Jess👾

https://infosec.exchange/@JessTheUnstill

Queer 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
Cybersecurity
Nerd
Neurodiverse
I am a woman, but I'm CERTAINLY not a lady.
I don't actually have zero followers, they're just intentionally hidden. (Note, it will still show as a non-zero number on some instances due to weird cache effects or software not acknowledging GlitchSoc saying it's -1)

Pronouns: she/her
BlueSky: @jesstheunstill.bsky.social
Signal: Available upon request
Infosec.space Bot Testing: https://infosec.space/@jesstheunstill

Public Key

npub1pq7c475ucmk2wpt63ush3krte8afxahvvhv3qlh2sszcppkkwpwqqjvejx

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqs0v2l2wvdm98q4ag7gtcmp4un75nwmkxtkgs0m4ggpvqsmt8qhqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsqyuxjp

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1pq7c475ucmk2wpt63ush3krte8afxahvvhv3qlh2sszcppkkwpwqqjvejx

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Last Notes

2026-05-23 15:02:39 GMT

I don't understand what the fuck Agentic AI is and how it's different from normal AI, and at this point I'm kinda afraid to ask ...

2026-02-08 13:45:15 GMT

One of the fun things on the Fediverse is that I can ask a question that I could probably have searched on Google or asked ChatGPT and get a number of people to talk to discussing the answer. It's nice being able to talk to interesting people.

2026-01-16 01:22:34 GMT

Today I learned about a particularly vile piece of shit corp, Bright Data. Web scraping as a service. They boast about having 150 million IP addresses from residential IPs and "real user devices" (I can't imagine that it's with the user's consent) and being able to scrape petabytes. They brag about their ability to defeat captchas, turning websites into AI data. Like every possible gross thing you can think of all wrapped up in a package with a shiny website bow.

2026-01-14 17:50:36 GMT

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I said even during the last Trump administration - if I wanted to leak sensitivity shit, I'd do it to reporters who aren't in the US on the condition that my info NEVER touches our borders.

2026-01-13 20:52:42 GMT

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And of course the weird thing is ... You still gotta go to work. And buy groceries. And your kids gotta go to school. The home Depot you need a new snow shovel from? Oh yeah that's now an ICE staging area. The Walmart? That's where they raded and kidnapped a dozen workers yesterday

2026-01-13 19:03:15 GMT

I've got a few folks I know in Minneapolis. Cis het white guys but also super lefty. They look and are just wrecked from everything every time I talk to them. I don't know if they're doing any protesting - they probably wouldn't say if they were, but it is ROUGH to live there these days. Much respect to my pals up there having to live on the front lines of a one sided fascist takeover.

2026-01-13 17:31:38 GMT

I can't believe I'm saying this, but can we just go back to the days of paying like $50-80/month and getting all the channels? I'm tired of having everything on different services.

2026-01-09 13:19:24 GMT

Here's to all the open source developers who put hours and hours of their lives into a project they built, put it out into the world, and now it sits with approximately zero users.
Thank you for putting labor into the world to try and help others, even if it's never been recognized.
Brag about your project here if you'd like!

2026-01-08 22:25:37 GMT

What's one of your weird video game habits?
I'll start - in Stardew Valley, I can't let myself divorce anyone. I have to do a whole new playthrough if I want to see someone else's marriage events.

2026-01-08 20:40:51 GMT

HAL 9000 was better than modern "AI". HAL at least didn't allow Dave to do the things he wasn't supposed to do. AI happily claims to do what you tell them to do, but then does them wrong 25% of the time.

2026-01-07 02:58:50 GMT

Every Single Trans Person was once a trans kid.
And I've yet to meet a single trans person who transitioned as an adult who doesn't wish that they were able to come out and be themselves as a kid.
We're watching as one after another, politicians, hospitals and organizations and universities and schools are choosing to toss trans kids under the bus.
They're. Sacrificing. Children.
I will never forgive those who throw trans kids under the bus. Never.

2026-01-06 18:14:34 GMT

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Then I blame the electorate for not primarying those fucks. At the end of the day, I still believe that people roughly get the government they deserve. And the citizens of the US don't deserve good government because we never bothered to address the original sin of our country.

