PSA for Android users: Uninstall Simple Mobile Tools apps!

The developer of Simple Mobile Tools, an Android app suite which has been historically well respected in the FOSS space, has sold their apps to a company called ZipoApps, a company that buys apps from independent developers to add advertisements and trackers to them. I highly suggest uninstalling any of the Simple Mobile Tools apps you have on your device and looking for alternatives.

Sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/SimpleMobileTools/comments/187w64x/simple_mobile_tools_bought_by_zipoapps/

https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGr4H7QLVRs

Rotate Your Owl.... for Science

(remember to turn the sound on)

It is so important to preserve shockwave animations from our earlier days. so important. :)

Go @internetarchive . Please donate https://archive.org/donate

https://archive.org/details/rotate-your-owl

#unionize #nobillionaires

Large capacitors should be handled with care.

Around this time every year, innocent kids are told a disgusting lie.

NORAD don't track Santa with their RADAR.. The NSA track Santa over the internet because Santa accepts cookies at every house

You might have seen the new hbomberguy video, I got to contribute some sprites to it!
https://youtu.be/yDp3cB5fHXQ?si=-pJa1FU23o5O2eYe
He and his team was a pleasure to work with

Urg... cross-contamination of mushrooms is doing a number on my guts :(

Transition feels like Bilbo felt when he left his house to fight the dragon.

You've got no idea what you're doing, you're clearly the wrong person to do it, and you're surrounded by all these weird new friends who make your old friends and family very uncomfortable. And yet, you do it anyway. You're a bit uncomfortable too, about these new companions, but something draws you to them. You walk out the front door and go on the adventure of a lifetime. When you finally do come back and see some of those old friends and family again, they hardly recognize you.

As you begin to settle back into cisiety as your new self, you realize that your life will never be the same. You have an experience now that, while it piques others curiosity, few around you share. You can tell the odd story over drinks and a few will listen, some may even want an adventure if their own, but most will never understand or even care.

On the odd occasion when one of your old traveling buddies shows up for a visit, you stay up all night talking and have the time of your life. Drinks are shared and stories aplenty. There's a bond there that's stronger than blood. You really don't care that your friends and neighbors look at them funny as they enter and leave your house. None of them get it anyway.

That is transition.

Fortify.

I dig it.

Watch a video earlier where a Chicago PD officer screws up, mainly runs away shooting, jams their gun, fails and mishandles it while clearing it.

YTuber: “This is what happens when you defund the police”.

Me: let me fact check that…

Oh Chicago PD actually had their funding increased. In fact their budget is in surplus right now. Clearly none of that went on training, big hikes on salaries and new toys though.

✅ Exhaustive list of things at "AI" generated text has made better:

❌ Non-exhaustive list of things that "AI" generated text has made worse:
- Search results
- Scientific studies
- How-to articles and repair instructions
- Cooking recipes
- Information on poisonous plants and mushrooms
- Information about disease symptoms
- News
- Marketing copy
- Customer support replies
- Product descriptions in online stores
- Bugs and data corruption through subtly wrong generated code
- Ripping off authors

@MeiLin @cstross

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
John Rogers

Source code for Infocom’s original interpreters released: with little fanfare, Andrew Plotkin uploaded a trove of newly-discovered source code for various 1980s computers to GitHub https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/infocoms-ingenious-code-porting-tools-for-zork-and-other-games-have-been-found/

Just remembered this amazing quote from Sir Terry Pratchett, about Tolkien and fantasy:

"J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”