So, just a quick and long-overdue note to let you know what is going on with me and why I haven’t posted in such a long time. Basically, I’m neck-deep in a big project with a rather urgent deadline and I just haven’t had time to focus on the blog. I will get back to it as soon as I can, but I’m not quite sure yet when that will be. My apologies! And I’ll try to keep you all updated in a somewhat more timely fashion as this thing progresses.
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@ Elaine
Good luck on your date!
Some years back a friend was on a first date. She’d done the ‘meet somewhere public’ thing. I was drafted to keep an eye on things. So I was discretely seated at a table across the way. I kept getting bombarded by texts from her girlfriends “Is he good looking? What are they doing? Have they kissed yet?” I was so busy answering that when I looked up they’d vanished. Luckily just for a walk on the beach. But that’s the level of wingman competence you get when you ask me.
@Elaine the Witch:
Lots of things at this point cause he the DM in my DND group.
That right there gives you not only an opening shared interest but some potentially valuable information. Is he out to one-up the players or to preside over a shared and consensual (if sometimes challenging and vexatious) good time? Does he ask about players’ hard no’s? Can he adapt to player orneriness and unpredictability?
Sooo… my latest weird thought is “if Trump gets Greenland, and Putin gets Alaska, does that mean Frederiksen gets Kaliningrad?”
(For reference, Frederiksen is the current Prime Minister of Denmark, and Kaliningrad used to be an independent germanic kingdom named Köningsberg and is currently under Russian control despite the physical separation between the two.)
Aaand I just had another. What happens to the Palestine flag emoji if Palestine ceases to exist? I hope that doesn’t happen any time soon, so this is purely a what-if.
I already know that “what is a country” for the purpose of flag emojis are determined by ISO-3166 (which is not controlled by the Unicode Consortium). I did a bit of research and found that, if a country stops existing, then it is removed from the main ISO list 5-10 years after it’s gone.
At that point it appears the Unicode Consortium would be in a bind; their policy is to never remove any emoji once added, but their policy is also to only use the main-list ISO countries. I suspect that the actual result would be recommending that it be depreciated; that all devices should continue to support it for backwards compatibility but make it unable to be inserted/typed by normal means.
But that would creates another potential issue: How Unicode encodes country flags is by using a pair of “invisible letter” codes based on the two-letter country codes listed in ISO-3166. Palestine is PS. Suppose, in the distant future, Unicode is still in use and there’s a different country which gets assigned PS. I have no idea how they’d handle that.
@ snowberry
The irony of the Palestine flag is that it was designed by a Brit. Sir Mark Sykes, of Sykes-Picot fame.
Like most British ideas its original purpose was to annoy the French.
https://i.postimg.cc/q7pb5N84/temp-Image-Pfvdhp.avif
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140123-flag-of-paradox/
Ugh, that last one really could have been written better, but I didn’t have time to edit it properly. Also, I just figured a way to get the invisible letters to appear: 🇵🇸 🇵 🇸 .
So, addenum: The last time a country ceased to exist was in 1993 (Czechoslovakia) but that wasn’t an issue yet because Unicode didn’t do flag emojis until 2010. Another country which is currently in danger of existence failure is 🇹🇻 Tuvalu, due to sea level rise rather than genocide.
Despite not agreeing with some of his positions, I’ve been loving my current governor’s Twitter game the past 10 days.
This just in: U.S. evangelist James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is finding out what the afterlife, if any, is like.
Managed to screencap a fresh edit of FotF’s Wikipedia page; scroll to the bottom.
https://archive.ph/FSJA3
@GSS ex-noob: Some of the conservative pundits and talking heads don’t seem to get it. They’re acting like Gavin Newsom is imitating the prez in order to get liberals to worship him the way MAGAs worship Trump.
@Full Metal Ox: I can’t get too excited or happy about people like that being gone anymore. There will always be more, and a lot more, until we make it so there can almost never be. The last time I truly cared beyond a weak “yay” was when Rush Limbaugh died in 2021, and even that was a bit of an exception. Really I’d love it if far more if they’d just stopped on their own.