2026-01-06 17:32:27 GMT

You know, if you told me 5 years ago that every one of the people who conspired to try and overthrow the election and assassinate the VP and congresspeople would be free and pardoned. And the very man who orchestrated it would be back in office, surrounded by many of the same election deniers, I would be skeptical.
Somehow naively, I wouldn't have anticipated the Biden DOJ taking over 3 years to bring charges, and even our SCOTUS to decide on absolute Presidential immunity and 51% of the electorate deciding a felon who attempted to overthrow an election is just fine to put back into office.

2026-01-05 14:35:10 GMT

The concept of "passive income" in our capitalist society is a curse. The whole idea that simply having wealth makes more wealth without having to do anything at all is rotten at the very core.
Oh sure, my savings are in interest bearing accounts and funds and such. But it's still the toxic concept that allows for billionaires to exist.

2026-01-01 17:48:11 GMT

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10 year olds should have hello kitty or unicorns or my little pony or whatever on their water bottles. Not creepy bible verses

2026-01-01 17:26:58 GMT

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Oh my God, this sticker someone let a TEN YEAR OLD GIRL have on her water bottle is even grosser than I could imagine. Fuck evangelicals.
> A sticker with a line drawing if a fetus surrounded with a Bible verse
> Blessed are you among women. And blessed is the fruit of your womb. Luke 1:47
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/821/008/676/158/419/original/1d01894f8c5f22dd.jpg

2026-01-01 01:21:56 GMT

Ugh my partner's sibling's family is religious, and the 10 year old girl has an anti abortion sticker on her water bottle with like a picture of a fetus and one of those Bible verses used for pro forced birth stuff. Like ... What the fuck? And they call us QUEERS perverts? Teaching children about how they must always keep their babies or else.

2025-12-31 21:10:44 GMT

*snort* listening to my partner's dad going on about how Thomas Jefferson was a "good slave owner" because he treated his slaves "humanely".
...
... Umm
I'm of the John Brown school of thought:
The only good slave owner is a dead slave owner

2025-12-31 15:38:19 GMT

I wonder if adults can just come up to one another and say "Hey, you seem cool, can we be friends?"

2025-12-27 23:32:51 GMT

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To note: fuck landlords.
Landlords need to be far higher regulated and far better tenant rights.
But even still ...

2025-12-27 23:30:05 GMT

Extra spicy take:
Way fewer people should own their own homes, and there should be no tax advantages or government backed mortgages or mortgage insurance or flood insurance for it. NIMBYs are in no small part a creation of people obsessed with their property value because their home is their largest chunk of their net worth. I would slap anyone who said they were going to take out 6+ figures of debt to purchase any one specific real estate investment. But because it's a home, somehow it's celebrated as Peak Adulthood.
Leave real estate speculation to those who are fine with losing it all.

2025-12-27 14:58:47 GMT

Relatives got a new computer and aren't ready to take the plunge for Linux?
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
You can even walk them through it on the phone in under 5 minutes.
It does a whole lot to disable AI, all that crapware preinstalled, ads, popups, and nags that otherwise they'd have to deal with.
I rerun it every major update on my gaming PC just to clean the latest sneaky shit off.

2025-12-26 13:37:09 GMT

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Fine, I'm on a rant here, so here we go.
"We'll just fork it" is privileged mindset. It means you think you can gather enough clout and like minded people to put up a bunch of unplanned work and time and passion to make a whole new project despite the old one still working "well enough".
Now you can take the same logic to electoral politics. "If you don't like it, move, or win elections".
Minorities know they're going to get clobbered in most of those situations if it's only done half-assed. So you pick your battles and go into it with a plan more concrete than hitting the fork button on GitHub and making a logo.

2025-12-26 01:28:09 GMT

Spicy Take:
Fuck the FOSS bro mindset of "We can overlook bad behavior of maintainers because if it gets TOO bad we can just fork it."
And "It's okay to use 'open core' products even though the whole project couldn't survive without its corporate overlords who refuse PRs and public maintainer communities.
I can count on one hand the number of major FOSS projects not from Sun/Oracle who successfully forked and became larger than the original.
Forking a project results in one of two outcomes: <li><p>the fork dies because most of the contributors, maintainers, and users don't leave because they just can't be bothered to give a shit</p></li><li><p>Many people do schism, and the entire original AND fork decline in popularity as many people just go elsewhere rather than mess with it all </p></li>
Fight bad behavior, corporate ownership, toxic bullshit, bigotry, wrong project direction, etc. where you find it. Not by saying a fork is the release valve.
Among many others, this is a subtoot about Firefox

2025-12-25 01:02:08 GMT

Again, kudos to the librarians for fighting book censorship, including age ratings on books, which would ultimately amount to book censorship with extra steps.
Sure, have kids sections and adult sections, but if a kid wants to learn about something, let them do it.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/labelingratingqa
Btw, this is the exact same for the internet.

