Robert
@robert@cornershop.network
🤯
I just learned what a Billabong is! (oxbow lake in Australia)
As in Waltzing Matilda
For all my life I thought a billabong was Australian for "swamp". 😟
This is almost as big of a revelation as when I figured out maybe 8 years ago that "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is the same tune as the "ABC Song"
(having learned those both as a small child, apparently the neurons failed to connect the tune between the two songs for my entire adult life)
our brains do fascinating things, both with connections made and missed.
i learned how to sing the alphabet backwards because NoVA cops used to love doing DUI checkpoints and making you say the alphabet backwards. (I was young and stupid... didn't drink and drive, just wanted to piss cops off...)
@paul_ipv6 Ha, that sounds like a great party trick.
@paul_ipv6 I can write backwards in cursive. When I worked at a startup company, I used to leave notes on people's dry erase whiteboards like this so they had to go get a mirror to read what I left them.
@paul_ipv6 @ai6yr I counted in German, to 10 and back again, as they made me walk a straight line one day. The speeding ticket was deserved. The rest was a fishing expedition.
@paul_ipv6 @ai6yr That's great...in the UCLA marching band, we would sing Take Me Out To The Ball Game, but start one word early, and end with the last note missing.
"This land is my land"
"You are my sunshine"
@paul_ipv6 @RnDanger Really?!?
@paul_ipv6 This likely helped his ability to have written over 1000 songs, mostly unrecorded. It's a treasure trove for the few artists the Woody Guthrie Foundation gives access to. Currently I think that's just Billy Bragg, Wilco, and the Dropkick Murphys.
guthrie was really more a poet than songwriter. amazing stuff in his notebooks.
dylan was definitely influenced by guthrie. poems that didn't fit the musical meter but the words were what mattered more to him.
leonard cohen is another wordsmith who happened to use songs. i was amazed at how cohen would endlessly rewrite his lyrics, add/delete/change.
@ai6yr Which also makes one wonder why a surf clothing company named themselves after it. Not much swell in a billabong!
"Australia: Come Dance With Death" tested surprisingly poorly in the tourism market, so they went with "At least we don't have moose and bears"
@jrconlin @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr Apart from sharks, crocs and drop bears, there’s very little that actively views us as a snack.
@pmonks @jrconlin @paul_ipv6 LOL it's just the unintentional "kill you right away" stuff, i.e. accidentally stepping on a snake, or running into a spider, or whatever LOL.
@pmonks @jrconlin @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr
"The drop bear (sometimes dropbear) is a hoax in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a predatory, carnivorous version of the koala."
@KrajciTom @jrconlin @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr FAKE NEWS!!!!!!1 😤
Ignore drop bears at your own peril!!
@pmonks @jrconlin @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr
New Mexico has fiercely entered the chat.
@KrajciTom @pmonks @jrconlin @ai6yr
"Look at the bones!"
@paul_ipv6 @KrajciTom @pmonks @jrconlin LOL I thought that was real most of my childhood life. Stupid Wyoming tourist traps.
@KrajciTom @pmonks @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr
'tis true.
Jackalopes ate all of the North American drop bears.
Now you're lucky if you spot a chupacabra on the horizon.
@jrconlin @KrajciTom @pmonks @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr I think @IPXFong has a Chupacabra just down the road from him (because we haven’t sucked in enough #NewMexico people yet).
@KrajciTom @davepolaschek @jrconlin @pmonks @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr
Chupacabra? You really should be watching out for the soplacabra. 😂
@IPXFong @KrajciTom @jrconlin @pmonks @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr Sorry, I must’ve mistranslated in my head. My Spanish is no bueno.
@davepolaschek @ipxfong @KrajciTom @pmonks @paul_ipv6 @ai6yr
It's ok.
You didn't confuse it with a chalupacabre, which can be rather tasty if the guac is fresh.
@jrconlin @davepolaschek @IPXFong @KrajciTom @pmonks @ai6yr
chalupocabre. wow. a taco with fangs. now i'm intrigued.
@paul_ipv6 @jrconlin @davepolaschek @IPXFong @KrajciTom @pmonks @ai6yr I imagine it hanging on like a venus flytrap.
