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.

I have no source and yet I must boost

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Poe: Once upon a midnight Beastie Boys: DREARY Poe: While I pondered, Beastie Boys: WEAK Poe: and Beastie Boys: WEARY

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

(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

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.)

Basically it's equal parts flour, sugar, and fat, with an egg to bind as needed and chips to taste. Also, letting the dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour helps, too.

#3160 - Document Forgery

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The image shows a comic depicting a fake university diploma. The diploma reads “East State University” at the top, with unreadable scribbles above and below. In the center, it says “Doctor of Philosophy in Document Forgery.” There are several illegible signatures and a circular seal at the bottom center with abstract symbols. Below the diploma, a caption reads: “If you put one of these up in your office, and no one notices, you’ve earned it.” Hidden text: "It comes with a certificate of authenticity, which comes with a certificate of authenticity, which comes with a..."

Chef José Andrés' World Central Kitchen nonprofit is usually giving meals to people in war zones, but now, it's distributing food in Washington, D.C., in order to help federal employees during the U.S. government shutdown. Here's more from NBC Washington.

https://flip.it/qK6UAt

#USGovernment #TrumpAdministration #GovernmentShutdown #USNews #USPolitics #JoseAndres

Hear, hear!

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A tweet from BrooklynDad_Defiant! says: “THIS.” followed by several clapping emojis. The image text reads: “Let’s give teachers $50k signing bonuses, $100k salaries, and $60k student loan forgiveness. You know, the same as ICE gets.”

Outside of Speaker Mike Johnson,
there is no bigger poster boy for the rubber-stamp Republican House majority than Jim Jordan.

Jordan’s purpose for running the House Judiciary Committee is to abuse its power to investigate those who tried to hold Donald Trump accountable for alleged crimes.

While Republicans in the House filled their committees with leaders who would be loyal to Trump,
Democrats filled their positions with experienced investigators and legislators who know how to use oversight power and navigate congressional hearings effectively.

Rep. Jamie Raskin is one of those Democrats. -- He is an attorney and constitutional scholar, and a person who understands how to properly and effectively use House oversight.

When Jordan gave Raskin a big opening by trying to investigate former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Maryland Democrat seized on it.

Jim Jordan wants Jack Smith to testify behind closed doors.
Smith wants to testify in public.

Raskin wrote a letter to Jordan urging him to allow Smith to testify before the nation.

Rep. Raskin wrote:
Last week, I applauded your call for transparency about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into how President Trump knowingly retained hundreds of highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago club and then defied subpoenas, obstructed law enforcement, actively hid evidence, and lied about his continuing retention of those records.

I commended you for apparently joining us in demanding the full release of Mr. Smith’s report
—paid for by American taxpayers
—as well as all accompanying records which the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been desperately concealing.

https://www.politicususa.com/p/jamie-raskin-outsmarts-jim-jordan

US people: If you are white, not racist, not a supporter of ethnic cleansing, but are struggling to pay bills, or don't know how you will afford food next month...

First of all, I am genuinely sorry for the stress you are dealing with. Truly.

Second, this stress was placed on you intentionally. By racists.

Their idea is that you will stop caring about other people and become more racist as you become more desperate.

These racists don't care about *helping* other white people. They don't care about you.

They care about *hurting* Black and brown people, and creating their white ethnostate.

They happily shared stats showing that in pre-war Germany, the nazi party got the most support where hunger and hardship were highest.

They also celebrated the eugenic cruelty that followed the Influenza pandemic, back when "long Covid" or "long flu" were not terms that people understood.

No, I do not think that they invented Covid in a nazi lab.🤦🏿‍♂️

But the worst of them definitely celebrated its arrival, and said "Let 'er rip, this helps us," at first because of the high Black death toll, and later because of the impact on the elderly, and the desperation and healthcare callousness.

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Twitter screenshot: @mekkaokerekebye An official DOD webpage posted an article celebrating a Nazi war criminal yesterday. It barely made the news. The Alt-Right wrote years ago that a widespread US economic crash and food insecurity, was necessary to foment the callousness required to proceed to the "next phase." 9:09 AM Dec 18, 2019

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Twitter screenshot: Mekkaokerekebye Dec 18, 2019 The theory is: Many white people will care less about adequate nutrition or flu vaccines for brown people in concentration camps, if they themselves are starving and without medicine. This will allow the camp death toll to rise without actually needing to execute people.

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Twitter screenshot: Mekkaokerekebye What're black folk saying today? * If you don't stop the GOP from deregistering /disenfranchising us, Dems will lose in 2020. And y'all will act surprised. Again. * 2020 Trump is gloves off, Phase 2. * Buttigieg is trash * Biden is trash, but we know what's in the can.

Roo reaction

[description: kangaroo checking out a Halloween display is scared by the cackling skeleton -- you can see the roo running away far down the street]

#kangaroo #roo #animal #halloween #humor #humour

Resurecting the ghost of Reagan turns out to be unexpected political dynamite. Since Republicans no longer believe in facts, but they do worship deities, this puts them in the irreconcileable position of having two of their gods issuing unequivocal and diametrically opposite decrees. Feel like we may be hearing more from the Almighty Ronny in the days ahead.

Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein was not the monster.

Wisdom is understanding that Frankenstein WAS the monster.

Enlightenment is understanding that I, the person who brings this up at every chance in every conversation, am the monster.

Why does the government tackle benefit fraud and ignore tax cheats? Could it be prejudice?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/10/23/why-does-the-government-tackle-benefit-fraud-and-ignore-tax-cheats-could-it-be-prejudice/
The National Audit Office issued a report yesterday on efforts being made by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to tackle benefit fraud, and the rate of errors being made in payments of what I call social security.

