Tootfinder

Mailbag: Should players speak up? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-players-speak-up

Day 19 (a bit late): Alice Oseman
As I said I've got 14 authors to fit into two days. Probably just going to extend to 30? But Oseman gets this spot as an absolute legend of queer fiction in both novel & graphic novel form, and an excellent example of the many truths queer writers have to share with non-queer people that can make everyone's lives better. Her writing is very kind, despite in many instances dealing with some dark stuff.
I started out on Heartstopper, which is just so lovely and fun to read, and then made my way through several of her novels. The one I'll highlight here which I think it's her greatest triumph is "Loveless", which is semi-autobiographical and was at least my first (but no longer only) experience with the "platonic romance" sub-genre. It not only helped me work through some crufty internal doubts about aro/ace identities that I'd never really examined, but in the process helped improve my understanding of friendship, period. Heck, it's probably a nice novel for anyone questioning any sort of identity or dealing with loneliness, and it's just super-enjoyable as a story regardless of the philosophical value.
To cheat a bit more here on my author count, I recently read "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao, which shouts out "Loveless" and offers a more expository exploration of aro/ace identities, but "Loveless" is a book with more heart and better writing overall, including the neat plotting and great pacing. I think there are also parallels with Becky Albertalli's work, though I think I like Oseman slightly more. Certainly both excel at writing queer romance (and romance-adjacent) stuff with happy endings (#OwnVoices wins again with all three authors).
In any case, Oseman is excellent and if you're not up for reading a novel, Heartstopper is a graphic novel series that's easy to jump into and very kind to its adorable main characters.
I think I've now decided to continue to 30, which is a relief, so I'm tagging this (and the next post that rounds out 20) two ways.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen

That patch to "detect fascism" is a nice piece of satire, but I think it has a bit too much of a broad audience and therefore I think it is not really good.
I therefore I have a proposal for a better utility that does not label projects or people, and instead tackles the problem at the root: a questionaire at boot. During the boot process it will ask you if you support queer rights, if you support trans rights, if you think white people are getting replaced or if you think pe…

We always talk about things that get worse with #Aging - but what about the things that get better? For example I feel that people become more confident and able to make faster decisions, especially about what they like or want to do. Can you think of anything else that improves with aging?
Trying to get ideas for a research fellowship proposal :)

@… I tried KDE at one point after seeing all the comments about how wonderful it is, but I wasn't very happy with it. It's resource intensive, for one thing, and I didn't think it was a better interface than Mint, Mate, or XFCE.

There is One Fediverse. There are a Million Pickleball Courts.
OK, maybe not a million, but over 100,000 and growing fast. And they are displacing tennis courts, because you can get four pickleball courts where one tennis court existed, and more and more people think that’s a good thing.
— by @…
:mastodon:

Mailbag: Should players speak up? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-players-speak-up

I don't see a big conflict here. BART is right to focus on keeping the lights on, but Oakland advocates are also right to think long-term. It's good to give people a future with better BART to look forward to in the runup to the funding measure.
"BART’s fiscal crisis could close 9 stations. So why are people pushing for a new one [San Antonio] in Oakland?"

Series D, Episode 13 - Blake
TARRANT: That isn't the plan anymore, though, is it Avon?
AVON: I think we can do better.
VILA: Does that mean safer?
AVON: In the end, winning is the only safety.
VILA: It doesn't mean safer. I didn't think it would.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/413/16

"When the safety rotates down, just rip the seam. It's not that hard. C'mon, we can do better."
Not a Tom Brady fan but i laugh everytime I watch this. 😂
▶️ You think you want Seven Rings Knowledge. You very do not.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KffXrGVAU0

I'm no fan of the the U.S. prison industrial complex or its justice system, but I can't help but think how much better the world would be now if they'd just locked Tim Allen away for life all those years ago

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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.
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading

It is slowly dawning on magats that insurance companies suck.
But they can't get beyond that to think about a better way.
Medicare for all.

i think we learned the wrong lessons from left-pad. maybe it would create a better world if any npm user could pull a "stop cord" for the entire silicon valley corporate environment

I'm again at that point in the research project where I think, "ooh, that sounds super important. I better get a copy of that source." Once I do, I realize, of course, that I've had a copy for years.

