A nice historical detail at the Pilsner Urquell brewery: the signature of Franz Joseph I in the visitors' book, with a visible correction halfway through – the emperor remembering that he's also King of Bohemia, and currently in Bohemia, so he ought to write the Czech version 'František Josef'.

It’s inaccurate to say Mario is brave and Luigi is cowardly Luigi is afraid of death, so he runs away from danger. Mario is afraid of living, so he runs towards death. Both brothers are cowards in their own way

Current status of the Strait of Hormuz dispute

reminds me of how pegasus used to have a racehorse pedigree table

To all who celebrate

That's what Internet was made really made for

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Hyperfixation of the week: there is apparently a field called “forensic hairdressing” where people try to reconstruct ancient hair techniques. Below is one from Ancient Rome ca. 120 AD. The leading figure is a hairstylist-turned-archaeologist named Janet Stephens who also does video tutorials. Cool!

[Does long backwards whistle] Well, mate, the problem here, right, is it says oceans are now battlefields, right? *Oceans*. And what you’ve got here, see, is a *strait*, right? Not under the warranty, then, see? Sorry, mate, can’t be done. Completely different parts. Dear, oh dear. Cowboys…

Pyrrhich Weekend - One more such relaxation and we're completely done for

The people who annoy me the most these days fall into two camps: (1) literally running the world and (2) utterly irrelevant outside of their tiny corner of social media. Reactionary centrism happens when (2) bugs you more than (1)

Trump's War: A Hegemonic Tragedy in Five Acts Act I

This shit is precisely why one of Zelenskyy's demands is that any security guarantees for Ukraine must be voted on by US Congress. Any agreement with Trump is invalid, not just because he's a bad person but because he literally can't remember what it was.

Remember folks, translating open source projects is a good way to contribute to the community. Had to redact a PDF and found Censor to do just that on Linux. Worked perfectly, took me 20 minutes to translate it into Polish. Had fun and did something useful too. codeberg.org/censor/Censor

At once frightening that Trump's threat were serious enough to warrant such response and heartening that us Europeans are actually acting on a real danger instead of burying heads in the sand.

"(...) Rzeczpospolita Polska nie uznaje przywilejów rodowych ani stanowych, jak również żadnych herbów, tytułów rodowych i innych, z wyjątkiem naukowych, urzędowych i zawodowych. (...)" - art 96 Konstytucji RP z 17 marca 1921 r.

Someone needs to send an ambulance to X

I am now enlightened. Great thread by Bret, as always.

Woke is good! People should be woke! We just can't let it get hopelessly hijacked by vindictive psychos playing out their power fantasies to compensate for their political impotence.

so you want to hear a little popular music history from a galaxy far far away? i'm sure you're already familiar with the biggest group ever, Rebel Alliance. (bringing this thread over from the bad place before it is list like tears in rain)

People who fancy quoting the Melian Dialogue ("the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must") ignore the fact that Thucydides was clearly portraying this as the kind of hubris that squandered Athens' primacy and paved the way for a devastating peer war that it ultimately lost.

Finally watched Master and Commander and the even convinced my wife to watch it with me. It's every bit as good as people here make it to be. It even had me root for the British and against the French. It's just That Good.

Who do I call if I want to call the United States?

If you need me, tap me on the shoulder. I’ll be happily working all day listening to this on a loop.

No. Punish the bad, praise the good, and tax all of them vigorously.

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

Following the Auschwitz Memorial reminds me every day that the people they murdered were not nameless or faceless. They were individuals and a lot of them were babies.

There's another dimension here. I'm a network engineer. AI could maybe write the config and implementation plan for a major change, but is it going to go in front of business owners, and stake its job on the claim that this is not going to cause an outage?

Pretty sure that was Stanisław Lem's "Niezwyciężony" ("The Invincible") and then Frank Herbert's "Dune"

This is basically every network automation demo ever

If you see this, quote with a robot that isn’t from “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Dr. Who,” or “Transformers.”

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, Star Trek, lord of the rings or marvel

Just to show you something. US this year has bombed: -Islamic State in Syria and Iraq -Islamic State in Somalia -ISKP in Afghanistan -Al-Qaeda in Somalia -Houthis and AQAP in Yemen -Iranian nuclear facilities There is so much going on at the same time, while people have no idea.

📣The countdown to the Annual Council Meeting is on! Join @agathedemarais.bsky.social, @ceciliamalmstrom.bsky.social, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri & Obiageli Ezekwesili as they explore how Europe can build resilient global alliances. @ecfrgeoeconomics.bsky.social #ACM25

You most likely don't need the Internet bandwidth you pay for. For most home networks the difference between, say, 200Mbps and 1 Gbps will only be noticeable during bulk downloads (e.g. downloading Steam games). Latency, on the other hand, impacts nearly everything.

Z pamiętnika początkującego mechanika rowerowego // From a diary of a novice bike mechanic

Poland just recreated this meme in 1:1 scale

The isn’t even like Christmas, it’s better than Christmas cause on Christmas we were bombed from those aircrafts

the current pope has a duolingo account i’m not even kidding

You really don't need legal scholars to weigh in on it just like you don't need to call an otolaryngologist to check if it is okay to shove a fork in your ear

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

“So first we pardon all the insurrectionists, then we send a bunch of broccoli-headed teenage Nazis in to gut all the federal agencies, then we start kidnapping legal immigrants and ship them off to Salvadoran prison camps.” “Good lord, and what do call your act?” “The Constitutionalists!”

"Woke war criminal Putin"