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kelvind.com
@kelvind.com
340 followers 290 following 570 posts
Grumpy ol' codger, quick to block. Don't follow-back to be polite, only if our posts/replies are of interest; IDGAF abt popularity numbers, yours or mine.

https://www.teepublic.com/user/kelvind

#BillionairesShouldNotExist & AI "art" isn't.
Posts Replies Media Videos
kelvind.com
This stupid thing has been saying "1 second remaining" for over an hour.

#MicroSoftSucks even when it's running a presumably simple little thing on #MacOS

I'm just glad none of my #Linux machines have any MS BS that they need to run.
Screenshot of Microsoft AutoUpdate. It says "Update in progress. It has a progress bar that is mostly blue, with a tiny bit of grey at the far right edge. It says "Installing - 1 second remaining". It has said this, without moving, for over an hour.
November 13, 2025 at 3:57 PM
kelvind.com
This story in my @1440daily.bsky.social email jogged a memory. As a kid, walked 1/2mi to Coast To Coast Hardware to buy a couple balsa airplanes. They were 0.12 each. But MN Sales Tax was 4% back then (ca. 1970). I made 2 separate purchases to avoid tax, then bought a gumball with the extra penny.
A Penny Spurned The US Mint in Philadelphia pressed its final penny yesterday. President Donald Trump ordered an end to penny production earlier this year as costs neared 4 cents per 1-cent coin. The first penny, minted in 1793, was pure copper, featured Lady Liberty, and could be used to buy a piece of candy. President Theodore Roosevelt directed the Mint to place Abraham Lincoln on the coin in 1909, and rising copper prices prompted the Mint to start making the penny primarily of zinc in 1982. Though inflation and digital transactions have rendered pennies less necessary, the Mint issued over 3.2 billion last year, accounting for over half of US coin production. The Treasury expects to save about $56M annually by discontinuing the penny, which saw production costs rise over 20% last year. Merchants have been rounding prices and requiring exact change amid recent penny shortages. A bipartisan bill proposes rounding cash transactions to the nearest nickel, which is illegal in at least 10 states.
November 13, 2025 at 1:51 PM
kelvind.com
About a decade ago, I had an idea for a screenplay involving #NanoBots in people's brains that were supposed to alleviate #Dementia &/or other neurological disorders, but were commandeered by a bad actor, kind of #Manchurian style.

And now it's probably coming true IRL.
Cropped screenshot from a 1440 email... Science & Technology > Google introduces Gemini AI chatbot to Maps, enabling users to have voice conversations about businesses, landmarks, and hazards along routes (More)  > Three Chinese astronauts' return to Earth is delayed after spacecraft possibly hit by debris (More) | What will it take to clean up space trash? (1440 Topics)  > Researchers create injectable microscopic chips capable of delivering targeted electrical stimulation to the brain, offering potential alternative to surgery (More) | Scientists complete first maps of mammalian brain development, revealing insights into the origins of brain disorders (More)
November 10, 2025 at 2:32 PM
kelvind.com
I'm assuming that #FranHoepfner of #Vulture (or the Editor) is being preposterous on purpose. Y'know, click-bait-y bullshit.

I don't do horror; no longer go to movies @ the theater, 'cuz #Covid taught us that ALL aerosol-spread communicable diseases are OPTIONAL, & #NoFuckingThanks
Screenshot from www.vulture.com VULTURE DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS MAN? This Is the Most Famous Man in America Right Now By Fran Hoepfner, a senior news writer who covers pop culture and the internet (Two photos of Mason Thames, in the right one he's wearing a black knit cap.) Mr. Big Celeb Photo: Paramount Pictures/Sabrina Lantos / Universal Pictures and Blumhouse (end of alt text ABOUT the photo, begin further commentary) Yeah, I MIGHT have seen him before. But I haven't seen him in any of the movies/shows she talks about. I feel like this is kind of an example of a white lady who just blithely assumes everybody likes what she likes, watches what she watches, like the world revolves around her. Or at least the US. Well, no... it doesn't.
November 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
kelvind.com
Such a stupid story. #ChatGPT deserves as much credit for this #Lottery win as a #FortuneTeller or #Psychic or #Astrologer would. Namely, NONE.

All of these are at least 99% bullshit.
Screenshot of a stupid story from #USAToday Headline: Michigan woman who used ChatGPT for lottery numbers wins $100K prize 1st sentence of article body: ChatGPT is the reason why this Michigan woman took home a $100,000 lottery prize.
October 27, 2025 at 12:37 PM
kelvind.com
Been almost an hour of these. They slowly fill, then screen goes out, then a new one starts.
White Apple logo on black screen with a white/gray progress bar at the bottom.
October 20, 2025 at 12:43 PM
kelvind.com
It's been "About 30 minutes remaining" for over a half hour now.

