A lord/servant relationship is still a relationship.

I don’t want a relationship with my tools.

If my PC starts running slow I’ll tear the fucker item and start replacing shit. If the OS displeases me I’ll start disabling parts. If software starts interrupting me when I’m not actively using it I change its permissions so it can only do what I tell it.

I’m not gonna give my butler a lobotomy to make him more obedient, swap the Footmen’s hands out for serving platters, or kneecap the scullery maid so she can’t leave the kitchen.

If my phone dies, it gets scrapped and I replace it without shedding a tear. I can’t say the same for a loyal Valet.

They tried to nickel and dime me on a $4000/yr product, but I’m just giving them the nickel.

I will give ESRI credit for their online stuff. It’s expensive, but it’s also pretty great. We’re actually thinking about getting an online subscription but no software licenses.

I didn’t discover it this uear, but I started using QGIS professionally when the small city that hired me to, among a lot of other duties, be the new GIS department.

Turns out they thought ArcGIS cost the same as like Office or Acrobat, and they didn’t budget for it for the fiscal year that started 2 weeks before I started working.

Anyway, I’ve gotten pretty good with QGIS, and we’re sticking with it. It does everything I need it to do, and I can still pull stuff from most REST servers.

If you have reason to believe someone is in mortal danger, your response shouldn’t be to mail a letter giving them 30 days to respond.

You send police to the scene where they secure the potential suspect and make sure there’s nothing going on.

Actually, this can be good for the Republicans. The pro-life crowd is a minority, but also the biggest, most reliable single-issue voting block.

Having it as a ballot initiative lets pro-choice Republicans vote to end the ban while the GOP still panders to the pro-life voters.

Was that the first one that had M Bison as a playable character?

Yeah. I’ve noticed the new generation coming into the workplace can’t do shit on a computer.

They’ve grown up on apps that have simple interfaces and limited options. Give them the freedom and power of a workstation and you’ll find they never learned to learn real software.

I’m really, truly not trying to be flippant. But welcome to the first taste of adulthood. What you plan for your life and what your life becomes are very different things. I am not who I expected to be. I am not in the career I expected. I don’t have the same interests I expected, and I only have like 2 friendships from my high school days that I’ve really maintained.

But the thing is, none of that is necessarily bad. I enjoy my job, but as a high schooler “municipal development” wasn’t a career to dream about, even though it can be very satisfying.

I have different friends and interests, but they’re not worse. It’s just that the world broadens as you age.

You can’t really know who you are until the training wheels come off. That’s where you’re headed by the sound of it. Is it scary and stressful? Absolutely. But when you come out of it you’ll be the person you are, not the person somebody expects you to be.

The 20s were an amazing time where everything in my life got flipped around more than once. Now that I’m a few decades past it, I can better appreciate how much I grew in that time.

I also miss having a more cooperative body.

Bioshock.

I don’t think there will every be a more satisfying twist for me. The twist was about me, the human playing the game, and only works because of the nature of the format.

It was perfection.

Correct. And I appreciate that. A couple wanting a religous wedding should know that the pastor that’s blessing the union supports them.

In this case it is. All 50 states are required to perform gay marriages as of June 26th, 2015. The ruling took immediate effect nationwide. Clerks were having to hand-edit marriage licenses to allow for same-sex certificates because within an hour of the ruling people were showing up at courthouses to get married in states where it had been illegal.

Churches aren’t required to perform same-sex marriages nationwide, however.

All 50 states are recognize gay marriage since Obgerfel v Hodges in June 2015.

According to the GSS, only 10% of Americans reaponded “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” to the statement “Homosexuals should have the right to marry” in 1988 (first year the question was asked).

In 2004, it was 30%.

In 2022 it was 67%.

Also according to the GSS, 40 years ago a third of Americans thought homosexuals shouldn’t have the right to speak.

We’ve made remarkable progress in a very short period.

To help fight bot disinformation, I think there needs to be an international treaty that requires all AI models/bots to disclose themselves as AI when prompted using a set keyphrase in every language, and that API access to the model be contingent on paying regain tests of the phrase (to keep bad actors from simply filtering out that phrase in their requests to the API).

It wouldn’t stop the nation-state level bad actors, but it would help prevent people without access to their own private LLMs from being able to use them as effectively for disinformation.

I wish I could remember the name of an extension I had on my old computer.

It hid all ads, but also clicked them all in the background. It accomplished 4 goals:

1. I didn’t see the ads
2. The websites I visited made more money through the clicks
3. It cost the advertisers money
4. It made the cost/benefit worse for advertisers since they were paying for clicks without anyone being influenced by the ads

Every decent joke in the film was a repeat from a previous, better Mel Brooks film.

People don’t see to understand what happened here.

The Open Library was a great tool designed specifically to let anyone access books without violating copyright. It was an elegant solution that allowed ohysical books that weren’t being used to be checked out digitally, and digital licenses to be loaned out from partner libraries, but kept track of the licenses so that it kept the 1:book/person limit.

During Covid, they intentionally disabled the systems that prevented multiple concurrent copies of a single license being used, and the publishers went along with it because national emergency, and because physical libraries were closed, so there were millions of unused books that were unavailable.

After the lockdown ended, the publishers asked the Internet Archive to return to the old system, and they refused to do it until they were sued.

They intentionally disabled the protections that kept everything legal, and when asked to stop doing illegal shit they refused. It’s absolutely their own fault.

School Massacre are nothing new in the US.

The deadliest school-killing in American history was in 1927, killing 38 children and 6 adults and wounded about 60 more. The killer was the school board treasurer and had spent the previous few months buying and stealing dynamite around his farm and the school as well as his truck.

The difference since Columbine is the celebration of mass shootings. The media makes celebrities out of the killers and make graphics breaking down the planning, supplies, tactics, and more. They’re essentially helping the next maniac plan a “better” killing.

There’s no requirement for a federal judge to be a licensed attorney. She could be disbarred and keep her position.