Here's an updated anomaly graph for sea-surface temperatures in region Nino 3.4, using the preferred color scheme. I will be updating these whenever they look crazier than the previous update. That may be daily.

and a very happy Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May to you all

So now is the part of the cycle where the deal gets leaked and Trump realizes that he'll get torched in the press for it and then he turns to the military solution again as its a risky gambit to solve all problems rather than the incredibly painful medicine of the surrender

How much money is this Claude outage saving Anthropic?

It is *fascinating* to me how quickly some people have gone completely from “we all must work in the office! human collaboration is vital and only happens in person!” to “I can replace all these pesky people with chatbots!” Definitely some commentary there about our society and who gets to choose.

Life in LA today 🤦🏽‍♂️ PS - these things are so damn annoying.

Superb piece on why “AI” is bad user design from @sifu.tweety.fish - and why AI proponents and skeptics so frequently seem to be talking completely past each other. buttondown.com/apperceptive...

"Department of Justice" is too woke. They should rename it the "Department of Revenge"

Yeah it’s time to bring back my all time favorite tweet, by @donaldhughes.ca

New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!

Love when job ads say on-site in "Los Angeles". Helpful! That's either walking distance or a three hour commute

Disappointed you can't say "grok" anymore without sounding like a Musk-worshipping incel. You used to just sound like a Heinlein-worshipping incel

Can someone explain to me how Kevin Hassett has a job? The guy who co-wrote the most catastrophically wrong book about the stock market in history, and everyone who believed him lost everything? He should be driving an Uber not smiling creepily at TV cameras

This morning, like every morning, US President woke up: painted his face orange, clipped on his comical wig, put on a big floppy tie & oversized suit & weird platform shoes, and went out in the world to steal as much money has he could while undermining US national security & economy & democracy.

Gavin Newsom vetoed a data broker privacy bill that our legislature passed last year that would have allowed Californians to opt out of all data brokers with a single click.

my most Gen X coded belief is that cities and the culture at large suffer profoundly for the near-complete death of alt-weeklies

1 year ago ~to the day~

In Feb. @quartzcity.bsky.social, @tropicostation.bsky.social, @airplaneian.com and I went to the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s Desert Research Station to see their Remote Sensing exhibit. This is a steerable VLF antenna made with 9+ miles of copper wire. 1/

Con-men are really good at convincing marks that they're in on the con

Im tied to a chair in some damp basement somewhere in the american midwest. The cop slides another Meta Neuroreader headset on me. I immediately fry it by visualizing Karl Franz's warhammer wiki page in a weaponized shotgun blast of autism, wasting $12,000. This is the third time I've done this.

An Industry Reacts

On this date in 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the imperial forces of Japan. The loss of life and destruction was horrific, and it pulled the U.S. into the war. For Japanese Americans, it was a terrifying time. Overnight, we became the “enemy within” because we were of Japanese descent. /1

The CBO is going DOGE'd if they don't figure out some way to make this work 😂

Fun Fact: Teslas have killed over twice as many people as the exploding Ford Pinto did at a roughly similar level of sales. the Pinto sold ~3 million units & killed at least 27 people. Tesla is now creeping up on 5 million total vehicles & 95 deaths from battery fires or autopilot crashes.

nobody does more brutal fashion reviews than the irish

I tried to cancel my Amazon prime membership a couple weeks ago, and those fuckers charged me again. It turns out there's another page with a confirmation button scrolled way out of view down the screen. How do those people live with themselves?

A real smoking gun in natalist writings is that they always say "Women are having fewer babies" as if men are somehow continuing to have babies in abundance. Never any discussion of how to push men to have more children. Zero attempt to convince men that child care is more fulfilling than work.

If you’re considering getting an air fryer, keep in mind you’re statistically more likely to air fry a loved one than you are an intruder

“Once upon a time” from five other languages… 5. When animals talked and people kept quiet (Catalan) 4. When snakes wore vests (Iberian Spanish) 3. When potatoes were pale blue (Brusselian) 2. Long long ago, when goat hair was grey (Kazakh) 1. In the old times, when wishing still helped (German)

In the annual sea of "how to celebrate The Holidays™️ when your family is full of ethical toilets who voted for you to die" media, here is the 2024 Captain Awkward Dot Com entry. captainawkward.com/2024/11/08/1...

Good life, Mr. Christensen! www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/t...

[George Nader, BOTD in 1921, starred in ROBOT MONSTER, sacrificed himself to the Tabloid Gods to save Rock Hudson, went to Germany and became an action star, and wrote a sexy science fiction novel about a robot guy with vibrator hands. Who among us has accomplished so much?]

StickerApp StickerGiant DieCutStickers Bumperactive Artist Amigos StickerNinja These are all better and much less repugnant sticker companies.

Mary Burchell remains one of the most successful romance writers, ever. Over 110 Mills and Boon books to her name. Less well known is that much of her early writing was done for one purpose: Funding her efforts to get Jews out of Nazi Germany, with her sister. Mary is a Righteous Gentile. /1 🧵

Because people keep asking, the Story of The Lizard In That Dude's Leg. Some caveats: 1. This happened more than twenty years ago. There are no pictures. There was a small article in a local paper with, again, no pictures (I'm assuming that's what the producers of 9-1-1: LONE STAR found).

I find it striking how in the aftermath of Helene, libraries are providing crucial community services like free wifi while cops are guarding stores with rotting food from potential "looters" instead of serving and protecting people. Worth considering how we spend local funding.

took a picture of the big guy today 🔭

OK...the NWS Bot collection is now fully populated and ready to go. I'm sure bugs will come up along the way, but I think it is 95%+ stable. There's an index page at nws-bot.us including a map (borrowed from NWS) to find the right bot for the area you want to follow.

OK that's pretty good

Saturday: our flagship Real Black Dahlia tour departs Grand Central Market in search of a lost world of reckless, rootless youth, traumatized by war and family drama, drawn to blank slate Los Angeles where they can live in anonymity, to love--or to kill! esotouric.com/event/black-...

The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized and Available Online www.openculture.com/2024/09/the-...