I'm at the point in my BritBox journey where I just mutter under my breath "why do the poor people in this show put up with this aristocracy crap?" (I'll leave obvious lessons for America for a PBS binge)

Really, Apple Music? This crosses the line?

Spent a lovely Mother's Day weekend with wife in San Francisco. Drove in across the Gate Bridge. Great weather, breathtaking view coming out of the Robin Williams tunnel. Incredible sites in the city, fun things to do. Don't believe the haters, SF is amazing.

No, no you don't. You want something much better.

I don't believe in Ancient Greek mythology, except I believe the Muses are real and they visit their favored even today.

Just watched Luc Besson's Dracula.The only flaw in this movie is that it seems to go by too fast. I was riveted by it.

A lot of us, including myself, struggle and fail when trying to describe why AI is so much smaller and less capable than people think. Betty Gilpin, on the other hand, has succeeded magnificently.

According to my inbox history, I have several hundred subscriptions to McAfee that are in urgent need of renewal. Does this actually work, or are there just some orphaned spam-bots on the web somewhere that have been grinding through the same scam since 1997?

Like Macron, I think a lot of people's reaction was "that might be an improvement". So do parents where I live, who scramble to get their kids into the public (ie, free), French-language immersion school which is accredited by the French Ministry of Education.

Dessert menu tonight at the White House: White House Honey & Vanilla Bean Crémeux Flourless Chocolate Gâteau Almond Joconde Crème Fraîche Ice Cream I think the King has overestimated England's ability to hold back French.

10 years of this bullshit from Trump. Nobody can say they didn't know. And Trump voters can't say they're surprised now.

Quelle horreur! But for our bon amis les Anglais, we might be speaking français! Thanks to them, we can laissez les bons temps rouler down in La Nouvelle-Orléans, be free to parlay in the King's English, can become entrepreneurs, and never have to acknowledge that half our words are really French.

Waiting for the official rebuttal speech from the Duke of Sussex to be given to a joint assembly of the California legislature.

Hmmmm.

Watching Vertigo (1958). Things I notice about the San Francisco of nearly 70 years ago. First, the Podesta Baldocchi flower shop that hung on to nearly 2000. What at loss...

A horse is a horse, of course, of course. And nobody's seen a millionaire horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed. (We now resume our normal programming in progress)

@olivia.science My wife tells stories of growing up in tobacco country. Your analogy may go deeper than it seems. Land & water wasted on Tobacco. The need for cheap labor. Winston-Salem as the Silicon Valley of smokes that made many well off. The "Duke" of Duke University who got rich from Tobacco.

Carousel will never be as good as ... Oklahoma! (Sorry)

I am at a loss for words to say how bad it makes the press look that they turned a blind-eye to Swalwell's predations but continue to harp on Porter's yelling. Actually, I found the words: The press looks clueless and biased all at once.

The recipient of the "Charles didn't notice the default Amazon shipping address changed until too late" award is ... My son's cat, Luci Le Chat. Congratulations, Luci! I hope you love your new collection of silk flowers and floral foam. Put those paws to work and show us what you're capable of!

Imagine my total lack of surprise at today's headline:

I don't like coffee (tea drinker) & I never drink it. If you asked me for advice, I would say maybe Kahlua is drinkable. ChatGPT also doesn't like coffee (electricity drinker). In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say it never drinks it either. If you ask it for advice… futurism.com/future-socie...

In 2011 a company brought bottled Iced Tea and Lemonade drinks to market. Being located on Long Island, they named their company (a bit confusingly) The Long Island Iced Tea Company. So far, so good. 1/...

SMART is the one bay area train system that is way up from pre-pandemic numbers as they focused on more than just commuters. Lots of bike riders and school kids. Many can ride free; it gets very little money from fares (< 10% of its costs). I think they should just make the system free for everyone.

I reckon that as the 1920s are known as the Jazz Age, the 2020s will be known as the AI Age. The open question is what other parallels will exist when we close out the decade...

It was obvious from the get go that this was going to be the result. It will be interesting to see what the polling says after this; worries that there'd be two GOP winners in the primary are probably gone. www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...

Old: The *Free* Seas New: The *Fee* Seas

How does that saying go? War is the continuation of idiocy by other means?

The allegations agains Swalwell (that he basically raped a staffer) are horrific. I don't think anyone with credibility is defending him. There's no coming back from this for him. Before June he will withdraw from the race to spend time healing his family or something. 1/…

Trump's agreeing to let Iran charge tolls on the strait undermines US commitment to freedom of navigation. Not so long ago, the Navy said this. I guess the official policy now is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?

I've always thought that NYC mayors should be seen in public and reasonably accessible. Ed Koch definitely was; I ran into him a few times back in the day (usually at restaurants). But wow Mamdani seems to have a level of magic not seen since maybe Beau James (minus the Tammany Hall problems).

Thursday I joked to a friend that all the Iranians had to do was make a deal that allows them to charge ships passing through the straights $2 million & give Trump 5%. Today ... is it real? I also joked a Trump Tehran Tower would be a good idea for the Iranians too as Israel wouldn't dare bomb it.

Trump working with the Iranians to impose a carbon tax on exported Middle East oil was not on my bingo card.

I get the sense that very few of our politicians, given the opportunity to time travel and kill baby Hitler, would actually do so. At best they might drop off art supplies to encourage him to get in touch with his creative side as he grew up.

Infrastructure weak

How vicious, murderous, authoritarian, corrupt of an administration is too much?

Ten years ago, the group I was working at at Oracle was eliminated. That is, we were all fired. The process is exactly the same as what you're seeing today: Middle of the night email, being quickly cut off from internal applications, and then some period of garden leave and severance. 1/2

Prediction: in about 6 to 9 months, a major topic about AI will be coder burnout. I'm mostly laying down a marker for when it happens. Maybe time traveling I told you so. But if you want to know why I think that will be, feel free to read my replies...

To Google, everyone named Roy Rogers is like Dr. Who -- all just manifestations the same being. "Got a Black Magic Appaloosa" "Oye Como Vaquero" So many great songs that could have been.

It's not just AI. Gift Link.

I'm starting to wonder if OpenAI is this century's version of 1970's AT&T. AT&T had great tech it couldn't always figure out how to sell, not always competitive when it did, and couldn't thrive when it lost monopoly control of the market. But it did killer science projects (e.g. Penzias & Wilson).

Checking in on how the AI conversation is going on BlueSky. As a reminder, BlueSky's open ATProto makes it cheap and easy to analyze posts here. Assume everything you say is analyzed by hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations for their own purposes. Be a very wary bear.

How long will it be before his image appears too? As an aside, "the U.S. treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century"? How?? Has every treasurer been the Dread Pirate Roberts since the early 1900s?

I have never read so many judicial decisions in my life, so I appreciate judges discussing the seriousness of the cases before them. Apparently, not everyone does. Gift Link

Over the decades I've learned that when members of Congress declare that something urgent needs to be done about an industry, it's just their cute way of saying that the industry's contributions to their campaigns and PACs are insufficient.

Move the TSA to the FAA. (1) Gets them paid again. (2) First baby step in breaking up DHS. Really, instead of getting rid of the Department of Education, we could get rid of DHS...

Iran needs to up its social media game. They could have added...

One day, your CFO tells you you're going to miss your margin goals if you don't bring costs in line with revenue. Fortunately, just a hiring freeze will tide you over if you can accelerate revenue soon. As CEO, you face the press to lament that only shrinking head count will boost margin and say...

You say "alt text" for images. I say "sotto voce" for a place to add secret comments.