Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a law banning most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during some operations.

PSA: please remove 103.114.190.0/23 from your IP blocklists/denylists. It now belongs to a legitimate Australian ISP (lightningbroadband.com.au), and is no longer under the control of Flow Chemical Pty Ltd or any entity known by me to be associated with Joshua Moon or Kiwi Farms.

I feel like there is confusion about why Judaism and Christianity are different religions. It's this confusion that allows for Messianic Judaism (a branch of Protestant Christianity) and various Christian groups to make use of post-1st-century Jewish rituals and objects. A quick explainer.

This may explain why there’s an aggressive response to people who merely post Kirk’s own words. It threatens the existence of the alternate Kirk - the motivational speaker that had been marketed to young kids and white Christian groups through selective quotation & clips.

This seems like a great organization for our ineffective altruism movement (ineffective-altruism.org) to collaborate with.

Misdemeanor and Community Service

Today's #xkcd hits me hard as a #cryptographer. xkcd.com/3137/ #cryptography

🤩

Please share widely

I can think of half a dozen book series that I know the author has plans to do more on, but because sales have not reached the goal of the publisher on the first book they can't publish it yet. The attitude of only reading complete series kills new authors careers.

We’ve heard it said: “the cruelty is the point.” But why make cruelty the centerpiece of a political strategy that inflicts pain on enemies and supporters alike? Because in Trump's brand of sadopopulism, inflicting pain is the strategy itself.

Finally, we know the rational, logical, explainable reason behind kashrut.

At #Crypto2025 at #UCSB. Can't wait to see you all. #IACRCrypto

"I'm gonna dump all my pent up angst and infodump material into a blog post about Itch/payment processing" I say to myself. It ends up like a million words, oops. but well, I got it out of my brain: voidfox.com/blog/payment...

If you ever use the URL, `hsm.util.local`, would you mind DMing me? I'm seeing it in some referrer logs and have a couple of questions. Thanks!

If you're going to send me something written by an LLM then save us all time and resources and just send me your prompt instead. I'll value a text that says "Heartfelt condolence message with reference to a list of events" more, because this way I at least actually know what you were thinking

A tipping point is happening. From the Chair of Israel Studies at UCLA:

I will be at #IACR #Crypto2025 this year. I always enjoy meeting new people and catching up with old friends. If you're going, then please feel free to drop me a line.

i actually think a major problem across much of society is lack of understanding that deserving something is not the same thing as being owed something. everyone is deserving of love, but (aside from one’s parents) no one *owes* us love. everyone is deserving of intimacy, but no one owes it to us.

Why is it non-sexual assaults are described in objective language ("was beaten", "were covered in bruises"), but the sexual assault victim's testimony is presented as mere hearsay ("said he'd been sexually assaulted"). The US media do this kind of thing constantly; make an effort to notice it.

The Substack app apparently push alert promoted a Nazi newsletter to several users. Users have complained about it on Substack Notes but the company hasn’t responded. Generally push alert promos are for content a user is likely to interact with

SO PROUD of my colleagues for willingly putting their bodies in the hands of the state for this critical demand. Thank you @rabbijilljacobs.bsky.social Rabbi @evantraylor.bsky.social Rabbi Rachel Timoner, Rabbi Elizabeth Richman & everyone else — Photos I’m 98% sure are @giligetz.bsky.social

Get the fuck off Substack already.

also, the one i'm hearing which is most insidious is the “AI code/peer review” use-case: that's how you deskill people but we'll be told that humans are still in the loop! and if they ever were skilled they are actively becoming deskilled by the “AI review” should be obvious, but zero talk re: it

Thread for Tom Lehrer fans.

I hate “bring your authentic self” stuff at workplaces. Employers don’t have a right to your authentic self. You’re trading them labor for money. They owe you an environment where you’re safe disclosing aspects of yourself like gender identity or neurodivergence, but they have no right to it.

Why is it that every conversation I have with a proponent of current #AI (especially #gen_ai or #LLMs ) makes me dislike the technology more and trust it less?

Glad Tom Lehrer outlived Kissinger. May his memory be for a blessing. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

LLMs are easy to trick evidence #384762953; You can trick them into recommending scams

I just sent this out. The Jewish people have moral frameworks for this moment. It is a choice not to heed them. Please let us meet this moment, let us see the shattered Temple around us, right now, and our responsibility to it.

The mass starvation & killing of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli gov’t is a chillul hashem, a desecration of God. Jewish leaders who criticized Zohran Mamdani for three words he doesn’t use should raise their voices loudly here as well. forward.com/opinion/7575...

Tech request (especially to Google and Apple): Let WiFi networks and Bluetooth pairings be marked as "temporary." When you do this, one of the following things happens (details left to you). (1/2)

I made this in 2021

You know what? Sure. I'll hop on the bandwagon and do this. One like, one opinion that's not on politics.

28. deeply wish more fantasy writers could invent a fictional religion that isn't just Christianity But I Refuse To Give Specifics On Actual Beliefs So It's Totally Original

The ending was not a surprise but I adore this blog.foxtrotluna.social/theyre-putti...

When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.

We announced the new native Go FIPS 140-3 mode today! FIPS 140, like it or not, is often a requirement, and I was increasingly sad about large deployments replacing the Go crypto packages with non-memory safe cgo bindings. Go is now one of the easiest and most secure ways to build under FIPS 140.

One thing about the Epstein saga is that it gives Trump supporters who were already becoming uncomfortable with other aspects of his tyranny, but who feel too dug in on those issues to acknowledge it, an out where they can abandon him for a reason consistent with their sorry excuse for an ideology.

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

The American Jewish community does not have an org we can rely on to accurately track, educate on, and combat antisemitism at the moment. The ADL has sacrificed us for Zionism. And declaring even “free Palestine” as antisemitic has muddied the convo so much the damage is awful

Finally! #Faun

Illegitimate court. Illegitimate government. It will require a massive grassroots movement by the people.

Domain Separation is a critical technique in cryptography and not enough people think about it. That's why I've added it to my Crypto Gotchas! page. This is the first gotcha to have earned a dedicated page. I'm sure that it won't be the last. Enjoy! gotchas.salusa.dev/domain_separ...

That's because the Supreme Court is illegitimate

To our representatives in Congress: We call on you to immediately pass the War Powers Resolutions in the House and Senate, cease all weapons transfers to the Israeli government that is continuing its daily massacres in Gaza, and push for renewed diplomacy in the region.

Impeachment now. This is not a legal gray area - this open defiance of our constitutional system.