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You can find more info on my userinfo page - but this is just here to say that I'm very happy to be friended by anyone that wants to read me. I rarely post friends-only, and that only tends to be about things that mention work, so if I don't friend you back you're not actually missing much...
If you do friend me, this would be a good place to leave a comment introducing yourself, and letting me know how you found me!
I have lots of awesome friends - if you want to make a few more then take a look at here for Dreamwidth, add a few people, and leave comment so people can add you too.
The links posts come from my page at Pinboard and are posted to DW via a web app which I wrote and runs as a daily PowerShell job on Azure. You can grab it to run yourself from here.
A note on correcting people's grammar in the comments.
Official Spoiler Policy.
Photo cross-post
Nov. 1st, 2026 01:54 pm
Meet the newest member of the family. 6kg. Very placid. The children
are delighted. Possibly called Cotton, but we need to get to know him
before we're sure.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Interesting Links for 01-11-2026
Nov. 1st, 2026 12:00 pmTags:
- ai,
- education,
- games,
- impressive,
- links,
- mario,
- maths,
- mod,
- snakes,
- technology,
- viakenny,
- video,
- virtualreality
Photo cross-post
Oct. 31st, 2026 02:50 pm
Happy Halloween from Alice and The Devil!
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Interesting Links for 31-10-2026
Oct. 31st, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Just Noting That Your Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions
- Sorry!
(tags:food insects halloween disgust ) - 2. Hills look less steep when you're with a friend
- (tags:psychology friendship perception )
- 3. Man who wanted his money outside the reach of traditional authorities now pretty keen for traditional authorities to get it back
- (tags:blockchain satire funny )
- 4. NBC is developing a series based on The Great Gatsby set in the modern day with a gender-swapped Nick Carroway. Also, they're detectives.
- (tags:TV EpicWTF )
Tags:
- blockchain,
- disgust,
- epicwtf,
- food,
- friendship,
- funny,
- halloween,
- insects,
- links,
- perception,
- psychology,
- satire,
- tv
Interesting Links for 30-10-2026
Oct. 30th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. The dehumanisation of Palestinians
- (tags:Palestine Israel bigotry OhForFucksSake )
- 2. Mass Effect 5 Devs: EA's New Owners Asked To Remove Woke Content
- (tags:MassEffect games bigotry )
- 3. The slow death of the amateur landlord is almost complete
- (tags:UK housing tax government rental )
- 4. School phone bans have no impact on mental health
- (tags:mentalhealth school )
Tags:
- bigotry,
- games,
- government,
- housing,
- israel,
- links,
- masseffect,
- mentalhealth,
- ohforfuckssake,
- palestine,
- rental,
- school,
- tax,
- uk
Interesting Links for 29-10-2026
Oct. 29th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Edinburgh council is discussing AI-generated complaints
- (tags:ai edinburgh government )
- 2. If you don't like obeying our laws then you should get out of our country, nation tells Tommy Robinson yet again
- (tags:satire migration uk law bigotry )
- 3. Community group completes 'first' hostile buy-out of eyesore plot of land in St Andrews
- (tags:scotland StAndrews )
- 4. As US ties fray, Europe plans first undersea cable link to Greenland (and then on to Canada!)
- (tags:usa europe canada greenland )
- 5. The pensioners caught in the 53% tax trap
- (tags:uk tax )
- 6. Bid to allow unaccompanied 12 to 15-year-olds into Edinburgh pubs
- (tags:edinburgh pubs children )
- 7. Firefox now has a "Copy Clean Link" option, to strip tracking from urls.
- (tags:firefox surveillance browser web )
Interesting Links for 28-10-2026
Oct. 28th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Fonts matter (otherwise your failure will be captured for the amusement of others)
- (tags:fonts funny )
- 2. Who Said It: Marissa Mayer, or Odysseus?
- (tags:ai life myths funny )
- 3. In a Time of AI, Wildwood Celebrates Humanmade Art
- (tags:art movies video animation stopmotion )
- 4. 'Autistic Flow': Meaning And Possible Benefits - what happened when researchers asked autistic people about their experiences.
- (tags:autism viaFergus )
- 5. Why cutting PIP support for disabled people would backfire
- (tags:welfare disability uk OhForFucksSake )
Tags:
Interesting Links for 27-10-2026
Oct. 27th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Sugar doesn't make kids hyper
- (tags:sugar children behaviour )
- 2. Why Do Some People Get Fevers After Vaccines? The answer may be in your microbiome!
