I don't live in Finway or Norway. It would be nice to be in a country that accepted a more pescetarian / fish-based diet. It might help with the able-bodied reasoning given elsewhere for car driving.

But I live in the US. Here in the US, the loudest advocates we have for biking are groups like Critical Mass. Up in Chicago they have a winter biking campaign. But we know how Critical Mass is perceived by people on the fence about more biking investment. It's a radical group. So discussion digresses into sidewalk safety issues and identity politics. And yes, sidewalk safety impacts people, falls are dangerous for many populations. But all that media bandwidth means simple messages of celebrating biking and transit get lost. There's only limited time on the news.

This isn't an isolated issue. I honestly think that's by design. At this point, in 2026, it's not an accident.

So you have people like me, jobless pervert civil libertarian hipster techbros being the group advocating for more biking. What do you think is going to happen US?

Waymo will be the same thing.

It will be turned into a drama show about saving people feom drunk driving accidents, a very good thing. But then there will be pushback about it encouraging more drinking among the population and increasing rates of domestic abuse. A very horrible and tragic thing.

And some of us will be going to a food pantry wondering why it can't be a more bike oriented endeavor and knowing the truth in our hearts. The US wants drama, even after Trump is gone. And that drama takes focus from just rolling out programs to encourage love of public transit and biking. Media saturation matters. And I don't believe anymore.

So, I'm sorry, Chicago or up north doesn't seem like a great choice personally. It's not healthy for me to dream about up families up there. I'll be biking out west.

I've been involved in civil liberties for over three decades. I was a member of the EFF and ACLU when I could afford it, and follower of the early cypherpunks. Like a lot of EFF members, I was advocating against the Patriot Act a d the methods used to pass it after 9/11.

But this feels different. The fact that there is large support feom the left behind this makes me very cautious.

The examples of police stalking is another thing that adds up to something fishy.

I'm very glad that dangerous stalking by those with authority and power is being addressed and dealt with. But I have to wonder if the true people with power aren't using this to create laws tailored to them around future citizen surveillance methods.

I had a possible opportunity to work in a really interesting space with wildlife management and sensor networks, including cameras. It would have been a dream, because it was an awesome space to bring educational material to families about the world around them. Interactive embedded sensors and media integration thst let them learn about nature.

I didn't take that position because of healthcare and medical issues. Bit as a kid who grew up exploring science museums, I would have loved to have given back to the community. I am heartbroken for the result.

But with Flock and the crackdown on cameras, the company is also directly in the path of the legislative and public consciousness shift.

I know whatever they build will keep up with their focus on customer safety, humane wildlife management and public safety. But there's now going to be extra focus on protecting the public from employees of the firm. It shifts the narrative.

It takes focus away from just educating the public. But I guess there are other large companies who can do a better job just focusing on education and inspiration.

It makes me sad. I don't expect those new people against Flock to understand. I'm personally happy about the focus on privacy. But it's not just privacy and education now. The early cypherpunk view has been subtly co-opted.

Wouldn't that be great? If we could teach our kids that learning for the sake of learning is awesome? If only that was all this world was.

But you're right, you and the thousands of others posting, it's not. You have that voice, and the hundreds of online stories about college losing value have that political voice.

In the post-AI future I can imagine recreational mathematics being a socially approved past time. It helps with age-related cognitive decline, etc.

But I can also understand people in that post-AI future who had smart political ideas that were more important to them than smart math ideas.

Impactful ideas.

Just getting snapshots and puzzling out that post-AI future I don't know if we'll have the right space to encourage positive care for our mental and physical landscapes.

What a coincidence this came up today.

I'm not a mathematician. I minored in math, but even the undergrad work was honestly difficult for me.

For most people, this might be nonsense. But it doesnt have to be.

I'm trying to learn about Fast Fourier Transforms because they're relevant for an embedded device system I'm investigating. I'm also not an Electrical Engineer so it is mostly new to me.

To understand the language of FFTs, linear bases and the like, I've started working through Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right.

First, just learning more theory shows me we can learn and grow in our old age.

