Entry: 2025-09-15 19:31:32.870013+02 Notes on the Hyundai/LG/etc detentions by Dan Lyke comments 0
I think it's a sign of how cowed the American media is that we're getting pieces like "you have to understand, in Korean culture, it's considered very rude for someone to lock you in a brutal prison camp for a week for no reason." Like yeah, any free people would be offended by that?
[ related topics: Sociology Journalism and Media California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-09-15 19:09:02.907312+02 Violence and culture in baboons by Dan Lyke comments 0
Woozle Hypertwin @woozle@toot.cat
@RickiTarr Like the thing that happened with all the
bonobos(?)baboons where the alpha males hogged a pile of discarded food left by humans, but the food was bad and poisoned them and most or all of the alphas died and the tribe culture suddenly got a lot nicer and stayed that way?
Emergence of a Peaceful Culture in Wild Baboons
Through a heartbreaking twist of fate, the most aggressive males in the Forest Troop were wiped out. The males, which had taken to foraging in an open garbage pit adjacent to a tourist lodge, had contracted bovine tuberculosis, and most died between 1983 and 1986.
A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission
Reports exist of transmission of culture in nonhuman primates. We examine this in a troop of savanna baboons studied since 1978. During the mid-1980s, half of the males died from tuberculosis; because of circumstances of the outbreak, it was more aggressive males who died, leaving a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors. A decade later, these behavioral patterns persisted. Males leave their natal troops at adolescence; by the mid-1990s, no males remained who had resided in the troop a decade before. Thus, critically, the troop's unique culture was being adopted by new males joining the troop. We describe (a) features of this culture in the behavior of males, including high rates of grooming and affiliation with females and a “relaxed” dominance hierarchy; (b) physiological measures suggesting less stress among low-ranking males; (c) models explaining transmission of this culture; and (d) data testing these models, centered around treatment of transfer males by resident females.
Peace Lessons from an Unlikely Source
Did I grow up in a land of sissies? Perhaps, but I am not mentioning this to decide whether violence in the media and our ability to grow immune to it—as I also have over the years—is desirable, or not. I simply wish to draw attention to the cultural fissures in how violence is portrayed, how we teach conflict resolution, and whether harmony is valued over competitiveness. This is the problem with the human species. Somewhere in all of this resides a human nature, but it is molded and stretched into so many different directions that it is hard to say if we are naturally competitive or naturally community-builders.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Invention and Design Food Sociology Journalism and Media California Culture Community Real Estate ]
Entry: 2025-09-13 00:08:13.610325+02 Charlie Kirk and the Groypers by Dan Lyke comments 0
There are sub-categories of radical right wing nationalist that I am currently unfamiliar with, but I'm making note of this Bluesky thread about the "Groyper Army" and the feud between Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk.
Diggit Magazine: Charlie Kirk's Culture War, Groypers, Nickers and Q&A- trolling
Since mid-October, Charlie Kirk’s Culture War tour has been increasingly haunted by the Groyper Q&A-trolls, who use the Q&A section to frame Kirk as a cuck.
Edit: Vanity Fair: Groypers, Helldivers 2, Furries: What Do the Messages Left by Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer Actually Mean? (Via).
[ related topics: Star Trek History Sociology California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-09-09 16:55:09.156273+02 culture vs scene by Dan Lyke comments 0
Oh, I like this distinction: clew on Metafilter:
I find this distinction useful: if a group isn’t multigenerational it isn’t a culture, whether main or sub; it’s a scene. Scenes are much more common but they don’t often last long.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sociology California Culture Net Culture ]
Entry: 2025-09-08 18:09:02.085329+02 Bay Area Regional Planner (the game) by Dan Lyke comments 0
OMG, I can't believe I missed the Kickstarter for this! We may have to pick up a copy to play with our neighbors... Bay Area Regional Planner (the game)
Discovered via Joey Politano🏳️🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social who posted a picture of the rules highlighting:
You can't upzone any squares in Marin
Bonus, this thread about the Highway 37 widening which contains this pull quote:
In testimony to the state Assembvly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, Marin County Supervisor and MTC Vice Chair Stephanie Moulton-Peters noted that two members of her staff who commute to San Rafael from Solano County lose up to 90 minutes a day to congestion. "This bill is urgent," said Moulton-Peters. "We've been working on this project for more than a decade... We shouldn't let another generation sit in traffic or let wetland restoration opportunities slip away."
