Chris Petersen

@cpetersen-cs.bsky.social

3409 Followers 635 Following

My pronouns are nerd/geek. I hope I'm an ally to many and an enemy to few. I can't believe bsky ran out of more interesting people to invite.

Sheridan and Delenn - Babylon 5
Anger may seem to be a source of energy, but it’s blind. It causes us to lose our restraint. It may stir courage, but again it’s blind courage. Negative emotions, which often arise from a spontaneous impulse, cannot be justified by reason, whereas positive emotions can. Scientists suggest that constant anger and hatred undermine our immune system. Compassion, bringing inner strength, is good for our health.
GE Vernova (post systems infrastructure provider) stock ticker over the past year - up over 100% with a share price over $1100)
a bee on purple flowers
Klingon captain pointing his disruptor pistol saying "Say AI one more time!"
the cover of the book "Slow Productivity" by Cal Newport
picture of a black and white cat lounging next to a zoo sign (inside the cage) for the giant panda. original post: "when you lied on your resume and still got the job."
A movie poster for Dark Star
https://britmonkey.com/2020s-political-compass/ results: 81% woke, 38% techbro, 63% hopepilled, 94% Davos
thoroughly ridiculous e-mail subject with a ton of variables that didn't get interpolated before it was sent - congrats, Best Buy! a real confidence-builder there!
James Earl Jones as Agent Abbot in Sneakers
completed a 300-day streak of correct, on-time solves for the New York Times crossword puzzle
an easy flow chart - "GOP spokesbeast says something insane on Fox" - branch on "Do they honestly believe it?" - both "yes" and "no" options go to "vote against them"
the WOPR a.k.a. Joshua from the movie War Games
a multi-colored flower in the midst of lush foliage
the "food" served to the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix
a 3-panel "cartoon" - panel 1 has an "AI CEO" saying "Ha, ha, ha! We’ve conquered our market segment!" - panel 2 has an "investor" asking "<yawn> Where are you getting next quarter’s growth?" - panel 3 has the "AI CEO" asking "ChatGPT, is it okay to cannibalize our suppliers and customers?"
a screen capture of Ed Elson (left) and Ed Zitron (right) on the Prof G Markets showing wildly different energy levels
For all the chatter about big tech’s huge capex bills, companies like Alphabet and Amazon are typically spending about half or a third of their revenue on capex. CoreWeave is spending three times its revenue on capex this year. Investors seem nervous: The stock fell 8.7% in after-hours trading, after dropping 6.6% during the day.
screen grab from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tblWObrXDsM showing a "Chinese armed merchant cruiser"
(6) THIS PART 17 DOES NOT PROVIDE THE BASIS FOR, AND IS NOT SUBJECT TO, A PRIVATE RIGHT OF ACTION FOR VIOLATIONS OF THIS PART 17 OR ANY OTHER LAW.
(b) ON AND AFTER FEBRUARY 1, 2026, A DEPLOYER THAT HAS DEPLOYED A HIGH-RISK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM TO MAKE, OR BE A SUBSTANTIAL FACTOR IN MAKING, A CONSEQUENTIAL DECISION CONCERNING A CONSUMER SHALL, IF THE CONSEQUENTIAL DECISION IS ADVERSE TO THE CONSUMER, PROVIDE TO THE CONSUMER: (I) A STATEMENT DISCLOSING THE PRINCIPAL REASON OR REASONS FOR THE CONSEQUENTIAL DECISION, INCLUDING: (A) THE DEGREE TO WHICH, AND MANNER IN WHICH, THE HIGH-RISK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM CONTRIBUTED TO THE CONSEQUENTIAL DECISION; (B) THE TYPE OF DATA THAT WAS PROCESSED BY THE HIGH-RISK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM IN MAKING THE CONSEQUENTIAL PAGE 14-SENATE BILL 24-205 DECISION; AND (C) THE SOURCE OR SOURCES OF THE DATA DESCRIBED IN SUBSECTION (4)(b)(I)(B) OF THIS SECTION;
A screen grab of a YouTube "short" description - the headline within the thumbnail says "synthetic data generation for model fine-tuning". apparently, the title of the video is "LLM vs. RAG: Better Synthetic Data Generation for Model Fine-tuning". No, I haven't watched it. That's not the point.
screen shot from that other site - "Now that Artemis II has launched we have 10 days to get everyone on Earth a Planet of the Apes costume so we can do something hilarious when the astronauts return"
purple and gold water lily blossom at the missouri botanical gardens 2006
the gateway arch (expansion to the jefferson memorial) is always photogenic
a tiger wading through its pool at the st. louis zoo 2001
a leopard asleep in the shade at the st. louis zoo 2001
a yellow with spiky, dark green leaves
post for the movie "The Island" with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson from IMDB
YouTube snippet for "Homebrew routers just got a whole lot more important in the US" by "Level 2 Jeff" -- not an endorsement or advertisement for their content
the "harbinger" delivering the marquis' ultimatum and an hourglass - John Wick
screen snippet with solves for New York Times' regular, midi, and mini crossword puzzles as well as tying my previous record for 222 straight (on-time - grumble, grumble) solves
YouTube ad capture for boot[dot]dev prominently displaying "RPG Coding" but talking about Python as if RPG isn't a programming language.
screen shot of @diedfrombeing.labeledrude.online's tweet about being a cyberpunk-style data courier - screen shot because they turned off replies and re-posts - how rude! O:-)
YouTube headline / thumbnail from Forbes (really???) "The U.S. Is Falling Behind Its Global Peers When It Comes To Women In Leadership" - who comes up with and approves these headlines???
a bar chart of gasoline prices in Hong Kong (HKD per liter) over the last 8 weeks and a line graph for the last 10 years. both show long slow rises over time but nasty, sharp rises in the last 2 weeks. 21% in 2 weeks?????
gas prices in southwest illinois, 2026/03/08, $3.38, $3.98, $4.28 in US dollars per US gallon
a screen shot of a post on the evil site about a claimed major data breach of LexisNexis...
map of gerrymandered Illinois house district 15 along with a couple of candidate profiles. the highlighted text reads "After Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly redrew congressional maps in 2021, the 15th Congressional District became basically unwinnable for their party." Brilliant!!!
What are the four core character classes? Wrong answers only.
the cover of "Algorithms Are Not Enough" by Herbert L. Roitblat
a snippet of Microsoft Excel showing that they're using up some screen real estate to try to up-sell people into Microsoft 365 Premium
Screen grab of a SerpApi ad served up on YouTube. Google owns YouTube. Google is suing SerpApi for exactly the kind of conduct that's mentioned in their ad copy.
awful, ugly, unsightly, dangling wires on a pole somewhere in the U.S. in 2026 - I didn't vote for this trash either
Fazia Rizvi ‪@faziarizvi.bsky.social‬ That anyone thought MAGA, famously 2A fanatics, were “dovish” on foreign policy is yet another frustrating sign that women are not listened to. These are just men (not just Trump) who don’t want any rules to tell them what they can and can’t do because they usually want to do what you shouldn’t.
snippet of 2025/12/28 weather forecast showing a 55F drop in 24 hours
screen snippet from the FallOfCivilizations channel on YouTube with their latest three episodes clocking over 16 hours!
one quarter of a quordle. a single yellow and no green for the first 6 tries than a very improbable solve... bizarre!
5. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Add to $1.2 Billion Funding Boom for Police Tech Startups By Abram Brown Source: The Information Over the past year, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and many of Silicon Valley’s other top venture capital firms have funneled at least $1.2 billion in funding to startups selling technology to city police departments and local public safety agencies. Those companies illustrate the technology industry’s growing enthusiasm for making software and hardware for the government and law enforcement—a trend that has accelerated over the last decade by the success of Palantir, SpaceX and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. (You can read more about the boom in our Weekend section’s latest Big Read.) One of the fastest growing is Peregrine, which makes Palantir-style data-analytics software. It has seen its revenue go from $10 million in 2023 to $75 million in 2025. (In March, Sequoia led a funding round valuing Peregrine at $2.5 billion—up from $400 million in 2024.) Another is Flock Safety, which makes drones and cameras that can read license plates, technology that has proved to be controversial with privacy safety advocates, such as the ACLU
the cover of Steven Pinker's "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..."
Glenn Close and John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons
screen grab of a Microsoft e-mail about raising the price of an M365 subscription by nearly 50% "to reflect the value we've added over the past decade, address rising costs, and enable us to continue delivering new innovations". Really? REALLY?
fortune cookie message from Panda Express "You will soon begin a new and fulfilling career"
the cover of "a crash course on crises: macroeconomic concepts for run-ups, collapses, and recoveries" by brunnermeier and reis
AI slop of a google search for "tsa airline lithium battery rules" that look more complicated than i'd like
the cover of K.B. Wagers' "There Before the Chaos"
EFCUT C30 - a small, garden-sized wood chipper as sold by Amazon
a graph of the "regional breakdown - fewer hiring initiatives for new employees" across world areas showing the "US & Canada" have some of the lowest rates - could be demographic based on survey responses or not
the climax of Free Guy when Antwan takes a literal axe to the physical servers that host the Free City game - every sysadmin has thought about it at least once