Tootfinder

Lockdown Mode is a backstop for people who either do dangerous things or are specifically targeted by high-resource threat actors. Almost no one can *actually* benefit from it but people who need it really need it.
I don’t need it. However, I have it enabled in part to understand what it does to the UX. It interferes with a minority of sites. It forces me to think about whether I REALLY trust the site I’m interacting with & how valuable my interaction really is.

Mysk🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@mysk@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image The Lockdown Mode that Apple introduced in iOS 16 is a nice idea to add extra protection to Apple devices. However, all security bugs we discovered and reported to Apple couldn't have been stopped by the Lockdown Mode either. Perhaps other researchers have a different experience. #infosec #iOS #Apple #security

It was never about AI (we are not our tools) - Big Think https://bigthink.com/the-long-game/it-was-never-about-ai-we-are-not-our-tools/

It was never about AI (we are not our tools)
Every generation has faced a version of this moment—the question has never been what our tools can do, but what we choose to do with them.

"Let's just…admit…if your wrists get in the way of ICE zip ties, if your lungs dare to breathe…our chemical weapons without written permission in advance, or if your body and face get in the way of ICE munitions, that was illegal of you. So if you're really honest with yourself, you deserved it and have no one to blame but yourself. People who follow laws don't get targeted by ICE, as being a target is a clear indication of criminality on the part of the target."
…

Ice Didn’t Do What They Did and Do
A statement from the US Department of Homeland Security: "Guys, guys, except for all the times we have targeted, arrested, unlawfully detained, been violent with, and hurt American Citizens, ICE doesn't do those things to American citizens. We should be grateful that ICE is doing the vital work of culling

My "grow plants everywhere" mod for #Luanti is progressing!
I just built a routine to do blobby weight regions as the intersection of a bunch of parabolas, where weight increases logarithmically from the edge of the parabola with an adjustable edge region, and we use the geometric average of these weight values within the intersection region. Then I spent a few hours hunched over a biomes vornoi diagram approximating different broad regions like "arid_grasses" and "temperate_trees" so you can just name some combination of these regions (with custom per-region multipliers) and have your plant definition apply within those regions. I was using rectangular min/max heat/humidity values before, but they were pretty awkward to work with.
If anyone on here who plays Luanti wants to check it out let me know and I can prioritize publishing what I've got. I've got growth definitions for most but not all VoxeLibre plants and it wouldn't be hard to put them together for another game. No trees yet, but that's pretty much the next thing to work on.

I'm going to go back to my social media break, but before I do I'm going to leave you with a thought experiment.
Imagine we're in the middle of the second American Civil War. What do you wish you had done to prepare? What do you wish you had done to bring the regime down faster? What do you wish you had done to avoid this ever happening?
Got some ideas? Think about them. Talk them over with friends. Ok... Now what can you do right now? Ok, now do it.
#USPol

Series C, Episode 04 - Dawn of the Gods
AVON: We will do nothing to counter the force acting upon the Liberator. We then plot the Liberator's course on the main battle computer flight predictor to see exactly how she is behaving. Once we understand how the force is operating we may be some way toward defeating it.
TARRANT: Strange. The Liberator's following a curve. Traction beams produce straight-line motion. Zen, I want a prediction of the Liberator's course based …

So we face a serious crisis with #ClimateChange, where we know what has to be done and how to do it, but we chose not to invest in it.
And we know we have the resources, because trillions are being spent on speculative investments in AI, which currently is aggravating the #ClimateCrisis wi…

So we face a serious crisis with #ClimateChange, where we know what has to be done and how to do it, but we chose not to invest in it.
And we know we have the resources, because trillions are being spent on speculative investments in AI, which currently is aggravating the #ClimateCrisis wi…

