Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥

I write about power dynamics in engineering management

Insecurity Princess. Clod Security leader. Queer femme mathematician. Dismantling systemic barriers in tech, one fencepost problem at a time

Wife of https://infosec.exchange/@sophieschmieg

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npub1naaczk3a9zusanavajgea6ae5fzy4j67mxa682rpk6vyfggqck7qup0nxl

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saraislet@infosec-exchange.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsf77uptg7j3wgwe7kweyv7awu6y3z2ed0dnwar4psmdxzy5yqvt0qpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qyr4n2z

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relay.ditto.pub

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npub1naaczk3a9zusanavajgea6ae5fzy4j67mxa682rpk6vyfggqck7qup0nxl

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Last Notes

2026-05-06 23:56:25 UTC

I had a dream that I invented a wearable fungus clothing line
At first, I wasn't sure it would be practical or comfortable, but it's growing on me

2026-04-21 05:36:53 UTC

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@nprofile…sq9j 🤷🏼‍♀️ bit of both. I think there's responsibility in a software developer to assess potential impact of how their software might amplify weaknesses or threats in the systems that users might put their software into

2026-04-02 21:22:39 UTC

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I know you've heard people say "just take ten deep breaths" — and if it were that easy and effective, you wouldn't be reading this. You don't need to clear your mind (hi ADHD dolphins!), but you DO need to have part of your mind pointed towards self-awareness of the state of your body and your emotions. Don't change your body's state nor your emotions, just recognize what you're feeling and acknowledge that it's okay to have those feelings
Each of these techniques helps your mind and body leverage natural stress reduction by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. Parasympathetic response enables more effective emotion regulation and dopamine regulation. Co-regulation can elevate endorphin levels and oxytocin.
Try different approaches! The exact methods and components of self-regulation or co-regulation that work best for you will be unique, but you will probably find high overlap with the people closest to you (because, «quelle surprise!», you meshed best with people who co-regulate and self-regulate similarly!).

2026-04-02 21:21:42 UTC

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Do you want more energy and stress reduction and energizing human connection, but you feel too introverted and drained to do anything about feeling exhausted all the time? I have a couple suggestions that might help!
1. Self-regulation:
There are many self-regulation methods (explore them!) but two quick simple options are splashing your face with cold water, or taking a quick breath in followed by a long exhale.
Exhaling longer than you inhale calms your autonomic nervous system by switching your brain from sympathetic (stress response: fight, flight, fuck, freeze) to parasympathetic (rest and digest).
2. Co-Regulation:
Spend a couple minutes with another human you feel comfortable being around. Make eye contact (not necessarily continuously!), talk to each other in calm and soothing voices, and recognize and acknowledge both your and their emotional states through active listening. Physical presence and mutually comfortable consensual touch can elevate the connection.
Co-regulation enables two people to mutually facilitate emotion regulation and help us feel grounded. Co-regulation also fosters secure attachment and builds feelings of trust and safety — but I want to focus here on the value that co-regulation can have for each individual regardless of the relationship.
#selfregulation #coregulation #HPAaxis #AmygdalaHijacking #ParasympatheticNervousSystem

2026-04-02 20:23:49 UTC

The long-term arc of how we approach software engineering operations and resilience and maintaining operations expertise is one of the most crucial open questions right now, but we're all too exhausted to put meaningful energy into engaging with that
And then there's the further metacognition step to recognize and synthesize the many consequences of the layers of challenging patterns and problems that we're not engaging with or proactively addressing or even anticipating at all because, again, we're all too exhausted to put meaningful energy into engaging with that

2026-03-25 21:40:11 UTC

Sure, Peter Drucker, sure.
The lady doth protest too much (he goes on to write several pages about how there were successful women leaders in business during that time period)
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/291/951/443/648/424/original/dced4b69958c69c6.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/291/958/994/486/942/original/d5ed3a8fe2d00013.png

2026-03-22 16:34:45 UTC

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@nprofile…643s or rather 🐾🐾
(Alecto-paws)

2026-03-22 16:11:48 UTC

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@nprofile…643s 🙏🏼🙏🏼

2026-03-22 07:27:49 UTC

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@nprofile…0rz0 stupendously silly sibilant syzygy. Solid service in spirit, sir!

