I'd like to talk a little about ketchup.

If I say "ketchup is just the worst," that's an opinion.

If I say "people who like ketchup are mentally ill," that's bullying.

If I say "because I don't like ketchup, no one should have it," that's oppression.

If I say "people who like ketchup are dangerous and should be controlled," that's bigotry.

If I say "anyone who defends ketchup should be silenced or locked up," that's fascism.

This post is about trans people.

Worth your time.

Fredrik Backman

X is bad, though: https://lexontech.org/x-is-bad-though

A YouTuber has received an unexpected visit from the police over an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) camera he built to specifically track police cars, using the same technology law enforcement has infamously used to track ordinary citizens. In a video posted to his channel on October 7, Anthony Sistilli says two police officers showed up at his doorstep on September 20th to ask questions about the device, asking what his intentions were with the project.

Sistilli, a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber, pointed out the irony of the officers' concerns, explaining that they mirror the privacy concerns of ordinary citizens who are growing increasingly weary of the recent spike in blanket surveillance brought about by a mass installation of ALPR cameras. Flock Safety, a U.S. public safety technology company, recently scaled its centralized national surveillance network to over 120,000 cameras operating across 49 states, according to the company, capturing billions of vehicle scans every month.

The Asimov-Moscow Protocols:

1. Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems,

2. Humans must not blindly trust the output of AI systems,

3. Humans must remain fully responsible and accountable for consequences arising from the use of AI systems.

#MoscowRules #TheThreeLaws #AI

The Wiz lights I got for our living room are pissing me off. They're Thread over WiFi but they often go unavailable. Reconnecting them through UniFi will fix it. I have an automation that lets me know when they become unavailable but it can't force a reconnect through UniFi, as far as I know?

Is that true?

It's like they know me.

#language #english #writing

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What your favourite obsolete English letter says about you: (Whichever one you pick, you are a nerd.)

This one is also nice!

Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!
Dr. Henry Jones Sr.

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A variation of the antifascist logo based on the Indiana Jones character.

Just renewed my US passport as it expires next year. It's pretty cool that you can renew it online now and upload your own picture.

The photo requirements include using a white, non-textured background which is honestly homophobic though.

Now the panic of not being able to leave the country* for 4-6 weeks. 😬

* Except for Canada thanks to my Nexus card. Whew!

My first watch of First Wive's Club (1996) and already loving it.

People are angry at Google (justifiably, Google sucks) for renaming Lake Ontario in maps when we know Apple did the same with the Gulf of Mexico so it's only a matter of time before it changes there too. Apple also sucks. These fucking tech bros bent the knee years ago.

Are you just another AI disaster?

Lego has released a French revolution commemorative collection.

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A collection of bodiless Lego heads.

Ugh, I did updates from the app store on my Mac. One of them was Bitwarden. Since it was open, I got asked if I wanted to close the app to finish updating. Yes please, and so the update was done.

Now I can't view the items in my vault in the app AND in the browser extension. The settings screen, Generate password option do work.

I have to use Bitwarden in the browser in order to get to my passwords.

Maybe a next Mac App update will fix it? Is it a bug? Would clearing cache somewhere help? Probably a reinstall will do the trick, but somehow I have the feeling it won't.

@gruber this is what I got clicking on your BMW/Marvel ad link. The irony of a post about dystopian ads preventing you from reading it unless you allow ads.

A new report suggests the money spent on deportations across the United States could be spent on funding over 925,000 schoolteachers or pay for over 5 million veterans' medical care.

The findings from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) showed federal tax dollars being spent down to the state and county levels,
as the Trump administration has drastically ramped up immigration enforcement over the past 18 months with the goal of mass deportations

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-ice-deportation-costs-every-us-county-12288386#Echobox=1785959925

My cancellable take is that curl whatever | bash isn't meaningfully worse than all the other awful ways of installing software that are deemed okay by the greybeards

Every once in a while, the internet delivers sublime joy.

#humor #foundontheinternet #magritte #comewithmeifyoufearthetreacheryofimages

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Two images. On the left, Magritte's "The Son of Man" featuring a man in a black suit and bowler. A green apple obscures his face. On the right, a modern woman in white pants and a black top taking a selfie. Her face is obscured by an iPhone. Below is the text: Just imagine if Rene Magritte was actually a seer, he saw the future, but due to his time he couldn't understand and explain what kind of apples people have in front of the faces and simply painted his interpretation of what he saw.

Another reasons to tut at the Mercator Map projection - how a circle with a radius of 5,000km, centred on Paris, looks according the Mercator map

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A circle placed on a world map using the Mercator projection shows how distorting this way of depicting the world has become. The circle is highly distended forming a large tear-shaped with undue size and prominence given to the northern portion.

You too?

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List of complaints about needing your personal data online.

