masknshadows

Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources Experts find fake sources in Canadian government report that took 18 months to complete.

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STAR TREK premiered on this day in 1966

The "Opera Scene" from Parasite Eve is still one of the craziest and most unsettling moments from the original PlayStation era.

An oldie but a goodie, one of the first #Murderbot fan art pieces I ever made! A faux pulp novel cover with our favorite construct. Congrats @marthawells.com on the fantastic series debut! Loved every minute of it and cannot wait for more episodes. (I will bide my time between eps by drawing more!)

Okay, I put this off too long, but I've been distracted:

Murderbot.

First two episodes came out last week on Apple+ and I have to say I'm very pleased. There's a lot to love here.

My only complaint: I keep wanting to give Alex Skarsgård a hug, and Murderbot does not want to be hugged.

A sane engineer would come to you, palms upturned, arms wide, and preach the virtues of Excel in a conciliatory tone. "It really empowers non-technical staff"', they would say. "The democratization of data is an important element to the modern workplace, and it is an incredible testament to Excel's flexibility that it has enabled so many people to leverage the power of computing." But that is a mere sane engineer, the first to die in the revolution, and when you have seen enough of what happens when you yield to this blatant cowardice, you move beyond mere sanity, into righteous logic so cold that it burns like fire. I tell you now, if you suggest that we put that spreadsheet anywhere near any process, no force on this planet will save you from me.

This Is Gatekeeping Yes. I have put this gate here and I am keeping it for a reason. The last time I stopped keeping this gate, I wrote a Python script that took a spreadsheet as an input, ran regular expressions in it against a database, spat out ten more spreadsheets, then used those to power a generic PowerBI template which had to have all ten spreadsheet targets repointed by hand. This became one of the most requested services my team performed for several months. Someone should have fucking stopped me, and I must pay for my crimes by keeping this gate forever. I swear to you, there is nothing good past this gate. Turn away. Turn away. I beg you, turn away. Beyond this lies naught but trying to work out why all the numbers are wrong, only to realize that Excel thought those IDs were integers and dropped all the leading zeroes. This death is a kindness.

I Will Fucking Dropkick You If You Use That Spreadsheet ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-...

“You don't have to live like this. … Just put the spreadsheet down and we can work with databases. Do you remember databases, and possibly happiness?”

(via @copystar.bsky.social’s excellent newsletter)

Shelly-Ann racing in her kid's Parents Day race at the school is the funniest thing I've seen all week LMAO

My friend @antiqueight.bsky.social is getting shelves built into her library. "You should have seen the carpenter's face when he saw my books," she said.

Which reminded me of meeting, visiting, Anne McCaffrey at her home in Ireland, where there were many beautiful & clearly hand-made bookshelves:

The Billionaire Boycott Conundrum Over on Bluesky, where I spend quite a lot of time these days, because it’s an instance of social media not owned by a billionaire and/or ruled by algorithms intended to push vaguely-to-expli…

Over on Whatever today, I've written a longish piece on billionaires and boycotts, how boycotts are effective (and are not), what to do when you don't feel you can boycott, and what to say when someone is telling you that you're not doing it right:

whatever.scalzi.com/2025/03/12/t...

Calvin and hobbs What is a pronoun A noun that isn't an amateur "Maybe I'll get points for originality "

Michelle Trachtenberg, ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Actor, Dies at 39 Michelle Trachtenberg, the actor best known for "Gossip Girl," "Ice Princess" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," died at age 39.

What the actual fuck

variety.com/2025/film/ne...

> Keep it down please @InternetHippo They taught Al how to talk like a corporate middle manager and thought this meant the Al was conscious instead of realizing that corporate middle managers aren't

Incoming Asteroid xkcd.com/3049

Let it be, let it be?

Good post and once again I'll reiterate that I think it's a good idea for creatives (and others) to have a room of one's own online, and a space that no one else can ruin against your will.

Doctor Who actor Tom Baker with kittens.

And you thought there was not much to be happy about today... But turns out it's Tom Baker day! 91 and still going strong. #DoctorWho

The irony. 🧪
#science #MedSky

I'm mostly on the mend, after a rather intense bought of illness; I'm expecting to go back to work tomorrow, which is great as I think my spreadsheets miss me.