Mike Agg has moved @countingquoll@qoto.org

the workday continues.

My idea: CLOTHES SHOP FOR DADS

You roll up at the facility, drive over to the JEANS hut. Dinnerlady-type in her wee hole says "What size luv," you go "thirrehfourthirrehtwoluv" while making a mental note to go easy on the pies so you can get back to 32/32, she goes "Right you are luv, tenner alright?" and chucks you a bin bag full of dead blokes' jeans that aren't too far gone and you give her a tenner and you're done, move on. T-shirts next.

T-shirts are more complicated, your jeans were the simple one to ease you into it. Pull round to a bloke eating a pasty. He asks "Size," you go "Medium or large depending y'know," he nods, "You wanting colour, drab, black or mixup?" you think about it a moment and go aye, go on then, "Mix it up mate, colours and drab," he goes "Plain or wi' shite on, plain's two quid extra," you're sure as hell not gonna advertise some bugger else's T-shirt business on your body, so you give him twelve quid and he hands you Bin Bag 2.

There's a pub on-premises that'll do you some chips or a pasty and you can watch the JCB sorting out the clothes while you drink your pint and furtle through your bags to see what you've bought.

It'd be brilliant. Buying clothes would have nae stress at all, plus if you ended up wearing shite and looking a bit of a muppet you could just go "Aye well it were in the bag weren't it" and everybody'd nod and go aye, fair do's

Well, fuck.

Just been informed by my GP practice's pharmacist that there's now a national shortage of Rybelsus, aka Semaglutide, my most effective diabetes medication, that's likely to last into 2024. Influencers have been boosting it as a weight loss drug (it's the same drug—in tablet form—as Ozembic/Wegovy) and private clinics are buying up all the stock for image-conscious idiots, depriving diabetics of access.

(I have 12 weeks in the cupboard, then I may lose access for months.)

Fitbits are like Tamagotchis, except the stupid little creature you have to keep alive is yourself.

Oh what a happy day it is today. The #BBC has joined up on Mastodon. I'm also excited because they are hosting their own instance. So I can feel assured that anyone posting from that host is part of BBC and not some yahoo who decided to just put bbc in their name. I hope this encourages other #news outlets to come to Mastodon or other #Fediverse / #PubSub services!

Please note that it doesn't look like they're posting breaking news here yet. Also peep that TLD pretty rad.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2023-07-mastodon-distributed-decentralised-fediverse-activitypub

https://social.bbc

Saw that my epicycle clock was getting noticed a bit again, so I finally took the time to make it use vector graphics - you can zoom in and it still looks good!

https://sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/epitime/

Fun bonus: Animated time offsets, watch it go spinny!

"Sex is cool but have you ever fucked the system"
Stencil seen in Paris

The evidence that cars don’t work as primary mass transport in cities is everywhere: traffic jams, air pollution, accident rates, the shocking fraction of city space taken up by parking spaces, safety barriers/bollards etc. This 100 year experiment should be declared over, and we should put proper effort into the systems that HAVE been shown to work and scale: walking, cycling, e-cargo bikes, cheap/accessible/reliable public transport. This “argument” about LTNs is just lazy delay. #LTN #cities

Back in Feb, when Grammarly said they were going to think about incorporating AI, I immediately canceled my account and uninstalled. And now they've actually done it.

I'm sharing because with everything going on, writers might not realize this is happening.

#AI #writing

It's so funny to me how #Conservatives love to reference George Orwell's "1984" in their culture war talking points. Not only because they clearly never read the damn book, but also because #Orwell wrote things like this in 1941.

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism - that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit - does not work.

– The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

Can definitely recommend this book, such an interesting time capsule and a very short read. It's quite interesting to see how optimistic he was that inequalities of private capitalism would be addressed after a victory against the Nazis... Seems like the best we got 80 years later is #neoliberal market fundamentalism.

Gonna have to post some more quotes, it has quite some highlighting material in its ~80 pages.

#GeorgeOrwell #Books #Politics

It also reminded me of the most beautiful piece of sports writing ever composed #cricket
https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/178921341318/my-boyfriend-is-trying-to-explain-cricket-to-me

Bought some shirts and neckwear that used to belong to a guy in the band The Mamas and The Papas.

All the sleeves are brown and the tie is grey.

Tell me you used #GenAI without *telling* me you used generative AI.

Holiday day 4.

Parents, have you talked to your kids about the dangers of moss?
Do they feel the seductive lure of a sun dappled forest, and the urge to lie upon a soft bed of moss and not move for a thousand years?
#Mosstodon

If you like decentralized social media networks, and use Instagram, you should consider signing on to Pixelfed. It's like Instagram, but no algorithm, decentralized, and a lot more options for posting. We're on it:

https://pixelfed.social/@coffeegeek

CultureDesk@flipboard.social has a knack for finding cool #culture & #entertainment posts. Accounts they boosted for #FollowFriday:

@coffeegeek – coffee resource

@davidaugust — Actor. Writer.

@Garwboy —Neuroscientist & author Dean Burnett

@heidilifeldman — Law professor

@JamesGleick – science & technology author

@LibrarianRA — Retro librarian

@MarkRuffalo — actor, director, climate justice advocate

@nickfromupnorth — Creative, journalist

@sepinwall —Rolling Stone TV critic

@wikipedia

🚨🚨 QEDcon Tickets are on sale now! 🚨🚨

September 23/24 (with a free Skepticamp event on the 22nd)

📢 Hosted by comedian Bec Hill
🎤 Featuring Lucy Cooke, Andrew Smyth, Debbie Ging, Jason Arday, Dan Friesen from Knowledge Fight, Alice Howarth, Pragya Agarwal, Joe Ondrak and more
🎙 Plus comedy from Ahir Shah, Sian Docksey, and Helen Arney
👻 Plus workshops on how to test paranormal claims
🎧 Plus live podcast recordings, panels, and more!

All for just £149 for the weekend

https://qedcon.org/tickets?utm_medium=socual&utm_source=Mastodon&utm_campaign=tickets

Help! Help! I am trapped
in a haiku factory!
Save me before they