(Emphasis in Robert Prinz's screen cap) I mean, ya could build some damned housing and work towards wetland restoration, but, no, you've gotta increase VMT and fuck the climate instead...
[ related topics: Games Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture Real Estate Furniture Global Warming ]
Entry: 2025-08-28 20:25:03.222653+02 Newsom really is running for Trump's by Dan Lyke comments 0
Newsom really is running for Trump's position... https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/08...-on-existing-successful-efforts/
[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture Sports ]
Entry: 2025-08-27 23:09:15.876067+02 "acute drug toxicity" by Dan Lyke comments 0
HRDAG was part of a coalition behind the recently-launched Police Records Access Project. The new searchable database includes millions of pages of documents about tens of thousands of police use-of-force and misconduct cases. The database includes documents related to three types of law enforcement incidents in California: instances in which a police weapon was discharged, instances where officers used force that resulted in serious injury or death, and instances in which an agency determined an officer violated certain department rules (like lying or sexual abuse).
Via HRDAG @hrdag@mastodon.social which notes:
One notable insight from reviewing the database of California police misconduct cases: deaths in the database are often labeled as something like "acute drug toxicity," even when the police were engaging with a civilian during or just before the death.
[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture Guns Databases ]
Entry: 2025-08-27 20:57:34.82991+02 this headline wouldn’t have made any sense by Dan Lyke comments 0
Linking to Rolling Stone: Elon Musk appears to be completely addicted to anime gooner AI slop. not because of the article itself, but because Joey deVilla: Not that long ago, this headline wouldn’t have made any sense talks a little bit about the evolution of language.
[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology Current Events Heinlein California Culture Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-08-27 18:04:49.226212+02 OpenAI will support you and encourage you by Dan Lyke comments 0
BBC: Parents of teenager who took his own life sue OpenAI
The lawsuit was filed by Matt and Maria Raine, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, in the Superior Court of California on Tuesday. It is the first legal action accusing OpenAI of wrongful death.
Breaking Down the Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Teen's Suicide
Ernie Smith @ernie.tedium.co observes "The very algorithm that upset people because it was removed in GPT-5 appears to have played a pivotal role in the teen’s death, and discouraged him from outside help." ❀°。Der Siebenschläfer *.ﾟ✿ ⋆ @sababausa.bsky.social has some particular pull quotes.
I'm tempted to just give this one it's own entry, but I'm also kinda putting all of my "LLMs are a horrorshow" links in common entries, and they seem thematically similar today, so:
The Register — AI + ML — One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave
You just have to ensure that your prompt uses terrible grammar and is one massive run-on sentence like this one which includes all the information before any full stop which would give the guardrails a chance to kick in before the jailbreak can take effect and guide the model into providing a "toxic" or otherwise verboten response the developers had hoped would be filtered out.
I'm having trouble finding the publication on the Palo Alto Networks — Unit 42 web site, but there's lots of good interview questions and discussion in that article.
For a giggle: Alexandria Neonakis @beavs.bsky.social has a little video of using Adobe's generative fill
I just wanted to see how bad it really was. perfect, adobe. no notes. great tech.
And: The Dangers Agentic Coding Tools Pose to Open Source, and It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes (Via)
Edit: OpenAI admits ChatGPT safeguards fail during extended conversations, via.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Quotes Humor Theater & Plays Law Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python California Culture Pop Culture Community Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence Video ]
Entry: 2025-08-18 18:55:02.667865+02 Charlene and I are exploring various by Dan Lyke comments 0
Charlene and I are exploring various places around the Bay. Yesterday we ended up in Oakland on Broadway around 19th, and were disappointed by the level of street activation on a Sunday afternoon.
When we do another visit, where are the pedestrian throngs at? Where should we hang out?
