Mason Loring Bliss

Unix geek. Thought leader for a small flock of back-yard hens and assorted wildlife. Technically correct.

Please interact before following.

I try to be socially and environmentally responsible.

I keep #chickens! (Chickens are friends.)

#COVID cautious and I #mask.

Born on #Wampanoag land; living on #Abenaki land.

Alphabetically: #antifa #bsg #buffy #doctorwho #freepalestine #green #noslop #sf #startrek #sustainability #woke

Pronouns: he, him, his
technologies: [#Debian](https://partychickens.net/tags/Debian ), [#FreeBSD](https://partychickens.net/tags/FreeBSD ), [#Slackware](https://partychickens.net/tags/Slackware ), [#C](https://partychickens.net/tags/C ), [#Perl](https://partychickens.net/tags/Perl ), [#Scheme](https://partychickens.net/tags/Scheme ), [#Lisp](https://partychickens.net/tags/Lisp )
Chi: cken
Roo: ster

Public Key

npub13t79gfswnjnxzhgcppk8y8awh0l2cwfqjgw45pnpd63alxedslksgkxn9w

NIP-05 Address

mason_at_partychickens.net@momostr.pink

Profile Code

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Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub13t79gfswnjnxzhgcppk8y8awh0l2cwfqjgw45pnpd63alxedslksgkxn9w

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Published at

2026-04-28T18:37:12Z

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Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-05-16 16:08:12 UTC

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Were you using ipfw? I'm migrating to pf and the simplicity and competence of the software is amazing. NAT is trivial and reliable. I'm moving away from vnet to the old way of hanging jails off of an lo, and getting rid of that whole dance removes all the complexity and timing from my plate. I'm still learning and I haven't updated my wiki docs yet, but I'm beyond impressed. I can't remember the last time using a new piece of software was such a pleasure.
Initially, years ago, I was annoyed by pf even existing. I was very fond of ipf and Darren relicensing an interim version not intended for release was not the catastrophic event people made it out to be. But if I ignore pf's origin story, there's nothing not to love about it.

2026-05-06 23:21:00 UTC

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Ugh. Alright. Yeah:
https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html
But we're not strictly out of the woods yet:
"Core is investigating setting up a policy for LLM/AI usage (including but not limited to generating code). The result will be added to the Contributors Guide in the doc repository. AI can be useful for translations (which seems faster than doing the work manually), explaining long/obscure documents, tracking down bugs, or helping to understand large code bases. We currently tend to not use it to generate code because of license concerns. The discussion continues at the core session at BSDCan 2025 developer summit, and core is still collecting feedback and working on the policy."
from https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-04-2025-06/#_freebsd_core_team

2026-05-06 21:59:35 UTC

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Not that the BSDs are in any way a bad option, but don't forget that it's entirely reasonable to use Debian without systemd. I'm doing it now.
It's well-supported by active volunteers:
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/sysvinit-core
And there are other good options: Slackware and Alpine stand out. Gentoo is a bit heavy with its config syntax, but it's a super solid option.

2026-04-29 01:34:55 UTC

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Let's get more people programming free software. I do it as part of my work, but it can be done avocationally too. I do it outside of work whenever possible. My two favourite books for the purpose;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language
https://web.archive.org/web/20150426092105/http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/

2026-04-29 00:46:14 UTC

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Gross. Disappointing.

2026-04-29 00:25:42 UTC

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I've been underwater with work today. What Blender announcement? Why is Anthropic part of your post?!?

2026-04-21 17:55:32 UTC

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Alternate link for folks who won't visit that site:
https://xcancel.com/mariambarghouti/status/2046540251623993395

2026-04-20 15:47:35 UTC

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I don't see email to the lists yet, but he's written up his issue here:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-15-bridge.102377/

2026-04-20 13:59:15 UTC

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There's a fellow on IRC having horrible issues having moved from 14 to 15, doing things I do that work for both of us on 14. He's having issues with NAT and his firewall rules that basically blow up his production.
I suggested he write to freebsd-net@ and I'll link it if he does. His experience added to a couple problems I had installing 15 on what was to be a new production server have taken 15 off my list of planned upgrades for the time being.

2026-04-17 15:30:42 UTC

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Final Five Voting is new to me - thanks for mentioning it! I'll read about it.
But yeah, both "teams" are going to block RCV in any form. Anything that removes their chokehold is going to be opposed. Ballot initiatives (referenda) are likely the best way forward because of their obstruction.
The Wikipedia mention of it references Gehl and Porter. Worth reading?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-four_primary#Final_Five_Voting

2026-04-17 14:38:27 UTC

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Ben, Mamdani was also DSA, and he was up against Andrew Cuomo, the "vote blue" candidate.
Wikipedia shows precisely how RCV was instrumental in his being elected.

