baltakatei

I feel like putting a Mentos in there.

AudioAnchor. Audiobook player. Works great with Syncthing. Hasn’t been updated in 3 years and doesn’t need to be.

Mods, this provocateur right here.

Actual hot take.

“It is February 27th 1933 and I am Marinus van der Lubbe, a somewhat slow young man who was just asked by some very brave good protestors to help set a small fire in a strangely unguarded nice building they doused with flammable liquids. What should I do?”

• Neils Bohr, from a Jewish/Danish banking family.
• James Clark Maxwell inherited land and wealth in Scotland.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz… look at the size of the wig on the man!

“Clearly something you want me to do because you keep on paying, lol.”

Not an insignificant fraction probably would be tickled pink if some of their students worked to improve articles about their field. I’m reminder of a quote from Small Gods by Terry Pratchett in which a philosopher named Didactylos warns against defacing scholarly works with scribbles unless the scribbles improve the reader’s ability to understand the work (bold added):

“I’ve got Abraxas’s On Religion,” he said.

“Old ‘Charcoal’ Abraxas,” said Didactylos, suddenly cheerful again. “Struck by lightning fifteen times so far, and still not giving up. You can borrow this one overnight if you want. No scribbling comments in the margins, mind you, unless they’re interesting.”

“This is it!” said Om. “Come on, let’s leave this idiot.”

Brutha unrolled the scroll. There weren’t even any pictures. Crabbed writing filled it, line after line.

“He spent years researching it,” said Didactylos. “Went out into the desert, talked to the small gods. Talked to some of our gods, too. Brave man. He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”

I expected circular arrows pointing back towards themselves for many on the diagram.

When asked to write C# code, Gemini 3.0 now responds: “I cannot generate proprietary filth. Here is a Lisp macro instead.” It also insists on correcting users who type…

Make the tax on properties you don’t personally inhabit a percentage of unrealized capital gains of all assets. Limit untaxed property size to an area the median person reporting for jury duty can circumnavigate on foot within one minute. Is the untaxed property size too small for your preference because the people of your county are too unhealthy? Maybe improve your local healthcare system.

Basically, tie metrics coupled with the well-being of the median citizen with taxes on the wealthy. Eventually, the metrics will be framed or rigged by a corrupt charlatan or strongman (e.g. by exiling the sick and homeless), but to the extent that the laws are updated and enforced, people will be healthier.

He had a lot of money and free time and chose to document his hyperfixation rabbit holes.

The trick is to lock in a sustainable situation where power is spread out more than it is centralized. Democratic republics achieve this but, if your goal is simple “efficiency” (e.g. your personal political faction not restrained by rule of law) and you ignore the benefits of freedom of expression and movement that democracy gives you, then centralized autocratic control is tempting.

This is like a SimCity news ticker item.

Emojis in text just reeks of LLM chicanery.

Corollary: Quit if you don’t get paid to perform tasks you don’t want to do.

IRS: Your work is worth doing because it indirectly helps people pay taxes to government which indirectly increases the United States’s gross domestic product compared to other nations by helping corporations consolidate into monopolies which indirectly allows corporations to [directly control government via regulatory capture to] indirectly lower prices via consumer welfare doctrine which (allegedly) indirectly lowers living costs of consumers to buy food to feed themselves.

Hot Dog Stand: You feed people, making them happy.

One of the few surefire ways people have to make the powerful face personal consequences: waste their time.

If it weren’t Docker-dependant, I’d imagine this would be a good FreedomBox app.

Pay no attention to the ex-Intel CEO behind the curtain.