if you haven't heard this album yet, put your headphones on and get stuck in. it is a journey through beautiful imaginary soundscapes and wonderful sounds.
#soundscape #fieldrecordings #deeplistening #meditation #soundhealing #soundart
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121 results for “nexttime”
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mood
some misty peaks
breathe in the fresh air
reset your nervous system to calm
majestic Scotland...#scotland #landscape #photography #mountains in grey weather...
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CeeDee Lamb: What can I do next time to capitalize off Sunday’s performance? https://www.rawchili.com/5115840/ #sports #SportsTopics
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Aaaaand colored in.
I definitely need to borrow wife’s brush tips for these large fields next time. I tried to hid as many crimes as possible with some ad hoc trickery, but I’m not nearly good enough to do that effectively.
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@hugovalters this test result was close to perfect for what I'll need in the future, thanks!
Next time I'm given a YouTube or alternative video without closed captions, I'll be less frustrated.
Side note: the original podcast and transcript are at https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/ai-as-normal-technology
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Today I played with water soluble black ink. In the first one I then used Derwent Inktense and in the second gouache and Neocolor IIs.
Not horrible, but next time I need to make the drawing a bit better and not quite as wonky and weird.
#art #artist #inktober #inktense #derwentinktense #gouache #neocolor2
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OpenBSD devs 🤖 gave a thumbs down 👎 to yet another Rust-based nonsense, proving once again that when it comes to #licensing and #compatibility, they only speak #C. 🚫 #Rust fanboys, better luck next time—OpenBSD isn't buying what you're selling. 😂
https://news.lavx.hu/article/openbsd-developers-reject-uutils-coreutils-port-over-licensing-and-compatibility-concerns #OpenBSD #RustFanboys #HackerNews #ngated -
#dreamcast Hori joypad, cool! Will remember and try to get this next time. #virtualboy boxed. V- #saturn. #retrogaming 
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For A More Filling McDonald’s Snack Wrap, Request These French-Style Additions
VGV MEDIA/Shutterstock Would you like to add a little extra oomph to your McDonald’s Snack Wrap the next time you give it a bite? Why not upgrade and order it the way they serve it in France? To achieve an Americanized version …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Cooking #CookingTopics
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2841555/for-a-more-filling-mcdonalds-snack-wrap-request-these-french-style-additions/ -
I've now completed "I Was a Teenage Exocolonist" multiple times. It's the sort of game where you kinda have to - I'm not going to spoil anything, but it's one of those games where your choices *really* matter.
Most of the characters are really well-written - even the terribly unlikable ones, in fact, are a compelling kind of unlikable. (With one exception - there's one character who just simply creeps me out, but I believe that's intentional). You end up wanting to get as many of them as you can - all of them, if possible! - to a good ending.
One thing that's very effective about the replay mechanic is that the game follows all its main characters from around age 10 to around age 20 - which makes it sort of heartbreaking when you've seen *bad* endings for the characters that the next time you loop around, you see sweet little innocent kids again, knowing what life has in store for them. At least for me, that makes me *want* to turn things around for the weird little exoplanet colony they live on.
It's both a good story about growing up, about choices and roads not taken, *and* a good piece of science fiction. It's probably one of the best game narrative experiences I've had this year.
Recommended!
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CW: smut appropriateness check
Is it OK to self-publish a campy erotic romance inspired by those home-for-the-holidays romances?
Plan: usual romance tropes keep getting subverted into super-spicy explicit writing for a scene or reference, before resuming playing the wholesome romance formula straight, until next time to disrupt, and a HEA romance ending. I like those wholesome pure romances too, and don't want to offend.
