Reginald

"We took a little time away from the Nazi Bar, but we noticed there's less pushback now for partying with the fash. So, back inside we go. Something-something, aren't-we-virtuous." #firefox #twitter #mozilla

It has only now occurred to me to construct a joke about a carny being the only person trained to manage a clown and his circus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carny

Charlie swimming in the spectacularly clear water of Lake Ontari’io. #dogs #dogsoffedi #dogsofmastodon #canada #ontario

It is said of Russia, “Every country has a Mafia, but with Russia, the Mafia has a country.” And it is said of the United States, “Every country has a parasitic billionaire class, but with the USA, the parasitic billionaire class has a country.”

@mlevison@hachyderm.io The original line goes, “You show me a metric, and I’ll show you a game.” Both are variations on Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social FTFH (“fixed that for him”):

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social I read that at a glance as “Phở Trump,” and immediately lost my appetite. 🍜🍊🤡🙅🏽‍♂️

@brennen@federation.p1k3.com Didn't you hear? The Internet has changed again, Twitter is cool now.

Blackmailing into silence those who point out dangers to patient safety is a *totally normal* way to handle the rollout of a system that you sincerely believe is a radical improvement in medical care. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/mayo-clinic-whistleblower-says-staff-015900709.html https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/07/09/lawsuit-alleges-mayo-clinic-cut-corners-with-ai 🎩 @whiskeysailor@reefahoy.boats

“I no longer think freedom and democracy are compatible.” —Peter Thiel, Fascist Translation to English: “In order for the .01% to do whatever the fuck we want, we must strip the 99.99% of their rights, their freedoms, and especially, their ability to form governments that place any limitations on our power, whatsoever.”

@carnage4life@mas.to He doesn’t think it applies to him, because he understands Wilhoit conservatism perfectly: “In-groups who are protected by the law, but not bound by it. Alongside out-groups who are bound by the law, but not protected by it.”

A certain kind of leader has always resented engineers who prioritize sustainable code that is verifiably correct and extendable at low cost, over code that ships right now and punts problems down the calendar. AI is the perfect product: It does what is asked of it, it does it right now, and provides cover for getting rid of those pesky seniors who have lived through the past consequences of leadership’s choices and seen the costs to everything from morale to revenues and shareholder value.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social And has been true for a long time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

I’m sorry, but the hard truth here is that for everything from user experiences to consistency to correctness to security, “slop” isn’t a tradeoff, it’s actually a feature of AI. Look around you. How much code has been shipped by “move fast and break things” organizations that may have been written by humans, but is indistinguishable from slop? Was it sloppy engineers? Or company cultures that made it impossible to ship anything *except* slop?

@nlupo@amikejo.xyz Some people's values are little more than dandelion seeds, blowing hither and yon with the slightest change in the breeze of public opinion.

“If your OSS isn’t about politics then it’s just you doing free labor for companies.”— @petrillic@hachyderm.io I close with this observation: All engineering choices are culture choices, just as all OSS is political.

“What could be more disrespectful to the Homeric works Musk claims to love than stripping them of humanism that has made them immortal. Musk's ideal Odyssey is one rendered entirely in the hallucination of a computer that, like him, is unable to comprehend the very story it is telling, without the intimacy of human art and labor… As far as art is concerned, it's worth less than the water a data center polluted to make it.” Rolling Stone’s Nikki McCann Ramirez is taking no prisoners.

@josephcox@infosec.exchange The contrarian view: What's the problem with AI slop? LinkedIn Lunatics have been hand-writing slop for a decade or more already, I have no confidence reducing or removing AI slop will improve the experience.

Blaxploitation-worthy Polish Tophat

Bard Mehldau met JS Bach. And it was good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-6Ts64lm9g

“I never assumed that some huge clanking monster would stride down Fifth Avenue, devouring New York; I always feared that my own TV set or iron or toaster would, in the privacy of my apartment, when no one else was around to help me, announce to me that they had taken over, and here was a list of rules I was to obey. I never like the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory.” —Philip K. Dick discussing “Service Call” https://theworlddickmade.com/service-call/

Trainer: "It's AI's point." @401matthall@mastodon.xyz: "AI don't surf!"

@401matthall@mastodon.xyz It works!

