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elfsternberg.bsky.social
Husband to a gorgeous wife, father to two great kids, greying leatherfairy, infamous furry, and world-class software engineer. If you can read this, you're running code I wrote.
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When people talk about the corrosive power of money in politics, they often don't think about it in these terms. But a *lot* of money in politics works exactly like this, less as bribe than protection money. And it's why politics so often favors status quo old guard bullies.

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

I have a lot of respect for Chali Tuna, he's one of the great voices of hip hop. But the squeaky clean, religiously tinted persona he showed when NPR interviewed him many years ago is belied by a lot of his older, rougher projects.

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

The intersection of a marketing choice in 1984, socioeconomic reality of 1985, and the commercialization of the internet 1993, led to the evolution of the internet as a commercial product being entirely in the hands of middle class white guys with no threat models.

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

"We can't have STANDARDS! Why, that might prevent some of us from getting away with rape and murder!"

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

Absolutely true. I've only ever felt unsafe on public transit twice. I was assaulted by a white woman. And I spent an uncomfortable 15 minutes being yelled at by a white guy because I told him, one man to another, that he shouldn't talk that way to a woman. (He was being very harassing.)

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Grief, I could have sex in that thing even at my age!

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Gack. "A common technique for handling Signals in Rust is start a thread and mask all other threads to block Signals. The signal-handling thread opens a Unix pipe to itself and spawns a pipe-listening thread. Every signal puts a message on the pipe's queue and resets. The listening thread then..."

submitted 3 hours ago • 2 comments

So this is the windpower project that Bill Gates is backing. I dunno; that seems like a lot more hardware that will need maintaining, and since it's designed to scale by increasing the size of the runner that means that when one goes down it ALL goes down. youtu.be/a5dpUT289_s?...

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

Ukranian drone pilots shift their priorities to, predictably, command and control centers for Russian drones and missiles, rather than ground forces. www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-new-...

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

"Tiny anime girl cyberprison" sounds like the premise of a bad William Gibson pastiche. www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/...

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

Any article that "explains" the cost difference in charging your EV vs gassing up an equivalent (in capacity) ICV (internal combustion vehicle) and does not make a distinction between home charging (cheapest, least stressful on the car) and public charging (pricier, shortens battery life) fails.

submitted 11 hours ago • 4 comments

This is a good thing for everyone involved except the shareholders of private prison corporations, and the citizens of state governments where their contract requires a minimum number of inmates. The only way to meet that quota is more draconian sentences. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

The Department of Energy says that oil consumption will peak and start to collapse in the next five years. The Secretary of Energy says that's "nonsense" and will "disadvantage populations that want a high-energy lifestyle." Uh... solar? www.axios.com/2025/06/25/c...

submitted 12 hours ago • 1 comment

Microsoft notices that it somehow failed to include a console-based editor with 64-bit Windows, re-writes the MS-DOS `edit` program in Rust, releases a Linux-compatible copy. Looks so much like the original I had flashbacks.

submitted 12 hours ago • 1 comment

The Republican Administration announces that the headquarters for the National Science Foundation will now be a palace for the sinecure from Housing and Urban Development. It will be remodeled to include a private dining room, secure parking for his five cars. www.alxnow.com/2025/06/24/r...

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

"The organizers are now trying to explain that they only meant to be homophobic, not racist. 'Leadership's saying that this event was for "white straight people only" does not align with the organizations values.'" ROFL. www.kivitv.com/eagle/organi...

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

The Republican Administrations says strikes set Iran's nuclear program back "decades." Two intel reports say it's more like "a few months." The right is split between "it's all lies" and "execute the officers who lied about the bunker busters' effectiveness." www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/...

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

Stochastic terrorist rolls the dice: www.joemygod.com/2025/06/kirk...

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

The Republican Administration, through its Department of Health and Human Services, seeks to ensure every American is tracked 24 hours a day with active biomonitors. Special scrutiny will be given to fertile women: gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-wants...

submitted 12 hours ago • 1 comment

"Liberals" would insist on better work clothes for those poor ladies. They either go through a lot of sunscreen, or they develop a lot of skin cancer. Those shoes look very uncomfortable for a quarry site. Where is OSHA in all of this?

submitted 17 hours ago • 1 comment

Meanwhile, on the Big Beautiful Bill, @ryanlcooper.com points out that the one big area where energy tax credits are actually expanded is in ethanol and biofuels, which is demonstrably worse for climate change and a horrible use of land: prospect.org/politics/202...

submitted 18 hours ago • 17 comments

submitted 18 hours ago • 48 comments

And this is the future Republicans are engineering right here and now, so:

submitted 18 hours ago • 2 comments

I came across a note in my vast horde about early Blue Sky funding stories in the news. I wish I could find the original article, because it says that experience with Tumblr shows that advertisers don't want sites that are mostly liberal.

submitted 17 hours ago • 1 comment

Okay, DJ Earworm, where did this come from? This was one song on a "generated for you" playlist from Spotify I used for workouts many many years ago. Why my brain resurrected at this morning is beyond me. youtu.be/_MHXtfJV9a8?...

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

I really dislike my brain's constant trying to create overlap between M3GAN, Battle Angel Alita, and Ochaco Uraraka.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

EA to Steam: "I have updated the integrated launcher. Pray I do not update it further." The new Star Wars game no longer loads and runs, as of two weeks ago. Sigh.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

@delong.social wrote: "An LLM is nothing more than a distilled matrix of values that represent words." An LLM is not, has no way to evolve into, and cannot be examined to determine if it can, be a distilled matrix of numerical values that represent human values.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Whoa, I come back from lunch to discover that Monster (monster-dot-com), the resume website, has gone under. End of an era.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

"The New Apostolic movement bills itself as 'a movement of independent apostles and prophets that seeks to control all of US culture, including the government. But what are 'apostles' and 'prophets?' Here's a handy mnemonic: whenever you see those words, replace them with 'dungeon master.'" Ouch!

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Political violence is on the rise; with one exception, all of it is driven by right-wing ideologies. That exception is the largest source, though: local issues, such as road projects or water rights. bridgingdivides.princeton.edu/threats-and-...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

The Republican Administration says that "there are numerous interpretations of NATO Article 5," the mutual-and-collective defense clause in the NATO Treaty, and refuses to say whether or not it intends to remain a member of NATO. www.politico.eu/article/dona...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Trump Says "Biden Let In A Lot Of Supercells." I think MAGA should totally take this as confirmation that the government controls the weather. www.joemygod.com/2025/06/trum...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments