Jez DuBois

@RickiTarr Steven Wright used to tell this joke in his stand up routines in the 1980s, as a kid I thought it was the most hilarious things I'd ever heard. "When I first moved into my house, there was a light switch that didn't do anything. I just flicked it on and off every once in a while... about a month later I got a letter from a lady in Germany. She said, 'cut it out'."

@Rickd6 @MarkHoltom @xenotar An added benefit, at least with the program my medical school offers, is that it reduces the funeral arrangements and costs to zero. At the point of death, the family alerts the medical attendants. They then call the school, who arrange to pick up the body within 24 hours. Approximately a year later, if you so choose, they return the cremated remains to the family. That's it. No cost to the family.

@xenotar @MarkHoltom Yes, it appears the story is true, the text is just wrong, which is why I couldn't find anything on it. Better internet sleuths than I got to the bottom of it! On the topic of organ donation, it's a wonderful gift. But I went a different direction and donated my entire body to the local medical school. They're always short on bodies, and who knows how many lives you could save by training young doctors.

Cats have always been my favorite animal. Sadly, I don't have cats at home currently, just a dog who is very sweet and we love her, but she's not a cat. So I have resorted to taking photos of wild cats, like this pretty little bobcat. I'm now counting the days until my trip to Brazil to photograph jaguars. #cats #wildlife

@crazyeddie@mastodon.social @georgetakei@universeodon.com "When did she say this?" She said it on Wednesday. Right before she said it, she did acknowledge the high prices, giving the official "short term pain, long term gain" rationalization. She wasn't actually pretending gas prices weren't currently high, she was trying to deflect criticism by saying they had been dropping for quite a while before. Still a weak attempt, but not exactly the same as the gaslighting that the out of context quote implies.

@MarkHoltom I suspect the story is fake. There is absolutely zero information available on this man except for this one story. It seems to have originated in 2011 and has been passed around and has been mutating a bit since. Especially strange is that part of the story is the intense backlash this already famous man received when he made the announcement, but neither that initial announcement nor any of the backlash seems to exist, only the story of his "reveal". I could find no major news sources that carried the story at the time, only clickbait websites. So my suspicion is that it is a bunch of staged and photoshopped pictures created to go along with a fake story, because somebody thought the sentiment "you wouldn't bury a valuable car, why are you burying valuable organs?" needed a dramatic story to go viral.

@cwebber@social.coop My son had an IQ test as part of a neuropsych eval for special ed placement. The IQ test wouldn't score him, as he scored very high on some sections and very low on others, and accidentally tripped the "results don't make sense" safeguards. This was quite a few years ago, but he still likes to tell people who seem to care about IQ that he doesn't have an IQ.

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange Conferences? This is the flow for my entire life.

@rjblaskiewicz My son was recently told in his college freshman English class that he was probably "too advanced" for the class when he told the professor he'd rather *not* use AI to help write his papers, after it was suggested the whole class do so. He's definitely not "too advanced", he has a diagnosed learning disability with writing. Professor has just given up.

@dbattistella@mstdn.ca My son, just finishing his freshman year, said his English comp professor was asking the class how they used AI in their assignments. He said he didn't use AI, because he wanted to use the class to learn to write better. Her response was that he was "probably too advanced for this class". The boy has a dysgraphia diagnosis. If he's too advanced for a freshman comp class, the class sucks.

@fesshole Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I wrote the inventory system for my family's business. I put the text "So, you've found my diamond mine have you?" from the old Terry Gilliam movie Jabberwocky in a branch that the program would never reach. A few years later, the inventory clerk at the time came to me and said, "Something is wrong with my computer. It's saying something about diamonds?" To this day, I have no idea how she managed to get the software to go there.

@futurebird @woe2you "It's one of the reasons I like the fedi. People will say when you are wrong but they are nice about it... mostly" I find this unfortunately being less and less so as more people discover it. Lately I've seen way more flaming and obnoxious argumentativeness than ever previously. Sigh.

@smeg@assortedflotsam.com Shall I be the one pedantic nerd that misses the point of the joke and comments that elephant babies are not, in fact, even close to the biggest babies on earth? Blue whale babies are much, much larger at around three tons.

@signalstation@raggedfeathers.com I recently called a librarian in Kansas looking for help retrieving a speech my great uncle made in 1950 on urban renewal in Kansas City. She was so happy that somebody was interested in her dusty old offline documents. It definitely reminded me of the old days of picking up the telephone to find info by talking to people. Oh, and Jack McGee used to make me so angry. Why couldn't he just let it be?

@tml @georgetakei Yes, this is not a real court. They both get paid to be there. It used to be that they'd find "TV worthy" small claims cases and get the litigants to agree to dismiss the case and have it settled on the show. I don't know if they still do it that way, or if now they just wholly make them up.

@SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange @Nonilex@masto.ai He had to put the money in escrow in order to appeal. So she'll get paid.

@gknauss@mastodon.social To be fair to the fictional Colossus, the movie doesn't tell the whole story. It only covers the events in the first book. By the third book, Colossus and humanity have mostly worked it out with each other.

@davidnjoku@mastodon.world I was growing up on the other side of the world, but remember it distinctly as well. Terrifying and heartrending.

@dabertime There was already a glut of US whiskey inventory from a speculative investor driven bubble that far outpaced demand, then Trump and his stupid tariffs/imperialism put the nails in the coffin, and prices are in a tailspin. So what's the solution? Well, maybe continuing to insult Canadians could fix everything. That's a good plan 🙄

@jeffowski@mastodon.world Even without the witty comeback, I don't understand the question. How would I feel? My child *did* have gay teachers in school. So what? I didn't feel anything.

@tml @georgetakei I honestly don't know if there was a real case behind it. But I couldn't find anything about a real case when I searched for it. Only news headlines about the TV show episode.

@iFixit@mastodon.social One of the first things I do when I stay at a rental property is pull out the nasty, filthy dishwasher filter and clean it. I'm constantly amazed that nobody knows you're supposed to clean these.

@ObsidianUrbex@mstdn.social The alarm clock is French, likely 1930s. I believe Bayard had added a seconds hand at the bottom by the 1940s.

@zvavybir I've been using flokiNET in Iceland (and a few other European locations) for a while. They're big on privacy and reasonable on their hosting conditions. For not allowed "harmful content" they list: Hosting or sharing child pornography Selling pharmaceuticals without a license Sharing or distributing materials related to terrorism Doxxing: revealing or sharing personal and private information without consent

@Nonilex I wonder how this pricing scheme interacts with the already existing Massachusetts price accuracy laws (MGL C.94 S.184B,C,D,E). They say that grocery stores have to ring up the item at the lowest advertised or marked price, or you get the item for free. Presumably this de-facto bans "dynamic pricing"? (And they can't get around it by simply not marking prices, as the law requires the prices to be marked)

@sven @MarkHoltom Thank you!

@futurebird @woe2you I stick mostly to animal photography on my timeline, which still seems friendly and unaffected. But when looking at trending posts, so seeing things I wouldn't normally see, there tends to be more arguing. Unsurprisingly, it's usually political posts, which are always going to raise emotions, but people used to at least argue constructively. Now it seems to be a lot of yelling and swearing. Not everywhere, but more often.

@KarenKasparArt They're all great, but I like three (with the bird facing left) the best. Captures something very authentic in the bird's sidelong gaze.

@rusty1281@fosstodon.org @pax0707@mastodon.social Those ferals aren't tipped?

@africanwildlife@stefanbohacek.online From the YouTube description: "Tau Waterhole, an oasis for animals and wildlife including elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, zebras, and cheetahs ." Tigers, huh? Escaped from the zoo? 😆

@zutalorz Beautiful caracal!

@notthatkindofdoctor @crazyeddie @georgetakei Yep, no argument from me that it's a stupid line of reasoning. But what else is new with this admin?

@mxchara@seattle.pink @cwebber@social.coop Yeah, I didn't know either. I guess the vast majority of people who take the test get relatively similar scores on the different parts, so if the parts are way off from each other the scoring process says to throw it all out. (This was the WISC, the most common IQ test for kids. I don't know if the adult WAIS is similar). The psychologist wasn't very surprised, as she said she'd seen it before with the particular type of neurodivergance my son has. Thankfully he's a smart kid and knows enough to just laugh about the IQ result.

@louisa_@mastodon.social "he evaded them, thinking they were a Native tribe wanting to harm him. Eventually he stumbled up an actual Native tribe who took him home." I've got a story my great grandfather wrote about his trip alone into the "Indian Territory" in 1893 in what is now Oklahoma, when he was 16. He was terrified of the "Indians" and even took a rusty pistol with him (that didn't work) to try to protect himself from being scalped. When he did eventually run into some natives they... completely ignored him.

@grinningcat @tml @georgetakei The People's Court in the early 1980's was the big one that started off the reality court show craze. As opposed to Miller's Court from around the same time that was prototypical of the dramatized re-enactment court shows.

@rjblaskiewicz That was my general conclusion as well. I can sympathize with the frustration of trying to deal with an incoming class of students who have all been using AI through their entire high school career now, but just giving up is not the way.

@MonotoneofBill@mastodon.world My pet termite would definitely have to be named Sir Chews-a-Lot.

@Nickiquote I'm unsure which option to pick. I have eaten a chip butty, and I'm in the rest of the world, but I ate it while in the UK.

@JenJen@mastodon.art Awwww, love the manul. Not to throw any shade on the very cute serval, but the manuls never get enough love.

@munchkinbear@mastodon.stickbear.me I can only hope that my phone's hotspot name, "FBISurveillanceVan," some day causes as much concern.

@MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social Oh boy, if they really did this my bills would go up by a lot...

@nixCraft@mastodon.social Cool. I wasn't sure, as I'm an old csh nerd who never made the transition to bash.

@clickhere@mastodon.ie @CatsOfYore@mastodon.social That cat is just a canning mistake, it's clearly supposed to be a canned camel.

@nixCraft@mastodon.social ".\python ..." ??? Is that . there a typo?

@cdevroe I remember when the web was just a few experimental pages at CERN. But I'm certainly not old enough to remember a time when Usenet didn't offer more than I could read.

@ManyRoads Cool. But Newsweek hasn't been "mainstream press" since about 2010 when The Washington Post sold it for $1. It's just a vacuous clickbait rag now.

@gulffire1@mastodon.ie Isn't that the dude that was stabbed to death and the case is still unsolved?

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange @Nonilex@masto.ai "the level to which thomas obviously hates his own racial background, women, etc. is still astounding." I visited the little village of Pin Point, GA, where Thomas grew up. They have a tiny museum there. They show a short documentary film with the local folks proudly talking about the good old days when the parents used to beat all the children to keep them in line. It all became clear at that point.

@rusty1281@fosstodon.org @pax0707@mastodon.social 😞