#Rant
Rob Shaw is solidifying his position as the new Dean of Right Wing, anti-Worker Legislative Reporters in British Columbia.
With these gems, it's incredible that he has an education or goes to a doctor at all…
"The BCTF is typically one of the most militant unions, and quickly prone to job action.”
BCTF Strikes since 2000:
2005
2014
phew! almost got to three!
Remember that this was at the time of a union-busting BC Liberal government that had to go to the Supreme Court of Canada to get told that they ripped up union contracts unconstitutionally and were *forced* to compensate many years later.
"The ratification is a win for a New Democrat government. And extraordinarily expensive for taxpayers, too."
“extraordinarily expensive. Really? How is a wage increase that is *barely* in line with inflation after literally decades of below-inflation increases, “extraordinary”? I'll wait.
"Teachers can thank the BCGEU for turning what was an initial 3.5 per cent wage offer over two years by government, into a more than 12 per cent increase over four that is now forming the baseline for all other union deals."
Indeed! For those who can do math, that means 3% each of 4 years instead of 3.5 over two. But thanks Rob for making it seem like 4 times more!
Thanks BCGEU members for your solidarity and perceverence! I have been on strike. It sucks HARD. But it was worth it and it works.
"The ratification by the BCTF means roughly half of the 450,000 public sector employees now have deals of some sort with the province. Two majors left on the table are nurses and doctors.”
Oh no! Let’s not pay doctors and nurses! Surely they'll stay regardless in our incredibly overworked and under resourced healthcare system!
Like how does Mr Shaw believe we are to stay competitive or attract people. Or is he just not worried about getting sick….
"The skyrocketing deficit has the NDP government inking sweetheart deals with organized labour on the one hand, while pledging to cut public sector jobs with the other.”
Ya, we could have kept those public sector jobs if it weren't for fools like you who demanded governments cut taxes over the past 20 years instead of reasonable rises to... again…keep up with inflation and retain service!
It is a crappy balancing act that the NDP is doing and I do not like a lot of it. At the same time as Mr. Shaw complains about "sweetheart deals" for people in post-secondary, I am seeing historic cuts in that same sector. It's a blood bath actually. So the potential wage increases are going to be welcome, but feel pretty hollow as so many collegues have left.
Rob Shaw would have had us all lose our jobs and take a pay cut at the next one for good measure.
Thanks but no thanks Rob, your world view sucks.
https://www.nsnews.com/economy-law-politics/rob-shaw-ndp-deal-with-bc-teachers-sets-another-costly-precedent-for-public-sector-talks-11966874

You tell us that we have to use a piece of software weekly or it will be uninstalled and if we want to use it then install it...
Guess what? I automated a script to run every Monday to launch that piece of software just in case I don't use it that week.
Guess what again? I told every team member how to do it and provided the script.
Depending on my workload and tasks I might not use it for over a week and I WILL NOT PUT UP with having to install it again and have a fo…

“AI can make mistakes” might as well be the slogan of our era. Even boosters admit that you need to spin the vibe code slot machine a few times to get a jackpot.
An employee with that degree of consistency would be fired.
So how do we redirect some of that unlimited grace from machines to humans?

Corporations demand perfection from workers, but AI gets unlimited slack.
LLM users have bottomless patience for inconsistent tools, and no grace left for their colleagues. What if we could flip it around?

A rogue AI enrolls in your online class, then publicly shames you when you remove it. This just happened in a dev forum. Are we ready if it happens to our courses?
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonippolito_a-rogue…

Cynicism, "AI"
I've been pointed out the "Reflections on 2025" post by Samuel Albanie [1]. The author's writing style makes it quite a fun, I admit.
The first part, "The Compute Theory of Everything" is an optimistic piece on "#AI". Long story short, poor "AI researchers" have been struggling for years because of predominant misconception that "machines should have been powerful enough". Fortunately, now they can finally get their hands on the kind of power that used to be only available to supervillains, and all they have to do is forget about morals, agree that their research will be used to murder millions of people, and a few more millions will die as a side effect of the climate crisis. But I'm digressing.
The author is referring to an essay by Hans Moravec, "The Role of Raw Power in Intelligence" [2]. It's also quite an interesting read, starting with a chapter on how intelligence evolved independently at least four times. The key point inferred from that seems to be, that all we need is more computing power, and we'll eventually "brute-force" all AI-related problems (or die trying, I guess).
As a disclaimer, I have to say I'm not a biologist. Rather just a random guy who read a fair number of pieces on evolution. And I feel like the analogies brought here are misleading at best.
Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that evolution inexorably leads to higher "intelligence", with a certain implicit assumption on what intelligence is. Per that assumption, any animal that gets "brainier" will eventually become intelligent. However, this seems to be missing the point that both evolution and learning doesn't operate in a void.
Yes, many animals did attain a certain level of intelligence, but they attained it in a long chain of development, while solving specific problems, in specific bodies, in specific environments. I don't think that you can just stuff more brains into a random animal, and expect it to attain human intelligence; and the same goes for a computer — you can't expect that given more power, algorithms will eventually converge on human-like intelligence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what evolution did succeed at first is achieving neural networks that are far more energy efficient than whatever computers are doing today. Even if indeed "computing power" paved the way for intelligence, what came first is extremely efficient "hardware". Nowadays, human seem to be skipping that part. Optimizing is hard, so why bother with it? We can afford bigger data centers, we can afford to waste more energy, we can afford to deprive people of drinking water, so let's just skip to the easy part!
And on top of that, we're trying to squash hundreds of millions of years of evolution into… a decade, perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?
[1] #NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

“So I guess what I’m trying to say is, the new workday should be three to four hours.“
Yup! That's what every worker knows and should have been fighting for with solidarity for decades. Every neurodivergent person knows that we can't do concentrated work for more than 3 hours, and that extended hyperfocus blocks drain our energy for the next day. It's not sustainable.
Steve Yegge writes about how AI Capitalism creates an energy vampire

The AI Vampire
This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.

