Orion Kidder

@orionkidder

@orionkidder@mas.to (general account) @orionkidder@writing.exchange (just for writing)

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Orion Kidder@orionkidder· 26d

I saw Erin Grey across a room and *gawped*. She smiled at me. :)

The actress Erin Grey, in her 50s or 60s. She has blond hair, black horn-rimmed glasses and a red sweater.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jun 28

Not sure how to link to it. It's on the Gnome "Software" app. Here's a screen shot, FWIW:

A screen cap of a Gnome "Software" review: "Spyware; Tries to connect to multiple external servers all the time without absolutely any need. Ugly design. Instaunistall."

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jun 20

I want a poster of this for my office.

A nearly black-and-white image with blue shadowing and red highlights of a man in a work shirt holding a sledge hammer over his shoulder. He looks out on rolling hills and a sky with clouds floating by. Two narrator boxes read: "Welcome to the future." and "Sabotage it."

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jun 18

Jay Leno is not a good person, but here's what the article actually said. #SavedYouAClick

Leno’s intention with the comment has less to do with Rogan’s edgelord opinions (in fact, he’s said he wished comedy wasn’t so politically polarized), though, and more to do with people’s shifting habits. For decades, people would tune into NBC at 11:30 p.m. ET to watch The Tonight Show, which Leno describes in the interview as “appointment television,” an idea he now finds “ridiculous” since people can call up anything they want to watch now, which prompted him to think of Rogan, who enjoys benefits he never did.

“Yeah, Joe talks to everybody about everything,” Leno said. “There’s no FCC to step in and say what you [can] say and can’t say, so you really do get an unfiltered idea of what everybody thinks. So yeah, I mean, to me, that’s what’s also changed late-night.”

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jun 2

By a mile. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_(20...

A poster for the movie SPY. Melissa McCarthy slides along the ground with a small gun in her hand. She's got a perm and a pink pant suit. Three traditionally attired spies--black clothes and posing--stand behind her looking "sexy" and stuff.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 30

Repost with your first crush.

A black-and-white photo of Erin Grey as Colonel Wilma Deering. She wears a white uniform, not quite skin tight but pretty close, as well as a very 70s-looking space-pilot helmet. She's standing with her arms crossed and one foot on a space dogfighter and the other on a small step-ladder.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 28

This quote from Kurt Vonnegut Jr. gets more and more relevant: en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vo...

[When Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 28

Probably Optimus Prime. He was like our collective dad. (I found out MANY years later that Black fans of Transformers consider Optimus Black, which I find *fascinating*.)

Autobots gathered around an angled table with Optimus Prime laying on it, chest open, body cracked all over the place. He's lost half his colour, and a moment later, he will turn literally grey as he dies.

Sniff.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 25

I just did a DDG search for "star trek original series women's costumes." Setting aside the mini-skirts, which had multiple meanings at the time, here are some samples. The *show* objectified women a great deal: the camera, the costumes, the storylines.

A collection of images of Star Trek Original Series women's costumes. They are largely designed to reveal legs, arms, and torsos. When they over the body, they hug the body.

A smaller collection of images of Star Trek Original Series women's costumes. The same trend is visible: revealing the body and hugging the body.

Another smalle collection of images of Star Trek Original Series women's costumes. The same trend is visible: revealing the body and hugging the body.

A single image from Star Trek Original Series: a woman in cave is dressed in a "cave girl" outfit, which consists of a mini-skirt with gaps on either side, revealing the upper thighs, and an asymmetrical top that leaves one shoulder bare.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 20

Metacrawler results look like this:

A Metacrawler search page:

At the top, is the search query "searchy search search," and below it is a list of plain-text results with the name of a page in large letter, the page's address in small, light-green letters, and a sample of the first couple of sentences underneath. There is a list of pages of results under that: "1, 2, 3... next." There is no "AI." There are no pictures. It's gloriously *boring*.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 15

I mean, you knew when you asked:

Okay holy shit here we go. The two leads are HOT. It's a little anger-inducing, honestly. Anyway, they're both tarted up in leather with bare arms, and he's got funky tattoos on his bicep and big clunky boots, and he's looking a little down sort of at her, and she's looking directly into the camera, and it's the Wachowskis, so it's always a little implicitly queer. They're gigantic and (somehow) standing on the open landing bay of a spaceship, but really, they just took the two leads and superimposed them over a shot of a spaceship bay. It doesn't make any more sense than the movie, and it's *awesome*, just like the movie. Behind them is the planet of Jupiter, which is kinda on the nose because that's also the name of the movie and the name of the main character, but it's a pun (get it? she's ascending). That's kinda it. You have to watch it to really get it. It's a glorious mess.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 10

This is the takeaway, IMO. TikTok has a feature they call a "heater," where they pick an account and push it into people's feeds to create the impression that anyone can strike it rich on TikTok. It's a con-artist's trick.