I think that it's important to remember that in these days of . . . gestures vaguely at . . . everything . . . that there is historical precedent for having some hope that things will get better.
On November 9, 1989:
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a pivotal moment in history that symbolized the end of Cold War-era division and repression in Europe; it led directly to the reunification of Germany and inspired a wave of democratic movements across E…

Berlin Wall - Wikipedia

@… I’m playing catch-up on your weekly updates (you no longer shows in my feed or alerts even though I follow you, which is hella annoying and I still have to debug) and think you were messing with me by generating the abstract of my Atlass post with an LLM.
If so, well done and I’m sorry I’m just seeing it.
If not, then I guess I need bet…

We are told that, under stress, the humanities must be sacrificed
-- of what use are literature, philosophy, and history when we have problems to solve right now?
And yet colleagues meeting in wartime Kyiv have a clearer sense of purpose, more esprit de corps, , and a better instinct for the essential.
And soldiers on the front (as they tell me) want to talk about history and culture.
In traumatic conditions, people think about where they stand amidst larger force…

Ukrainian History Global Initiative
The Creative Humanities During a War of Destruction

One other thing, while we don't claim that our mixed-effects logit model is the perfect way to account for non-independence between languages, we don't think it's correct, as Xia & Lindell assert, to just claim that our results are "counterintuitive", the fix-eff estimates are "unreliable" and that the high model fits are "unrealistic." Whether a mix model better captures the data-generat. process is ultimately an empirical question, not one to be decided by assertion. Take, for instance, our finding that once random effects for either subregion or language family are included, the estimated effect of L1_population reverses direction—from the negative value reported by Xia & Lindell et al. to a positive one.

When the commentators said Anthony Taylor has done more LFC games than any other team, it honestly hurt my heart.
I don’t think Taylor is biased. I just don’t think he’s competent. But why more LFC games than others? So I researched.
PGMOL has a board that makes the selection each week. The criteria for disqualification due to conflicts of interest are clear, but otherwise the selection is opaque. It seems an ideal place to ask for better transparency.

What Gives the Raiders a Fighting Chance vs. Eagles https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-what-gives-fighting-chance-eagles

I think about this every time I pass the bus stop where it happened (now built out to protect people better). Two young men from two very different versions of Limerick city, two lives destroyed (one very much by his own actions).
https://www.

Sentence for gangland figure who killed student Joe Drennan increased by five years
Limerick student was killed in hit and run crash in which convicted man had filmed himself speeding

I think "dumb" or "stupid" best describe the choices you make and not the knowledge you have or do not have. I think "ignorance" better describe that.
My partner was amazed to learn that the moon does not generate light, but just reflects sunlight.
I've know this since I was a child because I had an interest in astronomy and they never had such and interest and just never thought about it or learned it.

Miguel Ángel Russo passed away yesterday. Besides his sports achievements, he was loved and respected everywhere he go. And he died doing what he loved and being fully conscious about it, I can't think of a better way to leave this life.
Today, football is a little bit worse.
https://www.batimes.…

One area where I think I can do better is to have some sort of Asset browser in Xogot. I do not think that finding files by name is great - and I am lacking an icon view for the file browser.
I am unfamiliar with the space (other than Googling "Unity Asset Browser") and the Final Cut iPad browser - which seems insufficient.
Do you have a favorite tool or UI that you like that you recommend to me?

Large Reasoning Models Learn Better Alignment from Flawed Thinking
ShengYun Peng, Eric Smith, Ivan Evtimov, Song Jiang, Pin-Yu Chen, Hongyuan Zhan, Haozhu Wang, Duen Horng Chau, Mahesh Pasupuleti, Jianfeng Chi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00938

Large Reasoning Models Learn Better Alignment from Flawed Thinking
Large reasoning models (LRMs) "think" by generating structured chain-of-thought (CoT) before producing a final answer, yet they still lack the ability to reason critically about safety alignment and are easily biased when a flawed premise is injected into their thought process. We propose RECAP (Robust Safety Alignment via Counter-Aligned Prefilling), a principled reinforcement learning (RL) method for post-training that explicitly teaches models to override flawed reasoning trajectories and re…

The "write my own render manager" itch is getting harder to ignore. I think l'll scratch it if I have some slow days at work before Xmas :-)
Will it look like Deadline and use mongodb like Deadline? Sure. Do I know anything about writing networking code or other database options? Nope. Do I think I can write something better than a Sony-born ASWF-backed open-source project like OpenCue? Well that would be hubris.
But I think it'll be a fun side-project 😁

"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
#fediverse #algorithm

Finished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading

In a way I think luddism makes people better engineers.

