darkoshi | Reading

So, responses here are not terribly helpful.

The OP is specifically confused about the use of the prhase "such as" in the highlighted sentence. I said that this is not wrong, it's just formal and old-fashioned, but like most Americans I've had very little formal education in English grammar and with google I still can't find either the words to define it or a few well-placed citations by prestigious authors.

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1882100.html

0.

With all the eager discussion of the possibility of Trump dying in office, I am in the delicate and unfortunate position of not actually being in favor of it.

Don't get me wrong. I, too, would enjoy to seeing something very bad happen to Trump. What I'd best like is him getting his just deserts – ideally being arrested, indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced, having appealed, the appeal failing, appealing again, having that appeal fail, petitioning the POTUS for clemency and it not being granted, him being duly executed by the state as the traitor to the Republic and the Constitution he was proven to be. I'm not generally a big fan of capital punishment, but I am in fact willing to make exceptions; he seems to think he's an exception to a lot of things, and here I would agree with him.

But that's not going to happen, not in this time-line, and it's probably for the best that it doesn't.

Perhaps he will simply keel over dead, and I confess I will take at least a little bitter satisfaction in it.

And it's certainly not that I don't wish us all to be spared even another moment of this Trump presidency. Of course I do.

Alas, as much as I hate to crush the pleasant fantasy of us being redeemed by the deus ex machina of artheriosclerosis finally doing its job and carrying off our oppressor: Vance is worse. Much, much worse.

1.

( It's perhaps understandable that you would not realize this.... Read more [6,770 Words] )

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BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

Latest installments:

The Royal Sanctuary: The inscriptions.

The Royal Sanctuary: The sling.

The Royal Sanctuary: The statue.

EARLY ACCESS

A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands: Novel and Side Stories (Crossing Worlds), which includes an expanded version of Deadly Introductions, is now available to my Patreon and Ream readers. The omnibus will go into general release next month.

NEWS

Early access previews at Patreon and Ream

I'm now providing one-month-early previews of my new e-book fiction through Patreon and Ream. I want to give a treat to readers who financially support me, while still making those stories quickly available to the rest of my readers. The early access model seems to be the best way to handle that.

( General news and upcoming fiction )

( Ways to offer me a tip, financial or nonfinancial )

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

The kids take it in turn doing a variety of things, so that we don't have arguments every single night over who gets to choose teethbrushing things, who gets to be first to get put into pyjamas, who gets to check inside the parcel box when we get home, who gets to choose who gets out of the bath first, etc. This month, Sophia has odd numbered days and Gideon has even numbered days. Except that they swapped yesterday and today so that Gideon could have his birthday.

Except...that a few months ago we used the app Chwazi, where everyone puts their finger on the screen and then it picks someone (to be first player in a game, for instance). And Gideon loved it. So last weekend when I asked who should get out of the bath first he said "We'll play the finger game." - and I asked him if he'd be sad if he didn't win, and he said no, and then he and Sophia played it, and he lost, and I had to wash the hair of a sobbing child, who kept saying "I thought I would win!"

So this weekend, I asked him who was getting out of the bath first, and he said "Finger game!" and I said "Do you remember how sad you were?" and he said "Very sad!" and I said "So you should just choose." and he said "I have a plan, this time the person who loses will go first." And, of course, he won. And so, again, I had to wash the hair of a crying child who thought he'd found a way to beat probability.

All of which is to say that if you want to beat people at games of chance then I recommend 5-year-olds, who are both terrible at understanding it, and completely fail to learn from that.

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Well, this is kinda interesting! It's hard to say at the moment what the significance of it is, though. This is what I love about medicine: they discover one thing, only for it to prove how little we know about the body. "Hey! We know how to stimulate growth of gray matter! But we don't know why or if it's good for anything...." But hey, it's science, and science builds upon science, so it's all good.

From the article: "Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead. (and that's not entirely accurate: 29 women wore the scent, but one was unable to do the post-MRI)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.

While an increase in brain volume doesn't necessarily translate into more thinking power, the findings could have implications for neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia."

There was no change in the areas of the brain where smell or emotions were processed, which is interesting. But "significantly more gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex or PCC (linked to memory and association)."

They don't know why this change is happening. One thought put forth is that the rose scent is acting as an irritant, which is interesting. I'm hoping they do longer term studies to see if it actually affects dementia-related illnesses! Of course, I'd also like to see this study replicated using men. It's the same problem of most medical studies using only men because they don't want to have to bother with accommodating women's hormonal variances, it's just so yucky and unpredictable! Then they proclaim that everything applies equally to all women, and they just don't.

