I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this, but...I have to do this. Theoden's final vet visit and cremation was a big chunk of change for me, and losing him, plus Ad Astra's webshop being down for most of August, means the budget hole is larger than I expected. I miss my fuzzy orange fellow. A lot.

Theoden's Final Vet Bill/Cremation Expenses

On August 6th, my cat, Theoden, had to go to the Urgent Care vet. His hyperthyroidism had concealed kidney disease, and the kindest thing to do was to say goodbye. While not as expensive as the Emerge...

paypal.com

Prosecutors are elected officials. Not filing charges against a multiple child killer is a quick way to lose your next election. Whether she was legally insane is a genuinely hard, politically-fraught question… … exactly the sort of question best handled by the community (the jury), not the DA.

Julia Carrie Wong@joolia.bsky.social · 3w ago

I do not understand who is served by prosecuting this woman.

Someone had this to say about me today. I honestly had no idea I hold these positions. I am constantly learning new things about myself.

It wasn't cool in 1926 when Father Coughlin was saying stuff like this about Jews. It's not cool in 2026 when Nancy Mace is saying stuff like this about Muslims.

Nicki posts irregularly but with a fantastic signal to noise ratio. If you have any interest in financial intelligence or geopolitics I think she's worth ten bucks a month. (ObDisc: Nicki is my neighbor IRL. I have no financial stake in her writing.)

Nicki Kenyon@nickikenyon.bsky.social · last mo.

Hi, everyone. If you like the content I write, I’d love to see you subscribe. It’s still free to read, but I’ve made commenting a subscriber perk! I hope you will join me and engage. open.substack.com/pub/ireneken...

Time for me to retreat from BSky again. I'm tired of seeing people who couldn't pass a high school civics test have absolute certainty about things they don't understand well enough to even be called ignorant about. Can't persuade them, can't educate them, happier without them. Good luck.

The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Johnathan to be indicted.

Phil Hagen@philhagen.com · 2mo ago

The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted.

A mini-rant about NSF funding: Christmas of 2004 I was a Ph.D student at the University of Iowa researching electronic voting. One of the problems we had to confront was vote tabulation: when everything is stored on a digital media database, how do you keep that data tamper-resistant? 1/

It's Juneteenth. Post your favorite Black fictional character. Angela Bassett and Ralph Fiennes portray Lornette Mason and Lenny Nero in Kathryn Bigelow's 1995 movie "Strange Days".

ʀʏᴀɴ ᴛʜᴏᴍᴀꜱ ʀɪᴅᴅʟᴇ 🇵🇭 🏳️‍🌈@ryanthomasriddle.com · 3mo ago

It's Juneteenth. Post your favorite Black fictional character.

For the longest time I've wanted to make the Cruel Trick for Dear Friends: a vacuum dewar wrapped in radiation hazard tape/"do not open" tape. Inside: CO2 at pretty high pressure, so on opening you'd get this woosh and chill. Cargo: a lead rod finished in TiN, bearing a radhazard + DROP AND RUN.

With the Facebook outage, many are free of AI slop contaminated algorithmic feeds for the first time in *years*. Raise a glass to freedom! Facebook's DNS was blown away! And...FACEBOOKISDOWN! is good for 15% off sitewide, on orders of $10 or more through Sunday! SHARE THIS MESSAGE!

Attack Vector: Tactical: Ship Book 2 — Ad Astra Games

Following the destruction of the Saladin by the Warspite, the scattered remnants of humanity are embroiled in war. While focusing on the offensive set by the Medinan Star Force, the Olympian Def...

adastragames.com

Since my post about helium has gotten some interest, a quick follow-up on how helium might hold the secrets of neutron stars: Helium comes in two forms[*], 3He and 4He. The former is two protons and a neutron, the latter is two-and-two. [*] okay, nine, but only two matter 1/

My Ph.D thesis (which was interrupted: I'm an ABD) was on language-theoretic security. The theoretical and practical results I slaved over for 18 months can be taught and demonstrated in two hours tops in today's undergraduate CS classes.

Laurence Pearl 🔥@laurencepearl.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Not wanting to be snarky but this is true of every technological advance in science. My entire PhD in 1983 was the fitting and refinement of a single protein crystal structure. Today I could do the same within an hour - no AI required. Hyperbole does not help.

