RE: https://mastodon.social/@AltTextHealthCheck/116068929163081705 Níl ach 51%? Tar ar aghaidh #mastodaoine #alttext

I've been contirbuting to TVTropes since 2005, but as of Monday, I'm officially done. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15374859790A10773600&page=177#comment-4405 TVTropes has for some time been going down the same road that Wikia (originally Wikicities, now fandom.com) did. I […]

RE: https://mastodon.ie/@Infrapink/116065247823193291 Consensus is no, I should speak English like an English person. Ah well. For the first time in a while, I wrote a unique cover letter from scratch. I was honestly pretty proud of it.

My fellow #mastodaoine: is it acceptable to use the word "ye" in a cover letter for a job in Ireland?

Wow. Russia is scamming Kenyans into fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, threatening them with death if they tell the truth. #kenya #RussiaIsATerroristState #russia http://www.africanews.com/2026/02/09/lies-horror-trauma-kenyans-recount-forced-russian-recruitment/

Online money-saving tips come in three varieties. 1: Use a bucket to gather the water that comes out if your shower head in the few seconds it takes to get hot, and use that to water your plants. 2: Close your windows and doors when it's cold outside to retain heat. 3: A gold-plated silver […]

It's after midnight and I've been up since 04:00. I spent a coupel of hours working through Jean Meeus' example problem to compute the rising, transit, and setting times of Venus on 20 March 1988 in Boston. After much editing and fiddling, I have something which agrees with Meeus' results to […]

I recently saw someone leave fedi at least temporarily as a result of harassment, and one thing they highlighted was that most of us don't see the harassment they were getting because of how federation works and the fact that our instances block all the vile ones most of the harassment was […]

if i worked on aeration pools at a waste water treatment facility i hope i'd hold a job title like "shit stirrer"

[Dumbing of Age] https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/outings/ Huh. I noticed a while ago that, for all Dorothy seems to be perfect and have it all together, she didn't come to college with any high school friends. (Danny doesn't count because she dumped him on day 1, and Joe was never her […]

http://www.africanews.com/2026/02/06/why-ghanas-parliament-swapped-suits-for-smocks/ Just so we're all on the same page: Politicians in general should wear traditional clothing as formalwear, right? Suits are so boring. Let's bring in some colour and variety!

I've got some emojis for @koalou and @eruonna , courtesy of @alice 💖 💗 🏩 💓 💞 💕 💟 ❣️ ❤️‍🩹 ❤️ 🫀 🩷 🧡 💛 💚 💙 🩵 💜 🤎 🖤 🩶 🤍 :QueerCatHeart_BlackTrans: :bi_pride_heart: :meowheart:

Kanzi the bonobo who could communicate in English* also had imaginary tea parties. Scientists would "fill" one of two cups with juice "from" a jug, and Kanzi would choose the "full" one 69% of the time, which he would proceed to "drink" from. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00357-7 […]

[Cancer, maybe body hgorror?] Well that's terrifying. Lung cancer cells hijack neurons to send a message to the brain saying "There is no cancer here". https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00338-w #science #cancer #biology

Did some baking for Imbolc! Recipe here: https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/british/spiced-apple-and-raisin-one-crust-pie I used butter instead of lard and didn't use as much apple as Delia calls for because I thought I had more than I did. Even […] [Original post on mastodon.ie]

Ooh, the original Alone in the Dark trilogy is free on GOG for the next three days! https://www.gog.com/en/#giveaway #games #videogames #gaming #freegames #gog

Two countries divided by a common language and all that. An amusing snippet from an interview about the Game Boy Terminator 2 title. #nintendo #videogames #language

yt-dlp recently stopped working on me due to changes in YouTube. Here's how I got it to work again. 1: Switch from stable to nightly version. In Manjaro Linux, this is a matter of installing yt-dlp-nightly-bin from the package manager. Your package manager should hopefully have something […]

Back when I was a kid in Kansas we could go to the Quick Stop to play video games and get snacks without having to carry our passports and birth certificate to prove our citizenship. Both ways. #storiesoldpeopletell

WikiFlix is Netflix for public domain films, with no ads, no logins, and no data harvesting. Who doesn't love free entertainment? https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/

Herei s a cow using a tool: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01597-0

Turns out the size of the IKEA Tradfri control unit is just slightly higher than the gap under the front of an IBM AT. If you push the front of the Tradfri unit, say, cos you lean against it without realising it. Then the Tradfri box slides under the AT, which […] [Original post on social.v.st]

Last night I went down a rabbit hole reading about biilogical sex determination. I will now subject ye to what I read. Most people know that two X chromosomes make a female, and an X and a Y make a male. Smart people know that sometimes two Zs make a male and a Z and a W make a female. Oh […]

[Iran] "I'd rather not see anything happen but we're watching them very closely." says man actively making things happen. https://www.newarab.com/news/trump-says-very-big-force-heading-iran #iran

Ah here now, do ya not think that's a bit on the nose? https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2026/0121/1554356-m50-traffic-labour/

Al-Biruni was aware of the difference between the tropical and sidereal years, and of the precession of the equinoxes.

