Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.

Still have Keiko trapped in the transporter buffer, I see.

…

Riding through the village, Christmas Eve.
You can say there's no such thing as Elminster,
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe. 

Grandma got run over by a dragon
Walking home from the tavern, Christmas Eve.
(On her way home)
You can say there's no such thing as Elminster,
(Say there's no Elminster)
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.
(Lord, we believe) 

She'd been drinkin' too much ale,
And we'd begged her not to roam.
But she'd left her sword behind,
So she stumbled out into the snow. 

Grandma got run over by a dragon
Walking home from the tavern, Christmas Eve.
(On her way home)
You can say there's no such thing as Elminster,
(Say there's no Elminster)
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.
(Lord, we believe) 


Now we're all so proud of Grandpa,
He's been takin' this so well.
See him in there watchin' the dice roll,
Drinkin' ale and singin' with the halfling fell. 

It's not Christmas without Grandma.
All the villagers are in shock.
And we just can't help but wonder:
Should we bury her treasure or give it to the clerk? 

Grandma got run over by a dragon
Walking home from the tavern, Christmas Eve.
(Midnight before Christmas)
You can say there's no such thing as Elminster,
(Say there's no Elminster)
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.
(Lord, we believe) 

Now the feast is on the table
And the meat pies made of turkey.
And a red and golden candle
That would have just matched the hair in grandma's curly wig. 

I've warned all my friends and comrades.
"Better watch out for yourselves.
They should never give a license,
To a dragon that breathes fire and smokes with elves." 

Grandma got run over by a dragon
Walking home from the tavern, Christmas Eve.
(Minding her own business)
You can say there's no such thing as Elminster,
(What do you mean there's no Elminster?)
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.
(Lord, we believe) 

Oh, As for me and Grandpa, we believe! 

HOLD ON I NEED PUT ON MY PUSSY PACK.

U wot

“Won’t somebody [redacted] of this [redacted] p[olitician]?” unfortunately seems like our only escape hatch. I wish the two time travelers had better success in their missions. I am not confident the future resistance has enough resources to send a third, but one can hope.

Stop v Wanking < November ^ Embargo >

Computers to the rescue. AI succinctification:

Here’s a distilled version of the article:

Russian Psyops: Poisoning Online Communities

Russia has developed an effective online tactics game, using cheap and widespread methods to manipulate public opinion and sow discord. Their goal is to create an environment where no online space feels safe or trustworthy.

Tactics:

• Creating fake accounts to spread false information and ignite conflicts
• Targeting sensitive topics like race, politics, and hobbies to exploit emotions and provoke reactions
• Posting “clueless” comments to elicit responses from genuine users, then fueling the resulting flame wars
• Playing both sides by promoting opposing views with a mix of truth and disinformation

Consequences:

• Fracturing English-speaking communities and eroding trust online
• Normalizing toxic behavior and making it seem like “just how things are”
• Disrupting healthy discussions and debates, creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and cynicism

The Threat:

Russia’s online psyops campaign is a real and significant threat to global democracy and community cohesion. By recognizing this threat and taking steps to mitigate its effects, we can work towards preserving the integrity and safety of online spaces.

Shoulda let Sherman continue his march and torch the whole thing down. Reconstruction was a mistake.

Uh, ACKUALLY, these should be called GNU/Linux because without the Global Nutrition United’s packaging, these cookies would impossible to ship on there own

No, just a sociopath decided to fuck with this one person’s life.

IT’S NOT A PUUUUUMAAAAHHH

haha, yeah I am well aware I could do something like that. Unfortunately, once you start working for larger companies, your options for solutions to problems typically shrink dramatically and also need to fit into neat little boxes that someone else already drew. And our environment rules are so draconian, that we cannot use k8s to its fullest anyhow. Most of the people I work with have never actually touched k8s, much less any kind of server oriented UNIX. Thanks for the advice though.

This kinda functionality is surprisingly apropos to a problem I have a work, I realize. And yet, I have k8s. More and more I am appreciating the niche systemd can play with pets instead of cattle and wished corps weren’t jumping to managed k8s and all of that complexity it entails immediately.

