Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog about • archive • mastodon • feed
61 links
CDC on PrEP
Until Trump took over the CDC used to have a webpage about life saving medication
2025-01-31 aids • gay • hiv • lgbt • politics • prep • trump • uspol
Hexaflexamexagon
Old but delicious and hilarious post about mixing geometry, origami, and burritos
2025-01-30 flexagon • food • funny • hexaflexagon • mexican • via:metafilter
$50M condoms to Gaza?
A fact-check on one of the stupid Trump administration lies. It's not $50m for condoms. And they're being sent to Mozambique, not the Palestinian Territory
2025-01-30 condoms • gaza • geoegraphy • lies • politics • stupid • trump
DuckDB
Embeddable database, like sqlite, but columnar so better for certain kinds of repetitive data
2025-01-30 database • datastore • db • parquet • sqlite • timeseries
Pableaux Johnson
Obituary for a beloved New Orleans figure
2025-01-30 cooking • food • neworleans • obit • obituary • pableaux
Chinese AI overview
Details of the impressive development and in particular their open source bent
2025-01-30 ai • baidu • china • computerscience • deepseek • llms
Hitler's seizing of power
Meticulously documented details of how Hitler took control of the German government largely through governmental means, using German law
2025-01-28 germany • history • hitler • nazis • politics
UK OSA vs. woof.group
The UK's new anti-pornography law seems impractical to implement. My friend who runs a sane Mastodon server for LGBT kink grapples with compliance
2025-01-28 bdsm • kink • law • lgbt • moderation • osa • porn • pornography • uk
NEW #startsmall tracker
Jack Dorsey's spreadsheet documenting his charitable donation program. $723M so far in direct gifts. Altruism that is actually effective.
2025-01-27 charity • donation • jack • jackdorsey • twitter
Musk's game cheating
World's richest man plays other people to play videogames for him, claims credit
2025-01-26 boosting • diablo4 • elonmusk • games • poe2 • politics • sad
ChatGPT system prompt
Trying to control a djinn by wording your requests very carefully
2025-01-26 ai • chatgpt • jailbreak • llm • prompt • promptengineering
Musk speaks to AfD
South African / American dude says it's time for Germany to "move beyond" its history. Nazi salute on Tuesday, neo-Nazi talking points on Saturday.
2025-01-26 elonmusk • germany • holocaust • nazi • politics • shame
The Modem World
"A prehistory of social media", documenting pre-Internet online communication
2025-01-24 1980s • bbs • fidonet • history • socialmedia
Stochastic parrot
A metaphorical term of art to describe LLM AIs. Origins in a Google AI ethics paper.
2025-01-24 ai • chineseroom • llm • searlsroom • slang
US homeowners insurance
Why insurance is so expensive in the US. Climate change is a big part of it.
2025-01-24 globalwarming • homeowner • insurance • realestate
Stratoshark
Computer debugging tool: like wireshark, but for system calls instead of network packets
2025-01-22 debugging • devops • linux • strace • syscall • via:hackernews • wireshark
Reddit vs Xitter
Grassroots effort to stop linking to the Nazi-aligned social media company
2025-01-22 elonmusk • fascism • nazi • reddit • socialmedia • twitter
akam.ne
A particularly valuable typosquatting domain was available, Mastercard and others were vulnerable
2025-01-22 akamai • badtech • dns • mastercard • security • typosquatting • via:hackernews
Silk Road pardon
Trump pardoned the guy who founded a black market for assassinations and heroin.
2025-01-22 pardon • politics • silkroad • trump • ulbricht
Newsgrouper
A classic Usenet archive with a Web interface
2025-01-22 history • socialmedia • usenet • via:reddit
Nevada County protests
Local reporting on our small town protests against the Trump inauguration
2025-01-21 california • grassvalley • nevadacounty • politics • protest • uspol
On USDS/DOGE
Discussion from an insider formerly at a government service agency about what the new Trump/Musk change at the US Digital Service might mean
2025-01-21 amac • doge • politics • trump • usds • uspol
Project Mini Rack
Rackmount computers made cute! Half-width 10" racks.
2025-01-19 computers • hardware • homelab • minirack • racks
Bambu Connect hacked
3d printer company enshittifies, hackers immediately reverse engineer the DRM
2025-01-19 3dprinting • bambu • bambulabs • drm • hacking
Netscape founding dirt
1994 complications involving MCOM, University of Illinois, and Mosaic code that may have ended up in Netscape
2025-01-19 history • legal • mozilla • ncsa • netscape • pmarca • uiuc
Warming visualization
Nice use of stacked graphs to visualize climate change
2025-01-19 climatechange • globalwarming • joydivision • visualization
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
A whole subreddit of shitposts on the theme that Portugal is more like Eastern Europe
2025-01-19 culture • europe • funny • portugal • stereotypes
Banū Mūsā organ
9th century automaton may have had the first stored program for a machine, a cylinder triggering notes on a flute
2025-01-19 banumusa • computing • history • islam • jacquard • music • programming • punchcard
isd for systemd
An interactive text UI for systemd for Linux
2025-01-18 linux • ops • sysadmin • systemd • tui • via:hackernews
Denise Bryson
Appreciation of the trans character on the 1990s Twin Peaks. I didn't love the character myself but this essay makes some good points.
