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Random thoughts: it’s funny what you think is important.

When I was younger, I wondered about who people credit with investing the incandescent light bulb. Many people will say Thomas Edison, others will say Joseph Swan, and others from outside the angliosphere may give yet another answer.

But ISTM now that it’s a really weird thing to focus on. The light bulb was obvious. Its invention is trivial, and the fact that several people did it simultaneously should tell us that. It wasn’t a great breakthrough. Everyone knew wire glowed when it got hot. The problem in using it for light was that it burned.

It’s not the invention of the light bulb that’s important. It’s the invention of the vacuum pump.

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Invented by Otto von Guericke
You might enjoy Connections, made by James Burke for the BBC waaaaaaaay back in the late 70s.
@BashStKid
I'm gonna lay odds Sarah was all over that as a kid😉 .
@BashStKid Best enjoyed over a dish of chicken marengo.
@pieist
Ridley Scott left that important detail out of the movie … like a few other things
@BashStKid Not least the six dwarves onstage hitting each other.


This is very cool!
@Sarah Brown I like it, although I wonder how much dwell time it needs at each end to keep topped up enough. Maybe “less than it would if you were pratting about with wires” is good enough?
@Alexandra Lanes Commercial fast chargers are well above 100kw these days. You can get significant amounts of charge very quickly.


Standard deviation meme:

Bottom bit - dolphins are fish

Middle bit - dolphins are not fish, they're mammals!

Top bit - dolphins are fish

Can't be arsed to draw the curve, ok?

I'm the "some categories are paraphyletic, live with it" one


I can’t be the only one to notice this, but in the last week or so, the UK media trans narrative seems to have flipped.

What the fuck are they up to?


Former Great British Bake Off presenter Sandi Toksvig triggered an avalanche of so-called 'gender critical' anger for saying she felt 'distressed' by people who call themselves 'radical feminists' but are anti-trans

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/comedian-sandi-toksvig-65-hounded-31524665

#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA


It does seem like things have changed.
Also reminds me how good a bean Sandi Toksvig is.
@transworld the combined impact of Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who is probably not to be underestimated.


Ah, people on social media being knobs about the orcas again. Apparently they are “trying to send a message to humanity” by ripping the rudders off the boats of middle class people pottering about on what are basically floating caravans.

Fine, if you’re gonna anthropomorphise the murderfish, I’m gonna do the same and suggest that, given the attacks are being carried out by adolescent males, the message is, “nice boat, be a shame if anything happened to it. Now toss some tuna and dolphin hentai overboard.”

Andrew Hickey reshared this.

@Sarah Brown At this rate the message will be interpreted as “please extinct us”
@ajlanes the moment they kill some poor fucker the coastguard will be loading depthcharges...

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just gonna start calling fascists "future compost" from now on.

it cuts right to the heart of how to deal with them and what purpose they serve in society.

Sarah Brown reshared this.

@goatsarah also good, but doesn't really describe what should happen to them.
@Vox. (Cass, Lucy and Marcy) "gallows" is quite descriptive, and describes what DID happen to a lot of them after 1945.


Installed a vitamin D calculator thing.

I live in the sunniest part of Europe, on the 37th parallel.

I take vitamin D supplements.

It still thinks that I am deficient.

Guys, if you live outside the tropics, consider supplementing your D3 levels.



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Most of these "debates" by cis people are completely useless, at best, so I don't participate in them. I think my role, as a cis man, is to accept people as they are with no need for discussion - it's not hard. I care that people can be who they really are without fear or prejudice, no matter what "other" they might represent.
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Sarah Brown reshared this.


I cannot tell you all the sheer relief I feel that Sandi is on the right side re trans rights. I've had a crush on her for decades, and was worried I'd have to put her in the box with Christopher Lee (tory) and Alice Cooper (weirdly anti trans despite his entire career)

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Cooper plays golf. Not always a sign of a wrong'un, but...

