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  RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/117582291834400512 Here’s a thought worth saying out loud. …and of course I think immediately of TeX, whose version number does not just increase without bound but instead asymptotically approaches pi, on the principle that software should •converge• rather than •grow•. (The software dates from 1978. The latest release is version 3.141592653, released in 2021.)

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  OK, so apparently it’s not just Macalester. https://hachyderm.io/@jalefkowit/117577034552865964

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  Stephen Miller terrorized, kidnapped, and murdered my neighbors. This is not some vague figurative sloganeering thing. I can take you on a walk from my house and point out the spots where they took people. I know multiple people who had relatives abducted by ICE, including citizens. My wife personally knew Alex Pretti, and found out he died when she saw his face on the news. Stephen Miller. This was his brainchild. This was his fantasy. This is on his hands. Just so we’re clear.

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  One of my least favorite features of Mastodon is how it makes typos appear in posts after they’re boosted. I don’t know why they built it that way. They should really fix that.

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  Paul’s Inexpert Tactical Political Advice of the Day™: In the fight over who’ll be the next Senate leadership, focus on Schumer. He’s both more harmful and more likely to go down right now than Jeffries. Don’t get me wrong, Jeffries regularly pisses me off. This is not a Jeffries endorsement. I just think Schumer is the fight that both more important to win •and• is more winnable. Light a fire under Jeffries, now and continuously, but frigging take Schumer •down•.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/117561086543402885 How many of these so-called “red states” are actually voter suppression states? Once you see it, it’s hard to stop seeing it.

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  I am always, always happy when any human system moves decisively away from fascism. That’s true no matter how messy, how problematic, or how broken the system is. I will celebrate all the same. Not because the system is All Fine Actually. Because I am happy to see fascism pushed back, each and every time. It’s that simple.

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  RE: https://mastodon.online/@parismarx/117553692591133397 It would be •fantastic• if top-down AI mandates from fart-huffing C-levels produce tech worker union drives so consistently that executives become afraid to even talk about the subject, like they’re goin to summon Bloody Mary in the mirror

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/117553142566857942 “Compute campuses.” That’ll fool ‘em! No data centers here! Just a compute campus! Approve our permit!

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  My not-so-hot take is that OpenAI is as responsible for this, and should be as legally liable for it, as if they sold human advice as a service and one of their employees had done this. My somewhat hotter take is that they are •more• responsible and should be •more• liable because this is a software system that, unlike a human employee, this company completely designed and built. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/01/chatgpt-woman-seizure-lawsuit-openai

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  If “Vote blue no matter who” ever meant anything useful, it was “form a coalition across the center and the left to oppose fascism.” And…that’s a really good strategic thought. It’s an •essential• thought, in fact: when the fascism is on the rise, anti-fascist people of otherwise wildly divergent political views have to come together to beat it back, or it will consume everything. But that means that “blue“ can’t just mean “anyone who ran as a Democrat;” it has to mean “anyone who will oppose...

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  RIP. What an actor. I spent my teenage years watching ST:TNG every week with my mom. His Picard was, of course, as iconic as a iconic gets. Debate the different ST captains all you like, fine, sure, so many great characters, but Picard will always be •my• captain. 1/ https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/oct/29/patrick-stewart-dead

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  Be sure you savor and re-savor this •incredible• right-wing self-own: Two “Project Veritas” operatives committed fraud at a Minnesota polling place to prove they wouldn’t get caught ••• and they got caught ••• and both are facing multiple felony charges. 1/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/28/voting-felony-disguise-minneapolis

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  Economics is a form of animism. *ducks*

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  RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Hex/117492268256168064 “‘AI’ companies…have something to prove, right now, or they don't exist. So now everything is critical.”

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  RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:htdsafwakqmzvuk2oivijzn6/post/3myt3ada7mk2l The word “algorithm” is derived from the family name of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian who lived in Baghdad and not only wrote down the instructions for what we now call “long addition” and “long multiplication” etc. — the instructions that European schools used for 400+ years — but also… …invented algebra. You know, nbd, just a Persian-Arab thing. “They don’t produce science”?!??...

