Lately I've been reading a lot of fiction online, and decided to contribute a bit. I think I did well?
Lately I've been reading a lot of fiction online, and decided to contribute a bit. I think I did well?
Later, the historians would call these times The Golden Era of the New Galactic Republic. The Sith were definitively defeated, their feeble vessels perishing in the anti-matter fire of precision Jedi strikes. The wannabe copycats destroyed themselves from the inside, petty infighting turning what could have been an unstoppable war machine into a strategic joke. Republic's citizens were enjoying prosperity, democracy and freedom in equal parts.
Alas, not all was well. The minions of the dark side scattered and found shelter on the Peripheral Worlds, outside of the tender embrace of the Republic. Scheming, planning their revenge. Stripped of the military power, they turned to deceit and trickery to bring woe and ruin on the defenders of galactic freedom. In their hateful minds a devilish plot was concocted, aimed at draining the Republic of its most valuable asset: the people. For there is no king without subjects, nor there is a senate without people to represent.
And so, the agents of the dark side sought to lure the people of the Republic by turning the forsaken Peripheral Worlds into shining jewels of prosperity. They built the leading schools and universities to trick the gullible youth away from the traditional values of Freedom and Democracy. They offered free medical care to the old and sick to destroy the Republic's medical sector and ruin its numerous shareholders. They offered lucrative jobs to the poor and unemployed to strip the Republic of its industrial workforce. And as a final insult to those loyal citizens who chose to remain, they started buying goods from the Republic, buying so much that even the richest citizens of the only true democracy in the galaxy wouldn't have enough luxuries to fill their homes with.
That couldn't stand. In the unprecedented move, Chancellor Sp'ades in his first public address announced creation of the Trade Enforcement Agency and its enforcement branch Corps of Unilateral Protection. The agency would be led by Doggo Goodboy whose distinguished career traced all the way back to the Old Republic and Trade Federation. Chancellor's PR representative described Mr. Goodboy as the embodiment of traditions of freedom and democracy and a fearless leader who is all bite and barely any bark.
Only days later, Mr. Goodboy announced that his agency will ensure that for every galactic credit of goods shipped to the Peripheral Worlds, the New Republic would purchase at least 1.3106 galactic credits worth of goods from the Peripheral Worlds to guarantee that welfare accumulation happens on the right side of freedom. He reminded that TEA is empowered to send in the elite CUP units to facilitate goods and population acquisition and transfer, should Republic's trade partners put up unfair and exploitative obstacles to the free trade.
Later that day, Chancellor Sp'ades addressed the Senate, announcing Order 67, which established the free citizen's obligations with regards to the minimal amount of goods purchased from the Peripheral Worlds for coming financial year, and placing additional responsibilities on CUP to perform spot checks ensuring that the goods were actually present on premises of the purchaser. He reminded the senators of the unparalleled dominance of the Republic's true free economy and unacceptable exploitation its industries were subjected to by the dusty dirtballs that call themselves Peripheral Worlds Or Something. The order stirred a lot of controversy and fierce opposition with Senate members pointing out additional storage costs the order would place on the population, and the negative effect it would have on the government's affordable housing budget. The tension was resolved when the Order was later amended to offer an Excessive Goods Removal program for families struggling with the storage space, TEA agents additionally tasked with inspecting family homes and removing least space-efficient goods free of charge.
The New Galactic Republic citizens are now eagerly awaiting the fall of the corrupt regimes of the Peripheral Worlds.
I’ve been enabling XCompose on all my Linux machines and WinCompose on (guess what) Windows for the express purpose of typing m-dashes. But maybe I’ve been an AI all along, you’ll never know
https://drupal.community/@mikemccaffrey/114368157577514301
We've created a society where being confidently wrong pays better than being cautiously right. Is it any wonder we're drowning in bullshit merchants?
Modernizing an Enigma Machine
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/modernizing-an-enigma-machine/
Made this picture in 2019, updated just now with 2025. Can you guess what’s the next step will be?
A happy Japanese pun from
https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/1jyr6ci/transitioning_from_oop/mn5zgcd/
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Fun fact from Japan! We have a saying "郷に入っては郷に従え" (gō ni itte wa gō ni shitagae) which is our version of "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." Here "郷" (gō) means "village" or "hometown" - equivalent to "Rome" in the English proverb.
The funny part - in Japanese, "郷" (gō) sounds exactly like "Go"! So Go programmers here often joke: "Goに入ってはGoに従え" (Go ni itte wa Go ni shitagae) or "When in Go-land, follow Go's ways." A perfect bilingual pun that just works!
An early version of AI by CatGPT
- more CPU processors
- but very complex to install ...
Ideological purity is incompatible with understanding complexity.
On a broader note, today worldwide we are observing several practical demonstrations of why it's more important to vote for people with some sense of ethics than for jerks that say things you like.
Uspol
Uspol
Someone, please inform Trump that “America first” still implies “Earth is habitable” no matter what his buddy says about Mars colonization.
Does it make me old that it’s easier for me to type :) than go into the emoji keyboard and find the appropriate variant?
Who is this Chad Jippity fellow and why everyone keeps talking about him?
There is one kind of people I have no respect for: those who think they are always right. Doesn't matter why, be that God is on their side, or because they are the good guys, or because they are the smartest, bravest, or strongest, or even if it is because science agrees with them.
Nobody is ever perfect. Everyone can get better by recognizing mistakes and trying not to repeat them. But the moment you stop questioning yourself, you enter a death spiral of bad decisions and more bad decisions to cover them up.
You can fool yourself, you can fool people around you, for a while. But you can't fool the reality. The reality doesn't care that it would hurt your pride by not conforming to your ambitions. You might manage to die before the consequences catch up to you, but they will catch up to those you leave behind. Which isn't fair, but the reality doesn't care about fairness either.
Modded Minecraft be like
I don’t want AI to make me 10x more productive, I want it to give me Fridays off.
So often I run into a software footgun that has been created because it was the easiest way, and technically fits the requirements. And somehow authors often overlook the fact that it won't really serve the users as well, because they are not born with the intrinsic knowledge of where the footgun is and how to avoid it.
"But, if they hold it right, it will work!.."
something
Gary from IT is here to get rid of the bugs in your computer
Did you know? By replacing your coffee with green tea, you can lose up to 92% of what little joy you still have left in your life.
Here's a thing... If a person is known to be a shameless liar, no matter how similar their political views are to my own, there is no reason to believe they would stick to them when it's no longer convenient.
By the same token, if a person is a ruthless asshole, I'd rather not give them free rein to carry out something I am sympathetic to, because the next I may be the subject of their ruthlessness.
It's sad really, we desperately need the best people to lead us, but politics is so antithetical to ethics that truly wonderful people prefer to do other things.