Whatcha thinking about there, kitty?

Will you touch the beans? #picaTheCat #caturdayeveryday
#CaturdayEve

I decided to change it up this week and draft my newsletter in LibreOffice Writer instead of Word.

I am pleased to report that LibreOffice has reached parity with Microsoft Office in terms of their support for staring at a blank page and procrastinating for hours.

The White House announces that the Epstein files will be renamed the Trump Epstein files.

Surprise: I'm supportive of queer folks.

If you don't like it, hit the bricks.

NEWS! White House confirms Trump's impromptu visit to Walter Reed hospital was to receive 'Dementia test of the year' award https://newsthump.com/2025/12/19/white-house-confirms-trumps-impromptu-visit-to-walter-reed-hospital-was-to-receive-dementia-test-of-the-year-award/

@WilliamNB If they've got a t-shirt underneath, what's the problem? It's acceptable to wear jeans for a week, and trousers take far more abuse.

A meme meets physics.

"Hello, We're Firefox, The Only Browser That Hasn't Hit Itself In The Dick With A Hammer. For years now, folks use us because of our un-hammered dick. Now, you may be wondering why today we've brought this hammer and pulled out our dick. Well I'm glad you asked--"

They can't even admit what happened on January 6 for fear of crossing 47. Pathetic.

Hi mastodon,

I'm an artist in the ligne claire tradition, based in Sweden. I'm in the process of leaving Instagram. Follow me for scifi/fantasy drawings.

#introduction #MastoArt #FediArt #Art

EDIT: I now have more followers here in a few hours, than I gained on instagram in something like 6 years. It's as if Zuckerberg has been keeping me artificially down. Thank you all.

@Sarahp that sounds like they're making a good profit. Until you realise ChatGPT5 cost them $2.5B to train. And they've committed to $1.4 Trillion spend on data centres.

Three Democrats Vote to Imprison, um, Doctors:

"The bill would imprison health-care providers, including doctors and pharmacists, for as long as ten years if convicted of providing gender-affirming care to transgender kids. With the consent of the kids. And the consent of their parents — who could also face jail time."

Just enough democrats voted yes for the bill to pass 216-211. https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/three-democrats-vote-to-imprison

I am so stubborn about not using AI.
You have no idea.

I will even go as far as writing my own texts, drawing my own images, writing my own code, and reading the whole article or email just by myself. Crazy stuff.

#NoAI

From fakebook.

The greatest guitar riff of the decade didn’t begin on a stage. It began in a half empty pub no one remembers.

It was a rainy night in 1977 when Mark Knopfler wandered into a nearly deserted bar in Deptford. He was broke. He was tired. He only wanted a drink to warm the evening.

In the corner, a small Dixieland jazz band played to almost no one. Older men. Older instruments. Jackets worn thin. The kind of performance you give when the world has forgotten you but your love for music refuses to quit.

Three or four people stood around. A couple of boys hit pool balls in the back. No clapping. No audience. No spotlight.

But Knopfler listened.

He called out songs. Creole Love Call. Muskrat Ramble. The band stared at him in disbelief. Someone in the room actually knew the music they carried like memory.

For two hours they played like the pub was packed. All soul. No applause.

And at the end, the bandleader stepped to the mic and said the line that would rewrite rock history.

Goodnight and thank you.
We are the Sultans of Swing.

Knopfler almost laughed. Nothing about that bar or that moment felt like royalty. That is why the name hit him like lightning.

He returned to the cold council flat he shared with his brother David and bassist John Illsley. The gas meter kept running out. The band’s name Dire Straits was not a metaphor. It was their life.

Knopfler picked up his National Steel guitar and began shaping a story. Harry with his day job. Guitar George who knew all the chords. Men playing not for fame but for the love of sound itself.

The song was good. But it didn’t breathe yet.

Then came the turning point. He scraped together enough money to buy a used 1961 Fender Stratocaster. The first moment he plugged it in the entire song unlocked. The groove. The precision. The riff that would carry them out of obscurity.

They recorded a demo. BBC Radio rejected it as too long and too wordy.

But a Dutch DJ played it. Then a German station. Then American radio set it on fire.

Sultans of Swing climbed to number four in the United States. And the BBC that first dismissed it finally played the track only because America had already crowned it a hit. A perfect poetic reversal.

Dire Straits went on to sell more than one hundred twenty million records and reshape the sound of modern guitar music.

When Knopfler auctioned off his guitar collection in 2024 many instruments sold for millions. But one stayed with him.

The 1961 Stratocaster that gave Sultans of Swing its voice.

It is family he said. You do not let that go.

As for the real Sultans of Swing the band in the lonely corner of that forgotten pub no one ever found them. They never knew their fading night of music became a spark that lit a legend.

But maybe that is the point. Greatness often begins where no one is looking.

Fun Fact: The entire solo for Sultans of Swing was improvised in the studio and remains one of the most studied guitar passages in modern music history.

@nixCraft I will not use a browser that prevents ad blocker use.

@nixCraft I'm pretty sure that number has some very bad assumptions. If he blocked the blockers, the people he thinks would have generated him the extra revenue would have largely abandoned his product.

@Semafor @semafor-Semafor European and Japanese auto manufacturers have been dragging their feet on EVs for years. They've been trying to squeeze out as much profit from their investments in ICE as much as they can. Then they act shocked when China can make EVs that are not only cheap, but also more technologically advanced. They complain that China has an unfair advantage of cheap labour and batteries. But that doesn't explain why Kia/Hyundai and Tesla seem to be competing.

Koch Network Is Pushing Trump to Accelerate AI, Documents Show
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show

Right-wing political group Americans for Prosperity, backed by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, sees data centers as part of a larger pro-fossil fuel agenda.

This. Russia wasn’t goaded into war by Ukraine, NATO, or the U.S. They weren’t threatened.

When you invade a country because they might do something that would make them harder to invade in the future, what that shows is that you wanted to invade that country. https://mastodon.social/@KraftTea/115722825714450016