@fivemack.bsky.social
Reposted
Your annual reminder that if you get this cracker joke and are confused by it, it's apparently because "ffi" is a special character in some fonts and when the typeface is changed to one that doesn't have it, those letters disappear. It's supposed to be "coffin medicine".
December 21, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Your annual reminder that if you get this cracker joke and are confused by it, it's apparently because "ffi" is a special character in some fonts and when the typeface is changed to one that doesn't have it, those letters disappear. It's supposed to be "coffin medicine".
Zootropolis 2: the closest you'll get to a big-budget cartoon adaptation of the biography of Robert Moses or of the history of the Model Cities Program with songs written by Ed Sheeran and sung by Shakira.
December 21, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Zootropolis 2: the closest you'll get to a big-budget cartoon adaptation of the biography of Robert Moses or of the history of the Model Cities Program with songs written by Ed Sheeran and sung by Shakira.
The authorities in Maine wanted to check whether the shrimp fishery had recovered. It really hadn’t. The figures on slides 5 and 7 are not tons of shrimp, they are not thousands of shrimp, they indicate that a total of seventy shrimp were caught! asmfc.org/wp-content/u...
asmfc.org
December 14, 2025 at 8:49 PM
The authorities in Maine wanted to check whether the shrimp fishery had recovered. It really hadn’t. The figures on slides 5 and 7 are not tons of shrimp, they are not thousands of shrimp, they indicate that a total of seventy shrimp were caught! asmfc.org/wp-content/u...
Reposted
![Comic. [Two people walking together as inverted catenary curves fall around them.] PERSON: Oh wow, the first inverted catenary fall of the year! Time to swap out my all-season tires for square ones.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreiatr2ciyeqboikl6ohjuiscmlmkigixmvfutnhnvduecemtcqjri4@jpeg)
December 8, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted
My favourite fact about Iceland is that we have many, many crime writers but only one forensic pathologist, and he was so busy answering all of their questions that he decided to have a small seminar for writers to get some peace.
It immediately sold out so he had another one that also sold out.
It immediately sold out so he had another one that also sold out.
July 3, 2023 at 12:04 PM
My favourite fact about Iceland is that we have many, many crime writers but only one forensic pathologist, and he was so busy answering all of their questions that he decided to have a small seminar for writers to get some peace.
It immediately sold out so he had another one that also sold out.
It immediately sold out so he had another one that also sold out.
65^7+437^7+439^7+536^7 = 146^7 + 365^7 + 412^7 + 554^7
A quick probabilistic argument says there should be infinitely many examples like this; in eight dimensions we're very far from elliptic curves and I don't know where to start for thinking about this kind of variety.
A quick probabilistic argument says there should be infinitely many examples like this; in eight dimensions we're very far from elliptic curves and I don't know where to start for thinking about this kind of variety.
December 2, 2025 at 7:58 PM
65^7+437^7+439^7+536^7 = 146^7 + 365^7 + 412^7 + 554^7
A quick probabilistic argument says there should be infinitely many examples like this; in eight dimensions we're very far from elliptic curves and I don't know where to start for thinking about this kind of variety.
A quick probabilistic argument says there should be infinitely many examples like this; in eight dimensions we're very far from elliptic curves and I don't know where to start for thinking about this kind of variety.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/... I am a bit surprised that adding a Harris hawk to the situation deters the pigeons more given that the market is well inside the territory of the pigeon-eating peregrine falcons living at the cathedral 600 metres away - am I missing something obvious ornithological?
Norwich Market brings in hawk to keep pigeons away
Video shows pigeons fleeing a marketplace at the sight of a hawk brought in to scare them away.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 10:49 PM
www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/... I am a bit surprised that adding a Harris hawk to the situation deters the pigeons more given that the market is well inside the territory of the pigeon-eating peregrine falcons living at the cathedral 600 metres away - am I missing something obvious ornithological?
fgiesen.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/o...
Apparently on a sufficiently worn-out and slightly overclocked Intel Raptor Lake CPU, occasionally operations on the CH register (bits 8..15 of the RCX register) will operate on CL (bits 0..7) instead ...
Wonderful bug, heroic debugging story.
