Are the troops going to actually raid South Chicago and take out gangsters and drug kingpins door-to-door, or are they going to slowly drive their Hummers up and down Michigan Avenue and occasionally kidnap somebody's maid or cook?
Software guy and nerdy digital artist from Halifax Nova Scotia. He did Bloomsday Halifax and Starshipsstarthere.
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Are the troops going to actually raid South Chicago and take out gangsters and drug kingpins door-to-door, or are they going to slowly drive their Hummers up and down Michigan Avenue and occasionally kidnap somebody's maid or cook?
Paul Wells may lean conservative, but that's not keeping him from continuing to kick Poilievre around the block, just like he did during the election. "I think he may be superbly trained for a task that is no longer the challenge at hand." open.substack.com/pub/paulwell...
Austrians will complain "foreigners don't learn German" but by this they never mean the white Brits, Americans etc who have lived here for 10+ years and can barely order a beer but they definitely do mean Turks, Bosnians etc who actually do speak German, just with an accent and grammatical errors
I think AI coding assistants would probably still be taking off; we probably wouldn't be calling them AI but "generative coding" or something like that; and AI image generation would probably still be out there but not being commercialized or promoted as much, mostly a hobbyist thing
I hypothesize that if the end of the zero-interest-rate policy era hadn't led to a funding cliff in the early part of this decade, causing OpenAI to pivot to creating and releasing ChatGPT as a product, there would still not be a large number of highly commercialized chatbots out there
I wonder how different the reaction to AI might have been if we hadn't just been through several years of obvious and increasingly sweaty "solution in search of a problem" hype with blockchain and crypto.
Really taken with the idea of someone at an Oasis show, sometime on this tour, learning that Donald Trump has died by having Noel announce the news and then being like "right, then, this one's called 'Some Might Say.'"
I'm more of an Eta Carinae guy but yeah
This was good, like a digest version of her book "A Paradise Built In Hell". It skips mentioning the Halifax Explosion, which had been in the book, but makes up for it by bringing up someone actually named Halifax (I looked them up to see if there was a local connection, maybe Shambhala, but no)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filling an IV bag from a murky puddle near Trump National's sixth tee. "The president needs parameciums," he tells the assembled media. "It's the only treatment proven to work in real testing." His golf cart is piled high with dozens of dead birds.
On Saturday we went on a last minute whim to the Sensea Nordic Spa near Chester. We managed to catch the only rain for weeks but it was still a relaxing time. Then yesterday we went to Carbon Arc for a festival of cat videos. It's been a good end to the summer!
There's something really funny about how Gen Z has realised that all you have to do is film yourself making shocked faces and mouthing WOOOOW to hit songs from the 70s and 80s and put it on YT and it's basically a free money transfer service from boomers
Thatās interesting! I just did some googling and apparently her maiden voyage is leaving New York on September 5th, so this isnāt an official cruise yet. Which I think makes it even more likely that it couldāve indeed have been Richard Branson!
one of his cruise ships is visiting halifax for the first time today, so that seems slightly more likely than any other day :) (apparently it's a more sustainable ship, which seems a bit hopeful)
Pretty sure Richard Branson walked by me on the Halifax Waterfrontāor it was a really convincing lookalike.
Alex Robert Ross does an impressive reckoning with the Hip and their legacy in todayās Pitchfork Sunday Review. Lots of context for less-familiar readers and thoughtful insights and observations for the long-time runners. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...
Dear Americans, welcome to the thrilling game of āDid this dictator die or just disappear for a day?ā Weāve been playing it with Putin and Lukashenko for decades. Enjoy the suspense.
she said that āblackā with a hard r
Truth. Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
I see the "do construction on every block downtown" plan is coming along well. Next up, blame the resulting traffic mess on bike lanes
Itāll be fun if the midterms are a world historical wipeout for trumpism and we get to absolutely wipe the slate clean in every american institution that decided to comply with the fascists. Iām not really expecting it, but it would be fun.
