Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It's funny how there are all these people who say "ooh, em-dashes, must be AI slop" as if LLMs just invented the punctuation out of thin air.

What's actually happening is that LLMs are mimicking more formal or well-crafted writing—but it's easier to notice em-dashes at a glance than it is to notice... I don't know, good sentence structure or something.

#LLM #slop

Subs, hoagies, grinders, even "Submarine Sandwich" old-timers, we need to put aside our differences and form a united antifascist front.

It takes a lot of training to be this unfit for office. https://patreon.com/BrianMcFadden

Many Linux users have recently reported their fans running at full speed and high temperatures. They discovered that Firefox was consuming all CPU cores, and it turns out that the cause was Firefox's new default AI features. This is how you ruin your product 😅 https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/firefox_ai_scoffing_power/

Retired Iowa judge and former staunch Republican implores Iowans to see the reality of what is happening to America -- and then organize and vote to save it. https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/08/15/i-grew-up-an-iowa-republican-this-is-not-your-parents-republican-party/

Folks on grand juries are getting wise to Trump/Republican regimes' abuses of power, and using their own power to say no way.

Trial jurors also have power -- they can refuse to convict in cases of political prosecutions. Yes, a two-edged sword, and increasingly needed.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/crime/us-attorney-jeanine-pirros-office-admits-grand-jury-refused-charges-against-dc-woman-twice-sydney-reid-dc-jail/65-dc64747e-a8d4-4ad9-89e2-f6317f0fa2bd

Trumpflation takes off.

If you consider the possibility that the regime's policies are designed to destroy America, Dear Leader's decisions make much more sense (in a dismal way).

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/ppi-inflation-report-july-2025-.html

The “Big Beautiful Bill” cut funding for Medicaid, food assistance & social supports.

Instead of helping the most vulnerable in society, they gave billions more to ICE

What have they done with that money?

Made a rap video showcasing new trucks that say “defend the homeland”.

Please wake up. They’re not even hiding the fascist agenda anymore.

#uspol #fascism #ice #abolishice #immigration

I'm excited to introduce some new people to our amateur community! And hoping there are lots of opportunities to answer questions, offer guidance, and give unlicensed operators a chance to make noise on the radio.

If they're ready to take the plunge, they can get licensed right at HOPE! @kb6nu is hosting his 1-day get-your-license workshop on Saturday:
https://schedule.hope.net/hope16/talk/UCJVNH/

⚠️ Important headsup if you are on the server mastodon.cloud:

Mastodon.cloud no longer seems to be moderated. Its admin account hasn't posted since Feb 2023, its code of conduct is blank and there are vile racists posting from there. The racists have been reported many times but their accounts are still active.

Because of this, other server admins are starting to block mastodon.cloud completely.

If you're on mastodon.cloud you might want to move to another server ASAP: https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server

Many thanks again to https://prodigi.nz! We're live again after transferring to their NZ-based infrastructure (they're sponsoring these NZOSS & Iridescent services) from more than a decade of generous sponsorship from Catalyst.net.nz and CatalystCloud.nz! Just about everything is transferred over now... just a few loose ends to tidy-up... it's been a busy couple weeks... Thanks, too, to the good folks using this instance - hope everything it running smoothly for you again!

Setting fairness aside, biased AI models are just worse models: they make more mistakes, more often. Efforts to reduce bias-induced errors, even if you call the reduction “woke,” will ultimately make models more accurate, not less.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/president-trumps-war-woke-ai-civil-liberties-nightmare

which of these do you think is the least bad as a failsafe power source in a small minimal computing/"solarpunk" electronics project? (the project is entirely solar powered otherwise; I just need a backup power source for the real-time clock chip. i've ruled out rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors for this purpose)

This post by Rebecca Solnit illustrates why I am a paying subscriber to her newsletter. She doesn't use the expression "media literacy" here, but it's embedded in her writing -- and should be embedded in every person's media use.

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/stick-with-the-facts-dont-be-like-them-some-notes-on-a-spate-of-recent-misreadings/

LA Times headline would be more accurate if it said, "Trump thugs try to disrupt Democrats' event backing fair elections."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-14/border-patrol-conducts-immigration-operation-outside-gov-newsom-event

Huh, cool to see that ProPublica is a Svelte app... https://www.propublica.org

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and its state counterparts are very broad, tempting police and prosecutors to throw infractions at “any kind of behavior that’s objectionable in some way using a computer,” EFF’s Andrew Crocker told @theintercept. https://theintercept.com/2025/08/13/dc-plane-crash-washington-cnn-leak/

This week's comic now up on Daily Kos
Hollingsworth Hound, in "The Devil Went Down to HoundCo."
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/8/14/2338238/-Cartoon-Tom-the-Dancing-Bug-and-The-Devil-Went-Down-to-HoundCo