Notices by Bradley M. Kuhn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org), page 2

Heute habe ich nach 30 Jahren wieder mit dem Deutschlernen aufgenommen..

Die Deutsch-Amerikanische Gesellschaft Portland habst viele Klassen für Kinder *und* Erwachsene.

Leider habe ich heute gelernt:

meine Grammatik ist ganz toll, aber mein Wortschatz ist Scheiße.
😬

@jn Ja, natürlich. Und es gibt zu Viele Leute bei FOSS Deutsch sprechen, aber alles kann jeder besser Englisch als ich Deutsch. Es ist egoistisch, wann ich sage: "Bitte, sprechen alles Deutch, aber sehr, sehr langsam — nür für mich"

@jn

Jetzt schaue ich auf Deutsch fern: Ich wieße Star Trek so gut, daß ich glaube, dass ST:TNG, synchronisiert auf Deutsch (und mit deutschen Untertiteln), mein Wortschatz besseren.

Aber „Nebula“ ist auf Deutsch und Englisch dasselbe, ja? 🤷 🤣

(und auch "Cardassian")

Cc: @slink

@jn @slink

(Switching to English)

It both helps and hurts that the subtitles often translate differently than the dubbing. When the dialogue is going slowly, it actually helps learn multiple ways to say the same thing. When it's going fast, I just get confused.

I was born under the worst moments of Nixon's adminstration. One of my earliest memories is in my car seat in a gas line.

My childhood: Nixon's aftermath of Nixon. Reagan: my teens. 😱

I thought my first 0x30 years were tough. But rn everyone who wants to do kind & good is thwarted.

The people I most fear, though, are amoral opportunists who grift kind people for profit at every chance. There are more of them than MAGA folks in power.

“Lawful neutral” is harder to oppose than any evil.

@jxself I felt the biggest mistake the writers made was to actually go to St. Olaf.

Rose's descriptions were always better.

Also, I spent way too much time confirming that the scene where Blanche pulls her arm into a red sleeve and waves it around on the couch is a *deleted scene* and appeared nowhere but in the opening itself.

I just have to tell everyone that because it's a hard fact to confirm.

@jxself @lukeshu the goofy rights issues is sadly now sorted out thanks to the subsequent mergers but of course not enough to make ST:PIC what it should have been.

I also the obsession with canon ultimately is loyalty to a tiny group of writers who long since went to work on other projects.

@jxself please don't turn into one of those NotMyTrek guys!

Lower Decks makes every joke we as fans have always made and asks all the questions. To great comic effect. See it ASAP.

Think of the other new stuff the way we think about “Angel One” vs. “Chains of Command” … there will be some truly Bad Stuff to have good stuff too.

All the people working on new trek today are True Fans. They aren't perfect at their craft (no one is) but they have sufficient reverence.

#StarTrek

IMO, @tshirtman's point is key: “investments” are, in fact,gambling.

AFAIK, I'm the only #FOSS geek to spend time¹ as a part-time pro #poker player, so (hopefully clueful) rant follows:

Most who've never gambled for a living don't yet grok (to quote _Hunger Games_) “when the odds are forever in your favor” vs. (what we call) “bad bets”.

Pro gamblers seek games where they're “the favorite”. Lotteries & (most) casino games have a “house edge” & are “bad bets”…(1/6)

Cc: @BathysphereHat @finner

…many pro #poker players become investment bankers b/c the principles are the same. Wall Street is, indeed, a casino, where the wealthy have a “house edge”.

Any form of gambling — Wall Street, running a casino, or playing poker — one needs chumps (called “fish” in poker) to show up & play the game w/ no concept that others in the game have an edge over them. The sardonic _Hunger Games_ quote is apt, becuase if you're not from District 1/2, the odds are, of course, *never* in your favor…(2/6)

… for me, I eventually got disgusted that, as a pro poker player, I was the “house” for folks who didn't understand math. I was once¹ in a #poker game at Foxwoods casino (in CT, when I lived in MA) circa 2004.

