I get that “LIGHT” is more appropriate, but I still expected “LAMP”.

Ah, shit, you’re right. They’re right next to each other on my mental bookshelf. I was introduced to their works via this talk they gave together, have been reading both their works, and so I have trouble distinguishing them. >.<

So much of what creating privacy busting biometric databases claim to do could be accomplished with speed-of-light geofencing, a.k.a. “distance-bounding protocol”. If a moderator decides messages from country X are problematic, then they can flag/block them for other users. It only requires carefully measuring ping times and basically involves banning traffic from places that can’t achieve certain minimum pings to certain trusted servers.

“Private property is the smallest unit of warfare.” — The Terraformers (2023) by Becky Chambers Annalee Newitz

Edit: author name

Unless that cat is trained to use a toilet, that dough now has fresh cat shit and piss in on it, along with everything else the cat has walked on recently.

deleted by creator

It is not a contradiction to refuse your child’s desire for you to adopt a cat and to love a cat. If you force a parent to adopt a cat, they will resent you for foisting an unwanted burden on them. However, the cat has no say in the matter, so it makes no sense to resent or punish the cat. Your parent developing a loving relationship with the pet you forced on them does not absolve you of your imposition.

It’s why IQ tests are fundamentally flawed.

Since you have failed to correctly define the words “highfalutin”, “dogsbody”, “apiary”, “valise”, “collet”, “haruspex”, “threnody”, or even “copse”, we regret to inform you that you are functionally illiterate and likely mentally disabled.

Trump wants to nationalize ad agencies to force them to publish his propaganda, no matter how objectionable they may find it, by the sound of it.

As the Trump administration considers approving a proposed merger between two of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, regulators may impose unusual conditions.

A proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients’ advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The restrictions being discussed by the Federal Trade Commission as part of its merger review are part of an effort by the Trump administration to use federal agencies to root out what it considers political bias in corporate America against conservative voices and causes.

Alien 1: Wow, humans must go around saying “Kill me…” a lot.

Alien 2: Uh, rude!

Middle-aged human: No, no, that tracks.

No author credit given.

The main issue I have as an editor is that there is no straightforward way to retrain the LLM to correct faulty training as directly or revertably as the existing method of editing an article’s wikicode. Already, much of my time updating Wikipedia is spent parsing puffery and removing phrases like “award-winning” or “renowned”, inserted by malicious advertisers trying to use Wikipedia as a free billboard. If a Wikipedia LLM began making subjective claims instead of providing objective facts backed by citations, I would have to teach myself machine learning and get involved with the developers who manage the LLM’s training. That raises the bar for editor technical competency which Wikipedia historically has been striving to lower (e.g. Visual Editor).

I was familiar with how their single-nucleotide polymorphism fingerprinting worked in principle when I submitted my sample. So, I was not surprised when my report indicated majority Native American (both my parents were born in the Navajo Nation).

As for preventing misuse of the genetic profile 23andMe built, the primary legal protection is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) which prohibits insurance providers and employers from discriminating against patients and employees based upon disorders that are correlated with their genetic information. I believe it is prudent for people to examine their own genetic information in detail. I believe the legal protection GINA offers is sufficient for SNP profiling. I also believe as genetic profiling technology improves, the principles of non-discrimination set by GINA should be peotected with additional legislation.

Here’s my Bash script for combining a directory of .mp3 files into a single .mkv container using ffmpeg. It also reëncodes the audio using the opus codec which can help smooth out weird encoding artifacts from sloppily created MP3 files. The script retains the original MP3 file partitions as seekable chapters named after the input file names. I find it useful for some audiobooks purchased from libro.fm which are only available in MP3 format.

My headcanon is that college started out as a way for the wealthy elite to get their children to socialize with and breed one another to produce the next generation of social elites. These aristocratic objectives were highly correlated with the ability to successfully pass entrance exams and perform scholarly tasks, until the the “college for everyone” movement of the late 20th century (e.g. the GI bill). Then, the next generation of aristocrats collectively sent their children to an elite subset of colleges (e.g. Ivy League schools) and upper class companies filled out their managerial job slots with graduates from these colleges. At some point, I believe the wealthy elite will dispense with this academic charade and simply manage their own private dynastic dossiers for managing the breeding and marriages of their children.

2025: commit all the crimes you want, pin them on an immigrant scapegoat, get them extrajudiciously deported, no questions asked, no investigation, and badda-bing-badda-boom, you’re Scott-free! It’s basically the modern equivalent of lynching a black guy to keep a good old boy out of jail but official.

Sorry, I didn’t know there was a Nobel prize in economics. Is this one of those pseudo-Nobel prizes that has nothing to do with dynamite?

Ah, the new medication doomies.

So stinky.

I think the cognitive reset that psychedelics can awaken come in basically two varieties: delusions of grandeur or empathy. Elon Musk has benefitted from privilege, luck, and the immunity to consequences that comes from being a figurehead leader for people who expect him to make the right noises to support their cause. This lucky run has fueled his fantasy of making humans an interplanetary species like in his Iain M. Banks science fiction novels that he uses to name his SpaceX vehicles.

In Elon Musk’s case, engineers at Tesla and SpaceX have shared his technocratic vision up until he tried to adopt Trump’s Maga base away from Trump (e.g. with his fascist Nazi salute). Engineers of solar panels, self-driving cars, and space vehicles have to have a minimum level of empathy to deal with the stresses of working in teams to overcome difficult problems; most probably genuinely want to help humanity by expanding capitalism to asteroid mining and Mars colonies; the Maga mob, though, have much more grounded ambitions of restoring their socioeconomic dominance over cultures not their own. Attempting to curry favor with both at the same time only works if your leadership inspiring improvements in solar panel, self-driving car, and space technology dominate news stories with success after success, building and maintaining momentum beyond what Trump can disrupt with his own media stunts like the tariff posturing. But Trump has succeeded in making the Maga faction feel victimized and dominated the news cycle so far in 2025.

Elon and Trump are both salesmen, but the latter only has to break things to get attention. So, I am not surprised that Elon finds solace in mind-altering drugs to comfort himself from the realization that his support base simply is smaller than Trump’s.