MAGA official falls for prank in Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie

The Texas Republican and other MAGA folk are taught supposed self-defense techniques, including wearing a protective plastic buttock. He also teaches them how to fire bullets from the middle of these buttocks by stroking a rubber penis.

Lmao that’s just… a typical Tuesday for these guys I guess. Pretty tough prank to spot, honestly. I bet it totally looked like a legit wiener butt gun someone might use to help secure the border.

↳ via Alternet.org

More Than 1,000 Birds Were Killed or Injured in Window Collisions Around Chicago Over the Weekend

Sounds like they need to switch to the off-brand Windex for those glass skyscrapers.

↳ via Smithsonian Magazine

High health costs squeeze workers, even if you have good insurance through a job

Like about 157 million Americans, Babbitt gets insurance through his job. Unlike most Americans, his job has exceptionally generous benefits. “Our owners are very nice — they give all of our employees health care and they pay for it,” he says. The company offers several different plan options and covers most or all of the monthly premium cost.

I didn’t know this was even a thing. You always hear about “benefits” as if you’re privileged to be able to spend as much as rent every month on a health insurance plan with a $5000 deductible that mostly covers preventative medical care.

…and yet healthcare is still too goddamn expensive even if your employer pays your monthly premiums.

↳ via NPR News

What you get is what you mean

We need to completely move on from the idea that we should control how our information is presented. We need to stop trying to control the fonts and the colours. We need to stop thinking of our information as pixelated print documents. We need to stop even expecting our words to be represented faithfully in the order we placed them.

It has its limitations, but I think Markdown is already a pretty good example of WYGIWYM.

↳ via duncanstephen.net

Is Proprietary Software Over?

Tl;dr someone used AI to reverse engineer and recreate open source alternatives to Adobe’s suite of software, written in Rust.

It’s interesting that the angle here is whether or not proprietary software is over.

I was just reading a post about how Linus Torvalds is embracing AI-assisted kernel development, and the author of that post was arguing that open source software is actually in danger.

But if this can be done with closed programs like Photoshop, what’s to stop anyone with a little ambition and a coding agent from doing it with every closed system?

↳ via eventuallymaking.io

In 1897, London’s Lampposts Dispensed Hot Coffee, Tea, and “Fluid Beef”

However much attention the Pluto Lamps attracted as a novelty, this was still the infancy of the modern vending machine, whose deficiencies had yet to be fully worked out. It proved impossible, at the time, to defeat the enterprising scoundrels who used round pieces of tin in place of genuine currency, and in any case, maintenance costs seem to have proven unexpectedly high. (To say nothing of the prospect of drinking out of an enamel cup on a chain, shared with the entire public, which surely put off even some Victorians.)

Don’t get your knickers in a twist… everyone will get their turn at the communal cup of Fluid Beef.

↳ via Open Culture

I Am the World’s Most Annoying Website

Orientation time. Watch this video from three years ago. It’ll autoplay, with no visible pause button and a scrubber that doesn’t respond. The video only lasts ninety-four seconds. But know that it’ll reload at least twice.

↳ via McSweeney’s

As Embattled Democrats Equivocate on Trans Issues, A Rare Ad Goes on Offense

The ad, which The Hill reports is part of a larger buy worth over $1 million per The Hill, begins with a young girl entering a bathroom and to her horror, encountering an older white-haired man sitting in the stall waiting for her. He greets her with a short hello. Immediately, the girl presses the man for answers, “What are you doing? Who are you?”

It ends with him saying, with the creepiest goddamn smirk on his face, “Now let’s make sure you’re really a girl."

Honestly? Spot on. Most republicans currently in office, or running for office, are proud members of the Epstein class. This is the most accurate portrayal I’ve ever seen in a political ad.

↳ via Them

Mystery Flyers Sow Mass Confusion Ahead of Texas Election

Some residents have received pamphlets and fliers from the “Texas Transgender Student Union,” a made-up organization, advising them on how to emancipate from their parents and receive out-of-state medical care. The pamphlets seem to be leaning into right-wing hysteria over gender-affirming care for minors.

It’s not enough to simply spread lies and scapegoat innocent trans people. Conservative politicians also have to spend millions on a ragebait campaign to back up their false narratives and intensify hatred towards trans people among those who already hate them for existing.

Republicans don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves, or about anything except holding onto power and lining their pockets.

↳ via The New Republic

Two out of five Americans regularly get their news on Facebook

Pew did not give respondents a definition of “news,” instead letting them use their own understanding of the term when they filled out the survey. More than half (59%) said that they get news from social media “often or sometimes,” but only 19% actually prefer social media as a place to get news.

That’s… not surprising. Just this morning my girlfriend had me convinced Kim Jong Un had died because she saw a post from TMZ on Facebook about it. A quick web search showed that he already posted photographic proof he’s alive and well. It started as a rumor posted on X, where a bunch of tabloid sites picked it up and ran with it, and then shared it on social media. I’ll stick with my trusty RSS reader.

↳ via Nieman Lab

The future of the internet could be paywalls

Another option is private communities with high trust, where you can’t get inside without someone inviting you, at the cost of losing access because of the bad behavior of the invited person.

I feel like this is probably the most likely scenario. Maybe not always necessarily invite-only, but paid accounts sites like 404media are already doing. This is definitely one aspect of AI Everything that I hadn’t really thought about before; generating more slop than there are people to read it.

I can’t think of any meaningful way to keep the bots at bay. There really are no great options.

↳ via rushter.com

Masahiro Sakurai expresses concern over how AI might flood the market with ‘unplayable’ games

Nowadays, so many games are described as XX-like, or games that resemble another one. In other words, the thing everyone else already wants,” he said. He emphasized the need to be original, but noted that making something truly unique can be a daunting task.

