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Not a caterpillar - On a frosty May morning, a group of European Bee-eaters perched on a branch gave the impression of a caterpillar at first glance. The vibrant colours of their feathers, with shades of green, blue, and yellow, seemed to blend together and create a fluffy, caterpillar-like appearance. It's also a winning image in Adult Category of European Wild Wonders photo competition, November 2011. José Luis Rodríguez

@jerry I mean, unless every other Republican expects the job to be so awful that they don't want it - but I don't believe that's the case :D

@jerry Not American here, I don't understand - why are they "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results"?

Many European systems have speaker/president votes that can be long and contentious, but when it's clear that someone doesn't have a majority, well - they move on to other names

@scottjenson Honestly I don't know how we ended up with prices that low, we are an outlier for Europe too. It is definitely one of the success stories of capitalism in this country. (A regulated but highly competitive market that actually works! Shocking! :D)

@scottjenson Not _that_ inexpensive. In Italy, you can have 4 GB/day for $20 the first month, $9/mo afterwards.

werner58 boosted

Your periodic reminder that just because a URL is saved at archive.org doesn't mean it's going to stay there.

Last year, I wrote a series about proxy services marketed to cybercriminals, and that relied heavily on Archive.org links to document various connections. After my story ran, the person that those links concerned asked Archive to remove those links from their database, which they did. The person in question came back and said hey, what you said in your story is wrong because there's no supporting evidence and you must remove this. Archive.org confirmed they removed all of the pages at the request of the domain holder, and that was that.

If you stumble upon a page that is in archive.org and you want to make sure there is a record that won't be deleted at some point, consider saving the page to archive.today/archive.ph

@jon @andrew_shadura interesting that they can fit useful capacity just on the roofs. I would have expected a whole railcar full of batteries, like a coal tender...

... actually, why not a tender? It would be relatively quick to exchange with a charged one at the station....

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The natural gas situation in Europe: currently actually filling up the storage sites. Demand for natural gas often craters after Christmas, but that we're increasing our buffers in the midst of winter is rather special. Live graph on berthub.eu/gazmon/

@mmasnick
“Barry was one of those born clever enough at gaining a fortune, but incapable of keeping one, for the qualities and energies which lead a man to achieve the first are often the very cause of his ruin in the latter case.”

(Stanley Kubrick, "Barry Lyndon", 1975)

@rodhilton Well, the rockets unquestionably work and really were a step change.

The most conservative explanation is that, well, he isn't _really_ Iron Man but the incredible Hype Man, and he didn't build any of these things by himself...

werner58 boosted

So, as @mmasnick basically predicted, it's not surprising to see Elon moving away from his naive #freespeech position towards balancing speech and safety.

It's just that it sucks that he's being so selfish about it.

werner58 boosted

The thing about having a lot of high flying, overachiever friends and coworkers is that sometimes you don’t think you’re doing enough until you run into someone who’s just like, “at night I’m going to eat some pizza and sit on the couch”, and you’re like - “wait, no language lessons? No flight school? No excessive gym time? Not traveling to an event somewhere? People DO THAT, regularly? Wow, I guess I could take a night off someday.”

It’s like, I tear myself to pieces when I’m not in the top nn% of the race on my exercise bike workout, and then I realize I’m actually more physically fit than nn% of the people who own and use a Peloton regularly. Be careful who you’re setting your standard of “normal” against. Either too low, or too high for you.

@nyrath @markeebee @simonbp

Micropayments were also roundly ridiculed at the time. I don't remember what these first experiments were like, probably very crude as... everything on the 'net back then, but I do remember all the negativity they attracted. Thinkpieces were written about how very small payments made no sense because the "cognitive friction" of assessing them for the user was too high.

Looking back, it's a damn shame. It's also surprising because we were all very familiar with a micropayment system back then: metered phone calls! That we used to get on the Internet, even! (or had just stopped using).

@EnergiaRocket The trajectory is optimized for maximal research paper production and simulation "fun" ;)

@jonathonbarton @john @freemo @toplesstopics @admitsWrongIfProven Most people don't click buttons, and each post in a timeline has a fraction of a second to gain a user's attention. This would kill engagement for artists.

@voidabyss @BobertHepker Jobs was also a pain in the ass as a person, but not nearly as unstable as late Elon. And since Artemis depends on Starship, I would not like to have Elon's bullshit impacting the return to the moon

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Easy (and justified!) to rail against giveaways to undeserving corps. But sometimes leakage is the price of achieving crucial advantages 3/

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I keep saving memes to my camera roll, secure in the belief that there will come a time when I need each and every one.

werner58 boosted

The Washington Post interviewed Dril about an Elon run Twitter, and it's everything you could possibly want and more. washingtonpost.com/technology/

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