Conservatives:
“You have no money, so you have no car, and we have consistently voted against public transport, so you also have no buses or sidewalks, but we want you to have to get a job to be eligible for food stamps. We also cut funding the office that helps you find a job. Oh, and the people Medicaid paid to help care for your disabled family while you might have worked? We cut their funding too. So yeah, use your bootstraps to get to work while also being at home. Praise Jesus.”
Assholes.

@APBBlue @culturednyc good call.

@tao Republicans can't govern

The #NSF has reduced spending on the basic sciences by 50% or more in 2025, with similar cuts proposed for next year as well. For instance, through to May 21 of this year, the funding awarded to the mathematical sciences is currently $32 million, compared to the 10-year average of $113 million. These are of course large numbers for an individual person; but with the US population of 340 million, this amounts to spending less than 22 cents per American per year on basic #mathematics research, compared to the 10-year average of 80 cents per American per year. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/22/upshot/nsf-grants-trump-cuts.html

I myself have been fortunate to be supported by a small fraction of this 80 cents for almost the entirety of my professional career, allowing me to conduct research in the summer, invite speakers to my department, and to support graduate students. For now, I can continue these activities at a minimal level using by existing (and relatively modest) NSF grant https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347850 , but already I do not have the resources to put into any future long-term projects. For instance, my experiments with using new technologies for mathematical workflows are currently being conducted purely by myself together with contributions from unpaid online volunteers; I am applying for funding from several sources to scale these projects up beyond a proof-of-concept level, but I am expecting the process to be extremely competitive. (1/3)

I think this will resonate with a few of my online friends here... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how-gen-x-can-make-money-in-this-economy

How baffled I feel each morning reading the news...

When the score says "fortissimo."

#humor#humour #piano #bulldozer #fortissimo #music #score

I used to think ChatGPT was a threat to lawyers. So far, it's been great.

I'm dealing with an opposing party who's clearly using it to answer pre-litigation emails. They're very arrogantly giving me 100% wrong legal takes to justify their actions - and all in writing!

Easiest case ever. And fun!

This week's comic: Highly selective health nuts

#health #science #climate #environment

@i_give_u_worms @TheBreadmonkey And, of course, the OG, Clockwork Orange.

I see the trailer has dropped for Marvels Ironheart. What a shame that this potentially good thing comes at a time when the whole world is sick to death of Marvel ip. We had the age of cowboys, the age of flatfoots, whatever the shit the 90s were the age of and then just an avalanche of superbeings. No more superbeings! I want something new! Something previously inconceivable. Literally not previously conceived. A pair of curtains that solve crimes through the power of tears (crying not rips). A school term/semester that transmogrifies into a corporeal sentient being and traverses the universe to discover the true meaning of Christmas except finds something dark and horrifying and beyond human understanding which is presented to us in morse code that spells out the recipe for French onion soup. A person who's really a hundred million ants who falls in love with a pineapple and they run away together to Tenerife where they start an art studio that saves the world. A..... fuckn..... spoon who discovers a love of dance. I could keep going all day. Hollywood - I am available. DM me if you want any NEW and/or ORIGINAL ideas. x

Announcing: https://justaqrcode.com.

Tired of "free" QR code generators that are full of ads and trackers, that share your data, and that want to sell you something? Me too. Here's my act of resistance: I made a one-page site that works entirely in your browser to generate a simple QR code. And that's all it does. You can download the HTML page and run it locally, even. Read the source; nothing up my sleeves. Just a QR code.

My offer to you -- I will continue to pay for the domain name and web hosting for it, myself. If you find it valuable, you can pay it back by creating your own useful thing for the world and releasing it for free. Let's take back the friendly web, one vexingly-monetized utility at a time!

#QRcode #Free #FriendlyWeb #Resistance

Why so much prompt injection in AI? 1. We don't follow the security engineering design principle "economy of mechanism," and 2, input to LLMs mixes control and data with impunity. We know better. #MLsec #infosec #security

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/llms-on-rails-design-engineering-challenges

@patrickcmiller absolute bullshit from anthropic whose anthropomorphic hogwash is a standard trick

See, for example, https://berryvilleiml.com/2024/02/08/absolute-nonsense-from-anthropic-sleeper-agents/

#MLsec

‘I dropped Facebook, Gmail and WhatsApp, among others, in favour of Mastodon, Proton and Matrix. I still spend lots of time on the black mirror in my pocket. The difference now is that what I’m looking at feels honest, relevant, funny and informative. I built this feed myself. There are no sneaky codes with ads and algorithm-driven provocations. I can move or shut it down any time I want. This is the kind of internet I want my children to have.'

Fine piece by @fritjof

https://www.information.dk/debat/2025/05/findes-aegte-sociale-medier-frie-sunde-onlinefaellesskaber-staa-facebook

@newyorktimes @world-newyorktimes Slava Ukraini and fuck the Russians

Bonjour, nous sommes le

This happened earlier this week. I got to attend when four(!) young owls where measured and ringed.

Yes, very soft, smelled good and this young owl was very calm when I held it. The whole process was very quick and all four of them were healthy.
Yay! Good news for the eagle owl population here in Sweden!

The National Weather Service has saved countless lives. Here is a great history focused on #tornados in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtnC8RIKscs

@NewYorker @news-politics-NewYorker who cares. Weakling.