Got a new visa card recently and it's great for reviewing your subscriptions. Today I made the switch from Spotify to Qobuz because I got a notice that they couldn't process my payment.

Min #fredagsbog er 'The Vegetarian' af Han Kang, som indtil videre (efter del 1) er en temmeligt voldsom bog.

Jeg læser den som en del af min plan om at læse alle nobelpristagere, og Han Kang er klart bekendtskabet værd.

Men jeg læser faktisk rigtigt meget for tiden, og man kan følge lidt med på @CarstenBoll@minreol.dk hvis man har lyst :)

If you post a nice photo from #samsø and tag it with #ilovesamsø, then I will boost it and it will be shown at https://ilovesamsø.dk
@CarstenBoll and anyone else with nice photos from #samsø.

Yesterday the fascist Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) ruled that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't independent anymore. This is huge, on multiple levels.

For US-Americans it's just bad, but for Europeans there could be something good in it that the US fascists probably didn't consider … provided that the EU Commission doesn't stab European citizens in the back.

The FTC being independent is the entire basis for (and the only reason) why Europeans are allowed to send personal data from the EU to the USA.

Without this basis, Europeans aren't allowed to send any personal data from the EU to the USA. To give the maybe most concrete example, Europeans will be forbidden to use Google Analytics once this comes into effect.

In fact no US agency is independent anymore.

Did Trump's fascist cronies in the SCOTUS basically self-destruct US tech dominance over Europe? In their race to a dictatorship, they declared every US law unconstitutional that allows any US agency any independence from Trump. But without independence from Trump, the EU treaty collapses that allows Europeans to send personal data to the USA.

This means, Europeans aren't allowed to use Google Analytics anymore. No more Google Firebase, no more Braze, no more Sentry. NO MORE PALANTIR.

> noyb has sent a formal letter to the European Commission today, asking the Commission to take the appropriate steps to repeal the EU-US data deal in an orderly way.
> noyb will also file a lawsuit in the coming weeks, aiming to allow the [Court of Justice of the EU] to annul the current deal. However, such a lawsuit typically takes 2-3 years until a final decision is reached.

If your employer uses Google Analytics, they better start migrating to a self-hosted solution like Matomo or Plausible. Or they will face hefty fines.

This would be the biggest self-own and favor the USA could have done us Europeans. This seems too good to become reality?!

To be clear: This is extremely bad for US-Americans. The SCOTUS just made the USA even more fascist than it already was. And for the EU, a fascist USA isn't good either. But unless the EU bows to the pressure once the USA realize their mistake, Europeans could become free of US surveillance tech.

https://noyb.eu/en/us-supreme-court-just-blew-eu-us-data-transfers

finished reading Midaq Alley 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
I've been trying to read more nobel prize winners, and Nagieb Mahfouz' Midaq Alley caught my fancy but left me somewhat unsatisfied.

We're in Cairo, in an alley in a ghetto, where we're presented with the daily life of all the characters - if you're from Scandinavia, think of this as a sort of 'Folk og Røvere i Kardemommeby' novel.

We meet rich widows looking to marry, a young hopeful barber, a baker and his wife, a café owner with an angry wife and a preference for young boys and hashish, a factory owner, a religious mystic, a hack-dentisk, a beggar, and most prominently a young woman called Hamida who wants more from life, one way or another.

If you're anything like me that sounds fun - and it is fun, to a degree - but maybe it's my cool nordic rationalism getting in the way of things, because everyone in this novel keeps shouting at everything, no-one says what they really feel or believe, husbands are beating wives and wives are beating husbands, and while it's good fun (sometimes laugh-out-loud fun) it's also a little bit alienating and feels like a caricature. I wanted to get to know these people, but I don't feel I got there. That's fine in 'Kardemommeby' which is a children's novel, but it's a little disappointing here.

finished reading Tony Takitani 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
En underlig, afmålt, og minimalistisk fortalt novelle om en dreng - Tony Takitani - og hans far der går gennem livet passive og uden den store reflektion eller forståelse for egne følelser. Ikke en dårlig oplevelse, men du efterlades muligvis - som mig - en smule trist og frustreret over disse to mænds insisteren på ikke at tage livtag med livet.

Bought a Venus fly trap some months ago, and during this heat spell we've been plagued by flies and it's absolute gorging itself. Can plants get stomach aches?

