Today is a special day. As the Earth passes the closest to the sun in its orbit, it’s moving as fast as it ever gets. Thus today, the 4th of January, is SPEED DAY!!!!
It’s also the 18th anniversary of me having sex reassignment surgery. That was a weird time.
That's better than what I was using in 2007! Real keyboards. My T9 input is still faster than a touchscreen keyboard input is now. That's why I use a desktop + real keyboard still.
Ok, so we now know the point of this Quinn character who wasn’t in the books (neither was Sims. I think he’s going to be the one to do the deed Sheriff Billings did in Wool; his character arc has been building up to that for ages).
Anyway, they have Quinn being the one who worked out that they need to forget.
Which, in the books, was Troy/Donald in Shift.
Suddenly it looks like the reason they’re taking forever to get through Wool is that they aren’t going to bring Shift into the story.
Which makes me wonder how the hell they’re going to explain why they’re down there, and why 8+ billion people died.
Zoe: Someone here is asking if you can make a true software random number generator using generative AI that’s been trained on enough entropy to escape the quantum analysis constraints.
Me: Maths doesn’t stop being maths just because you don’t understand it.
@Snowgaze ❄️ it’s a lovely bridge in a great setting. I fear however that the best place to photograph it from may be spicy and forbidden. maps.app.goo.gl/dSXfebzGECwgPH…
And on the road near the little house for the lower down view. I agree it’s very photogenic too.
One day I’ll do a similar capture for the Guadiana bridge, but right now that involves having to drive past far too many photos of bloody Ventura with his whole “graças a mim não há portagens” stuff.
Uploading them to fedi has compressed the hell out of them. I took a load more (all raw mode) too, and on the big monitor the difference is very clear.
The phone is good, but it’s good for a phone. It can’t compete with big glass in front of a big sensor.
Tags like #photo, #mywork or #myphoto, among others, because I primarily like what people share about themselves. But I follow other tags too, of course. There's a link, somewhere about tags/interests, I think it's on the left part of the Time-line...
I am a fan of British sci fi author, Peter Hamilton.
One trope he consistently returns to in his universes is the group of humans who buggered off somewhere to try to build a post scarcity society of some kind.
And each new iteration, it feels like the seed group gets closer and closer to a transsexual polycule.
He sets his books in parts of Leicestershire and Rutland where, as an uneasy adolescent, I cycled for pleasure and peaceful hours.
Some of his stories are set there directly: some of them borrow the place names; and some of them have sly little hints that put me back in a particular lane or copse or village, with the realisation "Oh, it's *there*" which makes me smile, remembering.
Boeing added a system that wasn't even needed that they thought was easily ignorable if it malfunctioned as long as you did the Thing, and then didn't tell anyone what the Thing was.
They basically designed an escape room that you have to solve whilst hurtling at the ground at Mach 0.75 while pulling back on the control column with half your body weight.
Astonishingly, the first bunch of pilots on LionAir actually managed to solve that escape room and lived. It was the guys who took it out the next day who died.
And then the Ethiopian pilots, who had read the instructions that Boeing had provided after the first crash, did what they were told to do and it didn't work because while the escape room was actually solvable (hold the trim button constantly until the pressure on the column disappears then flip the stabiliser switches to off, or throttle right back and set the flaps to 1º when the plane slows down), Boeing's instructions put while flying manually in bold, so
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Just watched the two Mentor Pilot MCS videos.
What an utter cluster fuck,
Boeing added a system that wasn't even needed that they thought was easily ignorable if it malfunctioned as long as you did the Thing, and then didn't tell anyone what the Thing was.
They basically designed an escape room that you have to solve whilst hurtling at the ground at Mach 0.75 while pulling back on the control column with half your body weight.
Astonishingly, the first bunch of pilots on LionAir actually managed to solve that escape room and lived. It was the guys who took it out the next day who died.