With very rare exceptions, they lived a full life, showered with money and fame, and never renounced or withdrew from their legacy, and left behind a vacuum which won’t stay unfilled for long. That’s not something to celebrate. It’s still good, in a small way, that he’s personally gone, it’s just that his absence does not weaken the system which empowers people like him, and that puts a big damper on it. Sorry if that’s a bit of a downer.
For those who want the AP news link on Dobson’s life/career:
https://apnews.com/article/james-dobson-obituary-focus-on-family-51a9dbf50e26eaee2ac01d457e9d46aax
@Snowberry: semi-related to your earlier post(s) about stars and constellations, there is at least one known case where a constellation known to the ancient Greeks no longer exists. The Argus, the ship Jason used during the voyage he got the Golden Fleece, used to be a constellation but the stars moved too much over the years and it’s no longer recognized as one.
Well?
I got to drive across Bodmin Moor the other night. The skies were so dark it was magical. I pulled over for a bit and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. There were so many stars (and the Milky Way) that it was hard to actually make out the individual constellations, they just blurred into the background. Proper ‘cosmic vertigo’ time.
It was like being in Asimov’s Nightfall.
So, there’s a runaway trolley barreling down the track. Further ahead is Greg Abbott tying five Democrats to the track, and Gavin Newsom tying nine Republicans there. There is a switch which will divert the trolley to a side track, if you would only pull it in time, and tied to that track is… absolutely no one. You are a US conservative who has access to the switch. What do you do.
Bah, stupid WordPress.
For those who have/had a blog over on Typepad, or just had some favorite pages there, be warned that they’re closing it down by the end of September. Copy whatever you can before it all goes away. 🙁
https://everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08/typepad-is-shutting-down.html
Shitheads.
https://ktla.com/news/california/newsom-launches-statewide-task-force-to-clear-homeless-encampments/
Gavin Newsom is still fucking over homeless
And still fucking over trans people
He should not be president. And anyone trying to throw trans people under the bus under some “vote blue no matter who” need to reexamine their lives.
Two recent links that I thought folks here might want to know about:
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/google-sends-parents-of-lgbtq-kids-to-conversion-therapy-websites-why/
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/doj-plans-to-label-trans-americans-as-mentally-defective-to-take-away-their/
Off-topic, but Charlie Kirk was shot this afternoon during a college speaking engagement in Utah.
Breaking news: Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, shot and killed in Utah earlier today.
https://apnews.com/live/utah-valley-university-charlie-kirk-shooting-updates
Twitter/X thread / transcript of his last interaction. Video stops right when the shot is fired, so you’re spared the bloody aftermath at least.
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1965875820913668534?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1965875820913668534%7Ctwgr%5E172b25eab7ce80c836d67ffb3bddbb2a22b24792%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advocate.com%2Fpolitics%2Fcharlie-kirk-death-reactions
Given that Kirk had said that gun deaths were “unfortunately” (yeah, sure guy, you *totally* think it’s “unfortunate”) worth it to preserve the Second Amendment, I’m glad his loved ones must be comforted that he died for the cause…
It’s kind of refreshing that a gun fondler got to suffer that “unfortunate” price for a change, rather than some random bystander or kid in school
Thoughts and prayers!
@ gaebolga
Yeah, there is an irony there.
But the underlying argument is quite a common one. There’s a similar one going on in the legal community at the moment, about bail. To whit, whilst there are good arguments for a right to bail, is it worth the injuries and deaths caused by people on bail?
In any society there will always be conflicts of rights. Just be nice if we could address those without shooting each other.
@Alan
Absolutely agreed!
Y’all’s lack of a Second Amendment helps with that on your end…
@ gaebolga
The funny thing about the 2nd amendment is that it was originally the 4th, and the 1st amendment was originally 3rd. But the original first two didn’t pass.
This is my favourite abandoned amendment:
“Ninthly. That article 7th, be numbered as article 8th.”
You can tell this was written by lawyers.