Beautiful day for SOTA. Made a couple 2m SSB contacts and one 2m CW contact for this year’s 2m challenge. 40m, 30m, 20m, and 15m CW on the QMX.

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View of the snowcapped White Mountains from the distance. Pinyon Pine and sagebrush in the foreground.

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2m Yagi antenna sitting on a tripod on the summit rocks. Antenna is vertically oriented.

Ever since my go-to cracked Instagram app stopped working properly, I haven't been able to find a good replacement.

Fun fact for Seattleites:

Privately owned parking lots with predatory parking fees can't actually enforce any "parking fines" that they send to you. If it's not a ticket from the city, you can literally just ignore it. (Looking at you, Black Diamond and AirGarage).

The worst they can ever do is try to send it to collections, and if they do that, you can easily request that they provide validation of the debt in writing within 30 days. Once you make that request, the collection agency can't do ANYTHING. They can't contact you, they can't contact anyone you know, and they can't report it to a credit agency. It also immediately puts the burden of proof on them. How do they know it was you? They can't possibly know without security footage (which they don't have). Even if they do, there's a bunch of other things they have to prove to link you to the debt, and then prove that in court and it is absolutely not worth their time or money to do so. They will drop the debt immediately and you will never hear from them again.

I am... really tempted to pin this to the top of my account... Print it and put it on my office door... send it as my email signature... wear it around my neck at conferences....
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-mansplaining-explained-in-one-chart

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A flowchart to find out if you're mansplaining. The first step is "did she ask you to explain it" and if the answer is yes, not mansplaining. This goes through various other scenarios, the funniest/saddest of which is "Do you have more relevant experience" and if the answer is "she has more" then it's "definitely mansplaining" while if the answer is "she has more and is a well known expert" then it's "Just stop talking now"

Boss makes a billion
While making no hires
Maybe that explains
All those warehouse fires

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A poem I wrote about 5 years ago, published in several international magazines including Anarchy: Boss made a dollar Grandad made a dime But that was a poem From a simpler time Boss made a thousand Gave my pa a cent But that penny bought a mortgage Or at least it paid the rent Now boss makes a million And gives us jack Smugly blames his workers For the labor that he lacks

This is how a dictatorship takes hold. Judges should be free from political pressure so they can apply the law justly and without outside influence.

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A tweet reporting that the Trump administration fired two immigration judges who blocked deportations of pro-Palestinian students, noting that four additional judges were also fired.

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/116371004233374990

Hmm, turns out we were less well informed than we thought. 1P is Canadian and Bw has allegedly been vibe coding. Maybe more thought required…

Tim Bray 🇨🇦 » 🌐 2026-04-08 / 2026-04-23
@timbray@cosocial.ca

Update: Cancel this one, we went back to 1P, see https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/04/09/Password-Manager-Angst

Just to report that spouse & I have successfully transferred off 1Password to Bitwarden, relying on sync through Bitwarden.eu. It’s not quite as slick as 1PW but is less American and AFAIK is not fooling around with AI. Also, offers the option to self-host if the company goes sour.

#1password #bitwarden

Nothing captures my mood like these dollar store Peeps.

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A box of marshmallow ducks that look like they’re packed in too tightly so their faces are humorously fucked up.

Have you ever...

RE: https://mastodon.social/@daringfireball/116309404063715397

This is a bad take. Apple exerting control over what UI conventions are allowed, or even required, would be disastrous. I dont think you can carve out a special case for video players.

Daring Fireball » 🌐 2026-03-28
@daringfireball@mastodon.social

Apple Should Set and Enforce Some Basic Standards for Custom Video Players on tvOS
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/03/28/apple-should-set-and-enforce-some-basic-standards-for-custom-video-players-on-tvos

Divine knew, she always knew

#nokings

Random stuff off the curb haul: coconut coir (usable for seed starting), brand new. And some kind of almoat brand new fancy cold brew coffee thing, figured I would try it out and/or put it with the car camping/disaster stuff in case the opportunity arises for real coffee.

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Coffee maker and coconut bedding for reptiles also usable for seed starting

I dunno, why *wouldn't* I watch The Sound of Music after watching the two Sister Act movies?

Not me thinking I see Kathy Najimy and Maggie Smith lookalikes though...