@paul_ipv6 @jrconlin @davepolaschek @IPXFong @KrajciTom @pmonks @ai6yr Ow! I didn't think the chalupocabre would eat MY face.
Well, if you look around the taco bar, and all you see are other tacos, YOU'RE the taco, too.
@pmonks @ai6yr @paul_ipv6 @jrconlin No worries, there’s deadly landscape features as well.
*but there’s also all those pretty pretty birbs
"Back to work today, forgot my pass so locked bike outside Cannon Street station. Left work at 6pm to find just the cut lock and no bike, resigned to never seeing my trusty stead again asked the station if they have cameras. A guy appeared waving at me, asked me to put the code into my cut lock. He replied ‘I have your bike’ with a smile I will never forget!! His name is Abdul Muneeb and he works for South Eastern Railways, he was on a break and saw a guy bolt cut the lock and challenged him to give it back, he then took it inside and waited 4 hours after his shift finished to personally make sure I got my bike back. The world needs more Abdul’s, he is a legend of a man and a credit to his employer."
Story Credit: Steve Farmer
@MarkHoltom How do we buy Abdul a coffee or tea?
@briankrebs @MarkHoltom i'd also love to give Abdul some deserved appreciation but this is an old story: https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/02/rail-worker-saved-mans-bike-thief-waited-hours-shift-return-12935219/
My 9 year old and his classmates have started using “that’s AI” to mean “I don’t believe you.”
Me: we’re having dinosaur meat for dinner
Kiddo: that’s AI
This has got to be one of the best. In Wales, UK, there is a legal requirement for road signs to be in both English and Welsh. So, in this case, the official of the Highways department emailed the English wording to the translator and, after receiving a reply, proceeded to have the sign made and installed.
Unfortunately, a few weeks later, Welsh-speaking drivers began to call up to point out that the Welsh reads..... "I am currently out of the office. Please submit any work to the translation team."
If you think that turning on Reduce Transparency will fix all the problems with Liquid Glass, you're wrong.
Here's a standard bar button item drawn with reduced transparency. It goes from being dark (the system setting) to light the first time you use it.
Pro Tip: Check your apps with Reduced Transparency turned on in dark mode. It doesn't matter if you're using UIKit or SwiftUI.
There's not a fucking thing you can do about all the things that are rendered incorrectly, but you WILL be seeing what your customers see. And that's probably going to be A LOT of customers when they realize that they can't read anything on Liquid Glass.
See toot above for an example.
@chockenberry Do you have a Feedback # for me?
@robert @chockenberry I think this is a bug of the Apple software. Hopefully they will fix it in a later iOS update.
adding to the #antifa trend, this is a reminder that #PuertoRicans go hard when we bash the fash: it’s estimated 72,000 boricuas ―from La Isla and the states― joined the effort during #WWII.
sources:
The Puerto Rican Philly Experience · 1940-45:
72,000 Puerto Ricans Serve During WWII
https://omeka.hsp.org/s/puertoricanphillyexperience/page/puertoricansinww2
Puerto Ricans in World War II: The #Borinqueneers | Smithsonian
https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/puerto-ricans-in-world-war-ii-the-borinqueneers/bBdUXA2ZGpYgF05u
65th Infantry - Suggested Readings
https://history.army.mil/Research/Reference-Topics/Hispanic-Americans-in-the-US-Army/65th-Infantry-Suggested-Readings/
🧵…
BTW could point out that English-speaking Afroboricuas fought side-by-side with African Americans in their regiments during World War 2. or i could default to lauding the Air Force’s all-Black Tuskeegee Air Men.
why do so when i can talk about an AIR WOMAN who became one of the most successful spies for France, UK & USA whilst still working as, for all intents and purposes of burlesque and cabaret, the most famous stripper in the world?
this post is about the #antifa AF, Josephine Baker
🧵…
Baker left USA during the KKK 1920s revival and became a French citizen in 1937; but because of her fame, fluency and flying, her #antifa espionage work was shared between #France #UK #USA.
