Apparently the very first cryptographic algorithm was developed in the frigging 9th-Century by Al-Kindi, an Arab mathematician who authored the first description of cryptanalysis… S/O to the Islamic Golden Age for giving us AES-256 encryption, it almost makes up for inventing algebra.

For every tech startup that's "changing the world", don't forget, there's at least 50 more of them that wind up on lists like these: "That's a tent. In your office" absolutely SENT me

Learning the X11 protocol for the first time, which of course lead to me writing another fucking syntax highlighting grammar for Xresource files… Though this one can at least be used on GitHub eventually.

Every time I write Ruby, I'm reminded of what a *real* object-oriented language should look like. Even the null value is an object with its own class (`NilClass`), so no more null access errors: list = [1, 2, 3] list[0].nil? # => false list[9].nil? # => true If only JavaScript was as cuspy. 😫

My current motivation levels:

I'm not sure whether to be greatly amused or equally as horrified that this account exists.

The creative genius of this account

I love it when a MAGA patriot unknowingly posts an Islamic proverb because they didn't bother to look up what "Sufi" meant. I'm sure they were too distracted by the AI-generated image of a Spartan soldier standing in a fucking field of flowers surrounded by butterflies, which makes perfect sense.

du wass, m8 I used the Inspect Element tool to change the button's text to "nein" before clicking it, which is sadly the sort of shite I do to amuse myself more frequently than I'd like to admit.

@anatudor.bsky.social Tiger urine smells like popcorn (apparently). So you'll need to be more specific. Yes, I considered this factoid important enough to tag you in a screenshot of the post I'm unable to leave a comment on. Inveniam viam, muddafukkas.

@mad-mex.bsky.social Mexican food for dinner/late lunch (which is all I've eaten all day). I took the nachos home, since that phat burrito actually filled my stomach-hole pretty damn good. *insert white-people Spanglish phrases here*

Currently wondering how I ended up on the spectrum when Tylenol isn't even sold in Australia. 🤷‍♂️ SOME QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED

As somebody whose life is going pretty damn good, I'm sure it fucking sucks for someone else to exist in this timeline. (am I doing this template right?)

‘Involved sequentially’: leopard sharks observed mating for first time in wild have threesome

I recently learnt that you can disable Google's AI summaries in search results by adding " -ai" to your search query. Now if only they offered a " -slop" operator to cut through bullshit search results that weren't written by a human whose job title doesn't match the regexp /\b(SEO|SEM)\b/…

Learning basic-ass high school chemistry because I was too busy doodling Diablo weapons and D&D monsters in my exercise books to pay any attention in science class in high school.

The brain needs a "delete memory" function. Seriously.

ENGLISH IS DEAD LONG LIVE ENGLISH

Ultrawurscht und Uberschnitzel. (Proof that isn't a made-up band name: www.metal-archives.com/albums/Ultra... … the lyrics are… really something else).

Every fucking time I try to write an AWK script, I either switch to writing Perl halfway, or fall back on a messy but terse sed(1) script. Does anybody else have this problem, or is it just me?

A table of contents is the hardcopy equivalent of a navigation menu. Change my mind.

My first post to 2-year old Mastodon account, posted there instead of BlueSky because it doesn't fit the latter's character limit. 💀

This post got community-noted.

Post a castle if you see this.

Post your uptime if you're currently on a laptop or desktop computer (Windows users need not apply). 16:32 up 49 days, 22:33, 4 users, load averages: 1.49 1.65 1.69

Your most recent reminder that Ukrainians do NOT fuck around when it comes to metal. primitivereaction.bandcamp.com/track/archae...

I'm sure Karl Marx would have been HONOURED to have his work reduced to an expensive, useless collectable whose absurd value is determined by artificial scarcity controlled by a monolithic corporation. 🤦‍♂️ At least tell me that it was limited to 1917 copies only or something…

Say it with me, folks: ＰＲＩＭＡＴＥＳ　ＡＲＥ　ＮＯＴ　ＰＥＴＳ

Listening to this in FLAC: 😍 Listening to this through the paper straw that is YouTube's audio compression: 😫

Little-known SVG trick: you can enlarge and/or crop the image by appending the following fragment identifier to a URL that loads an SVG file: Unhelpful example: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

I've never seen Star Trek. lol

Just finished watching Jubilee's latest rageba-… erh, I mean, "Surrounded" video featuring Medhi Hasan debating 20 lunatics. I'm flummoxed. These people are beyond doublethink; they're on the order of milluple-think at this point.

R.I.P., Ozzman. You're the reason I got into heavy metal in the first place, as I'm sure countless other metalheads did. 🤘

Alright, I knew butcherbirds had complex songs, but not so complex that human musicians actually studied and transcribed butcherbird calling to sheet music. Damn.

Saying "JavaScripts" should be criminalised under punishment of ad-block confiscation.

lmfao

Fun fact: Adobe Illustrator (*.ai) artwork files are just PDFs with editor-specific metadata added. Try renaming the file extension to ".pdf" and see for yourself.

My favourite letters in Cyrillic, in no particular order: ꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮ

I love it when bands speak my language.

Rocket ship and cauliflower content. You’re welcome 😎

I'm officially coining Gardner's Law: Any online argument between an American and a non-American about their countries will inevitably lead to the former bringing up the moon landing, WWII, or the US's role in inventing the Internet as a non sequitur retort.

You'd think a neighbourhood full of yuppies wouldn't be this fond of burning smelly firewood for warmth in the winter when they can clearly afford the heating bill. 😫

40 browser tabs later and I remember why I avoid adding missing data to MusicBrainz when there's something else I should've been doing this whole time… Metal Archives. Wikipedia. MusicBrainz. I swear they are to ADHD attention spans what localised pressure differentials are to deep sea divers… 😫

I swear that standing under Niagara Falls would be less noisy than my frigging kitchen sink.

Casual reminder that China also committed genocide against an indigenous, predominantly-Muslim ethnic group under the guise of "combating terrorism". And not that long ago, either.

Just came back from a screening of "28 Years Later". The film was set in the Scottish Highlands, so I only understood about 40% of the dialogue.

Learning XSLT. Pray for me.