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UK: Sandi Toksvig flooded with support after expressing ‘rage’ at ‘anti-trans’ people

https://www.indy100.com/identities/sandi-toksvig-trans-lqbt

Really enjoyed this part too - bang on! 👍

"She also founded the Women’s Equality Party in 2015 and is working on a campaign to remove unelected Church of England bishops from the House of Lords because of its opposition to same-sex marriage.

She said: “It’s shocking. They don’t deal with gay people or women in an equitable manner. And they aren’t some sort of obscure organisation – this is our state church.

None of them have been elected. This is our parliament and it’s not OK. Be a bigot if you want to, in your own back yard – but don’t come and play in mine

#LGBT #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Trans #TransRights #TransRightsAreHumanRights #UK

A photo of Sandy Toksvig, a woman with blonde hair wearing a black top marked Women's Equality
good this is such a relief, I've been so worried she was on the wrong side

@miss_s_b
A fuller article on iNews (if you didn't already find it) ...

https://inews.co.uk/culture/comedy/sandi-toksvig-distressed-anti-trans-radical-feminists-2768064

@Nephrite
It's a systemic anachronism in 2023, the CoE is a protected animal

Tbf the Bishops in the Lords are far less obnoxious than 3-4 Conservative far right evangelicals who ARE elected in the Commons and get disproportionate press space for their extreme views on trans rights and abortion etc




For the love of god, can you try NOT to win the next UK election for the Tories? FFS. Is Sunak giving him backhanders or something?

if they fly in the rain my cash is on the cessna
@Kincaid Have to use the eurofighters if it’s raining.

Sarah Brown reshared this.


a netflix series in which a TERF wakes up one day and discovere she has a male body. After the initual shock, and following deep horror, she then makes the hesitant decision to enter the UK
gender system. while she strugles for years against prejudice and transphobia, will she ever gain empathy for other people?

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working title:
Transgendered
The Only Moral Transition Is My Transition

When I was an eggy yoof, a fair number of terfs would actually have been overjoyed at this.

But the world has moved on and now I think their primary connection to transness is through the porn they obsessively watch.

Content warning: fictional graphic violence mention


Sarah Brown reshared this.


Content warning: trans positivity, boosts OK

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Content warning: re: trans positivity, boosts OK

PJ Coffey reshared this.

Content warning: re: trans positivity

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Was it long ago ? Did you made friends easily in there ?

Feel free to ask whatever question you like about me 😋

Lived here for 3 years now, and have met some lovely people 😊


Dear housefly. The human you chose to annoy (me) had easy access to neurotoxin. I’d say make better choices next time, but you can’t.
I definitely have a soft spot for neurotoxins that interfere with acetylcholine mechanisms, but I have to say I prefer acetylcholine esterase inhibitors more.


I wouldn’t mind people being such idiots on the internet if they weren’t so utterly confident at spouting complete and utter bullshit.
And yet people thought there wasn't enough of them, and invented chatGPT.

The greatest thing about the internet is that it's given every one a voice.

The worst thing about the internet is that it's given EVERYONE a voice.


Sarah Brown reshared this.


just saw someone from winnipeg call themselves a "pegger" and i just want to say, folks from winnipeg, please keep doing this it's very funny i will not explain


Tip for well-meaning people doing diversity monitoring: if your form expects trans women to, at any point, tick anything that says “male”, then that is profoundly offensive and most of us will just lie to you.

Please stop doing this.

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i will also check female when the choices are ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘trans’. Trans is not my gender!

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“The following programme contains strong and frequent language”

So, like, swearing really fast?

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The phrasing kind of implies that the frequent language and the strong language might be different instances.
@Sarah Brown I always liked that when watching Scandi noir things. “This programme contains strong language” “What, Swedish?”

Sarah Brown reshared this.


Do artista brasileiro Geuvar Oliveira:

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Stabbing the first person who tries to argue Eowyns Chromosomes
Nazgul: FOOL, NO MAN CAN SLAY ME!

Eowyn:  I am no man!

Nazgul: YES YOU ARE, YOU HAVE XY CHRO-

Eowyn: (stabs)

Nazgul: AAAAAAAAAARGH! I AM BEING SILENCED FOR MY GONDOR-CRITICAL VIEWS

(Laura Amalasunta)
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A short history of the Tory party...

