Reblogged funeral-clown
Reblogged
Your Meta AI prompts are in a live, public feed
I'm in the home stretch of my 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX TOMORROW (June 20) at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG and at the TUALATIN public library on SUNDAY (June 22). After that, it's LONDON (July 1) with TRASHFUTURE'S RILEY QUINN and then a big finish in MANCHESTER on July 2.
Back in 2006, AOL tried something incredibly bold and even more incredibly stupid: they dumped a data-set of 20,000,000 "anonymized" search queries from 650,000 users (yes, AOL had a search engine – there used to be lots of search engines!):
The AOL dump was a catastrophe. In an eyeblink, many of the users in the dataset were de-anonymized. The dump revealed personal, intimate and compromising facts about the lives of AOL search users. The AOL dump is notable for many reasons, not least because it jumpstarted the academic and technical discourse about the limits of "de-identifying" datasets by stripping out personally identifying information prior to releasing them for use by business partners, researchers, or the general public.
It turns out that de-identification is fucking hard. Just a couple of datapoints associated with an "anonymous" identifier can be sufficent to de-anonymize the user in question:
But firms stubbornly refuse to learn this lesson. They would love it if they could "safely" sell the data they suck up from our everyday activities, so they declare that they can safely do so, and sell giant data-sets, and then bam, the next thing you know, a federal judge's porn-browsing habits are published for all the world to see:
Indeed, it appears that there may be no way to truly de-identify a data-set:
Which is a serious bummer, given the potential insights to be gleaned from, say, population-scale health records:
It's clear that de-identification is not fit for purpose when it comes to these data-sets:
But that doesn't mean there's no safe way to data-mine large data-sets. "Trusted research environments" (TREs) can allow researchers to run queries against multiple sensitive databases without ever seeing a copy of the data, and good procedural vetting as to the research questions processed by TREs can protect the privacy of the people in the data:
But companies are perennially willing to trade your privacy for a glitzy new product launch. Amazingly, the people who run these companies and design their products seem to have no clue as to how their users use those products. Take Strava, a fitness app that dumped maps of where its users went for runs and revealed a bunch of secret military bases:
Reblogged starlightomatic
no like fr the way that a lot of people look at israelis -- there's no group of people on earth i look at that way. literally no group of people where i'd look at posters of hostages from that group and go "that's obviously genocide propaganda i'm tearing it down." certainly not any group of people where i'd watch a video of their house blowing up and hear a woman crying for her dog in the rubble and point and laugh.
i can't even imagine having that response honestly. i can imagine apathy sure but glee? over people suffering? looking at a whole nationality that way? there's no way
i think that has to corrode your soul. i mean how can't it?
okay so on an individual level I have no quarrel with Israelis, I'm sure there are some, many even, who are good people as in any state, and as in any state that is at war. To be clear, I value human life above anything and there is no circumstance where I would ever celebrate its loss. Can you hear the "but" coming? I live far from Israel. I see posters around about the Israeli hostages. These posters have not been put up by people who knew those people personally. They are not put up by people who have ever met the hostages. They are probably not even put up by Israelis. They are put up by zionists in my country whose only connection to those people is their cultural or religious identity. To these people, the lives of the hostages are nothing but a symbol, and they are willing to support the deaths of fifty five thousand palestinians in the name of that symbol. That is the definition of propaganda. I don't know how to make it any clearer, these posters are a SYMBOL that the lives of Israelis are worth 200 times more than the lives of Palestinians. Which is propaganda.
how do you know that the people putting up the posters support the war?
or put a different way, how do you know that the message of the posters is "and this is why you need to support the war?"
also, since you mentioned it -- would you approach either of the above questions differently if the posters had been put up by israelis living in diaspora? what if they had been put up by friends and family members of the hostages?
side note, i do appreciate this response a lot because it made something click and now i understand where the big miscommunication and mismatched assumptions are.