2025-12-23 16:08:08 GMT

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Related - if you're a guy who almost ALWAYS plays games as a woman when you get the chance, just consider for a moment, you could play the game of life as a woman if you want to. It's hard mode for sure, but it is way more fun if that's who you are.

2025-12-23 14:41:38 GMT

Mild take:
Video games are objectively better when you can play as a woman.

2025-12-17 14:30:16 GMT

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ever consider the nuns are full of shit?

2025-12-17 13:37:33 GMT

Whether I would choose heaven or hell depends a whole bunch oh who they're accepting in heaven.

2025-12-16 22:51:51 GMT

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Re: Kaslarian -
> Since 2024, she has distanced herself from the progressive label, declaring herself "unaligned" and "politically homeless"
Ah yes, "politically homeless" - the last stage of "well I'm a fascist but I still want to be invited to parties" moniker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Kasparian
@npub12m2…2fcc @npub1em7…vrmq

2025-12-16 21:47:13 GMT

It's very surreal in this era of disposable websites that change every 6 months to go hunting for sites you visited regularly 10, 20, even 30 years ago and find them still online, and almost entirely unchanged in all that time. Just kinda preserved in amber by some blessed webmaster keeping their server online for decades after decade.

2025-12-16 21:09:19 GMT

Sure is "funny" how every single time someone "comes out" about "having concerns about trans people", they "come out" as a fascist within 6 months.
Every.
Goddamn.
Time.

2025-12-15 16:29:16 GMT

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We even had worldwide success during COVID. We showed that even in a global emergency, we effectively ended homelessness, eliminating poverty and for most poor people in the world, their lives were literally better in a pandemic than they were before. And then after having a taste of this better world, governments were just like ... Nah.

2025-12-12 18:42:45 GMT

Is it a tech interview, or is it several hours of free security consulting...

2025-12-11 15:59:50 GMT

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every once in a while I find an underwear has been traveling with me all day buried in my sleeve

2025-12-11 15:57:42 GMT

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but are a pain to get on and off

2025-12-11 15:57:05 GMT

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Okay yes, zipper hoodie is optimal most of the time. Though I'm also partial on sicker days for ones with the pockets that go all the way across.

2025-12-11 15:46:33 GMT

Lukewarm take
For moderate temperatures, hoodies are the S tier item of clothes. Everything else falls below them.

2025-12-11 00:59:51 GMT

Thermonuclear Take:
You don't need that 15th spare USB cable.

2025-12-10 18:35:00 GMT

Seriously 😑 we now have business speak saying "polyworking" to describe working multiple jobs?
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/workers-turn-to-polyworking-to-combat-frozen-salaries-and-inflation/

2025-12-06 03:18:20 GMT

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No real point to this other than something reminded me of it, but it seems like it kinda disappeared after Incredible Toon Machine. Wish they'd have kept making more

2025-12-06 03:17:05 GMT

Anyone else remember the old game The Incredible Machine?

2025-12-05 18:32:53 GMT

Hot take:
I blame the modern trend towards containerization of code as a not insignificant partial cause for all the recent package repository breaches being as bad as they are.
Okay, hear me out.
When a developer had to get her code to actually build on a machine she doesn't have full control over, it's in her own best interest to keep the dependency graph comparatively straightforward and oftentimes statically linked. If she's trying to build on an arbitrary server OS, she won't want her dependency's dependencies's dependency to suddenly be angry about some random library that is installed in a different version and bork the whole thing. So the application and its dependencies remain more tightly coupled.
When an application can be shipped in a container, a developer doesn't have to worry about his container image changing unexpectedly. He can define the whole manifest and get it built the same way every time. Which sure, is good for reliability in the sense that it's going to build the same way on a desktop and Azure and AWS and GCP. But that also means it creates weird incentives to just add all sorts of 3rd party libraries to the package manifest whenever he wants without even thinking too hard about it, because why not? As long as it builds in the CI/CD, it'll be fine. A sysadmin won't come along and run an update and break shit, it only gets updated on a redeploy.
But of course, now it means that dependency graphs sprawl uncontrollably, because there's way less back pressure to keep your dependencies under control.

