Flutterby™! From 2023-06-01 to 2023-06-30

May 31st is National Dam Safety Day. Take a moment to look upstream from your home at our crumbling infrastructure and sob.

But, yeah, California doesn't have a water problem, it's got a water storage problem. Double sob.

https://www.fema.gov/emergency...agers/risk-management/dam-safety

[ related topics: California Culture ]

I think that NextDoor post about road rage was from someone who honestly thinks that speed limits are minimums.

In honor of Pride month, was tempted to post an "If your parents aren't accepting of your identity, I'm your Daddy now" meme, but somehow it feels like slightly the wrong message.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Marketing ]

I'm sympathetic to all of the complaints about anthropomorphizing technology in the context of "AI" and large language models.

I mean, I'm still convinced that anthropomorphizing humans was a mistake.

(with apologies to BF Skinner, whom I don't actually agree with)

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Charlene wanted some color on the living room ceiling, perhaps to go along with the Milky Way print, so I got some cellophane and played with the light. The good news is that, because these are adhered with baby shampoo, when we remove it everything will be cleaner...

[ related topics: Photography Current Events ]

Unfollowed a few people on the Fediverse because it was plain that they were seeking being the center of parasocial relationships, and seeing another post about a friend giving up on trying to bust "Yahoo Boys" because the scammed are actively seeking parasocial relationship.

As I dance on the edge of being "known" in some circles, I'm thinking about how difficult it is to avoid that, but how much I'd rather make genuine social connections.

Well, I have come full circle. Now I'm building RSS systems at work. 20 years ago I was pushing NNTP for blogging. https://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/6704.html

Which I went looking for because of https://www.complete.org/usenet-over-nncp/ , NNCP is an Onion encrypted Darknet copying thing. Almost enough to make me want to spin up INN again.

[ related topics: Content Management Food Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Cryptography Archival ]

Pop22: Wives and Lives

I was mad to not have been exposed to the idea that I too, can some day be a dancing Chinese auntie in my 60s, prancing about on stage singing Teresa Teng songs at a karaoke in Oakland. I was mad that I never got to see people like M and her partner, an older interracial East- and South Asian couple, like Sabrena and I: with their children babbling about in several languages, the way it might look for us if we decided to have children some day.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Bay Area Marriage ]

Working on that English Muffin texture, but works for a breakfast sandwich...

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Drop Your Motion Capture Suit With This Invisible AI-Powered Video Solution

Disguise — Invisible — Real-time markerless mocap

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Video ]

DNS is a crap mechanism for identity, #... well... at this point why bother numbering any more?

798,000 Md. license plates promote Philippines gambling site in URL mishap

About 15% of registered vehicles in Maryland have the plates, meant to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812

The redirecting domain is starspangled200(dot)org

Reddit: Maryland 'War of 1812' license plates: advertisements for online gambling.

[ related topics: History Gambling ]

Meetup just offered me a "New group suggestion: Female Millennial Friendships", and given that I'm pretty sure they know all about my demographic memberships, this feels a lot like an email advertising hot MILFs in my area.

Anyway, yes, friendships with Millenials are great, this suggestion not so much.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

The more I read of Colburn and Aldern's "Homelessness is a Housing Problem", the more I wonder how California is gonna dig itself out of decades of Prop 13 and single family zoning driving out the construction labor force that could build us out of this housing shortage.

It's gonna take massive government intervention to undo bad policy.

[ related topics: moron Sociology California Culture Machinery Fabrication Real Estate Model Building ]

Thinking that "Odourless White Spirit" has something to do with appropriation of indigenous spiritual practices

[ related topics: Religion Photography Race ]

I have a request: Show me your favorite little free library type structures. I've seen the Adult Bookstore one, which is awesome, but I think not quite the vibe of our house. There are a bunch of examples of off-square kid-themed libraries, but we don't pass on a ton of kids books. Thinking like Japanese temple architecture, maybe, I like whimsy, but... not kid-themed in this case. I'm trying to figure out how to do like a Bombay chest side without spending a gazillion dollars on lumber (gluing up 3/4" ipe chunks, which I have, into a curve sounds like a huge challenge). Just: inspiration on something for the front walk!

[ related topics: Language Religion Children and growing up Books Law Architecture Real Estate Woodworking ]

Down at St Vincent's to see owls. The no trespassing signs have gotten way more aggressive since the last time we were here, so we're at the fence. No periods yet, Merlin says hooded oriole, spotted towhee, and now that the sun has gone down the peafowl at Silvera ranch are noisy.

