jazzy_dave | Reading

This is a great quote from Doonesbury's Say What:
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rebutted criticism [of Trump's crypto dinner], saying: 'The president is attending in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner.' But he flew to Virginia on Marine One. He gave his remarks from a lectern with the presidential seal. And some of the crypto crowd on Friday got a tour of the White House."
-- Maureen Dowd

Congratulations, sweetheart, you just described and failed the Duck Test.

President TACO conned these people into giving him hundreds of millions of dollars to attend this "dinner". They were served poor-grade airline food, allegedly Walmart-grade steaks, he gave a rambling 23 minute speech that had nothing to do with crypto currency or the direction he's steering the nation in regards to it. And then he left. He allegedly had a private meeting with some of the highest donors, I haven't seen anything about that particular meeting.

In other words, per usual, SCAM.

Oh, I almost forgot the second part. And GRIFT.

archersangel

full title is The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction.

from amazon;

Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the twentieth century the sisters’ parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage and promised to send for them when he settled in California—a promise he never kept. One of the Morris sisters later became a successful Wall Street trader and advised Franklin Roosevelt. The sisters lived together in New York City, none of them married or had children, and one even had an affair with J. P. Morgan.

The stories of these independent women intrigued Klam, but as she delved into them to learn more, she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue.

an interesting book, not only about the morris sisters' lives but about family truths and not lies exactly, but mistaken beliefs about what happened and what didn't in a family. and how much can you believe what you've been told about your distant family.

like; can you believe that your great-great grandfather's brother was on the team that developed some kind of revolutionary invention? or that your grandmother was the inspiration for a character in a well-known novel?

sabotabby

When someone tells you that something is "inevitable" or "here to stay," you shouldn't believe them. You should, in fact, do something between vicious mockery and other, more high-level spells on them. They are lying to you and they want you to suffer.

In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations.

So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.

The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.

thewayne

GO, PAKISTAN!

It's always lovely to see these arrests take place in countries where you don't expect them to happen.

This particular ring, who operated the Heartsender malware service, are accused of stealing more than $50mil from U.S. businesses over the last decade and are under investigation in the EU for more theft. Their package was advertised as undetectable to malware/anti-virus systems and used to trick businesses to make money transfers to criminals.

Great malware, lousy opsec (operational security).

The guys apparently thought that Pakistan was totally fine with their running a big cybercrime operation with no consequences. And perhaps they were, I don't know if other countries 'encouraged' Pakistan to get serious about shutting down people like this or what.

This is where it starts getting good...

"Mr. Shahzad ['alleged' head of the group] was named and pictured in a 2021 KrebsOnSecurity story about a series of remarkable operational security mistakes that exposed their identities and Facebook pages showing employees posing for group photos and socializing at work-related outings.

...

Sometime in 2019, The Manipulaters failed to renew their core domain name — manipulaters[.]com — the same one tied to so many of the company’s business operations. That domain was quickly scooped up by Scylla Intel, a cyber intelligence firm that specializes in connecting cybercriminals to their real-life identities. Soon after, Scylla started receiving large amounts of email correspondence intended for the group’s owners."

Like I said, sloppy opsec.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/pakistan-arrests-21-in-heartsender-malware-service/

darkoshi

I feel like MS Copilot is my new buddy at work. The company has the business version which is supposed to keep the company's data private and secure, and we are authorized to use it. I haven't been using it inside of VS Code or other IDEs, which would require an extra license. The browser interface doesn't require an extra license and has met all my needs so far.

From what I last heard, the version that runs in VS Code can't yet answer questions that pertain to the whole big code-base, rather only to the current file you have open. To me, that wouldn't offer much benefit over the browser version, as I can paste the contents of a file into the browser chatbox or I could select the file to attach.

Anyway, MS Copilot helps me with creating PowerShell scripts and complex regex expressions, and with answering various questions. The version at work seems to give a lot more accurate answers than the one I access from my personal laptop; it's likely a better model. Unless the difference is due to the kinds of questions I ask there versus here.

matrixmann

In reaction to a text from

onb2017, I get upon the following:

As a Westerner speaking from within the West, I don't really see a unification to stand up against those forces which want to keep the workforce and majority of the population of the world down ever coming so soon.

The reason is the following: Everyone - differing groups - can't even agree on the color of turd.
How do you want to achieve a higher and more complex goal like that, if you can't even manage that triviality?

On the other hand, there is to be considered and has to be admitted: Do I want to work together with feminists, with intersectionalists, with Identity Politics disciples, which want to tell me that the suffering of a woman or a black person is always bigger than mine, if I happen to be a paleface and are not female?
Do I want to work together with people whose primary business every day is first offending me, ridiculing me and telling me that I'm the source of the evil of the world because I have the wrong sex (or want to convert into the wrong sex)?

