They have to fight this battle. Traffic was probably down 80% due to one cabinet member not knowing VPNs exist.

I probably should have specified Los Alamos National Laboratory instead. It was definitely not a place I was authorized to be. I was just driving from Bandolier National Monument to Santa Fe. I’ve never been to Oak Ridge, Tennessee but I would hope someone stops me before I get to a transuranic element or something.

To be honest, I probably shouldn’t be around anything beyond iron. (I’m a star.)

I’d judge him but I once was forced to rent a car in France because of a strike and drove through what was definitely a total pedestrian/restaurant area because it was on a map as a road. It can happen if you’re an idiot with no sense of direction.

Also, Google Maps once tried to give me a shortcut through the Manhattan Project site in New Mexico. The security guard asked for ID and I gave him my driver’s license and he said, “Here’s what you’re gonna do. Go to that turnaround right there and never come back.”

It would be darkly funny if China made all the British sailors buy opium.

I guess he is actually back in charge of his companies.

Beethoven being born in Germany and Hitler being born in Austria was one of those trivia facts I learned as a 12 year old — or thereabouts; I forget how old I was — that made me question everything. I was obviously, by definition, uneducated at that age but I had just sort of lumped “classical music=Vienna” and “Hitler=Germany.”

It’s obviously an odd fact to blow a kid’s mind and there were many more such moments to come but, for some reason, that factoid was a very effective one on my journey to realizing I didn’t know shit. (A journey I’m still on, even on things I have a degree in or worked on. Nothing teaches you how much you don’t know like learning enough to realize you haven’t even scratched the surface.)

I’ve always wondered if the world’s major governments all have their own secret, bespoke operating systems for highly sensitive situations. Like, not Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, or anything even remotely known to the public. But then you see high-ranking admin officials using bootleg Signal on an off-the-shelf phone or whatever.

I’d assume the actual intelligence agencies are more sophisticated. I doubt they’re running some “hardened” version of Windows or Android or whatever. But maybe I’m being naive and they all are just working with vendors.

Putting Bill Gates’ dick in my mouth is far too high of a licensing fee. I’ll just play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe instead. But no judgment. You live your best life.

I’m American but I’ve travelled a lot and the only place I can remember seeing anything close to as many flags was Greece. And it wasn’t that close. Americans are absurd about flags. Plus, the Greek flag is aesthetically lovely and the American flag might be bottom 5 on pure design principles.

No one get offended. I’m not insulting my own country’s flag. I’m just saying, 50 fucking stars and 13 stripes is a design nightmare. The Greek flag is simple and nice looking in lots of contexts. This isn’t a comment about honoring the flag. It’s a comment about vexillology and design.

Yeah, but I doubt they’re close to having the capacity to offer full 5G service like a traditional carrier. I have T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom‘s US subsidiary) and they have a deal with Starlink but it’s (a) in beta and (b) limited in what you can do. Unless things have changed, even when it launches, it’ll be just LTE text and voice and you need a pretty modern phone.

So, it’s not like a drop in replacement for a land-based plan where you get internet and stuff. Plus, Trump and his kids aren’t going to do any of the hard work. Even before his presidency, “Trump” was just a licensing brand and now it’s a pretty shitty brand. It’s not like the family was running Trump Steaks and packing boxes for shipment or whatever.

If he actually launches a Trump phone service, it’s going to be a MVNO that just piggy backs off the main operators’ infrastructure. It’s not like he or his idiot sons are going to buy spectrum and build towers.

He wouldn’t really be competing with T-Mobile, Verizon, or AT&T. He’d be competing with Boost Mobile and companies like that.

That’s not that much of a twist.

Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. They’ve enriched uranium to something like 65% to prove they could go further if pressed but no bombs that we know of yet.

Israel’s official policy is to not say whether or not they have nuclear weapons but everyone knows they have them and the “mysterious” test was Israel and Apartheid South Africa working together.

Many more states have the knowledge and capability but generally don’t want to violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I would guess most countries with advanced economies could make a bomb in short time if they wanted to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons

I quit GTA V when it told me I had to drive from Beverly Hills to Long Beach and I was just like, “I’ll just play Tetris.”

I find myself playing games that involve exploration or retro arcade games. Missions and assigned side quests often feel like doing chores. I can follow a line on a map and get frustrated in real life.

That being said, I had a nice time playing Breath of the Wild and old arcade games were designed to take your quarters so they can be quick to play if you suck. Gradius doesn’t take me long to die in even with the Konami code.

Fly fishing would probably be similar. I just want an activity and some water. I can get fish at the store if I catch zero. It’s about being on the water and enjoying a nice day.

Lakes. I live in Louisiana so it’s more “water” than freshwater lakes but during the pandemic, I’d just go out to a lake and cast a fishing pole with no bait and be outside with something to do. I wasn’t interested in catching anything. I just wanted to do something and sit by the water.

Also, it should never be used for art. I don’t care if you need to make a logo for a company and A.I. spits out whatever. But real art is about humans expressing something. We don’t value cave paintings because they’re perfect. We value them because someone thousands of years ago made it.

So, that’s something I hate about it. People think it can “democratize” art. Art is already democratized. I have a child’s drawing on my fridge that means more to me than anything at any museum. The beauty of some things is not that it was generated. It’s that someone cared enough to try. I’d rather a misspelled crayon card from my niece than some shit ChatGPT generated.

My skepticism is because it’s kind of trash for general use. I see great promise in specialized A.I. Stuff like Deepfold or astronomy situations where the telescope data is coming in hot and it would take years for humans to go through it all.

But I don’t think it should be in everything. Google shouldn’t be sticking LLM summaries at the top. It hallucinates so I need to check the veracity anyway. In medicine, it can help double-check but it can’t be the doctor. It’s just not there yet and might never get there. Progress has kind of stalled.

So, I don’t “hate” any technology. I hate when people misapply it. To me, it’s (at best) beta software and should not be in production anywhere important. If you want to use it for summarizing Scooby Doo episodes, fine. But it shouldn’t be part of anything we rely on yet.

TikTok shows me BBQ techniques, random models, and teenagers trying to be professional stuntmen and almost dying. And that one time sea shanties. You have to train the algorithm.