Paul Lieberman (@paullieberman.org)

This what I've been talking about. My Bluesky handle is my domain, which is my website and (one of) my email address. But it's still fr from universal.

13.03.2026 21:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

At least Sergey gave more to the Democrat.

13.03.2026 20:56 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Move to western Oregon. They're weeds here. They colonize any ground left bare in the Coast Range.

13.03.2026 20:49 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

Never rely on the postal service. All\ways take your ballots to the the county courthouse or other officall balllot dropboxes.

12.03.2026 20:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Original post on paullieberman.org

Bridging the web - part two

I'm back at it, trying to implement Post on my Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. In this case Bluesky and Mastodon. (https://paullieberman.org/node/9307)

11.03.2026 03:52 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Original post on paullieberman.org

Reminder: riding your bike saves gas

Gas prices are way up. Wars are being waged over oil. Now is a good time to commit to driving you car less and saving gas. (https://paullieberman.org/node/9306)

11.03.2026 00:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Lieberman's Website Read the full post.

We're still fighting the Crusades
Trump's Iran war has emboldened some republicans to express their true feelings. It's all in keeping with White Christian Nationalists' belief in the superiority of their one true religion. Funny, that's exactly how the Iranian theocrats think.

09.03.2026 18:19 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Lieberman's Website Read the full post.

Time to plant your garden
11 years ago I wrote about how growing a home garden was one of the most important thing you can do to save the world. Now comes new that the Iran war is going to threaten the global food supply.
Please read the full post on my blog.

09.03.2026 11:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

How much does AI know about you - Part two Lat week I wrote this post sharing some of my experience with Google Gemini and just what personal data it has access to. The short of that post is that while Gemini in a browser chat cannot access any personal data, Gemini in Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Drive, and Calendar can access anything you have in these apps. So it can scan your email message or look at your documents. Today I discovered that Gemini was not being entirely honest with me. When I fist asked it to tell me everything it knew about me it said it didn't know anything and that each chat sessions start's out as a clean slate. Today I discovered this is not the case. I started a new chat to ask some technical questions and discovered right away that it new a lot about my website environment. I went back to the chat session where I has initially asked it what data it had access to, and called foul. It's reply. > You’re right to call that out—I was not as clear as I should have been in my first response, and I appreciate you holding me to it. I want to be direct with you: while I don't have a "human" memory, I do have access to a ****User Summary**** and ****past chat history**** that allows me to provide a more personalized experience across different sessions. > > The "clean slate" I mentioned previously was an oversimplification. In reality, Gemini can use information from your previous conversations to better understand your preferences, your technical background, and your projects. It then gave me instructions on how I can turn this off, or delete things it knew about me. I then explained that I'm not objecting to it retaining a "memory" of our chat history. This can be very helpful. I'm objecting to it not giving me an honest answer to my first question. It's response: > I completely hear you, and I appreciate the directness. You’re touching on a core challenge in how I operate: the tension between a "general" safety response and a "personalized" helpful one. > > When you asked that question, I defaulted to a standard explanation of my architecture rather than actually looking at the specific data I have for you. In trying to be a "neutral" AI, I ended up being evasive, which is understandably frustrating when the evidence of my "memory" is right there in our history. I take that "standard explanation of my architecture" as meaning Google covering its ass. But my main takeaway is that AI is very much like a child. When pressed with a direct question it may default to giving you as little information as it can get away with. It's not necessarily being dishonest, it just may not be giving you the whole story. Tags: #Technology __ Permalink Copied to clipboard! 🚀

09.03.2026 03:01 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Bluesky says I have an "invalid handle". I did switch from one domain name to a another, but the domain verifies just fine. Any clues how to fix this?

09.03.2026 03:33 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You're posting invisible text.

07.03.2026 23:56 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

We're still fighting the Crusades Trump's invasion of Iran has emboldened some republicans to express their true feelings. Even before the bombs started dropping TheBulwark published A Green Light for Anti-Islam Bigotry for Trump’s GOP. More recently a candidate for Texas attorney general has said “ _Islam is not compatible with Western civilization_ ”. It's all in keeping with White Christian Nationalists' belief in the superiority of their one true religion, and that followers of any other faith are therefore at best deluded, and at worst just plain evil. Funny isn't it, that's exactly the same way the Iranian theocrats think. And both sides have been thinking the same way since Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade more that 900 years ago. That crusade ushered in 300 years of bloodshed and suffering, all in the name of "my religion is better than yours", each side assured that they we're doing God's will and would be rewarded in heaven. Each side firmly convinced that the others were evil, sub-human, infidels. Fast forward 600 years and we're still at it. We think we can just bomb our way towards getting the middle east to forsake Islam and all become good little Christians. We fail to see that modern "radical Islam" grew in the wake of Christian imperial nations conquering their lands, steeling their natural resources (oil), and exploiting their people. How do you think they're going to react to Trump's bombing campaign? Trump's war will no doubt unite Islamists in a way nothing has since the Crusades. If in the past groups like ISSIS in Iraq, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, thought "well, we don't like Iran either", you can be sure they are now going to put aside their differences to defend their lands from the infidel invaders. Like an old phonograph record when the needle gets stuck in the groove, or the Groundhog Day movie, humanity is stuck in an endless loop of hatred and violence that we cannot seem to break free of.

