What has been very infuriating about all this is I'm checking online liberal commentators about this and even the more respected ones are staying silent. The news is being dominated by chants of FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD. Local officials are giving support but you wouldn't know that looking at the news.

The drum beat is growing louder, and all anyone seems to want to talk about is the blue wave and how Trump is cooked.

#Minnesota is in big trouble, folks, and no one wants to admit it.

#USPolitics

I predict they are going to arrest and try to deport Representative Omar Ilhan before the election. I doubt they will bother with due process. The order to strip her of her citizenship may have already been issued. Whether it is a legal order or not probably matters little to the people who issued it.

#Minnesota #USPolitics

So yeah, I'm not counting on a blue wave here in #Minnesota. I sort of feel like the Democratic Party is celebrating too soon. I think this election is going to be a lot closer than people expect. We need to understand the forces working against us and take them seriously. We thought our vibes would carry us through in 2024. I don't want us to make that same mistake again.

This will, in the end, be a turnout based election. The numbers are still close but the trends are working against us. We talk about how Democrats are dominating in early voting and this is true, but here's the thing: Democrats were also dominating in early voting in 2024.

#Trump's rallies are not filling seats right now. Well, that was true in 2024 too, and he still got the popular and electoral votes. He actually did *better* here in #Minnesota than in 2016 or 2020.

(cont'd)

I cannot overstate just how much rural #Minnesota hates the Twin Cities. I mean it; they actively hate us and everything about us here in the Metro area. They talk about how they would love to see Minneapolis become a smoking crater. In public and with barely disguised glee. And this isn't a fringe movement, either. This sentiment is *widespread*.

So anything that can accelerate that fantasy becoming reality is something they will happily vote for.

And #Trump is 100% feeding into that.

I want to talk about #Minnesota again, because it's getting serious here. I'm afraid it's about to flip red to the GOP.

Amy Klobuchar is probably going to win the governorship. I'm not worried about that.

It's all the downballot races.

The US Senate and State Attorney General races are now both lean Republican. I can't say that the state legislator races are going to fare much better.

The relentless propaganda campaign is working. And here's the reason why. (cont'd)

At a webinar for #AI best practices, I asked the question "Should we count on cheap tokens being around forever when the current revenue pictures for all the major AI vendors point to free or low-cost AI access being unsustainable in the long term?"

They loved the question but got a rather odd reply. "You might want to reserve the use of the more expensive tokens for writing an email to your mom."

Uh, no. I will not use AI tokens for writing to Mom. I can say "I love you" using my own words.

If Mathematicians are devastated now, I'm sure they will be thrilled to hear the colleges and research firms they work for referring to theoretical math work as a "commodity" moving forward.

#ai

The #Gnome project basically blocking any project that blocks AI is certainly a take.

I haven't used Gnome since the very early days so I can't say "I'm going to boycott this project now!" but it's certainly not helping their case.

I just had that thing happen where someone has been boosted so often on my feed I just assumed I was following him. I finally looked at his account this morning because I noticed I wasn't seeing some of their posts and lo! I was not, in fact, following him.

Now I am, since I was effectively seeing almost everything they were posting anyways. 😅

You ever have those weird dreams where you are living at your current or former place of residence but you discover a room or several rooms that you "forgot" existed, and you start renovating them?

And then you wake up and you're like, dammit! That would have been so cool!

@ai6yr House three houses down from us sold after being listed on the market for 11 days, which is wild to me. When we bought our house the seller had been trying to get someone to buy it for over 10 *years*, and that was only just under seven years ago. And interest rates were at record lows at the time. Today? Not so much.

The market is not rational at this point.

This video offers a bit of clarity of what the ruling did and did not do. Again, this is a garbage ruling but it does not do what I see half the outrageous claims out there say it does:

https://youtube.com/shorts/1qG3Dg3k6wc?is=ievmwOwb83-ugxQA

#USPolitics

I'm not anti Gen-Z slang or anything but I swear to god if I hear "Were so cooked" one more time I'm going to go full-on Old Man Yells At Cloud here

I see a lot of misinformation floating around out there about the Supreme Court's recent ruling regarding Trump's efforts to sabotage the election. The sky is not falling (yet), but if your first inclination is defeatism, that only helps Trump.

Do better than simply declaring "we are doomed".

#USPolitics

I have a confession to make.

I don't like overly literal skeuomorphisms.

This can be a bit of a challenge since I'm learning how to use VST plugins in digital audio workstations. Many of their front end UIs were made to look like a literal physical synthesizer or oscilloscopes, depending on the function.

I think I can trace back this irrational hatred going back to the days when our family got our first computer that had Microsoft Bob preinstalled on it.

I almost always ignore friend requests on Discord, but I would like to offer a particularly enthusiastic "fuck you" to the guy whose bio includes the words "crypto enthusiast".

Doubly hilarious: His bio also included the words "Security first"

Uh huh. Right. 😂

Now I want to amend this by saying I'm not poo-pooing the efforts of disability advocates who are working to bring awareness to the masses by discussing it as often as they can, because that is their job and their chosen role.

But just be aware not all of us are really willing to have a giant neon sign pointed at us at all times pointing out our disability.

I myself will bring it up, but as part of a larger story, not as the central pillar of my narrative.

I read a post from someone who was disabled talking about disability groups, and it reminded me of the reason why I never bothered joining autism groups.

Despite being diagnosed at around age 5, every time I looked into one of these organizations, it sort of felt like joining a group where the First Rule of Autism Club was You Never Stop Talking About Autism Club.

I do think talking about your disability is 100% important, but it's also important to remember it doesn't define your identity.

Just an FYI for no particular reason: the Internet is not a dark forest. If you post something online, just assume everyone can see it. End-to-end encryption can be easily defeated by a screenshot of your secure chatroom. Your autodeleted posts on social media are probably cached in a thousand different places.

I see a lot of people spend a lot of energy on performative privacy practices. I'm not saying you shouldn't protect yourselves, but be aware of what does work and what's a waste of time.