It's a little weird seeing India court Afghanistan as part of a way to undermine Pakistan.

Swing by a coffeeshop I'm starting to like that has a very friendly owner, learned it was kosher, and tried the pizza. What is it with kosher places and bad pizza crust? Bleh. Will keep coming back for the company and coffee, but will have to avoid the pizza in the future.

Recently learned that I really, really love fried Udon (noodles). Not sure if it'll be a new favourite food, but definitely top 10.

Ideally what we'll see is China teaching the Trump admin a lesson on tariffs by making it hard to get rare earth magnets in the US with its tariffs until the US accepts mutual zero tariffs with China. Thus undermining all this tariff nonsense Trump is doing.

Unsurprising by principles but surprising by professed alignment that Putin would justify Germany's aggression in WW2 as "they wanted to take land without needing to fight for it and Poland should've given in".

Really unfortunate that Google, in the name of protecting users from malware, is locking down side-loading onto Android: f-droid.org/en/2025/09/2...

Wondering how long France's next PM will last.

Tears streaming a bit because I unwisely rewatched one of the saddest bits of comedy I've ever seen - the closing skit of "That Mitchell and Webb Look", "Old Holmes". It's exquisitely done, and I remembered it as part of a conversation on senility in old relatives, with a coworker.

Nothing says "peace prize" like "he might bomb us if he doesn't get it".

For the weirdo progressives who keep telling me that I'm not really a Democrat: A) Yes. You're right. I don't pretend to be. I am an independent Liberal B) But I probably give far more to Dems than most. Almost never progressive Dems, and occasionally to Republicans.

Wishing my workplace didn't keep the AC at temperatures way below the outside world; it's shorts-weather outside, but dressing that way has me shivering in the office.

On first thought, it's easy to think that maybe this isn't such a bad idea, but then you realise that people who need and then get one of these might not ever have another human (real) friend again; the device will let them shift their ideas of company as they fit because it will never say no.

Good to see the NYPD removing a homeless encampment for once. I report the things all the time and usually get a "ticket closed we couldn't find it" no matter how clearly I state where it is.

Recently I've been reflecting on some incidents of conflict very early in my career where the me of now would've fired the ass of the me of then. And I'm kinda surprised that TPTB at the time didn't do just that.

A big part of how I view domestic policy nowadays is that it's generally possible to view policies/programs as being somewhere in a characterisation triangle between: A) Neglect B) Paternalism C) Punishment (It's possible to have both positive and negative words/eval for each pole)

I wonder if there are general or only specific ways to prevent operating under time and attention pressures from turning people into far less intelligent than they normally are.

Sometimes you meet really nice people on the internet.

I have nothing against Taylor Swift or people liking her music; I have no opinion on that stuff. I think it'd be good if the American Physical Society were to take itself a bit more seriously though, and refrain from joining the weird public adoration of a musician.

This is a moment in the country where people should be very angry at Trump and his people, but people are not very good at keeping their anger either/both appropriate and contained at the best of times.

I'm guessing a state governor couldn't deploy their guard to deny entrance to ICE or the NG of other states?? (even if they could I'm sure it'd be turned around very quickly, but it'd be interesting to see a governor try.

Just killed a mouse caught on a glue trap in my apartment, and apparently that cognitive machinery that makes mammals killing other mammals distressing is quite functional in me. And on top of that all those human concerns over death being so permanent.

Sometimes we have to give up on a delightful clever or snarky thing we could say because the venue is inappropriate. This is the adult version of not being able to have a cookie; I think little conversational joys are one of the few nice-easy-and-over things we have as we age.

Does anyone following me work for or know anyone working for Fraunhofer?

I don't think it's that important that everyone use the same definitions, but it is important that when asked we're ready to give our definitions for things. And if our definitions are sufficiently weird that can be grounds for legit criticism.

Reading up on Trump's actions in Chicago really makes it hard to think the US is going to come out of this moment in a reasonable state. Trump's abuses are too severe, his power grabs too extreme. It's not just Chicago. I would welcome an irregular transfer of power, at this point.

