Sounds like the beginning of the Cory Doctorow novella “Unauthorized Bread.” Cloud service goes down and the main character’s toaster won’t work without them.

I’m glad to hear you’re moving forward with better understanding of how your brain functions and (hopefully) how to address some of the challenges that can present.

Please don’t insult sex workers by comparing them with billionaires.

If I pay a stripper she’ll give me a lap dance. The terms of the deal are straightforward. If I give a billionaire money they’ll just fuck me over and ask for more money.

Group therapy has been shown to be as effective as one-on-one therapy for a lot of people. It’s worth it to try just a couple times.

If he was Epstein Netflix would have written off the money and given him some c-suite no-show job to keep him quiet.

I’ll have to check out Swindled. +1 for 404 Media and Better Offline.

You can always listen to the weekly omnibus episode that only has ad breaks between each full segment. Or get good with your skip forward button.

Not just Evans, but Mia, Gar (sp?), James, and their other contributors.

Behind the Bastards

BtB’s counterpart, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

If Books Could Kill

You’re Wrong About

Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

The Dollop

Depresh Mod

The Daily Zeitgeist

Oh, you say genocide and use of starvation as a weapon of war is against international law too? WE CANNOT HAVE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ISRAEL QUESTIONED.

Yeah, he has the ability to articulate what I was already thinking about LLMs and bring in hard data to back up his thesis that it’s all bullshit. Dangerous and expensive bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

It’s really sad that his willingness to say the tech industry is full of shit is such an unusual attribute in the tech journalism world.

When I was a kid public and semi-public pools would have signs that said “welcome to our ool. Notice there is no P in it. Please keep it that way.”

Years later it occurred to me it might make more sense to have a sign that said “welcome to our L. Notice there is no poo in it.” And so on.

It depends on a number of factors.

How thorough is the isolation/how “high” are the walls? Can I perceive the world outside the walls in any way?

How good is the propaganda?

Do I have anything to lose other than my life? Do I have a community I care about within the city? A family? Children?

A recent episode of The House of Pod podcast included a virologist and an ER doctor (the host is a gastroenterologist) and they talked about measles and the potential lifelong effects that a non-fatal case can cause, like blindness or deafness. They also contrast with the efficacy of the vaccine, the virologist got checked before going to SE Asia and despite her last MMR dose being in the 90s she had enough antibodies that her doctor said she didn’t need a booster. She went on to talk about how while measles has mutated it has not changed to bypass immunity.

The first message I got I asked if I knew them and got zero response.

Fair point, although the way things are going you might see investment in telecom connections between Africa, Europe, and Asia. Particularly with China pushing Belt and Road.

It would be hilarious if there started to be real competition in cloud services from nations in the global south, especially if they start innovating in a way that makes AWS/Azure/Google Cloud become low performance options.

If nothing else, real competition would make standards for cloud services more universal.

Who said anything about guns, or even violence?

“Jihad” means “struggle.” Mohammed once said the most difficult jihad was the one against ourselves, e.g. the struggle to be better people.

So a jihad for polar bears could mean throwing yourself into activism for the environment.

He played a very believable serial killer in Dexter, and before Third Rock From the Sun he was largely known for his dramatic roles.

I was going to say, I think I first saw this like a decade ago.