In case you were wondering if your votes count.

At 97% counted, Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom is leading by about 25 votes in MISSISSIPPI. 😬 :amaze:

Particularly shocking is that, with 54% of the vote in, MY DEEP RED RURAL TEXAS district is still trending BLUE... 56%/43%.

OMG, will I have a Dem rep again..?

I cannot allow myself to look too closely at this, lest I jinx it. 😬

A lot of races are trending blue in the US, but I don't trust the results yet. Swings can happen late in the count, because there are a lot of systematic effects on which votes get counted last, and so it's not at all strange if a race suddenly swings one way or the other towards the end. 😬

And some of these races are CLOSE.

I know this is a "NASA Artist Concept" of a lunar mass-driver from the late 70s (probably 1977). Legally, that's all I have to say in my credits.

But does anyone know who painted it?

I *think* it might be Pat Rawlings, but I haven't found anything clearly saying so.

#AskFedi #SpaceArt #MoonColony #MassDriver #NASAConcept

I mean is the Cheesecake Factory really known for such tasteless decor..?

Here's a conceptual programming question for you:

If I have a static site generator, can I make it federated..? :anime_huh:

I mean, I think you can set up an RSS feed so that the feed is updated when the site is updated.

Could that be federated? Tied to a federated platform to handle the dynamic aspects, maybe..?

I ask, because when people were asking about better "web comic" platforms, some of the stuff they asked for were my reason for making "LunaGen" for my landing site for serial episode content.

Could it be federated? Does that even make sense? Would I lose the benefits of a static website? 🤔 :raccoon_cool:

#Programming #Fediverse #ActivityPub #StaticSiteGenerator

IDK. I would like to go on with my business, pretending that LLM bots don't exist. Can I do that..? 🤔

I have found very few applications where they actually seem compelling as a solution. And many where they seem to do active harm.

So far I've got "voice transcription" and "translation" (especially between very different languages where grammar and idioms don't translate easily).

Software testing seems like a possibility, but I worry about the treacherous part -- undetectable failure is NOT success.

I am finally rebuilding the door to my soundbooth. I wonder how many of my recording sessions end with me grumbling, "I have to do something about this damned door!"

(The door is a bookcase, partly because books are good sound insulation. I built it too low, and it sagged under the weight, so it dragged the floor and got stuck frequently).

This is pretty cool. A guy decided to build a replica of the late-1980s TARDIS control room.

That would be pretty high on my list of fun fan projects.

https://theconsoleroom.co.uk

It's interesting that I had to type in the link from the guy's T-shirt, even though I found him on YouTube. Does YT filter out links in video descriptions or something..? That would seem rude, but plausible.

The photo gallery includes both the finished work and some of the construction process, which I think is even more interesting.

For the young 'uns, this is what a "teletype" looks like of about that era (it's not the right model -- my uncle's was a portable that came in a big suitcase -- I don't remember more than that).

I had to include "Adventure". It was one of my first experiences with any kind of computer. I actually played it on a teletype, with one of those 300 baud dial-in modems with the cradle for the handset.

My uncle, who worked as a programmer in the early 1970s brought the teletype to my parents' house, and this was one of the things we did (there was also "Star Trek", which was kind of like Battleship -- you can still find it in Linux distributions to play on the console), and ASCII art.

This was a time when kids did not normally have childhood experiences interacting with a computer -- which seems hard to imagine today, but it was true.

Okay, so people are posting "9 games" they found formative, so I have a wonderful opportunity to date myself here. :muppets_waldorf:

But here we go -- a good span of the history of computer gaming. But not recently.

Hmm. I just saw somebody talking about a 2027 calendar.

I guess if I wanted to make a calendar for sale, I should do it now, huh?

I always think about it in December. 😅

Automatic cooking devices are a really useful accommodation if you're easily distracted. We bought a simple $20 rice cooker, and it has been so much less hassle -- and so much less burnt rice and hard-to-clean pots!

(Mind you, there are also very sophisticated electronic Japanese rice cookers, if you want optimized settings, but we bought a simple electromechanical one for cheap, and it does pretty well).

#ADHD #AuDHD

There is something comforting and quaint about mechanical-sounding old-fashioned synthetic voices, for me now.

No "uncanny valley", I guess?

🤔 :gonzo:

I just visited a website and I got all the information I needed quickly. The experience was great, which made me feel nostalgic because it reminded me of a time when people at least seemed to pretend they cared about quality instead of conversion rates. Now it seems like no one even cares a bit...

#Mastodon #Fediverse newbie advice:

Before you start following people, I strongly recommend:

Create an avatar and/or banner image.

Write a short bio.

Write some posts. Pin a couple of them.

Also, post with some tags, particularly the #Introduction tag (probably with one of those posts you pin).

This way, when people check who you are (if you follow them or they consider following you), they can see a hint of who you are (and that you are a "who" rather than a "what").

Most likely, for the Star Trek 60th today, I'm going to catch up on Tawny Newsome's "Starter Trek" video/podcast (and maybe then the episodes they're reviewing).

Kind of gives me a fresh look on the series.

She picks episodes thematically, across all the franchises, and then gets her less-trekky friend Andrew Ti to watch them. It's fun. In the later episodes, the producer, Jessie Earl is also involved.

You probably know Tawny Newsome as "Mariner Beckett" in "Lower Decks". And she definitely has watched the show...

https://www.youtube.com/@StarterTrek

#StarTrek #StarterTrek #Podcast #YouTube

#TheGuyver #Monsterdon

The best Monsterdon? No.
The MOST Monsterdon? MAYBE!