Skip to main content


Weird anxiety episode day 6. Tears on my new sofa, no concentration, kind of just want to let ideas of work or law degree hang.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


So you're speaking a sentence in Portuguese, are you? Well you have 0.5 seconds to decide between a subordinating conjunction or a preposition/naked adjective, AND IT WILL DETERMINE THE COURSE OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

reshared this

in reply to Sarah Brown

Just got off a call with clients in Lisbon, fortunately their English is good so conjunctions were avoided…

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

I have no joke. I just like saying "sugarcane whip smut".


In 2023 I painted sugarcane whip smut, caused by the fungus Sporisorium scitamineum (synonym Ustilago scitaminea).

hgpenningtonart.co.uk/plantspa…




Trying to find my fabric tape measure to measure my boobs.

Of course it’s in the raspberry pi bits drawer. Of course it is.

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Where else would you keep it?! 😉

(I keep mine with the spare batteries...🤷‍♀️)

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I don't know what you mean *glances at tape measure that is coiled up with a network cable then coiled around the outside*

🤭




Weird anxiety episode day 3. Seems to be receding somewhat. Heart pounding and adrenaline rushes keep happening a bit but maybe less severely? Got sleep in a couple of three hour batches from what I remember. Have attempted to contact a therapist to process some of this.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


There is something magical in turning one thing into another. Celebrate your magical ability to turn good news into anxiety with this mug! Get yours here >>> shop.newsthump.com/product/mag…

reshared this



Sometimes we sleep, or may as well. The world of possibilities that contains and is contained by a day too much and too overwhelming to be but observed slowly through a fog. What shall I do today? Toss a coin.

Sometimes we remember, or remember feeling. To fetch from the vaults of memory is to remember afresh, and to remember afresh to feel afresh. To feel afresh is to reason afresh and it is all still true: this is still was still am still me I, feeling. But nevertheless afresh.

Sometimes we reach out. So fortunate I, who can be held without holding and still feel the warmth. Waves over waves.




Bit sad not to be able to join in the general trans Dorley Hall love-in but I read maybe 300 pages and the non-consensual and imprisonment aspects of it seem to trigger a lot of anxiety, so it's perhaps not the book for me. And that's OK.


I discovered the other day that the Scottish Baby Box, available free to everyone pregnant in Scotland, contains condoms. Bit late, you might think.

parentclub.scot/baby-box



It is a beautiful day in the village and you are Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls.


A month or so ago the weird gods of Internet advertising decided I needed a book on bomb scene investigation.

Now they’re offering me introductions to bloodstain pattern analysis.



One thing Facebook has that this place lacks is good kitten photos and videos. Where are my squeeping nuggets of federated cuteness?

Sion [main] reshared this.

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

The hashtags cats, catsofmastodon and caturday are a far higher purity source of cat huffing than those provided over on FB.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

You can follow hashtags. So find the proper one you want in regard to cats, and your feed will be full of em from all over the world.


In which the EFF attempt to safe face by showing themselves to be complete muppets mastodon.social/@eff/113794035…


Update: After this blog post was written, we learned Meta revised its public "Hateful Conduct" policy in ways EFF finds concerning. We are analyzing these changes, which this blog post does not address.




Ugh. Just had to move tables at the pub a a guy sat at the next table who absolutely reeked of piss.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Quite possibly not his fault, could be that he’s ill or doesn’t have access to toilets or washing facilities, but it was actually making me feel ill 🤢


This is an official translation of the law allowing Greenland self governance. Under it, for Greenland to become independent (to do with that independence what it may) it requires a majority in a referendum of the people of Greenland, an independence agreement with Denmark, and approval of that agreement by the Greenlandic and Danish parliaments. english.stm.dk/media/10522/gl-…


Fall asleep, fall pregnant, fall ill, fall on hard times. What other ways can you fall?
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

A drunk sailor might fall in, but fall over when they fall out, and as they fall down, fall overboard, it falling to their solicitor to whom their estate would fall.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Benji's early morning trip out.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to sunflowerinrain

@sunflowerinrain

He never enjoyed snow, unlike his brother.
The first time we had deep snow Bilbo spent 10 mins diving forward and skidding headfirst into it.
Benji has arthritis now so is a snow/ice wimp like me.



If you played Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum as a kid you’ll be aware of the notorious Attic Bug. It meant that if you entered the Attic in a game, various rooms became instakills.

Today I read an explanation of the bug: bits of non-screen memory are being written to when one of the monsters in the Attic is “drawn”.

skoolkit.ca/disassemblies/jet_…

reshared this

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Many times I played that I would be killed instantly because the monster was drawn at the same place the character entered.

in reply to Ian Smith

I'm experiencing Cassandrean tasks with talking to people about AI. As in, it is a bad idea
in reply to Ian Smith

The original post has been obliterated because of containment breach, but here's the archive: web.archive.org/web/2023112613…

And I found this reblog that has lots of additions as well. 😁 xserpx.tumblr.com/post/7349428…



"Like trying to contain a bucking bronco armed with a ball of string" is some top commentatorbabble.


