Oracle, Arizona, May 2025

Do you want an octopus revolution? Because that's how you get an octopus revolution. I, myself, like the idea of an octopus revolution. You could say I'm a sucker for it.

Top Ten Things They'll Find on This Old Unix Tape: https://ksltv.com/science-technology/university-of-utah-discovers-rare-computer-relic/853296/ 10. Price guide for a WANG 2200 9. A newfangled FTP server 8. /etc/passwd protected with 2ROT13 encryption 7. An RTTY centerfold of Barbi Benton 6 […]

Tens of millions of people bought hundreds of millions of tickets on multiple days & still nobody won. You're about as likely to win the lottery by buying a ticket as you are by finding the winning ticket blowing down the street. The latter is much cheaper. #statistics #math #StupidityTax #HopeTax

Okay, yes, Section 31 was uninspiring and intensely stupid. However, it was all worth it for the message from Control. #startrek #section31

Spent the day working on the van, checking on Keith's Caringbridge posts, and toying with Internet Gopher and Gemini. Keith's doing okay, so it could be worse. It's fun playing with Gopher and Gemini.

The odds of buying a winning lottery ticket are pretty much the same as the odds of finding a lottery ticket just blowing down the street and having it be the winner. #statistics

"Despicable Pismire" is my Drag King Name. pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/i... @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy "My guess is that Disney will have to offer Wolf enough money that he agrees to keep the film in distribution and the ride running. Which is the point."

Y'all, this weekend is the Vilification Tennis Musical at Strike Theater in Minneapolis! It's one of our best and funniest shows of the year, and it highlights the broadly-talented cast of Vilification Tennis! Buy tickets now! #comedy #insultcomedy #adult #offensive #live vilten.net/2025/10/23/v...

A roadrunner atop Mount Lemmon near Tucson.

Over on Reddit I mentioned that I drive the speed limit on cruise control and got called a "shitty driver" and aggressively downvoted, so that's Reddit alright.

I mean, I'm okay with coming up with a Nobel Prize for Fucking Off to the Middle of Nowhere and Never Being Heard From Again.

You guys, our Internet went down for about six hours, but we're okay! We're okay. We made it thru.

Our neighbor was, effectively, killed by his insurance company. He went in for back surgery, and they sent him home with no medical assistance. There's no medical help out here. He developed bedsores and died last week. But at least some health insurance CEO got his profit bonus […]

#infosec: Wow, that barn lost a LOT of horses. I bet that was expensive! Good thing they're closing their barn doors! Should we close OUR barn doors? Let's bring in some experts. Experts: close your barn doors! I hear what you're saying, but closing the barn doors would slow the process of […]

I remember all those Nazi marches we protested in Minneapolis and someone would say, "Why are they letting this happen, where are the police?" And I'd answer, "They're right there." And they wouldn't get it.

Why don't the British use phrase "You got your just puddings"?

Post a you from a different era

I will refrain from vaporizing Sheboygan... For one MILLION dollars! Mwahahaha!

My rental car braked twice because someone cut me off, I braked three times and braked-and-changed-lanes once. People just come rolling down the ramp at any speed, slalom directly into oncoming traffic and then, I dunno, shrug and hope no one hits them? UGH.

I drove from the Renaissance Festival to St. Paul (35 miles) in the right lane with my cruise control set at the speed limit. If 'almost an accident' is where I, or my car, had to alter our course or speed to avoid a collision, I was in SIX "almost an accidents" because NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO MERGE.

Hahaha, I literally did this. Not at the beach, but I got a NEC PC8201a and I brought it to my college computer science class. I was King of the Nerds taking notes on a portable computer in 1983. The U of Minnesota teacher was Marvin Stein PhD, and he was […] [Original post on mastodon.sdf.org]

I'm pumped. After years of searching I finally located my brother's birthfather. He was a Danish sailor and my brother was born in Canada, so all I had were two very weak second-cousin genetic matches on two different testing services to go by. But tonight I finally found him! So that's all […]

Oh, good, now I'm down to just ONE murderous former customer I have to worry about. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/norman-wartnick-obituary?id=56523173 #gotawaywithmurder #lostthecivilcasethough #killersiknew

Everybody loves a spork, but did you know that like many hybrids sporks cannot reproduce? #themoreyouknow #FastFacts

It was the fuckaroundest of times, it was the findoutest of times.

