@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

jamiemccarthy

@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social

Ruby on Rails engineer, vegan, enjoy D&D and relational databases, unhappy about fascism. Interests: procgen, nonzero-sum games, staying healthy. Formerly: Slashdot, ThinkGeek, The Holocaust History Project. Engineering account is over at https://ruby.social/@jamiemccarthy

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grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

Relatedly there needs to be better language for this, like the What Gets On The Plaqueness of a cause of death label which becomes the final line of the intro para of a Wikipedia bio which therefore becomes the summed regurgitation of a generative llm

https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/112591431146716505

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@grimalkina Whoa I think you just upgraded my worldview.

I’m replaying in my mind iffy/weird interactions with PCPs and surgeons now to see if they make more sense given this context

Someone needs to write “Seeing Like a Hospital” — the “Seeing Like a State” for medicine…

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

One of the weirdest things from doing A City on Mars is the people who do some version of "actually it'll be cheap" and then explain that you could get a huge Mars base for just, like, 1% of Earth's GDP. Or, if you took everyone's budget for entertainment and put it into space, you could do amazing stuff.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith I recall Asimov or Heinlein writing about how NASA’s moon budget was small compared to how much women spend on makeup. Super-cringey of course, but that was just an ordinary day in the 1970s

mcc, (edited ) to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Do you ever think about how the writers of the cheapo Home Alone cash-in "Blank Check" were really focused on the idea that a bank would not normally actually simply cash a check such as the one at the center of the movie's plot and so they devote an incredible amount of work to contriving a set of circumstances that would cause a bank to not follow the security procedures which a bank in the real world ordinarily be expected to follow when cashing an unusually large check

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc I forget who said it but this is the easiest thing in the world to handwave. Problem: plot revolves around characters breathing in outer space. Solution: one character says to another, “good thing we solved that problem of breathing in outer space!”

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

OK, Chromebook hivemind, do I get the new Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714
Or the HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 inch Chromebook
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-chromebook-plus-spin-714-laptop-14-wuxga-touch-display-intel-core-ultra-5-115u-8gb-lpddr5-256gb-ssd-wi-fi-6e-steel-gray/6576960.p?skuId=6576960
or
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-elite-dragonfly-135-inch-chromebook-enterprise

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis I have an older Acer Spin and it’s fine, solid machine for a fair price, not MacBook quality but I have no real complaints

cfiesler, to random
@cfiesler@hci.social avatar

Authors, I continue to be unconcerned about ChatGPT taking your jobs.

I'm currently finishing up revising a novel, and out of curiosity I decided to see what kinds of suggestions and advice ChatGPT would give me for revising some scenes. In the little bit I tried, it offered a decent idea or two, but when it came to actual revision suggestions the writing is utter garbage.

Here's one example, and keep in mind that this is a middle grade novel. So for, like, twelve-years olds:

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@cfiesler It can usually improve on this kind of slop with a little tweaking, fwiw

jamiemccarthy, to random
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

PFAS: “hold my beer”

From: @fuzzychef
https://m6n.io/@fuzzychef/112481545161302068

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@fuzzychef

(They coated the aluminum cans with it, the PFAS is literally holding our beer)

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

For decades Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council has been the enemy of free speech in America. His son was just sentenced to prison for Jan. 6. Some parent.
Son of prominent conservative family sentenced to nearly 4 years for Jan. 6 https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/05/17/bozell-jan-6-sentence/

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis This convict is the grandson of L. Brent Bozell Jr., who ghost-wrote the extremely influential Goldwater biography, and who also was William F. Buckley Jr.’s brother-in-law

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Germany now calls the United States the land of forbidden books. Think about that for ten seconds, please.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis Also “Kulturkampf” hits a little differently

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Honestly rooting for Kessler syndrome at this point.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jwz https://web.archive.org/web/20190410081804/https://mccarthy.vg/post/168005943556/the-slowly-dawning-realization-that-were-one-of

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

Even before Musk, Twitter under Jack Dorsey was INCREDIBLY BAD at moderation. I could cite MANY examples of ridiculous moderation fails, just from my own email archives.

If you ever tried to use Twitter’s reporting tools to get them to moderate horrific racism, stalking, outright Nazis and worse, and only received an email saying they didn’t see anything wrong with it and would take no action, you know what I’m talking about.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@Green_Footballs I kept screenshots for years of my reporting outright obvious bigotry and literal Nazis, to little effect. The main thing that got an account to experience consequences was using one of a short list of racial slurs with the full word spelled out. But literal Nazis who wrote “J” instead of “Jew” just kept spreading literal Nazi propaganda, for years. So yes, moderation under Dorsey was already a joke

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

I order some Products from the United States.

The cost is $88 CAD.

There's a fixed international shipping cost of $48 CAD. Frustrating, but that is what the shipper has, so okay.