[ related topics: Photography Java ]

Twitter is definitely going great. Pages of scammer follows with a request to turn on notifications...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Just when I thought the writers of this face couldn't get any lazier, here comes Mr Bean shilling "hydrogen" (natural gas) and spreading battery fud in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/co...ar-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson

[ related topics: Nature and environment Writing Automobiles ]

Thinking about Feynman's anecdotes about education in Brazil, my own experiences with education in the US, and Emily Benders "Thai library" critique of large language models. Most humans don't have the advantage we'd like to pretend.

https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

[ related topics: Language Books Education ]

It's good that they've started naming Apple releases after regions known for recreational drugs. Once they work through wine, presumably they'll either go in the Humboldt/Mendocino or Kern/Lake County direction, and then we'll have a better sense of the vibe.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Drugs Health Wines and Spirits Work, productivity and environment ]

Wow, so a friend asked ChatGPT how the phrase "conspiracy theory" was developed, and it gave a very 4chan/Q-adjacent response. I found the AP article that referenced the NYT 1863 reference, but on digging deeper, it was clear that their author hadn't read the source the linked to either.

So I found that source (a response to the letter that the AP lazily linked to), but then asked Bard for the origins of the term.

Holy shit, we're doomed. Expensive generators of obfuscated bullshit.

[ related topics: Conspiracy Government ]

At this point I don't know what to believe any more, but the first use of the term “conspiracy theory” is much earlier — and more interesting — than historians have thought explains why I couldn't find the term in the NYT letter that the AP linked to, it's in a letter responding to that letter.

This post brought to you by me subsequently going far too deep in trying to chase LLM generated bullshit.

[ related topics: Conspiracy Government ]

Okay, gonna put the current chat GPT saga in the comments to this thread.

Wondered why it seemed like my webcam's FOV was changing, then looked back and realized that a side of my backdrop had fallen down.

The bad thing about modern LED lighting and all of the computing being on batteries and switching power supplies is that I can tell the electricity is fucked up because the UPS is making weird humming noises and the car charger and car just declared power faults, but I don't have that "wait, the lights just got dimmer weirdly" feedback of incandescent bulbs and brownouts.

[ related topics: Cool Science Automobiles ]

Graydon Hoare: The Rust I Wanted Had No Future

In a recent podcast about Rust leadership, the BDFL question came up again and Jeremy Soller said (in the understatement of the century) that "I believe Graydon would have said no to some things we all like now". And this echoes a different conversation on reddit where I was reminded that I meant to write down at some point how "I would have done it all differently" (and that this would probably have been extremely unsatisfying to everyone involved, and it never would have gone anywhere).

[ related topics: Movies ]

Good read on a life lived with purpose: Politico — Daniel Ellsberg Is Dying. And He Has Some Final Things to Say.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

RT mwl@io.mwl.io Michael Lucas

Me: I won't discuss business in a room with an Alexa, because Amazon is my business competitor and they eavesdrop.

Various other folks: :flan_eyeroll:

Today: Amazon to pay fine for eavesdropping. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/01...126/amazon-alexa-ring-settlement

[ related topics: Books Star Wars tolkien ]

This webinar could have been a one page email.

Latest follower in the Fediverse. "AI" is just gonna drown us in bullshit.

https://me.dm/@chiarrasue

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Amusing how the further up one gets on either the economic hierarchy or the academic hierarchy, the more one thinks that language is sufficient representation of the model, and the further down, the more the tools come into play.

Yes, this is talking about how people perceive the value of "AI".

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

I guess the breakdown on people seeing the value in LLMs as "AI" is how much they think the language *is* the domain.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Thinking about how Jira provides a draggable interface in the exact place where I want a text-selection interface, and how I absolutely never want to use their draggable functionality for what it does.

New Republic: Reality Winner's story was never about a leak, a review of the HBO movie Reality, and a bit of a look at what she was trying to accomplish, and may or may not have.

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design ]

Just catching up and clearing a backlog, at this point the "lawyer tries to argue a case using ChatGPT" thing is pretty old, but Simon Willison has a pretty good rundown of the situation:

The judge, clearly unimpressed, issues another Order to Show Cause, this time threatening sanctions against Mr. LoDuca, Steven Schwartz and the law firm of Levidow, Levidow & Oberman. The in-person hearing is set for June 8th.

[ related topics: Law ]

OH: "Under the new arrangement, the PGA will manage holes 1-8 and 12-18, while the Saudis will continue to be responsible for 9-11."

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Perry Bacon Jr. writing opinion in the Washington Post: CNN’s Chris Licht showed the problem with anti-woke centrism (Gift link, no subscription needed)

[ related topics: Writing Food - Bacon ]

Has anybody got experience with the Academia.edu claim of mentions in papers? I recognize the author of one of the papers they've emailed me to claim I'm mentioned in, but not $150 worth, especially given that it's unlikely that most of the mentions are actually of me.

