🙋‍♂️ What the fuck is wrong with you?
❓ Have you ever seen a bandwagon you didn’t want to jump on?
💩 Can you please be less shit? https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/115643458015221823

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

The Shorts format on YouTube gets me 30 times more views and 2 to 3 times more new subscribers. It's fascinating. I think I could post any nonsense as a Short, and I'll still break my previous "record" :/
* I don't believe this is only due to the algo pushing hard the format (although it's a significant part of it). Besides conditioning people to favour Shorts so they would see "less" adverts, YouTube is tapping at a larger audience that would eventu…

@… The last time I tried LuaTeX, it was even slower than XeTeX, and there were many more or less obvious incompatibilities. Also, I’m sick and tired of the “Babel is outdated, use Polyglossia! Haha, no! Polyglossia is unmaintained, use Babel—well, except for these languages! Stop, you must now switch to Polyglossia!”
I’ve been trying to get away fro…

@… The last time I tried LuaTeX, it was even slower than XeTeX, and there were many more or less obvious incompatibilities. Also, I’m sick and tired of the “Babel is outdated, use Polyglossia! Haha, no! Polyglossia is unmaintained, use Babel—well, except for these languages! Stop, you must now switch to Polyglossia!”
I’ve been trying to get away fro…

🎜 What the Project needs is committers far less decrepit than me.
🎝 Let's say, yes, maybe, whatever, it's all good. Let's just wait and see.
🎜 If a ninety-nine-pages-long primer is slightly off-putting,
🎝 please watch this space, 'cause five-minute videos are much more Mark P's thing:
https://www.y…

The less educated you are, the more likely you'll vote for Trump/MAGA.
And this is why Republicans:
▫️defund the Dept of Education
▫️ban books
▫️call college a scam
▫️tell people to go to trade schools
Two surveys from the WSJ & FOX News below:
#trump #education

View of hills covered by forest canopy looking south from a high point along the Fingerlakes Trail in Caroline -- a rare place south of Cayuga lake where you can find a commanding view
#photo #photography #landscape

2006: Less is more, don’t repeat yourself
2016: Beautiful code prevents technical debt
2026: trillions of lines of generated spaghetti code that generate other spaghetti code will save us

Want to ride your bicycle? Study highlights rise of Canada's bike network #Canada

Northwestern about to cave???
Writing about Cornell caving to the Trump Administration,
I told Northwestern that if it planned to cave to please do so by December 31
so I can save money.
Unfortunately, I may have gotten my wish.
The supposed pricetag is
$75 million
(more than Cornell, less than Columbia, much more than Virginia).
And it will include the usual surrender of academic freedom tempered by a bullshit assurance
(and press rele…

Just finished "It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth" by Zoe Thorogood.
CW: Frank/graphic discussion of suicide and depression (not in this post but in the book).
It feels a bit wrong to simply give it my review here as I would another graphic memoir, because it's much more personal and less consensual than the usual. It feels less like Thorogood has invited us into her life than like she was forced to put her life on display in order to survive, and while I selfishly like to read into the book that she benefited in some way from the process, she's honest about how tenuous and sometimes false that claim can be. Knowing what I've learned from this book about Thorogood's life and demons, I don't want her to feel the mortification of being perceived by me, and so perhaps the best thing I could do is to simply unread the book and pull it back out of my memories.
I did not find Thorogood's life relatable, nor pitiable (although my instinct bends in that direction), but instead sacred and unknowable. I suspect that her writing and drawing has helped others in similar circumstances, but she leaves me with no illusion that this fact brings her any form of peace or joy. I wonder what she would feel reading "Lab Girl" or "The Deep Dark," but she has been honest enough to convey that such speculation on my part is a bit intrusive.
I guess the one other thing I have to say: Zoe Thorogood has through artistic perseverance developed an awe-inspiring mastery of the comic medium, from panel composition, through to page layout and writing. This book wields both Truth and Beauty.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Why SUV when you can LSV? (Low Speed Vehicles)
25mph max car! street legal in San Francisco.
Can drive on almost all roads in the city.
This one is not that great, imho (but try it at gocar). I want to see more LSVs. Amsterdam has many, and many types.
all roads w/ 35mph limits or less are ok, almost all roads in SF. Here are all limits on all roads in SF:

@… I suspect Apple's problem with GPL-3.0 is less complying with its requirements and more its language around patent grants.

