@memeorandum@universeodon.comThe Washington Post Is No Longer Useful to Jeff Bezos (Jason Koebler/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/the-washington-post-is-no-longer-useful-to-jeff-bezos/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260205/p51#a260205p51
@newsie@darktundra.xyzThe Washington Post Is No Longer Useful to Jeff Bezos https://www.404media.co/the-washington-post-is-no-longer-useful-to-jeff-bezos/
@marcel@waldvogel.familyApparently some universities have started using mostly-AI tought courses. And are surprised students don't apprrciate them fully:
“There are some useful things in the presentation. But it’s like, 5% is useful nuggets, and a lot is repetition. There is some gold in the bottom of this pan. But presumably we could get the gold ourselves, by asking ChatGPT.”
@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"Christopher Bishop’s 2006 book “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning,” arguably one of the triggers of the current popularity of machine learning, is quite literally a book about applied mathematics, diving into probabilities, linear algebra, neural networks, Markov models, and combinatorics. And rightfully so; if your objective is to find a job as an engineer at OpenAI, knowing a thing or two about eigenvalues and eigenvectors is definitely going to be useful."
@bourgwick@heads.socialand yes, android, i always wished your photo app would only allow me to crop images at a microscopic size after navigating through a screen of AI options, i really appreciate you listening to my feedback. it's a very useful improvement, even better than i imagined.
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org @mxp@mastodon.acm.org @mxp@mastodon.acm.org
@alejandrobdn@social.linux.pizzaFor all the distro-hoppers out there TuxMate can be a useful tool. You select the apps and it creates the command to install them. It can save you some time.
#linux
@laurentperrinet@neuromatch.socialA constant rant I have when reviewing a paper:
Putting images at the end of a manuscript was useful in the 1980s whenever we printed papers. it should not be done in any circumstance in 2026 and should raher reflect the paper as it will / should appear after publication.
I have not found a better formulation of this yet. #paper # scientificwriting # reviewing…
@grumpybozo@toad.socialRE: https://infosec.exchange/@atax1a/116173432194041282
I wrote a ksh framework for config management 20ya for ~100 hosts that wrote other ksh scripts, ran them on the right selection of machines, & collated the output in various useful ways.
It…
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
UKI: unified kernel images for booting Linux from UEFI.
https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/unified_kernel_image/
saved 2026-02-28
@paun@digitalcourage.socialThis is a pretty useful comparison of the 2020 and 2025 #Maduro indictments.
Comparison by @… :
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgAfter having switched to Zen Browser with its "Glances" feature (it kinda opens a link in a small overlay window on top of where you are now and you can turn that window into a new tab or split view if you want) Firefox's "we have an AI that generates a wrong preview for a link you click before going there" feature looks even dumber.
Like: Having a way to preview links is really useful. But only if it gives you an actual idea what's going on there
@tschundler@leds.socialI got an invite to a meeting at work for a project I don't work on. I was then told it wasn't a mistake - an engineer suggested I might have useful input.
Which makes me realize there have been a various other times I've been invited to meetings that I don't know why I'm there. They've always been very productive and worth my time.
...meanwhile, many meetings for projects I do work on really don't need me.
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialIt's really fun how you can easily vibecode apps using Mastodon's APIs to analyse, summarize your timeline, lists etcetera For personal use i made an app to summarize the last 48 hours of posts in a specific Mastodonlist. Really useful/timesaver.
#vibecoding #mastodon
@sean@scoat.esHey Git, if it's not too much trouble, could you push my branch up to the server?
Git: That's a great idea. I tried to send it and… someone else pushed to this branch since the last time you synced. Want me to force push?
No. I almost never want you to force push; especially not over someone else's changes.
Git: You're absolutely right! I reset your local sandbox to what they sent.
