Querydash

I have gone to great lengths to Battlestar Galactica my digital life away from the rest of humanity.

👆Thiiiiiiiis. He’s specifically targeting those friggin’ straw-users! You know, those people who voluntarily suck on a cylinder instead of chewing on the side of a styrofoam cup like God and Sister Agnes intended!

Now, off for a smoke.

He’s worried about the wrong additives. The secret ingredient is some sort of patented anitfreeze that makes MA residents impervious to cold. How do they think we’ve been shoveling in our shorts without coats for the last month.

Also we will kill to maintain access. So.

Those who did not learn the lesson of taxing New England’s beverage of choice are doomed to repeat it

Oh, DO IT. The modern-day minutemen have been out for the past two months clearing sidewalks in shorts while pausing to sip their iced Dunkin’.

He might as well announce a ban on orange striped straws, then just throw himself directly into the Harbor. Faster.

Screenshot from linked substack article stating: This piece is inspired by a wave of recent Al-related writing from people I respect: Dan Williams, Alex Imas, Ben Ansell, Tibor Rutar, scott cunningham, Kevin Munger, Hollis Robbins, Claude (yes!) Blattman, Kevin Bryan, Andy Hall, Kelsey Piper, Sean Westwood, and many others. So here, I'm continuing the tradition of writing the takes that are upsetting but needed.

So. If, of your 12 AI thought leaders, only one is a woman… I would encourage you to wonder why that is.

I would also encourage you to discuss AI with female designers & researchers, find out why they’re so underrepresented in the AI Future Chorus.

Maybe ask why they’re not singing along.

It feels like a lot of society is microdosing “Jackass” - doing little hits of obviously stupid insanity to chase the thrill of getting away with it anyway.

Anyway, it’s been a couple decades, I’m sure all of the original Jackass cast are fine.

GOOD.

Every time I see a new one of these I wonder again: how flammable is that material?

The final panel of “Get Your War On”, a really good clipart comic strip of office workers reacting to Bush’s Iraq war. Three comic panels on a white background with red line-drawings. Panels 1 and 3 show an old desktop computer monitor and keyboard. Panel 2 shows a stack of binders. Recurring characters Accounts Payable and Account Receivable usually sit here, but they’re absent in this final comic, either because the war’s over or they’ve just had it with this fucking shit. I’m choosing to pick the latter. I am not fucking doing “Get Your War On” again, twenty years later. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKERS. Comic available here: http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/

The only people who should remain on X are a loose affiliation of Grok-whisperers, who feed these prompts to Grok 24/7.

They may not listen to “libs”, but they’ll listen to Grok. Or they’ll turn against Grok. Win/win.

This energy, all the time, to get elected in coming cycles.

* My First Most Difficult Aunt is actually my uncle, who we routinely refer to as “Aunt Agatha”, Wodehouse-style.

I love this, and I also love that I would show it to both my aunts separately and they would both chuckle, thinking I meant their sister, the other aunt.

(spoiler: they are both my Second Most Difficult Aunt)

Frame the last two sentences. Memorize them. Practice them in the mirror. Use them all the time.

Also interviewing.

I mean, sure, you CAN hand my script to a junior staffer, record the sessions, then have AI analyze the result and stick it in a powerpoint.

But you’re not going to learn much.

Well, it IS one of the wars Trump has ended.

No, I get it - it’s a risk calculation whatever your job.

But I still think going to your boss saying “hey, I’m worried if the staff wear these glasses there are data security issues” is relatively low-risk. You’re pointing out a risk to their business.

(Of course, not if THEY wear the glasses.)

Basically, any opportunity to get on record that you’re saying to any boss “hey I am concerned about data security” both covers your ass and makes the company reframe this from a personal preference thing into a corporate financial loss scenario.

No guarantee it’ll work, but better than nothing.

Although there’s also potentially a risk route for many service workers too: “I am nervous about data security when someone hands me a credit card in view of someone with these glasses”. Because you’ll be the one in the transaction if something goes wrong.

I wouldn’t even tell them to go to HR (if available) with an “I don’t like the spyglasses” argument, honestly.

The more subtle “I am unsure whether I am appropriately complying with the mandatory training due to the security risk of these glasses” takes the employee out of the mix.

Agreed - but if you do have HR, it’s much better to frame it as “I am concerned about corporate exposure to privacy and data risk that you have trained me on” than “I hate the glasses personally”.

Sometimes you have to work backward from your desired result, and lean into corp self-interest.

It does feel like, in a workplace, you should have protections against that. Especially with all of the security and PII training modules you have to go through.

Have you raised it to HR in that way, that you’re concerned this breaches privacy and info retention policies?

Women very used to having to do the last-mile tuneups on work product the guys on team think is “fine”. Introducing AI assistants who produce wrong work product 10-90% of the time wasn’t a new experience.

You can’t refuse to work with (and clean up for) Jason. You CAN refuse to work with NuClippy.

They really did not think this through. At all.

I’m amazed no one envisioned a contextless viewer tuning into the BAFTAs for ten minutes and this clip is the takeaway. Why did they think they get tons of runway to explain why ACTUALLY this was fine?

Just multiple points of negligence here.

Two neighbors and I were the only people outside this evening shoveling our city sidewalk mid-blizzard so elderly dogwalking neighbors won’t fall before the shovelers come tomorrow, I paused and said “hey, are we all out here because we’re New Englanders?”

And fuck it, we WERE all New Englanders!

There are lots of types of “kind”, but the NE one stands out for me because you can get totally blindsided, almost a fight or flight moment, and only after the interaction understand that you’ve been left with more than you originally had. Info, safety, material goods - whatever you truly needed.

Easier to frame it New England-style for me: New Englanders are not generally nice, but they are contrastingly kind.

You can go through an entire day without a single “nice” interaction, but if something goes wrong and you need help, someone will gruffly help you in the manner of a mugging.

When I went out to clear off my car (round 1/x), a four year old in pajamas spent the entire time standing at the giant first-floor window of his apartment, banging on the glass and seemingly shouting instructions at me.

Buddy, you don’t even have a license.

…which just means the US government will spend millions on an old Carnival Cruise ship (out of service due to never quite being able to eradicate norovirus), slap some paint on it, name it after an Icelandic king (possibly that jerk who caused a riot throwing gold off a cliff), and send it over.