The headlines keep getting better:
“Alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave and is seeking attention, authorities say”
RT @brionv: @KelsonV at least it’s not a sea lion
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Now that you mention it….
Tag: Conversation
It’s almost as though cruelty and neglect can affect people’s mental health….
It’s almost as though cruelty and neglect can affect people’s mental health.
Everyone gives Batman shit over the state of Arkham but no one ever talks about Iron Heights.
There was a bit of criticism for Iron Heights within the Flash book, such as when Ashley Zolomon called the prison “the Rogue Factory” (which she said was a widespread nickname) and accused Wolfe of having no compassion for its prisoners. It seems quite likely that the mistreatment there has made some of the prisoners worse, with I think Roscoe as one of the prime examples. And as awful as Arkham is, at least they make some attempt to treat their inmates; we’ve seen that Iron Heights leaves theirs barefoot in straitjackets and isolated in filthy cells. So it’s no surprise that they end up even more mentally ill and anti-social, which is almost certainly what Ashley was alluding to.
Wally and Wolfe clashed on a number of occasions over the treatment of prisoners there, once Wally found out about it. But Wally had no authority there, he was just a vigilante super-hero, and Wolfe kept running things the way he wanted to. The one win I remember was that Wally was able to get Fallout an actual, comfortable room that absorbed his radiation instead of leaving him hooked up to tubes like he was before.
On TumblrIs there some sort of maintenance done on AstroTurf that uses a tool that looks like a riding lawnmower?
Is there some sort of maintenance done on AstroTurf that uses a tool that looks like a riding lawnmower?
Cause I’m a little confused, otherwise.
At first I thought they were just crossing the field to where the actual grass was, but they were going back and forth across the artificial turf.
Then I thought, maybe they’re vaccuuming it?
gcupc at glitch.social:
AstroTurf zamboni.
The milky-way-like blob from exhaust and exploding missile debris…
KelsonV shared a status by brion@mastodon.technology
The milky-way-like blob from exhaust and exploding missile debris makes for lovely formations in the fading high-altitude sunlight, which were quite the rorschach test for my friends.
I recall I thought one photo looked like the starship Enterprise; the lady at the photo shop (before good digital cameras!) said it looked like an angel; my classmate said it looked like a dog. 🙂
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@brion I might actually have a copy of at least one of those pictures. I’ll take a look.
@brion I found this one. No EXIF, and the text file only notes that you took it, but the files are timestamped Oct. 4, 2003.
@brion And now it’s even more distributed!
I’ll email you the original(?) file, since Mastodon seems to have resampled it even though it didn’t need to resize it.
We apologize. The error handler responsible for handling the errors has been sacked.
KelsonV shared a status by @brion@mastodon.technology:
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@brion We apologize. The error handler responsible for handling the errors has been sacked.
R2-D2 is looking extra boxy. Maybe it’s the Minecraft version? ;-)
R2-D2 is looking extra boxy. Maybe it’s the Minecraft version? 😉
Spotted in San Diego last week.
On Flickr
On Wandering.shop
On PixelFed.Social
It’s some sort of utility box. Electrical, maybe?
I installed Instagram on a Chromebook to see if I could.
I can.
Um, now what?
When I first used Instagram, I really wanted to be able to upload photos from my camera & type captions with a real keyboard. But it’s been built around uploading from phones since the beginning, and it just doesn’t lend itself to any other use case, even when you can get it to run on another form factor.
Plus phone photos are a lot better now, & it’s just as easy to transfer pics from the camera to the phone.
@brion In the specific case of Instagram, the website doesn’t offer full functionality: you can browse & update your bio, but you can’t add new photos.
I haven’t tried any game apps yet, partly because I just got an underpowered one to use as a second laptop. (I figure if I get nice hardware, I want a real OS.) It’ll be interesting to use touch apps w/a trackpad…
But I’ve had success with utility apps for Dropbox, KeePass & a VPN.
@brion I was surprised that the Android layer was thorough enough for a VPN app to work, but after looking around the Chrome app store a bit, I think Google decided it was better to leverage the more mature ecosystem than try to push something that never really took off.
Finally spotted the plant whose spiky seeds keep puncturing bike tires. It’s a low, creeping …
Finally spotted the plant whose spiky seeds keep puncturing bike tires. It’s a low, creeping mat that can grow right next to the path and spread onto it, and the seeds grow in clusters. The dried seeds’ spikes punch straight through, sometimes to the inner tube.
Unfortunately I have no idea what it is, since it doesn’t match my previous guess (sand burr / sand spur) from what I can tell.
@abetterjulie Yes, that looks like it. Thanks!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulus_terrestris
And damn, puncture vine is an accurate name…
We have book clubs at booktoot.club!
@stefanhayden @andeluuu @Mastodon We have book clubs at https://booktoot.club ! #sffbookclub, #nfbookclub, #storyclub & a few others.
@andeluuu @stefanhayden @Mastodon Just check out the hashtags to see what people are reading. There’s a master list at https://fediverse-reads.dreamwidth.org
Joining the specific instance isn’t required, since hashtag columns will federate.
