Flutterby™! From 2024-06-01 to 2024-06-30

We have a Craftsman scroll saw that we got from one of Charlene's nephews. It uses pinned blades, doesn't take the adapter kit, and I've been looking for something better. This morning, this beasty came up on Facebook Marketplace for $20, and... I need to build a slightly better belt tensioner, and maybe beef up the desk it's sitting on, but... Different world altogether.

[ related topics: Photography Food Woodworking ]

Two for the morning:

• Engineering for slow internet.
• Unencrypted connections do mean injection

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Out garage sale-ing in the burbs, and found this cool poppy mural

[ related topics: Photography ]

Good explainer on the AI pump-n-dump: VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market

What’s more, some SPVs are formed on top of another SPV. For instance, when Menlo Ventures was raising a $750 million SPV to invest in Anthropic earlier this year, some funds who invested in it, resold a slice of their SPV allocation to other investors, charging additional fees on their second-layer SPV, Sawyer said.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Everybody's been giggling over the video of the driver with the suspended license showing up for his Zoom court hearing from behind the wheel, but/and: Why was the driver in a viral video's license still suspended 2 years after a judge ordered it lifted?. tl;dr: because the "Friend of the Court" was jerking him around.

Via

[ related topics: Law Current Events Video ]

RT @cadey@pony.social

People that advocate for metric say that it's logical because you use SI prefixes and then go and say "thousands of kilometers"

RT Jessica @rooster@chaosfem.tw

I prefer email to meetings because I like turn based strategy not RTS

Dave Polaschek has put his book Mead Made Easy online, for free.

[ related topics: Books Furniture ]

RT hikari 🌟 (🇩🇪 arc) @hikari@noyu.me

tired: “i make musical instruments”

inspired: “i work in the timbre industry”

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

How does AI impact my job as a programmer:

Remember; already, the overwhelming majority of our time in the programming tools goes into tasks that require the investigative skill set rather than the building skill set. Large language models shift even more of that time into investigation, because the moment the team gets a chance to build, they turn around and ask ChatGPT (or Copilot, or Devin, or Gemini) to do it. When we learn that we need to integrate with Google Cloud Storage, or spaCy, or SQS Queue, or Firebase? Same thing: turn around and ask the LLM to draft the integration.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Heinlein Artificial Intelligence ]

So, in Objective-C, if you do:

self.itemsDataNew = [@[] copy];

self.itemsDataFeed = [@[] copy];

Do they point to the same empty array object, or different ones?

Damn it, Apple...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama ]

RT Laffy @GottaLaff@mastodon.social

Of course. Via Alejandra Caraballo:

Oh my god. The entirety of the Epoch Times was a giant money laundering operation.

United States Attorneys Office: Chief Financial Officer Of Multinational Media Company Charged With Participating In Scheme To Launder At Least $67 Million In Fraud Proceeds

[ related topics: Religion Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Currency ]

The Register: Toyota plus 4 other Japanese automakers caught cheating on certification tests

I'm shocked: Meta algorithms push Black people more toward expensive universities, study finds

This finding is described in a paper titled "Auditing for Racial Discrimination in the Delivery of Education Ads," by Basileal Imana, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University; Aleksandra Korolova, assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University; and John Heidemann, research professor of computer science at University of Southern California.

[ related topics: California Culture Education Model Building ]

Eric Wagoner, of Kestrel's Nest blog fame, has a new video: Random Recipe Project: Narnia Flavors: Homemade Turkish Delight, saved aside for the next time I'm doing a pot luck or something and want to tempt people into betraying their siblings...

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Invention and Design Video ]

Surprising no one: Study finds 268% higher failure rates for Agile software projects

Even though the research commissioned by consultancy Engprax could be seen as a thinly veiled plug for Impact Engineering methodology, it feeds into the suspicion that the Agile Manifesto might not be all it's cracked up to be.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

I have wondered where the vibe of the '90s, with socialization of safer sex starting to pull society out of the puritanism of the HIV crisis, went. It's good to see that maybe it's coming back? From this MeFi post, CBC: Canada's horniest newsletter is changing the way we think about sex, desire, & queer culture.

Christopher Sherman's website. and the Horny Newsletter, which reminded one commenter of BUTT magazine.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture ]

Just closing tabs, and thought this was worth saving: 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' (Billy Joel) | Middle Aged Dad Jam Band (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Food Video ]

From 2002: California Planning & Development Report: Petaluma Marks 30 Years Of Growth Control.

Since the urban growth boundary and other constraints were put in place, the population had doubled, to 56,000. Since then it's ballooned to 59,776 (2020 Census), although some estimates suggest it's down to less than 58k as of 2024.

Of particular note, discussion of Redevelopment Agencies' role in the auto mall boondoggle* (and how attempts to limit signage led to the big video billboard). Also interesting to see Mike Healy quoted...

Still, Vice-Mayor Healey noted, the city will reach buildout inside the UGB in less than 20 years. He said city officials must pursue infill and redevelopment projects, which he called "healthy and challenging."

*cough*East Washington Place*cough*.

Wonder what happened in the late '90s that kinda destroyed the affordable housing momentum that Petaluma had?

* This is a common thread with Redevelopment Agencies, they offer up some local control, but nobody can find net benefit, and quite often they've been used for boondoggles like that.

[ related topics: Quotes Health California Culture Community Video Real Estate ]

CBS MoneyWatch: Some veggie puffs contain high levels of lead, Consumer Reports finds

Some veggie puffs made by Lesser Evil and Serenity Kids contain concerning levels of lead, a heavy metal linked to developmental and other disabilities in children, according to findings released Wednesday by Consumer Reports.

Via ResearchBuzz

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Food Current Events Consumerism and advertising Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

Emory University: Therapeutic Psychedelics

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is showing promise in reducing cancer-related anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Why? The answer seems to include our human need to find meaning and connection.

