July 01 - Art 365/182 - Tufted Puffin

Puffin knows what you did.

#art365 #DailyBird #watercolour

ArtFight 2026!?!

https://artfight.net/~pussreboots

#artfight #artfight2026 #teamcomedy

Just to note:

When you take a self assessment for ADHD or Autism and it asks something like:

"do you have difficulty with ABC?"

And your response is

"I don't have difficulty with ABC. I've developed a System that I use to deal with ABC, and when I follow the System, I can do ABC. So it's not difficult."

... Then you have difficulty with ABC. Mark yes on the question.

but #aislop is inevitable, right?!?!?

❝ OpenAI Went From $5.09 Billion Net Loss in 2024 to $38.53 Billion Net Loss in 2025 https://cleantechnica.com/2026/06/30/openai-went-from-5-09-billion-net-loss-in-2024-to-38-53-billion-net-loss-in-2025/

Do you know anyone in Toronto?

I have a friend who is dealing with some very difficult medical issues right now. She is on the waiting list for in-home care, and in the meantime really needs some very basic food prep help

If you know anybody who might be able to donate an hour of their time, or if you have connections with community in Toronto, please let me know and I will put folks in touch

Thank you so much!

June 30 - Art 365/181 - Jamaican Owl

The last owl of the month.

#art365 #owl #DailyBird #watercolour

hiraeth - a word that has shown up in three books I have recently read (or am still reading).

Found in:
- The Someday Garden by Ashley Poston
- Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders
- Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

#reading #hiraeth

@catsalad I saw this recently on the #InternetArchive & saved it for similar reasons of amusement… 🙃

#YoRobot
#IRobot
#Asimov  

There are cool rainbows. 🏳️‍🌈🌈
There are hearts you can assemble into Pride colors. ❤️♥️🩷💜🧡💛💚💙🤎🖤🤍
But my favorite #Pride emoji is still a brick. 🧱
#StonewallWasARiot

thank you @1Bit for introducing me to artist Trici Venola, one of the earliest macintosh b+w painters. it's been a long time since i was excited about finding new (old!) pixel art to learn from, and Trici's work sets such a high bar 🙏

her personal site showcases a little bit of her pixel art. but what stood out to me is her little story, "The Tiger in the Mac". it's near the bottom of the page:
https://www.tricivenola.com/about-the-digital-art/

“But where’s the tiger coming from?” the boy asked in genuine bewilderment, “isn’t there a program for drawing the tiger? That you just tell and it draws one?”

#1bit #digitalArt #painting #vintageApple #macintosh

Current* conditions near Kewaunee, WI:

Captain Painway, personal log. Starskate Command, week 1

i’ve been assigned to my first team (the Balboa Lake Monsters) and hit my first training session

~I~AM~DEAD~

much like my first day of derby freshie practice, i wonder if i will ever truly be able to do this

but I’m damn well gonna try

Five stars:

Morning Sun in Wuhan by Ying Chang Compestine (2022) is middle grade fiction set in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city where it was first taking hold. Mei and her father are grieving and learning new routines after the unexpected death of her mother. Now her father, a doctor at a nearby hospital, is suddenly too busy to come home, leaving Mei to take care of running their apartment, cooking meals, and attending school.

https://pussreboots.com/blog/2026/comments_06/morning_sun_in_wuhan.html

#bookstodon #fiction #MiddleGrade
@bookstodon

June 29 - Art 365/180 - Cinnabar Boobook

#Art365 #watercolour #owl #DailyBird

Behold! The first strawberry of the summer

This morning was the day I taught my dog to blep. Blepping is when they stick out their lil pink tongues and I've decided it is so adorable that I want to be able to ask for it.

In other news, I guess I should give a new intro to folks on this server who don't yet know me.

Hi! I'm Shan. Been around Mastodon for awhile but recently moved to this new server home. I'm into loads of things. Here's a start...

#DogsOfMastodon #PositiveReinforcementTraining #Politics #AlbertaPolitics #Mending #Sewing #FixingThings #DoingNothing #BikesNotCars #CargoBikes #UrbanDevelopment #Bread #DeepCanvassing #Writing #Reading

OMG YOU GUYS!! MY T-SHIRT IS HERE AND MY STUPID FACE CAN’T STOP SMILING!!!

