After taking a few hours off in deference to the guilty verdict in the trial of the murderers of Briana Ghey, the UK press are once again back at it, going on about how trans women need to be banned from All The Things.
This, presumably, informed last nightโs nightmare from which I woke in a pool of sweat in which I was in the process of being beaten to death by TERFs on a train going from London to Cambridge in a near future UK.
do you know which cat allergy y'all have? There are two common cat allergens, and some breeds naturally produce lower levels of one of the allergens. I have a cat allergy, and a cat who doesn't trigger them
Iโm more worried about the rich. Bands getting rich always turns the same way. Not that I ever enjoyed muse much, but Iโve seen other bands Iโve enjoyed go to the same way.
@Billy Smith I honestly have no clue what your ideas are, other than nationalising the water to make you pay taxes and not letting you buy a solar panel, or something.
Fell badly from my SUP yesterday. Initial tenderness in left knee which was bent at an awkward angle as I fell. Managed to paddle several more kilometres.
Later it swelled up and became agonising. Barely slept last night with the pain. Joint remains stable and able to bear load though. Got a compression bandage today. Itโs helping massively.
Dr Google suggests that this is a grade 1 MCL tear. Mild, as the joint still retains full function. It just hurts like a fucker.
Apparently it should heal in 1 to 3 weeks. Iโm hoping for 1.
also kidneys. Our kidneys are iirc about half as effective as horses, gram for gram, for no reason besides "evolution missed the optimum and it's too hard to back out and fix it". Also sinuses. And spines! The human spine is a mammal spine turned sideways and kludged.
Teeth are the example I normally think of, though knees are good too. What's even going on with teeth?
The mess that is hunan knees is easy to explain evolutionary though. We spend like a couple hundred million years evolving knees optimized to walk on four legs, and just 'recently' start using them *wrong*? (Apparently using hands for tools is beneficial or something.) Maybe evolution would eventually fix that, but give it at least a few more million years.
(You can easily anthropomorphize the process here and imagine a god, but somehow no one finds it particularly convincing or reassuring to imagine we're crude prototypes made by an imperfect god who is still figuring out how to do bipedalism right. And how to create intelligent tool-users who don't irradiate the planet because someone else has their favorite kind of rock or something.)
Ok, have discovered the โfor youโ timeline view in #friendica 2023.12 and also limited default post display to 10 replies in the timeline, and have reinstated bluesky in my feed. I hope that will make the weirdness tsunami manageable.
"Thank you for submitting this report about our user, GoatSarah. We appreciate that this may not be the news that you were hoping for, but the post you reported does not violate our community standards. There are, however, still actions you can take. You can block the user in question! Also, you can fuck yourself up the arse with a rusty wrought iron fencepost tipped in a cocktail of capsaicin and curare. Thanks for reaching out!"
@fool You know that if you post, "dust off and nuke the site from orbit" on the Aliens fan group on Facebook, your account will get banned automatically, and there is nothing that the mods can do about it.
Well, I know that as a cis guy I probably don't really get a vote here - but as we both know how much it will wind up the soi-disant Stoic Defenders of Something-Or-Other, I say: go for it.
LGBT conversion therapy (yes, including trans people) is now illegal in Portugal.
Penalties of people found guilty of trying to change sexual orientation or gender identity: up to 3 years in prison and, if the victim was a minor, a ban on working with minors for between 2 and 20 years.
Does anyone EVER have any reaction other than muttering, "oh, for fuck's sake" to the following?
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
This is one of my favorite things about using FreeIPA with DNS for SSHFP records. Iโm sure thereโs other ways of populating SSHFP values, but itโs the least terrible I know of.
Fellow trans women site owners: that HOA guy with the blocklist that blocks Nazis and trans women, but mostly trans women, is back on another instance. Just got the shock of my life when he showed up in my feed. It appears that his new personal instance is h-i.social.
You may wish to preemptively defederate for your own protection.