This is important reading for everyone concerned about STEM education. tagide.com/blog/llm/the...

For my international friends: Right now the upper house of the United States' legislature (the Senate) is in the hands of Donald Trump's party (the Republicans). It would take a miracle for the opposition party (the Democrats) to seize enough seats in the November elections to take control. 1/

No Star Wars, no Star Trek. Name an SF franchise.

Ken Burnside@kenburnside.bsky.social · 3mo ago

No Star Wars. No Star Trek. Name a favorite sci-fi franchise.

As a senior software engineer, not managerially oriented like Phil, let me offer an alternate take: Don't use Mythos to create a bug list. Use it to justify making hard changes to make those classes of bugs you keep making harder (or even impossible!) to make. 1/

Phil Hagen@philhagen.com · 3mo ago

If you haven’t completely aced the basics, lay off the efforts to do the exotic and/or fad stuff like Mythos. (And yes, those are the same fundamentals of security programs we’ve been stressing for decades.)

Slightly diminish a musical act: Vegan Meat Loaf.

Ken Burnside@kenburnside.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Slightly diminish a group OKAY SAID FRED

When I was an academic I'd be so fastidious about citations I would literally have nightmares about getting one wrong. Every honest academic takes citational accuracy dead seriously. It is the bedrock of research integrity. Without it you're nothing and deserve your nothingness.

JFC I can't even "I can't even".

Soraya Nadia McDonald@soraya.press · 4mo ago

I wonder if other countries are having a debate about whether or not to send their espionage trainees to the U.S. because the newbies will return full of false confidence about how easy the job is

Where is Rep. Kean? Wrong answers only: He converted to Sikhism and is now atoning for being a Congressman by feeding the poor free, nutritious meals in his home gurdwara. He has much sin to expiate before he feels he may show his face with honor once more.

Kathryn VanArendonk@kvanaren.bsky.social · 4mo ago

so my district's house rep, tom kean jr, has fully disappeared for two entire months, and his spokesman apparently told the nytimes that he is dealing with a personal health matter but also no one can see him because "there's no cameras where tom is" www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/n...

A law that prohibited felons from owning muskets would, by the ATF doctrine of constructive possession, be used to prosecute a plumber who had just visited a Starbucks. I am not kidding. They're so easy to make even pre-industrialized shithole colonies like America could make them in huge numbers.

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 4mo ago

A musket from 1776 can fire a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet per second. Imagine what that can do to a human body. Yet under federal and most state laws, it’s exempt from gun regulations. Many antique or replica guns aren’t considered firearms and even convicted felons can own them.

There's a CNO contract in NoVA with a burning need for good Windows devs _now_. Absurd $$$ goes to the right candidate. *I advise against working for this administration in any way.* But if you need work, you need work, and I'm not going to judge you. Reach out and I'll hook you up.

Bruce Springsteen and the F Street Band

Ken Burnside@kenburnside.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Slighty increase a band: Correct, Said Freidrich

Slightly diminish a book: * "The Peaked-in-High-School Gatsby" * "The Wet Smouldering of the Vanities" * "Catch-21"

Ken Burnside@kenburnside.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Slightly diminish a book: The OK Stuff. I Guess.

To anyone who needs to hear it. The best advice I ever got from my advisor about getting a job after graduation was when he said, "but that was what worked for me, and that was a long time ago." Do not assume that your path to success will look like the paths of those who succeeded before you.

No, I haven't read SCOTUS's opinion. You know who else hasn't? Every person telling you to be outraged by it. Stop letting ignorant people tell you who to hate. Slow down. Breathe. Wait a day for the honest legal commentators to read the opinion. I promise, you'll have time to hate tomorrow.

I have long had a weird role in GnuPG. I don't influence the specifications (RFC9580 or LibrePGP), I don't touch the codebase, I have absolutely no official role. Some people listen to me anyway because of my twenty years of active involvement in the GnuPG community.

A few days before Easter in 1979, Mrs. Waters taught me how to draw a star on an Easter egg. No, seriously, it all goes back to that. Story below.