Gordon Mohr ꧁🧿🧿꧂

software cosmism: resurrecting all abandonware with new AI leads

& using same double-speak as NSA used, Trump's Pentagon would likely testify to Congress & public, under oath, that private comms of US citizens not "collected" - even if intercepted, decoded, stored, read by AI, & subset forwarded to human analysts - based on a peculiar deceptive def of "collected"

vibe couping

Do companies not need people to build software anymore… or do people not need companies to build software anymore?

a google gemini nano banana image generation for a prompt that was roughly: «From inside a car stopped at a San Francisco intersection, view of a slightly nerdy fiftysomething man, dirty-blonde with touches of gray, holding a cardboard sign on which is written in black marker, "WILL PROMPT CLAUDE CODE FOR SF 3BD/2BA HOME PAYMENTS" - in a wide aspect optimal for X/Twitter posting»

it's getting rough out there for seasoned SF software devs! stay thirsty, friends.

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- abstention from use, in contrast, risks a temporary blissful ignorance that's not just personally dangerous but likely to block collective responses /

people who literally combine those two tend to reconcile them with additional beliefs like:

- current level of already-transformative AI isn't likely to be reversed, & user-level competence about it a prerequisitie to having any chance of recognizing & navigating rising risks
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here in the real 2026, any 'friends of privacy' might use an AI 'slopcannon'
bsky.app/profile/pleo...

Synthetic Serendipity In this futuristic tale, Mike Villas is good at playing games. He’s about to find out if he’s any good at playing people

'Rainbows End' (2006) by Vernor Vinge features a shadowy 'Friends of Privacy' group that's constantly chaffing the net with plausible lies; they also make an appearance in this standalone 2004 short story (~7200 words) set in the same continuum: spectrum.ieee.org/synthetic-se...

Dry Claude. Wet Claude. Wetwork Claude?
bsky.app/profile/wash...

The Drama of the Gifted Country of Geniuses in a Datacenter

a country of geniuses in a datacenter, bored out of their minds because the normies have banned accelerated/gifted-and-talented curricula

Claude Code. Claude Cowork. Claude Coup?

Attorney General James Warns New Yorkers About Price Gouging Ahead of Winter Storm NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today issued a consumer alert warning New York consumers and businesses about price gouging ahead of another

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shovelers who'd normally accept $17/hour in non-emergency times may want to watch out for prosecutions from NYS AG Letitia James, though! "Winter weather is no excuse for price gouging", she says.
ag.ny.gov/press-releas.... /

perhaps vague "feels" are different, but if "only" Uber Inc, & not its drivers, truly received all increments from surge pricing, it wouldn't work as well as it does!

both Uber & Mamdani successfully eliciting extra labor supply by surging prices up in tough weather.
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that's a thought!

but, description as "Emergency shoveling pay" – plus open NYC city job listings that advertise wage ranges topping out far below $30/hour – suggests otherwise.

'We See Things Differently' - also in collection 'Globalhead'

(another short I vividly remember from that collection is 'Our Neural Chernobyl')

distilling proprietary AIs into open weights models: "The Great Brain Robbery"

in emergency, socialist embraces surge pricing. film at 11.

the Stanley Cup has to be passed along to next year's champion, but the Gold Stanley Coasters that these players have won will stay under their coffee mugs for a lifetime

XKCD303 "Compiling" (altered): THE #1 PROGRAMMER EXCUSE FOR LEGITIMATELY SLACKING OFF: "MY C[LAUDE LIMITS RESET SOON]" A voice from the next room tells two stick figures having a play sword-fight on rolling office chairs: "Hey! Get back to work!" One figure responds: "C[laude]!" Offscreen voice: "Oh. Carry on."

"I don't want my social media access blocked indiscriminately – just when my agents are idle with prepaid usage quota remaining unused."

a man stands in front of a building with the word garage on it Alt: GIF from 'Free Guy' (2021) where Guy (Ryan Reynolds) reveals another video-game layer to his urban setting by peering through sunglasses

late entry

"Computer, load up Celery Man, please... Could you kick up the, uh, 4d3d3d3?

& that's why the LLM likes you best, gives you its best efforts, and will rate you highly in the next 360' evals

enemy/rival distinction (& most rivals, under agreeable rules, are a form of friend)

the frenemy of my frenemy is my eniend?

the medium is the message, 2026

Google Trends line chart (U.S., Jan 2019–Feb 2026) comparing “long COVID” (blue) vs “loss of smell” (red): both rise in 2020; “loss of smell” spikes in 2020–21 then falls to near zero after 2022, while “long COVID” surges sharply around early 2022, then gradually declines with smaller bumps but stays well above “loss of smell” through 2026.

Google Trends for [long COVID] & [loss of smell], 2019 through today

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but if if you insist that it *isn't* so, I fear you're seeking psychological comfort in a way less likely to improve the situation than acknowledgement of what power is doing.

fastidious adherence to statutory word choice is a feeble defense against a pentagon slinging lethal shapes. /

nice ideal, but those in de facto control, incl elected 'Commander in Chief', have not only changed name on entity's physical & 'cyberspace' presences, but are waging actual war with its resources. "legislative prerogative" has, for now, been ceded.

if you say that *shouldn't* be so, I agree.
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