Dallas needs to become the new Columbo where inexplicably a bunch of people start watching it now

Parents, PLEASE check your kids Halloween candy for PHP CVE-2026-109618

Uh, the whole Plex player team got laid off today?
Seems pretty bad for Plex.  I already jumped ship to Jellyfin because I saw the writing on the wall with where Plex was headed, this type of project needs to stay stupid hacker software, the second it becomes paid it's not going to go anywhere good, not even just in a "boo capitalism" way but in a "they are never going to monetize software people use to watch pirated shit the way they'd need to so the second that becomes an expectation there's a problem"

If there's one thing I really respect though, it's that Julia truly was working for nothing and putting her all into it.  She didn't have quite enough experience, but like...idk after Cohost acting like their $94k salaries were peasant wages it definitely puts Julia not paying herself at all in a nicer light to me. But, well...this is the downside of doing that. You certainly can't do that forever.

Just saw the news about pillowfort

Its a shame but its honestly kinda what I expected. There was no way the non-profit thing was going to work out, at best they could have hoped for "Julia gets to exit gracefully then the new board shuts it down soon after". Which might have been better her for her but not very different to users.

But it was on borrowed time. Julia was basically running herself into the ground by having to do full time work for no pay.

Its just the reality of it: free social media is too expensive to run unless it's small fedi scale servers or unless you get into unethical monetization or VC.  Especially when you're writing the software yourself.  I think Pillowfort made a good effort at a losing game.

And honestly I don't think the security issues (which had been reported before public launch, but ignored, for the record) actually made a difference here.  More users don't really mean more money on a site like pillowfort, they mean more costs.  Cohost had this same problem.  You need a better ratio of paying users to non paying, and I'm not convinced that ratio gets better as userbases expand. More users just mean you have more things breaking, more hosting costs, and need more moderation.

Staring and wondering why I'm not giving her treats right this second

Much like the dogs, but quieter

I'll get up from my desk and glance at the hamster cage as I go to walk out the door and there will be a little creature just staring at me

Hamsters are great they sleep most of the day so half the time when they DO wake up during the day you get jumpscared by them

Hello!

I do finally have most of the auto-db stuff going though.  So like...say you have this reader letter:

I hope the writers of Cheers consider using Helen Gurley Brown's ideas, because I, like Brown, am "half dead" waiting for David and Maddie and Diane and Sam to get together!

When entering this into the db, I am manually tagging relevant things in it like so:

I hope the writers of [[show moonlighting Moonlighting]] and [[show cheers Cheers]] consider using [[author helen_gurley_brown Helen Gurley Brown]]'s ideas, because I, like Brown, am "half dead" waiting for [[character david_addison@moonlighting David]] and [[character maddie_hayes @moonlighting Maddie]] and [[character diane_chambers@cheers Diane]] and [[character sam_malone@cheers Sam]] to get together!

This is giving me the type of reference (show/character/author), the database ID, and then the text in the article (which may or may not match anything in the db as-is, so is arbitrary).  For characters I add the @show_name so that later when I have the pages for shows, and it lists the mentions of that show, it can list mentions of characters, since in some cases a character will be mentioned without the show itself being mentioned (like you can imagine someone referencing Miss Piggy without saying "from the Muppets")

Have to keep reminding myself that the issue page generator for Born Into TV is by far the hardest of them, because it is taking a lot of time (I'm getting it close to done, or at least done enough for now), but like....basically every other page is going to reuse the stuff used here.  Like the tables of articles, when I make the author pages that will list all the writing by each author, it's going to be those same tables and everything, just a slightly different database call.  So it should take way less time to do all the other page types.

if someone wanted to make a xena for the next generation, make a show about these ladies in this vaguely mad max-ish wild west

arguably the longer edit is better, I'd have to analyze how many seconds of buff leather lady footage there is to say for sure, I don't like that the swearing is removed though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBKxwLRSLHs

"To date", implying that James Cameron could surprise us all still on this front,

Titanic had no fuckin buff leather ladies at ALL what a waste of a film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkz0Lx6VyxA

Martini Ranch - Reach is truly James Cameron's best work to date, and if you think I'm wrong name me one other thing he's done with MORE buff leather ladies

Share with me an image you saved thinking you'd use it as a reaction image but haven't really found any use for it and have no idea what you thought it'd be good for in the first place

For me it's this

A weird thing I want an explanation for

I found a sealed vintage Dynasty jigsaw puzzle on eBay

But looking them up...there's a TON of these sealed Dynasty jigsaw puzzles on eBay

I don't even see one that has been opened

Which to me implies someone out there at some point produced a warehouse full of them, and nobody wanted to do a Dynasty jigsaw puzzle

Last year, there were THREE!!! reported cases of this in my county.

Nothing came of any of them.

No further reports whatsoever.

Interestingly, one of the supposed reports?  Was for the road I live on.

I've never seen a trick or treater on my road.

It's October!  You know what season it is?  That's right, it's False Reports Of Needles In Halloween Candy Season!

So a quick reminder that if you see a bunch of articles about needles or drugs being found in Halloween candy--note the details (city, neighborhood, any names) and search for it again in a few weeks.  You'll be shocked to see one of two things:

1) The perpetrator was a kid between the ages of 9-15, because their parents were so paranoid and fearful of candy that they thought it'd be a good prank

2) The perpetrator was an adult making it up for attention, social media clout, whatever

3) The most common situation: nothing.  No further reports.  No further mentions of it ever again.  Either candy needlers are the craftiest criminals on earth that cannot be caught, or the cops just drop it because it's a hoax but they don't have enough info to charge someone over it.