+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@qoto.org

I got some Gros Michel bananas! Here is my review.

GROS MICHEL BANANA REVIEW:

Gros Michel was the worldwide banana strain until a blight wiped out commercial viability, leading in about the 1950s to a switch to a different banana for worldwide consumption (the "cavendish). Therefore, Gros Michel have become rare. They still exist cultivated in small quantities by heritage farms.

taste: tastes like a regular cavendish banana, albeit a good one. I did NOT detect that it reminded me of "banana candy flavor".

texture: denser, compacts more gooey in the mouth while chewing, which is pleasant on the tongue.

appearance: smaller but otherwise similar to cavendish, skin interior has more texture. It did not seem "slipperier" than a cavendish banana, contrary to claims. I will try making my dad slip on one later to see for sure.

RATING: 4/5 slightly superior banana, but just seems like a particularly good cavendish banana, so delightful but not worth the 17 dollars a banana I paid for the privilege of trying this rare heritage breed.

More information on the Gros Michel banana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel

#Banana #Review #Mastodon #FediTips #Foodstodon

https://x.com/john_kafka02/status/1909216154620703059

Three paths, one day.

https://gript.ie/new-report-shows-massive-eu-funding-for-trans-ngos/

A new report has revealed that over €220 million in EU funds have been used to advance “a radical gender identity agenda” over the last decade, including support in the EU for adopting a strategy calling for gender self-ID for children.

The investigation by MCC Brussels, a Hungarian backed think tank, says that research funding is being ‘weaponised’, and that EU-funded research “is being used as an advocacy tool to justify policy changes rather than for neutral academic inquiry” – pointing to €2.4 million in funding for research “Challenging the gender binary”, and a €3 million “MEN4DEM” study which critics say “treats traditional masculinity as a threat to democracy”.

The report, “Mission Creeps: How EU Funding and Activist NGOs Captured the Gender Agenda,” was authored by sociologist Ashley Frawley, and MCC Brussels say it is the first comprehensive investigation into how a small but powerful network of NGOs has shaped EU gender policy under the radar of public scrutiny – and that the funding has been used to promote “controversial policies” that “undermine women’s rights, child safeguarding, and national sovereignty – all without meaningful democratic debate”.

@deVoid

>"IN A WORLD... WHERE DEATH MEANS NOTHING"
>camera pans over Firelink Shrine
>suddenly JACK BLACK appears in full knight armor
>“TIME TO PRAISE THE SUN, BABY!” *guitar riff*
>proceeds to suplex a Hollow off a cliff
>bonfire lights up
>Jack Black stands on top of Anor Londo yelling “I AM THE LORD OF CINDER!”
>camera cuts to black, text fades in:
>“DARK SOULS: THE MOVIE — GET GUD OR DIE TRYING”
>produced by Illumination

@Suiseiseki @jeffcliff

> Since the current holder of the Unix™ trademark

Is passing a test suite created by a corporation that owns a trademark the sole necessary and sufficient criterion by which one decides if something is a Unix or not?

How many versions of Research Unix pass their test suite, anyway? Does Seventh Edition pass the suite?

ken helped with BSD's Unix. Is BSD a Unix? When ken created the first Unix, was he creating an operating system or a legal entity or a test suite?

I've read this brief essay, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", it was written by dmr. It seems to treat the matter of trademarking as incidental and says that Unix was created in 1969. It doesn't say anything about a test suite. Is it possible that the authors of Unix created Unix and named it Unix and that the thing they were describing is somehow not Unix? I mean, if that's true, then what was created in 1969? What is the real name of the entity that these papers have been written about? If I want to see something, I do `cd src/unix/v7` or v6 or v10...what kind of thing am I looking at? Should I rename the directory?

If I create something, is it not real until a room full of lawyers and MBAs decide that it is? I thought I could make things, but it turns out that anything I might make is just bullshit until it is given the stamp of approval by officials with the proper authority and they get to decide what is what! Gosh, that seems to make hacking a completely pointless. But I guess their opinions matter more.

I'll be right back, I'm deleting all this nonsense that the cool hackers made and installing Windows 11 and VSCode and asking OpenAI to write some JavaScript for me so that I can better serve the corporate overlords. There's an ARM version of Windows now, but I suppose I will have to throw away my RISC-V system. Maybe I can sell all these terrible devices and just replace it with a shiny MacBook :germanB:ro and then click on "Please, sir, may I run the program?" boxes in order to install Chrome! Chrome is official: it's not a website unless Chrome.
evolution_of_the_unix_time-sharing_system.pdf
research_unix_reader_1971-1986--mcilroy.pdf
unix_prog_design.pdf

Gibbs Gardens Georgia

💯💯💯

"In 2006, a retired AT&T engineer knocked on the door of the EFF's office in a rundown part of San Francisco's Mission district and asked, "Do you folks care about privacy?" With him he carried schematics exposing the largest US government domestic spying operation since Watergate.

That person was Mark Klein, who died on March 8 this year from cancer. He was 79.

After a life working in telecoms, Klein realized he had helped the NSA wire up a listening station in AT&T's San Francisco switching facility - the infamous Room 641A - that was being used to illegally spy on Americans.

The evidence he gathered and shared led to two lawsuits that exposed the extent to which US citizens were being spied on by their own government in the post-9/11 world. Klein faced legal pressure, death threats, and the constant fear of ruin, to get his story out and tell the public what was going on. But Klein regretted nothing."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/15/rip_mark_klein/

#USA #NSA #Surveillance #ATT #MassSurveillance #PoliceState #Privacy

Took Luna to a dog park on a lake

@hfaust @kakafarm the typical claim is that older movies are formulaic but can you really say that tons of modern movies aren't? they are both formulaic and fail the formula lol, like everything about these cash grab movies should be by the numbers but they're still not great even if people still go to see them since there's nothing better to do.

you know what an exception appears to be? the sonic the hedgehog movies.

Xander at my neighbors house. We left the gate open and he went over to visit. #dogsofmastodon

@Doll

Here's the really long story about FSE and the FBI and Torswats: https://blog.freespeechextremist.com/blog/fse-vs-fbi.html . It has a lot of weird information.

Also a response to some speculation by GotoSocial about FediList: https://blog.freespeechextremist.com/blog/about-fedilist.html . This is probably of less interest in general: it is mostly addressing questions the people there had about it.

There, that's almost all of the writing I'd been meaning to do, I'm done writing for the foreseeable future.