Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧 @pieist@qoto.org

@beebrookshire
Lots of coyotes in my older Portland neighborhood now. The bunny population exploded in the early pandemic when the streets became quiet, and the coyotes followed, and now the presence of both is the new normal. There's at least one family with lots of pups living on a steep, densely vegetated hillside -- actually someone's yard --near here. People have responded by posting flyers explaining what to expect and how to behave around them.

The neighbors seem very clued in, but the coyotes are _very_ comfortable around people. One crossed with me in the crosswalk at a busy intersection; understood it was safe to go when I did.

Most people are really charmed by them, others feel threatened. I've little doubt that something tragic will happen sooner or later.

I have great idea. Instead of having this presidential election, AND instead of Ukraine joining NATO, how about Ukraine just annexes the US, taking care of both things at once. President Zelensky sounds good enough to me.

People sometimes confuse the plural of octopus.

Here’s a guide:
• one octopus
• two octopuses
• three octopods
• 3.14 octopi
• four octopodes

Few things piss me off more than a huge, multi-billion IT corporation that suddenly sends me an email regarding an open-source project I’ve been running since 1990’s that I’ve recently shut down due to absolute lack of interest from its users… which happened to be telcos and large IT companies. Here’s what I replied:

Thank you for your email. As it’s often the case with open-source projects, their value to organisations is only noticed and appreciated when they go offline. I have maintained pam_tacplus for the last years and it had the call for sponsorship prominently displayed for most of the time specifically because it’s a legacy project that is difficult to maintain. None of the commercial companies that clearly do rely on it ever demonstrated any interest in even nominal donations, so it was archived. While it’s notable someone finally noticed it, I’m not the person to discuss any future development any more.

I did work in large companies and I do understand the sick logic that drives them, when it’s easier to get approval for annual spending of $50k for some office decorations than $100 for a mission-critical project which happens to be open-source and can be used for free for some time.

But it’s possible. If you’re working in such roles, please make every effort to get this $100 because otherwise it will become your responsibility to develop and maintain code that you always got for free.

As a reminder, in 2016 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and UN mediated a deescalation agreement with #Russia which included reporting precise locations of hospitals and other civilian safe zones in #Syria to prevent what Russia claimed were “accidental bombings”. Guess what happened next? Russia bombed exactly these locations:

“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict,” said MSF Syria operations chief Massimiliano Rebaudengo.

A report published by the international medical charity on Wednesday said that during 2015 “a total of 94 aerial and shelling attacks of hit MSF-suppported facilities” with “12 cases leading to total destruction.” MSF said that 81 medical staff members were killed in these strikes.

Speaking in Geneva, MSF international president Joanne Liu told reporters that civilian institutions are being deliberately targeted on a regular basis, said the Guardian.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/103415-160219-amid-fears-of-intentional-strikes-msf-stops-sharing-hospital-gps-locations