Every car rental line ever

By instagram user @mattsurelee

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A humorous infographic titled “Every Rental Car Line Ever” showing a collection of colored dots representing different types of people and workers in a chaotic rental car office, with a small boxed area on the left containing blue and yellow dots depicting workers either milling around or frantically searching for cars while an orange dot represents a guy being tricked by insurance questions and a cluster of pink dots below symbolizes an exhausted family discovering they are renting a truck, while on the right side a scattered line of brown, green, purple, and red dots represents confused customers such as people in the wrong line, those with no urgency, a woman without a driver’s license, someone who needs to be downtown in negative fifteen minutes, and at the far right a striped multicolored dot represents people wondering why the process takes so long, with each dot explained by a legend at the bottom.

disney's wish feels like it was written by chatgpt. and I'm not saying it was (I'm sure it wasn't. it was written too early for it for one) but I mean everything about it from the plot to the dialogue to the jokes feels like 'here's the statistically most likely thing to go here'

and I suspect what actually happened is that everything about it just got committeed to death, all the actual creativity got sanded down into the safest version of itself until you have something that just feels like slop

If you're a gay man on IG, it's good at showing you hot men -- for some definition of hot. On the fedi that's much harder and I would argue is one of the real but stupid reasons it's harder to get the gays off IG.

Following tags is not practical because many tags have been taken over by the NFSW "content curators" who are posting other people's content -- which is why I don't use any in my selfies.

But there's a way to do curation: dedicated boost accounts.

1/x

A good reminder that “originalism” means believing that America was better when only white male property holding Christians could vote and even they couldn’t be trusted to vote for Presidents and Senators. https://www.pennlive.com/news/2026/06/scott-perry-joins-push-to-revoke-17th-amendment-strip-voters-of-electing-senators.html

Apparently this was in the Boston globe

As per usual. Showing how it can be done and gaining respect everywhere they go.

As they said in #Germany during the last Euros

"No Scotland. No party!"

#Scotland #football #WorldCup #TartanArmy #soccer #NoScotlandNoParty

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Newspaper page with photos of Scottish football fans having fun in Boston Text reads: Dear Tartan Army, You came for the World Cup, but gave us something more. For a week, you turned train stations into singalongs, Fenway into a football ground, and an ordinary June into something we'll be talking about for years. Boston has hosted championships, parades, and celebrations of every kind. But we've never hosted guests quite like you all. Thank you for the laughter, the bagpipes, and the memories. The World Cup will move on. So will the songs, but we'll never forget the joy you brought to our city. D The Boston Globe

So my local library doesn't support OverDrive. If I want to check out an eBook, I have to use a Android or iOS app.

That sucks.

My Kobo reader isn't Android. So, this has me looking at Android-based eReaders and wow that's a crapshoot.

#inclusion #equality #pride

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A picture of a man smiling, with a rainbow painted on his cheek and a poster in his hand stating: "I don't wear rainbow items to tell yopu who is in my bed. I wear them so the family across the street feels safe. So the couple in the restaurant know they aren't alone. So the boy who sees me notice him looking at dresses kows I won't judge. I wear pride bc you make them hide."

OH "My Wagnerian pornographic epic, 'God damn you're hung'"

Even if reading regular books, always try to put them through something like kepubify (or use something like Calibre) to make sure you get a better experience.

Today’s lesson in unfortunate font use comes courtesy of Portugal’s Federação Académica do Desporto Universitário.

(1/2)

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A series of posters for a beach sports tournament, in which the choice of lettering unfortunately makes the word "final" read like "anal".

#LGBTQ #RoeVWade #FuckTrump #ThisIsWhatYouVotedFor #TrumpEconomy #Immigration #DueProcess #InalienableRights #NoKings #LetsGoTACO #USConstitution #TrumpEpsteinCoverup

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A screenshot of a social media post by "existentialmemes" on a dark background. The text reads: "Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights. If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not 'inalienable' and they're not 'rights.' We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins. And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with."

Love Language

The undying dream of Esperanto

by Katie Thornton

https://harpers.org/archive/2026/06/love-language-katie-thornton-esperanto/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KSQ7JVHVABAKFRY3CGXJYDZ0&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Books in Esperanto at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/34

#Books #Literature

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The Esperantist, Complete Editor: H. Bolingbroke Mudie The cover of The Esperantist, Vol. I (Nov. 1903 – Dec. 1904), published at Norfolk Street, Strand, London. The ornate black-and-white design features a central star — the symbol of the Esperanto movement — surrounded by circular medallions depicting the continents of the world. A small portrait, likely of L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, appears at the centre bottom. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38240/pg38240-images.html

Because of the unusually warm season, they may open early. Traditionally, the owner would close for winter and take the employees on vacation. I imagine when they open will be tied to opening the pass into Yosemite.

Take it as a sign, and abandon the data-harvesters.

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.