2026-03-22 07:02:03 UTC

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@nprofile…kzr2 yes, it will be recorded!

2026-03-22 05:19:04 UTC

I will be speaking on Sunday at BSides on "Power Dynamics in Security Leadership: a legato leitmotif lullaby on leading lightly and luminously"
Sunday 4:25pm, AMC Theatre 12
https://sched.co/2E1io
#BSidesSF

2026-03-19 18:52:22 UTC

I think I need to put into my talk this line that keeps running through my head
So many leaders want people to trust them, which is exactly backwards
In organizations, positions are typically appointed through the hierarchy and authority of the organization. However, like trust, "leadership" is earned: slowly built and quickly lost.
Asking how to earn trust means admitting you have failed, and more importantly means committing to a change. If you don't uphold those changed behaviors, you will simply lose trust again and consequently fail as a leader no matter how the organization helps you fail upwards.
#GideonTheNinth
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/257/319/184/991/877/original/3f54b12f57cbb28b.png

2026-03-09 17:23:55 UTC

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@nprofile…9hjn
Women like my mother were the majority in computer programming until around the 1970s and 1980s.
That's an important qualifier to how men ended up as the majority: when computer programming was understood to be a lucrative growing field beyond a service oriented profession, men came in swarms and the income level rose.
And IMO not coincidentally, that happened just 3 decades before Y2K, which was a well known problem at the time.

2026-03-09 16:53:57 UTC

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@nprofile…qugy @nprofile…uxug @nprofile…a6hr
1. What's the probability of ending up at 1488 by random chance (as opposed to 1489 or 1487, etc)?
2. What's the probability that no one stopped and went "hold on, we need to change something here"?
This isn't the first study I've seen with that number. You cannot tell me that number happens more often than 1487 in research studies by random chance. Again, that probability is zero.

2026-03-09 09:49:49 UTC

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@nprofile…uxug @nprofile…a6hr
👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼 There is exactly zero chance that they studied exactly 1488 people as a random sample. Someone involved in this chose 1488.

2026-03-08 18:10:29 UTC

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@nprofile…9smc 😂

2026-03-04 23:23:51 UTC

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@nprofile…55vq Anubis?

2026-03-04 21:40:42 UTC

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@nprofile…g2n5 huh. That's surprising. Not super impressive, but moderately useful in some circumstances

2026-03-02 00:04:51 UTC

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@nprofile…3l8r demon core vibes

2026-02-27 01:18:17 UTC

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@nprofile…tnnp 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

2026-02-26 19:00:49 UTC

Blaming "user error" seems not a healthy precedent. Are we moving away from the age of blameless postmortems?
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/aws-service-outage-ai-bot-kiro
https://leaddev.com/software-quality/high-profile-aws-outages-highlight-the-risks-of-ai-agents

2026-02-25 18:46:10 UTC

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@nprofile…3h99 @nprofile…cy5p
^ that is what makes this accurate:
"Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack."
Moderators have to review hundreds of applications to prevent a single attack. But because the damage of accumulated attacks is both long-lasting and affects audiences beyond a single direct target, reviewing remains a lower effort investment
Preventing attacks is also ethically worthwhile, adding ethos to logos and pathos! Never let meritocracy trolls reduce us to only using logos and rational arguments as persuasive tools

2026-02-20 04:52:56 UTC

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@nprofile…0f5x yessss I loved how he showed off in the very first episode

2026-02-14 00:22:50 UTC

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@nprofile…95e0 this has at least some good points and some 🤔🤨🙄😬🫣🫠

2026-02-13 22:42:49 UTC

“So I guess what I’m trying to say is, the new workday should be three to four hours.“
Yup! That's what every worker knows and should have been fighting for with solidarity for decades. Every neurodivergent person knows that we can't do concentrated work for more than 3 hours, and that extended hyperfocus blocks drain our energy for the next day. It's not sustainable.
Steve Yegge writes about how AI + Capitalism creates an energy vampire https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-ai-vampire-eda6e4f07163

2026-02-10 00:47:22 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…nm66 not the gay one though

2026-02-09 21:30:03 UTC

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@nprofile…4vve yes! It's very practical!