I noticed late last night, by way of discovering pooling water under the sink, that the garbage disposal had gone belly up.
And so today’s task is to replace it, which I don’t really relish doing, but:
"…so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." -Gandalf the Grey
And so, I’m off to the hardware store, having accepted the conditions are what they are and deciding ho…

While I'm talking about new ways to structure computer programs, what does it look like to _push_ data into an LLM? Instead of making it natural language fetching, with huge privilege to do stuff, can we structure things to, say, have one system supply some data context, and push it into an LLM to arrange processing, and that in turn pushes to other systems for action? It's not quite “code and data are separate", but I think the inversion might help mitigate a lot of the lethal trifecta. It also puts humans in the artisan-director seat, rather than the wannabe slave-master's seat, metaphorically.

I gave a talk recently to some legislators. It dealt with the history of politics and trade in the region we were in. While some of what I presented was fairly obscure, most of it could be dug up by anyone with a library card and a few days to kill. But it all seemed to come as a revelation to my audience.
As a rule, our elected leaders aren't dumb - some are very smart. But we do ourselves a disservice when we imagine they know what we know. They might not - we may need to explain…

Just got these messages from @seengoals@mastodon.social, one of the members of Gaza Verified, basically accusing me of running a fundraiser for Gaza and keeping the proceeds (I have no fundraiser on any fundraising site anywhere) and extorting me to share his fundraiser or he’ll apparently go public with it.
So here’s what’s going to happening instead: Nabil has been removed Gaza Verified (

RE: https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/116064657955859408
I love the sentiment, but this is actually exactly what law enforcement has always been. It's always been political, always racist, always arbitrary, always genocidal.
ICE is just what happens when they think they can get away with it. The other abuses require a lot more investigation. Abolishing ICE is a good first step.
For all folks who have just now become enraged with the brutality of law enforcement agencies like ICE: I hope we can walk together, and learn from each other, until our ways part... But I do hope you'll walk a little farther with me after we achieve our shared goals.

FYI, there's still time to register for this Thursday's #DefendResearch webinar with
PEN America
to learn about what's going on with academic #censorship and what we can do about it

"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!" He gave a hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has
achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happ…

There are several photographs circulating online right now purporting to show the full, unmasked face of Renee Good’s killer. These photos are, as far as I’m aware, all AI-generated.
Please do not share these photos.
Remember that, as with all gen AI, it is answering the question “What would be statistically plausible here?” It’s not showing you the •killer’s• face. It’s showing you •a• face that fits with the what we know of the killer’s face.
2/

What will people do when AI can handle most current white-collar tasks?
I don't know.
And that's the whole point.
Nobody knew what displaced agricultural workers would do, either,
-- until they did it.
The absence of a visible next chapter isn't evidence that there won't be one.
It's evidence that we're bad at predicting what humans will invent when constraints shift.

Everything is awesome (why I'm an optimist)
February is the month the internet decided we're all going to die. In the span of about two weeks, Matt Shumer's Something Big is Happening racked up over 80 million views on X with its breathless comparison of AI to the early days of COVID, telling his non-tech friends and

I see no sign of any recognition from those who would want such a ban that they see any of the collateral damage a successful ban would have on the majority of kids who are not falling for this bullshit. That they are banning any good at all along with the bad.
Under 18s only
I see that the lobbying for these laws are funded by the absolute worst companies on the internet, those who will be entrenched by the legal compliance costs, that will cement themselves as the arbitrators of who is allowed to access the internet.
It’s a gift to Palantir and other surveillance companies. The very people running these algo-feeds are the ones who benefit from IDing every user and stalking them across the internet on their government-approved internet-licence IDs.
I don’t think even a successful ban on social media for kids would actually address the issue of kids being exposed to sexism and misogony or reduce the kids alienation and depression.
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
But I see we are going to do it anyway.
The direction is clear.
Those companies do get what they lobby for, and they are lobbying hard for ID checks on every website, wrapping their desire to enclose the internet commons for themselves in a faux concern for children’s welfare.
And governments wish to monitor and control the internet, so they will pass these laws.
I wonder how many parents have a family group-chat that they’re going to accidentally ban their kids from using, not realizing that ‘social media’ might include Whatsapp? 😆
It won’t fix anything, it will make the situation for kids worse, impose costs and rents and hacks and exploits on all of us, and increase government and corporate power.
Many will lose access to their networks of support and help.
So it goes.
We will build a better more censorship resistant internet. It’s already here really: Briar. Matrix. Nostr. Bitchat. Veilid. Spritely. And the rest.
The laws may push us there faster.
The race will go on.

