Yesterday was the Suneung, Korea's notorious college-entrance exam, where the whole country almost literally holds its breath. Seriously. Flights are rescheduled, stock-market hours change, just so students can take the test on time and in absolute quiet. Fortunately, this is the 2nd year of […]

Any prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, but getting a conviction is something else entirely https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/us/politics/trump-sandwich-guy-verdict.html #sandwichguy #sandwich #uspol #protest

Cool article on the history of the Kinect and hacking it, which was really in the air in NYC in that era, plus how different that time was compared to today https://www.theverge.com/tech/812803/hacking-kinect-history #hardware #games #hacking #ai #opensource

Greetings from South Korea, where the time is just the time and no one spent the weekend fiddling with their clocks, but now I gotta deal with folks back in the US and whatever weird time-warp trip they're on now #korea #southKorea #DaylightSavings

infosec has a lot to learn about understanding failure conditions and accurate, understandable error messages from roadies

So, the big AI corps aren't getting loans for their data centers, they're getting private equity to fund them, paying them rent, and those PE firms are then turning around and selling bonds backed by that rent. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? […] [Original post on mas.to]

My kid's elementary class created the school's award-winning pumpkin this year, decorating it to look like Derpy and Sussie from K-Pop Demon Hunters. It's kind of amazing what they did on their own #halloween #pumpkin #korea #southKorea #kpop #kpop_demon_hunters

Looks like Wilders had a bad day, which means pretty much everyone else on Earth had a better one https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwvy4w875vo #politics #fascists #netherlands

Folks. I'm going to suggest that the interim United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is... not very bright.

this is the dumbest shit i have ever read

Polarisation? No, fuck that. I'm still at the same mainstream Swedish democratic socialist political position I was as 30 years ago. What you mean is that there are unashamed Nazis now. That's not a shared responsibility.

[Food] If you're flying from Korea through Incheon airport, don't miss out on the delicious taste of KFC's own... #food #Korea #southKorea #humor

Despite a lot of turmoil, and maybe because of it, ZA/UM staff in the UK have formed a union #games #gameDev #labor #union#labor#gamedev#gamestps://www.gamesindustry.biz/after-layoffs-cancellations-and-controversy-zaum-uk-staff-unionise-as-the-workers-alliance

If these results hold up, and there is no guarantee that they will, they set the starting point for Homo sapiens back from 300kya to 800kya — half a million years earlier! #archeology #paleontology #evolution #science#evolution#paleontology#archeologyttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx01ve5151o

It'll be interesting to see how these go. There've been a lot of indictments, and trials are starting, like the bribery one here for South Korea's ex-first lady. Hopefully, accountability is on the way. My compatriots back in the US know what happens when it doesn't arrive in time #southkorea […]

New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States #climateChange #climateCrisis #maps #globalwarming#maps#climatecrisis#climatechangettps://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/

Electrical workers in harnesses assembling a transmission tower, September, Korea #korea #southKorea #infrastructure #photography

By the way, these are what pass for big trucks in Korea. Hyundai Porters and Kia Bongos are everywhere. Highly customizable, small, and basically unkillable, they work in the narrow, busy, often treacherously steep neighborhood roads here and in the countryside. Some […] [Original post on mas.to]

It's been a minute since I've seen the term "ubiquitous computing", but maybe it's worth bringing it back, framed in terms of colonization, as in this great 2012 paper from Dourish and Mainwaring: https://www.dourish.com/publications/2012/ubicomp2012-colonial.pdf Key quote: "In fact, projects […]

Many of the urban trails around Seoul have a range of flowers that bloom throughout the warmer months. We're probably in the last part of it before the brown and gray season ahead. Here's a red spider lily #bloomscrolling #silentSunday #nature #naturePhotography #korea #southkorea

Many sidewalks in Korea are built with bricks, which makes maintenance underneath them for utilities, etc. easier than have to jackhammer away concrete. Also, they get these neat rivers of moss in the cracks #Mosstodon #silentSunday #nature #naturePhotography #korea #southkorea

[Joro spider, large but friendly and pest eating] One of many joro spiders out this month #bloomscrolling #silentSunday #nature #naturePhotography #macrophotography

Ant on a white hosta flower #bloomscrolling #silentSunday #nature #naturePhotography #macrophotography

Two photos of what I believe are hibiscus, locally called mugunghwa (무궁화), the national flower of Korea. #bloomscrolling #korea #southKorea #nature #naturePhotography #silentSunday #macrophotography

Marigold and dandelion in extreme close up #bloomscrolling #nature #naturePhotography #macrophotography #silentsunday