The scent-wearing group were 29 participants aged 41–69 years, the control group 22 participants aged 41–65 years.

https://www.sciencealert.com/smelling-this-one-specific-scent-can-boost-the-brains-gray-matter

The full paper is currently available at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923024000297?via%3Dihub

If it becomes restricted, I downloaded the PDF and would be happy to supply it.

1. 'The Long Walk' treadmill screening will test viewers' endurance: (tags:stephen_king movies exercise walking )

My, my, how time flies! But fly it does, and October will see the release of a 4K HDR box set of the newly-restored movie that will have TWO documentaries!

A lot of the movie cast is still with us, though we lost Meatloaf a few years back. Interestingly, the movie was not a success in its initial run, it wasn't until the midnight circuit picked it up and the shadow casting and other fun started and it took on a life of its own that it really became a success. According to the article, RHPS may be the origin of cos-play!

I'll definitely be ordering this when it comes out. As it happens, I listened to the soundtrack just a week or so ago.

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/08/celebrating-50-years-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/

Me, using correct spelling: Those are two entirely different groups of people. Is there any way you can narrow this down even a little?

Them, repeating the wrong spelling: Nope, absolutely not!

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( Read more... )

Living in Aberdeen, seeing the grand things around the city centre, it was notable that many of them dated from the Victorian era. I suspected it to be no coincidence that the Victorians saw the height of the British Empire's exploitation of its colonies. With the wealth of others, we built our shiny things. The bridge I walk on to work is nineteenth-century.

In the meantime, Britain declines. Local councils now struggle to provide even basic services. The health system is becoming several kinds of joke, despite the dedication of those working within it. Even those graduating with good undergraduate degrees typically can't get a job that pays well enough for them to be soon on the road to buying a house within reach of the job.

Furthermore, our population is aging. As we end up with fewer working people, and more people needing assistance, the situation can only worsen. Given that our history puts us somewhat in others' debt, I would like to imagine that we could kill two birds with one stone: welcome young families from the British Commonwealth so they can live and work here, providing services and paying tax, ideally building new towns and cities too, while probably also sending some money back home to their families.

Of course, what I describe is not far off the immigration policy we had between, er, around WWII and Margaret Thatcher. We've seen how the Windrush generation has been treated since. Further, populist anti-immigrant rhetoric abounds so we're not about to be saved by welcoming workers from overseas. So, what's the plan? We could make domestic families have lots of babies (not that they can afford anywhere to put them) or we can erode the health service far enough to stop the old people from living for too long.

Looking at the high prices, poor services, and xenophobia, I'd be happy to self-deport. However, for the meantime there are kids in education that I don't want to disrupt. Once everybody graduates, I wouldn't fault any of us for moving elsewhere. In the meantime, I can continue to hope and vote for change, both in the UK and the US.

for

chopwood_carrywater_feed. I thought that getting it in my email and on my reading page would help prompt me to call (or email, listen, I have limits) my congresscritters.

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( Read more... )

Given that I am so used to Linux, having a Mac for work always slows me a little. Especially, aspects of the window management and focus ongoingly impede my usual workflows. Another aspect is the keyboard shortcuts. To take a simple example, for cut, copy and paste, where I might be used to control X, C, V on other systems, of course I'm using this command key on the Mac. Except, within Emacs on the Mac, which seems to behave more as I'm used to. Of course, the Mac has a control key too, and it's a common modifier for some other purposes, so I'm often left guessing. For instance, if I recall correctly, in IntelliJ I do use control in pulling up a type hierarchy.

This switching of shortcuts between Linux, Mac, and Emacs-on-Mac is awkward partly because, as above, some of these are quite similar, and I don't yet see a system that helps me remember. Far easier for me was back when I used to use a Programmer Dvorak keyboard layout at work, and regular Qwerty at home, partly because those are just so clearly different. Also, probably it helped that I wasn't switching frequently, just a few times per day.

Current rumors engulfing Bluesky have me recalling an old Communist-era Russian joke:

Every day, a man walks to a news stand and pays for a copy of Pravda, unfolds it, looks at the front page, and throws it in the trash. Every day he does this, for months, until finally the news seller asks the man, "So what is it you are looking for on the front page every day?"

"I'm checking for an obituary."