2026-02-09 21:08:21 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…2sfs bromine is not the most attractive, and not a metal!

2026-02-09 08:58:37 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…0gke now that sounds more like something that's safe to put in your mouth

2026-02-09 08:54:01 UTC

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@nprofile…zykx but mercury is pretty

2026-02-09 06:02:46 UTC

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@nprofile…0gke I've been there, it's nice! But I want my own!

2026-02-09 06:02:11 UTC

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@nprofile…e5jr well just don't breathe and it'll be fine 🙃

2026-02-09 06:01:26 UTC

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@nprofile…v45s a large fine hood over a vacuum chamber should do it!

2026-02-09 04:44:24 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…0gke and if you hold it against your skin, it will tell you how hot you are

2026-02-09 04:31:10 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…0gke Paul, help me out here, a girl has needs

2026-02-09 04:28:41 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…0gke chocolate mercury??

2026-02-09 04:27:53 UTC

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@nprofile…u2v9 I was going to be very careful!

2026-02-09 04:17:18 UTC

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@nprofile…lkqc yeah what's up with that?

2026-02-09 04:17:08 UTC

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@nprofile…0gke Calder would be proud

2026-02-09 04:08:00 UTC

My wife doesn't want me to make a fountain out of mercury
I was starting to come up with a great plan! Estimating about 30 liters, which is about 400kg, which our floors could handle, and the price would be comparable to a bathroom remodel

2026-02-08 21:41:45 UTC

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@nprofile…4kzv setting a political goal of still being allowed to own a house in 2029 💀

2026-02-08 00:38:49 UTC

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@nprofile…juw7 inquiring users want to know 🥵

2026-02-08 00:37:07 UTC

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@nprofile…uvmw @nprofile…dey5 that's a very different and very personal topic that's also very dear to my heart

2026-02-07 21:59:38 UTC

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@nprofile…e264 penetration testing to validate that network design is satisfactory?

2026-02-07 17:57:19 UTC

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@nprofile…z6kv you're absolutely right!

2026-02-05 07:44:38 UTC

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@nprofile…e264 Terra 💀💀💀 don't give them ideas!

2026-02-05 07:39:22 UTC

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@nprofile…lhv6 yes!

2026-02-05 07:39:14 UTC

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@nprofile…0zx2 😮

2026-01-30 00:21:55 UTC

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@nprofile…rng8 or to use that as an opportunity to question and discuss the parameters, requirements, constraints, tradeoffs, etc!

2026-01-21 09:20:03 UTC

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@nprofile…yprl Deutschen zahlen sind schwierig, total umgedreht

2026-01-20 08:36:12 UTC

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@nprofile…kuux well that's six nauseating forms of horrifying in a hand basket

2026-01-17 07:27:40 UTC

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@nprofile…nrlp I love your pictures of Mila and seeing your love for her. That love remains 💞 take care of yourself

2026-01-14 20:36:41 UTC

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@nprofile…lkqc @nprofile…q4ft my first name has a space, and I have no middle name, and that continues to break a surprising amount of systems.

2026-01-14 20:19:57 UTC

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@nprofile…lkqc the lesson that too many people haven't yet learned is that it's harder to turn mediocre code or documents into high quality code or documents than it is to write high quality work from scratch
And while some may defend that mediocre work is fine for "boilerplate" product text or documents or code, I think we're already on the same page that you shouldn't need boilerplate, least of all in code

2026-01-14 00:37:47 UTC

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@nprofile…55vq I haven't read that yet!

