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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Etymology is so cool.

The term "microblog" comes from micro + blog, ie small blog.

Then, "blog" is a shortened form of "Web log". And a "log" comes from "log book", which is a book used to record events on a journey.

So get this, the "log" in log book is because you would use the book to record the progress and speed of a ship by using a reel attached to a chip log... So called because it's made of wood... ie a log.

So a microblog is a small record of your journey.

I think that's very poetic that this very post is a direct descendent of mariners from 400 years ago.

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

I had to sign up to a private dentist (no NHS in the area). One thing I always notice the few times I've had to go private for things is that you don't get lectured.

With the NHS it's like waiting for the NordVPN bit in a YouTube video, except you can't skip it.

You need to lose weight, stop drinking, eat better, exercise, wash behind your ears, phone your mother, come more often, not come as often, get more sleep, work less, just be happier, find some "me" time, stay informed but worry less, get out more, close the door (were you born in a barn?).

I wonder if there's been any papers on contrasting primary care providers who moan at their patients and those who don't. I can't help wondering if it's counterproductive.

It's made me much happier to book checkups knowing that we both start on the basis that I'm trying.

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in reply to kæt

Mike
Mike
• •
I've never had that from any dentist.
I've been with the same NHS dental practice for maybe 10 years.
The biggest difference is that there seems to be a revolving door of dentists where if you are unlucky (like my wife) you never see the same dentist twice.
in reply to Mike

Charlotte Walker
Charlotte Walker
• •
@MikeFromLFE My personal experience within the same practice is that when you are an NHS patient they just do the bare minimum to patch you up, now I’m a private patient I have a plan for restorative/preventative work to improve my teeth for my future life. Obviously that costs, but it’s silly not to help people to keep their own teeth into older age
@Mike
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


1946 book of reportage by I. F. Stone

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
#palestine #israel #refugees #freepalestine #ceasefire #zionism #gaza

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in reply to Ruby Sinreich

Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes
•
@Ruby Sinreich @MyView Outside Israel, perhaps? I get the impression (from what other journalists report, so...) that Israeli TV isn't really showing very much of the devastation in Gaza.
@Ruby Sinreich @MyView
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

MyView
MyView
• •

@ajlanes
That's common among media that supports and encourages their government's bad policies and very bad behaviour ...

We've had the same thing over the past quarter century from a media reduced to three owners ... one being Murdoch and the other two being well known CONservative recipients of Mate$ Rate$ ...

No such thing as a Free Press in many countries now.

@Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

it's not "clocky transfem voice", okay, it's the distinctive regional accent of 🏳️‍⚧️, that country all the hot girls are from

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in reply to xanna

Finn
Finn
• •

"they find that basically nonbinary people do whatever the heck they like"

damn right lol

I'm going to #eastercon this coming weekend. If you're going too and you'd like to, let me know so I can say hi!
#eastercon

This judgment in the Family Court, written in the form of a letter to a 14-year-old, is an excellent example of the law trying to be accessible. bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2…

A (Letter to a Young Person), Re (Rev 1) [2017] EWFC 48 (26 July 2017)

www.bailii.org

Ben Evans reshared this.

Unknown parent

Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes
•

@Sesquipedality It's an interesting exercise in attempting to express the reasoning in accessible language. To me it seems a little patronising but it's been a long time since I was 14 so I'm a poor judge of that... and was never very typically 14 anyway.

Problematic how?

@Sesquipedality

You know goats have those excellent rectangular pupils in their eyes? Well apparently they give the goat an excellent field of vision to detect predators. They also swivel in their sockets to ensure that the pupil remains parallel to the ground.

#goats

#goats
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Felt cute, might slither later idk..
Snek in a purple sweater (long crotchet tube) laid straight on the floor.

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I want to know why Sky is doing the presentation for the Melbourne Grand Prix from a studio. #f1
#f1
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Eridanus looks like it was created to deny proportional representation to voters in neighboring constellations
a constellation with a long tail that looks like part of a gerrymandered congressional district

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Saw someone hyperventilating over LLMs “passing the mirror test”, so …

TL;DR This short program “recognises itself”: show it a file containing its own source code and it will print “This is me!”

Underwhelmed? You should be! But I did have to type a lot of backslashes.

