Notices by Steven Hoefer (troublewithwords@wandering.shop)

Is there a mnemonic for remembering which is for screaming into and which is for staring into, void or abyss?

Planning a gender’s night out, just me and the genders, gendering it up!

The idea that LLMs contain "all human knowledge" and therefore untapped wisdom to be drawn on is kind of understandable, but very wrong.

It's like saying the contents of grocery store processed through a blender is a meal at Michelin 3-star restaurant because it's got all the same ingredients.

No, it's a gray paste, but if you've never eaten fancy before you might be tricked into believing it's fancy by people selling gray paste.

@dalias @futurebird I know that the Secret Service is one of those that already do polygraphs on their own employees. The gov already has the equipment and "expertise".

@futurebird Polygraphs are still very popular with police and other security folks who apply them to prospective hires.

Well, that was a terrifying read.

Suni and Butch talk about thrusters going out as they approach the space station.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/

Catch-22 but Yossarian's just trying to log into a website.

Speech-to-text is converting all mentions of "cow's milk" to "cosmic" and this is very good.

A glove has blown in front of your door. It is a rather nice left glove. It's not your size, and its a bit dirty from its mysterious travels.

What would you do with it?

Would you try to reunite it with its pair? If so, how?

My dad when I was a kid: "Don't do anything that would prevent you from becoming President or a priest."

Me, 2025: *dead stare*

I have not retooted
the toot
that had
an image

and which
you were probably
hoping
I'd share

Forgive me
it was excellent
except it had
no image description.

@mattl Didn't expect to find those there. Thank you.

Anyone want to give me a job where I can be proud of doing the work you ask me to do, I'll respect the people I work with, and they'll respect me?

I can learn pretty much anything you need me to do, and do it well. Touching words and computers are my forte, but I've done everything from audio/video production to illustration and construction.

At this point I will work cheap if you hit the points above. Ideally 20-30 hours a week.

#getHired #fediHire

Since 1996 I've done work for Microsoft, Marvel, Sega, Sony, Lucasfilm, and many, many more I've forgotten.

I can't do that work anymore. It's destroying my soul. I'm literally happier doing gig work getting less than minimum wage than I would be working for any of the above.

I'm looking for a small group of good people for whom I can solve real problems for for a bit of money.

Is the groundhog not happy any other day?

#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 30: "Do secondary characters sometimes get promoted to main characters?"

Not officially, but it does help to think of every character as the main character of their particular story, even if that's not the primary story I'm telling.

I remain a big fan of RSS.
If you're unable to cut yourself off from news, consider consuming it through an RSS reader. It won't give precedence to the most hyped/outrageous/most visited/most sponsored news. It's all just in the order it was published, all articles look pretty much the same.

A kindness you can do for other folks on this network of people is to add a content wrapper (CW) to your agitation and rage. A lot of folks are dancing around the edge of panic, about the state of the world today. It would be particularly ironic if it was a comrade that cracked them lose into terror and despair.

It should be C,S,V, not CSV.

@squishymage42 Excellent point! For folks who are comfortable with git and want to know how they might make a nicely formatted ebook, or non-technical folks who want a decent manual of style, the section “For People Wanting to Produce A New Ebook” at the link below has all the resources.

https://standardebooks.org/contribute