2025-01-18 davidduchovny • davidlynch • gay • lgbt • trans • transgender • twinpeaks
Harris Wofford's second love
2016 essay about a 90 year old man marrying a man of age 40, after a lifetime of a loving relationship with his wife
2025-01-18 agegap • bisexuality • gay • lgbt • love • relationship
Facebook ad privacy
Practical instructions for protecting yourself from Meta surveillance
2025-01-18 ads • facebook • meta • privacy • surveillance • tracking
Trump vs immigrants
Detailed reporting on what Trump will be able to do when attacking immigrants
2025-01-18 civilrights • immigration • politics • trump • uspol
2024 election results
Very detailed polling returns, albeit partial
2025-01-17 2024 • elections • politics • trump • uspol • voting
The Straight Story
A deeper critical reading of David Lynch's film that on the surface looks like a sweet and sentimental story
2025-01-17 criticism • film • lynch • movies • straightstory
Bambu lockdown
Cool 3d printer company does a heel turn, locks customers out from using third party software with the devices they own
2025-01-17 3dprinters • bambu • enshittification • freedom • lockdown
99 Names
Artwork, Arabic calligraphy. Photo doesn't do it justice, it's a subtle changing scrim of beads that reveals Kufic writing as you move around it
2025-01-16 amighi • arabic • art • calligraphy • houston • kufic • mfah
Blek le Rat / Houston
Paris street artist has an enormous stencil at a hotel in Houston
2025-01-15 art • bleklerat • houston • paris • stencil • streetart
ChòpnBlọk
Houston West African restaurant, food is real good
2025-01-15 africa • dining • food • houston • naija • nigeria • restaurant • westafrica
Gainfully Unretired
Justin Watt on his post-software-engineer career as a handyman building things for people
2025-01-15 handyman • life • purpose • retirement • working
"Cargo cult"
A thoughtful essay on the problematic use of the term "Cargo cult" in the tech community
2025-01-14 cargocult • culture • language • tech
Musk's fake gaming
Elon buys accounts someone else spent the hours developing, doesn't know how to play them
2025-01-10 elonmusk • funny • gaming • politics
Location spying
Hack of a sleazy data broker reveals how ad networks and mobile apps track and resell your location data
2025-01-10 gravy • location • privacy • surveillance • tracking
Color calibration target
Spot in China for calibrating satellite and airplane cameras. Includes color
2025-01-09 calibration • china • imagery • remotesensing • satellite • space
Keygen Church
Music, a sort of metal / baroque mashup with heavy videogame influences
2025-01-09 baroque • chiptunes • games • metal • music
matsu.sf
San Francisco stree artists, pasteups featuring a Shiba Inu andlots of mushrooms
2025-01-08 mushroom • sanfrancisco • streetart
RSS Tricks
A list of little-known feeds for various web products
2025-01-08 blogs • feeds • rss • syndication
Data Portability Map
Articles about transferring data from a service to another service, like Wordpress to Squarespace or getting out of Facebook
2025-01-07 data • dataliberation • dataportability • download • socialmedia
Small Data
Artisanal information collection in Brooklyn, NY
2025-01-07 data • documentary • funny • krazam • parody • smalldata
Lobste.rs vs UK OSA
Community forums may not be able to comply with the UK's new Online Safety Act
2025-01-07 community • forum • ofcom • osa • politics • socialmedia • uk
US soccer tour
Matt Haughey wrote a book about touring all 14 women's soccer stadiums
2025-01-06 mathowie • nwsl • soccer • travel • usa • women
Naoshima Island
An island in Japan with a huge amount of contemporary art
2025-01-05 art • japan • travel
DOGE as procurement capture
Analyzing the Musk/Trump grift
2025-01-05 corruption • doge • musk • politics • procurement • trump
Kehinde Ekundayo
Art history graduate student with an interesting perspective on contemporary art from refugees
2025-01-05 art • arthistory • global • refugee • stanford
Twitter blocks Amber Alerts
Emergency organizations still using Twitter as a messaging medium even though it's completely inappropriate for the use now
2025-01-04 chp • elonmusk • emergency • socialmedia • twitter
Timescape cosmology
Alternate explanation for the universe's acceleration of expansion. Not dark matter or energy but rather variable time
2025-01-03 astronomy • cosmology • darkmatter • science • timescape
Mattermost
An open source alternative to Slack and Discord
2025-01-02 chat • collaboration • discord • slack • socialmedia
Embroidery Journaling
Lovely craft to remember one's year
2025-01-02 art • arts • crafting • embroidery • fabric • journaling • via:kottke
In this house...
Yeats The Second Coming made into the form of a smarmy affirmation lawn sign
2025-01-02 2025 • funny • inthishouse • parody • poetry • yeats
BGP 2024
Yearly stats on growth of the Internet
2025-01-02 bgp • internet • ipv4 • ipv6 • networking • routing
Lemon Pigs
An odd New Year's tradition, of a sort
2025-01-01 glücksschwein • alcoa • crafts • food • lemon • newyears • pig