The CCGS Amundsen is a Canadian research icebreaker run by the non-profit Amundsen Science at Université Laval and operated by Canadian Coast Guard. This past summer, the ship was able to navigate into areas previously off limits due to very thick multi-year ice (5 yrs, 7 or more metres thick). There is much less of this thick stable ice in the Arctic now due to #ClimateChange, meaning prev…

It is cold in northern parts of the world. Studded tyres are awesome. If you do not have them, forgot to mount them or cannot afford to invest for your usage, I am here for you.
The number of times I have been caught out and unicycled on snow and ice is quite high. If I can do it, you can do it. Just take it easy! Oh and wear a helmet, even if you do not normally. That kind of a fall is exactly what they are for.

PitchBook: US AI and robotics VC deals are up over 4x since 2023 to $160B so far in 2025, while comparable China deals are just $10B , up from $9.24B in 2023 (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/cnbc-china

"In 1990, 943 million people [in China] lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago."

These butterflies pick host plants where the temperatures are more comfortable, even if they're less nutritious (but it's not clear from this data that the nutritional variation is biologically significant?)
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.15.688506

S01e02
Starfleet Academy is a weird show. I'm trying to not watch it as a startrek show to give it more a chance.
This show is much easier to compare to Lower Decks and Prodigy then other shows IMHO.
Which makes it more clear the show is too loose. The script just need way more polish and pace to make ever scene and line count. Main kids characters should be more involved and adults less involved. I know too little about these characters.

This article just cited the Finnish Michaux study. There are others. The whole "industrial renewable energy capture systems" wager has inadequate foundations, which is why the only way is to use much less energy. Hence #degrowth See my article and linked report for the UK case.
Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil? - CounterPunch.org

🤬 National poll: Less than half of parents say swearing is never OK for kids
#swearing

CO2 is #JunkFood for plants.
Food becoming more calorific but less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide
https://www.theguardi…

CO2 is #JunkFood for plants.
Food becoming more calorific but less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide
https://www.theguardi…

@…

I guess it depends on the language. I use polars heavily with Python. It works really really well. It's not just faster than pandas, it's more ergonomic, more regular, more composable and less quirky.

Python is very flexible and accommodating. And you are strongly discouraged from doing fine grained computation in Python a…

The chat interface was a marketing bet. Selling #AI as if it is not auto complete. It still is.
"#ChatGPT shifted the user’s relationship to text, moving the prompt from a ‘piece of writing for the model to finish’ to a ‘question calling for an answer’."

The last couple of days have been relatively quiet in Minneapolis. ICE seems to have been much less active in the city, though everyone (including me) is sort of afraid to talk about that too much lest we jinx it.
They seem to have been more active in the suburbs, and maybe that’s all it is: a geographic shift.
Maybe the cold is keeping them inside. (A bunch of them are from places like TX and VA, and I’m sure they don’t know how to dress.)
1/

An evening discussing falling enrollment in #STEM courses at universities across Europe, especially traditional studies like chemistry, geology and meteorology. I wonder if young people are unaware of just how interesting #STEM careers to be? Or do they have the perception it's "too hard" compared to other subjects where easier grades may be had? Or is it simply they think they can have "better"* jobs in other fields?
#AcademicChatter
*Where better might mean higher paid, more prestigious, more certain of employment, or less workload or some combination of all of these... ?

"Putting less meat and more legumes in school menus reduces environmental impact by up to 50%"
#Food #Environment #Environment

In the time I've been offline, I've been doing a lot and feeling a lot more mentally healthy. I've been exploring nomadnet a bit, looking at reticulum. I'm definitely going to go back to my break and being online much less regularly.
I actually totally forgot about the anniversary of the shooting, which is the first time that's happened since... uh... the shooting, I think.
I've definitely realized that, on some level, I've definitely used Mastodon (and formerly Twitter) as a coping mechanism, often in order to deal with the stressful things that I've found out about on Mastodon or Twitter.
But, again, none of those things really change our core job: build community. And that's part of what I've been neglecting, and what I can focus on more when I'm not spending as much time talking to people all over the world indirectly. Like, I can just chat directly with folks and talk about this shit.
Yeah, I do think there's value in this community. I don't think it's really screaming into the void (at least, not most of the time). But I know that I need the balance to be way farther on the side of direct engagement with comrades doing and building.
So that's what I'm gonna go back to. I feel as though it's a good sign that with all the writing about getting shot that I've been doing, and all the thinking about that, that the actual anniversary of the shooting I'm actually just thinking about bread.
And that seems like a good note to leave on. I'm gonna go back to some hacker shit.

