I could easily have been a knocker-upper's knocker-upper if I'd lived back then. Stay up until 4am, wake a few people up, then turn in? Ya, that'd be fine.
You can now watch every series of QI, including this one, on iPlayer! ▶ http://qi.com/iplayerFollow QI on Twitter ▶ http://twitter.com/qikipedia Follow QI on...
If your freedom of expression, security or privacy has been curtailed in any way, however minor, submit evidence.
That includes people who have been forced to submit data to unregulated third party age verification processors.
That includes people who have had to remove content from their blog or website for fear of censorship and legal harassment by Ofcom - an unelected quango.
That includes people who have felt that their speech or artistic expression has been limited.
I will be submitting evidence as a website/service operator.
It's certainly worth submitting evidence -- great suggestion! That said, the whole framing of this is that the OSA didn't go far enough and needs to be enforced more vigorously. It's still an opportunity to push for reform (and potentially even getting rid of it), but making progress is going to take some serious organizing to get a very loud outcry so that MPs start to see political costs.
agreed, it's certainly worded with a "how can we push for even more draconian measures?" tone.
I've been saying from the start of this: we need to hammer the point that MPs care about - economy. Ways in which this is hurting the British economy. Holding back movement of information, ideas and curtailing the development of products that can replace the problematic US-owned systems. Get rid of it, and watch innovation flourish.
Yes, I know that's a very libertarian anti-regulation talking point, but honestly I think we need to start playing the game a little bit differently if we're going to win this argument. They do not give a shit about privacy. They do not give a shit about freedom of expression. That much is abundantly clear. Let's pull some strings they do care about.
The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. Never: The Autobiography 📚 OUT NOW! Follow this link to get your copy and listen to Rick’s ...
Not gonna lie, I clicked on it worrying that it would be something else. I also watched the whole thing for possibly the first time. What is the story of the Black dude who's dancing behind the bar? I'm so curious now!
RIP Ronnie Le Drew, best known for his role as Zippy from Rainbow, puppeteer extraordinaire and a genuinely lovely guy, pictured here holding one of my puppets "Maurice" at a convention years ago. 🙁
Today is the 30th anniversary of Classic Computer Magazine Archive, site launched July 27, 1996 as "The Digital Antic Project" with the full text of two issues of Antic magazine. Later renamed to The Classic Computer Magazine Archive, it has HTMLized articles from many magazines, with publishers permission. https://www.atarimagazines.com/ #atari
These are the magazines that defined my childhood. I absolutely loved them and would read them cover to cover many times over. I had almost the full run of ANALOG (but I think there were a few issues at the end of the run that never made it to the UK) and Page 6 and Monitor, a few of Antic, and some misc issues of others, plus a few things like a Computer And Video Games annual. Very nostalgia. I think I still have a bunch of them in a box somewhere, can't quite bring myself to recycle them!
Today is the 30th anniversary of Classic Computer Magazine Archive, site launched July 27, 1996 as "The Digital Antic Project" with the full text of two issues of Antic magazine. Later renamed to The Classic Computer Magazine Archive, it has HTMLized articles from many magazines, with publishers permission. https://www.atarimagazines.com/ #atari
'xlogo' is close to the simplest possible X11 program. But it has so many uses.
• A ruler! Make an xlogo, drag it to a size, and if your WM shows a size tooltip as you drag, you can measure distances in pixels. Any X11 app works for this (unless it's sized in character cells or something) but you want one that doesn't try to do any actual _stuff_ as a side effect.
• Also, in reverse, 'xlogo -geometry 1920x1080' and then you have a nice rectangle you can check if some other window fits into.
• An alarm clock! Sleep until a certain time and then open an xlogo too large to miss. Doesn't disturb your colleagues, but if you're looking away when it appears, that's fine, it's still there.
• A colour chart! What do those names like 'OliveDrab' mean anyway? 'xlogo -bg thingy'
• An inert X session-lifetime process, if anyone still uses those.
• Just occasionally, you might even want to display the X11 logo, or find out how to. (The xlogo source is the official definition of the logo.)
This month I've been using xlogo as a workaround for the fact that VLC is failing to inhibit my laptop's screensaver, so that if I connect to a TV to show a video, there's a risk of it blanking part way through.
$ while xlogo -geometry 2000x1000; do sleep 240; done
Now every 4 minutes a huge xlogo pops up (and my WM placement algorithm reliably puts it on the built-in monitor, because the other one is full of VLC). So I use the mouse to dismiss it, and that _does_ inhibit the screensaver.