Trying out the latest version of TheDesk: https://github.com/cutls/thedesk-next It fixes every issue I have with Fedistar: It handles quoots correctly, and when I open a boosted post, it shows the full thread. BUT when a new post comes in, it appears on EVERY timeline and I have to refresh […]

USA voters only please: would you vote for a Republican that opposed the Gaza genocide over a Democrat who did not? #evanpoll #poll

In describing the "months of the Greeks" (ie Romans), that is theJulian calendar, al-Biruni describes it as having been introduced by Julius Caesar (correct), who was a king (debateable) who lived long before Moses (y'wot!?) He's also a little confused about intercalation. He is correct that […]

The amount of time a person spends talking about how rational they are is inversely proportional to how rational they actually are.

Testing

[FRpol] I see Macron is going full Machiavelli. https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/15/to-remain-free-one-must-be-feared-macron-says-of-frances-defence-priorities #france

I won't say that nodejs-lts-hydrogen is buggering me up. Buggery, if done properly, is actually pretty fun.; #linux

Just gave a presentation on "AI" which was attended by senior managers who are in regular contact with the C suite. In the Q&A bit, I quipped "It's OK to be left behind if everybody else is running towards a cliff". Pretty proud of that one.

Just started chapter 7 of Marc David Baker's The Ottomans, and holy excrement Selim I of Türkiye did not mince words when accusing Ismail I of Iran of every evil under the sun. A but odd that Selim, who was descended from a line of notorious alcoholics, would condemn Ismail for failing to […]

RE: https://doesstuff.social/@lety/115889972585967818 I have discovered a way to exclusively spam Pleroma/Akkoma servers while largely leaving the greater Fediverse alone If anyone wants to fix or exploit this, have fun

[Iran] 🤞

What the fascists did with Grok was horrific, and it isn't an isolated incident. The popularity of image generation tools will only continue to highlight the digital consent dilemma. Let's say I take a photo of myself. I should be allowed to do anything I want with it, from replacing my outfit […]

Discord is fucking confusing. And I say this as somebody who finds the Fediverse logical and straightforward. #discord

[Syria] They can oust a brutal dictator, but even revolutionaries bow down to money. https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-settles-status-top-businessman-under-assad #syria

The EU is working on what is in essence a new Open Source strategy for Europe, and the call for evidence is now open. This is our cue to provide feedback and input to the strategy! If you are involved in the Open Source community in any way, if you benefit (or could benefit) in any way from […]

[Venezuela] Trump says America will "dictate" how Venezuela operates. What sort of person dictates things? #venezuela #trump #donaldtrump #usfasc

Jellyfish and sea anemones sleep, even though they don't have brains. And they even have different sleep cycles: Upside-down jellyfish (Cassioea andromeda) sleeps for eight hours at night, while Nematostella vectensis sleeps for around the same amount of time around dawn. The purpose of sleep […]

Jellyfish and sea anemones sleep, even though they don't have brains. And they even have different sleep cycles: Upside-down jellyfish (Cassioea andromeda) sleeps for eight hours at night, while Nematostella vectensis sleeps for around the same amount of time around dawn. The purpose of sleep […]

I've seen lots of Chinese, Israeli, and Russian accounts on Fedi talk about how exhausting it is for them to comment on international politics, because they're constantly met with replies that are like “Well, what about what your own country's doing, China/Israel/Russia's the worst”, and how […]

I started reading The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer on Second New Year's Day. It traces this history of Ottoman Türkiye through the sultans, and some if what Baer describes is NUCKING FUTZ.

"Oh, but Venezuelans didn't want Maduro!" They can figure it out on their own and this had NOTHING to do with doing *anything* for the Venezuelan people. It's about being pissed that they nationalized THEIR OWN FUCKING RESOURCES and how dare they decide they're done with folks stealing their […]

[Venezuela and Ukraine] Come to think of it, if the US army can just swoop in an abduct the president of a country, why the fuck didn't Trump (or Biden, let's be fair and balanced™©®) fly into Russia and arrest Putin? #venezuela #ukraine