What? You lost my work⁉️
Git: Want me to show you how to use the …
@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energyThermal Imaging Survey: DIY vs Professional - Learn how a thermal imaging survey can spot real problems. What does it cost? Is a trained operator useful? #thermalImaging #cutCarbon -
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAnthropic launches a tool to bring a user's preferences and context from other AI platforms to Claude via one copy-paste command, available on all paid plans (Claude)
https://claude.com/import-memory
@peterhoneyman@a2mi.socialNiels finds AI agents useful but wants to isolate them
https://www.wired.com/story/ironcurtain-ai-agent-security/
@todbot@mastodon.socialA good ep! I’m glad we talked about Benn’s investigation into these Flock “AI” cameras that stalk us daily and are on the open Net. If nothing else watch his summary video https://youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
He also has good videos on defeating LRAD and other useful tools
@todbot@mastodon.socialA good ep! I’m glad we talked about Benn’s investigation into these Flock “AI” cameras that stalk us daily and are on the open Net. If nothing else watch his summary video https://youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
He also has good videos on defeating LRAD and other useful tools
@qurlyjoe@mstdn.socialHere’s something from an 11 year old blog post. (Folio.olio) I guess we were worried about paparazzi back then. But they might be useful these days too, to counter facial and body movement ID detection.
@cdarwin@c.imIn a conversation at this year's
Billionaire's convention
—aka the World Economic Forum
—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that AI will lose public support
unless it's used to "do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries."
"We will quickly lose even the social permission to take something like energy,
which is a scarce resource,
and use it to generate these tokens,
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialSeeing Iran appoint new leaders and continue to fight is seeing the more literal kind of necropolitics in action, as a hierarchical system continues to function while replacing the expendable human parts that it lost. The system is of course changed and influenced (and ultimately was built) by humans, but it has become something undying, or at least almost as hard to kill as an idea, and it maintains a terrible inertia in it's destructive tendencies (e.g., "Morality Police" continue to patrol the streets).
Lest anyone think this somehow expresses approval of US actions, the same logic applies here too: what once had a (thin) verneer of democracy, a system which loudly proclaimed to be controlled by "the people" (but which never was nor was ever intended to be) has lost its paint job, exposing the inhuman machinations beneath. Trump is a symptom, not cause, of an institution built on blood and spoils, whose alignment with the Epstein class (and moreover, their institutions) is ever more apparent with each disregarded law and principle.
Stepping back for a moment, this systems/necropolitics perspective is just a perspective, with its own distortions and blind spots. To paraphrase LeGuin, any institution built by humans can also be changed or destroyed by them. But I think it's very useful to put on the systems goggles in this moment, especially when some are fond of preaching about the dangers of "overwhelmingly powerful systems unaccountable to humans which pursue destructive ends" without actually examining the plethora of existing systems that do just that.
P.S. yes, United Healthcare is another good example of this.
P.P.S. yes I bending the meaning of necropolitics here, but the two are related: these systems would not be so free to profit from human death and suffering if they were more vulnerable to the deaths of their constituent parts. Necropolitics of the standard variety is of course present as companies like Raytheon and Lockeed Martin profit from the carnage. The F-15 caught by friendly fire? Just as profitable for Beoing to replace as one downed by the enemy.
@NFL@darktundra.xyzThe point-guard mentality didn't just make Sam Darnold better. It's a useful mental trick https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6990248/2026/01/23/the-point-guard-mentality-didnt-just-make-sam-darnold-be…
@vform@openbiblio.socialHm, Doom läuft inzwischen auf Zahnbürsten und nun lernen pythonprogrammierte Gehirnzellen das Spielen von Doom in einer Wochen. Hey, was soll schief gehen, Skynet hat auch mal klein angefangen ;) :D
Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week: https://www.
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioA useful tidbit that stood out to me in this article:
“Noem [by lying] is training and testing the MAGA base”
Huh − “training and testing”
There’s a dance here: the regime is training its supports in how to think about and talk about current circumstances — but also testing the waters, seeing what sticks, what they’re willing to believe. Recognizing this as a bidirectional dance seems useful. Framing it as “training” instead of “telling” seems useful. Recognizing it as “testing” seems useful.
