Skip to Content Skip to Navigation
Profile image for Avi Flax 🇺🇸🇮🇱 אבי פלקס

Avi Flax 🇺🇸🇮🇱 אבי פלקס

@avi@flaximus.net

Feminist, futurist, father. XL biomachine, he/him. Modern Hebrew. Zionist. Aphantasiac. Trans rights are human rights. Bicycling enthusiast. Space enthusiast. Earth enthusiast. Coffee. Speculative fiction! Technology! History! What the hell is this list, even‽

553 Posts Posts & Replies 361 Following 95 Followers Search

GOP: States rights!

States: Okay, we want to protect immigrants.

GOP: No, not that.

States: Okay, we intend to allow abortion.

GOP: No, not that.

States: Okay, we would like to allow transgender athletes.

GOP: No, not that.

States: What about making decisions about cars in our cities?

GOP: Not, not that.

States: DEI?

GOP: Hell no.

States: I thought you cared about states' rights?

GOP: That was when Biden was president. Now we want a strong Federal government!

Apple added “Split View” to the iPad 9 years ago, and they were already selling keyboards for the iPad then. And yet still, 9 years later, the feature is fundamentally broken in terms of focus and keyboard events. WTAF.

On Friday, my uni, like many others, received a “Dear Colleague” letter from DoE acting assistant secretary Trainor. The letter threatens to withhold funding unless we demonstrate compliance with the administration’s anti-DEI program. It uses words like “depraved” and “shameful” and promises that the days of “overt and covert discrimination” are over. It also says that higher ed has engaged in “toxically indoctrinat[ing] students with the false premise of structural and systemic racism.”

And now for something COMPLETELY different:

Linux booting *inside* a PDF file. (Uses embedded JS to run a RISCV emulator and boot Linux to a command line prompt):

github.com/ading2210/linuxpdf?

www.theregister.com/2025/02/16

Edited 5d ago

Found a nice nudibranch yesterday at the tide pools.

Just a reminder that well before Hitler was in charge, he had books banned with help from his supporters all throughout Germany. Specifically books on the sciences, and books by Jewish authors were targetted as being unfit for consumption.

Now. Fastforward to today.
Substitute Black for Jewish.

Do you get it yet?

“Technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right?

But if that’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you’re going to die.”

— David Foster Wallace, 1996

thenewinquiry.com/excerpts-fro

Fuck, the yanks have gone and confirmed Brainworms Kennedy as their health secretary, just as H5N1 bird flu is taking hold in mammals and bird migration season is starting.

We're doooooooomed.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/li

You tell 'em, Supes 🦸🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️

Seeing amazing cars like this is one of the perks of working outside of the home (among others, for me)

Seriously, Microsoft‽ 2.44 GB for an email + calendar app? That’s straight incompetence and malpractice.

Congrats to everyone at Boom for having the first civilian-designed aircraft to go supersonic in over two decades today. Really hope they can get this turned into a full passenger aircraft.

my colleague just coined this great word, describing some convoluted code I wrote recently: “we need to deconvolute this” — I like the way it sounds/feels.

I just made a small donation to help low-income survivors of the LA fires.

If you can, I hope you’ll consider donating too: www.givedirectly.org/lafires/

Aptera has been featured in Car & Driver! Love to see it.

I read calmatters.org/economy/2025/01 this morning and I worry about the implications for farm workers across the US.

Did you know that agricultural workers are explicitly excluded from the protections of the NLRA? Farm workers have very few protections under US law and need our help.

If you donate to United Farm Workers and send me your receipt, I will match your donation (not tax-deductible), up to $5000 total. ufw.org/sparechange/

I’ll be divesting myself of my Tesla vehicles soon. I’ve owned a Tesla of some kind since 2019 but no more.

(I just gotta figure out how to handle the car I’m upside-down on.)

Tempted to get a Switch 2 later this year solely for Metroid Prime 4 🤪🙄🤪

UPDATE: Disclaimer: There's quite a bit of doubt about these claims.

„I was part of a team that was directly ordered to manipulate Twitter's systems to influence the 2024 US presidential election. It wasn't subtle, and it wasn't ethical.

We completely changed how the algorithm worked, pushing pro-Trump and right-wing posts to the top of people's feeds. To make it look balanced, we also boosted some left-wing critics of Democrats, but it was all carefully calculated.“

theconcernedbird.substack.com/

Edited 28d ago

"We all think spinach is a good source of iron because of a decimal-point typo in the 1930s" is not something I expected to learn today.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/

Elon musk just gave the nazi salute at the inauguration

There are a number of principles we will need to hold close and defend over the next several years. The Library Bill of Rights is among them, as worth championing today as it has been since its establishment in 1939. Quoted in full, with link, herein. 🧵(9)

Before declaring democracy over, as our major news orgs and tech companies seem to have, remember there are still 50 states, most of whom still seem to accept that votes must be counted, and the winner is who gets most votes, not the one who sends in a mob to trash the state Capitol.

Net zero by 2050 — a great idea! 🙄