Paulina Borsook's 2000 masterpiece, "Cyberselfish," will be re-published in September with introduction by Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich

Is the modern world systematically destroying our capacity for deep thought and genuine connection?

A footnote from Sami Timimi's Searching for Normal : There is a habit of referring to oligarchs as the super-rich in countries we don't like, but not to extend a similar label to such a stratum in…

Chris Nixon posted bodycam video to Facebook showing him getting attacked by deputies with the Lyon County (Nevada) Sheriff’s Office. It showed a brutal attack by a heavily-tattooed and aggressive…

The new TA, if ratified, will bring to a close a nearly 3 month long strike

My N+1 said that they could see I was feeling emotional from the decisions taken in the office. The company hired an Indian person for our team, under the veil of "diversity" (throws glitters into…

I’m writing with a slight optimism right now, cause I have a feeling that the AI-madness and all the current dystopia is leading to a resurgence and increased interest in the poorly cared for…

There's an autism stereotype that just won't die, and it never stops bugging me. It's the idea that the "default" autistic person is a STEM person, while an autistic person in the arts or humanities…

The hidden cost of rituals in organising

I want to first state that I respect all religions. Everyone should have the rights to choose their religious beliefs (if it does not harm others). I do not hate people who follow Islam but a…

I don't know if anyone really wants to be a woman. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be a woman, and I'm even prouder to be a trans woman, but when people talk about transitioning they talk about it as…

There is a small genre of data-visualization writing whose whole purpose is to give readers vocabulary for the moves bad-faith presenters make. Nathan Yau's "Defense Against Dishonest…

I saw how NPR had a segment discussing, " The worrisome return of the R-Word, " late last month. It is a good listen and only 14 minutes long. The general idea is how the word, "Retarded," started…

I’ll write much more about design for birth and death in coming months — I have a fellowship next year and will teach two new courses on this subject — but this story nicely details the ways…

What can we do as individuals? Nothing, virtually nothing. We cannot influence in the decisions of our leaders, nor in the attitude of the gregarian crowds that they manage with maquiavelic…

Mmm hmm. Via: Daily Mail: An international team of scientists are working to develop a vaccine against deadly hantavirus after an outbreak of the rat-borne virus on luxury cruise ship left three…

5/8/2026, 11:16:00 AM I know this is one of those things like A.I. where everyone's like, yeah but what can you do, but at least do not forget that Substack is not responsible and not even neutral.…

Supreme court's Voting Rights Act ruling cited misleading data from DoJ “They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into…

Building a civic information economy, not cultures of extraction.

Last month, LEGO and BrickLink updated their terms and conditions impacting resellers and they received some backlash from it. They have recently sent out another email clarifying their stance. You…

In Australia, suicidal men who contact helplines for support are now automatically assumed to be perpetrators of domestic violence. It's a shocking manifestation of a feminist establishment, says…

One of the other librarians emailed this morning asking if the rest of us had gotten an email from an outfit called Librar Labs. We hadn't, but I looked them up. And yeah, this whole webpage can fuck…

This is only a hyprethetical scenerio to express what would proceed if the “Faust Baseline” framework was actually challenged in real time. The institutional player claims the category.…

I once worked on a project to bring inclusive-themed bench installations to a small municipality. The benches had an inscription on them and were painted bright colours. It was fun! The committee I…

It’s been a while since I wrote about how economist Julian Simon’s theories don’t work. I last wrote about him in Some thoughts and responses to Julian Simon about six months ago. I…

Locking up phones is raising students' moods -- but not their test scores.

Accelerationists believe that things have to get worse before they get better and that the faster things get worse, the sooner people will wake up and demand radical change. I've always been…

Has the consultant apologized yet?

For the last month or two I've been working on some new work for this group show at the fantastic Museum of Homelessness, opening on the 21st May. It's free and open for 10 weeks! Here's the details:…

Faced with the need to justify allocation of resources, how does a person who doesn't understand the decisions that were made respond? One approach would be to build relationships with stakeholders,…

Natural Worlds Sir David Attenborough, great naturalist and celebrated TV presenter, an indisputable “national treasure”, likes to use the phrase “the natural world”.[1] I have no objection to this…

The most human thing about us has always been our urge to build sanctuaries. Now coders, neuroscientists, and AI are helping us build them inside the machine — and the results are stranger and more…

Your regular reminder that shitting on OSS on social media is a selfish thing to do. Good job sapping volunteer maintainers' motivation in exchange for your "internet points". Next time: try rolling…

C’è una specie di convitato di pietra, nel dibattito furibondo sul caso di Delitto di Garlasco, ed è curioso che quasi nessuno sembri volerlo nominare apertamente. Il confronto pubblico procede ormai…

If you think your CTO is losing the fight on AI, get them to read this one. The CTO’s Incoming Storms Let me name the six conversations I’m watching land on CTOs right now, and the stance I’d want…

Want to get my easy to follow Tech Tips in your email? Sign up for my daily Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter! As you probably know by now, the scammers of the world are always coming up with new ways to…

Four states have purged Muslim voters by the millions. The states are West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Kerala. Forgive me the ... READ MORE

in 1995 knowing someone’s IP address was indeed exploitable, you could very easily find out their ISP, call them, and allege anything you want and they would disconnect you while they…

I. Not Causation, but Lowered ProtectionSuicide prevention has a language for contagion. It does not yet have an adequate language for what makes suicide imaginable before any specific crisis…

AI tools made developers more productive and less human. BCG calls it 'brain fry.' The science has a longer name for it. The developers just call it exhausting.

"We need to have the courage and vision to support the Jewish community without destroying a fundamental and necessary right. It is Jews who will ultimately be harmed too, as members of the UK…

These charts, from the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, are an excellent use case for a ternary chart. A ternary chart is a triangular plot with three different variables that all sum…

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One of the first things skeptics learn is to never assume that paranormal belief implies stupidity. Smart people believe questionable things all the time; intelligence is different from the ability…

Becasue I’m working in Health Informatics at the moment, initiatives like OpenMed are really interesting to me. I’ve gotten it working on my Raspberry Pi. 1. Prepare the Directory Ensure…

Another day, another Linux exploit. It’s been hard to keep track over the last few months. Vulnerabilities are inevitable, but they do highlight my concerns again regarding monocultures. Any…

Generative AI has hit the peak of inflated expectations. The Gartner Hype Cycle reminds us we've been here before - and shows why governance, not hype, and doing the work still matters.

An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.

Over the last twenty years I’ve posted numerous images on the internet. Mostly here on FITK, but many were on various forums and even some in Wikipedia. In the early days of the internet  people…

A data pipeline is a set of choices. It's almost always a bet that you know how this data will be used, how it needs to be modeled, how it needs to be queried. I've watched a data engineers…