Apparently on a sufficiently worn-out and slightly overclocked Intel Raptor Lake CPU, occasionally operations on the CH register (bits 8..15 of the RCX register) will operate on CL (bits 0..7) instead ...
Wonderful bug, heroic debugging story.
Oodle 2.9.14 and Intel 13th/14th gen CPUs
There’s a hardware problem affecting Intel 13th/14th gen CPUs, mostly desktop ones. This made the rounds through the press last year and has been on forums etc. for much longer than that. For…
fgiesen.wordpress.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:45 PM
fgiesen.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/o...
Apparently on a sufficiently worn-out and slightly overclocked Intel Raptor Lake CPU, occasionally operations on the CH register (bits 8..15 of the RCX register) will operate on CL (bits 0..7) instead ...
Wonderful bug, heroic debugging story.
Apparently on a sufficiently worn-out and slightly overclocked Intel Raptor Lake CPU, occasionally operations on the CH register (bits 8..15 of the RCX register) will operate on CL (bits 0..7) instead ...
Wonderful bug, heroic debugging story.
The problem with saving books you’re looking forward to to read when you’re in bed with a cold is that you end up associating @maxgladstone.bsky.social ‘s marvellous Craft War denouement with lying in bed with a cold :(
November 22, 2025 at 5:24 PM
The problem with saving books you’re looking forward to to read when you’re in bed with a cold is that you end up associating @maxgladstone.bsky.social ‘s marvellous Craft War denouement with lying in bed with a cold :(
This is from the conclusion of a series of fantasy novels about undead lawyers, but I can’t help thinking the author might have spent time at the Conferences of the Parties …
November 21, 2025 at 8:06 PM
This is from the conclusion of a series of fantasy novels about undead lawyers, but I can’t help thinking the author might have spent time at the Conferences of the Parties …
When we are constantly told that the price of wholesale electricity is set by the wholesale price of gas, it seems a bit peculiar to have household gas price per kWh drop 5% and household electricity go up about the same amount.
November 21, 2025 at 12:41 PM
When we are constantly told that the price of wholesale electricity is set by the wholesale price of gas, it seems a bit peculiar to have household gas price per kWh drop 5% and household electricity go up about the same amount.
I think it's a bit dubious that the January price cap has electricity go up a bit more than 5%, gas go down a bit more than 5%, and the precise bucket of electricity and gas whose price is the headline number from Ofgem stay essentially flat.
November 21, 2025 at 12:40 PM
I think it's a bit dubious that the January price cap has electricity go up a bit more than 5%, gas go down a bit more than 5%, and the precise bucket of electricity and gas whose price is the headline number from Ofgem stay essentially flat.
The Economist has contrived once again to bind a 108-page supplement into the middle of an 84-page magazine
November 19, 2025 at 3:48 PM
The Economist has contrived once again to bind a 108-page supplement into the middle of an 84-page magazine
Reposted
The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.
-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.
-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem
November 13, 2025 at 12:13 AM
The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.
-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.
-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem
If you’re making a movie with Super Obvious Frankenstein Vibes you do not *actually* need to have the Frankenstein character observe someone reading Frankenstein and highlight several important passages twenty minutes in. Banging NIN sound track though!
November 7, 2025 at 6:06 PM
If you’re making a movie with Super Obvious Frankenstein Vibes you do not *actually* need to have the Frankenstein character observe someone reading Frankenstein and highlight several important passages twenty minutes in. Banging NIN sound track though!
Lovely work! What sort of repeatability do you get for the astrometry on pictures on consecutive nights?
Are you taking them six months apart to try to get a parallax measure too?
Are you taking them six months apart to try to get a parallax measure too?
November 6, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Lovely work! What sort of repeatability do you get for the astrometry on pictures on consecutive nights?
Are you taking them six months apart to try to get a parallax measure too?
Are you taking them six months apart to try to get a parallax measure too?
Does en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabir_i... give anyone else en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas... vibes? Massive compilation of works all claimed to be by a single author, but for the existence of whose author there is very limited evidence.
Jabir ibn Hayyan - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 4, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Does en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabir_i... give anyone else en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas... vibes? Massive compilation of works all claimed to be by a single author, but for the existence of whose author there is very limited evidence.
