Since I suspect I am being sub-skeeted here, let me clarify my actual position: I think the US could defeat the IRGC and the Iranian army on the ground but only at ruinous cost. 'Different' does not mean 'better.'The correct decision on how to wage an Iran War was *always* DO NOT WAGE AN IRAN WAR.
"putin is fucking insane" is something a lot of american chin-stroking think-tank/academic and beltway types don't really want to reckon with for any number of reasons (not least of all it would require a massive reevaluation of the last 30 years of their work)unfortunately, it remains true
Judging by recent events, the A.I. bubble may be approaching the point when euphoria gives way to distress, John Cassidy writes. www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin…
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted his views on artificial intelligence in a 6,500-word essay published Monday, emphasizing his belief that wider access to AI models is key to the industry’s future
…that’s why he couldn’t help that boat out, I expect…he was writing his manifesto…say…chat…how do manifestos generally work out for people as rich as they are disingenuous?
Destroying the Earth and hiding the evidence.In the service of greed and power.
This is what I’m actually worried about. Diesel is priced like oil is $140/bl. Gas prices have been held low due to our releases from the SPR, now it’s about dry and we have no way out of the war. You can’t choose gas or diesel, we have to have both. Gas prices are about to go hyperbolic..
RBADVISERS: “.. Yet another inflation impulse. The US basically has NO STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE (SPR) anymore.”
…the guy’s plenty enthusiastic about the tech…& even the companies…buys that revenue is going through the roof…does admit that if you extrapolate the month used to calculate the run rate for anthropic that would seem to indicate a rate of revenue growth whereby Anthropic’s exceed the current global GDP in around early 2028…the guy does seem to be doing a reasonable job of trying to be reasonable…at one point he talks about the current rate of capacity getting added at around 20% more in a year rates…& although 3-4 years ago he himself viewed it as basically “a toy” he takes the view that “it’s tough to persuade people to spend tens of millions on a toy” so…given what they’re spending
…in case it seems like I’m making the other guy sound like an idiot…he doesn’t seem to be unaware that these models are getting served at a loss however you derive sounds-like-progress on your “inference” line-item or whatever…I dunno as I actually expect people to listen to him for nearly an hour to find out…well, that stuff’s in the first 10mins or so…the whole about-50-of-those-minutes…probably not, really…but…fun fact…also in the first 10mins…cost of renting time on even ye olde H100 chips for your “compute”…on the rise…&…your breakeven to not lose money on the hardware before that degrades to end-of-life…think he quotes that starting with a 6 & having a lot of zeroes after it that…I dunno how it’s supposed to work, exactly…it…kinda seems like it doesn’t most ways I can make the pieces line up, tbh…but if you’re a real glutton for punishment…there’s a much longer one from that other guy that has him talk about stuff with a guy from oxford
…whoops…cursor must have slipped…not that one
…stop it…I said not that one…the other bloke
…we have…crazy-costly coding tools that if you can’t code & squint right look like they might be a cheaper source of code productivity…or code for productivity…or just productivity…if that’s code for profit margin…that is also a tasteless plagiarism synthesizing deal where you hide the thousands of monkeys flinging shit while they bang on the typewriters & get “new” shakespeare…or whatever…&…thus far…as far as I can make out…&…for my sins I’m curious enough I probably will spend about 2 3/4 hours hearing out the one guy talk to the other guy about why based on the strikethrough text it ain’t gonna be next year…I have to date seen nothing at all that indicates to me why this particular species of software is meaningfully closer to AGI than…at the risk of making an ill-advised red dwarf joke about a cursed entity that’s an even more cursed product…a toaster?
