Alex Koppel
@arsduo.bsky.social
book reader, staff engineer at Slack, Awesome Foundation Toronto member, 🏳️🌈, Jewish, he/him. @arsduo on Twitter.
why the fuck is it so hard to find the interior dimensions of cars. I need to know if this Dodge Durango rental can carry a tall horned mirror umbrella stand or not.
Still thinking about the apartment fire I passed on Saturday. Scary how fast it spread, even with the fire department arriving in 5 minutes.
Check your smoke detectors!
Nothing says New York City like cops loitering everywhere! We've counted 15 in 5 minutes, mostly in groups chatting and laughing, one in a car in the subway station(?!), together earning enough overtime to keep a library open for a month of Sundays
"The baby has global entry?" is a thing we need to shout to welcome people entering the United States, I guess
If Hochul were not so epically, believably bad at politics I'd 100% believe she'd kidnapped by the auto lobbies and police unions opposed to the congestion plan
I wondered exactly this and dismissed myself, assuming the program must have had at least *some* element of executive direction — but maybe not!
This gets at the wildly underreported-on fundamental question about all of this, which is how exactly did Hochul decide she had the power to stop congestion pricing? It's not like she was rescinding her own executive order—the legislature created the program!
just one copy of this book brought me to tears and now they're printing MORE
extraordinarily happy to announce that DAYSPRING has completed its initial print run and is now going into a SECOND PRINTING!
thank you all for reading and telling people about this book - grab them where you still can, and more copies soon!
dayspringbook.com
There seems to be a general resentment throughout the US (and Canada) whenever cities try to lean into being *cities* rather than leaning towards suburbs 😮💨
I have decided for no particular reason* I'm going to follow along with a Live Marvel Event for the first time, so here goes Bloodhunt
* @meakoopa.bsky.social is writing Brielle, daughter of Blade, for Avengers Academy
This was so much fun!
a fantastic day in Cambridge with DAYSPRING to celebrate Grand River Pride! Thanks to Rookery and Flight for having me, and to all of you for showing up!!!
Toronto friends! A friend of ours is having is book launch *tonight*! Should be a lot of fun, with a reading, guest performances, and giveaways during live piano show after at Flash on Church 🙌
facebook.com/events/s/boo...
Book Launch Party - TEARS IN TIME
Event in Toronto by Christian Baines on Saturday, June 1 2024
facebook.comPLEASE DO! The more people who watch it the more likelihood of a season 2 I can watch on my furtive visits to the US
fucking Canada and its stupid media landscape, I spent weeks getting excited for Scavengers Reign on Netflix and it's not on Netflix here 🤬
Had a little beer with dinner tonight as a treat bc it was a special little day
"even though the Israeli occupation had marked that particular block as a safe zone and forced citizens to move there". Evil.
“Thousands of children, women and families chose this area because Israel claimed that it was a safe area.”
‘People burned alive’ as Israel attacks designated safe zone in Rafah
Israel bombs tent camp housing displaced Palestinians, leading to a huge blaze and killing dozens of people.
www.aljazeera.comSo excited for this! I was always a bit sad to have missed this on/for not having Max. Scavengers Reign coming to a platform I do have is great.
I am begging everyone to watch Scavengers Reign when it releases on Netflix May 31st.
Yes, streaming is the devil but this show is something special and the more eyes on it will not only get to see probably the best scifi animated series ever made but will help get it another season.
I think/hope the big difference is that these are automated tags and you can switch your level from warning to on or off — vs other people jumping into written replies to be a bother, which is much nastier.
Toronto! My friend has a show on and it's *really great*—funny, rich, smart. One more show tomorrow, if you're looking for something fun tomorrow night!
www.factorytheatre.ca/shows/iggy-b...
I guarantee you everyone involved in this program has their own laptop and lives with other people who all have their own laptops like all of their friends and colleagues
amazing how scraping away 2000 years of tradition and adding butt sex reads like heresy
Microsoft knows who they protect: Recall won't help you find that one Netflix scene you watched with the great cat joke, but it'll make sure to snag your passwords and bank info for anyone who's ever on your laptop ✌️
This is a nightmare.
"The scope of Recall, which Microsoft has internally called AI Explorer, is incredibly vast — it includes logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you’ve visited for research, and more"
www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24...