"Comrade, the obituaries aren't on the front page."

"Oh, this one will be."

I came across this description of a dream I had a couple years ago, while searching through my notes for something else, and found it uncommonly funny in retrospect.

Dream: I was with a group of people (coworkers?) given the opportunity to go skydiving (over Columbia?). The opportunity was presented on short notice while we were doing some other group activity. My first thought was sure, sounds fun. So I got into the small plane with everyone else and sat in a seat in the middle on the right side. The chair felt small and uncomfortably close to the window. I realized that I'm terrified of heights and I'd refuse to jump out of the plane once it got up high in the air. So as the door was closing I said I couldn't do it and asked to be let out. But I think it was too late; they didn't want to open the door again. So I thought that I'd just have to stay in the plane after everyone else jumped out. After waking up and thinking about it I realized there had been no mention of nor training on how to use a parachute first, nor were we given parachutes.

.

It reminds me of the time in high school when I was standing on stage with other National Honor Society members and/or inductees. The speaker had been telling a story about being up in an airplane with the principal of the school, and I hadn't realized it was a joke until the punchline. Then, envisioning the principal jumping out of the plane without a parachute, I couldn't stop breaking out in (possibly well-concealed?) snorts of laughter for the rest of the ceremony. I didn't have anything against the principal, by the way, it just seemed so funny and incongruous.

I'm a member of an organization in Minnesota called MN350. It takes its name from the carbon dioxide parts-per-million that we wish we had. We passed 350 ppm long ago. We should aspire to having numbers that low again in our future. This year, I can't remember if I've seen any measurement in my house (even with windows open) below 500. The longer that humans burn fossil fuels, the higher that number will go.

I mention it now, because a few minutes ago I took additional measurements on 2 floors of my house. I was so tired again today, and I spent about 2 hours trying and failing to get some needed sleep just now. I thought maybe the sleep apnea was a lot worse (which might also be true), but I used the app on my smartphone to check the readings on the AirThings device (mentioned last year too), and the CO2 level was not great. I grabbed the even more portable Aranet and placed it next to the bed. It immediately switched over to the "red zone" alert level. That's not good.

ground floor: 1,250ppm CO2
upstairs bedroom: 1,452ppm CO2

Okay. So... I need to stop talking about how tired I always am and actually do something about the air quality indoors. I need to finally schedule that sleep test, so I can also get a new sleep apnea solution, since I didn't use the old machine when it gave my face a rash everywhere that it touched my face.

I'm tired of being tired. The potential causes are measurable. I just need to overcome inertia and rationally do something about these issues.

After I got over my cold, I seemed to get another, for the following weekend, which would fit with my contracting them on my commuting on-site days. For my latest day on-site, I realized that, for Reasons, I used my ScotRail card to ride the Glasgow subway, and my Glasgow subway (really, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport) card for riding the ScotRail trains. I'll be going back in on Monday via a less inverted arrangement. I use smartcards rather than cellphone apps because I dislike being reliant on my telephone and its apps all working.

1. My Top Five Favorite Techno Songs and Why They're All the Mortal Kombat Theme Song: (tags:music satire )
2. A historian reviews King & Conqueror (neither good nor accurate): (tags:history UK TV review )
3. Spineless fence-sitter thinks killing children is bad no matter who does it: (tags:israel palestine satire politics murder children gaza )

Little smiley chap wanted to take a photo with me this morning.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Profile

Darkoshi

Darkoshi's Enchantment

August 2025

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Page Summary

conuly - Does anybody have an explanatory link?
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 01-09-2025
siderea - Vance is Worse [pols, US, Ω, Patreon]
duskpeterson - UPDATE: Tempestuous Tours + introducing early access fiction
mark in dw_maintenance - Code deploy happening shortly
andrewducker - Life with two kids: A matter of probability
denise in dw_news - Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts
thewayne - In a study, wearing rose scent for ONE MONTH increased growth in the brain's gray matter!
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 31-08-2025
thewayne - "It was great when it all began!" 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
conuly - So, the title said something about the Argonaughts or maybe the Hugonuts?
mtbc - Immigration and wealth
conuly - So, I've now created a DW feed
mtbc - Keyboard shortcuts and modifiers on the Mac
siderea - This one will be [curr ev]
darkoshi - old dream
mellowtigger - 1,452 ppm
mtbc - Infectious commuting
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 29-08-2025
andrewducker - Photo cross-post

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