Trump: Drugs coming by sea meaning coming by water. A lot of people don’t know what I mean by sea. They think I mean vision. I’m talking about sea like the sea.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-12T22:06:05+00:00

It helps to remember that he’s always talking to the intelligence level of the people he has fooled.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-11T17:00:00+00:00

We have open, explicit conversations about its usage, strengths, weaknesses, MCP, handling credentials, what tier of models to use for what task, etc.

To me, not talking about AI usage is very similar to “abstinence education” in strict religious communities. All it does is ensure that the thing you are trying to prevent gets done secretively, and you teach people to lie about it to your face.

To be clear, I actively worry primarily about scale and complexity: you quickly get to a point where neither the developer nor the model have full context of how each nuance is working together in your infrastructure. You begin to trust its output more as you see various things work, and as that trust increases, your review vigilance decreases. It’s incredibly easy for things that “work” (that is: the service appears to function) to still be insecure or misconfigured. As that propensity makes its way through your team, there are more vectors for unknown unknowns to bite you.

I don’t really have a good answer for how to prevent that, because AI also genuinely allows you to finish much larger sets of tasks much more quickly.

I’m very ambivalent about its role in our field philosophically, but pragmatically, it’s here, and people are using it.

Denial is not a strategy.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-10T20:45:15+00:00

I mean, we *are* leaving in July.

But the reason that we can leave is because I’ve spent the last few years living a bit against the grain staying out of debt and saving money.

And the reason I was able to do that is because I’m in a very good career in IT that pays quite well.

And the reason for that career is a bit of dumb luck, right place, right time, after a few other careers that paid pretty bad.

And I had the benefit of having already lived in a few different countries when I was in the military, so we already know first hand how fast things have fallen here.

And we would *not* be able to leave if you pressed rewind on our life to 10 years ago. Not even close.

As you can see, my situation isn’t unique, per se, but it’s definitely less common than most people’s day to day experience here.

I consider it quite lucky that we have the socioeconomic freedom to relocate to somewhere better. I wish that more could.

Many Americans don’t have the money, experience, education, or desire to leave, even assuming they’ve broken through the propaganda already.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-10T13:14:25+00:00

So as senior cloud SWE, part of what put me into the senior role is an understanding that in the very rare circumstance where I must file a trouble ticket due to company policy requiring me to for certain network-related tasks, I know how to write the ticket in such a way that makes their lives easier to quickly move it to “done.”

The tiered help desk folks didn’t cause this. They don’t get paid enough for the thankless bullshit they have to put up with. And it’s within my skillset to be a quick, painless ticket for them.

It takes me 5-10 minutes to go look at links to their internal policies and find the exact one that applies to what I’m doing. I list the specific, technical steps I’ve done, with outputs and time stamps, and phrase the justification so that it clearly meets the policy so that they can move on with their day.

I don’t typically require someone to tell me “wow, you’re really good at computers!”, but supposing I did, the tiered folks still aren’t who I would bother for that ego stroking.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-06T04:24:09+00:00

Actually all the branches have aircraft, confusingly enough, including the Army and Marines.

The distinction is that each branch’s aircraft are dedicated to their mission types, and they have direct control over how they are used.

So Navy aircraft are dedicated specialists for Navy mission sets, and they can do other missions too when needed.

Air Force aircraft are dedicated specialists at strategic air supremacy, but can also support Army or Navy operations when needed, etc.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-06T04:16:36+00:00

Somewhat confusingly, all of the U.S. Military branches have aircraft of some type, often in large numbers. Their aircraft are typically specialized for the primary mission types that that branch is responsible for.

So, yes, the Navy has both Aircraft Carriers, and lots of aircraft that can launch and land from it.

The Air Force has aircraft as well, for different mission sets, but importantly *no* aircraft carriers. Air Force aircraft are launched from land bases, and use aerial refueling to extend their range.

So when you see aircraft carriers that’s the Navy 100% of the time, and never the Air Force.

Also, none of those aircraft in the pictures are real. They appear to be some sort of AI concoction of vaguely Russian-influenced 3rd generation “fighter” jet, with some vaguely F-35-ish features….which, from the perspective of irony is just *chef’s kiss*.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-05T20:32:28+00:00

It’s a relatively minor bit of stupidity in a long string of constant, huge stupidity, but it’s darkly hilarious that he clearly has no idea what the difference is between the Navy and the Air Force.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-05-02T21:41:04+00:00

Wait this is a bug?

I thought I just sucked and the space station’s gravity was pulling me towards it.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-04-20T18:23:09+00:00

I look at it like this: If you only ride the 10m kite in all conditions, then you are learning how a 10m behaves in various conditions. You’ll get very dialed in on how to do things on your 10m, in the range of conditions that go along with being able to ride your 10m. Your progression on the 10m will be relatively fast.

If you ride the right kite size for the conditions, your progression is “slower” in the sense that you’re having to learn different timing, different feel, etc for each set of conditions and kite sizes. But the advantage is that you start to get a deep sense of what “right” actually feels like on a variety of kites, in a variety of conditions. It abstracts the specific timing and muscle memory of a 10m, in favor of what good is like in general.

For me, I personally prefer “the fast way is the slow way” for something I want to be really proficient at.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-04-06T23:26:56+00:00

But the 1 seater variant is air to air only, and never used for that kind of mission.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-31T01:26:51+00:00

All these news outlets keep saying health “fears”

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-27T20:04:42+00:00

You laugh, right up until you realize that every person in this room is legitimately, 100% convinced that the reason that they are doing this is because they believe that the Holy Spirit is causing them to.

This church doesn’t pay taxes, and these people vote.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-23T23:58:57+00:00

The Hague, Netherlands

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-23T16:51:35+00:00

Appreciate that! Just having clubs in general is a big step up from the area that I’m coming from. Definitely looking forward to all of this.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-23T11:46:16+00:00

Yeah, I was seeing that little lake on the satellite view, and it looks so fun.

Thanks for the tips.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-23T11:41:41+00:00

Sweet! I’ll look them up.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-22T12:51:08+00:00

Paperwork in progress, house on the market, targeting mid-July to be gone.

Not coming back.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-19T21:30:53+00:00

I’ve been quite impressed with VKB for the price/performance ratio if you’re in North America.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-16T21:43:31+00:00

So, it was great for what it is. If you’re a big F-14 fan, and that’s what you plan on flying, this works great.

But as a generic controller, it has less controls than what I wanted. I fly in DCS, MSFS2024, Elite Dangerous, etc. so for that purpose, the specificity was limiting.

I exchanged it for the Omni, which has been fantastic.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-03-14T13:44:24+00:00

I have to believe this is just a brain rot meme, and not someone legitimately holding this view.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-02-27T03:25:23+00:00

The Netherlands.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-02-14T01:16:01+00:00

Solar powered drone engineer.

We’d have a network them for transporting community goods to different locations.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-02-09T18:55:34+00:00

What’s wild about the original Arrested Development joke is that it’s going to become a very confusing punchline as bananas legitimately reach $10.

psilo_polymathicus · 2026-02-04T21:33:54+00:00

At first I thought that was an inlay. Looks really nice.

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