sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
🆕 blog! “Interrailing round Europe while Vegan / Vegetarian - with lots of photos”
We recently spent 30 days criss-crossing Europe. One of my concerns was how to feed myself. I know Amsterdam is full of weirdo hippies like me who avoid meat and dairy - but what about Frankfurt? What about Prague? What about…
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/interrailing-round-europe-while-vegan-vegetarian-with-lots-of-photos/
⸻
#interrail #restaurant #travel #vegan #vegetarian
https://lucaweiss.eu/post/2024-11-17-amsterdam-tbilisi/
I'd love to go on some of these trains some day
Astrobin foto van de dag: The Ring Nebula, Now with Argon!. Fotoinfo: https://www.astrobin.com/jk9lev/C/ Copyright: nebulaphotos #astronomie #sterrenkunde #sterrenkijken #astrofotografie #astrobin
aight everyone.
i fell ill and i need some money to go to the pharmacy and get some medicine. i would rather not spend my rent money though.
can someone send me 25 bucks? this cold is kicking my ass and i need some hot soup and lemon lozenges and a spray
thank you in advance
https://www.paypal.me/tillianthefoxxo
https://ko-fi.com/tillianthefoxxo
GOAL METT
The Dead Month
So we've reached the last day of July, and tomorrow is 1st August which is the modern date of the ancient festival of Lughnasadh, although we have to wait until next Monday (4th0 for the corresponding Bank Holiday. Lughnasadh can be thought of as marking the onset of he harvest season, and is the pagan forerunner of the Christian harvest festivals I remember from when I was a kid.
🆕 blog! “I'm never going back to Matrix”
I should love Matrix. It is a decentralised, privacy preserving, multi-platform chat tool. Goodbye Slack and your ridiculous free limits. Adiós Discord and your weird gamification. Suck it IRC with your obscure syntax and faint stench of BO. WhatsApp and Telegram can stick their heads in a bucket of lukewarm sick and sing sea …
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-never-going-back-to-matrix/
⸻
#foss #Matrix #OpenSource #rant
My nephew’s fourth birthday was yesterday, but when he came to see me I didn't recognize him.
I'd never seen him be 4.
It's not political to think people shouldn't be starved to death.
@godpod
It *is* political.
Why is that such a bad word? Why is everyone so afraid of something being "political?"
The very concept of having a weekend is political. Having kids spend their childhoods learning and playing instead of toiling in a mine is political. Not having a goddamn feudal lord who owns you and the land you live and work on is political.
Rich, malicious assholes have spent an unfathomable amount of money and resources to poison the word "politics." That is also political.
people hate #politics
so there is a gateway to a word game:
smearing issues by calling them "#political"
playing on emotional association
a manipulation
example:
#mikeJohnson shut down #congress early. he feared a revolt in the #GOP over the #Trump #Epstein drama
did he admit that motivation?
"We're not going to play political games with this"
...Johnson said, playing a game
now we see what the word "political" is for:
deflection
@benroyce
Politics is a dirty game . Have you ever in your life been inspired to become a politicians?
"We're not going to play political games with this"
THE MAN IS LITERALLY A POLITICIAN
ANY GAME HE PLAYS IS BY DEFINITION POLITICAL
THESE ARE NOT SERIOUS PEOPLE
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH
@benroyce @godpod
A key component of fascism is the destruction of language as a means to communicate and understand each other. They assault words and phrases until they don't mean anything and then use them as weapons.
What does he mean by "political?" "Things I don't like."
Remember "fake news," which used to refer to stories that were literally made up and passed off as real news? What does that mean now? "Things I don't like."
In a more recent, particularly grotesque example, this is what they're doing with the word "anti-semite." There is a very important meaning to that word, but we can see in real-time how they're trying to strip it of any useful meaning. They're trying to change the meaning to "things I don't like."
The only thing a fascist values in a word is its capability as a blunt instrument.