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#NowPlaying the #OriginalScore to the #Series #PrehistoricPlanet #IceAge composed by #HansZimmer #AnzeRozman #KaraTalve from the #USA
#Documentary #Wildlife #Nature #Prehistoric #AlbumsOf2026 #ScoresOf2026 #Filmmusic #OST
Personal Rating: 8 / 10
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢⚪⚪Recommended Tracks: "Welcome to the Ice Age", "Dust Storm", "Prehistoric Planet III Themen", "Grassland Giants", "Mammoth Herd Part 1 & 2", "Rock Climbing Sloth", "Homotherium", "Glyptotherium Gauntlet", "Apex Predator", "Doedicurus", "Gigantopithecus", "Wooly Rhino", "Megalocerus", "Marsupial Lion", "Giants short-faced Bear", "Forest Fruit Picker", "Next Time"
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"It is the very activity of thinking that is inherently generous. […] It is because thinking opens up the realm of possibilities, in the silence of our minds, free from surveillance and coercion, that it is a dangerous activity. Thinking allows us to (re)define ourselves as subjects, to question our social conditions, and to challenge the legitimacy of power. Thinking is a necessary step to move on to verbalisation and sharing with others in order to create the material conditions for organization and political resistance."
– Fania Noël-Thomassaint, in "The Power Next Time" (2022) 🧶
#mutualAid #nonMixity #community #feminism #feminisms #afroFeminism #FaniaNoël #joy #selfDefense #power #empowerment #thinking #resistance
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CW: alcohol's disgusting taste mentioned
I stopped drinking alcohol about 4 years ago.
As a Bavarian German, I liked the taste of beer *a lot*. I just didn't want to intoxicate myself anymore.
Other beverages also taste well. "Won't you miss its taste?" was the number one question I was asked, as if people wanted me to revert my decision. I drink Green Tea every single day. I love the taste of Jasmine Tea. I don't need to continue putting a cell toxin into my body to have a tasty beverage.
Very occasionaly, when I'm in the mood and *do* miss the taste, I buy one alcohol-free beer from the local supermarket.
Today I was in the mood. But I accidentally bought beer with alcohol. It tasted so very disgusting. My mouth and gum immediately filled with the stringent smell that pierces your nose when you open the bottle of Isopropyl alcohol. I couldn't finish the beer.
I used to drink this beer multiple days a week and I *loved* its taste. It *never* tasted piercing when I was still used to drinking this every week.
Incredible how your tastebuds change (and revert back to healthy) when you stay abstinent for a while.
Today is the first day in 4 years that I drank alcohol. I was never an alcoholic, so this isn't a relapse nor a problem. It just confirms to me how good the decision was to quit this stuff. My mouth still tastes as though I suckled on a bottle of pure Isopropyl alcohol.
I invite you to say No to alcohol the next time you're celebrating or eating out. And maybe the time after that, too. 🙂
Now I'll cook some cauliflower, something I hated as a child but which my tastebuds now love. 🙂
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Your DNA Might Be Older Than Earth, According to One Very Optimistic Spreadsheet
The math says maybe. The rocks say not so fast.Dear Cherubs, the internet keeps circulating a spicy little claim that human DNA is somehow 9.5 billion years old, which would make Earth the cosmic newcomer and us the interstellar transplants. Spoiler: the math is real, the fossils are not impressed.
A pair of researchers, Alexei Sharov and Richard Gordon, looked at how genetic complexity has grown over evolutionary time. They treated functional non-redundant DNA length like a biological version of Moore’s Law and noticed it roughly doubles every 376 million years. Run that trend backward to a single base pair and you land at about 9.7 billion years ago, give or take a couple billion. Earth only formed 4.54 billion years ago, so the calculation implies life’s software started somewhere else and hitchhiked here.
THE DOUBLING CLAIM
Sharov and Gordon published the idea as a 2013 preprint called “Life Before Earth.” They plotted genome sizes of major groups against their appearance dates and got a neat straight line on a log scale. Extrapolate hard enough and, yes, the origin point sits well before our planet existed. The authors openly floated panspermia as the tidy explanation: hardy microbes or their precursors arrived on rocks after the messy early solar system calmed down.
It is the kind of elegant thought experiment that makes you pause mid-scroll. Gene duplication is a real evolutionary engine, after all. Complexity does ratchet upward. The spreadsheet is not pure fiction.
