Posts by jcolag@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #9vyOYkCnR7T4eE45NQ by jcolag@mastodon.social
2020-06-11T12:20:06Z
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@emacsen Seems like it's time for my favorite article: https://qz.com/531496/the-loudest-monkeys-have-the-smallest-balls/Men who fly off the handle about extending rights and respect to people aren't necessarily LITERALLY overcompensating for their tiny sex organs, but the metaphor is still relevant.
(DIR) Post #9xDAG7b8pZWWGLQgWO by jcolag@mastodon.social
2020-07-18T13:12:37Z
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@emacsen They should be outright abolished, no questions asked. It was born with the current crop of high school seniors and this is likely all we're going to get out of them.
(DIR) Post #9xHvbxZ8HhVnzqFEG0 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2020-07-20T20:22:04Z
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@emacsen Check around for credit unions in your area. A lot of them have shifted to serving geographic regions. You'll need to prove your identity and ask about their particular rules and facilities for foreign transfers, but they're much more pleasant to speak to than any bank I've worked with.
(DIR) Post #ASs66Gkl2JAmgMxEZ6 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-02-20T13:03:18Z
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@seldo I mean, the enlightenment did have its initial "hot zones" of a handful of coffee shops, and spread fairly exponentially to slave revolts and democratic revolutions, to become the world's dominant philosophy, spreading through contact.If viruses sometimes made people healthier and more productive, it'd be a pretty solid characterization...
(DIR) Post #AT8fZcqYZrloWjl8dM by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-02-28T12:57:08Z
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@Teri_Kanefield What amazes me is how this never changes, beyond the scale of the operation. In the '70s and '80s, local news would tease a final story with some foreboding premise ("Are your pillows killing you? Film at eleven"). Normal shows went to commercial on cliffhangers. It keeps viewers focused during the ads (so that they don't miss anything). Cable amplified this with 24/7 fear and anger. Social media A/B tests this for constant refinement. Ad-supported media is pretty bad...
(DIR) Post #ATgS0a7Xbo60Fkb6fY by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-03-16T20:05:21Z
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@elizamccarthy My understanding is that they only loan one copy at a time NOW; I've had to wait for books. The lawsuit comes from when they declared that the pandemic gave them the authority to remove any restrictions on borrowing.
(DIR) Post #ATz3G54or5uYrvJFvU by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-03-25T19:27:31Z
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@lowqualityfacts Honestly, the best copyright law that any country could ever pass is "whenever an artist proves himself to be a horrible person, they no longer have the right to deny derivative works from the affected groups." Separate the art from the artist by letting women and non-white people fix Dilbert!
(DIR) Post #AURa3ERVrjEpNveDJ2 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-04-08T11:51:55Z
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@Miriamm I obviously can't give too many details, because it's not my story to tell, but way back when I still taught computer science graduate courses, I had an ex-Facebook employee who left because they refused to secure the data from developers, so you had the same sort of asinine behavior there.
(DIR) Post #AVcVKpJzIzfkyCY6mO by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-05-13T11:40:53Z
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@copter_chief This is the party of fearing "I'm from the government and I'm here to help," and wanting to drown government in bathtubs. They don't want to improve anything, because they campaign on government being bad. They want things worse, so that they can show people that government is bad.The real question is why we've spent forty-plus years pretending that people who oppose governance should be allowed to run for office.
(DIR) Post #AVzPbwt2B4rMVyFK9Q by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-05-24T19:22:13Z
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@KimPerales They all but literally worship the guy who said that the most terrifying words in the English language were "we're from the government and we're here to help." Lack of support of the government is the party's platform...because it stops them from discriminating against everyone not exactly like them.
(DIR) Post #AWBtrmzDbs27qs2T44 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-05-30T19:57:29Z
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@lauren Not only does it get them more attention, but it often also deflects from the destruction that their organization is responsible for.
(DIR) Post #AXjqEsqCYaOFKsR3g0 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2023-07-15T21:13:01Z
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@JackPine @wjmaggos @QasimRashid I hate the "pay their fair share" framing for exactly this reason: They don't care about fairness, but they DO care about maintenance costs to keep the market that they need for survival running.
(DIR) Post #Ahtj6YXfNXu8dYI412 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2024-05-06T11:19:07Z
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On my blog: Developer Diary, Hıdırellez https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2024/05/06/hidirellez.html - This week's projects include newsletter updates, The Light's Edge, BASIC, Notoboto, Earburn, and the blog itself. #programming #project #devjournal
(DIR) Post #AjZ8Q4lST0nmnBsDIG by jcolag@mastodon.social
2024-07-03T21:15:00Z
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@foone Well, now I need to wonder if the AI bubble is basically a backlash to remote work, in that the "no AI button" is to print your résumé and hand it to a receptionist...
(DIR) Post #ArFyles1NySbE0JLaC by jcolag@mastodon.social
2025-02-18T22:25:15Z
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@davidrevoy "Accessible to," I notice, as if hatred is an intrinsic disability and not a deliberate choice to hurt people...
(DIR) Post #AwZSf2splXAwEDhUQ4 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T21:20:21Z
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@davidrevoy I initially considered that the cynical punchline would be that they're all applauding for something behind her, like when you wave back to someone who definitely doesn't know that you exist.But twisting that around, having her thank herself for finishing the song or getting it out of her head, not even aware of the audience, might work.
(DIR) Post #AxKkFeiEKmmeDnaB28 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2025-08-19T13:02:15Z
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The dark history of forced starvation as a weapon of war against Indigenous peoples https://theconversation.com/the-dark-history-of-forced-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-against-indigenous-peoples-262564In 1791, President George Washington ordered Secretary of War Henry Knox to destroy farms and livestock of the Wea Tribe that lived along the Ohio River valley – a fertile area with a long history of growing corn, beans, squash and other fruits and vegetables.#Famine #Gaza #History #IndigenousPeoples
(DIR) Post #AxdoJelKBKypM3QpBg by jcolag@mastodon.social
2025-08-28T21:34:00Z
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@futurebird I've been thinking about similar things in a different context, but while the model didn't (and still doesn't) get created for kids, Masterpiece Theater is probably the easiest version of this to manage, where Boston's PBS (WGBH) licensed cheap material (from the BBC) to repackage, fill time, and syndicate.Games aren't quite the same, but license/bundle/rebrand/sponsor/release should work pretty broadly.
(DIR) Post #B09MUgQtEDMuBpItiy by jcolag@mastodon.social
2025-11-11T22:37:21Z
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@strypey That may not hold up. Yes, you need a human creator to secure copyright, as evidenced by the "monkey selfie" debacle. However, LLMs sort of extrude "content slurry," so their output is *also* not eligible for copyright because it's just other stuff, analogous to photographing a page of a novel.You're on the hook if the LLM violated somebody's copyright, which isn't a great match for public licenses.
(DIR) Post #B2DtUU8JmkAjI26jI0 by jcolag@mastodon.social
2026-01-12T22:49:35Z
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@davidrevoy Well, there's the old joke, that "in the dark, all cats are gray," about the idea that the appearance of sexual partners not mattering once you turn out the lights. And given Grok's other (slightly larger?) scandal this week...