ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

It occurred to me this morning that it has now been over a decade in which we have all been forced to hear something about Donald Trump every fucking day - often many times a day.

There are people in journalism who have no experience of a world in which we actually covered many different topics in a day.

I feel like I've been mentally force fed McDonalds for ten years non-stop.

I would like it to be over before I die, please.

Tomorrow is No Kings 3.
My husband wants me to be safe.
He made a lanyard for my whistle because he thought it should be around my neck instead of on my keychain.
He carefully braided this twine even though neuropathy makes this task more difficult for him than it would be for most.
I am touched by his thoughtfulness.
Resistance by braiding.
Who knew that was even a thing?
I couldn't have purchased a more beautiful lanyard.

Try to unsee it

Level: impossible.

I joined #mastodon on New Year’s Day, with no idea what to expect

I found somewhere totally different to other social media. No ads, no algorithm, and a massive number of really nice people. Thank you all for making me feel welcome and comfortable in this unique place you call the #fediverse

But the best part is how much you all like cats (because me too)

Here’s Molly, sitting between my knees and staring at me until I give her treats

#cats #CatsOfMastodon #animals

Wikipedia bans AI-generated articles https://www.theverge.com/tech/901461/wikipedia-ai-generated-article-ban

Starting to think the real risk is not AI replacing junior staff, but senior staff quitting because they just can’t take this AI bullshit any longer and just opt for early retirement.

i love that we went from "zero trust" as a fundamental buzzword to "trust autonomous nondeterministic agents everywhere in your stack"

"AI" users are like, "I know this is imprecise but as a convenience these transcriptions are better than nothing"

then 70 years from now we'll still be struggling to debunk these entirely hallucinated transcriptions of thousands of manuscripts that were pissed into the pool of human knowledge.

some things are worse than nothing. "signal-shaped noise" is worse than nothing.

A #Linux distro should not comply in advance. It would be better to block downloads to deranged nanny state jurisdictions, than compromise security and privacy for everyone else on the planet.

Blocking downloads is a lawful way to handle this. It sends the right message, to those who could complain to their representatives to repeal the stupid laws.

#ageverification

The extent to which core linux projects are laying the groundwork for age verification is very concerning.

I understand why some believe they are compelled to do so, and why others feel that it may be better to implement the most minimal conforming implementation in the hopes of fending off something worse.

But the line must be drawn such that no threat can obligate an OS to collect/store personal information - without that freedom, we face an uphill fight to protect general purpose computing.

@jwz the fact that it took me (and looking at other replies, quite a few other people) quite some time to be sure this is satire is extremely depressing, I can't believe we're at a point where this looks believable even for a second... The email is very funny though and shows just how stupid this situation is

Use AI instead of hiring junior staff = stock price bump.

5 years later senior employees start to leave; there is no junior staff to promote and management panics.

Management does not want to spend money on new staff so they hire expensive contractors.

Contractors do a subpar job, charging 10x what an actual employee would cost (different budgets so its cool); and the company starts to go downhill and customers flee.

This starts a death spiral leading to either bankruptcy, acquisition, or restructuring.

The original management who approved the AI have all gone and cashed in their stock.

Just a guess at what is about to happen across the industry.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2026/03/16/servicenow_grad_jobs_ai/

#ai #servicenow #hiring #bankruptcy #aislop #salesforce

The less someone understands about a job, the more they think it can be replaced by AI

June 21, 2025: "Iran's nuclear threat has been obliterated."

February 28, 2026: "We need four weeks or less to obliterate Iran's nuclear threat."

(Four weeks into the war.): "We need $200,000,000,000 more funding to obliterate Iran's nuclear threat."

He should just buy Iran. It would be cheaper and he obliterates everything he owns.

So to recap:
•Trump illegally bombed Iran.
•Iran responded by closing the Straight of Hormuz, thus spiking oil prices.
•Trump is now responding by lifting sanctions on Iranian oil, thus funding the regime he's bombing—all as the Straight of Hormuz remains closed.

So in short, Trump bombed Iran, raised oil prices for Americans, and gave Iran more money. Masterful gambit by the author of the Art of the Deal.

Are we great yet?

I’m thinking of starting an alt account that’s called enshitification, and just posting every time something isn’t working properly. Which would be a lot.

GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification or an account. GrapheneOS and our services will remain available internationally. If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.

Sigh.

New boss: “You’re good at writing notes.”

Me: “Thank you, it helps me to remember so I have been writing summaries for many years.”

New boss: “You should try CoPilot and see what it can do.”

Me: “Well I enjoy summarizing my notes, and it helps me to learn and remember.”

New boss: “Let me show you something I did in CoPilot.”

Ugh. Writing it myself helps me LEARN and REMEMBER. Why are these AI zombies so intent on changing a process that is helpful to me? Feeding notes through CoPilot won’t benefit me when it’s the act of writing that works for me.

LLM code is the lead pipe of our generation of software engineers. They’re going to be replacing it for decades and wondering how we were so foolish