@smadin@better.boston
@smadin@better.boston avatar

smadin

@smadin@better.boston

Leftlib/Demsoc cusp, Socdem rising, moon in Ancom. Like Doctor Worm, I'm interested in things; unlike Doctor Worm, I do not live like a worm.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

A discussion about the unusual cover design for the Traveller RPG—still striking in its tone and its minimalism, decades later—led me to recall and share this timeless banger from @avram.

And only then did I get the joke: Oh, because the ship on the original cover is named “Beowulf”!! OK.

https://wandering.shop/@avram/109809275612064222

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac I've always thought Traveller was a great concept, even though in my first encounter with the world—MegaTraveller: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) for DOS—I never got anywhere in the game or figured out what the plot was. I even backed the Traveller 5 kickstarter back in 2012 and have the huge hardcover volume on a shelf. I should read it one of these days…

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

Really one of the standout lines from the whole dang enterprise. Right up there with the “What is grief" one.
https://dementedandsadbut.social/@genehack/112374808756068264

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac every time I think about Thor Ragnarok I get mad about how in Infinity War, the Russos' top priority basically the second Thor appeared on screen was to undo all of his character development.

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

So eclipses are pretty good actually

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

Happy Bandcamp Friday to all who celebrate!

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

The news earlier this evening that Shafiqah Hudson, known to many of us on twitter as @sassycrass, or Fiqah, passed away last night, is devastating. She was important—the originator in modern discourse of the sarcastic deployment of "not ALL men", as well as hashtag, exposing 4chan nazis using digital blackface before anyone else knew it was a problem—but much more importantly she was smart, funny, and a good friend, and she deserved to live a long life in ease and comfort.

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

You know, a technology blogger of some renown described "Poor Things" as “a more accessible ‘The Lobster’" and I'm like... okay I enjoyed it and all but... wh-what?! It's a lot of things but it is extremely not that!!

Mis-set expectations kind of made for an awkward movie date night, I tell you that much…

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac I haven't seen either film, but even just from the trailers I wouldn't have said they had much in common beyond both being directed by the same guy.

smadin, to security
@smadin@better.boston avatar

hey so if you have a account you need to immediately scroll to the end of this post, take the four steps listed, and then read the whole post. a vulnerability that was just fixed made it possible for an attacker to take complete control of your account without you getting any kind of notification.

https://www.troyhunt.com/how-spoutibles-leaky-api-spurted-out-a-deluge-of-personal-data/

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

I just realized that calling some harbinger “a wake-up call” is a metaphor for a literal phone call, one that you’d ask someone to make at a particular time just to wake you up. Often, the caller was the front desk of the hotel you were staying at.

I’m pretty sure this was actually a thing and that I’ve experienced it in the distant past.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac back just before the turn of the millennium, when I was regularly driving the ~1,600 miles between home and college, my routine was to drive 8-9 hours the first day, stop at the Red Roof Inn in Erie, PA, and order a wake-up call for early the next morning, when I'd finish the remaining 12-13 hours on the road. so they're not even a thing of all that distant in the past!

gbhnews, (edited ) to fediverse
@gbhnews@mastodon.social avatar

Hello , just dropping in with an update:

▶️ Trump won in New Hampshire, 53 to 45 over former SC gov Nikki Haley.
▶️ Haley is vowing to stay in the race.
▶️ Biden also won in New Hampshire -- as a write in candidate. He was not on the ballot.

Lots more here. https://www.wgbh.org/news

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@gbhnews totaling…101 percent?

gbhnews, (edited ) to fediverse
@gbhnews@mastodon.social avatar

Hello ! This is GBH News bringing you the world from * It's 24 degrees at the Manchester, NH, airport and visibility is 10 miles.

Yes, you read that correctly. We have arrived in to cover the . (Links to our livestream chat ⬇️).

Taylor Swift's playoff tour continued to Buffalo on Sunday.

FL Gov Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race.

In South Dakota, residents burned a giant wooden effigy of the destructive mountain pine beetle.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@gbhnews the thing about a corn muffin is it's got to be big and fresh-baked, split in half vertically, then griddled cut-side down in plenty of butter until nicely toasted.

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

My dinosaur just threw up in its mouth a little.

Long story short, Mozilla found that they had just Too Much Money from the firehose of cash that Google had been spraying at them as antitrust-enforcement insurance, so to launder that money, they...
https://jwz.org/b/ykId

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jwz what a cool new future in which there are no usable web browsers

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

I don't think that "Flagpole Sitta" (Harvey Danger, 1997) is a very good song, but I have to admit, the couplet "Iiiiiii…wanna publish 'zines/And rage against machines" as an elder-millennial cri de coeur is extremely (as I assume the kids these days no longer say) Hashtag Relatable.