@andeluuu @stefanhayden @Mastodon I mean each server will be able to see tagged posts from others, so you don’t have to move to a specific one to participate in a conversation around a hashtag.
Spiders
@readlesmispod Having listened to this, the remark about the giant spiders infesting houses like the Gorbeau tenemant makes a lot more sense!
On Twitter
Flashback to last summer: a red panda (sometimes called a fire fox)…
Flashback to last summer: a red panda (sometimes called a fire fox) at the San Diego Zoo. I made a point to look for them and the penguins on that trip. For reasons. 😉
#photography #photos #redpanda #firefox
Sadly I didn’t get to see them doing much. There were several in the enclosure, maybe three or four, but the rest were either hiding in the tree or sleeping. This one was just sort of perched up there, looking around.
I remember doing a bunch of experimenting when the camera was new…
@kemonine I remember doing a bunch of experimenting when the camera was new & settled on some best-for-most-cases settings. White balance is only available in some modes – it usually does a decent job on that, but I think it must have just detected the wrong type of light in this case.
Thanks for the tip on turning digital zoom off completely. I don’t use it very much, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to have available for when I do. Maybe it is?
I guess I should do a new round of experiments with this camera & see what I can convince it to do!
Yeah, I rarely have reason to use the digital zoom with that lens!
I used to figure if I needed to zoom past what the optics can do, I’d just crop it smaller. In most cases it’s still better than screen resolution anyway. But I’ve found that digital zoom has one advantage over cropping after the fact: the camera bases any automatic settings like exposure on the actual image you intend to take, not the wider view.
But yeah, might as well turn it off the rest of the time.
I wish we could put some of that snow in our mountains…
Indian hawthorn flowers in bloom, spotted on my lunch hour walk. It’s been a warm winter in California, and we’ve finally gotten some rain over the last few weeks (not enough, but some is better than none).
What a gorgeous photo, and I’m so envious of those blossoms! We still have snow 🙁
Thanks! I wish we could put some of that snow in our mountains…
On Tumblr@brion I think that got started because quantity is so much easier to measure than …
@brion I think that got started because quantity is so much easier to measure than quality. But ultimately it’s like the joke about looking for your keys where the light’s better instead of looking where you dropped them.
@brion Actually I think a *lot* of problems are the result of measuring what’s easy to measure instead of what’s useful to measure, including economics and politics.
Does anyone actually bite on blog contributor spam?I’m not opposed to *relevant* guest …
Does anyone actually bite on blog contributor spam?
I’m not opposed to *relevant* guest posts on a topic-based blog, but when it’s obvious that they didn’t even look at the site & are just robo-spamming blogs that maybe matched a keyword or something…
I mean, stuff like this:
“I read your article https://speedforce.org/2017/11/crisis-earth-x-conclusion-review/. Your readers might be interested in checking out our resources on machine learning and AI.”
On Mastodon.social
Expanded on K2R
@brennen That’s what I figure too, but it seems like the response rate would be too low for it to be worth the effort.
Or are there really enough people out there who have blogs who get messages like this and say, “hey, that sounds like a great idea!”
@brennen Oh wait, I get what you’re saying. The spammers aren’t making money or getting exposure from the guest posts that don’t happen, they’re making money selling their service to people who *think* they’re going to get guest posts placed somewhere.
So it turns out this was the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg.
No idea what sort of launch this is
Oh wow, that’s really cool!
Thanks! So it turns out this was the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg.
The bright spot at the left moved across the sky, trailing a shell of vapor.
I ran back inside shouting “come see this, fast!” and grabbed the better camera, but it wouldn’t focus, so I snapped this with my phone.
The vapor trail persisted for another 10 minutes after the rocket and booster stage (I could briefly see an expanding ring around the booster) were no longer visible, and it was high enough to continue reflecting sunlight even though it was long after sunset.
On Tumblr17 votes? Wow! That’s amazingly close.
Remember to vote in local elections. Initiatives, council & school board members, judges, etc. affect you and your community directly even if it’s not as exciting as the Presidential race. And the people elected locally go on to build the pool of state and national candidates. If you care about 2018 or 2020, get out and vote locally to get the ball rolling.
Plus between a smaller pool and a lower turnout, your vote literally makes up a bigger share of the total.
I like to remind people that a candidate I voted for once lost by exactly 17 votes. Your vote does matter.
17 votes? Wow! That’s amazingly close.
On TumblrI need a word for the fear of accidentally tapping “like” on something while trying to scroll past it on a touch screen.
I need a word for the fear of accidentally tapping “like” on something while trying to scroll past it on a touch screen.
For the action: scrick, from scroll-click. Add -ophobia and voila.
–@alenxa
@AndyBehbakht …I remember a “Dora the Exploder: a Michael Bay film” joke running around years ago. 2017 strikes again.
@AndyBehbakht …I remember a “Dora the Exploder: a Michael Bay film” joke running around years ago. 2017 strikes again.
@brionv Renaming digital assistants as “Wiretap” should be the new “TLA surveillance van” wifi name.
@brionv Renaming digital assistants as “Wiretap” should be the new “TLA surveillance van” wifi name.