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  One wonders whether Yascha Mounk thinks that Julius Streicher's execution after World War II was unjust or not. (I've had the misfortune of reading his book The Identity Trap and I am now very annoyed at the guy)

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  I am getting steadily better at just blocking or muting people rather than going after them for saying stupid things. One step at a time... ... that said, I do find it fascinating how many people on here will happily say things about Christianity that they'd *never* say about Islam, despite the two religions having an awful lot of overlap in the areas these people are commenting on.

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  Our local supermarket is stocking the Whittakers Jelly Tip chocolate again, for which I am deeply grateful

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  Weird alignment between trans and Jewish experiences part 2137: people get very strange ideas because the most visible parts of our communities are very educated and very politicised, leading to us being held to absurdly high standards of conduct that nobody would ever think to apply to other oppressed groups

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  Ukrainian strikes on Russian datacenters have *definitely* had a massive impact on Russian bot activity and we owe it to Ukraine to keep saying it whatever the evidence might be.

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  RE: https://toots.matapacos.dog/@porkroll/117436839131955984 Russia *very much* engages in bot farming and hybrid warfare, and I don't like how much the "we have no evidence that the recent datacenter strikes have led to a decrease in bot traffic" is turning into "Russian hybrid warfare has no effect or isn't a thing", which is transparently and obviously stupid. Two things can be true.

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  There's something perverse about the fact that the people whom we give the biggest platform when it comes to discussion of crisis and collapse are the ones that have really not had very much experience of it and that talk in weirdly woolly ways that are almost delusional. The writing that we see coming out of it gives the impression of hardheadedness while being the opposite. Considering that *getting a publishing deal these days* requires an awful lot of privilege, perhaps this is unav...

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  More news on the Arca front: I have, after dragging my feet on it for quite a while, finally set up trial access for two modules. If you've been thinking about buying access but haven't been sold on it, you can now find out what you're getting before you pay for it (you still have to give me an email, but no money needs to change hands now): https://deadsimpletech.com/free

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  I have to admit, the sheer level of compartmentalisation between writer-Iris and businesswoman-Iris that I have to maintain very much wears me out sometimes.

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  Just presented at our local Python meetup! I talked about Python's GIS tooling. Think it went well

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  Worried about KDE. I don't want to have to use GNOME

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  New article: this one has some thoughts about a part of the discussion around LLMs that has been underdiscussed so far: namely, the fact that you can only control their behaviour using prompts. https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/llms-on-the-boundary

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  The one thing I would like the queer community to understand about trans women is that, unfortunately, we are hypervisible and, in a lot of ways, the major group targeted by the more unpleasant bigots. This isn't anything inherent to us or particular about us: it's a largely socially situated thing. This does mean, though, that we're going to have a different perspective on things to people who aren't directly being targeted by the worst people in the world.

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  New article: this time, we use Heidegger to explain why the "it's just a tool" line that often comes up in tech is so very silly: https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/no-such-thing-as-just-a-tool

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  There has to be a Steven Yegge Gas Town Carbon Monoxide Poisoning joke out there somewhere.

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  Omnes, gentes, please behold my latest cursed marketing idea. It is a quiz that tests your knowledge of some engineering fundamentals (specifically, in this case, git and the unix command line). Have fun! https://deadsimpletech.com/quizzes/some-fundamental-skills

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  One thinks that a good guideline for life might be "don't believe things that disfigure your soul, no matter how correct you think they are"

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  The moment someone says the phrase "real simple question", you know they're trying to slip something past your radar. ... I really shouldn't have to say this, but arson attacks on synagogues in New Zealand have *nothing* to do with Gaza.

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  RE: https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn/116982181052064171 I, for a variety of reasons, have trouble maintaining a vegan diet (my partner has had an eating disorder, I'm autistic and have trouble switching diets and so on and so forth). Not driving, by contrast, is very easy for me (I live in the middle of a city, am fit enough to walk or cycle most places). Sometimes you just have to lean in to what you *can* do

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  New article time! This time, I've talked about writing C is so much more enjoyable than a number of other things, and tech's regrettable tendency towards shallowness: https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/tech-aint-deep

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  RE: https://mastodon.sprawl.club/@ludicity/116939432745772414 Ludic has done the thing!

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  Anthropic's article on cultural differences in LLM behaviour is *fascinating*. It tells me that Claude expresses the following specific values in Polish: Says when it is unsure Backs claims with evidence Pushes back on false assumptions I hadn't realised that *basic epistemic rigor* was a culturally encoded trait, and (dropping my deep antipathy to the tools in general for a moment), it's a little concerning that apparently other languages *don't* do this so much. https://www....

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  Some good (if terrifying for me) news: Arca is now in early access. That's right: now you can buy access to my notes on statistics and engineering fundamentals, exercises and access to a community of fellow students where you can ask questions, comment on others' questions and get them answered by me. It's a great opportunity to learn something that will make you better at basically everything you do from someone cool. Take a look! https://deadsimpletech.com/arca

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  I am tired and fed up and need to do something to feel better, so I'm writing a piece about how learning Latin can change your software career (and your life)!

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  I think I actually have to go live with billing for Arca (my learning platform project) tomorrow, and I am *terrified*. Getting people to pay you online on a monthly basis is hard, and there are so many things that can go horribly wrong

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  Have had a thought about social media bans for young people: there's a good chance that this actively backfires and pushes young people towards writing and publishing their own blogs, which is much harder to regulate.

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  RE: https://mastodon.online/@zl2tod/116866612922005826 This one's truly incomprehensible. Like, even taking the horrific ethics out of the equation a) New Zealand has no strike capability to speak of and b) how well did the "precision strikes" in Iran work? As far as we can tell, they were basically useless in achieving any meaningful effects

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  RE: https://cloudisland.nz/@exlibrarykris/116870571038982179 My heart swells with civic pride ! I am so glad to call this city my own.

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  My current in-progress essay is about Kurt Vonnegut's review of Hunter Thompson's *Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72". I'm kinda excited about it.

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  RE: https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116871738193741080 I really do empathise, but I also think that being misread in bad faith is just part of being a writer. I've had some truly hideous misreadings of my work, and well... I don't know whether an LLM can do shit to stop that without completely defanging my work?