It makes somewhat passable mediocrity, very quickly when directly used for such things. The stories it writes from the simplest of prompts is always shallow and full of cliche (and over-represented words like “delve”). To get it to write good prose basically requires breaking down writing, the activity, into its stream of constituent, tiny tasks and then treating the model like the machine it is. And this hack generalizes out to other tasks, too, including writing code. It isn’t alive. It isn’t even thinking. But if you treat these things as rigid robots getting specific work done, you can make then do real things. The problem is asking experts to do all of that labor to hyper segment the work and micromanage the robot. Doing that is actually more work than just asking the expert to do the task themselves. It is still a very rough tool. It will definitely not replace the intern, just yet. At least my interns submit code changes that compile.

Don’t worry, human toil isn’t going anywhere. All of this stuff is super new and still comparatively useless. Right now, the early adopters are mostly remixing what has worked reliably. We have yet to see truly novel applications yet. What you will see in the near future will be lots of “enhanced” products that you can talk to. Whether you want to or not. The human jobs lost to the first wave of AI automation will likely be in the call center. The important industries such as agriculture are already so hyper automated, it will take an enormous investment to close the 2% left. Many, many industries will be that way, even after AI. And for a slightly more cynical take: Human labor will never go away because having power over machines isn’t the same as having power over other humans. We won’t let computers make us all useless.

You’re aware Linux basically runs the Internet World, right?

Billions of devices run Linux. It is an amazing feat!

It is a question that matters. Why is the current rate of death not already “worse”? We currently seem unable to halt it. It is already unbearable and horrible. And it won’t stop after the election regardless of who wins. That sad truth is that those in power, those with money, simply don’t care about it. It is already “worse.” The president has less control over foreign aid than you believe.

Hard to do that given suicide is criminalized in many places. So, uh, go vote so we can do what you want, I guess? It isn’t enough to know the train wreck is coming, but I am forced to endure watching it unfold like a sneeze that never comes as the authoritarians do their best to defy entropy. The constant strife and tension is just not worth it. In fact, it is boring. Nothing lasts forever. Institutions should wither and die just like people. We pretend there is some kind of coherent narrative to the institutions when really they drunkenly stumble through time, reacting to the shit as it happens. Tenaciously gripping onto the current world order as if it is our peak is very disheartening. We should just let it go.

Didn’t say it would be awesome. It would really suck. Lots of people dead. Yep. But given the current status quo, lots of people are already dead. So is it the rate of death that bothers you?

Positive change happens slowly, you cannot force it through violence.

I’d argue a guillotine dramatically improved social progress, and for the time period, pretty quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

Yeah, that does seem pretty likely. I also think civil war would become very likely after a stunt like that. Great movie idea actually. The ethnofascists decide that Trump being assassinated could actually galvanize a full white supremacy uprising. So they do it. Vance predictably circles the wagons and declares martial law. The confedernazis start lynching. And then all hell breaks loose.

Bro, voting for either of them won’t stop the warring or the genociding. The US can’t not be involved in some kind of armed conflict and also maintain the current hegemony. Just because we put a veneer of democracy on it, doesn’t make it any better, in fact it makes it worse. Either the majority of the populace is cool with it (tyranny of the majority, yay democracy?) or the leaders do it without the consent of the governed and the populace doesn’t immediately depose (tacit consent by virtue of not giving enough fucks to overcome the inertia, yay democracy?). Voting in a two party system is like picking between a shit sandwich and a diarrhea smoothie.

I’m not voting at all actually. The whole system is too depressing to engage. Of all the games humans choose to play, we chose this one with all this misery and strife and assholes. Voting won’t make any of it better. Two centuries in with industrial technology, and we can only seem to achieve some kind of bullshit metastability of two steps forward, one step back, for anything. History syndicates generationally with the same dumb things happening over and over. We are capable of so much more than this. We can imagine such wondrous things. Yet we are consumed by avarice, lust for power, tribalism, emotional thinking. Humanity doesn’t deserve the gift of consciousness.