This ominous photo I took tonight of the Disney castle lit by red fireworks is my new header for, possibly, forever because shit is just ominous these days okay?

A brightly lit castle is illuminated by colorful fireworks exploding in a vibrant night sky.

Frozen Ever After. Of course our first attempt to rope drop at Disney World ends with Frozen Ever After having a delayed opening of at least an hour…

Frozen Ever After. Of course our first attempt to rope drop at Disney World ends with Frozen Ever After having a delayed opening of at least an hour…

Orlando International Airport (MCO).

Orlando International Airport (MCO).

🧱 I don’t think the The Verge’s paywall will last, given that it’s very porous, most Verge readers likely block ads anyway, and the comments section is already… lively. They should offer an easy way to support them without degrading the free experience, but I can’t blame them for trying something.

🧱 I don’t think the The Verge’s paywall will last, given that it’s very porous, most Verge readers likely block ads anyway, and the comments section is already… lively... They should offer an easy way to support them without degrading the free experience, but I can’t blame them for trying something.

🔔 There are so many bearded dudes in Philly that I think I know from college. It can be very disconcerting.

Seeing my Micro.blog profile in a Mastodon app, where my username is @joe@joeross.me, really makes me want to use it as my primary fediverse account. I just find the transfer process daunting, and I recall Mb may not be a full implementation of an ActivityPub account, though maybe that has changed.

🦃 Now that the kids are mostly sentient, Thanksgiving means fielding questions from them about why we’re vegetarians and most people aren’t. If anyone has any ideas let me know. I’m not sure they’ll understand I was radicalized by a YouTube rabbithole decades ago, given they’re both younger than 5…

Threads can brag about hundreds of millions of users and more daily signups than all of Bluesky, but its recent feature sprint shows competition is having the desired effect. Bluesky’s best move would be to ship true, easy federation ASAP. Easier said than done, I’m sure, but the sooner the better.

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.”