2026-04-17 14:03:19 UTC

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The lesson of Mamdani is that we need RCV. That is why he was elected. He would not have been elected in the vote-out-of-fear system we have in most of the country.

2026-04-16 19:32:52 UTC

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If harm reduction requires genocide, then no. That's a trap to get people to support people who shouldn't be in power.

2026-04-16 16:57:44 UTC

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Alright, we've gotten to that point. It sounds like you're saying "I didn't like the genocide, but I was willing to accept it to avoid a bunch of other harms."
Is genocide really just the cost of doing business? Man, not for me. We have to draw a line somewhere. Exterminating people in gas chambers and its modern equivalents seems like a pretty good place to draw that line.

2026-04-16 16:51:54 UTC

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Well, that's the central motivation behind my drive for ranked choice voting. It gets rid of evil-vs-lesser-evil, and doing it with ballot initiatives lets the people flex their muscle in one of the most powerful ways we can.
In the 2024 election, genocide was on both big tickets, so it gets really hair-splitty to call one "lesser evil". That is *exactly* what I was speaking to (sarcastically) when I was talking about the number of dead in Gaza. You *can't* rank genocides by quantity. Thus, on that one very hard-to-escape point, both tickets were equally evil.
And that's what we have to ask. At what point do we start accepting genocide as the cost of doing business? I hope we get to the point where the answer is "freaking NEVER." The question of the 2024 elections was "do I accept genocide to otherwise get the lesser evil?" I don't think people should have stayed home, but with everyone shouting at them that a third-party vote is a vote for MAGA, can you blame them for staying home?
For my part, I vote third party and call out "a vote for Stein was a vote for Trump" as the bullshit it is. But that's what people had to choose between if they just couldn't accept that they had to vote for the genocide either way. I'd rather have my vote tallied so the DNC can work the numbers and realize what supporting an actual atrocity cost them. Staying home is giving up.
Human suffering and the extermination of a people are not an acceptable price for my comfort.

2026-04-16 16:28:41 UTC

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No, I couldn't vote for someone who was complicit in the genocide. Wasn't a question of being right or wrong - I didn't have a choice. I wasn't going to stay home and not vote. I know a lot of other people tried to get Harris to move on this, and none of us were successful. And it cost her the job.
It's a truism, but "if you vote for the lesser evil, you've still voted for evil."
The only vote I regret was when I voted in a Republican primary a few years ago, to vote against a really bad candidate by supporting a mildly-less-bad candidate. I felt dirty coming out of that polling station. Never voted in an R primary before, never will again.

2026-04-16 16:02:20 UTC

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That was why I marked it with a sarcasm content warning. No amount of that evil is acceptable. And we've got equivalent evil here - people in America being stuffed into concentration camps. Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and dozens of others murdered on the streets, and who knows how many more murdered or left to die from treatable illness in our concentration camps. Dark times.
The main thrust of my post was that a bunch of people didn't vote for Harris because of that one issue, including me. I called her campaign a number of times and said I wanted to vote for her, but the genocide was going to decide whether I could. I ended up voting for Stein again, because I like her platform, and she opposed the genocide in Gaza.
As further context, I didn't support Harris in 2020 despite her otherwise compelling platform because of her actions as a DA, when she sided with the Catholic Church against their childhood sexual assault victims. So for folks saying "you're only willing to vote for a perfect candidate" I was willing to overlook *that* to put her in office. She maintained the one stance that took my choice away from me, and now the DNC appears to have acknowledged that that was why she didn't win. (I don't believe the argument that people didn't vote for her because she was black and a woman. I'd be absolutely tickled pink to vote for Nina Turner. I really hoped we'd see a Sanders/Turner ticket a few years ago, with Sanders staying a term or two and then Turner running for President after having been VP for eight years.)
This all brings us to the question of, "What the Hell do we do, then?" I don't believe violent revolution will do ANYTHING good. What I think we need is to push ballot initiatives, which can sometimes sidestep the legislature, and force in ranked choice voting. And I think we can sell it to right-wingers, as it benefits everyone - you can rank your exact flavour of MAGA first if that's your thing, rather than being force-fed a candidate. If we can get more RCV everywhere - through ballot initiatives, since both red and blue say RCV burns like fire - then we'll see candidates start trying to appeal to the people, rather than appealing to the extremes. We'll have a better chance to get campaign finance reform rolling.
It's the best hope I see for getting out of this, and it won't be easy. It'll involve convincing our neighbors that this will be good for them, and frankly the evil puppets at the top - Trump, Hegseth, Pelosi, whatver - are not the main problem. Apathy and hopelessness and a lack of being offered palatable choices breeds cynicism and extremism, or makes people think their vote doesn't matter. We need to do the hard thing and engage all the voters. All of them. And we can't do it with "more of the same". Hard to do, but I don't see anything else helping long-term.

