Million dollar idea: a new telephone signaling protocol so that when I'm put on hold, it signals the music app on my local phone to play my tunes rather than whatever random junk has been badly recorded into their PBX.

Today in 1962, 63 years ago: in the United States, the leader of the majority in the Senate, Mike Mansfield - on his return from Vietnam, where he had traveled at the request of President John F. Kennedy- becomes the first American official to comment adversely against American intervention in the internal affairs of that country.

#OnThisDay

Ugh Spectrum is so annoying. Promo pricing expired. They "no longer sell 600 Mbps," only 500Mbps and 1Gbps. Only promo was "a free mobile line for a year." Downgraded to 500Mbps saving $20/mo because between the two of us we really don't need more and I'm not paying $100/mo or more for 1Gbps.

We've all heard the tale of how to own a Nazi bar, i'm fairly sure.

I was drumming up interest in a local board game group i really enjoy, on my local queer Discord server. I got some interest.

Someone on the board games group's server asked "why did you make a point about us being queer friendly?" Not rudely, just curious.

"Because a lot of community groups are invisibly closed to us. We daren't reveal ourselves because of antipathy to queer folk. This place doesn't do that, at all. So i tell people it's safe, and they feel more comfy coming along."

Someone said, "Oh, so it's like the Nazi bar story, only good." I thought for a moment, and they're right. Sort of. Because unlike Nazis, queer folk aren't an invasive species. We don't push people out. Assholes just self-select choosing not to be associated with a bar that's queer-friendly.

Which is fine, system working as designed.

So...how do we tell the tale of the Queer-friendly bar, and the positive feedback loop that can occur when a business is explicitly friendly to queer folk?

Cause I think that could be a simple, true, and effective point about the great difference between choosing to be nice to Nazis instead of queer folk. Or vice versa, being nice to queers and bum-rushing the Nazis.

The Nazi Bar story is one we all know. Anyone got a proposal for how to do a good tale of how the bar got so lively? "Oh, I bought a drink for this gay fella once, and soon there were loads. But they're great guys, and if ya tell them no, they stop bugging ya, which is giving me weird feelings about how I treat women. And we get a lot fewer assholes, too."

Someone? Got a seed for the good story lurking here? I wanna make us some rippin' good properganda.

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die”

Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," set in Yoknapatawpha County, enters US public soon. Despite 15 stream-of-consciousness narrators making it challenging, Holly at Nut Free Nerd explains why it's worth reading.

By John Mark Ockerbloom

https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/01/it-takes-two-people-to-make-you-and-one-people-to-die/

#books #publicDomainDayCountdown

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First-edition dust jacket cover of As I Lay Dying (1930) by the American author William Faulkner. Published in New York by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying#/media/File:As_I_Lay_Dying_(1930_1st_ed_jacket_cover).jpg

#Oops: The seminal paper that has been used for 25 years to justify that the use of #Glyphosate is safe has been retracted.

"Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors. "

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230099913715

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Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology ELSEVIER Volume 31, Issue 2, April 2000, Pages 117-165 RETRACTED: Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans Gary M. Williams 9 Robert Kroes °, Ian C. Munro © 2 This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal

Whenever I go to museums, I like to pause in front of stuff that definitely isn't art and talk about the "art" and how it makes me feel just to make the other people think they're missing something.

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I initially thought this was a step stool, but now I have no idea what it is. It's like a red metal thing that has a hinge and a shelf? Anyway, it's propped against a white wall in an art museum.

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Vintage light switch with a silver-aluminum/stainless steel switch plate in the corner of an art museum.

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Drinking fountain in a long hall in an art museum

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Restroom entrance in an art museum. There appears to have been some flooding in the past because the light wood floors have some water damage and staining.

Thank you Past Me for writing the breaker on the back of the light switch cover

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Light switch with the cover off, with “breaker 19” written in marker on the back of the cover

”Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” – Dale Carnegie

#quotes

Four bendy buses managed to enter a roundabout at the exact same time from four different directions in Oslo yesterday afternoon and get properly stuck, each bus blocking the exit for the one behind it. #BigBusStuck

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A scene showing four red bendy buses making up a squarw around a small roundabout. There are cars trapped inside them and long lines on the two visible sides going into the roundabout. Photo was found in Avisa Oslo, a local newspaper, and was sent them by a guy named Endre Helgeland.

I plug my phone in to charge every night. TV and Movies tell me most fictional people don't.

So...