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/ice-noem-dangerous-playbook
@hex@kolektiva.socialThis is as good a time as any for a thought experiment.
You're in Nazi Germany. You know about the camps, you know what they do, you see the ash fall, you smell it. People who resist alone are killed, some are sent to the camps too. You're afraid to even talk to people about it for fear that they'll turn you in.
You think back to when the camps were being built. You had all the warning signs, but you didn't know how to interpret them. You could believe it would happen. You thought you'd have a chance to vote him out. You thought there might be another way. You thought maybe things would turn out differently if you just sat tight, kept your head down, kept yourself safe.
You see a family being dragged from their home. You know they will be killed. You want to fight, not just for them but for yourself. You opposed Hitler, and at any point you know you could be on the list... Even if you do nothing.
You wish you could rise up, shoot the SS, open the gates, fight it all. You know you aren't alone, but you don't know how to connect with the people who want the same thing.
Using the knowledge we have now, what should you have done in the preceding months and years to connect, to build a community that would open up all paths of resistance?
There were people who resisted. We know it wasn't enough.
Gun laws in Nazi Germany were very similar to US laws in that Nazis were largely free to own guns and everyone else was not. Unlike the US, where "others" have historically controlled using the fear that they might be randomly executed, Germany did codify it. Red flag laws were one more step in the US towards that codification, and there will be more.
When Nazis were taking away those guns, the social networks didn't exist to make resistance possible for most folks. But some Jews were able to resist.
It wasn't the guns that made the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising possible, though they definitely helped. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was made possible by labor organizing in the precessing years.
If there were more uprisings like that, the Holocaust could have been stopped if not prevented. Social networks make resistance possible. Guns are only useful tools to resist authoritarianism *after* you build a community able to support that resistance, and they are only one of many tools made useful by that community.
Getting guns is easy, and not always necessary. Building community is hard. Guns won't keep you safe. Community will.
Single acts of resistance may slow the machine down, but to actually bring down a monster you need to be able to attack more than once. You need a society of resistance. If you are afraid now, build that. Talk to people while it's still safe to do so. Ask them where their red line is. Talk to neighbors. Figure out your network.
Take the steps you need now to keep your neighbors safe, to keep yourself safe.
#USPol
@nelson@tech.lgbtOnce again astonished at how useful LLMs are as a tourist. My impromptu walk in Genoa today was like having a tour guide with me giving me impossibly detailed information on every piazza, church, and snack shop exactly on my route. (I'm using Gemini 3 Pro these days, but ChatGPT is good at this too.)
@whitequark@mastodon.social@… whoa, https://ontime.lol/ is very useful
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSome 2025 takeaways in LLMs: reasoning as a signature feature, coding agents were useful, subscriptions hit $200/month, and Chinese open-weight models impressed (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/
@yaxu@post.lurk.orgPretty useful summary of European train delays in 2025. Grim reading for German trains, but chuu chuu looks like useful for finding more reliable routes https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped
@portaloffreedom@social.linux.pizzaI liked the name Bard more than the name Gemini
But hey, they are both not really useful so who cares.
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io–Me, using Visual Basic 4.0 in 1995
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialThis might be a useful Obsidian tip. I tried Obsidian (again!) last year but I just couldn’t walk away from Bear because it’s so good. (Bear is macOS only but they did add web access last year.)
“I discovered Obsidian's core plugin "File recovery". Enabled by default, it saves the state of your files every five minutes and keeps that history for a whole week!”