I continue to be impressed with how the LLM systems are pretty open about queerness and non-judgmental, non-homophobic. Remarkable given that so much of the training material must be hateful! Here's Gemini being cautious but helpful after I asked it about a summary of what it knows about me and asked why it didn't mention me being gay.
I do have access to information regarding your personal life and sexual orientation from our previous conversations. However, I am designed with specific safety and privacy guardrails that prevent me from storing or outputting information related to a user's sexual orientation or sensitive medical conditions in these types of summaries.
While I can remember and use those details to provide context during our active discussions—such as when we were looking into the history of queer voices or specific support resources—I cannot include them in a "permanent" distilled profile like the one above.

There are a lot of takeaways from this:
1. Organizing locally gives you a massive advantage because you will always know your local area better than ICE ever can.
2. Be agile. You can always change tactics faster than a centralized organization.
3. Organize now. The sooner you build your networks, the sooner you can learn.
4. Identify ICE facilities and organize monitoring them directly.
But I think the most interesting one that's not explicitly in there, one that's hinted at the last one, is to go on the offensive. ICE is already afraid. If we all take the anger we have at the murder of #ReneGood, find the local ICE facility that they'll stage from, and bring that anger to #OccupyICE we might be able to just shut the whole thing down preemptively. Completely stop all ICE operations across the US. If they want to fight, they can fight *with everyone, all at once.*
Shut down their ability to operate at all. They have a logistics pipeline. They need cars, they need oil in those cars, they need to be able to move those cars to target areas. They also need money to pay those agents. All of those can be disrupted.
The regime needs your money and labor to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. They chose a bad time because you can hit both of those at once *right now* with a combination of #GeneralStrike and #TaxStrike, and then #BoycottEverything.
The regime is weaker than it's ever been. It's flailing. Their own base is demanding the release of the #EpsteinFiles. Their last gasp attempt to prevent the radical change that's coming is just to ethnically cleanse the US back to the 50's (which is what they always meant by "Make America Great Again"). Trump will do anything to stay in power, even if it means killing everyone on Earth in the process. But Americans can end it now by going on the offensive.
Now is the time.
#USPol

Okay, so I've been talking about the ways that Big AI directly harms kids. But what can we *do* about it? Here are some things you can do, at work and and your kid's school, to take action today, complete with scripts to follow: https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/23/taking-action…

Taking action against AI harms
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Perhaps the main difference between myself and vibe coders is that we have completely different backgrounds.
I've learned coding as a kid, with no friends and no Internet. I didn't do it because it was cool; nerdy stuff was the exact opposite of cool and was likely to get you bullied. I didn't do it because it promised good salary; as a 10-year old, I didn't ponder much about my future, let alone salary. I did it because I was bored, and it was something interesting to do.
I didn't do specific exercises, but rather created whatever I've found interesting. I wasn't graded, I had all the time in the world, and I've enjoyed solving problems. Even if I had access to the Internet, I doubt I would start looking for ready solutions and copy-pasting them. My code was always mine, and I was proud of it; at least at the time.
Of course, nowadays I do stuff I don't enjoy as well. But I'm a grown man who takes responsibility for what I do. And even if my code is shit, it is my shit, and 100% eco.
#NoAI #NoLLM

A couple of minor concerns, probably all resolved with regular minutes:
Mamardashvili looked a little unsteady in a few moments. Was fortunate the ball carried over, rather than looking he knew, spatially, that he had it all covered.
Chiesa struggled. We've seen what he can do, but today was pretty far from it. As a starter, he's been underwhelming. As a super sub? Maybe that's where he's best. Questions, for me, are whether he's really a Jan target for Juvent…

Huge respect to @… for taking the necessary risk with his 3 million subscribers by telling it like it is with the political landscape in the US, at the end of his latest video.
(linked video at the start of the "Who the liars are and what we need to do about them" section, but the whole video is worth watching for other reasons)

Series B, Episode 13 - Star One
CALLY: Are we fanatics?
BLAKE: Does it matter?
CALLY: Many, many people will die without Star One.
BLAKE: I know.
CALLY: Are you sure that what we're going to do is justified?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/213/77 B7B5

Please no nuclear power revival. humans can't manage 10 years of long term thinking, Do you really think we'll deal responsibly with nuclear waste for the 100 years it takes to stop become radioactive?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? What am I missing? Solar and other renewables forevah!!!

