Notices by Deirdre Saoirse Moen (deirdresm@hachyderm.io)

@inthehands I want to give an example of this.

Friend of mine is IT guy for a non-software firm that uses a major db vendor and uses another third-party database set of tables, etc. And they have addons from another company.

Neither of these products use boolean column types. So the first set uses "Y" or "N" as a bool, and the second was written in Iceland, so decided to use "J" and "N" instead.

This kind of thing is just trivially awful, but chews up just great wads of time.

Frankly, this chart is infuriating.

Most men seemingly do not realize that, were it not for #contraception (including #abortion), that year-long relationship with a 20-year-old would have been 95% likely to produce a child.

And how many kids would they now have? It's precisely because contraception and abortion have been legal that people were not compelled to raise more kids than they could afford. Or wanted.

That is far more fundamental than other "economic" concerns.

#AbortionIsHealthCare

@inthehands @scy Me too, for without them, we'd never have copyeditors.

@mattly Aneurysms suck (first husband died from one), but when they kill, it’s usually quickly.

@mattly I'm very glad to hear that, and I wish medical research had been just that little bit faster for her.

@mattly I'm really sorry for your loss, but hopefully she had some good years despite the autoimmune stuff.

(I know there's current research into mast cell signaling in scleroderma, but haven't been keeping up with it.)

@mattly I'm just so, so, so devastated. Lily's my favorite cat I've ever had, and her every quirk delighted me even when it was incredibly frustrating and time consuming.

Still no sign of #LilyTheCat. :(

Reposted a clip on FB of Reggie Jackson giving the harsh truth on the news of how he was treated as a Black player.

FB removed it claiming it went against their guidelines. (He did talk about people denying him access, using the N-word.)

Clip is here, note the N-word is bleeped: https://youtu.be/R4mWOVy_02s

#racism #baseball

If anyone's looking for a Release Engineering position at #Apple and willing to live in San Diego, let me know.

Requires Swift, python, bash, git, etc.

I have the recruiter contact info. This is *not* a remote role, and requires being in the San Diego area. (Which is a red area of a blue state, but if you're looking to relocate out of a red state….)

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200546194/release-validation-engineer-tools-automation?team=SFTWR

@inthehands @blogdiva I need to leverage my cat’s special access for sure. (She has her own decorated box in the principal’s office!)

We’ve found listening to the public zoom meetings rage-inducing at times. :(

@blogdiva @inthehands Rick and I have tried on school boards, but have found candidate statements are often deliberately generic to the point of being misleading.

That’s one case where it’s super easy to do far more harm than good if you’re not super high information about each possible candidate.

We try, though!

One of our county supervisors hates parking, and as a disabled person with POTS who needs proximity, I always give him a good snarl. :(

@inthehands @blogdiva

Great metric. Because of the potential crisis in secretaries of state, I’ve been focusing on those races, particularly in swing states.

I’ve also been looking at AG races as that affects a ton of people’s lives. A good AG/DA vs. a bad one can be a huge change in local justice, particularly in states with abortion restrictions.

@blogdiva As someone in a county that voted 78% for Biden and had 86% turnout, I’m not sure where to focus my efforts, because local-to-me isn’t a problem. I have a small family with no one in swing or red states.

Best I can do is try to extend my reach by amplifying others and contributing to tight races, particularly those with liberal to progressive candidates.

Cynical thought:

What if the push toward AI isn't really about AI at all, but rather avoiding shareholder lawsuits from jerkwads who are anti- climate-change initiatives?

IOW, the entire *point* is to bork climate change mitigation?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/microsoft-s-ai-obsession-is-destroying-the-company-s-climate-goals/ar-BB1mvCof

When I was in Ireland in 1990, I was busking. One of the upsides of busking is getting to talk to people from all walks of life and of all kinds of opinions.

Including people who'd been involved in the IRA in the anti-treaty era (fighting for a one-state solution). Until I lived in Ireland and traveled a lot through the North, I thought that was possible. After those travels, I thought it wasn't.

(It might be in the future, especially due to changes brought by Brexit.)

This is the single best explanation (long!) I've read about why LLMs are a con. Great piece from @baldur.

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

#AI #LLM

@mattly @riley @afewbugs

This is why I loved the college I went to, where you had to take science and have a science project, but *which* science and what project was open.

The project I envied was a two-semester one of a woman who designed an ecologically stable duck pond for her 10 acre lot, and all the research about how deep and what species to have and so forth.

We *all* wanted to do that project!

Bullet point 1 is the funniest thing I’ve ever read about #ADHD. Also true.

Given how cheaply these units were built, there are lessons that could be learned here.

https://mstdn.social/@hkrn/112239780994210868