Parks officials were directed to keep employees who perform front-facing visitor services, such as maintenance and sanitation, on duty, along with essential law enforcement and emergency functions. By contrast, many of those who work in conservation, research and education were told to stay home. Some employees reporting to work are getting paid, while many others aren't. This was laid out in a contingency planissued the day before the shutdown began. It states that 9,296 of the park service’s total 14,500-member staff, or roughly 64%, would be furloughed. au.news.yahoo.com/why-did-nati…
I haven't really used Google's NotebookLM since I toyed around with it last year, but I logged in the other day and realized they added a lot of new features to it – including a video generation option. I'm pretty late to the party, looks like it was adde
I haven't really used Google's NotebookLM since I toyed around with it last year, but I logged in the other day and realized they added a lot of new features to it – including a video generation option. I'm pretty late to the party, looks like it was added at the very end of July 2025, but it's new to me so I'm going to talk about it anyway.
The core of Notebook LM still remains the same: add sources in just about any form (documents, websites, YouTube videos, etc) and you can ask it questions or have it summarize the content. You can achieve similar results with a local LLM using RAG, but Notebook LM doesn't require technical know how to setup or a dedicated GPU. The only other feature I remember it having was a generic “podcast” generation, which while neat in theory, I didn't really see any uses for myself.
I might do a longer in depth post about it's various features sometime in the future, but for now I just wanted to share the video itself:
... show more
I haven't really used Google's NotebookLM since I toyed around with it last year, but I logged in the other day and realized they added a lot of new features to it – including a video generation option. I'm pretty late to the party, looks like it was added at the very end of July 2025, but it's new to me so I'm going to talk about it anyway.
The core of Notebook LM still remains the same: add sources in just about any form (documents, websites, YouTube videos, etc) and you can ask it questions or have it summarize the content. You can achieve similar results with a local LLM using RAG, but Notebook LM doesn't require technical know how to setup or a dedicated GPU. The only other feature I remember it having was a generic “podcast” generation, which while neat in theory, I didn't really see any uses for myself.
I might do a longer in depth post about it's various features sometime in the future, but for now I just wanted to share the video itself:
I generated the video with no prompt or guidance; I created a notebook, added this post as a source, and hit generate video. Honestly, I'm surprised at how well videos worked. It's no masterpiece, but it feels like it's escaped the orbit of AI slop and reached the level of generic human made YouTube slop. Though I'm sure being an AI summary of a human written text was a big part of it.
Anyway, I guess keep an eye out for that specific artificial voice on YouTube and similar platforms. I have a feeling that NotebookLM has/will be a major source of video slop.
I'm experimenting with what I've deemed a 'mini blog' – smaller posts and different mediums separate from normal posts, while experimenting with different platforms/protocols, all linked together via a page and RSS link. If you want to see more you can follow here.
This is sort of a successor to Firefox: A Brink of Their Own Making that I published ~6 months ago, followed by me rambling on about different browsers that …
1. Half-day (okay, a little more than half) at work, afternoon off to take son to a doctor appointment. 2. Had a #migraine coming on, but stopped it with a timely dose of lovely, lovely #Nurtec. 3. Tried a new recipe for supper that was delicious enough to enter the regular rotation.
@cobalt123 I feel very fortunate to be able to take it, as it's only because I have a heart arrythmia that precludes me from taking other commonly-prescribes migraine meds. I had the same reaction when I discovered how much it retails for, but mine is 100% covered by insurance.
"Over the last few years, Y Combinator has gone through two major transformations at the same time: the AI revolution & Garry Tan returning to YC as President & CEO."
"Since Garry took over in 2023, YC founders have gotten much younger. The average age of founders had been holding steady around ~29 years since 2015, but now it stands at ~26 years and falling."
"I think this is for two reasons: 1) Garry has generally been refocusing YC on what made it successful in the first place, and 2) whenever there is a major technology platform shift underway like AI, the balance of power between youthfulness and experience tends to shift in favor of the former."
"I" here is Jared Heyman.
"The age cohorts of YC founders that have been growing the fastest in recent years are the youngest, and for the first time the past decade, there are more YC founders under the age of 25 years than over!"