Tesla's p/e ratio is 205. Trump Media is 199 Palantir is 527 (!) For comparison Apple is 35. Meta is 27. Amazon is 35. Nvidia is 65. It's a cult.
Ryan Gosling in a great-looking flight jacket? Sold! My boy Ryan has a knack for jackets doesn't he?
need people to stop making technology inspired by Star Trek (smooth, sleek, no buttons, all screen, voice activation, extremely minimal, wireless) and start making technology inspired by Star Wars (clunky buttons, indicator lights on everything, ugly, indestructible, fat cables that emit steam)
Monarez is playing her weak hand perfectly, and should be a model for institutional resistance for the next four years: 1. Make them fire you 2. Donāt go along to get along 3. Donāt apologize, have confidence in your own integrity and the importance of your role 4. Always escalate the conflict
So yeah it turns out people have always been like this, just social media made it more obvious. It used to be you needed to be a published author to face this stuff, but now everyone can experience it. Progress!
So the small business woman who made Taylor's engagement ring is entirely sold-out of all her pieces of course. Imagine telling group chat your engagement ring is by the lady who did Taylor's š®āšØš®āšØš®āšØ No price too high artifexfine.com
Some people are like this with guitars. Wouldn't the world be a better place if these folks had that many guitars instead of guns? (Also if someone breaks in you could still really hurt them with a heavy Les Paul)
The thing with this smoke smell is it's apocalyptic while also bringing up cozy memories of campfires and fireplaces
Been hearing about the erratic and confusing actions of the Dalhousie administration in their labour dispute and I'm seriously wondering if they've been using ChatGPT for their strategy. That disconnected and inconsistently arbitrary vibe feels very LLM. Like an uncanny valley of labour relations.
They're totally going to use the tank at the Davis Cup.
I stand corrected!
I was briefly freaked out by this but then remembered the NS Liberals have like 3 seats and this is just a publicity stunt
It's hard to really describe the converging threads of sheer power and timing in Taylor Swift + Travis Kelce getting together at this point in very heights of respective career tracks. The larger business machinery and power-families behind them meshing together. These are still YOUNG professionals.
Look what they did to Notepad. Shut the fuck up. This is Notepad. You are not welcome here. Oh yeah "Let me use Copilot for Notepad". "I'm going to sign into my account for Notepad". What the fuck are you talking about. It's Notepad.
So upset that the city didn't buy even just the corner of that lot so they could finally fix that intersection.
Their kid is gonna turn out to be the Kwisatz Haderach
Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldnāt write it
"The Republicans are in the moral wilderness and have finally hit bottom and will turn things around" has been the median pundits' position for my entire adult life.
Previously this situation had been solved by, among other things, UofT students jumping on horses and rushing to Niagara, and the government providing south-Quebec farmers with high powered "hunting" rifles. Those solutions might not work so well this time.
One of the worst things about the current situation in the US is how much the representatives of one of the great republics of world history are sucking up to their senile Dear Leader in the most pathetic and humiliating ways possible
Today Taylor Swift accomplished something no AI researcher ever could (made an announcement without posting on X)
If they end up having a child it's gonna be the Kwisatz Haderach
Apple September event invites have officially gone out
Finally finished Andrew Cuomoās scavenger hunt first thing this morning. It took a while because all the clues were about letting old people die of Covid. Fortunately there were still a couple dozen unsold copies of some old Sandra Lee cookbooks and a gym bag full of funny money from Scores.
Smelling it right now but it comes and goes depending on the wind direction. One good thing about the pandemic is it's much easier to find N95 masks. We still have a whole bunch at home, and a lot of my jackets still have one in a pocket somewhere
Definitely one of the dumber ways we've spent money, but thankfully they're all this stupid and there are like five more coming.
Well, the meeting is done. Coun. Trish Purdy wouldnāt answer my questions Halifax Regional Police are here.
Boy howdy, this administration sure loves targeting accomplished black women, and those women's white coworkers and peers sure love letting it happen. (See also: Muriel Bowser, Karen Bass, Barbara Lee, the DOGE firings ...)
Switch to bonds and stable dividend stocks and maybe even gold everyone - the game's on sale again!
Kahless tells us that where your journey takes you is less important than who you are when you get there. Be true, warrior, and be glorious no matter your destination.
S4E11 "The Comeback Kid" had me weeping in laughter
I literally have an app for that www.halifaxexaminer.ca/arts-and-cul...
The boardwalk doesn't seem to have proper supports or interactions with the surroundings. If you zoom in on where it ends up there are weird shapes that don't really make sense.
"Mayor does town halls with city's most fiscally irresponsible districts to talk about fiscal responsibility in other, more responsible districts that pay for everything" is a look.
"Most Americans wanted little to do with this faction until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected Black and Brown voting enabled the businessmen who hated regulation and taxes to mobilize racists."
It should be illegal to close the MacKay Bridge during daylight hours. Itās not just that you really need two lanes of traffic each way to and from Dartmouth, but just how awful North Street is at handling the entirety of Dartmouth-bound traffic.
Lists are your friend. Organize by level of positivity/negativity. Back in 2016 in the other place I had a list called "Screaming" that I could dip into whenever I felt strong enough, but I spent more time in lists with constructive, positive responses
Itās more like a kind of ānational socialismā if you will
That's basically what he's doing in his press conference, not that I expect many of the people performatively dunking with "elbows down š¤Ŗ" to deign to notice it.
While dropping some of these retaliatory tariffs is probably a good idea in the big picture, it would be great if Carney could do and then broadcast some even simply performative "elbows up" stuff, just to keep us in fighting spirits.
When I lived in Ohio, I always confused Cracker Barrel with Der Dutchman, though I never went to either of them, though I heard good things about Dutchman. I liked Bob Evan's, though their early 2000s redesign took away a bunch of the charm
Good morning Nova Scotia!
In the same time span that the NYT sat on the whole "yeah, we WATCHED staffers hand out envelopes full of cash at rallies" thing, how many pieces did they run on what a teenaged Zohran Mamdani put on his college application?
So @christhompson.bsky.social from Defector has the definitive take on this defector.com/never-attemp... The comments are also gold: "they must have misunderstood the American idiom 'Cash in your chips'"
As the AI bubble starts to burst, I am hoping the tech and finance worlds can focus on the true future of technology: buying and selling digital pictures of apes in funny outfits for several hundred thousand dollars
The Directors Label by PALM was a short lived DVD collection of the very best film/music directors and curated their best most well known works alongside lesser seen curios. Inspiring and very much recommended. The internet Archive has the seven volumes here for free: archive.org/details/@dir...
Some incredibly good news: One year ago this week, The Onion returned to print. In that one year, weāve grown to the 13th largest print newspaper in the United States, just ahead of the Boston Globe, and growing fast. In short, itās working. Soā¦ thank you. Thank you for helping save this thing.
Speaking as a Chinese person, in the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of bribery.
TBH "Minister of AI" was already pretty cringe the day it was announced
Like with the dot bomb and crypto collapse, for the next year or so we'll be seeing slower-moving or oblivious companies and governments making big excited statements about their new AI initiatives. How long is Canada still going have a "Minister of AI"? Long enough to be embarrassing, probably.
It never fails. The people who say thereās a ābike lobbyā pulling the strings in city government almost always have a direct line to City Hall the bike advocates only wish they had! Itās all a giant act of projection.
Guy who gets bribed at Fogo de ChĆ£o only the money is stuffed in the picanha and the server has to slowly slice a little bit off at a time to reveal the hidden wad of cash and then the guy has to pull out the little envelope using the provided metal tongs.
