A life spent in service. Wishing Larry well on this anniversary.

History is not a story, but... Red shares a downright Pratchettarian view of history, and imposing narrative structure onto "things that were just things happening."

Here's your good news for the day: SETI@Home finished.

This feels like the week that Dear Leader really lost it.

Autumn Sunset. Downtown St. Louis.

Achievement Unlocked: Get told sending a package is impossible "because Trump".

Side Quest Complete: Read Jules Verne in a Paris cafe.

Achievement unlocked: A German asked me to help translate something into English for a native Dutch speaker.

Infinite monkey on infinite typewriters inventing infinite brand names for throwaway Amazon names have produced this perfect gem of a company name:

Headcanon: Mimics never wanted the entire adventurer. They eat fabric, not meat. They were only hungry for your clothes. This is why socks always go missing. Mimics have learned they can peacefully co-exist with humanity by convincing us there is such a thing as a "washing machine".

Impressed that the Internet can be THIS obsessed with something (Kpop Demon Hunters) without spoiling it.

Tables set up at the Siege Invitational tournament for Warmachine.

All 40+ books of Discworld, rebound on a wheel, with a crank to spin the pages. From the Nerdforge channel.

Zelensky makes the most succinct statement of rational objectives for anyone outside the Russian Imperial meme-space: "The key to lasting peace is clear. The aggressor must not receive any reward for war."

Would youTube commentators please stop asking, "Who won India & Pakistan's war?" First, it's a war. Wars have losers. No one wins. At best, you do something needed and pay the price. More importantly, can we not taunt either side by rubbing their nose in it?

Happy Birthday, Sophie Scholl.

A simple bill: End the official state of emergency that permits the President to declare tariffs. It's got sponsors on both sides of the aisle. Granted, only one Republican: Rand Paul. It's a start.

In the 1970s, the Soviets sent a series of giant probes to Venus. They showed that the planet was far from the tropical paradise predicted; It was a hellscape of acid rain hurricanes. One of the probes malfunctioned, and was trapped in Earth orbit. In the next few days it will fall back to Earth.

He was a pope who spoke up for all. He will be missed.

New credit card salami attack just dropped: Found a bunch of fraudulent 2$ charges on my card from "Facebook Advertising" and when I reported the charges, was told the system had declined twice as many on its own. Time to check your credit card history.

In St. Louis, home-owners are reporting a flood of phone calls offering to buy their houses, at double the price they paid. Oh. Of course. That makes sense. Investors are scared that America might be over, and they're scrambling for a backup plan. 🧵

Yes, again.

Trumps loudly-proclaimed tariffs aren't actually being collected. Somewhere, there's a Database Administrator explaining in exhaustion that the executive order and the published chart disagree. They need to know CLEARLY what the rules are supposed to be before they can start implementing them.

"On February 11, 2025, Blue Shield discovered that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a way that allowed certain member data to be shared with Google’s advertising product, Google Ads, that likely included protected health information."

If you had told 12 year old me that he would routinely use chainmail as a grown up, he would think that was pretty cool. If you explained to him that it was all kitchen supplies: That he was going to use to scrub cast iron skillets and weight things in the sous vide pot, he would be less impressed.

Trump's foolishness has presented the perfect opportunity for cats and penguins to sign a trade deal - the fish will be ours!

Short-short version: Trump: "Tariffs won't raise your prices." Trump's team: "So we guessed how much we needed to raise prices for stuff from each country, to make Americans stop buying it."

Happy Healthy-Skepticism Eve, to all who observe.

The minis game "Infinity" attracts ridiculous levels of creativity, to match the painting expectations. This truck is a one-off creation, CNC cut out of Fanta boxes, and painted. It has moving parts and lights, some of which are hidden until you swing the doors open.

I apologize for adding to the constant stream of "news about our administration"; it's already overwhelming without my adding to it. But oy.

Does anyone have a video where: An aggrieved drunk... ...tells a whole bar they don't appreciate him ...and that he can take them all ...and starts by punching his two closest friends for no reason? Because I feel like this summarizes the president's economic policy so far. Same end result, too.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong... www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaKN...

Happy Half-Priced Chocolate Eve, to all who observe.

WIshing a Superb Owl Sunday to all who observe the holiday.

Thought of the morning: "The ALU is going to already be in the fray, working to mitigate this shotgun-blast to our institutions. Time to up my monthly donation to them. ... ...I'm not already donating to the ACLU? Time to fix that!" action.aclu.org/give/become-...

A succinct explanation of one way to think about AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUm...

Seeing a LOT of friends and strangers reporting miserable cases of norovirus this winter. Wash your hands. The lunch that stays down might be your own.

For anyone who needs to see today's ceremonies through a comic lens, are you following The Onion, here? They're doing good work.

A friend posted some math on how the battery fire in California could put heavy metals into the strawberry crop. Though it's early speculation, and inconclusive, I thought it was worth sharing, and got their permission to quote again here. TLDR: It's scary enough that someone should be checking. 🧵

Wall of Text: When you write too much. The audience sees it, and their brains turn around and go the other way, because they just can't right now. Tsunami of Text: When you put the important bit up top, so at least they'll read that. But then you follow with a Wall of Text that washes it all away.

The original 59-second version of "Half Horse Half Man" is still the catchiest version of the song. If you let it loop more than once... you've been warned.

Lessons learned from last year's New Years Resolutions experiments: 🧵

JavaScript is the Comic Sans of programming languages.

Everyday winter beauty: Ice crystals colonizing the windshield.

I've stayed in the habit of popping on a mask any time I'm going to be indoors outside my home for more than a few minutes. Haven't gotten sick all year. Last year only caught one mild cold.