I'm troubled by Luke Littler. Specifically his nickname "Luke The Nuke" which needs USian pronunciation to rhyme nicely. Hmm.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

not sure about that. If "luke" and "yuke" rhyme then "luke" and "nyuke" also rhyme, almost by definition. Different previous phonème (/j/ rather than /n/) doesn't matter.
This entry was edited (5 months ago)


The #thearchers team are silly. Today's omnibus ends with a very... festive arrangement of the theme tune.


In US law they pronounce the “v.” in case names as “versus” or “vee”. So we get the famous case of Roe v. Wade. But in English law for civil cases like this we pronounce the “v.” as “and”, thus rendering the case name as “row and wade”.

Or so I thought. It occurred to me just now that if the case had happened here, it’d be a judicial review. So would be called something like R (Roe) v. Wade, pronounced “the Crown (on behalf of Roe) and Wade”.

But! It was in 1973 when we wrote judicial review case names differently. It would probably have been something more like R v. Wade ex parte Roe.



Idly reading about New Zealand's court system. Amusing to me was the way Māori introductions in New Zealand courts became the norm. A judge decided it would be good, so did it, and then a barrister for the Crown followed suit. Obviously at this point defence barristers couldn't be outdone, so... youtu.be/ycL-cKQ_0tU?si=imaGLw…
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I am endlessly fascinated by the unique way colonialism and decolonialism have played out in Aotearoa.


Watching the darts on Sky Stream, and it's got a bit confused. It's really weird when the sound and picture get out of sync and you hear random plunks while the player is preparing to throw. (Pause and play fixed it.)
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Yeah We had a similar problem earlier today. Same solution. I shall will be reporting said issue next week when I return to work.



Inspired by a blooper in yesterday’s Wallace and Gromit, does anyone here know why the Western Region of BR stuck with lower quadrant semaphore signals when the rest of the network standardised on upper quadrant after nationalisation?

Mike 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 reshared this.

in reply to Mike 🇬🇧 🇪🇺

@MikeFromLFE working on an old GWR branch line, you get this kind of insight. Often used phrase “there’s two ways of doing things, the Great Western way and the wrong way”

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


AI is a marketing term, not a technical term: Exhibit 1 in what is likely to become a continuing series.

This aircon unit is set to auto. But the icon on the remote shows “AI” instead.

I can state with reasonable certainty that there is nothing in this aircon unit that computer scientists recognise as “AI”, even under archaic definitions.

reshared this



Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Looks like this person got a visit from the ghost of cybersecurity "foreseeable consequences".

"I harassed my users into not opening any emails they aren't expecting, and now they won't open any emails they weren't expecting!"

#phishingtraining

reshared this

in reply to Matt Linton

The "anti phishing" campaigns, when fake phishing emails are regularly sent out and the unlucky ones who click on a link in them have to do additional training, are very efficient in training employees to never click any link in an email.

If there is something urgent, I'll be contacted some over way.



What Lego have done with their PoweredUp stuff is very cool. You can control it from a remote control or from your phone using Bluetooth. But this means that when you’ve not played with this stuff for a while and just want to make the train go forward you have all this technological baggage. I miss the joy of being able to press a button to make it go.


Is it silly to feel a bit nervous around people on the train wearing Harry Potter gowns (not just ordinary academic gowns, but obviously embroidered with Griffindor etc.)? It feels silly, and yet…
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I've not got the impression that the people being poisoned by JKR's transphobia are actual Harry Potter fans, primarily. It's not people with HP avatars who tweet out the bigotry, it's single-issue shouty types, different demographic. So many HP fans are sound people, they support Daniel Radcliffe in his vocal support for trans rights, even the ones who keep wearing the shirts etc. This is what I choose to believe, anyway.
in reply to xanna

@xanna Yeah. Most of them are almost certainly ok but it doesn’t stop it being entirely rational to be wary.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I don't think so, no. I mean, it could be they're unware of the views of the author... but at the same time...


Wake up. Ask Siri what the time is. 05:56. The radio alarm goes off at 06:00. How on earth does my brain do that?!

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED BUT REPULSIVE", "WRONG BUT WROMANTIC", "FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD", "NOBODY BOTHERS WITH THIS BIT", "SHOULDN'T REALLY BUT WE WON'T JUDGE", "REQUIRED IN ORDER TO WORK AROUND EVERYONE ELSE'S BUGS", "YOU DO YOU", and "OBVIOUSLY ABSURD BUT VERY COMMON FOR SOME REASON" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

reshared this

in reply to Simon Tatham

@mwl

haha, 2119 was written by "sob[at]harvard[dot]edu," that makes me laugh.



Interesting conversation the other day. In relation to the ban on GnRH agonists I said that the requirement for puberty blockers before hormones at 18 was a sop to the cis. A friend pointed out that my experience was very gender binary and that blockers might have a role for those whose gender identity is more complicated or in flux. Food for thought.