beka valentine
@bekavalentine.bsky.social
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a dyke who hacks on things. she/xey/ey. [email protected] [email protected]
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Reposted by beka valentine
Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
*****************
Investigation of:
LOSS OF THE SUBMARINE TITAN
IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN
ON JUNE 18, 2023
*
*
*
*
*
*
Accident No.:
*********** * * * * * *
Interview of:
Co-designer/Pilot
Deepsea Challenger
DCA23FM036
via Microsoft Teams
Friday,
July 26, 2024 INTERVIEW OF
10
BY LCDR
11 Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible
12 operations?
13
A.
Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic.
When I
14
set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did
15
was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible
16
program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named
17|
Professor
I. I did that through a mutual friend
18
of ours, a guy named
, who is one of the preeminent
underwater cinematographers in the world. And had been on a
20
submersible expedition out to Titanic the previous year with the
21
Russians. And that was organized by a Canadian company that was
22 doing an IMAX film which was released under the title Titanica.
Reposted by beka valentine
CA governor Gavin Newsom vetoed both of the major AI bills on his desk that Silicon Valley meaningfully opposed—one making it illegal for bosses to use AI to fire workers with no oversight, one requiring chatbot sellers to ensure their products do not harm children before marketing to them.
Silicon Valley's capture of our political institutions is all but complete
The tech lobby kills off two key California AI bills, and why it matters. Plus: How Sam Altman played Hollywood with Sora 2, organized mass social media deletions, and more.
www.bloodinthemachine.com
Reposted by beka valentine
Where we stand, in long arc of history:

-Story on left, adding race as a factor when that favors white people.

-Story on right, banning race as a factor when that favors non-whites.

I often complain about NYT headlines and story-play. But these are strong. Including "If Court Guts 1965 Law."
Two headlines on front page of NYT.

First is "Trump Weighs Transforming Refugee Policy. White People Would be Given Preference."

Second is "Justices May Ban Race as a Factor in District Maps. Nation's Political Balance Could Shift If Court Guts 1964 Law."
Reposted by beka valentine
Try 1990s. In the US.

Teaching Basic, Word Processor AND Spreadsheets, right here in Ohio due to unfair school funding.
and so we as a society no longer see programming as fundamental to computer usage. you used to have to program almost everything you did. now you buy it
the other factor I think is the explosion of commercial software

there is SO MUCH software out there that you can buy, that you generally don't need to write your own anymore, because you can just buy something that does what you need
my best guess for what happened is that as computers became VERY common in the 90s, they started to be seen as normal, default things, not some new weird alien thing that no one understood

and as a result, we sort of .. stopped thinking of them as needing training materil
in the 1970s, my mom, at a highschool on Long Island, was taught to program BASIC using PUNCH CARDS

she's not a programmer, she's not technical, but in the 1970s, the computer was the future and everyone needed to learn it NOW NOW NOW
we're not teaching kids to understand computers, to control them, to create their own computer experiences and bend the machine to their will

we're teaching them to ask corporations to give them what they need or want

that's no education, that's a trap
now what kind of education is that? you're not empowered, you're not the one in charge of the computer, you're a consumer, you're eyeballs for corporations to sell software to

that's what we're teaching kids that computers are for: buying, consuming, etc
but what kind of computer literacy is that? they're starting out on iPads or iPhones, browsing the web, playing games, and whatnot. maybe they'll have Chromebooks to do the same

most of them aren't learning how computers work, and the computers are terrible for that anyway
this was a lower class school that wasn't some fancy school for techies

but I from what I know of schools today, they're not teaching kids to program. they're expecting the kids are computer literate, or that they'll learn it at home at least
now granted, Peninsula School is in Menlo Park, so you'd expect them to be very technically biased, but when I was in 4th grade in the mid 90s, I learned some Logo programming at an intermediate school on Long Island on Macintoshes
you wanna know how impoverished the world of computer education has been since about 2000?

in 1980, there were elementary schools teaching 10 year old kids how to program BASIC on Apple II's, Commodore PET's and other computers

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oFh...
" DON'T BOTHER ME, I'M LEARNING " 1980s PERSONAL COMPUTERS DOCUMENTARY COMMODORE PET IBM SM10255
YouTube video by PeriscopeFilm
www.youtube.com
CNC machinists are paid so poorly and the expected experience is ridiculous for the price
Reposted by beka valentine
It's weird that the guy who made the spyware app that Mike Johnson uses to spy on his son's porn-watching, and vice versa, was found to have a stash of CSAM and that just blipped right out of the news.
Reposted by beka valentine
I will never, for as long as I live, forgive those who defended the Assad regime. I don't care what they say about Palestine.
Reposted by beka valentine
Very straightforwardly detained by secret police for speech. I honestly don't know what establishment figures are telling themselves any more to avoid cognitive dissonance over this shit.
ICE arrested comedian Robby Roadsteamer for singing a parody of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” in a Jeffrey Epstein the Giraffe costume outside their facility.

He sings “If you hate brown people / and you are a Nazi” and ICE thugs grab him and drag him into detention. No violence—just speech.
Reposted by beka valentine
ICE arrested comedian Robby Roadsteamer for singing a parody of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” in a Jeffrey Epstein the Giraffe costume outside their facility.

He sings “If you hate brown people / and you are a Nazi” and ICE thugs grab him and drag him into detention. No violence—just speech.
there's an episode where that almost happens, too
Reposted by beka valentine
I’m getting fed up with how many times we are seeing things we all bloody KNEW were going on, being presented as new revelations… The Entire Brexit campaign was clearly a moonshot for Putin, but the opportunity to break off a key part of the EU was irresistible.
Of COURSE he was involved.
Reposted by beka valentine
I’m from the San Francisco Bay Area, and never once in my 40 years of life have I heard a mainstream media figure say that the right — or government generally — has any obligation to treat me as an equal citizen or human being, or in any way be protected or served by the federal government.
Reposted by beka valentine
the extent to which media elites treat liberal americans as if they do not count in the body politic is a real problem