I hate being told what to do. I also find it hard to accept ideas from other people - my partner especially. I think it’s because I want to find solutions myself and do it in my own time. I’m often overwhelmed with things when she starts talking about another thing that needs sorting out. I feel really angry when she does that. I will try to communicate better in those situations. Sometimes I don’t need problem solving, just a hug.

Language Models that Think, Chat Better
Adithya Bhaskar, Xi Ye, Danqi Chen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20357 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20357

Language Models that Think, Chat Better
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) improves language model reasoning by using rule-based rewards in verifiable domains such as mathematics and code. However, RLVR leads to limited generalization for open-ended tasks -- such as writing outline essays or making meal plans -- where humans reason routinely. This paper shows that the RLVR paradigm is effective beyond verifiable domains, and introduces **RL** with **M**odel-rewarded **T**hinking (**RLMT**) for general-purpose chat …

The super power most OSS users lack: Asking a question, then trying the answer you're given without first having a argument with the person helping you because you think you know better.

In a decade on the Fowl Site, I don't think I ever saw anyone post pictures from or mention Empire, which is a very special place for me. In 3 years here, I've had the boon of new ones every day (from @…) and a trickle of fabulous shots like this one. Sleeping Bear and South Manitou in the distance anchor it for me as being a very parti…

Dr. Everything’ll be Alright (@tayfonay@beige.party)
Attached: 1 image Took my ass down to the beach to get a better view. Bright moon and clouds making it not great but can see with the naked eye. Even caught some movement. Empire Beach, MI October 1, 2025 #aurora

An evening discussing falling enrollment in #STEM courses at universities across Europe, especially traditional studies like chemistry, geology and meteorology. I wonder if young people are unaware of just how interesting #STEM careers to be? Or do they have the perception it's "too hard" compared to other subjects where easier grades may be had? Or is it simply they think they can have "better"* jobs in other fields?
#AcademicChatter
*Where better might mean higher paid, more prestigious, more certain of employment, or less workload or some combination of all of these... ?

I tried the Peak Design Form Rope (neck length) and Cuff Rope over the weekend. They’re nice, and both are comfy! However, I think the Slide Lite and original Cuff are the better, more functional products. #photography

On yesterday's Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else podcast, I talked about AI's impact on the environment and classrooms—and argued that it isn’t reinventing education so much as exposing bad habits we should’ve let go years ago https://www.link…

Friends, I'm seeing many appeals from people in desperate need in #Gaza. If you can help, and are not yet helping, please look at Gaza Verified and choose people to support.
There may be other, better ways to get help to people on the ground in Gaza, but if so I don't know of them.
There are families who have lost parents who I think are especially vulnerable.

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

#3goodthings
Digging deep today
1. Reassuring support from well-informed professionals making me feel a bit better about, y'know, stuff
2. My father agreeing to fund better insulation for the house
3. The end of formal education for my son, who has decided A levels aren't for him. I think this is good as it's been a painful term, but we'll see.

Stephen Miller is trying to make you think that it's a done deal that they have all the power ...
It's not a done deal
https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social/post/3m2nnspr7js2s

Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) (@hcrichardson.bsky.social)
Today in Politics Chat, I talked about how power sloshes around when a president is checked out, and noted that right now unelected officials like Stephen Miller are trying to grab it. But instead, We the People can take it back and create a better nation.

"My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor [Frankenstein] be similar in some ways to the tech bros. He's kind of blind, creating something without considering the consequences and I think we have to take a pause and consider where we're going."
Guillemo del Toro in an interview about his Frankenstein movie.

Guillermo Del Toro Compares His Victor Frankenstein to Tech Bros
The Frankenstein director would 'rather die' than use generative AI.

Sonnet 121 - CXXI
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing:
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses re…

Man I hate the new language for a task one doesn't want to do — "aversive”.
Primary reason is that it externalizes the problem. It's fixed mindset framing, that something _else_ has to change to make the situation better, that it's the task's fault for being aversive, instead of our own for not working on the aversion to the needed task.
We have a bad habit lately of attributing relational traits to the party in a relationship, rather than to the relationship itself and it weakens our thinking about things. Noticing this pattern really changes how you think, because you can start attributing things better and noticing the contexts — and contexts are often things that can be changed!

