oh yeah merry christmas

Possibly a really niche topic - but wanted to circulate this on the off chance it helps someone in a similar situation: I had an old Western Digital MyBook external hard drive enclosure that I had pulled a bad drive from. I had kept the SATA to USB board to possibly use for mounting other […]

Julie has been covering this longer than most. The DOJ is not following the law. #TrumpEpsteinCoverUp

NY Times doing a lot of framing work here that is a huge misrepresentation of the truth. The article lead implies that the zero was because the essay was about binary gender definitions. The zero was because the student didn't respond to the prompt […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Remember StumbleUpon? Apparently there is a project @cloudhiker which is trying to recreate the experience. Free, with limited ads, and a paid tier available. And there's currently a discount on the premium tier ($2/month or $20/year) -- which I'm hopeful is enough to help them recoup costs […]

"The exposure highlights the fact that Flock is not just surveilling cars—it is surveilling people, and in some cases it is doing so in an insecure way, and highlight the types of places that its Condor cameras are being deployed. Condor cameras are part of Flock’s ever-expanding quest to […]

https://limewire.com/d/oEbEa#dWWMnbJzNw Bari Weiss would probably be very upset if everyone were to download a copy of this video and watch it. It's the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT that CBS pulled off the air in an act of cowardice and capitulation to the fascist regime

My review of @rwg's new book "Move Slowly and Build Bridges" is now published in Convergence https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565251409858 In my draft/notes, I had written "this book slaps and everyone should read it because what is thing I feel... hope? optimism? That's been a […]

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/21/nx-s1-5651317/colorado-us-official-time-microseconds-nist-clocks I wish more outlets would recognize that this is a climate change story. Xcel Energy, the utility provider in Boulder, CO, had implemented planned outages to mitigate wildfire risks due to abnormal […]

Riding the nearly-three-years-overdue-for-inspection elevator. I'm such an adrenaline junkie

A thing that I made (and a project that I actually finished and didn't abandon for months in a partially-done state) Faux-Con Controller - Raspberry Pi Zero that emulates a Nintendo Switch controller. Not actually useful as a controller, but super […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

https://theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-highlighters-all-thes-1819568147/ Apropos of nothing

RE: recent news and the US DOJ breaking the law

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5655553-trump-patriot-games-2026/amp/ "Trump announces ‘Patriot Games,’ with 2 high school athletes from each state" I see we have finally created the Torment Nexus, from the cautionary sci-fi story "Don't Create the Torment Nexus"

I’m going to say, again, what is perfectly clear to anyone paying attention. Trump, assuming he is still alive, will try to stay in power beyond 2028, either by changing the law or flouting it completely. You don’t build a ballroom and refurbish a luxury jetliner for the next guy. What makes […]

The way that the "Save and Next" button in Blackboard just takes me back to the full gradebook instead of advancing to the next submission is truly just *magical* All LMS platforms are terrible. Some are just more terrible than others. #academicmastodon #academia

"We have learned a lot in the past seven or eight decades of technological progress about how to do really good safety engineering and safety systems management. And a lot of that about how we learn how to build safe systems and safe processes will […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Elon Musk and X are once again proving why institutions should never rely on corporate-owned, centrally-controlled social media platforms to reach their people. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0589g0dqq7o

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/how-fonts-are-fueling-the-culture-wars/ For no reason at all, here is a piece from 8 years ago about typography, culture wars, and the deep intersections of fonts and politics

I sought the serif

I'm trying out this new thing on my server called "don't have Apache consistently crash every 5-10 minutes after restarting" Ya know, just for shits and giggles #selfhosting #sysadmin

I'd been hearing about Wiki Edu and the Wikipedia Assignment on various listservs for a while, and this past semester I ran it for the first time with my "Data and Society" class, and *wow* it is so incredible! We all trained to become Wikipedia […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

I'll readily share a lot of this info with friends/colleagues/people face-to-face. But I'm not entering it into the centralized HR system if I don't absolutely need to. It's small mundane(ish) things like this which characterize living in a fascist […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Looks like my retirement account (mystery bag of random RAM) is finally gaining value! Thanks AI bubble!

RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@temptoetiam/115661944697746687 I WANT TO GET OFF MR. BONES' WILD RIDE

If Trump keeps trying to push the falsehood that documents signed with autopen aren't valid, does that mean that the promissory notes I "signed" for my student loans aren't valid either? I mean, that's just really irresponsible of the federal government to give tens of thousands of dollars to […]

https://apnews.com/article/trump-hernandez-honduras-pardon-96ac8d1d44d438f64beb8b24ca54b651 Trump says he plans to pardon former Honduran President Hernandez for 2024 drug trafficking sentence This is a brilliant 5D chess move to drum up popular support for continuing to extrajudicially drone […]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-drug-boat-survivors-order-b2874580.html I'll take "War Crimes" for 1000, Alex

This is actually a very interesting sub-field of personal injury law that has its own set of rules and regulations. People who litigate these issues are practicing Fall law law law I also have to assume that the same ad firm sold the billboard for the lingerie store as well

There are a lot of cursed computers things but this is the most cursed computers thing https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/h4N78m1PjXYsYfzkGV

someone pls alt text this shit

No *you're* procrastinating by creating Guy Fieri's Flavortown Market from Guy's Grocery Games in Animal Crossing!

As the Academic Job Market Season™ progresses and as some lucky folks may be receiving offers and thinking through the whole negotiation process, here's some info about what I got when I was hired last year (private SLAC in Virginia): $85,000 base […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Sure, Windows 11 may be a massive security risk, but at least it also has poor performance and an unnecessarily complicated UI! It's the Microsoft way! https://23.social/@leyrer/115571850278462660

RE: #cloudflare today

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Every year, my domain registrar sends me renewal reminders for the stupid domain names that I purchased as one-off jokes, and each time I get that email I have to seriously ask myself "wtf is wrong with me? Is this shit even worth it for the joke? Why couldn't I have developed a less expensive […]

Recently had Infrastructure Week™ in my Critical Internet Studies class -- I sent students to walk around campus and identify the various infrastructure and utilities that often go unnoticed Student quote: "They're not actually hidden that well, but […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Wow... I was just pointed to this paper https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfin.2024.104081 and its retraction https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfin.2024.104081 Want to read the first sentence of the introduction together with me? "Certainly, here is a possible […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

It has Turtle McConnell as Lucy because I first made this meme a previous time that Chuck Schumer caved under the promise of getting a future vote on some important issue. He's certainly consistent and predictable in his cowardice

Is logging back into Animal Crossing a recession indicator?

Nobody* could have possibly predicted this! *except for the overwhelming majority of scientists and medical professionals with extensive training and experience https://zeroes.ca/@ikonha/115425756064098040

It is 72° F (~22° C) and sunny in Richmond, VA. I'm doing yardwork and wearing shorts because of how warm it is out. Today is November 9, 2025 Yes, this is a milder region than where I've lived previously (Wisconsin, Colorado). But this is still way […] [Original post on mastodon.benpettis.ninja]

Looks like maybe we won’t get a huge spike in communicable diseases like COVID and flu during the holidays and all it took was destroying the entire federal government and having to cancel thousands upon thousands of flights because already-overworked ATCs don't want to work for free

RE: https://mastodon.benpettis.ninja/@objectionodon/115510427689074168 I made this silly bot because I remember really enjoying an equivalent version on Twitter. Something about shifting stupid online arguments to over-the-top Phoenix Wright animations just helped to highlight the absurdity of […]

Vision "insurance" in the United States of America 🙄 JFC....

Very glad to live in a state where the candidate who said denying gay couples the right to marry wasn't discrimination didn't get elected as governor. Very disheartened to live in a world where the candidate who said denying gay couples the right to marry wasn't discrimination was a serious […]

In retrospect, having a magic rectangle that blasts light at me whenever I look at it and does 2d8 psychic damage by bringing me constant news of the world and collapsing any remaining distinction between public and private was maybe Not Good. Though still anxious, I am much happier reading the […]

You have an PhD in #digitalhumanities and have plans continuing research in this field? 6-years #postdoc position #UniGraz in the Departement of Digital Humanities #dhgraz available! #jobs submission deadline: 8.12.2025 more info at […]