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

the baby had an ecstatic weekend with his visiting auntie, who brought him luxury-dog presents and took him on one million moss-gobbling walks

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@kissane he has a very good face

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

if you wanna end war and stuff, you gotta sing loud

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

Some Personal News

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@kissane sickos-yes.jpeg

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

REMINDER: ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other large trained neural models are NOT "artificial intelligence", they're just stochastic parrots, remixing and regurgitating what they've been fed. There's no theory-of-mind involved, so no understanding: there's no "there" there. (A real live parrot exhibits more intelligence than this.)

Don't call it AI; call it parrot-tech. That way you'll have a better perspective on what it can (and can't) do.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@cstross I prefer the term "Big-Data Statistical Models", it's more precise, and no one disagrees with me when I say it's wrong to generate BDSM text and images without all sources' and participants' consent

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

I have resumed my piano lessons. I'm happy with my choice of the Samson Carbon. My total outlay for this adventure so far comes to less than $150.

I have figured out how the keyboard wants to be used: pop an iPad running a MIDI-capable app like GarageBand into its “cup-holder", and it becomes a perfectly good self-contained novice-friendly synthesizer. The tablet even powers it!

Also, yes, I have scrawled notes about notes onto the white keys with a black dry-erase marker. It's my keyboard.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac that's very reasonably priced! unfortunately I think I have to make a rule for myself that I have to finish at least one project before I start any more new ones.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac well, that's more-or-less true with all musical instruments, isn't it? if you were to significantly change the shape or layout or behavior of a violin or a flute, the consensus response would be that what you now had wasn't a violin or a flute anymore.

gbhnews, (edited ) to Halloween
@gbhnews@mastodon.social avatar

Is , and for this last Saturday before we are particularly interested in your black cats

But all cats are welcome in our mentions

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@gbhnews here's Moss, who I swear is actually alive, she's just a goof

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

9/11 comparisons are flying thick and fast, and one of the things that brings to mind for me is the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief.

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@amaditalks that was the one titled "Bin Ladin [sic] Determined to Strike in US". by which I mean to say: 1) the Patriot Act was full of stuff right-wingers and law enforcement had wanted for ages but not gotten because it was unconstitutional; 2) the Israeli government's surveillance and intelligence capabilities are famously extensive; 3) there are a number of people in Netanyahu's government who I think have wanted a pretext to storm Gaza for a long time.

jmac, to music
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

Was appreciating a student musician on a Discord sharing some background music they'd written for multi-stage boss fights of nonexistent video games, and it brought to mind this obscure and excellent Maddy Myers track.

I heard Maddy perform it live at Arisia in 2018 or 19, and hadn’t heard it since, though it clearly stuck with me. It's kind of a banger actually? (Why don't I own this album?! Here, let me fix that…)

https://maddymyers.bandcamp.com/track/form

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@jmac don't miss this extremely good remix of "Bad Feeling" (original track from the same album as "Form"), either! https://maddymyers.bandcamp.com/track/bad-feeling-bitculture-remix-feat-kirk-hamilton

leigh, to random
@leigh@ottawa.place avatar

I have been extremely heads down at work, and mostly ignoring the Internet, except for posting on the business social network for work things. How is everyone? How are your cats? I have missed you!

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@leigh Marlowe is grumpy from evening pill time, and he doesn't know it yet, but he's gonna be grumpy tomorrow too because he's gotta go to the vet (photo from non-grumpy snoozing time a few days ago)

atomicpoet, (edited ) to internet

#Barcelona, #Meta's Twitter competitor, will be ready by summer.

And lest you believe #ActivityPub integration was just some rumour, think again. In a slide, Meta confirms that Barcelona will indeed be decentralized and will be compatible with Mastodon.

Everyone who thought that AT protocol would easily win over ActivityPub, and that #Bluesky would kill Mastodon just because a few influencers joined doesn't understand the sheer marketing power and pull that Meta has at its disposal.

But believe me, I'm not exactly cheering on Meta here. Generally, where Meta goes, shenanigans happen. I simply don't think Meta is capable of releasing a product without dark patterns.

Nevertheless, I don't think the Fediverse is even close to preparing for what will happen once Barcelona starts federating.

We should all be taking Barcelona very seriously.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/19/23730070/instagram-twitter-app-competitor-leak

@socialmedianews

smadin,
@smadin@better.boston avatar

@MichaelTBacon @atomicpoet @socialmedianews Even Eternaler September

smadin, to random
@smadin@better.boston avatar

I'm so mad they're just calling it Dune: Part Two instead of 2ne

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • love
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • DreamBathrooms
  • ngwrru68w68
  • provamag3
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • normalnudes
  • tacticalgear
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • anitta
  • Leos
  • tester
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •