New opportunity in the AI slop+gig economy era: A vast distributed service where people certified by trusted companies basically notarise and certify that photos actually show products that physically exist. Gig worker shows up, verifies it's real, clears a hash of the photo…

It's happening 🚨 House GOP representatives are about to introduce a bill that would completely eliminate subsidized student loans. They are trying to make it impossible to go to college unless you can afford to pay for it upfront.

An Objectivist appeared.

🇨🇦's #BillC22 is entering committee study this week - and we're hearing it may become law by end of the month. We never say this: but this is the worst, most privacy-breaking bill we've seen. It MUST be stopped. Speak up against it and read on to learn more: www.openmedia.org/StopC22-bsky 1/

If my wife predeceases me, I expect to end up as one of those bodies found only when, after a few weeks, neighbours begin to complain of the smell.

ICE is targeting journalists at Delaney Hall. They’re hitting photographers, breaking fingers and smashing off lenses.

Most people don’t know this, but technically Trump is the vice president. Vance is the vice vice president, because although he’s a deplorable waste of molecules, he doesn’t have *as* many vices.

I generally think that no broad demographic is better or worse than any other, but boy, can the shitty among them, as groups, exhibit similar *kinds* of being shitty.

if we're arguing social media is too dangerous for kids 16 and under, we're basically saying it impacts the brain and potentially body like an addictive drug. this IS kinda true. people seldom carry that logic to its end. doing that would mean admitting every adult online is getting fucked up 24/7

Having no social life outside of work friends is probably a bad idea, but can work. 100% remote work can work great. These two things combine poorly.

Worldbuilding detail → cultural consequence → affects one character’s background circumstances → has implications on motivation → affects character interactions, hence, plot. I like worldbuilding best when it feels literally productive like this, and characters that fit organically.

Today's Daily Cartoon for @newyorker.com by Kevin Maher and me.

Our singing neighbour may never in his life have hit a correct note, but by God he tries to make up for it with gusto and volume.

It is so effing boring to be hit with BS doomer posturing so regularly. Again: 1) Midterm elections matter 2) Presidential approval matters a lot in midterms 3) Public opinion matters b/c it tells us something about who we are 4) It's good that Trumpist populism is failing as a long term project!

The podcast bros said they were supporting Trump for two reasons: He wouldn’t start any wars, and he’d release the Epstein files. Massie lost tonight for two reasons: (a) forcing the release of the Epstein files, and (b) trying to restrain Trump’s war in Iran.

“86” has one of my favourite endings in all the anime I’ve seen, which is kind of weird considering it only adapts a small part of the overall series.

Hadn't written in decades and now over 100k words in less than a year. Not that impressive in a vacuum, but maybe the hobby isn't entirely dead.

The maker of jets that crashed and killed everyone onboard and the carmaker fined tens of millions for mishandled recalls have suddenly decided to sponsor their top regulator's reality show purely for the love of the open road www.wsj.com/business/boe...

At the *very* least, megascale data centres should be legally required to generate enough wind and solar to fully power themselves (grid connections for off peak loads acceptable if they provide storable daytime surplus).

This. All of this. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Oh, this is fantastic!

If Dawkins thinks the superficial appearance of sentience can only reflect genuine sentience really ought to learn about the concept of “designoid” features—evolved features with strong appearance of design. This useful word was coined in Climbing Mount Improbable, 1996, by…Dawkins.

It often feels like creating and maintaining human relationships come to most people instinctively, but to me they seem like learned skills…though I never actually learned them. I just existed in spaces where I marginally got by without them, until I lost those spaces.

A state that redraws its legislative maps before every election to maximize advantage for the incumbent party is not a democracy or a republic and in any case obviously violates the guarantee clause, among many others. No country does this. No country ever thought of doing this. It is a total farce.

Like the vast majority of spiders (certain Australian psychopaths excepted) the Brown Recluse does not seek confrontation and will only bite if threatened or trapped. To use words Kyle Rittenhouse will understand, Brown Recluses have a Castle Doctrine and abide by strict Stand Your Ground laws.

