Damn, looks like I’m in the minority here: I basically burn sick time at or faster than the rate I accrue it. Around 20-24 days a year.

My absence never affects anyone else, and I do have chronic migraines so some of these days are “legitimately” used; for others it’s burn out, depression, or just convenience, honestly.

TurtleWow balls hard

With this news – along with the relocation of autofactories down to the US – are we seeing the state’s resignation towards Canada’s already-faltering auto manufacturing sector?

Right now there are at least 5 billion a year in gov subsidies being committed to the big auto manufacturers (~10% of what is spent of Canada’s “defense” budget)…

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Y’all got any advice for what feels like a sinecural job position I’ve suddenly found myself in? I do get tasks but they take up maybe 20% of my shift at most… I’m unsupervised, and spend half the week working from home.

I’ve spent time learning/improving on my python skills, learning typesetting and bookbinding to make nice prints of Lenin’s and other Marxist works, spending some time on my Spanish… I just feel like I should be taking better advantage of this time, since it feels like an unsustainable position longterm. (I recall a story about a worker in Spain who was basically forgotten by his company and ended up becoming an expert in Spinoza scholarship).

His recent episode where he fully endorses Richard Dawkin’s theory that evolutionary selection acts causally on strictly a genetic level was disappointing in how underinformed / disinterested in alternatives it was.

At least they had the discretion to leave out the hack theory of memetics that Dawkin’s was pushing.

viprow.nu hasn’t been too bad for me (w/ adblocker, obv)

That looks decent. I’ll give it a look, thanks for that!

Google AI Studio has a massive token window. I’ve tested it out using a setup where I feed a templated prompt into Gemini 2.5 pro along with a PDF of any particular campaign (courtesy of Anna’s Archive), and the campaign actually plays out really well.

Here’s the prompt and a readme I put into google drive Just be sure to change the {character name/race/class} for your character in the prompt before you submit it.

Since it’s a large model, a 50 response session might have an equivalent energy cost of running a microwave for 7 minutes (or more – and of course that doesn’t count the energy used in the training of the model as well), so make of that what you will.

I know we have some King Gizzard and the Lizard Fans on Hexbear…

I’ve been working on an extended remix of their most recent album, Phantom Island. The original album has been met with mixed reviews, and one of the major issues with it was that it was artistically pulled between two dissonant directions: a broody orchestral rock album, and a fun and flippant country rock thang.

I wanted to put something together that was more focused and which took seriously the interesting orchestral rock angle, so I spent some time editing and rearranging the existing tracks and throwing in some original orchestral arrangements as interludes/segues. The final product has about 10 minutes of original stuff.

If anyone would like to give it a listen, here’s a youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOJOFxk1cog

what makes you think this is ai?

It’s on scihub: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.2307/2539272

https://xcancel.com/TechnicallyRon/status/1813502080557932942

Excellent recommendations! Thank you!

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World,

This looks excellent – thank you!

Thank you for your response!

What I meant was that their analysis felt like it complicated traditionally marxist positions, eschewing the deterministic trajectory of history (not a bad thing) and being concerned more with the characteristics of individual freedom within early societies rather than more causal ‘class-like’ elements that constrain or enable that freedom. While their problematization of centralized hierarchical states does seem to echo the more utopian visions of a post-socialist, communist society, in our given time and in the context of problems of a global scale, it seems appropriate to be skeptical when these past observations start to turn into present prescriptions for adopting ‘flexible and creative’ forms of organization that have, in the last century, been ineffective at challenging power or ushering in meaningful and lasting alternatives. If you do have a chance to read it, though, I would recommend it.

Michael Hudson

I thought he only wrote about contemporary economics; I’m now looking into his book on debt forgiveness in the bronze age, which looks a bit ‘over-specific’ but nonetheless quite relevant to the era I’m asking about – thank you for the recommendation!

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

With the recent surge of hype around AI Music and sites like Suno and Udio, I thought I would make a post discussing AI music, some tips, and critiques to be had. It also showcases some genre-mixed music that sounds alright.

Not really sure if this will have major implications for mainstream pop music… everything already feels derivative and focus grouped to shit lol

Also, the Suno wiki is a decent source for prompt guidance.