@lapislantern one more, sorry
there's a jewish practice that after our festive meal each friday night, we sing jewish songs together. nowadays, during this, it's very common for people to sing acheinu, which is a traditional song about praying for jews in distress that in the current moment is "dedicated" to the hostages.
in addition, the jewish community that i visited for the passover holiday had little placards with hostages' names for us to put at empty place sittings, to make tangible the idea that their places at their family's celebrations are empty. likewise, it's common to have an extra chair at holiday meals.
in addition, many jews, including my mother, have added an extra candle to their weekly ritual candlelighting to represent and remember the hostages.
can you help me understand, from your perspective, how you would see actions like these? since these are things done within jewish spaces that the outside non-jewish world does not see or usually even know about, what do you believe is the purpose? are these also forms of propaganda? who is the audience?
Since I am atheist I think it will be difficult for us to see eye to eye on this, but I will try to explain my perspective. This will be my last response though, because I'm not really interested in debating on this.
how do you know that the message of the posters is "and this is why you need to support the war?"
I am a media student, and one thing we are taught is that the creator's intent doesn't always matter, if the actual effect of the media is something different. So I can't definitively say that the people putting up the posters support the war, I've never met them, but that is the way I interpret them based on the social context that I do have. The reason I interpret them this way, is because of the political climate.
For example, there have been protests in my city in solidarity with palestine, calling for ceasefires and an end to the genocide, which have had counterprotests by zionist groups. If these groups don't support the war, I have no idea what they're protesting for. So when I see posters about the hostages, these are the groups and ideologies I immediately associate them with. Whether this is the intention or not I can't prove, but even if it isn't the intention it is the reality. Even if it wasn't their intention, the effect of these posters is to amplify the voices of zionism in my city, and what the voice of zionism is saying in my city is that palestinians should die.
would you approach either of the above questions differently if the posters had been put up by israelis living in diaspora? what if they had been put up by friends and family members of the hostages?
If the posters had been put up directly by friends and family of the hostages, I would feel a little differently. I would feel much less hostility towards them because it would be much clearer that the posters come from a place of love and grief. However I would still disagree with them, because of the reasons above (the intention does not change the effect).
If the posters had been put up by Israelis living in diaspora this wouldn't change my feeling toward them. Like I said in my first reblog: "their only connection to those people is their cultural or religious identity. To these people, the lives of the hostages are nothing but a symbol, and they are willing to support the deaths of fifty five thousand palestinians in the name of that symbol." Or, if you wanted to argue that they don't actually support the deaths of Palestinians, see my other point above: that's still the message they are sending.
how you would see actions like these? since these are things done within jewish spaces that the outside non-jewish world does not see or usually even know about, what do you believe is the purpose? are these also forms of propaganda? who is the audience?
I think this is the heart of where the ideological incompatibility is.
I'm sure that these practices are done with genuine love and care. I'm sure that it makes you feel a sense of genuine connection and kinship with the hostages. I can see how this would inform a lot of zionist's actions. But to me it doesn't excuse them in the slightest.
As someone on the outside, as I said above, I value human life above anything, and that means ALL human life. To me there is no difference between the value of an Israeli and a Palestinian. I don't want either of them to die. When you are practicing these traditions, you are placing higher value on the lives of the hostages who you have never met, than the palestinians who you have also never met, because of your religious and national identity.
I don't know if propaganda is the right word for this, because it seems like its less of a purposely constructed thing and more of an embedded cultural thing, but it still perpetuates an incredibly discriminatory bias, and your immersion in these practices is what makes you feel such a strong passion for the hostages. If you wanted to call it propaganda, then you are "the audience".
I wish I knew more about religious social systems to really unpack this, but thankfully this seems to be a bias specific to zionists and not judaism in general.
This is the last I'll respond on this topic, because I suspect my words will go to waste, but I hope you'll properly consider everything I've said, and I hope you can see why it's tone deaf to prioritise the israeli hostages when far more palestinians have been killed.
