A word on how the bot works.

Bot is probably not the best term for it, because it is so dirt simple. It is literally just fortune piped to a perl script called cat4stuff which is executed via cron. It used to be called cat4mastodon, but I have since merged another script called cat4mm (as in MatterMost) into the same codebase. So it can be used to pipe command outputs to multiple destinations on multiple platform types now.

The Roman date bot works in a similar way, but instead of fortune, I execute a perl script called kalends that uses Date::Roman, and corrects a spelling error along the way. It also is piped to cat4stuff.

And before anyone asks, yes, the year is correct. It is the years since the founding of the city of Rome, which has nothing to do with the birth of a certain deity associated with the common era.

Es uno de los villancicos rockeros más famosos, pero esconde algunas trampas en su historia.

Para empezar, porque el artista no era rockero.

Y a lo mejor ni siquiera es un villancico.

Hoy, en este hilo pre-navideño de #LaHistorietaMusical, Bobby Helms y su Jingle Bell Rock.

#Navidad #Villancicos #jinglebellrock #BobbyHelms #LaHistorietaMusical

If you don't in the WordPress ecosystem, you may not understand how HUGE this post is

https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/

Joost is probably the second biggest figure in the entire WP ecosystem, only after Matt M himself. He is the biggest voice from the "Enterprise WordPress" world.

This is not anymore open source contributors complaining about governance. This is the Business WordPress demanding a leadership change and suggesting it either happens or a hard fork, backed by big business, is on the way.

Look no one is saying Amazon treats it workers like shit and are utter scum as a company … it’s just that Amazon treats it workers like shit and are utter scum as a company

#brexit #tory #tories #toryscum #politics #ukpolitics #bbc #news #EU #nhs #costofliving #Labour #keirstarmer #Starmer #labourparty #RejoinEU #ToryCorruption #standuptoracism #farage #nigelfarage #refromuk #Gammons #elon #elonmusk #trump #DonaldTrump #amazon

We're all going to die because a very small minority refuses to reduce its profits and everyone else refuses to lose followers.

El amigo @rafapoverello ha recopilado casi 40Gb de películas dirigidas por mujeres. Un trabajo titánico.
https://zagueros.noblogs.org/post/2024/12/13/dirigido-por-mujeres-feminismos-y-septimo-arte/

The next new leader of the free world
Told me on TV before l could silence it

That america and italy had been allies since the roman times?

I thought he was wrong because america is not that old

Now I find they where actually the enemy in 2 world wars?

Why is he telling such great big lies?

He cant be as ignorant of history of his country as me

Trump the ignorant liar
Is going to be in charge of America?

The insanely rich should be in the nut house
Not the white house

'I feel sorry for him': Ex-Republican lawmaker says Trump just 'kneecapped' Mike Johnson - Raw Story

https://www.rawstory.com/charlie-dent-government-shutdown/

They are always denying their plan to cut your mom’s fixed income, yet here it is in the plan for January.

#trump #musk #mandleson #america
Calling Trump a moron would be an insult to morons. He’s an egocentric nefarious megalomaniac attempting to build a government of unfathomably dumb servile lackeys he can easily control.
Being recommended or chosen by Trump is an endorsement of stupidity.
The picture below never ceases to amaze me. They look like a modern day version of the Kray twins. Would you honestly hand your country over to these idiots? It’s bound to end in tears.
https://news.sky.com/story/incoming-uk-ambassador-to-us-mandelson-called-absolute-moron-over-trump-criticism-13277216

Republicans’ troubles are only just beginning | Semafor

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/20/2024/republicans-troubles-are-only-just-beginning

'Two severe #H5N1 cases caused by the D1.1 genotype are reason for increased concern - the one good piece of news is that so far, there has been no human-to-human transmission of H5N1. If that starts happening, we could be in trouble'. @jeremyfaust

https://open.substack.com/pub/insidemedicine/p/two-severe-h5n1-cases-caused-by-the?r=cwb8u&selection=7ebc5419-e549-42f1-a9e4-8ed149311008&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web

Content warning: #Wordle 1,280 1/6 NYT Freebie with a slight hint Click to open/close

The only thing worse than African scammers, are white sociopaths pretending to be African scammers, or just people of African descent in general.
#BlackMastodon

Ugh, terrorist attack in Germany!