2026-01-14 00:10:06 UTC

I wish we had more people writing more sophisticated concerns about the harms of AI.
"Slop" criticism is important because I think many of us feel we are being gaslit into believing that generative AI is currently creating quality creative output, while Al (henceforth Alfred) is overwhelmingly creating mediocre quality creative work.
Every past winter, Alfred survives in a more focused and refined form. Eliza was a toy chatbot of the 2060s, but what emerged from that is expanded investment in things like Natural Language Processing and Markov chains.
Markov chains have always been powerful, but through computing applications, Markov chains led to advancing capabilities in weather prediction, financial modeling, and eventually Google PageRank and bioinformatics/biostatistics (BLOSUM/BLAST for analyzing/predicting/correlating amino acid chain similarities).
The next boom and winter led Alfred to popularize classic machine learning into practical applications in consumer products: recommendation engines and clustering algorithms that formed the core of products from the Netflix prize to Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, and eventually virtually every consumer retailer has multiple machine learning products supporting everything from suggested products to search results to their own logistics and sales and financial modeling.
Learn from the past. Prepare for the future. Al will learn how to spell strawberry, write basic documents and code more effectively, and make fewer basic mistakes. Think beyond that. What are the emerging harms that come AFTER all of that?

2026-01-11 20:23:58 UTC

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@nprofile…nrlp dishdash biryani is incredible

2026-01-08 04:04:12 UTC

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@nprofile…ss8w Katelyn only keeps a Twitter account to prevent someone from impersonating her. She hasn't used it actively since Elon took over.

2026-01-08 01:32:47 UTC

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@nprofile…nrlp 🤩 that sounds like a delightful friend

2026-01-08 00:35:08 UTC

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@nprofile…nrlp me imagining this scene: "yo Adrian!" [a scene from Rocky]

2026-01-07 17:19:52 UTC

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@nprofile…qxye High Output Management by Andrew Grove

2026-01-07 07:35:21 UTC

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@nprofile…k08e I would absolutely not touch a report unless I had explicit consent, and only in limited circumstances (like offering a hug to a familiar report, or offering to help with something)

2026-01-07 07:26:01 UTC

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@nprofile…rng8 yeah, unfortunately all too relevant to why I started writing to begin with!

2026-01-07 07:25:21 UTC

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@nprofile…q7uv why does the bigger subordinate not simply eat the smaller subordinate?

2026-01-07 07:17:24 UTC

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@nprofile…2378 yeah but you have to do the eyebrow thing

2026-01-07 04:39:02 UTC

Please — and I can't believe I have to say this — please do not lick your employees.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/851/422/193/884/340/original/4842d2e854bda280.jpg

2026-01-06 20:20:46 UTC

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@nprofile…qdmp there's an interrobang in the margins because I don't even have a pithy margin comment for how abhorrent that is

2026-01-06 03:41:11 UTC

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And that brings us to one of the worst examples of what continues today to be among the most highly recommended leadership books: High Output Management, by Andrew Grove.
The historic context above ties into what Andrew Grove writes here. When Andrew Grove writes about fear of punishment motivating galley slaves, this is literal. This is not a joke. When he writes about "new, humanistic approaches", he's referring to how the mechanistic scientific management approaches rooted in slavery and leveraged by industrial free worker labor gave way to more humane practices in the early 20th century.
Side note: Organized labor gained substantial footholds through the late 19th and early 20th century. It is not a coincidence that humanistic approaches to management grew in the 20th century as labor rights grew.
When Andrew Grove refers dispassionately to "if they stole food and got caught, they were hanged" without any kind of moral judgement, he's declaring bankruptcy on professional ethics.
That is the foundation of what business executives have been reading for 40 years: a can[n]on of mechanistic scientific management thinly anodized by a scant layer of humanized behavioral theory, with minimal and performative hints of professional ethics. (Compare, say, to medical ethics?)
The book isn't entirely without useful ideas, but this one page rather sours the entire pot when you can clearly see that his professional ethics are somewhere between absent, fraught, and deeply breached.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/845/965/305/653/241/original/e36d4bb1fc40f829.jpg