Sorry, can you clarify -- are you saying that internal Jewish cultural and religious practices relating to the hostages are unethical because they condition people to care more about the hostages than about Palestinians? When you say "it doesn't excuse them" are you saying that lighting an extra candle for the hostages in one's home cannot be excused?
Also, imagine that I am a 1980s Christian housewife. I see that there's been a rise in D&D playing and I am sure it is satanic. When I see a flyer advertising a D&D campaign at the local library, the author's intent does not matter, only the effect: which is promoting satanism. In fact, when I see people who I think are Satanists, it makes me think of the flyers, increasing the effect. I definitely should tear them down. What is important here is my emotional response, not the author's beliefs or intent. They can argue all they want, but satanism is still the message they are sending.
Holy fuck bless your patience. That person had the most foul, uneducated, black and white thinking …
Fucking hell. Everything they’ve said is just… batshit. And they do not seem to be against the war at all actually (though they’ve been deluded to think they are).
What a weirdo.
I'm honestly reeling from their argument literally being "I have already decided this is what they meant, so their actual intent doesn't matter."
This is honestly such a perfect example of the phenomenon of the Verbose Idiot. This person wrote so many words, in complete sentences, with structured reasoning, and every single one was wrong.
I guess it's also unethical to grieve at your grandma's funeral, because all lives matter and there are other grandmas who've died whom you're not grieving. Black History Month is also out; there are other oppressed people and during February we send the message that only black lives matter (and of course intention doesn't matter) .
Since lapislantern is either their media profs' worst student or is studying media at Liberty University, for the benefit of any other media students: this is a wholly incorrect understanding of the relationship between author and audience and intent and effect.
To wit:
- The intent of the author has no intrinsic relation to the effect speech has on the audience
- This is because the audience is responsible for their own interpretation of the speech, which happens within a context the author cannot control.
- If the context is known, the author can attempt through rhetorical and literary devices to shape the likely audience response to better match the intended message.
- The responsibility however lies on the audience to separate their interpretation from the author's intent, approach the text in good faith, and examine how the text might be understood in different contexts.
In other words:
If you look at hostage posters and it elicits in you a call to war against the Palestinians, instead of a grief and rage at our brethren being held hostage and receiving far less attention from the western left?
That's a you problem. Just as the effect of the posters is separate from the intent, you cannot project onto our intent your own response to the posters.
They're not pro-war propaganda, you're just a sad, twisted fuck with no media literacy.
Reblogged funeral-clown
Asking I'm genuine interest: does anyone who follows me have anything to praise banksy over? Because I'd like to at least have checked my opinion of "hack"
Banksy is (was?) straightforwardly good, it's just that he's not great, and he's not deep, and he kept riding the confusingly arbitrary rocket to art stardom far beyond the point where his actual work could support it, which makes him look like a self-important sellout. He wants to be the same guy he was originally while also having all this, and that guy just does not make sense with all this. But that guy was good, in his original context!
You have to look at it in the context of the 90s, right? In the 70s, UK and US culture fermented to the point where it was starting to get a bit ripe, and people voted in fusionist conservatives to cut it open, scoop out all the substance, and fill it with consumerism and family values. By the 90s, the consumerism was still intense, but the family values were on the way out, without other values to replace them.
The iconic art form of the 90s was the advertisement. Banksy was the kind of guy who could go into advertising, who was good at basically that sort of concise, pithy "message" image, but was resentful of the whole complex. As a result, he applied those skills to, like, guerrilla marketing left-wing social conscience in the same idiom. The 90s was the era of irony and ambivalence, and its youth social conscience habitually had this weird affinity with commodity trash, reflecting a sense that everything had already been captured and it was uncertain what it really meant to still care about things (other than brands) at the End of History.