Traditionally - "Party of law and order"

1980s onwards - "Party of law and order"; cruelty is the collateral damage of ideology

2010s - cruelty is the ideology

2020s - to be cruel we'll break the law if we have to.

#Tories

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Christian baby carrots ...
Just what I was thinking.

finally no need for the restraint shown hitherto.
@Ailbhe So much restraint


There will come a time when the Raspberry Pi Foundation does not require a super secret mythical combination of USB C power supply and cable that is only dubiously complainant and can only be obtained on the third Thursday of the months with no R in them.

That time is not now.

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I am once again begging them to stop thinking they know better than the whole world when it comes to USB C power delivery. If Fred in his Wuhan shed can make shit that powers up without you feeling like you’re playing a game of fucking Myst, RPi with their impressive collection of computer science degrees and personal computer heritage should be able to.
Flips device over and reads underside: "Made in Britain".
@SaraMG By people who can’t fucking read the USB spec, repeatedly.

Given how they were told of by the AUTHOR of the power delivery portion of the spec because of what they did to the 4, you'd think they'd have made *some* effort on the 5.

But hey, this version has AI in it, so yay?

@saramg it needs some power connections on Lucas terminals
Meanwhile, my 2 and 3A trundle happily along with whatever random chargers for no-longer-supported phones were kicking around. Where did they go wrong?
@sparrowsion interesting, as my 4 has a random PSU and is totes fine, but the 3A with a pi specced PSU undervolts All. The. Time...
@Kincaid @Sion [main] The 4 cares about the cable more than it cares about the PSU. They also fixed it for later versions of the 4.
Yep. I resorted to a forbidden 2.1mm barrel connector to USB-C adapter for my Pi4. Meanwhile another board I have support 12v over USBC-PD.

Sarah Brown reshared this.


Modern political semantics:

Tory/GOP politicians: We oppose, um, Flerb!

Tory/GOP voters: What's Flerb?

Politicians: It's anything you hate.

Voters: Like what?

Politicians: Your choice, whatever. Now, see my opponent? They personify Flerbism.

Voters: Oh no! We must stop Flerbery ruining our country!

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Sarah Brown reshared this.


You can trace the post-WW2 history of the Tory Party from how their Home Secretaries have gone from David Maxwell-Fyfe, a prosecutor at Nuremberg who was a key figure in creating the ECHR, to Suella Braverman insisting the UK should leave the ECHR in order to persecute refugees even more. #ukpolitics
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Maxwell Fyfe also strongly defended the death penalty and laws against consensual sex between men. There was no golden age of reasonable conservatives


Me: installs a new Debian

Also me: nslookup something.or.other

Me again: "fucksake!"

I now ask interview questions about frustrating replaced commands to anyone who says they have a history with Linux.

"Which netstat flags have been replaced with other commands?" tells on a person

@mark I still use fgrep
@mark
@mark I also remember when the cult of of the parrotfucker decided that manpages were "deprecated". That didn't last.
@mark
lol, ya. Man pages were always still available on the web. Not sure how anyone thought those wouldn't be used
Bloody pottering is out to make Linux unusable ...


Pi5 is fussy about its USB cable in the opposite direction to a Pi4: older Pi4s, if you used a USB Superspeed cable then it wouldn't come up. Pi5: if you DON'T use a USB Superspeed cable, it gets all arsey about booting from USB.
so I’ve heard, 5V 5A right? not sure if any of my USB-PD chargers even support that particular configuration
@joshie 🏳️‍🌈 I have mine on an Apple iPad PSU which does 5V/4A which it seems to like: the magic "I'm not going to be a twat about USB" flag comes on anyway.


#DieMaskeBleibtAuf reshared this.

✝️☠️ This feels like a good opportunity to break this out again...
Christianity;
The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby who is also his own father, born  from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and then make you live forever only if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your lord & master so he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because an immoral woman made from a man's rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by a malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree.
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