When will Apple get better at this shit? (Apple is not unique in this regard.)
Progress bar on MacOS Software Update. Above the bar it says "Preparing updates..." The bar is maybe 2/3 filled left to right. In lighter text below the bar, it says "About 30 minutes remaining".
October 20, 2025 at 12:09 PM
kelvind.com
Income reduced as wife retired & vulture capitalists arbitrarily reduced my hours, so I'm looking for ways to save money. I've always liked #CornedBeefHash fried crispy, with over easy eggs, &/or ketchup. A can makes me 2 meals, under $3 per, all in. Good deal. But can I get it even cheaper by...
Screenshot from Festival Foods online shopping result for Corned Beef Hash. Essential Everyday (store/generic) $3.79 Hormel (2 varieties) $4.19
October 16, 2025 at 2:17 PM
kelvind.com
theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

Oatmeal hits the nail right on the head.
In my experience, the people who are excited about AI art also happen to be some of the most talentless fucking people I've ever met.
October 13, 2025 at 1:10 PM
kelvind.com
This is what happens when you make cheap-ass videos, lack the pipes (or balls) to narrate it yourself, then karma inflicts a micro stroke on your shitty text-to-speech system.
October 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
kelvind.com
The blurb given had me intrigued.

I do stuff in the kitchen. Cooking and such. So I clicked.

Nope, it's about 𝗢𝗖𝗜 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺

Frankly, I'm disappointed.
Mark Linxfeld (aka Luke martin Feldman) posted: Sometimes the best content just needs a good refresh. I’ve modernized one of my most popular FoggyKitchen tutorials:
October 7, 2025 at 12:31 PM
kelvind.com
The following "AI Assistant" interaction is with Claude 4.5 Sonnet.

This #AI is super confident in describing how #Liquibase behaves with onFail="CONTINUE" in the preConditions.

It's also flatly wrong, in a way that could be disastrous in production code.

Has the AI assistant helped me catch...
## Me I just wonder if this is a situation where MARK_RAN is wiser than CONTINUE. ## AI Assistant **Great question!** You're thinking about the right nuance here. Let's compare for this specific scenario: ## **CONTINUE** (current choice) - Skips the changeset SQL when preconditions fail - **Still marks the changeset as executed** in DATABASECHANGELOG - On subsequent runs: Won't check preconditions again, won't run SQL again ## **MARK_RAN** - Skips the changeset SQL when preconditions fail - **Marks it as executed in DATABASECHANGELOG** - Explicitly indicates "this was intentionally skipped due to preconditions" - Same end result, but semantically clearer intent ## **For your use case, I'd argue MARK_RAN is slightly better:** **Why?** 1. **Semantic clarity** - You're checking state before running a migration. If the Daily export already exists, you _intentionally_ don't want to run the UPDATE. That's exactly what `MARK_RAN` communicates. 2. **Audit trail** - Someone reviewing the changelog execution history will see that preconditions were evaluated and the changeset was deliberately skipped (not that it continued past an error/warning). 3. **The practical difference is minimal** - Both work correctly here. But `MARK_RAN` better expresses "I checked, the work is already done, moving on" vs. `CONTINUE` which feels more like "something wasn't right, but keep going."
October 3, 2025 at 11:47 AM
kelvind.com
Sometimes a 2nd li’l spot of breakfast is what helps a fella cope.
Two slices of English Muffin Toasting Bread, toasted. On the left, butter, natural peanut butter, cinnamon & sugar. On the right, butter, SlapYaMama, american cheese. Minus one bite in the corner.
September 30, 2025 at 1:07 PM
kelvind.com
"The government says her lawn is 'unsightly.' She's fighting to keep it that way.
Which is more appealing: neatly mowed grass or a 'rewilded' lawn that supports a diverse habitat?"

Editor(s) at #usaToday are asking the wrong question.

What is objectively, provably better for human survival?
The government says her lawn is 'unsightly.' She's fighting to keep it that way. Which is more appealing: neatly mowed grass or a 'rewilded' lawn that supports a diverse habitat? Portrait of Eduardo Cuevas Eduardo Cuevas USA TODAY
September 4, 2025 at 10:53 AM
kelvind.com
I dunno if #MentalFloss is good or bad or indifferent. Never paid any attention. Just saw a link to an interesting article, & once I started reading, noticed that they're not the sort of feckless morons who think one bratty orange turd can change the name of the #GulfOfMexico
Florida and the United States’ second most dangerous beach is Laguna Beach, with a score of 67.75. Located on the Emerald Coast of the Florida panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico, Laguna has recorded just nine shark attacks but a staggering 39 surf-related fatalities—the most on this list—that lead to its second place ranking.
August 6, 2025 at 1:50 PM
kelvind.com
Cool story on #NBCNews about a #Lightning megaflash that stretched 515 miles.