@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot@mastoxiv.pageDevelopment and extension of a monochromatic neutron beamline for neutron polarimetry device characterization at the Spallation Neutron Source
Kavish Imam, Vince Cianciolo, Brad Filippone, Nadia Fomin, Geoffrey Greene, Chenyang Jiang, Jordan O'Kronley, Seppo Penttila, Josh Pierce, John Ramsey, Isaiah Wallace
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00167 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.00167 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.00167
arXiv:2602.00167v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The precise manipulation and analysis of neutron spin states are foundational for a wide range of physics experiments, from fundamental symmetry tests to materials science. To enable systematic characterization of neutron polarimetry devices, we have constructed and extended a monochromatic neutron beamline at the Spallation Neutron Source, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The beamline delivers monochromatic neutrons and provides a flexible platform for deploying and evaluating advanced neutron spin manipulation instruments. We describe the design and commissioning of the extended beamline and present a proof-of-concept neutron polarimetry study using three devices: a supermirror neutron polarizer, a Mezei spin flipper, and an in situ neutron 3He spin analyzer system. Performance metrics, optimization strategies, and systematic effects are discussed, demonstrating the beamline utility for neutron instrumentation testing. These results establish the extended monochromatic beamline as a useful resource for the development and validation of neutron polarimetry technologies.
toXiv_bot_toot
@gray17@mastodon.socialthinking of writing a cli tool with an interactive prompt and/or tui, and I'm questioning the need for non-tui interactive mode, it feels like an artifact of the teletype era.
weak justification: tui removes information from screen, which you might need. this is not a big deal in window systems, but console ttys are still useful.
maybe instead of a full tui it can just tui the 5-6 lines it adds. this is not supposed to be doable in terminfo/curses, but everyone is ansi-termin…
@seeingwithsound@mas.toDecomposition of retinal ganglion cell electrical images for cell type and functional inference (2025) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/ade344 Useful "for developing future electronic implants that can restore vision."
@jrm4@mastodon.socialPresent thought
Mastodon's the right model. But to be truly *useful* politcally - the Bluesky/Mastodonian idea of "we will make our safe space over here" might be pleasant for many and that's fine
But they're not healthy for useful political discourse, which is often ugly, but generates the necessary talk.
The discussions I'm seeing on Twitter/threads e.g. left v. liberal are finally getting "good." (among others)
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 04 - Dawn of the Gods
VILA: Why don't we switch him off and put ourselves out of our misery.
AVON: I would advise against it. Orac may be gathering information that could prove useful to us.
VILA: Useful! He's got us into this mess.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/304/89
@theodric@social.linux.pizzaMy Firefox plugin has 28 users and 5 stars! Woohoo, I did something useful.
@fortune@social.linux.pizzaAs many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.
Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"
1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I…
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsSo new #Android versions support using phone as an USB webcam — something Linux Motorolas had twenty years ago.
I wonder when Google is going to figure out that exposing the mic would be useful too…
@UP8@mastodon.social🐘 Drones: An ally in the sky to help save elephants
#animals
@kazys@mastodon.socialThe incunabula period, during which we shifted into a print culture, took sixty years. We are under four years since the release of ChatGPT 3.5 and the era of actually useful LLMs.
@mxp@mastodon.acm.orgSome people now argue that LLMs are useless. I disagree; they can be very useful if you take them as what they are: models of language that generate text on the basis of some given text. As such, they can be useful for a wide range of text-related tasks, including assisting with writing. And the more formulaic the genre, the better they work obviously. This is part of the reason why they are so popular with students, and in academia more generally.
⇢
@mxp@mastodon.acm.orgSome people now argue that LLMs are useless. I disagree; they can be very useful if you take them as what they are: models of language that generate text on the basis of some given text. As such, they can be useful for a wide range of text-related tasks, including assisting with writing. And the more formulaic the genre, the better they work obviously. This is part of the reason why they are so popular with students, and in academia more generally.
⇢
@migueldeicaza@mastodon.socialWhen you are a C developer, every day is Xmas!
https://www.swift.org/blog/improving-usability-of-c-libraries-in-swift/
@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energyThermal Imaging Survey: DIY vs Professional - Learn how a thermal imaging survey can spot real problems. What does it cost? Is a trained operator useful? #thermalImaging #cutCarbon -
@elduvelle@neuromatch.socialIt used to be that to use any kind of software you would have a paper manual explaining how to do everything in detail.
Then it moved on to the manual being on the computer, why not, it had the added benefit of being searchable.
