Rajiv Moté

Beyond that, "Balloon Season" has the best, most unique, most horrific spin on a zombie horde that I've ever seen.

"Balloon Season" is the first Thomas Ha story I read, and it remains among my favorites. Reading it again in the wake of ICE's invasion of Chicago, the tension around "should I be doing more? But what about my responsibility to family?" hits acutely. Can we become too comfortable in our coping?

It sucks that by the time I can free up a weekend and coordinate with friends, the movie we thought of seeing has ended it's theatrical run.

Good. Trek is large, and contains multitudes.

amicus curare - "friend of the paralytic poison"

This is the age of no love that dare not speak its name.

Imagine proudly accepting this "prize."

Imagine putting that medal around your own neck, in front of cameras.

Imagine thinking, as you do, "yes, I deserve this."

This is a quote from the article summing up both studies in Technology Review: "A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate—in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things."

Two independent studies found that AI chatbots were better at persuading voters than political ads. The most persuasive bots also lied the most. This is something that humans working in psyops have known for decades. AI is psyops at scale. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/04/1...

I'll admit it, I believed it. I figured it was exactly the kind of project that was in his comfort zone and would keep him happy. He likes having things built and putting his name on them.

But if it's just a personal donation laundering scheme, that's certainly plausible too.

Sometimes, apropos of nothing, I think about how unnerving Kevin Hassett's perpetual smile is. I imagine him with the same expression, with the worst atrocities going on in the background, lavishing praise on his leader.

Casting Kevin Hassett as the Mouth of Sauron would've 10Xed the creepiness.

Someone changed the channel on the White House TV.

My grade school Spanish teacher made the same proposal, to resounding boos from Omaha Public School children. Senorita Cuadrado, I hope you feel vindicated.

I'm looking forward to the announcements of the FIFA prizes in Literature, Economics, Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics.

It's like the world is The Truman Show, but it's all centered around delighting a narcissistic man-child.

Holy shit, if we ARE living in a simulation, it's more idiotic than I would have dared imagine.

Wow. What if Trump exits office and there's nothing but a ruin where the east wing of the White House was?

So symbolic.

Huh. Kind of like a flesh-embodied LLM.

I couldn't bear being in the same room with Alex Karp for more than 30 seconds, and that's even discounting the content of what he says.

In a driveway, a silver Smart Car in the background, a little girl in a tiny plastic toy car in the foreground

I mean, tiny cars can be adorable.

It's strange to watch his brain spill itself on the world stage like this. Historians will look back on this, mystified why this man's random statements were in such central focus. They will doubt their understanding of how the world of this era worked. His prominence will be one of those mysteries.

Dan Wineman @dwineman@xoxo.zone You’re absolutely right — you are Pagliacci. It would certainly be difficult for you to attend your own performance! I should not have given such paradoxical advice, and I apologize deeply for the error. There is no excuse for my failure. Nevertheless, comedy is a powerful healing force. My recommendation is to seek out live entertainment. For example, great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up. 🔗 Sponsored Reply (Great Clown Productions, Ltd.) Dec 02, 2025, 03:10 PM · · Mona for Mac https://xoxo.zone/@dwineman/115651788702895997

I like tiny cars. I once drove my mom's Smart Car across the midwest, and it elicited smiles, greetings, and conversation wherever I stopped. It was fun.

What does Trump have to do with the American auto industry making them? I dunno. But this is the most harmless proclamation from him I've read.

A silver Smart Car, on the side of a country road by the corn fields and wind turbines of the midwest

I like tiny cars. I once drove my mom's Smart Car across the midwest, and it elicited smiles, greetings, and conversation wherever I stopped. It was fun.

What does Trump have to do with the American auto industry making them? I dunno. But this is the most harmless proclamation from him I've read.

The Power of Speech

I good way to avoid those comparisons would be not to fall asleep in front of the cameras.

There is no house on the street, only an ever-consuming void that took its form

I was masking a house out of a photo for an edit and accidentally made an ontologically evil image

Do we contradict ourselves?
Very well then we contradict oursevles,
We are large, we contain multitudes
And we own the Department of Justice.

In theory, no!

(Practically, though, yes.)

a cartoon of homer simpson and marge simpson with the word wow in the corner Alt: The Simpsons: "Wow! What kind of mileage does it get?" "One highway, zero city."

This is indeed a choice.

‘End-to-end encrypted’ smart toilet camera is not actually end-to-end encrypted | TechCrunch Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers' data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.

NEW: Your "end-to-end encrypted" poop pictures taken by this $599 (+ subscription) smart toilet camera are actually not end-to-end encrypted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/e...

"Why, it is the very nature of the Venezuelan to run drugs. It is an inextricable quality of his existence. If he's breathing, he's running drugs. That makes him a threat to our great nation."
-- some 'expert witness' they put on the stand