Among the reasons for rejecting the idea of "intelligent design" of the human body are the shockingly stupid instances of bad design in it.
Occasionally someone has hands with six fingers. Could the human body have been designed by an LLM?
Bernie Sanders has endorsed Troy Jackson as a senate candidate to replace Platner.
The article links to more information about Jackson.
* EU regulators have accused Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, of failing to tackle the risks of its "addictive design" on the physical and mental health of users.*
This is a very important problem, and one of the reasons to refuse to use those systems. But if the EU is serious about protecting users from them, it should take firm action -- take a big bite out of the problem, not a little nibble. Use of a recommendation engine should not be enabled by default.
I think that a platform should not be allowed to use or suggest any particular recommedation engine.
The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is continuing to spread. Several factors are causing this, one being the monster's cancellation of US public health aid.
Analyzing arguments people cite on the issue of free speech.
The saboteur in chief wants to put a global heating denialist in charge of official US government reports on the advance of global heating.
*UK must cap political donations to stop the rich buying influence.*
The US must do this too, but the question of how it can be done is different in each country because of the difference in constitutions./p>
Two Muslim governments (Turkey and Egypt) have seized on a self-designated "gay cruise" as an opportunity to demonstrate their religious bigotry, by refusing the ship entry.
Turkey is ostensibly a secular democracy, but nowadays the tyrant Erdoğan is undermining both of those allegiances.
A bill in the UK proposes to set a maximum temperature for workplaces, as a safety standard.
This is needed, in the age of global heating disaster, to protect the lives of workers.
"Build history as you grow: Once you have enough history, we'll automatically unlock features." Apparently my 14+ year old youtube channel has not yet reached 2 months of active use, according to the vibe-coded math of Google's robots.
Since, as you know, arguing with robots is something of a hobby of mine, I uploaded my traditional driver's license. You can't just "upload" it, of course, they require you to scan a QR code with a phone and take a photo from within the browser, for maximal tracking. So I used one of my burner phones for that. They say their response takes 24 hours, so presumably some dollar-a-day call-center gig worker in India is going to put eyeballs on it, so we'll see how that goes.
In case you're wondering what stupidity I'm up to this time:
Bonnie Tyler died last week, and so the glorious "Total Eclipse of the Heart, Literal Version" by Persephone Maewyn and dascottjr was making the rounds again, dodging takedowns. (This video is a textbook case of fair use, since not only is it a parody song, but the lyrics are direct commentary on the video itself, I mean come on.) Anyway all extant copies of it are shit quality, so I reconstructed it from the official HD video plus the "literal" audio, and re-built the subtitles by hand. Immediate takedown. I appealed. A week later, some intern or chatbot at BMG said "fuck you no". Now I'm trying to counter-claim.
Anyway, maybe someday you'll get to see this higher quality version of the video. It's still pretty funny. You can go request it on the DNA Pizza music video stream I guess.
Update: Oh no. Anyway
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:28:12 -0700
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"Meta has spent years tracking us online," said a spokesperson for Everybody Hates Elon. "Now it wants to track us in the real world too." [...] "Meta and Ray-Ban's new AI glasses can be used to secretly record women and young people for sexual reasons," the EHE spokesperson continued in their statement. "Simply put, that's abuse."
EHE poses one simple question: "Billionaires could fund cures for cancer -- so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?"
How make go?
/run/initramfs/overlayroot.log: builtin set cfgdisk='disabled' Unable to find driver/module. searched: overlay overlayfs [failure]: Unable to find a driver. searched: overlay overlayfs
Adding "initramfs initramfs8 followkernel" to the end of config.txt did nothing.
Typically we treat Nov 22 as our "real" anniversary (the club will be turning 41 this year) but 25 is kind of a shocking number, so I thought that was worth noting. Check out what used to pass for photo galleries two and a half decades ago.
Traditionally this is where I do the usual "if you'd like us to be around for another 25 years" blah blah panhandling. So yeah, this would be a great time for you to join our Patreon or up your contribution, or make a one-time donation. We have been getting absolutely obliterated financially this year, the last few months specifically. Attendance has been way down across the board. You people need to start showing up, ok?
# xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 7680 x 7680 HDMI-1 connected primary 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm 1024x768 60.00* 800x600 60.32 56.25 848x480 60.00 640x480 59.94 HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
I have also tried various permutations of hdmi_force_hotplug, hdmi_group, hdmi_mode, hdmi_force_mode, hdmi_force_hotplug and hdmi_drive in config.txt, and video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60D in cmdline.txt with no change.
Before I toss it in the trash, does anyone know what could have caused this and if it is fixable? Is this a known failure mode of the video hardware scorching itself somehow?
Do not speculate. Do not just google it for me.
Update: I seem to have had a second Pi freak out in the same way from the same power failure!
Please use small words, URLs, and assume that I have no idea what any of the acronyms you used mean.
Update: For those of you who are late to the party:
- I am aware of the existence of iptables, thanks.
- AWS "ACL"-style "security group" firewalls do not have a country dropdown, and have a low-ish limit on how many IP addresses you can include.