Rolled hummingbird-macrorouting v0.3.0 ; version bump due to API changes (for the better).
Apologies if this conflicts with your travel (though I don’t think anyone hard-depends on this except us, anyway). Complain to me in person. (-:
#Swift #Hummingbird

Release 0.3.0 · sloatescoan/hummingbird-macrorouting
This release contains BC breaks (hence the 0.3.x bump) API changes: rename $Routing.prefix to $Routing.$prefix to avoid collision with a route named prefix rename resolvedPath to path (path can be...

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

I was ripping movies with makemkv and decided to try handbreak to h265 and it produced a movie about the size of 1.5gb instead of the raw 4.4gb size from makemkv. I actually think handbreak movie looks better anyway.

#Willowdale tell your councillor Lily Cheng what you think of small retail stores in your neighborhood
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI

«So, to sum it up, Kling wears his mask a bit better than DHH, but as far as I’m concerned it seems clear that both projects are run by fascists. If it walks like a fascist and quacks like a fascist… then why is Cloudflare giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars?»
I think we all know the answer to that one!
https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html

There are online friendships I've been trying and failing to better develop for 20 years now. crazy to think about.

When I design physical objects, I think in boxes and simple, usually circular-section curves. This has been true when I freehand build physical objects, as well as when I model things on the computer. Fillets are about as crazy as I get.
I'm in awe of artists whose design imaginations extend to "organic" shapes.
Reminds me of music a bit. I was a reasonably good high school musician. Played multiple instruments; did fine in music competition on several of them. That's just en…

Thinking more about the PIC12F683 RE project.
I think if I really want to go all out, it might make sense to be both blog and video dual tracked, since some stuff will map better to one format or the other.
But that's gonna be a lot of work. Another option would be split media with particular parts of the analysis in one format or the other but not double covered.

I find there is a lot of overlap between the following groups:
- people who are mission-driven and want to fight for a better future
- people who hate negotiation and think it makes them "selfish"
If you fall into those groups, please check out my negotiation tutorial. It is written specifically for YOU. 💖

How to Negotiate Without Being Pushy: The Empathy-Based Approach That Actually Works
Negotiation doesn’t have to be a battle of wills. Learn how to reach agreements through empathy, clarity, and mutual respect — even if you hate confrontation. This step-by-step guide shows you how to stay calm, connected, and confident in any negotiation.

Some people, without naming names, is deliberately trying to make me think anarchism is wrong or equivalent to terrorism, as if I’m too naïve to know better.
#Anarchism #Syndicalism #Friendship

As an historian of the fur trade in Canada, I think it's sort of perfect that the Thomson and especially the Weston families get the charter. Nobody performed the proud Canadian tradition of corporate monopoly over the basic necessities of life and knowledge of the outside world better or longer than the HBC.
htt…

Thomson, Weston families win Hudson's Bay charter auction with sole bid | CBC News
The Hudson's Bay Company has chosen the new owners of the royal charter that created the company more than 350 years ago.

Alright, the good news is that I've mostly corrected convergence on the Sony PVM-2530 and it looks tons better. The bad news is that I'm getting shadowing/bleeding on changes in colors which wasn't apparent due to the horrible convergence. However, it's progress. I think it's a cap issue...not sure where though.
#electronics

Are graphics cards really 3 slots wide these days? I think we need a better way to connect GPUs...
#PC
#Graphics
#RTX

I made this pizza the other night. It's a "Grandma Pie" or whatever you call it. The results were much better than the last two times I tried it, though it could have used a few more minutes under the broiler. (Burned it last time, so I was overly cautious.)
I think I'm good for this style but... I just don't like this style. Too much dough and not enough flavor.
I may try it again but use the same amount of dough to make two pizzas, which will thin out the …

Sometimes I think "I want to get an Olympus Micro 4/3 body and their longest lens so I can take pictures of birds" but if I did that I'd really be getting better pictures of this kind of cat -- anyhow I'm off to Monkey Run and Cornell for landscapes, wildflowers and sports
#photo #photography