Close up on the intersection of two areas on a patch of tree bark #lichensubscribe #Mosstodon #nature #naturePhotography #silentSunday #macrophotography

Lmao lol https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-explains-live-ai-demo-fails-connect-ddos #ai #pivotToAI #meta #fail #technology

Godot 4.5 is now available! Complete with their typically excellent release announcements https://godotengine.org/releases/4.5/ #games #gamedev #godot #godotengine

Quite possibly my new favorite video game review—Garfield Kart 2, as written by Werner Herzog: https://www.polygon.com/garfield-kart-2-all-you-can-drift-review/ #videogames #games

Bridge crossing in southern Seoul, South Korea #photography #naturePhotography #monochrome #monochromeMonday #korea #southkorea

"Slice of Life" Today I set myself a weird photography challenge: I have a 10mm macro ring that a attached to my f1.4 ~50mm equiv lens. I kept most of my shots right at that fastest aperture and tried to capture a really narrow depth of field up close. Here are some […] [Original post on mas.to]

Really interesting article on the history of Goodfellas, but one of the wildest bits: the author of the book it's based on, Nick Pileggi, was married to Nora Ephron, who in turn wrote My Blue Heaven, which is also based on Henry Hill and also came out in 1990! […]

Mendik Tepe is a Neolithic site (settlement?) with early monumental architecture as well as storage structures and potentially living areas that could've existed before Göbekli Tepe https://arkeonews.net/mendik-tepe-a-neolithic-discovery-that-could-rewrite-history-before-gobekli-tepe/ […]

...

lmfao, shoot this straight into my veins https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/style/hamptons-nyc-mayor-cuomo-adams-mamdani-fundraising.html #nyc #uspol #billionaires #inequality

The last barrier has fallen! It will be impossible to tell humans apart from AI! https://www.theverge.com/news/767551/windows-is-getting-a-better-em-dash-keyboard-shortcut #AI #windows #EmDash #typography

I've always thought that sites like Yanko and Core77 were... credulous at best with whatever glossy renders manage to cross their desks each day, but this one... I'm pretty sure it's "The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good" right? […] [Original post on mas.to]

In case anyone is wondering whether social media bans will stop children from socializing online, I just saw my kid communicating with buddies via a shared Google doc. "Texting" by typing lines and erasing them back and forth. #socialMedia #censorship

We could be feeding 15 billion people with our crops. Instead, we waste more than half on meat and biofuel https://www.newscientist.com/article/2493576-fewer-than-half-the-calories-grown-on-farms-now-reach-our-plates/ #food #agriculture #meat #vegetarian #vegan

Oh, nice! Blender 5.0 is getting ACES support! Hopefully, no more manually dropping it into random config folders after every install https://80.lv/articles/blender-5-0-to-feature-built-in-aces-2-0-view-transform #blender #vfx #blender5 #blender3d #3d

If you're in the US, and you've had to suffer through endless spam texts and hyperbolic emails from Democratic fundraisers, only to think, well, it's a necessary evil for a good cause... candidates and committees wound up getting only 1.6% of the money donated via the largest organization at the […]

Trying out @andrewt 's dithered QR code generator: https://www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-codes/ Bowled over by the amount of AI slop out there when you search for an image of Dickinson. If you didn't know the existing images, you'd never be able to find one.

Oh, wow, Japanese is officially going with Hepburn-style romanization https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/21/japan/panel-hepburn-style-romanization/ #japan #japanese #english #languages #linguistics

I don’t consider myself a ‘nature photographer’ but I figure if I brute force it (by going to look at whales a lot) I would eventually get a few cool shots. Can’t wait to see this on a computer (still on a boat) #photography #whales #marine

Yikes, I've been wondering about the explosion of cheap travel eSIMs. Turns out they're a privacy nightmare https://www.itnews.com.au/news/travel-esims-secretly-route-traffic-over-chinese-and-undisclosed-networks-study-619659 #privacy #it #esim #mobile

I'm at #pycon #Korea! There is... a lot of #AI here. Like, a lot a lot. There was a pretty decent presentation on working with #django#ai#korea#pyconat I liked, but it had AI stuff kind of tacked onto it, like that's what it needed to make it on the schedule. Just trying to mentally sift it all out

The former first lady of Korea was arrested for bribery and price fixing, if you're keeping score on folks from the previous administration getting indicted (I certainly am) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz71rp7yn05o #SouthKorea #politics #coup #fascists

The result is a lot of mossy infrastructure, vines crawling up with A/C outlets, random trees breaking through at odd angle with oddly angled machines, Tales-from-the-Loop style #korea #southKorea #nature #naturePhotography #photography