The Real Gaetz Story Is Less About Sex Trafficking, More About Poverty | Dame Magazine
https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/12/03/the-real-gaetz-story-is-less-about-sex-trafficking-more-about-poverty/

I enjoy Balatro as a game, but honestly hadn't played it in a while
So to revisit it, I tried out the Cryptid mod: Cryptid is insanity. Enjoyable but insane
Then I left it alone for awhile more but have since returned - looking for a slightly less insane but still mind bending mod
May have found it in Mayhem, been enjoying it so far
https://codeberg.org/BalatroMayhem/Mayhem

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp that renamed itself in the Metaverse craze less than five years ago, is reducing its Metaverse activity by 10% and laying off some 1500 employees.
https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-reportedly-laying-off-over-10…

The way all "AI" CEOs and evangelists keep talking about how we all need to be more positive and believe more and talk less about the material issues ... that is how an actual innovation, a paradigm shift even, looks like, yes?

Firefox is jumping the shark with this AI thing. A web browser helps you browse the web. it doesn't steal and summarize web content in order to prevent you from visiting web sites.
I think it's barely less disgusting than the blockchain web nonsense. But I acknowledge that it is possible that it is actually even more disgusting.

The real reason people move to red states
The “U-Haul index” does not prove a point -- or at least the point the WaPo Editorial Board makes.
Yes, people are moving from more expensive to less expensive areas,
but why are those areas more expensive?
Many factors play into the calculation, but one is obvious and significant:
Real estate is more expensive where people want to live.
Tax rates by themselves don’t make real estate expensive;
ultimate…

I have believed for a long time now that humanity has proven incapable of a 'gradual decline' of anything that it is truly dependent on even if alternatives are available.
We seem pre-programmed to use something to the max... hit rock bottom in terms of impacts on our own health and general well being… and then go pretty much cold turkey. (either through replacement or outright abstinence).
I believe it will be the same with fossil fuels.
We are possibly seeing a slight reduction now globally in overall use of oil. But it is still far and away too too much.
Maybe we’ll cut this by 10% or 20% in the next 10 or 20 years... but zero by 2050? Not a chance.
I believe we will go and go and go, until one day we can go no more, the pressure is too great, the casualties too high, the effects too devastating, and the impact of complete shutdown of the fossil fuel industry in less than 5 years will seem less bad than the damage we have already done and are sure to suffer in future.
I hope I live to see that day, not out of morbidity, but out of hope. I want to die knowing we finally did it. I don't know if that's going to happen.
Not an uplifting prediction, I know, but seriously, tell me I'm wrong.
#CanPoli #Cdnpoli #ClimateCatastrophe #Oil #Gas #EndFossilFuels
chart from the 2025 IEA report: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/018c3361-bc01-4482-a386-a5b2747ae82a/Oil2025.pdf

This website illustrates nicely how the US lost the competition–at least for now–in open(ish) LLM models: #AIResearch #AGI_hype
/via Wired

Sonnet 020 - XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou f…

Survey: over 40% of executives said AI saved them more than eight hours per week, while two-thirds of non-management staff said they saved less than two hours (Lindsay Ellis/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

Mick Shots: Making common sense QB decisions https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-making-common-sense-qb-decisions

"What has not changed in 50 years is the fact we are still using centralized architectures, prone to government intrusion and privacy leaks. Maybe it is time to think about a “Post Cloud” era where information is distributed instead of centralized. Of course this raises questions of trust, cryptography, security and collaboration, but the technology to build such systems already exists. It is more of a question of policy and education than of technology."

