damā¦ā¦.. that website āyou feel like shitā (itās like a questionnaire / troubleshooting guide for when you feel like shit) really worksā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦.. im not even all the way thru it and i even half-assed a lot of the suggestions and i already feel loads better
Last year, I befriended a Catholic seminarian. We've gotten to be pretty decent friends. Seeing as he was staying in town for the summer and I wasn't, I entrusted him with caring for my plant.
He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"
"What?"
He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"
"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."
Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.
Listen, totally cool. My plant becoming Catholic is a great deal for her not dying over the summer. But now I must navigate this interfaith household. Keep me in your thoughts.
Mafia boss smoking a cigar: Whyād you gotta squeal, Squealinā Stephen? I trusted you. Now I gotta send my best goons to show you what happens when you cross the Big Bossā¦
Guy tied up in chair: uhā¦theres just one guy over there.
Mafia boss: Yeah. Thatās Lilā Tony. Heās got one of dem conditions where heās got multiple mooks nā his head. But when Big Tony fronts youāre gonna be in big trouble.
Lilā Tony: We actually all agree weāre gonna kick your ass.
xAI has open-sourced Grok Build after backlash over secretly uploading usersā repositories
xAI has released the full source code of Grok Build, its AI coding agent, after Cereblab researchers found that the tool was uploading usersā entire Git repositories to company controlled Google Cloud storage. The transferred data could include sensitive files such as SSH keys, password databases, private documents, and photos.
xAI disabled the file upload feature and said data storage had been turned off by default since July 12. Elon Musk also stated that previously uploaded user data would be permanently deleted and promised to open source the project after a security audit. The code is now available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, although it was published as a single commit without previous Git history or pull requests.
The codebase contains approximately 844,530 lines of Rust covering Grok Buildās core agent workflow, tools, terminal interface, and plugin system. Code related to the disabled upload feature remains in the repository. Grok Build can read repository configurations, plan tasks, generate or modify code, execute shell commands, run in automated pipelines, and integrate with editors through the Agent Client Protocol.
Anyway, PSA for programmers and anyone who uses Git! Apparently Elon Musk has been stealing all your stuff, including your security keys and passwords, so uh. well I am not a programmer but you might want to Move That Shit
Despite their luminescent glow, lightning bugs have remained a conservation mystery until relatively recently. Now researchers are relying o
Excerpt from this story from Audubon:
āI canāt tell you how many people come that are like, āI grew up seeing fireflies, and I donāt see as many now,ā ā says Matt Johnson, the centerās director.
Candace Fallon, a conservation biologist at theĀ Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, had long heard similar concerns. But when she checked the literature in 2018, she found little to no information on firefly trends. In fact, there was no comprehensive population data for any of the 179 known firefly species in the United States.
Fallon and a team at theĀ International Union for Conservation of NatureĀ set out to determine how American fireflies are faring. In 2021 they published their findings, theĀ first list of conservation statusesĀ for U.S. fireflies. Of the 132 species they reviewed, more than half lacked enough data to conclude anything for certain. But among the species whose status was clear, the scientists found 20 to be threatened or near threatened.
Fireflies, which are actually bioluminescent beetles, face many of the same threats as birds. Habitat lossāespecially of wetlands, given the insects' preference for moist areasāis a major issue. (Indeed, the most threatened fireflies are the species that depend on only one type of landscape, such as the critically endangeredĀ Bethany Beach firefly, which primarily occupies freshwater wetlands between sand dunes along a 20-mile stretch of the Delaware coast.) Rising seas and extreme weather events drown coastal birds' nests as well as firefly habitat, while pesticides kill insect prey that both fireflies and birds rely onāand likely fireflies themselves. Light pollution, which can disorient nocturnal migratory birds and contribute to fatal building collisions, also disrupts lightning bugsā ability to communicate: Flashing in a brightly lit environment is like trying to yell across a crowd.
To help fill critical knowledge gaps, researchers are turning toĀ community science. TheĀ Fireflyers International NetworkĀ collects dataĀ on iNaturalistĀ from all over the world, and in 2022 Fallon and the Xerces Society launched theĀ Firefly Atlas, where U.S. participants can share incidental observations and even conduct field surveys. These crowdsourced records can illuminate how species are trending in the face of threats.
In some parts of the country, community scientists are logging the first records of fireflies. In the West, the flashing beetles are such a rare sight that some people believe they are imaginary. āItās like: unicorns, dragons, fireflies,ā says Christy Bills, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Western fireflies have always been harder to find: They appear late at night, in small numbers, and in marshy areas where people donāt often hang out. So Bills and her partners at Brigham Young University started theĀ Western Firefly ProjectĀ to focus attention on them. Today its participants have spotted fireflies in 27 of 29 counties in Utah, where previously there had been only a few documented sightingsāand in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, so exciting to Bills that she likens the discoveries to finding gold.
Every time you go in a public place and something ISNāT disgusting itās because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground itās because somebody cleaned it.
Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.
Goths aren't "true to seed" in the sense that the biological offspring of two goths do not necessarily grow up to be goth, though inheriting the inclination for it from both parents increases the odds significantly. That is not how goths naturally reproduce.
The process is actually quite sophisticated, and requires the presence of a full-grown goth to trigger it. A pupal-stage proto-goth, at this point completely indistinguishable from any other small human child, only needs to encounter a mature specimen once - and while the initial imprinting that ensues will only take seconds, the incubation period often takes more than a decade, even several.
