Friend in Noosa for a few days (Australian resort hot spot). Saying how restaurants & cafes v, v, short staffed. One person serving in a very popular restaurant, no cups to drink coffee in the cafe as no one to wash them, etc.

Friend pondering why this might be.

Um.

#capitalism

People working in these service industries can't pay the rents in these places. It's a no-brainer.

I'm going to stake out what will sound like a radical position, and make my argument for why it isn't at all radical, but common-sense response to a simple problem.

When someone decides to transition, the way it should go is, "I am doing this with my body, and if you don't like it, mind your business."

That's it. Then start hormones, if you want them. Change your name and your gender marker, if you want. Get surgeries if you want. Or not, to all of that.

Because gatekeeping is fundamentally immoral. On what basis does *anyone* claim the right to tell me what I can do or not do with MY body in MY one life?

Why? Because gender-affirming care is already fully legal in the US, everywhere.

For cis people.

You're a cis woman and want breast augmentation? Get in there and get cut, baby.

Erectile dysfunction? We have a range of drugs to help.

Vaginal dryness? Here's progesterone.

Low T? We got you, bud.

Losing your hair? Here's your finasteride.

We don't blink an eye at these obvious instances of gender-affirming care, because they're for cis people.

But try to get affirmed in a gender you weren't coerced into? Whoa! You'll need to see some GATEKEEPERS about that, you're not old enough to make that decision for yourself!

(note that reproductive care, on the other hand, is NOT available everywhere in the US)

It is nothing but transphobia, and if you back that system, you're doing a transphobic thing.

That means if a trans girl needs you to lie and say they always played with girly things because they're facing a gatekeeper, you lie your face off for them.

If a trans guy needs top surgery to feel right, but has to prove his gender, you can tell whatever comforting lies the gatekeeper needs to hear to soothe their wobbly guts.

It is not immoral to refuse to participate in an immoral system. It is, in fact, a moral imperative to fight against it.

Wanna be an ally? This is one way to help.

Since I've left my last job, I've been thinking about the guy who used me as an alternative to ChatGPT whenever he hit a problem that he couldn't vibe code the answer out of at work.

He basically rotted his own brain by compulsively using ChatGPT in lieu of actually thinking with most any of the projects he was working on. Instead of taking the time to read through code in our framework, look up documentation, or do any sort of debugging, he instead just begged and pleaded with ChatGPT to try and get somewhere because "it was faster." Basically just really hammering his brain with the Programmer's Slot Machine. (@davidgerard wrote a really good article here about this specific gambling addiction angle here. I highly highly recommend reading/watching the corresponding YouTube video:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/generative-ai-runs-on-gambling-addiction-just-one-more-prompt-bro/ )

Back to the story; When that wasn't working, which was a significant portion of the time, he'd then just turn and use me as a "more informed alternative" to ChatGPT.

I worked fully remote and the majority of our interactions was via a Teams chat. which apparently crossed some wires in his monkey brain and made him start just... Basically verbally barraging me like he would with the company ChatGPT instance. No thoughts at all, just an immediate process of:

- Ask vague question
- Get guess for an answer with a request for more details
- Try applying the guess blindly without thinking if it's applicable at all
- Have it not work and just report back that it didn't work.
- No follow-up details, no further explanation of what was going on or what he's trying to do. Nothing added past the original vague situation
- If lucky, I might get a screenshot of part of the error, meticulously sliced before it gave something useful in the output because he stopped reading error output to things and made no attempt to understand it. (Why? ChatGPT can do that part!)
- Rinse and Repeat until I get fed up and get into a call with him
- Fix the thing in less than a minute, pointing out that he should have been able to tell what was wrong almost immediately if he actually dropped a break-point and debugged the code at *literally any point* along the way
- Fuck off immediately after getting his fix, no thank you or anything
- start the process anew the following day when he vibe coded himself into a corner all over again

I literally had to go to leadership and make them have a talk with him and get him to leave me the fuck alone at work, after repeated attempts to establish boundaries about it, due to how much time it sucked out of me being able to work on other projects. Effectively just doubling up my work and slamming me with burn out right at the start of the year for absolutely no reason other than his belligerent insistence to just Not Do His Job Without His Hand Being Held By A Chat Window.

It rapidly went from a "He sometimes asks informed questions that I can answer and help him with. I enjoy working with him" to "The dude isn't even trying in the slightest and is now basically offloading his work onto me because he broke his capacity to actually do work independently of an external chat window. I fucking hate him and I hope he gets in a car wreck so I can get a break from the bleakness of dealing with him every goddamn morning"

ChatGPT has basically just been an absolute blight for me since it's inception. Going from the team being generally pro-crypto to intensely pro-genAI/LLM because their favorite scammers (er.. I mean YouTubers) had them hooked on a fantasy of some day making it Big by jumping from one Hype cycle to the next. I sincerely was very close to just finding an entirely different career path altogether because of just how incredibly shitty it was working with that team on just about anything, but lacking the job experience on the resume to land someplace else.

Nobody wanted to be an actual expert, nobody really wanted to learn anything. They had their degree and ChatGPT, which means they learned all they ever will need. ...While working in an industry that tends to re-invent itself every half decade or so while half-assing solutions with an outsourced bullshit generator. 🫠

All in the name of "Well it got me from point A to point B faster." and leaving it at that, despite taking significantly longer than they should have from the get go over it.

I've seen and lived what an AI Fueled future looks like:
Mediocre men harassing their talented and likely autistic peers until their peers just up and fuckin leave to a different organization out of frustration and exhaustion.

I think down the road, we'll be able to measure the negative impact using LLMs has on people's cognitive faculties by comparing it to horse kicks to the head, and only be exaggerating it by a little bit.

A few days ago I shared the story of Alma Bowman, a disabled woman from Macon Georgia who was a whistleblower against the atrocities committed in ICE detention facilities.

She’s currently being detained again, likely due to retaliation for speaking out.

I also spoke of Rodney Taylor, a double amputee who was taken by ICE two days before he was set to get new prosthetics. The medical neglect he’s enduring at the hands of ICE is unfathomable.

We must tell their stories.

Disabled people are at higher risk of dying in these awful facilities, and the conditions within the detention centres will also lead to more people becoming disabled.

No one deserves to be treated this way.

Let’s speak up. Say their names. Help get them released.

And remember, don’t shame disabled people who are unable to protest. For many of us it’s not safe and we lack the physical ability to be boots on the ground. We can still contribute in our own way, and every voice matters.

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/disabled-people-are-being-mistreated

#ice #abolishice #uspol #fascism #authoritarianism #la #disability #ableism #eugenics #almabowman #rodneytaylor

Someone captured the moment an Australian reporter was shot by a rubber bullet at the anti-ICE protests in LA.

It’s wildly concerning that a country which prides itself on freedom of the press is now shooting at journalists.

Also, watch closely. She was away from the crowds. She was clearly reporting and no threat to anyone.

Yet the agent took direct aim & shot.

This is enraging. This is state sanctioned violence. This is an attack on the press. An attempt to silence.

Keep speaking out.

#ice #fascism #la #losangeles #abolishice #uspol