Recall is Microsoft’s key to unlocking the future of PCs
Would you like a timeline of everything you do on your PC?
www.theverge.comAfter decades of listening to people insist the rich would just uproot their whole lives and flee, it's nice to see hard evidence that yes, taxing the rich does work
The Massachusetts "millionaires tax" has vastly surpassed projections, bringing in more than $1.8 billion in revenue so far this fiscal year — with the prospect of a surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on transportation and education
State’s ‘millionaires tax’ has already generated $1.8 billion this year, blowing past state projections - The Boston Globe
The estimated haul is already $800 million more than what Governor Maura Healey and state lawmakers planned to spend from its revenue in fiscal year 2024.
www.bostonglobe.com
Always a pleasure reading your work 💖
(We should get together sometime soon!)
Thanks for suggesting it! Hope you two had a really nice rest of the day!
Cat storytime! Dax met Smokey, one of the neighborhood cats, for the 2nd time. He was not happy, but with some treats & pets they shared the space just fine for 20 minutes. (Then he decided to be done and intimidated the much bigger cat.)
Proud of our little guy! One day they will be friends 💞
Long weekend part 8: time to garden! We ripped up the random small plants germinating in the patio soil and installed a ton of herbs. It's not much to look at now, but hopefully we'll be rolling in homemade pesto and cocktail mint soon 🌱✌️
Long weekend part 8: time to garden! We ripped up the random small plants germinating in the patio soil and installed a ton of herbs. It's not much to look at now, but hopefully we'll be rolling in homemade pesto and cocktail mint soon 🌱✌️
Long weekend part 7: taking @jasonloo.bsky.social to his first drag brunch with @meakoopa.bsky.social, a nice start to a Sunday
scheduling our next vaccinations now
People who were repeatedly vaccinated for COVID-19 — initially receiving shots aimed at the original variant, followed by boosters and updated vaccines targeting variants — generated antibodies capable of neutralizing a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants and even some distantly related coronaviruses.
Repeat COVID-19 vaccinations elicit antibodies that neutralize variants, other viruses | Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Response to updated vaccine is shaped by earlier vaccines yet generates broadly neutralizing antibodies
medicine.wustl.eduReported! BS that you can't—does the Report Item link not work on your device?
Despicable! Just takes a moment to report the listing with a link to the post here, please do it and help @monstercliche.bsky.social!
Shein has stolen my pin. Please report the listing. I have already reported it, but who knows if they’ll listen to me. This fucking blows. (this link worked five seconds ago :/) us.shein.com/LGBTQ-Pin-Al...
Long weekend part 6, the end of the first day: ice cream and Dead Boy Detectives back at home with @meakoopa.bsky.social, a perfect end to the day 😊
Long weekend part 5: took myself to see I Saw The TV Glow. An ode to Buffy and to cracking the egg, a strange and cool film.
Long weekend part 3: the lakefront got cool, so I got coffee and caught up with @tatebrombal.bsky.social and @artofnickrobles.bsky.social' fantastic comic Behold, Behemoth 💯
Truly disappointing! Really did not want to have to find a new search engine, if there even is one to find that won't incorporate LLMs 😮💨
I wonder if Qwant is any good, and if they plan to build any LLM/AI features or are just focusing on the long-term with great search results. 🤔
www.techradar.com/reviews/qwan...
Qwant search engine review
A simplistic search engine with top-shelf privacy features
www.techradar.com
DuckDuckGo is at least using Wikipedia, rather than stealing from the sites it indexes like Google is. Still!
There are plenty of great sites on the Internet, and for good user experiences _and_ a healthy Internet we need better than intercepting people with faulty fancy autocompletes.
Ugh! I've used DuckDuckGo for years and recommend it regularly; it's still better than Google, but cramming in "AI" really breaks my enthusiasm.
Sad to see them falling prey to the push to put LLMs in everything (and I say this having worked previously with LLMs). Disappointing 😞
Yes, unfortunately, and they are the top results you'll see now.
www.theverge.com/2023/3/8/236...
DuckDuckGo’s building AI-generated answers into its search engine
The AI-powered DuckAssist is coming to DuckDuckGo.
www.theverge.comLong weekend part 2: sitting by the lake (a summer goal) reading (another summer goal) Mothersound, an anthology of scifi and fantasy stories by African & diasporic writers by @sauutiverse.bsky.social establishing a shared universe for people to build on—a book I've been excited to read for a while!