Happy Clean Air Day in Canada, to those who celebrate.

"Clean Air Day is June 7, 2023. This is a day to recognize how important good air quality is to our health, our environment, and the economy."

https://www.canada.ca/en/envir...ironment-week/clean-air-day.html

[ related topics: Photography Health Nature and environment Economics Global Warming ]

Great. So we've been waiting on the battery for our 2022 Bolt EUV. Called the dealer, Victory Chevrolet in Petaluma, asked "what's up?", they said "you just need another software upgrade". Plugged the VIN into experience.gm.com, it says we need a battery replacement.

This is kinda when I wish I was back on Twitter so I could publicly slag everyone for not having their data integration shit together, because now I need to spend more time on the fucking phone.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Automobiles Fabrication ]

Pat Robertson has died. Far too old for justice. I know, a lot of people are already dancing on his grave, my footsteps are redundant, but it feels inappropriate to let the death of this hateful awful person go uncelebrated.

Good fucking riddance.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Whoah! What happens when you can't guarantee that your boot is coming from completely clean media: Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway Appliance Vulnerability:

ACTION NOTICE: Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level. If you have not replaced your appliance after receiving notice in your UI, contact support now [elided]

Barracuda’s remediation recommendation at this time is full replacement of the impacted ESG.

I mean, we know that when you can field upgrade the BIOS you can get devices into this kind of a state, but that's a very strong argument for the BIOS to be little more than a boot sector loader. Instead we seem to be going to more and more BIOS capabilities...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama User Interface Law Journalism and Media Shoes ]

Fuuu. I don't know how many times I've gone to the Apple "forget my phone number" thing, and yet here are messages showing up in MacOS Messages rather than as SMS on my phone. It's been a long time since I went Android.

iPhone. Not even once, unless you want to commit to it for life.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh iPhone ]

A researcher who publishes a study every two days reveals the darker side of science — Spain’s most prolific scientific academic — meat expert José Manuel Lorenzo — put his name on 176 papers last year, exposing an underworld of shady practices

At one point, Lorenzo began collaborating with exotic researchers — who nobody knew about — on topics that have nothing to do with meat. Four months ago, he published a study on the hospital management of monkeypox, alongside Iraqi, Indian and Pakistani co-authors. And a year ago, he and some researchers from India and Saudi Arabia published an article on the treatment of gum disease with bee venom. In a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS, Lorenzo admits that he doesn’t know any of these co-authors in person, nor is he an expert on any of these issues.

[ related topics: Phreaking ]

Ooooh, I think I know what's going on with those Academia.edu claims of mentions. Probably people citing IATS stuff.

I thought all of that had been buried deep...

From a Metafilter Post that links to an essay on Software Development, The History of Fire Escapes, comes The Nation: Single-Stair Layouts Are Not Going to Fix the Housing Crisis

If you’ve been around architecture and urbanism circles for the last few years, you might have heard about something called “single-stair” layouts. While not a new concept (it’s been present in European multifamily buildings for a very long time), single-stair apartment buildings have, like upzoning before it, become the latest concept to gain “it will fix our cities” panacea status among a certain type of pragmatic liberal urban pundit. If we build using single-stair, it could lower rents! It could make better streetscapes! It could make America more like Blessed Mother Europe! Wow, the housing crisis is suddenly solved, thanks to this one weird trick!

The author, Kate Wagner, points out that Europe has dramatically different circumstances, like much lower rates of fires, stemming from different ways in which housing gets implemented.

And also mentions Robin Bartram's Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality that looks fascinating.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Invention and Design Software Engineering Writing California Culture Pyrotechnics Birds Architecture Dogs Real Estate ]

The Petaluma allies of the drag queen story hour are out in force this morning! The day was packed, but we had to squeeze a visit in, and it's a wonderful joyful group of people.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I think the most shocking thing about the theft and probably sale of some the United States' closest held secrets is that that bathroom looks like some house flipper ended up with extra funds on a Home Depot gift card.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

It's bottling time!

[ related topics: Photography ]

41 bottles and 2 glasses into the fall 2022 pindo fruit wine and we've decided that what we really need in this neighborhood is more ornamental cannabis plants. Or psilocybin gardens

[ related topics: Photography Wines and Spirits Gardening ]

"Fulfillment date" sounds like a dystopian rite of of passage in an SF YA novel...

Why yes, I have been sampling the pindo wine as we bottled, why do you ask?

