Ben McCary

YouTube video by The Map Reading Company How to put a hat on

This guy is my favorite.

youtu.be/UAwVz8hMhV8?...

YouTube video by More Perfect Union Could Texas Run Out Of Water? Wall Street Is Betting Big On It.

The Water Knife! Watching this was surreal. It's like if you wound that book back in time when things were just starting and no one knew what was coming. Wild.

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

I recently got to explain snuffaluffagus to a non-western non-english native colleague.

It was a highlight of my professional career.

I've been doing a lot with coding agents lately. It's super weird to be giving instructions with all caps to add emphasis: "DO NOT edit the files in directory...."

I'm terrified I'll accidentally write a ticket for a peer with this prompting style 😬

Please this down. It's fine to make a mistake and share (please don't!), but don't leave it up when you find out it's fake please.

🤣

I love the west seattle version of protesting: everyone waits for a red light at our all-way-stop intersection, crosses the street, then waits for the next red light

Patiently waiting to cross the street is the most west seattle protest I could ever

#NoKings #WestSeattle #Seattle #SeattleNoKings

It's wild how AI has captured data collection/ads space where previously unreachable: Most tech companies succeed by capturing your attention. If you were in a spreadsheet, coding, working in sfdc there's very little a search engine can do to get data & sell ads.

Now that space is now fair game.

I'm super into urban design & infra outside of my day job. @jensvb.bsky.social has some really great stuff.

But tests? This is a super difficult problem. One way you can look at it is utility: if the model output ends up being copy pasted, or generating code that lands in a repo. Also throughput metrics. (obvs tons of caveats.)

IME, good prompters iterate on specific problems till hit rates are high.

This is super interesting. I've heard of ppl having specific prompts+environments for steps a wkflw: prompt A for discovery, prompt B for code gen, C for testing, and D for deployment. Iterate and share with colleagues.

Sharing prompts like we used to use stack overflow.

downvote. There's enough misinformation going on. Let's keep this to real stuff please.

If anyone knows of alt accounts that are similar but less bot-ish, I'd follow.

YouTube video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel

Really well done video on the risks of AI slop on the web.

youtu.be/_zfN9wnPvU0?...

💯

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour WATCH: Trump threatens shutdown in heated meeting with top Democrats

source from 6 yrs ago. Apparently not a lot has changed. youtu.be/_uSJsYqYeCs?...

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Just gonna keep tapping the sign*

*𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦

bsky.app/profile/benm...

Block on Tacoma ICE facility inspections may soon be lifted Washington state health officials may be on the verge of winning a yearslong fight to gain access to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. The Washington State Health Department has been tryi...

Washington state health officials may be on the verge of winning a yearslong fight to gain access to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. The health department has been trying to get into the center to investigate complaints about the conditions there.

I've seen a lot of hype about being in an "AI bubble."

Yes. And after the dotcom bubble the internet really fell off! Just like people basically gave up real estate assets after the housing bubble.

An AI bubble has no bearing on the viability of AI tech.

Hollywood farmers market

Your war correspondent on the ground in battle-ravaged inner northeast Portland

YouTube video by Fads Why Is Everyone Autistic Now?

Good overview of the "rise in autism." The formal autism diagnosis is only 34 years old. So right now the leading hypothesis for rising ASD is more broad diagnostic criteria & growing awareness.

(Real science isn't fear based. We investigate environmental factors!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Kf...

I've heard of @nwirp.bsky.social for several years now and really admired their work. Just noticed they're on bluesky too. Bumping their @ here!

ICE Detention Trends | Vera Institute of Justice

@vera.org also has a really good website for visualizing how detainee populations are growing over time: www.vera.org/ice-detentio...

This is also a really good site see how detainee populations are growing over time: www.vera.org/ice-detentio...

And according to the TRAC dataset, Tacoma is the 4th largest contract detention center in the country.

Tacoma detention center is 8th largest ICE detention center according to data set.

According to a local advocacy group, the NWIRP, the capacity is a bit higher than this dataset shows, 1,575. But even at the smaller number in the dataset, Tacoma is one of the top 20 largest detention centers in the country.

www.nwirp.org/resources/nw...

Plot showing rising avg daily detainees in Tacoma WA Detention center starting from a low at the start of the Biden presidency and rising, with a steep incline after Trump's 2025 inauguration.

The Seattle ICE detention center is nearly at capacity for the first time

tracreports.org/immigration/...

#ICE #Seattle

BirdNET Pi is so cool!

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

So cool they discovered the cause of autism on basically day they guessed they would. I’m also glad they are withholding this information for a few days to prep for a WrestleMania-style announcement. This is how science works.