32

Okay, that’s kind of egregious.

I wonder if a counter might be — if that isn’t already what they’re doing — running sting operations pretending to be Russian intelligence. Then, any time someone’s thinking about maybe taking money to set something on fire or whatever, the appeal is tempered by the fact that they might actually be talking to Polish law enforcement.

Dunno if sting operations are something that Poland does, though.

kagis

Sounds like it:

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/7-arrested-in-poland-in-latest-sting-against-illegal-tobacco

7 arrested in Poland in latest sting against illegal tobacco

I would mention that I use Kagi as a search engine, which doesn’t retain search queries (outside a subset for a limited period of time, like a percentage retained for 7 days to counter DDoS attacks). They also have functionality to let people — people who are more paranoid than I am — pay anonymously via cryptocurrency and use search tokens that don’t link individual searches to each other.

https://kagi.com/privacy

Maximizing anonymity with Kagi

We strive to give our customers the possibility to maximize their anonymity. Users who want provable anonymity guarantees may access our service by:

• Creating an account with a pseudonymous email address
• Paying for their plan using cryptocurrency
• Accessing our services via Tor service
• Anonymously authenticating using the Privacy Pass protocol

https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass

In general terms, Privacy Pass allows “Clients” (generally users) to authenticate to “Servers” (like Kagi) in such a way that while the Server can verify that the connecting Client has the right to access its services, it cannot determine which of its rightful Clients is actually connecting.

I’d also add that, search query and AI prompts aside, one’s aggregate YouTube history is also likely to have privacy implications, as I expect that most people have watched a lot of content on YouTube and done many searches on it. In 2025, I can’t suggest a reasonable, privacy-oriented drop-in alternative for that, though.

EDIT: Social media is its own can of privacy worms, but at least there people basically understand that they’re putting content out there for the world to see, albeit maybe wanting to do so pseudonymously.

EDIT2: Actually, I haven’t been using it, but Kagi does have a video search, and a bit of experimentation shows that it does appear to index YouTube. I guess I could use that to hide search queries, though obviously YouTube will still have a “videos watched” history, as one would still connect to YouTube for a video itself. And it’s gonna come with some limitations; NewPipe and similar mobile clients don’t have functionality to issue search queries to anything but YouTube directly, so one wouldn’t be able to use a mobile client for searches. I also don’t know whether they permit filtering on everything that YouTube does (or, if they index multiple video sources, whether it’s even possible to filter things on all those criteria; different video services may not expose the same information).

EDIT3: It also appears to only return 48 results per search, unlike YouTube’s search Web UI, where I believe that you can just keep paging through more results as long as you want.

EDIT4: Ah, they show what they index in the search options, since they let you choose which source the videos are from. Apparently it’s YouTube, Vimeo, TED, TikTok, Twitch, Daily Motion, and PeerTube. Huh. I didn’t even know that it was possible to search Vimeo at all. Last time I went looking for a YouTube alternative, I remember looking at it, seeing that the main page had no search form or list of videos, and thinking that there wasn’t any way to search it at all.

I would imagine that the same is true of search engine queries, and the collection of search engine queries is gonna be a lot larger than ChatGPT prompts.

to find a montage I’d seen recently of the clown saying “in two weeks” about all kinds of things

searches YouTube

This?

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

EDIT: MSNBC has someone commenting on the phenomenon here:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TbD_Syj6j5U

I’m fairly sure that California having cage-size mandates does the opposite of driving up egg prices outside California.

They’ll drive up California egg prices, sure. But California egg prices have been higher than egg prices outside California. That’s because it’s not legal to sell eggs produced in other states if the producer there doesn’t produce to California’s requirements, which eliminates California consumers as competition for those eggs. If you have a shortage in California production — as happened earlier — what happens is that prices in California go much more expensive, but prices outside California don’t rise as much as they otherwise would, because California consumers aren’t competing for the available supply.

California’s cage-size mandates may be a bad idea for California egg consumers, but they shouldn’t be driving up prices outside of California a la the Trump administration’s claims.

I suppose maybe it’s a media strategy, the aim being to fix the idea that it is California’s fault in the minds of people elsewhere.

This isn’t an “all else held equal” situation. The monkey is topless.

EDIT: Well, ape probably. I don’t see a tail.

I don’t think that he’s actually riding it — the kickstand is down. I think he’s just sitting there.

Yes!

The things you’re describing aren’t really version control systems themselves. Git is a version control system; these are an ecosystem of web-based tools surrounding that version control system.

I don’t know if there’s a good term for these.

kagis

Wikipedia calls them “forges”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)

In free and open-source software (FOSS) development communities, a forge is a web-based collaborative software platform for both developing and sharing computer applications.

For software developers it is an online service to host the tools they need to work and communicate with their coworkers. It provides a workflow to propose modifications and engage in discussions. The goal is to reach an agreement that will allow these modifications to be merged into the software repository.

For users, a forge is a repository of computer applications, a place where bugs can be reported, a channel to be informed of security issues, etc.

The source code itself is stored in a revision control system and linked to a wide range of services such as a code review, bug database, continuous integration, etc. When a development community forks, it duplicates the content of the forge and is then able to modify it without asking permission. A community may rely on services scattered on multiple forges: they are not necessarily hosted under the same domain.

https://www.findlaw.com/state/alabama-law/alabama-capital-punishment-laws.html

Methods of Execution Allowed in Alabama

Lethal injection is the primary method of execution allowed in Alabama. Also, the state allows the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method.