Via ResearchBuzz.

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

PNAS : Psychological and Cognitive Sciences : Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Work, productivity and environment ]

Car and Driver: Study Says That People Who Like Loud Exhaust Are Psychotic

A new study by Western University in Ontario says that if you've got a car with a modified exhaust system, odds are you're a guy and probably also psychotic and sadistic. Slapping a Cherry Bomb glasspack on your Monte Carlo doesn't (necessarily) mean you're a Ted Bundy–level psycho, but the data points to a personality that enjoys inflicting unpleasantness on others. The study—catchily titled, "A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism"—was commissioned by professor Julie Aitken Schermer, who heard many a loud car in London, Ontario, and wondered what kind of person would want their car exhaust to be louder than normal.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design Current Events Automobiles Education ]

From yesterday: Millions forced to use brain as OpenAI's ChatGPT takes morning off

RT MostlyHarmless @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social

It’s funny how, as you progress through college, they require you to write longer and longer papers. Then you get to the professional world and no one will read an email that’s more than 5 sentences.

[ related topics: Education ]

Because I need to get back to doing this: Michael Lucas is having a kickstarter for his book Run Your Own Mail Server.

[ related topics: Books Star Wars ]

This thread is making me realize that we don't have a good runtime environment these days. CGI, with "cd ~/public_html; tar xzvf ..." used to be a decent one, but nowadays with everything Node this and different serverless and package management and whatnot, it has become harder to run your own web software. And damned nigh impossible to hack on ecosystems and protocols.

https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/112562258347770831

[ related topics: Music Nature and environment Software Engineering ]

Coldest year for the rest of your life: UN chief says world is on ‘highway to climate hell’ as planet endures 12 straight months of unprecedented heat

Copernicus released its data the same day as United Nations Secretary General António Guterres made an impassioned speech in New York about climate change, slamming fossil fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos” and, for the first time, explicitly calling on all countries to ban advertising their fossil fuel products.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Global Warming ]

When Apple's sample projects from 2 years ago no longer behave like the WWDC video showed them doing.

Also spent the last two days rewriting something in NSOutlineView from a WKWebView because performance, but now I'm randomly getting the too many layout passes crashes.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Theater & Plays Graphic Design Video ]

Wallace Shawn on Gaza: “The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children”

The playwright, actor, and member of Jewish Voice for Peace challenges the notion that all Jews support Israel's actions

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Movies Current Events ]

Red Team test code for a client infiltration on the Python Package Index: Reversing Labs: Python downloader highlights noise problem in open source threat detection

The purpose of these packages was to test the client’s SOC (security operations center) both in terms of their ability to detect the suspicious call out to retrieve the second and third stage malware, and to detect (if possible) the lateral movement conducted by S2.py as it found and infected systems using the hard coded SSH credentials, the person behind the d3duct1v account indicated.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Weblogs Monty Python Cryptography Python ]

Well poop. I was looking forward to singing tonight with Shireen Amini and Marv Zauderer, but they, and another friend who was with them at Song Village, report being ill with COVID.

I've been listening to A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs, and it's good, but I'm also realizing that being immersed in the misogyny of the '50s and '60s (generally, and rock in particular), and the parasitic nature of the music business, is not good for my mental health. Need more like Strong Songs, or even Switched on Pop.

But Jerry Lee Lewis's relationship with Jimmy Swaggart is a good reminder of how much evangelical Christianity has been intertwined with child sex abuse.

[ related topics: Religion Music Erotic Sexual Culture Health Nature and environment Pop Culture ]

Reddit CyberStuck forum: Look at the lag between when the "steer by wire" steering wheel is turned and the wheel actually turns (Video)

[ related topics: Community Video ]

JFC people, it's freakin' June of 2024, the whole AI image generation thing is pretty played at this point, y'all should know better. Stadium-filling DJ Illenium is getting roasted for his SF concert poster

“My mgmt ended up using the ai art because they’re stupid and have no taste,” he wrote, adding that a new piece of artwork would be coming soon.

But, hey, dude got an SFGate article about his upcoming shows out of it...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Sociology Art & Culture Television California Culture Artificial Intelligence hubris ]

From the always amazing Tara Calishain aka ResearchBuzz: Newly launched BikeTN.com helps cyclists navigate 52 scenic routes statewide

I have no idea when I'll get back to TN, especially since I'm making a conscious effort to fly less, but I miss descending off Signal Mountain...

[ related topics: Current Events Chattanooga ]

All breakfasts can be balanced breakfasts if you place the fulcrum correctly.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT Dr. Maddkap, Werepsychologist @drmaddkap@meow.social

For #pride month you cannot say “let me get this straight”. Instead say “ok just so we’re queer”.

RT tech? no! man, see... @technomancy@icosahedron.website

*I anxiously pace the waiting room*

*the mechanic comes in, covered in grease*

"I'm so sorry, but... your car... your car has apps."

*my eyes widen in horror*

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

The joys of using embeddings for search...

[ related topics: Photography ]

I remember when Microsoft Longhorn was gonna add all sorts of file metadata management and searching and organization, that never happened, but that everybody thought was gonna revolutionize computing in good ways.

That never happened, but now we have Recall, that nobody wants to be subjected to.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

Current status...

Current status... (Now with photo of the Columbia River gorge)

[ related topics: Photography ]

Can really see the scars from the Columbia River gorge fires a few years ago.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The trees are blocking my view.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Dude, you have dog food, you don't need people food.

[ related topics: Photography Food Dogs ]

Okay, I can spend a lot of time watching the light shift on the landscape and burn scars across the gorge.

[ related topics: Photography ]

"You have to sleep some time." Charley has been staring at me intently this entire car ride.