Anyway. There's an actual craft to the kind of stuff he was doing, but it's still low art. It pricks the skin and catches the eye but it's never, ever deep, because it can only evoke simple ideas that people already hold. This worked well for his original schtick, when he was an unknown street artist mostly working in a single town, but trying to parlay that into a reputation and career while doing the same schtick just turns you into an editorial cartoonst. The appeal was surprise and authenticity, and how can you possibly maintain that when you have a reputation and a brand identity and a swarm of wealthy collectors and international newsmedia reporting on your every move? He had to either reject all that or else pivot to something that complemented it, and he couldn't choose between the values and the money, and so...uhm. Actually it worked out great? He's one of the world's most famous and sought-after artists, and he presumably feels OK about his values, so. You know! But yes, it makes him kind of a parody of what he originally was, now.
In a sense, I feel like this itself is artistic, because the culture he emerged from was also very concerned with Selling Out, and so being morally and aesthetically undermined by his own success creates a sense of aesthetic completion. But personally, I don't like that he's still bucking against it in a half-assed way. Propriety demands that at this point he either burn it all down catastrophically in a crazy way, or do an ad for Coke without trying to be cute about it and salvage his dignity somehow.
The shredding-a-banksy art auction thing was fucking hilarious (conceptually - would have been much better if the painting had actually been eradicated and irreparable; would have loved to see a million dollar painting turned into ash the moment it sold).
But also, yeah, I agree with @discoursedrome - his stencils are good. They're usually witty, they're a smart use of the medium, the images themselves are intelligible and evocative. If you isolated each stencil and they were never printed on t-shirts or arranged into fifty dollar coffee table books they would be perfectly solid pieces of protest art (I have always particularly liked the use of rats stenciled around security cameras and I continue to think that those look good and present an actual subversive message; unironically more people should highlight the presence of security cameras to point them out and to remind passers by that this shit is spying on you. Of course Banksy hasn't marked a camera in forever at this point, but at this point if he did people would roll their eyes about it and call him a sellout and the marked cameras would become a place where people congregated to take photos of the Banksy(tm)(c)(r) Art)
He got popular because people looked at what he was doing and nodded genially and went "yeah, man, I feel you" and enough of them did it that what he was doing basically stopped being criminal? But only if he's the one doing it?
IDK I think that Banksy is:
- Good in a technical sense; he makes good use of his medium and separated from the Banksy of it all are well constructed and usually funny or thought provoking or at least witty enough to make someone pause and go "huh"
- Difficult to take seriously as a political or street artist at this point because his mainstreaming has severed him from the subversive/interesting elements of his art (this is why the shredder thing was so good and funny)
- Genuinely doing good work as a political artist in the sense that he knows rich people will buy his art for ridiculous prices so he uses sales of his art to fund refugee rescue boats (which means that the art that a bunch of people want to call shitty and sell-out is doing tangible, material good in the world)
Anyway. I feel like people mostly just roll their eyes at stuff like Dismaland and the walled off hotel and new murals because they feel kind of cringe but i feel like most Art with a capital A is kind of cringe at some level? But yeah, Dismaland feels. Bad. Pandering? Obvious? It feels obvious, the way that a lot of Banksy stuff feels obvious but I don't know how obvious it would feel if Banksy hadn't been doing it for thirty years?
I understand the "burn it all down or do a coke commercial" attitude, and I am certain that I've said something like "the best thing he could do is make sure that every painting he sells from now until the end of time is destroyed at the point of sale" but also, fuck, I can't fund a refugee boat.
That fucking rules, actually. I have made up my mind I don't care if his stuff is cringe he can make all the dismalands the world will take if it lets him keep paying for shit like this.
Anyway, here are two fun bullet points from his wikipedia page:
Reblogged bibimbobibliophile
the assisted dying debate is so crazy
because i do fundamentally believe everyone should have the right to die when they want.
