Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

The thing about birds is that the dinosaurs we were left with were the sinful ones. The others all disappeared in the velocirapture.

🎄 XMAS CREATOR BOOST TIME 🎄

Every year I try to boost awesome creators doing things that might make cool presents.

If you are a creator, reply with:

- a description
- a picture
- a link

And I will boost you.

If you are NOT a creator, buy the cool things and boost this thread!

Merry Xmas everyone.

Fascinating image from a smartphone camera. Upshot: a photo is no longer a snapshot in time. It's the perils of computational photography - https://petapixel.com/2023/11/16/one-in-a-million-iphone-photo-shows-two-versions-of-the-same-woman/

It was a cold and frosty magical morning here in Glastonbury. Taken from Glastonbury Tor at sunrise.

Henry Kissinger, who famously sabotaged the 1967 Vietnam peace talks in order to become Nixon’s national security advisor, has died. It’s rare when you can pinpoint a number of deaths to a political appointee but the 1975 peace deal was exactly the same as the 67 guidelines, and more than a million people died because of his decision, including 60% of all US casualties.

We need to talk about the Clangers. The Clangers (copyright Coolabi Productions Ltd, Smallfilms Ltd and Peter Firmin, images used under review/satire...) live on "a small Moon"...and are tall enough that the Moon's curvature is comparable to their scale. This is the best pic I could find to illustrate this, the further Clanger seems to be pretty much ON the horizon from the camera's point of view.

So we can draw a circle to match that curvature...

Google announced that starting in June 2024, ad blockers such as #uBlock Origin will be disabled in Chrome 127 and later with the rollout of Manifest V3 (#Mv3).

The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future, which mean an automatic win for Google in their battle to stop YouTube #AdBlockers .

#ManifestV3 is deceitful and threatening to your privacy, and now is a good time to switch to #Firefox (@mozilla) and/or #TorBrowser (@torproject) if you haven't done so already!

EFF (@eff) on Google’s Manifest V3:

⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Chrome Manifest V3 Transition Timeline (2023-11-16)

🚩⁠https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

EVERYONE: We gotta save salmon

US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Ok we'll build a giant fish vacuum

TRIBES: Why not just open up the dams

ARMY CORPS: We have to save the power companies!

POWER COMPANIES: No, you really don't

ARMY CORPS: FISH VACUUM

CONGRESS: Maybe u should look into shutting down the dams

ARMY CORPS: Our FISH VACUUM only costs $1.9 BILLION AND DOESN'T WORK LET'S GOOOOO

TRIBES: “Killing salmon to lose money deserves a deeper analysis.” (actual quote)

https://www.propublica.org/article/willamette-river-salmon-dams-usace?utm_source=comms&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=comms

SIMON CASE: David.
SUNAK: It shows we're serious people.
CASE: David. Cameron.
SUNAK: We'll give him a Barony
CASE: Of where? Ham?
SUNAK: Well it's done now so-
ED MILIBAND <interrupts>: CHAOS MOTHERFUCKERS!
SUNAK: Damnit! Who keeps letting him in?!
CASE: I think it's the cleaners

Brilliant. A bot that buys/sells stocks after Congresscritters buy/sell stocks. It is up 20% during a period the market was flat.

https://www.threads.net/@quiverquantitative/post/CzcB-Gsgqow

via @pluralistic

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 "Hand-drawn map of England and Wales by Christopher Saxton in 1579." #Map #Maps #Atlas #Cartography #England #Wales #Europe #History #Histodon #Histodons #C16th #16thCentury #PublicDomain @histodon @histodons

Attribution: Christopher Saxton, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anglia_Atlas.jpg

The Chestatee River Diving Bell. Built to enable gold mining underwater and you'll immediately recognise that was not subsequently "a thing", as I believe the kids say. Essentially dropping an iron balloon into the river bed to poke around for gold is less financially rewarding than going somewhere dry and - rather more important, this - with actual gold present.

When histories say it was abandoned in mysterious circumstances please substitute "in extreme embarrassment".

#FailureFriday

If you have had an adult family member or friend that was recently diagnosed with a previously unknown developmental psychological disorder (ADHD, autism, etc), you might have noticed something that confused you. Right around the time they were diagnosed, maybe even a bit before, they "suddenly" began to exhibit symptoms when never had before. You might be like, "I've known this person for X years and they never behaved like this." You might even think they are "acting" or something.

1/4

Fact of the day:

ISO3103 is the International Standard covering the serving of tea. It's there to ensure consistency in taste testing.

Key points:

- Pot should be porcelain or earthenware
- Milk should be added AFTER hot water

Ireland were the only country to object on its submission, noting there was no provision for pot-warming in the specification.

This was overruled.

Five years ago, New York magazine reported less than 60% of web traffic was human while bots masquerade as people.

On days that the Internet seems particularly unpleasant, it’s helpful to remember that many of the individuals we encounter online aren’t real.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html #AI

Last night on Glastonbury Tor. As the veil begins to thin.