Flutterby™! (short)

Me too, air fryer. Sigh.

Sign reads "I'm dirty, I'm noisy, but I work and I'm free".

Boulder Cast: A Complete Failure of Winter Across the West — And What It Means for the Rest of 2026

A stubborn North American dipole pattern locked into place: a deep, frigid trough dominating the eastern U.S. while a warm, bloated ridge camped over the West or just offshore. La Niña helped tilt the scales, but the dipole did the heavy lifting. The result was astonishing, historic, and frankly unsettling. Entire western states logged their warmest winter on record. Meanwhile, the East endured weeks‑long cold snaps not seen in decades, with snow and ice reaching the Gulf Coast and Deep South. Coastal North Carolina has seen more snow than Denver. Parts of Florida have out‑snowed Salt Lake City. That’s how upside‑down this season has been.</blockquot>

I don't know why this particular image makes me giggle like it does, but ‪Pickl es!‬ ‪@misterpickleman.bsky.social‬:

Post a meme made by you.

One of the things about being conscious of automobile statistics is just how hard it is to do things like find what to normalize against, and understand error and biases and all of that, so the caveat to this is that the Cybertruck's sales numbers are so abysmally low that it's really hard to extrapolate from 5 reported fire fatalities, one of which was a suicide, but: Fuelarc: It’s Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto.

I'm not sure I can actually follow on BlueSky because frankly I have enough of "holy shit the world is fucked up" right now, especially since his beat is Southern California, and it's not like I need regular reminders that the LAPD and LACSD are criminal enterprises, but...

LAPD Quietly Admits At Least One Of Its Officers In A “Law Enforcement Gang”

Disabled on Paper, Skydiving in Practice: LAPD Officer Charged With Disability Fraud

Read NPR's annotated fact check of President Trump's State of the Union.

Via

US District Couirt, Southern District of West Virgina, Charleston division: Eduardo Tinajero Rodriguez v Christopher Mason et al, Civil Action No. 2:26-cv-00122:

The Respondents did attach a document to their Response purporting to show minor convictions for marijuana possession in 2009. The Petitioner was four years old in 2009, and the Respondent indicated that the document was supplied by ICE and likely presumed to relate to the Petitioner because the individual in those records had the same name, despite the differences in birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names, and immigration status. This sloppiness further validates the Court’s concerns about the procedures utilized by the Respondents depriving people present in the United States of their liberty.

As Gavin Newsom continues his run for Trump's position, against people who are actually running for, you know, President, it's good to be reminded of who the slimeball really is:

Gawker: Remember When... 38-Year-Old Gavin Newsom Dated a Republican Teen

He brought her to the symphony after apparently disguising her age on Myspace

By way of Just Some Guy ‪@justsomeguy11.bsky.social‬ who noted:

The guy that fucked a 19 year old when he was 38 and owns a wine bar where the tables spell out the word "sex" is a weird terf? Color me surprised!

WSJ on MSN: Americans are leaving the US in record numbers

Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus—negative net migration—as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.

Direct WSJ link, both via.

If the bullshit coming out of Kansas right now isn't making you go "holy fuck", the idea that federal prison officials are blatantly disregarding judicial orders is...

Law Dork: Breaking: Trans inmate's lawyers claim "egregious retaliation" in violation of court order

Trans woman involved in a lawsuit challenging anti-trans policies says federal prison official told her on Feb. 22: “I don’t give a fuck what that judge says, I do what I want.”

Via.

This MeFi comment from caviar2d2. So much good in it, but:

So with AI entering the picture the worldview of your average programmer goes from "I don't love this company and the business part of it, but at least I get to solve fun puzzles" to "oh, I don't get to solve the puzzles anymore, what the hell is this all about" and a sudden reckoning with what a moral stain it is to be writing code...

and:

My wife put it really well over drinks last week:

"AI turns idiots in the workplace from a distraction into a menace." Every now seems as smart as everyone else unless you lock them in a Faraday cage and force them to explain themselves. And the smart people are getting dumber every day.

Voice teacher suggested we try Moody's Mood For Love, the sheet music version is Amy Winehouse's version, and... holy crap do the producer and I have ... different visions.

Hope someone else follows the same sheet music structure so I don't have to listen to that percussion over and over...

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal from June 20, 2017 nails the ChatGPT girlfriend experience.

Network Working Group Request for Comments: 406i — BOFH — The Rejection of Artificially Generated Slop (RAGS) [ERROR 406i: AI_SLOP_DETECTED]

You were sent here because your contribution triggered our automated and/or manual AI Slop defenses. Specifically, a human maintainer or senior engineer looked at your submission, experienced a profound existential sigh, initiated an immediate socket closure on your contribution, and pasted this URI.

Via.

MeFi user notoriety public

Omelas Council: "We have created a beautiful society that requires only that a single child suffers."

Techbros: "Have you tried using more?"

Ya know when you see something that's definitely there to troll the older generation, like Tide Pod challenge or whatever? This is so fucking stupid I can't believe it's actually real, on the other hand it is the 2020s, so "so fucking stupid" is completely believable. GQ: What is Bonesmashing? Inside the Extreme Looksmaxxer Technique

As looksmaxxing enters our lexicon, the practice of bonesmashing—tapping your face with a hammer to shape your bone structure—is trailing close behind.

"Retrophrenology" was supposed to be a joke. Although this also probably isn't de- douchebagifying the incels, so, yeah, doesn't work in practice either.

Via Charlie Stross.

Should probably make a note of this, 'cause it's everywhere right now: Gizmodo: Meta Exec Learns the Hard Way That AI Can Just Delete Your Stuff

One small trick to get you to inbox zero.

TechCrunch: A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox.

The X/Twitter post/thread that describes the thing, there are alt links in the Gizmodo text.

The saddest thing about this is the anthropomorphization in the follow-up screencap, with any sort of sense that the LLM has "learned" anything.

Podcasting Isn't Video- First

A recent study by Triton Digital says 80% of those surveyed consume podcasts both in audio and video. But only 7% only consume the video.

I am surprised that the video consumption is that high.

Daniel P. Huffman @pinakographos@mapstodon.space has a warning to Adobe InDesign users to double-check all of the AI generated content, including image alt text that you might not have known was even there.

Hot on the heels of Goldman Sachs announcing an AI-free index fund (Pivot to AI on the topic), AI Added ‘Basically Zero’ to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

Briggs’ colleague, Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, said in an interview with the Atlantic Council that AI investment spending has had “basically zero” contribution to the U.S. GDP growth in 2025.

“We don’t actually view AI investment as strongly growth positive,” said Hatzius. “I think there’s a lot of misreporting, actually, of the impact AI investment had on U.S. GDP growth in 2025, and it’s much smaller than is often perceived.”

Some of this is that the value of the excess manufacturing accruing to Taiwan and Korea.