Cary

fibro-memes:

Using Google has started to feel worse over the last few years, as results are seemingly taken over by SEO'd content, AI-generated results, and websites with tons of affiliate links and ads. As a response to this state of affairs, a single coder has launched a new, open-source search engine in part as a response to internet’s overwhelmingly corporatized and homogenous search ecosystem. The new search engine, called Stract, is running on a server in the basement of its developer’s office, is highly customizable and, based on feedback from users in the project’s Discord, is rapidly improving. 

The project grew out of founder Mikkel Denker’s master’s thesis at the Technical University of Denmark, which was focused on helping people search their own files and documents, he told me in an online chat. He is set to finish that master's next week and will then pivot his attention to Stract fulltime.

“Most of our searches go through the same handful of entities (Google, Bing, Yandex),” Denker told me. “Even other search engines such as DuckDuckGo use Bing for their results. I found it very weird that there essentially is no way to browse the web in an open manner. So that's what I am trying to build.”

hometoursandotherstuff:

An Apple executive lobbied against a strong right-to-repair bill in Oregon Thursday, which is the first time the company has had an employee actively outline its stance on right to repair at an open hearing. Apple’s position in Oregon shows that despite supporting a weaker right to repair law in California, it still intends to control its own repair ecosystem. It also sets up a highly interesting fight in the state because Google has come out in favor of the same legislation Apple is opposing.

“It is our belief that the bill’s current language around parts pairing will undermine the security, safety, and privacy of Oregonians by forcing device manufacturers to allow the use of parts of unknown origin in consumer devices,” John Perry, Apple’s principal secure repair architect, told the legislature. 

This is a quick about-face for the company, which after years of lobbying against right to repair, began to lobby for it in California last fall. The difference now is that Oregon's bill includes a critical provision that Google says it can easily comply with but that is core for Apple to maintain its dominance over the repair market.

dangerousoperatoroperadonkey:

thetursithan:

The two twins…

Sometimes there’s a blip in the universe, and a soul is reincarnated into two bodies at once, and those two bodies end up in the same household.

jenny-jinya:

TW: animal death / injury / death

For grandma, who loved pigeons, and for grandpa, who did not but wanted her to be happy.
Please hear me out <3

WEBTOON

muntzerism-diggerism:

chandelyer:

Schiaparelli spring 2024

glorious-spoon:

glorious-spoon:

every genius who thinks mandatory two-factor authentication is a good idea should be forced to do tech support for a public library that serves a lot of elderly poor people

way too many people are interpreting this as ‘old people are too ignorant to understand technology’ instead of 'poor people, especially elderly poor people, often do not have reliable access to a cell phone’.

i know 2fa is more secure. everyone knows that 2fa is more secure. the problem is, when you make your very secure 2fa reliant on a cell phone, people who do not have cell phones can no longer use your service. when the service in question includes every major email provider, and you are required to have an email to access many basic kinds of assistance, people without cell phones are cut off from accessing those things.

and this is a fucking problem.

angremlin:

escuerzoresucitado:

This refers to something so convenient as to be unlikely, like a duck bringing its own onions to cook it with, and you may also recognize this as the basis of the Pokemon “Farfetch’d”, which is why it’s called that :v

snakesonacartesianplane:

apocryphics:

lydia davis

In the same vein:

“The simultaneous borrowing of French and Latin words led to a highly distinctive feature of modern English vocabulary: sets of three items, all expressing the same fundamental notion but differing slightly in meaning or style, e.g., kingly, royal, regal; rise, mount, ascend; ask, question, interrogate; fast, firm, secure; holy, sacred, consecrated. The Old English word (the first in each triplet) is the most colloquial, the French (the second) is more literary, and the Latin word (the last) more learned.” (Howard Jackson and Etienne Zé Amvela, “Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology.” Continuum, 2000)

via ThoughtCo

Though I like how John McWhorter phrases it better:

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin – note how one imagines posture improving with each level: kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

from “English is not normal”