I’ve worked over the past year to reduce the amount of noise in my consciousness on a daily basis.
By that I mean - information noise, not literal sounds “noise”. (That problem was solved long ago by some good earplugs and noise canceling earphones.)
I’ve gotten used to spending less time on social media, regularly blocking most apps on my devices (anything with a feed news, most work communication apps, etc.), putting my phone and other devices aside for extended periods of time. Often go to work places with my iPad explicitly having its WiFi turned off and selecting cafes that don’t offer WiFi at all.
Negotiated better boundaries at work and in personal life where I exchange messages with people less often but try to make those interactions more meaningful, and people rarely expect me to respond to requests in less than 24 hours. Spent a lot of time setting up custom notification settings on all apps that would allow it, so I get fewer pings. With software, choosing fewer cloud-based options and using tools that are simple and require as few interruptions as possible.
Accustomed myself to lower-tech versions of doing things I like to do: reading on paper, writing by hand, drawing in physical sketchbooks, got a typewriter for typing without a screen. Choosing to call people on audio more, trying to make more of an effort to see people in person. Going to museums to look at art instead of browsing Pinterest. Defaulting to the library when looking for information.
I’m commenting on this now for two reasons:
1. I am pretty proud of myself for how much I’ve actually managed to reduce the constant stream of modern life esp. as a remote worker in tech!
2. Now that I’ve reached a breaking point of reducing enough noise that it’s NOTICEABLE - I am struck by the silence. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to navigate it and fill it. I made this space to be able to read and write and think more deeply - for now I feel stuck in limbo where I’m just reacquainting myself with the concept of having any space in my mind at all.

@… So, depending on context, I think I have three different answers:
#1 for better and worse, the Protestant Christian church has, over centuries, managed to interweave itself with Danish culture.
So even though I don’t have any faith, I would gladly and with no reservations participate in something like Christmas mass. I’ve even been to one at the Nordic hous…

I do think that this framing isn't fully correct. "Open Source" often has a libertarian (and therefore explicitly non-left) bend. It can be put into left thinking and politics but it works just as well in more right-wing logics. (See Golumbia, Cyberlibertarianism)
https://mastodon.mallegolhanse…

The iPhone 17 Pro feels so much better in the hands. I think it’s a combination of rounder edges and smoother frosted glass back.

Also, special shout out to Wirtz who has weathered so much criticism as he's tried to adapt. He was the best we'd seen him tonight. I salivate at the prospect of him growing further.
And while Ekitike had a middling rating on FotMob of 6.3, I think his job was extremely difficult and he was far better than that number. He has a sophistication in reading the moment that is amazing for such a young player.

When "self-driving" cars were first getting some hype back in ~2015 or so, I told people who asked me that I didn't think they'd be safe, and that I wished the same money were being invested in driver-assistance systems instead.
At the time, advocates were claiming that self-driving cars would be safer than human drivers.
We now have both self-driving cars and some nifty new driver assistance things, and it turns out that the self-driving cars are in fact being developed by corporations whose attention to the bottom line results in danger to others on the road pretty regularly. I don't actually have stats here for whether they're "safer than human drivers" or not, but the opportunity for one bad software update to make *all* self-driving cars dangerous at once kinda makes me doubt that.
Here's an example of Waymo cars getting "more aggressive" as they try to balance between being too timid and obstructing traffic (including emergency vehicles) and being too dangerous:
https://archive.ph/JJuGv
Here's another example of passing stopped schoolbusses leading to a software recall:
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/waymo-issue-voluntary-software-recall-after-close-calls/story?id=128207776
In the first article, Waymo claims 91% fewer serious accidents per mile. Obviously an independent audit would be actually trustworthy, but even if we take that claim at face value, it's meaningless if an update tomorrow causes 100,000 accidents.
Note that they could be using better engineering practices, and the fact that they aren't shows that they don't care enough about the risks. They could be deploying new software versions incrementally and slowly, letting new versions rack up lots of miles only on a few vehicles before pushing them to a fleet. The should also have the equivalent of a simulation unit test for "schoolbus is stopped, what do?" and if a software version fails that test, it doesn't make it to the fleet. Clearly they don't have that.
I feel pretty vindicated in my earlier prediction that this tech is a bad idea in the hands of the current advocates.

You would think Google Drive app would have basic search that finds all document titles containing search words. You would be wrong. Actually Apple Files/iCloud search is much better. The more I work with Google apps, the more mediocre they seem. The main thing that stops me from getting folks to use iCloud web apps is the unnecessary 2 modal dialogs to open every doc.