And then the Ethiopian pilots, who had read the instructions that Boeing had provided after the first crash, did what they were told to do and it didn't work because while the escape room was actually solvable (hold the trim button constantly until the pressure on the column disappears then flip the stabiliser switches to off, or throttle right back and set the flaps to 1º when the plane slows down), Boeing's instructions put while flying manually in bold, so that was the bit everyone remembered, and instead they kept trying to engage the autopilot, which didn't work and never would, because the failure mode only occurred when the plane was so confused that autopilot wasn't going to work anyway.
@Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ They didn't even need the bloody system. It's as close to being utterly pointless as can be. It's a tickbox that the plane flies fine without.
@christineburns Meanwhile, they were selling dual redundant flight speed indicators, a key safety feature which marginally increased costs but would have prevented the disaster, was being flogged as a premium optional extra.
Post McDonnell Douglas Boeing is a fractal of corporate horrors.
@Kincaid The Max is probably now quite a decent aircraft. It has the compromised version of the LEAP because the landing gear is too short, but it does surprisingly well regardless.
But as originally produced, it was a murder plane and unfit for purpose, simply because of this stupid bit of software that made piss all difference to normal flying, but could be tricked into killing everyone on board remarkably easily.
And all to save a few-days-long differences course to add a new rating on pilots' licences. Read some notes, take a multiple choice online test. Maybe an exercise or two in the sim. Perhaps repeated at every third or fourth sim check. Would have cost the airlines a tiny fraction of their training budgets.
@katiefenn @christineburns everything else being equal if the email from Ethiopian Airlines‘ chief pilot were answered throughly, containing some actual information besides peak corporate asscovering, the second crash probably wouldn’t have happened
Bluesky: say what you like about it, but it’s nuclear block combined with the zero tolerance blocking culture that’s developed there has made it far less combative than most social media platforms.
And I think it’s superb. Honestly, I’m gonna get a lot less fussy about blocking at the slightest provocation.
Gonna start with the Reddit wankers who downvote every comment you make while ostensibly trying to have a conversation with you. That’s just rude and they can fuck right off.
@A_C_McGregor Yes. I hang out in small subs, mainly r/fermentation and r/heraldry, and they are fairly OK. I think ones with a strong topic adherence are a lot better than general-interest ones.
“Talk to your healthcare professional”. Lol, no. No discussions about neurodiversity are being had with any healthcare professional thank you. I do not desire a summary DNR.
I hate it when I get so excited to answer a question and then halfway through I realize the question I answered wasn't the one asked. I hate it even more when I don't realize I've answered the wind question until after a couple of confusing, awkward back-and-forths with the original author.
Just watching Zoe pay for a bit of private healthcare surgery follow up and can’t help but think that were this America, there would be an option on the card machine to tip the insurance company.
@goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.orgSeem to recall a couple of days I encountered some American payment portal that attempted to solicit a tip for the company providing the portal service. Presumably these customer-granted tips don't come off the seller's bill for the portal.
@Zoë O'Connell @Sarah Brown Ireland does this quite well, I think. But it's hard to require an elected president to keep their trap shut in the same way as the monarch does, and the coverage the media would give President Farage's latest pronouncements might well guarantee the post doesn't stay powerless for long.
Seeing Orion always makes me remember the years I spent on the road in the early '90s, cold winter nights driving on the interstate highways of the Western United States.
An interesting mix of feelings: cold and lonely but peaceful and reassured. If I can see Orion I can find my way home.
These are...not optimistic times for most Americans. Across the world, the dangers of climate change and the terror of creeping authoritarianism present an increasing danger to all of us.
Εμμηνόπαυση (Eminopause) was the Greek word for menopause, so, while I don’t know what the -archy word be, but one would clearly refer to the rulers as “Your Eminence”
You might enjoy the novel The Gate To Women's Country, by Sherri S Tepper. Very cool take on such a government in post-apocalyptic future. No idea what its called tho. Love this book!
New British House of Lords appointments announced. UK politics is just a contest to see who can run the most transparently nihilistic grift and still get cushy life tenure in Westminster.
There needs to be a way to restrict the number of political peers who can sit in the Lords at a time. Either they can elect some number of their own body similar to the hereditary peers or have a first-come-first-served each day to allow them in.