I am pretty sure that if I hire someone in Britain to knock down my listed building without getting planning permission, they're liable as well as me. I'm certain that if the builders I hired disturb a nesting bird they're personally liable. Does this not apply in the US?
November 2, 2025 at 6:54 PM
I am pretty sure that if I hire someone in Britain to knock down my listed building without getting planning permission, they're liable as well as me. I'm certain that if the builders I hired disturb a nesting bird they're personally liable. Does this not apply in the US?
Today I discovered that the honeycomb in Crunchie bars is a closed-cell foam, and so you can't drink through them in the way you can with Penguin bars.
November 2, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Today I discovered that the honeycomb in Crunchie bars is a closed-cell foam, and so you can't drink through them in the way you can with Penguin bars.
Is ‘derpy’ entirely neutralised in American English by the My Little Pony character and the tiger from K-Pop Demon Hunters? It’s absolutely not an adjective I feel comfortable using in Britain.
October 31, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Is ‘derpy’ entirely neutralised in American English by the My Little Pony character and the tiger from K-Pop Demon Hunters? It’s absolutely not an adjective I feel comfortable using in Britain.
Reposted
I think this is an example of how game logic shapes policymaking - 'you play the regulation card - in five turns, new market participants appear. in eight turns, produce a five housing tokens every turn thereafter' would be so frustrating for any strategy game. But that's how it actually works!
A surprising number of people don't seem to get this - if you are a business, and your path to profitability for 20 years has run through 'selling high density homes at £750k a pop', changing the regulatory incentives that created that business does not mean a £450k a pop business appears overnight.
October 30, 2025 at 10:10 AM
I think this is an example of how game logic shapes policymaking - 'you play the regulation card - in five turns, new market participants appear. in eight turns, produce a five housing tokens every turn thereafter' would be so frustrating for any strategy game. But that's how it actually works!
I suppose inflation since 2003 has been enough that new instances of a fighter jet that entered service in 2003 at a claimed $117 million per plane now cost £200 million (the £8bn deal appears to be '20 now with an option for 20 later')
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Starmer signs £8bn deal to supply Turkey with Typhoon fighter jets
The agreement will support thousands of jobs across the UK, the government says.
www.bbc.co.uk
October 27, 2025 at 11:38 PM
I suppose inflation since 2003 has been enough that new instances of a fighter jet that entered service in 2003 at a claimed $117 million per plane now cost £200 million (the £8bn deal appears to be '20 now with an option for 20 later')
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Reposted
Something like 80% of the used lithium-ion batteries in the country go to Redwood Materials for recycling. So they had a thought: what if we hook all these used batteries up as grid-scale storage until they're completely tapped out, and *then* recycle them? Thus was born: Redwood Energy.
Can "second life" EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?
Colin Campbell explains how Redwood drains every drop of capacity from used batteries before they are recycled.
www.volts.wtf
October 23, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Something like 80% of the used lithium-ion batteries in the country go to Redwood Materials for recycling. So they had a thought: what if we hook all these used batteries up as grid-scale storage until they're completely tapped out, and *then* recycle them? Thus was born: Redwood Energy.
What would evidence that the AWS outage on Monday actually cost anyone money look like? I don’t think it took out physical cash registers and I can’t imagine any purchases were skipped rather than postponed.
Business continuity people always seem to assign vast values to business continuity.
Business continuity people always seem to assign vast values to business continuity.
October 22, 2025 at 6:07 PM
What would evidence that the AWS outage on Monday actually cost anyone money look like? I don’t think it took out physical cash registers and I can’t imagine any purchases were skipped rather than postponed.
Business continuity people always seem to assign vast values to business continuity.
Business continuity people always seem to assign vast values to business continuity.
Reposted
Mr Sri Lanka. This is a rare case where I think the outfit would be better without the giant gold snakes around his head. Maybe add a cape, but I think the rest of the outfit (what little of it there is) is so great that he doesn't need the snakes.
October 11, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Mr Sri Lanka. This is a rare case where I think the outfit would be better without the giant gold snakes around his head. Maybe add a cape, but I think the rest of the outfit (what little of it there is) is so great that he doesn't need the snakes.