To hear JD Vance talk,
you’d think the only people who ever see a doctor in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants.
He insists that Democrats are refusing to support a Republican budget bill because
“they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health care benefits to illegal aliens.”
As Vance repeats the lie, the number gets bigger.
He’s even claimed that it’s a
“trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens.”
By the time you read …

JD Vance's shutdown bet: MAGA loves racism more than health care
The vice president's argument assumes it’s better for millions to lose coverage than for one immigrant to gain it

I was just thinking about what you should do when you have a problem with an organisation you are part of, and so far (I've only just woken up) I think the steps are:
1. Wait - maybe it will pass
2. Act yourself to fix it - at the very least you will gain a better undertaking of the
3. Complain - perhaps the boss doesn't know theres a problem
4. Organise - what you can't fix alone you can fix together
5. Leave - if all else fails
And it feels lik…

I keep trying to get into reading Jeffery Self’s “Self-Sabotage” which is really good and hilarious and makes me think I can write my own book of personal essays but I keep feeling the book would go better with a glass of wine. I may have to bite the bullet and open a bottle

Trying out working from my hammock today. No idea why I never thought of this! Thanks @… for the idea!
This was unplanned, so I think some adjustments would make it more zen. In particular better head support (instead of my laptop bag), and possibly adjusting the angle a bit to be more upright. I'll play with it a bit more to find what works.

Kavanagh. Every time, that guy. 6’ of stoppage? Let’s play a full minute more because Palace have a throw. I have zero doubt he’d have blown it dead at 95:45 if #LFC were on a counter.
Given that Palace played better in composite, Liverpool being decidedly better in the second half, and that I think Salah did handle the ball that VAR somehow missed… seems the result is justice served.
Glas…

librewolf fares better with unsigned addons so i think i'm just gonna stick with it from now on

Donald Trump is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election,
raising tensions with administration officials who think their time is better spent examining voter lists for future elections.

In recent private meetings, public comments and social media posts,
Trump has renewed demands that members of his administration find fraud in the five-year-old defeat that he never accepted.
He recently hired at the White Ho…

Trump escalates demands for 2020 election investigations and prosecutions
The renewed focus on 2020 comes as Trump has begun to see results from his demands to prosecute his critics, including former FBI director James B. Comey.

I was interviewed by Kim for her @… Website about my criticism/approach. It was neat to think about how I approach things, maybe it's interesting to you, I enjoyed thinking about the questions a lot.
https://

Stop Gen AI (@stopgenai@hachyderm.io)
Attached: 1 image For my latest interview for Stop Gen AI's Anti Gen AI Heroes, I interviewed @tante@tldr.nettime.org a hacker, a luddite, and a communist. We have so much in common! But he definitely codes way better than I can. Anti Gen AI Heroes: tante moves slow and fixes stuff https://stopgenai.com/anti-gen-ai-heroes-tante-moves-slow-and-fixes-stuff/ Share, share! #AntiAI #GenAI