WHY SCIENTISTS AREN’T BUYING IT
The problem is the extrapolation itself. Early life could have cranked complexity much faster or slower than later epochs. The data points are selective; highly redundant genomes like those of many plants get sidelined because they muddy the tidy line. And there is zero direct evidence of 9-billion-year-old DNA. The oldest recovered genetic fragments clock in at around two million years, locked in Greenland permafrost. Actual DNA molecules do not last geological eternities.
Mainstream evidence still points to cellular life emerging on Earth after the planet cooled enough to hold liquid water. Nucleobases, the letters of the genetic alphabet, do show up in ancient meteorites older than Earth. That supports the idea that some chemical ingredients arrived ready-made. Fully formed genetic systems riding in from deep space is a different claim entirely, and one that remains unproven.
As noted by thisclaimer.com in its coverage of universe facts, mathematical models that stretch far beyond available data often produce headlines more than consensus. The Sharov-Gordon paper is a clever exercise, not a settled origin story. It does not prove we are aliens, nor does it rewrite the fossil record. It simply shows what happens when you keep the growth rate constant and keep scrolling left on the timeline.
So the next time someone drops the “DNA is older than Earth” line at a party, you can nod politely, then spill the tea: the doubling math exists, the conclusion is optional, and the planet still has dibs on us.
Sources list: Phys.org — https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html arXiv — https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381 MIT Technology Review — https://www.technologyreview.com/2013/04/15/113741/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ thisclaimer.com — https://thisclaimer.com Biology Insights — https://biologyinsights.com/are-humans-from-earth-the-evidence-for-our-origins/
The Thisclaimer logo blends a classic warning symbol with a brain icon to represent critical thinking, curiosity, and thoughtful disclaimers #Alien #biology #dna #dnaAgeClaim #Earth #Evolution #evolutionaryMath #extraterrestrialDna #genomeComplexity #history #lifeBeforeEarth #originOfLife #panspermiaTheory #philosophy #science #scientificSpeculation #sharovGordon #UAP #universeFacts -
I thought he was prolly just trolling me, but when I looked back he's still behind me !
Like fuck ! it's a straight road with nowhere to turn ! But fuck it. If this guy caught me, I'm done for. So I ran for my life. He's still chasing me and the road ahead felt like it stretched endlessly.
I was running out of breath but I can't stop. I looked behind again some moments after and he's still fucking chasing me !
So I thought of another shortcut. I ran towards the other end of the road, turned left then straight to a parking lot. The other side was also the streets but much more crowded & well-lit
That's when the crazy bear chaser lost me, or prolly stopped chasing me, idk. What mattered is I got out of there alive. I didn't know what the fuck that guy was up to. He prolly could've killed or drugged me, had he caught up to me..
I never go out at night alone since then. Who knows the next time some guy similar to him has a dart gun loaded with a tranq dart... or an actual gun...
2/2
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I thought he was prolly just trolling me, but when I looked back he.. he's still behind me !
Like fuck ! it's a straight road with nowhere to turn ! But fuck it. If this guy caught me, I'm done for... So I ran for my life. He's still chasing me and the road ahead felt like it stretched endlessly.
I was running out of breath but I can't stop. I looked behind again some moments after and he's still fucking chasing me !
So I thought of another shortcut. I turned left then straight to a parking lot. The other side was also the streets but it's much more crowded and well-lit
That's when the crazy bear chaser lost me, or prolly stopped chasing me, idk. What mattered is I got out of there alive. I didn't know what the fuck that guy was up to. He prolly could've killed or drugged me, had he caught up to me...
I never go out at night alone since then. Who knows the next time some guy similar to him has a dart gun loaded with a tranq dart... or an actual gun...
2/2
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Tofu Chorizo Crunchwraps
Got a new cookbook last week, PlantYou Quickies, and yesterday had most of the components to make vegan crunchwraps from pages 214-216.
It was nowhere close to a quick meal, between pressing, seasoning, and baking the tofu as well as building and grilling the wraps… but definitely very tasty! More heat than our usual tofu chorizo recipe from Sam.