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Wines and Spirits ]

On the off chance that if this vehicle is where in a collision and the driver faces any legal consequences, I would hope that these lug nuts are prima facie evidence of intent to do injury.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Law ]

Ugh. Why is Android File Transfer not talking to my Pixel 7? I swear Apple is getting more and more like 1980s IBM big iron, where you have to introduce additional computers from other vendors to get it to talk to anything.

Off-brand Bluetooth is right out.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless Graphics ]

Saving it here rather than in a persistently open tab, so that I can refer back to it the next time I need it: Reply to the usual anti-bike-lane whining

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Sooo, if Reddit collapses, got an over/under on cryptocurrencies without that big ol' platform to pump them?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

NVD (National Vulnerability Database) Damage Continued. On the frustrations of the curl team dealing with CVE rating vs their own internal development process.

[ related topics: Weblogs Databases ]

I know it's a lot, but just once I'd like to have the event budget to be able to ask for an in-house working sound system. I'll hobble along with projector dongles and adapters and whatever, but it seems like the half-life of house sound for cheap halls is about six months from the last time the venue paid tons and tons of money to the AV shop, and nobody's been able to figure it out since.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Currency Archival Real Estate ]

Dropped the Bolt off at the Chevy dealer this morning. Wowza GM's IT integration with the dealership and general CRM capabilities are crap, and they should fix that (Along with my flaky dash switches).

Also noted once again the lack of bike lane connectivity on Petaluma Blvd N. Fairly wide signed bike lane, and then boom, narrow shoulder overgrown with foliage pushing ya into 45MPH speed limit (hahahaha) 2 lane traffic.

[ related topics: Fabrication Bicycling ]

Apparently the Bolt's replacement switches are on order from Lucas in the UK, so I'm waiting in the Chevy service waiting room hearing the sales guy explain to a customer that the first step in diagnosing their problem was to update firmware, but GM won't pay for that, just parts, and damn this is all a racket, huh?

[ related topics: Star Wars Fabrication ]

The Decade of Sock Hops, Poodle Skirts, and Climate Change Awareness

As new and challenging as these ideas were, sincere attempts were made to introduce them to the mainstream. It may come as a surprise today, but in 1958, the potential for CO₂-driven climate disruption was part of the public school curriculum. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the director Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.) collaborated with Bell Telephone (AT&T) on a series of educational films that were aired on national television and distributed widely through American schools. Using a hybrid of animation and live action popular at the time, 1958’s The Unchained Goddess featured Meteora, an animated Rita Hayworth–like weather deity who becomes infatuated with the domed and bespectacled Dr. Frank Baxter, a legendary (real-life) professor at the University of Southern California. Over the course of the film, Baxter, a truly delightful man, explains the science and mechanics of weather, finishing up with a warning that “man may be unwittingly changing the world’s climate through the waste products of his civilization … ” As Baxter paraphrases Gilbert Plass’s research and Roger Revelle’s lyricism, we see dramatic footage of collapsing glaciers juxtaposed with fuming smokestacks, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and animations of rising seas inundating the coastal United States. The Unchained Goddess, financed and distributed by one of the biggest and most powerful corporations in US history, was seen by tens of millions of young baby boomers.

All overridden by concerted marketing campaigns from the fossil fuel providers, of course.

Via Sensible Endowment

[ related topics: Ziffle Children and growing up Technology and Culture Animation Movies Invention and Design Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Television Beer California Culture Marketing Education Dogs Phreaking Rocky Horror Picture Show Global Warming ]

Why Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs) at crosswalks are a bad freakin' idea that normalize drivers being even less attentive.

I do appreciate the extra wording on the "sorry out of order" taped over beg button: "sorry, you might die, our bad" is, yeah, how we treat pedestrian and bike infrastructure.

(Lynch Creek Trail & Lakeville Highway, Petaluma)

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bicycling ]

We've pumped so much groundwater that we've measurably shifted the earth's axis of rotation.

WASHINGTON — By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU’s journal for short-format, high-impact research with implications spanning the Earth and space sciences.

Via

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Just saw a "couple looking for activity partners" post that specified "(This is NOT a pineapple 🍍 post)", and... if I'm reading it right, that's an interesting niche to signal that you know about and yet need to specify that it's not about that...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Woodworking ]

Study shows psychedelic drugs reopen 'critical periods' for social learning

"There is a window of time when the mammalian brain is far more susceptible and open to learning from the environment," says Gül Dölen, associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "This window will close at some point, and then, the brain becomes much less open to new learning."