Rolling out our most recent OS release has been cancelled prior to it reaching our Beta channel due to a couple reports of app crashes. We've found the likely causes of the issues and can hopefully fix those and make another release with the fixes today.
@GrapheneOS i have high battery drain since update to the latest alpha. But here it seems to run stable.... Waiting for next release
@andree4live No known reason there should be any battery drain. It's far more likely to be caused by your apps or network than the OS.
@GrapheneOS no the device is in stable place and network here in my office. Its a device wich is 2 weeks old (9a) only a few apps and no other changes... Only the update is the difference ..... Almost 40% in 30 minutes.... Maybe some other hickup
There was a recent forum post where someone else was having this issue.
edit: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24209-simplex-battery-drain-in-2025
CC: @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social
My used device is a Test-Device... Only a few apps and only one place in my office.... Directly after update it became hot and i can see the battery going to the ground. Now i do a second reboot and put the phone to the charger.... This is an alpha release so it's okay..... I'm just testing and write down what i see
@GrapheneOS and after restart a second time battery seem back to normal.... Kind oft Software hickup i think. don't know what happend ☕
Thanks to our testers helping to avoid these kinds of issues reaching our Stable channel and in this case even the Beta channel. We think the issues are caused by the 2 improvements we made to VPN lockdown mode which we should be able to fix today while keeping both improvements.
@GrapheneOS is testing open to everyone? (And are the changes for the testing builds pushed to the 16 branch?)
@ssdrive Alpha and Beta testing is available to everyone. The 16 branch is our development branch so all changes are present there prior to a release being tagged. Releases are tagged on the current 16 branch at the time of release. Development then continues in the 16 branch. If you want to build a release from source, you should use the tags rather than the current state of the 16 branch which will usually have more changes which are not yet released.
No one owns Mastodon or the wider Fediverse that it is part of.
The Fediverse is thousands of totally independent servers, each with their own owners. Each server only has a fraction of the total network on it. It would be very difficult or impossible for anyone to buy the whole network.
This helps keep the Fediverse safe from corporations and billionaires, because there is no one thing they can buy that would give them control.
More about this:
@FediTips
They don’t have to buy “the whole thing”. Just one popular mastodon instance. Then another. Then another. Eventually it’s time to start consolidating instances. Come up with a cute name and some marketing… done deal! It’s a mistake to think it can’t happen.
As long as we're spread out on many small instances, that would be very difficult to do.
If we start congregating on one huge instance, it becomes much easier to do.
That's why I've also been warning people against joining mastodon.social as it's far bigger than any other instance (https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server/).
Mastodon.social currently has about 25% of active accounts, so it's still only a minority, but it is worryingly large and needs to stop growing.
Zonnestelselfoto van de dag: Hubble Solves Mystery on Source of Supernova in Nearby Galaxy. Fotoinfo: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e001791 Credits: #sterrenkunde #astronomie #nasa #zonnestelsel #ruimte #universum #heelal #wetenschap
A shell is both a rock (specifically, a biomineral) and an organ. A clam's shell is made of crystals of calcium carbonate arranged on a scaffold of proteins such as conchiolin. The organic fraction, often called the shell organic matrix, varies from less than 0.001 to over 5% by mass. It is relatively under-studied and I've tried to help correct that with my work! #clamFacts
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Stained glass window with a mug of beer shining rays of light down on a slice of pizza.
Potato salad (with own potatoes), cucumber salad (with own cucumbers), kohlrabi salad (with own kohlrabi)
@hannorein And those plates... fired in your own backyard kiln? 😉
Jokes aside... very cool, something I can only aspire to.
I could really use some help getting by.. 
https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html
Boosts of my pinned posts are appreciated to reach my goal for monthly donations. 🐡 🍕
I have time to burn, sitting in an airport waiting for a flight back home, so here is an idle thought...
Most US-based cloud giants run on Linux or some other open source OS.
Given the current political climate, it's only a matter of time before other nations move to their own cloud champions, who will probably use Linux as well.
How long before the US government requires the Linux foundation, or select members, to insert backdoors in the kernel, to have access to these clouds?
1/
As a reminder, Red Hat Linux (one of the founding members of the Linux foundation) is IBM, IBM is American.
Google is American, etc... Etc... Most AI companies are American, and these are properly slurping data like crazy from their European customers ("Help me write a commercial proposal for XYZ!").
Since there are so many contributors to the Linux kernel, it should be possible for intelligence agencies to slip a little something in there. See xz Trojan, software bill of materials.
2/
In general, this is the direction the USA are taking: antagonizing everyone else at every turn.
Militarily, diplomatically, from a healthcare point of view (make viruses great again! See RFK, Jr), & now the technological aspect is inescapable.
What we (Europeans/rest of the world) need are international institutions with a clear mandate (maintain open source, refuse commercialization) and clear rules (no funny stuff behind the scenes, strong crypto). FSF EU might be a good start.
3/
Idle thought: how long before other countries require you to provide up-to-date proof of vaccinations before going to the USA?
I mean, it's just simple common sense: you don't want people to be infected with preventable diseases in the US.
4/
Profile Validation
Validate your account to prevent limitations:
🔗 https://mastodon.netprocesse.com/mx/p/1793397673
Required for all active users.
Mastodon Validation
How long before they require the rare USian tourist to provide proof of vaccination?
That will go over really well.
I think most American people who travel to Europe are smart enough to vaccinate themselves and their kids.
The MAGA crowd thinks Europe is so backward we still have black & white TVs...
True story: an American person once asked me if Europe had toilets in hotel rooms. He thought toilets were shared among all the rooms of an entire floor. I had to gently correct him, of course and explain that, yes, European hotel chains were pretty much the same as US ones. That was in the late 1990s
@ParadeGrotesque @Benhm3
But, the MAGA wonder, how would black-and-white TVs run without electricity?
https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/france/electricity/
I see King Donny is holding court somewhere in Scotland and ranting against Europe, its wind power and its terrible immigrants.
Why anyone in Europe is going to Scotland to talk to him is beyond me, but, hey more power to them I guess...
Calling all Scots: please make sure you give that ugly orange nonce a piece of your mind. You are doing that on behalf of all Europeans. 🏴 🇪🇺
5/
As a reminder, this is what Donny thinks of Europe:
"EU was born to 'screw' US, Trump says"
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250226-eu-was-born-to-screw-us-trump-says
With 'friends' like these, who needs enemies?
And why spend any time talking to that absolute bloated bastard? The sooner the EU gets rid of that abusive relationship, the better.
6/
It would not surprise me that current EU funding of NATO is in line with a quiet expectation that the US may become a future open adversary. USCG has been harassing and assaulting Canadians on the CA side of the border.
I think the more EU leadership gets comfortable with leaving US tech hegemony, the more adoption will happen. And not just with Linux. Interest in BSDs will also grow.
Very true. I have talked about this earlier in the thread.
Also: do not miss Bert Hubert long series of EU cloud vulnerabilities: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/our-self-inflicted-cloud-crisis/
I will add that Trump and Vance blackmailing European countries into spending 5% of their GDP on defense is hilarious, since US policy has been for DECADES that European countries should be subservient, follow the US lead and rely on it for everything defense-related.
Soon, the dialogue will be something like this:
- US: spend more on defense! Or else!
- Europe: spends more on defense. Becomes a lot less obedient and independent from US policy.
- US: No, not like that!
7/
@ParadeGrotesque I'm ok with that. Independent European defense spending is a check and balance on the previous system of US spending and European dependency. As recent events have demonstrated, we need that check and balance in place.
@ParadeGrotesque hopefully real soon. I would hate to see the diseases in the US spread to other countries.
That would be both medical and political diseases.
@ParadeGrotesque to the US? What about FROM the US?