I understand that for the blocking trans women, but it seems odd that someone with that mindset is blocking Nazis. You would expect them to be pretty right wing themselves
ah, so am I so I should have picked that up. It's an odd mindset to want to deny to others rights your community has had to fight hard to achieve. But then I'm a middle-aged cishet white neuro(fairly)typical male
@KeithC It's the British establishment "admit only the right kind of people and close ranks" thing. There were a few journalists who were transphobic, and it became a kind of loyalty test in order to be in the "in group" for them.
We focus when we think of the solstice on the length of the day, but I wonder how much thatโs it and how much itโs the quality of the light, the angle of the sun, that makes this time of year miserable. Today it looks like the sun will not get more than 15ยฐ above the horizon
Hypothetically if the sun reached the heights it does in Summer during the 7h42 of daylight we get today, would it be more pleasant? (Assume for the purposes of this exercise that Iโve arranged the physics to work to permit this somehow. Either the sun operates like a lightbulb or speeds up or something.)
Iโm all for personal hygiene and healthy habits. But itโs dead easy to stress someone out about the topic. Probably hit a nerve there Iโm guessing.
Maybe a carrot would be good? Some collective light peer pressure that โother people like fresh people, not rank peopleโ.
I mean it goes for everyone and all social situations when others are close. Stinky bad is a general thing. Donโt want to sit next to you if you stink.
๐ It would be a great way to binge long TV series. One episode of Star Trek TNG on each TV, I'd cut down viewing time from 3 months to 3 days! ๐ ๐ฝ
besides, would much prefer high quality 720 to the over-compressed mess that is 4k from some of these services. The hideous artifacts around bright motion have ruined light sabers!!
Some people need high speeds because they're sharing/uploading content. For instance, I have a 750 Mbit/s plan. I don't need 750, but it's the cheapest plan that has 100 Mbit/s upload.
and unlike me, some folks share a lot of content via torrents, so i imagine they would be intetested in 5 Gbit/s
I don't think that a fedi server requires a wide channel, unless it's some kind of media hosting.
Eh I don't know about it being cheaper. If you need a large storage and unlimited traffic it could easily be more expensive than just getting a few SSDs and a switch (but the ISP is probably providing one anyway) once than paying $$$ every month.
Back to your point, yeah you don't need 5 Gbit/s if all you do is hosting a Masto server and watching Netflix. But it's not always the case.
I used to work in an office of, I dunno, 20 people. We had a 1 megabit leased line and everyone was jealous of us. We also hosted a few hundred web sites of varying popularity from the server room - gotta do something with all the spare bandwidth...
In the past fortnight, I have hard the benefit of travelling on “full service” airlines (Virgin, American, Air France), two of which are flag carriers, and on RyanAir, this morning.
I’m a RyanAir frequent flyer, but it’s been ages since I’ve been on another airline, long or short haul. However, the experience of recent days has allowed me to contrast things, and … what a contrast.
Ryanair cultivate a public image as being “low budget”, and they do this quite deliberately, but the reality is quite different. By way of illustrating, I’m going to compete two flights I took.
The first was American Airlines Miami to St Maarten. The second was RyanAir Stansted to Faro.
Each flight took place on a 737-800. Each plane was full. Each was about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Ostensibly very similar flights.
The first thing I noticed is that AA can’t turn around a 737 in under about 2 hours, and even that may be optimistic. They use jetways, having eschewed the air stairs that RyanAir buy their aircraft with. They a
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In the past fortnight, I have hard the benefit of travelling on โfull serviceโ airlines (Virgin, American, Air France), two of which are flag carriers, and on RyanAir, this morning.
Iโm a RyanAir frequent flyer, but itโs been ages since Iโve been on another airline, long or short haul. However, the experience of recent days has allowed me to contrast things, and โฆ what a contrast.
Ryanair cultivate a public image as being โlow budgetโ, and they do this quite deliberately, but the reality is quite different. By way of illustrating, Iโm going to compete two flights I took.
The first was American Airlines Miami to St Maarten. The second was RyanAir Stansted to Faro.
