Lawrence D’Oliveiro

A certain insurance company website seems to have cookie indigestion. When I try logging in, it fails with a cryptic one-line message. It works via a private-browsing window. I realize I could just purge my cookies for that site, but they shouldn’t let it happen anyway.

New Zealand’s own rabid right-wing religious nut MAGA-wannabe strikes again. He has tried twice to launch a political party, but nobody -- not even his own followers -- seems to want to vote for him. bsky.app/profile/rnzr...

The meaning of life is about never feeling satisfied with any explanation of what the meaning of life might be about. Does that leave you feeling dissatisfied? I rest my case.

Everlee Wihongi feeling 'disappointment, sadness' over delayed immigration hearing in US

Calling Android users: do you want Google’s platform to become just like Apple’s? keepandroidopen.org

Everlee Wihongi case: Government officials confirm contact with US immigration over Kiwi's detention

There was a little squeezebulb horn hanging on the door of the Egyptology Institute. The sign underneath said: TOOT AND COME IN

Are there such people as “digital natives”? As in those who have a basic understanding of how computer technology works in everyday life? Seems the writer of this article doesn’t appreciate that computer files are independent of the media they’re stored on. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

I was looking up Timothy Leary, which led me to something Abbie Hoffman said: “Don’t do needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.” Seems adaptable to the present day, somehow ...

Came across this old SF story which views society as being divided into those who want to rule others, those who want to rebel against order, and the normals, who just want to get on with life. So the normals worked out a system to keep the other two factions in check. www.baen.com/Chapters/143...

“My Incredible Achievements” by Billy Vitornot #BookTitles

“The Joy Of Tunnels” by Warren “Rabbit-Hole” Burrowes #BookTitles

“Learn To Fly The Easy Way” by Kara Shand-Byrne #BookTitles

“Our Invincible Military” by Isa Render #BookTitles

In a black hole, gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. For something to escape, it would have to travel faster than light, which is impossible. Gravitational-wave detectors work because gravity propagates at the speed of light. So how does gravity come out of a black hole?

One US corp that has been making a killing (literally) from the Israel-Palestine conflict is Caterpillar. They supply the bulldozers that the Israeli forces use to destroy Palestinian homes, roads etc. And I see a bunch of them being sent to Gaza to help with the reconstruction there. “Win-win”?!?

My candidate for Peak 1980s: Pointer Sisters, “Jump”. What’s yours? Just today heard the 12” mix, and wouldn’t you know it actually ends without fading out? Ah, those days when FM stereo was new, and 12” mixes sounded so good ...

Is there some mini-two-step revival going on in 🇳🇿? Yahyah — Run — www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo85... Lee Stuart — Clover — www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86m...

“Iditarod.” “Did you, indeed? And all by yourself, too!”

Spammer currently trying to appeal to my sense of “honor” to push their product: message titles “experience strength and honor”, “the power of honor on wheels”, “power and honor in every pedal”, “the power of honor and strength” ... .. stay tuned for more variations, if/when they appear.

Are there any other countries (besides 🇯🇲, obvs) that love reggae as much as 🇳🇿?

I like to put butter on poppadoms. Am I a heathen, or merely acknowledging my own cross-cultural origins? (Could be both...)

Just idly wondering the other day how you could inject additional filesystem mounts into the namespace of an already-running container. Discovered that Linux has a whole additional mount API that can do this and other things. So I did the linuxmount module here. gitlab.com/ldo/python_l...

🇳🇿 has a “Steampunk capital” -- who knew? *Smug* Does your country have one? www.oneroof.co.nz/news/oamaru-...

I remember, as a child, seeing the partially-painted-out letters “DUCATI” above a group of shops, and being proud of myself at figuring out that there was a previous sign saying “EDUCATION”. On the other hand, looking back, maybe it had been a motorcycle dealership ...

My mother picked up some Chinese New Year tradition (lots of Chinese friends), and applied it on the Gregorian New Year as well: no sweeping the house on New Year’s Day, because then you sweep away the luck for the New Year.

Ode to a sign left behind after unfinished roadworks: “You picked a fine time to leave me ... ‘Loose Seal’.”

Without rancour, the canker on the anchor of the tanker just sank ’er. Yes, I will have another of those oddly intriguing cookies, thank you.

I could of been a English major.

Might I inquire as to how to acquire a quire for the choir? What was that I just ate?

“The Princess Bride” is on 🇳🇿 TV this evening. Just thought I’d point that out to anybody who hasn’t seen it. Or if you have, spread the word. Happy Carisma Sieve.

Just got blocked by somebody offended because I pointed out the ridiculousness of the non-Open-Source licence on their software. So, if somebody uses it to murder children, the developers are going to sue them for copyright infringement?

Why is the French President named after a diacritic mark that doesn’t even occur in his name? His name should be “Mācrōn”. Who’s with me?

This is what satire looks like now. Caution! Rampant and unremitting AI ahead! www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM2V...

A lot of the Porter-Duff #graphics drawing modes don’t actually make any sense. I think it’s down to this: the ones that are useful are the ones that don’t actually assume that pixels are little squares.

Just discovered Samuel Goldwyn quotes. E.g. “Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day!” People couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

If that’s Shai Hulud, I shudder to think what Bold Hulud is like. #Dune

Spotted in my dentist’s office. When one door closes, another door opens. Or you could, you know, just open the door. That’s how doors work.

To make more efficient use of global warming, don’t forget to set your calendars one month forward for Summer Saving Time. #TooSoon?

If you are having trouble getting your head around how async/await works with the rest of Python at the lowest level, I came up with this diagram a while ago I call “Van Rossum’s Triangle”. It explains how the flow of control goes. www.deviantart.com/default-cube... #python #programming

Blender 4.3.1 is out. I normally do my own builds from source. Somewhere along the line my FFmpeg build got out of sync, so I had to build Blender without it; maybe about time to try getting some kind of reconciliation between the two ... #blender3d #blender

Nathan Haines/Arjuna Oakes track playing on Juice TV. Last time I heard from Haines, local TV had actual programs that played music videos.

Dear Syrians, I share your joy and appreciate your need to make loud noises to celebrate. May I recommend not using live ammunition to do so? (What goes up, must come down.) May I suggest borrowing an idea from the Chinese, and let off lots of firecrackers instead? Much better noise-to-harm ratio.

Making a conscious effort to get up from this screen and walk about every few days.

Several flyers from various Christian groups in my mailbox lately. And today, one from Hell Pizza. Balance is restored.

Ate that last banana before it got any more overripe. My mother preferred them black. Go on, take that last sentence out of context, why don’t you.

I get email notifications of postings on the Asterisk support forum. Emojis come through as text codes, e.g. “:slight_smile:”. Only “slight”? So, the lack of amusement/gratification is revealed ...

In #NZ, we have a consumer watchdog authority with real teeth. Shops showing inaccurate pricing and misleading “specials” are breaking the law, and this is not the first time prosecutions have been launched over this. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sup...

What’s going on here? input: s1 = "naïve" s2 = "naïve" print(len(s1), len(s2), s1 == s2) output: 5 6 False #python #programming

Never got used to that rule that it’s “an” and not “a” before a word beginning with “h” if the first syllable is unaccented: I just instinctively say and write “a historical event”, not “an historical event”. Say I have a Hitachi appliance: is that “a Hitachi” or “an Hitachi”?