Today is the anniversary of America's time zones. Before the railways forced standardization, every town had local time, more or less based on solar time. That was chaos.
England actually had railway time decades earlier.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-histor<…

I was thinking this morning, there should be more things like Goodwill, more thrift stores like that everywhere, for even LESS things going to landfills. Just people getting together, even as a trade or barter system, things like flea markets or garage sales-- people do some of this already.
Reusing things is so important, and repair, when possible-- I've been seeing some cool self-repair fix-it meetups on here, too.
As I was talking to my wife about it, and I remembered thi…

Sweden has had a stated goal of economic equality for 20 yrs, but the income gap between men and women remains the same. Capital is the blind spot. Women own less, save less and therefore benefit from significantly lower capital returns than men.
Additionally, capital is taxed less than wages which further reinforces the inequality. As long as Sweden's rules put more resistance in women's paths than in men's, capital, power and security will primarily benefit men.
Fro…

#LB Estou bastante surpreso da Troi não estar ganhando essa de lavada. Mas, considerando a idade que eu tinha na época da série, é possível que eu considerasse a Beverly adulta demais para mim, de forma que eu nem a considerava atraente.
https://

It’s possible that the recent court order about how they can’t target observers is functioning as sand in their gears — which right now I think is all the courts and the law can be, sand in the gears. They’ve been leaning really hard on harassing, intimidating, attacking, tear-gassing, and detaining observers; they need that to function in the city.
Noem responded to that court order with a snotty “well we’re not doing anything wrong so this doesn’t change anything” kind of statement, but it’s possible agents have been told not to push it until they can get another court to overturn the order. That would fit with them focusing on the suburbs: observers are less organized there, and homes are more spread out.
2/

Although the next "Talk Like a Pirate Day" is not until Sept 19, 2026, we here in the US of A can start talking pirate-talk immediately.
Why?
Because the US has become a pirate nation, robbing other nations of their lands, assets, and governments.
trump ain't no Dread Pirate Roberts - he's more on par with Cap'n Dumbo Lardbutt - but he is no less a pirate than the famed Blackbeard and has probably killed more people than Blackbeard ever did.

Hello from the Pacific Northwest during a major rain event, distinguished by a more or less complete absence of any actual freaking light or color. So here’s something I snapped a couple days ago, by way of eye therapy.
#Photography

In the USA there's now bipartisan acceptance that "steaks cost almost 17% more than a year ago" ,[1] 60 % of shoppers buy less beef,[2] 37 % consider plant-based substitutes[3] but not clear how many would simply increase e.g. pulses or go fully #vegan. Prices of lentils are down[4] and production of pulses is expected to go up.[5]
[1]

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

Just finished "The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Can't believe I didn't read this one earlier, and this strengthens my resolve to finish off the rest of her stuff I have yet to read sooner. I think it benefits somewhat from having read it after "Four Ways to Forgiveness" which gives more of the Hainish context. Certainly none of the blurbs I had read about it did it any measure of justice, which is one reason I hadn't prioritized it. More than being about colonization, it's about a solution to the paradox of tolerance, and both the price and imperfections of that solution. As usual with Le Guin's science fiction, it's a rich companion to anarchist thought.
I think the typical objection to seeing it as an answer to the warlord question would be that it serendipitously positions the indigenous population with more power and a less ruthless opponent than in the imagined scenario, and it uses the League of Worlds as a sort of deus ex machina to foreclose further retribution. Ultimately that's why I think it's more about the paradox of tolerance than anything else, but I also think in regards to the warlord problem that we are too quick to underestimate just how numerous and enthusiastic the opponents of a warlord might be, and to overestimate the strength of technological weapons wielded by frail (and psychologically unarmored) humans.
In any case, Le Guin gives this book's alien humans yet another fascinatingly credible capability, and getting to see the introduction of ansible technology with all its implications is pretty cool too. Maybe not

#Blakes7 Series D, Episode 13 - Blake
SOOLIN: Just like that.
AVON: More or less. He is strongly identified with rebels, you see, and very popular with rabbles. They will follow him, and he will fight to the last drop of their blood. [smiles] Idealism is a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use.

