I’m about 3 minor inconveniences from going off the deep end on a good day

Source

Unavailable at source, here’s their Bluesky.

While public life in the US seemed to slowly return to normal after the pandemic and Joe Biden’s election, the political upheaval in Shasta county was only just beginning. Since an ultra-conservative majority gained power, it has battled the state over Covid and second amendment policies and attempted to do away with voting machines and replace them with a system based on hand-counting paper ballots. Officials here have promoted misinformation about vaccines and elections, hired an election skeptic to serve as the county’s top voting official and appointed a local hydroponics store owner, who was also a conservative activist, to a county board overseeing mosquito control, rather than an epidemiologist and former public health director.

In order to help train its AI models, Meta (and others) have been using pirated versions of copyrighted books, without the consent of authors or publishers. The company behind Facebook and Instagram faces an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, and one in which it has already scored a major (and surprising) victory: The Californian court concluded last year that using pirated books to train its Llama LLM did qualify as fair use.

Hey,

But this isn’t just about professors; it’s about all of us. This is the most flagrant attack on higher education in my lifetime. Why are politicians reducing public colleges and universities to vehicles of state propaganda? Why are self-proclaimed proponents of free speech turning around and using state repression to enforce speech codes on our campuses? Why can’t we speak openly about our social world in sociology classes? Why are unqualified appointees from the business world dictating to Ph.D.-holding academics how they should teach and which textbooks they must use?

Via webcomics name

A top Iranian official has warned that the government is prepared for a long war with the US and signaled that it is willing to continue attacking Gulf countries in an effort to persuade them to convince Donald Trump to step back from the conflict.

Context: in classical Greece, Sparta built a hegemony based on its military power that was formed around a core of professional hoplites, which was rare at the time as most military campaigns were fought by part time soldiers who were mainly farmers, handymen, etc. This hegemony was broken when in Thebes the Sacred Band of Thebes was formed, consisting of 150 gay couples who became professional soldiers, too. These 300 (coincidence? Idk, but I find it funny) elite warriors were instrumental in two major defeats an outnumbered thebian army handed to Spartans who encountered another professional military for the first time. The Sacred Band being made up of gay couples was intentional, as the idea behind it was that men would fight harder for and with other men they had a strong bond with and there was no stronger bond than love.

Nancy Classics by Ernie Bushmiller for March 9, 2026 | GoComics

US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on targets across Iran on Monday, as large crowds took to the streets in Tehran in a defiant show of support for Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly appointed supreme leader.

Kontext: Im klassischen Griechenland errichtete Sparta eine Hegemonie, die auf seiner militärischen Macht basierte, die sich um einen Kern von professionellen Hopliten bildete, was zu dieser Zeit selten war, da die meisten Feldzüge von Teilzeitsoldaten geführt wurden, die hauptsächlich Bauern, Handwerker usw. waren. Diese Hegemonie wurde gebrochen, als in Theben die Heilige Schar von Theben gegründet wurde, die aus 150 schwulen Paaren bestand, die ebenfalls zu Berufssoldaten wurden. Diese 300 (Zufall? Keine Ahnung, aber ich finde es lustig) Elitekrieger waren maßgeblich an zwei großen Niederlagen beteiligt, die die zahlenmäßig unterlegene thebanische Armee den Spartiaten zufügte, die zum ersten Mal auf eine andere Berufsarmee trafen. Die Zusammensetzung der Heiligen Schar aus schwulen Paaren war beabsichtigt, da man davon ausging, dass Männer für und mit anderen Männern, zu denen sie eine starke Bindung hatten, härter kämpfen würden, und es gab keine stärkere Bindung als die Liebe.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley has endured threats and sexual harassment to report on Jeffrey Epstein’s chief enabler. Maxwell’s conviction was only the start of the quest for justice, she says

Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats, too, want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn’t what it was in 1992.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/1016123

After a high-profile antitrust lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday that it has tentatively settled with Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation.

It’s a contrast to the ongoing, unsustainable status quo in Baja California Sur, where wells pump relentlessly from aquifers that recharge slowly. Meanwhile, rapidly growing tourism demands even more water every year. Hotel pools, golf courses, and landscaped resorts are now consuming far more water than local households.

Iran’s internet connectivity was currently running at “around 1% of ordinary levels,” monitor group Netblocks said on Thursday, leaving most Iranians struggling to access basic information, navigation tools or communication apps.

I think this recent post by AI industry CEO Matt Shumer is worth a read. In it, he basically explains how quickly LLMs (large language models) are evolving to supplant many developers and programmers, and how that disruption is coming to other industries quickly. He also warns critics of AI to adjust their priors and realize the AI tools you mocked just six months ago, aren’t the ones in use today:

In the late 80’s, there were plans for a Star Trek Academy film featuring John Cusack as Spock and Ethan Hawke as Kirk. The story behind its cancelation.

What LLMs revealed is how many people in our industry don’t like to code.

A couple of timely blog posts remind us that RSS is alive, well, and can help you resist enshittification of the Web.

When companies sued to block Trump’s IEEPA tariffs last year, one of the key arguments they made was obvious: if these tariffs turn out to be illegal, we’ll never get our money back. We need an injunction now. The government had an equally confident response: relax, if the tariffs are struck down, we’ll just issue refunds. No big deal. No injunction needed.

Data is from here (I think): https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?LANG=E&GENDERlist=1&STATISTIClist=4&DGUIDlist=2021A000011124&HEADERlist=32&SearchText=Canada

The ‘Freedom Trucks’ will haul AI slop George Washington on a tour across 48 American states.

TNO and High Tech Campus Eindhoven are starting construction of the world’s first industrial factory for producing indium phosphide photonic chips on a 6 inch wafer scale.

Source: Steinbeck, Viktoria, Ishani Ganguli, and Irene Papanicolasn, Primary Care Physician Trends: Dissatisfaction, Stress, And Burnout In The US And 9 Comparator Countries, 2012–22, Health Affairs 45, no. 3 (2026)

Mental health experts say identifying when someone is in need of help is the first step — and approaching them with careful compassion is the hardest, most essential part that follows.

The publishers allege the shadow library is facilitating “staggering” levels of piracy. While the site’s owners are not likely to put up a defense, the publishers’ main goal appears to be to obtain an injunction that can apply further pressure on domain registrars and registries.

This conflict is growing more and more out of control by the hour, I don’t consider the use of smaller nuclear weapons by the US or Israel off the table here at all, and that is obviously extremely alarming.

S6:E5 - Schisms

Weight-loss jabs such as Wegovy could be made for just $3 a month, according to new analysis, potentially making the treatment available to millions in poorer countries as patents expire.

Das sah echt schon mal besser aus 😳