floof.org
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenl...www.righto.com
What I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers $15 an hour.”
What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.”
Funny how that works, huh?
don’t call me a gentleman
i’m not a man
and i’m not gentle
call me “excluded statistical anomaly” and “a threat to regional public security”
or you can call me kuriko as well, hi.
Peter Matejic on Joseph Rowntree Foundation's research into attitudes to health care in Britain:
'This research shows that the public feel they can no longer count on the NHS to provide a universal service that’s free at the point of delivery because some NHS services are now so difficult to access' - from dentistry to counselling; we all now expect to pay to get health care.
So, the Tories engineered NHS crisis has had exactly the intended effect!
#health #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/31/nhs-queues-mean-most-britons-expect-to-pay-for-healthcare-says-report
Joseph Rowntree Foundation points to ‘critical shift in expectations’ and says most people now budget for many routine servicesDenis Campbell (The Guardian)
Well, it finally happened. One of the kid’s friends sent her a link to a YouTube video featuring this tweet and asked “Is that you??”
https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/110334058263166569
When UX designers design their user interfaces, they should always include "vomiting child" in their user flows.
That is, they should take all their well designed and thoughtful user flows and insert "and suddenly the user's child vomits".
If the UX isn't robust enough to handle the user running off to deal with a vomiting child for twenty minutes, it is a bad user flow.
immediately makes me think of Windows Update.
Windows nags me about some OS patch. I authorise it to start downloading. Then I go away and leave it to get on with it.
I come back half an hour later and find that it auto-suspended the machine after 10 minutes because it believed it was just idle. So that's as far as the download got.
I can only get it to finish an update if I nudge the mouse every 9 minutes – even though _it_ wanted the update even more than I did!
The 2024 FAAFO (F*ck Around And Find Out) Award goes to Elon Musk for daring the Brazilian Government to ban X (formerly Twitter) and then whining about "free speech" when they actually did ban it. I should point out that X was in breach of Brazilian law for allowing hate speech, but you know, Elon never met a Nazi he didn't like.
Please join me in saying a big - Congratulations Elon!
#elonmusk #brazil #twitterban #socialmedia #nazis #twitter
Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted timeTiago Rogero (The Guardian)
When he’s not busy being one of our best fiction writers, Ted Chiang has become our best critic of generative AI:
“The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as ‘money laundering for copyrighted data,’ which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copying.”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art
Our new house has what appears to be only a pair of satellite signal cables coming to the area where the TV bracket is installed, and it would be a pain to install terrestrial cables instead (probably ripping up the whole concrete floor!) so, despite never having used satellite before I'm now looking for a freesat box.
Looking around Ebay, the Humax Foxsat-HDR is what I notice the most. It appears to be quite an old product, but is only about 50 quid and presumably should view, record and play freesat channels. My question is, is there any reason it wouldn't work? Have satellite broadcast standards changed in the last 10 or so years? Different codecs, or anything like that that would obsolete older boxes? Presumably the EPG and programme recording would work the same as it did back then?
Also am I right in thinking that the satellite dish receivers (LNBs) don't need power, or get it from the box they are connected to? (I.e. they don't need separate power supplies.)
I'm hoping things haven't changed too much and I should just be able to grab one of these older boxes relatively cheaply, plug it into the satellite cables and the TV/amp, and not have to spend more time thinking about how to get basic TV channels and recording/playback working for my parents.
One of the things you learn in #ArtSchool, at least when you're studying #Sculpture, is that a gentle rounded chamfer on the edge of a planar surface gives it a greater visual sense of mass - as little as 1mm on a 25mm thick plate of steel, will make that steel appear more solid.
This is why a #Tesla #Cybertruck looks like it's make of tinfoil - all the edges are too sharp. It gives away how tissue-thin the panels are, and makes it look cheap & insubstantial.
Saw this satire article elsewhere. Made me laugh lol.
Edit: I have learned it’s from The Daily Tism:
https://thedailytism.com/autistic-man-stranded-on-desert-island-asks-rescue-team-for-a-couple-more-weeks/
An autistic man who became stranded on a desert island after a shipwreck has asked the search and rescue team who found him if they wouldn’t mind fucking off again, reports have confirmed.The Daily Tism
moreutils is a package worth checking out.
I'm a big fan of:
ts - Adds or converts timestamps for stdin
sponge - prevents file clobbering
vipe - edit stdin before it goes back out
This gorgeous fursuit is available until tomorrow night! Will Pride be coming home with you?? 👀🏳️🌈🐺
https://www.thedealersden.com/listing/pride-coyote/291238
#fursuit #fullsuit #forsale #auction #coyote
This fursuit features:-Head built on a 3d printed flexible foam headbase (printing done by Dattas), following eyes, hair poof, a USB powered muzzle fan, lined with a balaclava.www.thedealersden.com
I love being a faceless biker/mook/robot/thing.