…toasters are pretty solid in the sense that we’ve had those for a while & we know how they work & compared to a lot of stuff they’re basic enough to seem simple…the one guy who was making a point made it difficult enough for himself to write a whole book about trying to make one from scratch strictly on a DIY basis
…but the bit that actually burns your buns is all the lost-as-heat power from the inefficient bit that you could burn out by making it melt itself if you turned the juice up…like how fuses work…& the confabulation box does that by a sort of analogous inefficiency…that’s how “give me a ghost story in the style of whatsisface…” doesn’t just quote the whole “nevermore” thing back at you from the “here’s one of theirs” pile…which is how come the part they talk about being “a harness” is as-or-more important to how good the coding tool-suite is than the model strapped in that…in terms of how/why it works…&…it is not a simple matter to build a thing using one model & then just swap that for a different one…you aren’t hot-swapping between claude & GPT like you can yank a bad drive from a RAID array & pop a new one in & nobody even notices that happened that wasn’t there on your end
…still…if you can get to the point where you’re talking about AIPAC PACs waging some sort of campaign against Antropic PACs…in a mid-term year…with this bunch of unmitigated fuckwitteded clusterfuckery inducing critical mass of untethered bullshit in the mix
…no…sorry…wow…cursor’s really slipppery today…not that guy
…&…there is no oil supply crisis & freedom of navigation has never looked like a surer thing & the people running this show are all as smart as they seem personally to be profiting
Judging by recent events, the A.I. bubble may be approaching the point when euphoria gives way to distress, John Cassidy writes. www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin…
“They'll land the gear, claim to be peaceful oil drillers, provoke a confrontation which they’ll escalate into a violent one, the Press will paint the Americans as the victims … and give Trump an excuse to invade and annex Greenland in order to “protect Americans and American interests.””
…look…I’m still salty about the reality-or-the-onion effect…if we hit south-park-as-prophecy before we put these assholes out to some sort of pasture…possibly in a big farm they could buy somewhere upstate where they don’t count their votes…just…generally out of our misery…I dunno…these posts will get worse?
glenn greenwald is a confirmed groomer this is not a surprise in the slightest
It is so funny to see minor characters show up here and immediately crap their pants at the awesome power of…some people that can disappear forever with a couple judicious blocks. Just the saddest, lowest juice kind of poster imaginable.
…it’s…funny…was more funny before but I guess that’s why it says they retracted the punchline where more of the tantrum was distilled down to a smaller scroll-age-window
not that I particularly want to get into today’s main character du jour but the thing about bluesky is that it is small enough that if you want to pick a fight with the entire website you can, still, pick a fight with the entire websiteand it is big enough that it feels like a big fight
…still…if I’m not mixing up my responses to deleted posts & other such backstage sheannigans
there’s only one person raging here, Jay, and it isn’t me.(I don’t usually share private DMs these days, but since you asked I’m more than happy to oblige)
…say, fam…if you got kids & you always refuse to be the one slathering them in sunscreen & joke online about how if your other half didn’t always pick up that slack they’d just burn & go bright red & then all their skin would peel off & you’d think that was good parenting…do you think you’d improve your social status by sending someone texts like that & then being mad they shared those in the group chat?
Kang: "go ahead, post these DM's"*posts DM's*Kang:
look man I just call out stupid shit (like anti-sunscreen) from public figures when I see it. and given the fact that our dipshit HHS Secretary included “sunshine” next to raw milk and ivermectin, many of the anti-sunscreen people aren’t “trolling” like you were
eh come on Sam, you know this is lame. The last time we got in a fight you were, I believe, once again posting DMs so I have a hard time believing you "usually don't do this." But very funny to post DMs again when the person says "post this."
…this is how you get doubthat putting in the paper that he was quitting the sinecure because he couldn’t remember who he was supposed to be being performatively mad at anymore & doesn’t know what he thinks he needs to think to be able to be angry at the right things that aren’t the right without accidentally slipping & calling bullshit on bullshit he’s meant to be buttressing
…cute your boy thinks he already lived through peak woke…anyway…
Just opened "The Limits to Growth" (Club of Rome, 1972) to look up a topic and hey, quite spot on if I look at today's FT headline. Also the World3 standard run still seems plausible, after more than 50 years.
The trial of a former gang leader accused of orchestrating the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur finally began on Monday, 30 years after one of America's most high-profile unresolved killings. u.afp.com/SHAz
They ran out of weapons, didn't realize how low they were, thought it was already solved, & now that they realize it isn't, they're all Gotta Go Fast on production with a reduced workforce & fewer safety checks? I'm sure that won't AT ALL lead to catastrophic equipment failures and own-side deaths 👍🏾
Over on the Nazi bar, Libs of Tik Tok attempted her stochastic stuff w/Trump's post (making claims that Trump himself had not made, for example).That's scary as hell, but also, she got a surprising amount of pushback for disseminating false claims.
people explained roblox to me on here maybe a year or so ago – i do not have kids so was blissfully unaware – and it’s mindblowing to me that anybody would let their kids near it
continues to be wild to me there is a very famous platform geared explicitly towards kids that no one with more than two brain cells lets their kids use because it's lousy with predators, we've known this for close to a decade, and no one in the US had really done anything about it until a year ago
⚡️Russia's version of Starlink deploying quicker than planned, Ukraine's military intelligence says.Russia launched its first 16 Rassvet satellites into low Earth orbit in March 2026 and is continuing to expand the constellation.
