Please enjoy this inelegantly named moon
Worm moon. Also known as the Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sap Moon, Sugar Moon or Lenten Moon. But the article says Worm Moon is the most popular in Britain.
Most people assume it’s due to earthworms in Spring, but the article says some bullshit about native Americans. The Brits love them some red Indians. They also still use the expression “red Indians” which makes me wince a little. I feel sure that would get you screamed at by a bluehair in the States.
It’s technically not full until tomorrow night, but more visible here tonight.
I can attest. I came in and looked up the moon because I went out to put the chickens away, and there it was in all its wormy glory.
March 17, 2022 — 6:29 pm
Comments: 13
Ew.
Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is – and I cannot stress this enough – ugly.
I’ve been trying to find a way to show you, but (no surprise) you’re not allowed to take screenshots in the normal way. When you take them with your virtual phone, you can only share them with Facebook friends – which, annoyingly, does not include your own self.
So let me describe. The character design of the avatars is poor. Those people in the picture above? It’s worse than that. This isn’t an actual screen shot (their usernames aren’t floating above their heads).
You do not have legs in the Metaverse. You are a floating torso that pootles around like a malfunctioning robot.
The Oculus Quest has multiple cameras to track the position of your head and hands. This means you can look over at people and wave or, like, fake robot dance. But wait! Your hands are also how you control everything. For example, to call up your menu, you raise your left arm and look at your wrist. But it doesn’t pop up unless you catch it just right, so you usually need a few tries.
Yes, that’s right – a whole room of zooming legless robots making gentle wanking motions.
The tracking is so good, it can track individual finger movements (there are some fun-looking games based on this idea). Even better! Imagine if you will an auditorium full of ugly torsos, zooming around waving their arms in the air and wiggling their fingers. Only a man as socially awkward as Zuck could think this would appeal.
One of the reasons the Oculus is so inexpensive compared to most VR rigs is that it can’t handle some of the more sophisticated visuals. But really, that’s no excuse for ugly design. I’ve spent my whole day on this island, which is a masterpiece of a silly VR world the Oculus can handle just fine.
March 16, 2022 — 7:23 pm
Comments: 3
Clean search results, comrades!
I read a good article about search engines today, but I’ve closed so many windows I’ve pushed it out of my history. Dangit! I wanted to link and quote from it.
The gist was, the writer tested all the major search engines to see if they were depressing results. He described the specific searches he did. RT was one of them. Project Veritas. 2020 election fraud. All the search engines you’ve heard of did poorly on more than one of his tests.
Except Yandex. Which, if you don’t know, is Russia’s own search engine.
I tried it and…I really like it! It has a quick, clean interface and clean search results. It does have a tendency to show you some hits in Russian (make sure you go to yandex.com, not yandex.ru and it’s a little better).
I registered with them, thinking I could specify English only if I did that. No, but they did give me a free email. I don’t think now is the time to be using stoatyweasel@yandex.ru, but thanks anyway, Russkies.
No, I’m not a supporter of what Russia is up to, but I’m reeaaallly not a supporter of having my search engine results sanitized by the government. And I think it’s painfully boneheaded to stop eating Russian dressing or playing Tchaikovsky because Vlad is bad man.
March 15, 2022 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 12
Now in the Steam Store!
ABOUT THIS GAME
The heroine is a girl who likes sports. However, what is troubling is that after exercise, the stockings on her feet will be wet by sweat, giving out a unique smell.
· There are some exercise machines in her room and the player needs to control her movement.
· After sports, stockings on girls’ feet will become smelly.
· Players can make stockings with different smells by combining different sports, shoes and stockings.
· Smelly stockings can be reclaimed for money.
· Smelly feet can be washed in the bathtub after exercise.
· Fatigue can be recovered through massage props.
REVIEWS
Recommended.
POSTED: 1 MARCH
As you know, this kind of game is rare on steam. It still suits some people’s interests, doesn’t it? （just like me ）XP
I hope it can do better and better.
Not recommended.
POSTED: 13 MARCH
?mAKE game more girls need more girls sweat odor sport girls athletices in this game NOW! game not enough girls stink
Recommended.
(Original in Chinese)
POSTED: 2 MARCH
I’m an idiot After playing for 22 minutes, the main way to play is to buy new socks, then do sports to make socks and sell them online. If you want to play, remember to buy socks before exercising, otherwise your exercise will be in vain (being able to change clothes does not mean that you already have that type of socks, be sure to see clearly) There are two status bars. If the cleanliness is low, you can go to the bathroom to wash. If your physical strength is low, you can go to bed for massage (really massage, don’t have any unrealistic desires) This can only change socks and take off the sports suit, and it can’t even make me a dress-up game
Only £3.99 on Steam.
We live in an age of miracles and wonders.
March 14, 2022 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 11
I’m sure you’ve seen this: they finally discovered the wreck of Shackleton’s ship Endurance this week, 107 years after it went down and four miles from its last recorded location (hence the time it took to find it).
I hoped to link to a definitive article with lots of good pictures, but it’s honestly more interesting to do a Google Images search of “endurance ship” because it turns up so many great pictures of her before she sank.
This video of the wreck itself is amazing. She went down in water so cold that wood-eating beasties can’t survive, hence the astonishing state of preservation.
I’d also like to link to his Britannica entry because it has audio of him talking about his adventures, recorded in 1910. Early audio recordings are so spooky.
Lumme a good creepy shipwreck. Have a great weekend, everyone!
March 11, 2022 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 4
DANGIT!
I got the WORDLE on the first guess today. AND I’M NOT ON TWITTER TO BRAG ABOUT IT.