2026-04-16 15:11:43 UTC

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I don't get why so many people wouldn't back down on genocide as their red line. I mean, the head count was nowhere near how many innocents died in the Holocaust, and that was small compared to the death toll in Congo. (I mean, the official Gaza death toll. Credible sources measure it at hundreds of thousands.) But is that even a genocide? I mean, yeah, it is, but it's okay if it's just a little genocide, isn't it?
I bet all the bleeding hearts were swayed by all the video coming out of Gaza. True, we didn't see inside the Nazi concentration camps until we broke them open, so it was probably unnerving seeing so many children dismembered and suffering in realtime in Gaza. And, well, all those bombs were blue, because Biden sent them. But still, if all it took was a candidate who committed to not funding a genocide, couldn't they have hopped down from their privileged ivory towers, held their noses, and voted for just a few little bombs? Plus, maybe Harris didn't really mean it when she said she supported Biden's policies with regard to Israel. Didn't they think of THAT?
I just don't get these people who went to the polling booths and voted for a third-party candidate who didn't have a repugnant platform. Didn't they realize they were throwing away their votes in a system where incremental change is best achieved by supporting corporatist candidates? No one ever became President without that sweet, sweet corporate money.
(Don't even mention AOC or Mamdani. Anyway, they have ranked choice voting down there. Hardly seems American.)

2026-04-11 04:30:48 UTC

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This struck me as an unusual observation given how malleable Linux-like operating systems are. Anything that's there by default is more a suggestion than anything.
Clearing /tmp still seems like a moral imperative to me, which suggests that I use traditional filesystems. Or... Traditional-ish anyway. Mostly ZFS nowadays. But I'm not sure what the default is on anything I use...
What's the context of the question, out of curiosity?

2026-04-06 00:58:43 UTC

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viper-mode? evil?

2026-03-29 17:35:40 UTC

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vi in OpenBSD *is* nvi, I thought. It's hard to imagine them digging up Joy's code and including it for fun.
But of course if they've done something interesting there, I'd love to know about it.

2026-03-23 18:08:28 UTC

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Where are the markets getting food when so much farmland has been maliciously destroyed? I've seen videos of concrete being poured into wells. I'm glad there are souces of food, but it can't be enough.
As many are, I'm very distressed by all of this. I'm hoping the Sumud Flotilla can raise awareness. I'm not sure if they'll actually get food in - I hope they do.
It seems like sources of news have dried up. Even Al Jazeera has stopped covering Gaza, but I can't imagine the blockage on fishing has lifted, and all I hear from the big organizations is that they're being locked out, with tons of food rotting at the borders. Such horrible malice...
If we can help individuals that's unambiguously good. I'm just writhing with frustration that there isn't more being done, and moreso WHY there isn't more being done.

2026-03-23 16:05:16 UTC

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How are they getting food? Where are they buying it? As heartbreaking as it is for them individually, I've always felt like it helps more people if I support the UNRWA, the World Food Programme, and similar - people working to get resources in for everyone.
I'm thinking about the people who can't get Internet access and who don't have access to the modern banking infrastructure. I want to help everyone, not just a few. So yes, we need to give, and to support more than just a few organizations, but we need to help at scale.
This feels like giving a food bank a can of food as opposed to giving them money they can use for efficient bulk purchases.
It's also important to address medical needs, so that's Doctor's Without Borders and the Middle-East Children's Alliance and similar.
It shames me that my country is co-owner of the genocide.

2026-03-23 00:03:21 UTC

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Was he arrested for that? If not, why not?

2026-03-22 23:59:51 UTC

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Do you have a way to control the level of magnification?

2026-03-22 22:13:41 UTC

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Oh, nice. Thank you very much for the link. My wife teaches so I'll share it with her.
I'm glad it's working out well for you. :)
EDIT: A question... Are the controls physical, or are these functions that require software that might be less accessible on a Linux system? I haven't watched the video yet but I'm snagging that now.

2026-03-22 21:51:48 UTC

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This might seem picky, but I've been boycotting Amazon for a decade now - could I trouble you for a brand and model number? This might be something the kids can use for school, especially if it works with VLC.
Thank you in advance!

2026-03-22 21:24:16 UTC

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Does it work with free software - a BSD or Linux? If so, what do you use? Can VLC feed it?

2026-03-06 06:47:19 UTC

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Are those boosts? They'll reflect when people boosted them.

2026-03-01 01:54:59 UTC

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That's a significant win. Thank you.

2026-02-14 18:32:27 UTC

I've listened to Dr. Michael Osterholm talking about ethics like this a number of times, via his podcast.
Our government isn't concerned with ethics.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/who-slams-us-funded-newborn-vaccine-trial-as-unethical/
#ethics #vaccines #publichealth

2026-02-10 14:40:50 UTC

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It's deeply focused, engaged in some form of interpretive dance.

2026-01-31 23:21:20 UTC

I just heard that a bill to criminalize Plan B is going to the Indiana governor for a signature. Anyone know anything about this?
#abortion #indiana #planb

2026-01-31 18:31:20 UTC

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Some of these are in my sometimes-benighted region.

2026-01-08 03:06:35 UTC

There are folks who'll tell you not to isolate, that masks are a good idea but optional and you should balance the social stigma against the protection.
There are other folks who will cite reputable sources showing that we're losing over 100,000 per year to COVID, and that it's hitting those over 65 really hard.
I'm one of those other folks, and here's the promised reputable source:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-continues-exact-heavy-toll-older-us-adults-study-suggests
#covid #covid19

2026-01-05 20:55:53 UTC

Just saw this. Fascism in action. Jessica Plichta, with Grand Rapids Opponents of War, arraested while being interviewed.
A couple articles discussing this:
https://thedailybs.com/2026/01/05/police-photo-bombed-maduro-supporting-activists-news-hit-by-arresting-her-as-cameras-rolled/
https://www.alternet.org/police-arrest-protester-venezuela/
#fascism #freespeech
https://partychickens.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/844/469/235/373/478/original/694fa1338e45b596.mp4

2026-01-02 21:11:00 UTC

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Good video. I learned more about Linux running Slackware than I would have guessed going into it. My only quibble is that it's painful and non-obvious building a minimal system, and once you've built it, maintaining it is equally non-obvious.
Maybe I've missed this, and if you have an answer, please tell me, but there's no connection between tagfiles and slackpkg. If you don't want "slackpkg install-new" to undo your carefully crafted tagfiles, the only thing I've come up with us converting them a blacklist file.
Having a full install isn't a problem for a single server, say, but if you want lightweight system containers, fourteen gigs a pop starts to add up.
Ideas welcome. I'm sure I'm far, far from the only person to muse about this in Slackware's long history. I've considered patching in support for tagfiles into slackpkg, but I'm curious what other folks think and/or do.

2025-12-31 18:40:33 UTC

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This is why I only ever use GPT labels for everything.
FreeBSD: /dev/gpt/foo
Lignux: /dev/disk/by-partlabel/foo

2025-12-30 17:14:39 UTC

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The wind is still going strong. It's power is daunting. The house creaks with it and I am made keenly aware of all the tall trees surrounding us.

2025-12-29 19:10:10 UTC

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Did you install with 'yum --installroot' from a rescue session? If some other way, I'm curious what it was.
As you note, Red Hat doesn't support this, but if you ever find yourself stuck, make a noise. :P

2025-12-08 05:52:21 UTC

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If you want more excitement, read about his handling of whistleblowers.
We could have had Nader. Sigh.

2025-12-08 03:38:20 UTC

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You should really have included some references to back up that outrageous statement about how many bombs Obama dropped.
Since you didn't, I'll do it:
https://medium.com/@arif94ismaizam/obamas-war-the-president-who-dropped-the-most-bombs-9452414d1089
From that, we learn that he started off with a bang:
"Barack Obama was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009. And by the end of his presidency in 2016, Obama would become the president that dropped the most bombs on the Middle East than any other president past and present."
"His first bomb dropped on the Middle East just three days after his inauguration. Swinging the same neoconservative hammer on countries deemed to be a ‘threat to democracy,’ Obama doubled down on Bush’s foreign policy and began his airstrike campaign."
I'd have thought that bombing someone would have disqualified him from receiving that year's peace prize, but what do I know?
This is notable too:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/24/obama-26000-bombs-2017/

2025-11-30 20:07:09 UTC

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Do most people have toasters that draw current when off? Mine is old and mechanical.