‘According to the 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴, the US has collected $13 billion of Venezuela’s oil revenue, yet no one seems able to say where those billions are.’Tony Wood on US imperialism in the Americas:www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4…
Did Trump replace David Warrington w/Will Scharf bc he'll help Trump build the Bunker-Ballroom and Losers Arch, or bc he'll figure out a way to suspend habeas corpus? [Note, Maggie's book focuses on the latter but most coverage is focusing on former.]www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/u…
Yet, he voted for the guy. Total coward."Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) seemed not fully sure about how the new U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche might approach November’s midterms." www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/…
*You can "define it" in exquisite ethical and legal detail, but this is what that looks like as an existent power-struggle that is actually happening in the contemporary USA #Pentagon #Anthropic bisi.org.uk/reports/pent…
US defence companies Lockheed and Raytheon are against licencing Patriot missile production to Ukraine because they’re afraid Ukrainian manufacturers will be able to “improve the Patriot and then produce them at scale faster and for much less money”, The Atlantic reports.
One difference between law and journalism is that in a legal document one should use the same word or term repeatedly, while in journalism one has to constantly use synonyms so as to avoid repetition. (Especially on second mention.)
This poses a challenge for any journalistic commentary about law.
I think there's a generational aspect at play here where a lot of the PLP simply don't understand how ingrained social liberalism is within under-40s and that no amount of economic "radicalism", real or otherwise, can compensate for being seen to be reactionary.
*Well, I would counter-pontificate that it's more that "the individual is the microcosm of society," but yes, quite frequently "the cruelty is the point" for "structural violence"*It's not enough to merely warn, admonish or deter, you have to put-the-fear-of-God into 'em
*Can you do "structural violence" to yourself when you are alone in a room*Yes, you can"Well, I'd dying of Covid, but at least I had the guts not to let 'Them' give me those vaccinations""I'm dying proud and free"
*If you think that people who build "autonomous AI felons" will be held personally accountable, you need to catch on about "structural violence" and how well AI as a technology fits into this*No one gets arrested for "structural violence." It's not even possible.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structu…
Don’t express alarm when he’s merely obviously TRYING to consolidate authoritarian power. You have to wait until he succeeds and you’re no longer allowed to.
…if you overclock your $10,000 setup to 10x your usage…will it…run for >2.4 years?
Trying to gauge when, exactly, between the lies about Haitian migrants, the extrajudicial boat killings, the Epstein Files strategy sessions, the Tate brothers importation, and the illegal overseas war, it was that God made his presence known to JD Vance through a glass on the wall
Vance: I’ve had moments where I felt the presence of God. A friend and I were talking about Christianity and there was this moment where a glass fell off the wall. I think an atheist would dismiss that, but it felt like God was trying to send me a message. #cdnpoli
…gee, JD…do we get to hear what the message was?
Jeez, Vance has everything you want in a leader, doesn't he? – the emotional maturity (see tinyurl.com/4yefvncd on his penchant for hurling personal insults at those he disagrees with) *and* the high-level cognitive development:
It's too late to ask "Should we do this" because we are well into the territory of "I wonder what will happen now that everyone is doing this".We're going to find whether more efficient steam engines means (a) steam engines everywhere or (b) less coal consumed.www.forbes.com/sites/jonmar…
I am very much a believer that software people see their 10x productivity and assume it will happen everywhere, but also that 90% of produced software produces very little of value and is simply refreshing the UI. The amount of load bearing software at any given point is not actually that large
Fundamentally, i still think we are quite far away from a lot of these systems being like incredible analysts or solo developers. I used Fable, and i needed to spend a lot of time getting it unstuck trying to make a tree look better.
We are investing like insane GDP into these things…
Honestly I think the substantial gains are from subject matter experts becoming half-decent programmers, implementing their expertise with code in a way that they couldn’t before because they were busy learning accounting or geology or whatever
yeah i think thats entirely right. I was hoping chatgpt would bring scripting to the masses and then i saw people try to do that and realized i was asking way too much. And i think people are still asking way too much there
Whoops I’ve got opinions againMost software projects take too long, cost too much, and do not deliver results. It’s common to assume that this is because of the difficulty of translating known solutions into running, correct programs, but this mistake is *why* most software projects fail.
