The MacBook Neo is such an interesting machine that it coaxed a thousand-word-essay out of me: https://samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-computer-for-you/

Diabolical work by Rudds intern. #auspol

Axions used to be worthless. Australia is sitting on the largest deposits of crustal dark matter on the planet, and until Higgsolysis was invented it mattered not a whit. Now there’s a land rush in the desert as prospectors lug W-boson spectrometers across a grid pattern, mapping the potential riches beneath.

I tell you, once you get an Axionite skillet you will never want to cook on cast iron again.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Title_Axionite

A software project is about 5% code.

I heard someone say (and I'm paraphrasing here) "with AI everyone can be a developer". And no, that's just not true.

The trouble is the AI gives you the "shape" of a solution, not the solution. It will contain stuff that won't work, and if you don't understand what it's produced you'll never find those problems.

Just as the AI has been trained on every genius project on the Internet, it's also been trained on every bug ridden piece of garbage and it doesn't know the difference.

"If you want to improve the model's output, you can write skill files with more specific instructions!"

"Oh wow so like a file that tells the computer to do exactly what you want?"

"Yep!"

"You're never gonna believe this."

“Oh shit, I forgot to plug my dress in”

“What, you have to charge your clothes?”

“No doofus, it’s the sonic cleaning cycle”

“Uh, we have a washing machine”

“The label says dry clean only”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Title_Dry_Clean

Featherlight, Fragility and structure.
Sometimes my attention on animals is less about what they do but more about what they leave behind.

#macro #photography #droplet #feather #TFV

I came across this a couple years ago, and it expresses what I deeply believe.

I saw a post recently that was arguing that you should stop using alcohol wipes when giving yourself hrt injections because it's too wasteful, literally saying that the possibility of sepsis is worth not using a square inch of cotton per week.

They weren't arguing for more efficient solutions, ways of recycling the material, or anything like that. It was just "you should facetank risk of infection in order to not create waste"

And goddamn isn't that everything I've been noticing lately about how people talk about technology and progress and waste these days; a kind of reactionary tech-pessimism.

I recently had a student argue that we should never have invested in NASA or the space program because rocketry can also be used for weapons, damn all the other things that came out of it like weather satellites.

Westerners literally make up stories about the Fukushima Daiichi plant, talking about people who are walking-dead cleaning up the site since they'd already had a lethal level of radiation exposure. Sorry, what's that? No one died from radiation exposure when Fukushima Daiichi failed? That doesn't feel right.

The power grid! My god, the power grid. Everyone is so hung up on "what if we ban datacenters" but, guys, the US power grid has been decaying from austerity and intentional conservative sabotage for decades. Remember when rotted infrastructure caused wildfires a few years ago in California? The primer driver of your power bills is that, not facilities still under construction. We have to fight and build solar and improve transmission between states so we can actually send that electricity places!

Like we can't embrace our own "reject modernity". We just can't. The answer can't be "stop using air conditioning", "stop using electricity", "stop using satellites", "stop using alcohol wipes".

lol

“AI” translations are ruining Wikipedia

Oh boy.

Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI “hallucinations,” or errors, to the resulting article.
↫ Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media

There seems to be this perva

https://www.osnews.com/story/144567/ai-translations-are-ruining-wikipedia/

#ClownCar

Donald 🤝 Baron
J Vladimir
Trump Harkonnen

☑︎ refers to self. ☑︎
in third person
☑︎ requires assistance ☑︎
with ramps
☑︎ always accompanied ☑︎
by personal skin
care expert
☑︎ secretly insolvent ☑︎
☑︎ spits poison at ☑︎
disloyal minions
☑︎ hapless nepots ☑︎
☑︎ unwise reliance on ☑︎
shield-wall to protect
southern frontier
☑︎ mounts insurrection ☑︎
masterminded by
evil emperor
☑︎ flies around ☑︎
screaming in rage

@Brad_whitecross buggy could as well be softy :bender_dance:

@Heliograph I had also considered “Bytey”

“Nope, that one’s got AI”

“How about—“

“Oil burners, no”

“This—“

“Gender inequality is off the chart!”

“I’m not going to help plan a vacation with you if you’re just going to automatically reject every destination”

“I do not automatically reject every universe, just the shitawful ones. Look you’ve sorted by price, no wonder. A free voidskip is worth what you paid for it.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Title_Unplanned

Attention: Here is an important cartoon about an Australian Cultural Icon! (untrue) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/mar/09/the-government-has-decided-to-charge-money-to-visit-the-twelve-apostles-unaustralian

Late afternoon visitor
#MonotremesOfMastodon