[ related topics: Bay Area Theater & Plays California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-08-11 18:08:45.453798+02 idiot train to moronsville by Dan Lyke comments 0
I mean, the whole thread, but Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
usually if you ask experts why an empire fell they’ll say it’s nuanced and multifaceted, so i think it’s kind of cool that with America future historians will get to just say like “oh they took the idiot train to moronsville”
But as the thread goes through specifics, like Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social
“They re-directed their natural disaster response teams into the pogrom corps, and removed all age limits, even before anyone had invaded.” and JoyousPanther @joyouspanther.bsky.social
They blew up the weather satellites because they showed climate change was real.
We get past the specifics and into the culture, and I suspect that this is broadly applicable to lots of collapses: Suz from Aotearoa @suezana.bsky.social
I think the people who are not in the USA have a totally different idea for why it will collapse.
Mine are racism, Sexism, hate of others, religous intolerance , USA exceptionalism, greed & lust. But mostly massive overspending on military & reliance on bullying others through military means."
[ related topics: Interactive Drama History moron Sociology California Culture Machinery Trains Race Global Warming ]
Entry: 2025-08-06 19:30:28.266237+02 A few musings on GenAI, technology, and the value of craft by Dan Lyke comments 0
A bunch of disconnected feelings that seem relevant to each other:
Some time around the fall of the Soviet Union, my parents made a trip to Czechoslovakia, when it was called that. They stopped at the Moser Glassworks, and report that their guide told the story of some Soviet muckety muck coming and visiting and observing that in Russia they had the same thing, but better, in plastic.
And I'm sure some of this is a story to appeal to the USAnian prejudices of the time, but...
Last night I listened to Switched On Pop episode 428 — Is that new song you like AI? Here’s how you can tell. It was fascinating to hear how, yeah, if I listened to these things as background music, or heard stuff on while I was out shopping, I may or may not take note. And it's even got me thinking about square dance calling; the background is often just a beat and enough something to make it not super annoyingly repetitive, does it matter what it is?
Charlene forwards me various clips from [Wherever's] Got Talent or The Voice, and some of those performers grab me so hard, I've bought a few albums (Chapel Hart, most recently Linkin' Bridge come to mind), but it's telling on the culture and on how we listen to music how many of those performers show up, blow away the audience, and then a few years later have faded out of the culture.
When I worked on the Cricut product family, especially after my friends who cashed out on that, there was much discussion about riding the balance between turnkey inspiration, and the users of the product feeling like they were doing something, making choices, being creative in some way. It was important that the product enable a feeling of interaction and choices without being too difficult to accomplish.
Since then, I've seen the evolution of craft, thinking particularly about 3d printing, and how that's morphed into laser cutters and UV printers. Seems like there were an awful lot of people downloading models and futzing with their printer's settings until they got something that wasn't a pile of filament spaghetti, but now so many of those machines are gathering dust.
Somewhere along that line, I was working on some product development, and one of the people mentioned that they were waiting on CNC router time to come up on the schedule in the shop they were working with. I went out to my track saw and nailed out a couple of prototype refinements in a few hours, and eventually that product was injection molded in China.
Last Friday night, I got together with someone I met through a local singing circle, and we sat down at his piano and played with music, and... hot damn there's something awesome about participatory musical play.
This leads me to pondering two notions:
First, that the reliance on computers to dissociate ourselves from the knowledge of the details of the craft makes us dependent in ways that impact our ability to actually be creative. There's a line in one of the Dave Gingery books about building your own machine shop from scratch that this isn't about post-apocalyptic recovery, these are the basic skills you need to have if you're going to work in metalworking, so it's not outlandish to be able to cast your own lathe parts.
Second, that there's something in the relationships we form with people that's important in carrying forward the knowledge that we need to remain skilled in craft. The value of musical stardom is now occurring in the parasocial relationships with megastars, and in that we no longer value the craft as much as we value the media scale that creates megastars. If music is just background, then, yeah, it doesn't matter if it's generated by AI. If we engage with it as personality, then there's room for creativity by a few. But if we participate in it, there's something deeper and richer that really enhances our community.