Most software projects fail because the organization trying to engineer software to solve a problem is incapable of developing an understanding of the problem and connecting that understanding to an implementation.It is not that writing a program is hard, it’s that the writer is chasing shadows.
Most software engineers see, to some degree or another, the dysfunction of our profession. Some, who particularly and unfortunately tend to be influential, presume that *all* professions must be more dysfunctional and so set out to better them. This rarely ends well.
…preach…it might be true that nothing worth doing is easily done…but…not necessarily that it follows that it’s worth doing a thing just because it seems impossible…unless that thing is getting up tomorrow to go another round with reality…in which case
…I’ll…uhhh…get you next time…err…gadget?
…uhh…you know what…there’s probably a better way I could be spending that time
…anyway…tuesday…again…probably see a next tuesday or two before…how did it go again…vis á vis the metabolic processes, ‘e’s ‘ad ‘is lot”
…now…do the stochastic one?
22 Comments
…not sure what it was I saw that brought it to mind…but…it was something that referenced a race…possibly NC…where that was the AI ticket flavor…but…the thing it reminded me of was broader & longer ago & the TL;DR could arguably be expressed as “AIPAC:AI PAC – watch this space…”
"AI Is the new AIPAC: companies like Anthropic are powering a new election spending boom that's just as deceptive and destructive as anything the pro-Israel lobby has done," writes Usamah Andrabi:www.thenation.com/article/poli…
Busy morning so circling back now. You have to wonder how the press feels about being used as decoys to protect his decaying orange carcass. I’d also be curious to know which staffers were considered expendable. I mean, obviously the flight crew was.
Will any of them do anything in response? At all? Y’know, like quit?
Also, Kang, lol, a talented writer and somehow sub-mediocre thinker who somehow always ends up on the worst side of every argument. He also seems deeply offended when anyone doesn’t agree with his wildly absurd hot takes, he starts getting into “sir how dare you, SIR” mode over other people’s opinions when his entire schtick is saying wacky shit.
Separately: The way he talks about his kids has always made me raise multiple eyebrows. Lots of good parents vent about their kids, but I dunno man, he gets real close to the “you sound like you hate your children” line.
Y’know, it’s deeply weird that a leathery lizard was appointed Secretary of HHS and then publishes lists of nonsense that he supports. BUT that doesn’t even make the top 10 of weirdness in the Trump Administration.
Trust me that as the parent of a child with autism, if I was in an elevator with Trump and RFK Jr. and had a gun with only one bullet, I’d shoot RFK and then beat him with the gun until there was nothing left or my arm started hurting. That guy is a monster with blood on his hands already.
Most software projects fail because the organization trying to engineer software to solve a problem is incapable of developing an understanding of the problem and connecting that understanding to an implementation.
DING DING DING!
I’ve told this tale before, but now I can openly state this. At the pill factory, the powers that be decided on automating all the processes would help speed up QA production approvals, QA tasks, documentation and production. Instead of breaking down each task into manageable slices, the fuckwitted Program Manager decided to do everything all at once (because he never did this before and he imagined himself being clever, he’s not.) The PM and I had a long history as he was my former manager who nearly got me fired and I’ve clashed with before because he’s a fuckwitted asshole whose primary skill is licking the assholes of the higher ups (according to the office gossip he called me a dumb fucker whose mouth is smarter than his brain – well… ouch.)
And instead of bringing in experts in various areas, he filled the ranks of the implementation specialists with his buddies… all like him. Big mouths, little brains and no experience with SW. I mentioned (Very loudly so that his little spies could hear) that I would be better choice than any of them because I’ve done this at implementation and at system level so I understand the pitfalls if not done correctly. It’s best to do a pilot project and look at modifying or eliminating processes before jumping into full scale integration… but what the fuck do I know?
Funny enough they charged ahead like a brain dead bull in a China shop. Smashing this, breaking that, bullying instead of gaining consensus.
Instead of getting furious, I started laughing at each major fuckup, er, milestone like hiring PWC who brought on some 100+ SW engineers to write the code, but without any understanding of the problem at hand. And my own experience with PWC is that their project managers are generally worthless dumbshits who might be good at making powerpoints and flow charts, but never listen to what the customer’s requirements are.
Someone I know was involved in the implementation meetings and I got to overhear what went on. I’m glad I stifled my laughter as they pretty much broke every rule of SW implementation in the 20 minutes I listened to.
It was the stupid leading the blind while playing 3D chess.