BUT if they legalise assisted suicide in the UK right now i don't trust our ableist fucking government to not just start coercing disabled people into suicide to save money. they already won't give them enough money to live.
you can't make a free, genuine choice about the time and manner of your death until you have the right to live, as independently as possible and with all your needs met.
this is also true of people who commit regular old unassisted suicide because they can't transition, because of harassment or discrimination, because they can't keep a job or don't make enough money to live. it's government murder by proxy.
Reblogged the-library-alcove
no like fr the way that a lot of people look at israelis -- there's no group of people on earth i look at that way. literally no group of people where i'd look at posters of hostages from that group and go "that's obviously genocide propaganda i'm tearing it down." certainly not any group of people where i'd watch a video of their house blowing up and hear a woman crying for her dog in the rubble and point and laugh.
i can't even imagine having that response honestly. i can imagine apathy sure but glee? over people suffering? looking at a whole nationality that way? there's no way
i think that has to corrode your soul. i mean how can't it?
Reblogged oy-to-the-world
Friendly reminder that you're not required to publicly take sides in any geopolitical conflict you don't understand.
Reblogged nothorses
we have to start expressing vocal disgust at 'ironic' homophobia again in a big way. if you can't explain to me how calling a guy a twinky little fruitcake valorises the terminology vs. reducing and demeaning him for perceived femininity I don't want to hear it. nobody is off the hook for this.
Reblogged meangirlnurse
Any time I see someone defending GenAI in academics I'm reminded of a video Oz Media made a bit ago about a guy studying to be a nutritionist who realized they fucked up once he got to having to do labs. The TL;DR of it is the person used ChatGPT to cruise through foundation courses and through nutrition coursework, but realized as labs were looming they didn't actually *know* jack-shit. Direct Quote from their post: "LABS START NEXT MONTH. AI CANT PIPETTE LIQUIDS. i have to measure nutrient densities IN PERSON. what happens when i blank out and cant explain the krebs cycle to my professor's face???" Even the basics made no sense to them; tried to brush up on chemistry but couldn't understand page 1. And it was a couple of years worth of STEM they needed to learn.
And the whole time I laughed at their suffering because they put themselves in this boat. They didn't study, they didn't learn, and now they have to deal with the consequences.
That's the fundamental problem with cheating on your courses as a whole. Eventually you will have to actually do stuff and you're either going to be prepared for that or you aren't.
Reblogged stripedroseandsketchpads
BREAKING: Seniors in wheelchairs who staged a sit-in in the Senate building against the budget bill that would cut healthcare have been zip-tied and arrested.
Reblogged the-library-alcove
I know you’re probably fatigued hearing about this, but this is one of the best pieces I’ve read so far explaining the enormous worry and pain of this situation.
Zohran Mamdani just won the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City.
This is the same Mamdani who voted with Republicans against banning revenge porn and ghost guns. The same candidate who once rapped praises for convicted Hamas financiers involved in the Holy Land Foundation, a sham charity dismantled by the FBI in one of the largest terror finance trials in American history. The same Mamdani who partnered with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, a figure infamous for glorifying 9/11, joking about rape, and celebrating October 7. He’s called for defunding the police, raising taxes in a city already suffocating under its own cost of living, and repeatedly refused to back Holocaust Remembrance Day resolutions until public pressure forced him to say, yes, he condemns the Holocaust.
How did we get here?
Let me start with this. I get it. Truly.
He’s attractive, charming, memeable. He promises free buses, rent freezes, city-run grocery stores, and a happily-ever-after New York. Who wouldn’t want that? Even actress and model Emily Ratajkowski wore a “Hot Girls Vote for Zohran” t-shirt as part of her campaign for him.
Though he earns a six-figure salary and grew up middle-class, Mamdani brands himself as a man of the people. But the numbers tell a different story. Most Black and low-income New Yorkers voted for Cuomo. The communities Mamdani claims to fight for clearly rejected him.