2026-01-06 03:01:36 UTC

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Mary Parker Follet's work was largely swept under the rug and disappeared for decades in American organizations (though her ideas had some influence in Britain and Japan). The torch for "power-with" was taken up by feminist sociologists like Hannah Arendt and Marilyn French.
If I understand the history of this correctly (which tbf I may not), management theory largely shifted back towards mechanistic approaches, metrics-driven performance, and a supposed emphasis on outcomes (i.e., overall, the precursors of meritocracy and OKRs).
And thus came the shift back to scientific management, measuring and analyzing economic efficiency — the Taylorism of the late 19th century that Mary Parker Follet had tried to augment with humanity.
Side note: scientific management came about from data-driven control practices exercised by plantation owners with slaves. Remember this, because it comes up.
There are some mid-20th-century theorists who bring back some human elements, such as Abraham Maslow (i.e., Maslow's hierarchy of needs, theories of human motivation), and Peter Drucker (shifting to view an increasing portion of workers as knowledge workers vs manual labor workers).

2026-01-06 02:41:56 UTC

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Let me recap some history, because I'm mad about where we are in 2026.
Mary Parker Follet was the mother of modern management. In the early 20th century, she wrote about shared power, collaborative win-win conflict resolution approaches, empowering workers, group psychology, sociology, and communication.
MPF coined the term "power-with" (collaborative power & influence) to distinguish from "power over" (coercive, hierarchical authority).
Mary Parker Follet's legacy is in shifting management theory away from a purely mechanistic approach and towards considerations of human behavior, centralizing human relations (literally relating to humans) as core to managing people in a business. Keep in mind here that this was in the 1920s, an age of industrial, manual labor.

2026-01-06 01:25:19 UTC

This article by @nprofile…4hqr squarely hits in the feels, names and articulates what's happening in the tech industry, and points towards pragmatic things we can do.
Notably — and I cannot sufficiently underscore how crucial this is — Anil spells out that power by its very definition is fundamentally requisite to enact any influence on the direction of tech. We cannot change the past, we cannot change everything, by we can change SOME things. And that requires power. Power isn't exclusively money or positions or authority: power is the ability to influence.
A single electron cannot do anything. But a million electrons aligned in the same direction? That sure amps things up.
https://me.dm/@anildash/115844846912829876

2026-01-05 03:38:48 UTC

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@nprofile…k39g I think it was just an RV's sun shade

2026-01-05 01:42:47 UTC

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We spent almost 3 hours parked at Donner Pass (yeah, THAT Donner Pass), due to multiple spin outs on I-80 — long enough for several centimeters of snow to build up around cars, and this guy went snowboarding down the middle!
It's eerie to watch 4-wheel-drive off-road vehicles WITH chains slide on the snow covered roads!
It's exponentially more eerie to see a pickup truck and a semi both sliding in front of us. We gave plenty of distance and fortunately both vehicles made it safely to the side of the road.
I couldn't get any pictures of it, but the tire tracks in the snow covered highway told a horror story of the many cars that lost traction. 6.5 hours to drive 40 miles is grueling but I'm glad we got through safely.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/839/876/375/069/627/original/67b637df7c787b78.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/839/900/379/241/772/original/5293e3c2f11189ce.jpg

2026-01-04 18:21:20 UTC

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The best practice for opsec is to post location details after you leave
The second best practice is to be in the middle of a winter storm in a mountainous area
That way, any potential threats have to make it through worse hazards than I can produce, and if anyone does make it there…we have chains, so
😉

2026-01-04 18:10:39 UTC

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Note for any potential stalkers who recognize this as Lake Tahoe: bring an extra ice scraper please, and some ibuprofen

