darkoshi: (Default)
2025-07-07 05:13 pm

fig sound phenomenon

Interesting fig phenomenon I noticed today: after rinsing a ripe fig with water, pressing it slightly on the sides made it emit a sort of buzzing sound out of the little hole at the tip. Each time I pressed (lightly) again, the buzzing would start, and each time I let up it would stop.

It almost seemed like there might be an insect inside, complaining about being pressed. But it seemed more likely that pressing on the fig made it expel air, which made the noise. It was surprising how long it kept doing it, though. I'd have thought all the air would have been expelled much sooner. Maybe it was sucking air back in each time I released the pressure. After repeated light pressing on all sides, probably squishing the fruit too much, the sound finally died down. Upon cutting it open, it was a normal fig inside; no insect.

I've never noticed other figs to do that. I tested a few other figs after that one, and a few had similar sounds, but quieter and much shorter lived.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-07-06 04:34 am
Entry tags:

refreshingly zesty carrots

This is a good way to use up carrots that are dry or slightly bitter:

Peel, then grate the carrots. (I think I used 4 carrots)
Mix some frozen orange juice concentrate with water (I used about 4 tbsp or maybe more with 2 cups water)
Add about 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar to the OJ.
Add 1 to 2 tbsp maple syrup to the OJ.
Stir the liquid, then pour it over the carrots.
Let it marinate in the fridge.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-07-06 03:38 am

make your own spicy ketchup

In my spice cabinet was a jar of garam masala which my brother left here 15 years ago. Other than perhaps once (after which I wrote "spicy sweet" on the jar), I never used it because it's too spicy hot for me. It smells good like Christmas spices, but on the rare occasions when I want something to be spicy hot, I don't want it to taste like cinnamon and cloves. I realized that while browsing the spices recently, so I put the jar on my counter, intending to finally get rid of it.

A few days ago I was looking for something to pep up my meal. It occurred to me that spicy ketchup would go well on it. I didn't have any. But I had ketchup, and that jar was still on the counter. So I mixed garam masala powder into ketchup, and ta-da, spicy ketchup! It tasted just like the Maya Kaimal ketchup I remembered.

The jar went back into my spice cabinet, as now there's something I can use it for in the future.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-07-06 02:23 am

flirtatious smiles

About that 6' Pole video, something I didn't mention before is that I find the singer's smile rather captivating and/or fascinating, especially the way he looks straight at the camera when doing it. It's like a half smile, or a "knowing" smile, or like an "I have a secret" smile*. And yet when I watched the video again now looking specifically for the smile, it's even more interesting because most of the time where I get the feeling he's smiling, he isn't, or it is only a very slight smile. Even his eyes don't look like they are smiling, and yet I still get that strong "smile" impression.

*None of which are mentioned here: 12 Types of Smiles and What They Really Mean, but I'm thinking now that it fits under the category of "flirtatious smile".

His biggest smile is at 1:51. That's more of a normal happy/fun smile, not like the rest I'm talking about.

Not only that, but the other bandmember (like at 10 seconds into the video), has the same fascinating half smile!

The girl at 56 seconds also has a captivating smile (very briefly shown), but it's a different kind.

In other words, I think I find both band members cute. Not as in wanting to meet them or talk to them or do anything with them, as I have a feeling I wouldn't like them in person. But in that it stirs something in me. Which together with the catchy beat of the song, makes me not mind watching the video again and again. I'm not sure how similar that is to a sexual person finding people cute?

The singer's voice in the song seems at first jarring compared to the music, slurred and unmelodic. But as the song goes on, I get used to it and start liking it. Together with the smile, it starts sounding like the lyrics of the song are a joke he's sharing with you.

And another thing. The purple striped t-shirt he's wearing is very similar to one I had as a kid. I think it was one of my favorites. Although now in looking at the photos, I had two different t-shirts like that! The stripes are slightly different in each, but nearly the same colors and with the same darker purple band around the neck.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-07-05 11:30 pm

one thing, one thing, leads to another (refrigerator alarm)

Last night I cooked yellow squash. I finished late, and it was still warm outside so I couldn't open the windows to air out the cooking smells from the house.

