@m@blat.at
@m@blat.at avatar

m

@m@blat.at

Middle-aged SRE, he/him. Brexit-afflicted resident of Austria. Once defeated a Beholder with nothing but a sharpened gourd. Profile picture is reasonably accurate.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

Government-owned subsidised electrically powered public transport in a Pride livery flying a Progress Pride flag. Cry me a river, bigots.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@gnomicutterance @VirtualOdour Well, exactly. For the benefit of Mr Odour here, I'm in Austria (that's the one without the kangaroos) where although physical punishment of children was first made an explicit offence in 1989 the "right" of parents to hit their children was removed from §145 of the Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch in 1977. Here's the 1811 text that was deleted. Happy now?

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@gnomicutterance There's also a handy-dandy map there showing how in the "developed" (I use the term advisedly, as usual) world the English-speaking countries are obvious outliers.

bencurthoys, to random
@bencurthoys@mastodon.social avatar

The line that infuriates me the most is "The crew, made up of 20 Indians and a Sri Lankan national, has been unable to disembark because of visa restrictions, a lack of required shore passes".

Give them fucking visas then! Give them shore passes! Bullshit paperwork requirements that you have imposed are not insoluble problems, the solution is that you just have to recognize when your bureaucratic system has failed, and just fucking ignore it or circumvent it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69011124

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@bencurthoys Yeah, it’s just the casual cruelty of people unable to think beyond their own jobs — treating the crew like criminals and confiscating their sole links with their families is what the FBI does, to be fair, but you know that if these were US nationals stuck on a ship in Mumbai the US would be kicking up a massive stink.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

FM4 presenter: “.. it’s unlikely that today’s young people will ever earn as much as their Millennial parents or their Boomer grandparents”

Me:

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

"Introducing Apple Pencil Pro. It takes the pencil experience to a whole new level." is one of those ridiculous sentences which make me laugh out loud .

thisismyglasgow, to glasgow
@thisismyglasgow@mastodon.scot avatar

Every now and then I come across a road sign which raises more questions than it answers. This is one such sign I spotted today in Bowling just to the west of Glasgow.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@thisismyglasgow That sign is very wrong in so many ways. Someone didn't bother asking a traffic engineer for help with this one.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@thisismyglasgow okay, I looked in Street View and what's even more mysterious is that there are signs like that in both directions on the Dumbarton Road.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

I’m starting to think that people who were on the Internet before the first dot com bubble should have a referendum where we decide whether to write it all off as a bad idea, shut it down and start again with a model that’s not only decentralised but resistant to billionaires and venture capital. Fidonet, maybe?

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

At a press conference this morning the International Astronomical Union announced that the next two total solar eclipses are to be held in Doha, Qatar and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The IAU praised the “highly competitive bids” the two cities had submitted, and addressed human rights concerns raised by original favourites Spain and Australia by emphasising that LGBTQ+ eclipse fans will be welcome to attend, although out of respect for local customs they will not be permitted to use eye protection.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@Soyweiser @gerikson Plus the sets of "people who can DJ competently" and "people who are convinced that they should be allowed to DJ in public" do not, unfortunately, overlap completely.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

Unusually, the switch to daylight saving time in Europe tonight coincides with Jesus rising from the grave in countries which use the Gregorian calendar for religious observances. I really hope whichever authority is responsible for the resurrection hasn't scheduled it for any time between 01:00:00 and 01:59:59. If it's on the hour at 0100 or 0200 that seems even more vulnerable to someone's lousy time handlng.

What if they assume time goes 00:59:59 -> 01:00:00 -> 02:00:01 and it's scheduled for 02:00:00? Major theological crisis, people!

@fanf this may be within your sphere of interest

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@dgerard @froztbyte I always tell people that the reason so many systems nerds (I don't use BOFH any more as that's.. not really an attitude I like identifying with, it hasn't aged well) use Macs. It's because once you get back from work, frankly, the LAST thing you want to do is system administration on your home machine and OS X is just *nix enough.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

I haven't read anything this dystopian in a while. It's made extra-special by the assertion that having their trips to the bathroom timed and controlled by an app "prepares kids for the world of work". Prepares them for working in an Amazon warehouse, maybe?