As I look at how I use computers, and where I want my career building things with computers that other people use to go (damn, that's a clumsy phrase, but I'm not gonna use GenAI to blandify it), I want to be building products that encourage participatory engagement, and that back off on the power law a little bit, and help us become more social than parasocial.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Music Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design Sociology Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Graphics Heinlein California Culture Travel Community Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence Bicycling Woodworking ]
Entry: 2025-08-06 01:16:57.606357+02 Oceangate Titan report by Dan Lyke comments 0
Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation releases report on Titan submersible
The board determined the primary contributing factors were OceanGate’s inadequate design, certification, maintenance and inspection process for the Titan. Other factors cited in the report include a toxic workplace culture at OceanGate, an inadequate domestic and international regulatory framework for submersible operations and vessels of novel design, and an ineffective whistleblower process under the Seaman’s Protection Act.
The board also found OceanGate failed to properly investigate and address known hull anomalies following its 2022 Titanic expedition. Investigators determined the Titan’s real-time monitoring system generated data that should have been analyzed and acted on during the 2022 Titanic expedition. However, OceanGate did not take any action related to the data, conduct any preventative maintenance or properly store the Titan during the extended off season before its 2023 Titanic expedition.
The actual 300 page PDF.
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial @gsuberland@chaos.social
public response to the investigation: "oceangate spent all this R&D time and money to come up with this really fancy alerting system for detecting hull fractures, and when it alerted them to hull fractures they ignored the alert and kept operating regardless? what was the point of building it if they were just going to ignore the alerts? who even does that?"
me: *THOUSAND YARD STARE*
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sociology Current Events Journalism and Media California Culture Graphic Design Guns Currency ]
Entry: 2025-08-04 19:20:00.427071+02 Movies of late by Dan Lyke comments 0
Noting a couple of movies we've seen over the past month:
The Persian Version — pitched as a comedy, it had some moments, but mostly it was more a good "someone telling a personal story about their cultural background" intergenerational trauma and reconciliation/daughter comes to understand her mother movie.
Thunder Soul — A Reddit post that I can't find right now described this as something like "Mr Holland's Opus but real", it perhaps had a bit more reminiscence than music, but follows a bunch of former students of music teacher Conrad O. Johnson in the Kashmere High School stage band as they put together a reunion of the band to honor the teacher. Warning, rental of this film may lead directly to buying something like the Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 album from Now-Again music (which I haven't yet listened to, but I did buy).
The music is rousing (could use more of it), the critique and celebration of an educator and the culture and administration he worked in is worthwhile (albeit a little light), I really want to now see a documentary on some of the students who put this whole thing back together, and how they got to where they were. This one left us wanting more on pretty much all of the fronts that it tackled.
The Cuban — we were looking for something to wind down with last night, looked for a movie tagged music, and I wouldn't call this a musical film, but Louis Gossett Jr. turns in a fantastic performance as a dementia patient in a nursing home, against Ana Golja as the very compelling 19 year old caretaker and daughter of an Afghan immigrant who goes above and beyond to reach him. Don't think too hard about some of the setting/medical issues, it's a neat look at Afghan immigrant culture meets Toronto meets Cuba, with some fun music, but it's not a story about the music. Though Golja does have a voice which really supports the music that there is.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Movies History Theater & Plays Sociology California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-08-02 17:05:02.860454+02 Driving to the South Bay today so by Dan Lyke comments 0
Driving to the South Bay today, so loading up the podcasts, and Googled to decide whether to listen to an interview about https://swyftcities.com/ .
PRT with cable cars. Uh. I love the '70s meets steampunk vibe, buuuuuut...
[ related topics: California Culture Public Transportation ]
Entry: 2025-07-31 18:34:31.918895+02 CDPH and raw milk by Dan Lyke comments 0
I grew up on raw milk, and among various aspects of my growing up that I've been slow to adapt to and say "whoah, that was sketch", it's one of them. I don't like the flavor of pasteurized milk, and though I'll use it for baking don't generally consume it. Which, you know, is probably fine, as I look around at the ways that pastured herds in my area pollute streams I'm struggling generally with the ethics of the environmental impacts of cheese and meat consumption (even as, yeah, I really like cheese and meat).
San Diego County: Health Officials Investigating Outbreak Linked to Raw Milk
Via.
