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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
laemeur@mastodon.sdf.org ("LÆMEUR") wrote:

I illustrated this feature for The Hollywood Reporter back in March, but it just came out yesterday: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/the-ai-roundtable-r2-d2-skynet-hal-9000-m3gan-1236572418/

It's a humorous "AI roundtable" with the Terminator, M3GAN, R2-D2, Samantha (from Her), and ol' HAL9000. Short, and pretty amusing.

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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
trevorflowers@hachyderm.io ("Ol' Dustmouth Flowers") wrote:

Groggy morning thought: A regular event in which people make interesting things the rough size of a business card. Maybe there are casual categories and votes, but mostly it's for fun and community.

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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
tuftyindigo@meow.social ("Tufty Indigo 🪗") wrote:

Greatly amused that #Confuzzled had the bright idea of putting pronouns on the room keys to encourage people to have them on show, but not all the hotel staff got the memo to offer people the choice, so several people got "assigned she at check-in". And of course they ran out of hes before the early day was over, so looking at someone's key doesn't tell you their pronouns at all.
I feel like the political message here is much deeper than they intended!

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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

Signs you have carpenter ants

1. keep finding tiny tools
2. city sends tiny permit to affix to baseboard
3. try to move a book, are told “keep this entrance clear, ma’am” because of “cement delivery coming later”
4. Your dish rack is dismantled “because it’ll be cheaper to rebuild from scratch”
5. no room on the dresser due to like 85 tiny pickups illegally parked there
6. husband keeps hearing high pitched wolf whistles when exiting shower

#antart #ants #carpenterants #drawing #antdrawings

Color drawing of realistic carpenter ants with little hard hats and tools. One says "hey bay-be" the other says "wow we"

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pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

If you're an atheist, you can't answer this stupid question, apparently.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/24/what-is-the-meaning-of-life/

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SRanLOrW4hQ

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Of Course They Booed”

https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/of-c/

> It's this sneering attitude, I'd argue, that is driving so much of the pushback against "AI" and against ed-tech

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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
axbom@axbom.me ("Per Axbom") wrote:

If you are considering the Kagi search engine, there are aspects you should be aware of from an ethics perspective.

https://khevans.com/2025/08/21/kagi-ethics.html

”A portion of your fee goes towards Yandex, indirectly funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vlad, the CEO, has stated that 2% of their total costs in 2024 goes towards Yandex. He has also stated that there is no intent of changing this.”

”At least other search engines like DuckDuckGo have halted their partnerships with Yandex. Kagi’s refusal to do so and Vlad’s firm support of Yandex is quite telling. If others have ceased partnering with Yandex, why can’t Vlad?”

”It’s worth mentioning that Kagi previously listed the sources they used in their search. It seems that they’ve now hidden that information on that page, seemingly contradictory to their “commitment to transparency.”

”A portion of your fee goes towards Elon Musk’s xAI, of X/Twitter, to support Grok in their AI assistant. Indeed, you can simply not use this assistant, however all paying users are effectively subsidizing the cost of the Grok API calls. There is no way to opt-out of this.”

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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
zzt@mas.to ("[object Object]") wrote:

@blaurascon same

I can recommend taking a look at Postgres full text search as a possible backend, as it’s pretty close to what you’d want for a (smaller scale) search index and query language: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch.html

you’ll need to bring your own ranking mechanism and scraper of course

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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
blaurascon@critter.cafe ("Blau :neocat_floof_w_: :therian:") wrote:

me, having basically none of the required skillset and literally none of the required resources: i wonder how hard it is to build a little search engine and crawler bot

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Boosted by aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart"):
mhoye@cosocial.ca wrote:

@aredridel

Discoverability, accessibility and norms-clarity are are at the top of my list of concerns. If you open, just about any man page for just about any program on Unix, you will virtually never find information like "where I can ask questions", much less "what is our CCoC" and "what information generally helps to answer questions".

It is virtually impossible in the default settings to go from "I have a question" to "I have an answer" to "I've improved the docs for the next person."

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aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart") wrote:

RE: https://meow.social/@oddtail/115422796270229996

"We treat our bodies as sacred in the worst possible way" brilliant line

And it's exactly the primary transphobia I got in my family. It was something I had to unlearn and convince my family to accept, and was kind of a remarkable barrier in an otherwise accepting family.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

These days my photographs are mostly from around Hveragerði. /end

The sun seen through steam in Hveragerði.
Steam freezes on the ground as crystals in Hveragerði.
Autumn mist in the reforestation area near Hveragerði.
Mist covers the ground. Snow is scattered. Starlings fly above.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Montréal is quite picturesque.