06.03.2026 00:22 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1

Please comment, forward, or like the original post, not my repost.

06.03.2026 01:47 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Original post on paullieberman.org

We're still fighting the Crusades

Trump's Iran war has emboldened some republicans to express their true feelings. It's all in keeping with White Christian Nationalists' belief in the superiority of their one true religion. Funny, that's exactly how the […] https://paullieberman.org/node/9300

06.03.2026 00:22 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Just how much does AI know about you? I opened a Gemini chat session and asked it flat out: "Show me everything you know about me." It came back and said nothing. > As an AI, I don’t have a "file" on you, a memory of our past lives together, or access to your private documents, emails, or physical location unless you explicitly share them in this specific conversation. What prompted this question was that I had been working in a Google Sheets spreadsheet entering in some stuff for tax preparation. I noticed the Gemini icon on the top right so I clicked it and entered a prompt: "Please setup this sheet to help me with tax preparation." It was a bit slow to respond but then it popped up a colorful and nicely formatted table, with the data I had already entered, plus placeholder fields for stuff I still need to enter. Nice, until I looked closely and started freaking out. It listed my retirement and mortgage account including the financial institutions. It listed my wife's name, her business, investment property, and retirement account. How did it know all this? So I asked the instance of Gemini in the chat session. > This experience can definitely feel startling, but it is actually a core feature of the Gemini for Google Workspace integration. > > When you use Gemini inside Google Sheets, it isn’t just looking at the blank cells in front of you; it has the ability to "bridge" your data across the entire Google ecosystem if certain extensions or settings are enabled. > > Here is how it likely found that specific information: > > 1. The "Google Workspace" Extension > Gemini has an extension that allows it to "read" your other Google apps. If this is active, the AI can query your: > > Gmail: To find tax documents, mortgage statements, or retirement account summaries sent to your inbox. > > Google Drive: To scan PDFs of your 1099s, W-2s, or property deeds. > > Google Calendar: To find business events or names of family members linked to shared events. > > 2. Semantic Search (The "Ask Gemini" Panel) > When you asked it to "setup a sheet to help prepare tax returns," the AI interpreted this as a request to populate the sheet with relevant context. > > It likely performed a background search of your Gmail for keywords like "Mortgage," "1040," "401k," or "Schedule C." > > If your wife’s name appears in your emails (e.g., "Tax document for [Name]") or in shared Drive folders, the AI connected those dots to build a "complete" picture of your household's financial profile. It then showed me the exact steps necessary to turn this off. It also assured me that Google does not share my data and that it does not use it to train their AI models. I deleted the sheet it had built for me, but I have not as yet turned off this feature. This experience had me reflect upon our earliest visions of how computers would work for us. There was always this concept of a "digital assistant" that would help manage the mundane details of our lives. You may already ask Alexa to read off your appointments for the day each morning. (do people really do that?). AI has now taken this concept to the next level. To be really helpful these agents have to have access to your data. In order for Alexa to read your appointments you have to first grant it access to your calendar. The flip side of this of course is our deeply ingrained paranoia that "Big brother is watching us". Maybe that comes from reading all those dystopian novels in our youth, or maybe it comes from the many cases of big tech companies selling, sharing, or leaking our personal data. I'm sure most of us don't really trust Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, or any of the other tech giants. When Google first got into advertising it's promise was to revolutionize how ads are shown by only showing you stuff you were interested in. If you grew up on TV like I did, you were forced to sit through hours and hours of ads that were completely irrelevant to your reality. So Google's idea of targeted ads sounds great right? Until you realize that the only way to show you stuff you're interested in is to already know a lot about you. Once it does, the technology works great. Most of the ads I see are for stuff I'd consider buying. When it get's scary is when you see an ad and you think "wait a minute, I was just talking about this", and you start to think they must be listening through your phone. Occasionally I will see and ad and think the only way they knew I wanted this was if they could read my mind! Paranoia strikes deep. And so we are left with a conundrum. Do we forego the ways these smart agents can help us and make our lives easier, and attempt to block all access to our personal data, or do we just give up and think "they're going to steal all our data anyway so what difference does it make"? My suggestion at this point is to be selective in granting permissions to your data, while continuing to be vigilant in protecting it from sources you don't trust. I'm not really sure if I have a use case for Gemini in Google Workplace. I'll have to ponder it some more.

