Contrafagotto32

Hey, I remember that store! (Lived in Corvallis from 1987-2002.)

A screen shot of a part of a conversation with Vrbo's customer service AI chatbot. The user asks "Agent". The AI replies "Sure, I'll connect you to an agent right away. Please hold on for a moment.", immediately followed by "You don't have any upcoming bookings that I can help you with. Do you want to see a different booking?" The user replies "Agent", and the AI replies "I'm sorry, but I am an AI assistant and cannot connect you to a live agent. How can I assist you today?"

I nominate Vrbo for a @kevlin.bsky.social. (And for clarity, this is after several attempts to engage with the chatbot to ask about an issue with my booking, which it tells me I don't even have.)

Neat thing is that the relay is on a timer, giving you about 60sec exit time before the lights go out.

Palm Springs - newer chain hotel just outside of town.

A close-up of an interior wall with a light switch. Above the light switch is a device, about the same size, with a slot for inserting a key card (the size of a credit card). The slot is labeled "Insert Card for Power".

Ever encounter this one before, @deviantollam.bsky.social ?

Uncle Sam billboard on I-5 near Chehalis goes from right-wing zingers to a statement of Native rights The billboard, with separate messages for people traveling north and south on I-5, has garnered an undue amount of attention since the highway cut through the turkey farm owned by Alfred Hamilton and his wife Ruth in the early 1960s.

The 70-year saga of the Uncle Sam billboard on I-5 south of Chehalis and its provocative, conservative messaging took an abrupt turn this summer when the billboard and the 3.5 acres on which it sits was purchased by the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.

It is playable, I just heard it briefly on Wednesday when I was filming there.

In the future, as an olive branch to MAGA people, when we’re done removing Trump’s name off of everything, we’ll remove Reagan’s too. Starting with National Airport.

I'd give you an answer, but the first rule of George Soros club is that you don't...

I recently switched to using Kagi, which is a paid search service. No ads, minimal AI (and can be disabled). Feels like Google did over a decade ago. Just results, and usually pretty good ones.

I once searched for something related to my documentary (I forget exactly what) and the AI suggestion was not only a complete hallucination of people and events that never happened, it referred me to *my own web site* as the source. The referenced page said no such things.

Just in time for my road trip through CA/NV/AZ.

The late centrist blogger Kevin Drum was a big proponent of the "lead-crime hypothesis" and I tend to agree it's a bigger influence on criminality/antisocial behavior than sociologists give it credit for.

Things are getting...

...animated:

Article From The Columbian Newspaper, Vancouver, Washington, December 27, 1977: PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Does a nude statue in Portland's downtown Transit Mall injure Earthquake Ethel's reputation for modesty? According to a $1 million suit filed Wednesday in Multnomah County District Court, the "humiliation of having been undressed in public is a wrong the redressing of which will not redress. The tongue-in-cheek suit was filed by lawyer Henry A. Carey Jr. in behalf of his client "Earthquake Ethel." The original lady of that name was a dancer in the San Francisco area in the early 20th century. Stories say Ethel Hodgkiss acquired the name because the 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred while she was performing her act. The name was carried on by a daughter and continued by a granddaughter who lives in San Francisco. Carey's suit states that Ms. Ethel's success as a dancer has been in never allowing her "magnificent body" to be viewed completely in the nude. The plaintiff charges all her secrets have been bared by Portland's new downtown statue. The famous dancer is better known in Portland as the name of a local restaurant and discotheque. Peter Wiley, a spokesman for the restaurant, said the living Ms. Ethel is aware of the spoof suit and is in full accord with the action. The suit offers to forgo the $1-million damage claim if the defendants publicly acknowledge that the sculpture is, in fact, patterned after Earthquake Ethel's "well-formed" body.

"Unclad Ethel Prompts Suit" - a headline for the ages. (Article text in image alt text.)

I have 2 autographed copies of this. Bud autographed posters as a charity fundraiser of some kind back in the day. My parents got 1 for them, and 1 for me. Trivia: As a publicity stunt, the woman playing "Earthquake Ethel" sued, saying the statue was made in her image. It made the papers for awhile.

Well, the difference, you see, is it's OK to track every move, public & private, of vulnerable people with few rights, resources, or defenses. It's not OK to track the public moves of masked, armed goons who come into town and have the backing of the federal gov. I hope that clears things up!

I got to learn a lot about how Portlandia was installed when I did the 30+month time-lapse photography project for the reconstruction of the Portland Building: www.convey.tv/portfolio/ti...

For a few years, I rented a commercial space from the same MAGA landlord that owns the building ICE is using. He tried to stick me with the cost of replacing a garage door that (thankfully) Google Maps showed was damaged before I ever leased the space. May he slowly decompose in regulatory hell.

Screen shot of a video editor timeline. The preview area shows a clip of a forklift operator inside the cab of a forklift. An error message has popped up "Critical Exception - Driver Not Loaded Driver Not Loaded" (yes, twice).

I'm sorry, Da Vinci Resolve, but the driver IS loaded. I can see him right there. Please stop popping up these silly "critical exception" error messages and let me get back to work.

This represents a fascinating lesson about law/regulation-writing. On the one hand, we want simplicity, so adding a bunch of exceptions like "no need to post this sign in areas where firearms are already prohibited" makes the law longer and harder to read, but staying simpler leads to absurdities.

Are these also the 1 in 5 dentists who don't recommend Trident gum?

In addition to reputational harm and lost revenue, if he is receiving threats and any of those threats reference false public statements, are there criminal or injunctive remedies to be sought there? (I assume he's already getting good advice and knew this sort of thing might happen.) /Fin

Entities including his own employer and distributors are making claims that lead people to believe he was suspended for making insensitive statements about Charlie Kirk, when in fact he was criticizing people for using his murder for political gain. (Don't know if that's too subtle a distinction) 2/

A question for @kenwhite.bsky.social - I read your post about how if Kimmel were to sue the Trump admin. for rights violations, there would be little remedy except possibly injunctive relief, which might not be of much use. I wonder if there is a way he could pursue private entities for harm? 1/

"Embarrassingly unprofessional, how buffoonish, Trump’s complaint was." - This is even better if you imagine it in Yoda's voice.

We also cancelled Disney/Hulu last night. I did not expect Andor to become a live-action interactive experience with nonconsensual audience participation. (Well, I did expect it, I just didn't want it.)

We just cancelled our Dish Network service entirely, after 27 years of continuous operation. I know that Trump-buddy and Dish-founder Charlie Ergen won't feel it, but I can no longer let my $$$ go to fascists just for entertainment. Other things will be tougher, but looking for alternatives.

It was especially irritating to those of us willing to show our faces and put our names and careers on the line. But now is different. (To me, at least.) Antifa, in part thanks to this fascist admin, is now anyone who opposes them. So color me Antifa if you will. Not uncomfortable after all. /Fin

I will add that being a Portlander, there was a time when I did not approve of who locally called themselves "anitfa" - they were masked protestors that always seemed to turn up and disrupt more mainstream protests, provoking violence, and make everyone look bad on the news... /5