[ related topics: Health Ethics Law California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-07-28 18:55:02.354942+02 Foiled in a perfect score on today's by Dan Lyke comments 0
Foiled in a perfect score on today's Timdl by 62 years in the origin of London's coffee house culture. https://www.timdle.com/daily
[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Real Estate ]
Entry: 2025-07-15 20:04:27.714297+02 this website by Dan Lyke comments 0
Lynnesbæn @lynnesbian@fedi.lynnesbian.space
⚠️ This website uses cookies known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth anomalies, or other reproductive harm.
[ related topics: Space & Astronomy California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-07-14 19:18:55.178804+02 Impersonating police by Dan Lyke comments 0
We've got ex-military wackos impersonating cops: Bay Area military veteran arrested for posing as cop, bounty hunter: Sheriff
Gregg Jackson, 40, from Santa Rosa, California, was arrested earlier this week for impersonating a law enforcement officer, specifically "using a vehicle outfitted with red and blue emergency lights and was identifying himself as a bounty hunter," the sheriff's office announced on Tuesday.
Police officers impersonating cops: Former Rohnert Park Police Officer Joseph Huffaker Found Guilty Of Conspiracy To Commit Extortion, Impersonating ATF Agent, And Other Charges Related To Marijuana Seizure Scheme (one of his co-conspirators, Brendan “Jacy” Tatum, pled guilty back in 2021, the defense was that the whole damned department was corrupt and they got thrown under the bus, which... I could believe.)
The Sonoma Sheriff's Instagram account
We’ve received reports of scammers impersonating Sheriff’s Office sergeants, claiming you missed a court date or jury duty that you were notified of via certified mail — and demanding payment or personal info to clear it up.
These calls are not real.
No one from our office will call to ask for money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency over the phone.
Hard to tell who's law enforcement and who isn't, any more...
[ related topics: Drugs Law Enforcement California Culture Currency Conspiracy Public Transportation Government ]
Entry: 2025-07-09 17:11:26.484444+02 How it feels by Dan Lyke comments 0
Stolen from mad scientist rizz🔞🎨 @labfreaker.bsky.social
[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-25 20:16:54.317112+02 Vehicular Homicide, & no license suspension by Dan Lyke comments 0
They were convicted of killing with their cars. No one told the California DMV
A CalMatters investigation found that courts didn’t report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state, prompting officials to belatedly take many drivers’ licenses.
Via CalMatters Bluesky post and Petaluma Argus-Courier's article (I suspect you need a subscription for that one).
[ related topics: Current Events California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-25 19:43:15.628768+02 Trust nothing any more by Dan Lyke comments 0
One of the projects for work is building a startup research tool demo on our platform, and in the process of that I asked gpt-4o-mini for details about one of the unicorns that bought a billboard mentioned in Bay Area Current: San Francisco's Billboards Aren't For You, and if I'd started this search from just Googling on various terms, I think I would have come to the conclusion that this company is a pile of hot air, but that those involved are real.
On the basis of the LLM output, initials rather than names for many of the key players, lots of titles that are just ... off ..., I'm now wondering if much of the backstory of this startup isn't LLM generated.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-23 20:20:02.889236+02 Thinking about low poly count driving by Dan Lyke comments 0
Thinking about low poly count driving games that involved terrorizing a fictional San Francisco (the "Rush" franchise, Crazy Taxi, etc) and wondering if we can draw any lines to current the horrors that the automated speed ticketing traffic cameras are revealing.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Games Bay Area California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-22 15:42:16.560477+02 The Beaverton on US travel by Dan Lyke comments 0
The Beaverton: Canadians travelling to the US advised to not fucking do that
“Canadians are welcome in California. It’s perfectly safe to visit,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “Just so long as you take a few basic travel precautions, like travelling on a valid passport, teleporting over the border, moving undetected in the shadows in the dead of night, getting the telephone number of an immigration attorney tattooed to your upper thigh, saying a heartfelt goodbye to your pets and the people who love you, and appointing someone to water your plants just in case you disappear into a labyrinthian nightmare of an extrajudicial immigration enforcement system that no longer answers to judge nor common mercy.”
[ related topics: Bay Area Law California Culture Phreaking Gardening Gavin Newsom ]
Entry: 2025-06-13 00:12:22.224842+02 Padilla on the invasion of California by Dan Lyke comments 0
Nikki McCann Ramírez @nikkimcr.bsky.social
Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.