@siracusa
EDIT 2: Both hats have sold.

EDIT: The original hat has been sold. The second-gen hat is still available for $25.

Original post:
If there’s someone out there who missed the sale, or who wants to try the old design, I’ve got two chicken hats for sale. One is the original from a few years back, and the other is the new version.

Each has been worn for maybe a couple hours (and subsequently washed, of course). Selling because they’re too small for my head.

Asking $50 for the set. I can accommodate pick-up in Greater Boston or shipping within the US.

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Close-up of two black fleece winter hats on a wooden table.

Sometimes it is all about the crop.😜

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tight crop of my head, triceps, part of my pit and some of my chest.

Has anyone dried or otherwise preserved Cuban oregano (Coleus amboinicus)? I've found it easy to grow in pots but I some of the older plants could use some trimming back to encourage new growth. It would be nice to save the off-cuts for something if there is too much to use fresh.

#gardening #GrowYourOwn

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A close up of a green, mint-like plant with rounded, semi-succulant leaves sitting in a window

The problem with fact checking...

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Text in image reads:- I think this is all best summed up by a comment on a random right-wing typepad post from 2022 that has weirdly been making the rounds as a meme on social media lately but that is not satire, as far as I can tell, and is a genuine thought someone had. Username Right side rick says: “Unfortunately, the problem with left-leaning media is they’re intrinsically more strict with their propaganda to only using verifiable sources so it’s really hard to poke holes in their ideology and arguments in comparison to a lot of quality rightwing content. That makes attacking their points with fact checkers not very effective unless their fact checkers use misinformation tactics as well. In essence people like us on the right have to work harder and more creatively to push our agenda as statistics and, unfortunately, official studies aren’t usually on our side.” Oop! Right side rick, I think you just said the quiet part out loud buddy. But good job identifying the problem. Source https://www.leejamiller.com/episodes/2025/1/8/fact-checking-is-bad-for-business

FInally made it to the top of three days of timeline and I want a cookie.

No, not a metaphorical cookie. I really, really want a cookie.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/115583843485470235

Ah ha! This is why Google was able to make Quick Share work with AirDrop

If I had a child today I would probably name it Inspirational Skeletor.

This is not creepy at all! /s

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Voice Match (@ Lets Google recognize your voice across Google products © off

If you’re experiencing burnout volunteering in/for Open Source, is it more:

My heroine this week is ABC’s White House Correspondent Mary Bruce who asked the Saudi-Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman what Saudi-Arabia was doing at The White House, after Saudi-Arabia’s involvement in both 9/11 and the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

May her courage inspire us all.

Production-Grade Container Deployment with Podman Quadlets by @Larvitz

https://blog.hofstede.it/production-grade-container-deployment-with-podman-quadlets/index.html

#SelfHost #Sysadmin #Podman @homelab

Does ANYONE out there with a #Synology know how to ensure the #RTL8152 or #RTL8153 loads at boot time instead of having to "shutdown/restart" the adapter in the package manager AFTER reboot?

Thanks!

@siracusa @caseyliss : (I know you both have/had Synology - but do either of you know how to do this?)

PLZ re-toot ... I really am getting sick of USB-C 2.5/5/10g adapters requiring restart each reboot!

#3166 - Big and Little Spoons

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Four-panel black-and-white comic. Panel 1: A stick figure gestures while speaking. Text: “Some people like to be the big spoon.” Panel 2: The stick figure continues, “Some people like to be the little spoon.” Panel 3: Text filling most of the panel: “And some brave truth-tellers point out that the metaphor makes no sense because different-sized spoons don’t nest right either way. You nest same-sized spoons.” Below the text are two pairs of spoons shown nested. Panel 4: The stick figure is shown lounging on a couch. They continue, “…And apparently we sleep on the couch.” Off-panel person: “Why are you still going on about the spoon thing?” Figure on couch: “Because I’m right!” Hidden text: "Are you the annoying spoon or the sleepy spoon?"

#Christmas #holiday #Thanksgiving

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Twitter user, ClassyWarfare, writes, Tweet 1: The war on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November. Tweet 2: I am calling on the Klaus regime to return to the borders agreed upon in the Black Friday Agreement.

#ffs

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A humorous exchange about the correct grammatical usage of the phrase "for fuck's sake" versus "for fuck sake." Two characters discuss the need for possessive punctuation while surrounded by writing tools and papers, with an artistic background that resembles a painting.

So who's coming to mine for Christmas, I have dessert all ready.

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A vintage advert featuring a slice of a cheesecake like pie. Is it cheesecake? No. It's Fruit Cocktail Eggnog pie. It's yellow, with brightly coloured fruit chunks through it. Text reads Go fancy for the holidays! Fruit cocktail eggnog pie. Make it with knox gelatine Canned fruit cocktail Your dairy's prepared egg nog Betty Crocker Homogenized pie crust mix. Under the pie, in very tiny text because it's a lie it reads Yes, make this glorious new dessert so easily! The hard work is all done for you, and what a perfect ending for your festive meal!

Daddy, hilariously, suggested we get a little poppers fridge for the play room and now I'm neck deep in Counter Top Skin Care Product Refrigeration which I never knew was even a thing?

A few days ago I setup a test virtual machine under macOS to see if it could be a viable option for my home lab. I anticipate that I will begin migrating some services to it in the near future.

#3164 - Metric Tip

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The comic shows two stick figures. The one on the left, wearing a hat, asks, “How tall are you?” The one on the right replies, “5 ft 24 cm” - Caption below: “When switching to metric, make the process easier by doing it in steps.” Hidden text: "The package weighs 7 kg 9 oz."

In the mist of shite political news from around the world, here's a good news story, the Danish Foreign Minister give the Egyptian Foreign Minister a Lego set of the Pyramids as a gift, just look at his face ;)

#Politics #Denmark #Egypt #Lego #Joy #GoodNews

https://egyptianstreets.com/2025/11/03/danish-foreign-minister-gifts-lego-pyramid-to-celebrate-grand-egyptian-museum-opening/

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Danish minister give the Egyptian minister a Lego set of the Pyramids in a formal looking room, flags, gold, big lamp shades, the expression on the face of the Egyptian minister is just pure joy and the biggest smile ever.

So I met this Australian guy who works in IT...

I said: "Do you come from a LAN down under?"

He just smiled and gave me a mega byte sandwich ...

Surely one of the finest pieces of journalism of all time? The headline alone is award winning.

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DUCK EATS YEAST, QUACKS, EXPLODES; MAN LOSES EYE Rhadamanthus’'s Unusually Fermented Sunday Breakfast Causes It to Rise Piecemeal, Blinding Owner, DES MOINES, Jan, 2 - The strangest accident recorded in local history occurred this morning when Rhadamanthus, a duck, which took a prize at the recent Iowa poultry show, exploded into several hundred pleces, one of which struck Silas Perking in the eye, destroyIng the sight The cause of the explosion was the eating of yeast which was placed In a pan upon the back porch, and tempted his duckship, which was taking a Sanday morning stroll. Upon returning from church Mr Perking discovered his prize duck in an some what logy condition Telltale marks around the pan of yeast gave him his clue. He was about to pick up the bird when the latter quacked and exploded with a loud report and Mr Perkins ran into to house holding both hands over one eye. A surgeon was called, who found that the eyeball had been penetrated by a fragment of flying duck and gave no hope of having the optic.

An owl gliding through a cloud of helium-filled soap bubbles reveals wingtip and tail vortices.

Video credit: Usherwood et al.
Source: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/223/3/jeb214809/223686/High-aerodynamic-lift-from-the-tail-reduces-drag

What is a programming language you learned and mastered, but that is now completely obsolete in your work?

(Now I feel the need to re-read it, as well as get myself a copy the Book of Dust now that the third book is about to be published.)

This is a valuable lesson for any manufacturer: never awaken the nerd sleeping inside your customer, because his wrath shall be terrible.

In this case the warning was quite literal.

The company annoyed a buyer enough to push him into full blown nerd mode. He tore the product apart, reverse engineered every part, and then published a step by step guide showing exactly how to disable "kill switch" that prevented the use of the product without the vendor spying on the user.

What started as a minor grievance became a public, technical exposé that left the maker exposed and embarrassed.

Moral of the story: underestimate your users at your own peril.

The Day My Smart Vacuum Turned Against Me

Goodreads volunteer moderator went rogue and changed a cover to Eric Trump's book Under Siege, and added the subtitle “Goodreads Censorship in Favor of Trump,”

🔗 https://www.404media.co/rogue-goodreads-librarian-edits-site-to-expose-censorship-in-favor-of-trump-fascism/

Baking is science, but it is also fun. Experiment and enjoy each result.

(Sometimes I also put in some baking powder or soda to get some rise, and at least a teaspoon (5ml) of vanilla for flavor.)