2025-12-04 17:47:16 GMT

For fucks sake ... Call women "women" and men "men". Saying "females" and "males" is creepy and triggers my "what, did you learn how to talk about women from Ferengi?" Or "are you doing some TERF nonsense about "male/female genitalia/chromosomes/body/socialization".

2025-12-04 16:07:01 GMT

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I mean obviously the end goal is that parents just skip a bunch of the shots

2025-12-04 15:12:30 GMT

Every time someone I feel like they've become something of an e-acquantance, maybe even a possible e-friend on here, used to post pretty often, then they just. Stop posting. And I get to worry, is this it, the time they finally have moved onto some other platform? Or gotten too depressed to post anymore? But also I'm too awkward to DM. So instead I just vaguely subtoot.

2025-12-03 18:10:14 GMT

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one of those things people who haven't been through proper major depressive disorder never seem to wrap their heads around is that depression isn't "feeling sad" and needing to be cheered up. It's "feeling nothing".
My most dangerous times are actually after I've been in the depths and then start coming back out, and suddenly all the emotions from the numb period hit at the same time.

2025-12-03 02:07:02 GMT

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Drug cartels are just another gang of capitalists at war with the other gang of capitalists that has flags and badges

2025-12-03 02:05:21 GMT

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"But drug cartels kill people!"
Yes, like capitalists.
"But they actually shoot people!"
Yes, like cops, who work for ... Capitalists.
"But INNOCENT people!"
Yes ... Like cops.
"But they steal from people."
Yes, like capitalists.
"They sell dangerous addictive substances!"
Yes, like capitalists.

2025-12-03 02:01:49 GMT

Don't call them "narco terrorists", call them what they are. Unregulated capitalists.

2025-11-30 20:42:30 GMT

Can I pet your dog?

2025-11-30 13:14:36 GMT

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Nah, I recheck pronouns online all the dang time. Largely because I worry I might have forgotten which the right ones were, but also, just because I always attempt to be accurate.
Okay like if you directly asked me my pronouns every few weeks I'd be kinda irritated, but that's about it.

2025-11-29 19:43:17 GMT

It's really embarrassing when some white person tries to get you in on some "hey, don't we all hate those minorities?" Take.
Umm ... No. No I don't, and stop trying to imply that we all do or should.
There's only one minority I categorically hate:
Billionaires

2025-11-29 19:02:38 GMT

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Stop trying to replace administrative assistants with chatbots and AI and offshore call centers. Hire ACTUAL PEOPLE who are experts in that shit.

2025-11-29 19:01:08 GMT

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My spicy take of the day:
Bring.
Back.
Administrative Assistants.
For fucks sake, have people in the office who are literally professionals in drafting and editing memos, scheduling meetings, figuring out travel, coordination with other folks, hell, making a good cup of coffee. It's IMPORTANT WORK!

2025-11-29 18:50:59 GMT

Okay, I could give them a battle of wills. Can I give enough spicy takes to break their will before they break me.
https://bsky.app/profile/ceej.online/post/3m6qqclq3wc2x

2025-11-29 13:21:33 GMT

A lesser known Mastodon pro tip:
Want to mute a conversation, but the mute conversation button isn't appearing on the post?
The only way you can mute a conversation is on a post you have made in the conversation.
But the secret part - Say you want to mute it without actually participating in the conversation:
Reply to a post, set the visibility to "Private Mention", remove everyone's username from the post. Post it.
Then you can click "mute conversation" on THAT post, and it silently mutes you from the conversation.

2025-11-25 17:30:33 GMT

For those of you who do tech support for your family and friends over Thanksgiving - I'm not even joking:
Installing adblockers is one of the best cybersecurity improvements you can do for them.
Oh sure, patch their systems, remove bloatware, make sure Windows Defender or whatever is running, etc. But when ads are continuously poisoned with malware and phishing, blocking them from even seeing it in the first place will eliminate entire categories of risks.

2025-11-22 14:59:24 GMT

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But 3 times a day seems tough to keep up with.