A couple confers over something in the sun in a Montréal park.
Through the reeds we see the vague outlines of a duck.
People meet in the rain, under the cover of their umbrellas, in Parc Jarry, Montréal.
Teenagers meet under a tree in Parc Jarry, Montréal as the sun sets.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Got back into proper photography ten years ago with a Fuji when I was living in Montréal.

A mother dragging a reluctant child over the road in Montréal.
A very green armchair that was left under a bridge in Montréal.
A very chunky cat that was outside a store in Montréal.
A woman reading a book in a public park in Montréal.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Had my iPhone era like many others. The iPhone 6 camera had some charm

A black and white photo of old buildings next to the river Avon in Bath. 2015.
Canal boats in the river Avon in Bath.
A bird flies over buildings by the river Avon in Bath.
Tourists walk along a hill in a geothermal area somewhere in Reykjanes IIRC

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aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart") wrote:

RE: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/116628363841732321

This law is so good and the US needs an equivalent this strong, badly.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Got into digital photography about 20 years ago while still living in Bristol. Although regularly visiting home.

A photo taken in Bristol. The cobbles are still wet from the rain. A pigeon is chasing after another pigeon.
A photo of the “Gentlemen’s” public toilets in a park in Bristol. The sign says “these toilets are now permanently closed.”
New year’s eve in Garðabær in Iceland circa 2007. There are fireworks everywhere.
New year’s eve 2008 in Reykjavík city centre. A couple walks along the pond.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Never really recovered from my admiration of black and white film although I don't miss the many inconveniences

The fire escape by the dormitory belonging to the University of the West of England.
Mail is stacked up against the wall by a very shoddy front door.
A group of people walk through a cemetery in Clifton, Bristol.
A child looks at the procession during a commitment ceremony in Bristol. Apple’s “AI” thinks she is a bald eagle.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Most of the photos were taken in Clifton, the centre, Redland, or Southville

A bicycle is locked to a railing in Clifton, Bristol.
An out of focus photo of the Clifton train station, I think.
A view town a tunnel of thorns in a cemetery in Clifton, Bristol.
Through a gate, down a hall, we see a silhouette of a man.

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Moving to Bristol in 2000 I was still using black and white film, mostly

A black and white photo taken through an arch in Bristol city centre. A woman is on the other side taking photos of the architecture.
Newspapers piled on chairs in a Clifton laundromat.
A pair of golfers seem to argue in the Ashton Court golf course in Bristol.
Pigeons taking flight in a Bristol park.

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jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

The dog got skunked today and I have to think the skunk had been storing that shit away for a while because it was the most caustic chemical-smelling, WWI mustard gas-level skunking ever, our house is now a Superfund site, please avoid

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Cross-posting tools still suck, huh?

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

These were taken after my shift in the newsroom studio on the last day that the Icelandic national broadcasting service broadcast from their old facilities in Laugavegur. Late 90s

A photo from an old-style newsroom showing a number of screens with various broadcasts and clocks showing various time zones.
Inside the small newsroom studio control room at the old facilities that the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service had in Laugavegur. A documentary about the life of Halldór Laxness is being broadcast.

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pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

The rules are being rigged to favor contrarian assholes.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/24/idiots-demanding-special-status-for-being-idiots/

National Academies of Science

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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

If you’re one of my new or recent followers that came here because of my newsletter, you might not know that I regularly subject my audience to my photography. So to give you some context I figure I might as well post a little bit of an overview of the kind of photography I’ve done as a hobbyist.

A scanned film photo of a cat taking shelter from the rain under a car.
A photo of the pond in the Reykjavík city centre. The buildings are in silhouette as the sun sets.

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neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik") wrote:

What a BANGER https://youtu.be/Ck3MRdeph5o

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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
evaristegal0is ("evariste.gal🌈is") wrote:

@campuscodi open source projects should not pay for bug reports. But they should credit the researcher publicly.

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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
Binder@petrous.vislae.town ("Shannon Prickett") wrote:

The worst implementation of the rand() function can be found in Objectivism Oriented Programming.

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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
ton@social.coop ("T🎃N") wrote:

Black and white ink cartoon of a three eyed alien creature at a lectern raising its hand as it gives a commencement speech to a sea of mortarboards. It says, "And, as you head out into the world, your fresh, meaty torsos will be ripped apart and roasaed to feed your new alien overlords--wait, why are you all booing?" Cartoon is signed joedator + kevin maher

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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
Gulfie@yiff.life ("gulfie official") wrote:

PSA it's fledgling season in many parts of the world, many well-meaning people will see a fledgling and think it's a "baby bird that needs help". Fledglings do not need your help aside from imminent dangers like cats dogs and roads. If it flutters and hops around, it's a fledgling, its parents are very likely nearby. Leave it alone please!