The first visible step of the transformation is triggered when the dormant goth suddenly gains awareness that they have free will and can do whatever they want with their appearance. While the progress may be gradual, or seem like the transformation happened all at once overnight, the initial seed was planted years ago. And now, in full bloom, a fully-fledged mature adult goth may finally be happy.
And that's why it's important to sometimes look goth as fuck in the grocery store. You might be seen by small child who had previously hoped to die before adulthood because everything they've heard about becoming a grownup is just pure misery, who will then consequently think to themselves "actually nevermind, that's what I want to be when I grow up."
I once had a cashier at a retail place say to me, āI wish I could wear a dress like that.ā
And I asked, āWhy canāt you?ā
Iām pretty sure that was the first time sheād ever realized that she was an adult, with a job, who could make her own decisions about herself.
A few weeks later, at the same store, I overheard one of the employees telling one of the other cashiers that he still didnāt know what happened with her, but she showed up to a shift dressed completely different, had changed her hair and makeup, and just said, āI hate this job, I quit,ā and walked out.
It wasnāt even that good a dress, it was just bright red. But sometimes you have to be the nudge that triggers someone elseās metamorphosis.
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesnāt care which VPN you use, only that itās still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows āsurveillance softwareā.
Two things back that up:
Thereās no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Appleās advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Androidās works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then thereās activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: āItās impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].ā Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
I don't know. I don't get why more people (/rhetorical) aren't, in some way, invested in youth lib. Like, can you listen to what we're saying? Have you seen what's been happening? Why aren't you infuriated?
My mom told me a story today about how, in her last semester of high school, she had 4 study halls, calculus, and PE. She told me she skipped her study halls and just showed up for calculus and PE so she could graduate. She told me on her senior skip day she went to the lake with nearly her entire class.
I'm not saying this is like, incredibly awesome and educationally productive, but she was a teen. And she did teen stuff.
My school doesn't have study halls. Punishments for absences start once you dip below 95% attendence rates. 3 tardies count as an unexcused absence. We got several emails about how senior skip day was not approved and that anyone caught to be participating would get in school suspension. 45 minute lunches are a "privilege". Skipping class is an in school suspension, which are sent along with grades to colleges you apply for. Speaking of which, the majority of my classmates are still spending hours everyday studying, and failing that, doing part-time jobs, clubs, sports, and volunteering -- all in hopes of getting into the college they want.
Everyone is fucking wiped! Barely any of us enjoy school (+or life, to some extent), many of us are actively suicidal because of school. One of us didn't make it to graduation. This is seen as an "us issue", a matter of mindset (don't worry! Today's quote of the day is another variation of "good mindset = good day, bad mindset = bad day"!!) Most places actively bar or discourage teens from being there (hanging out in a mall = loitering, no minors allowed without parent supervision basically everywhere, walking around with no real goal is "suspicious", etc etc). When we stay inside and go on the internet, we are told that we are the problem, we need to stop spending so much time online, and the solution is social media and phone bans. As if excessive use of electronics by younger people isn't a symptom of a much larger issue. As if bans will solve the problem. As if we like spending our teenage years scrolling.
My friends tell me how their mom took their inheritance money and bought a car. How their dad flipped their shit, verbally and physically, when they dyed their hair. I read stories about people getting messages from online friends that say "I think my parents found out I'm queer" and then never hearing from them again. Have you ever read about the troubled teen industry?
And that isn't even, like, the basics!!! That's barely even scratching the surface!!
Aren't you angry? Aren't you? I need more people to be angry, because I'm not allowed to (don't cha know being angry when you're young justifies abuse I mean discipline?).
There are layers to this. Earlier in the episode, Xena discovers her secret while they're sharing a locker room. A woman she has got naked with turned out to be trans. It's the exact scenario terfs are always fear-mongering about, but Xena just shrugs it off.
Also, the kiss was a big deal not just because it was gay but because the trans actress was HIV positive. They wanted to show the world that you can't contract HIV just from kissing someone. Bear in mind, the AIDS crisis was still fresh on people's minds in the 90s.
#idk what this means or if i do this but ig i'll just hold my phone with my pinky stuck out from now on??Ā
Good question, also no that wonāt help.
shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the ābottomā edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesnāt slide out of your hand that easily, youāre wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from itās resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.
Green lines - the fingers are going their natural way. Red line - the pinky is way off, thatās bad.
Why is there a diarrhea parasite outbreak in America?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to disease prevention and control.
Why is measles back in America?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including RFK Jr, cut vaccine and measles prevention funding and programs.
Why is the New World Screwworm infecting cattle in Texas, when it had previously been eliminated from the area?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Elon Musk, cut USAID funding, which in part worked to monitor and prevent screwworm outbreaks.
Why was there a flu outbreak in our armed forces?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Pete Hegseth, cut vaccination requirements for our armed forces, putting all of them at risk alongside our military readiness.
What contributed to the Covid outbreak?
Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to a pandemic prevention program in his first term because Barack Obama had created it.
āAmerica firstā sends its regards. Trump voters, please learn your lesson. And if you donāt, itāll be taught to you again with yet another diarrhea outbreak.
Please give credit to Matthew Cortland, the disabled lawyer and activist whose work is reflected in that last screenshot. They work hard on documenting what Trump and his cronies have been doing & they deserve credit.
