According to this proclamation anyone holding a H-1B visa who is outside the country and does not re-enter within the next 20 or so hours will be denied entry unless they can prove they have paid $100k. To whom is a little unclear.

Finance guy says it’s nearly impossible for data centers to turn a profit given the insane depreciation on the chips. On the bright side if they have a few bankruptcy sales we might get much cheaper rent-a-rig streaming gaming services.

As women worldwide have gained education and career opportunities, many have grown more selective. Women want independence, while many men expect a “servant at home”, says Fernández-Villaverde. “Women are asking, ‘Why would I marry this person?’ A lot of men are undateable. Truly undateable.”

www.axios.com/2025/08/21/a... Will this reverse the billions of dollars people in expensive suits are shoveling into the bullshit fires? Of course not.

Over the weekend someone broke into our building’s parking garage and then broke into the elevator service room and did some undisclosed damages. I’m still trying to figure out why someone would go to the trouble of taking a crowbar to that particular door but no other.

gizmodo.com/the-world-wi... I do take exception that humanity as a whole isn’t capable of facing our current and near future economic, political, and social crises. It’s the people in charge who have a problem. I suppose our problem is we don’t hunt and eat them nearly often enough.

www.finalroundai.com/blog/softwar... tl;dr version: we can get the robot to code but it’s an idiot and needs constant supervision. You are now the code janitor. No, we won’t hire a recent grad who also needs supervision but is capable of learning.

‘The company is yet to experiment with creating plus-size women, claiming "the technology is not advanced enough for that".’ That’s a take so stupid they should be smacked with a week old mackerel and prohibited from using any technology more advanced than a pencil.

They might have more traction outside of those-we-used-to-call-hipsters if you marketed these as civilian body cams rather than content creation devices. The cops can grab your phone if you try recording them but they might miss your glasses.

Just got my ballot and it’s mayoral election time in the anarchist jurisdiction of Seattle. And there’s Bruce Harrell. A guy I didn’t vote for last time because he seemed to be overly concerned with the cops and corps. But somehow he still managed to disappoint.

Huh, I might have a job next year after all. We'll see if the rest of congress can act like adults and not bludgeon the economic golden goose that is the US research community.

PUT IT INSIDE MY BODY.... ahem, as a lifelong allergy sufferer... this sounds spiffy. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you're a member of the Democratic gerontocracy, the chances of you catching a primary challenger just went up 1000%.

www.science.org/content/arti... If orcas enjoy a good exfoliation can we get a team of marine biologists to introduce them to a loofah scrub down and attempt to use that service as a negotiating tactic to get them to agree to sink Jeff Bezos' big stupid yacht?

Entire thread is a delight to read in its entirety but wanted to pull this out. This point seems to be something that more than a few straight white male type people have a very, very difficult time grasping when it comes to women's choices for their personal appearance.

This is tasty. 'Legal experts are equally forthright about Midjourney’s likelihood of success defending the case. “It’s Disney, so Midjourney are fucked, pardon my French,” says Andres Guadamuz at the University of Sussex in the UK.' www.newscientist.com/article/2484...

True facts. Today I advocated for prioritizing quality of code and performance and got smacked in the face with the day old herring of deadlines uber alles

What’s wild about the current political use of “antisemitism” (as opposed to its actual instances) is it has nothing to do with Jewish people at all. So much so that an Italian sexual harasser can wield it against a Muslim who is endorsed by a Jewish candidate. It’s just all nonsense.

As with most automation technology, the question is not if it can do the job, its if upper management is convinced that it can get away with using a far cheaper and far shittier replacement for skilled labor.

Just like in Seattle for the 2020 George Floyd protests. Other than a march on city hall everything happened in a space you can stroll across in less than 10 minutes.

You’d think the Rodney King beating video would have earned the LAPD exclusive protestor mauling rights for at least 50 years.

I’m in a multiple sclerosis caregiver group on FB. One of my favorite posts is people loosing their shit over the lack of home health care who have MAGA heavy profiles. Like bro, I feel your pain but you shot yourself in both feet and then put a round through your dick for good measure.

