Former SPLC CFO arrested for overseeng payments to informants embedded inside white supremacy groups. https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/exclusive-splc-fraud-cfo-charges?Date=20260812 The government is portraying this as a fraud against donors, which is absurd. As a donor, this is exactly […]

Sad to be missing today's total solar eclipse. If you've never experienced one in the zone of totality, it's like nothing else. Night surrounded by day. The sun seems to swallow itself up. Here's the 8 April 2024 eclipse, as seen at the DFW airport. But no […] [Original post on federate.social]

Best wishes for clear skies and good viewing for those in the path of today's solar eclipse, especially if you're in the totality path! (In Philly, we only get a small nibble this time-- at maximum coverage, around 1:53pm local time, the moon will only cover 7% of the sun's surface. Local folks […]

The National Academies have bowed to pressure from the Trump regime and removed the chapter on climate science from the 4th edition of their _Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence_, a summary of scientific knowledge intended for judges, while it is "under review". (The chapter is already gone […]

Just noticed some public domain Internet Archive books are behind a login-wall. (I hadn't noticed it before because I'm usually logged in when I visit them.) Such books appear to largely be offensive or adult materials (though at least some appear to be written rather than visual porn). I […]

Something there is that doesn’t love a paywall.

The observations Ali Rıza Taşkale makes her are in many cases familiar to SF fans, or to anyone who's seen the joke "We're building the Torment Nexus from the classic SF work 'Don't Build the Torment Nexus'." But I like how it brings together a summary of many classic SFF works that tech […]

(I immediately looked for the source code on the last boost. It's concise and amusing: https://tinysubversions.com/ethical-assistant/app.js )

After experimenting with local LLMs for a couple years now, I'm excited to release my newest project: The Ethical Assistant! It provides all the benefits of an LLM assistant but with low energy usage, completely private, and no cost to use. https://tinysubversions.com/ethical-assistant/

The Ethical Assistant

Get the most important benefits of LLM assistants without the associated environmental costs, privacy risks, and economic brinksmanship.

tinysubversions.com

The article in the my last boost is open access. When I opened it, an intrusive "get help with an AI companion!" popup obscured some of the text. When I clicked in it, a larger popup telling me I needed to subscribe to use it let me click an X to close the popup, thus letting me read the […]

Did you know that early Christian ascetics who gave "everything" away often retained a single slave? Just out, a new study by Erin Dailey and Justin Pigott: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Ascetics, slaves, and necessity in Late Antiquity: renouncing all wealth, but for a single slave

Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics who shared thi...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

RE: https://cloudisland.nz/@paulh/117039165420784703 Here’s hoping journalists in the US are doing the same 👇

"Today is August 4, 2026," says an automated voice in a house devoid of people near the start of Ray Bradbury's post-nuclear-war tale "There Will Come Soft Rains". Bradbury's story first ran in the May 6, 1950 issue of Colliers, a few days before appearing in the book _The Martian Chronicles_ […]

"Union-busting statements dress refusal in the costume of respect. The Wikimedia Foundation ran that playbook against the one community on earth that keeps a timestamped ledger of who said what, and if it was truth, or lies." […]

Yesterday's cycling trip was through the shore towns of Stone Harbor, Avalon, and Sea Isle City, and back to my car via a rail trail along a power line right of way in the middle of Cape May. I rode along causeways and bridges passing salt marshes with egrets and osprey. Parts of Seven Mile […]

If you find a long-overdue library book in your house, don't worry about years of theoretically accumulated fines. Libraries generally just want the book back, or if they no longer want to keep it, they typically wouldn't want more than what it costs to replace it with something more suitable […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@publicdomainrev/117016314610604910 Cutter's article appeared in volume 8 of Library Journal. You can have the complete volume, and other volumes through 1934, delivered straight to your desk (or wherever you happen to be with your computer) with just a few touches […]

Finding suddenly recurring login-walls a useful way to break me of the habit of idly loading certain commercial websites to see if there's anything interesting there.

Emily Wilson appreciates how Christopher Nolan's _The Odyssey_ is bringing audiences into theaters, and drawing attention to Homer's epic poem (and its translations by her and others). But she's not a fan of the script, which she finds thematically incoherent, and making most of the characters […]

Tried an ambitious train and trail trip yeterday. The rail parts featured NJ Transit and Metro North; the walking parts featured midtown Manhattan; a farmer's market in Pawling, NY; a gorgeous lake where a nuclear research lab once stood; a hilltop view from Cat Rocks over a green valley; the […]

"The angry defensiveness at play makes me think that the writing tool that best resembles generative AI isn’t the typewriter. It’s cocaine… Writers integrating liberal amounts of drugs and alcohol into their writing process is well documented: they fall into the catch-22 of needing it to create […]

Keyana Sapp goes into depth about the many cookware brands that are no longer what they used to be: acquired for the name by another company who moves production elsewhere and lowers the quality. The article also identifies other companies that have held onto their brands and manufacturing […]

"This victory shows that universities should not capitulate to unjust and unconstitutional demands from the Trump administration, “When we join together and fight, we win." - Lorena Grundy, VP of AAUP's Penn chapter. The EEOC has dropped its demand for information on people involved with […]

"While I am not opposed to staged debates per se, there are two cases in which they invariably fail. The first is when one side strives to articulate complexity while the other promotes simplicity.... The second case where debates inevitably fail is when they single out a minority group for […]

There was a rain delay, and the Phillies blew a chance to win in the 9th with some bone-headed base-running decisions. But I got to sing in our chorale director's new arrangement of the national anthem in front of 40,000 cheering fans, and then watch the game (mostly out of the rain) with family […]

I have to pay increasing attention to what my phone does to pictures it takes. For example, my new Motorola phone includes a super zoom feature that actually uses generative AI to fill in details as it crops in! I turned it off, but others might not notice and upload such digitally created […]

"There’s no evidence that China or any other foreign entity manipulated the vote in 2020 or any other year.... One declassified document from 2020 portrays Russia as the country that has tried the most to penetrate American election systems — but in an effort to defeat Joe Biden." The AP […]

Philly's air quality index as of 4am was 333, in the "Hazardous" range: https://www.phila.gov/services/mental-physical-health/environmental-health-hazards/air-quality/. Limit time outdoors and driving gas and diesel vehicles, and consider masking when you do need to be outside in bad air.

Check air quality data | Services

Find current air quality information for Philadelphia, including air quality index (AQI) readings.

phila.gov

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/116932278568430247 "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'"

Philadelphia air quality index has now worsened to 211, in the "Very Unhealthy" purple zone, due in large part to the fires in Canada. That's up from "Unhealthy" this morning. The city has a site where you can monitor the current AQI, and get information on ways you can respond […]