2025-11-08 00:14:14 UTC

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Maybe be careful about your dog nosing around where the racoon was resting, as whatever the racoon had - and it seems like it had something - could well be saturating that bit of ground. I'd probably want to hit it with some kind of disinfectant.

2025-11-04 00:42:27 UTC

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I just read the thread. I've encountered a lot of that. People believe that Gandhi couldn't have freed India without other people being violent.
Advocating for the devil a bit, I don't think the No Kings protests have had a significant effect. I think we need to appeal to people's better nature and get them to force their reps to change course. And we need to find more ways to resist. But this doesn't mean employing violence.
How do we teach empathy?
Anyway, I wouldn't be concerned about that block. The fellow is mostly serial-reposting things, and the original stuff he writes seems pretty negative.

2025-11-03 16:48:56 UTC

I was reminded of this classic this morning. My numbers have been good for a few years now. It's possible to get diabeetus under control.
#diabetes #diabeetus
https://partychickens.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/486/773/475/945/185/original/2419a7f1e0786a35.mp4

2025-11-02 03:53:20 UTC

"Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/amazon-datacentres-water-use-disclosure
#amazon #llm #climate #polycrisis

2025-10-30 03:16:16 UTC

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He needs to rewatch Wargames.

2025-10-13 17:28:10 UTC

@npub153c…2tew I just went to a doctor's office today, and I got the usual question, "Why are you wearing a mask?" I reply, I asked, "Knowing the cognitive and cardiovascular impact of COVID, why aren't you wearing a mask?"
I got a couple answers from the same person, including "we were trained how not to get sick" which I assume means how to not breathe, and "it's just another flu" which is always baffling coming from a doctor.
#covid #maskup

2025-10-11 16:16:11 UTC

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The CalyxOS folks don't want you to know why they're recommending that you uninstall #CalyxOS from your phone.

2025-10-09 05:20:36 UTC

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It's lovely, but I couldn't ignore all the coughing from the audience, and I can't imagine the audience was masked. I searched and didn't see the choir publishing a mask policy for audiences. Makes me a bit sad thinking of the damage these kids are suffering from repeated COVID infections.

2025-10-04 23:28:03 UTC

"A group of scientists and other experts who formerly worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently launched Climate.us, where they eventually hope to replicate much of the public-oriented climate content from Climate.gov."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/climate-scientists-protest-trump-censorship-government-websites/
#climate #science #globalwarming

2025-09-28 01:18:22 UTC

We watched "Cat's Paw" tonight and the kids noticed the theme music changing. Less orchestral, now with vocals. (It's also the episode that introduces Chekov.)
Reading about the changes, I encountered this:
"Without Courage's knowledge, Roddenberry wrote amateurish lyrics to the theme – not in the expectation that they would ever be sung, or indeed ever be made publicly available, but so that he could be officially registered as the lyricist of the theme and hence claim half the performance royalties. Although there was never any litigation, Courage stated that he considered the conduct unethical."
That's really pretty disreputable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_from_Star_Trek
#startrek #ethics

2025-09-26 13:52:05 UTC

If Edith Keeler had lived, we wouldn't be in this predicament.
#startrek

2025-09-17 02:10:12 UTC

NetBSD really is everywhere:
"Its extensive use in spacecraft, including the AeroCube series, BRICSat-P, ITSAT, and NASA's SAMPEX satellite, highlights the OS's exceptional capabilities in meeting the rigorous demands of space missions."
https://machaddr.substack.com/p/why-some-satellites-use-netbsd
(Apologies for linking SubStack again. Public service announcement - please don't use SubStack! They monetize actual Nazis.)
#netbsd #bsd

2025-09-08 14:39:38 UTC

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If they don't want to get the organs from their own people, they could always ask Israel for a Palestinian organs, although the starvation might make them less desirable lately.
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5982/Int%E2%80%99l-committee-must-investigate-Israel%E2%80%99s-holding-of-dead-bodies-in-Gaza%E2%80%8B
#genocide #polycrisis

2025-09-01 20:57:12 UTC

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No one has a kid so that their last perception will be from that of a severed head. No one who is beheaded learns to regret whatever they did. Imprisonment at least holds out the hope of rehabilitation, not that the prisons we've got today are even minimally acceptable.
If we're not going to eat them, then we at least need to humanely lock them away and try to teach them empathy.