Sean Highkin, the creator of the NBA-focused publication The Rose Garden Report, tells The Verge that he makes “significantly more money” after switching from Substack to Ghost last April. “When I first joined up, [Substack] gave me a big push and featured me and funneled a lot of traffic to me, which led to a good amount of growth,” Highkin says. “But once I wasn’t one of the ‘new recruited talent’ they could tout, they stopped featuring me and I saw my growth stagnate.” Highkin now pays $2,052 per year using Ghost and an add-on called Outpost, compared to $4,968 per year on Substack. The Rose Garden Report’s subscriber base has grown 22 percent since the end of 2024, Highkin says.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 8

Bosses are so horny to eliminate labour, they'll shoot themselves in the face to achieve it.

And yet, the popular sentiment of "I told you so" may be partially misguided. Many CEOs see these bills as a good thing, as it means that their employees are making progress on large-scale automation — in short, driving innovation, at least supposedly.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 3

This is the app that comes with the operating system that I use to get apps in Linux. It has never once forced me to sign up for anything, and there isn't anywhere that I could give it a credit card. Just saying.

A picture of the Software app in Gnome DE. It says "explore, installed, updates" along the top, but the bulk of it is taken up by a scroll of programmes I could download, a grid of categories, and then more individual programmes at the bottom. It looks exactly like any other "app store" only you don't have to pay anything.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· May 3

I think they did okay. Just sayin'. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_King...

A paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the "No Kings" protests:

Organizers estimated that more than five million people participated in more than 2,100 cities and towns, including the flagship event in Philadelphia.[4][5] More protests took place in the U.S. territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands, and in 20 foreign countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, and in Europe. In countries with constitutional monarchies such as Canada and the United Kingdom, the alternate "Dictators" or "Tyrants" titles were favored over "Kings" to avoid confusion with anti-monarchic movements; Hawaiʻi did the same to avoid confusion with a King Kamehameha Day parade held on the same day and out of deference to the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Apr 9

Indeed: support.signal.org/hc/en-us/art...

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Apr 5

Just posted this to the other thread: the security guard in question attests he was not working for Roan at the time, so the whole narrative is based on nothing. www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

On Thursday, celebrity bodyguard Pascal Duvier spoke out, taking “full responsibility” for the incident.

“I do not normally address online rumors, but the accusations currently circulating are false and constitute defamation. I take full responsibility for the interactions on March 21st,” he wrote on Instagram.

“I was at the hotel on behalf of another individual, and I was not part of the personal security team of Chappell Roan. The actions I took were not on behalf of Chappell Roan, her personal security team, her management, or any other individuals.”

Duvier continued: “I made a judgment call based on information we obtained from the hotel, events I had witnessed in the days prior and the heightened overall security risk of our location. My sole interaction with the mother was calm and with good intentions, and the outcome of the encounter is regretful.”

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Mar 31

On this #TransDayOfVisibility, I'd like to say, in addition my trans friends and colleagues (you know who you are) that the Wachowski Sisters have never made a movie I wouldn't watch with a smile on my face. Feel free to join in the Wachowski love, below. If you're rude I'll enjoy blocking you.

Okay, here we go. This fuckin' movie. There's our heroine, in the foreground, looking right into the camera because she's a badass (by the end), and then the love interest a head taller than her, but like bowed down so he's kinda smelling her hair because that's what good himbos do. They're both dressed in sleeveless black leather sci-fi outfits with just big clonky boots, and I love it. They're standing on a super miniaturized version of a landing bay inside a space ship, and it all shady and shiny and shit, and behind them is Jupiter, the planet, with just one measly moon over the edge so that it kinda look like a jewel on a ring, but it's in silhouette (or however you spell that), so it's black, like their leather costumes. for some reason, there's *another* circle with a little circle--like Jupiter and its one measly moon--superimposed over the title of the movie, which is JUPITER ASCENDING because the lead character's name is Jupiter, but a bunch of the move takes place in one of Jupiter's moon or something and, oh, I just got the reference. Anyway, this movie is *bonkers* in the best way. It's balls-to-the-walls space opera with a kind of political point if you want to see it, and I love every second of it unrepentantly.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Feb 21

Holy shit.

Open AI employees warned about Tumbler Ridge shooter before tragedy: WSJ report

By May Warren, Housing Reporter

Employees of ChatGPT creator OpenAI warned about the alleged Tumbler Ridge shooter’s content, months before the shooting rampage in British Columbia, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal.

While using ChatGPT last June, Jesse Van Rootselaar “described scenarios involving gun violence,” according to the report, that cites sources familiar with the matter.

This was flagged by an internal system and some employees at the company urged higher-ups to contact the authorities.

But leaders at the tech giant did not go to police, according to the report.

The Journal says that according to an OpenAI spokesperson, Van Rootselaar’s account was banned but her content did not meet the threshold for alerting authorities.