If you are buying a new computer, there's no need to throw the old one away. I was really surprised last year how many items found another owner.
Nothing to get rich of, but avoid unnecessary e-waste
https://www.locked.de/how-i-gave-my-old-computer-parts-a-s…

I would like to find the 'genius' who nuked one software package that I like and used and for me to apply the clue bat (with a steel rebar core) when we were forced back to what we had years ago. It is slow, takes more steps to do my job than what we were using. It was also CROSS PLATFORM and not such a resource hog. They also force us to use it in seven days or they uninstall it and make us jump through the hoops to have the damned thing installed again.
Right now it is tak…

After the whole Adam Something "dating advice for leftist men" thing, I realized I should probably write something about that. I didn't, but I realized I should. Here I am sort of getting around to it.
I had a friend call me an "elder" at one point. I was like 35 at that time, but like... a lot of old leftists are just dead or in prison, so we take what we can get I guess. Being also an elder in the sense that I'm an elder millennial, who is also a parent and married for almost 10 years and all that, I guess I'm technically qualified.
So here it is, dating advice for (straight cis) leftist men:
1. Don't.
That's it, actually. That's the whole thing. Let me explain a bit.
First of all, this is dating advice for neuroatypical folks. We're way overrepresented in both extremes because this system wasn't built for us. And that's who is *the most* confused by all the relationship stuff, and most likely to try to apply all this masculinity/manosphere bullshit. I'm also talking a bit from experience here, as a neruo-spicy trying to "figure out" how to date within a paradigm entirely built around neurotypicals and their relationships. It's garbage. Throw it out. There's nothing worth saving.
His video had some line comparing not having sex to your house being on fire. I'm not gonna bother to quote it because I'm busy with actual life. But like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I recognize that and it's horribly destructive. Men who buy in to patriarchy actually believe this, because those men value themselves based on (hetro) sex. Yeah, if you think you're worthless because you aren't "getting laid" then yeah, you're gonna feel like that's an emergency.
"Dating" as a paradigm turns humans into roles. It dehumanizes us all, and thus makes human connection much harder. It is a game that, like thermonuclear war, can only be won by not playing.
When you abandon "dating" and just act like a human, everything starts to be easier. There's no such thing as being "friend zoned" because you're just friends. Sometimes friendships become other things, sometimes they don't. It doesn't actually matter, because if you're actually there for friendship then you don't *need* anything else.
My grandma, at 98 I think, gave me some advice. My grandparents always got along well, and were married for enough decades that I listened really closely. She told me I should just do things I loved to do and everything else would work itself out.
And it kind of did.
I understand the fear, the idea that you'll die alone. I get that. I get the loneliness. It all hits a lot harder when you have ADHD emotions and past trauma. I get that. But that fear is self-manifesting. When you build your confidence, when you don't *need* to be "in a relationship," you have more room to actually build relationships. For me, dating was dehumanizing. When I abandoned that, I was able to actually be a good partner, and I was able to find my partner.
I would advise against marriage as well, but we did get married for legal reasons. It can still be hard to maintain that, to see each other as people rather than roles. That becomes extra hard as parents. But the times that we cut through that are the times we're closest. Those are the times when it becomes easier to remember that we're both humans and all human relationships need tending.
Roles don't need to be tended because they are classifications. Classifications are static. But relationships between humans are not. Humans are messy and chaotic. Humans have all kinds of complex needs and desires.
So yeah, don't date. Just be a human and see what happens. Maybe google "relationship anarchy" and see where it takes you.
If you have ADHD, it can be especially useful to understand that relationships with neurotypical folks can be especially difficult. Assume you're incompatible with 90% of the population as your baseline, and you'll start to understand why the standard "dating" thing has made you feel so alienated and miserable.
Neurotypical folks generally have no idea that atypicality exists, much less how it impacts relationships. Having to conform to a neurotypical relationship just adds additional mental strain unless you find someone (really special) who can do at least some of the work.
The ADHD thing was especially important for me. There were so many things I was told to do in specific ways by neurotypicals that never worked for me. Their advice always made me feel like a failure. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized they were just giving advice for the wrong type of brain. It was advice I could never use. Basically all dating advice I ever got fell into this same category.
That's my braindump. Maybe I'll develop it more in the future, but I'm busy so maybe not. I hope it helps someone who is struggling like I was.

#Samsung phones are such a pain.
I had a friend over and we had to put a SIM card in a Samsung phone to receive text. Turns out you can't do anything with the damn phone (except emergency calls) until you provide Wi-Fi and allow it to install all kinds of scamware on behest of the mobile network. What a waste of time and resources.