Each flight took place on a 737-800. Each plane was full. Each was about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Ostensibly very similar flights.
The first thing I noticed is that AA canโt turn around a 737 in under about 2 hours, and even that may be optimistic. They use jetways, having eschewed the air stairs that RyanAir buy their aircraft with. They also only use the front door. Ryanair use both.
American have business class on short haul. Ryanair do not, but you can pay around 40 euros to sit in the front row and have as much legroom as you want. I usually do this.
American board in groups. This is a mathematically terrible way to board a plane. They are also very permissive about what may be taken as cabin luggage, and people take the piss. As a result, boarding is slow and cumbersome as people block the aisle looking for the dwindling amounts of overhead locker space.
So the two boarding experiences: from the start of boarding, when they started putting people on the aircraft, American took over 40 minutes to have everyone seated before they closed the door.
Ryanair, in contrast, checked everyone through and divided them into two queues on the apron: front door and back door. Then they started boarding,
It took RyanAir 15 minutes to fill a 737-800 and close the door with everyone seated. 2 minutes later, they pushed back. The engines started. A minute later we taxied. The crew had finished the safety briefing within 3 minutes of pushback and with military like precision, using movements which were pretty much choreographed, they prepared the cabin for flight. It took them about a minute.
When the captain said, โcabin crew, seats for takeoffโ, they were already in them.
We took off 32 minutes after boarding started. At the same point American were closing the doors and thinking about pushback, RyanAir was at cruising altitude, heading towards Faro, and had started the hot food service.
Which they also did much more efficiently than American, by the way.
American turned a 2-3 hour flight into a 3-5 hour experience because they are just utterly terrible at the process of getting people on and off a plane, and preparing it for departure. It was similar when we landed. American waited ages for the jetway, then pissed about while the crew bumbled with no thought apparently given to efficiency and reproducibility of process.
RyanAir, on the other hand, arrived at the gate, stopped the fans, and had the stairs down within a minute. 30 seconds later I was off the plane. 45 seconds after that, I was in the queue for passport control.
This isnโt just American, although I picked them because of the very similar nature of the flights. I also used Air France short haul, and Virgin and Air France long haul, and itโs the same story. They are just horribly inefficient. Cabin crew donโt seem to know what they should be doing, or rather they do, but nothing is in a consistent place, people seem unsure of their roles, and everything seems so adhoc.
Watching RyanAir crew prep a plane is like watching a military operation. Watching the others is like watching a bunch of amateurs do a military reenactment, badly.
There is a huge irony in this. In the age of late stage capitalist enshittification, I often lament that there are certain areas where you simply cannot buy a quality product, at any price, because itโs not available.
In this case, you can, and contrary to their reputation, I genuinely think that RyanAir offer the highest quality short haul air travel experience in the world. They donโt have fancy business class seating, they donโt use jetways they donโt have โboarding groupsโ, or frequent flyer perks.
But what they do do is fly you from point A to point B more or less when they say thatโs going to, and donโt waste 1-2 hours of your time pissing about with zero regard to efficiency with a plane before and after.
My flight this morning with RyanAir was scheduled for 09:50. That often refers to boarding complete. In this case, it took off at 09:52.
I didnโt even go to the gate until 09:10.
I am an utter, utter convert. What I donโt understand is why the flag carriers are so bad at applying the same sort of scientific approach to process to their own operations. They charge a fortune, and act with inefficiency and complacency, neglecting their core business of moving people from A to B in favour of trying to sell you stupid shit, which obstructs their ability to offer an efficient and timely service.
Now RyanAir also try to sell you stupid shit, but they do that while the plane is in the air, not as part of some endless ground operation with a vague promise that the plane might go somewhere, eventually.
While I certainly don't disagree that a lot of the flag-carriers could pull their socks up, my understanding is that that the way Ryanair treat both their staff and customers leaves a lot to be desired.
I feel that some of the other low-cost airlines would make better role models for the flag-carriers.
@Sean D AIUI, while as a large employer they are not without conflicts, they are generally regarded as one of the better employers in the industry, especially if youโre flight crew.