A Python program's source code is shown, then the program is run. When it is shown its own source code, it prints "This is me!”, but when it is shown a different file, it prints "This is not me!”

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to Greg Egan

Reid Ellis ☑️
Reid Ellis ☑️
• •
why didn’t you use raw strings to save yourself from all those back-slashes?
in reply to Greg Egan

Chris Who
Chris Who
• •

In the 90s we had Eliza. Why couldn't we just have been happy enough with "Super Eliza" and watching ourselves drawn eating a twelve foot donut with Freddie Mercury?

Why did we have to jam this garbage machine into absolutely everything?

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

We got an email from the Serbian Registry of Internet Domain Names (RNIDS), the organisation that is responsible for the `.rs` top-level domain.

Looks like they are a big fan of Rust. 😊

Dear Rust Foundation and global Rust community, We at the Serbian Registry of Internet Domain Names (RNIDS) respect Rust and its global community. Rust has already proven its ability to increase the reliability and security of the internet and the rest of global digital infrastructure. The global Rust community amazes us with its enthusiasm, commitment, and ingenuity. We are also aware that an increasing number of Rust projects use the .rs domain. As Rust grows and gets adopted as a dependency in many places, there is growing concern about, among other things, whether the use of the .rs domain, Serbia's national TLD, represents a risk or liability. Being fully aware that we have no control over how the Universe works or what the future holds, we, as the Board of Governors and CEO of RNIDS, would like to reach out to the Rust Foundation and the Rust community to express our support for your efforts and to say that the global Rust community is welcome on the .rs domain. So, know that you have a friend at RNIDS, and you may contact us with any concerns you may have about any .rs domain that you believe is vital to the Rust ecosystem or the stability and resilience of the global internet infrastructure. Keep up the excellent work! Best Regards, Dejan Djukic CEO & Ivan Minic, Chairman Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation Žorža Klemansoa 18а/I, 11108 Belgrade, Serbia | +381.11.7281.281 rnids.rs | domen.rs
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Looks like Threads is inhospitable to journalists posting real time information about major international news stories.
in reply to Steve Herman

A Tattered Scrapbook
A Tattered Scrapbook
• •
Gosh! Zuck platform behaves like the other Zuck platforms! Color me shocked!
in reply to Steve Herman

Timo
Timo
• •
that's a bummer. one by one, people will stagger over to the fediverse (not counting threads as worthy of the fediverse yet)

Today I learned about Bigger Luke, so you have to too. biggerluke.wikidot.com/bigger-…

Bigger Luke - Bigger Luke

biggerluke.wikidot.com
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Job description: Network specialist needed with some Python experience (Note - urgent role)
A photo of a series of complex network cabling with a long yellow and black snake intertwined between it
in reply to Natasha Jay 🇪🇺 (Fediverse)

Nate Vack 🍴
Nate Vack 🍴
• •
"I mostly work with Ruby and Python but I can control any kind of snake with any kind of gemstone"

I have a knee jerk reaction to anyone saying they’ve lost something. Especially metaphorically.
“Mrs Jones lost her husband” “Has she looked down the back of the sofa?”

Can a swan be a birb? I can’t do polls on Friendica so you will have to reply either birb or the appropriate noun of your choice
A large white mute swan stands on a brown dirt bank. Its neck is turned towards the camera, showing off its vivid orange beak. Behind it a younger swan still has some brown feathers and is preening so appears to have no head.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

The remarkable witness statement of Johnny Mercer

How a government minister tried and failed to get to the bottom of serious war crimes allegations

By me, at Prospect

prospectmagazine.co.uk/politic…

The remarkable witness statement of Johnny Mercer How a government minister tried and failed to get to the bottom of serious war crimes allegations

The remarkable witness statement of Johnny Mercer

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Them: Life isn't a video game yaknow!

Also Them: Now go out there and perform daily repetitive tasks for strangers in exchange for currency rewards, so you can get yourself some cosmetic upgrades!

