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Don't worry, Sam, SpaceX won't ACTUALLY launch 7,000 satellites! (There are currently 10,296 Starlink sats in orbit)

Don't worry, SpaceX said they'd get their satellites fainter than magnitude 7! (They have not ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gat…)

Don't worry, they won't actually start Kessler Syndrome! outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashcl…

Don't worry, they won't actually launch a million AI data centres into orbit!! theconversation.com/a-new-spac…

This is the fucking worst I-told-you-so apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.ht…

A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a ‘crematorium for satellites’

Planned ‘megaconstellations’ of satellites could cause unforeseen harm to the ozone layer and climate systems. Global regulation is needed before it’s too late.
The Conversation
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Barry Schwartz 🫖

The scab I had on my knee that my parents had to debride lest I die from sepsis was beautiful in its way. Nevertheless, when they told me I would die if they did not let me rub it off of me, I let them rub it off of me. And, as always, I took my penicillin. Being a kid in the 1960s who got his tonsils out in the 1960s, when they didn’t take out tonsils regularly anymore, I took a lot of penicillin.

Tell that to the people who say that.

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Googly eyes might stop seagulls from stealing your lunch. UK researchers stuck googly eyes onto takeout food containers in seagull-infested places and found that they were far less likely to be approached or pecked compared to un-googly-eyed control containers. Not every gull fell for it, but half were consistently deterred, even after repeated trials. Gizmodo gizmodo.com/this-ridiculously-…
#ShareGoodNewsToo

This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch

Googly eyes are apparently one of a gull's biggest fears.
Ed Cara (Gizmodo)
#sharegoodnewstoo

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In 1996, tired of squabbling between EU countries about whose favorite person or building should be on the EU banknotes, the currency commission held a competition for a new design: “The ground rules for the design strictly prohibited displaying any recognizable national monuments or heroes that risked giving greater prominence to one country over another.” The winning design was a series of bridges that were stylistically typical of different kinds of European bridges, but which weren't any specific bridges. For example:
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Stan Carey

A comment on my post describes users of this slang as lazy simpletons with a limited vocabulary. (I was having none of it.)

I see linguistic shortcuts – abbreviations and the like – more as efficiencies. They're the verbal equivalent of desire paths, which no one sees as "lazy".

But the characterization shows the social baggage that language has accumulated. It's a scapegoat for broader anxieties and prejudices.

#language #slang #abbreviations #sociolinguistics #blogging

#language #blogging #sociolinguistics #slang #abbreviations
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openwall.com/lists/oss-securit… OH MY FUCKING GOD complete auth bypass in inetutils telnetd for over a decade and obviously nobody inside that decade should have been running a telnet daemon but wow

oss-security - GNU InetUtils Security Advisory: remote authentication by-pass in telnetd

www.openwall.com

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We need to buy a replacement DVD player from Argos (cos we like owning our media) and looking through the Q&As this tickled me.

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Have you always wrestled with questions about the things that turn you on? Are you worried that your desires are messing with your relationships, your self-image, even your body? I'm ready to help you stop feeling "broken" and become the wholehearted kinkster you were born to be.

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NEW

Trying to make sense of the nonsensical decision to drop the Chinese spying prosecutions

How the positions of neither the CPS nor the government stand up to scrutiny

By me

Substack
emptycity.substack.com/p/tryin…

Personal blog davidallengreen.com/2025/10/tr…

Trying to make sense of the nonsensical decision to drop the Chinese spying prosecutions

d. a. t. green (The Empty City - a law and polity blog)

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The entire Western Pacific has been verified free of measles and rubella. The WHO has verified the elimination of both diseases in all Pacific Island countries, alongside rubella elimination in Japan. The achievement follows two decades of coordinated immunisation campaigns, regional surveillance, and high routine vaccine coverage, making the Western Pacific the first WHO region to eliminate rubella entirely. who.int/westernpacific/news/it…
#ShareGoodNewsToo

item

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that the 21 Pacific island countries and areas that are part of the WHO Western Pacific Region have collectively been verified as having eliminated measles and rubella.
www.who.int
#sharegoodnewstoo

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If you've heard of Tor lately but
aren't sure how it works and how it can help you to stay safe,

I wrote this article explaining how Tor works, who it is for, and how it can help you in a very accessible way.

No technical knowledge needed.
I hope this helps you to stay safe 💜 :tor:

privacyguides.org/articles/202…

#Privacy #Safety #Tor

In Praise of Tor: Why You Should Support and Use Tor

You might have heard of Tor in the news a few times, yet never dared to try it yourself. Despite being around for decades, Tor is still a tool too few people know about. Today, Tor is easy to use for anyone.
Privacy Guides
#Privacy #safety #tor

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And now for something light and fun:

A friend sent me this--and I cannot stress this enough--*PEER-REVIEWED* article on transfeminine puppygirl culture because it includes comics (one NSFW).

And yall

This thing is a wild ride. But it's also kinda great.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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Doc Impossible

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Doc Impossible

Honestly, this seems like work that either winks toward or outright engages a lot of the frankly-odd shit that (especially white, but overwhelmingly well-educated) trans folks get into: things that yearn for ways to sever our humanity, personhood, intellect, or all three at once, in the fantasy of Getting Out of that awful double-bind, where we're helpless front-row spectators to, well, *gestures vaguely at the structures of the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy* all that crap.

