I recently posted a photo of my cat on Bluesky, as any serious person does on a growing social network. While carefully preparing the post (again, I am serious person) I asked four different LLMs for alt text to include with the photo. They all did okay, but as you can see Claude went pretty hard…

Screenshot of Google Gemini showing the following alt text it generated for this cat photo: A black and white cat stares seriously at the viewer while wearing a pink plastic tiara.Screenshot of ChatGPT showing the following alt text it generated for this cat photo: The image shows a black-and-white cat wearing a pink, gem-studded tiara. The cat has a serious expression, with its greenish-yellow eyes focused on the camera.Screenshot of Microsoft Copilot showing the following alt text it generated for this cat photo: A cat is wearing a pink beaded crown. The cat's face is blurred, but the crown is clearly visible, adorned with numerous small, shiny beads. The cat has black and white fur, and the background appears to be indoors with a warm-toned setting.Screenshot of Anthropic's Claude showing the following alt text it generated for this cat photo: This image shows a black and white cat wearing a bright pink, ornate tiara or crown made of small beaded or jeweled elements. The cat has striking golden-yellow eyes and distinctive black patches around its eyes contrasting with its white fur. The crown sits perched on top of the cat's head and appears to be decorative costume jewelry. The cat has a dignified, regal expression and appears to be resting on what looks like light-colored fabric or bedding. The photo is well-lit and in sharp focus, particularly highlighting the cat's facial features and the intricate details of the pink crown.

▶️ Once in a while, I remember that the overwhelming majority of human beings prefer everything Coldplay did after Parachutes over that absolute gem of a record, and I realize that I should’ve known when that thought first occurred to me that I was in one of the darker timelines.

I told myself I wouldn’t participate the discourse, but everyone who voted for Trump had enough information to know this was a likelihood and they did it anyway. Each and every one of them shares responsibility for those will suffer or die as a direct result of RFK Jr. running HHS if he’s confirmed.

I was sad to read that Radio Free Fedi is shutting down early next year. It got me thinking about how easy it is to spin up awesome stuff on the Fediverse. On the one hand, that’s awesome! But on the other, it means that stuff often outgrows the metaphorical bandwidth of its creators pretty fast.

Chris Geidner writes at Law Dork that progressives should be litigating “narrow challenges brought on conservative grounds — using the reasoning of the right, […] fighting with the tools that can work.”

This is the way. Forcing liberal arguments through conservative courts won’t work.

Oh the privilege of naivety, or the naivety of privilege, or something

A tweet by @levie (Aaron Levie), who has a verified checkmark. The tweet reads: "With a major push to remove unnecessary red tape and over-regulation in key areas, we could really have a century of crazy building, innovation, and acceleration. More manufacturing, housing, AI, energy, transportation, space, medicine, and more. Excited for Elon's efforts here."&10;&10;The tweet was posted at 1:58 PM on Nov 6, 2024, and has 199.3K views, 138 replies, 161 retweets, 1.8K likes, and 134 bookmarks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Great to see Andy Kim win the former Menendez seat in the Senate for New Jersey.

Adam Kotsko, grousing:

The beginning of my frustration came early last week, when the entire site was aghast at a Financial Times column that said Bluesky was an echo chamber.

I’m a fan of Bluesky, but I chuckled at the idea of all of its users being upset about it being called an echo chamber.

I don’t pay much attention to polls, so I had no idea Nate Silver had gone so far down his own rabbit hole. It’s so bad that he thinks polling based on, wait for it, the data, takes “an incredible amount of guts.”

Practical AI tip: When someone sends me a PDF calendar (😡), I ask Claude to process the info into ICS format. For my kids' daycare snack calendar, I say:

Please convert data from each day to one all-day event, like: Snacks: AM: Cheerios / PM: Crackers

And I get the excellent result pictured here.

A screenshot of Fantastical for iOS shows a calendar schedule of snacks for each day, including applesauce, nachos, granola bars, cucumbers, yogurt, and pretzels.