Nature: How psychedelic drugs achieve their potent health benefits

For their new paper, the researchers gave adult mice either MDMA or one of four psychedelic drugs not known to promote sociability: ibogaine, LSD, ketamine and psilocybin. Mice that received any of the psychedelic drugs were more likely to choose the social room than untreated mice, suggesting that each of the drugs could reopen the critical period.

But mice did not prefer the social room if given enough ketamine to make them unconscious and therefore unaware of their companions. This suggests that the drugs only open the social critical period if they are taken in a social context. Each drug opened the critical period for a different length of time, ranging from one week for ketamine to more than four weeks for ibogaine.

Via the always amazing Tara Calishain

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up Interactive Drama Health Nature and environment Invention and Design Television Education ]

Product I'm interested in advertised on Facebook, from a vendor that looks legit and has a real web site that I can find via Google, but because of where it's advertised I'm reluctant to risk an order from them...

Historic Redlining Practices Cast a Long Shadow on Cancer Screening Rates

A new study shows that people who live in historically redlined areas have lower screening rates for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and colorectal cancer

Association of Historical Redlining and Present-Day Social Vulnerability with Cancer Screening DOI: 10.1097/XCS.0000000000000779

Conclusion: Redlining as a surrogate for structural racism continues to adversely impact cancer screening. Policies that aim to make access to preventive cancer care more equitable for historically marginalized communities should be a public priority.

Via

[ related topics: Invention and Design Theater & Plays Television Community Race ]

RT purple @purple@tech.lgbt

TERFs are terrible database admins because they won't commit trans action

[ related topics: Databases ]

I have not fact-checked this article, I'm putting it here for later when I write up a presentation on why electric automobiles will not save us, and I can go back and check the numbers and such: amy.zip: You Will Never Own an Electric Car — How Tech Optimism Blinds Us to Obvious Problems

It doesn’t actually matter that we’ll destroy every road in the country trying to drive them. It doesn’t matter that refining Lithium is one of the most environmentally damaging industrial processes on the planet. It doesn’t matter that over its life a BEV is still responsible for at least 30% the emissions of a conventional car and therefore the entire story of a zero emissions car is a fairy tale. It doesn’t even matter that we’ll need to magically find thousands of times more Lithium and start digging it out of the ground 50 times faster.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Mathematics Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Engines Nelson F. Liu, Tianyi Zhang, Percy Liang

Generative search engines directly generate responses to user queries, along with in-line citations. A prerequisite trait of a trustworthy generative search engine is verifiability, i.e., systems should cite comprehensively (high citation recall; all statements are fully supported by citations) and accurately (high citation precision; every cite supports its associated statement). We conduct human evaluation to audit four popular generative search engines -- Bing Chat, NeevaAI, this http URL, and YouChat -- across a diverse set of queries from a variety of sources (e.g., historical Google user queries, dynamically-collected open-ended questions on Reddit, etc.). We find that responses from existing generative search engines are fluent and appear informative, but frequently contain unsupported statements and inaccurate citations: on average, a mere 51.5% of generated sentences are fully supported by citations and only 74.5% of citations support their associated sentence. We believe that these results are concerningly low for systems that may serve as a primary tool for information-seeking users, especially given their facade of trustworthiness. We hope that our results further motivate the development of trustworthy generative search engines and help researchers and users better understand the shortcomings of existing commercial systems.

arXiv:2304.09848 https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.09848

[ related topics: Machinery Model Building ]

West Virginia State Police Investigation: 10 more minors, 42 more women in total to sue West Virginia State Police over hidden cameras

According to a letter sent by Cpl. Joseph Comer, a member of the WV State Police, to state lawmakers, Governor Jim Justice, and the office of the Attorney General on February 16, a hidden camera or cameras were placed and operated inside the female locker room at the State Police Academy. Toriseva says her clients and other female Junior Trooper program attendees accessed and used the female locker room at the Academy during the time the anonymous letter states the cameras were in use. Toriseva also says the taping of the females in the Academy did not end until 2020, the same time the Junior Trooper Program was discontinued in 2020.

“Our ongoing investigation shows rampant sexual misconduct, including hidden videotaping, toward female cadets and others, while they attended the Academy,” Toriseva told 7News. “Much of the conduct is through witness provided evidence.”

Via

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Software Engineering Law Law Enforcement Television ]

I'm not sure their methodology is rigorous enough to justify the claim that Tesla "full self-driving" kills an order of magnitude more than human drivers, but it's probably several times, and it sure would be a better look if Tesla was more forthcoming with data.

WaPo: 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot — Tesla’s driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, has been involved in far more crashes than previously reported

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

Not news, but nice to see it recognized, and it's a decent dive into specific examples: A storefront for robots — The SEO arms race has left Google and the web drowning in garbage text, with customers and businesses flailing to find each other.

