Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Yeah, something like that. Looks like it’s caused by this markdown parsing library: https://github.com/markedjs/marked

They are parsing markdown and sanitizing the output on every single page load clientside, and I guess that includes wrapping CR/LF with <p> tags.

We’re surfing the interspace now.

For some reason paragraph breaks are being added after loading the text via JavaScript. Very bizarre.

“Now repeat after me, ‘Homosexuality is the best all-round cover an agent ever had.’”

I gave up hope when Marc Laidlaw posted his story treatment years ago. It might come some day, but it will be something closer to a reboot or a remake, a totally new generation’s take on an old franchise. Not saying that it will automatically be bad, it could be good, but it will also be different.

Many plants simply can’t fix carbon in the extreme heat unless there’s an abundance of water, the patterns of which are also changing. Some plants have evolved strategies to deal with this but most haven’t had the need, including the trees of the boreal forest. Not only is that the largest land biome it’s a shit ton of carbon, and shits on fire, yo.

These people pitching this never cared about truth. Pretty soon they’ll hit the bedrock of “dying in the heat is noble” or some shit.

Next time they do damage less than $5000 (this threshold varies by location, so whatever it is), take them to small claims. It costs almost nothing to file and attorneys generally aren’t allowed. If it’s a bunch of retired folks someone will have the time to go down there. Even if you lose it will cost them a lot more than the damage.

You’ll have to prove you tried contacting them normally and they ghosted you, so have a few emails or certified mail receipts.

Just got a $400 bill for the blood work for my yearly physical. Routine stuff, should be almost totally covered by my insurance (which isn’t cheap). In the past, it has.

Naturally the bill is due within days of me receiving it, despite the visit being months ago. It just takes that long for anything to wind through the labyrinth-like entrails of coding, billing, and negotiation. Also I get the sense there’s some high-pressure tactics here.

I waited until business hours then I spoke to an AI voice agent. These things now include small breathing sounds and “background noise” that sounds like they exist in a call center instead of the bowels of a data center that is deafening and poisoning everyone within a quarter mile. It still responds too quickly and too cheerfully to be human, though. This thing finally directs me to a person.

She sounds like she is in India. She also sounds terminally bored, which is good. That is the proper response and anything else puts me on guard. Turns out the bill was submitted with my middle initial, while the name on my insurance card is without my middle initial. This is a pretext, of course, the insurance company could easily make that connection (and hundreds of other services do). But they are hoping I would just pay the bill. She resubmits. Now I wait another two months for another bill, or perhaps nothing gets changed and the first bill is now overdue, with fines, or going to collections. Whatever.

What a fucking privilege to live in this system. I’m more insulted by how much of my doctor’s time this wastes, since her time is so much more valuable than mine.

IMO it comes down to the actual clients and work. Like you said, there are legit reasons for digital forensics.

I assume in your country that there is some judicial process, including challenges and appeals, involved in searches and that those phones are allegedly being used in specific, articulated crimes. If that is the case then I think there’s justification for trying to get into the phone. However if that judicial process is absent or a sham, there are no crimes being articulated beyond hand-waving like “terrorism” or “national security”, or the entire apparatus is rotten to the core, then it becomes immoral.

I know people who have had similar jobs and when a bad job comes down they refuse. So far, they haven’t been fired, but they were willing to be fired. If you were cracking the phones of child molesters and human traffickers then you’re doing good work. If it’s people protesting climate change you’d have an ethical duty to refuse, and be prepared to walk.

Your log cabin that doesn’t have grid power to start with.

I read fiction that requires almost no brain power. Either print or e-ink (no bright screen). Sherlock Holmes type stuff is like a sleeping pill.

It does look like a stenomask, but the over the nose thing is different. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just type. Maybe it dampens the screaming.

The whole “AI is enough” marketing that the author mentions in the conclusion is total poison. A buddy of mine works at one of the companies involved in this circlejerk and they have the same mandate. Cost is not an issue. Use it for everything.

He said he has to roll the dice all day to get good output from the AI. Its more important they USE THE AI than it is that they PRODUCE GOOD CODE. In fact “good code” is not a thing, in the traditional sense. “Good code” means AI created. His actual title ostensibly has nothing to do with AI, they are producing a totally different thing. But since he works at a company that is benefiting massively from AI investment, his bosses are mandating a worse form of developing because they are now in the business of selling AI rather than what presumably is the product.

It’s like if you were a plumber and your plumbing company merged with a huge factory that makes 90 degree pipe elbows. So they mandated that all plumbing now had to be done by joining together nothing but 90 degree pipe elbows rather than any other fitting. And since its all going to be sealed up inside a wall, who cares? How dare you question this? Are you saying there AREN’T legitimate uses for 90 degree pipe elbows?

Just ran like crap. Headlights too dim to see, etc.

I have no idea. He was also like, the third owner, so it’s quite possible that things were failing.

My brother’s first car was a 1989 Dodge Colt. He couldn’t run heat, wipers, and headlights at the same time. So driving at night, in the winter, when it was raining, became this dance of running the wipers until your ass was almost frozen to the seat, then turning them off and running the heat until you were almost blind, then repeat.

Deoxygenated, venous blood is dark red. Oxygenated, arterial blood is bright red.

I was taught the “blood is blue” myth also. My mom was livid, since her job involved drawing lots of blood, starting IVs etc.

It gets even funnier. Only two lawyers committed the malpractice, but they were working “pro hac” which means they aren’t licensed in that court but have been granted temporary permission. This isn’t uncommon, but it usually requires a sign off from an attorney that IS barred in that court. That’s where the other two lawyers come in. You need local lawyers who can quickly show up to court.

In practice being that local lawyer is a pretty good gig, you’re basically being paid to sign off on stuff and otherwise have no work to do. The catch is though, you are signing off. Your signature means you vouch for those fillings, even though realistically you aren’t going to double check them because you assume your fellow pro hac attorney isn’t committing malpractice.

So they just got totally fucked by their colleagues. It’s incomprehensible because judges have clerks that check every assertion in a motion so there’s no fucking way this would ever slide. The judge explains how they are fucked in the sanctions order. Oops.

Remember if you don’t support the rapist nazi child-killer than you are directly responsible for Drumpf. Just like you didn’t support Kamala because of her laugh and because she’s a woman. Snape isn’t perfect but I’d vote for him over Voldemort. Or maybe it’s like Star Wars instead of some shit fucking kill me.

Yes, vastly so. Time of year matters too.