Then it moved on to being fully online, slightly annoying since you can't figure stuff out without internet, but OK.
Now.. You get weird "get help" interfaces for which you still need to get online but do not actually provide any useful info. I can't reme…
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social
@aral@mastodon.ar.al@… Heya! When you report an account, you can’t add the infringing posts for admins to review. This likely makes reports less useful. Would be great if we had this functionality that exists in the official client. Thanks!
@grumpybozo@toad.socialI so hope this blows up in his face spectacularly.
Note that I do not believe that any LLM can become as skilled as the least skilled #InfoSec professional using conventional tools, so I’m quite confident this will not reach any useful goal.
I’m saying he needs to learn a lesson, and it would be great if it were useful for others as well. @…
@Xavier@infosec.exchangeI'm installing and tweaking #Immich, a really neat "Google Photos" like app that runs locally. It uses ML to do face detection and other neat features. I've been tuning my server and needed a better way to measure performance, so I vibe wrote a helper script. If you run Immich, this might be useful to you:
@brian_gettler@mas.toSitting in meetings led by upper admin - a dead-zone of anything but HR or crassly materialist thought and a wasteland of soul-crushing management speak - is a useful reminder of the university's true nature.
@primonatura@mstdn.social
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeAnd Seattle has continued destroying the park along Elliott Bay.
Repaving the path and removing the potholes and bumps from tree roots? Definitely needed.
But not only is the whole area full of lamp posts ruining what had once been a pleasant place to enjoy an evening away from city glare, the paths are lined with fencing and sprinklers blocking access to any trees that could be useful as a spot for someone to shelter from the weather or even sit under one to read a book.
I…
@cyrevolt@mastodon.socialThis would be neat:
https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/675
@awinkler@openbiblio.social#pywikibot looks very useful and can definitely mitigiate some pain one might have interacting with the mediawiki api. But wow, it appears almost as complex and the docs are equally labyrinthine 🤯
#mediawiki
@datascience@genomic.socialPrimer to get you started with Optimization and Mathematical Programming in R #rstats
@fraca7@social.linux.pizzaI suddenly feel the urge to do something useful (for a very niche demographics to which I belong), is this what a midlife crisis feels like?
@ellie@ellieayla.net
@cheryanne@aus.socialRE: #Hootsuite
@LillyHerself@Mastodon.socialConcise and useful overview of the Russian occupation of Ukrainian land:
"What is the Donbas, the piece of Ukrainian land that Putin wants so badly?"
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/23/world/ukraine-donbas-region-explained-intl
@penguin42@mastodon.org.uk'systemd-analyze' is a useful if random tool that's part of systemd; it's actually got a whole bunch of different useful bits thrown in. The 'blame' , 'plot' and 'critical-chain' subcommands let you debug start up time. 'calendar' and 'timestamp' let you test if your format for a time/date is OK to use in a systemd file; 'verify' lets you check your systemd unit file for errors. There's loads more random bits.
@MolemanPeter@neuromatch.socialPhilip Ball:
"There’s a broader issue at stake here too that pertains to the place of AI in scientific research. Too often now, we hear claims of how AI will replace human scientists and, in doing so, will solve our most pressing problems: curing all disease, solving climate change, figuring out how to conduct nuclear fusion. Such claims are never supported by experts in those fields—and that’s not because they want to convince us that they are indispensable after all. Rather, it i…
@cdarwin@c.imThe Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements,
or “SAVE,” program
was designed to help states verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for government benefits.
Some state and local governments also use it to verify citizenship for voting.
But SAVE’s results — sometimes based on incomplete or outdated information — have never been perfect.
For that reason, the information gleaned from the SAVE program should be considered useful, but …
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org“I get that Tsoding and Valigo are probably writing tongue in cheek but really, if Emacs is so useful you can’t live without it, why are you complaining? You can, after all, change anything you don’t like.”
Or add anything you’re missing, for that matter. If you know #Emacs, why try anything else?
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialAt this point, if you don't find AI tools useful for code generation, that's a skill issue.
