Ersatz Cliff
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www.cliffordvickrey.com
Ersatz Cliff
@www.cliffordvickrey.com
Sad, bad, and inconsequential to know
Reposted by Ersatz Cliff
“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
February 17, 2026 at 7:31 PM
great. I ordered “Move Fast and Break Things: The MBA Guide to Vibe Coding SaaS Apps” but received “Move, Fast, and Break Stuff: The Fred Durst Weight Loss System”
February 17, 2026 at 4:17 PM
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February 13, 2026 at 8:59 PM
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hey sully, you're supposed to land planes on the runway, not in the dang river. idiot
February 16, 2026 at 10:59 PM
that almost every programmer loathes “Uncle Bob” Martin makes me wonder: is there another public face of an industry that’s despised by everyone in said industry? I wonder if chefs secretly find Anthony Bourdain annoying, or if pilots make fun of Chesley Sullenberger when passengers aren’t listening
February 16, 2026 at 10:43 PM
Robert Duvall (RIP) was older than I am when he delivered his legendary performances as Tom Hagen and Frank Hackett (the evil media executive in Network). There’s still time…
February 16, 2026 at 8:30 PM
Maybe nerds should worry less about Blazor components and more about donning blazers and comporting themselves appropriately at formal occasions
February 16, 2026 at 3:48 PM
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Look I have thick skin, and I know we are hated, and yet this statement still makes my breath catch. What kind of society allows for this sort of thing to be said
February 16, 2026 at 1:50 AM
The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit is sad, but the Redditors mocking it don’t make a connection between their own consumerist approach to social life (the mantra of that website is “humiliate & cut off anyone who ever disappoints you in any way”) & why so many people are resorting to chatbot companions
February 16, 2026 at 12:37 AM
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@theonion.com subscription good
January 25, 2026 at 3:48 AM
I’m not good w/ people & have a hard time understanding them. They have way too many traits. My proposal is a utopia based on the Mr. Men books, where everyone is given just ONE exaggerated, horrible personality trait (Mr. Mean), wretched affliction (Mr. Sneeze), or behavioral pathology (Mr. Tickle)
February 15, 2026 at 3:36 PM
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i can’t stop laughing
February 15, 2026 at 12:05 AM
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This is probably ok
February 14, 2026 at 9:31 PM
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not sure what Calvinism is all about? just remember TULIP! Total depravity, Unconditional depravity, Limited depravity (which is a tricky one when you consider T!), Irresistible depravity, and the perseverance of depravity!
February 11, 2026 at 12:16 AM
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Nail him into the dirt with my fist. "Looks like you got Ezra Pounded"
February 14, 2026 at 5:49 PM
If Ezra Pound ever came up to me and said “Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson,” I’d shove that dork into a locker
February 14, 2026 at 5:34 PM
GitHub has had something like 30 outages/incidents so far this month. Vibe coding (GitHub is now under the aegis of “CoreAI”) + Azure migration going well, I see
February 14, 2026 at 5:01 AM
Repealing §230 will codify a 5-site Internet where only tech giants can assume the risk of hosting content. & the reason social media is harmful in 2026 is not that they give users a place to post; it’s that these sites became *publishers* that push content designed to turn kids’ brains into slurry
February 13, 2026 at 3:08 PM
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Same Valentine’s Day plans as last year: buy a dozen long-stemmed red roses and eat them in the handicapped stall in the bathroom at the mall
February 12, 2026 at 6:30 PM
What’s fascinating is that (to a certain class of pundit and consultant) polls became the only lodestar for political messaging and policy the second they ceased to be reliable indicators of public opinion (insofar at it makes sense to reify “public opinion”)
February 12, 2026 at 4:25 PM
what a lot of people miss about the 90s was when consumer capitalism was (well) consumer-oriented, even though it was godawful for workers/suppliers/small businesses/communities/the world generally. In college, I could get $9 haircuts at a 24-hour Walmart in Nowheresville, ME. Amazon rips you off
February 12, 2026 at 3:12 PM
The point of using Notepad is to avoid bothering with awful rich text formats, so you can just work with text. Who thought, “you know what Windows Notepad needs? Markdown support, Office365 integration, and AI!” Just let me see control characters and make the search function a little better
The AI features added to Notepad created a critical exploit vulnerable to loading a compromised txt file.

The fix is part of Patch Tuesday, so update your systems.

AI is not a feature I ever desired in Notepad. I should look into some alternatives...
AI-upgraded Notepad now exposes Windows users to critical exploit
A critical remote code execution vulnerability found in the AI-upgraded Windows 11 Notepad has fueled renewed criticism of Microsoft's forced AI feature creep.
cybernews.com
February 12, 2026 at 2:16 AM
It seems that people today care more about Boomer Esiason than asking of their Savior “eleison”
February 12, 2026 at 1:46 AM
I don’t know what the future of this tech is. It may be that it’s now in the “too big to fail“ category in spite of losing $. But I see 0 evidence that it‘ll make anyone or anything better. The human brain—like neural networks—prunes unused nodes, & AI is already causing this for very little benefit
I understand why people are exhausted by AI hype, and why those of us squarely in the corner of "human dignity uber alles" see AI doomerism as self-serving hype, but I *really* think people on the left broadly need to start thinking seriously about the possibiltiy of the hype being...true.
February 11, 2026 at 7:01 PM
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this bus puts out all the best movies
February 11, 2026 at 12:52 PM