So I’m at the Spirit Halloween yesterday (it’s in an old Toys R Us; I know you all were curious). My 12 y/o wants to be Spider-Man for Halloween. The “boy” costumes have a Spider-Man mask, but no gloves. They also have the foam sculpted muscles. My kid hates this. But we happen to notice that they have a “girl” Spider-Man costume. In a win for equality or progress or whatever, it’s labeled as “Spider-Man” and not “Spider-Girl” or whatever. And, like the “boy” costume, it’s an officially licensed product. Now, the “girl” costume is basically what he wants: it has gloves, no stupid sculpted muscles, no sculpted boot things to cover shoes from what we can tell. It’s just a straight up, lean, form-fitting lycra suit with Spidey’s graphics on it. Awesome.

Doesn’t have an actual mask. Only a “domino mask” (think Black Cat or Robin).

Why do we do this? I could probably write an entire thesis on the gender politics of these two costumes.

(We’re probably just going to look for like a “zentai” type suit online; seems to be the best option)

And aren’t there recent legal rulings in the US that say that LLM-generated content is not able to copyrighted?

Right. This is because the ISPs actively obfuscate or hide the knowledge necessary to do this. In other words, they expect us to offload the intelligence behind this from them. It’s already happening. It’s what they done with cooking and pretty much every other skill we humans have quite amazingly developed. The news doesn’t report about Local Language Models. They promote hyperscale data center Large Language Model stuff, making us associate “AI” with that and thus mystifying other ideas (that are less beholden to large corporations) to the point that “normies” are made to feel as though they are not intelligent enough to run this stuff themselves.

Just look at Linux. It’s still treated as a kind of niche, “computer-smart” thing. I’m a GenX/Millennial “normie.” I do have certain computer skills that both Boomers and GenZ lack, but I’m probably about at pace with most people my age. I switched over to Linux about a year and a half ago (from MacOS, where all the computing knowledge has been offloaded to a corporation) and have not looked back. These things are learnable. The learning just needs to be encouraged and made available. But the Sam Altman’s of the world have such utter contempt for the rest of us they’d rather us be the mouth-breathing, drool-faced sheep they see us rather than actually do anything to better the human condition.

“My name Yiff.”

Switched to Zen as soon as I switched to Linux about a year and a half ago. Love it.

Robbie Williams? (from US, best friend used to have “Millennium” on repeat for a spell) I honestly thought at first that this was a Jonas brother or maybe post-reconstructive surgery Zac Ephron, but that didn’t make sense with the UK part of the question.

Edit: I see I’m correct. But I honestly only dug into that part of my mind because I recalled both the aforementioned single and the general thing, stemming back to those days, that he was like huge in the UK but practically nowhere else. In other words, the question itself served as a clue to who he was (meaning he is apophatic–I only recognize him because I am aware of his absence)

Sad I had to scroll down this far to find this.

“Ugh, ninjas” is a perennial line among my friends.

I’ve noticed a sharp increase in just GARBAGE re-toots (which wind up on the trending page) in the past year or so as more people migrate to Mastodon. Just the worst of Twitter offal finding new life. The trending page is where I get a bit disheartened. When I want to be reminded of what Mastodon is really like, I just click on the Federated tab and see all the random posts from normal people (and bots, so many bots) around the world. Way less snark and self-importance there.

It’s also one of the reasons I was disheartened that .social removed access to the Federated and Local tabs (I got them back by making a complaint–I’ll eventually migrate to a smaller instance). I get that it’s crazy hard to moderate those. But taking that away made Mastodon feel smaller and more like “every other social media.” I don’t want that. I came to Mastodon because it’s different.

There’s a guy who long maintained that the Garden of Eden is found near the Florida panhandle and there’s a park to commemorate this.

And as a result made an absolute mess out of what Christians actually believe about death and the afterlife (and you, John Milton, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you)

Okay, who let a Ferengi become the CEO of Delta?

It’s kind of wild when you learn that words for blue are relatively new in human language.

Look, all of us have different sleeping habits, okay

Mint user and the image is perfect. This is because Mint allows me to rest like a baby that has all their needs met, free from anxiety.

I collect both but have begun focusing more on CDs for their portability, price, and their ease of digitization. I’m actually in the middle of extracting CDs I recently picked up at the thrift store as I type this. I have an MP3 player and I load them on there, keep them on my hard-drive AND a separate back up. I still have CDs from the 90s and have had no issues with them playing or being digitized.

Bug Brother

As Walter Isaacson says in his Jobs biography: “Some stories are too good to fact-check.”

Thing is, if “digital” actually meant “own” we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Is this one of those things where the old “block chain” could be helpful? Like, a mechanism for actual digital ownership where one can have reasonable assurance that the thing one has downloaded actually belongs to them? That, so long as there’s a unique key, one can access that digital item whenever one desires–AND can transfer that to someone else by way of sale or trade?

Stuff like this fascinates me, the ways in which physical limitations can impact a piece of art.

Right now it’s a toss-up over:

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Graceland by Paul Simon

Time by Electric Light Orchestra

She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper

(I really love them all; other top contenders are Born to Run by Springsteen and Untitled by Blink-182)