Today I opened all the windows to air it out. With the A/C off, the temperature got up to 88 inside, but felt nice to me with the fans on. So I left the windows open all day.

As the windows were open, I washed a load of items with mildew and other stains along with 2 bleach tablets in the washer. (My use of chlorine bleach is seldom enough that liquid bleach usually degrades before I can use the bottle up. Tablets don't have that problem.) The windows being open prevents the bleach smell from bothering me.

As the windows were open, I also baked some things from the freezer in the oven. It seemed a good idea as the heat and baking smells could dissipate out through the windows, without making the A/C use more energy (since it wasn't on).

Coincidentally, part of the reason I wanted to use up some of the things in the freezer is because there's always the slight worry that if the power goes out for a long time, the food will melt and go bad. The strong storm we had on June 25 only made my power flicker a few times (although it ripped some siding off my soffits), but my mom's power was out for 11 hours. Before that, my power was out for 2 hours from a storm on June 14.

This evening, several hours after the baking, my refrigerator started beeping and showing the Too-High-Temperature warning icon. Uh-oh. I hadn't had the door open more than usual, and I hadn't put any hot food inside it. I wasn't sure if it could be due to the house temperature being higher than usual. This isn't the first time I've had the windows open in warm weather, but it's the first time the refrigerator had a problem with it. I closed the windows and turned the A/C back on. I took the grate off the bottom of the fridge and checked the coils. I vacuumed some dust out, but they didn't look too bad. I took the back panel off the fridge to check back there. The fan was still running. The compressor was very hot. The finger I touched it with didn't get burned, but it was hot enough to make me jerk my finger back.

The fridge kept giving the high temp warning for over an hour, but then it finally stopped. That's a relief.

I wonder if that was a sign of the refrigerator being too old to handle a warm house, or if new refrigerators would have the same problem. The fridge is 41 years old. 88 degrees inside really doesn't seem that high to me. I suspect that in the old days, people got refrigerators before they got air conditioners.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-26 07:17 pm
Entry tags:

Safe Mind - 6' Pole



Video title: Safe Mind - 6' Pole (Official Video)
Posted by: Boy Harsher / Nude Club
Date posted: Oct 1, 2024


Bandcamp song page (with lyrics)

The lyrics are vague enough that I can't figure them out, other than they seem sexual in nature.

Maybe this YouTube comment explains it:
[profile] sogonrei
This song is addictive a unique sound digging this and it is hilarious how it is doing the most flirtatious negging I have ever seen! 😂 🤩💕


It reminds me of Nirvana sort of.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-25 09:25 pm
Entry tags:

phishing email URL breakdown

My mom got a phishing (or malware) email made to appear like it was sent from Amazon:

Your Prime membership is renewing on Thu, June 26, 2025. However, we noticed that your default payment method for your membership is no longer valid.

To avoid losing your benefits, we'll try charging other active payment methods associated with your Amazon account. If we can't process the charge for your membership fee, your Prime benefits will be suspended.

Thank you,
Amazon Customer Service


The rest of the email looks like a normal Amazon email (although I don't have a real one to compare against). There are several obvious indications that the email is fake: an empty subject line, a non-amazon sender email even though it is shown as name "prime@amazon.com", and it only including an email address, not a name, in the "To" section and greeting.

The link provided in the email for updating her payment information is what I find curious. It is in this format:
https://mobile.mail.yahoo.com/apps/affiliateRouter?brandUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fgoogleads.g.doubleclick.net%2Fpcs%2Fclick%3F
followed by a bunch of characters and some other parameters at the end.

I asked MS Copilot about the URL and it provided the following details.

The base domain is mobile.mail.yahoo.com, which is a real Yahoo domain. But the key is in the query parameters — especially brandUrl and adurl.

The brandUrl parameter encodes a redirect to a Google Ads click tracker (googleads.g.doubleclick.net), which itself contains another redirect via adurl=... to a suspicious final destination: ....

This kind of multi-layered redirect is a classic phishing tactic. It uses trusted domains as intermediaries to:

Evade spam filters and security scanners.
Trick users into thinking the link is safe.
Obfuscate the final destination, which may host malware or a credential-harvesting page.

Everything after the ? is a query string made up of key=value pairs separated by &.

brandUrl: This is a URL-encoded link to a Google Ads click tracker (googleads.g.doubleclick.net). It contains its own nested parameters like xai, sai, sig, and adurl, which are used for ad tracking and redirection.

appName=YMailNorrin: Likely identifies the Yahoo Mail app variant or interface being used.

partner=1: Could indicate a specific affiliate or partner ID — possibly used for tracking referral traffic.

locale=1: Might refer to a language or region setting, though 1 is a bit ambiguous.

buckets=6oDiyy...: This is probably a session or experiment bucket ID — used for A/B testing or feature rollout tracking.

fbs_aeid=[gw_fbsaeid]: This is a Facebook Ads tracking parameter — possibly spoofed or copied to mimic legitimate ad traffic.

adurl (appears twice): This is the final redirect destination — in this case, a suspicious .pe domain. That’s the real payload of the phishing attempt.

This URL is a layered redirect trap:
Starts with a legit Yahoo domain.
Redirects through Google Ads infrastructure.
Ends at a potentially malicious .pe domain.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-22 10:46 pm

the good and the bad; the wonder and the falling apart

Errant thought from June 13:
The world keeps seeming more and more dystopian. But it is really amazing to be able to ask a computer complex things in natural language, and get back coherent, valid responses in natural language too. My mind often glosses over that wonder because of everything else going on. And also because of knowing that wonderful achievement has its own associated dystopian aspects to it, which will just get worse and worse as they are exploited.

.

Like this: The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel

.

Kids growing up now and in the future may find it difficult to believe actual photos and movie footage from past atrocities, including the Holocaust. They will have no way to trust that the images are real and were not generated by AI. Perhaps if they looked through an old book with photos, and could trust that it was published in the year it said it was, before AI was capable of what it is now, perhaps that would be believable to them. But books are becoming rarer, especially old ones. Old books didn't have many photos. Were there many books with photos of atrocities? Encyclopedias would have perhaps a few photos for each topic. Certain magazines were more likely to have extensive photos. There may be digitized versions of the books and magazines available online, but then you get back to how can you trust that the digitized item you're looking at isn't a fake?

I'm already at that distrusting stage with much of what I see online. When you don't know what is trustworthy, you end up choosing to believe the things which align with your already-formed beliefs. "This aligns with my beliefs; I don't know if it is true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was." "This doesn't align with my beliefs; why spend time and mental effort considering that it might be true when it very well might not be?"
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-22 09:00 pm
Entry tags:

local recycling - spiral wound composite cans, frozen food boxes, gable-top cartons

The below statement (bolded by me) about composite cans was added in 2021, between July and October, per the internet archive.

Richland County, SC - Recycling
Cardboard, Chipboard, & Cereal Boxes
Corrugated cardboard is accepted for recycling - cut or fold so the cardboard fits into the roll cart. Flatten boxes and place them in your recycling roll cart. Spiral Wound Composite Cans (i.e. canned potato chips, nuts, raisins, coffee, etc.) are accepted for recycling. Wax or plastic coated cardboard is NOT accepted. Chipboard boxes such as cereal boxes must be clean and dry and only have stored dry, non-refrigerated foods. Pizza boxes are recyclable- the pizza is not! So make sure the pizza box is free of ALL food debris (and the extra cheese)


I'm surprised they accept the composite cans now, as the cardboard part usually has a film of metal and/or plastic foil attached. I've been in the habit of separating the metal from the rest, and peeling the foil off the cardboard when possible.

For "cardboard cans", the Recycling Wizard says to "Please put metal and plastic lids in garbage."