Eighteen-year-old Van Rootselaar was found dead on Feb. 10. She’s accused of killing her mother, stepbrother and six people at Tumbler Ridge Secondary school, in one of Canada’s worst mass shootings.

More to come

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Feb 9

Does anyone in #Vancouver know of a specific store / group where I can get Progress #Pride *decals*. I want decals so that I can put them on the inside window of my office (I'm a prof) and no one can peal them off from the outside. I have already checked #LittleSisters.

The Progress Pride flag: on the right, a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple), and on the left, a triangle/arrow shape starting with white, then pink, light blue, brown, and black.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 23

Dude. Duuuuuude. This is one of my desktop wallpapers:

A high-contrast silhouette of a flat plain with a red sky and a single moon in the upper right. On the left, in a defensive stance, is the outline of Darth Maul holding two red light sabres. On the right is Obi-wan with a single blue light sabre raised behind him, ready to run and strike. (In Star Wars lore, It Is Known that Obi-wan will rush across, deliver a single slash, and end Maul's life. The Jedi will cradle the Sith in his lap, the two of their fates wound together over decades...

Even though Darth Maul was explicitly conceived as a throwaway villain and the only reason people give a single shit about him is because he uses a double-ended light sabre, his face paint is like so cool, and Ray Park is a fantastically talented physical performer.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 20

It's going well. :)

A picture of the pol results: 7% "yes AI" 93% "no AI."

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 19

I know your article already strongly implies it, but it's worth saying more loudly that this result--conservatives having way less faith in votes being counted--is surely related to American conservative/fascist disinformation, which we have seen Canadian Conservative Party members echo.

Overall, support for the idea that votes are "always" counted "correctly and fairly" has slipped from 64 per cent in 2021 to 54 per cent in 2025 and the drop is particularly pronounced among Conservative voters — from 61 per cent to 37 per cent. And while overall levels of trust have mostly stayed the same, there are now some sizeable differences between Liberal and Conservative voters when it comes to having a lot of trust in certain institutions.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 19

Folks, it was just a matter of time before this Twitter clone turned into Twitter. Even before Elon, it was a trash fire. I was already thinking of winding down my presence, here. An ICE-friendly social-media platform is not for me.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 17

This is interesting. It's almost literally symbolic. It's a sign of more to come, though, and that's what Ford et al are complaining about. But if they think they can keep the manufacturing relationship they currently have with America, then they're idiots. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The federal government noted the 49,000 vehicles subject to a lower tariff represents less than three per cent of the Canadian market for new auto sales. It said it's the same volume of EVs that came in from China in 2023-2024 before Canada hiked tariffs along with the United States in an effort to protect domestic industries.

Peter Frise, a professor of mechanical and automotive engineering at the University of Windsor, concurred that 49,000 vehicles represents about three per cent of the Canadian market, adding that's the number of cars that Stellantis's Windsor Assembly Plant would produce in 30 to 35 days.

He also said the average purchase price of a vehicle in Canada right now is in the $40,000 range.

This deal covers vehicles priced at $33,000 or less, and other cars sold at that price are already manufactured offshore.

"This doesn't compete head to head with any Canadian production, especially in the EV end of the market," Frise told CBC Windsor.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 4

Ubuntu's desktop, which is a customized version of something called Gnome, is a little more Mac-like:

The Ubuntu desktop, which a sidebar on the left filled with applications and a folder open with video files and subfolders.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 4

Ubunut and Mint compete as "go-to" starter distributions. Mint's default desktop environment (called a "DE") is called Cinnamon, and it's Windows-like in its desktop:

The Linux Mint desktop (ie, Cinnamon). There is a task bar at the bottom with a "start" button on the left and a menu of mostly applications extending upwards from the menu. At the bottom left are the time and a few system icons, such as wifi.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Jan 4

Then why did you start with 600,000? By the way, that's not quite the number. According to StatsCan, it's under 540K, 40% of whom are above 65 years old, and an unspecified number are reservists who I believe haven't seen combat. We do not have a standing force of 600,000 vets. That is a fantasy.

For the first time in 50 years, the 2021 Census of Population collected detailed data on members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). There were 97,625 Canadians serving in the CAF in the spring of 2021—as members of the Regular Force or Primary Reserve Force—and 461,240 Canadians counted as veterans.

More than 4 in 10 veterans were seniors aged 65 years and older, while almost one-third were in the core working age group of 25 to 54 years.

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Dec 20

Vader's dilemma, from RETURN OF THE JEDI. My read is he has done so much evil in the world that he's terrified of what would be required of him if he were to repent. Evil is self-perpetuating because it is cowardly.

And over-the-shoulder shot of Luke Skywalker with Darth Vader in a medium-close-up shot. The subtitle reads, "It is... to late for me, son."

Orion Kidder@orionkidder· Dec 20

This is the part that breaks my heart, the ones who think that using "AI" will make their essay better. This is a direct result of industry propaganda and the people who repeat.