(In less free countries like this one employment law makes it clear that toilet breaks are "a short interruption in work", and not "a break", and therefore absolutely none of your employer's beeswax. Doesn't stop the shittier employers from trying it on anyway, of course.)

https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/app-that-times-bathroom-breaks-stirs-controversy-at-fresno-high

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

A true visionary.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@lowqualityfacts A lie told by Edison himself, who enthusiastically spread it and put it about incessantly. In reality, a Scottish blacksmith called Dick McTaggart had invented it ten years previously, exhibiting a magic lantern show titled "Stoke My Forge!" in Dundee but Edison stole the patent.

m, to random
@m@blat.at avatar

A Discord or Slack channel is not documentation, pass it on

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@gerikson Eh, I grew up in a family of doctors. They'd discuss their workdays at the dinner table. I fear nothing. Let's have a read, see what all the fuss is ab... (turns green, excuses self)

thisismyglasgow, (edited ) to glasgow
@thisismyglasgow@mastodon.scot avatar

You only begin to appreciate just how many fireplaces were required to keep old buildings, like Glasgow's Pollok House, warm when you start counting the chimneys. In this case, there's more than thirty. That's a lot of grates to be cleared of the previous day's ashes each morning before the fires could be re-set in time for the family getting up for breakfast.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@thisismyglasgow My grandmother was sent into service by her father in the 1920s at 14 and her first job as the most junior of the scullery-maids (getting up at 4:30) was not even just to clean and re-set the fires in the living rooms, it was to clear and set the fires in the rooms of the more senior servants so it was warm when they got up. Sounded just absolutely miserable, and fortunately she had the common sense to run away after a while and tell her father than no way in hell was she staying there. So she trained as a seamstress instead.

ianbetteridge, to random
@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange avatar

I am sorry if this language offends anyone, but FUCK THE FUCKING TORIES.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/16/desperate-neglect-teachers-washing-clothes-and-finding-beds-as-poverty-grips-englands-schools

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@ianbetteridge But who else will fight against the existential risk to society that is low-traffic neighbourhoods? Resources ARE limited, you know..

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@ianbetteridge But really.. the witty comment there was more an attempt to cope with the true awfulness of the situation for thousands of kids who are where they are only due to having had the misfortune to be living in the UK under this amoral sham of a government. Every day they delay the inevitable election is another day these kids will have to endure.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@ianbetteridge Major, let alone Thatcher, wouldn’t have given any of these chancers who claim to revere her political memory the time of day. The only reason it’s sad that Thatcher’s dead is because in her time she would have absolutely detested the likes of Johnson and Truss - political butterflies with no convictions beyond their own obsession with self-promotion. They wouldn’t have been worthy to be junior minister for paperclips because they’d have found the job too onerous.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@ianbetteridge That and he was willing to put his job on the block to make his point. I have time for both Major and May as despite being Tories (and in May’s fault making some catastrophic misjudgements) they both practice a slightly old-fashioned form of politics that goes way beyond message control and their own personal desires for power.

NanoRaptor, to random
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social avatar

Picked up an extremely rare album today, and a terrific bit of Apple memorabilia as well.

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@Cdespinosa @NanoRaptor The Van Halen track? Steve Ballmer covered that too and the video is just.. well, some things cannot be un-seen.

windows dancing GIF

m, to UKpolitics
@m@blat.at avatar

The Guardian's correspondent Peter Walker has the perfect summary of the aftermath of the by-election:

"Overall, this was something of a depressing spectacle for a town facing significant deprivation and numerous other problems barely addressed by many of the 11 men who vied to become its representative.

The Galloway circus has once again swept in, declared a revolution and will most likely slink out again, this time in a matter of months. The 69-year-old has another political scalp to brag about. And what has Rochdale got? For now, it seems, not much."

(Oh, I checked - "11 men" is a completely accurate description of the candidate field. How very depressing.)

m,
@m@blat.at avatar

@fasterandworse Published a book about hypertext two years before the Web.. but two years after Hypercard.

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