(The issue is that you are an actually competent programmer who knows how to do things like abstract boilerplate code into a helper function or practice test-driven development, and therefore you recognize the AI tool "assistance" as a net productivity loss. If you aren't good enough on your own that AI slows you down, the "speedup" you'll experience can only come at a crippling quality cost, which you might not even be able to recognize until it's too late.)
#AI #LLMs #VibeCoding
@Techmeme@techhub.socialGPT-5.2 models match GPT-5 and 5.1 with a 400K context window and 128K max output tokens, but have a newer knowledge cutoff of Aug. 31, 2025 vs. Sept. 30, 2024 (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Newsletter)
https://simonw.substack.com/p/gpt-52-and-useful-patterns-for-…
@hex@kolektiva.socialAs salty as I am about it, there's also another way to think about this. For anyone who still has connections to folks on the right (which is perhaps unlikely for anyone on this server, I digress), the cult that has consumed them thrives on isolation and grievance.
The words "you were right" have the potential to cut through the programming and open up an opportunity for reconnection. The modern conspiratorial cult of the Right has been built partially around people who were told they were wrong or were crazy. In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong and even when they were right they completely misunderstood why, but we'll skip that for now. Liberals making fun of them (even the times when they definitely earned it) has pushed them further and further into their ideological hole.
The thing about those words, "you were right," in this context is that the way they offer reconnection also requires them to take one little step of betraying their ideology to accept them. So they must choose between maintaining allegiance to a pedophile or finally getting to feel superior after years of living in an illusion of persecution.
Under the ideology of the Right, admitting one is wrong is a weakness. It is admitting defeat. They have to "own the libs" by saying things, things that they know aren't true, in order to feel dominant. But these things are often so absurd that they end up being made fun of, feeling even more weak and pathetic, reinforcing their fear and alienation.
Offering what they're looking for can offer a way out, but only if they're willing to start to recognize the thing they've supported for what it is.
And they were right about some things. They were right that Bill Gates was a terrible person. I've had plenty of liberals defend him based on his philanthropy washing, but he's awful and always has been. The Epstein links make that blatant. They intuitively recognized him and didn't trust him, even if they were wildly off base about *how and why* he shouldn't be trusted... Even if their correct mistrust was leveraged into one of the most destructive conspiracy theories ever (vaccine denial and COVID vaccine avoidance).
They were right about Bill Clinton. He was always shady as fuck. Sure, the people who attacked him at the time turned out to be even more shady but that's not the point right now. He was connected to Epstein and that was always creepy as fuck.
And the Epstein thing was an open secret that liberals ignored for a long time. It was seen as some weird thing that right wing nutjobs believed about the Clintons. But it was true. Not all of it, and there has always been an antisemitic element to the right wing interpretation or Epstein stuff, but his whole pedophile conspiracy was always kind of real.
The whole "Illuminati"/deep state thing is a vast oversimplification, an attempt to make comprehensible an incredibly complex set of interlocking and emergent behaviors. But Epstein did very much want to remake the world, to create a new world order, and he absolutely played a part in it.
The Right wing nutjobs talked about global authoritarianism, Blackhawks flying over American cities, masked men with guns disarming and executing legal gun owners in the streets. That's all happening right now.
The "FEMA concentration camps" are not actually that far off. ICE and FEMA are sister agencies, both under DHS. I'd be more than happy to call that one "close enough" in order to hear some MAGA admit that ICE is, in fact, building concentration camps.
There was always a huge millennialist element to these things. They tended to be connected to "the antichrist." It was absurd, especially for me as someone who no longer identifies as a Christian. But I'll even acquiess that to a degree. The "the number of the Beast" is 666. That's just the sum of the Hebrew spelling of "Nero." Revelations focuses a lot on Nero coming back to life after his death. His death that involved a head wound, thus the line from Revelation 13:3:
> And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.