Per the above guidelines, I suppose I'm doing a bad thing when I put paperboard boxes from refrigerated and frozen items in the recycling bin. But they are clean boxes; the food contents usually are in plastic bags inside the boxes. And the cardboard tears the same easily as non-refrigerated boxes. So I have a hard time convincing myself that there's any difference; they don't *seem* to have a plastic coating.

[Trying to convince myself...]

Per this video from a different jurisdiction: Why Aren't Frozen Food Boxes
Recyclable?
, "Frozen food boxes are sprayed with a polycoat to protect from freezer burn."

It makes sense that the cardboard would be coated. If the coating is thin enough, it probably doesn't inhibit you from being able to tear it. But wait, what about refrigerated (non-frozen) boxes? Would they be coated too? You don't get freezer burn in the refrigerator. But I think many things sold in the refrigerated section are kept frozen in transit and storage. So, maybe.

Per that video, the reason why gable-top cartons are an exception and are accepted is because the manufacturers buy them back to recycle them themselves. I hadn't heard of that before. In that case, I'm doing a bad thing by tearing open the cartons to more easily rinse and flatten them. Doing that makes them less distinguishable from other flattened paperboard, for purposes of separating them out.

For gable-top cartons, our waste wizard says "Empty and open to air dry. Discard caps in garbage." So I suppose it's still ok to break open the top part for purposes of cleaning them and tearing off the part with the plastic spout. Although maybe even that is wrong, because doing that makes the cartons more crushable, and then they are less distinguishable again.

I wish the wizard and guidelines had way more details. (The wizard doesn't even clearly say that some items are recyclable even when the guidelines do; but that's a separate issue.)

TO DO: Next time I am discarding a frozen box, tear a piece off and soak it in water, and do the same with a piece torn off a cereal box for comparison.

Update, 2025/07/06:
I soaked small pieces from two frozen food boxes and one non-refrigerated food box. One of the frozen food boxes had a thin layer of plastic on it. The other two boxes didn't have plastic, as far as I could tell.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-13 12:30 pm
Entry tags:

a danger of having multiple supplements in liquid drop form

I put what I thought was 6 drops of Vitamin D on my spoon, put it in my mouth and started swallowing it. The taste was unexpected; strong and sweet instead of mild and oily. Realizing it was iodine drops instead of Vitamin D, I spit out as much as possible into the sink. I don't want to overdose on iodine. Per that article, 6 drops would still have been under the recommended upper limit, but it would have been half-way there.

I don't take either of those supplements on a frequent or regular basis; I also take chewable children's multivitamins. Both bottles are quite old; I suspect the D may have lost potency so I'm less worried about taking more of it. But iodine is a mineral which I imagine is less likely to lose potency, and its dosage is a single drop per day to get 100% of the recommended amount.

Most people don't need to supplement with iodine, but I had read that vegans often have low levels of it.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-06-11 01:10 am
Entry tags:

soap and towels in olden day public restrooms

I have a memory from the 1980s of a certain semi-public restroom (like in restaurants, but this was a building with a big meeting room where one of my aunt's clubs had meetings and events) in Germany. The building itself was probably built in the preceding decades.

The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.

The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.

The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.

This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine

The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking

That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-05-29 02:40 am

smart coding buddy

I feel like MS Copilot is my new buddy at work. The company has the business version which is supposed to keep the company's data private and secure, and we are authorized to use it. I haven't been using it inside of VS Code or other IDEs, which would require an extra license. The browser interface doesn't require an extra license and has met all my needs so far.

From what I last heard, the version that runs in VS Code can't yet answer questions that pertain to the whole big code-base, rather only to the current file you have open. To me, that wouldn't offer much benefit over the browser version, as I can paste the contents of a file into the browser chatbox or I could select the file to attach.

Anyway, MS Copilot helps me with creating PowerShell scripts and complex regex expressions, and with answering various questions. The version at work seems to give a lot more accurate answers than the one I access from my personal laptop; it's likely a better model. Unless the difference is due to the kinds of questions I ask there versus here.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-05-25 03:13 am

probably not made in the U.S.