We skipped the shredded lettuce for obvious reasons and opted not to sweeten the sauce because that’s not usually our jam. The vegan yogurt based sauce functioning as a sour cream was really nice. (We used Kite Hill Greek which is often a breakfast component.) We added our favorite vegan cheddar shreds as the last layer before closing and grilling.
We didn’t have huge tortillas, which definitely caused some structural issues when forming the wraps using some old taco shells we had, lightly toasted. I had to underfill them to just make it work; for seconds we all just did grilled burritos. Next time need the big ones.
#cooking #food #TacoBell #tofu #vegan -
Silence after you apply is normal. It doesn't always mean they've forgotten you — but a short, thoughtful follow-up can help your application get a second look.
A practical approach:
1. Wait a reasonable window. For most roles, 7–10 working days after the closing date (or after you applied, if it's open-ended) is a fair point to follow up once. Earlier than that often lands while screening is still underway.
2. Keep it short and specific. One short email or LinkedIn message: the role title, where you applied, one line on why you're still interested, and an offer to share anything else they need. No multi-paragraph pitch.
3. Add something useful if you can. A relevant project update, a clarifying question about the role, or a corrected detail beats "just checking in" on its own.
4. One follow-up is usually enough. If there's still no reply after that, move on. More chasing rarely changes the outcome and can hurt the relationship for next time.
5. Track what you sent. Note the date and channel so you don't accidentally nudge twice, and so you know when to stop waiting and focus on other applications.
Hiring teams are busy. A polite, low-friction nudge shows interest without adding to the pile.
What's your rule of thumb for when — and whether — to follow up after applying?
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Apologetics: Monthly Mormon Monday – Joe Smith’s Whacky First Vision.
Behold! It came to pass that it hast been 6 months since last I wrote of The Book of Mormon, and verily, it came to pass that I began to wonder what to write of for this week, and truly, a Mormon did come into my comments section to tell me what a beauteous religion Mormonism is, and it came to pass that my interest long put on the burner on the back of the stove was once more rekindled in this topic strange.
Hence this post.
There are several directions I can go with Mormonism, such as disproving the idea that it’s a Christian religion, but right now, I want to focus on the history of Joseph Smith’s first revelation, or the First Vision. Every Mormon knows this story. Basically, when Joe was 14, he went to a grove near his family home in New York where he knelt down and prayed, wanting to know what church the true church was. He was then overcome by some dark power but was delivered when God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared and told him not to go to any church, as all of them had been corrupted. This of course was a major event, marking the young Joseph Smith as a prophet of God who would later start the LDS church.
But that version of the story is the standard version written on April 1, 1842. There are eight more versions, all of them with massive contradictions.
In a version of the story written in 1832 by Joseph Smith himself, he records himself to have been 16 years old when he was visited by Jesus alone, and was forgiven of his sins. In this version, he already knew all the churches were wrong and only prayed for the forgiveness of his sins.
In the second version written in 1835, Joseph Smith gave an account of the First Vision to a dude named Oliver Cowdry, saying that he was 17, was only praying to see if God was real, and was visited not by Jesus, not by God, but by a messenger of God. Who this messenger was, we have no clue, but he forgave Joe’s sins. But as though that wasn’t bad enough, that same year, Smith wrote a diary entry recording this event (third version), but said that many angels visited him, not Jesus and God. This diary entry was also the first time the evil power was ever mentioned.
Then, two years later, a fourth version was written, and while this is a third-hand account, it still messes up on key details, saying Smith was 17 and that the visitors were angels. It also makes no mention of the (supposed) revival that was going on that caused Smith to start (supposedly) wondering what church to be a part of. Similarly, in an 1841 third-hand account that was originally given to the writer by Smith’s brother, Smith was 17 and “glorious angel” came to visit him, not God or Jesus.
A year after the 1841 version, Smith then wrote in a letter to John Wentworth about the First Vision. In this version, he doesn’t give his age, doesn’t speak of the dark force that overtook him, and says he was visited by two personages, but they’re identified. A year after that, in 1843, he told the Pittsburgh Gazette his story, but says he was 14 and – once again – never mentions the dark power.