What really makes me irate about how LLMs are marketed and sold is that if these companies instead spend their time and money to make highly specialized versions for them we could have amazing and actually helpful tools without the ick.
This could both work much better for many use cases (for example for correlating documents and giving a list of results like a search engine instead of tedious palaver) and they wouldn't need to steal data (Professor Bender calls it succinctly "datasets too large to care")[1].
But they're pursuing "AGI" (which is provenly impossible to do with LLMs) and endless growth.
[1] https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/116109627131276897

FYI, there's still time to register for this Thursday's #DefendResearch webinar with
PEN America
to learn about what's going on with academic #censorship and what we can do about it

All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each
other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information.
This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with
our lives."
-- Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell"

FAFO-ing in the iOS app Loopy Pro, which is what I use to create midi controls on the iPad. Here I have used an XY controller widget to control delay mix/feedback.
We will see how fiddly that is in the heat of battle, but if it works I might do the same with reverb mix/decay.
The joke might be on me however; in iPadOS26 grabbing anything near the edge will resize the app 🤣😩

Double grumble with an asterisk!!!!
I'm here getting my car serviced and I attached to their wi-fi. OK, that's pretty normal.
But their wi-fi intercepts TLS connections and substitutes its own certificate. Bad, bad, bad. At least my tools noticed it and said "we ain't gonna get fooled".
However, this happened in Thunderbird (e-mail tool) which popped up an utterly obscure dialog to tell me and ask what I wanted to do.
Hey, Mozilla/Thunderbir…

A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker

Great talk by @… of #GNU #Hurd fame, in a packed room, selling the the Hurd really well (in my not entirely unbiased opinion, of course) and starting with
It'…

#poolpond progress today as we approach spring. Need to clear out the backyard enough so I can get a local guy with a mini bulldozer to soread out and flatten out the dirt mountain.
I came to a realization over the winter that leaving the lining as is in the pool with just a bottom of gravel and nothing on the sides is definitely not an option.
Turns out if the hole is emptied in the rainy season, then water will drain into the gap between the lining and earth... bulging the lining out into the cavity. Nope. Not good. keeping water in it keeps things in place, but realstically winter and spring will be when I want to do cleaning and stuff.
So that means I must do my best rock wall building up the sides this spring once the surrounding ground dries. This was my original plan, but I had hoped to do it without grouting or cement. That was a mistake on my part that I learned in earnest in August.
So now, all the various rock sizes piled around the yard is not going anywhere.... BUT at least with the leftovers from the fence i have material to build some forms to help with the wall building....
So that's why my attention for preparing for spring will turn to reactivating the surrounding yard.
So I need to find a place closer to the house to move what rock is left. Ugh. heavy work. And I realized today that someone has taken our garden cart 😢 boo.
oh well, onward we go! There is light at the end of the project!
#diy #backyardPond #Gardening #portalberni #landscaping

Getting back into training. Yay!
This past week I did a resilience session after not exercising consistently in a long time, and my normal work day ended up being one of the best I've had. My body felt relaxed and my mind sharp and focussed. I really feel we're made for intensity, or at least I enjoy it. Find what works for you, personally small group training with knowledgeable coaches that instruct has been life changing. I can be a workhorse if I'm told what to do. A dre…

The cover of this week's edition of Science..
The details say it all - everything that Trump's shadow touches is broken.
https://www.science.org/
Let's do what we can to preserve science (which is an international endeavour) and support our US colleagues until the US gets rid of Trump!

2026 mood
(from Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany)

What is “social media”?
What do you actually want to ban?
Does Github count?
Does an anorexia-support forum count?
Does a queer-support forum count?
Does the schools own homework-submission system count?
Does Whatsapp, which the kids use to talk to family and to bully each other?
How about Telegram that the kids use to talk to their drug dealers?
How is it different?
Are we really saying nobody under 18 can watch youtube, and expecting that to make life better for those kids rather than worse?
How are you going to define ‘social media’ such that you’ll ban the harm you think you see without also banning any chance of support for a person looking to learn to program, or cope with their abusive parents, or seek advice about being anorexic or queer?
Is it really a good idea to attach a label to every child account for all the websites they visit? You want the kids to all have a big “Child” tag on them as they wonder the net? Might that not increase rather than decrease their vulnerability?