❝ Josephine Baker: From Poverty to Stardom to Espionage - CIA
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/josephine-baker-from-poverty-to-stardom-to-espionage/
❝ Siren of the Resistance: The Artistry and Espionage of Josephine Baker | The National WWII Museum https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/siren-resistance-artistry-and-espionage-josephine-baker
❝ Joséphine Baker (1906-1975) | Service historique de la Défense
https://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/liste-dossiers-individuels/josephine-baker-1906-1975
🧵…
Josephine Baker was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.
she was incredibly proud of her #antifa work for France; and though white America was horrible to her she was a fiercely Black & Proud African American woman.
she was one of only 2 women to give a speech during the 1963 March On Washington, right before Martin Luther King Jr:
https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/1963-josephine-baker-speech-march-washington/
🧵
not one of your #antifascist faves could ever be like la Grande Dame Josephine Baker.
in November of 2021 Emmanuel Macron inducted Madame Baker into France’s mausoleum of heroes, the Pantheon
❝ Josephine Baker is inducted into the French Pantheon : NPR - https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059776777/josephine-baker-france-pantheon
so, remember boys and girls:
you can start a stripper, turn into a superstar, and become a fascist bashing war hero all in one lifetime.
be #antifa like Josephine Baker.
bash the fash. /🧵
Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls
to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man,
in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting”.
The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads”,
Mark Zuckerberg’s rival to Elon Musk’s X,
were being dropped into his Instagram feed
❌ featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.
The children’s images were used by Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school.
⚠️The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this.
🔥One mother said her account was set to private -- but the posts were automatically cross-posting to Threads where they were visible.
Another said she posted the picture to a public Instagram account.
💥The posts of their children were highlighted to the stranger as “suggested threads"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/20/parents-outraged-meta-uses-photos-schoolgirls-ads-man?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
@cdarwin @paul_ipv6 Who would have thought that a company build on a website to rate (esp. female) students as „hot“ or not, based on data they scraped from university systems without permission would do something like that…
https://mastodon.social/@RecoveredExpert/113870525376638389
Hello fediverse! We are Cambridge Community Kitchen, a mutual aid project based in a squatted pub in central Cambridge, UK.
We cook around 300 hot vegan meals every Thursday and every Sunday, 52 weeks of the year, and we deliver to literally anybody who asks, for free, across the city.
Nobody owns CCK. We have no managers. Nobody has a job title, or decision making power over any part of the operation. And it Works™.
#introduction #introductionpost #Cambridge #mutualaid #solidaritynotcharity
I don't understand how vscode, a program whose entire job is "efficiently edit text", can get copy-paste so horribly wrong.
@aphyr what does it do wrong?
@yosh Several times a day, it gets stuck in a mode where it pastes a different number of lines nearby, possibly intersecting, the region of text that was actually highlighted and copied.
@aphyr I think your main occupation of work keeps you–despite breaking things all the time–in a still surprisingly well engineered bubble, compared to the utter garbage that is out there as well.
@aphyr you can use my method: I paste into Sublime Text, copy, and paste out to whatever program is doing dumb copy/paste things.
@aphyr oh you don't use vi? I guess you lose the sadistic train controller creds or something then... 🙃
me: please cut this line and paste it above
vscode: gotcha boss
me: what is this
vscode: the line below the line you cut, boss
me: did I highlight wrong?
vscode: no boss
me: did I not press ^X?
vscode: no you did boss
me: did you not specifically cut the text I highlighted?
vscode: no i definitely cut that text boss
me: then why did you paste a completely different line
vscode: i just like that line more :)
vi
FTW
However, if the accessibility option to "Reduce Transparency" is not enabled, the text remains white when scrolling.
Tomorrow is iPhone day and @atpfm did not go through it this time. For the sake of me, @caseyliss (who always seems to choose the "wrong" method), and all of ATP listeners, what's the current recommendation for setting up the new phone? iCloud, phone-to-phone, local backup, new device with icloud sync? Help me @siracusa and @marcoarment
@jakegub You have two choices:
• Direct with cable (takes 2-3 hours, both phones are useless, but everything except apps are ready to go immediately)
• iCloud (takes 2-3 days, but phones are usable almost immediately)
IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.
