busybee

A large chunk of the company I work for is Ukraine-based. Today, one of my coworkers (who lives in the US, but still has family back in Ukraine) posted this message, which I am sharing with his permission (he asked not to be named, for the safety of himself and his family):

Please read this carefully. This is a most realistic analysis from me since I’m thinking about it for last 40 hours non stop.

The World has changed. This is the biggest act of aggression since the WW II.

Guys I wanted to emphasize this again. US media might not represent it well, but Putin’s idea is to take down the whole Ukraine, because he can’t stand the idea that some of what he thinks satellites has chosen the democracy… After he taken down Ukraine, he will heal his wounds… And since he has nothing to lose he will take over Eastern Europe and maybe claim Alaska as a “historical” russian land. He has no moral identity — they are shelling our schools, hospitals, blood donation centers, kindergardens.

More than that China is watching this brutal act of aggression and making some conclusions of the Western world weakness.

And trust me if Ukraine falls — here in the US, everything will be very bad. It’s not even about our business it’s all about global economy and possible global militarization. Next elections will win Trump — guaranteed with the help of russian funding if they succeed today. So the only way to save our World as is and DEMOCRACY — right now is to help Ukrainian military. They are fighting versus second world larges army and winning.

WHAT CAN WE DO NOW?

The only weakness point is lack of airdefence systems since russia is attacking from everywhere — from the Black sea, from it’s border, from Belarussia and pre-Dniester Moldavian republic. We have to ask NATO to shield the airspace over Ukraine. Trust me the rest of russian troops will be taken care by Ukrainian army.

SO we have to attend rallies, to ask US government (your congresmen) to block Russia from SWIFT system and to close the airspace over Ukraine and start lend lease with tanks and stuff.

Please donate to Ukrainian army - they are the last frontier of the democratic world as is. This the truth. Spread the word about this, please. US folks should now what at stakes. 

For those who would like to contribute financially, there is information from the National Bank of Ukraine and a charitable fund based in Ukraine, which you can specify as going to the Ukranian Army or to a general fund.

Now the real celebration can happen, as we put Twosday to bed.

See you in 198 years.

It is 2:22:22 on 2/22/2022, which happens to also be a Twosday.

This is not the only Twosday which will ever happen on the Gregorian calendar; 2/22/2220 is also on a Twosday. If anyone else is still around in 198 years, they can also have a celebration of numerical assonance.

2/22/2222 is, unfortunately, on a Friday. Pope Gregory XIII clearly failed to think ahead.

Anyway, the real celebration will be in 20 hours, when it’s 22:22:22.

“Open Pod Building Management, how may I help you?”

“Yes, I just arrived at my new apartment, and it’s definitely not in a livable condition and I’d like to terminate my lease.”

“Ah, could you tell me what’s wrong with it?”

“Oh, gosh, I’m not sure where to begin… well, for starters, it’s on fire.”

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that. But could you tell us all of the problems with it? We need to know in order to evaluate whether there is something we should do to fix it.”

“Hm, more than it being on fire? Well, I suppose that while I was in there I noticed a lot of problems, like the tiles being cracked and the faucet having a leak.”

“Oh, well, I’ll definitely need more information about that. Which specific tiles were cracked, and how did you determine that?”

“Um… I’m not sure, just like. A bunch of them?”

“That’s not enough for us to take action on. Also, you mentioned a leaky faucet, are you certain that it’s leaky and not that you simply don’t know how to shut it off?”

“Don’t know how to… shut it off? I’ve used plenty of faucets before. I’m pretty sure I know how to turn this one off.”

“Oh, don’t use your other faucet experience as a judge of whether you can turn these off. They are made for very advanced users, and they are much more flexible than normal faucets, so of course someone who isn’t experienced with them may see them as having a leak.”

“Um… okay, well, regardless, I can’t really use the faucets anyway. On account of the, you know. Fire.”

“Well, that’s just typical, a new resident showing up out of nowhere and thinking they know what’s better for things, but not even being willing to give it a proper time to see if it works for them.”

