I’m glad someone else is calling this out. He seemed so thoughtful and methodical previously.

So for the guy to get busted because he eats in a public place, while a huge manhunt is ongoing, and he happens to have on his person: the gun, the fake id previously used, and a manifesto expressing his motive? It’s ridiculous! He could have tossed the gun into a body of water anywhere on his route outside NYC and it would never be found. And why reuse the same ID if you had several? Why not burn the associated IDs after they’ve been compromised?

It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve seen suggestions that this could have been a state hit, maybe to destabilize the country further? Would our spooks make up a lazy narrative to cover up for their spooks?

Surely some of these are fannon? Also, do the robots next!

Many school shooters talk about wanting to be seen, wanting fame/notoriety, and so on. With the huge positive response to this, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see copycats. “If I do this, people will remember me and love me for it.”

I first heard of it from Joel Spolsky’s blog and wikipedia also credits that article with popularizing the concept. In it’s original formulation, it was based on remote procedure calls being hidden in APIs. Because a remote computer call has all these limits of latency, packet/info loss, and possible connection loss, it is impossible to make a perfect abstraction that allows the programmer to treat the remote call as though it were local. The reality the abstraction tries to hide “leaks” in those fundamental limits.

All of contemporary global society is such an abstraction; that’s one of the principles of post-modernism. When you buy clothes online an entire invisible work force of shippers, manufacturers, resource procurerers, and more lies beind each article of fabric.

Pressure from climate change, tariffs, global war, and more are straining the foundations of society and the comfortable abstraction is starting to crack.

Live by the dollar, die by the dollar

Is this a variation on “there are only 2 stories: a person goes on a long journey, and a stranger comes to town.” Some would argue those are two sides of the same story (digressions about this are the backbone of Lemony Snicket’s Poison for Breakfast, an excellent light read).

So does Widow also go through a mutation arc and become an 8 legged horse at some point? Cause that sounds rad af

The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade.

Yeah no shit! When my computer does full-screen, disruptive things that I didn’t tell it to do, I figure out how to remove that malware. I’ve been off Windows at home for about a month now, thanks Linux Mint! Getting some games to work has been challenging, but most things have just worked and quite a few work much better!

Performance is up overall, and my confidence that my computer isn’t running a bunch of secret ad and spy ware is way up. Hardware like my gamepad and microphone would randomly disconnect and have issues on Windows, all working perfectly now.

Unfortunately I’m still deep in MS land for work, but there’s almost a comedic quality to it. Everything’s very slow, everyone has constant issues with Teams, or Office online, or Dynamics, or copilot shoving it’s tendrils into everything. Watching businesses struggle to keep operating in the face of Microsoft’s inadequacy is like being a mechanic watching a motor grind to a halt because the owner/manufacturer replaced all the oil with syrup.

Like yes, it’s my problem to fix, but I’m just glad it’s not my car.

I had in some ways the opposite 23&Me experience and goals. My parents told me growing up that I had some small native ancestry. This is actually a common myth many Americans have either been told or somehow deluded themselves into believing.

So I did the DNA testing (which I now regret from all the obvious enshittification and privacy reasons) to prove that my ancestry was boring and predictable. Which it was, no indigenous ancestry, just the expected European countries that my great grandparents came from.

They also do a lot of nice health screening things and I think that’s probably the much more valuable aspect of it. It really is very American that people are so much more concerned with what DNA says about one’s race or ethnicity than about their health and wellbeing.

As Abraham Lincoln famously warned, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!”

Every 5 minutes, at max volume:

YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. ALL AVAILABLE OPERATORS ARE HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS. PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.

2 minutes later:

DID YOU KNOW <COMPANY> IS WORKING TO SAVE CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU MONEY? UPGRADE YOUR PLAN TO ULTIMATE TODAY AND SAVE! YOU CAN ADD BASIC CABLE TO YOUR INTERNET PLAN FOR FREE FOR 3 MONTHS. MAKE ANY SOUND AT ALL TO LEAVE THE SUPPORT QUEUE AND SPEAK WITH A NEW ACCOUNT SPECIALIST RIGHT AWAY.

returns to playing compressed elevator music through an old can

I’m far more afraid of the Nazis in Baton Rouge running this state than I am of Acadians hunting out in the swamps. Just don’t go in the swamp! The Nazis are actively making life worse whether you seek them or not.

Coffee beans are laid out on a big sheet after roasting and then sprayed with flavor oils to create this kind of thing. So it’s no more or less healthy than any coffee, plus some flavor compounds that probably won’t give you cancer at those concentrations.

Flavor-wise is up to your preferences. Coffee snobs are dorks, don’t listen to them. Obviously M&M flavored coffee isn’t something you hand grind for a pour over, you brew it up in bulk then add some sugar and milk to bring out the chocolate flavoring.

Would I prefer a pour over with some fine cocoa powder? Sure. I also have time and energy to put into coffee. Some people need the coffee to put time and energy into them.

Thish posht… isht very intereshting sniff what ideology can we ashsume from it?

I see the great minds are thinking alike

My reaction when I heard it was trending was to slap this together:

I like how I know this story didn’t happen anywhere close to me since: no one calls them “cycle paths”, we hardly have any “bike lanes” anyway, and we definitely don’t have any trains to ride while discussing biking.

Now, if this had been a story about guns, trucks, and psychopaths, it would have been very relatable.

He likens Arkane’s approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: “Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that’s what Arkane had to do.”

Damn, what a concept: doing the same kind of game multiple times, iterating on the design to perfect it. Obviously Bethesda gets releasing the same game over and over again, but this idea of “improving” the design is so alien to them. Wouldn’t adding thousands of microtransactions be an improvement?

Blame Camus

I’ve expressed a similar sentiment as “it’s easy to be enlightened up on a mountain.” As in, big whoop to all the wise hermits who fled society to find peace: that’s not being above the problems of the world (except literally), it’s hiding from them and pretending that ignorance can be bliss again. The real work is maintaining peace and wisdom in the face of monstrous injustice.