Not just Iran

We'll be watching it a couple more years, but I think we've eradicated the knot weed finally. We still have some invasive yellow and orange day-lilies, I haven't pulled quite all of them yet.

This summer my battle with the goutweed will continue. I know I'll never win that one.

The state forester pointed out that the honeysuckle bush just down the hill from our house was an invasive variety.

Today the ground was just right to pull it out: dry enough to support the tractor, but still good and damp. I wrapped a chain around it and the loader pulled it out in one go.

It's crazy to me to look at that situation and think "My comfort is what matters most here"... you'd have to be a self-centered prick.

So... solidarity among dudes sitting with discomfort for the sake of not being self-centered pricks :D.

I'm straight, and my wife spent some time exploring her masculine side and considers herself queer... but decided to stick with she/her and identifying is primarily a woman.

It's not comfortable, and I am glad about the conclusion, but I want her to be happy more than I want her to be a woman.

A lot of the "prepping" I'm doing is also just useful basic rural living, ecological concern, and saving money stuff. It's stuff I would likely be doing anyways, but the world we live in is an extra kick in the pants.
The presentation of it here is accurate, but a particular side due to the topic.

Also on that list, my brown wife being kidnapped. "Oh no, all my money might get drained out of an account" is like... bad... yes. I'd have to go back to work, boo, but it's not actually that big a deal compared to some other things that could easily go wrong right now.

Perspective is important.

The LLM hacking stuff is real, and a *developing* threat.

But e.g. Iran is actually there, and our fascism just made them a *present* threat. They have the capacity to crash our power grid.

That's just ONE present issue. So... yeah, LLM hacking's a little ways down the list.

I am prepping the fuck out of things. My basement is full of beans and rice. I'm trying to get enough solar in so I won't freeze next winter if the grid goes down, and I'm planning to buy a dehydrator so I can store up more vegetables.

But as an American, LLM hacking is not the concern... duh.

The LLM hacking stuff IS literal PR. These papers are published by the AI companies, which also means it's whitehat and not widely accessible YET, and not an emergency YET.

It's also true that it's a big fucking deal, a very very important development in security, and may soon be an emergency.

I also just love learning the history. Some of of it rings bells for me like I read about it in the past, or I've heard references to it (the sparrows in particular). I had never heard a whiff of of the steel part before though.

Good explanation of what's going on.

I'm suspicious that execs might even know it's happening to some extent (probably not to the full extent). Remember how even before the AI bubble they were laying people off to get stock bumps. Who needs a product when you have short term gains?

You got farther than I did, I didn't know that's where that useless abbreviation came from.

I took a class from Bo Brown years ago at a traditional skills gathering. Amazing ecological knowledge and one of the most experienced in the U.S. with trapping animals with traditional traps.

I just tripped over this in my feed. I'd lost track of him as I don't live in that region.

As someone who has processed and eaten roadkill myself after taking a class to ensure I knew what I was doing like a very odd but still fundamentally sane person... AAAAaaaarrgggh.

Yes! very exciting results.

BTW @grapheneos.org, Vanadium's lack of this feature is a problem for stuff like this. You have to do a weird little dance and hope it detects the URI parameters, and you can't add arbitrary parameters yourself.

I'll probably switch my wife and I to Ironfox for this reason, which kinda sucks.

Ah.
Yes, 100%, it is completely unacceptable.

I am not marginalized, but I refuse to comply. I'm here by grace of Vermont not passing such a law... yet.

The simulacrum of bullying is still bullying.

When I say "you'll eventually read it" I mean "I've caught myself reading it". I'm skeptical that anyone else can avoid doing so either. Human discipline is just a terrible strategy for this sort of thing.

If anyone is curious how I'm happy to give advice. I dump cookies when I restart my browser so those don't work. I do it with URL hacking instead.

Unfortunately grapheneOS's default browser doesn't support manual entry of search URLs, so I have to be careful there :(.

I've turned off AI output from the search engines I use (qwant and duckduckgo). It's too hard to stay vigilant ALL the time. If it's there you'll eventually read it.

This way I only have to stay vigilant on the rare occasion when I use a different search engine (like Google).

It's a good bet. State senators typically don't get that communication, even a little noise tends to get their attention.

Haven't tried to read this law, but most of these laws have allowed "account age" as a verification strategy.

Not that this makes it okay at all, but it might resolve your *specific* issue.

(note that I did not say everything. Vaccination and autism are some of the clearest examples where what he says is usually outright lies with no kernel of truth at all. I'm sure you know this but I just want to state it for the record.)

Nice link! And of course, as the link states, it doesn't always work.

This is actually the most frustrating thing about RFK. MOST of what he says is a little bit true. People then want to throw it out wholesale so most refutations end up *also* being false. It's absolutely maddening.

That sounds right, though a given fast charger can also only pump so much power per second, so big stuff can be above that threshold. The issue is often due to local grid constraints actually. That's why I mentioned infrastructure.

But... yes... we are very much in agreement here.

It's one of the best things about owning an electric (for suburban/rural folks). For most driving you just take your car wherever you want to go, drive home, and plug it in. You never have to stop to refuel unless you're on a road trip.

I loved that part when I had one for a little while.

Your central point is accurate though for sure. We need both.

Also, smaller lighter cars help enormously. You need a LOT more tech and infra to charge an F150 lightning a decent percentage in 10 minutes than you do a leaf.

Unless this is brand-new tech, this is half true. Level 2 chargers are car controlled, level 3 "fast chargers" are charger controlled.

The battery sends information, and must be capable of the rate, but the fast charger has the logic to change rates as it charges to avoid blowing up the battery.