Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 11/09/2023: RICO Charges Against Protestors in Atlanta, NYC’s Airbnb Problem



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Do Dogs Face North When Pooping?

        I saw a stupid Youtube segment that claimed that dogs prefer facing towards the magnetic North when crapping. This sounds like nonsense, but it seems that many other places of questionable reputation concur.

      • An Anecdote from Another Place

        Just yesterday, far away from Nightfall, I spent some time at a much more crowded place. It was noisy and the scent of exhaust fumes was so strong that it seemingly affected the inhabitants' minds negatively.

        [...]

        The guys were joined by a woman claiming to be a marine biologist and agreeing wholeheartedly with the guy yelling himself into a rage.

        How paradox. At least from the marine biologist I would have expected a more nuanced response, yet this doesn't seem to be encouraged at this place. But considering that the other two guys appeared to be academics, as well, I wonder if that is supposed to be a reflection of the current state of academia and higher learning, which is... disappointing enough to have made me leave this place immediately, to say the least.

      • roophloch'23

        which about as far as I can go before the wifi cuts out and there is somewhere to sit that isn't lawn or garden stuff. The box thing is the bottom a bird house, though it's pointed towards the house which is also where most of the weather comes from (off the Pacific) so maybe the orientation isn't so good for birds?

        Keeping conifer needles off the keyboard occupies some of my time. The squirrel that usually yells at me is not around. The daystar makes it sometimes difficult to type; it's partly cloudy. There's a better spot in the shade with (usually) less squirrel, but that's outside wifi range.

      • 2023-09-11

        One of the ways you know you are getting old is when you see the state-of-the-art desktop PC technology and ask the question "why would you need all that?"

        that's a bonafide sign you are too old. I hit that point a few years ago but I was reminded of it again when I saw a younger family member's workstation.

      • I hate being two timezones from home

        This makes the east coast my least favorite spot by default. I have no real reason though to dislike out east, however. The culture is foreign to me, but the people are alright.

    • Politics and World Events

      • The RICO charges brought against protestors in Atlanta are ridiculous

        Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr's recent indictment of the Stop Cop City protestors is laughable. His office's 109-page indictment cites "mutual aid", "occupy[ing] a treehouse", and a man "sign[ing] his name as 'ACAB'" as "overt act[s] in furtherance of the conspiracy" to prevent the construction of a police training complex in the Weelaunee Forest.

      • Edan's Capsule - The Barbie Movie

        Today, I finally went to see the Barbie movie! Oppenheimer isn't at my local cinema anymore, but I guess I'll be able to get it on Blu-Ray soon enough.

        To be frank, this was a really€ awesome film. The funny scenes were hilarious and on-point; and there were also some seriously deep and introspective scenes. This film was good enough, in fact, that it's now on my Blu-Ray list. On top of that, it was SO memable.

    • Science

    • Technology and Free Software

      • NYC's Airbnb Problem

        NYC is supposedly cracking down on Airbnb. I sure hope they make it illegal altogether. But I am sure the crackdown is not about making rents more affordable, but about squeezing more tax revenue from Airbnb.

        NYC is a great city -- if you can find reasonable housing. But that is a big if. Why is it so expensive? Hint: it's not really greedy landlords, it's mostly rent control laws. Also, Airbnb. Even if you ignore inflation (everything else doubled in the last few years, so it's not a surprise that rents did also). But the real problem is rent control. According to some sources, 70% of NYC apartments are stabilized or controlled, and are pretty much forever off the market. You'd be an idiot to give up a rent-controlled apartment in NYC.

      • How to add pledge to a program in OpenBSD

        This article is meant to be a simple guide explaining how to make use of the OpenBSD specific feature pledge in order to restrict a software capabilities for more security.

        While pledge falls in the sandboxing features, it's different than the traditional sandboxing we are used to see because it happens within the source code itself, and can be really tightened. Actually, many programs requires lot of privileges like reading files, doing DNS etc... when initializing, then those privileges could be removed, this is possible with pledge but not for traditional sandboxing wrappers.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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