Looks like you’re out of luck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_in_the_United_States

The hanging of Billy Bailey is likely to be the final hanging in the United States, considering that all three of the states that maintained hanging as a secondary method of execution alongside lethal injection after the 1976 restoration of the death penalty have now abolished executions. Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be in violation of their state constitution in 2016,[20] Washington abolished executions in 2018,[21] and New Hampshire abolished executions in 2019.[22] However, the last person on death row in the three states is Michael K. Addison in New Hampshire, convicted in 2008 of the 2006 murder of Michael Briggs, an on-duty police officer. Should the state carry out Addison’s execution, the method could be hanging if lethal injection was found unconstitutional or inefficient, or if he chooses to be executed by hanging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Raised by wolves

Hessian wolf-children[19]: 15–7 [20] (1304, 1341 and 1344) lived with the Eurasian wolf in the forests of Hesse:

• The first boy (1304) was taken by wolves at age 3 and found when 7 or 8 by Benedictine monks, the wolves having cared for him by “surrounding him in cold weather, and fed him the best meat from the hunt.” He was later sent to the court of Prince Henry, and became accustomed to human society but said he preferred the wolves.[21]

Frankly, Alabama, I think that you need to up your child-rearing game to at least wolf-level.

Markdown treats a single newline as a space, so that already wrapped text doesn’t need to be rewrapped. If you want to have each item on one line, some options:

Two spaces before newline

Foo  << two spaces here
Bar

Yields

Foo
Bar

Backslash before newline

Foo\
Bar

Yields

Foo
Bar

Paragraph Break

Most clients will have a “larger” vertical space if you do this. Use a double newline:

Foo

Bar

Yields

Foo

Bar

Bulleted List

* Foo
* Bar

Yields

• Foo
• Bar

rambling about

https://themysterytraveler.com/why-no-window-screens-in-europe/

I suspect, from past conversations, that some of it is that when you design a house to be used without screens, then retrofitting screens isn’t optimal. Like, say you have a window of X area. The screen blocks, say, 30% of light that would go through. If you then put a screen on the window, then you have only 70% of the light that you normally would. That may well be darker than you want. If you design a house with the intention of screen use and want light from windows, you’re going to make the windows 130% the area you normally would.

That creates some inertia.

“If a 4,000-pound SUV runs a red light, they get a ticket and you pay it online. You’re done with it in a matter of minutes. But if a 60-pound bicycle runs a red light, then they can get a criminal summons, which means you have to take a day off of work, go to court, probably you should hire a lawyer. And if you are an immigrant, then that can put you at risk of deportation,” Berlanga said.

I’m in California, not in New York City, but I have to say that while I have seen cars run red lights, it is exceedingly rare, whereas I see bicyclists doing it all the time. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if New York City has a similar situation. Whether-or-not the current situation is a good one, I do think that there’s a lack of deterrence as things stand.

and keep me awake

• The artist, Richard Klos, appears to be Dutch. One convention that I understand to be common in the US and uncommon in Europe is the use of screens on windows. The US used to have some serious tropical disease problems that didn’t exist in Europe, and window screens became a norm in the US to deal with that.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_screen

  By the 1950s, malaria was largely eradicated in the United States due to the widespread use of window screens.[3] Today many houses in Australia, the United States and Canada have screens on operable windows.[4]

  While mosquito-borne malaria isn’t a problem in Europe today, screens will still work to keep mosquitoes-as-an-annoyance out.

• That’s probably sufficient, but if you want a second line of defense or don’t want window screens, in some places, like Africa, that still have tropical disease issues, use of mosquito netting over beds is used.

https://www.amazon.com/Sublaga-Mosquito-Hanging-Installation-Decorative/dp/B0BZV3T8TG

I think this might be apropos here:

Matthew 7:3-5:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

https://julieroys.com/former-ceo-my-faith-votes-charged-possession-child-sex-abuse-material/

…according to a probable cause statement filed in the case, the former CEO, Jason Yates, has a prior conviction for a similar charge, which was expunged.

The organization in question’s top news item is apparently complaining about pedophiles:

https://www.myfaithvotes.org/

So-Called ‘Equality Act’ Could Undo Free Speech, Mandate Murder Of Unborn Children, Make Pedophiles A ‘Protected Class’

A bill positioned as the “Equality Act” is gradually moving its way through Congress, and is designed to “crush moral decency and religious freedom beneath the feet of the radical LGBT & Q lobby,” says experts.

That’s actually kind of impressive.

The Pope looked smug. It was the Protestants this time around.

Las Vegas

bookings through the summer

I mean…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas#Climate

Las Vegas has a subtropical hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification: BWh, Trewartha climate classification BWhk), typical of the Mojave Desert in which it lies. This climate is typified by long, extremely hot summers…The summer months of June through September are extremely hot, though moderated by the low humidity levels. July is the hottest month, with an average daytime high of 104.5 °F (40.3 °C). On average, 137 days per year reach or exceed 90 °F (32 °C), of which 78 days reach 100 °F (38 °C) and 10 days reach 110 °F (43 °C). During the peak intensity of summer, overnight lows frequently remain above 80 °F (27 °C), and occasionally above 85 °F (29 °C).[35]

Summer wouldn’t really be when l’d want to go to Las Vegas.