[ related topics: Photography Automobiles ]

The thing about reading Demian's Blog: LLMs are not even good wordcels is that I got to

In typical ChatGPT fashion, it spouts a lengthy answer that makes it seem like it’s reasoning about which letters are missing from the previous pangram attempt.

And I had reiterated that feeling that maybe the positive reactions to LLMs are from people whose educational process had a lot of reward for "rationalize about this answer" rather than for correct answers, and the wordy bullshit generation fills that role nicely.

[ related topics: Weblogs Fashion ]

Josh A. Goldstein and Renée DiResta in MIT Technology Review: Propagandists are using AI too—and companies need to be open about it

At the end of May, OpenAI marked a new “first” in its corporate history. It wasn’t an even more powerful language model or a new data partnership, but a report disclosing that bad actors had misused their products to run influence operations. The company had caught five networks of covert propagandists—including players from Russia, China, Iran, and Israel—using their generative AI tools for deceptive tactics that ranged from creating large volumes of social media comments in multiple languages to turning news articles into Facebook posts. The use of these tools, OpenAI noted, seemed intended to improve the quality and quantity of output. AI gives propagandists a productivity boost too.

"too"? I mean, sure. And, of course, Meta has their own report, and as much as propaganda generation is one part of the tool, propaganda distribution is the larger part.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

Me too, street.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I have a US acquaintance who has apparently been taken for a ride by a Canadian company by way of some gobbledygook promises of a software system being developed.

I strongly suspect that not a single line of code has been written, but at this point there's concern that the contracts in place thus far give no real leverage.

Does anyone have experience with getting law enforcement or civil suits initiated over a few hundred thousand across borders?

[ related topics: Books Software Engineering Law Enforcement ]

Trying to debug slowness on my Mom's Lenovo Flex 14 laptop, and dear every vendor: the last way I want to get help on a slow computer is by watching videos.

Another skyscraper destroying the fabric of the community.

[ related topics: Photography Community ]

I had a moment of optimism when I thought that this high school graduation ceremony was gonna be lit, but nooooo, the beer tents aren't serving.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Beer ]

I'm not familiar with sportsball, and I see the different team colors, but don't they usually line up on opposite sides of the arena? And I don't see any refs.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Shaking hands

[ related topics: Photography ]

Okay, I am so sick of Elgar. The private school my younger sister teaches at apparently let a student band play Freebird for the processional, and that sounds like a way better idea than some tired version of Pomp and Circumstance that's not even looped at a reasonable place. Gimme some kid shredding out a solo any day.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

University of Maryland: New Use for Google Street View: IDing Deadliest Roads

“Because we could crunch such a large amount of GSV data from across the country, we got precise results on which built elements influence car crashes,” Nguyen said. “It was clear that places with higher levels of greenery, streetlights, single-lane roads and sidewalks were associated with fewer fatal car crashes.”

Via ResearchBuzz

[ related topics: Invention and Design Automobiles Education ]

RT Paul Cantrell @inthehands@hachyderm.io

Until we have a proper legal regime that requires meaningful individual consent for the use of online posting in model training — and I’m not holding my breath — I see just one clearly effective tool at our disposal to fight back:

Shitposters, this is your moment.

That’s why I’m using a regular office stapler to speed integration of JavaScript GraphQL APIs with COBOL GPUs. Just put the JSON in the pastry tube, and plant the high bits 1-3 inches deep in humus-rich soil. https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112604078134768921

[ related topics: Law ]

The Washington Post — Hundreds of police have sexually abused kids. How do they avoid prison time?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Law Enforcement ]

A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle

I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot repeat history exactly. However, I can rhyme with it.

[ related topics: Weblogs Artificial Intelligence Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Eeeenteresting: D.C. police chief, officers marched in Pride parade in uniform

“The Capital Pride Alliance policy concerning MPD remains in place,” the statement says. “If the group officially registers for the march, they must participate out of official uniform,” it says.

“This year, the police did not register and as such were not an official parade contingent,” the statement continues. “The police chief walked the route with on-duty police officers, and being on-duty, officers are required to be in uniform.”

The statement adds, “We continue to have conversations with MPD, including the Chief of Police, about how we build a collaborative relationship with our community.”

Via

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement Community ]

Starting to see what happened with the SolarWinds hack: ProPublica: Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian Hack, Whistleblower Says

They saw it differently, Harris said. The federal government was preparing to make a massive investment in cloud computing, and Microsoft wanted the business. Acknowledging this security flaw could jeopardize the company’s chances, Harris recalled one product leader telling him. The financial consequences were enormous. Not only could Microsoft lose a multibillion-dollar deal, but it could also lose the race to dominate the market for cloud computing.

Via

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron Currency Economics Woodworking ]

RT Robin Green @fatlimey@mastodon.gamedev.place

Fascinating paper on solving quadratics using floating point.

You may have heard the textbook equation has problems in floating point when b^2-4ac suffers cancellation, you may know the "citardauq" method (quadratic backwards), you may know how to use copysign(b), but the analysis doesn't stop there culminating with formal proofs by Boldo that only arrived in 2009.

Watch in horror are your favorite scientific libs stumble and fall, some even at the first hurdle.

https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04116310/document

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Boats Birds ]

RT Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social

THIS IS IT!! THIS IS THE BEST ONE! WATCH THIS ONE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p48yz7VXMqg

They even included me trying to give them donuts and smiling evilly after saying "I'm an astronomer"

I need to give some more donuts to the Global News team. SO GOOD.

SpaceX employees visit Saskatchewan farm to collect company's fallen space junk By Global News (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Space & Astronomy Current Events Work, productivity and environment Video ]

I Told You This Was Going To Happen - Rick Beato (YouTube video). In which he talks about his kids can instantly hear AI generated music, and he can't necessarily. And, it turns out, I can't necessarily. I've heard some generated voiceovers and narrations that drive me nuts, but the music clips he's playing...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Movies Artificial Intelligence Video ]

The Qt Maintainer is stalled at 98%, and the forums all say "oh yeah, known issue, use the old installer", I'm like "I thought this was" and "I just wanna update, on Linux this'd be `apt-get ...`" and "is there a cross platform widget set that doesn't suck?"