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An article from earlier this year argues that it is entirely constitutionally appropriate for the Lords to block the Rwanda safety Bill and suggests some approaches the courts might take to it if it were passed. #ukpol
ukconstitutionallaw.org/2024/0…

Jeff King: The House of Lords, Constitutional Propriety, and the Safety of Rwanda Bill

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords on 29 January 2024, having cleared the House of Commons unamended.  There are a great many p…
UK Constitutional Law Association
#ukpol
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

It is perfectly proper for House of Lords to insist House of Commons think again with certain types of legislation.

This delaying power is expressly part of the Parliament Acts.

It is not an outright veto.

If Commons in their next session pass same Bill a year from now then it becomes law.

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…


Rwanda bill likely to be stalled at least till April after seven defeats in the Lords

Peers voted for numerous amendments making it improbable the legislation will return to the Commons this side of Easter
Rajeev Syal (The Guardian)
in reply to d a t green

Mike Taylor 🦕
Mike Taylor 🦕
• •
Is it then the case that the Lords CANNOT stop a bill in the end? Even if it's something obviously completely wrong like "All non-caucasian people to be euthanized"?
in reply to Mike Taylor 🦕

Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes
•
@Mike Taylor 🦕 Ultimately, yes, correct. Coping with that would be a matter for the courts.
@Mike Taylor 🦕
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Mike Taylor 🦕
Mike Taylor 🦕
• •

@ajlanes I see. I suppose the intent was that if the Lords kept sending something back over and over, the Commons would take the hint.

(I have to admit, in my Reductio Ad Absurdum, I struggled to come up with a hypothetical policy more obviously immoral than "send refugess to a country known for its genocides and human-rights abuses".)

@Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Mike Taylor 🦕

d a t green
d a t green
• •

@mike

No, there is no absolute veto is the Bill is passed by the Commons again a year later in identical terms.

You would then be looking to the monarch to not give it royal assent.

@Mike Taylor 🦕
in reply to d a t green

Mike Taylor 🦕
Mike Taylor 🦕
• •
I see — which is probaby why the government were so keen on rejecting ALL the amendments: so they can send it back in identical form. What a shower.
in reply to d a t green

Jonathan
Jonathan
• •
“people are risking their lives in the hands of people who don’t care if they die as long as they pay”
A fair description by the Home Secretary of the COVID PPE profiteers who benefitted so much from this government during the pandemic
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Yo I've got a PhD in genetics from Cambridge and on the off-chance you need it I give you permission to say that Dawkins is a hack

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in reply to Koos Pol 🇺🇦

Matthew Garrett
Matthew Garrett
• •
@KoosPol @FSMaxB The problem with popular science is that you get to just make your own claims without them being reviewed by other experts, so things like "The gene is the unit of selection" end up as part of popular understanding despite it not being accurate
@FSMaxB @Koos Pol 🇺🇦
in reply to Matthew Garrett

Koos Pol 🇺🇦
Koos Pol 🇺🇦
• •
@FSMaxB Fair enough. But that's on another level then saying he's a hack. I'd argue that popular science is way more a means of getting people to understand things than necessarily being correct in every detail. It's ok to present omissions, generalizations and caricatures if it helps me understand difficult topics.
@FSMaxB
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Jakop Dalunde commissioned it. I wrote it. And it came out this evening - what needs fixing has why with public transport ticketing, cross border, in the EU jakopdalunde.se/wp-content/upl…
Jon and Jakop holding the report

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in reply to Jon Worth

Stefan Lindbohm
Stefan Lindbohm
• •
Read it all now and have just one nitpick. The NAP’s don’t really solve the timetable data issue fully because being open data, they come with no guarantees. If a booking portal is planning journeys to sell tickets, there needs to also be a guarantee from the operators that the data is in fact correct, including some commercial relationship as recourse if there are errors.
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm

Jon Worth
Jon Worth
• •
@stefanlindbohm thanks, but does this matter? Ok, when you hit “book” you might then end up with (fractionally?) different times, but are there cases where this would be significant enough to matter?
@Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Jon Worth

Stefan Lindbohm
Stefan Lindbohm
• •
I will have to get back to you on how frequent issues might be for inaccuracies as we get more data, but the big issue lies in building a portal that is dependent on data without a commercial relationship. If the data would disappear from one day to another and we would potentially have to go through courts to get access back, that is a huge risk to the business model.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Jon Worth

Stefan Lindbohm
Stefan Lindbohm
• •
A lot of countries/operators are already fine with their long distance/regional traffic missing from Google/Apple maps. Or in a few cases they are present in Google/Apple without the data otherwise being publicly available (assumingly there are commercial agreements), which would make open data that another party uses a separate question that is lower impact for countries/operators to break.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

I would like to see greetings cards saying

"GET WELL SOON"

and inside

"The well is firmly cemented to the ground. You cannot take it.
What now?"

