Today I am just saying nope to empty news calories.
Two articles about Tucker Carlson’s last broadcast? Another day I might have read one or both but today I just say nope.
A profile of a powerful Democratic political consultant who is apparently an awful person? Another day I would gobble that up, but today? Nope.
I hope I can keep this up.
This blog is a LGBTQ- and trans-friendly place.
I’m posting less about politics nowadays, and that’s a conscious decision by me.
But given all the hate coming out of the red states nowadays, it seems to me to be necessary to take a stand on this issue.
Anti-trans bigotry taps into the darkest impulses in human societies. It’s a step on a dark road that ends in genocide.
Timothy Lee: “Why I’m not worried about AI causing mass unemployment. Software didn’t eat the world and AI won’t either.”
You should always start the day with gratitude. This morning I’m grateful that the cat vomit on my blanket was quick and easy to clean up.
Cory Doctorow’s “Red Team Blues” is the most exciting technothriller about a 67-year-old accountant you’ll read this year 📚
“Red Team Blues,” the latest novel by the prolific Cory Doctorow, is a gripping technothriller about billion-dollar cryptocurrency crime. I don’t often encounter fiction that pulls me in as hard as “Red Team Blues” anymore—I’m a jaded reader. But “Red Team Blues” kept me up well past my bedtime on more than one night, and I staggered around bleary-eyed at work the next day. I should send Cory a bill.
Cats are always disappointed in you, whereas dogs always think you’re amazing and you’re disappointed in yourself for failing to live up to their high regard.
Just a reminder that ALL the sticks in the forest are free. Go out and get yourself a cool stick. You earned it!
The 65 newest series and movies to stream right now - The Washington Post.
Some of these are already on our watchlist, and I’ve bookmarked a bunch of trailers for others.
Tonight I wiki’d and googled about the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon stories 📚and their author, Spider Robinson. The bar travels through time and space1 but its home base is Route 25A, in Suffolk County on Long Island, which is just a few miles from where I grew up. Robinson went to the same college I did, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Then I wiki’d my home town, Huntington Township on Long Island, and was surprised to learn about many notable people who came from there, all of which I immediately forgot, because it is late and I am tired.
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Like the TARDIS on Doctor Who, if the TARDIS was a bar. ↩︎
Noncompete clauses and related employment agreements are indentured servitude.
Noncompetes epitomize MLK’s “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.” They’re a way for employers to operate in a command economy where the power of the state can be mobilized against uppity workers who dare to seek a better deal…. “
— Cory Doctorow, How workers get trapped by “bondage fees”
📚I reread “Snow Crash, recently and recommend it. It gets better with age.
When people talk about “Snow Crash” today, all they talk about is the Metaverse. But there is a lot going on in that novel, and the Metaverse is only part of it.
I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that the novel is satire. It’s funny. People talk so seriously about the book that I had forgotten. I laughed out loud at the payoff to the joke about the dog.
ChatGPT Is Already Changing How I Do My Job. By Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times.
Guillotinable. The bit about the dog isn’t even the worst thing this narcissistic dipshit said. Not even close.
CEO Celebrates Worker Who Sold Family Dog After He Demanded They Return to Office
In his memo announcing the cuts Peretti took full responsibility, writing “I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better…” which is why 180 other people will be getting fired instead of him. He’s learned so much, and going forward he’ll bring a new spirit of collaboration and humility to the AI garbage he replaces them with.