It sounds like something truly terrible is happening to these goats.
The truly terrible thing that's happening? I am not walking fast enough toward them with the evening grain bucket.
Poor poor goats.
I have the library name and card number saved for pasting in, but still the process is laborious and annoying. Before they "improved" the website two or three years ago, it was at least possible to autofill the form, and you could stay logged in for a sensible length of time.
I like being able to access the online #OED with a library card. What I DON'T like is their login process:
• Start typing your library's name, while their popup list does its best to stop you after each keystroke.
• Select your library from the list, even if it's now the only item left and fully typed.
• Enter a 14-character library card number.
Being forced to select from the list means you can't enter login details automatically. You have to do this rigmarole each time they log you out.
I've a feeling something similar happened last time I tried to order from them, and I ended up having to use Amazon just so I could actually get the book. :-( Frustrating.
Damn. Just tried to order a book via bookshop.org. There's a Visa verification page, which freezes. (And although "choose payment method" is shown before then, there's only one option to choose from—namely the card payment that it's not letting me make.)
Periodic reminder.
When you have two versions of a document open for editing, change the background color so you don't mistakenly edit the wrong document.
Another junk blog post that is only for bad "AI" scraping bots https://strudel.org.uk/blog/no-scraping/002001.html
Mastodon is the social network to be on if you want to guarantee that your joke will eventually be explained back to you in the most earnest possible way
mnemonic (n.):
3. Something forgettable that helps you forget something memorable.
(Obviously includes (1) and (2).)
"Morning Light"
Open to view entire painting.
Digital gouache.
Painting © Mary Nelson, 2026
Case in point for (2): supposed mnemonics based on forced #acronyms. For example: there's a logical four-stage process you can remember. There's also a four-letter word you can remember. But how on earth do you label those four stages to match that sequence of letters?
(Normally, by describing the stages in a contrived way and using the first letters of some of the more optional words.)
Mnemonic (n.):
1. something counterintuitive that's harder to remember than the thing you're trying to, and which can only be recalled by first recalling that and then somehow remembering what the connection was.
2. something additional that you can just about remember along with the thing you're trying to, but whose connection to it you can't then fathom.
Context: when first learning to read and write Norwegian, I found the German I'd previously learnt at school useful for recognising some Norwegian words—for example, guessing that "viktig" in Norwegian might well mean the same as "wichtig" in German. Now I know more Norwegian than German, so I find myself guessing the meanings of unfamiliar German words from more familiar Norwegian ones.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@courtcan/117434893394097184
"chews up extant human creations and spits them out with the heart and soul removed"
[contd.]
Now the interesting bit: I read up a bit more about the letter ȝ (yogh) a couple of days ago, and now know that the sound of German "ch" is one of the ones it has been used for, along with often appearing in English words that now have a g or a y.
So we've got:
• g ~ ch in fagbok / Fachbuch
• g ~ ch in equivalents of the letter ȝ
Which doesn't imply that ȝ is the historical connection between the words, but does illustrate a similar connection appearing in two different ways.
Interesting set of connections, prompted by not knowing the #German word "Fachbuch" just now despite already knowing the #Norwegian word "fagbok". They both mean "textbook"—"fag" in this context is an area of work or study.¹ Once I knew the meaning, the connection was obvious. What hadn't been obvious, but perhaps should have been, was that I could try changing ch→g to guess the meaning. #language [ cont. ]
_____
¹ meaning 6, here: https://naob.no/ordbok/fag_1
Gelesen: "Wenn ich den Song nicht mit Suno gemacht hätte, gäbe es ihn gar nicht."
Gedacht: ja, und es wäre nicht schlimm, wenn es ihn nicht gäbe (und was meinste, wie viele Song- oder Kompositionsideen ich schon hatte, die es nie an die Öffentlichkeit schafften? Nennt sich kreativer Prozess und persönliche Entwicklung.)
Gelesen: "Ich wäre nie auf die Idee gekommen, einen Musiker zu beauftragen. Wollte ja nur herumspielen."
Was ich dazu gedacht habe, schreibe ich besser nicht.
This made my day
This 403 page from @WEATHERISHAPPENING certainly means business
https://403.weatherishappening.com/