2025-11-22 14:04:22 GMT

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I do often wonder if we ever actually got nasal spray COVID and flu vaccines working and approved, if we'd see higher vaccination rates. Fear of needles is a major factor in people hating vaccines and doctors. A spray in your nose would probably get a lot more people to accept it.

2025-11-22 14:01:57 GMT

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Like - I don't love feeling blugh for a day either. But if moping around in my PJs and binging comfort food for a day is the price I have to pay for dramatically lower risk of serious COVID and flu? Sure. But also, even if I choose not to get it, what the fuck is up with RFK and his pet CDC trying to make EVERYONE not get vaccinated

2025-11-22 13:51:05 GMT

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Gonna start an homeopathic anti virus company.
No, we don't manufacture vaccines. We manufacture homeopathic medicine of pure saline with very small amounts of dead or deactivated viruses in it.

2025-11-22 13:43:02 GMT

Vaccines seem like such an apt microcosm of living in our society these days.
Hey everyone, here are some shots that will dramatically reduce your risk of getting very sick or dying.
Also, they will help keep your loved ones from getting very sick or dying.
You can get them for cheap or even free
They're extensively tested across hundreds of millions of people, and have very low risk of serious side effects
Do you:<li>Eagerly advocate and advertise how important vaccines are, and how everyone should get one</li><li>Suck it up, accept the second of pain and a day of feeling a bit blugh after for having yourself and ones around you better protected from disease </li><li>Dither around and decide not to get it, and just hope everyone else gets it so you don't get sick and/or if you don't won't be that bad </li><li>Not only choose not to get it yourself, but to try to actively work to make sure as few people get a vaccine as possible</li>

2025-11-19 21:31:51 GMT

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Property has been vacant for over 6 months? Sounds like it's open season for squatters.

2025-11-19 21:17:11 GMT

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And then even "liberal" mayors and governors order cops to go through and throw away the few possessions these people have because they have decided people who can't afford ever increasingly unaffordable first month, last month, security deposit, and monthly rent are subhuman.

2025-11-19 21:14:26 GMT

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And what homeless shelters there are, that they would be such a miserable place that people would choose to sleep outside instead.

2025-11-19 21:13:24 GMT

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How have we failed as a society so badly that people can't even have a roof over their head in freezing rain?

2025-11-19 21:11:24 GMT

Every time I'm out on a cold and rainy night and see people outside sleeping rough, I lose a little bit more hope in humanity

2025-11-19 16:57:28 GMT

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hormone makeup

2025-11-19 15:10:20 GMT

If you see someone clearly presenting as one gender, but have a number of physical features of a different gender, no you didn't see those incongruous features. You just treat them normal.

2025-11-18 19:57:21 GMT

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A Kaiju cat that can't find a big enough box, so he goes and sits in stadiums until the Japanese Defense Force builds a large enough spray bottle to teach it to stop that and go back home

2025-11-18 19:50:04 GMT

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Hmm I wonder how many Kaiju cat films there are

2025-11-18 16:48:34 GMT

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If you want as close to an A/B test in misogyny in industry as you can get, talk to trans women. Legit the same exact person before and after, and many many of us watch our careers stall out. I've seen my raises and bonuses halt entirely for the last 5 years while team members get raises and bonuses. I had a great grand boss directly interfering with my work and bashing my communication styles when I asked many of my colleagues and they said they saw nothing different in how I communicated than a great many of my men colleagues.
Now I daily consider how much longer I'll make it in tech.
@npub1hr7…jxyc

2025-11-18 16:30:43 GMT

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I follow over 1000 people. But I can't even filter by mutuals

2025-11-18 16:28:56 GMT

Seriously? How is it that there's no way to search and filter the people you follow?

2025-11-18 16:18:03 GMT

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If that's still not enough, just mute the people talking about it for a week or a month or forever

2025-11-18 16:16:26 GMT

"Why won't people talking about this thing I don't like/don't care about"!
My sibling in Satan, the mute word filter is RIGHT THERE!
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/

2025-11-17 21:56:42 GMT

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Okay, now I'm even more angry. What the fuck is this shit?
> The unit of measurement varies by region: a United States liquid tablespoon is approximately 14.8 mL, exactly 1⁄2 US fluid ounce; about 0.52 imperial fluid ounce. A British tablespoon is approximately 14.2 mL, exactly 1⁄2 imperial fluid ounce; about 0.48 US fluid ounce.[2]
> An international metric tablespoon is exactly 15 mL, about 0.53 imperial fluid ounce or 0.51 US fluid ounce.[3] An Australian metric tablespoon is 20 mL, about 0.7 imperial fluid ounce or 0.68 US fluid ounce.