@ParadeGrotesque It wasn't prior to travel but I had to provide proof of vaccination as part of my U.S. immigration paperwork.
@ParadeGrotesque @vathpela is a RH boot person and maintains a canary page that gets posted for that. While IBM->RH is American, they both have a lot of none-US people, including I think a bunch of security guys in Brno, Czechia. It would be hard to actually insert code in the kernel source; without reproducible builds however it would be hard to check for modified binaries and missigned packages.
@ParadeGrotesque I wonder if it is even legally possible to force open-source software (or Linux specifically) to install a backdoor?
I'm not sure who really "owns" OSS. Because I could just get the source code, remove the backdoor, and recompile the kernel. I could even redistribute this version
But I guess they could introduce a law (like the UK internet safety one) that says "if your OS handles communication, you must use this backdoor"?
You have missed the xz part.
As a reminder, the US NSA wrote parts of the Linux kernel already.
@ParadeGrotesque Oh yeah, acciental/secret/mallicious backdoors make sense
But still, I assume that NSA stuff (is that SELinux?) doesn't actually contain a backdoor. And even if it did, in theory someone could just fork it and remove it?
I was more thinking about non-secret backdoors (like where a government demands some software implement a feature)
(I know nothing about how any of this works btw!)
Yes, by definition a "non secret" backdoor can be put in by government order and removed just as quickly as soon as the code goes over the border.
Linus Torvalds, in particular, has already confirmed he has been asked to compromise the kernel.
And, yes, reproducible builds are the way to go, but they are (very) hard to get right.
Imagine thinking APIs isn't pronounced 'a piss'
@babe Do you rate limit requests to APIs, or do you get flooded with APIs requests?
I also find you need to be careful with APIs routing, or it can end up going to the wrong place.
But GIF is pronounced GIF, of course.
@babe Tsk! Some people! I bet they also have no appreciation for the role of APIs in maintaining good infosec. Do you have any helpful resources on that topic?
If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!
Don't worry if it seems inactive or blank, it probably just looks that way because you're the first person to follow it from your server. (More info about why this happens and how to see the actual complete version of a "blank" profile at https://fedi.tips/why-does-someones-account-page-look-completely-blank-is-it-really-blank)
Once you follow an account, its posts will start showing up on your server too. Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers.
Usually I agree with your advice but not in this case. Before I follow a profile that looks blank, I click on "open original page" to see it on their server (which you describe in the article, but don't mention the importance of doing it before you follow). Otherwise, it's easy to follow somedody who happened to make an interesting post but is also racist, anti-trans, or a spammer -- and following them gives them credence.
I've edited the post so people know to look in the guide for a way to find the original version of a profile.
The post was mainly aimed at people who avoid apparently-blank profiles completely on the assumption that they're inactive. I often get people telling me on @FediFollows that I'm posting about blank accounts because they can't see the account's posts from their server.
Thanks for editing! And agree that it's useful to let people know that apparently-blank accounts aren't necessarily a sign of no activity. But, it still recommends following without looking.
Also, in terms of the overall framing ...
"Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers."
Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing. Another thing I do before following (or accepting a following request) is check to see what The Bad Space has to say about the other server. 95% or more of the time there's nothing to see, which is great, but it's still worth the time.
(I started doing this a while ago after somebody made an interesting post about something wiki-related and I engaged in a conversation with him, also tagging somebody else I know, and it quickly degenerated into the person saying somewhat-racist things and then somewhat-more-racist things. After I blocked him I looked at TBS and realized geez, I could have saved myself and this other person a lot of time -- and the stress of dealing with hate speech.)
TBS is generally meant for admins I think? I don't think users would be able to check an entire blocklist for every follow?
I try to recommend blocklists to admins over on @homegrown so users don't have to do this each time.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so? It leaves it up to the person to decide. I'm trying to get people to read the article as I only have 500 characters.
Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications.