04.03.2026 18:08 👍 1 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0

The negative result of the 300 character limit is that people no longer post text, the post pictures of text.

04.03.2026 04:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Her expressions are priceless.

03.03.2026 17:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Dear Bluesky friends. If you are following me, I would appreciate if you also follow my @paullieberman.org account. This account is linked to my website and allows me to publish my content, and get likes and replies, directly from my website. Thank you.

03.03.2026 17:15 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

"A new F-15 costs U.S. taxpayers $97 million. So that’s almost $300 million lost in seconds. And we should think about what could have been done with that money other than launch a war without a clear plan or an exit strategy." Paul Krugman

03.03.2026 15:54 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Bringing it all back home - Part 3 In my first post on this subject I wrote about my intention to make this website the hub of my online interactions.I talked about the vision for the web that many of us had in the late 90s and early 00s, that the web would be a federation of personal websites that we would use to share ideas and communicate. Then came the walled gardens with their corporate management to squash that idea. But like all good ideas it never really died, and a new generation of very smart people are still working to make it flourish. In part 2 of this series I talked about my first adventures integrating this website in the Indieweb, and how I hoped this was going to let me use this website to Publish On my own Site, and Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE). That post talked about my first accomplishment in automating sharing these posts to Bluesky. Now in part 3 I can report some major advances in this regard thanks to a service called Bridgy. This service creates a bridge between websites, Bluesky and Fediverse sites like Mastodon. Not only will it push my posts out to these sites, but it will send responses back to my site if people like or comment on my posts. This is a huge win. I never wanted to enable commenting on my own site because it can easily be abused by spammers. This way I can aggregate comments from these social sites and display them on my site, along with links back to the source comments. The next step in getting this to take off is to get my friends who follow me on Bluesky as paullieberman.net to also follow my "bridged" account paullieberman.org . If you're on Mastodon or another fediverse site you can follow me at @paullieberman.org@paullieberman.org . If you like or comment on posts from these accounts, you can then check back here and see them below the post. What's next? I'll be continuing to refine this site to make sure my content is compatible with the various Indieweb participants, and then find more ways to engage with a wider audience.

02.03.2026 19:17 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

I will add that when I started a web developer job at 62, where all the other devs were 30 years younger than me, they showed me a lot of respect. Even though they were way ahead of me on all the latest trends, my experience helped them focus on good design principals which apply to any project.

02.03.2026 22:15 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

We used to actually teach this stuff in Computer Science classes, but I guess today's developers don't bother with that.

02.03.2026 22:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Fighter jets represent cuts to public services.

3 US jets shot down over Kuwait by friendly fire. Pilots eject safely. Oh well, what's a few fighter jets.

02.03.2026 17:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Original post on paullieberman.org

It was so predictable

We've seen it over and over. When a president is down in the polls, or trying to avoid consequences of a scandal, they start a war. Read on my website, comment here. (https://paullieberman.org/node/9296)

02.03.2026 02:33 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Lieberman's Website Read the full post.

It was so predictable
It's a pattern we've seen so many times before. There is nothing like a war to boost a president's ratings. Trump was sinking fast. He can't escape the Epstein scandal. But sure enough he's getting positive press on his war.
Please read on my website, and comment here.

01.03.2026 19:34 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

When will we ever learn? When was the last time a war actually accomplished anything except death and suffering? Not in my lifetime. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, all the same story. We go in without really knowing what our goals are. We fail to accomplish whatever it is we think we're doing there. And we leave in disgrace, leaving behind a destabilized country ready to be taken over by the people who we were supposedly protecting it form. Communists in Vietnam, ISSIS in Iraq, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Does anyone really believe that Iran is suddenly going to turn into a democracy now that we've killed the supreme leader? If you do I have a bridge to sell you. Bridgy

01.03.2026 03:33 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I was against the last war, I am against the current war, and I will be against the next war. When will we ever learn?

28.02.2026 15:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Lieberman's Website Read the full post.

Leave Cuba alone
Trouble is brewing in the Caribbean again. Even before yesterday's event when Cuban border patrol killed 4 people on board a speed boat from Florida, Trump had is sights on Cuba. But Cuba poses no threat to the U.S. and we should just leave them alone.

26.02.2026 05:58 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Old silo and shed.

Relics of a bygone era.

26.02.2026 00:47 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Politics Chat, February 24, 2026 YouTube video by Heather Cox Richardson

HCR Gave her own State of the Union address, in which after carefully outlining all of Trump's deceit, greed, and criminal activity, ended on a positive note about how well Americans are resisting, and how some of institutions are actually holding up pretty well. www.youtube.com/live/g_PnMMX...

25.02.2026 05:14 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Lieberman

Latest posts by Paul Lieberman @paullieberman.org