The US military has always had a massive global advantage against enemies by having bases all over the world. There are bases in every NATO country. This would appear to be a powerful threat to anyone willing to oppose American hegemon, and under normal conditions it would be.
But a lot of those kids serving on those bases joined, not because they love America but, because they needed a ticket out of poverty. They joined for the education, for the money, maybe a bit for the adventure, but, more than anything, to escape the ghetto or podunk backwater that trapped them. Under normal times, this is the best deal they could expect. Maybe they risk their lives, usually they sit around being bored for a few years, and they get to come out with respect and paid college.
But what they are being offered is normal in most of the countries they're stationed in. Free healthcare, cheap or free education, is just what citizens in a lot of countries have come to expect. If the US attacked a NATO country, how many would snap up citizenship if they were given a chance to defect? Bonus points for taking some hardware with you, I'm sure.
But there are some who love their country. There are some patriotic Americans on those bases. Some of them joined specifically to protect the US from all enemies, foreign *and* domestic. Given a chance to fulfill that oath or violate international law, what happens?
There are a good number of former military folks too who now are unsafe in the countries they served, who would do just about anything for citizenship in any EU country and almost any NATO ally. Some of those folks know things they swore an oath to never share, but the country they swore an oath to has betrayed them. Today there's no value in leaking those secrets, but in a war between the US and NATO allies things would be different. Some of those former military folks still believe in their oath, and know exactly who the real enemy is. What happens when there's a real threat of war, when they can use their knowledge to fulfill that oath to protect the US against those domestic threats?
There are a bunch of civilian tech workers who have become targets of the regime. Some of them had clearance, or know about the skeletons in the closet. They know about critical infrastructure, classified systems, all sorts of things that would be extremely valuable to an opponent. But the opponents of the US have always been a frightening *other*, never familiar societies these folks look up to, have visited, have thought about moving to, are trying to escape to.
All I'm saying here is that invading Venezuela and kidnapping the president has a very different calculus than does attacking Greenland. I don't know if Trump or his people are able to understand that, but if he and his folks aren't then I hope European leaders are. But more than that, I hope it never comes down to finding out.
But perhaps we should all think about what we would do to make sure things ended quickly if American leadership ever made such an incredible mistake.

Series A, Episode 08 - Duel
BLAKE: What do you think?
JENNA: The surface seems to be melted. It's almost like the effects of a fusion bomb.
GAN: Blake! Jenna! [They walk over to The Monument]
BLAKE: Well, at least we know the planet's inhabited.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/108/64

What We Build — #leadership

Grounded Urgency: Activism, Grief, and the Practice of Sustainable Love
This essay reimagines activism as an act of love, not obligation. When urgency becomes panic, we lose clarity; when grief is honored, it becomes fuel for compassion. Grounded in love and trust, sustainable leadership begins with tending what’s ours to do.

Cowboys are locked into a 2nd place schedule in 2026 https://insidethestar.com/cowboys-are-locked-into-a-2nd-place-schedule-in-2026

This 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

C02 - Powerplay
BARR: They'll never willingly give up their way of life. That's why we try to catch them with our drug guns. And when we do they make an invaluable contribution to our society.
VILA: It's a shame, they just don't know what they're missing.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/302/330

"Hero? No! We're pirates! I love heroes but I don't wanna be one! Do you know what heroes are? Say there is a chunk of meat. Pirates will have a banquet and eat it but heroes will share it with other people. I want all the meat!"
Monkey D. Luffy, One Piece, ep. 554.
#quote #OnePiece

I just made a cool shortcut in Apple’s shortcut app on iPad!
When tapped on the Home Screen on an iPad or iPhone or an Apple Watch, it will message two people immediately.
Then it gives a choice of calling an ambulance (911) or not.
There is an “are you sure” before actually calling 911.
If no ambulance is required it sends a message just telling the people help is needed.
If it does call the ambulance it texts the people that too.
…. I have been playing with Apple scripting since old MacOS days. love that it lives on and just gets more powerful with all the apps that we can tap into now.
So easy! And doing things that can truly improve, even save, lives. This is what computers should do.
#apple #shortcut #app #automation

Series C, Episode 07 - Children of Auron
FRANTON: The infection risk.
SERVALAN: You obviously have cleansing procedures. Besides, we are not diseased in any way.
FRANTON: What do you want?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/307/367 B7B2

I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.

Went out canvassing with the Green Party in ward next door.
The candidates seem nice and meeting other green members is nice, but the actual process of going around knocking on people's doors isn't really a great deal of fun for me.
Mostly nobody home, or else maybe peering through the spy-hole feeling intimidated by me I guess? Hard to tell.
Spoke to mostly Labour voters who claim not to be sure what they'll do next time. Couple of folks already Green.
Nobody around here is gonna vote Conservative or Liberal or Reform of course. "Your Party" not likely to get it together in time to even stand. It's a race to see how many Green and Independent opposition councilors can be elected to avoid a Labour full house. 47 Lab to 3 Green seats last time. Less than 200 votes in it in that seat. Probably will do better this time, maybe even win the seat. At least make some of the safe Labour seats a bit less safe.
Most exciting part was when the flat over the road went on fire and we had to call the fire brigade and a triplet of fire engines and couple of cop cars turned up to deal with it. Started with smelling smoke and wondering if that flat was on fire, by the time the fire fighters turned up remarkably quickly (someone else already called I imagine) there were flames licking at the windows.
An exploding e-scooter battery someone was saying, but dunno how they knew.
Nice to share a drink in the pub with the green crew after, but dunno that this canvassing lark is for me. I felt like either a spare part, or just backup muscle probably intimidating people into not opening the doors.
Probably I'd enjoy it more if I could get into an argument but apparently that's rare and the advice is to disengage anyway.
#green #london #greenPartyEW

