Merlin

Reminder that I'm looking for a new role. I'm an experienced infrastructure engineer. I've worked with Kubernetes, Terraform, Postgres, AWS, with some Azure and GCP as well. I've also done a lot of valuable work as a backend engineer, having worked primarily in Haskell and Rust, though I've also gotten my hands dirty with Python, some Go, C++, and a bit of TypeScript. I've also had the privilege of being a public speaker, and have also lead training seminars for peers on how to use different tools, sharp edges to avoid, and getting them to a functional mental model of how things work quickly, so they can start to ask meaningful questions and debug problems on their own. I take ownership quickly, care deeply about reliability, correctness, and delivering quality service to customers. I say this up-front because this comes with a number of downsides, including: * I dislike shoddy work, buggy code, leaky abstractions, or flaky services. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is fine and well, but tech debt brings an aggressive drag coefficient to your business, and that fact gets swept under the rug far too often. * I don't optimize for shipping a ton of code quickly. I tend to be on the lower end of lines of code/sprint, and I'm not terribly keen on changing that. I write code to be maintainable, have clear invariants, be easy to refactor as business needs change, be easy to debug, and to quietly work while you're focus is elsewhere. I'm also a quick study, and have a long history of getting spun up quickly on the new parts of a stack I encounter at the various roles I've filled over the years. If this sounds like a good fit, please do drop me a line. I'd love to talk about how I can make your life better. thewizardtower.github.io/McCulloughAdam…

At minimum, and without question. The cleaning house that would result in both the conservative movement and TPUSA in particular would be profound.

The “ai data centers are using all the water” thing was very radicalizing. I saw smart people, respected people, scientists- echo this back. You can not like data centers near you. You can complain they make electricity prices rise… But the water point is a total hoax. Every data center on earth uses less water than American golf courses. And the water isn’t polluted, it isn’t destroyed. It’s a little warm. IT COULD STILL BE USED ON THE GOLF COURSES IF YOU WANT. Your local McDonald’s is using more water than a data center. It’s just shocking how unreal and fake that narrative is. Radicalizing.

@RazorwireRPG I'd have a long fight with you that it's actually Planescape, but I wouldn't be too mad if I lost. :)

The Dark Sun setting is the best thing to happen to RPG's, but I don't think you are ready for that conversation

That divide exists already, it's just not clearly marked as such.

I understand when trash tier Free Palestine accounts pretend to not know Hezbollah was uninvolved in this war until it tried to slaughter Jewish civilians with missiles. I expect my senator to. Elizabeth Warren has access to security briefings. Lebanon isn’t under attack, Hezbollah is. The legit government of Lebanon supports these efforts. This is a trash take from someone I am ashamed I supported.

Based move by GrapheneOS; open source needs to take a stand in the name of privacy and security against unreasonable advances of government.

this absolutely baffles me. why are so many linux distros basically just caving on adding age verification, and closing off discussion on whether this is a good idea or not. Devuan is looking like a good contender to get around this.

Tucker Carlson has not posted once about the SAVE America Act. In that same period of time, he’s released 7 episode about Israel. Weird.

This is a possible future. But it's not a given. There's a long fight ahead, and we've already lost so much ground.

Do you truly understand what Japan just gained? As a Japanese citizen, I’m telling you—this moment changed history. Trump's Pearl Harbor joke wasn't an insult. It was the key that finally unlocked something buried deep in the Japanese soul. For 80 long years, we've carried apology and guilt like a permanent shadow—haunted by the past, bound by the Constitution America wrote for us, forever in "reflection mode." He turned that raw wound into a shared laugh between equals. No more endless atonement. No more vassal shadow. The curse is broken. Japan is free now. Thank you, Mr. President. We're allowed to stand tall again—as true partners, not subordinates. The strongest alliance in the world is rising—equals, brothers, ride-or-die. - @sow413

Dear fellow Democrats, If you believe either Israel or the United States started this war, you have fallen for propaganda. You are exactly like the right-wing anti-vaxers you despise, believing a storyline without checking to see if it’s true. Iran has been BEGGING for a war since 1979. They have attacked Israel relentlessly, gleefully targeting their civilians. They slaughtered our marines. They’re spent every second since 2005 destabilizing the entire Middle East. All this history is out there for you to read. No one wanted this war. But ignoring jihadists doesn’t work. Sometimes you have to go kill the people trying to kill you.