Anyway, this is neat, and got my noodle cooking. Thought some of y'all might enjoy it too.

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Rylie Stargazer 🏳️‍⚧️

wow I did not expect to be this called out by an academic paper on a subculture I'm not even in. I wish I had the emotional capacity to dig into the lit beyond a paper here or there...

"most trans women know that their perception of themselves, that their own ideas of their self, are not always trustworthy. In a society built on foundational trans-antagonism (Stanley 2021), and suffused with narratives of trans femininity as inherently fraudulent (Bettcher 2025) and unloveable (Guadelupe-Diaz 2019) it simply hard for a trans woman to feel secure enough to be the source of her own affirmation." 🫣

"the enticing anxiety surrounding desires that we may fear as much as we want them, which, once again, is a deeply trans feeling (Lavery 2023)" 😯

(Ok and it's slightly distracting the number of times "is" is missing from the phrase "it is" in the paper, but oh well)

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Frogs apparently represent peak masculinity in english children books and I don't know what to do with this information.
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I think it’s at least mildly surprising that three of these can be combined into a cube. skfb.ly/pzByn

A third of a cube - 3D model by robinhouston

Three of these pieces may be combined to form a cube. This dissection is based on Hashimoto’s bucolic cube, which is a cool puzzle. - A third of a cube - 3D model by robinhouston
Sketchfab

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content cruelly disappointing given the URL
bouncysigns.co.uk/products/inf…

Inflatable slide rules

Inflatable slide rules safety notice Printed and Laminated Size - A3 (297mm by 420mm) Other sizes available A4 & A2. 3mm Foamex board, Strong & durable
Bouncy Signs

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The current breakaway leader in the Tour de Nap 🚴
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Simon Tatham

@mjd it's true that with k>2 hat colours the problem stops resembling a graph. Instead you have to generalise to a k-uniform hypergraph, i.e. graph edges are replaced by sets of k vertices instead of sets of 2. But you still keep the rest of the properties: every hyper-edge is a set of exactly k vertices, all agreeing in the same n−1 places but covering every possibility for the remaining place, representing a situation in which one player sees one particular layout of hats on the other n−1 players but could have any choice for their own hat.

And an 'orientation' of a hyper-edge involves nominating exactly one of its endpoints, which probably isn't the right generalisation of orienting a graph in all situations, but it's the one that works for this problem.

But with k=2 but >2 players it still seems like a graph orientation problem to me.

@Mark Dominus
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#AcceptTheCompliment and #GetCherishedNerd.
#acceptthecompliment #getcherishednerd
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The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

[...]

Client implementations SHOULD NOT be a place of honor. Client implementations MUST NOT commemorate highly esteemed deeds.

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Minesweeper on my DXY-885 plotter. A project that took longer than expected!

Uploading partly to test video-embed from mastondon.social.

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Simon Tatham

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I've done this now. The current version of Puzzles on my website – both the live web version and the downloadable binaries – mark the original first click location with a cross if you undo past the move that opened it. For example, I loaded the save file you sent me into the Linux version, and now it looks like this. Same if I use "Upload save file" at chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtath….

Mines, from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection

www.chiark.greenend.org.uk
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Sometimes, I receive questions which leave both me, and the person asking, bamboozled.

> Your website loads so quickly! What CDN do you use?

There is no CDN. It is just really small and simple, mostly text.

> Sure, but is that Cloudflare, or...?

None. It is a tiny website, just a few kilobytes per page, on a tiny server, at my home, connected to the Internet via my ISP, Andrews & Arnold.

> But are you / they in the cloud?

No. The webserver is in Newbury, in my garage.

> Neil, please can you pass my questions to your technical person? I don't think you understand, your website cannot be in your home. It must be in the cloud or have a CDN.

*Neil puts on glasses and false nose and moustache*

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So I tried out the nonogram dude's android app and the controls are baffling and I gave up when it tried to be clever with zoom, so back to the good old fashioned Simon Tatham puzzle collection for me.
Tapping a second time gives you blank, dragging only works in the line you started. Intuitive.

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It is time, once again, for me to tap the sign.

"Ant-ee-far" is a profoundly un-British pronouncation of "Anti-Fah", and is used by plastic "patriots" for precisely one reason - to obscure the fairly obvious question: "Who are the Fah that these people are opposed to?"

Likewise, the UK does not have "DEI" and never has.

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A-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC

Make them define it.... every time some one uses DEI or Antifa or Woke in any kind of pejorative manner... Ask them to define it... make them state categorically that they A: Don't understand what it means (ignorant moron) or B: Understand but are against equality, equity, compassion, consideration and basic human rights (utter piece of human bigoted garbage).
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#trans #fashion

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I feel like there ought to be a discipline of something like "perceptual geometry", and I need to be better at it.

We all know that finding the "optical centre" of a glyph is not straightforward (but there are algorithms). Even something as apparently simple as "stroke contrast" requires thought. Stroke contrast is just the thickness of the thickest part divided by the thinness of the thinnest part, right? Not so. The thickest part of the O on the right is not relevant to contrast.

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