@futurebird @sewblue

If you think the stock market is bad, wait until you look at commodities markets.

Originally, you sold commodities (wheat, steel, whatever) when you produced it. It turns out that it’s quite useful to know when you plant a field of corn how much you will be able to sell it for. It’s also useful if, for example, you are building a skyscraper and it will take two years to know how much steel will cost in a year’s time, so you can budget properly.

So the idea of a futures market came about. Rather than buying steel that exists now, you buy the ability to buy steel at a fixed price in the future. Or the ability to sell corn at a fixed price in a year’s time. And now both producers and consumers can operate with significantly reduced risk. Having a guaranteed ability to sell X tons of grain at a known price next year lets you plan the amount that you want to plant, and maybe grow a bit more than you know you can sell because you won’t make a loss if you can sell more. So far, so sensible.

(Aside: a lot of the antitrust laws in the USA exist because of one person who managed to achieve an onion monopoly. This is an amazing story, and well worth reading, but it’s most fun because laws are written as changes to existing laws, so a lot of the antitrust laws in the USA are of the form ‘onions, and other things that are not onions’).

The problem with this model is that it lacks liquidity. A lot of people (especially on the consumer side) don’t want to plan so far ahead. They will buy wheat if it’s available, but might buy corn if it’s cheaper. They may buy steel if it’s available, but might just put of construction to next year if it’s too expensive. And that makes it harder to plan. To address this, you allow speculation.

Speculation was quite controversial. A speculator buys and sells commodity futures, but does not want the commodities. They are selling a service where they take risk in exchange for profit. If they expect the price of some commodity to be $110 next year, they might offer to buy it for $100. The producer gets a worse price than they would probably get if they didn’t trade futures, but they get to guarantee that price. If their production cost is $50, they make a big profit, guaranteed. The speculator then has to find someone willing to actually buy the commodity for over $100. If they do, they make money. If they don’t, they take the loss, the producer does not.

There were a lot of regulations around speculation, including the ratio of producers and consumers to speculators that could participate in the market. It was viewed as a necessary evil to increase liquidity. And liquidity is important. Markets don’t function without it. But then some smart and evil people managed to convince the government (pretty sure it was Reagan, it’s a fair bet that anything bad in market regulation was probably his fault) that speculation existed to reduce risk (true) and that reducing risk is good (true) so it’s important to relax regulations to reduce risk for speculators (false, the entire reason speculators exist is to take on risks from people in the real economy). So now there’s far more trading between speculators than between buyers and sellers of the actual commodity. There’s no shortage of liquidity, but the flip side of liquidity is volatility (both mean, roughly, that prices can move rapidly. If you want that to happen, it’s liquidity, if you don’t then it’s volatility).

A lot of the same thing happened with the stock market.

The Māori people descend from Polynesians whose ancestors emigrated from Taiwan to Melanesia between 3000-1000 BC, and then travelled east, reaching the Society Islands 1000 CE.

After a pause of 200 to 300 years, a new wave of exploration led to the discovery and settlement of New Zealand.

#archaeohistories

Often computer history focuses on the US (or UK), but rarely Australia.

This article reveals how Ozisoft, the Aussie distributor for Sega, went into print publishing and shut out Mattel (which distributed Nintendo):

"The news section of Megazone issue 11, dated December 1990, starts with a glorified press release. It states that over 100,000 Sega Master Systems have been sold in Australia and that things are going gangbusters.

"What it fails to mention is that the magazine’s publisher is OziSoft. Which also happens to be the local distributor of Sega products.

"The cover of that same issue featured the new King’s Quest 5 game for PC alongside a glowing preview across several pages. Coincidentally, King’s Quest is another one of OziSoft’s local releases.

"Growing up, I didn’t know any of that. Because a 12-year-old kid doesn’t really know or care about licensing, distribution, or ‘corporate synergy’.
...
"While Megazone went out with a whimper, its final issue barely noticed, the magazine’s legacy, and its influence on Australian gaming can’t be underestimated. It made Sega a household name, sold a generation of kids on the Master System, and helped OziSoft outgun and outsell Nintendo when the 16-bit generation arrived on our shores.

"For better or worse, the conflicted nature of Megazone shaped a generation of kids. Even if we didn’t know it at the time.
...
"Looking back at Megazone with the benefit of hindsight it’s clear that the lines between journalism and marketing were often blurred.

"That’s a view that Stuart Clarke agrees with. And he should know, given he was the editor from 1992 to 1993."

https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/megazone-history/

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #retrocomputers #retrogames #Amiga #Atari #Sega #Nintendo #Commodore #ausmedia #computers #computing #computerhistory

Because we need good news: Gary Larson is drawing again (he bought a tablet, taught himself how to use it, and suddenly drawing was fun again): https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/

About syntax highlighting https://tonsky.me/blog/syntax-highlighting/

Made for reasons i'm not going into...

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A small stool, in a sample test tube, with a blue top, held in my hand.

My spouse and I now have an interesting experiment going: which enhances your 5G reception more, getting a Covid shot and a flu shot in the same arm on the same day, or getting one in each arm? Confounding factors: we have different length arms, and I'm not sure which is a better match for 5G wavelengths. Also, I use a computer a lot more, which means that the extra microchips I've just been injected with will help me a lot more.

I’m looking through my Macintosh user guide (the booklet that accompanied my 1984 Macintosh) for the first time in a while, and I’m a little obsessed with this graphic explaining scrolling.

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A page from the “Learning Macintosh” chapter of the Macintosh user guide. It says “Most of the time, a window on the desktop can't show you the entire directory or document all at once, even when you've made the window very large. There's often more information than can fit in the window at one time.” With a MacPaint-generated papyrus scroll featuring a square demonstrating the visible content.