TL;DR: spending money to find the cause of autism is a eugenics project, and those resources could have been spent improving accommodations for Autistic people instead.
To preface this, I'm not Autistic but I'm neurodivergent with some overlap.
We need to be absolutely clear right now: the main purpose is *all* research into the causes of autism is eugenics: a cause is sought because non-autistic people want to *eliminate* autistic people via some kind of "cure." It should be obvious, but a "cured autistic person" who did not get a say in the decision to administer that "cure" has been subjected to non-consensual medical intervention at an extremely unethical level. Many autistic people have been exceptionally clear that they don't want to be "cured," including some people with "severe autism" such as people who are nonverbal.
When we think things like "but autism makes life so hard for some people," we're saying that the difficulties in their life are a result of their neurotype, rather than blaming the society that punished & devalues the behaviors that result from that neurotype at every turn. To the extent that an individual autistic person wants to modify their neurotype and/or otherwise use aids to modify themselves to reduce difficulties in their life, they should be free to pursue that. But we should always ask the question: "what if we changed their social or physical environment instead, so that they didn't have to change themselves?" The point is that difficulties are always the product of person x environment, and many of the difficulties we attribute to autism should instead be attributed to anti-autistic social & physical spaces, and resources spent trying to "find the cause of autism" would be *much* better spent trying to develop & promote better accommodations for autism. Or at least, that's the case if you care about the quality of life of autistic people and/or recognize their enormous contributions to society (e.g., Wikipedia could not exist in anything near its current form without autistic input). If instead you think of Autistic people as gross burdens that you'd rather be rid of, then it makes sense to investigate the causes of autism so that you can eventually find a "cure."
All of that to say: the best response to lies about the causes of autism is to ask "What is the end goal of identifying the cause?" instead of saying "That's not true, here's better info about the causes."
#autism #trump
P.S. yes, I do think about the plight of parents of autistic kids, particularly those that have huge struggles fitting into the expectations of our society. They've been put in a position where society constantly bullies and devalues their kid, and makes it mostly impossible for their kid to exist without constant parental support, which is a lot of work and which is unfair when your peers get the school system to do a massive amount of childcare. But in that situation, your kid is in an even worse position than you as the direct victim of all of that, and you have a choice: are you going to be their ally against the unfair world, or are you going to blame them and try to get them to confirm enough that you can let the school system take care of them, despite the immense pain that that will provoke? Please don't come crying for sympathy if you choose the later option (and yes, helping them be able to independently navigate society is a good thing for them, but there's a difference between helping them as their ally, at their pace, and trying to force them to conform to reduce the burden society has placed on you).

Like, how is Arne Slot to blame for missing that many chances? You put the players into positions to win. LFC didn’t play well and yet were still statistically better in every facet, but the scoreline.
It’s ragged, sure, but it will get better. There is too much quality in the squad to stay this uneven.
I think the more fruitful conversation is how to better blend the new players in. Is it too much, too soon? Has Salah finally hit the age wall?

My friend Carlos knows better how to spend his time than on social media, so I can't tag him here, but he knows everything about statistics and Star Wars.
The thing is, my kids want to watch the clone wars series and I hate the idea because I think it's dull. But Carlos gave me a list of all episodes with "need to watch" rating (and in a better order!) so that we watch only the story arcs and skip all fillers. Now Clone Wars is tolerable for me!
1/2
https://pixelfed.de/p/CombSynPeople/889113283333962949

The iPhone 17 Pro feels so much better in the hands. I think it’s a combination of rounder edges and smoother frosted glass back.

If #LFC can get their defense sorted, I think the rest will snap into place better. Kerkez has looked uneven, but I thought defensively he was pretty good tonight.
I'd rather see Bradley start with Robbo and Kerkez rotating. Frimpong available as a sub, pace for the late push against tiring opposition.
And until Konate gets right, there is no stability. It exposes everyone else. Van Dij…

So important that we talk about better digital social networks!
> Dear World: Now is a good time to get off -#SocialMedia that’s going downhill.
> Why now? … First, this month is my three-year anniversary of bailing out on #Twitter in favor of #Mastodon. Second is the release of Mastodon 4.5, which I think closes the last few important-missing-feature gaps.
2025/11/3 by @… #Fediverse

Writing unit tests for my random number generation library continues to be difficult. My tests are failing because the bias in the distribution exceeds my expectations, but I'm wondering whether I should just repeat the test more times and permit it to exceed expectations some of the time (as long as it does it symmetrically/rarely/etc. My gut tells me that second-order expectations aren't any better than first-order expectations, but another part of me disagrees.
Thinking more as I write this (writing is thinking): second-order tests can at least give me better info to work with towards fixing things I think! So maybe I'll invest in them.
#coding

I keep saying the same thing over and over with my kids: you don't make decisions with your voice, you make them with your body.
"I want to go to the park."
"Ok, put your shoes on."
"I want to go on my play date."
"Put on a jacket and get in the bike."
"I don't want to be late to school."
"I don't control time, if you don't want to be late you have to brush your teeth."
There's a fundamental truth underlying this concept though, one that I hadn't really thought about. On some level, I feel as though, any choice you can't make with your body isn't a real choice. If you're begging someone to do something for you, it's ultimately not something you control.
As I'm compelled, by threat of violence against my family, to pay for war against my comrades and to kill people I don't even know, I think about that. How far is our concept of freedom from the police state we are taught to imagine as the global beacon of liberty. My participation in the violence had always been compulsory.
Perhaps we could do better than just #NoKings.
#USPol

