Joseph 'zeruch' Arruda

AOL discontinues its dial-up internet, and we're just surprised they even offered it in 2025 Dial-up's days are numbered, after 34 years of service.

The lede is correct. Announcing that AOL was discontinuing their dial-up offerings is shocking only because most folk would have assumed it had died at least a decade ago.

At LEAST.

The fact that AOL exists at all is still a bit of a quandary in and of itself.

www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

Please someone start a company that exclusively makes and sells electronics and appliances that don’t connect to the Internet.

Could call it “Luddite”.

“Hey how’s your new Luddite dishwasher?”—“Great, it washes dishes and never crashes!”

this sounds insane on its face? voters do not closely follow legislation and policy but they are very aware of the image and vibes of the elected officials. if voters say “we think they are nerds who won’t stand up for themselves” that’s almost certainly what they mean

just a reminder again that we were told over and over that a 13 year old downloading a Limp Bizkit mp3 was an existential threat to society

YouTube video by DaveHogerty COREY GLOVER NO SUCH THING AS SUPERMAN

A cover of #GilScottHeron's "No Such Thing as #Superman" by a strong lineup including Corey Clover (Living Colour) and V Jeffrey Smith (The Family Stand) live in 2011: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfmD...

It's one of his greatest tracks, bar none. And it's sonic perfection is ageless.

I'll promote all aspects of the George Smiley playbook.

I have a pot. I have a kettle.

The 90s was a fractured soundscape and I couldn't pick one. I couldn't pick 10.

Encountered on the NB blue line VTA. She muttered about bad burritos and "nasty people" at about 110 decibels.

Such is life.

Painting over an incomplete drawing from 1995, so as to flesh out some ideas for a pair of abstract works I have in mind. #art

One of the reasons FDR was the way he was is because he had zero faith that the american ruling class was devoted enough to american democracy to be trusted to preserve it.

There needs to be something more absurd than Dunning-Kruger...like maybe Magoo-Horshack.

Hugely important topic in media criticism

Via @brianstelter.bsky.social: The Financial Times recently dubbed it "the great crime paradox:" Violent crime rates are falling, both in the US and the UK, "but a growing share of people think levels are rising."
view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/175...

The sw techbro class is now inured to trying to placate Trump, as they are the primary backers of his ascent and they are just as likely to succumb to the dumbest LCD of the sunk cost fallacy as anyone else.

But old money, big pharma/medtech, energy, defense and big ag may have been rankled a tad.

It sets a very dangerous precedent as well for the huge numbers of institutions and firms and even individuals who hold patents. The idea that the state can just arbitrarily pilfer patents is a far bigger deal than I think most people are apt to understand.

It would appear Trump and whoever the "Organization unavailable for these records" are in all the annual entries I could quickly scan here:

www.opensecrets.org/officeholder...

It's the kind of showboating that one would expect from someone sidling up next to Trump; more theater, more eunuch-grade machismo, and endless bloviating to replace anything resembling awareness of, let alone concern for, your potential constituency (as in all of it, not just the Super PAC class)

Sounds That Have Been Made, EP 56: The Pursuit of Happiness “Cigarette Dangles” Edmonton, Alberta is not one of the first places I think of as a hotbed of stolid yet agitated alt-rock songwriters (it’s not hot in any other sense either given its proximity to the arctic c…

"#TPOH later produced utterly addictive, propulsive bangers like Cigarette Dangles, which sports some of the most strident lyrics on lusty sexual abandon that a song at the time could get away with on MTV"

Moe Berg knows how to craft a sardonic, anthemic cut.

zeruch.wordpress.com/2023/04/01/s...

a pen and ink sketch of jay leno with the word bubble "I'm Jay LAME-O!"

The greatest (and maybe only) bit of self-awareness #JayLeno ever uttered: "I'm no Johnny Carson"

He's right. He's also never been very funny to me. He's always been at best a safe, lazy, dullard, and with the survival instincts of a bookie.

Here's an editorial sketch I did of him in 2010 #art

people are bad at naming things, episode XX

this is a tax on people *making* over $1M a year, not people with over $1M of wealth. it does not impact a dentist making $200k a year who has saved up $1M over a lifetime of work.

messaging really matters for what people imagine they might be subject to

The album was ok, the tour was great. Cherone had the vocal chops, and had no ego about singing either DLR or Hagar, so the band could span the whole catalog without gripes.

geri allen in mixed media

Also, here's a #drawing I did of Geri back in 2003: mostly pencil, pen + ink, tombo marker, and gouache IIRC. #art #artshare

YouTube video by Geri Allen - Topic The Gathering

Because @aarondsouza.bsky.social made me remember how much I love #GeriAllen, here's one of my favorite cuts from her large and varied catalog, the title track from "The Gathering" a rich album with a stellar ensemble (e.g. @vurnt22.bsky.social , and Lenny White)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQnC...

YouTube video by OfficiallyExtreme Extreme - "Banshee" (Official Music Video)

#Extreme as a band gets a lot of flak (some of it deserved) for some of it's most over the top antics, but they are one of the few 80s rock bands that sit closer to Van Halen musicality and technique than just Aqua-net and a punchy chorus. They deliver the goods,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYQ6...

2019 – 2024 – Repeated denials and discovery stonewalling Through years of communications with the police, the plaintiffs and the court through the investigation and later the discovery process for the lawsuit, Tesla never mentioned that it had all the data that explained how Autopilot saw the crash, which everyone was seeking, sitting on its servers for years. The facts are: Tesla had the data on its servers within minutes of the crash When the police sought the data, Tesla redirected them toward other data When the police sought Tesla’s help in extracting it from the computer, Tesla falsely claimed it was “corrupted” Tesla invented an “auto-delete” feature that didn’t exist to try explain why it couldn’t originally find the data in the computer When the plaintiffs asked for the data, Tesla said that it didn’t exist Tesla only admitted to the existence of the data once presented with forensic evidence that it was created and transfered to its servers.

This whole story is insane. Tesla apparently did everything it could to avoid providing the data it had about its Autopilot crash. This is just a snippet and there's a lot more. electrek.co/2025/08/04/t...

Got to see her live twice, once on her own, and once supporting her then husband, Wallace Roney. In both cases, she was the incandescent star of the show. Her capacity to shift gears on a whim, and her phrasing was amazing to watch.

Unfortunately, everyone in his administration is there for their mewling fealty, not for actual acumen, and certainly not for having any vertebrae.

FOIA is a critical tool for government accountability.

How misinformation spreaders reframe news from reputable sources to support false claims A growing body of research tracking the spread of misinformation online has largely focused on presumably false stories from unreliable sources—websites that fabricate content or intentionally mislead...

A key doubtmongering strategy...👇

How misinformation spreaders reframe news from reputable sources to support false claims phys.org/news/2025-07...

"...some social media users deliberately repurpose credible journalism to advance misleading claims."