The Circle: The Scariest Part Isn't Big Tech. It's Us.

When The Circle hit theaters in 2017, many people saw it as another tech thriller. Today, it feels less like science fiction and more like tomorrow's news feed.

The movie is based on Dave Eggers' bestselling novel, often called the 1984 of the digital age. Ironically, the film improves on the book in one important way. Instead of explaining every idea through endless dialogue, it lets us see them. The result is faster, smoother and much easier to watch. But it still feels more like an essay than a real story.

Mae Holland lands her dream job at The Circle, a giant tech company that looks like a mix of Google, Apple, Meta and TikTok. The campus is bright, colorful and full of smiling people. Everyone talks about changing the world. That is the first warning sign.

Modern tech companies rarely say they just want to build products or make money. They promise to make humanity better. The Circle sells exactly that dream. Soon Mae believes privacy is outdated. If you have nothing to hide, why keep secrets? She starts wearing a tiny camera that livestreams her entire life. Every second. Every conversation. Every emotion. Imagine if your entire life became one endless Twitch stream.

This world feels like a strange combination of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Control no longer comes through fear alone. It comes through convenience, entertainment and the promise of a better future. Looking at today's AI boom, smart homes and endless social media feeds, the movie suddenly feels much less fictional than it did a few years ago.

One scene stands out. The Circle suggests that voting should happen through its own platform. If everyone already has an account, why not connect democracy directly to the app? It sounds efficient. Maybe even practical. The movie briefly asks whether democracy itself could become a product owned by a private company. That is one of its most interesting ideas.

Sadly, it never explores that question.

Instead, the ending takes the easy Hollywood route. Rather than challenging the system, it blames a few powerful executives. Once their private emails are exposed, the audience is expected to believe justice has been served. As if replacing a CEO could solve everything.

But that misses the real problem.

Systems survive because people are replaceable. Remove one tech billionaire and another one will take the job. The real issue is a business model built on collecting more data, measuring human behavior and turning attention into profit. It doesn't matter whether the CEO is friendly or arrogant. If the machine stays the same, the result stays the same.

That idea feels even more relevant today. We often argue about individual tech leaders. But should we? The real question is why any company should have that much power in the first place. Whether it is Meta, Google, Apple or the next AI giant, the structure remains the same.

The movie also lets us off the hook too easily. It is comforting to blame powerful corporations. Harder to admit that we help build this world ourselves. We accept the cookies. We install the apps. We trade privacy for convenience. We buy smart speakers, connect everything to the cloud and tell ourselves it is worth it because life becomes easier.

That may be The Circle's biggest weakness. It criticizes Silicon Valley's worldview but forgets to criticize ours. Most people are not driven by ideology. They simply choose what is new, useful and comfortable. That is how surveillance becomes normal—not because anyone forces us, but because we quietly invite it into our homes.

The movie offers only one alternative: rejecting technology completely and escaping into nature. But that feels just as unrealistic as total digital transparency. It presents two extremes while ignoring everything in between.

Despite its flaws, The Circle remains a fascinating warning. Not because it predicts the future perfectly, but because so much of its future has already become our present.

Why am I writing about such an old movie? Shouldn't we have much smarter, deeper movies about AI, surveillance and Big Tech by now? Or have we simply become so used to these technologies that we no longer notice what is happening? Has Silicon Valley slowly won us over with its own propaganda? If you know any newer movies or series that tackle these questions in a more thoughtful way, let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for the next great warning before it becomes reality.

#TheCircle #movie #film #entertainment #cinema #Hollywood #criticism #filmcritic #siliconvalley #bigtech #bigdata #bigbrother #orwell #surveillance #privacy #warning #danger #today #future #ai #technology #software #algorithm #freedom #democracy #economy #power #billionaires #finance #money #company #humanity #ethics #world #life #control

Ford rehires "greybeard" engineers after its push for AI automation backfires.

"Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product."

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/ford-ai-automation-human-workers-b3003787.html