A large portion of his base came from wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods. These voters weren’t affected by rising rents or public transit costs. Mamdani’s proposals to tax the rich didn’t feel like a real threat to them, but rather a symbol of moral alignment. For them, voting for him wasn’t about material change. It was about projecting values — anti-establishment, progressive, and deeply online. Ironically, the affluent supporters who helped him win aren’t the same high earners his policies would drive out. Those are the business leaders, landlords, and job creators who shoulder the fiscal burden of the city’s operations.
Cuomo, his opponent, was hardly a strong alternative. Accused of sexual harassment by 11 women and responsible for covering up COVID nursing home deaths, he was a hard sell. For many voters, Mamdani seemed like the cleaner choice. Young, idealistic, uncorrupted, and someone who will fight for all New Yorkers.
But maybe the old saying holds up: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
In reality, his proposed policies would be devastating for New York City’s economy. Financial analysts and policy experts have already raised alarms that tax hikes on high earners risk driving out the very people who make up a disproportionate share of the city’s tax revenue. A rent freeze might sound great in theory, but would shrink the housing supply, and deepen the already worsening financial crisis facing New York. Basically this could push the city toward another era of fiscal instability. Add to that billions in new spending on free buses, city-run grocery stores, and expanded social programs, with no clear funding plan, and you're looking at a fragile economic foundation on the verge of collapse.
And that’s just the economics. For me, as a Jewish New Yorker, the concerns run deeper. I’ve spent the past day watching my friends and my community process what this means. And we are not alone. Across my social media feed, members of the American and Canadian Hindu communities are also speaking out. They’re trying to break through the noise and issue a warning. One that too many progressives are ignoring.
It’s been said but it bears repeating. New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Nearly one million Jews live in the five boroughs. That’s about 12 percent of the city. If you count Long Island and Westchester, the number surpasses 1.3 million.
I’m one of them. I moved to the city in my mid-twenties after spending part of my childhood in Israel and the rest growing up in Westchester. And I’ll be honest. At first, I hated it. The trash, the prices, the constant motion. I got lost all the time, even with Google Maps. I always felt one step behind.
But over time, the city became mine. I learned the subway. I found the bagel shops that remembered my order. I spent too much of my nonprofit salary on iced coffee. I found a bar where I could mark time — bad dates, nights to mark milestones, birthdays with friends. And yes, I saw Wicked three times thanks to the Broadway Lottery and still cried at the same scene.
But none of those things made me feel like I belonged. What did was the Jewish community.
It was Friday night services. It was marching in the Israel Day Parade. It was dancing and singing in the streets with my fellow congregants to celebrate the Torah scroll that was dedicated in honor of my Zaidy, a Holocaust survivor. And it was visiting the Nova Music Festival memorial exhibit when it came to New York.
That exhibit wasn’t about politics. It was about grief. It showed shoes. Broken tents. Burned possessions. It played the music those young people danced to before they were murdered. It asked only that we bear witness.
But for groups like Within Our Lifetime — the same group Mamdani marched with during the May 2021 Israel/Hamas conflict when over 4,000 rockets were fired into Israeli civilian territory, even memorializing Jewish and Israeli victims proved too controversial. In June 2024, WOL organized a protest outside the Nova exhibit and labeled it a “Day of Rage.”
Their founder, Nerdeen Kiswani, has repeatedly incited violence against Jews and openly called for the elimination of Israel.
In August 2020, he attended an anti-Hindu rally while hate chants rang out behind him. Aligning with extremists is part of Mamdani’s record. In October 2023, he was arrested for disorderly conduct while protesting outside U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer’s home in an anti-Israel demonstration, during Israel’s war against Hamas following the October 7 attacks.
Over and over again, he has stood with groups that openly target Jews and Hindus under the guise of political criticism. These groups traffic in clear bigotry, often with links to white supremacist movements and foreign terror networks. Mamdani may not echo their rhetoric word for word, but he toes the line, again and again
He wants plausible deniability. But the pattern is the point.