Then, in an 1844 journal entry by Alexander Niebaur, the First Vision story is largely the same as the standard version, but in this version, Joe was simply told not to join the Methodists. He wasn’t told that all the churches were corrupt.
So which one is the right version?
Well, that’s the question that Mormons have to struggle with as all of these accounts differ greatly from each other on key points. Was it an angel, God and Jesus, or multiple angels that visited Joseph Smith? Was he 14, 16, or 17 when it happened? Was he overtaken by a dark spirit and delivered or not? Was he praying for forgiveness of sins, praying to know if God is real, or praying to know which church to attend? Was he forgiven of sins, told all churches were corrupt, or only told that the Methodists were corrupt? Which story should the Mormons believe if there are so many discrepancies coming from credible sources, including Smith himself?
Until next time,
M.J.
#Apologetics #Blog #Christianity #faith #god #history #jesus #JosephSmith #LatterDaySaints #LDS #Mormon #Mormonism #OpinionPeice #Writing -
Poetry Comes Alive!
October 3, 2017, when I performed “All About Eve” at the West End Arts Center in Long Branch
Poetry is such a high form of art, not many get it. But those who do, do.
Before I became a journalist, I relied on writing (and performing) poetry as a creative outlet. I read at events all over New Jersey and New York City. It’s a shame we didn’t record and take photos back then as we do today. We were so in the moment. And it was always a great honor to be reading with other great poets. All of us expressing ourselves and creating a memorable vibe.
Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta, a featured reader at the All About Eve Festival of the Arts, October 2017
I had blogged about this event when it happened back in October of 2017. And oftentimes readers find my old blogs because I’ll see them in the “Top Posts & Pages” section to the right. Thanks to proper tagging, my blogs will live on until I die and stop paying for this account. Laughing out loud!
“All About Eve” was written specifically for this festival. When I write poetry, I’m also thinking about how I will be reading it in front of a live audience. Because it’s the deliverance that makes people listen. I write my poems to be read, to be heard, and even to be shouted! I have something to say, and I’m saying it!
All about Eve?
What about me?
In a superficial society.
Trendy, Fendi,
Keeping up with Beyonce
Spending at your local foods
People are so freakin’ rude
Pushing shop carts into butts
Let their kids do what they want.
Monopolize the conversation
It’s better than a sex sensation
Demean others, even your friends
The main thing is to “win, win, win.”
Do it daily, do it loud
Do it often so you feel proud
Raise your kid the same way
She’s a princess every day
Problems in the world we see
Ignorance, sickness, poverty
Change would be nice, if only …
Yet we still chant, “Me! Me! Me!”
And, you know, it’s nothing new,
Eve was all about “me” too.
Back then it was forbidden fruit,
Now it’s Botox to stay cute.
Charlton Heston, was once the rage, uh-huh
No one cares what Moses claimed; uh-huh
And the ME goes on. And the ME goes on.
On.
On.
On.
On.
Copyright 2017, Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta
All rights reserved.
“All About Eve” reminds us to take the focus off ourselves, stop being so shallow, and pay attention to others.
Two years later I brought back “All About Eve” to the Neighborhood House Association, where I read it to an audience, which you can see here on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyLorsfQig4&t=1s
(By the way, I’ll be back at the Neighborhood House Association November 15 to be presenting a motivational speech on gratitude.)
If it hadn’t been for poetry, early on, I wouldn’t have become a motivational speaker.
When I started writing professionally and being published in magazines all over the world, I had friends complain that I was no longer doing poetry. Poetry was always in my heart, but sometimes you take a break from certain things to pursue others.
As a journalist I interview actors that are also directors, producers, musicians. Talented people (and we all have talents) usually don’t just stick with one thing. We branch out, to explore other areas of arts, including the stuff that we may not be as good at, but we just put it out there because we love to be creative. This, for me, includes film projects. I can be expressive in front of a camera, but I’m not camera-genic. Photogenic, yes, not film-genic. Film hates me for some reason and I never look good in film.
