I woke this morning to thinking of socialism. The wind in the US is shifting. Not just the left either. Working class people are fed up of barely getting by. The last time this happened at scale was the 70s, Cities around the country built tall buildings to house folks, many of which were poorly maintained and turned to cesspools (but not all) and eventually were torn down. I hope we learn from the mistakes of the past - not only build massive buildings, but the infrastructure to support them too. People need green spaces…and not just roads and parking lots.

I’m optimistic that we will get closer to a success this time. It’s a shame other western countries get to have nice things while we have to work 3 jobs to cover the rent.

How do I plan to prepare? Inform, advocate, encourage. Vote.

Reference to a zombie movie.

But you can sleep soundly knowing that your taxes are $0.50 less more this year.

There was an interesting podcast recently from freakonomics about Epic software and how it’s always been private. It reinforced my perception that companies do better for humanity when they stay private.

Most C corps have the same tragedy of the masses problem that we face with pollution and resource scarcity. Not to mention that the average anything is mediocre. So, in a word, yes.

I really hope that some of these big players in the AI market will stay private. There are already enough headwinds to them being a force of good in the world without having to report to shareholders of the lowest denominator.

This guy’s a total shower.

Tiny home that I’m moving into in two weeks. And then a larger home that I plan on moving into at the end of the year if i can ever get my contractor to fix the mess his “buddy” made on the last roof repair.

And then, in addition to those two, just myself.

So…you are concerned that you used a calculator instead of doing math in your head?

Did you know how to do that math before hand?

I think the biggest risk to using AI is that people don’t first learn how to do something before using tools to do the thing. In other words, our 7th grade teachers were right. You should understand the principles before accessing the short cuts.

Lazy request warrants a lazy response. LMAITFY:

About 1.2 to 1.4M active users across the fediverse, with Mastodon making up the bulk at around 990k MAU on its own. Other platforms are much smaller: Pixelfed ~110k, Lemmy ~48k, PeerTube ~40k, Misskey ~21k.

Since these instances are defederated, it’s an approximation.

I use a chromecast and, good golly, the number of times I get 90+ second ads is insane. I downloaded nebula the other day and, once I finally get my fill of avgn in the next week or so, I’m leaving and never looking back.

This is disconcerting. China’s not going to slow down on their build out of infrastructure.

And for those who spin this as a positive. AI is not all LLMs. Real diseases are being cured by the complex modeling, real world tangible products, like airplanes and ships, are being designed safer.

I speculate that there’s a good chance that the modeling will eventually help to resolve the climate issue too, rather than continue to contribute to it. Physics models become more robust for simulating nuclear fusion; logistics models for transportation and energy distribution too.

Living in a tourist town, I don’t want a large data center in my backyard either, but there are plenty of places that do and where it makes sense to do so both from a logistical and resource perspective.

We get behind the curve here and it’s going to be near impossible to catch up, and when the smart people can’t play ball with the newest toys, that leads to brain drain.

“Outlook is looking bleak, I’m seeing double.”

At some point, about a decade ago, I started using inciteful rather than insightful in messages. I only realized my mistake after I got a new phone that flags it as a spelling error.

Oh man, what a dunce! I don’t know when my spelling got so aweful! I’m really glad to finally get that one off my chest.

Well, that’s just a price you pay for not springing for the premium service.

Now, watch this ad about a funeral service provider in your area before we can open the doors.

But aren’t they all running on open source infrastructure? Well, except for the ones who’ve undergone cosmetic surgery

• Ad free music, especially if most of it goes to the artist
• Ad free content creation, especially is most of it goes to the artist
• Ad free games, especially if most of it….
• lichess.org
• Activity pub development and hosting
• ability to pay my bills online
• central platforms to buy goods and services that I want (clothing, furniture, car parts, etc) mostly eBay nowadays as I try not to support Amazon and had a terrible experience on Mercari
• ad free podcasts that like to listen to
• direct from manufacturer car……soon-ish

Getting high on their own supply again I see.

Andean Condors - multiple of them. I want them to fly me around. “Today we fly, my birds!” - in exchange, I will give them as much food as they would ever need.

This stacked right by the house? I’ve been told that’s a good way for termites to find a good snack but then stay for the full course meal. Best to put that out in a shed or tarped over far away from the house.

There was this one time a few years back that I had to go to the dump to dispose of some various large material. Our dump is more of a transfer station with a big warehouse where everything is disposed of, compacted by giant bulldozers and then loaded onto other trucks to take to a nearby landfill in a separate county.

This particular visit it had been rainy for a few days, and I guess I must’ve gotten there right after the transfer trucks picked up all the refuse. Except for the floor, it was covered in a slippery stink-filled film. I carefully threw my truckload in, making sure that I didn’t fall, though I did slip a bit. It took some time to do so, so I came up with this little ditty. “Trash juice, trash juice, oh bring back my trash juice to me, to me!”

I did my work, shuffled my shoes and got into the car. Next stop was the grocery store. I’m fumbling around in the cheese aisle, and I guess I was still singing my song at a quiet mumble. Well, this old blue haired lady must’ve heard me. She turned around and recoiled “what are you singing!” In that way where it seemed like her whole life was built around cleanliness and my recitation was an affront to everything that she stood for.

Well, I got a good laugh out of that reaction, still do. Moral of the story is that singing to yourself does not necessarily negate other people thinking you’re a crazy person.