ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

Remember, when something in the news upsets you, you are *not obligated* to spend the next hour hunched over your phone reading live updates and social media hot takes.

You *can* stay informed without succumbing to this urge -- an urge deliberately conditioned into us for decades by the 24-hour news cycle and exploitative for-profit social media.

Step away from your screens, let your psyche absorb the blow, and read about it in a newspaper tomorrow morning if you like. You have permission!

Linux is good now. The author had enough of Windows and Microsoft shenanigans. I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/im-brave-enough-to-say-it-linux-is-good-now-and-if-you-want-to-feel-like-you-actually-own-your-pc-make-2026-the-year-of-linux-on-your-desktop/

Guess what? If you supported the alcoholic Fox News pundit to become Secretary of Defense, the anti-vaccine sexual abuser to become Secretary of HHS, the PDFile protector to become AG, and the WWE actor to become Secretary of Education, you get to have zero opinions on anyone Zohran Mamdani has appointed to his Mayoral cabinet.

@dwm @losttourist @cstross @tek the same humans that breathe an atmosphere that contains rocket fuel, chemically burn food within their bodies for energy (not to mention breaking it down first with strong corrosive acids) and regularly consume known poisonous substances for fun.. no wonder aliens avoid us.

50% of the population being able to process Marmite is just the nail in the coffin IMHO!

Once again, the Guardian's journalism shows the way:
Donald Trump in his own words – the year in racism and misogyny
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/29/donald-trump-racism-dei-misogyny-2025-review

The exploitative character of academic publishing in a single cartoon.

#publishing #universities #research #academics

h/t Alexandra Kupferberg/LinkedIn

original illustration: Thailand by Tawan Chuntra.

https://www.irancartoon.com/site/artists/tawan-chuntra#&gid=1&pid=30 #TawanChuntra #Thailand

Website idea: enter the year you left school and the website will generate a list of outdated facts and concepts that you were taught at school and which have since been disproven.

That’s accurate.

Trump dragging the US away from the free world, feels more and more like Nigel Farage pulling the UK out of the EU:

Based on lies, never delivering on its promises, and strongly supported by The Kremlin.

it's truly amazing what LLMs can achieve. we now know it's possible to produce an html5 parsing library with nothing but the full source code of an existing html5 parsing library, all the source code of all other open source libraries ever, a meticulously maintained and extremely comprehensive test suite written by somebody else, 5 different models, a megawatt-hour of energy, a swimming pool full of water, and a month of spare time of an extremely senior engineer

‘It was a matter of conscience’: Ahmed al-Ahmed’s family reveal why he risked his life to disarm alleged Bondi shooter
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/15/man-who-tackled-alleged-bondi-gunman-couldnt-bear-to-see-people-dying-cousin-says-ntwnfb

A few years ago I really struggled with the icing for my gingerbread barn and it accidentally became a gingerbread slaughterhouse.

The fact that far too many people cannot recognize fascism unless it looks exactly like Nazi Germany is very dangerous.

ICYMI — “I identified myself as a U.S. citizen and a veteran, but that didn't matter. ICE Agents smashed my window, sprayed tear gas and pepper spray into my car, dragged me out… this experience violated the very principles I fought to defend.”

@bruces @pluralistic If AI were a newly hired person and doing this kind of thing as its work results — and other fundamentally dumb stuff we’ve all been hearing about AI doing — it would be fired in short order.

Why so many businesses are ready to not just ignore that fact but in some cases fire huge swaths of people to make way for AI instead is what will be perhaps historically bad wilful ignorance.

Arresting freedom!
At street art at 2nd Av - Houston St, F Line
In New York! 🇺🇸
Artist Unknown

via Hackernews. It really is comical the lengths to which companies will go to avoid being contacted by their customers.

What the fuck is a ‘fuck off contact page?’

"A “fuck off contact page” is what a company throws together when they actually don’t want anyone to contact them at all. They are usually found on the websites of million or billion dollar companies, likely Software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies that are trying to reduce the amount of money they spend on support by carefully hiding the real support channels behind login walls. These companies tend to offer multiple tiers of support, with enterprise customers having a customer success manager who they can call on this ancient device we call phones, whereas the lower-paying customers may have to wrangle various in-app ticket mechanisms. If you solve your own problem by reading the knowledge base, then this is a win for the company. They don’t want to hear from you, they want you to fuck off."

https://www.nicchan.me/blog/the-f-off-contact-page/

Sickening — “Massachusetts college student (Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19 year-old business major at Babson College) deported to Honduras after attempting to fly to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving…” www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...