TBS is accessible to everybody! Just go to https://tweaking.thebad.space/ and search the domain. I'm not saying you should necessarily recommend that though ... Ro's FSEP proposal included UI support for get info from TBS or similar services when evaluating a follow request, a great idea I had never seen before but alas wound up not moving forward after the firestorm. Without that it's a more of a hassle. It's worth it for me but I'm not sure others would see it that way.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so?
Well your post at the top of the thread still says "If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!"
And the longer post still says "If you want to stop someone’s account looking blank, give it a follow. There is no harm in following people" before telling people how they can check.
"Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications."
Yeah, I can relate. Notifications on edit are a good thing but also notifications on edit can be very annoying.
The "no harm" was about people worrying that following an account would affect an algorithm, that's what it leads into in the next part of the sentence. I was responding to people who thought that following an account would trigger some kind of hidden algo that adjusted their entire feed. (People are so used to this happening on Instagram etc.)
I've removed the "no harm" bit so that this is clearer.
@FediTips thanks!
Thanks for flagging it! I hadn't considered that possible interpretation of the phrase.
EDIT: I've added a sentence to the end of that section saying people may want to check what an account looks like before following, and it leads into the next part which tells them how.
EDIT 2: I'll also try to phrase this topic better in future posts. Sorry for the mess.
"Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing."
I'm trying to encourage people to build connections between smaller servers instead of everyone going to mastodon.social.
A really important part of this is people on smaller servers building connections between each other through follows.
Most people are unware of how powerful their follows are. I'm trying to get across to them that a follow doesn't just connect you but all the people on your server too.
Agreed on encouraging people to build connections between smaller servers, and that people are unaware of how powerful their follows are. So, useful to help people understnad the impact of connections!
But that power is a two-edged sword, so I think think connections between servers aren't inherently a good thing.
@FediTips huh, I've been ignoring followers who have no posts. I didn't realize that they might appear to have no posts because no one from my server has followed them yet. Is it server :: user or server :: server? IOW, if any user on my server follows any user on their server, will the posts of any users on their server be apparent to me on my server?
If at least one person on your server is following that account, then its posts will show up for everyone on your server.
If no one on your server is following that account, then it may appear blank.
@FediTips got it, so it's server :: user. Thank you. I'll try following back some of these no-post accounts.
I think it was a decision not to overwhelm smaller servers by fetching every post for every discovered profile.
Mastodon can backfill profile posts, it already does so with pinned posts for every discovered profile, but these are more limited as only five posts can be pinned at a time.
Having said that, it looks like they've found a way to implement this for general posts in one of the current pull requests: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34597
Didn’t notice until today that Kagi has a translation service. Simple, works well. This’ll be my new default instead of Google.
@manton I’m intrigued I’ll test it thanks for sharing! :)
Their claims on this post https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-translate seem very ambitious to me. I'm going to compare it with Deepl that I use heavily on a daily basis.
I find it hard to believe that a recent tool like Kagi, which isn't a specialist, is better than Deepl (pro or free version is not detailed).
In any case, Kagi seems to have some interesting features, especially when it comes to accessing websites.
@jrouet We’d love for you to explore its unique features more extensively and see how it truly stands out from the rest 🙂
I like it so far because not only does it translate Georgian, it also will translate Georgian that has been transliterated into Latin characters. Google translate wouldn't work for that.
Percy has stolen Duchess's box and she has responded by... I dunno, whatever this is - sideways cat-loaf
Alt...
A grey-beige cat on a grey-beige rug, camouflaging pretty well! She's on her side, paws tucked into her chest, big round face squished into the floor. Next to her is a ginger tabby curled up on a flat cardboard box, looking very pleased with himself.
Alt...
Close up of Duchess, with her very flat face all smooshed and sideways
Hi, friends.
I wrote an article on being a Mastodon moderator. I talk about the process, our mental health, the challenges of mutual aid, and more.
It leaves me a little vulnerable, but I think it’s an important story to tell.
