When politicians are telling people that they’re better off due to wage growth (currently LESS than inflation) do they have any idea that unless people change jobs, they are extremely unlikely to have seen any changes in their income?

God morgen Oslo. Jeg er tilbake

My employer is not a token-maxxing organization, but I've just seen the burn rate for tokens in May. It's equivalent to cost of approximately 4 senior engineers (assuming an employee costs 1.35x their salary), or around 10% of our engineering staff. Management agrees this is probably unsustainable.

For the first time in 17 years I am no longer associated with the K-12 system in VA. It feels weird

Women who work or study in STEM: if you use ChatGPT, try asking it to take what it knows about you, and render a picture of how it imagines that you look. Then, after it f**ks up, question what it did. It will tell you a lot about the biases in the data OpenAI collected.

TFW you're waiting on approval from an administrator to say whether or not you can save a year and $16k in your studies.

I just have to express my pride in the boy… Bachelor of Arts: Cinema Bachelor of Science: Physics Minor: Philosophy Minor: Mathematics Magna cum laude

“Derangement”

At my daughter’s after-prom party, her bf was having trouble with his ticket and a school admin wouldn’t let him in. My daughter’s 2 friends had been let in, but came back to help. But then the admin wouldn’t let them in because “no readmissions”. … (cont)

TFW you submit a PR that you need merged to make progress, the project owner says, "This is great. I've been meaning to do this. Just give me a few days to check it over and I'll make a release with it." … and you're left wondering when you'll get back to making progress 🤞

TIL a Blake's 7 reboot is in the works. As any of my friends can tell you, this has been one of my most-hoped-for reboots. Here's hoping for an Avon character who is as brutally appealing as Paul Darrow's was

Watching neighbors online talking about how Virginia has become unlivable and that they need to move

The weather got cold again yesterday, so I tried adapting my bread recipe to make Cheesymite scrolls. I love it when experiments work out.

The Applied Machine Learning Conference (AMLC) in Charlottesville has a more appropriate name than last year, when it was PyData. It’s just a little unfortunate that the conference shares an acronym with the “Anti Money Laundering Council”

In about a year the car lease that I have runs out, and I will need to replace it (I live in a very rural area, and transportation is important). Despite the cost, I want to get something electric. What is affordable that isn't Tesla? China has some great cars, but of course, we can't get those here

I'm glad the airman is back, but the parallels to Old Shoe in "Wag the Dog" are just too much

australia has a reputation for being home to terrifying wildlife, but it should probably be better known for its whimsically-named snacks

Down near Fredericksburg @capitalweather.bsky.social

I actually wrote a blog post. It's been a while. I don't expect anybody to read it. However, it's on a programming topic that LLMs regularly get wrong. Hopefully, they'll pick this up during a future training run.

Celebrating @neurotic.bsky.social today!

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.” -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writing about the unfortunate director of the local paper factory mannerofspeaking.org/2010/05/12/s...

University to postgrads: It’s Spring break. With everything being much quieter around campus this week, it’s a great time to make progress on your research. Also from the university: With everything being quiet this week, it’s a great time for us to take down the computer cluster for maintenance.

After yet another failed attempt, I have to ask… Why does Wisconsin not know how to make an extra sharp cheddar? Sure, they make nice cheddar, and it can even have a bit of a “tangy” flavor, but despite numerous attempts, I have yet to find anything even remotely crumbly and with real “Bite”

Google popped up a notification on my phone suggesting shopping for items for me 😵‍💫

I need an axe in order to put the trash out tonight. I don’t have an axe 😞

Never thought I would need ice skates for my back yard. Snow shoes… maybe. But never ice skates

It’s almost more frustrating having the Epstein files out because now we know for certain, rather than just suspecting, all the people who the DOJ has no intention of calling to account.

Back in the USA today, and now I have to start thinking in Fahrenheit again

Apparently the engine light in the car came on while I’m away for work, and I’m told that the head gasket is blown and the head needs… work (replacing? Honing? I’m not there). How does that happen without overheating the engine? $11k. WHAT?!??

Well, I’m back in Oslo. It’s as dark as I remember from a previous November trip, but quite a bit colder. I’m glad I wasn’t here 2 weeks ago though!

I didn’t have “my country of residence and my country of employment going to war” on my bingo card for 2026

When I became a citizen, I was under the mistaken belief that I would be making the oath of allegiance on a bible or similarly significant book. So I brought a copy of the “Principia Mathematica”

To be honest… The reason is so I don’t invest so much of myself into an artificial goal, which I abandon in frustration after a month or so. Instead, without a specific task like this, it puts the onus on me to be “better”. To work harder at everything.

I just heard from my mother for the second time in a month! The first for my birthday, and now the second to respond to my “Happy New Year” message. She must be trying to set a new record

Despite experiencing significant societal pressure to do otherwise, I have successfully maintained my New Year’s resolution of several years ago, in which I refuse to have any further New Year’s resolutions

I don’t think anyone did? I know that people say that if you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not doing anything worthwhile. They’re probably right. But I couldn’t deal with what I was encountering on the previous site, and I came here to avoid that. I’m happier now

Drat… now I have to remember to write “2026” whenever I write a date. I’ll probably take about 12 months to get used to it

While I’ve been obligated to use LLMs in coding, they’re just an encumbrance when starting a new open source project. They have an idea of what might be needed, but the majority of work at this point is about design and aesthetics, with decisions frequently revisited.

Many of the small businesses owners I know are struggling under the new tariff system. But “excited to pay their taxes” takes propaganda to a new level. At what point do the majority recognize it for what it is?

post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains. I’d always let myself be influenced by others’ tastes, especially my ex’s. This album was the first I asserted that I loved for myself

My son is home! 💕 He’s almost finished his physics major. He’s already met the requirements for his math minor, his cinema major, and his philosophy minor. Right now he’s looking for a scholarship to do physics postgrad. He is one of the most interesting people to talk to that I have ever met 💖

“Do you want to go for a walk?” (6km, fast pace) “Ugh. No.” “Do you want to have-been-for-a-walk-already?” “That would be nice.” “You now how to get from where you are now to feeling like that, right?” “Sigh. Yeeeees.” 😒

This means nothing to anyone but me, but I just received my final-ever grade for a university subject in this PhD, and my GPA remains at 4.0.

If the baguettes you buy still have both ends 5 minutes after you’ve arrived home, then you need to question the quality of your baker

I like to take a month off from coffee every so often (I often start when I’m unwell for a couple of days). I do this for a couple of reasons, including because of how awesome it feels for a few days when I start drinking coffee again

i wasn’t drinking coffee (or really any caffeine) while i was sick, and haven’t been drinking it since starting to feel better, and boy did i underestimate how much a month without coffee would change my sensitivity to caffeine

I saw “100 Nights of Hero” as tonight’s mystery movie. I knew nothing about this movie before, but I loved it

Once upon a time my managers would check up on me by following my github checkins (this prompted me to push code more frequently). These days, they check up on me by tracking the Claude token usage

After spending the weekend writing Scala I've been reminded of 2 things about that language: - It has a great facility for making coding fun. Put some effort in, and you can build libraries that are very easy to use - Dependency management is so broken that it's almost impossible to maintain