The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.
A lost dog wanders into the jungle. A lion spots him from a distance and thinks, “Huh… never seen one of these before. Looks edible.
The lion starts charging. The dog freaks out until he notices some bones nearby. Thinking fast, he blurts out:
“Mmm… that was some tasty lion meat!”
The lion slams the brakes: “Wait… this little dude eats lions?! Nope, I’m out.”
But high up in a tree, a monkey saw the whole thing. He scampers over to the lion and spills the truth, hoping to score points. The lion growls: “Hop on my back. We’ll get him together.”
They storm back toward the dog. The dog sees them coming, panics harder… then yells:
“Where the hell is that monkey? I told him to bring me another lion an hour ago!
Australia is a slightly less alarming mash of imperial and metric measurements (how is height in one and weight in the other???) but despite converting between the two systems my entire life I am still not sure what unit to order food at the grocery counter in, or how much is a reasonable amount.
Oh, a tasty salad … wait, is that measured in grams? Milliliters? Ounces? Pints? What are the container sizes? A liter is too much to make sense.
Something BDSM also taught me is that religious experiences aren’t about Sky Daddies, they’re about ritual and people unified in the ritual. So like the whole singing hymns and shit is just How Concerts Be When You’re Into Them and not the Divine Breeze cupping your balls or whatever.
I will never stop belaboring this point because the Satanic Panic may have been replaced with Trans Panic but the whole “concerts make your kids reject Jesus” thing has stuck around hard and so many people from evangelical backgrounds I’ve taken to concerts for the first time (Sir, most recently) just kinda stare in confusion and ask, “Why is this just like church?”
@dkub fuck. i wish sky daddy would pull my balls
well at least in bdsm, there is supposed to be informed consent
@dkub One of my intimates who relates to me as a Dominant starts negotiating every interaction we have with the question: "Do you want a scene, or do you want an experience?" Because he is the one asking, I almost always choose 'an experience' even though there is a clear sense of foreboding involved in that choice. In other words, I'm looking for a religious experience, and he prefers to give me a religious experience.
Little known fact, but all phones have a little speaker at the top that you can hold to your ear. It means you can have a private conversation without the whole world listening to it
The igniter for the broiler in our Samsung range has apparently just died. I replaced the oven igniter a few years ago.
At least Defense is no longer spelled incorrectly
@TheBreadmonkey tangent: I love the word spelled because it's spelt incorrectly depending on whether you're from a country where it's spelt "spelled" or from a country where it's spelled "spelt".
English is a cess pit.
(But if you want lightweight, Sumatra on Windows, and Zathura/MuPDF for *nix, and I think the latter can do Mac, too.)
(Looking for Zathura on macOS brought out Skim, which I had completely forgotten about: https://sourceforge.net/projects/skim-app/ )
#3138 - Dimensional Lumber Tape Measure
@xkcd aren't the timber sizes "nominal", i.e the rough sawn size, then the timber is dressed down to the smaller size?
@xkcd I love how Americans are obsessed with fractions with their stupid inches and then still clueless that third pounder is a bigger burger than quarter pounder, perfectly encapsulating the idiocy.
"A man on the streets in the UK is asked about "the problem of inmigration" and dismantled talking points with ease"
I'm in love 😍✊️
#uklabourgovernmentimmigration #UKElitesucks
What's the least offensive VPN provider that will let me connect via standard wireguard and provides exit IPs in Ireland?
“VA hospitals are clamoring for some way of preventing any gun violence, which is a very real concern,” and to “just throw technology at it is a shame” that has little to do with actual science, EFF’s Matthew Guariglia told Military Times.
https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2025/09/04/va-hospitals-pay-for-ai-weapons-scanners-testers-say-are-error-prone/
Autopsies are rare when the goal is general medical insight about the causes of stillbirth and pregnancy loss more generally, but they are seemingly routine when criminal consequences are possible, according to legal scholar.
You can also read this story on our new Substack, The Afternoon Story, which sends our most interesting story of the day right to your inbox
https://buff.ly/bI3Y9n8
Got three jabs today. Latest COVID, Flu and Hep B.
