Given that the topic of the day is health care for rich people: Even if you (think you) don't need the "insurance" part of health insurance, you still need health insurance to get real prices, because the insurers require providers to charge everyone else ridiculous random numbers.

I’ve signed a galactic decree that he can’t do that.

I’m worried that the Rebel Moon cinematic universe might have lost momentum.

I missed it, but several days ago we entered that strange time of year when the days are still getting shorter, but sunset is getting later. How am I the only one who thinks this is deeply weird? The cosmic ballet continues.

The entire Venezuelan prison population is 25,000. Not twenty-five million. Twenty-five thousand.

Occasionally billionaires will be like "gun control is completely impractical if it impacts survival bunker arsenals" or "shipping costs are more impactful than tariffs on my private island" and...oh yeah. I almost forgot we should ignore you.

I am very close to "giving up" on #adventofcode Day 10 Part 2, by which I mean just feeding it into a linear algebra solver. Which totally violates my AoC goal to use the least powerful algorithm required. It is so frustrating knowing there is a "trivial" library solution just sitting there.

The party of states’ rights. The party of local control.

Obviously Trump should be impeached. But just as Dems can choose to be the party if reality instead of trying to be better liars than MAGA, they can also choose to be the party of substance instead of the party of feckless posturing. And impeachment is *obvious* posturing.

I pray that both pols and media get the message that the way you deal with hand-waving and deflection is to demand details. Because healthcare.

The “data centers are bad” critique of AI is so weird. It’s like complaining that gun factories are too noisy.

Surprisingly straightforward day 11 of #adventofcode, requiring only the One Famous AoC Optimization. 20 lines of python; negligible runtime. Still haven't gotten back to day 10 part 2; hope I get a chance to do that tomorrow before the finale.

When you hear a politician say "we want regular people to make complex technical decisions for themselves" what they mean is "We want to remove protections for regular people so that specialists can prey on them." Every. Fucking. Time.

This also explains why Trump’s comments today were…vaguely normal. If he’d just randomly seized a boat on his own say-so he’d have been far more proud of himself.

Sergio Cilli’s whole series of Instagram reels about AI actors is entertaining, but this latest is a great reminder that human actors—even those you don’t think of as particularly great—have *skills*, man. www.instagram.com/reel/DSFz8o4...

Forget the Trump Gold Card. How much for a letter of marque?

When Trump says he doesn’t know something I consider that this time he *might* be telling the truth.

If US residency is worth a million dollars, the next step is to let residents sell them on the open market. Make these MAGA “patriots” the offer and see how much they really love America.

The Trump Platinum Card should simply be called “the alternative maximum tax”.

Oh no: day 10 of #adventofcode and for the first night I hit my one-hour time limit before heading to bed and coming back to it tomorrow. Got the sample data for Part 2 quickly, but brute force doesn't work on the real data. I see how it's doable, but can't face the code while sleepy.

Currently watching A House of Dynamite, and I have never been so excited to hear what @dandrezner.bsky.social has to say about this strange mess of a movie.

I am not a parent, but bear with me: I bet it's a lot easier—like a LOT easier—if you're a billionaire. Kinda seems more important than a chatbot that will get the answer to "should I shake the baby?" right 70% of the time.

My reaction is that this is a Hitler rally. “Why the hell did Germans think someone spouting pure hate was ‘charismatic’?” is a question I’ve never been able to answer. It’s no longer restricted to Germans.

I’ve told this story before, but I once worked with an (older) engineer from Iran whose family fled during the revolution. He got some kind of immediate citizenship offer, and suddenly someone was there to swear him in… 1/2

I read the Harry Potter books as they were released and liked them and thought it was great they were encouraging kids to read. And then I met an entire generation who thinks they’re civilization-defining texts. FFS I liked Encyclopedia Brown as a kid but I got over it.

(This) Walmart does not stock white chocolate bars and it’s blatant discrimination against pervs like me who like white chocolate. Store manager: prison. Walmart executives: prison.

I was planning on going to see Wake Up Dead Man in a theater today…only to discover it’s not in (any convenient) theaters. So much for my attempt to prop up a dying industry. (Streaming release Friday, apparently.)

Oof; day 9 of #adventofcode (part 2) is the first day I've had to actually sit back, grab a snack, and think up a strategy. Again, lots of ugly redundant code (70 lines of Python)...and meaningful compute time (5 seconds). But a right answer is a right answer. On to the last three days!

Ask me about the pull-up rings hanging in my living room. I dare you.

When you take all the drugs to increase muscle mass but don't hit the gym.

Labour is tired of governing and wants to be voted out.

I grew up in an age when politicians would say “Our farmers are incredibly smart. They’re technologists, the equal of any Silicon Valley coder.” Now: “Our farmers are too dumb to turn on their lawnmowers. I demand we make farming easier because our farmers are so dumb.”

Almost ten years ago now I was working at Bloomberg, and the TV studio is in the same building as all the engineers, on effectively a sky lobby floor. So occasionally I’d running from meeting to meeting, and there would be a celebrity wandering around. Which, honestly was kinda cool. 1/

A lot of folks on here spout off about principles, but I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is: If FIFA offered me next year’s Peace Prize, I’d turn it down. The trophy part, at least. Unless they came up with a particularly good bribe.

My Facebook notifications are currently flooded by the “murdering insurance CEOs is a moral duty” crowd. It’s cute.

Is anyone else stewing over the fact that #adventofcode day 8…didn’t ask the right question? Like, we should be finding the shortest set of connections to join all the junctions, right? The minimum spanning tree? I was *sure* that would be Part 2. Which worried me. Because it would be hard.

Anyone want to wager on which remaining day of #adventofcode will rely on bfs as the core algorithm? Every year it becomes a little game of whether I can bang it out from scratch in Python in a minute or two... (I believe others have already applied BFS in days 1 to 8, but it wasn't necessary.)

Day 8 of #adventofcode is both my ugliest code (40 whole lines; could easily rewrite it in half that) and the first time I've actually used nontrivial compute (700ms). But...meh. Reinforces the lesson I use AoC to remind myself of: spending time fussing over working code is bad engineering.

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

These people are children.

As a (young) teen I asked my father if he had any dating advice. “Wine by the neck, women by the waist, my son” he told me. All I ever got out of him. It’s not good advice. Or at all helpful. But I now realize he could have done a LOT worse.

I don’t object to the term “third-world” on touchy-feely woke principles. It’s just a very clear tell that you don’t know anything about geopolitics. It’s like someone setting health policy who regular references the four humors.

Maybe we should just let Hegseth drink.

An actual conservative(/libertarian) argument is “there is now an effective private sector in shipping/communications and transportation; government should exit the business”. Instead we get “the government business should be shitty and that will prove how shitty it is”.

I think I might have hit the leaderboard for #adventofcode Day 7? I mean...if there were still a leaderboard? (~10 mins)

Right up there with “shouldn’t it be Back to the Present?”

This is a prime example of a media so desperate for easy stories that they can’t tell their audience “this is utter nonsense and beneath your attention”.

Day 6 of #adventofcode is the first day I’ve actually bothered trying the test inputs…and necessary because I had an off-by-one error in my rather ugly futzing with character positions. 30 lines of Python; negligible runtime.

I find it genuinely interesting that so many people who were engaged by outright sociopaths like Tony Soprano and Walter White can't bear to watch an antisocial but deeply moral character like the protagonist of Pluribus. And I wonder how much of it is just cover for dismissing a woman/lesbian.

Listen: the UN General Assembly Hall is similarly dystopian. Internationalists are all supervillains when it comes to architecture.