(Edit: I should point out there are 6 pics attached to this post; see post on original instance if you don't see them all!)
Looking really good - thank you for sharing!
Now I know to check the original post when you've got four pix to see if there's more :)
I find it very hard to understand how anyone gets away with this in America. The way it *should* work is surely how it worked for me here in the UK: I registered to vote when I was about 16 or 17 (it then activates on your 18th birthday), and I don't think I even had to remember, I think the local council sent an automatic letter (presumably due to birth records from 16/17 years prior) and we probably just had to confirm my details were correct and I was registered.
And that's it. That one registration lasts for life.
I did have to re-register once, a week or two ago, due to moving house. This automatically cancels my registration in my old area and lets me vote in my new home constituency.
The only other thing I've done is, back at the start of the pandemic, changed from voting in person to postal voting. This also lasts until you cancel it, or until you re-register in a new area.
This is how it should work. America, stop tolerating whoever the hell is periodically taking away your right to vote and forcing you to do pointless work to get it back. For a purported democracy, that is unacceptable.
Also, why in heck are political parties involved in voter registration over there!? They should be kept at a *very* great distance from that. Voter registration must be done by an organisation with no vested interest, as should everything to do with holding elections.
Agreed. But the problem here is, there are the people who never get over their griefs, and people who are willing to work for our government neutrally, for the benefit of all.
It only takes a few--generally very rich people--to mess with this. It's actually one of the gifts of computers/the Internet. It's possible to keep voting info & votes off in a secure place, tabulate them, & announce them.
This is unfettered Capitalism. It's not pretty. We claw more back each time. But. :(
I might have to include this illustration in my lab courses.
Because otherwise those damned Dutch giants will crush you.Pharyngula
This is the best explanation of hyperfocus in #ADHD I have ever seen. Someone give this guy a medal. And Oscar. Something.
(Src on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@connordewolfe/video/7408628416808815903)
I get excited whenever the carbon intensity of the UK electricity grid is below ~100g of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity.
The 2023 average was 162g gCO2/kWh
But just look at this figure - in 2009 it was regularly ~600. We ARE making big changes. Hooray!
Source: https://tinyurl.com/48dwzz33
As the UK closes in on its legally-binding 2050 emissions reduction targets, it’ll be more important than ever to understand how green our electricity is and the impact of any action we, as GB’s Electricity System Operator, take to keep electricity f…tinyurl.com
A map of Every European City
➡️ credit: Malachi Ray Rempen
Viking wind farm and subsea cable boosts UK clean energy from Shetland
The Shetland Isles have been connected to mainland Britain’s grid for the first time and this coincides with the switch-on of a 443MW onshore wind farm there. As the most northerly land in the UK (next stop: The Faroes and then Iceland) Shetland is ideally placed to get very high utilisation from its new turbines.
In a ground-breaking achievement for clean energy in the UK, the Shetland Islands have been connected to the GB electricity grid for the first time.www.sse.com
This doesn't look good:
Eight locations experienced temperatures of 50C + this year, most of them in the Tropic of cancer.
Hotest spot was Death Valley, USA, 7/7/24 - 53.9
the rest in deciding order, all 50C + peak:
Jahra, Kuwait
Sindh, Pakistan
Sanbao, China
Tepache, Mexico
Abadan, Iran
Churu, India
Agadir, Morocco
Hassi Messaaod, Algeria
Arafat, Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, the impact of these peaks has been intensified by high humidity.
climate change is here!
#climate
h/t Nikkei Asia/WMO
In my day we had buttons.
We had switches! Sliders!
And what do we have now? Glass rounded rectangles of various sizes.
"We can make it do haptic feedback."
No just put me out of my misery. Send me to the farm upstate. Your haptic feedback is a mockery of the elegance of the latching switches and potentiometers I have known.
Robotics is hard. Mechanical engineering is hard. The glass rounded rectangles are magical, yes, and lovely, but they also prisons for the imagination.
What's not to like:
community owned wind farm;
profits recycled into tree planting;
local management of project(s).
Yes, things can be done differently - quite apart from the local details, this focus on recycling surplus into the area is a great example of what might be the future the green transition.... or at least part of it.
About 211,000 saplings already planted under plan to reestablish woodland on Western Isles croftsSeverin Carrell (The Guardian)
@wawik That would make sense, even the British need to do some sort of business eventually.
I am really glad that we decimalised! I've tried working in the older currency (my employer has a long history) and it is needlessly complicated. Now, if only we could stop using idiotic measures and metricate.