As the AI bubble pops people are going to start noticing that's Apple's half-assed approach was actually a great strategy. Do enough to stay on trend and keep the shareholders happy-ish, but don't bet the company on it. Soon they'll be able to pick up some cheap leftovers to build some real features
So as far as I can tell this bribe was only like $200 - which doesn't seem like very much for NYC in 2025. Maybe it was supposed to be the first of many? But as an opening offering it still seems kind of puny. If you want to buy me off, it's going to have to be at least 4 figures!
It's Joever. Various old men that look and sound like Dracula are complaining that A.I. talent is taking away from what's most important: shareholder buybacks. This is what they start doing when they are tired of whatever dog and pony show a company is doing. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...
For all the retro font lovers out there, this dot matrix font fucks so hard!
ChatGPT is like an invention that exists on the wrong side of that hypothetical.
There's a long running Sci Fi idea where if you can just solve the energy problem then you can make huge technological leaps because you can suddenly brute-force solutions to problems, like solving water access by distilling sea water (a hideously inefficient process).
Oof that particular font choice and drop shadow just zapped me back to 2000 again, running Adobe ImageReady on a PowerBook G3
Tempted to be "that guy" and bring him a copy of his play "Aunt Dan & Lemon" to sign
NOTE: Councillors Kathryn Morse, Sam Austin, Shawn Cleary, Laura White, Virginia Hinch, and Jean St-Amand voted against funding the Davis Cup.
More fun: this feels like people are finally figuring out how to use A.I. tools for interesting creative purposes rather than just slop. youtu.be/Z8J02fFc3tk?... (It helps that it's funny)
Finally some smart (if dense) thoughts about LLMs www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang... All that theory I had to read in my literature degree has turned out to be surprisingly useful for understanding LLMs - it's Text all the way down!
Last time I was at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, they had the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership on full display in the special Afro-futurism exhibit and it was fucking awesome. I'm starting to think that the president has never actually visited the museum!
Like you I've seen all the pics people post here abt the steady increase of tacky gold crap he keeps adding to the oval office. But somehow it wasn't until I saw this picture that it just hit me. What the actual fuck. Like a Vegas whorehouse.
I love to show up every day for my job, which is standing around holding the front of my tactical vest and getting told to choke to death by thousands of passers-by while 11 of my coworkers handcuff a roofer on his way to work. Every night I drive 80 minutes home, thinking about nothing at all.
Anyone else notice Trumpās lightbulb moment when he repeated that Ukraine canāt have an election during a war. I did not enjoy that moment, especially as a Canadian.
By treating him as though he has unlimited powers and his very word is law, they collaborate in handing him those powers. When in fact, as I just replied to someone about those courts, "His overall win rate is currently 17 percent...." thehill.com/opinion/whit...
I wish newspapers wouldn't treat all these executive orders as though they all have teeth and power and stuff. Lots of them are just the fulminations of a geriatric clown and mean nothing or will be overturned in court or are just distractions from what Trump wants to hide about his Epstein crimes.
In a decade or so a bunch of people are going to express shock and dismay at what happened in these places and try to pretend they had no idea what kinds of things were going on
Flight attendants work long hard hours, many of them unpaid, doing work that has lost the social cachet that was supposed to counterbalance the poor compensation. And we need to address the industryās broken paradigm, which one strike and one arbitration cannot resolve.
I think this was, back in the day, referred to as "canoodling"
During COVID lockdown I created an entire series of handcrafted web development classes on YouTube and they got next to no views - in fact the only interaction one of them had was some rando commenting "Bruh zero views after a year" It's hard to break in even if you work at it. If you don't ā¦
"Better at turning difficult literature into a text adventure" is maybe not the trillion-dollar civilization-changing achievement they were probably aiming for, but hey it works for me. LLMs are actually useful for some things - not as much as the hype suggests, it still useful!
Lots of talk about how flawed / underwhelming the new GPT5 is, but I tried it out with my "James Joyce's Ulysses as a Text Adventure" GPT and it was massively better than the GPT4 version. The tone was better, it included many more elements from the text, and didn't veer off into generic slop.