Chris Lentini

Sure. There was some quote floating around on here along the lines of the rich on the right view political advocacy as existential, while on the left it is treated like charity / an obligation. There is a ring of truth to that for me.

Yeah maybe in terms of degree it is an outlier, but in broad strokes I think the point remains that right wing billionaires have made partisan media a priority in a way there is no left equivalent to?

And I'm not saying there should be, but it is something I think needs to be grappled with

My intuition is this is right but maybe undersells the degree to which right-wing billionaires have been willing to both fund and weaponize media? There is no left wing equivalent to someone buying a social media site for 44 billion and using it to shape the information environment

X-ray of a human skull

This is an x-ray of a skull. Probably being presented to you by a doctor. Do not fear, they are not threatening you with Nazi symbology. You will be okay (hopefully).

Abuser mentality - "look what you are making me do"

a man in a suit says how am i not myself Alt: Jude Law in the movie I Heart Huckabees, asking "How am I not myself?"

Which feels like a totally portlander thing to do

a lot of the interesting work since concerns how to best utilize this CPU in some more fully featured system + program loop (i.e. how to beat structure and retrieve memory, what sorts of "programs" are most effective for what tasks)

I am partial to thinking of the core LLM as a type of CPU that executes (in a sense) natural language programs. Early chat bots were a very simple and raw interface to this "CPU" - the "CPU" itself obviously keeps getting better but IMO...

Reasoning Models Can be Easily Hacked by Fake Reasoning Bias Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) like DeepSeek-R1 and o1 are increasingly used as automated evaluators, raising critical questions about their vulnerability to the aesthetics of reasoning in LLM-as-a-jud...

arxiv.org/abs/2507.13758

"LRMs are consistently more susceptible to RTB [reasoning theater bias] than general-purpose LLMs"

Basically - they are susceptible to flawed arguments that nonetheless present as logical.

Honestly, sounds like a lot of people in the world right now...

Case in point - the horrible tragedy unfolding now.

We ignore reality at our own peril.

Sadly, even the inevitable misery that follows from trying to pretend like truth is something you control is not enough to wake some people up. A truth I did not fully appreciate until covid

It's a kind of subjectivism or even solipsism, I guess. All that matters is having the power to impose your truth on the world.

An inherently fragile / dead-ended way of living. Ultimately reality asserts itself - COVID / natural disaster / etc - with pain and misery sure to follow

I'm so fucking sick of this shit.

Salvation Sequence?
I really love Hamilton, but, well, yeah...

I've seen a jicama described as like a potato-apple hybrid. So, like is he just completely talking out of his ass, or did he just like see one or hear about them and think they actually are a hybrid or something? Bizarre

One of these days, some asynchronous UI layout update is going to cause someone to click "launch all the nukes" when they really meant to click "destroy all the nukes"

Convinced the laws of conservation are wrong. How else to explain the endless supply of snot produced by my nose?

Checkmate physicists.

People like JFK, Ben Shapiro and others have been pretty successful at co-opting the aesthetics of rational discourse, and abusing this image to then fool & confuse those (including, I think maybe, themselves) who can't really distinguish between the aesthetic and the real deal.

So many emotionally impactful moments in this episode. Definitely one of my top episodes of all time for any show.

Thank you

A New Hampshire man with a green card was detained by immigration officers at Logan Airport and is being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Donald W. Wyatt detention facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Fabian Schmidt’s family said they are unsure of why he is being held. They said he has a recently renewed green card, and no active issues in court. Schmidt had been visiting Luxembourg and flew back to the U.S. on Friday. His partner had gone to pick him up at Logan Airport, and waited four hours before calling authorities. “It was just said that his green card was flagged,” said Astrid Senior, his mother. She said she didn’t hear from her son directly until Tuesday, when she learned he’d been hospitalized. Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair. She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.

ICE agents are torturing a green card holder from New Hampshire, his mother says

www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025...

Rewatching Voyager, and boy that Tuvix episode... Is kind of fucked up

I will say that in all fairness it is easy for people on here to blast you for this. Plenty probably would not rise to the occasion either. The thing is, we desperately need you and other congressional Dems to meet this moment in history.
And this is not it.

And that's maybe a little harsh, CNN is not OAN. Obviously. But you are still capitulating and trying to rationalize it.

I mean, yeah, probably they would? But why should I care? If the only way you can see to report the news is to roll over and hold on to your position of privilege, what really makes you any better?

It boggles the mind that we, as a country, looked at stuff like this and said "That's our guy."

And it's not like it was hidden or anything, we actually elected a guy that repeatedly spent campaign time rambling on about Hannibal Lecter.

It's crazy making.

"They're just kids"

Okay, then why are they being allowed to rampage through sensitive government systems?

"They are smart capable professionals"

Okay, then why shouldn't they be subject to the same scrutiny and oversight as any other person wielding this much power?

You can't have it both ways

Living in constant paranoia and anxiety about things you are unfamiliar with and reaching for violence as your primary tool to cope... Very healthy, not at all big scared babies

Like, sure, good policy is good policy. But now *they* get the credit for what *you* should be fighting for.
The difference between "we'll support their good ideas" and "here is how we are fighting for you, we will push Republicans to join us"

The issue, IMO, with all the "we'll work with Trump/RFK/etc on housing/spending/whatever" - it cedes the initiative and leadership to them, legitimizing them. Now you aren't the one with the good ideas, they are; you are just along for the ride.