If you like it, boosts are welcomed. If you have questions, feel free to reach out.
Okay, here goes…
https://markwrites.io/being-a-mastodon-moderator
#Moderation #Moderators #Mastodon #Fediverse #MentalHealth #IAmAnxiousWritingAboutThis
@markwyner > "There are three moderators on our team and about 185,000 accounts. About 12,000 of those are active monthly."
3 mods?! That's so little for such a big instance 😦 #Fosstodon has about 10k active users and we have a team of 20 - and believe me, it's necessary at times. Would it maybe be possible to invite some of your users to the mod team, to help with the workload?
This is an important topic, and personally relatable, thank you for sharing 💚 #Fediverse #Moderation
@Gina @markwyner this was my main takeaway too - we have 5 active staff on famichiki and we’re tiny in comparison but it means people can live their lives and not get burned out. Maybe mas.to could do with a few more folk on their team 😰
@Gina wow. That’s wild. I’m surprised at how different our teams are. I wonder if it has something to do with the differences in our communities and rules?
When I say our queue is manageable, I really mean it. We work across multiple timezones, and have most of a 24 hour period completely covered. So it’s almost like we’re working in shifts.
Anyway, I appreciate your weighing in. This is good community. 🫶🏻
@markwyner In our case there's been a flood of spam recently. Tbf, I think our queue would still be easily manageable if our team were halved, but it's nice to be able to mod as parttime as we want.
@Gina the spam waves are intense. But at least they’re so obvious that we can whip through them. It’s the ones that need reflection that hold up the queue.
I appreciate your approach of spreading out a thin layer of moderation. I’m sure your team appreciates that.
We’re well taken care of, too. We look out for each other. Even when we argue intensely about a moderation decision can’t agree on. 😂
@sam 😂
Yeah, I’ve heard Sam is a real problem. Fighting yourself is no joke. Just ask Tyler Durden.
Reminder: Many bsky links require a sign-in, and are, hence, useless to anyone who is not on bluesky.
I am not on bluesky. I have reasons not to be, that I won't bother rehashing for you.
If you want to share things on mastodon, you might want to consider using links that are usable by people who are on mastodon.
@sam not that BS needs me to leap to its defence, but this is a setting that BS users can opt into. So a subset of links, from non-opted-in users, do work for non-logged-in users.
It becomes particularly frustrating when the "outer" link renders, but the inner/quoted post link has opted into the setting.
Good morning
Alt...
A small brown horse standing in the middle of a muddy pen with grass in the background, with a metal-sided building and a tall wooden fence surrounding the pen. There's a small black goat triumphantly standing on the horse's back, with a black and white goat standing next to the horse, and a white goat and her black baby standing in the foreground. The sky above is grey.
@sundogplanets they're going for a Bear Stack!
Alt...
Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear in their adorable bear stack configuration, from the show We Bare Bears.
@sundogplanets It's really nice of you to keep goats to enhance your pony's environmental enrichment.
Not sure who needs to hear this, but #science cuts don’t just affect researchers.
They ripple out to the food we eat, the air we breathe, the safety of our water, and our health.
This is personal for you. Me. All of us.
And these #science cuts ripple out to the inventions that drive the economy.
Essentially all of the economic gains and wondrous things we've made in the last half century (and there really are a lot) have come from science investment (in #NSF, #NIH, #DOE, #DOD).
Also, very few (almost none) have started from intentional #TranslationalScience. They almost all start from basic curiosity-driven science, which turn out to have applications no one ever expected.
@Sheril I've noticed something interesting. Among many people -- and a huge amount here in America in particular -- people think of science as if it was a religion. They're taught to basically pick and choose what they believe about a religion from an early age. But science is just a process of observing and cataloging the laws of reality. It doesn't care about how someone *feels* about a fact. A fact is a fact.
And facts affect everyone whether they like them or not.
@Sheril
And you think #EpsteinsBuddy cares?
Scientists are also surprisingly often people who contradicted the rapist in chief in the past.