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  My controversial-not-actually-controversial take is that the Meta fine is still too small by a factor of 10, in principle the judge shouldn’t have discounted it (but I realize in practice he’s just trying to get some scrap of it to survive appeal), and if liability were actually an •existential• threat to megacorps instead of an expense line then that would mitigate a whole bunch of societal problems at once.

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  I just registered my kid for fall school athletics, and now feel like Heracles returning from the underworld with Cerberus on his back. WOW is that online registration platform bad software. 1/3

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  RE: https://mstdn.social/@DemocracyMattersALot/117503114528255910 I understand and share the joy of dunking on Trump, but please don’t do it this way: - IQ is largely a nonsense metric - Given its context and history, using IQ as an insult is playing with eugenicist fire - Purporting to quantify “intelligence” at all is wildly problematic (we don’t even have a good definition of the thing we’re measuring here, folks) - Purporting to quantify intelligence of someone at a •distance• is even w...

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  Surfacing from a conversation in someone else’s replies, advice many folks on Fedi might like (but I don’t want to swamp their mentions): ADVICE ABOUT GETTING A PIANO If you’re thinking about getting a •piano• (the acoustic instrument) and not an electric keyboard… 1/ #piano

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  Oh HALLELUJIAH macOS Safari recently added a “pull to refresh” feature that is triggered by the scroll wheel, and obnoxiously easy to trigger accidentally — so much so that I’ve already multiple times lost unsaved changes in a web form to it. You can disable it: defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugDisableRefreshControl 1 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256358874?sortBy=rank

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@KraftTea/117493899019603708 Wow, this video is quite a mix of emotions.

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  RE: https://mastodon.online/@vwbusguy/116105608250025802 ICE is “de-escalating” in exactly the same way that cockroaches de-escalate when you turn on the light.

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  RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5o6k7jvowuyaquloafzn3cfw/post/3myfjcm3isk2h I’ve heard reports exactly like this in • every • single • election • since 2004. And every time, when somebody finally manages to get to the bottom of it, it turns out the culprit is garbage UI design — not the machine secretly changing votes (because why would it •show• the user if it’s actually cheating?!). But these breathless stories about touchscreen voting aren’t going die unless touch...

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@Zygos/117461869086312391 It strikes me that there’s a real Catch-22 here for AI vendors: They want to argue that training an LLM on other people’s copyrighted work without permission is OK because the LLM and its output are transformative use. But if it’s transformative, then the people doing the transforming must be responsible for this new, original work they created. No more “we’re just indexing other people’s sites!” If it’s misleading or defamatory, that’s th...

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  RE: https://eupolicy.social/@jmaris/117461810385145539 Watched it the first time for the highly satisfying “Yeah! Go get him!!” reaction. But I’ll be bookmarking this to study exactly how El-Sayed handled it: his word choices and rhetorical structure, which parts he did and did not choose to engage with, how he did and did not let his interlocutor respond, what he left said and unsaid, how he held control of the framing of the whole conversation. This is a master class.

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  RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/117461057426428454 Is code a machine that performs a task, in a way that is verifiable and measurable? Or is code an embodiment of hard-won shared understanding of problem and context, understanding that extends into human systems far beyond the code? The correct answer is “both.” Neglect the latter at your peril.

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  RE: https://newsie.social/@servelan/117453769304899627 My inexpert take on this is that these scumbags •are• actually concerned about whether they have the legal right to scrape what they’re already scraping, and we should press that case hard.

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  A neighbor shared two short documentaries made by students about how the ICE invasion impacted students in Minneapolis. Folks on Fedi might like to see them. The first one is face-to-face interviews with students at Roosevelt High, the place where Bovino and a bunch of unhinged agents stampeded school grounds hours after ICE murdered Renee Good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFOoUTNgTOM 1/ #Minneapolis #ICEout

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  RE: https://hachyderm.io/@evacide/117266977480037384 This! This! Louder! Flock isn’t just mass surveillance. It’s •redlined• mass surveillance. Same for ShotSpotter.🧵