Hilary Mason

YouTube video by Road Less Marveled May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications

With news that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down due to Trump’s meddling, it’s worth watching Mr. Rogers testifying to the Senate about the real value of what we’ve all lost.

Women’s status is very rapidly eroding—in their civil rights protections, healthcare, access to the public sphere, and the cultural support for their independence and dignity. But there is no feminism: our public gender discourse is divided between transphobia and handwringing about man’s feelings.

The Discourse has almost nothing to do with the tech.

I feel gaslit by a whole industry about a thing I am nominally an expert on.

Yup! It only makes sense if it's power dynamics.

(And I say this as someone who likes to work hard on big things; that's not what this is.)

Here's my unpopular opinion: The 996 schedule isn't actually about productive work output, it's about having work take the place of an active social life and family as a person's primary obligations and sources of emotional support.

Trump’s AI plan is a massive handout to gas and chemical companies It’s another attack on bedrock environmental protections in the US.

Trump’s AI plan is a massive handout to gas and chemical companies

And ChatGPT is one such product, and OpenAI is indeed responsible for their choices here.

...but they are not hiding that it's a light LLM wrapper, and it's not a surprise that a light LLM wrapper would do this.

I do think there's a burden of responsibility for anyone building products that make use of LLMs to consider the impacts on the people who may use it for dangerous things.

So much AI angst comes from the difference between thinking about an LLM as a compressed representation of the language in the training data vs thinking about ChatGPT as a product experience.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Why do people sign up for game waitlists with emails like "imajerkwhohacksgames@domain.com".

I'm not going to invite you, dude.

i wrote a doc explaining why it's important that you call Visa / Mastercard and how to make your complaint as effective as possible (script included) rentry.co/visa-masterc...

for a campaign to succeed, it needs a high volume of legitimate Visa / MC users voicing their opposition to these policies.

No better time to celebrate than during the final hours of our 99 cent hat subscription sale!!!

hellgatenyc.com/99-cent-hat-...

I saw a GameTank machine in person for the first time today and I am charmed (it was also hooked up to a small CRT and you could smell the 90s vibes): gametank.zone

Excellent question. 😂

It’s Doro! esports.gg/news/nikke/d...

The east river. In the foreground there’s a pink inflatable bull (maybe?) on top of another white animal on a pink inflated raft all on a small barge, the background is the Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building and Manhattan skyline

Happy Saturday New York, I love you, I have some questions

I try not to amplify the awfulness, but this is just a straight up John Wick villain move

It was the best thing that has ever come in the mail here, thank you!

Mysterious fliers photocopied onto bright yellow paper. One is in some kind of code. Titles of others are “vampire prank weekend” and “endurance karaoke at club scintilla” and “pika season is coming are you prepared?”

Okay, can anyone explain these fliers that someone mailed to my Brooklyn office from Dallas, TX? (Is it an ARG?)

Congratulations! This is such important work.

A screenshot of an email subject line that says "Media coverage for {[companyName}}" (which has an obvious bracket mismatch error)

Trying so hard to not write back and tell them how to fix their error

Yes, you’re seeing more fireflies than usual in NYC this summer A wet spring brought the bugs back in force

If you’ve been enjoying this summer’s magical New York City twilights full of breezes and fireflies, it’s because of heavy spring rains!

www.timeout.com/newyork/news...

THIS.

Incredible. I never thought I would see a poster session as protest. 💪

I love when the little ones have that I WANNA RIDE energy!

Enjoy The Dragon!

Hey political science data folks: I've got a large (1-2 GB) dataset that I want to post someplace for public use. What are my best options?

A photo of the statue of liberty at dusk. It's peaceful, and there are several small boats in the water.

... "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883

www.nps.gov/stli/learn/h...

Whoa.

That's a sprite, an elusive, high-altitude electrical discharge from a thundercloud photographed by NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers from the ISS earlier today.

With reported sightings going back more than a century, this phenomenon was first photographed in 1989.