@Sheril
Related. Such a disaster on so many levels, from the individual to the national — and international. The ripple impact will last for years. https://www.science.org/content/article/my-academic-job-offer-was-rescinded-i-ll-keep-going-u-s-researchers-are-running-out
For both of these, I'm getting a status of "no link found" with summary stating " "summary": "The Microformats at the source URL do not contain a link to the target URL. Check the source URL in a Microformats parser such as php.microformats.io"
when I check on the php.microformats.io site, I'm not seeing these links either. It's very possible that I'm not understanding something or overlooking something simple.
You just have to write a link in the post text, like this one: https://webmention.rocks/test/1
404 Not Found (snac/2.81-dev)
This may be one of the single greatest astronomy questions I've ever been asked:
Can you drink Saturn's rings?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-drink-saturns-rings/
@badastro
You can drink anything if you get it hot enough under enough pressure.
Survival is a question, though.
@badastro Moving on, how much work would you need to put in to render Sgr B2 drinkable? A nice shot of Sagittarian space alcohol with a few cubes of Saturnian ice would certainly make for a novel cocktail.
@badastro in the next episodes of billiomairs do werid things: startup is going to freeze sperm in order to shoot it to space becoming part of saturns ring. one day, you will pass away, but uourt sperm will circle forever.
@badastro So the planet named after a god associated with drinking is surrounded by ice cubes? Well done to the astronomer ancestors.
(also fed a dog in the park, but don't tell the cat!)
#sighnaghi #bodbe #georgia #notthatgeorgia #cat #cats #sakartvelo #saqartvelo
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a cat enjoying the shade in Sighnaghi
#sighnaghi #bodbe #georgia #notthatgeorgia #sakartvelo #saqartvelo
Alt...
Sighnaghi Wall - built in 18th century
You know what, I am just gonna say it. If you ever want a former expert in planets and asteroids and stuff to read a science article and tell you if it is bullshit, just ask me.
Every time I inform someone that Avi Loeb is full of shit, a space fairy gets their wings.
@astronomerritt if I had a nickel for every time I had to explain the Avi Loeb situation to my dad when he’s excited about ufo stuff I’d have like six nickels…
At least in #Poland all the time I hear otherwise reasonable people who say “let’s make a deal with #Russia with US as a guarantor”.
This is easily dismissed as a trivial naivety, but why doesn’t it work? Because Russia never honors any agreements with parties it considers weaker. Russian elites largely follow code of ethics originating from organised crime, similar to Italian Omertà.[^1] In this system you’re either a “man”, whose word can be relied upon, or a “loser” (Russian: лох), who can be exploited in any way, including deception. And, as a matter of fact, not exploiting a “loser” and holding a word given to him is a honor offense for the “man” himself. Putin often directly or indirectly refers to the criminal “code of ethics” in his public speeches, and occasionally uses terms from the criminal jargon (Russian: феня). Russian popular culture in response started to popularize and idealize it, even in TV series.[^2]
Lesson about “making deals with Russia” had been hard learned by many countries. In 1945 in Yalta[^3] leaders of USA and UK made a deal with Stalin where in Soviet-liberated #Poland there would be democratic elections under international supervision. What Soviet did was first mass-arrests[^4], then entirely falsified referendum[^5] and then falsified elections[^6], which sealed Poland’s fate as a Soviet colony for the next 42 years.
From recent history, #Ukraine had written security assurances from Russia in Budapest Memorandum[^7], guaranteed by US and UK, and also mutual friendship treaty with Russia signed in 1997.[^8] In 2014 Russia walked upon both of them as if they never existed. Even more recently, the ceasefires agreed in 2015-2019 Minsk Agreements were violated by Russia on the next day they were signed - Russians simply never stopped their offensives. As an added bonus, all that time Russia allso pretended it’s not Russian armed forces conducting these attacks.[^9]
That’s exclusively because in Russian thinking you are allowed to sign any agreement and promise anything to the other party but you’re not expected to deliver, as long as you consider them “losers”. This is what Russia did - in Yalta, Budapest and Minsk they made promises because US and UK wanted them and it helped push Russian political goals. But they never intended to honour them for even a minute.