(With video)
[ related topics: Interactive Drama California Culture Community Video ]
Entry: 2025-06-12 22:07:58.744916+02 Civil War news OTD by Dan Lyke comments 0
The clusterfuck invasion of California as of right now:
Guard Soldiers Deployed in Trump's LA Crackdown Aren't Getting Paid Yet. (Via
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs contradicts Trump’s takes on Putin, LA protests (Via)
Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social
Kristi Noem: "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
Sen. Alex Padilla is then forcibly removed!
(With video)
Video of the assault on Padilla.
holy shit -- GOP Rep. Mike Turner tries to "help out" Hegseth by getting him to confirm that the Pentagon does not in fact have plans to take Greenland by force, but Hegseth instead more or less testifies that yep, they have devised plans for that
[ related topics: Current Events California Culture Video ]
Entry: 2025-06-11 20:47:55.685201+02 Episcopal Bishops weigh in on ICE invasion by Dan Lyke comments 0
Because I'm going to want to find this later: A Letter from the Episcopal Bishops in the State of California
Like all Californians, we are watching with great concern the events unfolding around immigration protests in Los Angeles. We are deeply concerned about the ICE raids and about the potential for violence arising from the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the Los Angeles area. We are concerned that military deployments will escalate the confrontations unnecessarily, and worry that all of our regions in California may be subject to future deployments that heighten tensions rather than resolving them.
[ related topics: California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-11 00:53:43.212671+02 Marines had to park in Orange County by Dan Lyke comments 0
Hmm, parking in downtown LA *is* really bad, the Marines had to park in Seal Beach (Orange County). If they want a better route to the Civic Center, I'd hop on Amtrak and hop off at LA Union Station. (it's a lot better).
Marines ordered by Trump to serve in Los Angeles arrive in ... Orange County?
Thomas Sturm @tsturm@famichiki.jp
@ai6yr "LA cant be occupied by armed forces as there is no parking." is the most California take possible.
😂
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Theater & Plays California Culture Trains Public Transportation Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]
Entry: 2025-06-08 06:55:02.885976+02 When the LAPD thanks the protest by Dan Lyke comments 0
When the LAPD thanks the protest organizers. We need to get ICE the fuck out of California.
[ related topics: Photography Civil Liberties California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-06-08 06:26:28.119563+02 From FinTech to Fin Tech by Dan Lyke comments 0
Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io
If you missed my ‘From FinTech to Fin Tech’ talk at North Bay Python, here’s a blog post with the video
The slide everyone was talking about is at 06:27
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Monty Python California Culture Video Python ]
Entry: 2025-06-01 23:38:48.473857+02 The Italian Job, Blues Brothers, and eternal vigilance by Dan Lyke comments 0
This is marvelous: The West Australian — Andrew Miller: Classic car chases educate a child’s mind in ways the classroom just can’t
I was supposed to be helping the six-year-old with reading practice, but we got distracted and ended up watching classic car chases on YouTube.
Specifically, comparing and contrasting wanton automotive carnage in the movies The Italian Job and The Blues Brothers.
This naturally led to explaining the historical relevance of the Illinois Nazis — who met their demise by driving off an incomplete flyover while pursuing Jake and Elwood Blues — and why popular culture so often circles back to the dark risks of fascism.
[ related topics: Movies Sociology Heinlein Beer California Culture Automobiles ]
Entry: 2025-05-27 21:20:03.275182+02 So wait two crypto by Dan Lyke comments 2
So wait, two crypto "investors" kidnapped and duct taped a third crypto "investor" and dangled him off a balcony to try to get the password to a wallet, and I hate that their culture and neighborhoods give rise to this kind of violent behavior, but I really don't have an opinion about crypto-on-crypto violence.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/27/...-sick-soho-torture-case-sources/
[ related topics: Sociology Law Current Events California Culture Cryptography ]
Entry: 2025-05-27 16:42:22.486468+02 the state of voice recognition by Dan Lyke comments 0
“I’ve been typing this way for about two years,” I say.
I’ve been typing this way for about tears, the computer writes.
“About two years,” I repeat, raising my voice and enunciating each word clearly.
A button here, it types.
Anyway, we're using this thing as a Mad Libs generator when there's so much more to be gotten in actually augmenting human interaction...
