@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

nitpicking

@nitpicking@mstdn.party

So I've been a science teacher, museum guide, freelance writer, software dev, software product manager, network admin, and for a long time now a business trainer. And I run SFF conventions.
Member: #tootfinder.

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

masknerd, to random
@masknerd@mstdn.science avatar

The good news is that @trishgreenhalgh, and many others wrote a great piece that highlights masks work. The bad news is that the laws of physics still work everywhere else too, especially those involving bicycles and immovable objects.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@masknerd
Damn. I'm so sorry to see that you're injured. It seems unlikely random internet denizens can help you, but let us know, OK?

jackyan, to DuckDuckGo
@jackyan@mastodon.social avatar

Bingo! Or -go! , , , and down? I hope a ton of people are switching to @Mojeek today. https://mojeek.com

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@jackyan @Mojeek Yahoo! is fine. It vampires Google results, not Bing.

WorMP3, to DuckDuckGo
@WorMP3@mstdn.social avatar

Can someone tell me what is going on with ?

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@WorMP3 Yes. In fact, the answer has already been posted dozens of times on Mastodon. The default DDG search uses Bing. Bing is down. DDG can't get any results. Neither can other Bing-dependent services like Ecosia.

sknob, to DuckDuckGo French
@sknob@mamot.fr avatar

startpage.com seems to be working.

startpage.com a l’air de fonctionner.

https://www.startpage.com/

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@sknob Yeah, at last report Startpage was reselling Google results, as opposed to DDG reselling Bing.

robchapman, to random
@robchapman@ohai.social avatar

Dogpile is also down,

Why are these engines all tied to bloody Bing for heavens sake.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@robchapman Because it's cheap/free and clearly good enough, since so many people are using DDG.

The thing is, DDG can do Google searches with !g. Why couldn't it fail over to Google when Bing is down? (Answer: it could, but the developers didn't bother writing the 20 lines of code needed.)

randahl, to random
@randahl@mastodon.social avatar

Today I saw a number, which I will never forget.

During this war, Russia has launched 5628 Shahed-136 drones towards Ukraine.

That is 5628 times, civilians have heard a buzzing moped engine in the sky, and seen the Shahed-136 strike a civilian home, a power plant, or a school with its 50 kilogram warhead.

For comparison, Hitler struck London with 2857 V1 and V2 rockets — half as many.

I simply do not know what to tell future generations when they ask, why we did not stop the Russian terror.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

Hey, namesake @randahl Is it worth mentioning that the German V1 and V2 weapons had 1/2 and 1 ton warheads, vs. the 50kg one of the Shaheed?

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@randahl Fair. For whatever reason, I didn't see that one.

markmetz, to random
@markmetz@sfba.social avatar

bUt rUzzia feElz THREATENED! tHey hAz nO cHoiCe!

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@markmetz Poland conquered Moscow once, they most certainly have attacked Russia. It was in the early 1600s. Sweden had just conquered Moscow a couple of years earlier.

Russia's culture enshrines fear of attacks by their neighbors because this happened. European and American forces were operating in the country as recently as 100 or so years ago--and yes, that's recent to them.

I know that modern Sweden won't invade modern Russia, but Russia doesn't really believe it.

nitpicking, to coffee
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

How hard would it be to genetically modify #coffee plants to not produce caffeine? This would allow decaf coffee to taste the same as current coffee with no special treatments.

davidbrin, to random
@davidbrin@mastodon.social avatar

Donation today, completing gallon . It's not for everyone. But if you feel okay about it, well, it does some good. And I think it vitalizes the donor! (I use my local blood bank, not Red Cross, but it amounts to the same thing.)
www.redcrossblood.org

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@davidbrin Nice work. I just made my 113th donation myself. (I do platelets, so I can donate more often than a whole-blood donor.) I wonder if the New York Blood Center, where I donate, does anything for 15 gallons.

jdnicoll, to random
@jdnicoll@wandering.shop avatar

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Post-apocalyptic coming-of-age in theocratic Labrador.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/re-birth

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@jdnicoll I remember as a much younger person, trying to read that and just bouncing right off.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@wattevans Our tastes overlap, but are not the same. You like horror, for instance, and almost all of it leaves me cold.

spamless, to CrystalsHashtags
@spamless@mastodon.social avatar

"Only" 82 reps today, and I'm not going to do a second or third set. Here are the last four from this set. Last week, I had 95. But I injured my right shoulder last week – tore some muscle fiber in the upper tricep area — and it needs to heal

#SeniorFitness #calisthenics #pushups #nogym #noequipment #weightloss #workout #declinepushups
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C63n1-Nouo0/?igsh=MWoyMzV1NW1xbXkwdA==

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@spamless I hurt myself doing core exercises about 8 years ago. I have an old left shoulder injury from a fall in the 1990s that I aggravated by overdoing. I'm still being careful with that one when I do stuff like side planks. I hope you heal fast.

mitchw, to random
@mitchw@mastodon.social avatar

I do not often work in Microsoft Word, and when I do, I remember why.

WORD: “You’ve been writing this document in a 12-point font. 10-point font from now on!”
ME: “Why are you doing this?”
WORD: “I was bored.”