A year later the project blew up after they spent almost $50 million on it. As per usual, the program manager was promoted upwards while many of his minions/buddies became (well deserved) unemployed.
…fuck it…the thing I have to wait for just let me know the wait would be longer than originally advertised so this barely even counts by the standards of modern convenience as me wasting my time on account of the other thing I need to do I can’t because it’s very important that whenever the thing that should have been here in the next half hour not turn up when I’m not there to whisper its code-response to it so I can have the thing I sent to myself after I paid for that to save someone else a bunch of hassle…still takes longer to do than the window between that receeding line of when I must be in situ…so…that can’t be done until they stop saying “well, ok – maybe later – don’t go anywhere – definitely today…& we have to get confirmation before we can put it through the door”…which…at the other end of their “real-time” window…has now stretched clear to the other side of dinner…hence the boilerplate message to be sure there’s a light on out front if its dark when they get here…even though that also said “soon”…&…it’s not even mid-august yet…so…dark…is a good way off…it’s really these little personal touches that confirm the esteem in which these companies hold their customers…hate to be a client…they make you look bad enough no amount of expense-ed lunches seem like they could get the marks out…anyway
As I wrote with @becingber.bsky.social in @justsecurity.org earlier this summer, these US attacks on third-state merchant vessels themselves constitute violations of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.At least according to the USG's own legal position.www.justsecurity.org/142005/block…
For anyone curious, this is what their numbers look like. Also, looks like their generic ballot made a pretty decent jump to Dem +8 with adults. Will be curious what RV looks like.
…because that’s existential shit to an out of work incel with no prospects if naked grifting via toxic masculinity in-groups falls apart as a revenue model
some of you are idiots to the point where societally speaking you need to delete your account
…&…shit…if you can’t even out bench the qualified doctor with the name you struggle to pronounce & think sun-screen is dumb but expect to win an online debate faster than a stand-off conflict with iran that totally isn’t a land war in asia…your that guy ain’t about to come out of tangling with the that guy that’s also one of them “others” looking like *their* name is carter…say it with me, now
If I had a son, I would rather he look up to this guy than basically any elected Republican official I can think of
You’re not wrong that it’s the site, but it’s also that person. I don’t think people who gain their notoriety “putting people in their place” can ever really avoid becoming someone who is looking for their windows to do that reflexively, inevitably misfiring and making themselves look ridiculous.
I agree. The post was so clearly about protecting early career researchers from making a terrible mistake, and she completely misread it. I thought it was a really important point to share.
Its the normal lefty arrogance plus the LLM topic. Some zealots think llms are the anti-christ and therefore any amount of verbal abuse is okay.Somewhat similar delusional as those who hype LLM beyond any reasonable means.
Yeah. The latter are irritating enthusiasts whom you chuckle at like any oversharing child. The former are peasants with pitchforks, who won’t stop until they can burn SOMETHING or someone. No comparison.
Thats an amazing picture to describe it.Even as some oversharing kid one can acknowledge that the real world development to enable all that is something we urgently have to talk about. But thats never enough for the inquisitors. Only a total boycott is acceptable.
…is this maybe a bit like why I think ed zitron is right about enough stuff to get away with being rude about some of the people he talks about…but also that he’s not so right he’s some kind of blitzed oracle-at-delphi se’er with an inside track on the fundamental nature of the universe who is right more often than god…yeah…probably
…would you all probably have been saved all the scrolling in the comments that I could have put in the post where the fast-forward-to-the-comments-from-the-top button would have let you skip it…if not for the…now promised in a 2-hr window more than 2hrs after the earliest bound of the time you insisted it be waited for in person…that…remains roughly 15-20mins in the future…the one constant of the last 2hrs since the message about making sure to leave a light on out front?
…also yes
…as you can see, it is true…both sides make good points that should be treated as meriting equivalency
…I bet they wouldn’t give me this shit if I was an AI they wanted a token-on-receipt out of…mod-cons my…sorry…no need to keep taking it out on folks that don’t deserve it
…guess if you wait long enough you also do become the villain in your own tale
…man…the amount of shit “they” turn out to be right about…no wonder everybody hates them so much
It’s always a two-step: “they were rude about it” becomes the easy substitute for “we were wrong about it” and then nobody has to reckon with it afterward and we can go right back to status quo.