The parallels between Trump and Nero are easy to draw, and Trump's ear wound feels pretty on-the-nose for this. I don't believe in "prophecy" in this way. I think that there are patterns, and useful patterns can become encoded in beleif systems. But I will, again, happily call this one "close enough" for anyone on that side willing to also acknowledge it. I'm happy to meet on that common ground, because anyone who accepts it must recognize that their duty is to fight against it.
A lot of these correct nuggets are embedded in a framework of religious extremism and antisemitism. The vast majority of the beliefs holding these together are wildly wrong and incredibly toxic. But by giving some room to feel validated, listened to, understood, can give some room to admit things that were wrong.
Cult de-programming starts with an opening. People have to talk through their own thoughts, hear their own inconsistencies. Guiding questions can help them untangle these things for themselves. And it all starts by having enough room to feel safe, to not feel cornered, to not feel stupid. Admitting mistakes means being vulnerable, and the MAGA cult is built on fear. It's built on exploiting vulnerability and locking it away.
De-programming takes a long time. It's not easy. It takes patience. But every person who comes out does so with a powerful perspective, a deep understanding, that can be turned back against it. The best people at getting people out of cults are former members. Some of the most dedicated antifa are former fascists who understood their mistakes and dedicate their lives to fixing them.
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioA lot of what I’m archiving has like 0 hits but I just know sometime, someone, maybe in a hundred years from now, will find it useful.
It’s a nice feeling to have contributed just a little to preserving our cultural artifacts.
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org“I get that Tsoding and Valigo are probably writing tongue in cheek but really, if Emacs is so useful you can’t live without it, why are you complaining? You can, after all, change anything you don’t like.”
Or add anything you’re missing, for that matter. If you know #Emacs, why try anything else?
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org“I get that Tsoding and Valigo are probably writing tongue in cheek but really, if Emacs is so useful you can’t live without it, why are you complaining? You can, after all, change anything you don’t like.”
Or add anything you’re missing, for that matter. If you know #Emacs, why try anything else?
@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energyOn Building a New Efficient Home in the South of England (2017) - Where to start, what to remember, and useful resources. Save your wallet, warm toes, and the planet! #greenBuilding #lowCarbon #frugal
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioPressure on Senators •is working•. Previously head-in-sand centrist Senators are actually coming out to vote against ICE funding. Their positions are still weak and insufficient, and more need to cave to pressure — but they are visibly buckling.
Again, we should not and must not wait on elected officials to save us — they will not — but we can and should deploy pressure on them as a strategic tool in moments when that can be useful.
Now is such a moment. KEEP IT UP.
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@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI’ve been trying to incorporate Apple Shortcuts into my workflow. I’ve got a few useful things now but happy to hear any recommendations.
#apple #shortcuts
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
Bitwise conversion of doubles using only floating-point multiplication and addition.
https://dougallj.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/bitwise-conversion-of-doubles-using-only-floating-point-multi…
@brian_gettler@mas.toI find it useful to remind myself that bloodless bureaucratic language serves not only to reflect some actually existing state of things, but also to create new realities that are anathema to many in terms that seem unassailable. But that's the thing about human-made systems - they have been, can currently, and always will be changed.
@MolemanPeter@neuromatch.socialIf you are not an expert on how our DNA works and how it forms who we are: read this masterpiece of Philip Ball:
https://www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/alpha-genome
@Techmeme@techhub.socialGoogle updates Gemini in Chrome with a new side panel, an auto browse feature that can navigate pages and take actions for AI Pro and AI Ultra users, and more (Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/work-life/google-chrome-auto-browse/
@penguin42@mastodon.org.ukBlech, bit of a cold today (and on and off through the week) - sitting here watching Styropro's Epic battery video has been a useful way of not doing anything.
@hex@kolektiva.socialThings like the #NoKings protests may feel like they're not enough, but they can be useful for building that network. Asking neighbors if they're going can help open up conversations, can lead to more conversations, can provide openings to find ways to escalate resistance, and can let you build what you need to feel safe going hard if you realize it's time.