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in reply to marnanel

xanna
xanna
• •
"I only understood you as far as wanting to get Well"
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Ireland managed “marriage without regard to gender” before basic bodily autonomy for women. That’s so Ireland. The North’s worse.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Reading en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage… I was unaware that Gyles Brandreth had had any significant impact whatsoever on UK Politics. #ukpol

Public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
#ukpol
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Sion [main]
Sion [main]
• •
... and thereby having a significant impact on my life. That is so weird.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

@llamasoft_ox made a friend
@a stinky ox 🐂
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

The dreaded barnyard puddle has returned, and the goats would like you to know they are really annoyed about it. I'm a little surprised they didn't make use of the plank, but goats have very strong opinions about getting their feet wet.

(Every year this puddle appears and I want to dig a trench, but the ground is still too frozen, and then the puddle soaks in by the time the ground is workable and I forget to do it)

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in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler

Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes
•
@Prof. Sam Lawler Seems like perfectly sensible behaviour for anyone spending time outside in your neck of the woods. Water is cold!
@Prof. Sam Lawler
Unknown parent

Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
• •
@weirdmustard They're desert animals. Water makes them sad (though snow doesn't seem to bother them too much)
@Fuck.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

I've worked out when the Firefox developers plan to retire.

(Of course there seems to be an off-by-one error, it's javascript. Kwality is its watchword. I'd expected it to be on an IEEE754 boundary, but it looks like a magic constant).

3 new Date(8648000000000000) & » Date Sat Sep 13 275760 1:00:00 GMT+0100 (British Summer Tine) 3 new Date(8648900000000001) & » Invalid Date

Me: "I don't think I know $person"
Friend: "I think they know you because you did a politics near them once"

That should be my epitaph. "Did a politics once"

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

If you want to buy Grace Petrie's new album Build Something Better, you should do it now so it has a chance to make the Top 40 chart.

If you bought it but haven't downloaded it, it doesn't count towards the charts, so go and download it.

gracepetrie.bandcamp.com/album…


Build Something Better, by Grace Petrie

11 track album
Grace Petrie

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Happy get a sensible date order day to those who celebrate.

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in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Jos Dingjan
Jos Dingjan
• •
I’m eagerly awaiting 22 July for the actual decent-approximation-to-pi-day.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content

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in reply to Another Angry Woman

Misuse Case
Misuse Case
• •
Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content

in reply to Another Angry Woman

acm
acm
• •
Discourse, 🔥flaming hot take🔥

Sensitive content

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Do cis people in the UK actually think there has ever been a point at which transgender medicine was widely and routinely available on the NHS?

Guys, it never has. When they exist at all, the services are chronically underfunded with waiting lists that literally stretch for decades.

To a first approximation, if you want to medically transition in the UK, you are on your own, unless you want to fight a war of attrition for years.

TERFs like to pretend that you can easily access NHS gender identity services as if it were just a thing people do.

It appears some people have believed their fairy tales. However badly you think trans people are treated by the medical establishment in the UK, I promise you that the reality is worse, and always has been.

“Children on puberty blockers”. Fucking state of it. There are no children on puberty blockers. Not because they’re trans, anyway.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Isabel Ruffell
Isabel Ruffell
• •
Totally endorse your summary of the lies, but there is a difference between underfunded and an exercise in bloody-mindedness on the one hand and wholly unavailable on the other. Many of us have no choice but to grit our teeth and grind through the system. Which is as bad as you say.
in reply to Isabel Ruffell

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
• •

@Isabel Ruffell I transitioned with a lot of people who tried and were unable to access it.

Even at the peak of trans acceptance in the UK, being able to access ANYTHING depended on your postcode at least, and probably a few other things. Some PCTs as we’re basically refused to refer anyone for anything at all.