(One of these days I'll get round to actually _debugging_ the screensaver situation, but that's a faff, because every time you try something you have to wait 5 minutes to find out if it worked.)
Although, fun fact: xlogo is not quite as simple an X11 application as it looks. It's not just plain Xlib; it's linked against Xt, and in particular, has Xt's standard reconfigurable key-binding system, in the form of an "XLogo*baseTranslations" resource containing a list of key/function mappings. (Even though the only function you can bind keys to is quit().)
The reason I know this is that I once had to report a bug in the default value of that resource. It can't be the simplest possible thing if it's capable of having a bug!
Sadly, that doesn't hold. You certainly know the story of the program IEFBR14, which consisted of *one* instruction, and it had a bug. (Not clearing the register which ought to contain the desired zero value to use as an exit code.)
@pozorvlak I thought about it (or maybe 10 seconds), but on general principles I was nervous of perturbing anything related to what I was investigating.
And I think rightly so, given what the problem turned out to be: who knows if the two screensavers I was simultaneously running would have been reading the _same_ configuration? I could easily have confused myself further!
If I want to work around a screensaver suppression failure by jiggling the mouse, someone else in this thread has already suggested a pure software approach using xdotool, which doesn't cost any money.
But both versions of this workaround have the same problem: the workaround has to be manually turned off when you've finished suppressing the screensaver, or else your screen carries on consuming power when you're _really_ not using it, which is exactly what you wanted to avoid.
My xlogo approach avoids this problem because it involves my brain every 4 minutes, so when the xlogo pops up _after_ we've finished watching our video, I know I can ignore it, and ^C the while loop.
But also, I've fixed the problem properly now, so a workaround isn't needed anyway!
Had a lovely time at the Sheffield Furmeet this weekend! Was a pretty chill meet, lots of new folk and checked off “installing Windows XP live at a furmeet”!
Took Midnight out and tried out a weird old Leica camera on the furries too. Good day!
And then all the libraries closed, and they had to send a ship back in time to find a breeding pair of libraries and bring them to the present before the aliens destroyed the planet...
Yesterday at the supermarket checkout in front of me was a boy of maybe 8, 9 years or so who only wanted his bottle deposit back.
What warmed my heart was that he had a whole arm full of library books. I wouldn't have pegged him as a reader, but apparently he was. I loved seeing that.
"It's okay to realize something isn't working for you." Or "You can try again later." Or even "You didn't fail. You learned something, and that counts."
Sometimes pushing hard and cheering someone on is helpful to them. But it's just as important to realize when someone needs your compassion and gentleness, and to hear that they're still wonderful in your eyes if they don't, or didn't, meet their goals.
...I'm getting the feeling that this is one of those "Bwee secretly talking to themself" posts.
*hugs tight*
Someday doesn't have to be today. Baby steps are better than trying to do it all at once. The important thing is that, no matter how slowly, no matter how small the steps are and no matter how infrequent, you keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I had a lot of "you can do it" responses to my post where I said I was trying to quit smoking. And it ended up making me put a lot of pressure on myself and freaking out when I couldn't do it. I really needed someone to say "It's noble to try, but if you have to try something else later if this attempt doesn't work out, that's okay too."
You can admit something didn't work. You can learn from an experience, and that makes it not a failure. You can strategize and plan for next time. You can give yourself a break before working up the nerve to try again.
The one thing you *can't* do is say you're never going to successfully quit so why bother to try?
*That's* what I mean when I say "don't give up!" Not "I'll be disappointed if you don't do it this time." Not "you're at the starting line of a marathon, and if we just cheer hard enough, we know our Bwee isn't going to trip or run out of breath".
Marathons are hard even for really fit people, and your lungs aren't in the best shape. You're gonna stop for breath. You're gonna stumble. And sometimes it's gonna feel like you got dragged all the way back to the start. You can walk the whole way. You can stop for breath for 20 minutes every 500 steps. You can not take a single step for a month. You can take 10 years to get 26.2 miles.
We're gonna be there to pick you up every time you trip (like we did the other day), and pour water in your mouth when you get thirsty. And you best believe that when you finally cross that finish line (and at every single mile marker between now and then!) we're gonna celebrate like Trump died, no matter how long it takes.
Our faith in you was NOT misplaced. You're still trying. **That means you haven't failed.** You won't have failed until you decide you're not going to try to quit after all.
(And for the record, if you made a post tomorrow that said "I've decided that trying to quit is too hard and not worth it, and I'll probably smoke till I'm on my death bed", I'd be disappointed. I'd be very disappointed. But I wouldn't stop loving you. (Platonically.) I'd show up in your mentions every single day, hugging and smuggling and doing everything I know how to make you happy, because I like seeing you happy.)