A guy won a pot & he said “Now I have enough to get the diapers.” We all asked him what he meant, & he said: “my wife sent me out to by diapers 3 hrs ago, & I came here instead.” I thought he was lying at the time, but after he lost all his money & left, I realized maybe he wasn't.…(3/6)

… ultimately, @silvermoon82 is totally right that gambling does impact the same brain centers that some substances do & addiction is common.

If you're a pro #poker player or otherwise make a surplus in the gambling industry (which, BTW, includes Wall Street), *you are* the same as a heroin dealer (or, at least, a liquor store owner). I admit I occasionally still play #poker when I'm traveling & have an evening free, but doing it as my primary source of income sounds disgusting to me now … (4/6)

… I do sometimes buy lottery tickets.

e.g., rn #Powerball cash-payout ($826.4 mil) exceeds odds of winning (1 in ≈584mil — note ½ the odds b/c a ticket costs $2). That's a farce b/c odds don't factor in chance of a split btw winners (ie, N people *can* buy the exact same numbers), but while usually a $2 ticket is worth ≤ $1, my back-of-envelope calculation is rn a $2 ticket is “worth” ≈ $1.40 in expected value, so I take the gamble b/c of the NGO donations I could do with that money … (5/6)

… anyway, @evan polled on something of my interest.

¹I worked previously for FSF & SFLC. I wasn't paid enough to make ends meet in Boston-area/NYC-area (respectively).

Only way I could make ends meet was to play #poker on weekends

It was a *grueling* way to make a living: only job where you show up $3k in your pocket, work the whole day, & leave with $1k in your pocket (on a given day, of course).

I made roughly $25/hr playing poker, but games were easier then for various reasons.

(6/6)

An excellent article yesterday by @thomasclaburn in _The Register_ about the ongoing concern that #Microsoft / #GitHub users continue to have about being forced to use LLM-backed generative- & agent-based #AI.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/github_copilot_complaints/

I hope the further coverage will really encourage more people to #GiveUpGitHub <https://giveupgithub.org> & look to sites like @Codeberg or self-hosting with @forgejo.

#CodeBerg #Forgejo #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #SoftwareFreedom

@foxcat @federicomena

I can confirm that I was not asked for comment, by email, mobile phone, text message, or all the other contacts that are available to this individual.

As I said in this post:
https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/115147055177862580

real journalists *do not* quote a source without asking them to give further comment beyond their public statements.

This individual truly has no excuse now b/c I just reminded them three days ago how to contact me.

Not journalism, just alt-right entertainment.

@evan Ok, I'm now starting to wonder if #EvanPoll s are designed primarily to just to test ActivityPub polling federation. Is this really a question you wanna see what your followers think (and it's surely obvious how it'll come out, no?) 😁

Just in case the poll ends up being super serious re: Apple policy, cf this from today:

https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/115146771798526920

My uncle John nearly died from COVID because he believes anti-vax bull💩.

John is just the right age to have been one of the kids lined up here in the USA to receive the mandatory polio vaccine.

His mother (my grandmother) had often talked about how the polio vaccine changed what it was like to be a parent in the 1950s. That fear, the worry, the terror — finally parents could let it go thanks to vaccines.

We horrifically watch as life affirming science becomes a political football.

😔

@KathyReid For about 5 years, I've been calling what's going on here “Civil Cold War”.

It's unlikely we'll have widespread armed conflict — just the kinds of violent short-term but repeated skirmishes we've been seeing.

I got really into both USA Civil War history & international Cold War policy (which was contemporaneous news at the time) when I was a kid, and I think this best describes what's happening.

I can easily imagine USA/USSR using vaccine deployment as Cold War proxy fight in 1982.

For those who haven't (as I have) been interviewed both by real journalists & lazy/fake ones (the latter is sadly far too common in “tech press”):

Real journalists keep on file best contact info for folks they cover & will use that method to contact them. If they can't reach the subject via that best known means, they'll dispassionately state: “The subject was unavailable for immediate comment”.

I wanna thank @lwn, @arstechnica, & The Register (esp. @thomasclaburn) — who always get this right.