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I as the same with “Castrol”. “Lol, that sounds like castor oil, must be using that in cars”

Then “what a stupid thing I thought”

Then turns out it’s called Castrol because of castor oil.

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Journalists: LLMs will replace us! Oh noes! What will we do without humans in the loop to ensure fact checking and quality journalism?

Also journalists: This is a propeller

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in reply to Sarah Brown

at which point in the propeller alignment chart is a high bypass turbofan a propeller?


I just checked the date. It’s the 11097th of September, 1993.

If you get this, you are fucking old. I, for one, am still waiting form my 20th birthday.

Sion [main] reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

I wasn’t on Usenet back then, as I was still in elementary school rather than university. But I heard the story later in the 90s. On the radio. I guess that last part makes me old after all.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Was on Usenet (rec.aviation mostly) through most of the second half of the 80s. Left the job that gave me that access in 1990 and had only limited (and pay-per-minute phone call) access for a few years (CIX and Compuserve, don't remember the order) so just used email a bit until a few years later and came back to a very different Internet.


We are rushing headlong into technodickensianism.

This is not the future we thought we were building in the 90s tech industry. We thought we were going to help people. What we built could have been used to help people, but it’s not. It’s being used as a misery amplifier on a massive scale.

I’m so sorry.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

It's pretty frustrating for me. I twigged to the Californian Ideology pretty early; pointed out often that anything which empowered the grass roots also empowered the powerful, if they were smart enough to leverage it. Which they were. I saw no evidence people were actually using the net to do the empowering things they said they wanted to do, but people were too happy to roll their dice on dotcom payouts.
I got a career out of it so at one level I guess I shouldn't complain.
in reply to FeralRobots

@FeralRobots I was 21 and being "on the grid" meant using payphone, realistically. The internet at that point was pre google, and the idea of just being able to use a satellite navigation system, text messaging and email when out and about seemed utterly transformative.

I was naive.



I pay a small fortune to streaming services and there’s nothing fucking on.

I’d pirate something, but … there’s nothing fucking on.

Mark Asser reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Things I've enjoyed recently:
Slow Horses on Apple
Fargo s5 on Prime
Percy Jackson on Disney
Kin and The Tourist on iplayer
True Detective s4 just started this week and looks very promising
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Sarah Brown There was someone on the radio just now complaining that the golden age of television is over because the streamers have lost the plot


Boeing seeks Ryanair support with checks after mid-air blowout


Asked in an interview with the BBC if he had complete confidence in Boeing's quality control processes after the incident which saw a part of the aircraft's fuselage fall off, the Ryanair boss said "no".

bbc.com/news/business-67994140



“We are definitely not invading Ukraine, troop buildup is training exercise” - Putin

“There will be no whitewash at the White House” - Nixon

“iOS will automatically be upgraded tonight” - my iPhone.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

"I am not a criminal", Tricky Ricky Nixon, just before he got huckled 🚔🚔🚔🤣


I was today years old when I worked out that Trading Places with Eddie Murphy is literally an adaptation of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, and I feel very slow on the uptake.




Headcanon: Killing Me Softly is Song For Whoever from the other point of view


One disadvantage of having bsky integrated into my feed is that site’s propensity to have a Normal One.

Muuuuum (casts eye towards urn with mum in), they’re doing it again!

#NotCrossposted

in reply to Sarah Brown

I cross-post, but don't take the bsky feed into my Friendica feed. It was way too weird for that hour or so.


Some months ago, I asked about trans women who were long term post op and who have had dental implants with bone regeneration.

I am pleased to report that at my 3 1/2 month appointment to place the healing abutment, I have had more than satisfactory levels of bone regeneration. The procedure worked really well!

2mg estradiol, oral, twice daily, FWIW. I also supplement vitamin D3.




Reddit mods embrace the fact that nobody has time to give a shit about your special snowflake arbitrary community rules novel when you are just one of thousands of subreddits and this is social media, not a job application 2024.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

TAP’s refunds department are incompetent rather than malevolent. They made the news for accidentally giving a full seat price refund for a baby that was on a lap so hadn’t had a ticket in the first place.



I utterly resemble any suggestion that I have been at the whisky.
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown
@rooftopjaxx I might have used a wine glass, on account of how sophisticated I am.


FAA has grounded all 737-Max9 aircraft.

India has just grounded all 737-Max8s. They don’t even have the door plugs.

I think right now if I was booking a RyanAir flight I’d check if had 33 rows.



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in reply to Sarah Brown

Capitalism does to products what it does to everything else: the wealth gap, here visible in quality and price tag.

The midrange products are kinda gone or turned to shit. We now have a lot of shitty cheap stuff (getting less cheap by the day in many cases) and very high end quality stuff, unaffordable by most.

On top of that, all the crap technology now allows like subscriptions to be able to use the hardware we paid for are not prevalent.

in reply to Miguel Arroz

Regarding cars, if I was on the market for one, I would look into the Hyundai Kona (or Kauai or whatever it’s called in Portugal to avoid the c word). It’s a bit SUVy so you probably won’t like it, and I’m not sure about the enshittification factor. However it seems to be the car that usually gets higher ratings on range per kW second only to the fascist EVs (and I’m almost sure the battery has active cooling).
in reply to Sarah Brown

This. It’s long past time for youtu.be/ZwMVMbmQBug?si=ALSzsm…


Dear UK. Please stop hogging all the rain. Our reservoir is empty!

gz reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

If we turn the wind up to a hurricane we should be able to blow it over to you …


Apparently some F16s are late on their way to Ukraine?

Have they tried the afterburner? Might help.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown

@geekylou :transgender_flag: that happened to me in the Caribbean last month (minus the afterburner. A330s don’t have those)

Bit of a nuisance.



So, out of interest (I drive a Nissan Leaf, which is in many ways my ideal car, but they’re EOL), what car is available today that satisfies the following:

Battery EV

Not an iPad/SUV crossover

Hatchback with decent boot space (previous comment about not an SUV still applies)

Intelligent cruise control with lane following

If Nissan updated the Leaf to have CCS2 and an actively cooled battery, it would be just perfect IMO, but instead they scrapped it and replaced it with the Ariya, which is an SUV/iPad crossover and they broke one of the Leaf’s best features (e-pedal) in the process too.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@swaldman The only cooking surface on the Leaf is the battery, and I wouldn’t put things on that.
in reply to Zoë O'Connell

@zoe also, in modern planes, a lot of serious experimental science has gone into UI design (because of its importance, as you note). Although what is best for pilots who train on that specific aircraft type may not be what is best for car drivers, I guess.
@goatsarah


Dear Boeing,

I travel on your planes quite a bit. Please stop making them like they're Teslas.

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in reply to Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@chris
Don't think so. The ergonomic engineering of controls in cars is one of those things that looks seemless, but is the result of lots of design expertise. The controls themselves are quite expensive because they have to work reliably in temperature and environmental extremes. Sticking an iPad on the dashboard is relatively inexpensive. It is also a safety nightmare, but hey its so cool 😎.
in reply to Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@chris @mastodonmigration
I reckon touch-only is cheaper nowadays. Touchscreens are cheap commodity items, note that the CPU behind them is nearly always underpowered and the UI poor, the assembly cost is less than lots of buttons, and it's identical for all versions regardless of features.

Hyundai's design team have stated that they plan to stick with buttons. But they don't really have a Leaf-sized hatchback (maybe Ionic 5, but I think it's bigger, and the looks will be marmite)



Conversation with the wife now about why the angry Christian types don’t froth about Dan Simmons’ Hyperion/Endymion series.

I mean, it’s literally about the second coming of Christ, sent by god to die a horrible death so that humanity can be redeemed, only god is us, if we heed the message, sending said sacrifice back through time, and she’s a teenage girl because apparently the carpenter from Nazareth had one job (apart from the carpentry gig), which he fucked up, so she’s sent to do it properly, and it’s the Catholic Church which tortures her to death this time round.

Anyway, the conclusion was that they aren’t upset because the books are longer than their attention spans.



Can’t sleep. Time to do the paradoxical caffeine thing.


Welcome, once again, to, “I see most Reddit mods are frustrated wannabe global dictator arseholes” day.

Wasn’t even me this time. I’m annoyed on behalf of someone else who fell foul of “posted with vowels on the first Tuesday of the year, which IS CLEARLY against subreddit rule 53 a subsection 5 clause z (revised). WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST READ THE RULES?”




That’s UTC. I’m calling it. Happy new year everyone!
in reply to Sarah Brown

happy new year! Have a brilliant 2024. Let's meet up and drink wine together!
in reply to Sarah Brown

your place wins on quite a lot of metrics. I think the only good thing about my place is that I can get there without having to move...


I am older than Stephanie Cole was in “Waiting for God”. Not sure how I feel about this.


transphobic violence description

After taking a few hours off in deference to the guilty verdict in the trial of the murderers of Briana Ghey, the UK press are once again back at it, going on about how trans women need to be banned from All The Things.

This, presumably, informed last night’s nightmare from which I woke in a pool of sweat in which I was in the process of being beaten to death by TERFs on a train going from London to Cambridge in a near future UK.

Lovely.



Spammer just told me that I had a wonderful personality.

No I fucking do not.



Although I have bsky integration, this post is fediverse only.

Yesterday they were being weird about mayonnaise. Today it’s the ellipsis.

I think they might need an intervention, guys.

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I wish @Sylvia Knight and I were not allergic to cats. It would be really nice to have one in our lives.
in reply to Sarah Brown

do you know which cat allergy y'all have? There are two common cat allergens, and some breeds naturally produce lower levels of one of the allergens. I have a cat allergy, and a cat who doesn't trigger them
in reply to Sarah Brown

given they Know and are maximally vindictive I am amazed one hasn't been assigned to you by the Committee...


Randomly listening to Muse, and their weird conspiracy thing about how the "powers that be" want your "compliance".

And I find myself wondering, "comply with what?"

And honestly, the only thing I can think of is "paying taxes".

DeterioratedStucco reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

You're the one currently making space inside your head for my ideas... 😁
in reply to Billy Smith

@Billy Smith I honestly have no clue what your ideas are, other than nationalising the water to make you pay taxes and not letting you buy a solar panel, or something.


Fell badly from my SUP yesterday. Initial tenderness in left knee which was bent at an awkward angle as I fell. Managed to paddle several more kilometres.

Later it swelled up and became agonising. Barely slept last night with the pain. Joint remains stable and able to bear load though. Got a compression bandage today. It’s helping massively.

Dr Google suggests that this is a grade 1 MCL tear. Mild, as the joint still retains full function. It just hurts like a fucker.

Apparently it should heal in 1 to 3 weeks. I’m hoping for 1.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown
@Jack I’d put some bloody cross bracing in.
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown

@Jack I mean, this took almost none of my body weight laterally. I was almost in freewill at the time.

And it fucked it.

That's wank, that is. Stupid quadruped joint bodged into a bipedal leg and rotated 90 degrees.


in reply to Sarah Brown

@antranigv Hehe. Like gallons, gah.

SI is superior in every possible way. It hurts to hear people argue for anything else at this point:(



Ok, have discovered the “for you” timeline view in #friendica 2023.12 and also limited default post display to 10 replies in the timeline, and have reinstated bluesky in my feed. I hope that will make the weirdness tsunami manageable.


Oh nice, got bluesky in my #friendica timeline now too! All my socials increasingly in one place!
in reply to Sarah Brown

what was it like? Can you offer a taste for the benefit of us confused onlookers?
in reply to Alaric Snell-Pym

@Alaric Snell-Pym It swamped my fediverse content with people shitposting about mayonnaise.


Went for a lovely Boxing day SUP paddle in the Ria de Alvor. A good 7km it was! Very pleasant.
in reply to Sarah Brown

The bit that looks like sand wasn't; the tide was in.

But it got uncomfortably shallow at points.



Oh wow! The new Friendica release now has a list of abuse reports people have submitted to my server.

And there aren't many, but the few that have been submitted are from people who so truly, madly, deeply, need to FUCK RIGHT OFF.

Clara Listensprechen reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

“Where the Karen has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Piemaker 🖖
@A_C_McGregor
What if they just wanted to be Karening through the night? I mean it was bloody xmas 🎅