With Omnivore being acquired by Eleven Labs and shutting down, I recommend Readwise Reader.

You can still self-host Omnivore, but I think Readwise is worth its ~$100/year price, though all-in Apple users might prefer GoodLinks for a simpler but still well-designed alternative at a much lower cost.

And just like that, someone I have idolized since I was a young child shows themselves willing to deliver our republic to death by authoritarianism.

Here’s a real form someone I know who makes more than minimum wage was recently asked by their employer to sign:

I understand that for calculation of overtime, my contractual hour rate with Employer is set at minimum wage, which is the wage that New Jersey Department of Labor sets, or the Federal minimum wage, whichever is higher. This means that if I clock hours in excess of 40 in a one week pay period, that my pay should be equal to/or greater than 40 hours at minimum wage and overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage.

Am I missing something, or is this what us fancy lawyers call… illegal af?

“Michael Keaton Enters the SNL Ring”

youtu.be/CJGNX31DI…

It’s one of the better films of the last several years. 10/10, no notes.

Sam Cole, writing at 404 Media about Matt Mullenweg’s ongoing, unforced founder mode flameout:

“We were unaware that Matt redirected sign-up emails until current Automattic employees contacted our support team,” a spokesperson for Blind told me, adding that they’d “never seen a CEO or executive try to limit their employees from signing up for Blind by redirecting emails.”

This is just gross. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would still want to work for him now that toxicity is the norm, but he still has fans inside the company:

“There is a vocal group of sycophants who are cheering on Matt’s actions via Anonymattic,” [an employee] said, “drawing favorable comparisons to how Elon Musk and Donald Trump operate. Their morale seems high, but I can’t relate.” Screenshots viewed by 404 Media show some staff having changed their Slack usernames to include “[STAYING]” to signal their support of Mullenweg and intention to remain at the company.

The thing is, whether you agree with him or not, it’s not the rhetorical position he has taken that’s the problem, it’s the way he’s expressing and defending that position that is the problem. And it’s such a problem that it’s hard to see anyone defending his recent behavior as having much of a reputation left after all of this.

As I’ve said before, I don’t envy his/the company’s lawyers the job of litigating around his ongoing meltdown. I’ll be keeping an eye on the filings at CourtListener.

Abhorrent CEO or not, a lot of really incredible people at SpaceX achieved a really incredible thing with the Starship launch/Super Heavy catch, and it was awesome to show my kids and see the excitement in their eyes.

youtu.be/b28zbsnk-…

Amazon killed API access for one of my favorite apps, price tracker DropScout. Its developer, Daniel Kramer, writes on Mastodon:

Amazon has pulled my API access and the app is non-functional as a result. I’m looking for find a solution but the future doesn’t look good.

Apparently it’s against terms of service to track prices. There are other apps that do this so it’s a bit surprising. Apparently they’ve given other services permission and I’m trying to see if they will allow DropScout to do this.

DropScout is my favorite in its class of apps and I hope Daniel gets his API access back.

The 1999 movie Sleepy Hollow is, to my mind, the film to watch during the transition from early autumn to the Halloween season.

It captures the dreary, de-saturated feeling you get, on the east coast of the U.S., anyway, when you realize there won’t be another day without a chill in the air for a few months.

It’s full of weirdness and dark humor, but one of my favorite exchanges in the movie is this:

Ichabod Crane: You have moved the body.
Dr. Thomas Lancaster: I did.
Crane: You must never move the body!
Lancaster: Why not?
Crane: … Because…

A stylized poster for the film Sleepy Hollow features a shadowy figure on horseback against a moonlit, eerie forest backdrop

😑 Sometimes, when I've really had it with my kids, I just look them right in the eyes and tell them, with the most stern and serious expression I can muster, "There will be no fourth chances!"

Matt Mullenweg is a litigator’s worst nightmare — please stop talking in public about the subject matter of the litigation — but presumably Wordpress' lawyer Neal Katyal knows what he’s doing and doesn’t expect the PR blitz to cause problems.