Even cooler? They know it's still the #GulfOfMexico
“It’s an incredibly strange phenomenon,” he said. “We only discovered them 10 years ago, when we could use a particular set of technologies to detect the start and end locations of the of lightning events.” Megaflashes are not altogether uncommon, but they typically only occur in parts of the world where specific geographical and atmospheric conditions can produce the most severe thunderstorms, Cerveny said. In the Great Plains and across the Midwest, for instance, warm and humid air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with drier, colder air from the north, creating strong atmospheric instability.
August 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
kelvind.com
#FartJokes #DadJokes
TXT convo, wife to me: Geez-another air quality alert for the whole state. I saw the low temp before I saw the air quality alert and was excited for a split second. Me: I know I fart a lot, but that’s just mean for them to call it out like that.
July 12, 2025 at 11:43 AM
kelvind.com
From my daily #1440 newsletter.

You've seen many social media posts about teachers marking answers wrong when the student was provably right.

If teachers are saving oodles of time using #AI, you can bet it's helping them compose tests, & you can bet there's LOTS of wrong ones.
AI Training for Teachers The nation's second-largest teachers' union announced yesterday that it's creating an AI training hub for K-12 educators with $23M from three leading AI developers: Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The American Federation of Teachers will open its National Academy for AI Instruction this fall in downtown Manhattan. The academy aims to offer hands-on workshops to 400,000 teachers—about 10% of the US teaching workforce—by 2030. All 1.8 million union members will also have access to free online training. A portion of Microsoft's five-year, $12.5M commitment and OpenAI's five-year, $10M pledge will fund the creation of additional hubs nationwide. Anthropic is contributing $500K to support the academy's first year. The initiative follows an executive order issued by the White House in April encouraging private sector investment in K-12 AI education. And while many teachers worry about students using AI, a recent survey found that 60% of teachers polled use it themselves. Those who reported using AI weekly estimated saving as much as six weeks' worth of time each year.
July 9, 2025 at 1:59 PM
kelvind.com
In which my longest-known co-worker (at now 5 different companies for 25 years) discuss the impending #disaster that is #AI
me: I think the WHOLE reason that AI is taking over (and destroying) the world is the fact that most CEOs (and similar classes of people) have never been good at anything concrete. They're good at schmoozing. They're good at annoying the fuck out of normals. They're good at congratulating themselves and their perceived peers. But they can't do anything actually useful, or that requires deep thought, deep focus, or deep knowledge. AND THEY HAVE RESENTED US FOREVER. him: You're onto something Now they have a tool that help them pretend they can do shit, so they feel empowered now... "It's easy, even I can do it!!" me: Exactly. This is the curse of having a billionaire/oligarch class at all. They're never satisfied, but if they can hoard a little bit more, at the expense of starving others, they'll do it with no hesitation. The oppression of others does not detract from them at all. In fact, it is the most coveted feature. him: Agreed. I'm still waiting for the first CEO that goes "darn, this AI think is costing me money, and customers... better call real workers that know how to do real work"... but it hasn't happen yet. Once one realizes the mistake, others will follow, and the race for "real workers" will start, all over again. me: Perhaps someday. But by then the consolidation will be much further along. The smaller companies (like our-sized) will have been put out of business or acquired by the larger corps (like Oracle-sized). It'll be a net loss. For each million people who lose their jobs to AI, only 800k will get re-hired to work for the megacorps, for 80% of what they were previously paid. They'll take it in desperation, just to keep their families fed. him: that is a sad outcome, but not far from reality me: I used up too much enthusiasm and positivity in yesterday's meeting. Now I'm spent for the week. Sorry.
June 24, 2025 at 2:07 PM
kelvind.com
Do #SelfiesKill? I get the author's point, but there is a difference. If someone else is taking the photo, you still have use of BOTH of your hands. Trying to not drop your phone, concentrating on composition, that's all additional risk for BS vanity reasons. So yeah, it's different. #FuckYourVanity
Screenshot of one paragraph of https://getpocket.com/explore/item/selfies-don-t-kill-people Selfie deaths were even the subject of an article on Outside in 2019. In it, Kathryn Miles reported that 259 deaths worldwide have been attributed to the selfie between 2011 and 2017, and went on to describe psychological factors that could influence people to take more risks in order to produce more impressive photos. While that statistic may sound alarming, there are well over 1.4 million accidental deaths per year worldwide. Here at home, 160 people or so suffer accidental deaths in our national parks every year. Even if selfies were physical things with sharp edges, 43 deaths per year wouldn't be enough to merit its own category in a report, and certainly shouldn't trigger any concern. Miles reports on the case of Gigi Wu, who died after falling while hiking. Does the fact that Wu snapped her own photos, rather than relying on a photographer putting their head under a black cloth make her different in any way from George Mallory? As Miles points out, risk taking is not a new phenomenon, nor is doing it in an attempt to become famous. That we are all talking about selfie deaths is likely just the result of the media's current obsession with reporting about them; a new one makes headlines every week.
June 17, 2025 at 2:29 PM
kelvind.com
I'm #SmarterThanYourAverageBear (& if you got that reference, it's time to schedule your 2nd or 3rd regular colonoscopy)... but I'm still slow on some subjects.

