James

We told you….😂

YouTube video by Abigail Devoe King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic｜Vinyl Monday

Preaching the good word of King Crimson.

More Sneak Attacks on Social Security Today on TAP: It's hard to kill America's most loved program outright—so Trump is strangling it by stealth.

Social Security got hit with more body blows this week: its commissioner is moonlighting as the made-up "CEO" of the IRS, and 750,000 applicants could be denied disability benefits. More from Bob Kuttner:
prospect.org/blogs-and-ne...

For an October Caturday, a frame of my Klaus looking spooky. 🎃📷😻 #LeicaM

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

A little jumping spider sitting on the shoulder of this Monster High doll, didn’t let me get a closer shot. Pretty cute though. 💀🕷️📷 #Arachtober

Full moon over Nampa.
#iphone15ProMax

1 to 2 Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

"There are currently one to two Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every day ... Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite reentries per day." 😳

Today 5-7pm!

#idaho #boise #nampa #bannedbooks

Despite campaign promises, White House eyes new changes to Social Security and Medicare “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump vowed in 2024. I have bad news for voters who believed him.

Evidently DT now wants to kick hundreds of thousands of people off of Disability & Medicare! Yet another way to steal from the poor! If you know anyone who is disabled, please recommend them to keep their medical documentation current. We may have to re-prove our cases. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

Another little house spider from years ago taken with the Lumix/Leica 45mm f/2.8. #Arachtober

Look at the little face on this jumping spider. 😻 #Arachtober

Aside from all the other obvious points it strikes me as particularly cringeworthy to feel you need to put your own face on BOTH sides of the coin

Small house spider, 2015. Micro 4/3 was a pretty good system for macro, this is with Panasonic’s Leica branded 45mm f/2.8. #Arachtober

“if you wish to see a virgin on-screen” WTF? I did not know this was a specific kink. 🤔

Article titled: My Favorite Actress Is Not Human Subtext: Tilly Norwood doesn't need a hairstylist, has no regrettable posts, and if you wish to see a virgin on-screen, this is one of your better chances. That's because she's Al. By Tyler Cowen

Opening paragraph from the article: Tilly Norwood is the actress I most want to see on the big screen, or perhaps the little screen, if she gets her own TV show. She is beautiful, but not too intimidating. She has a natural smile, and is just the right amount of British-a touch exotic but still familiar with her posh accent. Her Instagram has immaculate standards of presentation.

How did we get from bs AI startup media blitz to a 63 old economist writing about wanting to see a virgin with just the right amount of sex appeal and zero agency on-screen, and how he’s keen to turn to AI to meet that need. This feels like many red flags all around!

It is of course helpful to remember that in the Trump regime, every accusation is a confession. Antifa might not be organized, but the Department of Homeland Security sure is. George Soros might not be paying professional protesters, but right-wing media personalities are bankrolled by Trumpist billionaires. In the case of Ben Shapiro, that’s billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks; for Rumble, thank Peter Thiel. This is to say nothing of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, or Elon Musk’s X, or the Daily Caller itself, which is funded by Charles Koch. Indeed, the memo’s description of the environment that leads to terroristic violence applies cleanly to the entire right-wing ecosystem. But perhaps the most striking accusation-as-confession is this paragraph from the national security presidential memorandum: This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. What is this but an elegant encapsulation of the past 10 years? It describes everything from the removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the air to the Libs of TikTok pattern of incitement to Charlie Kirk’s Professor Watchlist to Fox News’ defamation of Dominion Voting Systems and its employees to the celebrity worship of people like Kyle Rittenhouse. What is this entire anti-terrorism memorandum if not an admission that terrorism works, and that terrorism has secured the White House?

a verge feature story with the headline / subheadline of "Everything is terrorism in Trump’s America / Identifying faceless ICE agents. Mutual aid for jailed protesters. Calling JD Vance a fascist. The war on ‘antifa’ is a war on free speech, and it’s just getting started."

"What is this entire anti-terrorism memorandum if not an admission that terrorism works, and that terrorism has secured the White House?"

wake up babe @lopatto.bsky.social and @sarahjeong.bsky.social banger alert www.theverge.com/policy/79051...

So happy to have just learned about the #Arachtober tag, now I can share all my spider pics! 😻
I don’t know what species, very small, lives behind a wall plug night-light.

YouTube video by Gerald Joehri How An Old Camera Healed My Broken Brain

Photography as mindfulness practice.

quick while the government is shut down let’s all switch to metric

This is a lot of desperate dancing but the funniest thing is these jokers spent the 25 years since 9/11 militarizing the police and now they’re like, yeah they suck at keeping us safe call in the troops

Tariffs meant replacing the dead main board on my RX100m5 took three months and $600 and somehow that was the most economical option because camera market new and used is bananas right now

This came in the mail today. I wish Criterion had been clear on the website that six of the ten films are upscaled from old 2K digital intermediate files. Some of the weakest UHD Dolby Vision releases I’ve seen. 🤔

Dying to see how long this lasts

So, the question here is what the definition of “made” is. If a producer outsources VFX to a foreign studio, how many seconds of footage counts? One? One frame even? 🤔

Amazon’s workaround has been to use its LLM models as a kind of translator. It interprets what you say, then hands off the request to deterministic systems — APIs, device controllers, or local Matter connections. The unpredictability of LLMs is a poor fit for smart home control, where reliability and repeatability are crucial. I’ve found this works most of the time, but if the LLM translates a request incorrectly or there’s a gap in the API, it appears that handoff can fail. I assume that’s why my bathroom fan sometimes turns on as requested and why Alexa sometimes insists on creating a routine but then forgets to finish the job.

The essential failure of LLMs in the smart home - where natural language processing should shine - is the best evidence that LLMs as a technology simply may not be able to do the things they’re promised

www.theverge.com/report/78717...

I'm amazed* at all the "Christians" saying the attack on the LDS is another example of "Christian" persecution... because one thing "Christians" made abundantly clear to me growing up was that the LDS weren't "Christians".