It is less than the price of a Super Bowl ticket
(with even a nosebleed seat costing at least $4,000).
Still, at $1,500 per person for dinner, served by the chef whose restaurant has been named the best in the world four times, it may give pause to even the most dedicated food enthusiasts
h…

"Climate change is affecting your food – and not in your favour"
#Climate #ClimateChange
http…

idk who needs to hear this, but this is your sign to drink more water (if dehydrated) or less (if over hydrated) or neither (if perfectly hydrated) :ablobcatnod:

Blaine's talk is SO GOOD @… - I'm going to get his slides too, and we should embed the hertzog video.
Speaking of great talks, will we have more or less tears at this year's #ATmosphereConf?

even the eagles documentary made me like the eagles' music a little more, but this billy j**l documentary (which is as charming as advertised) might be the 1st music doc to make me like someone's music even less, which i didn't think was possible. but holy shit this is insufferable. wowie zowie.

🫧 Cleaner air may be accelerating warming by making clouds less reflective
#atmosphere

Ok, actually, one more thing. There was an #OccupyICE in 2018 and it worked really well with far less support than there is now.
Ok, that's all, I'm dropping offline again. Go organize some shit!

Mick Shots: Making common sense QB decisions https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-making-common-sense-qb-decisions

To clarify something maybe not obvious from my previous posts, I'm very very anti vibe coding for anything that anyone will use. LLM codegen requires more oversight, not less. This is *very* different from deterministic codegen/compilation where if the inputs are valid and the codegen is valid then the outputs are valid.

Good Morning #Canada
Happy #BoxingDay to all Canadians, and good luck to the estimated 8.6M Canucks who will wade into this significant sales day looking for bargains. December 26th was traditionally a day when the nobility gave gifts and leftovers to their servants and staff. The practice was famously put to song when the Duke of Bohemia, patron saint of the Czech Republic, and inspiration for the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas," was known for feeding the poor after Christmas. His charitable nature didn't prevent his murder by his brother. Today it's known as a major shopping day, although less important than 10 years ago. Check out the attached article for a really boring look at recent retail Boxing Day trends. Summary: Boxing Day is more like a Week and shoppers are less impulsive and more focused on specific purchases that they delayed.
#CanadaIsAwesome #EverythingMustGo
https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2025/12/boxing-day-still-matters-for-canadian-retail-new-data-shows/

So there's a #Mastodon instance for people that are into #math called mathstodon… and that instance allows users to use #LaTeX.
The

I’m sure having to post a lot of links to this one:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/115860687777099579
People are getting really confused about this. When I say “pretext,” I don’t mean for individual ICE officers. I mean that the Trump regime still (!!) does not have enough popular support and political cover to cross certain lines. They’re finding themselves genuinely stymied by federal courts and state govs, Congress is getting less (not more!) quiescent, they’re finding themselves unable to control the press, and popular support is collapsing.
Saying “the situation is already extremely dire” is true and important. Saying “they’ve already achieved total authoritarian control” is wrong, dangerous, and an invitation to give up when we most need people active.

A day of lots of painting, most of which is more or less invisible on a photograph coz it's the clear-coat varnish over the top of the wood stain. Does it look more shiny? To the eye it does, but even that may fade as it dries. The clear coat is important to protect the wood though.
For the first time all the exposed wood is blue though. Hurray.
One more days work tomorrow, then we're off for six days while I have to work and play away.

Using #PHP arrays as pseudo-objects is almost never the right answer. They're less self-documenting, slower, worse on memory, and more bug prone.
https://peakd.com/php/@crell/php-use-a

Binge watching #StarTrek #StrangeNewWorlds Season 3.
Not bad but not quite as good as S1 & S2.
▫️E1 was great as expected
▫️E2-E4 are cheesy & less creative
▫️E5-E6 is more my taste
(watching E7 now)
Still the best thing for me on

Perhaps a tad more slowly than the asteroid striking the earth some 66 million years ago, man striking oil less than 200 years ago may have a similar effect of eradicating three quarters of all living species. A few hundred years is an instant if seen on a geological time scale.

If recently played with plain Raw photography a bit on my iPhone.
I find that I can achieve better looking results than with the stock camera's HEIF or ProRaw format.
It mainly just looks less over processed and more natural.
The main downside is that the iPhone limits you to 12 MP but I think it is worth it.
Does someone else do this as well?
Or do you use a different app than the stock camera?
Curious about Android experiences as well.