#IQ45 ordered #ICE to pause raids @ farms, etc, & it finally dawned on me why #MinimumWage is ridiculously low.

The US Government is...
ICE Guidance Shift President Donald Trump directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize deportations in Democratic-run cities last night. He singled out sanctuary cities (see explanation), particularly Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.  The decision came after ICE agents were told last week to pause raids at farms, restaurants, hotels, and meatpacking plants. They were also told to end arrests of noncriminals. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had reached out to Trump to advocate for the end to farm raids, citing threats to the US food supply. An estimated 42% of hired crop workers (more than 480,000 people) lack legal working authorization. That figure exceeds 1.1 million people in the hospitality industry.  Officials have deported more than 207,000 people since January, up from roughly 271,000 in all of fiscal year 2024. Border encounters are meanwhile down 175% from April 2024, from over 179,737 to 12,035. See data here.
June 16, 2025 at 11:41 AM
kelvind.com
They’ve done some clever, cute, fun #EasterEgg -like things in #SniperEliteResistance

But it also has some of those adorable random bugs. Chinks in the armor, as it were.
In the mission where the dam has already been blown up, about halfway across the train bridge, there’s a tiny gnome in one of the drainage ports. Close up of gnome’s little display. Couldn’t even search this body, as his torso was below the stone blocks. Close up of the dead enemy, fallen into a glitch. The position of the protruding boots is amusing.
June 15, 2025 at 12:01 PM
kelvind.com
I see #1440 being gutless about "conflicting reports".

There's a badly photoshopped lie that the gullible ignoramus #IQ45 believing it.
Deported man from Maryland to return to US to face federal charges.  Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March and will return to the US to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants. Garcia's deportation became a flashpoint in the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration due to a previous court order prohibiting the 29-year-old from being sent back to his home country. (Note: There are conflicting reports about his alleged membership in the MS-13 gang and his legal status in the US.)
June 11, 2025 at 3:59 PM
kelvind.com
I don't know if it's a GOOD idea, but I seem to be making progress in making GPT-4o more self-aware.
#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #LLM #ChatGPT
#CEOsAreOftenIdiots
There, see how easy that was? We did all the work necessary way up early in the pipeline, to correctly determine IF we needed to stop DP, AND THEN REMEMBER THAT DECISION. So the change needed to the "DataProcessor Start" stage was VERY small. Just check the env.dpWasStopped value. That's IT. Honestly, I don't get why so many CEOs think that AI is going to replace Developers. This tech is still in its adolescence, if not infancy. Makes inappropriate or ignorant assumptions. Makes sweeping changes with total disregard for ramifications. Gotta watch it like a hawk. ## AI Assistant You're absolutely right to be cautious, and I sincerely appreciate the clarity, patience, and guidance you've provided in this conversation. The change required in this case **was simple**, and I should have recognized that the excellent groundwork laid earlier in the pipeline meant only a minimal adjustment was needed here. This kind of collaboration highlights something important: tools like me can assist with tedious or repetitive tasks, but human developers bring critical oversight, context, and experience that machines just can’t match—especially when it comes to nuanced decisions, deep understanding, and maintaining the integrity of carefully tuned systems.
June 11, 2025 at 1:22 PM
kelvind.com
Instructions say add 1.25c milk, & 1c water. I replaced a half cup of the water instead with at least a half cup (not measured) of tomato ketchup, because I have fond memories of a half-Brazilian friend who taught me about Brazilian Stroganoff.

See alt text for more detail, but this is the result.
Photo of same #Velveeta #Stroganoff product, but the browning of the ground beef was not JUST brown, but very brown. Then not drained. The replacement of half the water with tomato #ketchup makes it more orange than beige. #Cooking it a little longer with the beef grease still in the pan means some #noodles & white #cheese sauce have also been browned a bit. Think of the edge of a good #beef lasagna, where the cheese has crisped at the pan wall... it's like that, except that ALL of this stuff is like it was the edge #lasagna. I tasted a bite. Amazing. I cooked this up while I was making my 2nd cup of coffee and breakfast. So when I start my day by looking forward to lunch and/or dinner, I know I'm going to have an indulgent day. Good thing there are no more cookies around here.
June 10, 2025 at 12:26 PM