"YC founders are also nerdier. At Rebel Fund, we use AI to divide founders into 'technical' vs 'non-technical' backgrounds, and the 'technical' group has really taken
... show more
"Over the last few years, Y Combinator has gone through two major transformations at the same time: the AI revolution & Garry Tan returning to YC as President & CEO."
"Since Garry took over in 2023, YC founders have gotten much younger. The average age of founders had been holding steady around ~29 years since 2015, but now it stands at ~26 years and falling."
"I think this is for two reasons: 1) Garry has generally been refocusing YC on what made it successful in the first place, and 2) whenever there is a major technology platform shift underway like AI, the balance of power between youthfulness and experience tends to shift in favor of the former."
"I" here is Jared Heyman.
"The age cohorts of YC founders that have been growing the fastest in recent years are the youngest, and for the first time the past decade, there are more YC founders under the age of 25 years than over!"
"YC founders are also nerdier. At Rebel Fund, we use AI to divide founders into 'technical' vs 'non-technical' backgrounds, and the 'technical' group has really taken over since 2023 -- another return to YC's historical roots."
"More YC founders graduated from top universities than ever in recent years. For the first time last year, more than half of YC founders graduated from a top 20 university."
"In recent years, nearly half of YC founders have worked at a top 20 employer vs only ~25% a decade ago."
"Since Garry took the helm, average YC founder personality profiles have shifted, with much lower levels of Dominance and higher levels of Conscientiousness."
Note "Dominance" and "Conscientiousness" here are references to the DISC personality traits model (which is probably why they're capitalized). DISC stands for "Dominance", "Influence", "Steadiness", "Conscientiousness". If you've heard of the Big Five or HEXACO personalities models, what's different about DISC is that it is supposed to describe how people interact in a workplace environment, not be a general personality model. (Link below if you want to know more.)
"We can also observe Garry's bias towards community-building, with a massive leap in 2023 in the percentage of YC founders who had previously worked at a YC startup."
"There has been a huge increase in the proportion of YC startups located in the Bay, now approaching 85%!"
"So in short, YC has become 'more YC' than ever, with a refocus on young, technical, pedigreed, Silicon Valley-based founders."
Commentary: What I find interesting is that with software engineers, what I constantly hear is that new college graduates and "junior" engineers have it the worst and the industry has demand for "senior" engineers, yet here we see the exact opposite, "whenever there is a major technology platform shift underway like AI, the balance of power between youthfulness and experience tends to shift in favor of the former", and "the age cohorts of YC founders that have been growing the fastest in recent years are the youngest, and for the first time the past decade, there are more YC founders under the age of 25 years than over!"
Korea has held its inaugural security and defense dialogue with the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels, the foreign ministry said Thursday,
Mr. Epstein also told him about a time when he said Mr. Trump was “so focused” on watching young women in a swimming pool that he bumped into a door, “leaving his nose print on the glass.”
[unremarkable boomer lawyer DINO who peaked as a high school jock and will get every single city employee in the Democratic primary and has been your mayor for at least a decade] is [your city]'s Mamdani.
I wish it were true that the smartest, most compassionate candidate is all that matters! But unfortunately it's not.
I should clarify one big difference between Mamdani and Katie Wilson as candidates. It's a big reason for why Dems fail so often, and why Bernie never had a chance at being president, and never will, why Biden could never win again, and why AOC is much more popular than Bernie even though they say the same things, and why the DSA is so unsuccessful in the US, even though many of their policies are popular.
But I'm such a big tease! We'll get back to that in a second. First, I want to point out some things that Mamdani faced that Katie Wilson didn't: racism, xenophobia, and Islamaphobia. And not from the GOP, from the Dem base, and the major Dem donors. That hate didn't just spring up. It was always there. The constant dispronouncing of his name.
I wish it were true that the smartest, most compassionate candidate is all that matters! But unfortunately it's not.
I should clarify one big difference between Mamdani and Katie Wilson as candidates. It's a big reason for why Dems fail so often, and why Bernie never had a chance at being president, and never will, why Biden could never win again, and why AOC is much more popular than Bernie even though they say the same things, and why the DSA is so unsuccessful in the US, even though many of their policies are popular.
But I'm such a big tease! We'll get back to that in a second. First, I want to point out some things that Mamdani faced that Katie Wilson didn't: racism, xenophobia, and Islamaphobia. And not from the GOP, from the Dem base, and the major Dem donors. That hate didn't just spring up. It was always there. The constant dispronouncing of his name.