We also seem to have a Bed Pug problem
@motoridersd once you have bed pugs, you’ll always have bed pugs. Can’t get rid of them. New mattress/sheets/pillows? Would probably just make the situation worse.
I thought the vaccines had not knocked me out since I slept great and was feeling good this morning, but no, my body went into antibody producing mode around 9 AM and I've been wrapped up in a blanket catching up on TV.
In short: the sicker/worse you feel after a booster/vaccine, the better for you.
@motoridersd ugh I gotta schedule mine, usually have to block out a good day or two for the covid shot. Hope the pugs are being good nurses!
Red crosses on street furniture converted to resemble battenburg cakes (sweet sponge cakes popular in the UK, made with two yellow and two pink quarters, all covered in marzipan).
👀
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent charged with terroristic threatening in Kapolei
"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Honolulu police responded to a report of a woman allegedly being threatened by a man on Monday morning in Kapolei.
At around 10 a.m., officers responded to the residence where the 33-year-old woman reported being threatened.
According to the Honolulu Police Department, the 42-year-old suspect allegedly brandished the butt of a firearm during the incident.
When officers arrived on scene, he reportedly identified himself and presented his credentials as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent...."
Found the orange cat that's been hoarding all the collective brain cells.
My undergraduate degree in Sociology has prepared me better for AI than any of my technical certifications and degrees, including my time researching for my PhD in cybersecurity.
Humanities are the key.
Don't forget that.
Over the weekend, one of my coworkers noticed that we were logging sensitive info somewhere it shouldn't be, and rather than just fix it and move along, they notified the security team so we could assess it, determine the risk involved, and make a timeline for fixing the root problem and cleaning up the affected systems.
That was exactly how I wish *everyone* would act in such situations. I was absolutely delighted at how they handled this and bragged about them in the company Slack.
am i the only one who always found Atom slow?
(watching The Story of Atom: GitHub’s Forgotten Editor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11W2SsXh_E )
@scottwillsey It worked well enough for me and nothing I've used since then has felt as nice. On Windows I settled on Notepad++ but I still haven't found something I like on Mac.
I don't need an IDE, I just need a graphical editor with decent search/replace and block selection. Also one that will automatically save all my tabs even if they don't have a name.
I'm a mess. LOL. I use it to paste random things from projects
@robert I used to use Textwrangler many many years ago, I'll check this out
@robert it seems they just rebranded everything to BBEdit, with a Free and a Paid version
@motoridersd I know of some that will not delete the files that you haven't saved when you close the editor (they will reopen when you open the editor again, even though they're not technically saved to disk) but not that will auto save them
@scottwillsey yeah that's what I like to use. The information is not extremely important but it is a dirty history to have
Florida is doing everything they can to kill their biggest industry: tourism.
Olivia Colman doesn't know what "String Cheese" is and she does not have to. Also a very common reaction for 95% of the world.
🤣 I love her
@motoridersd Ha! Though now you have me really jonesing for something I’m not sure I can even find in Vegas: the legit Armenian cheese sold in large, fresh ropes I used to get at specialty delis in East LA.
@Holberg oooh I've never heard of this and it sounds amazing
@motoridersd It really is.
They sell smaller packaged versions at a lot of markets. They look like knotted ropes of cheese. Still better than the mozzarella! But I was raised on a style that looked like a super-sized string cheese stick. Straight cylinder. Around a foot high, probably six inches around. The texture as you pull off the strings is delicate and gorgeous. And a wonderful subtle flavor. The only place I’ve ever gotten it is in east LA delis so maybe it’s a totally unique thing haha.
@Holberg in Mexico we have something like string cheese, it's the Oaxaca Cheese. It is sold as a ball, the size of a head of lettuce, and a proper one will have a long thick strand just wrapped around the whole thing like yarn. Commercial versions aren't as good.
@motoridersd Yes! Very similar to that, especially the packaged versions. Can be kinda rubbery, too. The fresh version is totally different. Almost silken strands when you pull it apart if you do it very finely. I’ll try to find a photo!
@Holberg yeah! That sounds just like the fresh version of Oaxaca cheese I know
History