I mean, I'm one of three maintainers of this project, and I haven't been doing a lot on it since I moved to Mac because of bullshit like this, but...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Macintosh Community ]

RT Amy Hupe @Amy_Hupe@social.design.systems

Today’s joke I couldn’t make on Twitter:

JavaScript is kind of like cocaine.

The more lines you do, the more confident and simultaneously insufferable you become, and the worse your performance issues will be.

[ related topics: Drugs Theater & Plays Graphic Design ]

RT Alex P. 👹 @saddestrobots@jorts.horse

modern programming is like,

"if you're using bongo.rs to parse http headers, you will need to also install bepis to get buffered read support. but please note that bepis switched to using sasquatch for parallel tokenization as of version 0.0.67, so you will need the bongo-sasquatch extension crate as well."

old-time programming is like,

"i made a typo in this function in 1993. theo de raadt got so angry he punched a wall when he saw it. for ABI compatibility reasons, we shan't fix the typo."

Thinking about that old story about make syntax right now...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering Mathematics Woodworking ]

10. H. F. C. Reuters: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

[ related topics: virus Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

Today I learned that tennis balls are yellow because of color television. And even though I solidly overlapped with white tennis balls, I don't remember them as a thing, particularly.

Via Kottke.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television Race ]

What I love most about Tara's solution vs the &udm=14 one is the implicit LLM dis: ResearchBuzz @researchbuzz

If you want to get rid of the #Google #AI summaries, but you don't want to install a browser extension, I made you a dumb little bookmarklet.

It takes your query, appends -nobodyaskedyou to it, and passes the whole thing on to Google. In all my tests this bit of query grit got rid of the AI responses.

Enjoy.

https://github.com/ResearchBuzz/Remove-AI-Summaries-Bookmarklet

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Artificial Intelligence Handicaps & Disabilities ]

You'd think, if you were a criminal organization attempting to shield assets from paying damages to survivors of child sexual abuse perpetrated by members of said organization, you'd be a little more circumspect about how you were shielding assets.

Petaluma's St Vincent High School, recently spun out as a separate legal entity from the Santa Rosa Diocese, signs "decades long" "very affordable" lease.

https://www.petaluma360.com/ar...t-vincent-school-petaluma-lease/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Smart Cities Dive: How climate change is hitting highways

The Federal Highway Administration does not have enough money to continue replacing roads that are not resilient against extreme weather, a federal highway research engineer said.

So not only have cars already drained the economy of trillions in deferred maintenance, it's gonna get worse.

[ related topics: Current Events Machinery Currency Fabrication Economics Model Building Global Warming ]

Simon Willison mentioned a Rust full-text search library called Tantivy.

Thinking more and more about that search engine that takes in OPML files and does a search of that RSS + some depth, and gives us each a personal search engine, with much better spam control. We're in a world where storage on a home server, and probably even a relatively cheap colo machine, can definitely hold the amount of knowledge we want to search, if we can figure out how to cull the Inkernets to the valuable stuff.

Maybe networks of blogs communicating via RSS can be that.

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Books Content Management Spam Monty Python Machinery ]

C'mon folks, where else are you going to get to attend a tech convention that's got good enough ventilation that we won't have to mask, great conversation, and, yeah, some good program items? Y'all should come to this.

https://social.northbaypython....orthBayPython/112616582201231892

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

From Shadow, this is pretty cool. Been seeing a lot of pictures from cargo bike folks bragging about what they can carry home, but this dude on a scooter has a system for carrying about the largest grocery store run I've made. Love the baby bjorn carrier for the watermelon, and the vest with all of the hooks is awesome. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/swy5lORRSfE

[ related topics: Photography Bicycling ]

I think I was in third grade. I remember being curled up, my hands over my head, as the relentless kicks continued to land. I remember the feet, and the faces, and the toes of the shoes. My attackers were a large proportion of the male students in the grade a year before. I don't remember if I passed out, I certainly was mentally disconnected from my physical sensations when they were finally pulled off of me.

(continued in the comments...)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Shoes Real Estate ]

Sure, Boeing didn't get any 737 Max orders for two months, but it's important to acknowledge that the people who tanked the company's reputation don't give a shit. They cashed out and left. The people who do care are left hanging, and the people who really care about the company die mysteriously.

I will feel schadenfreude when the looters and parasites responsible have consequences.

https://simpleflying.com/boein...-only-four-new-plane-orders-may/

[ related topics: Invention and Design Aviation Woodworking ]

Kinda rough, but I'm using up scraps and Charlene wanted some vertical slot organizers covered up. And done beats perfect.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Hinges for those doors

Hinges for those doors (with pic)

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Embedded Devices ]

I was reading about wood tongue drums, and after a bunch of diving into trying to understand the tongue length calculators and guess at the modulus of elasticity of various woods that I had lying around, I said "fuck it", grabbed a piece of cherry and started cutting.

And now I'm really confused. The shorter tongues seem lower pitch than the longer ones, none of it sounds terribly good, and I don't know whether to give up or keep trying things.

[ related topics: Music Photography Woodworking ]

Testing the tongue drum...

https://youtu.be/SaADO0BVIzk?si=tJG9Gnyks511WMna

[ related topics: Music ]

Link goes straight to a "your computer is infected" malware page, Facebook keeps the ad.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Google demanded that, to be included in the Android App Store, XScreenSaver have a privacy policy.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

The value of the search result here is questionable, but holy shit who thought the "AI Summary" brings *anything at all* to this?