Also true for: the Iran war, 10/7, Covid, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, American foreign policy before 9/11, Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf war, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, Civil Rights, Korea, the League of Nations, Reconstruction, The Civil War, slavery, the Naopleonic Wars … anyway, I’ll just cut it here otherwise I’ll be here all day …
or shorter me:
“You will lose your job to AI” is not rude
“No I won’t, it can’t think for itself” is INCREDIBLY CRUEL AND RUDE AND SIR HOW DARE YOU SIR I WILL RETIRE NOW TO MY FAINTING COUCH TO WEEP AT YOUR CRUELTY AND LIES AND SLANDER SIR HAVE YOU NO DECENCY SIR
…what is that metric tracking…anecdotally or otherwise…active users with the .bsky.social bit…users of the bsky.app URL &/or default bluesky-on-the-label app-wrapper-ed mobile device client…anything that posts to the ATProto pipeline…maybe techcrunch bothers to say but you have to click to find out…but…all the “it’s not like twitter enough to be fun or get the cool kids” stuff…if that’s really true…make…I dunno…myowntwitter.blackjack.hookers your own node on the protocol & moderate that into some soul-sucking fiefdom & find out how many people think it sounds like their field of dreams…if you want the dynamics of the thing to work like twitter “when it was good”…&…you don’t even have to question that premise for this part…don’t be using the thing that used to be twitter no more…what else you do is all dealers’ choice & all…but…that shit is worse than kinja when it was as bad as it got & in most of the same ways one way or another
NO! BAD NEW YORK TIMES! [swats the newspaper on the nose with a newspaper] STICK YOUR NOSE IN THAT SENTENCE AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE WRONG!
…like twitter-in-its-pomp…plenty of people can use it & find nothing it puts in front of them makes them a kind of mad they don’t want to be for recreational purposes & mostly they get to laugh at other people to some extent & maybe learn a new thing on any given day…& know that if misery loves company then their brand is among those with a market share
Good media critique. Often I’ve reported somewhere and get pushed to talk to an “important source” who “works with every journalist” as a kind of fixer. Personally, I run from that because I don’t trust folks too eager to be in the news. But this is how stories get made.
they like the republican and want to help him win, so they cover his most reasonable opinions and ignore his most objectionable. they do the opposite for the democrat in the race, amplifying years old social media posts as the #1 issue in the race and ignoring her popular views.
…but the one I think this is hinting at had a headline that was borderline “US troops fuck each other up after stir crazy brawl on carrier” & almost certainly didn’t go down even particularly in a way you could mistake for that if your nearest-to-a-primary-source-for-that is third hand after three translations from a chinese domestic news outfit…so
(sharing screenshots without a link is, if anything, worse since it's a vector for misinformation and context collapsed so consider, instead, sharing things that are good?)
obligatory pancakes/waffles statement: there is a difference between the argument that one should never combat or express opposition to genuinely dangerous positions (nobody is saying this) and the argument that you do not need to Post Through every annoying hot take you read (I stand by this)
…perfection is generally out of grasp if not beyond our ken altogether
The actual best venue is at a dive bar on a week night.This is why I have started buying friends books and then making them come talk to me about them.
…not sure what it was I saw that brought it to mind…but…it was something that referenced a race…possibly NC…where that was the AI ticket flavor…but…the thing it reminded me of was broader & longer ago & the TL;DR could arguably be expressed as “AIPAC:AI PAC – watch this space…”
THESE COLORS DON’T RUN.
(but they do hide beneath trays of chicken marsala and bags of peanuts)
…man…it’s like people don’t even read le carré anymore…wait…what was that?
…oh…ok…still some readers out there…that…actually does make me feel better?
…ta…if I say you can call that your good deed for the day does that mean you’ll
validate my parkingsign off on this being mine?Seriously, do we expect Trump to NOT eat McDonalds? Honestly, people.
Busy morning so circling back now. You have to wonder how the press feels about being used as decoys to protect his decaying orange carcass. I’d also be curious to know which staffers were considered expendable. I mean, obviously the flight crew was.
Will any of them do anything in response? At all? Y’know, like quit?
Also, Kang, lol, a talented writer and somehow sub-mediocre thinker who somehow always ends up on the worst side of every argument. He also seems deeply offended when anyone doesn’t agree with his wildly absurd hot takes, he starts getting into “sir how dare you, SIR” mode over other people’s opinions when his entire schtick is saying wacky shit.
Separately: The way he talks about his kids has always made me raise multiple eyebrows. Lots of good parents vent about their kids, but I dunno man, he gets real close to the “you sound like you hate your children” line.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!
