Joe Neal

Joe Neal

@vlvtelvis.bsky.social

Me. Leftish, Gen X, Vaguely Southern, Sober, Chaotic Good, Player of infinite games, enjoying every sandwich @vlvtelvis

440 followers1.5K following949 posts

Joe Neal reposted

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

The house that Dripped Blood For Tax Purposes

Adam Bonin@adambonin.bsky.social

In the spirit of the phrase "resident alien for tax purposes" and me thinking Resident Alien sounds like a movie, add "for tax purposes" to the end of a movie title: That Thing You Do For Tax Purposes!

Hawktober surprise

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

Joe Neal reposted

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

Joe Neal reposted

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Joe Neal reposted

The Onion has created a machine that will kill everyone on Earth that is coincidentally running out of money and the only way to slow it down is if my staff and I take a six-week vacation to Cabo San Lucas.

Joe Neal reposted

Replying to @janecoaston.bsky.social

I think it's more comforting for some people to think of OBL as some evil genius or tragic victim of imperialism rather than a bog standard delusional ideologically extremist billionaire failson who thought he could accellerationism his way to a theocratic utopia

Not having seen Nathan Fielder's full body of work, I've found him somewhat confusing. Upon reading that the dishonesty expert they brought in to talk about Elizabeth Holmes in the new documentary was discredited for fudging his own research, everything clicked. He's Andy Kaufman.

Joe Neal reposted

What’s the problem w using LLMs to write stuff you want other people to read -emails, articles, posts- and why are people (like me!) so incredibly hostile that they will block you/mute you/block your domain, to never read anything from you again? Bryan spells it out. Read it:

Bryan Cantrill@bcantrill.bsky.social

Your intellectual fly is open bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025/12/05/y...

Andy Ogles committed the cardinal sin in Southern Republican politics. He was tacky. He didn't fake being high minded about the hateful shit he believed. He didn't wrap it in religion or pretend moral principles. He was all id, base and tacky.

Joe Neal reposted

Very important piece by @davidoatkins.bsky.social at Washington Monthly: the DNC is actually doing just fine and raising record money, and the hit pieces are a product of a tier of useless DC consultants who don't want their media buy gravy train to end. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/07/31/t...

washingtonmonthly.comThe Case for the DNC’s Ken Martin. Really.Martin is being excoriated, but he’s taking on the consultant class, building a strong grassroots operation, and raising tons of money.

Joe Neal reposted

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social

Channel 4 has announced documentary “The Great ADHD Myth?” It “seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct.”

Joe Neal reposted

Officials from the Nashville Zoo say a planned data center just beyond its perimeter could introduce constant noise, light and industrial activity that may disrupt the environmental conditions critical for the more than 3,000 animals that call the zoo home. https://cnn.it/4visczU

Joe Neal reposted

For America's 250th, I read Frederick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” on the House floor—for the first time in history. His speech endures as a mirror & mandate for us all—to confront our inequities while fighting for an America as good as its promise.

Joe Neal reposted

Is the Microsoft Office Ribbon causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since Office 2007 was introduced nearly two decades ago.

Joe Neal reposted

Let's Streisand-effect these people. Here's the editorial that somehow merited calling the cops. Read and share.

diabetesjournals.orgMisguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!The opinions expressed in this editorial are the personal views of the authors (S.E. Kahn, C.A.M. Anderson, J.B. Buse, and E. Selvin) and do not represent
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com

Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link

Joe Neal reposted

Sign outside the studio where we’re wrapped up our shoot of the four new MST3K episodes today. Yes, this is the level of professionalism you can look forward to. We’ve had a wonderful time making these. It’ll take a few months of post production but they’ll be out there before you know it. Wheee!

Joe Neal reposted

1/ At 17 weeks pregnant, Emily Waldorf was suddenly faced with a life-threatening situation: Her baby’s foot was dipping out of her cervix. Doctors told her the longer her cervix stayed open, the higher her risk of infection. They knew how to treat her. There was one issue … 🧵

Joe Neal reposted

So the statue-pfp crowd on The Bad Place are Having a Moment about the depiction of Achilles (image as a representative example). But the first guy to subvert Achilles was...Homer. Achilles isn't intended as some uncomplicated role model; that Alexander treated him as one is kinda a red flag.

Joe Neal reposted

Remember when y'all made this thread on Paulina Borsook go viral? Well, that resulted in her getting a deal to re-publish her book in the USA, the UK & Commonwealth, Belgium, France, and Switzerland! Coming Sept. 15—with a foreword by some guy named Gil Duran. Pre-order! www.cyberselfish.com

Gil Durán@gilduran.com

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Screw Trump's "ballroom." The WHCA should have their next gala at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Have premixed gin rickeys in a couple igloo coolers. Boar's Head catering.