IT security student. Programmer of digital duck tape, learning to write digital plumbing. Aspiring cryptographer. Personal research interests include zero-knowledge credentials (to counter online antisocial conduct while protecting privacy) and AV/image non-repudiation (to counter deepfakes).
Anti-exceptionalist egalitarian. Empirical pragmatist: evidence over ideology, results over rationalization. Theory is as good as the least of its falsifiability, its internal consistency, and its withstanding of attempted disproof. It is as useful as one is willing to revise or replace it when it falls.
RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116395850095295387
Mark Blyth is very good on this, and I say a bit in my Zombie Economics books.
But I'm hopeful that when the current bubble implodes things will be different. Tech bros and Wall Street are now fully aligned with Trump, and will all go down together
Q: How many Libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The light bulb should be permitted to change itself.
Christos Jonathan Hayward, an Orthodox Christian author.
https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/12/Oct/lightbulb.html
Noticed that due to Cory Doctorow's "Object permanence"
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/13/always-great/#retro
#25yrsago Mastercard threatens the moderator of rec.humor.funny https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.html
@gopal @pluralistic How many Freudian Psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb?
How long have you had this fixation?
A startup is putting military-style drones in high school ceilings. Ceiling-mounted. Charging. Waiting. And when something happens, a pilot in Austin, Texas, decides whether to deploy pepper gel on your kid's school. I'm not saying the problem isn't real. It absolutely is. But read that back.... in schools. We've taken a Ukrainian battlefield tactic against Russian soldiers and ported it to Deltona High School in Florida. The co-founder literally said the idea came from watching drone videos of the war in Ukraine. The chief pilot described it as "cheating in a video game after you die." These are children.
Here's what's not in the headline:
🔒 The drones use an encrypted connection — but the article notes they're potentially vulnerable to cyberattack. A compromised drone in a crowded hallway isn't a security tool; it's a weapon pointed in the wrong direction.
⚖️ Mithril reserves the right to act independently during an attack, without waiting for law enforcement. A private company operating remotely is making use-of-force decisions at a school.
💰 Florida and Georgia approved $500K+ each for this. A group of Texas parents raised $200K more. That's real money going to ceiling drones instead of mental health services, counselors, or de-escalation programs.
The ACLU said it plainly: when force becomes a zero-risk remote action, it gets overused. Axon tried a Taser drone for schools in 2022, and its own ethics board killed it. Mithril is picking up where that got dropped.
I teach cybersecurity. I've spent years in boardrooms helping organizations think through risk. And the risk calculus here isn't just about whether the drone works. It's about what we're normalizing when we turn schools into drone-monitored combat zones and call it progress.
"This is the future," said the sheriff's captain.
I hope not.
https://www.wsj.com/business/a-startup-is-supplying-drones-to-high-schools-a7800ade
#SchoolSafety #Cybersecurity #Leadership #security #privacy #cloud #infosec
Whoops: Russia’s Attempt To Block VPNs Causes Major Banking Failure
Cartoonist Rob Rogers was fired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2018 for the cartoon below. While he seems to have done all right for himself, it's just one episode of many showing the rank cowardice of the media that contributed to this disaster.
"A new poll found that the only demographic with a positive view of Israel and PM Benjamin Netanyahu in the US right now is Republicans over the age of 50."
~ Marcie Jones
#Netanyahu #Israel #Palestinians #Gaza #Iran #Lebanon #war
/1
i just woke up to the realization that i might have finally read enough Slavoj Žižek to attempt to re-watch The Pervert's Guide to Computer Programming Languages and fully enjoy it
(for reference, this is the thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZyvIHYn2zk )
John Quiggin
gopal
Michael Vilain
Brian Greenberg 
Techdirt
Scary Austin
Tracy Rosenberg
William Lindsey 
CenDemTech
Alex / catileptic