2025-08-25 16:50:01 UTC

We have to attack the environmental apocalypse and polycrisis on so many fronts... But here's a good move:
"New EU rules for durable, energy-efficient and repairable smartphones and tablets start applying"
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules-durable-energy-efficient-and-repairable-smartphones-and-tablets-start-applying-2025-06-20_en
#polycrisis #climate

2025-08-24 01:58:21 UTC

Google's deceptive greenwashing exposed.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/22/googles_gemini_water/
#globalwarming #climate #polycrisis

2025-08-19 03:04:03 UTC

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He's going to try it. And he's going to fail.

2025-08-18 18:34:11 UTC

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I like the notion of "climate hawks". Thanks for sharing this.

2025-07-31 12:35:25 UTC

I wonder how many more children have to die before the world starts taking measures that will force Israel to stop.
"Former EU ambassadors warn: Europe’s silence on Gaza is complicity - In an open letter, 58 former EU envoys urge the bloc to end arms exports, sanction Israel, and act to stop what they call atrocity crimes."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/7/31/former-eu-ambassadors-warn-europes-silence-on-gaza-is-complicity
#Gaza #genocide #eu

2025-07-25 13:16:19 UTC

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By that logic, the people of the US like concentration camps. You interviewed their equivalent of a MAGAt and she wanted you to believe that they're all MAGAts.
Meanwhile, over the last week I've seen videos of Israeli kids burning their draft papers (and being jailed for it) and I've read a letter from a couple thousand Israeli academics condemning what they recognize as a genocide. Oh, and don't forget Neturei Karta members being beaten in the streets as they protest the genocide. Last year I was following an Israeli fellow whose group was defending trucks carrying food from Zionist settlers at the Gaza border.
There are people there who care about what's happening just as much as we do and who are working against the genocide more directly than we can. I'm not much concerned about percentages there for the same reason I'd argue that we're not all MAGAts here.

2025-07-24 15:25:14 UTC

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Easy answer: boycott Google. Don't use their search engine. Don't use their tools. Don't use their platforms. Use CalyxOS or one of the other de-Googled phone OSes. Encourage others to do the same.

2025-07-20 01:47:02 UTC

Repost from Hani Almadhoun, Senior Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA, on LinkedIn:
My dad shared this story with me today, and I haven’t been able to shake it.
A woman in one of the makeshift camps was seen running from tent to tent, frantic and out of breath. Her husband had slipped into a diabetic coma. She knew what he needed — just something sweet — a spoonful of sugar, a bite of halva, anything. But the war has emptied even the smallest comforts from Gaza’s cupboards.
No one had sugar. No halva. No dates. Nothing.
Even if someone did have sugar, it now costs nearly five dollars a spoonful — a price no one in that camp could afford. Not for a dying man. Not even for a child.
She returned to her tent empty-handed.
Her husband — a man in his late fifties — was gone.
Just like that.
Not from a missile or a bullet. But from something entirely treatable — if only they hadn’t starved Gaza of everything.
Who is responsible for this death?
Israel is.
And here's the grim reality behind the slushies we handed out to children three days ago: they were sweetened with cough syrup. Because that’s the only sugar we could find. A kilo of sugar now costs $100. People are draining the syrup from canned pineapples just to sweeten their tea.
This is what it means to be under blockade and siege — where even sugar is out of reach, and dying from a diabetic coma becomes part of daily life.
#gaza #warcrimes
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hanifundraiser_my-dad-shared-this-story-with-me-today-activity-7350628795113971712-Mkf6

2025-07-07 14:09:03 UTC

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I've heard both those things, but those safety officials aren't NWS staff. The situation is abominable, but everything I'm finding suggests that NWS did its job here. They won't be able to do their job effectively in the future, which is also well-documented.
It's hard to not relate this tragedy to the 2021 cold-related deaths, and I've seen people bringing up Uvalde as another recent failure of local government there.
From what I see, I fear FEMA cuts are going to ultimately be more dangerous for Texas.

2025-07-06 16:04:41 UTC

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This notes that the emergency alerts went out three hours in advance. The NWS cuts put us at risk, but they don't seem to be at the heart of what happened in Texas. If there's more detailed data I'd like to learn more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/doge-nws-cuts-texas-flood-b2783357.html

2025-07-06 16:04:08 UTC

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2025-05-22 06:16:04 UTC

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1984 talks about that - control of history is control of reality. And it also had the violent suppression.