Day 5: Robin Wall Kimmerer
I'm taking these liberty of changing my hashtag and expanding the intent of this list to include all non-men, although Kimerer is a woman so I'll get to more gender diversity later... I've also started planning this out more and realized that I may continue a bit beyond 20...
In any case, Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous academic biologist and excellent non-fiction author whose work touches on Potawotomi philosophy, colonialism (including in academic spaces), and ideas for a better future. Anyone interested in ecology, conservation, or decolonization in North America will probably be impressed by her work and the rich connections she weaves between academic ecology and Indigenous knowledge offer a critical opportunity to expand your understanding of the world if like me you were raised deeply enmeshed in "Western" scientific tradition. I suppose a little background in skepticism helped prepare me to respect her writing, but I don't think that's essential.
I've only read "Braiding Sweetgrass," but "Gathering Moss" and her more recent "The Serviceberry" are high on my to-read list, despite my predilection for fiction. Kimmerer incorporates a backbone of fascinating anecdotes into "Braiding Sweetgrass" that makes it surprisingly easy reading for a work that's philosophical at its core. She also pulls off an impressive braided organization to the whole thing, weaving together disparate knowledges in a way that lets you see both their contradictions and their connections.
The one criticism I've seen of her work is that it's not sufficiently connected to other Indigenous philosophers & writers, and that it's perhaps too comfortable of a read for colonizers, and that seems valid to me, even though (perhaps because I am a colonizer) I still find her book important.
An excellent author in any case, and one doing concrete ideological work towards a better world.
#20AuthorsNoMen

Given the chance, I think her words could resonate in a Provincial election against both the David Eby #BCNDP and the Rustad #BCConservatives (and whatever other parties happen to pop into existence).
It was nice to see a leader actually genuinely congratulate and lift up her rivals in the contest. A rarity these days in too many party leadership races!
Key lines from her speech:
"take on this province's billionaires, largest corporations, and big oil... who take far more than they give.
"democracy is in retreat around the globe, but I am encouraged to see young people in BC fighting back.”
"the BC Green Party has solutions”
"the BC NDP.. are making decisions based on scarcity and fear”
"David Eby... rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump's inner circle of oligarchs to buy and control even more of our province”.
"The NDP's big idea… to double down on raw resource exports.... no manufacturing, no innovation, no vision for a future beyond more foreign billionaires ripping and shipping our resources while families wait for the wealth to trickle down.”
“while workers wait for fair wages and homes we can afford, the BC NDP doubles down on MAGA backed fossil fuel projects, ignores the need to obtain consent, and refuses to care for our community members”
”The horrors that we are witnessing now are the death rattle of the old world.”
"it is up to us force a new world through”
"We can build a plan to take back the public wealth that has been looted with real taxation on the ultra wealthy”
"Build on our massive advantage of renewable energy… create thousands of jobs”
"will reclaim BC's economy for working people… together we can build a resilient thriving province that respects indigenous sovereignty and our planetary boundaries.”
“we are worthy of better, and worthy of hope. When we learn to believe that again, we can win.”
@…
#BCPoli #BCGreens #CanPoli #CdnPoli #RenewableEnergy

👀 Defensive regression. If you review most of the goals this season, it usually isn’t that LFC don’t have enough people behind the ball. It’s that depth & injuries have been more undermining than expected. Little choice but to play those out of form or out of position.
Missing out on Guehi was massive, as was the injury to Leoni, and the decision to sell Quansah now looks bad. I think Trent, when he wanted to, was a better defender than his reputation, but defensively, he’s not mis…

Reading the Bradley & Wirtz injury news. With Frimpong out still, will Slot go with Gomez or put Szoboszlai at RB again? Endo? Curtis Jones?
I might initially try Szoboszlai and put Curtis Jones in the middle, allowing the freedom to pivot in the second half. For me, both will be on the pitch, and I think Dom has better defensive capacity. But you sure hate to blunt his progressive impact.
#LFC

I had thought we'd see Ekitike on the left, with Chiesa on the right. Slot, instead, puts Ekitike on the right and leaves Gakpo in.
Happy to see Jones make it into the midfield, as he's been good all year and a) Gravenberch needs to rest that ankle; and b) Mac Allister needs to rest period. Will be interested to see how far forward Szoboszlai plays.
Robbo and Frimpong make sense. I think Bradley has been better than the general perception, but Frimpong should get a run ou…