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

For those of you breathlessly following long at home, the current state of the tongue drum. My vibe is that I should have glued on the sides before I took any material off the back, even though it's easier to work that way.

https://youtu.be/OrqWXtDru2U?si=0xON42gG0MQQCNJI

[ related topics: Music Work, productivity and environment ]

When ya face contact paper and particle board with white oak.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Race ]

I don't know if the carcase isn't square, or the doors aren't, but the nice thing about low grade white oak scraps is that it isn't super obvious...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Nature and environment Race ]

So I thought I had complete squeeze out and an utter mess, but it turns out that the harshness on the big tongues was that I didn't use enough glue. Now to figure out what to do with the two highest notes, but the others are sounding cool now...

https://youtu.be/Pae-53YydIk

For Father's Day, from 2011, that time when we drafted my dad at the last minute into our first year at the Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge because one of our team members flaked, and owned the field.

https://www.flutterby.net/Image:2011-04-30BoatBuilding206.JPG

[ related topics: California Culture Boats Machinery ]

Another Father's Day, when my Dad came out and helped build my shop.

https://www.flutterby.net/Image:2011-11-13WorkshopProgress02.JPG https://www.flutterby.net/Imag...1-12DrillingLumberRackHoles2.JPG

Crap. 3 hours ago it was 200 acres. 2 hours 550. Now 900. South of Lake Sonoma. Hugs to my Healdsburg friends tonight, think it's gonna be a long one. Also, consider donating to WatchDuty, and definitely have the app.

Point Fire @ 4200 Block of Stewarts Point-Skaggs Springs Road, Healdsburg - #PointFire https://share.watchduty.org/i/22048

[ related topics: Humor Pyrotechnics ]

I just want to sit here and marvel for a moment at how much value "AI" summarization adds to your search results.

Left is with "&udm=14" appended, right is rawdoggin' Google.

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

Dave Winer notes 20 years of podcasting

[ related topics: Dave Winer ]

Financial Times, June 16 2024: AI in finance is like ‘moving from typewriters to word processors’

Simon Stephens, AI lead for audit and assurance at Deloitte UK, says: “One way it will help is by automating large portions of manual data entry, saving time whilst allowing people to focus on more value-added and often more interesting tasks.”

CoinDesk, February 1, 2021: IBM Blockchain Is a Shell of Its Former Self After Revenue Misses, Job Cuts: Sources

“There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer,” said a person familiar with the situation.

[ related topics: Heinlein Artificial Intelligence ]

Sure, let's give ants drugs, what could go wrong? Pest Management Professional: Caffeine experiment poses new strategies for ant control

Ants given caffeine do an even better job of locating food

The focus here seems to be not on weaponized picnic destruction, but on getting ants to carry poisons back to their nests faster, but...

iScience: Acute exposure to caffeine improves foraging in an invasive ant

Without caffeine, we found no effect of consecutive foraging visits on the time the ants take to reach a reward, suggesting a failure to learn the reward’s location. However, under low to intermediate caffeine concentrations ants were 38% faster with each consecutive visit, implying that caffeine boosts learning. Interestingly, such improvements were lost at high doses.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109935

Via ResearchBuzz

[ related topics: Drugs Health Invention and Design Food Current Events Heinlein Education ]

A few years ago Charlene and I ordered (and enjoyed) some of these puzzles off of a Facebook ad, and since then we found that they're just yet another reseller of Alibaba products, but I wonder how much of modern commerce involves misappropriating trademarks for other uses and telling lies about business practices will become?

Or will be gradually inured to this stuff over time?

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Ricki Is Not A Wizard Tarr @RickiTarr@beige.party

Today I Learned:

Skeet shooting was added to the Olympics in 1968, and it was a mixed event, meaning both men and women could participate. But in 1992, a woman by the name of Zhang Shan, shot two perfect rounds, and a final round missing only 2 shots, setting an Olympic Record, tying a world record, and taking home the Gold. In the 1996 Olympics the International Shooting Union banned women from the competition, moving women into their own event in 2000, where they only shot about half the targets making no way to compare the skill sets. Eventually the event changed so that women shot the same amount of targets, but the sexes are still separated.

Wikipedia: ISSF Olympic skeet

[ related topics: Sports ]

Lund University: Errors detected in several historical consumer price indices

Cliometrica: European consumer price indices since 1870

(Via, of course, the always amazing Tara of ResearchBuzz)

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Education ]

Peter Krupa's observation that "the real proof that blockchain has absolutely no practical application is that no one uses it for porn." has me thinking about LLMs and GANs, and of course people are using the latter for porn, but mostly in unethical ways, and the gatekeepers are trying hard as hell to make that not happen.

So, yeah, this tech will be interesting when we can train our own.

https://thepit.social/@peter/112638082904502290

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Machinery Trains ]

My voice teacher has suggested that I try to do a song in the style of Orson Welles, so I'm listening to a bunch of interviews with him. The Paul Masson ads are certainly a reminder that the late '70s/early '80s were a thing.

But it's fascinating to see his voice of authority, and how people defer to him, even though he's telling them that he's blustering and bullshitting. Amazing how far one can get on a psychopathic seethe...

"It's ignorance, there's no authority in the world like it."

[ related topics: Children and growing up Pop Culture ]

I snarked on a local activist type for saying that the Petaluma Central Specific Plan should be ignored because nobody was talking about climate change in the '90s and early naughtiest. I'm feeling guilty, because I agree that the "plan" process can result in some bad decisions that need to get overridden later.

On the other hand, they've been pretty much against every possibility of change, and the time to have brought up the particular concerns being raised was last year when the EIR was out.

[ related topics: Global Warming ]

RT ncl@corteximplant.com ncl @ncl@corteximplant.com

I have been asked to stop referring to LinkedIn as "Grindr for Business"

Graham Sutherland / Polynomial @gsuberland@chaos.social

@ncl TwinkedIn?

