If anyone is considering blaming those in LA for confronting ICE for the rise in violence, I strongly recommend reconsidering your position.

This *is* the plan. It has always been the plan to rachet up ICE violence until that are finally confronted.

Now is the time to support those on the front lines resisting the government troops who are, quite literally, rounding up folks and sending them to concentration camps*.

#USPol #FightFascism

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.

My talk from CSS Day covering multicol, fragmentation, the new gap decorations spec, why printing from the browser sucks despite the fact we have specs that could make it better, exclusions, and regions.

https://noti.st/rachelandrew/mI9WWD/multicol-and-fragmentation

Oh, I’m excited about this: @demarko, a longtime organizer and member of Kickstarter United, is writing some posts about what it means to be in a union, and building a glossary of labor terms.

Here’s his introductory post: https://posts.demarko.org/2025/05/31/setting-some-context/

Celebrate #PRIDE with some beautifully queer LGBTQ+-themed tabletop roleplaying games! The starter collection is under $10 and you get THREE DRM-free complete rule books for:

• Thirsty Sword Lesbians
• Moonlight on Roseville Beach
• Star Crossed

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/PrideGames

Of all of the people living on Earth, only 4% are US citizens.

Less than 3% of the world's population are white US citizens.

Less than 1.8% of the world's people are white US citizens that support fascist, racist, policies.

The point: A very small number of people can make life awful for everyone.

The problem isn't "white people." Most white people on Earth don't choose this.

The problem isn't "Americans." Most Americans don't choose this either.

The problem isn't even "racist nazis." Most countries on Earth aren't silly enough to let the racist nazis be in charge, and aren't this strong.

Chronologically, we are closer to 2060 than to 1960. But ideologically, racist Americans would rather bring 1960 back, than progress to 2060.🤦🏿‍♂️

This is embarrassing.

The other 98.2% of the people on Earth reject this vision like a cat throwing up a hairball: vigorously, with much noise and retching.

Racism was a useful tool for adding to a nation's wealth in the 1800s and prior.

In the 1900s it was net neutral.

From this point on and into the future, racism is a negative that leads to a nation's downfall and decline. Some of you want to argue with me about this even as the US economy spirals.

The US is barely holding on after 100 days of our re-invigorated racism. Picture where we would be after 100 years of this mess.

We have exactly two choices:

1) Grow up. Get our racism under control.

2) Hang on to our precious racism, and go down with the ship as the world leaves us behind.

If you're thinking "How dare you call racism a useful tool!" or "We should end racism because it's the right thing to do, not to stop national decline!"

1st, unclutch your pearls, then unclench your cheeks.

2nd, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but US folk don't just do the right thing.

Hello mastodon. I could use some help. #fedihire

TL;DR: I was laid off a while ago, and the traditional "go scour job sites and apply" is currently broken. So - let's try social media. Please boost if you are willing, or pass this along if you know someone who needs what I can offer.

I'll be brief: I'm a very experienced System Reliability Engineer, with a track record of dependability and scalability. I take people's problems - stability, uptime, scale, cost, durability, speed, security and attack resistance - and fix them. I have the dubious honor of generally costing less to employ than I save my employer. If everything is perfect - you don't need me. But if you do, you may need me badly.

I'm available. Drop me a note.

I am located in Ventura, California, and strongly prefer remote work. I don't require visas or special accommodation to work in the US.

Here's a resume: https://www.bortels.us/TBortels_Resume_2025_public.pdf

The thing people still don’t seem to get?

Trump backs down at ANY kind of pushback. Resist a little & he folds.

SO FUCKING QUIT FOLDING IN ADVANCE DING-DONGS

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/05/02/maine-settles-case-over-frozen-usda-school-funds/