But that's not the Bwee I know. And if you post your one month smoke free fifteen years from today, and then have another cigarette the day after, I'll still be cheering for you, and I'll fight you tooth, nail, and electric-shock-giving tentacle tip if you try to call that failure.
And I'll also turn all those same weapons on anyone else in your replies who does.
Aaawww wow. Gosh. Thank you Vincent! I really appreciate that, and I understand. I think a lot of my response to "Don't give up" is a bit of a trauma one, because my mother, in my younger days, was a good cheerleader... but she always scolded me when I failed or gave up doing something, and it led me to internalize things not going well and wanting to do something else instead as being absolute failure I can never come back from. It's hard to shake those feelings, but I'm trying. 🩵🩵🩵🩵
Riomaggiore was my absolute favorite from all the villages of Cinque Terre, all five are wonderful but if I had to make a top favorites, this one would be on my number 1. Labyrinthine, narrow, mysterious, where you turned corners and arrived at impressive and unexpected places, streets were only stairs, going up and down, suddenly the streets were tunnels that passed under the mountains, and suddenly you arrived at a beach. I chose many spots from Riomaggiore that you may see on upcoming days.
And here you can see Koda, the wah, walking the narrow streets of Riomaggiore, with the ocean on the background.
In the spirit of "know your enemy", I tried out a couple of LLM-based generators for story-writing. *Very* interesting. Here's what I've written about the experience: https://eternamask.uk/trying-out-llms/ (And don't worry, the only part of what I've linked to that was generated is the ChatGPT session transcript I've uploaded, clearly marked, as a separate page.)
We are the guests of honor for Pawstral in Chile!August 21 to 23. We have SO much prepared for this con!!!Get your tickets at pawstral.clAnimation by @silver...
I can't believe not one DJ played Exploration Of Space by Cosmic Gate! 😄 I'll wind in the costume pictures now, #emfcamp isn't really about that. #emfcamp2026 #cosplay #furry #cybergoth #cyberlox
they've been lovely to see, some serious costume inspo there! I've been doing samba dancing for that kick, but it's a bit conceptually constrained - your looks have an incredible range :)
Content warning: Somewhat dark burrs, death mention
Folks think curses are dramatic. Boils, frogs, every channel on TV playing Barney. Amateurs.
Here’s a real curse: every single person you meet, for the rest of your life, responds to your pain with toxic positivity.
Your spouse dies. “God needed another angel!”
Cancer Diagnosis. “Positive vibes are the best medicine!”
You lose everything in a fire. “The Universe is just making room for something even better!”
You lose your job, “The right opportunity is out there waiting for you!” With a chorus of, “I can’t wait to see what you do next!”
Nobody will ever sit in the dark with you again with their hand on your shoulder and just be there for you. Nobody will ever say “that’s beyond fucked and I’m sorry.” Just an unending sea of smiling faces sanding any grief you experience down to a Live Laugh Love sign until you die.
A curse like that doesn’t just hurt you. It erases you.
Content warning: Somewhat dark burrs, death mention
In my head Toxic Positivity and Victim Blaming and roommates and “besties”. Not the same thing, but man, they really seem to happily share the same space.
Posted before, recently, but feels like it’s super pertinent. Toxic positivity is like looking down into the pit somebody is in. “Helping” from a distance. With a safe disconnect. Empathy is where you make a conscious choice to climb a ladder down into that same dark pit they’re inside.
What is the best way to ease someone's pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuin...
i think vrchat reminds me too much of going to bars and not being able to socialize because i don't know anyone and then going home and wondering what's wrong with me fundamentally as a human being because i don't know why people have fun at social events like that
I can do small gatherings of 5 or so if I already know one of them
I did go to a couple recurring meetups where there was a for real host that did real host stuff like at a party, where they're at the door to greet everyone personally, found people being awkward and pulling them together in groups of 3-4 based on common interests and got a conversation started, floated around between to check on on everyone, the whole thing. the only time I've ever been in an instance with double digit population and not feeling awful
"well you need friends to show you around these social places"
yeah y'all neurotypical motherfuckers said we just "make friends" by going outside and talking to people, not the Catch 22 of "you need friends to make friends". update your verbiage.
Content warning: Long, plea to ascribe fewer things to "NT vs ND" that end up erasing friends
Taco, ascribing this to NT folks feels like a weird form of accidental erasure, like trying to find a thing to blame that is nailing a lot of your friends in the crossfire. "I don't want to ask people I know if they want to join me or hang out" needs no blame, even towards one's self.