These people should check out health problems with biological origins... Then they would learn that the problems they refer to - social problems - are solvable, if everyone really wants to, while biological health problems rarely are that solvable that they'll be gone completely. Plus, you can't run away from them, as you carry them with you wherever your go, even to the edge of the world with no other humans around anymore.

What I want to say by this: You stupid fools, obsessing with your social/human problems... Get a life. This will keep both of your hands busy with enough to do.
Even if human-made problems can be quite nasty, evil, violent, brutal and malevolent - still they are solvable (because it "simply" requires human agreement on a common basis and fairness), while problems resulting from bad material, material that cannot be exchanged after developing anymore, often aren't.
This type of problems can hit everyone, regarless of skin color, regarless of sex, regardless of ethnicity or wherever you were born on this planet.
Regardless of what you believe in, prefer or think is right and wrong.

And as long as there are larger groups of people which put their reverse racism and sexism as the top priority on their list instead of recognizing the usefullness in achieving something which everyone benefits from, the road to working together for a particular goal is going to be blocked.
Same for people who subscribed to esoteric nonsense, fucked up conspiracy theories and religious faith, who are hostile to fact-based edcuation and well-established medicine (and/or only accept the "education" and "medicine" which they approve of), who react aggressively if they get put in their place once in their lives - who only put an interest in getting themselves and their kin the best life and the best resources, making their children and grand-children and parents survive and leave everyone else to die.

You can't act together if there is no common ground and if each group is only interested in lobbyism for the social group they want to represent because they think their group is the best of all living creatures and everyone else is unworthy trash.
You can't act together if hate and despise for each other is the greatest point you have in common.
And if those who still want to be fair are being laughed at, silenced and then trampled upon - like, what they want and demand from everyone is totally impossible to achieve, or even "ignorant of all the wrongs being done to group X in history".

At least I find, I can't work together with people brain-washed and self-obesessed like that.
(They only want to change to the other side of the table anyway... That's what the character of their acting and their mindset strongly implies.)

Parts of them you even don't want to be seen with because their stupidity and greed is embarrassing as hell.

...Therefore, even if not wanting to subscribe to all that crap that divides everyone, there is no real way around having to surrender to parts of it because the differing social groups in society are so mutually incompatible with each other (also with your own viewpoints) - it's like wanting to make a lion work together with a type of animal that is its natural prey.

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sabotabby

Just finished: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I really enjoyed this one, with the caveat that it was hyped to me as the most disturbing thing, read it before giving it to a student, etc., and it was a very different (if very good) kind of book. Though possibly my calibration for disturbing is way off. I did find it a very strong story about family and community vs. extractive industries and the MMIWG epidemic, and one of the best use of dreams in fiction I've seen since we all decided that kind of thing was gauche.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I enjoyed this one too. After barely surviving the events of the first book, our lead and ka (?) companions return to their home (fictional) country, where the caretaker of the estate has suddenly died. The villagers won't go near the place and claim that it's haunted by a creature that sits on your chest and sucks out your breath. So, they have to fight it, all while dealing with PTSD from the war. Fun stuff.

Two things I particularly liked about this: 1) it actually was disturbing as shit, especially the scene with the horses. 2) this is kind of the reverse of what I complained about with Someone You Can Build a Nest In in terms of queernormative fantasy settings. The imaginary country is integrated into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, but it is clearly a country with different norms, myths, and traditions. The novella has a nonbinary lead, and this identity is important and plays a role in their backstory, but it also has a different meaning and definition that in would have in our world (it's important to note that this is queernormative and Alex doesn't appear to be discriminated against in their society, but there are still gendered expectations and roles). It contributes to the worldbuilding as well, so there are different pronouns for both God and priests, and that adds interest rather than erases difference. Anyway, it is pretty cool.

Currently reading: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was also really hyped up and I can see why. There's a longstanding war between two empires: Varkal (which is kind of industrial-age but uses genetically altered animals as its technology) and Med’ariz (which has floating cities and more technologically based weapons). The causes and parameters of this war are deliberately fuzzy to the POV characters, but Med'ariz seems to be winning. Alefrat, the leader of the pacifist resistance in Varkal, is blown up, kidnapped, and imprisoned by his government, and let out on the condition that he travel to the Med'ariz front line, infiltrate them, and create the same kind of grassroots uprising that he did in Varkal. He's accompanied by Qhudur, a brutal soldier/prison guard.

