µblog - archive for 2022-12

whoops there goes another year, whoops there goes another pint of beer

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When Kissinger finally croaks the world will let out a collective “Finally!” à la Gert Fylking (Swedes will know who I’m talking about).

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🔗 Dinner for One: The Little-Known British Comedy Famous in Germany (and Sweden)

But the story of this cult classic is an unusual one – the original play and actors originated from the United Kingdom, yet almost nobody in Britain has heard of it.

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🔗🎬♪ The Triffids: Save What You Can

Well it doesn’t look much like we’ll see the new year
‘Cause all the bright young faces are here
And I can’t see us rising to their occasion any more
No, not their Christmas cheer

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Rewatching BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice”. “Barry Lyndon” it ain’t. Altogether well lit.

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Pope Palpatine croaking sure brings out the tradcaths on HN.

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kill 9 them all, init 1 will know its own

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🐦 Robert Farley: I am a realist

I am a Realist, and as a Realist I think it’s important to acknowledge that if we just gave Russia the permanent right to invade any of its neighbors anytime it sees fit then these disruptive wars would be unnecessary.

As a Realist I feel this is a very realistic opinion.

Also as a Realist it is important for me to point out that your moral outrage at Russia’s tendency to invade its neighbors is entirely inappropriate. My moral outrage about NATO expansion, however, is extremely Realistic and therefore appropriate.

Also as a Realist I am obligated to point out that international organizations such as NATO are pointless and irrelevant and also the greatest possible threat to peace and stability in the history of human social interaction. I know this because I am extremely Realistic.

Finally, as a Realist I wish you would acknowledge that proxy war as a tool of statecraft is entirely without precedent in the history of international relations until it was invented by dastardly, unrealistic liberals in early 2022.

(thread begins here)

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Back when Twelon tweeted out his “peace plan for Ukraine”, people dunked on him for mentioning that Crimea should be retained by Russia, with “water rights ensured”. This was singled out as a Kremlin talking point, which it no doubt is, but it’s also a geographical fact that anyone who’s done a little reading about the area and its history knows. I think Flusk included it primarily to seem smart and well-read, rather than blindly echoing Russian views.

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I’m sure Medvedev is thrilled that his 3rd-hand channeling of Houston Stewart Chamberlain found an enthusiastic booster in Felon Husk.

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Merry War, Christmas is over.

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Giving up on today’s AoC puzzle again. This year is the toughest in a long time.

Edit actually managed to solve it after some focused debugging.

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Kinda disappointed there’s no mention of Richard Feynman in the new Nolan movie Oppenheimer (at least not in the trailer).

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Elden Ring 100%

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🤬 Dithering images has come full circle while still staying in the same place

Dithering images enjoyed a mild fad among people who are eager to create “lean” websites. Whether dithered images actually save space, and are thus less resource-intensive to display, is still an open question, but the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ is there, which is the most important of course.

Enter pixel-accurate Atkinson dithering which deals with differing web page sizes by dynamically re-dithering the image on resize.

We’ve come full circle. We’re using computation to make sure our webpages look ugly at all sizes.

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🔗 🐦Make your own simple, public, searchable Twitter archive

This is pretty amazing, does its magic in the browser, super fast, very usable. My archive is here

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LOL called it: “[…] we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter” .

Me on Nov 01:

Expect Twitter terminating accounts for having fedi addresses in the bio, Andrew Lee style.

@TwitterSupport announcment

Update 2022-12-19: apparently this has been rescinded?. The comedy never stops 🤡

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I’ve had to skip two Advent of Code days in a row (days 16 and 17), because of social obligations. They do seem like interesting problems so I will try to solve them. According to the leaderboard finishing times they’re also two of the hardests of this year, so far.