But that won’t stop me from being in projects. I’ll look at myself and say, “Ew, am I really that gross?” and I’ll continue to participate because it’s fun and you get to create with other people. Whether it’s for a commercial or being on a podcast, that’s yucky me who looks nothing like the video. Then maybe you’ll meet me in person and say that I’m cuter. Ha-ha!
Whenever you see someone in photos or on film, always know they look better in real life. An artist once told me he prefers drawing people because he can capture their likeness better than a camera can. (So next time you see a photo or film of yourself and feel bad, just realize it’s not real — you do look so much better!)
Anyway, my art isn’t great, but it’s endearing. Something else that I love to do and comes straight from the heart. I never went to art school so I have a certain flair that makes a piece unique. (An art teacher once used my work as a sample for how someone can be expressive without perfection). And then there’s singing. I love it, but I’m not good at it. During the pandemic my husband and I made a video for our friends. I sang and it was good. But it wasn’t effortless. We practice so much. Him on guitar and us singing together. He had to sing in a lower register to match my alto. It’s private for our friends on YouTube, but I’d be happy to send anyone the link if they’d like to hear it.
Sometimes I’m hard on myself and view my poetry as mediocre, but it’s the deliverance that makes is strong. I was once told that it seems like I’m singing when I’m reading poetry. And on the flip side I’ve also heard, “You’re too much.” Some people don’t even like me, but they like my poetry. I’m fine with that. I’m not a delusional person who expects everyone to like me, nor am I a pick-me puppy dog who will jump through hoops to get people to like me. It is what it all is.
My poem “thin” in Paterson Literary Review, published in September 2026, written in the 1990s
I recently re-wrote a poem I performed at Aldo’s Hideaway in Lyndhurst, New Jersey back in the early 1990s, called “Mood Ring” but we’ll get to that in a second.
Yes, a nightclub hosted my poetry performance! It was super fun. I was able to keep all the money I had at the door, and the club would keep what was made at the bar. Some people who didn’t know about the performance were confused. “What is this? Where’s the dance music?” But nevertheless it was a successful night!
Me, in the middle reading “666-Talk”
In the early 1990s, there were late-night television advertisements trying to entice men to call a 1-900 number to talk to sexy women. I created a mockery about it called “666-Talk.” Instead of getting a sexy woman, the guy gets Satan.
I had two guys dress up as nerds with broken glasses held together by Band-Aids. They’d call the phone line and say, “Hey Baby, what’s happening?”
Me, and the girls on each side of me, screamed out, “NOT YOU!”
Then I’d go into a diabolical diatribe about sin. The devil came through the telephone and took this dude straight to hell!
That same night, I read “Mood Ring.”
I recently revitalized the poem to read at church in an upcoming community night. (I’ll also be making a dish to share, and I am giving away a free session for relationship coaching — because I just can’t do one thing!)
Mood Ring requires audience participation. When I say, “I’m a _____” the audience shouts: “MOOD RING!”
Audience participation is good. Because we are better together. It’s short. It’s fun. You always leave people wanting more. And more they will get because I’ll be giving away mood rings to children. And a little nod to the adults on the “blue team” as I am proud to go to a progressive church. When I renewed my faith earlier this summer it was important to find a church that aligns with my beliefs — and I did. (If anyone wants to find a church in their area that is progressive, I highly recommend the website gaychurch.org and you can put in your address to see what church is close to you).
So, I leave you with “Mood Ring” which I will be reading/performing in church in a few weeks. Enjoy it and keep creating!
Mood Ring
By Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta
I’m a …
MOOD RING!
M-O-O-D RING!
When I’m red, I’m full of passion.
When I’m orange, hey, I’m in fashion.
I’m a …
MOOD RING!
M-O-O-D RING!
Green is nature, to be seen,
Pink’s a flamingo, so unique.
Indigo, a beautiful hue.
When I’m blue, I’m voting for YOU!
