There’s a special pension from the democrats that you can get, if you’re a furry with pronouns

I haven’t been able to get a pilot’s license because of a med I take, but now I’m told there’s a loophole - become a furry, and the democrats will put you in the cockpit of a passenger jet

I volunteer

New goo just dropped

https://d.umn.edu/news/scientists-discover-new-life-aboard-great-lakes-research-vessel

it's good to talk about something besides the election, or partisan politics in the US. On bluesky nobody is, or apparently ever does.

A lot of interesting European history is contained in an exploration of the way Conan Doyle was both right and wrong.

Sherlock Holmes, of course, saves Britain’s submarine plans in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” (1908). Conan Doyle's fears burgeoned; on the eve of WWI, he wrote "Danger!: Being the Log of Captain John Sirius”, told from the p.o.v. of the captain of an enemy submarine. Britain is so ill-advised as to start a war with this apparently much weaker enemy; with just a handful of subs, the enemy cuts off British food imports, and brings Britain to her knees in just a few weeks.

Conan Doyle had his obsessions. He must have been more like #Holmes than is perhaps generally realized. He said Holmes was modeled after Joseph Bell, a surgeon he knew, but there are traits of Holmes in Conan Doyle.

One of his obsessions was submarines. He was convinced submarines were the key to war, and if Britain didn't immediately dig a Channel Tunnel (!) to France, it would certainly lose the next war.

#SherlockHolmes

The best OS UX ever was System 7, for all its flaws

I also liked NeXTStep but that was admittedly a niche fetish on my part

It was a bit of a blow to this town (at least, in a sense, or so the town government thought) when the army decided not to continue with the beretta m9, and the beretta apx didn't win the m17 modular handgun competition. they would have expanded the factory to fulfill the contract

regret to say the beretta factory doesn't have a factory outlet store

(lol, can you imagine such a thing? hideous thought)

I knew there was a big Facebook data center here, but the map shows another, small one, just south of the big Beretta firearms factory. Guess which one of those I find more objectionable

https://cleanview.co/data-centers/us

for the first time, I can legitimately say "hello new people following my account.”

mute #fediFC to avoid my soccer posting. I know sportsball is not to everyone's taste

Mute #USPol to miss hot takes on our fascist government

Mute #sumo to avoid…sumo

My kinda-sorta, back-of-the envelope number is that one borrowing of an ebook costs the library system on the order of five or ten times as much as one borrowing of the physical book.

A common contract for an ebook via Libby is a two-year rental that allows 26 circs, for—depending—something approaching a hundred bucks. That’s a few dollars per circ.

Hardback books cost about a third that much and circulate many more times. Probably tens of cents per circ or better.

Public library ebooks are becoming a thing of the past.

Libby is bleeding the libraries to death, sucking tax money straight to private equity. (KKR owns it).

For that cost, you get very little, beyond hockey-playing-vampire romance novels and other dumb bestsellers.

If your experience with Libby is still good:

1) You live in one of the few remaining cities in the US with a well-funded library

2) It won’t last. Libby is a parasite that’s indifferent to its host’s long-term survival 🧵

Just mute #WorldCup to miss all my soccer posting for the next five weeks

Senate Democrats issue call for unity as final act before being herded into Concentration Camp David

Democrats adopt wait-and-see attitude after Trump cancels elections; Jeffries “doesn’t like it” but won’t whip the nonbinding resolution expressing disapproval

T mobile wants to buy me a pie item

“The value of any discounted pie item does not count towards the minimum subtotal requirement. Discount applies to the lowest-priced eligible pie item in cart. If you have two or more eligible pie items in cart, the lowest priced eligible pie item will be discounted. Eligible items are ready-to-eat pies or some pie-making components that have the word pie contained in the item name and are reasonably intended for pie preparation.“

You can quote-post me if you want

Her name is Zuri, and she is tiny. The next door neighbors got her (as a gift? I think?) but decided they couldn’t keep her so they asked if we might want to take her

I already ran her to the vet; she’s FIV, heartworm and feluke negative, and she got dewormer. She’s too tiny for flea med yet, so she’s already had a soapy bath