A car drove into a crowd at Christmas market in Magdeburg

11 people killed, 60 injured based on initial reports

Portland Airport Grows With Expansive Mass Timber Roof Canopy
https://design-milk.com/portland-airport-grows-with-expansive-mass-timber-roof-canopy/ #solarpunk #cyberpunk #solarpunkart #sciencefiction #future #community #ecopunk

Time for the panic calls from IRL #MAGA Trump/GOP voters panicking over the possibility their Social Security and other things will get disrupted if the government shuts down. I told one person who called me today, "Well, you voted for Trump, Vance and the GOP. It's going to get worse. I told you if you voted for that mess, you would #FAFO. Enjoy the Fvck while you still have some afterglow left. It's going to turn bad, and fast." She hung up on me. #USPol

Last few boosts:

I mean, Bernie shilling for Jha & Biden in the deliberate murder of 160 years of public health is the reason I personally distrust him.*

YMMV, your reasons may be your own.

Electoralism isn't producing any results anywhere except toward favoring the already powerful.

Evolve, grow past it. They ain't helping us, ever, unless we hold a figurative gun to their heads.

*Once you let that genie out of the bottle, it's very difficult to get it back. The disease surveillance apparatus, the vaccination uptake, the universality precautionary measures. Biden all but assured a new Dark Ages that is lied about & heavily surveilled.

The odds that Trump is inaugurated on a Trump-branded Bible that is then marketed as the "Inauguration Edition" are probably about 50-50. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/20/trump-products-bible/

So. Essen war ok, Geschirrspüler läuft, Küche ist aufgeklart. Die Frau hat Feierabend gemeldet. Jetzt bissel chatten auf Ximig und Musik hören. Ich wünsche euch einen schönen Freitag Abend. 💻🎸🎶🔊🍷🥃😘

It's blowing a gale outside at the moment and not exactly warm in my office. I've had to put another layer on and have a brew.

Note it's always time for tea, but sometimes it's more urgent.

“Trump has sewn himself into a sack with Elon Musk, a few billion dollars, a cat and a snake, and had the sack tossed into the Tiber. That’s the story here. And it will go on for a while.” - Josh Marshall

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-trump/sharetoken/50385625-ee47-4692-a1c8-aa6ea081d9c6

#USpol

#GuteNachtFreunde #AgeSagtGuteNacht #GoodNight
Klostereingang Paderborn Nähe Dom

Vaccines are a leading
cause of old age.

Who made this?! Brilliant!

Fallen

#Photography

Better way too late, than never, I suppose.

cc @ben @dangillmor @jeffjarvis @froomkin

Today's Risky Biz newsletter (thanks @campuscodi) has a really good analysis of the growing influencer problem to national security.

"China and Russia appear to have understood before everyone else the role social media influencers play in modern societies, and are using them as weapons against unprepared Western democracies.

Both autocratic regimes have passed strict laws regulating the online presence of social media personalities while at the same paying foreign influencers in covert operations designed to subvert and influence foreign societies and elections.

China passed a law at the end of last year mandating that social media influencers and bloggers with over 500,000 followers must list their legal names on their profiles.

Similarly, in Russia, the Kremlin passed a law this year requiring any online personality with over 100,000 followers to register with the country's internet watchdog by the start of next year.

The two countries now have firm control over their social media landscape through the new laws, as well as their national firewall and internet censorship systems.

The crackdown is both the normal response from two paranoid autocratic regimes fearing they might lose control of their societies, but also a means of self-defense.

On the flipside, both countries have used opaque networks of companies to pay and weaponize influencers in other countries to promote their political agendas.

A Recorded Future report published last week concluded China has established over 100 so-called international communication centers (ICCs) across the country since 2023. The centers are tasked with running news websites that push Chinese-friendly propaganda and criticize democratic countries in various areas of the globe. The ICCs have also assembled "networks of thousands of foreign influencers" that get paid to push the same narratives inside the borders of other countries in posts that are designed to look as genuine as possible. Australian think tank ASPI also published a report on this."

https://news.risky.biz/r/8aeee661?m=ebb10ba8-118c-4ebb-aa1e-761703373571

@PatrickoftheG @lowqualityfacts it was more it didn't exist was the point I was making.

Blood emeralds would have right up their greedy street though.