I feel you on bars. I like going to the Atlanta Eagle, but _only_ when I know I'm going to see _existing_ friends there, and it's largely to see those friends in a kink-friendly space, where maybe, maybe I'll have the courage to compliment someone else wearing latex too. A normal bar to meet in holds no meaning or attraction, nor does being "shown around" to people I don't know at even a kink space.
But key is: those friends are generally folks I've met online in furry spaces. These aren't catch-22.
And my ass certainly ain't NT. I don't struggle socially as much as some, but I'm still uncomfortable the same way you describe normal bars, and similarly going to random instances of worlds in VR. (I avoid 'Public' altogether for that reason.)
When folks mention about having existing friends to go to VR with that's meaning similar. You know me, you know plenty of other folks on here where yeah, maybe haven't voice chatted ever, but that doesn't mean much. The harder part is asking folks, finding a sort of subset of people within your existing circles who you can feel comfortable asking to hang out with, or if they'd like to chill with you, whether directly asking or polling for finding them on here. (And now I wish fedi had a "mutuals" posting level x3).
Some days I'd feel too anxious to ask folks to hang out still, too, but usually liked when I did, or learned who kept too broad of company, which I think is the larger issue in these spaces: It often gets treated more like chatting with multiple people at once on messengers instead of the "physical space" it emulates, and folks forget that. x.x
I feel ya. I mainly just do VRChat when there's a group event where I know at least one person in attendance... If I'm completely on my own in unfamiliar territory, it makes me feel panicky and I rarely end up enjoying it. But that said, for me personally, finding group meets with common shared interests has helped a lot. Like Morghus's Wing Meet, or the VR Gameshow Nights - among others. It took some time but I've gotten to where, at least sometimes, I can feel comfortable joining some of the group meetups even if none of my friends have joined yet.
One other thing I'll do sometimes is log on and just chill in my home world. I'll throw a DJ set or some other fun video into the video player in that world, and then set my status to "join me". That advertises to creatures who have me friended on there that I'm looking to be social without being too "in your face" about it. It's not a perfect method, but I've found that it does work often enough to be useful when I wanna be social but don't have the spoons for dealing with crowds or when no group events are going on.
Also just for the record, I think you're a pretty cool birb. If you would like to, feel free to add me as a friend on there and we can hang out sometime! (edit: you can find a link to my VRChat profile on my Fursona Directory page, which I have in my bio)
I tried VR Chat once. Pottered around a few worlds which apparently had other furries in, even found one with some people I knew in (amongst lots of other people) but was too scared to actually come into visual range of anyone. Just hid, skulked around the perimeter, admired the 3D world for a bit, and finally fled. Even my crippling shyness would probably find it easier to talk to people in real life, honestly.
Huh. It occurs that one place I *have* been able to talk reasonably esily in a virtual world is in Minecraft. I go there with the expectation that I'll just bibble around on my own, and if someone else arrives there's nothing *requiring* talking, which somehow makes it easier. Weirdly, the fact that it's not there just for chatting makes it easier to start chatting.
puzzle games need to be less hard these days because life is hard enough and i just want to feel smart for like 2 seconds instead of the soul crushing imposter syndrome the rest of my life feels like
I have an open source sudoku app that I can import new puzzles in a thousand at a time, I go for medium because I can solve them in 5-8 minutes which is just enough time to do a couple during a work break
Thats actually some really good insight . I still like puzzle games but this reasoning may explain to me why, for some people, puzzle games are not thier cup of tea
During one of the late-night art jams at Anthrocon, while the rain was pouring outside, I had the chance to draw Snowybark. Encouraging him to draw with us. Art jams are one of my favorite convention moments!
"Britain today is a powerhouse of ideas, experiments, imagination"
We could offer a full time night time laser enhancement to the #emfcamp sign if people fancied it? Plus photographic lighting for a proper selfie spot? This was a random test I did with battery powered kit on Saturday night (thanks to the passing stranger who agreed to wave the portable fog machine around whilst I took the picture). #emfcamp2026
agreed, it's certainly worded with a "how can we push for even more draconian measures?" tone.
I've been saying from the start of this: we need to hammer the point that MPs care about - economy. Ways in which this is hurting the British economy. Holding back movement of information, ideas and curtailing the development of products that can replace the problematic US-owned systems. Get rid of it, and watch innovation flourish.
Yes, I know that's a very libertarian anti-regulation talking point, but honestly I think we need to start playing the game a little bit differently if we're going to win this argument. They do not give a shit about privacy. They do not give a shit about freedom of expression. That much is abundantly clear. Let's pull some strings they do care about.