Notices by GeePawHill (geepawhill@mastodon.social)

Stephen Miller is not a toady, a sycophant, a boot-licker, or an underling.

He is the key architect, leader, and planner of the destruction of American democracy.

Trump hasn't even the slightest clue of what habeas corpus means.

Stephen Miller is in charge.

He is as gifted a liar as he is a hater. He has lied, repeatedly, and hated, repeatedly, for multiple decades.

Please don't feature him as a follower. He is not. He is leading.

Upon a time, once, my friend David & I, tripping balls, decided to have a manliness contest. It involved several feats, including drinking a whole bunch of grapefruit juice, which we both hated. We kept tying, or anyway breaking into mad laughter, before the finish of each round.

Finally, in the dead of Ohio winter, we went outside in the snow, wearing only shoes and underpants, and engaged in an epic swordfight (using broom handles).

@feld You might be mistaking me for someone I am not.

I am not an academic, and the folks I work with are a trade school for young would-be professional developers, not academics.

The student care team -- also not academics -- is concerned that the quality of the students' work has rapidly declined year-on-year. In their view, the students are not making things, or making them as well as they did. And they they are not making them work, or making them work as well as they did.

My young-ish student care team, yesterday, said in no uncertain terms that LLMs are destroying their students' ability to experience and think and learn.

This is quite something, from a group that, even a year ago, believed that LLMs would do more good than harm.

I spoze I could pull a triumphant "I fucking told you", but I just find it so incredibly sad.

Whenever someone tells me their layoffs are about clearing the dead wood, I ask them a question:

Was the wood dead when you hired it, or did working for you kill it?

@cwebber Well, if anyone's got the chops to deal with it, Christine, you do.

Pro-Tip: When writing TDD microtests, we want them to *read* "black box", but they will be *written* "white box".

(I prefer, btw, "opaque box" for the former, and "glass box" for the the latter, and will shift to that terminology now.)

Some folks will be troubled by this advice: reams of words by testers back the idea that tests should be written opaque-box.

Are those testers all wrong? Of course not. It's just that they're testers, not TDDers, and that context makes all the difference.

How old am I?

I'm so old I remember when Google search provided more value than surveillance advertising.

I'm so old I remember when an operating system was not considered an advertising platform.

I'm so old I remember when "Artificial Intelligence" was a serious enquiry filled with brilliant people, and not a scam machine populated by sleazebags.

I'm so old I remember when "user" didn't mean "product".

I'm so old I remember when "corporation" didn't mean "person".

Every genuinely smart person understands that their thinking talent isn't general, it's specific to the contexts in which they usually operate.

I never met a person who was genuinely smart who didn't know that there were rooms in which they were the *dumbest* person.

60-percenters *always* think that their capabilities are generic.

90-percenters *never* do.

I call'em 60-percenters. Those guys -- it's mostly but not entirely guys -- who think that, because they're smarter than the average bear, they are ever and always the smartest person in the room.

And the ones whose inter-generational wealth and privilege has boosted them to success? They're the worst.

@mwl I was interested that Indivisible is touting 500k registrations for tomorrow. Show up, I will, or I won't, but I don't think I'll register on the internet.

Dear Canadian friends, European friends, Mexican friends, South & Central American friends:

I so hate to say this, but I need you to know, from a US citizen: do not come.

I love you,
I know you love me, and that is not faltering.

When the rule of law collapses, *everyone* is at risk, and the rule of law is collapsing here.

The bottom line: it is not safe. I'll miss you terribly, but you must not come.

Special note to my Canadian loves. Teach the others what "elbows up!" means.

Elbows up!

Ya know what I'm tired of? For each thing, people who feel moved to say that thing won't do the trick.

Boycotting Target won't do the trick.

Federal judges won't do the trick.

American Cheese Singles won't do the trick.

Holds on nominees won't do the trick.

Booker's astonishing speech won't do the trick.

Look. No one thing will do the trick.

But one thing, and one thing, and one thing, and one thing, that might do the trick.

We need you to act, we need you to support the acts of others.

(Three Strom Thurmond sidenotes. 1) His eldest child was born out of wedlock to a black woman who worked for his family. The woman was 16 at the time. 2) He served in the Senate until he was 100 years old. 3) He was a notorious and well-known creep and groper, and once groped Senator Patty Murray on an elevator, not realizing she was a freshman Senator.)

@StillIRise1963 tbh, I'm a little crabby hearing allegedly left-leaning people talk shit about what he just did, which was remarkable.

3) "Entitlement" is meant as a slur. But Social Security is individuals loaning money, and asking to be repaid for their principal and their interest. None of those people using that word as a slur call the same situation "entitlement", when *they* call in their debts.

4) Social Security is one of the tightest most fraud-proof systems a government has ever made. If fraud happens here, it may, sometimes, it is *miniscule*. Less likely than getting struck by lightning.

A few notes about Social Security.

1) It isn't insolvent. To the extent that it's close, it's cuz prior administrations have taken funds from it.

2) Whatever insolvency could be fixed by a single simple action: changing or even eliminating the income cap on contributions.

(1/n)

My government *disappearing* student critics.

If that doesn't make you understand what these people intend, I don't believe anything will.

Framing the universities and/or lawfirms as "capitulating" is the wrong framing in my view. What they are doing is actively collaborating.

Look, Columbia furiously persecuted its student protestors during the *Biden* administration. They're not buckling under, they're doing what they've already done: actively working for the suppression of dissent.

True Canada story. I once had a gig outside Toronto, and I was not independent then, and I was sent to the gig. And for whatever reason -- this was back in the oughties, before everything got so crazy -- I was randomly pulled for a passport inspection.

And the woman asked me why I was there, and I said, I have a gig. And she perked up her ears. "You have no work visa."

I said, "No what?"

Yes, I'm aware that was all very naïve.