Patageometry, n.: The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants. —fortune(6)

I was not expecting the loneliness every time I find out someone I’m working with is using an LLM like, they’re still there, they’re right in front of me sometimes, and I feel like I have to go on without them, because I can’t ever quite be sure it’s them I’m talking to

another jam is upon us and this is the energy we all need 🔥 “We must rise to the occasion. Please organize yourselves: neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, country by country. If they want war, they'll get war.”

Hoffer's Discovery: The grand act of a dying institution is to issue a newly revised, enlarged edition of the policies and procedures manual. —fortune(6)

Someone asked for an app to point your camera at a color and find matches. Cool. Here. BUT ALSO: I'm colorblind and never thought to make this for myself! Save colors ("new paint," "mom's fave"), get colorblind-friendly complements, simulate what you see vs. what others see. Legit using this daily.

There’s no shortage of good work in the world. Let’s do some of it

Nighttime on Earth as seen from outer space:

If I lose a DoD grant because I have one of these on my web site it’s an important signal and honestly their loss

just finished Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat and it's the most wholesome, uplifting, and technically impressive marvel on TV for a long time

This is my office door at Berkeley. If this has to come down, I'm going down with it.

The plan was with a big American military and reliable defensive alliances, you could substantially and peacefully demilitarize most of the rich countries that would otherwise be able to challenge US hegemony or collapse global peace and it kinda fucking worked.

“Oh boo hoo where is the Royal Navy? Where is the Grande Armée? Where is the Wehrmacht? Why don’t Warsaw and Istanbul have independent nuclear deterrents?” Because we spent the American Century very carefully putting all that toothpaste back its respective tubes on purpose, dummy.

Boat stuck

Cthulhu's bubble bath. (Bull-Thistle leaves, Cirsium vulgare, and raindrops) 🧪🌿🌎🐡 #gardening #BloomScrolling #photography #GardenSky #Flowers #FlowerReport #Pollenator #Wildflower #Nature #FloralPhotography #Macro #MacroPhoto

We know that democratic socialism and economic populism can win elections—if coupled with strong fundraising, creative communications strategies, and well-thought-out field programs. We must be honest about our existing base of support and where we can build out a new base.

Looking at what our universe couldn’t predict, Zohran’s strength with Latino and Chinese voters was remarkable. The campaign’s citywide focus, carefully crafted messaging, and refusal to cede a single neighborhood to Cuomo meant that we were able to run up the score everywhere.

During the campaign, some questioned why we continued canvassing neighborhoods we were guaranteed to win. The reason was we needed to do more than just win our base with a large percentage of the vote; that percentage also had to be accompanied by jaw-dropping turnout increases.

In the final round, Zohran won *all but one* of the universe's progressive precincts we'd IDed months prior. The most left-wing group of precincts had: > The highest turnout / increase > The most first-time primary voters > A staggering 72%(!) for Zohran in R1 (87% at the end!!)

Our final universe was equal parts triple prime AND zero prime with large numbers of M/SA voters & recent registrants. Shout out to Dev McManus, @jaggas1ngh.bsky.social, Asher Ross, Julian Graham, @maevehove.bsky.social, Austin Warrington, field staff (Tascha, Carmen, Ravi) & others for their work!

With that in mind, we built a universe with components such as: 1) Progressive voters. We ranked precincts based on past primary results & focused on turning out “zero prime” voters (hadn't voted in any recent primary) in the most left-wing neighborhoods in the city.

In most Dem campaigns, the most coveted voters are “triple primes” who have voted in the 3 most recent primaries. But in NYC-DSA campaigns, mobilizing triple primes has never been enough for us to win. In fact, we've always done best in cycles when infrequent voters turned out.

Zohran didn't win by relying on standard turnout patterns. We had to fundamentally transform the Democratic electorate. I was part of a group of NYC-DSA members that applied lessons from our previous campaigns to design the “universe” of voters to talk to. Here's how we won 🧵

Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" —fortune(6)

It says nothing good that important safety & security functions are getting shuffled further and further down the org chart

"From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch." ― Edgar Mitchell

“go back to the moon but this time we have really good cameras” was a fantastic idea

Current* conditions near Duluth, MN:

This is central to it all

Rockets are pretty. (This is the photographer posting his own work.)

Pretty sure that I am the only person on bluesky who read Pete Hegseth's "The War on Warriors" (2024), a book in which the author proudly proclaims that the US military should belong to "normal dudes," a phrase he helpfully clarifies to mean "straight white dudes"

im reminded of the one ESR thing I still think is worth linking even though he's a nazi, the letter written to linus about the trap of the gifted programmer lwn.net/2000/0824/a/...

...

Okay here’s a fresh AI angle: current CS student just wants to learn to code

@cydharrell.bsky.social I looked at your profile just now and thought, "Cyber is a warning. Punk is a manual."

a thing that happened last year and will almost certainly happen this year was google news and apple news kept picking up apr1 articles for weeks and months afterwards, same with google, and the dates often aren't even visible ("n days ago")

It tend to be the weird little details that lead to whole new worlds. Physics at the end of the 19th century? Solved except for the little detail of black body radiation. Planck explained with the help of energy packets called "a quantum". Gravity? Solved by Newton except for the little detail...

Mr Basil you are not pants

More seriously, I don’t write to have written. I write because there are things in my head and getting them out gives me more dopamine than anything else. Life is unbearable if I don’t do the thing, and even if AI actually worked, it wouldn’t do the thing.

In honor of Apple's 50th, here's my favorite early coverage of the company, from the Palo Alto Times. "It's like a car. People don't use them just to go places. They're used for other reasons, like to impress other people," said 21-year-old Jobs. =)

staring into the void. the void has a newsletter. the void wants me to subscribe for $8/month to access the full void. the first three paragraphs of the void are free. i have read the free void. i need more void

Can you read English cursive? Ever wanted to volunteer from the comfort of home for a useful cause? Have I got an offer for you... The Newberry Library in Chicago is always in need of transcribers to help decipher historical handwritten documents. If this is you, learn more about it below:

We are launching a big project today with MIT — The Electricity Price Hub! You can view monthly electricity prices per kwh and avg. bills for every major utility in the country going back to Jan 2020. electricity.heatmap.news

Ya’ll, I took the new train into Seattle, and met another trans girl who was also excited about the fact that we have the world’s first (technically second) train on a floating bridge and my wife called it the Trains Day of Visibility.

Driscoll’s inclusion as being part of refusing is interesting

These devices aren’t safety critical so we accepted the risk they would fail. It would still be a big hit to crew operations if they stop working, but since there are 4 of them, we’re hopeful that we wouldn’t lose all of them.

They’re also not radiation hardened, so we know there’s a decent chance that they could fail just due to being in the space environment. It’s a balance between cost, capability, and risk.

... during Holy Week. He fired the Chaplain. During Holy Week.