@401matthall@mastodon.xyz 🔥☝🏽

Compare and contrast with: Polish Tophat Phyllis Diller and Polish Tophat Shingy

A young Fred Astaire auditioning for "Top Hat"

@osma@mas.to What is this “working software” you speak of? Does the demo raise funds or not?

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Related: “I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later.” —Mitch Hedberg (1968 - 2005)

@threedaymonk@sonomu.club Matz was very nice when I met him, both in 2001 before Rails was a thing, and again in Barcelona a decade later. But the world is too complicated to make decisions based solely on whether someone is nice. The meeting in 2001 was at the intimate Lightweight Languages conference, organized by Paul Graham before YCombinator existed. Make of that what you will, I don’t think that’s relevant to Ruby or Rails in 2026, either.

Those four expressions of valuing one thing over another were driven by a set of experience-driven beliefs about what is expensive to do versus what is cheap to do. Which of those beliefs—like Chesterton's Fence—no longer hold thanks to AI, and how would that change the four value statements? But conversely, what new beliefs about what is expensive and what is cheap should we now incorporate with our experience of AI? And how would we express that with value preferences? (2/2)

Coming soon: Defunding public education in favour of vouchers that redirect tax dollars to consumption pricing from tech companies. It is highly significant that Mr. Miklas’s pitch implies that giving money to AI vendors is better than kids sitting in classrooms being taught by humans. Just another step towards dismantling everything that actually made America great in favour of restoring the Gilded Age. https://xcancel.com/ycombinator/status/2079963722253214112#m

@belehaa@wandering.shop During my conference speaking days, you would have needed powerful crowbars to separate me from DeckSet, a Markdown-based presentation tool. Integrating presentations with the universe of text-based tools such as git for versioning is a one-way turnstile. Once you go there, you don't want to go back to opaque, proprietary representations and tool-specific APIs. https://gist.github.com/johnloy/27dd124ad40e210e91c70dd1c24ac8c8 Requiring Powerpoint like it's 1987 all over again? Bah!

@Lizette603_23@mastodon.social Excellently put, but from what I know about people like this, it’s less important that they be happy than that we be unhappy. If they wanted to be happy they’d be out in the world flying gliders and diving with hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos.

@Colarusso@mastodon.social What a great thing to make together! If you haven't seen it, Russ Olsen does a fantastic talk about the experience of watching it happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMZBA7KHnHQ

@dbattistella@mstdn.ca Furball Lecter.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Mistress of the rebus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social My lifelong gratitude goes out to to Richard O’Brian for creating Rocky Horror and then scaring the bejesus out of me as Mr. Hand in Dark City.

@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net That particular one interests me, because I recall a conversation over BEvERages a decade ago where we played "what if compute was free." One of the things we considered was what if we could randomly write code at planetary scale. We could have a billion digital monkeys writing gibberish, and filter the results with test suites. And now the problem becomes, "How do we write a test suite that complete enough that it can't be mocked into compliance?"

“You people are never happy. You asked for us to be inclusive, and here we are including Nazis, a reviled and persecuted group! Also, who the hell is this Karl Popper you keep mumbling about?" —The Firefix Media Team #mozilla #firefox #twitter

@hewer_of_code@mstdn.ca "Someone suffering from Hero Syndrome, and more specifically, being a firefighter arsonist?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_syndrome#Firefighter_arson

@mlevison@hachyderm.io To elaborate on an ancient bit of management wisdom... “You show me a metric-driven incentive, and I’ll show you a game played with maximum cynicism.”

@oscherler@tooting.ch I have the original “Through the Looking Glass” in my basement, I got it from an authorized Apple reseller back when I was in computer distribution. I told him it was a collectible, and he shrugged, said Apple gave them out to resellers and if I wanted it I could have it. I did not hang around protesting his generosity, I thanked him and keep it alongside Apple’s “Make Something Wonderful” hagiography of quotes from Chairman Jobs.

@davep@infosec.exchange I have to go.

@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net Fine with me. You can also do the same exercise with any other approach that you feel has held to a reasonable degree in your experience. It's just as valid to pose these questions about the hidden assumptions behind BDUF, for example.

@douglevin@infosec.exchange 🧅❓