I’m a ….
MOOD RING!
#1990s #aldoSHideaway #artAndPoetry #artInNewJersey #Christianity #creativity #iLoveJesus #inspiration #maryanneChristanoMistretta #moodRing #motivational #neighborhoodHouseAssociationPlainfieldNj #poem #poetry #publishedPoetry #thingsToDoInNewJersey #voteBlue #WestEndArtsCenter #writing -
"XTC in the XIV and Vox Vulgaris bring medieval ecstasy at Fylkingen! Two acts with their own unorthodox approach to #medieval #music join forces and perform a super-set together on October 23.
12 musicians and singers in a variety of setups present music pounded out from earth, garage floors, and cathedral marble. To open the evening, there will be #microtonal beats with Óskar Freyr Guðnason."https://fylkingen.se/sv/events/xtc-in-the-xiv-vox-vulgaris
#XTCintheXIV #VoxVulgaris #medievalmusic #stockholm -
"Poking holes in these doomsday narratives is easy. Subject-area experts in fields such as chemistry, biology, and national security are quick to point out how difficult it is to, say, successfully manufacture and distribute a bioweapon or overcome layers of human safeguards designed to prevent a mistaken nuclear-weapon launch. (There is also the pedantic but accurate point that even a nuclear war would almost certainly leave some survivors.) Even so, difficult and impossible are two different things. In the RAND researchers’ estimation, “Extinction threats posed by AI are immensely challenging but cannot be ruled out.” It also should be noted that subspecialists across industries have consistently doubted AI capabilities, only to be proved wrong.
In some ways, the focus on existential risk is a distraction from more immediate concerns. Extremely smart AI systems pursuing their own agendas could lead to outcomes that are far short of human extinction, yet still very bad. Misaligned AI systems could plausibly steal money from major banks, launch disinformation campaigns to influence elections, take control of military drones, steal corporate and government secrets, or shut down parts of the power grid. Even “aligned” superintelligent AI systems could be used by malicious actors, such as a terrorist cell or an authoritarian government, for highly destructive ends.
My own view is that the human-extinction scenarios are quite unlikely, but the other category of risk is serious enough to justify imposing regulations and an industry-wide slowdown. If those have the side benefit of averting the apocalypse, it wouldn’t be the end of the world."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/ai-extinction-scenarios/688769/
#AI #GenerativeAI #AIAgents #AIDoomster #AIDoom #AIApocalypse #AISafety
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"Follow the connections out from that room and you pass through some genuinely strange territory. A Harry Potter fanfic used as a recruiting pipeline. Psychological workshops that former participants describe as coercive. A program for breeding smarter children, promoted by an AI institute. A sex worker from Idaho who became one of the subculture’s most-read writers and now runs an AI-doom propaganda residency with Grimes, Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend. A splinter sect that fled to tugboats and whose members have been linked to six deaths. And a blogger who wanted to abolish democracy, found the ear of several billionaire patrons, and watched his ideas come to fruition in the vice president’s office.
I am aware, that if you are not lurking on the internet as much as I do, of how utterly insane that paragraph sounds. However, every bit of it is heavily documented by numerous sources. The people in this story are not a secret society coordinating over dinner. They are a social scene: overlapping friendship groups, funding relationships, and sexual and romantic relationships, all of it threaded through the institutions asking you to trust them about AI regulation.
One of many unfortunate shortcomings of mainstream media is that credibly reporting on these things is so absurd that you can’t expect readers to take it seriously. However, I’ll endeavor to provide a thorough account of how our current slide into neo-fascism, theocratic dystopia, and the forecasted end of the world is deeply rooted in the history of this subculture."
https://www.iankduncan.com/personal/2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-the-apocalypse
#AI #AIDoomsters #AIDoom #AIApocalypse #AISafety #Ideology #SiliconValley
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"Google has officially suspended product vulnerability submissions to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP) — a bug bounty program — over an influx of invalid AI-driven reports. The company, in an official X post on October 1, encouraged participants to explore other VRP programs and committed to providing an update by the first quarter of 2027, while it reformats and works on this aspect of the program in the meantime.