Watching how empty and pathetic these fascists are as people makes me wonder if a major impetus behind the rise of oligarch-enabled fascism is that they are so utterly unworthy of real respect that the fear of tyranny is the closest achievable approximation they can think of.

There was a time in the late 90s when IRC and similar spaces could somewhat compensate for my general inability to form human connections. I miss it. I was unhappy then, too, but now I see what I had and likely never will again. I’m not a social person, but clearly the ideal number of friends is >0.

I think about this all the time.

If Americans ever manage to reclaim their government from the fascist takeover, they need to work out how to end the corrupt use of the pardon power—and maybe to nullify pardons. Retroactive law is awful, but not as bad as letting everyone get away with war crimes and massive corruption.

Just to put it all in one place 1. Posted a picture of Biden hogtied. 2 Mocked Paul Pelosi 3. Said he was glad Mueller died 4. Threatened the entire Iranian civilisation with being wiped out 5. Fomented an actual coup with extreme violence 6. Is a rapist But the left should tone down the rhetoric

Cesar Sayoc, a Trump super fan & obsessive Fox viewer, sent pipe bombs in 2018 to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, & many other top Dems. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In the wake of the attacks, Trump said about his rhetoric: "Tone down, no. Could tone up."

It's like they heard that empires can't last more than 250 years and set out to prove it.

We've written about how social media companies and other technology firms manipulate the scientific record in their favor. In our revisions, we will need to address how they have captured the state department to literally prevent researchers who criticize them FROM EVEN ENTERING THE COUNTRY.

What I dont get is why in this period anyone would put any money on these markets WITHOUT having inside info! You're literally gambling against people who can pick their own hand.

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

The only list the biblical text calls “the ten commandments” (Ex 34:28) are the list in Ex 34, from ‘destroy the worship sites of your enemies’ and ‘eat unleavened bread’ to the famous 10th commandment, “thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” in the KJV.

Trump is within sight of an under 30% overall approval rating. One of the most important causes right now is to establish a media narrative and popular support behind severe punishments and consequences to our present criminals running things.

In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.

A fantasy world where each worldbuilding element exists in isolation without impacting either the story or other worldbuilding elements feels sterile, a generic fantasy kit reskinned.

Still want Ryan George to expand pitch meetings to cover anime. There are so many opportunities. “A *very* bizarre adventure!” “I’m going to need you to get aaalll the way off my back about Cheap Trick…”

Is Vance trying to secure a place in the history books as the next great schismatic?

i'm not sure that you can work for this admin and be *any flavor of genuine christian believer* and see trump post something like this without understanding, at some level, deep down, that you are fucking damned, even if you'll never admit it to anyone

@kitkerr.bsky.social Did you have a model in mind for the Elves, like an actual culture? I'm sometimes reminded generally of Native Americans but, maybe you had something entirely different in mind or were freely inventing…

Weird, unidiomatic English and off-putting levels of obsequiousness: LLM agent or underpaid call centre drone in a developing country being forced to act like this for a pittance? I suspect the former but am too concerned it may be the latter to be as brusque and rude as I’d like.

@kitkerr.bsky.social Is deverry.com a thing of the past? I occasionally find myself wishing I could link people to your old essay, An Argument with the Master, which hit me just right at a formative point. Would it be acceptable (and legal) for me to repost it somewhere (Reddit, my blog…)?

Exclusive: The acting director of the CDC has delayed publication of a report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists.

The so-called Greatest Story Ever Told involves Jesus having a shitty weekend to counterbalance an infinity of suffering for everyone else, which is just bad story-telling. Hearing someone suggest he might instead have sacrificed himself to eternal Hell, I propose the Jesus/Omelas cross-over event.

There's no joke. It has no structure, no setup or punchline. It's 100% reference humour: 'Remember rape and genocide, isn't that hilarious?', and that's enough for a post. The bottom of the barrel is no longer visible from the depths they've excavated.