And yet that building remains a voting location. I worked it last November, and I felt like we needed to post a sign in front for voters like the one in Clerks: "I Assure You, We're Open!"

The AUSA building on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, showing a gap in its facade where the main entrance used to be and a recently-added set of four metal brackets to hold up what I guess will be a shade for the future entrance.

As renovations of the Association of the U.S. Army's building grind on--now 25 or so weeks past a 32-week estimate from last March--I have to wonder which defense contractor got a cost-plus contract for this job. www.arlnow.com/2025/03/03/r...

Either 1999 or 1998, per the database maintained by a bunch of well-informed avgeeks: www.unitedfleetsite.com

Screengrab of a post commending this photo as "Picture of the century" and crediting "Science Tube." I drew a red slash across it.

Sorry, this is another AI fake: no scorching on a spacecraft that hit the atmosphere at almost 25,000 mph, and the parachutes and risers are way too small. Whoever "Science Tube" is, you shouldn't rely on them for truth.

The real images on NASA's site are amazing enough: images.nasa.gov

A big splash in the ocean under the three red and white parachutes

Splashdown!

Welcome home, Integrity.

YES!

AOS! Acquisition of Signal - getting data from Integrity after the blackout. And voice from the spacecraft! All ok

Following Integrity's return on slow* inflight WiFi is a good reminder of the virtues of text-first communication.

* I mean, it's fine. It's not like I'm about to enter a plasma-enforced communications blackout.

🤞🏻

When I said that Trump needed to stop bringing a Kim Jong Un aesthetic to Washington, I did not mean that he should exhume Albert Speer's style instead.

Exact same debate on my end of the continent, and the people who don't want to legalize duplexes never have an answer to how to stop 90yo bungalows from turning into two-lawyer-income-required McMansions.

Columns arc up and away from a terrazzo floor towards a large oval skylight two levels above, with some of the rooftop park's trees visible through the glass.

The Salesforce Transit Center is the nicest bus terminal that I've ever seen. Granted, my primary point of comparison is the Port Authority...

That PCMag story says California residents aren't eligible because they're members of a separate class-action lawsuit. Is that where you live?

I did get an e-mail about this class-action settlement... routed to my spam folder. Search for "federalcellularclassaction.com" to see if you received your own notification.

"To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago."
If you think it is necessary to be on Twitter to communicate your fact-based worldview, the reality is that worldview is being smothered.

A bust of Gavin Newsom in San Francisco's City Hall, showing him with his shirt's top button undone and him looking up and to the left as if he were a model at a photo shoot. The text below: "IF YOU DISTILL THE ESSENCE OF EVERYTHING, WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US IS GIVEN A SHORT MOMENT IN TIME ON THIS PLANET, AND WE ALL HAVE ONE UNIVERSAL NEED AND DESIRE, AND THAT IS TO LOVE AND BE LOVED." - GAVIN NEWSOM

San Francisco City Hall art director: "Is that bust of Gavin Newsom ready to display next to the statues of our other former mayors?"
Sculptor: "Sure thing - real fuckin' sexy just like you asked"
Art director: "what"

(Last night's #HumanX reception happened there; such gorgeous architecture.)

Today in bizarro customer UXes: Epic Pass has been sending e-mails about my ski-pass account to my wife instead of me because at some point she got designated as "head of the household." I do not remember ever doing that, nor do I have any e-mail indicating when that happened.

I regret but am not surprised to report that one person still doesn't think hyperloop is transportation vaporware, because of course it's Elon--posting that the Boring Company "could build a Hyperloop tunnel from downtown SF to downtown LA for <5%" of a new CAHSR estimate of $126 billion.

“I’m leveraging AI to scale myself”

sus, tech bro coded, possibly in self-induced psychosis

“I used software to automate some really tedious stuff”

relatable, normal, clever

Not much less than that for me!

At left, Andy Konwinski (co-founder of Perplexity, Databricks, & Laude) gestures as Stephenson looks on. Both are seated in large, taupe-colored chairs before a blue background with the HumanX logo.

I did not expect to see Neal Stephenson doing a panel at #HumanX, and I also did not expect that session to feature him critiquing the class structure in Lord of the Rings. "The Bagginses don't do anything," he said. "They're landed gentry, right?" Later: "Sam Gamgee is probably illiterate."

Public-sector unions proclaiming a permanent right to taxpayer-funded Calvinball work rules give organized labor a bad name.

A convention center hall with arches curving from the wall to the high ceiling, with exhibits on the floor and people walking across blue carpet.

I feel very much on the far side of a generational divide when I look at Moscone South's show floor and can only think of covering Macworld Expo here.

It's more like five+ blocks for me. Sigh.

In a less stupid timeline, the political relevance of the word "taco" would have stopped at "taco trucks on every corner" (which, to be clear, should still be an objective of national economic policy).

Fascinating to read this after watching @stamos.org's #HumanX talk today about the "AI bug-pocalypse"--as he put it, "we are now at the point where foundation models are better than humans at finding bugs." One unplanned side effect: "Open-source maintainers are completely at their limit."

Literally the next post from my fellow journalist:

Well, at least the Islamic Republic of Iran has no history of employing hacking operations as an asymmetric response to threats from larger powers [checks notes] ... oh.

How many of your home-screen, lock-screen or desktop wallpapers now feature them?

Um OKAY. Breathtaking photos from the Artemis II crew's lunar flyby and eclipse viewing

Gore pronounced himself "a big fan" of Anthropic's documented "constitution" for Claude and said other AI LLM developers should do likewise. "I would like to see all of the pioneer models have a constitution that is public and not secret," he said--with open discussions of their features.