This could be a real thing: at each turn, you can either make a standard chess move, or slide one of the board tiles … who wants to code it up?

Beehiiv is an option.

In all previous instances, the agents of the ruling class were totally in control of the media landscape. Mainstream media has finally ceded enough to the internet, and the influencers they rely on to deliver a single message are all off their leashes, with fully half of them unwilling to get back in line.

I’ll concede that it’s probably still wishful thinking on my part, but the current situation is significantly different that what has happened before.

The whole ‘Q’ mythos is based around the premise that liberals must be pedos because, lacking a religion-based straitjacket of a moral code, there’s nothing to keep them from doing anything.

The reality is that, while there are certainly instances of bad sexual behavior across the political spectrum, it is the authoritarian MAGA culture in which child sexual abuse is a systemic problem— a natural consequence of deference to power and the entitlement felt by those given that power.

I know it’s wishful thinking, but the Epstein obsession of the MAGA base may end up crumbling more than just the current GOP.

Governor Walz is grieving the loss of our state’s house speaker, Melissa Hortman, who was killed by someone influenced by violent extremist Republican rhetoric. As the polar opposite of the Republicans— who would never take a milligram of blame for Hortman’s death— Walz is introspective, looking for anything he might have been able to do differently to change this outcome, which is a common part of the grieving process.

So I don’t blame him for not thinking clearly here, but the truth is that the sort of rhetorical attacks he was making on the Republicans is sorely needed. Calling them “weird” was clearly a winning strategy and the campaign consultants who got him to stop are at least somewhat responsible for the fact we now live in a fascist dictatorship.

No one would ever mistake Walz’s rhetoric as an actual call to violence (even though Republicans would be certain to make that bad faith claim). We need to call out who these people are and what they’re doing in a direct, non-apologetic manner. I hope Walz comes around to understanding this and goes back to calling out the fascists.

Whoever downvoted MeaanBeaan here, why? I suspect you just disagree; that’s not a legitimate reason for a downvote. He bothered to offer his analysis, and at least to me it reads like a legit take on events, not trolling. If you disagree, say what you disagree with (like I did). If you’re too lazy to do that, just skip it. Downvotes are for trolls.

CBS’ parent company, Paramount, is in merger talks with Skydance. Mergers must be approved by the federal government. (I thought it was the FTC, but I see the FCC mentioned in articles about this … don’t want to dig into the weeds here. The feds must approve.)

This used to be done by a theoretically impartial board which would make decisions based on benefit to the public. Now there isn’t even a pretense of caring about the public good. If Trump is happy with the tribute he receives, the merger will go through. If he’s upset, it won’t.

Yeah, CBS already folded and paid a huge fine as a “settlement” to a lawsuit they could almost certainly have won in court, but when you’re trying to appease a mob boss you just have to keep paying.

It’s true that putting the end date for Colbert a year out isn’t as extreme an appeasement than just pulling him off the air, but there are many factors involved. The mob boss has declared that he is pleased with the outcome, so mission accomplished.

I’m thinking about getting the new FairPhone 6 when it comes out and running /e/ OS, but I’m so reliant on Google Maps and Gmail (my email account, not necessarily the app … but I do rely on the app).

I’m afraid that I’ll either install Google apps and end up with a phone just as compromised as a stock Android install, or if I don’t it will be too much of a pain in the ass to use.

I’ve got to admit, I was a bit confused by this headline, because I’d heard that despite cuts to NOAA, the usual flood alerts were given and Texas officials were lying about that.

The article clarifies that a bit:

Former and current NWS employees have defended the agency’s response, as have meteorologists across the country. NWS’s Austin/San Antonio office—which covers the region— issued a flood watch on Thursday afternoon, followed by flash flood alerts that night into Friday morning.

However, the office’s warning coordination meteorologist took an early retirement offer in April as part of NOAA’s personnel and budget cuts, which were part of DOGE’s efforts to slash government “waste.” The position still hasn’t been filled, and according to the department’s website, the office currently has six additional vacancies. That vacancy may have delayed urgent communication with local officials.

It also sounds like the Trump admin isn’t going to change their plans for NOAA:

Unfortunately, NOAA’s recently released 2026 budget plan would shut down multiple NOAA labs, including the decades-old National Severe Storms Laboratory, which is crucial in researching and developing storm prediction technology, including hurricane forecasts. These cuts were outlined in Project 2025, with Russell Vought—Trump’s OMB Director—writing that he wanted to gut NOAA because the agency is responsible for “climate alarmism.”

I have to agree, knowing the facts about how rapidly the climate is changing does lead to alarm.

While we don’t all know he cheated, we do all know he totally would if he thought he could get away with it, and there are some troubling irregularities in the vote counts.

It appears that the credulous Fox “news” watchers really did believe that there were violent immigrant gang members in massive numbers all over the country, as they’ve been told for decades now. Anyone who understood that’s not the case wasn’t surprised that “mass deportation” meant rounding up gardeners and construction workers (duh!). But Rogan and his listeners bought into the idea that only the thousands of cartel mobsters that were taking over the country under weak Democrat rule would suffer.

Those were imaginary baddies all along! Tell your listeners that, Joe!

Thanks for the warning. I’ve crossed Best Buy of my list of places to shop.

Walmart heiress Christy Walton bought ONE full-page color ad in the New York Times. The rallies themselves appear to be independently organized — you can volunteer to host one on their site — and you can get a good idea of who’s actively involved in organizing them by looking at their partners page.

Ok, this is an idea I had after reading numerous comments on this post. You’re all asking how this would work … hear me out.

California declares its own currency, the “California dollar”. Wages earned in California dollars wouldn’t be taxed like US Dollars.

There are some issues to work out; I think the IRS does tax your foreign assets … some … but I think that this scheme could work.

A bill like this was proposed in the Minnesota state house, shortly before one of the co-sponsors was arrested for soliciting sex from a minor.

I only use Windows because I have to work with a corporation’s IT helpdesk staff to get on their VPN if I want to do contract work for them. They are not likely to help me get connected from Linux; they’ll just find another contract dev. Once in, I do everything in Linux because my code will ultimately run in a Linux cloud container of some sort. WSL works well enough for me to do this. I’d rather have Linux on bare metal, but whatever. I’m in; I’m coding; I’m getting paid. I’ll put up with a little bit of suck.

There are definitely people who cut & pasted from stack overflow in the work environment, too. The difference is that I, as the clean-up crew, could google their code and find the post it came from … and then I could read the comments and figure out wtf they thought they were trying to do. When they paste LLM-generated code in, there’s no trace of where the dumbfuckery came from.

Just thinking about it makes me glad I’m near retirement.

Having been a coder for decades before AI came on the scene, I don’t understand how inexperienced programmers could possibly write a serious amount of working code with AI.

It’s wrong, like, at least half the time, but as an experienced coder, I can look at the “code” it generated and know what it was trying to do, and then write it correctly. I do find AI useful when I’m not sure how to go about solving a particular code-related issue, but … it just gives me something to think about, not an answer I can use directly.

AppImage is the no-nonsense universal package format.

I once saw a headline that someone (I forgot who) said that “AI is weird”. All I could think was, well yeah, he’s been called “Weird Al” all of his professional life …