The subject matter experts are useful, they help beat legislation into some sort of usable shape. That's the Lords serving a useful function.
One begins to fully appreciate why "May you live in interesting times" is a curse. I think the hope this time is that things will crash and burn so badly in the next couple of years that the whole thing is definitively resolved. Or that all the campaign promises are kept and we really do get lower egg prices.
Useful questions that in-universe characters could ask:
What kills the people sent out to clean?
Why, despite us clearly having been down here a very long time, does it seem that everyone sent out to clean dies after about the same amount of time? Why is the threat not diminishing over time?
Why were these very well stocked silos ready and waiting and apparently very well matched to the threat outside? (In the books, Lukas does ask this question and gets an answer, and the answer is correct but incomplete).
This is not mentioned in the books, but I’m assuming the secret library of the before times that IT has does not mention climate change. The vault library probably does, but if IT knew about climate change, they could learn something interesting by monitoring external CO2 levels.
It’s quite astonishing to watch the Bluesky people keep digging that hole.
Now apparently they auto remove any post that has the house number and street of Jesse Singal in. As a result, literally everyone on the site now knows what they are, thanks to the Streisand Effect.
@A Spectre, Haunting @Kincaid @kianryan ☑️🐙🏳️🌈 I'm really wondering how they're going to handle the backstory parts of Shift though. The whole, "WHY were umpty-billion people murdered?" thing is kinda important to the storyline.
I'm confused as to why the wound on her arm is getting worse.
Atlanta was nuked, some of the surrounding area was nuked. The rest of it is all fiction.
There's no evidence at all in the books that the W.O.O.L. conspiracy succeeded in nuking the earth and cleansing everything. The only are the nanobots are active is in the area around the silos, because they're being replenished by the cleanings.
Thurman wanted all knowledge of nanotech erased and the entire conspiracy was to do a Bene Gesserit for 500 years to raise a society that would never again create the tech. Thurman saw it as an existential threat to humanity.
He specifically makes sure that Donald is at the convention because everyone else is going to die.
It's never mentioned in the books, but I strongly got the impression that the Atlanta incident was a FAE. They look like nukes (see Beirut), and would convince everyone inside that WWIII had happened. Using an actual nuke would have been counterproductive because it would have irradiated your breeding stock.
Thurman was convinced that a nano war was coming, and on entry day probably deployed enough into the upper atmosphere to kill every human on earth. If there's anyone left alive elsewhere at all, then his entire project is utterly pointless.
Note that the vault exists, precisely to restart civilisation, because there's nobody else out there.
It would be like sealing off Barnsley for 500 years to create a society that didn’t know about, say, plastic, and leaving a vault outside the sealed off area with loads of stuff in that nobody else touched because of the reason, and also you were so scared of your future civilisation knowing about plastic that you were willing to kill your self and your coworkers because you know about plastic, and by the way, the rest of the world is out there knowing about plastic and could rescue you at any time by just walking up and knocking and just decides not to, and by the way you literally have radios which you could use to call for help and they could hear you and you would hear them, and planes, which you would see in the night sky flying past, etc etc etc.
Humanity being dead is a central plot point. The entire premise makes zero sense if it’s not.
Local DIY barn is full of Christmas tat, except most of it looks like it’s been designed by generative AI. Upright boxer dogs wearing 19th century military uniform while looking vaguely cutesy and shit like that.
From the family iMessage, reproduced for your amusement:
Other day: I’m outside fiddling with the batteries in the automatic watering thing.
Sylvia and Zoe are in the bedroom. The patio door is open.
I refit the watering system, but it’s not fitted well and when I turn the tap on, it sprays water right onto the power socket that the outdoor WiFi access point is using.
The lights on the balcony went out, but some of the stuff stayed on.
I immediately figured out what happened: I’d caused an earth short with the water and tripped the RCD.
But I didn’t swear because I immediately knew that all I had to do is dry the water and flip the circuit breaker.
But before I could apologise to the other two, Zoe’s voice erupts in a blind panic:
“Sarah! Sarah! Are you ok?”
Me, “Yes. I got water on a power socket and tripped the RCD. Sorry”
Zoe, with massive relief, “we heard the click (RCD going off), and you didn’t yell and we were worried you were dead”
Upsh
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From the family iMessage, reproduced for your amusement:
Other day: I’m outside fiddling with the batteries in the automatic watering thing.
Sylvia and Zoe are in the bedroom. The patio door is open.
I refit the watering system, but it’s not fitted well and when I turn the tap on, it sprays water right onto the power socket that the outdoor WiFi access point is using.
The lights on the balcony went out, but some of the stuff stayed on.
I immediately figured out what happened: I’d caused an earth short with the water and tripped the RCD.
But I didn’t swear because I immediately knew that all I had to do is dry the water and flip the circuit breaker.
But before I could apologise to the other two, Zoe’s voice erupts in a blind panic:
“Sarah! Sarah! Are you ok?”
Me, “Yes. I got water on a power socket and tripped the RCD. Sorry”
Zoe, with massive relief, “we heard the click (RCD going off), and you didn’t yell and we were worried you were dead”
Upshot conversation took away some matters to note. Mainly that the RCDs work (I already know this from accidentally grounding neutral while wiring a socket. That’s so annoying), and an action going forward: if Sarah does something that trips an RCD in future, she will immediately swear loudly.
Federal and state governments acknowledge the widespread presence of lead pipes throughout the country—NRDC’s new map reveals where they are. The EPA, states, and cities must act now to solve this problem.
@KayEllen_OTS I mean, fair, but I was born in the early 70s and as was recently revealed, that’s peak lead exposure time, and I’m not yelling “OMG ALIENS!” at random Boeings.
Bluesky T&S have shat the bed and basically told all trans people on the site to go fuck themselves.
I've turned off my fediverse-bluesky bridge. Still have the capability to crosspost there, but I'm not planning to now. Am getting better engagement here anyway.
@AllysonShaw @Natasha_Jay you’re spot on, that’s usually the venture capital tactic: get something to grow fast no matter what the cost (financial, ethical or otherwise) and then cash out by either selling it or an IPO (making it a public company traded at a stock exchange)
@Allyson Shaw @Natasha Jay 🇪🇺 @marlies They basically have no business model beyond “create a pool of content which someone will pay for”.
And generating harassment drives engagement, so it’s not in their interest to clamp down too hard on it. Their ideal strategy is “slightly less harassment than Twitter”
@Rachel Lawson @Roche Limit @krims Because they want to hurt you, and are responsible for lots of the things that have likely already made your life harder than it needed to be, and knowing who wants you hurt or dead is kinda necessary, if unpleasant.
It’s a bit like a mouse not knowing what a cat is.
@marlies @Natasha_Jay I just wondered why no one on Bluesky is talking about this-there seems to be a single minded focus on replicating ‘the old Twitter’ rather than considering the future of that platform.
@Natasha_Jay @marlies right- there’s obviously a lot of engagement just going on about this ‘dilemma’- I just peeked in there because I have friends who now only use that platform. It’s so messed up. Thanks for helping clarify this.
The same guy followed up with a news article about how the Russians are going to beat the Americans at stealth fighters (comparing it to an F117, a slow ass bomber that’s been obsolete for decades), by building one out of fibreglass (plastic).
Credulous cheerleading tankies are the worst kind. Believe any stupid shit as long as it’s out of Russia or China.
@Matt Hodgkinson The only weapon Russia has that actually works properly is the ability to throw expendable human flesh at a target until it gets exhausted. It’s low tech as hell, but very effective.
The rest of their shit is junk. Sadly they have so many nukes that at least some of them probably work.
Been watching the HBO Max Dune prequel thing and I’m thinking, Paul Atreides is like, “I am the product of a 10000 year breeding programme to produce turbo Hitler. I have enough morality left to avoid being tubro Hitler. Phew!”
Philosophy question: a randomly selected UK journalist or medic is told that a 40 megatonne hydrogen bomb will go off in London unless they write 5 sentences about trans people without deliberately lying.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@The All-New 2025 Nick (technique)
And it’s not about you joggers who go round and round and round.