Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”(Simon Willison) Bing gaslights a user, goes through an existential crisis, and threatens someone else.
Congressional Republican leader Marjorie Taylor Greene backs “national divorce.” (MSNBC / Steve Benen)
In a President’s Day tweet, Greene endorses breaking up the United States. Then she walks it back and says she’ll settle for impeaching Joe Biden—but if that doesn’t happen, the US has to go, she says.
Elected political leaders should support the United States continuing to exist. That’s a pretty low bar. But the Republican Party can’t clear it.
Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic turns three. Congratulations, Cory!
Interesting behind-the-scenes look at Cory’s production process, and the reasoning behind some of his idiosyncratic design decisions.
Very good overview of Belzer’s life and career, by Chris Koseluk at the Hollywood Reporter.
Belzer played Det. Munch as a regular character on two different series and as a guest on several others, including an animated appearance on The Simpsons and as a Muppet on Sesame Street.
Belzer’s last words were “Fuck you, motherfuckers,” which is very much in character.
Tejada later became famous as “Raquel Welch.”
The author of this article makes it pretty obvious he doesn’t think highly of beauty pageant winners, but is impressed with young Raquel’s brains and charm, as well as her beauty.
Note the sidebar explaining how to pronounce the beauty pageant winner’s name. Did people really need to be told how to pronounce “Raquel?” That surprised me at first—but I guess the name is well known now because this Raquel made it famous.
I am also surprised that the Tribune in 1958 thought its readers needed to be told how to pronounce “Tejada.” San Diego was just as close to Mexico then as it is now; neither San Diego nor Mexico has moved.
And it’s sweet that her friends called her “Rocky.” I wonder if that continued in later life.
PS. Rereading the article, I see I was pronouncing “Tejada” wrong. I had the “J” sound right, because I’m not a bumpkin, but I was pronouncing the first syllable “tay,” rather than the correct “tuh.”
My Favorite Times to Use Incognito Mode (The New Yorker / Jade Orlando) A fun one-minute read.
Watching RoboCop on the Spanish language channel while getting a haircut. You really lose out on the emotional subtlety and nuance when you can’t understand the dialogue.
How to Win at Monopoly and Lose All Your Friends.
Monopoly starts as a fun exciting romp, only to turn into a bitter cesspool of despair.
…
A little-known rule of Monopoly is that the game has exactly 32 houses and 12 hotels. Once you run out of houses, no more can be purchased until they re-enter the supply by being sold or upgraded to hotels. … The core of this strategy is to buy up as many houses as possible before anyone realizes what you’re doing, and DO NOT UPGRADE TO HOTELS to prevent people from improving their own properties.
…
If losing a normal game of monopoly is frustrating, losing to this strategy is excruciating, as a losing opponent essentially has no path to victory, even with lucky rolls. Your goal is to play conservatively, lock up more resources, and let the other players lose by attrition. If you want to see these people again, I recommend not gloating, but simply state that you’re playing to win, and that it wasn’t your idea to play Monopoly in the first place.
The Onion: It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible “It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like…. “
I asked ChatGPT for my bio. The result has a staggering number of errors packed into a small space. I never wrote for CIO Mag or Network Computing. I am not now and never was EiC of LR, which is not best described as an IT and cloud computing website. I did not write those books. And so on.
TurboTax parent Intuit is stepping up lobbyist spending to stop Washington from simplifying taxes. (OpenSecrets.org / Anna Massoglia)
Simplified taxes would hurt Intuit’s bottom line.
Picard rummages through a trunk, searching for the source of the sound of an Enterprise-D commbadge chirp. He tosses the contents one at a time over his shoulder: Tennis racket, bowling shoes, harmonica, clown nose, groucho glasses, rubber bulb horn (which he squeezes twice: honk! honk!), feather boa. He unscrews the lid from a canister labeled “cocktail peanuts” and rubber snakes spring out…..
On Lake Murray: This metal platform is usually attached to the concrete walkway, and people fish from it. It came loose in the storms this week.
Lake Murray from Baltimore Dr., first clear day after this week’s storms.
Geese on Lake Murray. Watch with the sound on!
A little while back I heard about a conspiracy theory claiming the Roman Empire didn’t exist–that it’s a hoax promulgated by the Spanish Inquisition, which happened in the 15th Century.
I learned that it isn’t really a fully-blown conspiracy theory, which to me implies a movement. It’s just this one popular TikToker, who goes by the handle @momllennial_, and she also has claimed that Alexander the Great was a woman, and Jesus Christ’s name can be translated as “clitoris healer.”
2021: This TikTok Conspiracy Theory Is Infuriating Historians (Daily Dot / Gavia Baker-Whitelaw)
Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with dementia, his family announced. Last year, they announced Willis was retiring from acting due to aphasia. (CNN)
Sad and troubling news. I’m a fan, and he’s not that much older than I am.
Stifling Free Speech Is Now A Core Plank Of The Republican Platform (Mike Masnick / Techdirt) Clarence Thomas, Devin Nunes, Sarah Palin, and Ron DeSantis support laws that would enable politicians to harass critics with punitive lawsuits.
Cory Doctorow:
The really remarkable thing isn’t just that Microsoft has decided that the future of search isn’t links to relevant materials, but instead lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a chatbot who happens to be a habitual liar – even more remarkable is that Google agrees.
Also:
Every successful Google product except search and gmail is an acquisition: mobile, ad-tech, videos, server management, docs, calendaring, maps, you name it. The company desperately wants to be a “making things” company, but it’s actually a “buying things” company.
The last time Google went into full-on panic mode, the result was Google+, which was actually a great product that Google bungled spectacularly.
Honestly, I don't need reporting to the Social Media Mental Health Police
Thursday, February 16, 2023
I received this message when I logged in to Facebook just now, and I find it sweet (aww, somebody is concerned), ridiculous (I’m fine, aside from the normal amount of stress from living in the 21st Century) and creepy (Facebook, you’re not my Mom). According to the explainer, the message comes up when someone has flagged one of my posts as concerning, involving self-harm or suicidal thoughts. None of which I am remotely having or sharing.