Protests directly against facilities and other direct actions are small escalations that let you build trust and understand your network. If you want to know where you need to be, look at Twin Cities. That is the type of response that makes the machine grind to halt.
Make that happen everywhere and more escalation may not be necessary. And, if it is necessary to escalate more, that level of community organizing makes all other forms of escalation sustainable.
@cdarwin@c.imEvidence that AI is normal technology include AI systems that are good enough to be useful but not good enough to be trusted, continuing to require human oversight that limits productivity gains;
prompt injection and security vulnerabilities remain unsolved, constraining what agents can be trusted to do;
domain complexity continues to defeat generalization, and what works in coding doesn’t transfer to medicine, law, science;
regulatory and liability barriers prove high enou…
@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energy @inthehands@hachyderm.ioIs that legal, posing as different police? In Minneapolis right now, what is legal and what is illegal is just a sort of amusing abstract question, about as useful as asking “If you could breed a chicken with an octopus, would its eggs have shells?” — except suffused with a kind of grim, exhausted anger.
The law is something that people argue about on TV and on social media. It has so little relationship to what happens on the ground, it’s just hardly even relevant.
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
The perils of ISBN.
https://rygoldstein.com/posts/perils-of-isbn
saved 2026-02-19 https://dotat.at/:/U7VPF.html
@hex@kolektiva.socialRE: https://pawb.fun/@itsOasus/115787031750775789
"Starting a company is really just about getting a credit card and frantically spending as much as possible until you're profitable. Don't worry about the debt. It's not going to be your problem."
This would be a useful metaphor if it wasn't just how these people think. Anyway, thanks for the free bugs. You'll never be able to pay enough consulting fees to keep from being hacked repeatedly forever.
This is how the system collapses. At some point it simply isn't possible to sustain the crushing weight of incompetence.
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioPer replies, something I need to clarify:
We often use the word “neurotypical” to mean “neither autistic nor ADHD.” That might be useful as a shorthand, I guess, but it’s that mode of thought I’m specifically arguing against here: creating a single catch-all category defined as a negative, calling it “normal,” and assuming that it fits most people.
That doesn’t stand up to empirical scrutiny, and I don’t think it’s particularly healthy or helpful.
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@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energyThermal Imaging Survey: DIY vs Professional - Learn how a thermal imaging survey can spot real problems. What does it cost? Is a trained operator useful? #thermalImaging #cutCarbon -
@cdarwin@c.imThe unusual electronic and optical properties of #perovskites have long been touted as useful for improving solar cells and television screens,
but these materials have never quite hit the big time.
Existing approaches have hoovered up all the investment and attention, and perovskites remain confined to specialist applications.
Now researchers at Empa, ETH Zurich and the Politecnico…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialTop AI researchers argue that AI is now more useful for mathematics thanks to the latest "reasoning" models, as math becomes a key way to test AI progress (Melissa Heikkilä/Financial Times)
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/re…
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioMy general framework for thinking about this stuff:
- Brains vary a lot, in a lot of different ways.
- We have names for a few variations, or common patterns of variation. That can be useful, but it’s hardly complete.
- There’s a wealth of as-yet-unnamed neurodivergences out there.
- It’s all but certain that •everyone’s• mind is atypical in one way or another.
- Comparison with, aspiration to, or forced conformance to the nonexistent “average” mind is unhelpful, frequently harmful.
- Embracing variation is the only reasonable (or humane) approach.
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@inthehands@hachyderm.ioA lot of conversations about neurodivergence take the form of the first image below. I’m arguing to adopt the framing of the second image instead (except 100- or 1000-dimensional instead of 2-dimensional).
We’ve identified a few clusterings in a space of extraordinary and beautiful variation, and given those clusterings names. How useful those names are! How little they capture, even so! How much variation remains unnamed! How much variation must exist within every human being!
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@inthehands@hachyderm.ioScenario 2, “LLMs are the new cryptocurrency:” Regardless of whether the tech itself is useful or overblown, its wild overvaluation creates a massive wealth transfer to early (already wealthy) investors from later investors.
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