Re customer service, I have only ever had positive experiences. The reputation for โif your bag is a mm too big youโre fucked and we will be rude to youโ is typical of EasyJet, not RyanAir.
They like to cultivate their PR image as a ruthless cost cutter because it gets them mindshare, but the reality and the reputation are rather different.
A quick search of "ryanair working conditions" vs "easyjet working conditions" doesn't look good, however I do appreciate that bashing Ryanair does make for a good story.
For customer service, I was thinking more of when things go wrong, they have a reputation for being unhelpful. For example when requesting compensation/refunds. That probably does only apply to a small minority of customers, so it does make for a sustainable business model.
@Chris Northwood The treatment for it is hilarious. Unlike motion sickness, it is not an inner ear/visual imbalance. Anti emetics don't work. It's neurological.
Sitting in a car in the back seat and reading a book while someone drives works.
This last couple of weeks was the first time I have flown on โfull serviceโ airlines for years, after being a RyanAir frequent flyer.
Now say what you like about RyanAir, they understood the core brief of โairlineโ, which is โfly people places you say youโre going to more or less when you say youโre going toโ.
The โfull serviceโ guys include a lot in the very high prices they charge, but it seems what they donโt include is what you actually want: a plane that goes where it says when it says.
I am โฆ very disappointed in all of you. You know who you are. Go and sit in the corner and think about what youโve done.
Oh yeah, I can reliably get a hot gluten free meal on RyanAir too, instead of the excuse โnobody told usโ served with a packet of crisps and a can of coke.
Thing is, their selling point is that they offer through ticketing and stuff, which RyanAir donโt, but thereโs literally no point in that if, when things go wrong, which they seem to, a lot, they make no attempt to actually get you on your connecting flight and also turn reclaiming your clothes into some sort of messed up escape room.
RyanAir, great budget airline as long as you're not taller than 150cm. Every time I have flown with them I haven't fitted in the seat. I wont use them any more. Jet2 is my preferred carrier.
As I am in the Caribbean, I have discovered that there is quite a difference in what things cost. Take apple pies, for example: in Antigua an apple pie costs 9 eastern Caribbean dollars. In St Lucia, itโs 12. In Grenada, 10.
Airlines will straight up lie to you about where your lost luggage is, even after the point at which you call their bluff and show them the screenshot from โFind Myโ.
reminds me of that airline attempting to ban AirTag trackers last year, seemingly to avoid the embarrassment of actually having to deal with all that lost luggage arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/1โฆ
@joshie ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ โOh no, people are realising that we are lying to themโ - and the solution is โstop them being able to find outโ rather than โstop lyingโ.
Once the bag is back in my possession tomorrow, I will be filling in Virginโs feedback form. My answer will be detailed.
Anchored in Dominica. Walked up through the rainforest to the old British artillery battery to get a view over the bay, and then to the fort that the British army built (or rather, that their slaves built. I honestly can't imagine the unspeakable evil and sheer misery it must have been to do forced labour in this climate).
Anyway, the fort is now a museum and the area around it, a national park where the rainforest has been allowed to regrow. More recently, the establishment of the national park was assisted with an EU grant. Dominica isn't in the EU, but it retains ties to Britain which was an EU member at the time.
Got to see our ship, the Star Flyer (foreground) anchored in the bay, with her sister ship, the Royal Clipper (background), from the fort.
Just sailed alongside our big sister ship, the Royal Clipper, while passing into the lee of Dominica island in the Caribbean. Got a couple of very nice photos with the Fuji X-E4 and a 230mm zoom lens.
@demoographics They show for me (in Megalodon) as attachments, which I didn't know was a thing. (I can click through to them, but they're displaying from your server.) Will try to remember to see what they look like in Mastodon web-native when I get back to my desk.
@FeralRobots @Matthew Vernon I don't know if they'll refederate after I changed the permissions, but I rebooted my post to hopefully kick them into doing that.
Kim Spence-Jones ๐ฌ๐ง๐ท
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •