Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

Biden's funding of the IRS via the IRA, is paying off:

Wealthy taxpayers who haven’t filed in years are beginning to get their returns in order, even if they haven’t received collection notices. The IRS is going after rich taxpayers who haven’t been filing their returns, an announcement hailed as a sign the agency was getting back on track after Covid delays & decades of underfunding. Agency sent out 125K notices to those who should have filed.

#Bidenomics #GOPSabotage https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/wealthy-taxpayers-prep-years-late-returns-ahead-of-irs-crackdown?utm_medium=taxdesk&utm_campaign=6CC5C1C0-16A3-11EF-B3DD-5754F143A863&utm_source=twitter

My family finally became Swiss citizens after a 4-year application process. Photo shows information for our first referendum vote.

Since I cannot be refused citizenship now, it is time to say what I *really* think of this country. Thread.

The bald eagle could have easily gone extinct. But we did all sorts of "woke" things protecting it legally, ran conservation and study programs, banned DDT (that good for other reasons too) and in 2007 they were removed from the endangered species list.

Likewise pine forests could be dead from acid rain.

The ozone could have a huge hole.

We CAN take care of nature when we want to. And the successes have been worth it.

I feel like we forget this, you know?

Current lightning talk ⚡ at #PyConUS: They're not "Soft Skills," They're Professional Skills (and you can do it)

A great #PyCon talk on how to be a better team member. Wish she had more time

Those of you in the US please make your voices heard. If you don't think this impacts you, best believe it will get to you one way or another.

https://action.cair.com/a/reject-targeting-nonprofits

I’m sick to fucking death of racism and this whole fucked up nation and situation, but you don’t see me throwing in the towel and it’s 400 years later. So, quit your fucking whining and get busy.

Dear Google,

When I search, I am not looking for The Answer. I am looking for sources. A search that generates only answers will be useless personally, and worse than useless professionally for me.

What I would really like is an internet search engine that works. Google did that once. Then they focused on other things and used it for ad revenue and it became the new Craigslist.

It would sure be nice if Google would reinvent an actual internet search engine.

Once again: these machines aren’t hallucinating and your using 'Hallucinate' is a tell, that you don't understand how the machine works. Generating statistically plausible text is what these tools do. That's all that's ever happening. Theres no connection to truth or veracity in this mechanism beyond quantities of aggregated text in a dataset reconnected in ways that that, statistically, might be. If you see meaning in the output it is you, the uncritical audience, who is hallucinating.

Dear authors of computing research papers… https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-the-word-utilize-and-im-loving-every-moment-of-your-overblown-rhetoric

Never ceases to stump me that we have the technology to kill 99.95% of airborne viruses, proven to work, non-invasive, cheap to deploy and install, and is produced at scale already and we just like - collectively - kind of just don't really use it.

HEPA-grade air filtration is proven, cheap, and makes everyone's lives strictly better. It, like, makes zero fiscal sense for governments not to mandate its use in all covered public spaces ASAP.

Absolutely incredible to me how much faster and more effective it is for me to rip an entire site down with wget --mirror and search it with grep to find anything than it is for me to use Google for any goddamn thing now. Datacenters full of hardware running thousands of PhD-theses worth of high performing hardware versus me sitting here banging rocks together and my way works.

TIL Italy has a new supercomputer dedicated to studying climate change, and they’ve called it Cassandra.

Somewhat appropriate really, given how Govt’s of the world have steadfastly been ignoring climate change for decades.

@elverkonge One of my all time favorite moments on social media, when a member of the band responded to a post like that saying "what machine did you think we were raging against, the dishwasher?"

@RickiTarr

Someone said it's important say this publicly in the US: so I will. (And I think each of us should, online and to friends)

This November *I* will vote for Biden.

I would regard not voting for Biden, particularly in: PA, OH, MI, WI, IN, IL,VA, GA, FL, AZ, ME, NC, NH, etc. as a huge error. I'd be disappointed to find out anyone I knew didn't vote. It's one of a long list of things we need to do. We can't skip it.

And still? We deserve better choices, and in the future we shall have them.

I saw a post yesterday questioning why the U.S. is investing in projects for electric vehicles but not investing in public transportation. That’s just false.

First, we aren’t getting rid of cars. We are too spread out and it’s doubtful that public transportation will be available in entirely where everyone, everywhere, at every time of day will need it. And we will always need vehicles for emergency services like ambulances and fire trucks and mail delivery and farms. 1/4

Politicians and political commentators whine about young people not buying homes and starting families (not getting married) and then do NOTHING to help the young people (who do exist) who would love to do one or more of these things but can't because it's too damn expensive.

Build housing and coops where young people want to live. Protect their jobs with unions. Make health care not an issue.

Do not make some marriages impossible because you don't like the genders.

Not rocket science.