2025-11-17 21:53:29 GMT

Okay Brits, explain yourself.
I got a British cookbook, and why the hell are there measurements in grams, milliliters, but ALSO tablespoons and teaspoons? For fucks sake. Be consistent...
5 ml and 15 ml are right there.

2025-11-17 20:05:34 GMT

A career tip I'm still really bad at.
Stuck on something, you know someone else more experienced in that thing can probably help you with it, but don't want to bother them because you're embarrassed to not have figured it out on your own?
Ask them anyways.
In general, it's legit people's jobs to help out their colleagues when they need some guidance in how to do things. And it's your job to ask for help when you need it.

2025-11-16 19:41:46 GMT

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I've been doing it for a while now and it's very good for my mental health. It means I post what I like, people choose to follow me or stop following me as they like, and at the end of the day, all I'm really looking for is a place that I see interesting people, and get some cool people in my mentions from time to time. Big numbers would just stress me out and make me less likely to share things.
@npub1vu6…vcka @npub1s6e…n008

2025-11-14 15:22:11 GMT

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The even MORE infuriating thing about all this Epstein shit to me is that Biden and his DOJ reviewed all that shit, and said nothing. At all. Just kept it sealed in the vault and buried.
Let them all rot in hell as they saw dozens of billionaire pedophiles piling up hundreds more billions and did nothing.
@npub12jj…34jy

2025-11-14 12:52:04 GMT

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They're fascists when they act like fascists. I refuse to make some formal criteria, because fascists are the worst at bad faith arguing "but I didn't ACTUALLY break any rules, I was just asking questions and posing hypotheticals!"
Besides. Even if I block someone who isn't ACTUALLY a fascist, they're still someone being an ass, and I don't need that noise in my life.

2025-11-14 01:43:53 GMT

Ya know, I'm kinda surprised that there hasn't been more right wing "Billionaire pedophiles trafficking teenage sex slaves is a good thing actually" narratives getting printed in NYT and WaPo.

2025-11-13 21:52:00 GMT

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Then can we skip the greedy meat sacks and just have Agentic Management? It'd probably not do all that much worse, and cost 100,000,000x less

2025-11-13 21:48:06 GMT

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on top of vibe coding, we've got vibe management

2025-11-13 18:15:16 GMT

I saw a Jewish Bagel Shop the other day advertising Kosher Cheeseburgers. So I'm guessing one or the other has to be vegan? Or they have a pretty interesting supply chain where both the milk and the beef is certified to come from the same cow.

2025-11-13 16:51:27 GMT

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I have a long standing thing with any of my friends who like eating foods I've never tried, even if I'm kinda leery about it.<li>I have yet to find a restaurant I can't find SOMETHING I can eat. Sure, maybe it's just their token white people food, but I'm not going to starve there</li><li>If they order something, even if I'm kinda leery about it, I'll try a bite.</li>
Sure, sometimes it's still gross to me (idk what it is, but every eggplant dish I've tried is just ick). But sometimes it's surprisingly good and I'll gladly order it next time. At least it means I'm not stuck with a full plate of something I find inedible, but it also lets me test things out.
@npub12af…psk8 @npub1sv2…gm7p

2025-11-13 14:00:21 GMT

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For all the fight about ACA subsidies, remember - the ACA is a legit dream come true giveaway for insurance and healthcare and pharmaceutical profits. It means millions and millions more people buy into their marketplace plans, AND, the amount they can charge gets subsidized by the feds. So rather than the price of premiums being "max someone can afford", it's "max someone can afford+federal money". When they want more money, they raise rates even more, and then get the feds to increase subsidies to cover the difference. It's a massive giveaway of federal dollars to private corps.
We COULD have had a single payer system back in 2009 if it wasn't for 2-3 fucking senators who had received millions and millions from the healthcare industry.

