Trump Organization is selling 2028 hats
If you think this is just a joke, you haven’t been paying very close attention.
Judge pauses parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on voting
More sanity from the judiciary.
AI models can learn to conceal information from their users
This should not surprise anyone. The whole notion of “alignment” (convincing increasingly-powerful AIs to follow human-set rules) is a pipe dream, because of increasingly clever models and bad human actors who don’t care about such things.
Finished: Townsend of Lichfield, by James Branch Cabell 📚. This volume of Cabell’s collected works starts with an essay explaining why the actual book Townsend of Lichfield was never written. It then proceeds to collect a bunch of Cabellian miscellany: prefaces to other books, bits of verse, short stories, court documents. This is far down the rabbit hole and likely appeals to almost no modern readers. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Finished: Imperial Woman, by Pearl S. Buck 📚. Next up in my trip through Buck’s major works is this romantic novel of Tzu Hsi (these days usually rendered Cixi), the last Empress of China. I suspect there is more romance than history here, but it’s a sweeping story that I knew nothing about, so that doesn’t bother me.
Finished: Conquistador, by S.M. Stirling 📚. This alternate history is one of several that Stirling has written with the general theme of “what if modern technology and military in a new world?” In this case there’s a silly MacGuffin that gets 30 ex-soldiers to a copy of the earth in 1946 where Europeans never visited the new world. A coup-in-progress drives the plot forward, but there’s always the impression that the author is just having too much fun world-building to care as much about the story.
“Me! Me! Pick Me!”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens @ f/6.3, 1/25s, ISO 640. Along the Fisher Creek Trail.
“Fungus Family”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens @ f/10, 1/3s, ISO 800. Along the Fisher Creek Trail.
“Trail Ends Here…for now”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 14-42 kit lens @ 14mm, f/9, 1/60s, ISO 250. Waldo Lake Wilderness somewhere around where Fisher Creek Trail is supposed to be.
Are watermelon seeds the next breakthrough in plant-based milk?
I think the word “milk” has jumped the shark at this point.