- (tags:vaccination microbiome viaKirsty )
- 3. 'It's hard to believe': Legendary Edinburgh record store "Vinyl Villains" to close after four decades
- (tags:business shops music edinburgh )
Tags:
Patterns are everywhere (bricks and fences and paving stones and numbers. Followed by much predicting of next house numbers)
What if I was your car?
Wouldn't it be cool if I made everyone live forever if I was their car and they sat in me?
What if you had superpowers and were a god?
Did you know The Flash can't drink too much coffee or he would vibrate and then he would faint
(Miscellaneous discussions of Thanos, Loki, and other Marvel things he has clearly seen ridiculous nonsense about on YouTube, and how it would have been better if Gideon had been in charge)
A discussion of wishes, and how he would trick a genie into giving him unlimited wishes.
It's really good that we walked rather than taking the bus, because the bus is taking forever and hasn't passed us yet.
He wishes he lived in Australia because then he'd be able to hunt kangaroos and eat their meat
That a dog we met was friendly and if he survives into the future(??) he would love to have a dog. And an Iron Man suit.
How he literally saw a video about a man who was infected by a demon and everyone had to stand still whether they walked past.
Intensive discussion of the state of roadworks in our street.
Annoyance that the wind had moved our bins.
More warnings about people with red eyes and not moving if you see one.
And then he helped put the bin out for tomorrow's collection and headed in to the house to "turn on every single light".
What if I was your car?
Wouldn't it be cool if I made everyone live forever if I was their car and they sat in me?
What if you had superpowers and were a god?
Did you know The Flash can't drink too much coffee or he would vibrate and then he would faint
(Miscellaneous discussions of Thanos, Loki, and other Marvel things he has clearly seen ridiculous nonsense about on YouTube, and how it would have been better if Gideon had been in charge)
A discussion of wishes, and how he would trick a genie into giving him unlimited wishes.
It's really good that we walked rather than taking the bus, because the bus is taking forever and hasn't passed us yet.
He wishes he lived in Australia because then he'd be able to hunt kangaroos and eat their meat
That a dog we met was friendly and if he survives into the future(??) he would love to have a dog. And an Iron Man suit.
How he literally saw a video about a man who was infected by a demon and everyone had to stand still whether they walked past.
Intensive discussion of the state of roadworks in our street.
Annoyance that the wind had moved our bins.
More warnings about people with red eyes and not moving if you see one.
And then he helped put the bin out for tomorrow's collection and headed in to the house to "turn on every single light".
Interesting Links for 25-10-2026
Oct. 25th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. "My Daughter's Chemo Has a Worse Cost-Effectiveness Ratio Than Shrimp Welfare"
- (tags:philosophy ethics satire funny family seafood )
- 2. Why is AI-generated language so hard to understand?
- (tags:ai language )
- 3. Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town
- (tags:poetry comic viaSwampers )
- 4. Library and Archives Canada limits ISBNs for AI-made books
- (tags:Canada books ai )
Windy relief
Oct. 25th, 2026 07:57 amAfter several years of me internally worrying about the weird groaning sounds coming from above whenever it's windy, Jane pointed out how much the aerial on the house opposite was wobbling in the gusts and I realised it wasn't a loose beam about to explode in to our bedroom.
I was watching a video about why Britain beat China to the industrial revolution, and at one point there was a weird pronunciation - where "Suspect" (a person on trial) was used instead of "Suspect" (have a suspicion about). And then the quality of the text went somewhat downhill, near the end, as the video circled repeatedly around its own point, its grammar worsening as it went along.
And it's not that the first 2/3 of the video wasn't pretty well written, illustrated, etc. It's that if someone is paying this little attention to how it's written that they don't even copy-edit it into a decent shape and make sure that it's pronounced properly, how am I supposed to rely on it being related to reality?
I've come around to the idea that people who struggle with English might use it as a helping hand, to help them be taken more seriously, but when something is being portrayed as factual and education then I expect the quality to match the levels of seriousness with which it's been produced. And when there are obvious signs that your text has been largely produced by something which understands the structure of text more than it understands the meaning of it, it will definitely be losing my attention.
And it's not that the first 2/3 of the video wasn't pretty well written, illustrated, etc. It's that if someone is paying this little attention to how it's written that they don't even copy-edit it into a decent shape and make sure that it's pronounced properly, how am I supposed to rely on it being related to reality?
I've come around to the idea that people who struggle with English might use it as a helping hand, to help them be taken more seriously, but when something is being portrayed as factual and education then I expect the quality to match the levels of seriousness with which it's been produced. And when there are obvious signs that your text has been largely produced by something which understands the structure of text more than it understands the meaning of it, it will definitely be losing my attention.
