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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • My brother told me this story of the raccoons living in his backyard. The mother had figured out how to defeat a new supposedly raccoon-proof garbage can and lined up the cubs to demonstrate. The first two watched with rapt attention while a third had a kind of dazed look. The mother then came back and smacked him in the head before showing them again. That seems like a pretty good indication to me that she had a good grasp of the mental state of her cubs?



  • I guess this is rather niche, but I go to thesession a lot for fiddle tunes. They are ostensibly an Irish traditional music site, but their collection is a vast community-led effort and there’s all sorts of stuff of varying genres on there. Folk music in general is improvisational by nature, and what’s interesting about thesession is you will find multiple versions (aka settings) of a given tune as it’s played by different artists or in particular regions. None of them are “right” per se, but it gives you some ideas when trying to work out your own style.






  • For instance, in February 2023, the hosting giant disclosed that unknown attackers stole source code and installed malware on compromised servers after breaching its cPanel shared hosting environment in a multi-year breach.

    I assumed their security for this was to keep shuffling around their web site to make that cPanel stuff impossible to find? It’s like a store that keeps rearranging their floor inventory. I dread having to do anything with cPanel. Kudos to the hackers who managed to work it out.




  • I don’t know about good, but today was an unusual day for me.

    With a blizzard setting in, I figured my best chance to get to work was on the bus. So I was walking up to where I could catch it passing various houses with Christmas lights and decorations, only to stop dead in my tracks at one particular house.

    It’s sole decoation was an 8-ft tall Krampus on the front lawn. It had a goat head with horns and demonic eyes and sharp claws holding a gnarled staff on one side and chains on the other. It’s dark burgundy cloak had a dusting of snow on its shoulders to complete the look.

    Then I was on the bus trying to digest what I had seen when who should walk on but Polar Man! He’s a local superhero with a bushy beard and a mask. He helps people in distress shovel out their driveways. At one point as the bus was passing through a residential area, he got up and yelled “Driver! Stop the bus!” and leapt out dramatically to cheering passengers.




  • My brother is involved with tournament Scrabble and knows Nigel well. I don’t compete myself but have watched games among top players. There is a lot of strategy beyond simply memorizing word lists.

    The best play is often not the highest-scoring one. You need to examine the board and determine what it might expose to your opponent. You also need to keep track of what tiles have been played already to get an idea of what may be lying on your opponent’s tray at the moment. You may also take the calculated risk of playing a word you know is not real. If it is not challenged, it stands. Depending on tournament rules, a challenge may cost you if it fails (i.e. the word is legit), so there is a poker-like bluffing element.