Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

@catvalente I especially like this bit: "Us weird geeks making communities in the ether? We love. We love so stupidly hard. We try to be happy. We get enthusiastic and devote ourselves to saving whales and trees and cancelled science fiction shows and each other. The energy we make in these spaces ... people like Musk can never understand or experience, which is why they keep smashing the windows in to try and get it, only to find the light they hungered for is already gone."

Yesterday, I told you the #IronAge was weird.... well, here's the categorical proof!

Yes, a #Torc with a knot in it! Yes, it would appear it's an Iron Age knot. We have absolutely no idea why someone would tie a knot in a torc (there aren't other known examples), but my suspicion is it was done because they could - this is not easy thing to do & my gut feeling is this is a goldsmith showing off their skill set.

But whatever it is, I love it! ❤️

#Archaeology #Gold #Torcs

📷 British Museum

Me: I’m returning this ice “cube” tray. It makes cuboids

Cashier: you’re . . . cuboids?

Me: yes, rectangular parallelepipeds. Trapezoidal, really. clearly not functioning as advertised. how is this confusing

Cashier: you know what I was gonna quit today anyway

Years ago I bought a collection of IBM Selectric Typewriter ‘golf balls’ (including some rarer ones) from a typewriter repair shop. Once upon a time this was how fonts were stored for the machine. The owner literally used his arm to shovel them into a cardboard box like he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, in a shop full of hundreds of them. A good memory. #design #typography #typewriter #fonts

One of the benefits of #Mastodon being #OpenSource: The EU can help make it more secure.

"Awards of up to EUR 5000 are available for finding security vulnerabilities in LibreOffice, LEOS, Mastodon, Odoo and CryptPad, open source solutions used by public services across the European Union. There is a 20% bonus for providing a code fix for the bugs they discover."
https://commission.europa.eu/news/european-commissions-open-source-programme-office-starts-bug-bounties-2022-01-19_en

A 800 year old 'Pack Horse Bridge', in Lancashire, England.

#archaeohistories

The Ancient Egyptian for "cat" is 𓏇𓇍𓅱𓃠 or "mjw", a consonant-only representation of the onomatopoeic word... miaow.

#AncientEgypt #Cats #Miaow #Onomatopoeia #Linguistics

We asked my 8yo if she knew what "ambidextrous" meant, and as she tried to figure it out, we heard her mutter under her breath, "It's not when two girls like each other...that's lesbians."

OLD THREAD REPOST on virgin birth (also including exploding penises and regicide)

It's time for the bees and the bees talk. This is everything you need to know about where baby bees come from.

This is not a chart depicting Moore’s Law.

This chart is the CRAYOLA COROLLARY showing that the number of Crayola crayon colors doubles approximately every 18 years.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor, Black, young mother diagnosed w cervical cancer in 1951. When her cells were collected w/o consent, scientists saw they multiplied remarkably fast.

“HeLa” cells changed #science. They’re used globally to study viruses, drugs, hormones, genes, diseases & develop vaccines. Lacks passed away at 31 w no recognition.

Rebecca Skloot’s beautiful book about her life & legacy is changing that. Now her statue will replace Robert E. Lee in NC. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/us/henrietta-lacks-statue-roanoke-virginia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare #history

Mexican honey wasps- and yes they do make honey!- look like you gave a hornet a week to become a honey bee and this is the best it could do.

#Wasps #Hymenoptera #Photography #Insects

*arrives home, finds partner in bed with stranger*

Partner: “wait, I can explain everything.”

Me: “oh good, because I’m really struggling with the concept of quantum gravity. General relativity and quantum mechanics overlap but without an understanding of quantum gravity physics loses it’s logical consistency…”

I feel like Mastodon is a better fit for me than those Other Places.

It is chaotic. It is a raucous barrel of anarchists and furries and commies and queers and furry trans queer ancoms and then this layer of blissed-out academics wiggling their eyebrows and then journos vainly trying to find other journos and then someone who invented TCP/IP as a jape and then her friend who invented stereo and then Jeff Minter.

Why isn't the rest of the net like this?

#MastodonLove

These are male Afghani university students walking out of exams b/c the Taliban banned women.

This is the "woke" that so many in the US seem to fear: people who see injustice in the world and decide that standing against that injustice is worth some personal sacrifice.

RT @RefugeesAtHome
“If strangers started bombing London, we’d want someone to do the same thing and give us refuge.” Lovely article @standardnews about hosted #Ukrainians preparing to celebrate. Happy to have helped: https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/londoners-hosting-ukrainian-refugees-christmas-b1048240.html

So you know those old Glamour Shot places in malls in the 90s?

I want one of those but for armor and swords and cloaks and stuff. All the fantasy props. Bows! Belts with pouches and potions and tiny accessories!

I want a photoshoot with hair & makeup & prop artists who will make me look like a badass who just stepped out of an epic fantasy novel.

Where do I go to make that happen??

Money is the worst idol humanity has ever worshipped.

Reminder: the economy as we know it is an entirely MADE UP entity. GDP, as a concept, didn't really even exist until the 30s. Credit scores not until 1989.
We continue to live and die and steer our countries' wellbeing towards this dumpster fire of inequality, why?