This is very good so far; it pulls no punches either in its depiction of war or its depiction of disability (Alefrat's leg was blown off before the story begins, and there's a bizarro doctor who had started to regrow it with wasps, and the entire thing is very nasty). It's definitely problematizing pacifism and its role in defanging political movements, though I am not sure where the author/narrative is ultimately going to fall on this. It feels like a slog, and this is intentional; every inch of the characters' journey is painstakingly fought for, and you feel it.

real ones by Katherena Vermette. I really liked the other book I read by Vermette; this one is better. It's about two sisters, June and lyn, whose father is Michif and mother is white. Said mother, Renee, is an acclaimed artist winning all the arts grants by pretending to also be Métis. When her identity is exposed, the sisters are not only faced with digging up the trauma of their childhood (this is nowhere near the only shitty thing Renee has done) but having their own identities, careers, and community ties thrown into question.

Pretendians are somewhat of a national obsession here, and I don't weigh into it much because it's not at all my business, and it's a source of pain for Indigenous folks that I don't want to accidentally aggravate. Besides just being a really good story, this is an amazing look into the psychology of someone who fakes Indigenous ancestry and how it affects everyone around her. I haven't seen this tackled in fiction at all and Vermette does it spectacularly. It's also weirdly relatable in the relationship that the sisters have with their mother—growing up with a mostly-absent conman father, I get how they can't bring themselves to cut off Renee entirely even when she wrecks destruction in their lives.

Also the look at the media and arts landscape of Canada is just spot on. Perfect. It's so good.

cmcmck

Conwy also has a very fine Elizabethan mansion with amazing plasterwork!

This is probably the finest Elizabethan building in the UK.

The Front entrance with the arms of Elizabeth I:

( Here be pics! )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

darkoshi

While shopping for bed slats (not for me), I found a set on the Kohl's website that says it is made "right here" in the USA from Canadian wood. But while checking out that brand's website, Continental Sleep, I belatedly realized the wording and grammar on their pages isn't quite right. So now I wonder, is the "Made in USA" claim a lie? Or do Chinese companies have factories in the U.S. making that kind of stuff? I could have sworn I saw that "Made in the USA" claim on one of their website pages too (for only that one product, which made it seem all the more dubious), but am not finding it anymore.

I looked up info on the company but found nothing other than a reference to "Continental Sleep Holdings", which was likely a different company, on a Wikipedia page about "Sleepeezee".

The reviews on the ContinentalSleep website seem fake too, with similar grammar and wording issues; not the kind Americans would make.

It's a bit surprising they haven't used an LLM to fix the grammar on their webpages. Once Chinese companies get better at doing that, there won't even be that tell to give them away.

thewayne

You'll love this: GUYANA.

A small South American country just above Brazil.

"The study, published in Nature Food, investigated how well each country could feed their populations in seven food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, meat, plant-based protein and starchy staples." China and Vietnam produce enough in six of the seven categories. Out of 186 countries, 65% overproduce meat and dairy.

Concerningly, "...six countries – Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Macao, Qatar and Yemen – did not produce enough of any food group to be considered self-sufficient in that category." Dr. Jonas Stehl, first author of the paper, said that a lack of self-sufficiency is not inherently bad and can be due to any number of reasons: lack of water, bad soil, etc. But at the same time, "... low levels of self-sufficiency can reduce a country’s capability to respond to sudden global food supply shocks such as droughts, wars or export bans..."

The study was based on the World Wildlife Fund’s Livewell diet, which "... describes itself as “a flexible diet that involves rebalancing our protein consumption toward plants, eating more vegetables, pulses and wholegrains, and fewer foods high in fat, salt and sugar.”"

BBC article:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/only-one-country-produces-food-it-needs-self-sufficient

What appears to be the actual full study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01173-4

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/23/1912252/only-one-country-in-the-world-produces-all-the-food-it-needs-study-finds

cmcmck

The Church is early 14th century.

Rood screens are rare survivals and many are 19th century copies, but this one is original:

( See more: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

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sabotabby

You all deserve a break from *gestures vaguely at the rest of the internet* so have a completely wholesome podcast for once. "LARP Camp" on Normal Gossip is about two awkward gay counsellors, a neurodivergent evil genius of a child, and a ghost or two.

It's been a challenging transition from Kelsey McKinney to new host Rachelle Hampton, but Rachelle has finally hit her stride with this episode (and the one after it)—it's very funny and her storytelling here does the thing where you're like, "and then what happened?" It helps that the subject matter is up my alley. Anyway, it is incredibly cute so take a break from doomscrolling and give it a listen.

darkoshi

Introducing Waterfox Private Search (Beta)

The search engine can be accessed here:
https://search.waterfox.net/

archersangel

people who call any black & white cat a "tuxedo" cat.

according to wikipedia;

To be considered a true tuxedo cat, the feline's coloring should consist of a colored coat, with white fur limited to the paws, belly, chest, throat, and often the chin - sometimes the tail. Tuxedo cats can appear to have goatees due to the black coloration of their mandible, lower jaw, and chin. White muzzles or a white coloring on their faces are a common attribute of tuxedo cats.[6] Most tuxedo cats are also "black-mask cats" with a complete white blaze, a common name for felines who, due to their facial coloration, look as if they are wearing a black mask over their eyes, and often over their entire head. The ideal color distribution is symmetric, and the white areas are of modest size and limited to the desirable areas.

there are other bicolor patterns & the article has a couple of charts to understand the difference between them.

like most pet peeves it is a bit nitpick-y, but that's just the way some are.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: mid-week
Current Music: more rain?

sabotabby

The finale was...good, actually? Again, grading on a curve. It is still a bad show. But it's one of those bad shows where you get the sense that there is someone in the writers' room doing their best and sneaking all kinds of fun content in (see also: Archie singing IWW songs in Riverdale).

