Mike Agg @countingquoll@social.cleverlibre.org

Doctor Who is, at its heart, for children, not adults who check in with every new Doctor in the hope of getting sucked in the way they did with some previous iteration. So yeah this is another one I’ll be passing on bc I find it unbearably cringey but I’m glad other ppl love it

You may recall Jacob Rees-Mogg’s unutterably stupid poll on whether or not to revert to the imperial measurement system with its very carefully scripted choices that offered “imperial only” and “imperial with metric” but forced you to go down the “other (write in)” option to say “metric only.”

HMG have used the Christmas break to slip out the conclusion of the poll. Jump to paragraph 18 to get the numbers. 81% were happy with the status quo and 17% wanted metric-only.

In the grand scheme of things, compared to the PPE Preferential Access scandal for example, this was only a small waste of money but, even so, it pisses me off.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/choice-on-units-of-measurement-markings-and-sales/outcome/choice-on-units-of-measurement-consultation-response

Happy “WTF Day Is It?” to all who celebrate!

"i use linux as my operating system," i state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. he swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision.
"actually," he says with a grin, "linux is just the kernel. you use GNU+linux."
i don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "i use alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. it's linux, but it's not GNU+linux."

the smile quickly drops from the man's face. his body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth as he drop to the floor with a sickly thud. as he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!"
coolly, i reply "if windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" i interrupt his response with "and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. even if you were correct, you won't be for long."

with a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. he lies on the floor, cold and limp. i've womansplained him to death.

Quite the damning piece on Tesla and its recklessly (probably criminally) irresponsible application of the "move fast and break things" ethos.

tl;dr: the company has known for ages that its cars have the kind of chronic defects that would get a company like Chevy or Toyota sued into oblivion (way more than just autopilot stuff; basic mechanical stuff). And it's often gotten away with blaming its users for those issues.

https://defector.com/youre-supposed-to-be-glad-your-tesla-is-a-brittle-heap-of-junk

@RustyBertrand

Tech giant Palantir has hired Topham Guerin (PR firm) to pay influencers to attack the Good Law Project on social media – but the source of the money is to be kept ‘confidential’.

https://goodlawproject.org/pr-firm-topham-guerin-tories-and-palantir-offers-to-pay-influencers-attacks-twitter-x/

Nothing says Winter Solstice better than LebkuchenHenge #Lebkuchen #Stonehenge #WinterSolstice

Seven swans to rule them all
Six geese to find them
Five gold rings to bring them all
And in the pear tree bind them

Today’s poem is about how we all our establish our own traditions at Christmas.

It’s called ‘A Traditional Family Christmas’.

@Jedigirl

IMPORTANT. Threads stated policy is to collect and exploit Fediverse user personal data without explicit consent.

Now is a very good time to review Threads Terms of Use (https://terms.threads.com/terms-of-use) and Supplemental Privacy Policy (https://help.instagram.com/515230437301944).

Note just by following a Threads user or replying to a post, Meta claims they are entitled to your personal data.

And what do they say they will do with your data? Provide you with "business services (including ads)."

#threads #DataPrivacy

A new study published by PNAS adds more detail to the debate over YouTube recommendations and extremism.

The researchers found that YouTube's systems do recommend extremist content as they defined extremism, and that it's more pronounced for right-leaning users. This study used sock-puppet accounts in an algorithm audit.

Press release: https://www.ucdavis.edu/curiosity/news/youtube-video-recommendations-lead-more-extremist-content-right-leaning-users-researchers

Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213020120

Today’s poem is for anyone concerned about their energy bills this winter. It’s called ‘The Cost of Loving’.

Looks like it's time for this ... again.

You can just scroll on by a post and enjoy your life...

People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".

Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.

In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.

Elon: We’re chatting with sex traffickers and criminals and loathsome conspiracy peddlers today! Join us!

Linda Yaccarino: What do you guys think about auras? Do they really exist, and should they occasionally be fluffed up?