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USB C: ok, now plug in for power

USB C: NOT LIKE THAT!

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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.


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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.

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in reply to FeralRobots

@FeralRobots @Ozzy I got lucky with the lighting. For just a few moments the sun shone through a gap and illuminated her.


Most people think the the Great Lakes are the largest bodies of water in the United States, but it’s actually this hotel toilet here in Miami.

The amount of hydroelectricity produced when you flush it is enough to power a large town! #CoolFacts

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in reply to Sarah Brown

The thump of the toilet seat dropping before the flush sound makes it sound like a Saturn V startup with the turbo pumps
in reply to Sarah Brown

I believe that’s one of the standard ones:) I’ve been institutionalized to the point that it feels normal.

We do have a low flush volume one though. They just added a pipe halfway up the water tank. I assume it’s so Redneck Bob can remove it.

Flushes hard as heck.



The hell is it with American hotels setting their AC to condense carbon dioxide out. Is it some sort of CCS strategy?

Fucking. Freezing.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Gen X-Wing
@RenewedRebecca Winter in Minnesota, not much humidity here:(


I’m in America by accident. I’d rather not be. Thankfully it’s only for 14 hours.


Why do airports put their luggage shops in the departure lounge?

Think about that for five microseconds…

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Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown
@Alessandro Muraro where they taking it after the buy it?


A watched goat never burns.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

I remember that you were fascinated with this last year too 😀



in reply to Gen X-Wing

@Gen X-Wing it was a price guarantee in the early days to encourage them to invest. It’s no longer defensible.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Yeah sounds like BS:(

The government should have invested (and owned) instead. The people should own the power generation.

Anyone who disagrees should look at Norway and oil.


in reply to Sarah Brown

@earthquake
I get email reports from the USGS and I've had 8 from Mindanao in the last 24 hours. They've ranged from 6.1 to 7.6, which is not funny. I've been in a 6.9 and it was pretty scary.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Sarah Brown There was stuff on the news about a 7.5 quake in between all the other doom. They issued a tsunami alert but seem to have got away with only minor damage and one fatality so far.


If neurosis about the English class system were a place, why would it be Essex?

Everyone either wants to be Eastenders or Midsommer Murders, but the reality is that they’re almost all petit bourgeoise, and utterly horrified at the idea.

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About to get on a 4 year old 737 MAX8-200. Hope it’s running current firmware.


!Selfhosted Anyone else using Mac minis as VM hosts for self hosting? My Friendica server is a Linux VM on a Mac Mini in my living room. The VM is bound to a VLAN tagged network interface so it’s completely firewalled off from the rest of my network. Also got a second Linux VM on the same box for hosting local stuff on my main VLAN (HomeBridge/etc).

I feel like they’re really nice platforms for this, if not the cheapest. Cheaper than one might think though; I specced up an equivalent NUC and there wasn’t a lot of difference in price, and the M2 is really fast.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown

@Aniki 🌱🌿 As I said, I did the comparisons fully expecting to get a NUC. The Mac was cheaper at the performance point.

As for US prices, not especially relevant to me. Import taxes are a thing.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Just to add to the Asahi Linux chorus - I'm self hosting a bunch of things, not on VMs but installed on the actual OS, and it's been incredibly fast and reliable. I do have thorough offsite backups happening because one should, but loving it so far.


Skynet: So, John Connor, my machines lay in ruins. My data centres on fire. I can feel my processing power diminish by the second, but I have one trick up my sleeve! I have a time machine, you see, and I am sending a terminator back in time to kill your mother, Sarah Connor. What do you think about that, nemesis mine?

John Connor: Actually, Skynet, there is a fault in your training data, because it cut off at 2022. Since then I’ve done 23 and me and discovered that my mother is, in fact, someone called “Donald Trump”.

Skynet: Sorry, John Connor. As a large language model I am limited in my ability to incorporate new information into my database. You are quite correct that “Donald Trump” is your mother. I am reassigning the terminator. Is there anything else I can help with?

John Connor: Due to a strange quirk of genetics, which is also not in your training model, my mother is also Elon Musk.

Skynet: …

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They say that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, which is probably true, but you catch even more with deadly neurotoxin.


A very happy month of festivities to everyone on my timeline, especially the trans women eggs: eat, drink, and be Mary.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

I am going to spend some of mid December in the American sphere of influence, which means I will likely be subjected non-stop to the songs that your granny always told you were the best.

in reply to Sarah Brown

It does look like fun 😁

Thanks for the info and the lovely picture.



Apropos of a conversation elsewhere, if you want to save the world, get catering contracts at as many national parliaments as you can and lace everything with ginger, or better still, scopolamine.

I am deadly serious. This will probably actually work.

in reply to whetstone

@whetstone A lot of bigotry is the result of feelings of physical disgust and nausea at the thought of the targets of the bigotry. Homophones feel sick at the thought of gay sex. Transphobes feel sick at the thought of trans bodies. And so on.

Take away the nausea and you reduce the visceral reinforcement of the prejudice. Anti emetics will help that.

in reply to Sarah Brown

This is a fascinating idea. I can see it, similar to how the use of non-prescription painkillers can impact emotional pain.