Oh the 20th Century…

fuckyeahchinesefashion:

Weaving goldfish with corn leaves

moss-wizard:

carnival-phantasm:

carnival-phantasm:

I wish I could somehow explain to non healthcare workers/healthcare workers without rural experience how fucking real the first 22 seconds of this video are

That video is too good not to embed.

udntnome:

shutyourmoustache:

Love how you can feel his sanity slipping away…

This is a classic fucking prank type

I would have done exactly the same. ❤️

The Lorax

Backing us on Patreon can be the equivalent of buying us a coffee each month. But it’s much more than that: Your support makes sure that we can continue creating free comics and bring laughter into the world. Visit this link for more: https://www.patreon.com/warandpeas

Social networks and RSS. We really should be on the case for all social media networks to support RSS feeds outbound at least (inbound nice too). And also add features to make interop really useful. I've enumerated them here. I am making software that builds on this feature in social networks. And yes we do have some examples of that, thinking of WordPress and competitors. I think they are perfectly good bases for social networks.

thesterlingaffair:

aijoskobi:

My Human is Not

Written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly

Art by Sonny Liew

Star Trek: Waypoint Special #1

High Res Version

katrinageist:

roseapprentice:

cheeseanonioncrisps:

This is Sarah Grimké.

She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being ‘of her time’ and ‘just the way she was raised’.

And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.

When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dad’s plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.

This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said “hey, wait a minute, we’re all assholes!” and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.

It absolutely was a choice.

This is something I’ve been forced to learn in the past two years. The world around me is turning into something I was raised to believe could only happen in history books, or maybe in other parts of the world that sort of belonged in history books.

The more I see this happening–and the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slaves–the more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and they’ve always been the same.

And we’re always going to have genuinely appealing opportunities to make the worst possible choices again, no matter how much more modern the world appears.

George Washington owned slaves right? Most of the founding fathers did, and in grade school, to smooth over that abuse of humanity by an American hero, we as children were told “Yes, George Washington did own slaves but he freed them when he died.” And you infer that he didn’t like slavery but it was an economic necessity.

And then you’re in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nation’s early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.

There’s a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.

It’s important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what they’re doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.

Do not let anyone tell you his teeth were made of wood.

mysharona1987:

ancestorswatching:

In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.

In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.

Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.

Hair is not just hair in African diaspora cultures, and this is why the appropriation and stigma surrounding our hair is so harmful.

osberend:

iopele:

suspendnodisbelief:

naamahdarling:

optimysticals:

youwantmuchmore:

thebestoftumbling:

golden eagle having a relaxing time

This is the world’s largest flying Engine of Murder marveling at the fact that it can actually have its tummy rubbed.

I feel like this is the next step up on “loose your fingers” roulette from petting a kittie’s tummy, but just below belly rubs for say a lion.

Can someone who knows birds better than I do tell me whether this eagle is as happy as it looks?  Because I want it to be happy.  It looks so happy.  Bewildered by having a friend, but so happy.

Just popping on this thread to confirm: yes, the eagle is happy about the belly rubs. Golden eagles make this sound when receiving allopreening and similar affectionate and soothing treatment from their parents and mates. It’s the “I am safe and well fed, and somebody familiar is taking good care of me” sound. Angry raptors and wounded raptors make some pretty dramatic hisses and shrieks; frightened raptors go dead silent and try to hide if they can, or fluff up big and get loud and in-your-face if hiding isn’t an option. They can easily sever a finger or break the bones of a human hand or wrist, and even with a very thick leather falconer’s gauntlet, I’ve known falconers to leave a mews (hawk house) with graphic punctures THROUGH the gauntlet into the meat of their hands and arms, just from buteos and kestrels way smaller than this eagle. A pissed off hawk will make damn sure you don’t try twice whatever you pulled that pissed her off, even if she’s been human-imprinted.