Fun Fact: the child actor who plays Young Deloris in the opening scene of Sister Act only has one other credit in IMDB, and that’s in her role as Young Guinan in that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard, Ro Laren, Keiko O’Brien, and Guinan get youthified in a transporter accident and have to save the ship from the Ferengi.

There has to be a story there for her only two appearances to be as a young Whoopi Goldberg.

1. Context: If a post in my timeline is a direct reply to another post—even if they are not someone I follow—the parent post is shown.
2. Persistence: MastoBlaster will always take me to the latest/newest post when opening the app. This behavior makes extra work for the user, having to manually scroll backwards in the timeline to find where I was last. I personally prefer (at least the ability to configure) having the app remember my place in the timeline, allowing me to manually catch-up, while the standard tap-at-top-of-screen shortcut to should still function to move to the newest post.
3. Full threading: While not a feature of Mona, it is a feature of snac. MastoBlaster does not seem show/indicate the nesting level/depth of replies in a thread.

(You have to give his shows credit for having great casts. And to the uneducated outsider, they are good shows. It is only when you add him to his politics and his shows' subliminal story-lines that you realize the overt libertarianism is covert MAGA.)

My spouse has a routine medical appt today. He has a different health insurance than I do. He has been repeatedly grilled by the hospital about *my* involvement in his insurance.

This is fucking creepy.

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Text chat: Spouse: Sitting in the waiting room. Waiting. Had a terse convo with the registrar over questions I've answered twice this week in echeckin regarding your involvement in my insurance. Me: What? My involvment? What does that even mean? Spouse: Repeated questions about my work status and you. I finally had to use the voice and say it is none of your business about anything related to you. I have medicare and humana and go fuck off about anything else you'd like to know. I said I know a thing or two about billing and you have nothing to do with that. Me: what the actual fuck? Dystopic intrusiveness much? Spouse: I will be writing to the CEO.

so

if github had an outage

and was offline for 48 hours

what would catch fire?

Kids put up with a LOT from adults

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Tumblr post by roach-works look, here's the thing: alice in wonderland's enduring fucking charm is that it perfectly captures the vibe of being a very tired and annoyed child who is nonetheless required to play along with adult nonsense. alice is dragged from place to place without warning, forced to play stupid games with no good prizes, grilled over her schooling and manners and recitation and dress, scolded, judged, insulted to her face, sent away, given gifts she didn't ask for and doesn't like, corrected incorrectly, been subject to shifting and arbitrary rules, and then when she gets snappish with all this bullshit everyone acts like a little girl's temper is the end of the fucking world. alice in wonderland isn't a drug trip or a nightmare or a metaphor, that's just what being ten years old is LIKE. that's why kids love it so much. even if they can't quite articulate how, they recognize themselves in it.

Weekend plans.

#cat #cats #catstodon #catsofmastodon #humor #humour

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a little grey and white kitten sitting in a large bowl full of a giant pile of kibble

Today's macos discovery: I use Skim to read PDFs. If you togggle the Highlight Tool, any text you select gets highlighted!

This makes balancing my credit card statement so much easier...

To hell with AI, more innovation like this please.
#solarpunk

School drop-off and pick-up at the catholic school across the street from me is complete and utter chaos. I just popped out to pull my car around the block for a closer street parking spot and it felt like I was playing chicken with a mindless mob—ignoring stop signs and right of way, pushing through a one-lane neighborhood street, flasher-parking where there are no parking signs, doors flinging open, cutting the wrong way around mini traffic circles, and generally not paying attention.

@thickurt Hi! It's me! Your favorite online entity eternally role playing a pendulum swinging between nihilism and absurdism. 🤣🤣

Skiers who look like musical notes...

A photo by Haukur Sigurdsson.

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An aerial view of cross-country skiers traversing white snow. The skiers are small in the frame but cast long, distinct shadows across the snow.

Friday nights I make myself a little meal, watch some anime, and know that I’ll put out hard.

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A meal with a large bowl of stirfry vegetables and udon noodles with teriyaki mock flank steak. On the side is a bowl of cucumber salad, spring rolls and a hard plastic red cup of iced tea that I stole because it reminds me of home . In the background are candles and the opening credits of Golden Kamuy on ny iPad.