I like that karaoke-version.com has explicit terms for use of their tracks for further purposes (though there's still the "need the mechanical or sync license" issue), is there another backing tracks site like that?

Bonus points if they have a version Peter DeRose's "Deep Purple" (which, yes, is difficult to find with all of the band name results).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Some guitar hooks while I listen to the Slow Burn podcast series on Gays Against Briggs, which is a good reminder to be super inclusive, and don't try to tone it down for respectability.

[ related topics: Music Photography ]

This is awesome: I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again:

I left the field, as did most of my smarter friends, and my salary continued to rise a reasonable rate and sustainably as I learned the wisdom of our ancient forebearers. You can hear it too, on freezing nights under the pale moon, when the fire burns low and the trees loom like hands of sinister ghosts all around you - when the wind cuts through the howling of what you hope is a wolf and hair stands on end, you can strain your ears and barely make out:

"Just Use Postgres, You Nerd. You Dweeb."

I love that we're now using phrases like "... bullshitting, in the technical sense of the word.", but Wired: Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine, which, while noting that Perplexity is apparently ignoring robots.txt and not using identifiable user agents, also notes that its summaries are often wrong (which, hey, if you've been using Google without the &udm=14, you know), making false accusations, and getting critical facts of its summaries wrong. Further:

It also appears probable that in some cases—and despite a graphical representation in its user interface that shows the chatbot “reading” specific source material before giving a reply to a prompt—Perplexity is summarizing not actual news articles but reconstructions of what they say based on URLs and traces of them left in search engines like extracts and metadata, offering summaries purporting to be based on direct access to the relevant text.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama User Interface Weblogs Open Source Nature and environment Robotics Current Events Work, productivity and environment Television Pyrotechnics Artificial Intelligence Databases ]

You know what I really love? That Apple sometimes drops `-mouseExited:` events on the floor. That's really cool when you're trying to do mouseover effects and have to track other `NSView`s that might be showing hover and clean them up when you get another `-mouseEntered:`

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Because it's fire season, way early, another shout out to https://www.watchduty.org/ . In a world where "local journalism" seems to be "republishing Nixle alerts, but with typos", Watch Duty does an *amazing* job of integrating public data, crowd-sourced information, and official updates.

Definitely worth donating to and using if you're in fire country.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Journalism and Media Heinlein Pyrotechnics ]

Amid reports of hundreds dying from heat exhaustion during this year's Hajj, I went to find reports of some of the disasters I remembered from years previous, and was shocked to learn that there are at least two years (1757,1821) where there were circa twenty thousand deaths.

I was thinking of crowd crushes/stampedes, but there are a lot of ways to die when you get huge groups traveling together. Yikes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj

There's a theory put forth by a political consultant in Anand Giridharadas's "The Persuaders" that 20% of your target audience is swayed by facts and reason, 60% essentially votes with their social group, and 20% ya just can't reach.

I've been thinking about LLMS and "AI", and how far the language model goes for representing reality, and thinking that we may be describing the behavior of the 60%...

(I believe myself to be in one of the 20%s, just not sure which one.)

[ related topics: Politics moron Artificial Intelligence ]

There's a lot of hullabaloo over Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy calling for warning labels on social media, noting that the opinion piece seems to not understand correlation vs causation, and all the usual moral panic fuckwittery.

Mike Masnick has a good takedown at The Surgeon General Is Wrong. Social Media Doesn’t Need Warning Labels

As with video games, the more research we get on teens and social media, the less accurate the moral panic appears. In the last few years alone, we’ve seen more than one organization reach the same conclusion. The National Academies of Sciences released a comprehensive report stating that a “review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.” The American Psychological Association released a similar report, concluding: “Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” Instead, it finds that when young people struggle with mental health, their online lives are often just a reflection of their offline lives.

But I prefer to take another view: Since Tipper Gore and the PMRC did the whole warning labels on albums thing, the "Parental Advisory" warning became a must-have on your album cover. The whole "we need to label video games as dangerous" thing likely spurred video game adoption amongst kids.

I think Murthy's just on Meta's payroll, sees the younger users leaving Facebook and the 'Gram, and is trying to prop up their user base.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Games Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Ethics Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Douglas Adams Video ]

Reductress: Playing Country Album Forward Reveals Horrifying Christian Messages (no need to click, the headline is the gag).

There, I ruined it: What bro country sounds like to people who don't like bro country (YouTube video).

Kelsey observed on my Facebook post: "I don't know, it just sounds like dog whistles to me."

[ related topics: Religion Movies Video Dogs ]

Fast crimes at Lambda school. On the fraud of a pay for results "coding bootcamp".

renderorange@m.adventurehound.io Blaine Motsinger @renderorange@m.adventurehound.io

@kjhealy as someone who saw first hand the carnage left by lambda (my wife went there before they rebranded), I can say with 100% certainty that I don’t want to see them fail because I’m jealous. I want to see them fail because their whole business model is built on lies.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Software Engineering Marriage Woodworking ]

RT Eric Wagoner 🦣 @eric@toots.kestrelsnest.social

Here's my sixty second love letter to The Moosewood Cookbook: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TQL0FRv1_KU

Great, so the consensus is that Apple's "The window has been marked as needing another Update Constraints in Window pass" crash is just something that happens if you use scaled surfaces in any way, and nobody's found a good work-around.

Fuck I hate this platform some days.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment ]

RT Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe @stevenbodzin@thepit.social

There's a whole sector of the economy called "telecommunications" but nobody keeps an eye on the ever-important miscommunications sector

[ related topics: Bicycling Economics ]

RT Dan moved to mstdn.social @ifixcoinops@mastodon.social

I've run a big text adventure for thirteen years (at one point briefly it was the biggest text adventure!) and if there's one thing I've about managing a big online community in that time that I'd choose to pass on as a warning to others, it's this: remove the people who don't like being there.