2026-01-04 18:04:22 UTC

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@nprofile…e5jr yeah! Not seeing much self-driving today 😏 that would be a disaster

2026-01-04 17:53:36 UTC

Chain Control to Major Tom
Chain Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your snow chains on
(Ten) Chain Control (Nine) to Major Tom (Eight, seven)
(Six) Commencing (Five) countdown, engines on (Four, three, two)
Check ignition (One) and may snow's love (Lift off) be with you
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/838/002/920/204/489/original/d2db9881f1c4627b.jpg

2026-01-04 16:06:20 UTC

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@nprofile…g4vn did AI write this

2026-01-03 08:25:25 UTC

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@nprofile…cy5p since learning of his decades of antisemitism, I can no longer see him as hot at any age

2025-12-29 20:29:18 UTC

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@nprofile…c7d5 🤪

2025-12-28 19:52:02 UTC

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@nprofile…scce very grey

2025-12-26 23:05:52 UTC

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@nprofile…v74p my favorite numbers are 0, 1, many

2025-12-26 23:03:04 UTC

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@nprofile…gau4 you should write a book about … oh right, you did 😁

2025-12-26 22:56:50 UTC

"Numbers are not that complicated"
"Really? Then how many numbers are there?"
"At least three"

2025-12-26 21:42:11 UTC

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@nprofile…gau4 that's also a great example of how some security concepts and practices are useful metaphors for systemic oppression
Except the issue to fix there is that everyone should be running as root 🙃

2025-12-26 11:00:28 UTC

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@nprofile…9q5n ah, corporate interests : /

2025-12-25 23:09:22 UTC

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Proposal to Unicode for a guillotine emoji

2025-12-25 23:08:20 UTC

Eat the rich
It's French revolution time, baby

2025-12-16 19:13:41 UTC

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@nprofile…6s3h 👀 you called?

2025-12-15 02:27:38 UTC

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@nprofile…fpvn ah, interesting and strange choice 🤔

2025-12-14 19:47:01 UTC

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It is true that I've listened to Pinar Toprak — primarily Captain Marvel — but not that album. So maybe there's a mix-up? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Either way, a very strange artifact.

2025-12-14 19:41:45 UTC

Check out my hallucinated 2025 #YouTubeMusicRecap
@nprofile…hkr3 and I are exploring this mystery: I've never listened to this soundtrack, for a show that came out in December 2025, but YouTube Music thinks I listened to it 114 times going back to January 2025!
Conspiracy theory 1: the recap is hallucinated from LLM generated nonsense, entirely disconnected from reality
Conspiracy theory 2: the soundtrack is AI generated, and therefore segments resemble pieces of other musical compositions
Conspiracy theory 3: the recap uses "Now Playing" to match songs, and matched snippets of this soundtrack to things it heard throughout the year
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/719/594/446/163/592/original/cd16790ea7c96258.png

2025-12-13 19:55:05 UTC

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@nprofile…h087 🤦🏼‍♀️

2025-12-11 03:52:20 UTC

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@nprofile…63nc thought leadership!

2025-12-10 05:44:37 UTC

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@nprofile…hkr3 it did not fail open yesterday : P

2025-12-09 01:34:04 UTC

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@nprofile…n926 not 3mm wide and 6cm tall!?

2025-12-08 20:10:50 UTC

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@nprofile…n926 there's 2 kinds of cats: those that pretend to ignore you when you return from time away because they're mad, and those that shower love with abandon

2025-12-08 07:49:50 UTC

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@nprofile…gwfq I think the idea was to ensure my needs are met, but the thing is, my needs involve fire.

2025-12-08 07:24:00 UTC

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Too cold to walk into a forest. Currently tempted to walk into a lava flow. After all, my therapist suggested I find something more igneosyntonic.

2025-12-05 21:01:50 UTC

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@nprofile…v74p does Santa only eat US cookies? I don't know how this Santa worm works