The suspension went into effect on October 1 — the day of the announcement — and does not affect product vulnerabilities submitted before that date. Google said it may still accept reports covering product vulnerabilities through the Cloud VRP, “for some Google Cloud repos impacting Google Cloud products.” The suspension also does not affect OSS VRP supply chain reports. In a similar case, Linux ended support for older network drivers due to an influx of false AI-generated bug reports.
OSS VRP is a specialized Google security bounty program that incentivizes independent researchers to find and responsibly disclose security flaws across Google's open-source ecosystem. Under this program, product vulnerability submissions focus on code defects, logic flaws, or design bugs within Google's public repositories. This was usually painstaking, manual work requiring skill. However, the rise of large language models (LLMs) and automated AI bug-hunting scripts has nearly eliminated the cost and effort the task required, leading to an influx of low-effort, AI-generated bug reports."
#CyberSecurity #AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #OpenSource #Google #FLOSS
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This text feels like a very big rant about how technology is evil and disgraceful, while totally omitting the fact that the original Silicon Valley tech culture that brought us the personal computer had its roots in the counter-cultural hippie revolution from the late 60s/early 70s. Plus, it's mostly centered on the ideological/culturalistic side of enshittification which is total bullshit.
And here is where the enshittification thesis reveals its limitations as in being too centered in the information technology world. Bottom-line: Every Venture Capitalist who puts their money on the faith of a start-up, is doing it with the expectation of doubling or triple the original amount of money they invested in the company. The predictable output of this reliance on other's money is that all start-ups must grow excruciatingly fast... or else they risk diying. That's it. The main problem is with Capitalism and enshittification is here just a symptom of something deeper: The degrading consumer experience provided by all for-profit companies as they need to grown at all costs.
And because people can't really accept the idea that, for all purposes, we live in an increasingly automated, alienated, and fetishistic society, they will always need to find an evil agent, something like a scarecrow that they can conveniently use to atone for all the sins of every human being who participates in this market society. In this case, it's becoming more and more evident that the scarecrow of late-stage capitalism is the Information Technology Sector.
"The crux of the issue is that for a lot of the more cynically-minded elements of the tech world, the code entities being written have no purpose. There's not anything that they actually do and they aren't perceived as having any real utility internally: they're as much art pieces..."
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/poor-enshittified-souls
#Enshittification #Capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #Ideology #CulturalStudies #BigTech
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reboot s'enrichit d'une nouvelle oeuvre !
Le corpus compte désormais 35 oeuvres de poésie et de littérature numériques au moins trentenaires, facilement accessibles. La dernière à rejoindre la collection est "Les très riches heures de l'ordinateur n° 2", de Tibor Papp, créée en 1985 - il y a déjà 41 ans ! Cette oeuvre fut réalisée sur un Amstrad CPC.
https://entropie.org/reboot/index.htm
#poésie #littérature #PoésieNumérique #LittératureNumérique #poetry #literature #DigitalPoetry #DigitalLiterature #ElectronicLiterature
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I appreciate that artists are producing more #TrolleyContent lately.
Evita Vasiļjeva, Third Place, 2026
St. Marien, Essen-Karnap -
"More than 300 hectares of forest have been cleared for a Google data centre in northern Finland without the environmental assessment the country’s regulator said it needed, with satellite images showing the felling ran on until August after the regulator’s letter in May. That is according to Sari Myllyoja, the unit head running the inquiry at Finland’s Licensing and Supervisory Authority, who said on Monday it looked as though Google’s project company had gone ahead regardless.
“Either this is gross incompetence from Google’s Finnish project company, Tuike Finland Oy, or gross disregard for Finnish legislation, or at worst both,” Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, said a fortnight ago. Satellite images have since shown that four nature sites set aside in the local plan were bulldozed as well, she said on Tuesday, and the association cannot recall a comparable case in its 86 years."
https://woodcentral.com.au/google-finland-data-centre-felling/