At which point, you either had the money to go round them, or you found ways to get it 😞

@Isabel Ruffell
in reply to Sarah Brown

Isabel Ruffell
Isabel Ruffell
• •
yes, my first attempt at transitioning was without any guarantee that the local health authority would pay for anything but hormones (and having to persuade the local shrinks to refer me to a GIC at all). I am now in my ninth year of a second attempt. Now that I am relatively close to finishing, I am in a position to make other arrangements, but that wasn't the case earlier. And it is awful that I feel fortunate to have made it so far, but then I conside whatr other folk face.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Isabel Ruffell

Cyberspice
Cyberspice
• •
I basically had to self fund treatment to a certain extent but was incredibly lucky, combined with have a great GP, and being in Wales where they didn’t have a GIC at the time, that surgery was referred directly so I was one of those rare people who went to Heywards Heath. My partner did not so I used what I had saved, expecting I would have to pay, to pay for her. I know plenty who did the exceptionally slow NHS grind. I was just lucky with my circumstances.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Sarah Brown

PointlessSpike
PointlessSpike
• •
I would love to ask a TERF to summarise their achievements in removing healthcare from trans people, and then summarise how easy it is for trans people to get it now. They know, of course they do. It's all doublethink.
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

“NHS to end practice of back rubs for Godzilla”

If you think the NHS was ever actually giving trans children puberty blockers, then I’m afraid you have fallen for a TERF fairy tale. The NHS has never actually done decent treatment for trans children. news.sky.com/story/children-to…


Children to no longer be prescribed puberty blockers, NHS England confirms

The decision follows a review after a sharp rise in referrals were recorded at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which is closing at the end of March.
Sky News

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in reply to Sarah Brown

David Matthewman
David Matthewman
• •
For reference, the daughter in question turns 13 soon. And it's not that anyone was trying to give puberty blockers to an eight-year-old, but the battle was to get her the possibility of having them when they would help.
in reply to David Matthewman

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
• •

@David Matthewman Ok. Credit to her parents for fighting that battle, and maybe the Tavistock might have considered possibly doing it on a trial basis at some point (“maybe” is doing a lot of work there), but they basically don’t do that, and never have. Their standard mode of operation is to just keep talking until people age out of their service and can join an adult GIC waiting list.

The headline is literally just a reaffirmation of the way the NHS has always behaved. It’s giving the impression that it’s ending a practice of medical intervention for trans kids.

But to end something, it has to have started in the first place.

@David Matthewman
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

#ukpol #trans msn.com/en-gb/health/other/chi… The utter monsters.
#trans #ukpol

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Uhhhh bbc.com/news/business-68534703

Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

Prior to his death, whistleblower John Barnett was testifying against Boeing over concerns about standards.
By Theo Leggett (BBC News)

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I was watching the Portuguese election coverage last night. Ignore the Chega TV banner in the top left; they were just rebroadcasting RTP3’s coverage. What struck me was where in the UK we report turnout percentages, in Portugal the media report the opposite: the percentage of voters who stayed at home (abstenção in the bottom right). I wonder if there’s something about the political history of Portugal that makes this so.
Unknown parent

Alexandra Lanes
Alexandra Lanes
•
@Alisdair Calder McGregor Ooh, that's a good point; I hadn't noticed whether the numbers actually were %ages of the total electorate rather than of those who voted... And annoyingly they're not doing the UK thing of election coverage continuing well into the next day.
@Alisdair Calder McGregor
Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because some things are just none of your sodding business.

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in reply to Neil Brown

Sine-Nomine🇵🇸Free Palestine🇵🇸
Sine-Nomine🇵🇸Free Palestine🇵🇸
• •

I'll give up my privacy, when...
Politician's conduct all interactions in public & on the record
Politician's publish their tax records, bank statements, shareholdings, w oversight by open forum
Politician's don't allow lobbying of any kind
All corporations pay their taxes in full, no offshore crap
Free healthcare, education, social care for all worldwide
When the industrial-miltary complex is dismantled
When all wars are abolished & nukes

Sorry, got carried away there, but its my list

in reply to Neil Brown

Guido Stevens
Guido Stevens
• •
I like the one which says: I need #privacy not because I've got something to hide, but because you can't be trusted.
#Privacy
⇧