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

A hero: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, dies at 92

Study shows many American atheists hide their non-belief

Abbott recruited 600 atheist participants from throughout the U.S. — 300 rural-residing, 300 women-identifying — who provided data on both overt discrimination and microaggressions they have experienced because of their non-belief. She also learned about participants’ psychological distress and well-being, as well as their strengths.

So biased to vulnerable people in hostile environments, but still.

[ related topics: Religion Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Current Events Television ]

Out at the Petaluma Library to support drag queen story hour.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

Fixed it.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Wanted to build a little outside storage unit, and not only is it miserably windy, the wet redwood means the Titebond III isn't drying at all. I should have used PVA construction adhesive...

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

I stayed out on the Washington Street side of the library most of the day, so I missed the really ugly stuff. I talked with one guy who felt like he'd had some good engagement with one of the protesters, but today I'm just hearing about interactions that make these bigots sound like Sonoma County's own version of Westboro Baptist. Anyway, they were outnumbered, the event was apparently very well attended, and I really wish we could get out "allies" to stop shitting on the cops during these events, because I believe at least one had kids inside.

But the challenge with protests and counter-protests is that there are all sorts of groups trying to hijack the message.

Good on the Argus for this editorial.

https://www.petaluma360.com/ar...taluma-librarys-drag-story-hour/

[ related topics: Language Books ]

Think when we build the tiny library structure in the front yard we're gonna have to integrate some prisms...

[ related topics: Language Books ]

Think when we build the tiny library structure in the front yard we're gonna have to integrate some prisms... (With picture)

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

Peniel Joseph in Texas Monthly — The Story We’ve Been Told About Juneteenth Is Wrong: The real history is much messier—and more inspiring

Or, RT Brian Danger Hicks @ckape@teh.entar.net</as>

Juneteenth is a reminder that the assholes are not going to stop just because the rules said they lost. You have to make them stop.

The Nature Conservancy — How much carbon was in the atmosphere when you were born? A handy little reference.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

As if you needed another reason to not use Microsoft Edge: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft, here is how to disable that

Edge has a built-in image enhancement tool that, according to Microsoft, can use "super-resolution to improve clarity, sharpness, lighting, and contrast in images on the web." Although the feature sounds exciting, recent Microsoft Edge Canary updates have provided more information on how image enhancement works.

The browser now warns that it sends image links to Microsoft instead of performing on-device enhancements.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron Current Events ]

Cool WaPo (gift link) article about what's being learned about the ecological impacts of humans from sediment cores taken from Crawford Lake in Canada.

https://wapo.st/3XdAARP

I just wanna point out that two days ago the headlines read Hundreds of Pakistanis dead in Mediterranean migrant boat disaster, official says

More than 300 Pakistani nationals have been killed in the sinking of a overcrowded fishing trawler off the coast of Greece, the latest tragedy to expose the refugee crisis confronting the European Union as tens of thousands seek sanctuary from war, persecution and poverty.

Meanwhile, a couple of people who bought seats at a quarter million bucks a piece on a vessel which deliberately avoided the standard passenger certifications for boats and was controlled with a wireless $30 gamepad operated by a company which fired and sued an engineer who raised safety concerns are getting above the fold coverage.

[ related topics: Wireless Games Weblogs History Current Events Journalism and Media Boats Machinery Currency ]

I need some more resin to fill in more of that that very gnarly slab that I rescued from the junk pile at Sturgeon's Mill (there's a false economy) and I hate working with green wood, but we have a little storage chest by the spa now.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Gambling Economics Woodworking ]

Why is it that the people using US imperialism as an excuse for Russian behavior also seem to be the ones most likely to support politicians that promote US imperialism?

Picked up the mic tonight at Tam Twirlers. There's always so much more I could do for my square dance calling, but it felt good, like I need to say "yes" to a regular gig again. Between round dancing and projects and the Know Before You Grow forums I'm not sure when that is, but...

[ related topics: Community ]

Listening to the Capitol Weekly podcast recordings from ROADMAP 2030, and I think the message I'm hearing is that special interests are gonna delay any real action with infighting until long after the tipping point.

Also, I would *love* to have someone give me a non-handwavy explanation of why hydrogen isn't a prop-up-the-gas-industry pipe-dream.

https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/e...alifornias-zero-emissions-goals/

[ related topics: Pop Culture Global Warming ]

Apropos of nothing at all related to current events: German sea captain faces 20 years in jail for migrant rescue efforts

A German sea captain faces a 20-year prison sentence for helping to rescue more than 1,000 migrants at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.

Pia Klemp, one of just a handful of female boat captains, warned that “sea rescue missions have become criminalised” as she vowed to fight her case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

[ related topics: Law Civil Liberties Boats Machinery ]

Eeenteresting. Maybe I'll dive into the numbers a bit, see if I can find a breakdown of where most of the differential comes from, I'm guessing it's in housing. RT 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 :verifiedtrans: @LadyDragonfly@universeodon.com

The Great Depression (1929-1941) is widely considered to be the worst economic period in American history. And the very worst year during that time period was 1930. Now, what I'm about to show you, I'm not doing to hurt anyone. I just need people to understand that we are being gaslit.

In 1930, the average annual income for 1 person was: $4,887.

So let's plug that into an inflation calculator and just see what that Great Depression salary - the "worst" in American history - translates to in 2023 dollars.

I'll just let you sit with this for a moment.

Using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator I have not come up with exactly those numbers, but depending on when in 1930 I choose as a baseline I can bracket them. So, yeah, order of magnitude this checks out.

Obviously we have nicer goods now, though we're clearly spending more on housing, probably spending more, normalized to what kind of food, on food, and healthcare is worlds different now than then, but life expectancy in the US has dropped almost to below that of two decades ago after peaking in 2014.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Work, productivity and environment Mathematics Economics Real Estate ]

Dear Apple: under what conceivable circumstances would I ever actually want to create a .fileloc file when dragging a file URL?

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

RT Regis - HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot @rmd1023@infosec.exchange

Happy birthday to the 19" equipment rack, which turns 100 next month. From the July, 1923, Bell Systems Technical Journal: "All panels are to be of a uniform length, designed to mount on vertical supports spaced 19>< inches between centers. The height of the different panels will vary, according to the amount of apparatus in each unit, but this vertical dimension is in all cases to be a whole multiple of 1-3/4 inches."(p139 at https://archive.org/details/bstj2-3-112/page/n27/mode/2up )

Reading through the specials email from Grocery Outlet, products that have been remaindered, and thinking about how much product differentiation is ad copy for the same generic product. This barbecue sauce happens to be "Rich & Sassy", that one's "Legendary".

And thinking about how Large Language Models are just automating the exploration of this space of differentiating commodity product with more garbage superlatives.

[ related topics: Food Space & Astronomy ]

Oh yay, we're back to the "randomly crashes" part of the XCode development cycle.

[ related topics: Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Nothing warms my heart like the news that a local gadfly, having deliberately stirred up a particular controversy, has discovered that the response to said controversy has gotten out of hand, that they're taking flack from all sides, and that they're now trying to unwind from their bullshit.

Chickens, meet roost.

[ related topics: Current Events Birds ]

Just enjoying the sunset and moon from outside the grocery store

[ related topics: Photography ]

After asking Google Bard for a list of primes ending in 2, and being told that 5 was one of them, I asked it "What are good materials to make deep sea submersible pressure vessels out of?", and yeah, on-brand. I mean, it did suggest steel and titanium first, but we may have an insight into a design process now.

[ related topics: Photography Cool Science Graphic Design ]

i could really go for Google not telling me that "average" is a synonym for "median" right about now.

Some planes in a garage sale near me have me wondering about rust removal... Is this as easy as clamping one lead of a wall wart to the rusty bits, dangling the other lead in water, and adding enough salt to get some current flowing?

Starting to clean the hand planes gotten from a garage sale on 5th St.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Not showroom quality, but cleaned up enough to be usable for the kind of things I do with hand planes, with a coat of wax to keep them from declining as I look to what else I want to do with them.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Okay, they're probably usable now...

[ related topics: Photography ]

I haven't yet tried to single frame this to see if I caught a license plate, but this vehicle was just cutting donuts at 6th and F St.

https://youtu.be/JtZjFEXUjr8

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Ah, yes, the excusing high speed driving in our neighborhoods portion of NextDoor.

RT astrid@fedi.astrid.tech Astrid (Certified Server Maid)

monogamy implies the existence of stereogamy and 5.1gamy

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Copied over from Facebook, rather than changing the framing:

It's my annual "get a place for people to comment so my timeline remains usable tomorrow" post... So, yeah, June 26th this year is my 55th journey around this particular star. I've kinda gotten over celebrating a particular day, rather than making them all special, but it's a good reminder to take stock and retarget as necessary.

This time around I'm pushing some of my personal boundaries by trying to be even more outspoken about improving the city around me, whether that's working with neighbors on traffic safety or helping organize larger forums to try to help Petaluma navigate its next decades (I'm typing this in between emails about a forum to explore a proposed downtown zoning overlay).

Voice lessons have become their own thing. When I started them it was to support the square dance calling, now I feel like beyond the aesthetics of my voice, I'm getting a lot of value out of working on diving into my feelings around the lyrics, and learning how to express them in ways that people around me interpret in the same way that I mean it. I have long known that... the best metaphor I've found is that I express emotions with an accent; I don't process emotional content from others in ways that they expect, and they don't get from me what I'm feeling, and singing is getting me deep into finding ways to consciously explore that channel.

I'm gradually easing back into square dancing and calling. Need to get back to someone in the east bay about what a Saturday mid-day calling gig might look like, and the pressure is building to restart something here in Petaluma. But for now I'm filling in for area callers, and seem to be getting good feedback for what I'm doing, so it's a good chance to get up and hide behind the mic.

Haven't been on the bike in a while, and haven't been running much, most of my exercise has been walking. I could use more of that, but it's a matter of what I can squeeze in when.

Work is fun, I see a lot of value in the product I'm working on. I'm weighing the general product direction vs what I use, and struggling with that a bit, but mostly I really like what, with whom, and when I'm working on. I look forward to the week, and it's hard to complain about that.

And when I'm not engaged in one of those things, I'm, yeah, in the workshop making sawdust. Having the back yard feel pretty close to finished is amazing. The house projects are here, along with all sorts of fun diversions, and I'm looking forward to learning more about luthier work as a friend using the shop gets further along in his guitar building project, and on whatever else pops up along the way that could be fun to do.

Currently listening to Tom Waits — Ol' 55

[ related topics: Music Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment California Culture Sports Pop Culture Community Education Bicycling Economics Real Estate Aviation - Helicopters ]

Nature Climate Change: State of global land regulation inadequate to control biofuel land-use-change emissions

Under current land-use regulation, carbon dioxide emissions from biofuel production exceed those from fossil diesel combustion. Therefore, international agreements need to ensure the effective and globally comprehensive protection of natural land before modern bioenergy can effectively contribute to achieving carbon neutrality.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Real Estate Global Warming ]

If you're interested in a daily word game that delves into etymology and definitions, I have become quite taken with https://rootlegame.net ...

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Games ]

Your feel-good story of the day: Golf Digest: The grinders who saved a college golf team

Two women combined to shoot 434 in a single round—and became the heroes of this D-III program

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Software Engineering Education ]

Very worth reading: The Verge: AI Is a Lot of Work: As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

We have a clock that needs an update. I want a mechanical face (I inlaid some stuff into a hunk of olive). We have a number of different WWVB synced clocks of... varying ability to find a time signal, and maybe that's useful? I see movements from $4 to $40, and that's probably just because I haven't searched much. Anyone have enough experience to suggest one?

My German is just enough that I completely misread "ways to be kinder in group conversations" on the first pass.

RT Carl T. Bergstrom @ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org

ChatGPT detection and algorithmic bias:

This afternoon James Zou directed me to a recent pilot study from his group in which they looked at the performance of seven different GPT-detectors that are sometimes used to flag cheating in educational settings.

They found that these detectors commonly misclassify text from non-native English speakers as being written by an AI. A primary driver appears to be the lower perplexity (exponent of model's loss) of such text.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02819

ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org Carl T. Bergstrom @ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org

Ironically, these false positives are readily avoided by asking ChatGPT to rewrite the non-native English speaker's text to increase linguistic complexity.

In other words, the way for these speakers to avoid being accused to cheating is to actually cheat.

The take-home for higher ed is obvious and stark. Many (all?) current ChatGPT detectors have not been adequately assessed for issues of algorithmic bias and therefore should not be used to accuse students of misconduct in their written work.

GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Writing Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

Verge: Who killed Google Reader?

Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been.

It sure felt like Google Reader was killed so that the brand could focus on the ultimate "tech bros try to engineer a social media product" disaster that was Google+. And that really felt like a tipping point for "don't be evil", and Google as a company.

Also, there's so much they could be mining from blogs and RSS (and Atom) feeds had they nurtured that ecosystem that instead they're replacing with often completely wrong linkbait fed by Large Language Models.

[ related topics: Content Management Journalism and Media ]

MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information #9208

SummaryMDN's new "ai explain" button on code blocks generates human-like text that may be correct by happenstance, or may contain convincing falsehoods. this is a strange decision for a technical reference.

If I wanted vaguely human sounding autogenerated content, I'd use StackExchange.

Mozilla: Introducing AI Help: Your Trusted Companion for Web Development. Yeah, so it's a paid promotion.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Artificial Intelligence ]