(((Eddie)))

@abracadocious.bsky.social

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Mostly harmless. Tikkun olamnik.

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(((Eddie)))

Read this, share this widely

I will bang this drum forever: in THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45 Milton Mayer interviewed 10 ordinary Germans after WW2 to learn how fascism took hold. There was never a moment when everyone woke up:

Two days debugging because Swift's floating point remainder function uses rounding mode round-to-nearest-or-even instead of round-down like a sane programing language.

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(((Eddie)))

Joe Biden refusing to take advice from people who have been wrong about everything for decades could be seen as an indication his brain is still working

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(((Eddie)))

People complained that Chengdu zoo was letting their clouded leopard get fat, their expert explained "This cat is like thirty years old, that's twice as old clouded leopards GET, and he's just had major surgery. Making him lose weight would do WAY more harm, just let him have this."

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(((Eddie)))

Imagine the debates about whether Biden should step aside but 100x worse because he has already stepped aside and now we’re fighting over who should replace him based on whether they’ve used the word genocide to describe what’s happening in Gaza.

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(((Eddie)))

This is a picture of a newly discovered pool never seen before by human eyes 700 ft deep in Lechuguilla Cave a part of Carlsbad National Park here in New Mexico

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(((Eddie)))

I came to my 14 year old with a concern about social media. He literally took his glasses off, rubbed his temples, and asked: “what have the moms on the internet said now?” 😯🫤😆

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Reply to

Faine Greenwood

The way the panic is spreading (and is being obsessively reinforced by the Times) reminds me of the run-up to the Iraq War. People very quickly deciding "this is a CRISIS that demands one specific response," and brushing off talk of complications or consequences.

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(((Eddie)))

When an article says "some scientists think" then remember this: I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth. I could, it turns out, get it in there, but I hadn't given sufficient thought to the reverse operation.

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(((Eddie)))

wake up babe new* endosymbiotic organelle just dropped. They confirmed it's more than just symbiosis when they saw it absorbing whole proteins from the host! *100 million years old, but that's new compared to billions-years old mitochondria and chloroplasts

Scientists discover first nitrogen-fixing organellenews.ucsc.edu In two recent papers, an international team led by UC Santa Cruz scientists describe the first known nitrogen-fixing organelle within a eukaryotic cell. The organelle is the fourth example in history ...

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Reply to

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

House music was born in part from Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago: gimletmedia.com/shows/undone... *deleted & reposted to correct an error

Disco Demolition Night | Undonegimletmedia.com One summer night in 1979, 50,000 people got together at a baseball stadium to kill disco. And it worked. Kind of.

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(((Eddie)))

I’ll say a little more about this later. But the fun part of this essay was that I wasn’t allowed to assume any knowledge at all about gaming for my reader. None. I had amazing editors work me really hard for each sentence.

There's a neat essay on the influence of D&D in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social. I'm still blown away by how RPGs have become this American — really worldwide — institution. www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture...

How Dungeons & Dragons Sparked a Revolution in How We Play Just About Everythingwww.smithsonianmag.com Created more than 50 years ago, the game has captured the imaginations of generations of Americans, and not just the nerdy ones

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Reply to

Kaitlin Has Had Enough

The United States has always been a democracy for some and a brutal authoritarian regime for others, and the effort to expand it to democracy for all has led to a 70+ year backlash culminating in SCOTUS claiming that kings are totes cool and also judges are the ones to coronate them

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Reply to

Proof of Burden

If this is all going to be aesthetics---and I think that is bad---it is past time we pretended this kind of too-cool-for-school anti-Dem posting is any less cringe than saying you hate bedtime and homework is slavery

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(((Eddie)))

Twitter: @joshcarlosjosh But they're BOTH so OLD! Gandalf can barely remember his passwords and even forgot that people called him Gandalf (yikes), while Saruman betrayed the Free Peoples of middle-earth and led an insurrection that stormed Helm's Deep. You can see how they're equally bad choices.

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(((Eddie)))

YES THAT WORKED SO WELL AND DID NOT AT ALL THROW THE PARTY INTO A DIVISIVE NOMINATION CONTEST AND LOST ELECTION THAT WOULD HAUNT IT FOR THE NEXT HALF CENTURY

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(((Eddie)))

🧵 In 2020, I nearly died from mysterious industrial chemical exposure at my apartment. Later, I discovered my employer was dumping toxic waste into our windows from their Skunkworks semiconductor fab next-door. I tipped off US EPA, who then raided them in 2023. EPA sent me the report on Friday. 💀 ⬇️

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(((Eddie)))

I like how the Sigma Male is just David Tennant in “Good Omens”

they keep inventing new guys

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(((Eddie)))

BE ADVISED: Brain cell detected in vicinity Use extreme caution Do not attempt to interact with the brain cell Professionals are on the way Keep a safe distance until help has arrived

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(((Eddie)))

Normally such a pristinely white, beautifully coiffured, elegant bird - I think this spoonbill qualifies as a #DerpyBird 🤣😂

#DerpyBirds #birds I giggle every time I see this Limpkin photo I took a few years ago. 🪶

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(((Eddie)))

I can’t think of a clever caption for this. It just breaks my fucking heart.

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(((Eddie)))

Periodically, I like to reread my favorite Scottish poem: Batman's Aff His Nut by Robert Florence.

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(((Eddie)))

Also: Federal law is a floor, not a ceiling. The Court ruled that people CAN be ticketed, not MUST be, and did not make a ruling that forces munis to do this. As frustrating as it is, this is back to the states and towns now, and means getting on your city council’s ass and not letting go.

They don't have an inside to go to. This is "increase jail population and slave labor" ruling.

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(((Eddie)))

Some days I wonder what Bowie does all day when I’m not around. I figure mostly sleep. And then there are days I come home & he’s created himself a little box fort. #Cats

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(((Eddie)))

This rules and it will always annoy me this wasn't on the list of things Obama did on his way out of the White House. www.axios.com/2024/06/26/b...

Biden pardons veterans convicted under military's ban on gay sexwww.axios.com The action will apply to thousands of former military service members.

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(((Eddie)))

Reply to

DoctorBowring

Like 3 Mexican cartels agreed to a temporary ceasefire this year because they were all mourning the Dragon Ball Z creator This is a real thing that happened

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(((Eddie)))

LLMs are useless for lawyering and other tasks involving actual analysis and understanding not because the technology hasn't gotten there yet, but because that's fundamentally not what statistical word association is capable of doing. Not only can't it understand, it's not even trying to understand.

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Reply to

Nick Brumfield

This is mindblowing. Due to deforestation and sedimentation upstream, between 1194 & 1855 the mouth of the Yellow River advanced 90 *kilometers* into the sea Much of the land at the mouth of the Yangtze was created by the same process, with the land Shanghai is on today not existing until the 1200s

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“UW researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials — such as the ‘Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award’ — lower than the same resumes without those honors and credentials.”

ChatGPT is biased against resumes with credentials that imply a disability — but it can improvewww.washington.edu UW researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials — such as the “Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award” — lower than the same...

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(((Eddie)))

"here's the notes miles davis left out!" oh god, miles would have beaten the shit out of sam altman by now huh

The AI trend of “we took this art and expanded it beyond the artist’s intent because *more* of a thing means better” - showing what’s “out of frame” in a shot from a movie, or turning a six word short story into a novella - speaks to what art actually is: knowing what isn’t necessary.