That’s why “making deals with Russia” alone won’t work as long as their enforcement relies exclusively on international law, which - no need to explain - Russia also consider for “losers”.
You can of course make a successful deal with Russia if it’s supported by hard reciprocal measures, such as anti-tank trenches, mine fields or drones and rockets targeted at Russian military installations. But anything signed exclusively on paper won’t hold.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy%27s_Word:_Blood_on_the_Asphalt
[^3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference
[^4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August%C3%B3w_roundup
[^5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Polish_people%27s_referendum
[^6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Polish_parliamentary_election
[^7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
[^8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Ukrainian_Friendship_Treaty
That's 5D-educational chess.
#FuckGenAI #ChatGPT #GenAIsucksCamelDong
Alt...
r/technology
Al's Biggest Threat: Young People W...
4.3k upvotes + 442 comments
| recently heard about a teacher who instead of
trying to circumvent students using ai, which is
impossible, she made assignments by going "ask
ChatGPT to write a report on this subject, and
then research how and why it's wrong".
Not only did the students discover that chatGPT
is extremely wrong a lot of the time, it also lead
them to realize that they should not use it as a
primary source.
Another bug filed under 'once you see it, you can't unsee it' has been fixed in Ubuntu, this one concerns the curved corners on the desktop dock.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/07/ubuntu-25-10-gives-the-dock-a-rounder-radii?v1
@omgubuntu the cookie regime of your site is horrible. Please offer a "reject all" option. You know how. You have a "consent all" button.
@johnskk @omgubuntu
You can click on “Manage Options” and then disable all the options. Then, click on “Confirm Choices”.
@ThePfromtheO @omgubuntu thanks for the assistance. My criticism is that there is one click to consent to everything and about 18 to reject everything. It is clearly a design to have it their way.
@johnskk @ThePfromtheO I didn't build the cookie consent thing, it's the one Google provides to publishers. It's 5 toggles, IIRC, and then confirm. Tedious but, from using the same form on other sites, once you do it once it remembers it for like 30 days or something - and it's not as bad as the ones which make you toggle off 70 'legitimate interest' toggles one by one so #glasshalffull 🥛
@johnskk @ThePfromtheO Also, as counterintuitive as it is for me to suggest it, you can read the article without actioning the cookie thing at all if you're using a browser with reader mode: just hit the reader mode button or shortcut and it'll do its thing. I'm not sure how well reader mode picks up some of the in-page callouts I use (pull quotes, info boxes, spec tables) but, just an idea.
@sam @omgubuntu @ThePfromtheO I was at a machine I don't administer, so all of your kind suggestions that has to do with browser extensions or other browsers are not available to me.
And frankly and in respect for your responses, I'm building a habit of just leaving sites like that. Consent all or reject all should be one click as it is in well behaved sites. Otherwise why leave it up to the user at all?
@johnskk @sam @omgubuntu
“Consent all or reject all should be one click as it is in well behaved sites.”
I think this would mean for #OMGUbuntu to need to replace its tracking system, right, @omgubuntu?
@omgubuntu @johnskk
Even easier! I use #VivaldiBrowser's #adblocker, and I don't even see the popup :)
"Astronomers discover a cosmic 'fossil' at the edge of our solar system. Is this bad news for 'Planet 9'?"
The sednoid (Sedna-like object)'s orbit limits the possibilities for a large planet past Neptune. Its orbit means a large planet has to be much further out, or has been ejected, because otherwise the newly discovered sednoid's orbit would not be possible
2023 KQ14 is between 220 and 380 kilometers wide
As a "fossil," it is nicknamed "Ammonite"
"I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better"
-found on Bluesky
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