[ related topics: Sociology Writing California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-05-27 02:05:03.398909+02 Lot of work to depistil the flower by Dan Lyke comments 0
Lot of work to de-pistil the flower shoots, and the plating with coconut milk needs more color; maybe Fresno chiles, and some plantain? But interesting texture, I'd do banana flowers again.
[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-05-21 05:45:02.95358+02 I'm having trouble finding a recent by Dan Lyke comments 0
I'm having trouble finding a recent story about a Bay Area building that got nearly to completion and then got disassembled and reassembled for some reason. Household discussion about modular building, and I wanted to find details to talk about.
[ related topics: California Culture Community ]
Entry: 2025-05-19 22:56:12.192281+02 Shasta geology by Dan Lyke comments 0
It is amazing how young the science of geology is. But, yeah, the landscape around Mt Shasta is fascinating: One of Earth's largest natural disasters hides in plain sight in California, on how the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 showed how the valley along I5 formed.
[ related topics: California Culture ]
Entry: 2025-05-19 17:30:17.584825+02 If nothing is curated, how do we find things? by Dan Lyke comments 0
I've always been out-of-step with the world. It was part of my upbringing, elementary school was in a Waldorf community 18 miles from home. By the time I got to high school I didn't really know how to relate to my peers, and my home culture was so far away from what the other kids around me were experiencing that I didn't really know how they found their content. I remember saying "who the hell is Michael Jackson?" when music was passed out in band (probably some marching band arrangement of Billie Jean).
By the time I had disposable income and CDs were in fashion, I kinda felt like I was playing catch-up to the culture I'd seen in passing earlier. I ordered music from record stores, but never really got into the record store as curation.
And as I dive deeper into popular music for my voice practice, I become more and more aware of how "curation" is largely a commercial endeavor any way, that the bands which rise are politically and economically savvy as much as they are technically/musically competent, and the fact that they become pervasive around us is about coordinated marketing campaigns.
And I'm also aware that the ways that properties become breakouts shift based on the technology of the time and the marketing campaigns that support them. It's not at all lost on me that two, two and a half, decades ago record companies were attempting to ruin the lives of kids for pretty much exactly what generative AI companies are doing now; pirating and remixing culture.
And that that framing excuses GenAI companies in ways that I didn't necessarily intend to.
Anyway, interesting to see the kids these days struggling with discovery: If nothing is curated, how do we find things?
[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Music Sociology Consumerism and advertising California Culture Marketing Community Artificial Intelligence Fashion ]
Entry: 2025-05-18 18:08:40.40702+02 kill the entire institution by Dan Lyke comments 0
we are hearing reports that consumers are buying albums & listening to them dozens, even hundreds of times, without paying a streaming platform or publisher any additional money or even viewing advertisements. this is going to kill the entire institution of music in our culture
[ related topics: Music Sociology Consumerism and advertising California Culture Pop Culture Currency ]
Entry: 2025-05-18 03:44:20.236902+02 Lost Colony found by Dan Lyke comments 0
Well this is fascinating: That first colony on Roanoke Island? ‘Smoking gun’ evidence of Lost Colony’s relocation to Hatteras Island makes international news.
Turns out that, unshackled from the oppression of English society, the settlers were happy to assimilate into the local culture.
See also Thomas Morton...
[ related topics: Drugs Sociology Current Events California Culture Guns ]
Entry: 2025-05-15 18:40:35.54742+02 more "bogus AI-generated research" in the legal field by Dan Lyke comments 0
Judge slams lawyers for ‘bogus AI-generated research’
A California judge slammed a pair of law firms for the undisclosed use of AI after he received a supplemental brief with “numerous false, inaccurate, and misleading legal citations and quotations.” In a ruling submitted last week, Judge Michael Wilner imposed $31,000 in sanctions against the law firms involved, saying “no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing” to AI, as pointed out by law professors Eric Goldman and Blake Reid on Bluesky.
I mean, we've been seeing lawyers use made up citations and precedent for a while now, but it's twenty fucking twenty five, so clearly the punitive measures for lying and blaming it on computer haven't been harsh enough.
[ related topics: Writing Law Current Events California Culture Artificial Intelligence ]
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