To be fair, getting it in one is nothing to brag about, it just means you got lucky with your start word. Getting it in two, on the other hand, takes *some* skill. I’m chuffed anyway, because I try to use a different start word every day, which lessened my chances I’d ever hit on it by accident.
So what happens when you cut a weasel off social media? She goes to the fediverse, which is like the sleazy dive bar of social media. Oh, I’m palling around with some choice characters now!
Anyway, I’m off to attend a talk. Yes, in person. We’re pretty much all the way back to the old normal, except poorer and hoarding toilet paper.
March 10, 2022 — 6:04 pm
Comments: 19
*gasp*
£1.83 per litre = $10.97 U.S. per Imperial gallon.
In truth, that’s a deliberately click-baity photo. The pic was taken on a motorway (read: Interstate highway) and motorway gas stations are a notorious ripoff.
The reason is, there are far, far fewer gas stations around here, and if you’re in an unfamiliar area (which you’re likely to be, if you’re on the motorway) you can’t risk coming off and poking around for a better deal. So they can charge what they like.
At these prices, though, it would be worth your time firing up Google Maps on your phone and trying anywhere else.
Gas is still “just” £1.54 ($9.17) at our local station. Happy days!
March 9, 2022 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 5
Welp, it finally happened
Believe it or not, I’ve never copped a Twitter ban before. I’ve gotten into a few heated arguments, but I’m not a very aggressive Twitterer in general. In fact, my favorite tactic when the namecalling starts is to remain blandly polite. It drives ’em nuts.
What’s that? The tweet? It was in a thread about Lia Thompson. I don’t mind deleting it; it’s really badly worded. Shame on me.
As hate goes, it’s weak sauce.
So now, to get my account back, I have to give Twitter my cellphone number for a confirmation code. That is so not going to happen.
Comes the exploration of the free online sms services. They give you a fake cell number, you plug it in, you read the number that pops up. I’ve tried dozens of them. Either Twitter tells me the number has been used before, or I plug it in and the verification code never comes through.
I watch other people’s verification codes come through (it’s a shared number) for things like PayPal and DoorDash. I think it just doesn’t work for Twitter. But, strangely, Twitter lets you try about 20 fake phone numbers before telling you to come back tomorrow. I mean, surely the average punter doesn’t have access to 20 phones, so they must know what you’re doing.
Currently, I’m struggling with an app called Phoner that basically gives you a second phone number attached to your phone. It will forward calls and texts to your regular phone, if you like, but you don’t have to give out your real phone. And you can biff it and get a new one from time to time, if you so desire.
But I think I may have to feed it a few coins before it will let me play. I got it at the app store. It looks legit.
March 8, 2022 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 15
Crunch.
Well, this is just stupid. The last time we bought home heating oil, it was about 45p a liter. Yesterday, it was well over £1 a liter. Since the minimum buy is 500 liters, we were on the fence about ordering it now or waiting a few days to see if the madness passes. Earlier today, Uncle B got a message from our usual supplier saying, “don’t bother. We aren’t taking any new orders.”
No, we probably don’t have enough to get us through the heating season. It’s hot water bottles by day and fires by night for a while.
This sucks. We don’t even get our oil from Russia. This is hikes over supplies they bought in November, fer chrissakes. It’s all speculation, panic and profiteering.
Oh – gas, you ask? It was around £1.19 per liter a week ago. Now it’s £1.52. Let’s do the math, shall we?
£1.19 x 1.31 (today’s exchange rate) x 3.8 (to get us to a gallon) = $5.90 a gallon BEFORE and $7.57 AFTER.
This is exactly how the Greens wanted us peasants to live, you know: with a drastic reduction in our energy consumption (and quality of life, natch). Why does that make me deeply suspicious of this whole crisis?
The ugly-ass Blob People at the top are not relevant to this post. Mailchimp showed me this earlier, and now you have to see it, too. I reckon that’s a new low in dehumanizing depictions of the human form.
March 7, 2022 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 13
An update on my toy
I was struggling to play a sword-and-sorcery game with my new VR rig and couldn’t understand why everything was way high over my head out of reach. Then it dawned on me the damn thing wanted me to stand up, like I was a real person in a real environment. I stood up and…hoo, boy! Now I get why this thing makes people motion sick!
I’ll adjust. Eventually. Though I have a feeling I will always prefer apps I can use sitting down. I’m not a gamer so I can *stand up* and *get some exercise*.
There’s a cool freebie called Ecosphere that features high resolution real footage from Kenya, Borneo and Raja Ampat. I’ve always loved drone footage, but even more when it feels like I’m the drone. Also, you get up close and personal with elephants and orangutans and giant rays. Pretty convincingly realistic.
Of course, it’s sponsored by the WWF, so you get the obligatory lecture to go with, but that’s been a feature of nature films for decades. I’m immune.
Surely, somebody has made one where you just hang out under water and stare at fish for an hour. I’d so play that. I did it for real in Florida once when I were a lass – floated around on the surface for eight hours staring at fish. Worse case of sunstroke ever.
Easily my favorite so far is TRIPP – the deliberately hippie-dippy trippy meditation app. When you inhale, you see your breath swoosh in like sparkly white fairy dust; when you exhale, it flies away like shiny red sparks. A man with a California accent slowly reads a life-affirming script. It’s seriously corny and I love it.
Just the app for the moment, as we wait to see if that senile old coot in the White House gets us into a nuclear shooting war. Good weekend, everyone!
March 4, 2022 — 8:17 pm
Comments: 5