OnePlus 15R review: the new $700 device is fast with a big battery and a vibrant 165Hz OLED, but one less camera than 2024's 13R and only four years of support (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphone

I have yet to hear any, much less a solid, argument against my suggestion that Presidential pardons and commutations are revocable by a subsequent president.
Were I elected president I would revoke all of El Cheato's pardons and commutations and let the people involved make arguments (probably in the context of Habeas Corpus proceedings) why those actions are not Constitutional.
My own sense is that the question tends more towards the "not revocable" with regard to …

Sleeping less than 7 hours could cut years off your life #health

On a more positive note, my home now features a #vacuum robot running the open source #Valetudo cloud replacement. The guide on how to do that was surprisingly easy to follow. Some light soldering, a bit of flashing that's pretty similar to rooting an Android device, and it's done.
And becau…

Spreadsheets!!!
Filled in my #dasher tracking sheet today and added a chart!
This one shows most of the stores I've got orders from since I started tracking that more closely in March. (there is a 'long tail' of <5 orders on the right that is not included in the picture.)
No big surprises for me in here. McDs and Dairy Queen are the 'bread and butter' locations. Other good performers pop up as the number of orders declines including NoodleBox, Boston Pizza, and Walmart.
Little Valley and Panago are good ones on the less frequent side.
7-11 is frequent, but pay is terrible.
“Walmart SFS" is their package delivery vs. grocery. It's an anomaly. It does not allow tips, and the orders are generally 5-10 packages at a time per offer which is why it has the most orders, but the very little cash.
I'm also always considering these numbers geographically... as in, where is the best place to stage myself for the most pay. There is a 'north' and 'south' side of town and It's not a clear choice.
#PortAlberni #DasherLife #DoorDash #Uber #GigWork #Charts #Data #Spreadsheet #AppleNumbers

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Happy new year to all from Bev, Linus, and my bald self. Needless to say, 2025 was more than a bit on the dicey side—began with a fascist takeover of the US and leukemia on my part, followed by knee replacement and then hip replacement for Bev. Linus, knock on wood, has been fine. I’m in complete remission and Bev is fully recovered. We’re all up and running now, hoping for a healthy and less fascist 2026.

D05 - Animals
CAPTAIN: One of our pursuit units engaged an unidentified planet hopper. They refused to obey a stand and be searched order and the pursuit commander opened fire.
SERVALAN: Why all the interest? What's one civilian cargo ship more or less?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/405/97

In life's grand mosaic, simple moments carry immense value. Financial freedom is less about wealth and more about valuing time with loved ones. A recent afternoon with my granddaughter reminded me of life’s true priorities. ❤️ What made your week special? #FamilyFirst #CherishedMoments

Pharmaceutical companies are spending a smaller share of their revenues on research, for innovations that are often judged less innovative by experts, while paying more out to investors. In 2024, the US pharma giant Pfizer spent just 18% of its revenue on internal research and development – while 27% went to shareholders through dividends and debt repayment.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/24/is-trump-lowering-drug-prices?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

In 1990, a $100,000 salary would be worth more than $250,000 in today's dollars.
Today, a $100,000 salary would be less than $40,000 in 1990.
$100,000 is the new $40,000.
https://bsky.app/profile/thefinancenewsletter.com/post/3m77do5dycc2i

What is missing: info about overall collisions and overall injuries. It's great that there are fewer deaths, it's not great that pedestrian deaths are still high, and it's not clear if we are seeing more, but less lethal collisions.
San Francisco's traffic deaths fall by 42% in dramatic turn

What is missing: info about overall collisions and overall injuries. It's great that there are fewer deaths, it's not great that pedestrian deaths are still high, and it's not clear if we are seeing more, but less lethal collisions.
San Francisco's traffic deaths fall by 42% in dramatic turn

Oil is the absolute enemy, and that should be completely clear at this point. Advocate hard for a Dutch style traffic plan and Dutch bike infrastructure. Push hard for mass transit. Fight car infrastructure with everything you can. Abolish free parking.
Every dollar you spend on gas, every dollar that goes to roads and free parking, is a dollar that will be spent murdering civilians to steal their oil.
Free parking is the most important subsidy to car culture. The more expensive you can make parking, the fewer cars will be on the road, the safer cities will be, and the less money will be available for the gang of thieves directing the military.
#FuckCars