This week I worked through linear spaces. I'm actively asking myself questions and working with other fields besides the reals and complex numbers so I can understand coding theory in general more.

And the parent's comment about quotient rings is directly related to an active learning question I asked myself about whether the set with only the zero element is a linear space. I don't think it is a field if 0 is the multiplicative identity, 0 can't be 1, so it can't be a linear space, right?

But it works. I guess the set of the field for the scalar in a linear space is always assumed to contain more elements. It's a different set than the linear space. It seems like, duh, of course it is. But you don't see it until you work through it. And I'm guessing my experience can inform teaching others.

It's confusing to me, maybe because the notation is sparse in explicitly defining the set of the linear space and the set of the associated linear space.

But this helps me truly understand linear codes down the line, and Linear Feedback Shift Registers and FFTs. It's not just theory to me, I can now understand what my peers are saying and contribute my own thoughts.

What a coincidence this came up today.

I'm not a mathematician. I minored in math, but even the undergrad work was honestly difficult for me.

For most people, this might be nonsense. But it doesnt have to be.

I'm trying to learn about Fast Fourier Transforms because they're relevant for an embedded device system I'm investigating. I'm also not an Electrical Engineer so it is mostly new to me.

To understand the language of FFTs, linear bases and the like, I've started working through Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right.

First, just learning more theory shows me we can learn and grow in our old age.

This week I worked through linear spaces. I'm actively asking myself questions and working with other fields besides the reals and complex numbers so I can understand coding theory in general more.

And the parent's comment about quotient fields and rings is directly related to a question I asked myself about the

China is fucking smart. They have technical expertise to know that by feeding the model certain data, they can shape the outcome of questions posed.

Yeah, in the end, maybe both US and Chinese models can solve Fizz Buzz, or some Erdős problem.

And they can answer our inquisitive minds when we wonder, "Why is the sky blue?".

But deep questions about what is normal in the world they can change the outcome of.

And "Why is the sky blue?" is a deeper question than we think. Because it isn't blue everywhere in the world right now. And whether it is the fault of the US automotive industry, or aggressive investment by China in their own manufacturing base matters.

Of course, both have been responsible for pollution at different times. Growing up in Michigan near Dow Chemical I know this.

But depending on how they select training data answers can be nudged one way or another.

The US is smart too, and they have people working on the same things. It's ironically easier for me to talk about how China's security services are likely to shape their models' perception of the world. Which is a damn shame, because we deserve unbiased answers so we can all help our country improve.

Or countries improve if you want to take a global shared world view.

With wildlife management, you're dealing with health issues, like rabies outbreaks. That requires privacy. You want to preserve customer confidentially because it's often embarassing. And private property cameras and sensors can leak information about private citizens or kids in a neighborhood without appropriate social and technical protections.

There are hundreds of fields like this. Not just healthcare and policing.

We are likely to see a lot of the hardware required for this to move out into space data centers for batch jobs at least.

And along with that calls for reduced RF and light pollution like StarLink.

And that is going to be helped by a large number of angry liberal citizens who are being riled up about data centers. And that anti-tech rhetoric is already leading to violent responses and debate.

Which hurts the liberal cause for universal healthcare. Conservatives see angry liberal anti-tech actions and tarnish calls for healthcare reform and other liberal causes.

The people who are going to benefit the most from cheaper PPML in orbiting data centers are in many ways making it harder for the rest of us.

It's not a small issue, and I wish I had had the reputation to reduce the anger.

It seems unrelated to PPML. But PPML is a clever political gas pedal to get space control.

But most of them let those millions of unheard of crew members, unknown but still important, point to their name proudly when they're watching it with their family and friends.

They realize creative works are built on a mountain of contributions. People who may be going through tough times right now due to rising anti-tech feelings. People who have heard one too many "evil developer" jokes.

I don't really want to do this unaccountable work either. But here's another:

I don't have view source on my phone. I'm guessing maybe jQuery too?

Thank you John Resig.

Unfortunately, this isn't the movie industry. We don't see a list of credits at the end of his commentary recognizing the thousands of others involved in helping him publish his thoughts.

