Holy shit I hate STEMlords sometimes

"just use AI to supervise the AI"

"why don't they just let it get stuck or crash like in murica?"

Been hearing this a lot and honestly only haven't posted it here because I was assuming it already had been posted a bunch when it first came out.

from the artist, in the comments:

Gaza is Calling is about my first experience with heartbreak in friendship. I was 11 when I met this boy from Gaza. We were inseparable. With him I shared one of the deepest loves I’ve ever known, he grew up alongside me in a housing project in Toronto. And not even this love was a match for the violence we were up against; the one in our new home, the one that followed him from Gaza like a cold wind. In the end it was all the bloodshed between us that didn’t allow us to see each other without tears appearing, and one of the last notes he sent to me was about how we would continue on in another life.

The string sample is the Arabian nostalgia that we share, the autotuned Arabic I sing is the balance we tried to reach being boys of cultural empires in a small hood, and the Oud is the instrument of our homelands, Sudan and Palestine.

semi serious question.

I stumbled onto my local metro area's reddit while trying to look up some historical photos and stared into the abyss for a few mins.

I resisted the urge to leave libreddit and make an account just to reply but, I ran into this post that is basically complaining about having a car in one of the most central neighborhoods in the city, and asking for advice on getting off street parking (in reality, anything that isn't an overpriced surface lot that offers no protection is going to be quite a hike away from their apartment, there's no way this will work out).

They claim they work in X first ring suburb where "there are no buses" and that's why they have to have this car, which is hilarious because they could one seat ride to half of that suburb in under half an hour from a bus that leaves from their front door. the other half it'd be a 2 seat ride but still under 45 mins, and obviously way cheaper than a car. There are also plenty of neighborhoods they could move to that would have less breakins and cheap off street parking, but they seem convinced that's not the case.

But I digress.

The fellow ers in there commiserating about how horribly expensive off street parking is (in a neighborhood that is basically in downtown) got me thinking... If we can't get city governments to do shit about on street parking and massively unsafe roads, is allowing the street to be so unappealing to park on that people have to actually pay for their giant waste of precious urban land, a viable option to improve things?

this expectation that you should be able to just leave your 2 ton death box lying around in public anywhere for any length of time and nobody will so much as touch it doesn't apply to any other kind of property (just look at bike theft), and it really fucks with people when you violate that. I feel like that's a usable weapon, in a way, against gentrification and car dependency and traffic violence.

Were kia boys doing praxis?

On July 27, workers, descendants of the strikers, and the local labor community came together at Wabun Park in Minneapolis to honor the 90th anniversary of the 1934 Truckers’ Strike that brought Minneapolis to a standstill and served as a spark for radical and militant labor struggle across the country.

The strike lasted about three months, as Teamsters Local 574 truckers demanded a fair wage and official recognition of the union. The trucking companies had the support of the Citizens Alliance, an anti-trade union organization that sought to break the strike. The strike’s impact reverberated throughout the city, bringing much of the Minneapolis economy to a halt.

After reaching an agreement, the trucking companies did not honor the terms and workers returned to the streets. On July 20, 1934, the Minneapolis police attacked and opened fire on picketers in the streets of the Warehouse District. Police shot 67 strikers and killed two, Henry Ness and John Belor. The deadly police attack became known as “Bloody Friday.” On July 24, 1934, about 100,000 people lined the streets to honor Henry Ness’ funeral procession in Minneapolis.

Unicorn Riot heard from two grandchildren of Henry Ness and other descendants of the 1934 strike during the anniversary. More: https://unicornriot.ninja/2024/the-90th-anniversary-of-the-1934-truckers-strike-honors-minneapolis-militant-labor-history/

These fucking dipshits lol, its winter, so the trees are missing leaves and there's coal smog on everything, which was in wide use in the west just as it was in the east because it was cheap and domestically abundant. The reason it held on longer in the east after reunification is because the east was economically hollowed out and coal continued to be cheap compared to retrofitting in modern heating.

Here's a picture from the late 60s(?) that's not in winter (though it unfortunately frames out the large trees that are visible in the foreground of the reddit OP):

One near me is having an issue with rats. I think really they just need better trash pickup mainly, and better shelters in general, but they've specifically asked for help getting rat poison. Would bait boxes with poison even make a dent in an outdoor environment like that? I can't singlehandedly improve the cleanliness of the camp or get everyone rat-proof shelter obviously, but I feel like just going straight for the poison could have adverse consequences and not be effective, potentially.

reinventing commie blocks from first principles with five-over-one characteristics

I'll still take it