2025-11-13 12:55:00 GMT

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For those of you in civilized countries, this is only barely an exaggeration from experiences me and many of my friends have dealt with. Our system is SO fucked up.

2025-11-13 02:38:27 GMT

Healthcare In America:
Doctor - I see that your gscsttigom isn't working as well as I'd like. I'd like to start you on pjehhdntpf instead.
Patient - Okay, do you know how much that's going to cost?
Doctor - Sorry I've got no idea.
Patient - What do you mean? Like give me a ballpark. Is this a $20/month? $100/month? $500/month? Refinance my house for a month's supply?
Doctor - Well, it's probably not "refinance your house" level.
Patient - Umm ... Okay ... That leaves a lot of room in there still.
Doctor - You'll just have to talk to your insurance.
Patient - ... Okay
Later
Patient - Hey insurance, my doc wants me to start taking pjehhdntpf, can you tell me how much it is going to cost?
Insurance - Sorry, I have no idea.
Patient - What do you mean no idea?
Insurance - well, we won't pay anything until your doctor gets a pre-authorization. And then how much we cover is based on the diagnosis codes, your deductible, the specifics of your plan, whether you get it from an in-network pharmacy or not ...
Patient - fine, so give me a best case
Insurance - free if it's approved and in network and you've hit your out of pocket maximum of $100,000
Patient - ... Really not helping here. So assume it gets approved and I've hit my deductable
Insurance - which pharmacy?
Patient - idk ... Umm the CVS down the street
Insurance - Okay that's going to be $5000/month
Patient - ... Wait, WHAT?
Insurance - turns out it's on our exclusions list so we don't cover it unless you get it waved onto the formulary upon appeal
Patient - but.... I have insurance. Why aren't you helping me pay for my medicine?
Insurance - we don't allow that medicine on your employers' plan. You should use gscsttigom instead.
Patient - I'm on that one right now. It doesn't work.
Insurance - well you'll have to appeal it, but you can't do that until after you get a formal denial.
Patient - and how long does that take?
Insurance - well, if your doctor does the preauth paperwork, they'll make a decision about it within 14 business days, unless they need to come back to your doctor for more information. Then they'll mail you the decision within another 7 business days from (insert the location farthest possible away from you in the continental US). Depending on the decision you can appeal the decision, which the appeals process can take a maximum of 180 days, after which you can appeal it again which takes a maximum of 365 days.
Patient - and if I need to start taking the medicine now?
Insurance - well you're free to do that out of pocket and file for reimbursement later.
Patient - at $5000/month?
Insurance - no it'd have to be at the out of pocket price. For that CVS, it looks like it'd be $15000/month
Patient furiously googling "how to move to a civilized country"
Googles "pjehhdntpf price in Mexico" - $12.50 for a 90 day supply.

2025-11-12 17:33:04 GMT

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In case you weren't aware, the estrogen pills of that era were red, and Prozac was blue. So it was a subtle dog whistle about do you transition or do you just try and numb yourself to it all. The whole of The Matrix series is full of trans allegories and dog whistles.

2025-11-12 17:27:35 GMT

I'm still exceeding angry that "take the red pill", a line about literally taking estrogen from a movie written and directed by trans women, has been so corrupted by incel fascists...

2025-11-12 17:07:42 GMT

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Yeah but even jazz all builds off a common basis of style and techniques and mutual understanding between band members. So you gotta kinda know the fundamentals before you can improv.

2025-11-12 15:27:28 GMT

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I still need to get around to reading more actual anarchist lit. I mostly jive with it, but more just from blog posts and such, not the more established theory arguments.

2025-11-12 15:06:13 GMT

Spicy Take:
Nation-states were a mistake.

2025-11-10 03:06:05 GMT

Abolish the US Senate.

2025-11-09 23:28:07 GMT

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I mean at this point it's just rumors and statements from Republicans and the usual suspects just eagerly uncritically slurping it up and quoting one another.

2025-11-09 22:54:58 GMT

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As far as I can tell, the only ACTUAL sources that anyone is quoting is John Thune, the Republican Senate Majority Leader.

2025-11-09 22:51:46 GMT

Rumors about Senate Dems caving may be just that. And may actually simply be wishcasting from Republicans to try to turn it into a self fulfilling prophecy. Sure, keep pressure on your Senators, but don't forget that "anonymous sources" from not reputable journalists is basically just bullshit.