“I mean, I’d love to, like ideologically I agree with what you’re trying to achieve, it’s just… you know. The fire makes it somewhat difficult to live here, but even without that, I mean. The fact the toilet is in the middle of the kitchen is a bit alarming, as well.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but someday you’ll come to appreciate what we’re building. But in the meantime, I highly suggest that whenever you talk about the burning apartment, it does everyone a favor if you could actually go into detail about all of your issues and be clear about when and how you experienced them, so that others don’t get the wrong impression of whether this is a current issue or not.”

Just a followup, I ended up staying awake for over 25 hours, finally fell asleep for a bit today at 10, woke up again at 11, and mostly I’m feeling like I have a gigantic hangover.

Apparently armodafinil’s mechanism of action is identical to cocaine’s, so it actually IS stimulant-based and not just “a wakefulness agent” and I wish i’d known that before embarking on this. I don’t know why my research failed me this badly this time. Probably me being desperate for something that works.

I’m definitely not interested in continuing with armodafinil, in any case. Advice for dealing with this massive pounding headache would be appreciated.

i feel like crap and i;m wide awake and i want to sleep but i can;t sleep

i;ve been having electric pains through my nerves all night and i feel like i drank three pots of coffee and i am not sleepy at all but i am very very tired

on the plus side i’m having no apnea symptoms tonight but that’s because i’m not getting into a state of relaxation which allows it to occur in the first place

why is my body so awful at processing medications

Just to keep track of stuff here for onlookers

There is an open call for commentary on some pendidng legislation. Here is what I submitted:

As an independent musician, I often run into many problems with automated copyright enforcement online. Quite often I’ll upload a music video to YouTube containing only my own original work, but then I get a copyright strike because the drum beat or some incidental noise happened to match something on a major label track. The recourse for this is to appeal the copyright strike, and YouTube almost always finds in favor of the record label, as they have huge amounts of money and I do not.

Similar issues are faced by individual photographers who take photographs of well-known landmarks, being issued takedown notices because their photograph happened to closely match a similar photo owned by Getty Images or the like. For that matter, Getty Images often assumes they own photos that independent journalists put on their articles, when those photographs were taken specifically for the article.

There are also many content creators who create videos which include thorough academic analyses of copyrighted work, completely within the bounds of fair use, but algorithmic copyright detection filters do not understand any nuance when it comes to the difference between analysis and outright copying. In one particularly ironic case, Adam Neely made a video in defense of Warner Media regarding a copyright dispute over a song, and then Warner Media flagged that video – for the part of it which wasn’t even owned by Warner!

The copyright system is also often abused to prevent discussion of important issues, and copyright reporting mechanisms are often used as an end-run around anti-SLAPP measures.

Algorithmic copyright matching needs to come with extreme human oversight. While an algorithmic match can and should be used to inform people about potential infringement, it should never be used as an automated means of preventing access to a work, legal or otherwise.

If you care at all about the garbage clusterfuck that is the US copyright system, please share your comments in advance of the public consultation by February 8, 2022.

When my Leaf arrived, the front camera wasn’t working, meaning the self-driving functionality was nonfunctional. Today I took it to the nearest Nissan dealership to get it looked at, and fortunately it was just that the camera had gotten disconnected somehow. 5 hours and $280 later (most of which will be reimbursed by Carvana) I have a car with level 2 self driving.

And holy moly, level 2 self-driving is weird, in a good way. It can’t handle all driving even in its limited situation (nor should it) but it does an amazing job of maintaining speed and safe following distance and position within the lane. And it always errs on the side of caution; if it doesn’t have a clear view of the lane markers, it turns off (and lets you know!), and goes into lane-keep alert mode instead.

There’s a bunch of road on the way home which has had construction going on for as long as I’ve lived here, and the lanes are all weird. When driving there, the lane-keep alert made sure I was aware I was drifting between lanes, but used a perfect level of tactile notification, which made perfect sense. And when lane keeping became available again, it was so surreal (but cool) to feel the steering wheel automatically turn for me.

It’s a really cool experience, and I feel like it’s implemented in a safe way that’s not likely to have the Tesla problem of just like, you know, randomly swerving into trucks/medians/oncoming traffic.

It handles all of the parts of driving that make me anxious.

Also having the full wraparound camera makes parking much easier.

So anyway. Yeah. I like it.