I’m glad someone else is calling this out. He seemed so thoughtful and methodical previously.

So for the guy to get busted because he eats in a public place, while a huge manhunt is ongoing, and he happens to have on his person: the gun, the fake id previously used, and a manifesto expressing his motive? It’s ridiculous! He could have tossed the gun into a body of water anywhere on his route outside NYC and it would never be found. And why reuse the same ID if you had several? Why not burn the associated IDs after they’ve been compromised?

It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve seen suggestions that this could have been a state hit, maybe to destabilize the country further? Would our spooks make up a lazy narrative to cover up for their spooks?

Please point me to the statute or code which states a juror is legally obliged to render an accurate and truthful verdict, and explain how you would enforce such a thing.

Nice! I’m playing through TP2 right now and it’s great fun, though I did enjoy the mystery of the first more I think. How many laser puzzles does a person need in life though?

Chicle isn’t the only natural chewable by the way. Many resins can be jawed on for a while, I’m very fond of chewing mastic resin. Mastic comes from Greece, and has a piney taste when you’ve chewed it for a while.

Surely some of these are fannon? Also, do the robots next!

Many school shooters talk about wanting to be seen, wanting fame/notoriety, and so on. With the huge positive response to this, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see copycats. “If I do this, people will remember me and love me for it.”

I first heard of it from Joel Spolsky’s blog and wikipedia also credits that article with popularizing the concept. In it’s original formulation, it was based on remote procedure calls being hidden in APIs. Because a remote computer call has all these limits of latency, packet/info loss, and possible connection loss, it is impossible to make a perfect abstraction that allows the programmer to treat the remote call as though it were local. The reality the abstraction tries to hide “leaks” in those fundamental limits.

All of contemporary global society is such an abstraction; that’s one of the principles of post-modernism. When you buy clothes online an entire invisible work force of shippers, manufacturers, resource procurerers, and more lies beind each article of fabric.

Pressure from climate change, tariffs, global war, and more are straining the foundations of society and the comfortable abstraction is starting to crack.

Running theory is that it relates to this book.

I wonder also if the timing is related to it being open enrollment right now. For non-USians, you contract for health insurance for a year at a time, and are required by law to renew or buy different insurance every year. This period of renewal/purchase is “open enrollment”. For many, their employer provides a menu of 1 to a few options for plans to pick from. Or you can buy on the “open market,” but usually at worse rates than an employer can negotiate.

Anyway, it’s a magical time of year when you realize how hard you’ve been getting fucked by the insurance companies, and “negotiate” how hard you’ll get reamed in the new year. It’s quite dehumanizing: trying to bargain and haggle with yourself over how much health you can afford, what you’ll give up so your kids can have dental coverage, whether you should “take the bet” on extra life insurance coverage, etc.

Not a shock to me that right now is when someone would snap.

Live by the dollar, die by the dollar

So is anyone not a woman automatically a man, or are they going to define that one separately? Is one presumed masculine until proven guilty (of womanhood)?

Is this a variation on “there are only 2 stories: a person goes on a long journey, and a stranger comes to town.” Some would argue those are two sides of the same story (digressions about this are the backbone of Lemony Snicket’s Poison for Breakfast, an excellent light read).

So does Widow also go through a mutation arc and become an 8 legged horse at some point? Cause that sounds rad af

The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade.

Yeah no shit! When my computer does full-screen, disruptive things that I didn’t tell it to do, I figure out how to remove that malware. I’ve been off Windows at home for about a month now, thanks Linux Mint! Getting some games to work has been challenging, but most things have just worked and quite a few work much better!

Performance is up overall, and my confidence that my computer isn’t running a bunch of secret ad and spy ware is way up. Hardware like my gamepad and microphone would randomly disconnect and have issues on Windows, all working perfectly now.

Unfortunately I’m still deep in MS land for work, but there’s almost a comedic quality to it. Everything’s very slow, everyone has constant issues with Teams, or Office online, or Dynamics, or copilot shoving it’s tendrils into everything. Watching businesses struggle to keep operating in the face of Microsoft’s inadequacy is like being a mechanic watching a motor grind to a halt because the owner/manufacturer replaced all the oil with syrup.

Like yes, it’s my problem to fix, but I’m just glad it’s not my car.

(Obligatory, “oh thank God it’s not the game engine”)

I like where Ed’s at on this issue, and have all along. I wonder if there’s any analysis to link NFTs and blockchain boosters back to the AI pushers as well? In both cases, you’ve got technology that require huge amounts of GPU power. How much AI hype was over-leveraged NFT scammers trying to shift their compute power into the next profitable scam?

Metaverses too are GPU hungry, not as much though, too consumer focused.

Maybe next we’ll see a return to streaming games, but in VR with rented/subsidized rigs?

Shall we brainstorm other ways that running GPUs at 99% capacity at all times can be used to bilk suckers out of their money?

https://youtu.be/lhjk5x54bsE

Wow, the only one from this year I’ve played this year was Animal Well. I didn’t even get into the 2nd and third and so on layers of ARG puzzles, just the basic game was quite fun and has a great art style!

I replayed or finally got around to some older stuff as well. Replays on Blasphemous 1 and 2, Grime, and the Castlevania Dominus Collection (new package of old hits). I also played a lot of Rogue Legacy 2, which is a lot like the first but a little better.

I recently got a Jackery for camping and I like it! Haven’t had it long enough to tell you long term problems, but my initial impressions and first real usage were good. The displays are nice, I didn’t test bluetooth/wifi (seemed like a waste of power), but the solar panel and other charging options all worked well. Build quality was good. I wish I’d splurged to get a bigger model though, the Explorerer 300 Plus didn’t have quite enough juice for all our needs.

I had in some ways the opposite 23&Me experience and goals. My parents told me growing up that I had some small native ancestry. This is actually a common myth many Americans have either been told or somehow deluded themselves into believing.

So I did the DNA testing (which I now regret from all the obvious enshittification and privacy reasons) to prove that my ancestry was boring and predictable. Which it was, no indigenous ancestry, just the expected European countries that my great grandparents came from.

They also do a lot of nice health screening things and I think that’s probably the much more valuable aspect of it. It really is very American that people are so much more concerned with what DNA says about one’s race or ethnicity than about their health and wellbeing.

As Abraham Lincoln famously warned, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!”