A report I wrote in 1969. "Winter is the coldest season. The earth moves away from the sun farthest in that season." WHAT!? Wow, was I wrong! What a dumb kid I was! Everyone knows axial tilt is the reason for the seasons! #nostalgia #scanning #ancient #catholicschool #queens

An interesting OTP chat implementation https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/ash.radicle.garden/rad%3Az9NtUTymSdxnuTcnzaM5qi7cuHPN

Failed to find a photo of Gordon Dickson in my archives, but did come across this picture of Joan Vinge, Ellen Kusner, Norman Spinrad, and David Gerrold from 1983's Baltimore Worldcon.

Julie Nolke nails the modern finance system #comedy #satire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib_1jixUkLw

Great Horned Owl fren hung out in the yard the other night. Particularly proud of this one because I was using a hand-held manual focus zoom lens and was rushing to capture the image before, oop, yeah, he left. #wildlife #owl #greathornedowl #bird #wildlifephotography #lowlight

Live your life so that your death doesn't prompt debates over whether or not it's okay to celebrate someone's death.

Finally finished Iain Banks' "Look to Windward," it was... Banks. Not ENTIRELY Banks because there were at the end one or two people left alive. But still Banks. #books #sciencefiction #scifi #iainbanks #spaceopera #reading

I'm no Shakespeare but the number of books in which I've been published is growing!

'The background to the war [is] years of ruthless oppression, cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, systematic torture, sexual tyranny and the cult of greed' Iain Banks, "Look to Windward," 2000. Not sure why that comment caught my attention just now...

You have to admit, it's an efficient method of #hacking https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/clorox-accuses-it-provider-lawsuit-giving-hackers-employee-passwords-2025-07-22/

Oh this? Just some odd person using #gopher to track server status. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL8QQ6GT-42_wTygB3S-eKHLf94KpjZdZvFDbk0/ See more at gopher.someodd.zip

Normally I'd be pleased to have one of my photographs featured in the (paylocked) newspaper. Not so today. https://www.startribune.com/driver-airlifted-from-isanti-county-fair-with-life-threatening-injuries/601434757 Last October I shot a wedding as a gift to my partner's family (I really […]

Everybody generalizes from a single example. I know I sure do.

"In any revolution fighting authority is just one third of the battle. One third is trying to get food, and the other third is fighting with the people you're working with." Tony Gilroy, creator of 'Andor' on Jon Stewart's July 10 podcast.

Just to be clear everybody, the $1.9B for ICE? That's money to build an army. An army for Trump to use against you and me. Not another country. Not "terrorists." An army to use against you, and me, for things like, oh... ...this post, for example.

Shot from my "penthouse suite" at Convergence 2025.

The media calls it Alligator Alcatraz because apparently "concentration camp" is insufficiently alliterative.

Ooh! Let's help the media think up OTHER cute names for whitewashing fascism! "Arbeit Mach FUN!" "Mittel-lago," "Dachau-Dachau-Goosestep," Yay, the collapse of America can be fun!

The US in a nutshell, by Doctorow: "America has always been imperfectly democratic... in chains, on a reservation, or under the thumb of a husband or father, plenty of Americans had no reason to buy into the system or follow its rules. [So] America’s rulers had to know where to inflict terror."

Two people building a house notice that if they pick up a hammer, the price of nails goes up. So they time it that they grab both at the same time, and are prosecuted for shoplifting the difference. This future brought to you by surveillance pricing. #doctorow

So political assassinations last week, a war yesterday... And tomorrow's MONDAY? Greaaaaat...

Okay this is a test. Trying out @openvibe Android app and Nostr. The latter leaves a LOT to be desired, VERY rough and ready. Still, one hopes they are successful. #federation

Today was a bit of a nightmare here in Minnesota. Still, gotta appreciate the small stuff. I visited Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction bookstore today (world's oldest independent sf bookstore), Al's Breakfast (75+ years in a roofed-over alley), saw two of my three kids, fixed my music server, and […]

Oh, cool, got back to Minnesota just in time for political assassination season. #wtf