A couple days later, I get an email from UPS asking to pay the import duty fee. The import fee is $51 CAD.

That is more than half the cost of the product itself. I'm overall paying more for shipping+import fees than for the product.

When I moved here I assumed I could buy stuff from USA cheap because of NAFTA :(

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Yeah, I’ve gone through something similar. I can almost hear the meetings for the UPS phone and website dev, where the product manager explains in business-speak that the team’s KPI for the quarter is to get more customers to give up in frustration

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

👇🏼
Via Kyle Griffin:

President just announced his 49th round of nominees for federal judicial positions — bringing the total number of announced federal judicial nominees to 240.

jamiemccarthy, (edited )
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff @kwheaton Slightly more ordinary, decent, serious thinkers in important positions of authority than obediently vicious partisans is a tragedy, not an achievement

jamiemccarthy, to random
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

Perfect confidence scam. It’s called a con because the scammer works to make the victim gain his confidence. Once the victim is trying to prove their trustiworthiness to a stranger, they lose

I’m trying to picture the use story tickets for this feature. Did the project manager see any tickets like: “as a con artist, I want to trigger this push at a time of my choosing”

From: @Edent
https://mastodon.social/@Edent/112372412442888807

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/sit-down
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #war

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith In 1999 Thomas Friedman published his Golden Arches Theory that no two countries that both have McDonald’s will go to war. This was immediately disproven.

CartyBoston, to random
@CartyBoston@mastodon.roundpond.net avatar

It's 1979, I have heard of but my university has no machine to run it. Prof says "Moravian College (across town) has a PDP-11 that runs unix, go check it out."

There was no email, students did not have telephones, I just walked into their computer center. They were so thrilled someone was interested they encouraged me to stay and learn.

Oh my God what have we done?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@CartyBoston It’s 1979 and I am a child in elementary school. My parents drop me off at the campus computer building. I walk into the room across the hall from the PDP-10 and spend all day writing a LIFE program in BASIC and sending the output to the 132-column printer. I wait in line for my print job next to bemused college students and a disused card punch machine. No one asks whether I belong

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

Realizing that everything about modern conservatism was a complete fucking lie was the shock to the system it took to wake me up from my post-9/11 dumbass stupor.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@Green_Footballs What was it for you, that made you realize that?

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Hey. Question.

What the fuck is this?

Is my phone doing this? If so, how long has it been doing it? Also, why wasn't I informed? Also, why can't I find a setting to turn it off?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @mcc @moirearty Are… any people able to detect it?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @moirearty @mcc If people are claiming they can detect the IR flashes, it seems unlikely they're self-diagnosing correctly, and also it's easy to test

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @moirearty @mcc Interesting. Found this article about rhodopsin detecting certain IR wavelengths, so TIL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/photons-double-up-to-help-us-see-beyond-the-visible-light-spectrum/

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

★ Face the Critic: Ian Betteridge Edition
https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/face_the_critic_ian_betteridge_edition

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@daringfireball In what sense do you think people can be informed about Facebook tracking? It’s an impossibly Byzantine, ruthlessly comprehensive, globe-spanning spy network that has never existed in the history of the world or even in the feverish fantasies of Stasi directors. You need a Master’s to understand how it could exist. “We will cement your every thought and glance into a secret forever-log that was created before you were born and will persist decades after you depart this earth”

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

If I have the opportunity to upgrade my website from google recaptcha v2 to google recaptcha v3 should I take it

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Probably yeah.

One thing is that you don’t actually have to have the recaptcha icon visible on your page. You can hide it, it’s documented, but it’s not well documented and you have to go looking for the approved way of hiding it.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @mcc “Palestinian citizens of Israel have had the right to vote in Israeli elections since the first Israeli elections in 1949.”

    https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/palestinian_citizens_of_israel/

    dangillmor, to random
    @dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

    Blog post: Once again, NY Times amplifies right-wing trolling, omits vital context. It's journalistic malpractice, and it's the norm in Times political coverage.

    https://dangillmor.com/2024/04/17/again-ny-times-amplifies-right-wing-trolling-omits-vital-context/

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @dangillmor Since you recognize that it’s the norm, it’s time for you to acknowledge what that means

    waldoj, to random
    @waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

    Just rolled the absolute hell out of my ankle while on my final trip loading up the car for a 12-hour dive with family so my plans have changed to lying in the ground and yelling which is going great

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @waldoj This is just how healthcare billing works. They know your insurance will only pay a few bucks for an office visit. And they also know the insurance company will let them mark up ordinary medical supplies 1000%.

    For a chronic issue of my own, I’d spent a decade trying out various $30 Amazon orthopedic devices, and then I saw a specialist whose office staff handed me something nearly identical and billed my insurance $200. I guess it’s a little better? I can’t really tell.

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