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🔗 Taylor Campbell: On Bladerunner

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🔗 Perry Bible Fellowship: Life Sentence (a horror story in 6 panels)

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🔗 “Elon’s Jet” on Instagram

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🐦☢ Reminder: We’ve known how to get a net energy gain from fusion reactions since November 1, 1952. The hard part is doing it in a useful, controllable way. https://www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/ivy/index.html

– @coreyspowell

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🔗 John Scalzi: “An Update On My Thoughts on AI-Generated Art”

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Felon Husk is right to warn you about Mastodon - it is a dangerous place full of dangerous people talking about dangerous things. Do NOT get an account on Mastodon. I warn you, it is very dangerous! Listen to Melon! Don’t go there! People are talking about drugs, and sex, and rock and roll! Stay away if you value your safety!!!

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🔗 ✈ 💪 Well, I’ve been to Topgun so Tom Cruise thinks he’s me

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Day 10

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🐦 ⚽ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇫🇷 England managing to lose on penalties even in a match that isn’t going to penalties. Simply incredible commitment to the bit.

–@brianphillips

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🔗 Why Conservatives Invented a ‘Right to Post’

Conservatives wanted the Hunter Biden story to derail the Biden campaign and pave the way for a Trump victory. They have now convinced themselves that it was somehow a constitutional violation for private companies not to take the bait, and that the state should force them to do so in the future.

Before Musk purchased Twitter, conservatives had wanted to use the power of the state to control the platform. Once he purchased it, they assumed it would now become a reliable conduit for conservative propaganda. So they threatened to use the power of the state to force private companies to sustain Musk’s venture, and to silence activists exercising their First Amendment rights to register their objections. All in the name of “free speech.”

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🐦 The Great American Novel. The Fine Canadian Comic Strip. The OK Australian Tiktok Account.

– @NightValeRadio

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🐦 “Oh look FTX hosted all the NFTs minted on their platform using a web2 API and now all those NFTs have broken metadata and the links go to a restructuring website.”

– @jacobdotsol

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Other countries: our independence was won during the warmer months when people had the energy to gather in mobs.

Finland: our independence was won in the depths of Winter, wrested from the cold hands of a dying Empire.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää!

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Another country that counts its independence from 6 Dec is the Republic of Ireland, 100 years old today but no-one seems inclined to celebrate:

🔗 The Irish State is 100 years old. Why is nobody celebrating?

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My original #EldenRing character, now on Journey 3, is about to lap my second character in the race to get the final ending I’m missing: Ranni’s ending. Character 2 is a spellblade, and I’m not feeling it, especially compared to my current spec of max Arc + dual curved swords with bleed.

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🔗📽 📷 K. Praslowicz: I Inadvertently Bought My Dream Panoramic Camera

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I don’t know if it’s a regional thing for me but basically all en.Wikipedia articles about cars I read use UK English for body styles: saloon, estate, panel van. I quite like it.

This post inspired by the excellent 🐦 Car Brochure Addict account.

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🔗 🐝 💀 Twitter ‘replacement’ Hive shuts off service in privacy alert

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🐦 Twitter displays a tweet from the current POTUS denouncing anti-semitism and Hitler. The first reply I’m shown says “Worst POTUS ever”. I’d have thought that would have been FDR for that doofus.

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HN wonders why the men with guns haven’t arrested SBF yet. But Snowden swearing an oath to the Russian Federation? Barely a ripple.

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🔗 🐦 Bret Deveraux: Ok so I enjoy this joke a lot too, but the actual history behind this is a bit more complicated and honestly illuminating in its wackiness. Let’s talk about Roman calendars!

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Advent of Code 2022!

It’s started. You can now post completion updates to Mastodon, which is appreciated.

I’m looking to whether I can be bothered to compile a blog entry for each day, like earlier.

Update 2022-12-10: you can follow comments on the project README.

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🔗 Main blog: “HOWTO AoC” (2021)

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🔗 🐦 🇸🇪 en novell i Tweet-form

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This year’s trend in the AoC subreddit are AI-generated images of the puzzle scenarios.

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