Just heard a tannoy announcement that at the next stop “all doors [on this train] will not open.” But if this is our stop, we are told, we should make our way to a door at which we see a uniformed crew member.

I can think of relatively few acts as selfish and destructive as suicide by aircraft-mounted salad shooter. Even if the aircraft stops without damage, wrecking the engine is going to trigger an evacuation, which nearly always results in some injuries, however minor.

There are few activities more redneck than drifting a tractor around in the backyard.

Ahh, what a lovely picture of the famously T-tailed, twin-rear-mounted-engine equipped 747.

Tit-for-tat gerrymandering was always a deeply flawed, last-ditch effort to try to resist permanent rule by a white-supremacist majority without overthrowing the entire system. It failed. There are no other choices: the whole damn system has to go.

I started doing desktop publishing stuff back in the 1980s when I was in grade school. It floors me that four decades later I still see people incorporating boxes-arrows-and-text figures into documents as raster images. FFS how are people still making the same mistakes?!?

Thanks to the FTC spokesperson who suggests that @wired.com “Stick to computers.” But no.

Part of me really wants to shoot some fort events on 8mm cinema film. Part of me understands what a phenomenally expensive pain in the ass that would be.

The Supreme Court found that a school acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people was such a violation of freedom of religion that they had to allow opt outs but now the 5th circuit says kids being exposed to the ten commandments isn't. The law is such a joke.

The WaPo editorial board when Republicans gerrymander in Texas versus when Democrats gerrymander in Virginia.

I need someone to make me a bunch of little plastic ⚧️-shaped beads so I can make an abacus to count misgenderings with when I’m on phone with support. And they *always* insist on calling.

Have random #blackandwhite #photography I did with a cylindrical cookie tin and the cheapest 5x7 film I could find.

I wonder whether I should be happy to be shown racist political ads. I mean, it clearly tells me what *not* to support; sometimes unmasks rich racists; and drains racists’ bank accounts. It doesn’t do the emotional harm to me that it might if I was the one targeted. Good to waste their money, maybe?

Have a roll of Ilford SFX #infrared film from the Ridonculous Beast: my Reality So Subtle 6x17 #pinhole camera. #blackandwhite #photography

I can’t wait for tomorrow’s election so I can stop being bombarded with fact-free, often racist, sometimes even overtly racist political advertising.

Dunked some color film from #FurTheMore and #Bewhiskered this morning

I made a camera from a $5 cookie tin, a $5 laser-cut pinhole, and some gaff tape and I am taking pictures with it.

Use of AI in any software development task should trigger strict product liability

Almost like the whole thing was a Really Bad Idea (TM).

More #blackandwhite #infrared #pinhole #photography. Ilford SFX in a Calumet 401/C2 with a 400um #pinhole and a 690nm filter. This cleaned up nicely.

Have another #infrared #blackandwhite #pinhole #photograph. Ilford RPX 25 in a Calumet 401/C2 with a 400um pinhole, developed in ID-11. #photography

Me, staring at half a walnut: brainssssss

We have many decades of verified, repeatable, consistent research showing that is exactly how mass media works. Several enormous industries are built on the idea of media affecting attitudes and beliefs. Reporters who deny this in a fit of pique at facing down their own behavior just look unserious.

This is good coverage of an overlooked pogrom against trans folks. If you prefer audio, here’s an interview with an author. This reminds me of a longstanding objection I’ve had to religious organizations using healthcare as a means to force social policy on people who did not choose that religion.

I developed and scanned a metric butt-tonne of black-and-white film today. Both the color film and the processing will have to wait. But first, some teasers: a 4x5 infrared, a pinhole infrared, and a long exposure at a fur con.

Also the US Confederacy should deffo not rest in peace.

Don’t mind me, just out in the garage cooking up a potion.

My article in NW Bylines about the Starmer government’s deployment of the misleading term “gender questioning” for trans kids. Trans kids need help resisting this loaded term. IMO it is being used to open the door to what I characterize as a government policy of “wraparound conversion therapy”

Don’t forget, you’re allowed call fascists fascists

$&%# you, Rollei. (For the uninitiated, panchromatic sheet film has to be loaded into film holders in total darkness by feel. A notch at the upper right tells you which side has the emulsion on it. Without this, if you drop the film, you can’t find the emulsion side ever again.)

Oh, hey, a headline that sounds like good news for once.

There is an infinitely more interesting story if there if you shift the narrative over one character and make it about the girl from the non-magical family becoming entangled in the modern fight against wizard fascism

cis women transphobes are as embarassing as they are revolting because they will declare with their whole chest “I am less capable than a man and I demand you treat me accordingly by lowering your expectations!” girl shut the fuck up there’s no gender advantage in CHESS

if a position of authority can be misused in this way, that position of authority should not exist. It's clearly not enough to simply change who is in that position, no more than praying that the next king be better than the last.

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning.. We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance. And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use! 1/

The horror of sitting across from a Trump voter is the realization that they do not believe in universal human rights. Simple as. They believe in a tiered, racist and patriarchical system of humanity, and they're voting to ensure they remain at the top of it.

I’ve been done with politicians’ fundbegging spam for years, but I am extra salty about it today. Mother€#%¥er I know the White House tyrant threatened war crimes. Tell me that you will do with your power, senator/congressman/whatever to stop him from doing so right now.

Hungary has banned Pride events, permitting the use of facial recognition technology to target participants. Yet last month, neo-Nazis held their annual gathering in Budapest with no objections from Viktor Orbán's government. This is why we call it gender fascism. crimethinc.com/GenderSelfDe...

In an age of creeping relativism, a universal moral law still exists. Threatening to end an entire civilization of 90 million people in order to bend a nation’s conduct to your will is grossly morally wrong. It is evil. And we should say this loudly.

From Reconstruction to "We tortured some folks," from Iran-Contra to January 6th, a prevailing ideology of American politics is that no one should face consequences, nothing should be fundamentally changed, and we should all happily move on as if ignoring the problem solves it.

Ra'il I'Nasah Kiam co-founded YourSlipisShowing, which played a key role in anti-racist and antifascist organizing online. But his work, like that of so many Black trans organizers, was thoroughly erased — when the movement he helped found was even mentioned at all. This is his story:

NASA’s new political appointee boss, Isaacman, responds to Trump’s repeat of the same proposal to gut most of NASA’s science and aviation work by belittling NASA staff. Some commenters at nasawatch.com/ask-the-admi... really have his measure.

He must think the Wall Street crowd is so stupid they can’t remember that he’s made this threat before, and Iran ignored it before. Unfortunately, he might be right. I’m not sure that crowd has mastered bladder control and object permanence.

FWIW, I tend to think that centrists, like leftists, want to think of themselves as “good people” who wouldn’t hurt anyone. And it takes some work to receive feedback about a way you did harm (however unintentionally) and take it as an opportunity to learn rather than an attack on core identity.

i just think Watering Flowers While Black should not be an arrestable offense nor do i think this should be controversial ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

It’s called being blackout drunk, you hoser.

Is that what Trump renamed the USA to?

What kind of imbecile do you have to be to think the way to lower drug prices is to double them?!?

I think there’s a concept that’s crucial to understanding why LLMs have inherently limited prospects that might not be top of mind to those without a formal computer science education: Amdahl’s Law.

I’m a researcher. I write a great deal. I have never used LLMs for any purpose, and I have no reason to think I ever will. The hard parts of research and writing aren’t the reading or the typing, they are the thinking. A machine that plagiaries and bullshits won’t help with that.