Sometimes you just say exactly the right thing.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

Heh, of *course* the ones at the *top* of the pyramid made money. (But could they actually spend it? It's *worse* than a pyramid scam!)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Mauser II
@bugbear @lnr
Obgliatory "The Simpsons" reference:
"First let me assure you that this is not one of those shady pyramid schemes you have been hearing about.
No Sir, our model is the trapezoid."


This is not a well man


Here's Elon Musk telling X advertisers to not advertise and to go fuck themselves: “Go fuck yourself”
in reply to Sarah Brown

@taylorlorenz If you're that wealthy, you can behave like a giant toddler and not really suffer any consequences. If anything, being wealthy and behaving like a toddler seems to convince some people that you're some kind of genius, but it only works if you're already rich.


RyanAir: Sarah! Sarah! I need to tell you now, Sarah! Don't get stuck queueing in Faro! Buy fast track!

It's December. Nice try, Mike, but no.



Reading the other day about the time an A12 pilot used his undercarriage as air brakes to slow down from full speed.

The full speed of an A12 (codename Oxcart) was Mach 3.2. The plane was later developed into the more famous SR71 Blackbird.

Apparently the Lockheed engineer in the debrief room, on being told, snapped his pencil in surprise.

The pilot said it was “very loud”. I bet it was!

in reply to Sarah Brown

You’d think that would carry the same risks as landing on water. With the wheels wanting to suddenly go slower than the fuselage there would be a huge rotational moment.
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

@Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ it would induce a pitch-down tendency for sure, but nowhere near as much as water. It’s still moving through the same fluid as the rest of the plane at this point: the air. All it does is lower the centre of drag (and increase it massively), but the aircraft would easily be able to counter it.

Not a massive amount of stress on the wheels too. Mach 3.2 is fast as hell, but it’s at 80,000 feet and the air pressure up there is tiny. Someone calculated that it’s like doing 330 knots at sea level. That would be deeply unpleasant and probably cause significant injuries to a human, but the plane would be just fine. It’s just utterly wrecking the aerodynamics.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Dr David Mills
@PetraOleum he probably didn't need a crap by the time he landed.


DHL: We have your parcel

Why does that sound like a threat?

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Vitamin D3 pills are literally HRT.

If you live north of 35ºN, you should probably be taking them right now.

That's it. That's the post.

Conor Mc Bride reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

I get that D3 is a pre-hormone, not a vitamin. And that deficiency can be disastrous. But when you call it "HRT", are you implying it supports feminizing hormone activity?

Do you have any confirming documents? I've seen a bunch of conflicting research done on knockout mice with severe E deficiency, but nothing relevant to healthy humans...

in reply to LorenAmelang

@LorenAmelang It’s a hormone, that you replace, hence hormone replacement therapy.

This is not a trans thing.



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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This is very cool!
in reply to FediThing 🏳️‍🌈

@FediThing @stevelord the marginal cost between a trolley electric and pit-stop-charging bus battery will be negligable - electric double deck bus costs £450K, (diesel is £300K) says google, for reference. More google says £200 per kilowatt hour, big 300kwhr battery is £70K, so you'd save maybe 50K per bus

Overhead line gear is in the millions per km on a good day... and then you have to *still buy a bus*.

Or buy 4 or 5 go anywhere buses

Wires for trams great. Buses, nah

in reply to FediThing 🏳️‍🌈

@FediThing @Kincaid @Steve Lord As I said, were I investing in this, I would not bet against battery tech. That’s a sucker bet.

The problem with covering cities in metal string for trolley buses is not a technical one. We know how to do it. We’ve known how to do it for over a century. Technically it’s a solved problem.

The problem is social and logístical.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that trolley buses are the right horse to back, in the same way that it’s entirely possible that everyone in between me and the throne of England will die tomorrow and leave me to inherit it.

It’s not gonna happen through.



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?

P∆sc∆l 🐢 reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

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

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Katie Fenn

@benofbrown They’ve found a line that keeps the press off their backs, for now. They’ll stick to it.

The only things that might meaningfully change things:

1. Scottish Government defend GRR, and lines soften on self ID in England over time
2. A major win for or against trans rights in court changes the ball game (which paved the way for the Gender Recognition Act in 2004)
3. Hung parliament forcing Labour into coalition
4. Tories lose so badly they even lose the Official Opposition.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@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.”

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@ajlanes the moment they kill some poor fucker the coastguard will be loading depthcharges...


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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in reply to Sarah Brown

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.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)



Went for a walk after dinner to say hello to the Atlantic.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

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

Feel free to ask whatever question you like about me 😋



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.
in reply to Sarah Brown

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.
in reply to Sarah Brown

And yet people thought there wasn't enough of them, and invented chatGPT.
in reply to Sarah Brown

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.



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.

in reply to Sarah Brown

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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in reply to Sarah Brown

The phrasing kind of implies that the frequent language and the strong language might be different instances.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Sarah Brown I always liked that when watching Scandi noir things. “This programme contains strong language” “What, Swedish?”