The NS (the Dutch train company) was selling some old emergency brakes, and well... one thing led to another, and now I have this in my home 😂

People vastly underestimate how important trans* rights are in the contemporary fight for freedom.

If you cannot make your own choices for your body, the name you go by, or even the very clothes that you wear, then you are not, in any sense, meaningfully free.

The Internet was made for things like this: a website that looks like Gmail, that shows you the worst of the Epstein emails

https://jmail.world/

@lilo Ich habe nach dem Abschicken vom halfnarp einen Screenshot der gesamten Seite als Backup gemacht (damit ich notfalls meine Talk-Vorauswahl noch habe, falls den IDs in dem generierten QR-Code etwas passiert)

Mehr als das habe ich aber leider auch nicht.

someone pls alt text this shit
edit: thanks @quinn!!

The perfect snowball globe doesn’t exi…

#worldtoiletday

#Joke #Humour

I had a call from a scammer the other day

Me: “Hello.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Hello. This is Bob Bobson from Microsoft Support. We are seeing a lot of virus activity from your device.”

Me: “Oh no. My device? Are you sure?”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Oh yes, we have many reports.”

Me: “Oh jeez. How can I fix it?”>;
NOT-Microsoft support: “It’s OK sir. We can help you right now. Are you in front of your device sir?”

Me: “Yes. I was just about to use it. I’m glad you called.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Yes sir, we are going to help you. Can you please push the Start button?”

Me: “I think it's already on.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Okay, sir. Now you want to click on Control Panel.”

Me: “I don’t see that.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Do you see a bunch of information above the Start button?”

Me: “Yes.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “That is your Control Panel.”

Me: “Wow, I didn’t realize it had a name.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Yes sir, now press on Internet Options.”

Me: “Yeah, I definitely don’t see any Internet options. I don’t think I purchased that feature. This is just a cheap one.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “They all have the Internet sir. Press the Start button again.”

Me: “OK, it’s the same as before.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “That’s OK sir. We are going to restart your device. Can you please turn it off?”

Me: “Ummm…I don’t know how. I’ve never turned it off. Since I bought it, it just kind of stays on all the time.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “There must be an off button on your device. How do you stop it when it’s running?”

Me: “In those cases, I usually press the big button.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “OK sir. Please press that button.”

Me: “Ok.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Is your device off?”

Me: “No. The door popped open.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Door? Is there a disc inside the door?”

Me: “No, there’s a burrito.”

NOT-Microsoft support: “Why is there a burrito in your computer?”

Me: “Computer? I thought you said this was microwave support.”

and beyond just the triumph of capital over any alternative, it really breaks my heart that computers are just objectively worse today than they were in the time of Chuck Moore. I try and not be an old man yelling at the cloud about this but we've given up on stability, soundness, maintainability. these are non-goals of modern computing, sacrificed at the altar of shareholder value.

it is wild that an official update of the operating system could break otherwise working code in a way that is impossible to determine even what is happening, let alone what to do to fix it. but this is what we've come to expect. computers break all the time, software breaks all the time, stuff crashes, you restart, whatever. and this isn't even factoring in the incoming wave of vibe-coded systems which make no attempt at correctness.

this isn't what computing was, there were attempts -- serious attempts! -- at developing theory and practice to build systems that were stable and correct in the face of usage and updates. we put half a century into that. and now we live in a kind of collective surrender. it's really depressing. as someone who has dedicated a life to computing, it's really fucking depressing.

I have just read this sentence: "Usually I pick up Starbucks for my morning coffee because it's closer than my local coffee shop and I don't have to put on real clothes to drive through it..."

And I'm just. Staring into the distance in European. You DRIVE to get COFFEE before putting on your CLOTHES? You can't be bothered to put on clothes because you haven't had your morning coffee but you will DRIVE to a fully another location that isn't YOUR FUCKING HOUSE to get it??? You will operate. The machinery! On the roads, that you share with other people! To drive to a location?? When you could just make it at home??

I try not to judge but, dear reader, I am fucking judging 😶

@vi

Q: What do you say when you trigger a detonator from a microcontroller GPIO pin?

A: It's bitbanging.

For a few years I've been aware of this website that purports to be able to unlock shopping cart wheels using the speaker on your phone, but i finally had an excuse to try and and i remembered in the moment.

A woman was outside the grocery store struggling to move her shopping car that was stuck because two of the wheels were locked

I remembered the website! So I put my phone near the wheels and played the sound. The wheels unlocked like magic. She was very happy. So cool.

https://www.begaydocrime.com/

"Pick up hobbies that let you meet like-minded people!"

I continue to be flabbergasted by just how boring billionaires are with their money.

Like... where's the paying your favorite band to record a new album entirely without commercial pressure? Commissioning some artist to make a massive mural of a bee/cheeseburger creature?

Where's the contract to fill an entire swimming pool with cream and let everyone in the city jump in?

Where's the "giving 100 homeless people houses just to see them smile friday"?

You have enough money to explode god, but you'll buy things that make more money, yachts you barely use and houses that are much too big for anyone to sensibly live in.

How fucking empty a person do you have to be for that?

Was bestell ich denn in Zukunft, wenn ich einen Leberkäse will?

Korrekt wäre es ein Fleischleib, der in rechteckige Pastetenform gebrüht bzw. gebacken wurde. Es wird kein Käse verarbeitet und auch nur einige regionale Varianten haben einen geringen Leberanteil (z.B. Stuttgarter Leberkäse mit mindestens 5 % Leberanteil).

Das ist Irreführung der Verbraucher*innen!

The Beetles crossing Abbey Road

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.

In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.

In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of "care" which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.

But I did it "by the book"

As I did it "by the book", the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.

In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, "by the book", and it was.

In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, "by the book", the government promised that it would treat me as such.

Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.

The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the "mistake" it had originally made when it recorded me as male, "by the book".

In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done "by the book", because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.

In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, "by the book". Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, "by the book".

In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because "opposite sex" civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.

And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.

The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.

And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.

Apparently this is "all my fault" and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.

Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?