Interesting Links for 24-10-2026
Oct. 24th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. NHS England internal assessment shows that it knows that new guidance on single sex accommodation will harm patients
- (tags:LGBT transgender UK OhForFucksSake NHS bigotry )
- 2. Starlink still restricted for Ukraine despite Trump saying Musk lifted speed limits
- (tags:ukraine Technology politics ElonMusk russia war drone OhForFucksSake )
- 3. Brain scans reveal widespread structural and functional changes in patients following COVID-19 infection
- (tags:brain pandemic doom viaKenny )
Life with two kids: Laaaaaaaaate!
Oct. 23rd, 2026 05:25 pmNot me forgetting that pick-up is an hour earlier on a Friday* and arriving at 5:04 apologising profusely.
(I've never done pick-up on a Friday, because it's one of my office days. And when I looked out the front door at 4:30 to see what the rain was like Jane thought the noise was me leaving to get them)
*This is, of course, bloody annoying, and the kind of things that makes it hard for people** to have both full time jobs and children
**Mostly women
(I've never done pick-up on a Friday, because it's one of my office days. And when I looked out the front door at 4:30 to see what the rain was like Jane thought the noise was me leaving to get them)
*This is, of course, bloody annoying, and the kind of things that makes it hard for people** to have both full time jobs and children
**Mostly women
Interesting Links for 23.10.2026
Oct. 23rd, 2026 12:10 pm- 1. Bats are probably European (The Bat1K project has been sequencing their genomes, these are early findings)
- (tags:bats genetics )
- 2. The Gridification of music
- (tags:music Technology perfection )
- 3. Edinburgh Zoo roars with excitement as it welcomes the birth of two lion cubs after a seven-year wait
- (tags:lions cute edinburgh zoo )
- 4. Airbnb hosts can no longer make guests strip beds and wash dishes under new rules
- (tags:hotel )
- 5. A video teaser for the Mass Effect game which will never be
- (tags:video MassEffect games trailer sad )
- 6. Doodle Coaster - doodle a rollercoaster and then ride it
- (tags:viaSwampers game )
- 7. What actually happens when you critique Rowling's anti trans essay
- (tags:LGBT bigotry transgender )
- 8. Tour de France: Grande Depart 2027 – The route through Edinburgh
- (tags:Edinburgh cycling France )
- 9. Three Italian ‘hobbits’ flew to Ireland to return this man’s ring — and it was precious
- (tags:lotr ireland italy viaSwampers )
- 10. No Israeli political party will do a deal with an Arab party. I'm sure there's a name for that kind of thing.
- (tags:politics racism israel )
- 11. Microdosing LSD can improve your brain function – if you’re a woman
- (tags:lsd women gender brain )
Links - post PHP catchup
Oct. 22nd, 2026 04:55 pmPinboard went down for the PHP Apocalypse. Everything seems to be back to normal now, thankfully!
- 1. Games with loot boxes and other "paid random items" re-rated PEGI 16 as new rules come into force, hopefully cutting down on kids gambling somewhat
- (tags:games children regulation europe gambling )
- 2. Ofcom Concedes Defeat in the 4chan Case
- (tags:UK USA freespeech 4chan regulation )
- 3. Upcoming Facebook changes would charge me $500/month to post my links. Obviously, I won't be paying.
- (tags:facebook links OhForFucksSake business )
- 4. Failings allowed Covid 'to spread like wildfire' in care homes, inquiry finds
- (tags:UK care pandemic OhForFucksSake death )
- 5. If you've ever wondered what the inside of an AI datacenter looks like, here's a ridiculously detailed description of a giant one
- (tags:ai technology Facebook )
- 6. Report: Musk ordered Starlink slowdown in Ukraine, then blamed it on Trump
- (tags:ElonMusk Ukraine Russia war OhForFucksSake )
Tags:
I said, Brrrrr, it's cold in here...
Oct. 22nd, 2026 12:57 pmThat's my flu and Covid jabs done. Bring on the shivers!
(Would have been done a month ago, but we both had something nasty at the time.)
There's some work we want to do on the house, preferably in the next year as the gas boiler is getting old.
I want to do underfloor heating in two rooms, a heat pump, presumably a hot water tank, and a new kitchen. And possibly insulation.
Ideally I'd find people who can do all of that, rather than hiring in multiple groups and managing them all myself. But if people have really solid recommendations for someone who can do just the underfloor heating and heat pump/tank then I'm willing to sort out the kitchen on top myself.
Any suggestions?