I had to check Reddit to see which case this was based on—it takes most of the episode to get to it. A seemingly unremarkable middle-aged travel agent drops dead in his driveway while his wife is out for a jog. It looks like a heart attack, but a cop in 44 Division suggests to Holness that she might want to get "her best" on it. Unfortunately the best that Toronto Police Services—sorry, TPD on the show for some reason—have are Graff and Bateman.

( spoilers )

And that's a wrap. I guess I'll have to find some good show to watch now.

thewayne

Yep, we now have a new jet. The decision came from Upon High to accept the "donation", and it is now parked in San Antonio while the Air Force and Boeing decides what to do with it.

Would you like to know what a tricked-out 747-8 looks like after it took four years to plan and refurbish? Look no more, just click on the link below!

https://www.businessinsider.com/qatar-boeing-747-plane-trump-air-force-one-photos-interior-2025-5

Apparently Secretary of Defense Otis Hegseth (shout-out to the Andy Griffith Show) gave the order to accept the offer. It isn't in the below Newsweek article, but SecDef Otis said that the donated plane's remediation should be done in a way that should not "unduly impact" the delivery of the two new AF1's on order from Boeing and due to be delivered around 2029.

ROFLMAO!

One of the things delaying that delivery date is the difficulty in getting workers screened for their security clearances. And now there's a THIRD 747 that's going to require a massive refit before it can be put into service for use as an Air Force One that is going to further strain that clearance chain. Not to mention they still have to maintain the TWO EXISTING AIR FORCE ONE 747s!

Yeah, it won't unduly impact the delivery of the ordered planes in the slightest. And to quote Wayne's World, monkeys might fly out of my butt.

https://www.newsweek.com/hegseth-update-qatar-jet-trump-air-force-one-2074837

And remember, they're making government smaller and more efficient and saving money!

thewayne

Not feeling good, and my brain is having a field day.

I'm reading my ebook sales newsletters and came across the following description: "...A police officer, a sharpshooter, and a Marine band together to survive in this high-octane series starter..."

So you've got the cop and the sharpshooter driving down the road in a beat-up Trans Am, followed by a bus of Marine musicians performing Sousa....

:-)

This is honestly how my brain initially interpreted that blurb. I really need to re-re-re-watch Police Squad and the Naked Gun movies.

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jazzy_dave

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Page Summary

thewayne - Did you hear about President TACO's Crypto dinner?
archersangel - The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam
sabotabby - podcast friday
thewayne - Pakistan arrests 21, shutting down $50,000,000+ cybercrime ring!
darkoshi - smart coding buddy
matrixmann - Why the big change won't come
yarnandglue in beautifulmechanical - FLASH WARNING: Latter - "I Don't Owe You" 2024
sabotabby - Reading Wednesday
cmcmck - Plas Mawr
darkoshi - probably not made in the U.S.
thewayne - Only one country produces the food it needs to be self-sufficient
cmcmck - The Church of St Mary and All Saints Conwy
zenigotchas in beautifulmechanical - (no subject)
yarnandglue in beautifulmechanical - Lau Nau - "Painovoimaa, valoa" (2008)
sabotabby - podcast friday
darkoshi - Waterfox - a new privacy-oriented search engine option
archersangel - new pet peeve
sabotabby - L&O season 2: Episode 10
thewayne - See inside the USAF's newest 747 jet, courtesy of Qatar
thewayne - My brain is in a strange place today

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Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Music,books,philosophy,poetry, science and stuff

Reading

Did you hear about President TACO's Crypto dinner?

The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam

podcast friday

Pakistan arrests 21, shutting down $50,000,000+ cybercrime ring!

smart coding buddy

Why the big change won't come

FLASH WARNING: Latter - "I Don't Owe You" 2024

Reading Wednesday

Plas Mawr

probably not made in the U.S.

Only one country produces the food it needs to be self-sufficient

The Church of St Mary and All Saints Conwy

(no subject)

Lau Nau - "Painovoimaa, valoa" (2008)

podcast friday

Waterfox - a new privacy-oriented search engine option

new pet peeve

L&O season 2: Episode 10

See inside the USAF's newest 747 jet, courtesy of Qatar

My brain is in a strange place today

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