"Performative windshield wiping" somehow perfectly captures the zeitgeist.

I'm a software engineer who loves playing with new toys and tools, and the incessant marketing and bloatware have made *me* viscerally annoyed at AI. That's an achievement comparable to Elon Musk making me feel vaguely irritated by space travel.

In Our Glorious AI Future, There Will Be No Such Thing as Money (For You) “In the future, there is such a thing as money. But there’s no such thing as your money. All the money is our money.”

"Honestly, you should be thankful we’re freeing you from the burden of having massive amounts of money... We’re going to have to spend a good chunk of it on bunkers and machine-gun-wielding robot dogs to protect us from the mass social unrest we’re creating."

Preach, sister! 💜🏳️‍⚧️

I'm a software engineer who loves playing with new toys and tools, and the incessant marketing and bloatware have made *me* viscerally annoyed at AI. That's an achievement comparable to Elon Musk making me feel vaguely irritated by space travel.

And ableist as well. I use a scleral contact lens that requires two different special types of saline, one of which isn't available in stores. I always check a bag with a big supply of both, along with a smaller carry-on supply, so it would take both lost luggage and TSA zealotry to cause a crisis.

This is the fundamental problem with democracy. People with a lot to lose have the same voting power as people with nothing to lose. As Robert Heinlein said, it's two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Sun Tzu tells us that, upon winning a battle, the wise leader will immediately pay tribute to the loser. No, wait; he doesn't actually tell us that, because Sun Tzu was not an idiot. 🙄

"Paging Dr. Susan Calvin to the robo-ER."

We all have days like this

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Cla...

Holy SHIT someone found the test pressing of Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues and it is clear as a PIN www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco...

WOW.

BlueSky has been glitchy in general since the DDoS a few days ago. I'm sure it will settle down over time.

Atari's 6502 OS+BASIC reserved 16 precious bytes on page zero for the user. I rather miss the challenge and satisfaction of making things work in such a constrained environment.

a man and a woman are standing next to each other with the words let 's go get sushi written above them Alt: Looped snippet from the movie "Repo Man". Two punk-looking kids back up, with the dialog captions "Let's go get sushi ... and NOT pay!"

Let's go do some crimes! 😁

Somewhere, Dan Quayle is breathing a sigh of relief.

The Roman Catholic Church has Jesuits. I was taught by Jesuits. You do not ever, under any circumstances, want to pick a theological flight with Jesuits. I learned this the hard way -- several times, because I'm that stubborn/stupid.

It's prosperity signaling, like impractical fancy clothes or a peacock's tail. It communicates "I am so fucking rich I can afford to maintain acres of negatively productive grass just to prove it."

"Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics." - Omar Bradley (attr.)

I guess we know who is running this war.

I got through undergrad chemistry on partial credit, so I'm fine with that. 🙂

The phase diagram of water.

You can get the freezing point down to -10°F if the air pressure is ~500 MPa. However, since that is ~5000 atmospheres, you'd be crushed instantly, and never get to sip that extra-cool, extra-refreshing water. (I think this meets your criteria, since it's not the water that's unsafe.)

I find it very cool that Star Trek has provided two archetypal characters for two different parts of the autistic experience: Spock for the arrogant "I know more about my special interest than you can imagine because my brain works better" side, and Data for the "I'm lonely, how do I human?" side.

That's a tie between Dr. Susan Calvin in Asimov's robot stories and Alvin of Diaspar from Clarke's _Against the Fall of Night_.

Oh, *ouch*. I'm so sorry; that sounds like hell. 😞

Having an unusually good sense of pitch can be a blessing or a curse.

Making rich people richer.

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of "Eärendil: The Early Years". 😁

I live about 3 miles inland from the beach in Los Angeles. It's a sure sign that an especially nasty storm is on the way when I spot dozens of seagulls on and around the church across the street. It also gives me "The Birds" flashbacks. Why in God's name was I allowed to watch that at age 7??

Photo of the top half of a cluttered bookshelf.

As an autistic person, I find that the "Golden Fence around the Torah" approach is just barely rigid and prudent enough. 🙂