- AWS "WAF"-style "protection packs" have a country dropdown, but those require relinquishing your SSL keys, because they run at layer 5 instead of layer 3.
- There is no AWS "block country" solution that runs at layer 3.
- I'm not giving up my SSL keys because I don't trust Bezos with the plain-text of my commerce and customer data because I'm not an idiot.
- Unless you are contradicting a statement of fact, above, please stop.
Boy, do I feel silly. Until now, I've been a passionate supporter of SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht, the Nazi who got his face melted off by the sight of God, in his race for Senator. I believe the people of Maine deserve better than Susan Collins, and so even though I had some misgivings about Toht, I ignored every click and whirr of my moral compass to cheer him on.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Grok, what's the difference between right and wrong?
Last Sunday, San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey relaxed after what was, for most, a fun-packed SF Pride by repeatedly prompting xAI chatbot Grok to provide justifications for the killings of civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces. [...]
In lieu of actually addressing his critics online, of which there were many in the replies, Dorsey only had eyes for Grok, a chatbot that is notorious for being programmed to push false narratives about politics, history, and everything else according to the very transparent whims of xAI's trillionaire backer, Elon Musk.
Matt, are you OK? I really mean that. I'm not trying to be funny. Frankly, I tried to write something satirical about what was happening -- tried to find a lighter way through this -- but the more I dug in, the more concerned I started to feel.
Only a year ago, some backend overcompensation by Grok's puppeteers resulted in the bot compulsively spitting out conspiracies about "white genocide" in South Africa, praising Adolf Hitler, and engaging in Holocaust denial. To that point, AI researchers have warned that AI boosters' framing of chatbots as objective and reliable could be weaponized to push propaganda and even encourage people to commit violence.
So of course, watching an elected official openly using it to confirm his very loaded questions about the correctness of killing civilians is unsettling -- even terrifying.
In his most recent dealings with Grok, the supervisor's behavior is giving off the sketch vibes of a person antagonizing those around him while not even looking at them. Instead, it's almost like he's staring off into space and talking to someone who isn't there.
As it stands today, X is a platform that actively facilitates the turning of brains into pudding. And if this were some rando in the city posting, it would be easy to dismiss them as another soul lost to AI obsession. But Dorsey represents a major and heavily populated slice of San Francisco, including Mid-Market, Mission Bay, SoMa, and other neighborhoods. Supervisors like him write legislation and have a profound impact on the lives of the people in their districts and the city at large.
If this is what he's doing publicly, what is he asking Grok in private?
Despite this, Matt remains only San Francisco's second-worst weird dude named Dorsey.
Waymos were a key reason for the traffic snarl in the Presidio after Saturday night's foggy fireworks display on the Golden Gate Bridge. Videos and social media posts from people stuck in traffic show Waymos locked in giant lines, randomly blocking the road, and stuck in a roundabout.
A number of Waymos had to be towed after they lost battery power; the vehicles that could hold a charge made errors on the road that backed traffic up for blocks, bystanders said.
Fellow drivers acted like, well, drivers. "We realized people were getting out of their cars, yelling and screaming at these Waymos because there were no drivers," Dave Guingona, who was stuck in Presidio traffic for two hours, told NBC News. [...]
In the Mission, meanwhile, one Waymo drove into an intersection despite a large lit firework sitting in the middle of the road. Video taken inside the car by passenger Rose Peterson shows the firework's sparks flashing all around them as the Waymo takes a lazy left turn. A second angle shows Peterson's Waymo tip the firework over, which then shoots projectiles at cars, homes, and bystanders on the sidewalk. [...]
A second Waymo that encountered a firework was a different story, though: A vehicle that drove into a firework near the 1200 block of Connecticut Street in Potrero caught on fire, Waymo said. The Waymo was unoccupied and there were no injuries; the vehicle had to be removed by the San Francisco Fire Department and other city authorities, according to Bonelli.
These incidents raise serious concerns about autonomous vehicles, especially those operating during unusual traffic patterns that may require real decision-making by drivers. "Human drivers don't just drive. They are the captain of the ship and anything that can happen to it," AV expert Phil Koopman told Gazetteer in 2024. "Well, if you put a computer in charge and it's not capable of doing anything other than navigating traffic, who's the real captain of the ship?"
The office of San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins did not respond by press time to Gazetteer's questions about legal mechanisms that might hold Waymo accountable when its operational failures, including parking and moving violations, lead to blocked roads and other forms of extended congestion. Jenkins recently attempted to prosecute seven members of the so-called "Golden Gate 26" who blocked the bridge in 2024 during a protest and were charged with felonies for false imprisonment (for keeping people stuck in traffic) and obstructing a thoroughfare.
Meanwhile, Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has been a major ally for Waymo in its San Francisco expansion, did not mention the company in his statement regarding the July 4 pileups.
Mirroring these videos that were posted on oligarch-controlled social media sites for posterity...
I have so many posts about Waymos on fire that it almost deserves its own tag:
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Planet Debian upstream is hosted by Branchable.