And sometimes, he doesn’t even try to hide it. Just recently in June 2025, Mamdani compared the intifada — a campaign of suicide bombings, stabbings, and shootings targeting Israeli civilians — to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum condemned him publicly.
That moment should have ended, or at least significantly damaged his campaign. Instead, it signaled something else.
It was a dog whistle. And extremists heard it. Twitch streamer Sneako, known for his antisemitism and misogyny, celebrated his win. So did Mohamed El-Kurd, who celebrated and justified the October 7 massacres. These are the people cheering Mamdani into office.
And still, progressives look away.
This silence and passive aggressive behavior doesn’t just live in politics. It’s seeped into our culture. This year, for the first time, some of my queer Jewish friends didn’t go to Pride. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they were made to feel unwelcome. Rainbow flags with Stars of David were quietly banned or forcibly removed. The message was clear. If you’re Jewish, or Israeli, stay home.
That message resonates even deeper in a city Jews helped build.
Jews shaped New York’s comedy scene, with iconic figures like Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Lenny Bruce, and Jackie Mason defining its voice. We brought our food too — from Katz’s Deli to the bagel shops I frequent far too often. Jewish talent helped build Broadway, with Jewish lyricists, composers, and producers shaping the culture of American theater. A Jewish producer helped bring Wicked to Broadway, the very show I keep returning to. Our culture, our humor, our intellect is all embedded in this city.
So when I say New York feels like home, I don’t just mean I live here. I mean we helped build its foundation. Our food. Our grief. Our humor. Our resistance. It’s all part of what makes New York what it is.
So here’s the real question. Do the “right” minorities matter? Because when Jews and Hindus raise alarms, the mainstream doesn’t listen. When our pain becomes politically inconvenient, it gets dismissed.
But ask yourself this. If the people celebrating Mamdani’s win include streamers like Sneako and extremists like Mohamed El-Kurd — do you really believe he is going to fix New York? Or is he just using its brokenness to rise and further deepen its current fractures?
Some of us see the writing on the wall. We are only trying to get more of you to read it before it is too late.
Reblogged funeral-clown
me.
To give more context: The reviewer was Jean Lorrain, who also was gay. Both showed up to the duel and both missed on purpose.
gay people can never just ask each other out
Reblogged
There's a gang roaming the streets. They may kill you, and they'll likely get away with it if they do. But if you're nice enough to them and jump through all the expected hoops, they may spare you and instead kill someone else.
Imagine believing that this gang makes society safer. Imagine believing that wanting this gang to not exist is "extreme". Seriously, how did humanity get to the point where it's actually possible to believe that?
Reblogged
China breaks RSA encryption with a quantum computer - Earth.com
A 22‑bit key is trivially small compared with production‑grade RSA, yet the test matters because the approach scaled beyond past demonstrations that stopped at 19 bits and required more qubits per variable.
the spectre of quantum computing gets ever closer
Security experts recommend starting with an internal audit to identify all uses of RSA, ECC, and other vulnerable algorithms before building a replacement plan.
ouch, elliptic-curve cryptography is also broken
@esoteric-merit how big a deal is this
not too-too big a deal. At the moment, this has no way to reasonably scale to surveillance levels, so this will only effect gov'ts and militaries for now, and it's far enough ahead of time that we're given plenty of time to switch to new methods.
It's been "known" for a while that five eyes likes to imply that they have a private algorithm for reasonably cracking RSA (subject to unknown restrictions and material needs), so a lot of the more paranoid folks already switched a while back, and I'm sure I've rambled to you about my own algorithms.
It's more important for mathematics than it is for cryptography, as being able to factor large numbers helps with a number of theorems in a number of different fields. Looks like soon, we might finally be able to decompose the J2 symmetry and see what it's made of, and that has implications for total covers, q-subspaces, such like that.