Oh come *on*. Who out there was asking for Event Horizon in their Star Trek? I watch this show with my kids.

Not sure I'll ever get over the fact that every villain I ever thought an unrealistic blithering idiot with half-arsed writing was in fact unrealistically over-written and over-thought - while every 'realistic' villain with a coherent, sympathetic motivation is now clearly 100% literary fiction.

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · 11mo ago

god damn it he explicitly just said this when he was talking with Douthat this year

Voters who are like, “I fucking *told you so* about the Strategic Helium Reserve“

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · 2w ago

What’s the funniest hyper-specific New Mexico issue that might be become more nationally prominent due to the primary change? Lotta physicists there who are the kind of people who donate and vote in primaries, maybe some esoteric Los Alamos specific thing becomes prominent

OH MY FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DID THAT

karpad@karpad.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"If a bird is within 50 feet of a coop, it probably belongs to the owner of that coop, so don't fuck with it. birds further out are probably wild birds, and thus open to be collected." "what if a bird has one leg within range and one leg out?" "what if you shut the fuck up?" Bava Batra.23b7

My investor told me he doesn't really see the moat in my plan. I explained that's the point. The glacis protects the base of the wall and obscures the ditch entirely. By the time the assault party reaches the counterscarp with fascines, they will be committed and under crossfire from grapeshot

the provinces decline to offer tribute, the armies return in defeat, the temple of the arts has closed its doors, and the name of the Emperor is scoured from the palaces by his own magistrates. now the sun and storms turn against him. the Mandate is lost.

Just came back from a lovely 4th of July party in perfect weather. Now checking in on what God has seen fit to deliver to the capital.

when your leadership is too off-putting and weird to hire & retain normie attorneys and PR reps

Very Sane AI Newsletter@verysane.ai · 2mo ago

Did Anthropic ask for this? www.verysane.ai/p/did-anthro...

Hopefully, Steuard thought to bring some of the physicist’s mordant sensibility when teaching this class. “Now, it is our turn to learn about Balrog physiology.”

Steuard Jensen@steuard.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We're nearly done teaching our class on The Lord of the Rings. The class has finally finished reading the book, so I took the opportunity to dress up as "the minstrel of Gondor" and sing "Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom" from the old animated Return of the King movie. Fun times!

1975. A dingy IBM office. Doc Brown is grabbing Michael Fagan’s sleeve. “It's your kids, Michael! Something's gotta be done about your kids!"

This paper by Margaret-Anne Storey is the most important thing I've read about the field of software engineering in years. arxiv.org/abs/2603.22106

When I was younger, I had a real inferiority complex about software engineers vs. Real Engineers. I assumed Real Engineers spent all day using tensor witchcraft to precis model steel beam failure modes, or something.

It really is wild how much of stuff you thought had to be based in some kind of rigorous, evidence-based process ends up being just vibes all the way down.

John Lansing@pipedreaming.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is one of the best illustrations of the recklessly inaccurate flow estimations still primarily used for selecting diameters for water supply piping in multifamily buildings.

the bad guys have a dev+deploy cycle about 4-5 orders of magnitude faster than your average harried municipal IT team, so

Does not escape my notice that here, the CEO of a giant private prison company is showing more personal integrity than your average law firm partner. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Some DHS contractors told White House officials they were asked to pay Corey Lewandowski

Some companies complained to the Trump administration that Lewandowski has stood to personally profit from the DHS contracting process. Lewandowski denies the allegations.

nbcnews.com

Run under piping hot water for at least 15 seconds, then twist hard.

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · 5mo ago

how would YOU open the Strait of Hormuz? Wrong answers only

i needed this out of my head

There Is No Better Media

segyges.leaflet.pub

Had log back in to share this piece by @segyges.bsky.social about LLMs and consciousne— wait, where are you going? Come back! It’s actually pretty good! www.verysane.ai/p/might-an-l...

Might An LLM Be Conscious?

In short, this depends on what you think that means, whether you think it’s possible in principle, and what you think would be evidence of it.

verysane.ai

This tracks with slipping into a pre-literate society. The Big Man and his family don‘t need to read, we have scribes for that.

Leigh Walton@leighwalton.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Every office has an executive tier whose emails are like: saw on news , , can we replce complianc dept with web 3 and a worker tier whose emails are like: Dear Jim, First of all, I *love* this idea! Unfortunately, I spoke with Legal and identified a few issues with this approach. For starters…

my evergreen take is that "building software" is a bad metaphor because just like any other artifact made out of language, software is written the dominant activity of building is actually building (laying bricks or whatever); the dominant activity of writing is determining what to write

dorian@doriantaylor.com · last yr.

…and the reason why (as far as i'm concerned) is, the actual bottleneck is not lines of code but decisions about what those lines of code ought to say

For a second I thought that was blood spatter on her hands, but I’m about 95% sure it’s actually red paint.

James Gunn@jamesgunn.bsky.social · last yr.

Look Out. 2026.

Going back many decades, every physics department would receive a steady stream of crank physics manifestos. Typically from a retired engineer, using dimly remembered undergrad math. Kalanick & friends have discovered that this hobby is a lot less lonely if you have an LLM providing flattery.

David Burbach 🇺🇸@dburbach.bsky.social · last yr.

Wait, Uber founder, who dropped out of earning a business undergraduate degree, says he was on the verge of prompting Grok into making fundamental quantum physics breakthroughs? How, exactly, would Kalanick even recognize a physics breakthrough? I sure couldn't. gizmodo.com/billionaires...

The older teens has gotten into programming. He now asks with genuine interest what I did at work each day. I don’t have the heart to tell him, “Five hours wrestling with dependencies, blinking back tears, then some code reviews as a treat.”

INDIANA JONES AND THE LEAVERS OF THE LOST ARK ALONE BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE FUNDING FOR THAT AND ALSO FIGHTING NAZIS WOULD BE DEI I GUESS

Chaucer Doth Tweet@levostregc.bsky.social · last yr.

*INDIANA JONES AND THE CLOSURE OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT*

actual exchange: him: you havent tried nyc bagels me: neither will I him: what if I make you try them me: are you opening a bagel shop here no I don't think so then 5 days pass Him: how does one get to your house from the airport me: wut him: nvm I asked your wife see you in 30

Bad gateway Bad! (whaps gateway lightly on nose with newspaper)

The annual blog post is up, thanks to some bullying from @jemal.co. www.goer.org/Journal/2024...