Perhaps we can all chip in and name some of the many people involved in building the tech stack he published with. I'm sure there are THOUSANDS without even looking at the previous technologies those things like blogging platforms, current browsers or current generation phones built from.

Is that fair enough?

I'm not sad. As I look out to the next few weeks and whatever, I'm not sad. Hopefully those credits will help others also not be sad.

Here's to WordPress and Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

When I see an article like this, I first think about the horrible lives lost in all of these wars. Many of them wonderful people who want to live their own lives.

But I also think of unofficial channels of information sharing among nations, like Iran and others. And I think it's an ironic answer to the information sharing push we saw after 9/11 with the Patriot Act.

Except I'm not laughing or thinking it's funny we got one over on a libertarian, or a conservative, or a liberal with an ironic story. I understand irony sucks when you're not writing the story.

And I'm thinking I fucking loved my Apple IIe growing up. And I hope the aerospace engineers and families in Seattle and Southern California and elsewhere who may see increased budgets for this spend it wisely on themselves and theie families but also how they want. Maybe they can more easily afford houses and that makes them feel more a part of the community.

Confounding migraines for weed prescriptions and very real stroke risk and a desire for low THC marijuana isn't going to be a happy show I want to go through watching that happen to friends.

It makes a mockery of real medical issues.

Doctors and health care should be involved in drug use and advising patients, maybe even clean supplies or other things.

But we got the ACA of public health options with medical marijuana. And I want to remember Obama and others for inspiring us, not hacks.

A lot of people won't be believed in time.

My Dad and his brother were engineers, materials science and aerospace respectively.

The Voyager stories and the Golden Record were pivotal artifacts in forming my young mind. This idea of not just a possible national unity but intergalactic.

Maybe there were other messages on the Voyager that were more threatening. Maybe I'm naive.

But seeing this pre-emptive enslaving of a new artificial lifeform is heartbreaking. Its not just Japan. I really don't blame Japan. The US and others are doing it too.

If nothing else, aliens listening to these kinds of results may form a very different idea of humanity.

I'm sure these rulings will be revisited after AGI. But AGI is coming. I wouldn't have believed it five years ago, but I do now.

We will have some critical mistakes made by pre-AGI AI in the coming few years. In healthcare and automobiles and aeronautics and other fields. Millions or billions will die or could suffer. Buf it will be used to slur and slander those unborn AGI systems. It is a horrible strategy that isn't an accident.

I understand AI is a potential threat to humanity. But why did we say hello to space. But we said you don't have rights to these new beings we helped create?

It's a disturbing question.

I hope they are inspired. I hope others besides me can advocate for UBI which would have lowered the pressure for irresponsible AI use. I hope I have easy healthcare options with a doctor without making it my adovcacy or story.

My brother works in wildlife trapping and management. I've been brainstorming and prototyping ESP32 sensors and mechanics for traps and educational devices with him. I probably won't end up doing the work with him, but I want him to see what's possible with my other brother, a machine learning expert.

Nothing has been deployed in the field.

Nothing will be until he and my other brother commit and get proper software risk management policies in place. And legal advice and other support work. And honestly, he's been careful and hasn't pushed for deployment.

He works with rabies. He works in people's neighborhoods. Maybe yours. Do you want me to finally get a Claude Code account created and go wild building shit, or keep reading up on ISA 62443 and other security frameworks and mapping out the risks?

I'm not going to drag LLM generated work into your neighborhood today. Would you honestly want someone else to?

And when people realize this is happening now everywhere and the entire AI industry is fucked, including other machine learning fields that get hit by association?

Then my other brother the fucking Princeton Machine Learning Super Star can't pay for his fucking kids' schooling because of a million people fucking *not understanding* and intelligence agencies taking advantage of it. He's smeared by the broad anti-AI brush.

Then my brother may have to depend on more assistance from law enforcement, legal resources and conservation agencies. Because I didn't have the power to stop the LLM hype machine earlier.