If you’re ever unsure about an animal’s level of okayness with something that’s happening, there are three spot-check questions you can ask, to common-sense your way through it:

1. Is the animal capable of defending itself or making a threatening or fearful display, or otherwise giving protest, and if so, is it using this ability? (e.g. dog snarling or biting, swan hissing, horse kicking or biting) 

2. Does the animal experience an incentive-based relationship with the human? (i.e. does the animal have a reason, in the animal’s frame of reference, for being near this human? e.g. dog sharing companionship / food / shelter, hawk receiving good quality abundant food and shelter and medical care from a falconer)

3. Is the animal a domesticated species, with at least a full century of consistent species cohabitation with humans? (Domesticated animals frequently are conditioned from birth or by selective breeding to be unbothered by human actions that upset their feral nearest relatives.)

In this situation, YES the eagle can self-defend, YES the eagle has incentive to cooperate with and trust the human handler, and NO the eagle is not a domesticated species, meaning we can expect a high level of reactivity to distress, compared to domestic animals: if the eagle was distressed, it would be pretty visible and apparent to the viewer. These aren’t a universally applicable metric, but they’re a good start for mammal and bird interactions.

Pair that with the knowledge that eagles reserve those chirps for calm environments, and you can be pretty secure and comfy in the knowledge that the big honkin’ birb is happy and cozy.

Also, to anybody wondering, falconers are almost single-handedly responsible for the recovery from near-extinction of several raptor species, including and especially peregrine falcons. Most hawks only live with the falconer for a year, and most of that year is spent getting the bird in ideal condition for survival and success as a wild breeding adult. Falconers are extensively trained and dedicated wildlife conservationists, pretty much by definition, especially in the continental USA, and they make up an unspeakably important part of the overall conservation of predatory bird species. Predatory birds are an important part of every ecosystem they inhabit. Just like apiarists and their bees, the relationship between falconer and hawk is one of great benefit to the animal and the ecosystem, in exchange for a huge amount of time, effort, expense, and education on the part of the human, for very little personal benefit to that one human. It’s definitely not exploitation of the bird, and most hawks working with falconers are hawks who absolutely would not have reached adulthood without human help: the sick, the injured, and the “runts” of the nest who don’t receive adequate resources from their own parents. These are, by and large, wonderful people who are in love with the natural world and putting a lifetime of knowledge and sheer exhausting work into conserving it and its winged wonders.

reblogged for excellent info, I’m so glad that big gorgeous birb really is as happy as it looks!

Today’s bit of positive activism: A reminder that, although the world may contain many bad and awful things, it also contains an enormous winged predator clucking happily as a human gives it a belly rub.

neil-gaiman:

fuckyeahgoodomens:

❤❤❤ (tweet ❤)

We got old. And half of us got dead. And one of us hadn’t come up with the Hat Thing yet. And one of us still wore sunglasses indoors. Nearly 35 years ago…

imperfect-cherry-blossom:

Donald Trump suggested Thursday that presidents need immunity from prosecution even if they assassinate political rivals.

Trump addressed the media after appearing at his Manhattan civil court hearing and fielded questions a reporter noted Trump's attorney had argued that a president couldn't be prosecuted if they used Seal Team 6 to assassinate a campaign opponent.

Trump did not disagree.

"I say this on immunity very simple. If a president of the United States does not have immunity, he'll be totally ineffective because he won't be able to do anything because it will mean he'll be prosecuted, strongly prosecuted, perhaps as soon as he leaves office by the opposing party," the former president replied.

ALSO READ: Five unresolved questions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack

Trump argued that Biden could be prosecuted for his immigration policies or the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"You can get him on taking cash from countries," he said. "You could get him on the prosecutor not prosecuting his son or the company or whoever it was, Burisma in Ukraine, you could get him on that."

"If you don't have immunity, you can, you know, I mean, you won't be making any decisions, so you have to have it," Trump added.

Watch the video below or click here.

datingtrees:

maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

armengoldira: