Mitch Effendi (ميتش أفندي)

I like coffee, Philly, Pittsburgh, Arabic language, anything on two wheels, music, linux, theology, cats, computers, pacifism, art, unity, equity, etymology, the power of words, and getting high off airplane glue. Will use Adobe Illustrator for food.

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2025

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  • I have been using, exploring, and researching generative AI and big data / machine learning for like 6 or 7 years now, and all I can say is that generative AI is not at all ready to take most jobs, mostly because the error rates are extremely high for businesses that really can’t tolerate even one mistake, like fast food ordering systems. The liability is going to be insane once a chat bot recommends that someone at the drive-thru order a bleach and mcflurry special, and the high-as-balls teenager working the machine just does what the computer tells them to do.

    The issue at hand imo is that C-suites and VPs and shareholders have all been marketed to — it’s obvious to anyone who has worked with it in any real amounts of time that this shit ain’t ready, but, the brass all sure believe that it’s ready, and they’re gonna try. Once the funding floor falls out (in, say, an inevitable recession that comes once foreign countries’ central banks pull their investments in US savings bonds) and these mega model companies start charging what their tech actually costs, people are gonna be the cheaper option real fast.

    Personally, I think that any established professional will be fine. If you are already good at programming, you will probably keep doing programming from here. If you’re good at art or design and have work from the past 10 years, you will probably be fine.

    Who I mourn for are the kids who are just now coming up. There will be absolutely no cheap opportunities for young and hungry but inexperienced young adults — that space of ‘good enough’ can and will be filled with generative AI. :/ I have no idea what the solution there is besides a campaign towards mentoring youths and giving them opportunities explicitly.


  • My suggestion personally is that trans folk start taking boating lessons. They might not let you leave by plane, but they can’t stop a small boat from leaving shore somewhere, anywhere, along the 28,000 miles of coastline along the East Coast. Purchasing an old fishing trawler will be helpful, as if your boat obviously has fishing equipment onboard, drone strikes are less likely and less justifiable — especially given how many wealthy, white Americans regularly pilot their little boat-houses to Bermuda every year.

    Additionally, in less than three days’ voyage, you can reach several sovereign overseas European territories through which to claim asylum, such as St. Pierre and Miquelon (France), Bermuda (Britain), Sint Maarten (Dutch), and Greenland (Denmark). Stay out of public, and stay safe everyone. Now is the time to use all of those social-avoidance skills we have been practicing for decades.


  • This is true, what with tariffs and export controls. But, here’s a little secret from someone who grew up here: there’s no one acceptable cheese type. Some like American cheese (the closest you’ll get outside of the US is probably semi-soft muenster or young white cheddar; ‘American cheese’ is just a form of buttermilk-rich mild white cheddar), some like fresh provolone, some like the trashy stuff because it forms more of a sauce that forms a better coating of fat on your tongue.

    They’re actually all fine. The real secret is that you only use either rib eye or chuck, chip it extremely fine (you should be able to see light through a chip), and then fry it in a steel or iron pan with white onions and a dab of a flavorless seed oil, like corn or canola. Start it over low heat, and using a flat metal flipper (NOT a spatula. Look it up. There’s a difference), keep chopping that beef and onion mix until it forms thin sheets. Drop a slice (or dab) of cheese on top, and let it melt and seal the pan to steam the beef.

    Then, chop it a couple more times. Place your flat flipper on the pan and let it very hot. Drop another slice or dab of cheese on it, then run it through the center of a V-split long roll. Here, our authentic rolls are yeast-risen with a tougher crust that flakes on the top layer, a bit like filoh dough. A baguette would be too firm. You want a soft roll that can be split down the longways. Then, put your chipped beef + cheese + onion mash into the roll, and bam, you’re right there at 2am on South Street listening to some rich kid scream-talk about how he wants someone to date him to walk into Condom Kingdom.








  • Nazis did not have an ideology. They were a grievance movement that utilized a common folk scapegoat (Jewish and Roma migrants) to unify the fractured German political landscape in the Weimar Republic era.

    It was a populist demogogue movement that cynically and callously used terminology that was common and popular among poor working class people in order to trick them into believing that their movement was about anything other than hatred, extermination, and pilfering public coffers. The ‘Socialist’ part of their name was a cynical play to attract those who were active in Communist organizing in the early 1900s.

    There was no collective ownership in Nazi Germany. The government owned much of everything, and the only parties that benefited from that ownership were the individual cronies that Hitler personally feted. Nazi Germany was socialist in the way that Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation is a Communist state — IN NAME ONLY.


  • Frankly I don’t understand why they didn’t expect anything less by creating random traffic choke points. Mark my words, attitudes on ICE are going to start shifting radically once they start causing more and more collateral damage in pursuit of these capricious arrests.

    It’s gonna be something big, like, an ICE agent smearing one of Jeff Bezos’ kids with an SUV while they’re chasing a 75 year old abuelita through a palisade in downtown San Francisco. It’s gonna be random, and whichever unlucky ICE agent ends up doing it is going to get crucified — literally. This kind of high recklessness isn’t even seen in states with sophisticated surveillance or fascism. We are absolutely on some Great Leap Forward bullshit right now.