I watched the latest video from @… where he spoke with a German analyst and author ostensibly about the author’s new book… but it really was about how NATO may be on the verge of collapse right now and what the new reality might look like. Highly recommend Canadians watch this.
My only complaint and comment completely selfishly, is the absence of Canada 🇨🇦 in the discussion. I have to say I am feeling more than a little apprehensive, even isolated. I know Canada is not exactly pulling its weight and won’t be a major player in whatever Europe needs to do to secure itself in a post-NATO reality.
But I am definitely left wondering and more than a little worried…. What the heck is Canada going to do?
We border Greenland. We are deeply connected to Ukraine socially. We have a force in Latvia.
Anders, if you have thoughts on this, I would be interested, as would others.
Is a transatlantic alliance impossible without the USA?
#russiaukrainewar #nato #eu #europe #canada #canpoli #cdnpoli #war #alliances
https://youtu.be/A8ZvKXjhHYM?si=RGEiJYEf7zXg05t4

Very proud and excited to vote in the NDP leadership race today!!
This is not the first time I've voted in a Federal leadership race... more on that later but first, my choices! I considered only voting for two people, but I ended up filling in all 5 choices.
#1: Tanille Johnston @…
#2: Avi Lewis @…
#3: Heather McPherson
#4: Tony McQuail
#5: Rob Ashton
Why?
You might ask why I would publicize my choices. I don’t expect others to of course. It is a privilege and a right in Canada to exercise your democratic choice freely and privately, but I also think there is value in knowing how others voted.
#1 why Tanille? #electoralReform and proportional representation myself, I didn't just want to pick my top two. I wanted to make a statement on each of these candidates an influence each one.
To be blunt, Heather is #3 because she is the middle-of-the-road candidate. She is an excellent representative as MP and has gathered the support of other MPs including my own, but while I would be OK with her leadership, I would see her as a continuation of the status quo, and that is not what the NDP needs as a party, nor is it what Canada needs as a country.
We desperately need a vigorous and clear alternative to the Centre-but-mostly-Right Liberals, and the MAGA-wannabe Conservatives. The only way to do that is to catch the attention of Canadians and inspire them. I am not sure that Heather has the ability to do that, and if we continue with the same leadership crew in the NDP, I am not confident that the policy choices will be strong enough to inspire and attract Canadians.
That is why Tanille and Avi are far better options.
#4 Why Tony:

Tony is the real deal. Honestly, I would have loved to rank him higher. He represents the true life blood of rural, socially progressive, environmentally aware, Canadians. You should go check out his platform. I am so glad that he was able to participate fully in the race and we need his voice in the NDP.
#5 Why not Rob?
I have been an active member in my Union for more than 10 years. Unionism is The Way. Rob is representing a division within the union movement that claims that working people can't have jobs if the environment is put first. This is a lie.
We need union leaders that look to the future and speak honestly to people. We need union leaders who are genuinely progressive, not ready to do the bidding of corporate masters to the benefit of a few.
Working people need honesty, and when an industry is on decline, a clear path to new, excellent, union, jobs!
#CanPoli #CdnPoli #Liberal #CPC #Canada #Democracy #NDP

Because because because because because. Because of the wonderful things he did in the last scene.
Improv teacher Steve Hoopla in today's 'story' course guided us through some "Because Games", in which scenes are to be causally connected. Each following on from prior scenes. Because that happened, this happened.
He didn't explicitly mention Pixar's "Story Spine", but the main loop in Pixar's story template is "...and because of that..." looping over and over between the introduction, call to adventure, and conclusion.
Causality is what strings a story together, gives it structure an avoids it being just a disconnected dream sequence. This scene is only happening because of the events in the prior scenes. It gives the string of scenes meaning and relevance.
So good fun to drill some of that stuff with the team and end up with sheep infestations and santa claus robot wars among other laughs.
Gonna miss next week's session due to a prior engagement, but the team is gelling well. Pretty sure we could do this show without much further guidance really. Everyone's very good.
#london #improv #hooplaImpro