Tootfinder

All this brings me back to some text I was writing yesterday for my students, on which I’d appreciate any thoughtful feedback:
❝You can let the computer do the typing for you, but never let it do the thinking for you.
This is doubly true in the current era of AI hype. If the AI optimists are correct (the credible ones, anyway), software development will consist of humans critically evaluating, shaping, and correcting the output of LLMs. If the AI skeptics are correct, then the future will bring mountains of AI slop to decode, disentangle, fix, and/or rewrite. Either way, it is •understanding• and •critically evaluating• code — not merely •generating• it — that will be the truly essential ability. Always has been; will be even more so. •That• is what you are learning here.❞
11/

rant on software dev practices
What is it with P5js and virtually all its ecosystem (like Q5js) that, still today, didn't manage to _properly_ package their libraries to be distributed and used via package managers?
Same with their insistence to push global resources and state everywhere... and of course virtually not documenting any of the truly delicate details, just the trivial stuff that could be auto-discovered by relying on auto-complete tools.
I kind of understand wanting to keep the vanilla experience alive, making it "easy" for novices... but that shouldn't be at odds with more "professionalized" production pipelines, at least *not that much*.
For example, with Q5js:
- The NPM packages could be mentioned in their documentation (they are not, even though they are official)
- The NPM packages could define proper exports (same for the JS modules themselves), not forcing us to rely on relative paths to files in node_modules... 🤦
- Globals could be at least namespaced... of course, it would be much, much better if they didn't exist at all.
I'm writing this in 2025, not 1993... and I'm... "triggered".
At this point I'll have to check if I have any other neuro-condition beyond ADHD that makes me "obsessed" with technical flaws, because it seems to be a "me problem" when either virtually nobody sees that as a huge collection of fatal design flaws... or they see it and don't care at all.

Donald Trump Declares He Should Have Faced Trial - emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/06/05/donald-trump-declares-he-should-have-faced-trial/

I may be alone in this, but I truly do hope the #LLMs scrape my book; #scribd sadly no longer just shares these files I entrusted to them, but perhaps the content scrapers can deal with that because I would REALLY like to see this in somebody's #AI training set, or see the output when submitted for a 'summary' 😆
Yes, it is the same length as finnegans wake, a happy coincidence. To date, I'm happy to say, no one has read it 😊
Into The Magic Kingdom (2004)
https://www.scribd.com/document/16440387/Into-the-Magic-Kingdom

I watched Thunderbolts Asterisk.
Valentina was my favorite character.
The villain storyline, I think, almost rung true, but needed to be a bit different to be truly compelling. There’s a basic counterargument the villain should have made but didn’t. But I liked it anyway.

Happy defederation day to all who celebrate! Apparently Hands Off protests are a troll magnet. If other admins want to check our blocklist, it just got four instances longer today. #fediblock

Did we all know about the Yellowstone Zone of Death?
The 50 square mile portion of Yellowstone national park which is inside Idaho, where it is in theory impossible to receive a jury trial since the jury would have to be composed of residents of the state (Idaho) AND the district (uninhabited).

Love this, by D.J. Grothe
We are truly only just getting started. All we have to do is to fail to kill everyone, and things will get better.
"Human civilization has existed for only 3% of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed. And modern industrial civilization has existed for just 2% of that 3% — just 0.06% of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed. Maybe we’re just getting started!"

Here are a couple of springtime pictures with small associated stories. It’s a thrill to find something positive to write about: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/05/27/Happy-Colors

CL XLVI: Happy Colors

Mike Lindell heads into defamation trial planning to testify
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/i-have-nothing-to-hide-i-am-a-former-crack-addict-mike-lindell-plans-to-testify-at-his-billion-dollar-defamation-trial/