Wonder if its occurred to the White House staff that if Elon turns against them the Doge minions for the most part work for Elon, not the president. Sure, they might be getting paychecks from the treasury but they're not going to bite the hand that gave them the job in the first place.

Spiffy. Let's hope congress may have learned something from all those sci-fi and horror plots involving scientists who go feral. Because there will be a LOT of researchers who will find themselves idle, without funding, and open to suggestion.

the Inhuman League

If I created an investment fund and promised 300% returns but instead spent your money buying yachts, I'd go to jail. Yet there are so many dudebros telling me that when ChatGPT spouts total bullshit the problem isn't OpenAI marketing it as a knowledge engine, it's the users who believe it.

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/wo... So much for corporations being data mature organizations… as the study says, the results speak for themselves… yet no one is jumping on board.

I suspect more than a few people I know will find these highly relatable. Especially the bit about not being into bright colors

I work for a state university and due to budget cuts we were told there would be layoffs. The timeline would be for FY2026 which starts July 1, 2025. Due to state law we'd be given 30 days notice. Since June has but 30 days and the 1st is on a Sunday I was kinda expecting an announcement today.

Impressive. Here's someone who has probably never heard of (or will never admit to knowing about) Judith Butler yet is going the extra mile to prove Butler's theories on gender as a performance.

www.wired.com/story/ai-age... I had been thinking about this lately. Given how error prone AI is in general combined with how management tends to be rather vague in direction when ordering the rollout of a new technology this is going to be a very rich source of income for law firms.

andymasley.substack.com/p/individual... Working my way through this long read. So far the tl;dr; version is that AI usage represents a very small slice of our personal carbon footprint. Is it a lot of energy and water usage in aggregate? Yes. But cotton, beef, and cars are far, far worse.

There is the accessibility aspect to consider. Voice actors deserve to get paid but for older works or ones that don't have the budget to make that kind of recording, providing generated audio can make the work accessible for people who can't consume it through text.

Perhaps the core problem is that trying to predict the statistically most likely next word in a sentence isn't in fact solving the problem of returning a factually correct and evidence supported answer to a question?

Fellas, that unsolicited dick pic you sent to the lady who accepted your friend request counts.

Gee, you mean a bunch of people who have never done a lick of carpentry in their lives running around with the shiny new hammer looking for nails resulted in a failure rate that looks bad even by corporate IT standards?

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news... Meanwhile in WA state people are sitting in trees again. Hashtag: Big Lorax Energy

I will donate to their campaign and sign up for their filthy mailing list.

Achievement unlocked: Personal Beef With The Administration. Four weeks of really annoying work might have to be reverted due to the administration updating a NIH policy that now effectively bans funding of certain research for pathogens or toxins instead of adding extra levels of scrutiny.

www.freethink.com/space/space-... Interesting idea and glad someone is going through the process but would be nice if some of those billionaire bucks went to giving people solar roofs which we know works right now.

It’s May Day in Seattle and the Tesla dealership is being very bold in not boarding up their glass front. Then again there’s probably a bunch of FBI agents sitting in the bushes just waiting for someone to toss a rock.

The hesitation when your South Asian boss asks you what you're listening to lately at the start of a management/peon check-in as she wants recommendations and you have to quickly calculate if you have time to explain Alien Sex Fiend. So you respond that you've been listening to Blind Faith instead.

This seems less than good. Wonder if they're also looking for software developers. (wages for software developers are a LOT lower in the EU and Canada so I think I'm too old and too under the thumb of a mortgage to move)

I got both the once a decade TDAP vaccine and my annual Covid dose this morning. My arm feels like it’s full of bees and there’s a pig that’s fixing to shit in my head. But I drank most of a bottle of wine so I can’t tell who’s responsible for this. Which was the point.

Fuck. I eat a lot of chicken. Looks like I’ll have to learn the art of sauces as I’m going to have to cook that shit till it’s cardboard

Almost every line of this story would have been simply unbelievable a few months ago: —Pioneering cancer researcher; —*Arrested* at airport in Boston; —Now indefinite ICE detention in Louisiana; —"Crime": not declaring some frog-embryo samples for research. Read it. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Yet another reason why the massive budget cuts for research at US universities is fucking moronic, it's one of our best selling products.

Time to get on the phone with congress again.