Y’know, it’s deeply weird that a leathery lizard was appointed Secretary of HHS and then publishes lists of nonsense that he supports. BUT that doesn’t even make the top 10 of weirdness in the Trump Administration.
Trust me that as the parent of a child with autism, if I was in an elevator with Trump and RFK Jr. and had a gun with only one bullet, I’d shoot RFK and then beat him with the gun until there was nothing left or my arm started hurting. That guy is a monster with blood on his hands already.
Looks like somebody has figured out their likelihood of dying in Iran has increased exponentially on Tangerine’s watch.
The manosphere sours on Trump
Phonies deceived by the biggest phony of all.
DING DING DING!
I’ve told this tale before, but now I can openly state this. At the pill factory, the powers that be decided on automating all the processes would help speed up QA production approvals, QA tasks, documentation and production. Instead of breaking down each task into manageable slices, the fuckwitted Program Manager decided to do everything all at once (because he never did this before and he imagined himself being clever, he’s not.) The PM and I had a long history as he was my former manager who nearly got me fired and I’ve clashed with before because he’s a fuckwitted asshole whose primary skill is licking the assholes of the higher ups (according to the office gossip he called me a dumb fucker whose mouth is smarter than his brain – well… ouch.)
And instead of bringing in experts in various areas, he filled the ranks of the implementation specialists with his buddies… all like him. Big mouths, little brains and no experience with SW. I mentioned (Very loudly so that his little spies could hear) that I would be better choice than any of them because I’ve done this at implementation and at system level so I understand the pitfalls if not done correctly. It’s best to do a pilot project and look at modifying or eliminating processes before jumping into full scale integration… but what the fuck do I know?
Funny enough they charged ahead like a brain dead bull in a China shop. Smashing this, breaking that, bullying instead of gaining consensus.
Instead of getting furious, I started laughing at each major fuckup, er, milestone like hiring PWC who brought on some 100+ SW engineers to write the code, but without any understanding of the problem at hand. And my own experience with PWC is that their project managers are generally worthless dumbshits who might be good at making powerpoints and flow charts, but never listen to what the customer’s requirements are.
Someone I know was involved in the implementation meetings and I got to overhear what went on. I’m glad I stifled my laughter as they pretty much broke every rule of SW implementation in the 20 minutes I listened to.
It was the stupid leading the blind while playing 3D chess.
A year later the project blew up after they spent almost $50 million on it. As per usual, the program manager was promoted upwards while many of his minions/buddies became (well deserved) unemployed.
…oh…sure…that’s…”great”
…I hear the lincoln is sick of all the winning, too…promises made…promises kept
…fuck it…the thing I have to wait for just let me know the wait would be longer than originally advertised so this barely even counts by the standards of modern convenience as me wasting my time on account of the other thing I need to do I can’t because it’s very important that whenever the thing that should have been here in the next half hour not turn up when I’m not there to whisper its code-response to it so I can have the thing I sent to myself after I paid for that to save someone else a bunch of hassle…still takes longer to do than the window between that receeding line of when I must be in situ…so…that can’t be done until they stop saying “well, ok – maybe later – don’t go anywhere – definitely today…& we have to get confirmation before we can put it through the door”…which…at the other end of their “real-time” window…has now stretched clear to the other side of dinner…hence the boilerplate message to be sure there’s a light on out front if its dark when they get here…even though that also said “soon”…&…it’s not even mid-august yet…so…dark…is a good way off…it’s really these little personal touches that confirm the esteem in which these companies hold their customers…hate to be a client…they make you look bad enough no amount of expense-ed lunches seem like they could get the marks out…anyway
…nobody likes a tattle-tale
…but…between…*that* that guy
…uhh…what’s the opposite of a dog-whistle…would that be…sub-sonics…like…”the brown note” end of the resonant frequency spectrum?
…because that’s existential shit to an out of work incel with no prospects if naked grifting via toxic masculinity in-groups falls apart as a revenue model
…&…shit…if you can’t even out bench the qualified doctor with the name you struggle to pronounce & think sun-screen is dumb but expect to win an online debate faster than
a stand-off conflict with iran that totally isn’ta land war in asia…your that guy ain’t about to come out of tangling with the that guy that’s also one of them “others” looking like *their* name is carter…say it with me, now…you’re a big man…but yer outta shape…wi’me’t’s’a full-time job
…sure would make a change some of these jobs getting done on a full-time basis, tho…big man?
Abdul’s not wrong. Being a “man” isn’t being a fucking performative peacock strutting around.