A wren (Bewick's, I think, Thryomanes bewickii) in Seattle's Discovery Park this summer
#naturalist

Sonnet 020 - XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou f…

Hey... it's snowing again... what a surprise.
Our first winter in Barrie has been eventful as we've now gone 12 days with 2cm or more snow accumulation per day, and had a streak broken yesterday of 10 straight days of heavy snow / snow squall warnings.
According to local media the 2025 November/December snowfall amount is the highest in 25 years. Based on my substantial lack of meteorological knowledge I am predicting less snow than normal for the rest of the winter. The lakes are cooling quickly and icing over due to the colder than normal temperatures. That should reduce the lake effect snow squalls coming off of Georgian Bay. (Delivered in my Cliff Clavin voice).
#Snowmageddon #IceAge

Measured the gap under the dresser desk.
The clearance under the desk is 61cm.
What to make of the measurements diagram for that chair then?
The seat is at 46cm but how high are those arms? More or less than 15cm? 🤔
Probably approximately that, yeah.

As one who studied the development and growth of cities, the passage of this measure has caused me to wonder how short sighted are some programs to increase housing stocks.
Like rent control, which over decades can erase rental property availability, this measure will slowly nudge builders to locate new single family home construction outside of our city limits. (The average single family home price in our area is among the highest in the US.)
I am less clear about the impact on…

Oh look, the #BCNDP Government finally noticed the Post-Secondary system is collapsing. *slowclap*
Can hardly wait for that report next spring... maybe I will still have a job by then...
PS: I have a crazy idea: perhaps post-secondary should be majority-funded by government, not by exploitative international tuitions that can just *disappear*)
PPS: Domestic enrolment is not declining in any significant kind of way in the sector. From the “State of Post Secondary Education in Canada 2025” by Alex Usher:
"This decline in per-student funding is therefore not primarily a result of a significant decline in total funding; rather, it is a result of expenditures remaining more or less
constant while enrollments increased.”
WHICH IS WHAT EDUCATORS HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR DECADES
#layoffs #education #educationIsaRight #PostSecondary #VIU #BCPoli #CanPoli #CdnPoli #University #College
https://albernivalleynews.com/2025/11/25/b-c-launches-independent-review-of-post-secondary-education-system/

The Biden administration may have shot the serif,
switching from Times New Roman font on the grounds that serif-less fonts such as Calibri are more accessible to readers with disabilities.
That’s all over now.
The State Department Action Request reads:
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products
and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] program,
the Department is return…

Sonnet 020 - XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou f…

Physio signed me off since I told her that the wrist is more or less back to normal now.
She still wants me to keep doing the exercises for some undefined amount of time. Will into the new year be enough? Dunno. Will do that at least.
Need to get more exercise in general once this bedroom is finished building and I get the flat back to myself most days. Will have the fabled Tredmil Desk in the bedroom then so that'll help.

This block of wood, of which there are four at the corners of the bed now I've painted them, is very evocative isn't it?
I could glue a thimble atop that and some window-stickers on the side I bet... 🤔
Sheets of 1cmx1cm mirror tiles appear to be available easily. The more ideal 1cmx2xm less common.
Maybe best as a custom sticker?
Needs windows and a banner and maybe a siren light anyway when its done.

Canadians.
Is it time for Canada to ramp up its own defense industry?
We may not be capable of building the really large stuff. But I am thinking a focus on the essentials, mainly defensive or dual use.
Drones. (Land, sea and air)
Air Defense systems.
Armoured Personnel Carriers (we already do)
Ammunition
Artillery.
Small Arms.
We already produce some of this. We could produce more. Do we produce Air Defense systems currently?
Unfortunately the world is in need of more, not less, arms.
#ukraine #russiaukrainewar #canada #canpoli #cdnpoli
https://mastodon.social/@MAKS23/115752916537770053

You see some effort on the part of Congress to assert itself in the realm of war.
But it failed predominantly on party lines
Republicans predominantly were supporting the president and whatever it happens to be that he would like to do.
Moderate Republicans and Republicans who are in less safe districts were and are more likely to at least stand up a little bit to the president,
but there’s a very small number of them.