave if a platform ever fails them in some way.

Introducing Bounce, a tool to move your following between Bluesky and Mastodon | TechCrunch
The overall goal at A New Social is to shift the power of social networks back to the people, not the platform makers, by giving them tools that let them move their account, their followings, and leave if a platform ever fails them in some way.

Week 1 NFL injury report: Christian McCaffrey, Micah Parsons may not play in opener; Myles Garrett good to go

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/week-1-…

NFL power rankings 2025: Model says Packers in top tier, Chiefs not among top five contenders

https://www.cbssports.com/betting/news/nfl

Donald Trump’s budget bill is set to make ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in US history.
The mass deportations the far right fantasizes about will remain unrealistic,
-- but not for lack of funds.
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/ice-trump-

ICE Is About to Get More Money Than It Can Spend
Donald Trump’s budget bill is set to make ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in US history. The mass deportations the far right fantasizes about will remain unrealistic, but not for lack of funds.

Cowboys' Jerry Jones hasn't spoken with Micah Parsons since trade request, not confident he'll play Week 1

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowb…

Buried within 32 U.S.C. § 502(f)(2),
an otherwise mundane statute about the normal functioning of the National Guard system is a broad catch-all:
“Support of operations or missions undertaken by the member’s unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense.”
Not order, or command, or after going through the process of federalizing them.
But merely at the “request” for participation of state troops who remain under state, not federal, command.

Trump’s Leaked Plan to Deploy the Texas National Guard Against Illinois Will Tear Apart the Union
If it goes forward, it will plunge the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis

A.J. Brown explains Eagles mindset, hunt repeat Super Bowl championship: 'The Lombardi, she's not loyal'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/a-j-bro

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has told faculty that a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent and denied that the University is considering a $500 million settlement,
according to three faculty members familiar with the matter.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/8/…

Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump | News | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has told faculty that a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent and denied that the University is considering a $500 million settlement, according to three faculty members familiar with the conversation.

Jerry Jones not confident Micah Parsons will be on the field Week 1 for Cowboys https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6536650/2025/08/05/micah-parsons-cowboys-jerry-jones-contract-dispute/

NFLPA interim boss: 18-game slate not inevitable https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46146061/nflpa-interim-boss-18-game-regular-season-not-inevitable