Dr. Thomas —

I’ve told this story before, but Erik Estrada and I narrowly avoided colliding in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency during Dragon*Con. He turned around, flashed a smile, winked, and gave me double finger guns. It was pretty glorious.

The lesser-known song, “4 Luftballons”

Yea, this has always gotten me heated. So much pro-AI stuff is just marketing that relies on people not knowing the difference between ML and LLMs. Almost all of the amazing positive things they discuss have nothing to do with LLMs, but they use it to counter criticism bc they can blur those lines.

Aaaaaaaaand block. Not gonna abide someone talking to me like I’m an idiot when they have no clue wtf they’re talking about.

Sounds about right 🙄

4. Maybe don’t assume that everyone you speak to is a fucking idiot or that you understand their issues better than they do.

3. Don’t you think the better solution is for them to use their own standard protocol (gotten records pulls from them multiple times and never had this issue, because they always zip them) and not cause their own software to crash and then blame it on the user?

1. No. ❤️
2. That wouldn’t work because the software that is crashing/timing out is the accession system that points to the file paths. If it panics before it can load those records (the number of which is what’s causing the timeout in the first place) then there’s nothing for the script to use.

Less about the server itself and more the front-end freaking out. But like, regardless, I’ve got decent stable internet speeds and can download several gigs concurrently easily. And there was zero problem after the number of files was reduced by zipping them, even though it was still 20+ GB. So… 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, I have a lot more that I’d like to say about this, but I don’t think this is really the platform. Not sure where I could go with this idea, but I do think I’m going to try to at least get it out of my brain somehow.

But the problem with negative joy is that it is never truly fulfilling. It’s like eating only cotton candy. It might seem like it would be satiating, as much of it as there is, but it’s just an illusion — you’ll never really be full and if you try, you’ll merely make yourself sick

Been trying to put something into words that I’ve been noodling about for a while about joy and how so much of our society systematically strips away all positive joy from creative endeavors by demanding they be profitable, leaving only negative joy from destruction and the pain of others.

Oh look! A $7,615 redaction fee! Yay, Open Government!

Then acting like they’re doing me a favor by zipping them, as if they shouldn’t have done that in the first goddamn place! Ugh!

Not them claiming it’s my slow internet preventing me from viewing/downloading their files, rather than the fact that they uploaded 3400(!!!) individual audio, video, and image files to their open records portal, causing their server to just give the fuck up.

Sort by silver, cowards!

Waltteri Wottas

is 50 first dates a rougelike

I love the Olympics. I don’t really care about the nationalistic thing, but watching the athletes (many of whom are just regular people with day jobs) do something VERY well, making it to the pinnacle of their sporting career, and competing against the best in the world? How can you not love it??

I had a FOIA request fulfilled, but now their portal isn’t working, taunting me with a damn pinwheel that will just continue spinning until the sun burns out.

A man squirts bbq sauce on a whole pig BBQ pig that is smoking on a table.

Learned a lot about BBQ this weekend and ate WAY too much meat! But man it tasted so good!!

Screenshot showing that r/Conservative, noted bastion of free/awful speech, is now ranked just one above us in weekly visitor numbers.

Please make it your new resolution to visit AskHistorians once a week, because we've never been this invested in overtaking another community.

I think one of the fundamental problems that drive a lot of bad faith bullshit on the right is this idea so many seem to have that a “short question” is the same as a “simple question.”

That word before my grandmother was “poison.” 🤦‍♂️

I count myself very lucky in that. I think the thing that did more than anything, though, was watching FOX News ooo so my grandmother. I remember him using the TV’s parental controls to block her from that channel. He told her they just didn’t get it anymore.

I think one of my greatest reliefs is watching my Dad go from holding a family meeting because my sister and I planned to vote for Obama in 2008 to publicly calling out Trump and ICE and pushing against Tommy Tuberville.

Now tell me, why would a hotel not want to serve ICE?

In light of everything, I’m re-reading The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. Excited to give this one another go after many many years.

putin's most impressive accomplishment is getting europe to cheer for German rearmament

I live in an extremely conservative area, so I keep tabs on these things to be better able to recognize when dogwhistles are creeping into conversations and shut them the fuck down.