During the PDX Bridge Pedal, another cyclist came up beside me and asked if I was an engineer.
His indicators for this assumption were that I had a ponytail and had "placed stickers on my bike with pedantic precision."
I mean, he was right, but I have never been profiled to accurately before.
I'm supplying doughnuts for the faculty retreat. They pair with the hazelnut creamer someone insists on bringing about as well as anything does.
I just learned that oat milk was discovered in the 1960s, when NASA found out by accident what zero-g environments do to goat milk.
Thank you, thank you, I'll see myself out.
Thwarted again
Creating a Supersonic Trebuchet
https://hackaday.com/2026/08/09/creating-a-supersonic-trebuchet/
A new report from the Urban #Transport Group (UTG) calls for greater investment in walking, wheeling and #cycling to create more integrated public transport networks.
It says 43% of urban journeys under five miles are walked or cycled, while 68% of residents want more direct routes between homes and bus stops. Some 70% want pavements free from parked cars, while 88% of women feel unsafe walking alone after dark.
The report, From Doorstep to Destination: Enabling joined-up journeys, says every public transport trip starts and ends with a local journey. It recommends wider use of low-cost zebra crossings, stronger action on pavement parking, better street design and maintenance, improved safety, more cycle parking at stations and greater emphasis on active travel in new developments.
The report supports the Government’s target for 55% of short urban journeys to be walked or cycled by 2035.
https://www.urbantransportgroup.org/resources/types/press-release/doorstep-to-destination-report
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117066509290131562
In 1986 I went to Australia with my big folding telescope to see Halley's Comet, which I'd been dreaming about since I was a kid. It turned out less exciting than other comets I had seen.
But one night, camping in the middle of the continent, the sky was so dark there was no visible artificial light. The entire horizon was dark. The nearest building was 150km away. A weak, scratchy radio signal was playing Bach. I just lay back and marveled.
The Sky! The Milky Way overhead! The LMC and SMC!
Life meets art, head on ... meep-meep!
This accident actually happened. In Monterrey in Mexico a driver crashed into a concrete wall decorated with a trompe-l'œil mural of a Looney Tunes tunnel.
Mental image: Pinocchio asking Claude to make him a real engineer
The following is a valid DOS COM executable that prints "HELLO" in the lower right corner of the screen.
You can copy these emoji into a text editor, and save it as EMOJI.COM. it should be 141 bytes.
It will run in DosBox-X, with the following options:
cpu cputype=8086
machine cga
🐸☺️🐰🐎♐🗃️🧯🧯🧯🐮💗🦮♐🐰🐹🗃️🧯🧯🧯🧯💗🪗🧯😗🧮😗🧮😗🐮😪😔⭐
may god have mercy on my soul.
“3/4ths of disabled people don’t drive. Stop using us as an excuse for car dependency.” — @nondriver.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy in collaboration with @urbantruth.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy. #UrbanTruth
Worth repeating.
#UrbanTruth
RE: https://digipres.club/@foone/117038826379369323
🔔 THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS 🔔
as a release engineer let me tell you, if the outcomes of my work are nondeterministic, it's just fail all the way down. I consider that entirely untenable, and any tools that impose it unacceptable.
"Hello, yes, I would like one mental health please."
"Mental health is out of stock."
"Do you know when it will be back in stock?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
2026-08-04 01:00:00 UTC (Delta: 24 hours)
WHERE IS 2025-010D?
- Discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage on lunar intercept
- Geocentric speed: 1.27 km/s (-0.04 km/s)
- Lunar impact in: 1 day
⚪ Relative to Moon
- Distance: 76,155.26 km (-49,403.17 km)
- Lunar distance: 0.20 LD (-0.13 LD)
- Light travel time: 0.25 s (-0.16 s)
🌎 Relative to Earth
- Distance: 324,500.75 km (+19,285.19 km)
- Light travel time: 1.08 s (+0.06 s)
It's been hot and muggy every single day for a month now. And tonight it's below 10C. I normally have a cup of warm (non-caffeinated) evening tea, but tonight was the first time I've done that in a month. Nice.
Trying not to stress too much about my totally-not-done grant NOI that's due in like... 20 hours.
I always thought that by the time I was a tenured professor, I wouldn't procrastinate anymore. But it turns out that I'm now REALLY REALLY GOOD at procrastinating.
I've got this. Probably.
Sigrid Haugset stunned Stage 3 with an 88.5‑km solo breakaway, taking the Yellow Jersey and making history for Norway. Full Tour de France Femmes coverage now on Fan | Zone. #TDF2026
Our measurements reveal an average brightness seven times brighter than mitigation targets cited in FCC filings and peak values over 200 times brighter than the International Astronomical Union’s recommended threshold (V magnitude 7).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ae8333
None of my posts are AI slop.
All of my slop is hand-crafted, lovingly curated, and immediately regretted.
One of the joys of getting a new monitor is finding all the ways it interacts poorly with my kvm.
This time I find that the monitor will work with my laptop through the kvm but only if the lid is up. If the lid is down then it doesn’t display anything even though the laptop is awake. It works lid closed when directly connected, of course.
Computers are just so awesome. You can’t imagine how thrilled I am at how hard the industry is working to make them even better, too.