I don't think the "GenML changes everything" or the "GenML can't or should not be allowed to do anything" perspectives are particularly reasonable. Societally we are probably overinvesting in it, and the efforts to ban it are deeply misguided. Your positions on it don't need to be exciting.

This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.

I think Dr Becky Smethurst does a really solid job at communicating, on a regular basis, recent discoveries in astronomy.

Wishing Google would tweak whatever algorithms it uses for thumbnails to somewhat discourage everyone using the thumbnail of "presenter making a very non-neutral face paired with an image of something".

This is a good way to handle ICE.

Slowly easing myself back into watching a Youtube channel for a fox sanctuary - mentally I couldn't deal with, for awhile, that the founder suicided; it was just too weird to watch content there for awhile. Still feel very sad for the other parts of the family running it.

If only there were a way for all three NYC mayoral candidates to lose.

I think so long as ICE is acting so far outside the norms of US governance - masked agents, illegal deportations, detainment camp in Florida designed for cruelty, recruiting particularly people who couldn’t cut it as police because they felt the rules were too restrictive (or other ethical breaches)

This has some strong "Lieutenant Barclay in the holodeck" vibes. www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeny...

Some places are starting on Halloween already.

One of the things Progressives often fail to understand about Liberals is that we, the center-left, are not generally progressives-with-cowardice or fatalism. For many of us, the reason we don't sign onto progressivism or other further-left ideologies is we don't want them, even if they might win.

Amusing to see Musk going after the mistaken wisdom that leads people to actually respect Musk.

I keep generally hearing good things about Boston's mayor, Michelle Wu.

I don't really get the love for Bari Weiss a number of people I know have; she's smart, but her values are not particularly remarkable, and she's not part of the actually-pro-free-speech part of either the left or the right. I don't want her setting journalistic policy on anything, because of that.

I occasionally wonder if someday we'll be able to build devices that can auto-massage people in ways more like a real massage than the simple devices we have now.

8 years at my current (academic) job, as of today. Feels a bit weird that I'm actively trying to find a new job, in Europe, but that's not the fault of my employer in any real sense. I love what I do, just feeling I need to build a new life outside the US.

I have this growing suspicion that Dropbox is slowly phasing out Dropbox Paper, a little barebones word-processor I got in the habit of using when I was an SRE there. They haven't fixed basic problems for years, they merged the docstore into Dropbox, and they're deprecating the mobile apps.

I haven't kept up with her career or even re-reviewed it since I was far younger, but Jane Goodall as much as Rachel Carson inspired me to care about things at the intersection of science and nature when I was young Good science communication is very important. People who can do it well are gems.

This is in my view exactly the right response; government projects (really any projects) should not be set up to reward minority-owned businesses, set aside things for them, or even track their participation in contracts. But likewise POTUS should use existing mechanisms to challenge these abuses.

It's dumb that we're in a government shutdown; dumb that we even have a system where that can happen, but right after POTUS talks about people who don't share his nutty politics as the enemy within and embraces sending military into US cities, shutdown doesn't feel the biggest problem.

Was happy this morning that today's the day of my covid booster (I've been worried policy changes may limit vaccine availability), but found I wrote down the date wrong and it's a month from now. Really hoping by that date the booster is still going to happen. So daft to need to worry about this.

It's pretty common that we make fun of furries and people with a thing for feet. I know for sure that the former people really exist; years ago I was at a tech conference and the convention space was large, had a furry thing next door. Honestly not sure if there are many people into feet.

This is a serious and ugly backsliding of governance norms in the US.

Reading reports of Hegseth's speech and policy changes to military leaders, my impression is that while some of the changes are positive (pro-diversity practices are less good a standing policy intuition than being simply colorblind), some are very, very negative (tolerance of hazing, for example).

Even if they were smuggling drugs, the right thing is to take them into custody, or file a complaint with the government their ships were registered under. This idea by Trump's people that you can just kill people out in international waters because you suspect they're smuggling drugs is terrible.