Tootfinder

Lulu the #cat is lying on my mattress. I lie next to her. I gesticulate to her to climb on my chest, so I would get more space. She looks at me like I was some moron. In the meantime, Ruh notices the gesture and jumps on my chest.
Situation: I'm lying on half of the mattress. On one side, Lulu is stretching next to me and pushing me down. On the other, Ruh is lying on my chest, counterweighing me to the floor. I push my elbow against the bedside table not to fall.
But miraculously, they don't fight, so I ensure. Lulu started washing Ruh, and Ruh doesn't mind. I'm flabbergasted.
To the moment when Ruh suddenly starts sliding down, so she pushes all her claws into my chest. I shriek painfully, and both cats run away.
#LifeWithCats

Because I constantly hear myths about the good old compact cassette here's a longer post dispelling them:
1. They can sound as good as CDs
2. They don't wear out
3. You can't use a pencil to wind them
4. You can go to specific tracks automatically
5. You don't need to carry around extra batteries
I will elaborate below:
1. Sound Quality
Many higher-end decks can record cassettes on metal tape with various Dolby noise reduction settings; especially the combination of metal tape and Dolby S will make tapes that are pretty much indistinguishable from listening to a CD.
Even normal or chrome tape with Dolby B (around since the 1970s) will give great results; likely indistinguishable from a CD when played in a car or while out and about with a personal player.
Some extremely high-end tape decks produce better than CD results in some regards (for example some Nakamichi models go to 26KHz with frequency response, while CD are inherently limited to top out at 22KHz).
It's true that the dynamic range of CDs is much better than either vinyl records or tapes. However, unless you're super into classical music there's likely not much music for which this truly matters, as 99% is mastered to use much less dynamic range than provided by any audio media format. (If you're super into classical music you probably want SACD or other high-res lossless sources anyway, not CDs.)
2. Yes, it will wear out mechanically but you will wear out mechanically before it does. Please watch VWestlife's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgJ4hRHBiw
3. European and American pencils are too thin to engage the cassette reel cogs. (You'd need to get a Japanese pencil. People mostly used BIC pens for this purpose which have the right thickness.)
4. Most (nice) decks and personal players from the early-to-mid nineties onwards have track skip features (e.g. Sony has AMS, Automatic Music Sensor), which allow precise winding to a specific track.
Some decks even did this in the early 80s!
5. My late-90s Walkman has seventy-eight (78) hours of playback on one (1) single AA battery.
Anyway, the main reason why I like them is they're fun to use and recording them is very deliberate instead of algorithms selecting music for me. :)

Congrats! The @… team hit their initial “maintenance” goal. The next unlock is working on federated groups.
Help fund their campaign!
https://indieweb.social/@bonfire/11566

De leefomgeving vervuilen met giftige staalslakken. Het kan wel!
https://www.platform-investico.nl/onderzoeken/rijk-verbiedt-gemeenten-om-eigen-maatregelen-te-nemen-tegen-staalslakken

Rijk verbiedt gemeenten om eigen maatregelen te nemen tegen staalslakken | Investico Onderzoeksjournalisten
Gemeenten mogen het gebruik van staalslakken niet meer zelf aan banden leggen. Plaatsen die een verbod op gebruik van het vervuilende materiaal hebben ingesteld, moeten dat dit jaar nog terugdraaien.

Pro-indy SNP supporters should vote for Scottish Greens on the list vote in May if they don't want to waste their 2nd vote and want to help keep Reform down:
"The [SNP]’s likely success in [constituency contests] would mean that, despite not being awarded a single list seat, the nationalists will have 45% or so of the seats in the chamber, well above the party’s 29% share of the list vote"

Why the electoral system matters – Holyrood election 2026
The outcome of any democratic election depends on how voters cast their ballot, yet the electoral system shapes the result too

Why the sports column still matters — and why I'm still writing one https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6946845/2026/01/07/jerry-brewer-sports-columnist-introduction-the-athletic/

Did you see that thing about the whistleblower engineer exposing how a food delivery company exploits its drivers? It turned out to be a hoax:
https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/
The thing is, I don’t doubt that companies •do• in fact do stuff like what the whistleblower described, if not in such cartoonish terms. But this story is apparently fake, and that matters.

As the first guests began to trickle in, the conversation turned,
as these things do,
to the ethics of gene-editing embryos to create custom babies.
“I would actually argue that the ethical questions probably aren’t as big,
because kids already don’t choose their genes,” said
#Malcolm #Collins

Why Elon Musk and JD Vance Are Obsessed With You Having More Babies
My strange weekend with the pronatalists.

Check out my latest article - "the cosmic joke and the sacred everything"
https://www.brichapman.com/p/the-cosmic-joke-and-the-sacred-everything?utm_source=bri-mastodon&utm_medium=social&src=m…

the cosmic joke and the sacred everything
How "nothing matters" and "everything is sacred" might be the same realization

"Plastic patrol: the citizen scientists tackling litter in Australian waterways"
#Australia #Litter #Environment