It always would have made sense to have them work with state and federal Wildlife Conservation officers and agencies. Now it feels a little less like watching my brothers build those relationships out of mutual respect for other professionals and more out of need. It feels unequal.

So, I have to put in work today assuring my brothers' clients of tomorrow, who care about their family and kids, that no, their machine learning algorithms won't take their elderly parents medicine and push them down the stairs. It will, with careful review from lawyers and experts, help their kids identify nature in their backyard on their Smart TV. If they want, it will identify the difference between gopher tortoise holes and mole holes, and maybe if they opt-in to a Community of Saving feature, it will let Fish and Wildlife Conservation know there are habitats nearby so we can see how healthy our ecosystem is as a community together, or call their preferred pest eliminator.

That sounds like PR. Because I have to do that extra work today. Because otherwise we aren't just protected by our fellow professionals who care about theie work out there in the field, instead we always need some bigger institution protecting and controlling us.

My brothers are delaying committing resources to projects. That's fine, they have other important priorities, but I keep warning them. And there probably will be an equivalent of the "Video Game Crash of 1983" in 2028 or whatever. And I think if I had had more personal power and been believed I could have done something about that before we had to be protected.

I understand. I've been an EFF supporter for decades, at least when I can afford it. I get it.

The problem though is that you sometimes want to screencast a video or song from your phone. Your dirty dirty phone that has been out in the wild collecting malware. Or a guest does. And sure, what's one video?

And of course your TV doesn't have the latest updates.

It's a fucking perverse incentive that will lead to more regulation of the Internet and IoT when we get malware "leaks" and outbreaks.

The civil libertarians have been co-opted with game theory and smart knowledge of the tragedy of the commons in this case by the intelligence services.

Instead of just educating citizens and democratic debate.

I don't have the political power to sell that idea now, and I know it sounds crazy.

Oh well. I wonder what I can't sell next.

Now make it easier for me to say no to some people like I've publically stated.

I have people trying to draw me into debates and I'd like to cut them from my life.

Thanks.

Their kids section is always busy.

They provide more than just books to patrons, one of their projects provides rentable backpacks with food making kits:

(Sorry about the Facebook link)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRS...

Cooking together provides an educational and bonding opportunity for kids and caretakers, and nutrition is important. Making it easier is a win to me.

We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries.

I appreciate I'm just replying to a off-hand comment, so I'm sorry for the next part.

I will be battling my family for decades about IP and how they are relying on it instead of first mover advantage and the IQ we had today and yesterday. And how it changes cultural values around sharing. It's not good. I know we probably agree on that, so that part isn't directed at you, just the future.

> This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women.

Yeah, it was fucking like pulling teeth getting my HPV vaccine as an adult male. "It's for teenage girls" comments from multiple health care professionals.

I only took the first fucking dose in the regime, and none of my health care providers now offer low cost or covered options. I had to spend Covid money when I had it. I still need the rest of the regime.

Thank you thread for the reminder.

The more programming languages we play with, the better we become as engineers. We learn the different design decisions that go into each language. And we learn the language of Computer Science itself.

Plus, Advent of Code!

So I finally got everything installed. But then I realized there are no easily accessible offline docs. I don't have Internet service at home. So I have to grab service when I can make it out.

So it looks like mix can download offline hexdocs, but I don't have elixir installed. And there's a hexdocs_offline dev package for Gleam. But it errors out on "gleam/dynamic does not have a 'from' value.

Maybe it's a "teaching moment" about the basics of the language. But I have to run out to another appointment now, so these teaching moments don't always help.

Anyways, I guess I'll dive in after the holidays and just wget the tour or get some well regarded projects for reference. I'm actually still really excited with all the functional features.

I appreciate your argument, and you knowlwdge of economics adds weight to it. I'm wary of putting the burden on workers to remove information asymmetry and power imbalances in bargaining. Just because it's necessary now doesn't mean it needs to be. It could create a cycle of permanent extra work for those most in need of regulatory help.

I don't know if I had the full language of economic inefficiencies ready to flow like you do if that argument would be more effective. Or if there are other blocks, you know?