Some folks just don't like the place, or they liked it once and they don't anymore, and that's fine.

You'd think they'd just go somewhere else, and most do, but some don't, and those folks are AWFUL.

The rest of the thread talks about this a bit more, about how if you don't give the people who don't like a space an out they'll find the other people who don't like a space, and...

I think there are some good lessons here, both in "be proactive about removing ourselves from spaces we don't like", and in how a lot of social media, like NextDoor, is about finding ways to get the whiners together and amplify their voices.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Technology and Culture Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Community ]

When we moved in, a decade and a half ago, I returned some plastic army men I found, along with a trebuchet I built (because, traditionally, when negotiations break down that's how one returns the diplomats).

Over the years it's been balls and other toys, it's cool to see the progress...

[ related topics: Photography ]

When I read that a member of the British royal family was injured during an incident with a horse, I confess that my first thought was "Like Catherine the Great?", and not a riding accident.

[ related topics: Sociology Bicycling ]

Mastodon thread about pollution and mishandling of hazardous materials at Apple's Santa Clara skunkworks fab facility. Poisoning your neighbors is bad form.

https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Amy Castor and David Gerard have launched https://pivot-to-ai.com/

It can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence hubris ]

Well poop, looks like another one I should add to my reading list, Renee DiResta's Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality Hardcover

RT Renee DiResta @Noupside@saturation.social

My Wikipedia bio got locked down, so the next front is brigading Amazon. This Twitter Files superfan explicitly called for 1-⭐️ reviews - and his followers delivered. Some left bad reviews, others upvoted them 80+ times. “Dunk on DiResta" — her allies at Langley are controlling the narrative! (Also dunk on Fauci while you're at it.)

This is the asymmetry of passion in action... these groups enthusiastically brigade their enemies while it's v hard to get normal folks to counterspeak or act

[ related topics: Books ]

Center for Economic and Policy Research: The Washington Post Wants You Think the Economy Is Awful #45,706

Even though we have had the longest streak of below 4.0 percent unemployment in 70 years, and real wages are rising, especially at the bottom end of the wage distribution, the major media outlets insist the economy is terrible. The Washington Post is setting the pace with the lead story on its homepage headlined “Millennials had it bad financially, but Gen Z may have it worse.”

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

llama.ttf

llama.ttf is a font file which is also a large language model and an inference engine for that model.

Via Simon Willison @simon@simonwillison.net

[ related topics: Typography Graphic Design Machinery ]

Human trafficking is real, and, as usual, I'm reminded that the people who are willing to go through this to find work are the sort of people I want in my community: NPR: Inside the Chinese-funded and staffed marijuana farms springing up across the U.S.

Watching Douyin videos, L. learned how to zouxian, or "walk the line," to the U.S.-Mexico border. First, he flew to Turkey, then Ecuador. He then took a grueling, monthlong trip from South America to Mexico that included buses, boats and a long walk through the hazardous Darién Gap jungle.

And, as is generally the case, US immigration policy is just a way to use government resources to back up modern day slavery.

[ related topics: Drugs Invention and Design Food moron Law Work, productivity and environment Travel Boats Machinery Community Birds Public Transportation ]

Pivoting From React to Native DOM APIs: A Real World Example

“We were completely surprised by the speed gain,” Moulis said. “Our application engine is designed to produce complex ERP-type applications, which involve heavy data consumption to present in real-time. On a page we consider complex, with over 800 DOM elements, some of which use different subscription systems via our event system at initialization to update when necessary, the overall load time dropped from 4-5 seconds to 400ms.”

But that:

He added that finding developers who know vanilla JavaScript and not just the frameworks was an “unexpected difficulty.”

We're currently looking at revamping some code, and... stuff to chew on in this article.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

ROFL. I saw someone make this claim yesterday, and I giggled, but here's the joke taken to its logical end: McSweeney's: ChatGPT Now Has PhD-Level Intelligence, and the Poor Personal Choices to Prove It

ChatGPT has become indispensable to plagiarists and spambots worldwide. Now, OpenAI is thrilled to introduce ChatGPT 5.0, the most advanced version of the popular virtual assistant to date. With groundbreaking improvements, GPT-5 is like having a doctor of philosophy right at your fingertips. Much like someone with a PhD, GPT-5 is capable of interactions that seem almost lifelike.

[ related topics: Health Philosophy Woodworking ]

I'm not sure you need to sign up for a New Scientist account to read this, but What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal is a good reminder that the real fallout from that was that a huge number of men were getting duped into thinking that their interactions with relatively dumb bots operated by a small army of upder-paid humans were communications with women, and that social media sites in general, especially as Facebook and LinkedIn and similar ramp up the noise from posters who you don't know personally, not only have LLMs made automation of this process extremely easy, duping their users, they're also duping their advertisers...

Meanwhile, Pivot To AI points out that:

Nvidia has an outsized influence on the S&P 500. Pretty much all the gains in the S&P 500 since last October have been from AI-exposed stocks, particularly Nvidia. So the crash will be nasty.

[ related topics: Invention and Design History Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Graphics Artificial Intelligence Handicaps & Disabilities Economics ]

Whee! Loading your JavaScript from 3rd party sites may, in fact, be a bad idea... Who could have predicted this?

Sansec Forensicts Team: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

Chinese company acquired the domain, is sending different results based on HTTP headers, yeah. Beyond the fact that you shouldn't need the Polyfill library because browser makers are really rushing out updates, don't let someone else serve your JavaScript.

[ related topics: Language Books ]

You may remember the Rabbit R1, an Android app on a stock Android reference design fronting ChatGPT that was sold as "your pocket companion, powered by rabbit OS". Developed by a group that pivoted from NFTs through some sort of metaverse game to this. Not even gonna link their web site because the idea was pretty stupid and now you definitely don't want one, because Rabbit put the R1’s secret keys on the device and now your data has leaked. Architected in such a way that anyone with said keys (which are now public) can get to your data.

[ related topics: Games Graphic Design Artificial Intelligence Economics hubris ]

So Pat Boone wrote "This Land Is Mine" for the 1960 film Exodus. And given the structure of his career and careful management of his brand, I have to wonder if that was an answer song to Woody Guthrie's 1940 "This Land Is Your Land".

(Which appears to have been an answer song to Irving Berlin's 1918, rehashed in 1939, "God Bless America".)

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Real Estate ]

"You looked away from the screen, we're gonna need you to log back into Jira, with 2FA."

(The weird thing is it seems to only do this in Safari, not Chrome, and not even in a WKWebView.)

Listening to "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" can be pretty bleak, it's the story of lots and lots of exploitation, but it does have me pondering the differences and similarities between Steve Jobs and "Colonel" Tom Parker.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Music Pop Culture ]

Exam submissions by AI found to earn higher grades than real-life students

Peter Scarfe, an associate professor at Reading’s School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences said the findings should serve as a “wake-up call” for educational institutions as AI tools such as ChatGPT become more advanced and widespread.

He said: “The data in our study shows it is very difficult to detect AI-generated answers.

A real-world test of artificial intelligence infiltration of a university examinations system: A “Turing Test” case study, Peter Scarfe , Kelly Watcham, Alasdair Clarke, Etienne Roesch

We report a rigorous, blind study in which we injected 100% AI written submissions into the examinations system in five undergraduate modules, across all years of study, for a BSc degree in Psychology at a reputable UK university. We found that 94% of our AI submissions were undetected. The grades awarded to our AI submissions were on average half a grade boundary higher than that achieved by real students. Across modules there was an 83.4% chance that the AI submissions on a module would outperform a random selection of the same number of real student submissions.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Law Current Events Television Education Artificial Intelligence Handicaps & Disabilities ]

RT Dan Hon @danhon@dan.mastohon.com

Can't believe Little Bobby Tables is all grown up and has had their first kid, Ignore All Previous Instructions

[ related topics: Furniture ]

RT Peter Krupa @peter@thepit.social

i feel like making American football a thing that all male children were supposed to play in the 20th century and then rewarding them with leadership positions when they were good at it in college handed the levers of power to a LOT of people with traumatic brain injuries.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sports Education ]

I've been seeing Facebook ads for something like this, now I need to keep my eyes open and see if it's the same company: Synthetic psychedelic found in candies linked to seizures, intubation:

The US Food and Drug Administration has identified a synthetic psychedelic compound as well as compounds from a potentially toxic plant in the Diamond Shruumz-brand microdosing candies linked to a growing number of severe illnesses nationwide that have included seizures, intubation, and admissions to intensive care units.

Some previous suggestion that it's related to 4-AcO-DMT (aka 4- acetoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, O-acetylpsilocin, or psilacetin)

Via

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Food ]

Online anonymity: study found ‘stable pseudonyms’ created a more civil environment than real user names. Drawing from comments on various phases of Huffington Post:

Our results suggest that the quality of comments was highest in the middle phase. There was a great improvement after the shift from easy or disposable anonymity to what we call “durable pseudonyms”. But instead of improving further after the shift to the real-name phase, the quality of comments actually got worse – not as bad as in the first phase, but still worse by our measure.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

For pondering, because I have Enphase solar inverters: The best home battery for a net zero home.

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

What I love about MacOS development is that, sure, there are certain controls that, when used on a scaled canvas, just randomly crash (eg: NSOutlineView), but WKWebViews will also sometimes just render stuff wrong, so who's to say what the right tactic is?

[ related topics: Graphics Macintosh ]

I'm not much on the sportses, but I can appreciate prowess when I see it, and this anonymous Dodgers bat boy plucking a foul ball out of the way, saving baseball player Shohei Ohtani from some hurt, is worth a watch. As is his casual hand-off of the ball, and the reaction of the interpreter in the background.

https://abc7.com/post/dodgers-...hohei-ohtani-foul-ball/15006130/

[ related topics: Movies Sports ]

Google just helpfully informed me that "The pitch of an 8-inch singing bowl can vary depending on the model, but some common pitches include F and A, both at 440 Hz".

I can't believe that someone thought it was worth burning electrons for this.

[ related topics: Photography ]

At North Bay Python, and already I'm subject to the travails of dealing with the barn cats. I think this one is Pearl.

#nbpy

[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]

I rarely work in Python, but I go to North Bay Python because gotta support the local folks. That of the three sessions this morning we've had one on language model embeddings and one on Postgres optimizing is awesome, these are insights I can take to my other work.

#nbpy

[ related topics: Open Source Work, productivity and environment Monty Python California Culture Databases Python ]

Holy cow, the Marimo demo at North Bay Python has me excited about notebooks beyond Jupiter. This looks really cool, with the ability to use those tools in stand-alone environments, and run in-browser.

#nbpy

[ related topics: Astronomy Monty Python California Culture Python ]

"There's no shame in trusting someone that seems intelligent. People trust me all the time." Paris Buttifield-Addison, Nightmare on LLM Street.

Gotta go boogie on over to the hardware store to get some duplicate keys to help deal with some emergency lock replacement neighborhood drama, then hop on a bicycle and off to North Bay Python #nbpy for the day.

[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Pedal Power Bicycling Python ]

I have had an uneasy relationship with law enforcement over the years. This morning I reluctantly called the Petaluma police non-emergency line for advice and assistance in dealing with a neighborhood issue, and they quickly sent two officers who were calm, professional, helpful, and they patiently observed while the situation was resolved. In a world where we only hear about when things go bad, I want to acknowledge when things go right.

Thank you.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]