It really bugs me when there is a new release of a package, but no changes or release notes.
Like, *what did you change?*
I would really like to know, before risking a currently-working system with the upgrade.
I had to use a weird work around, blowing almost a week, on the last upgrade, to get it working properly. Unless you've fixed all that, I might want to wait until you do.
Music to my ears, near the end of the video:
"...in the battleground state of Texas."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsUZ0l_qzIY
TL;DW: Channel "Let's Talk Elections" compares the Talarico/Paxton race to O'Rourke/Cruz. And Talarico is doing a LOT better. Meanwhile, in that previous race, the actual election results were much bluer than the polls. If that trend applies again, then Talarico wins.
I'm personally hoping that if that many Democrats show up to the polls, then Hinojosa also beats Abbott for Governor, though I know that is a MUCH bigger ask.
In general, I would rather listen to an amateurish narrator reading a script written badly by a human than to listen to the blithering drivel of an AI voice belting out a soulless LLM-generated script.
This is not because I hate AI or LLMs. It's just that they're not really all that good. At *best* they're mediocre, but in practice, they're not even that.
I get that paying for a professional writer and professional voice-over artist might be a lot -- but you don't really need top-tier talent to beat the pants off of the AI.
A lot of the human flaws sound charming and comforting now.
If you're not already following these, they are pretty cool. This is the way to celebrate (and remember) 250 years of the USA, regardless of how you may feel about the current snapshot.
I like that they are neither universally positive nor negative, but always memorable. Each about a minute long.
"250 to 250" project, started by historian Heather Cox Richardson, but with many guest presenters:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2dS6uX1RkUzLppeUrqtvApwnR6whO7I_
Without having actually read them, but only paged through to see how long they are: the enormous dissents from Thomas and Alito are probably going to give pundits fodder for a lot of YouTube videos. :dumpsterfire:
I am grateful for this outcome.
But to be absolutely clear, we have learned nothing about the Constitution from this.
This we already knew. It's obvious from a plain reading of the 14th Amendment.
What we are learning are the limits of the corruption in SCOTUS.
Remember when we actually respected the Supreme Court..? Instead of just waiting around to see what partisan bullshit they spit out today..?
The president has so much power because they gave it to him -- in clear contradiction of a plain reading that anyone with a brain can see in the Constitution.
And also about the Constitution... it's not so clear on the role of SCOTUS. They only have so much power, because our representatives decided to give them that power -- by tradition.
That can ALL be taken back. And without having to break the Constitution itself.
In the end, power exists only because people allow it (and the "first mover problem" 🤷♂️).
:raccoon_cool:
Random edgelord troll shit. Why do they bother? Is it just to find out how fast they can get banned? Waste of their time as well, it seems to me. They must be very bored useless people, to waste time just trying to make people hate them. 🤷♂️
It's really a pretty nervy move of Google to do this, considering they are among the bot scrapers.
A reminder that YouTube is a bad habit I will need to break in time.
"Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot
This helps protect our community. Learn more
Sign in"
Every YouTube embed on here.
Might be because of the proxy, but who knows?
Ah. So the day after tomorrow is the beginning of Quarter 3, when I take my Quarter 2 goals, strike out the "2" and put a "3", for the exact same goals... :welp: :leftsharkdance:
There's something very funny to me about musicians who got very haughty about using electric guitars instead of "electronic gimmicks".
I know this is not so common now, but I just saw it on an album from the 1960s, and I remember Boston making a big deal about it in the 1980s.
Because, the thing is... 🤨
See, I didn't care enough to actually draw one. But movie-poster art is sufficiently kitschy for an avatar, IMHO.
A-ha!
I finally realized where I could get a non-AI cartoon spacey cat that matched my screen name.
I had picked that because of a MidJourney image, but I decided to ditch it, because... AI art.
So for awhile, I was using a couple of characters from "Lunatics!"
But then, just now, we were discussing old TV, and this Disney movie came to mind: "The Cat From Outer Space".
Okay! That'll do nicely.
I'll probably keep this for awhile.
Hmm. I wondered what birds one might find in the Baikonur / Western Kazakhstan region, and Wikipedia is providing...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photos_of_birds_in_Kazakhstan_by_Yuriy75
Now, I can use the species names to find recordings of birdcalls. Might be able to get some appropriate sounds.
Good news: there is a corvid species with a distinct "caw", which is good, because there are crow and grackle
volunteers in a lot of my own outdoor ambience recordings.
Downloading SO many train recordings.
I am sure I can make this ambience better.
One rather specialized thing I like about Dollar General stores -- they usually don't play music.
Also, there are many times when they aren't that busy.
This means I can get generic store ambience recordings without having to worry about copyright dings.
Useful.
:raccoon_cool: 🎤
I know that this isn't strictly malicious. These are defensive measures to deal with badly-behaved spammers, offensive DDOS attacks, and scraper bots.
I get it. I also run websites. But the result is a toxic, broken web.
And that makes me sad and somewhat afraid of the consequences of us going down this path.
Well, shit.
My ISP blocks half of Europe's websites, because apparently they have the entire fricking Hetzner cloud blocked.
But now that I use a Squid proxy to get around the ISP's bullshit, Cloudflare blocks me from accessing websites, because accessing from a Digital Ocean IP is suspect or something.
Remember when the fricking web had "web sites" and we had "web browsers" and they just fricking WORKED..?
Now, all this paranoid bullshit is just splitting the web up and disconnecting us all.
This sucks.
[EDIT: it seems I need to clarify that I'm being hyberbolic -- it's not *literally* all of Hetzner. It's just that blocked sites keep turning out to be on the Hetzner cloud in Germany or Finland, when I investigate. The guy just has an overly-aggressive IP block list, as does Cloudflare]
Apparently, ALL memes must now be updated, or should we say "goosed"..?
🪿 🥚