Andrew Dupont

@andrewdupont.net

101 Followers 74 Following

apologies to all you programmers who followed me thinking i was going to post about programming (also @savetheclocktower@mastodon.social)

On Tuesday, a source close to Thrive Capital told CBS News that criticism of the firm's involvement was unjustified. "I think the first assumption is that Trump was involved in FFE in any capacity, which is just not accurate," the source told CBS News. "Josh himself does not have any links with the administration, he does not have any political roles, he has not donated to them, he is not involved in any capacity. If you look at his donation record, all of the causes he has donated to are Democrat ... it's kind of unfair to assume a lot about somebody just because of what their brother does."
One Nextdoor commenter asks: “So what was the point of this SB79, if not to force the creation of "affordable housing?"” Another replies: “1) The dismantling of single family residential neighborhoods because the renter class tends to be younger and vote blue 2) developers have many politicians in their pockets 3) creating more traffic and congestion to make driving unbearable 4) LA Metro has billions of $ and one has to believe that they are funneling money to politicians”
Excerpt from a Nextdoor comment (note the sudden bouts of CAPITALIZATION): “While local ordinances are allowed to override those SB79 percentages, local ordinances allow developers to bypass building ANY affordable units if they pay an in-lieu fee, which goes into a fund to build affordable housing IN THE FUTURE. In other words, nothing affordable would be built in the present, and the only building types that could be built are 100% affordable units. Many years could pass before a city would see such a development.”
An email from Nextdoor: “What's a Fourth of July tradition from your childhood that you still think… [See more]” posted by a user named “Ask Pasadena.” (This is an automated user that posts anodyne questions on Nextdoor; Nextdoor thinks this is worth emailing me about.)
A video of King Cake Baby (the New Orleans Pelicans’ seasonal mascot) dancing after a Pelicans win
Post from Nextdoor marked as “Trending Post”: “I hate Pasadena ! I would never take anyone there.”
Nicholas Fehn and his wacky “take” on the news
Born to be a hobbitcore lesbian; forced to protest bigoted fascists
Illustration of Trump in an admiral’s hat and a straitjacket
An email from E*TRADE: Geopolitical perspectives with Admiral William McRaven An exclusive event presented by Morgan Stanley Wealth Management February 19 | 12:15 p.m. ET Join us for an exclusive virtual event featuring distinguished four-star U.S. Navy Admiral, William McRaven and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Chief Economic Strategist and Global Head of Thematic and Macro Investing, Ellen Zentner.
However, some users may not have to go through either form of age verification. Discord is also rolling out an age inference model that analyzes metadata like the types of games a user plays, their activity on Discord, and behavioral signals like signs of working hours or the amount of time they spend on Discord. “If we have a high confidence that they are an adult, they will not have to go through the other age verification flows,” Badalich says.
From a JS newsletter: “Only idiots write manual tests — modern engineering teams like Notion, Dropbox and LaunchDarkly use Metuculous to maintain e2e UI tests that cover every edge case of your web app. [sponsored]”
Excerpt from an L.A. Times article: ‘Before it closed, Malatesta started a mall fan account on Instagram and threw it a funeral, singing “Unchained Melody” beneath the giant Westminster Mall sign that for decades welcomed customers and window shoppers alike. ‘“I love you Westminster Mall,” she yelled as the song concluded. “I’ll never forget you.”‘
Lisa FUCKING Loeb
At the MIDDLE-AGED DAD JAM BAND New Year’s Eve show
Photo of a crane game; all the prizes are ducks. A sign reads: JUST DUCKS.
An ad: “Arcadia: Lookup anyone’s home value instantly by address.” The associated image is an aerial view of San Francisco (nowhere near Arcadia).
The actor revealed he was approached for the role of suave action-hero James Bond following Sean Connery's departure from the franchise. Connery, who died in 2020, originated the Ian Fleming-penned character on screen in 1962's "Dr. No." "They said, "Would you like to be Bond?' And I said, "Have you heard my British accent?" Van Dyke recalled, adding that he was skeptical that viewers would have "accepted" the change in genre from him.
A person on NextDoor, in a comment to a post: “BLOCKED FOR RIDIOCY AND TREASON”
UCLA reaffirmed its long-term commitment to the Rose Bowl as part of a 2014 lease amendment, waiving its right to terminate the agreement before its completion. In return, the city of Pasadena has issued nearly $200 million in bonds to pay for stadium improvements that would benefit UCLA. The bond structure was designed so that stadium revenues would service the debt instead of taxpayer dollars.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the Democratic offer a "nonstarter." "The Obamacare extension is the negotiation. That's what we're going to negotiate once the government opens up. ... We need to vote to open the government — and there is a proposal out there to do that — and then we can have this whole conversation about health care," he said.
From a job listing, quoted verbatim: """"MUST BE A US CITIZEN OR GREEN CARD HOLDER""" """MUST SPEAK PERFECT AND CLEAR ENGLISH NO ACCEPTIONS"""
“However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right — nay, obligation — to critique me and my views in public,” Rowling continued. “Years after they finished acting in ‘Potter,’ they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”
A screenshot of part of a (presumably) AI-generated image with Jesus Christ (?) and a speech bubble above him that says: “Sweet Jesus, that’s not analysis.” The lettering style is all-caps sans-serif and is reminiscent of a pre-Helvetica font like Akzidenz Grotesk. I, Andrew Dupont, find this pleasing.
Email from Peacock: Subject: Upcoming Price Increase Thank you for being a Peacock subscriber. We want to let you know about an upcoming price increase to your subscription.