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@mitchw My favorite Word thing is when a long document suddenly moves one of your illustrations 39 pages up, and you have to do a weird hide-and-seek game to find it and put it back where it was.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Stupid econ question:

So it looks like a lot of remaining inflation is rent. In that case, wouldn't you want to lower rates to increase home-building and home-ownership in order to reduce rent pricing?

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@ZachWeinersmith In isolation, maybe. In practice, lowering interest rates has other effects. Also, it would take years--home-building is not generally an overnight thing. And home ownership is bad for society, for many reasons. (No, I wouldn't say provocative things. What gives you that idea?)

laurahelmuth, to random
@laurahelmuth@mastodon.social avatar

Fun fun fun: Beluga whales have a lump on their forehead called a "melon" that they shake, wiggle, thrust and bump to communicate https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/belugas-flirt-and-fight-by-morphing-their-squishy-forehead/

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@laurahelmuth All the toothed whales have a melon, from the smallest harbor porpoise to the sperm whale.

thisisskaly, to random
@thisisskaly@mastodon.social avatar

Imagine talking to your friend about how your brother just died and your bestie was raped mutilated and kidnapped and then them screaming at you HOW DARE YOU CRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER AND RAPED FRIEND WHNE THERE ARE KIDS DYING IN AFRICA

This is how Israeli Jews feel every day we talk about our lived trauma and people respond with WHAT ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS as if their very real pain makes ours meaningless

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@thisisskaly The problem is that your current PM is using the hideous and horrific tragedy of the Hamas attacks to justify the much worse (in scale at the least) damage being done to your neighbors. That links the two in people's minds.

smari, to random
@smari@mastodon.social avatar

Predatory business practice: Payless, a car rental company, offered a car for €9/day at Dublin Airport. Turns out, they block €5000 on your credit card if you don't buy their CDW product for €60/day, or half cover at €35/day with a €2000 hold. The vast majority of their customers don't have credit card limits that can allow a €5000 hold, so they are forced to buy insurance, even if their credit card has full coverage. I saw three groups end up shelling out for half cover, having no other choice.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@smari is Europe different from the USA here? I had $20,000 in credit as a college student. I didn't use all of that, but I had that card limit. That's in 1980 dollars, too.

geerlingguy, to random
@geerlingguy@mastodon.social avatar

IT HAS BEGUN!

There are thousands of these guys, crunching underfoot, being eaten by every critter in our yard, and now making the continuous racket... only a few making noise today, but it's coming. 80+ dB of cicada cacophony!!

video/mp4

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@geerlingguy You of all people (electronics guy, dad is a radio engineer) have noise-canceling headphones.

nitpicking, to random
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

Things I learned from @charliejane Anders's newsletter: "nothing" was slang for "vagina" in the time of , so "Much Ado About Nothing" meant, "lots of hubbub about a vagina". It's a reference to Hero's virginity, a key plot point (among other things, Shakespeare loved wordplay and complex references).

jdnicoll, to random
@jdnicoll@wandering.shop avatar

Going to run an intro RuneQuest adventure out of the Starter Box. Promised myself not to go into the usual paralyzing Glorantha lore spiral. Just using the box.

Well, and maybe the (really badly packaged) GM pack. And the Bestiary. Weapons & Equipment. But that's it.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@jdnicoll Did you know I co-authored an edition of RQ (that Avalon Hill killed, unpublished)? I love the game. If you were anywhere near me, I'd be begging to play.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@jdnicoll I mean, it's literally based on the "Basic Roleplaying" system. It isn't massively complex, and you can just skip a lot of the complexity. Glorantha is amazingly complicated, but not RQ. The original TTRPG DragonQuest, now that was complex.

wollman, to random
@wollman@mastodon.social avatar

Finally bought my airfare for #Glasgow2024 #Worldcon. It was a big chunk of money, but thankfully I don't actually have to pay until July. Of course I did have to spend half an hour listing to BofA's insipid hold music to talk to someone to manually authorize the transaction because Visa sucks.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

@wollman I bought my tickets yesterday. Paid a bit extra to use JetBlue, because airlines are being enshittified rapidly.

Discover questioned the transaction, but didn't block it.

jdnicoll, to random
@jdnicoll@wandering.shop avatar

A Pride of Monsters by James H. Schmitz

Five answers to "What's eating you?"

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/scratching-through-the-wall

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

2/3

@jdnicoll
I think Schmitz was the most feminist of the Golden Age writers. His most popular character, Telzey Amberdon, is a teenage girl. She gets in trouble, but you could never call her a damsel in distress. Unless his most popular work was the Witches of Karres series, in which the protagonist was male but the titular witches are mostly female and, again, have full agency and are developed characters. They aren't walking, talking rewards like women in Christopher Anvil's early work.

nitpicking,
@nitpicking@mstdn.party avatar

3/3 @jdnicoll

(I was amazed on rereading Anvil decades later how many of his early stories had no female characters at all.)

Consider also Trigger Argee and Nyles Etland. I'd say he was a specialist in strong, female lead characters.

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