While shopping for bed slats (not for me), I found a set on the Kohl's website that says it is made "right here" in the USA from Canadian wood. But while checking out that brand's website, Continental Sleep, I belatedly realized the wording and grammar on their pages isn't quite right. So now I wonder, is the "Made in USA" claim a lie? Or do Chinese companies have factories in the U.S. making that kind of stuff? I could have sworn I saw that "Made in the USA" claim on one of their website pages too (for only that one product, which made it seem all the more dubious), but am not finding it anymore.

I looked up info on the company but found nothing other than a reference to "Continental Sleep Holdings", which was likely a different company, on a Wikipedia page about "Sleepeezee".

The reviews on the ContinentalSleep website seem fake too, with similar grammar and wording issues; not the kind Americans would make.

It's a bit surprising they haven't used an LLM to fix the grammar on their webpages. Once Chinese companies get better at doing that, there won't even be that tell to give them away.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-05-20 11:48 pm

"Ask Copilot" in Windows Explorer context menu

On both my work and personal laptops (Windows 10 and 11), I have noticed that the file context menu in Windows Explorer now includes an "Ask Copilot" option.

I have privacy and security concerns about that. If I accidentally select this option, will the file or its contents potentially be uploaded to the web somewhere? Will Microsoft use the contents of the file for other purposes? I didn't find clear answers on that. If I wanted Copilot to analyze a file, I would prefer to select the file thru other means. I don't need extra items in my context menu; mine is already lengthy due to other custom entries (which I actually use on a frequent basis) that I've added to it. So I will edit my registry to remove the entry from the menu.

Windows 11: Microsoft is adding Ask Copilot to right-click menu, how to remove it

Windows 11’s Copilot in Context Menus: Benefits, Concerns, and How to Remove It
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-05-18 01:39 am
Entry tags:

oldy but goody

I found some Good News but only in the internet archive.

I have so much I'd like to write here but still so little spare time considering the other things I want to do.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-04-18 08:13 pm
Entry tags:

Chamomile - Gangnam Style parody

A little something to make you smile, maybe.

Luckily not all of the things mentioned in the song apply to me so far, but several do!

I am still working, really!, I just opened Youtube to turn on some background music.



Video title: Chamomile - Gangnam Style Parody Song for us Older Ones!
Posted by: Shirley Șerban
Date posted: 2025/03/05



This is what I'm going to be listening to:
Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals *FULL ALBUM*
My clock radio played the last song, "Red Cave", this morning. The sound was special and intrigued me about the rest of the album.

That's happened a few times lately. Google Sound Search comes in very handy to identify the songs. Twice, it was able to identify a song based solely on the last two seconds of the song (when I was slow to open the app), with only the winding down sounds of the instruments - that seems so amazing (especially with audio from an over-the-air radio which has a certain amount of static rather than perfect digital sound quality).

One of those other songs is worthy of mention here too. But it is not light-hearted so I'll leave it for possibly another time.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-04-18 05:35 am
Entry tags:

Democrazy

Another typo which I sort of like.
Democracy gone crazy.
darkoshi: (Default)
2025-04-17 03:23 am

More Protests this Saturday April 19

I didn't find out about the April 5 Hands-Off protests early enough to make plans to go to the one here. But there are more nationwide protests planned for this Saturday as part of 50-50-1.

AFL-CIO and allies plan more mass protests through April 19

Little things make me anxious. I already found the Facebook page for the SC branch of the 50501 group, which does show a protest will be held here in Columbia on the 19th. Yet now I saw that the main site's page doesn't show an event being held here. (Maybe I'll go downtown with a sign and there will be no large group ::dread::) So if you don't see your location listed on the main site's event page either, you may want to do some more searches to be sure.

I need to make a sign. There's hardly any point in going if I don't have a sign, as then I will just look like a random person standing around. So I have to decide something to write on a sign, and then make the sign.

I have to fight against the part of me that doesn't want to go out there and expose myself. There are so many things I could put on a sign, but I am having trouble thinking of something I'll agree to.