From an _Esquire_ article, emphasis mine: “The humble straw was invented— get this—about 5,000 years ago in ancient Sumer (modern-day Iraq), and they were made from gold and lapis lazuli. Think about that the next time your paper straw is disintegrating into your McDonald's Coke. The modern version was patented in 1888, and plastic ones entered our drinks in the mid-20th century. _Since then, men have been told to avoid them._“
Emmy nominees for outstanding guest actress in a drama series: • Jane Alexander, "Severance" • Gwendoline Christie, "Severance" • Kaitlyn Dever, "The Last of Us" • Cherry Jones, "The Handmaid's Tale" • Catherine O'Hara, "The Last of Us" • Merritt Wever, "Severance"
Protest sign: No kings (in general) /But even if you're cool with kings... / Specifically not THIS chucklefuck
An email from Google: “We believe Al is foundational to the future of work and its transformative power should be accessible to every business and every employee, at an affordable price. That's why today we've decided to include the best of Google Al in Workspace Business and Enterprise plans, bringing the latest generative Al capabilities to our business customers without the need to purchase any add-ons.”
The Jags consider it a two-for-one, with Hunter being this year's best receiver and cornerback prospect. “In our mind, we got two second overall picks this year,” said executive vice president of football operations Tony Boselli.
Advertisement of which I am skeptical: Dropbox, Lattice, and hundreds of other engineering orgs all rely on Meticulous because it generates and maintains an exhaustive suite of E2E Ul tests with zero developer effort. That means you'll never write, fix, or maintain a test ever again. Here's how it works: * Add a script tag to your local development, staging, and preview URL environments, so Meticulous can monitor your daily interactions with your app * Their Al engine uses that info to generate a continuously evolving test suite that adds or removes tests as needed and eliminates flakes
Poster: “Congressional Republicans are hitching their wagons to an idiot”
Excerpt from the article: “I think I could beat the Dred Scott challenge, if I wanted to do so. I could come up with an elegant theory that explained why, on a consent-based account of citizenship, Dred Scott was wrongly decided and the Citizenship Clause nullified it. I think I could do more. I think I could convince you that it was consistent with some legitimate strand of originalism. Perhaps I could even convince you of a theory along these lines that would exclude the children of unlawful entrants from citizenship. “I'm not going to try, and I don't think that anyone should. That's because, as Robert Cover put it, ’Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death.’ It's not a soccer field or a football field, it's not the Lands Between in Elden Ring. Play games with the Reconstruction Constitution, and people will suffer, bleed, die.”
A text message: “Your toll payment for TxTag Lane must be settled by March 25, 2025. To avoid fines and the suspension of your driving privileges, kindly pay by the due date.” A link to a fake TxTag site is given.
Search engine results for LibGen, a large set of pirated books that Meta used to train their AIs instead of paying money like decent human beings. My book, _Practical Prototype and script.aculous_, is in the collection twice.
From _The Independent_’s interview with Christopher Walken: Everyone thinks they can do the Christopher Walken voice. That New York lilt. That round, honeyed purr, like a cat with plans. Try it yourself. Go on. Speak from the back of your throat. Elongate those vowels. What you shouldn’t do, though, is try it in front of him. “People come up to me in the street and they impersonate me to my face,” Walken says. “You know, they speak the way I speak.” The actor, 81 and spry, looks knowingly down the lens of his Zoom camera. “And I’m never sure what they’re doing at first. I think, ‘Why is he talking that way?’ But then I realise.” He lets out an ambivalent whine. This sounds a little cruel, I tell him, while fully aware that I was speaking pure Walkenese to a colleague mere minutes before our interview. “Oh, it happens all the time,” he sighs.
Screenshot from a map of properties in Altadena with icons indicating whether each was destroyed by the wildfires or is intact. One black icon (intact) is shown amidst a sea of red (destroyed) icons.
An annotation of the JavaScript code new XMLHttpRequest() in which the “XML” is described as “patrician; dignified; trendy” while the “Http” is described as “plebeian; quotidian; stodgy.” It attempts to answer the unanswerable question of why “XML” is in all-caps but “Http” has only its initial “H” capitalized.
A digest of a Nextdoor post: “Hello neighbors. On October 11th, I noticed a rash on my upper thighs...” The rest is hidden behind a “See more” link that I was reluctant to click.
Gamble House in Pasadena; a DeLorean is parked in the driveway in its full time-machine accoutrements.
(an excerpt from the 1978 book _The C Programming Language_) 1.1 Getting Started The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. The first program to write is the same for all languages: Print the words hello, world This is a big hurdle; to leap over it you have to be able to create the program text somewhere, compile it successfully, load it, run it, and find out where your output went. With these mechanical details mastered, everything else is comparatively easy. In C, the program to print “‘hello, world"is #include <stdio.h> main() { printf("hello, world\n"); }
A snippet of text in which CODE elements are rendered with leading and trailing backticks
A cookie modal with the heading “Responsible use of your data” that continues, “we and our 814 partners…”
Title of a YouTube video from Late Night with Seth Meyers: “Please Don’t Destroy Wrote ’Bad Bunny is Shrek’ for SNL at 1 a.m.”
(screenshot from NYT article about ESPN) With its dual revenue stream — fees from cable subscribers and advertising — the sports juggernaut continues to earn billions of dollars for Disney. In the first six months of the 2023 fiscal year, Disney’s cable networks division, which is anchored by ESPN and its spinoff channels, generated $14 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit. The problem: Wall Street is fixated on growth. Revenue for those six months was down 6 percent from a year earlier, as profit plunged 29 percent.