A lot of fans of the DSA like the "It's not race, it's class" line of thinking that seeks to ignore the racist attacks that Black people and Black candidates face.
Bernie fans get online with their whole government names, and feel completely comfortable cursing Black women out online even more than Trump fans. Bernie bros are the worst. Bernie is the worst. AOC is popular because she basically says what Bernie says, without pissing off Black people, and speaking up for us most of the time.
Mamdani was less apologetic in his defense of African people and immigrants than we've seen before in candidates.
Folks that decry "identity politics" believe that pointing out the difference between Katie Wilson and Mamdani based on where they were born and what they look like, seeks to discredit her ideas. It doesn't. Or that it seeks to boost Mamdani's ideas because he is brown. Again, no.
Mamdani was brilliant in the way that he deflected racist attacks from centrist Dems, and the way that he refused to let Indian and African heritage be something that he was afraid of. He refused to go on defense.
Bock to the point: DSA fails so often, and Dems fail so often, because they don't acknowledge the latent racism in their base and their platform, that tilts the scale away from Black and brown candidates.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
This was me watching how smoothly and easily all the centrist Dems slid into Southern strategy style racism and Islamaphobia to try to get Cuomo the win.
I'm sure that Katie Wilson is a great candidate, and I'm sure that her policies are great. But calling her the "Mamdani of the Medina," does her a disservice, and completely ignores the central issues in Mamdani's victory.
A DSA fan that doesn't understand why so many Black voters don't like Bernie, might think that Mamdani's philosophy is "All I know is make TikTok and tax billionaire!" But it's much deeper than that. Mamdani locked horns with racists in the Democratic party and won. Unapologetically himself.
Your Cherokee words for today. The top word is English followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled in English then how to pronounce it phonetically.
Cherokee street magician.
Trying to preserve our Native American Magic Culture.
If you like my work, please, please, please help support it, any little bit helps a lot and is greatly appreciated.
Looks like sfba.social has installed Mastodon 4.5 with Quote Post support. Interestingly, it’s now impossible to quote-post some posts using the Mastodon web interface, but it remains possible to do the same using a 3rd party client (Mona) the old-fashioned way, i.e. by including a link to the quoted post.
If you can't quote post using the Mastodon web interface, that's because the poster has chosen to restrict quote posts.
Even though you could do a fake quote post even on the website by including a link to the post you want to quote, hopefully people will respect the person's choice to restrict quote posts.
People keep hurling accusations of AI-assisted writing as though it’s the new literary scarlet letter. Apparently, if a sentence lands too cleanly or an argument isn’t held together with chew…
AALBORG, Denmark — In a warehouse more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from Ukraine’s capital, workers in northern Denmark painstakingly piece together
The answer is simple and requires legislation to: 1. The ticket managing companies (TMs) chosen to manage the ticketing have an agreed per ticket price and transparent and capped transaction fees.(no markup & capped, say £1/ticket + £1/transaction) 2. Everyone buying a ticket MUST provide recognised photo ID for each ticket, which will be stored on a database 3. When turning up at venue, ticket's stored photo MUST match person. Onus on purchaser to ensure photo is a good & current likeness. 4. If customer no longer wants their ticket, it can ONLY be redeemed for its face value with the original TM + actual transaction costs (same as original purchase) 5. The TM can only re-sell returned tickets for their face value and will associate it with the new buyer's photo ID
The last time America did something fucking cool, as a country, you went to the Moon and inspired humanity.
It's all been downhill ever since, and that was only achieved because you were trying to piss on The Russians.
I'm not talking about popular media, or private companies selling computers, movies or pop culture, America shines in many ways, but you're all so loud and self important, and you can't even get rid of that slimeball, he's like a joke Bond Villain laughing at you all. Come on.
Almost 80 years of cinema and TV programs have been pushing you to fight the bad guy at the top against all odds and overcome evil, and hes got his fucking ICE agents out on the street and most of your country is just 'Hey honey, there's a good deal on in Wendys, next week is Black Friday, Ima buy some white socks and wear them while watching the big game, the Detroit giant dolphins are finger banging against the Apache cancelled dodger bulls, get me a bud light'
cobalt
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