acb

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGreens/115531272710102305

That’s some good news for Scotland; unfortunately for those in northern Europe, the planned ferry will go all the way south to Dunkirk, France. (The long-gone sea links between Britain and Gothenburg/Esbjerg/Stavanger show no signs of […]

RE: https://dair-community.social/@tomstoneham/115530422697886534

Along similar lines, a lot of services don’t accept email addresses on personal domains as valid (Discogs for sellers, for one).

I’m guessing that validating an email address as “legitimate” can now involve querying adtech data […]

This essay is beautiful and painful.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-is-not-a-vibe-on-chatgpt-and-the-humanities

@Unixbigot @futzle that would be the adult equivalent of dreaming of sitting an exam for a subject one forgot one enrolled in and didn’t attend any lectures of

@timrichards I haven’t had the fortune of flying with them, but heard they’re good. My flights to/from Australia recently have been mostly with Thai, who IMHO are quite decent

Today’s piece of #NominativeDeterminism comes from the Ukrainian military spokesperson quoted in the piece about Breton fishing nets being used as drone protection, who is named Rybakova (translated, unless I’m mistaken, as “Fisher”) […]

Someone put this "blue plaque" on a London Tesla showroom to mark his becoming the world's first trillionaire. “World’s first trillionaire Elon Musk. Could have solved world hunger but funded fascists instead. Bellend.” […]

[Original post on social.vivaldi.net]

A piece on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It appears to be based on a traumatic event that actually happened on a specific date in the 13th century, though nobody seems to know exactly what. Theories range from recruitment for settlement of newly-conquered eastern lands to a massacre […]

Doris, a tortoiseshell cat, sitting in a patch of sunlight on a wooden floor, her fur backlit.

Happy #Caturday

#Cativitypub #catsofmastodon

Haha, this from the New Yorker is getting passed around the math dork community. I did a comic about this kind of thought a few years ago: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/commut...

Latest distraction from meaningful work: figuring out what makes BeOS icons look like BeOS icons and how to draw pixel art in that style

@pikesley @cstross Though, as surely as he has won his past unreasonable claims, it’s a safe bet that he’ll somehow fudge the metrics and claim his trillion, and that him having done so will be cited as proof of his unique visionary genius.

We Wing Any Car - Pay tax like a billionaire Add wings to your car and enjoy the same tax loopholes as private jets.

Own a car, but are tired of paying tax on fuel? Reclassify it as an aircraft and get your fuel tax free.

https://wewinganycar.com/

“Toxoplasmosis host (Cat)”

Whoever compiles Tiled Words appears to be a dog person:

@tml @jon The EU thing is a wishlist of items to be built by national governments/rail companies, aided/encouraged by EU funding. The scope and reliability of individual lines is highly variable (for example, Sweden’s right-wing government hobbled its lines to a sluggish 250kmh as part of their […]

I concur with the 2013 report: Sydney-Canberra would be a natural first segment for Australian high-speed rail. The existing Edwardian-era line is dog-slow and everybody flies instead, whereas with state-of-the-practice HSR, you could do the trip in an hour. As Canberra is the federal capital […]

Europe by 2040: a bunch of high-speed-rail lines, all of them already planned by national governments to various degrees of speed, spanning the EU

Australia by 2040: our once-in-a-generation nation-building high-speed-rail project will be a New South Wales regional line joining Sydney with the […]

A friend needed a new laptop and was about to buy some consumer-grade garbage for ~500-600€. Fortunately he asked me before committing to it, and we found a second-hand AMD-based Thinkpad T14 for 300€. It's stupidly powerful for what he does, has much better connectivity and a much sturdier case […]

@jon SNCF massacre of surplus TGVs brought forward to before the deadline then?

1. In the wake on Mamdani’s win, we’ll see a lot more far right anti-urban sentiment. Here’s a thread on its roots and evolution.

The idea that the city is evil and corrupt, and the countryside innocent and pure, goes back a long way: to Theocritus in Alexandria, and to the Old Testament. 🧵

NYC mayor election results with almost ⅔ of the votes counted, showing Mamdani on 50%, with Cuomo lagging behind on 41.4%

As we say in Australia: stick a fork in him, he’s done.
#nycmayor

Hand drawn art stapled to a tree on 16th Street. It's a drawing of Kit Kat, a local cat. There are several other items and tributes around too.

Photos of Kit Kat and other parts of the shrine in front of the Roxie Theater on 16th St

A small shrine has appeared for KitKat, a beloved bodega cat who was recently hit and killed by a Waymo at 16th and Mission. Tension around autonomous vehicles in #SanFrancisco has already been high, and KitKat’s death has intensified things […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

@timrichards If the AI tools are owned by supermarkets (or someone they can do a deal with), there’ll be the temptation for them to push whatever they need to get rid of and bill you for it. Like that UK supermarket that substituted an octopus for a loaf of bread, only more so.

Hey remember how mad you got about Disney firing Jimmy Kimmel for a few days? Well here's your chance to show another corporate media overlord that you're pissed at them firing someone for political speech, and to let them know why you did it.

It's time to cancel all your subscriptions to Code […]

Enthusiasts have successfully recreated the MingKwai Chinese typewriter, a 1940s design which uses a keyboard to navigate a selection of characters from a large drum, from patent drawings. As a bonus, someone found a prototype of a real MingKwai, hitherto feared lost, before they finished […]

https://www.politico.eu/article/us-accused-threats-eu-diplomats-bid-to-kill-green-shipping-rules-negotiations-personal-intimidation/

> “Our negotiators had never seen this before in any international talks,” said one European official, who had spoken to negotiators. “People being summoned to […]

@timrichards They had “Mean Girls for Capitalism” right there, with all the brand synergies with the existing US right, but didn’t go with it?

"Wherever we looked for the prominent flaggers and leaders of this movement, we found people smugglers and sex doll salesmen, people with dubious criminal pasts and people willing to put in a good word for Adolf Hitler. Farage told us the flag-raisers were just ordinary folk sticking it to the […]

Good energy #Toronto #AI #Resist

Doris, a tortoiseshell cat, lounging on a sofa and licking her front right paw to wash her face with.

Happy #Caturday!

#Cativitypub #catsofmastodon