P.S.
P.P.S
…is this maybe a bit like why I think ed zitron is right about enough stuff to get away with being rude about some of the people he talks about…but also that he’s not so right he’s some kind of blitzed oracle-at-delphi se’er with an inside track on the fundamental nature of the universe who is right more often than god…yeah…probably
…would you all probably have been saved all the scrolling in the comments that I could have put in the post where the fast-forward-to-the-comments-from-the-top button would have let you skip it…if not for the…now promised in a 2-hr window more than 2hrs after the earliest bound of the time you insisted it be waited for in person…that…remains roughly 15-20mins in the future…the one constant of the last 2hrs since the message about making sure to leave a light on out front?
…also yes
…as you can see, it is true…both sides make good points that should be treated as meriting equivalency
…I bet they wouldn’t give me this shit if I was an AI they wanted a token-on-receipt out of…mod-cons my…sorry…no need to keep taking it out on folks that don’t deserve it
…guess if you wait long enough you also do become the villain in your own tale
…man…the amount of shit “they” turn out to be right about…no wonder everybody hates them so much
It’s always a two-step: “they were rude about it” becomes the easy substitute for “we were wrong about it” and then nobody has to reckon with it afterward and we can go right back to status quo.
Also true for: the Iran war, 10/7, Covid, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, American foreign policy before 9/11, Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf war, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, Civil Rights, Korea, the League of Nations, Reconstruction, The Civil War, slavery, the Naopleonic Wars … anyway, I’ll just cut it here otherwise I’ll be here all day …
or shorter me:
“You will lose your job to AI” is not rude
“No I won’t, it can’t think for itself” is INCREDIBLY CRUEL AND RUDE AND SIR HOW DARE YOU SIR I WILL RETIRE NOW TO MY FAINTING COUCH TO WEEP AT YOUR CRUELTY AND LIES AND SLANDER SIR HAVE YOU NO DECENCY SIR
…so…this one is like a half hour & kinda skims the surface like the latest leaf in a time machine backup that does that sparse image thing
…whereas…*this* one?
…3mins of your time & 3/4 back in change off the 4th if you stick it out to the end of the runtime
oh look! we’re sending troops to greenland for “training” again
https://nltimes.nl/2026/08/08/dutch-nato-troops-train-greenland-amid-trumps-push-take-island-denmark
….its almost like we dont trust that mining ship what turned up
…ok…probably a preface-with-the-apology-in-advance kinda day…&…the run at the end isn’t directly in the thread the earlier bits come from…but…damn it
…what is that metric tracking…anecdotally or otherwise…active users with the .bsky.social bit…users of the bsky.app URL &/or default bluesky-on-the-label app-wrapper-ed mobile device client…anything that posts to the ATProto pipeline…maybe techcrunch bothers to say but you have to click to find out…but…all the “it’s not like twitter enough to be fun or get the cool kids” stuff…if that’s really true…make…I dunno…myowntwitter.blackjack.hookers your own node on the protocol & moderate that into some soul-sucking fiefdom & find out how many people think it sounds like their field of dreams…if you want the dynamics of the thing to work like twitter “when it was good”…&…you don’t even have to question that premise for this part…don’t be using the thing that used to be twitter no more…what else you do is all dealers’ choice & all…but…that shit is worse than kinja when it was as bad as it got & in most of the same ways one way or another
…which…is not to say bluesky…or the damn protocol…is the big rock candy mountain
…like twitter-in-its-pomp…plenty of people can use it & find nothing it puts in front of them makes them a kind of mad they don’t want to be for recreational purposes & mostly they get to laugh at other people to some extent & maybe learn a new thing on any given day…& know that if misery loves company then their brand is among those with a market share
…anyway
…I know
https://bsky.app/profile/gravelinfluencer.bsky.social/post/3mst34br74c2z
…but the one I think this is hinting at had a headline that was borderline “US troops fuck each other up after stir crazy brawl on carrier” & almost certainly didn’t go down even particularly in a way you could mistake for that if your nearest-to-a-primary-source-for-that is third hand after three translations from a chinese domestic news outfit…so
https://bsky.app/profile/gravelinfluencer.bsky.social/post/3mst34br74c2z
…caveat notwithstanding
…perfection is generally out of grasp if not beyond our ken altogether
…but…if someone picks the divebar I’d throw in for cab-fare most days, I expect…or…as the saying goes…I…guess I’ll get me coat, then?