Matt Lebofsky

It used to be the most commonly used emoji by me on slack was :grimacing: 😬

This changed. The new leader is :expressionless: 😑

"As American as apple pie"

Apples originated from Kazakhstan.

Also note how traditional eastern hemisphere cuisine often features tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers, all of which are originally from the western hemisphere.

Not trying to make some big point. Just fascinating to think about.

Me, in April 2026, one of the few human survivors on earth after twelve months of global war, economic devastation, infrastructure collapse, and climate disaster: "I bet the republicans are going to get trounced in the midterms!"

I'm so old that when I arrive to work at UC Berkeley I increase the average age of everybody on campus by 6 hours. #ididthemath

My regular reminder that “democrat republican” is an anagram for “corrupted imbalance.”

In case there was any doubt about my feelings, I'm absolutely disgusted and enraged by the current US government. Politics has been replaced by money, corruption, greed, hate, and abuse. Idiot clowns and rich psychopaths are running the country. HELP!! Also: anybody hiring outside of the US?

Be sure not to buy anything tomorrow (February 28th)! Sure, people are saying "this won't change anything" or "this won't make a dent" but (a) maybe it will, but more so (b) it's definitely educational and good practice for bigger efforts. Anyway.. get used to it! Get with it or get out of the way!

I still have my Web 1.0 home page, did all the programming myself, and update it regularly with vim. It's like owning and repairing my own house, as opposed to rotting inside a tiny apartment in a giant earth-sized complex built and operated by nazi billionaires.

We're gonna need an update to Godwin's Law.

Given this "Gulf of America" stunt from Google I highly recommend all sys admins (myself included) scour their Google Cloud services and reduce/kill them as much as possible. I'm certainly doing that today.

I see how rich, famous, or powerful people commonly behave and in my head hear Elliott Smith singing "stupid acting smart..."

Looking back at the past 50 years of technological advances it almost seems like the main goal of everything in Silicon Valley has been to enable nazi trillionaires the unhampered collection of private data from all US citizens within seconds.

Two lesser discussed causes of current societal collapse:

1. Twenty five years ago most everybody on earth stopped paying for music
2. The existence and overuse of object oriented programming paradigms

Unlocked a new level of hate for some fellow concert goers: people facetiming so their remote friends could watch the show and loudly comment about it for all at the venue to hear in distorted blurps as the volume is maxed out on their phone.

Highlander but instead of immortals they are billionaires, beheading each other to get even more money.

Lo the furious firehose of fascist fuckery

Follow the money. The Jupiter sized piles of money, on top of which the oligarchs stand, proudly, with megaphones, shouting "look at all my money!!"

Since it's all about making things fast, easy, and taking humans and their passions out of the equation as much as possible.. I reckon all people working on commercial AI products are terrible lovers.

I'm at that point, about two weeks after quitting caffeine, where I realize my sleep is as bad as always so it's definitely not the coffee keeping me awake.

Who doesn't like a nice review?

expose.org/index.php/ar...

There is no greater real-life metaphor for the difficulty in reconciling two disparate worlds of being a musician and a university researcher than overzealous light-sensing auto-flush toilets in the astronomy lab triggering frequently and prematurely whenever I wear my all-black rock band t-shirts.

People are freaking out about Facebook abandoning fact checking and I'm like... "There was fact checking on Facebook? Really? I don't think so."

This is so right up my alley:

geminiprotocol.net

I have a strong personal dislike towards any efforts to add abstraction in order to make computing more human, and the efforts to digitize and technologize everything which makes music less human.

Look I've been reading the news a lot lately and I gotta say I'm a bit disconcerted about what's going on.

Happy New Year! Or just.. New Year!

'Cause that's compostable that's com
That's compostable that's compos
That's compostable that's com-pos-ta-ble

US federal minimum wage: $7.25/hour. Average US life span (rounded up a bit): 78 years, or 685,000 hours. So the US deems your life is worth $5 million dollars. In which case, corporations that cost US taxpayers $5 million should be charged with murder. Along with all their shareholders.

Elon Musk net worth: $500 billion. He was born June 28, 1971, which means he's been alive 19533 days, or just under 470000 hours. So for every HOUR of his life (including weekends, sleep, infancy, etc.) he's made OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS. ISN'T THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM?

Paranoia that as the country crumbles people who are like "stay strong" and "we'll power through," or aggressively acting like it's business as usual, are simply distracting us so they have more time/resources when secretly making plans to flee before anybody else.

But maybe things will be okay. 😬