Since 2025, many countries started pushing what is being called "age verification" laws Is it a coincidence that all these governments are doing the same thing, at the same time, and in a notable rush? Probably not So what (or who) is behind it? Well, we know it already... The TBOTE Project is curating and consolidating many pieces of evidence by independent investigators that point to a massive lobby operation that traces back to social media platforms -- with META standing out, in particular access → tboteproject dot com + $26.3M spent in federal lobbying + 86+ lobbyists in 46 states in the US + over $70M in super pac spendings + 245 documented findings On one side, we have META pushing these laws, supported by X, Snap, and Pinterest (yes, Elon Musk's X) On the other side, we have mostly app stores pushing against it (lobby-wise) and now the free (libre) open-source community is also mostly against these laws that we all know at this point that ARE NOT to protect the children What are their motivations? Well, surveillance and control is the obvious answer But is it the only answer? Probably not We are living the AI agentic era People can barely tell what is AI slop and what not Social media stats can't know the difference at all These platforms have their main revenue coming from adverstising However, advertisers can't know who is being impacted or engaging with their ads anymore... Impression (views), likes, comments, clicks... Everything is blurred They can't know if it's an AI agent or a real person behind the screen Real people can become consumers and justify the ads expenses AI agents do not (or at least are not triggered to buy things the same way real people are, so the ads is innefective) Probably millions (if not billions) of dollars have already been burned with ads that are reaching mostly AI agents and not real people This is a strong motivation to push surveillance, don't you think? If the user is forced to verify and prove human-hood, money back flowing to META, X, Snap, and Pinterest pockets All that at the expense of your data and more importantly, your security As data breaches expose and harm people around the world, making thousands of new victims every single week But enough of the rant for today Follow the money -- help educate others Share this post so it can get to more people

One-size-fits-none regimes that block protected speech online have no place in America. Say NO to ID-for-Speech laws. Your ability to read, learn, and connect shouldn't be conditioned on surrendering your private data.

Before the internet, we had the right to private conversations. No one thought the government would be justified putting microphones in our homes to prevent them. Privacy was a right we took for granted. Today it's a right we must fight to protect.

@effectfully 😭

"Mom how did we become so poor?" "Solve your morning Haskell challenge quietly, Monoid"

In 1964, John Schoenherr became the first to visualize Frank Herbert’s Dune, starting with black and white drawings, then creating the cover for the 1965 edition, and later contributing 41 illustrations for the 1978 illustrated version. Herbert praised his work, saying, “I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr's careful and accurate illustrations,” adding he was the “only man who has ever visited Dune.” His influence even helped shape later adaptations, especially Denis Villeneuve’s Dune trilogy, with the third installment set to release on December 18.

I am a millennial too. I tend to lean more towards @esrtweet's libertarian open source philosophy rather than Stallman's socialist accent. But I read both as a young teen, and they both profoundly shaped how I think about software. Aside from that, I violently agree with everything you've said.

@TheWizardTower The older generation of devs from the Stallman era was really based. Millennials… I apologise, as I am one, but holy fuck what a cucked generation. I hate them and what they’ve done to open source.

There's a very strong argument to be made about how this sort of thing is inevitable, that the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc have already backdoored every CPU on the market today. I don't care. I'm not homeless today because I was able to install an OS on my machine, create a login account, read a pile of documentation, and gain computer literacy to a degree that I got paid work for it. We have an immutable, inalienable obligation to ourselves, each other, and our descendants to fight this tooth and nail, everywhere it manifests. Because this only helps tyrants, and robs the innocent of things they have an inviolate right to: the right to think for themselves and speak their mind. If that isn't enough, you only have to look as far as England, Australia, or the EU to see the absolutely catastrophic impact these ID laws have had, and how quickly they've escalated from "Stop Children from seeing scary things" to "You said true things about the current ruling regime." It happens in a matter of weeks or days. Every time it happens. Fight it. Fight it while you still can. This is no time for moderation.

Wow, people are actually falling for Microslop's promises to change? You don't hesitate when breaking up with a narcissist. Just keep walking away.