Someone recommended @lostterminal on here recently - a month back or so - and I've been slowly going through the backlog. What a lovely show @tris !

Thank you for that :)

@mrundkvist when television was new, in the wake of nazism, fascism and Stalinist communism, it was deemed a powerful and dangerous media for propaganda, so it was heavily regulated. Public service and high bars for impartiality and quality journalism for private broadcasters.

When 24h algorithmic feeds of engaging content optimised for conflict came along in every persons pocket, nothing was regulated. Instead our politicians fall over themselves to ingratiate themselves and advertise it.

New game came today 😁

finished reading The Left Hand of Darkness 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
In 'The Left Hand of Darkness' we follow Genly Ai, a human diplomat from the loose global alliance called The Ekumen, sent to the snowbound planet of Winter/Gethen as an envoy to inform them that they're not alone in the universe - in the hope that they may want to join the Ekumen.

But the inhabitants of Gethen are suspicious of the Envoy - and he, for his part, struggles to understand the social and political realities of this race of humans, what drives them, and who to trust and not trust. Will he succeed or fail as so many have done before him?

---

As with other Ursula K Le Guin books, the Left Hand of Darkness is less a space opera and more an exploration of what it means to be human, and in this case of the impact of human sexuality on a society. The Gethenians, you see, exist most of the time in a sort of androgynous asexual state of being and only feel and emit any sort of sexual tension every 28 days - and when in heat - 'kemmer' - they are just as likely to transform into a female form as they are to transform into a male form, that happens on a case by case basis. What does it do, asks Le Guin, to a society when the baseline of sexual tension is removed entirely?

It's an interesting book, and an interesting concept, which is unfortunately marred by the use of 'he/him' pronouns throughout the book for the Gethenians in their androgynous state. A more gender-neutral term would have enforced the message of the book and the idea of most of the characters being androgynous, but as this was written in 1969 you can perhaps excuse Le Guin for not considering this point.

Today's menu is a chicken curry, paratha, fresh yogurt, and fragrant yellow rice 😋

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@steviesyerda/116766578938213628

If you're a Scot, or just British, do yourself a favor and read this passionate argument for Scotland to regain her independence and to create a truly radical nation. There are so many brilliant passages: "The market is not the natural order of the universe, it is a human model, and it has run its course. Now it conflicts with a material reality that does not negotiate, does not believe in growth, and will not be lobbied. The planet is the one thing in all of this that cannot be bought."

@Tarnport

Anthropeum.com · Jun 18 2026
🟦🟩🟨🟩🟨🟦🟩🟥🟩🟦
71.746 · top 15% of players today!

Every day I hope for coins :D

Anthropeum.com · Jun 17 2026
🟩🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩🟦🟨🟨🟨
64.387 · top 21% of players today!

If you're into history and maybe antiques or archaeology give this game a spin :)

Thanks to @Tarnport

Det er på en eller anden måde tragikomisk at caféen i plantecentret er fyldt med plastikplanter.

So, over on #Reticulum I am building a library and one thing lead to the next and I am now trying to add a complete bibliography of all Nobel laureates to it. And in doing that I got the dumb idea into my head that I should read at least one work by each of them, as a sort of challenge and an attempt to educate myself a bit more.

Goodness knows how long that will take me.

I am spending my time on #Reticulum building content pages, probably as the only person. But I just feel like writing and building stuff again and in a place where it's not just scraped by big tech and presented to people as their own work.

Maybe one day there will also be people there 😉

Edit: write me on 6b6e0a9b8d06e2a17ed0d23eab3fb996 and I'll send you a destination to my most recent project 🙂

finished watching Legends (Miniseries) 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
In this BBC series - which means 6 episodes - we follow a selection of customs officers who go undercover to infiltrate drug gangs in the UK anno 1990. And while this is hardly a unique concept or a unique plot, it is excellently executed with some real standout performances - and based on true events, or so it is claimed.

Tom Burke is sensational as Guy Stanton, a luggage inspector turned undercover agent, and Steve Coogan is wonderful (and funny) as his special-operations boss. But really, the whole cast does a great job - from Hayley Squires as another undercover agent to Numan Acar as a Kurdish druglord, and of course Gerald Kyd as a Greek-Cypriot gangster and double agent.

It reminds me most of The Wire, though only having half the episodes. It's one of those shows where you wish the BBC did the occastional 12-episode series.

Recommended!

Few things are more delicious than butter fried fresh green asparagus!