Good point; soulslike, roguelike, metroidvania… My favorite genres are all trying to be something else, and that’s definitely going to get more common the more people use AI to make their own personal takes on formats they love. Truly unique things are already hard to pull off, but I haven’t lost hope. It just makes truly creative devs and studios more valuable.

↳ via Nintendo Wire

Completely forgot Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse was scheduled to launch this month! Perfect timing, too, because I just finished Axiom Verge 2 over the weekend. My favorite game of all time is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed just about every game in the series since then, but this is the first proper Igavania-style Castlevania since the Nintendo DS era. It’s been 18 years 😳

Trump can rename an ocean. But can he force people to use the new name?

Apparently he can at least get shitass companies like Apple and Google to bow down to his ridiculous renamings of bodies of water.

I like to keep things as minimal as possible on my phone. If there’s a web version of something, nine times out of ten, that’s what I’m using. Reddit, Miniflux, Fark, Lemmy, Micro.blog (with the assistance of OutPost for publishing, of course), Tumblr, and any forums I’m on;...

TIL boneless wings can have bones, per Ohio Supreme Court

In a 4-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said Thursday that “boneless wings” refers to a cooking style, and that Berkheimer should’ve been on guard against bones since it’s common knowledge that chickens have bones.

Not now, I’m deboning my chicken nuggets.

HTC Made Smart Glasses That Are Way More Private

Right by the cameras is a bright indicator light. If you cover the light, it won’t record. If someone around you says stop recording, that will stop the recording.

I still think it’s weird and creepy to walk around with cameras bolted to your face, but this is really smart. It should be a standard for all pervert glasses.

I’ve always liked wearing a watch. It seems redundant at first, since we’re perpetually glued to our phones these days, but it’s really not. A smartphone is like a Swiss Army knife. It can do a lot of things, but if I’m assembling some cheap furniture, I’m not doing it with ...

George Carlin joked about televised executions decades before Pentagon announcement

What we really need is year-round capital punishment on TV every night with sponsors! Gotta have sponsors. I’m sure as long as we’re killing people, Marlboro cigarettes and Dow Chemical will be proud to participate.

Ironic that cigarette ads aren’t allowed on TV anymore, but this regime seriously considered airing a state-sponsored execution. Glad to see it won’t be televised after all.

Bootleg Cards, Big Trouble: ESA Takes Notice of Anbernic

According to the recommendations put forth by the ESA, they are requesting the USTR to classify Anbernic as a ‘superfake’, which is a high-quality counterfeit product that is nearly indistinguishable from the authentic product it is attempting to copy.

This is a bummer. Anbernic makes some really cool shit, and it’s affordable too. It’s reminiscent of my old OG Xbox modding days, only without needing an FTP program and a copy of Mech Assault. A lot of other companies don’t ship a preloaded SD card with their consoles. Maybe they should try going that route. Most of the ROMS on those things are junk, and the card itself will inevitably fail within a few months anyway.

Measles: coming to a town near you. I used to work near Powell, but luckily I’m about 50 miles east of there now. That’s not to say measles outbreaks are any less likely in my deep red neck of the woods. A little unnerving how headlines like this keep creeping closer and closer.

Pretty bummed out to see John Gruber’s post about how much he loves X.com, but Lex Friedman posted the perfect response to it. Dude is becoming one of my favorite tech bloggers since he started Lex on Tech.

Quake - SRP (Slop Rust Port)

tested on Linux in Chromium and Firefox, and played in Chrome on macOS and on an Android phone. Not yet tested: Safari, iPhone, iPad.

I wasn’t even going to post this, but I clicked through to the game and it loaded instantly on my iPhone Air. I know it’s a tiny game by today’s standards. But fuck, man. This thing took a hot minute to load on my old HP Pavilion back in the day. Plays smooth as butter even in a mobile browser now. Still feels magic to me that I can just go to a website and play this on my phone 🥲

Diablo 1 Looks Like Classic Doom With This First-Person Mod

I never really got into Diablo, but this looks surprisingly good.

Anthropic asks users to stop being mean to Claude

The AI developer’s latest usage policy prohibits “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models. The rules take effect November 12, giving users just over a month to get any lingering insults out of their systems.

Weird marketing stunt or do chatbots have feelings? I guess if they’re trained by conversations with people, getting beat up all the time could have some ill effects. I, for one, am going to be nice to them so they might spare me during the robot uprising.

I picked up the TestFlight for Jim Mitchell’s new Micropub client OutPost yesterday, and I think this will go down as my favorite tweak to my blogging workflow since I discovered Micro.blog a couple years back. I prefer to use the mobile web version of Micro.blog vs the app ...

I’ve never had a spam problem with linking to my email on my blog, but I forgot to enable whois privacy protection on a domain name for like one week and my inbox has been getting blown up for months with sketchy emails trying to sell me custom apps and websites for my new domain 😵‍💫

We are going to kill “unalive”

Just to recap for the olds: “unalive” is the word you use to represent concepts like dying, or death, or killing or being killed, on digital platforms where saying those words accurately will cause the algorithm to punish or censor you.

Algorithms are bleeding into the real world, dictating how people talk even offline. Terrible things happen sometimes, and using silly euphemisms like “grape” or “unalive” is so odd and obnoxious.

Bluesky is applying for a TLD:

A little scoop before Oct 7, when ICANN publishes 1,000+ applications for new top-level domains: one of them is .bsky! It’s a long road (18 to 24 months), but if it goes through, handles like alice.bsky become possible.

I’m taking a break from Reddit You see Reddit and to a larger degree YouTube give me the false opinion that I’m learning something. I’m doing deep dives. I’m taking away educated content. The reality is I’m doom scrolling through engineering and AI subreddits while likely r...