Notices by Ritalin Invitees (intransitivelie@beige.party)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gwynnion/117056551833025267

Holy shit I can only boost this once so you're getting it quoted too to make sure you read it.

I regret to inform everyone that my copy of QBittorrent escaped its sandbox last night and downloaded a whole bunch of content owned by major corporations, and then my copy of Jellyfin broke containment and added those unfortunately-downloaded media files to its various libraries. I'm conducting an internal investigation to figure out how this happened, which will involve consuming these media files until the answers become apparent. Thank you for your cooperation during this trying time.

There's a classic joke along the lines of, "Isn't it romantic seeing all those hearts carved on trees commemorating two people in love? But why do so many people bring knives on dates?"

First off, I bet a lot of heart graffiti isn't done on dates. Even so, I carry a knife with me at all times. Two actually. They're on my Leatherman. A fuckton of people carry either multitools or knives because knives are handy as fuck. Yes, like guns, knives can injure or kill people. Unlike guns, to injure or kill is not a knife's only or indeed even main purpose (unless you're some special-forces black-ops CHUD who does shit like that). They're useful tools. Humans have been using knives for thousands of years and a date is no reason not to be prepared.

So the next time you see a heart carved in a tree, don't ask why people bring knives on dates. Ask why they felt the need to damage a helpless tree instead of doing the right thing and carving their names into a cop's tire instead.

I don't recall who on here recommended Dogfish IPA to me, but bless you because I can't get enough minutes of hops.

"14 hours of hopping? This beer is legally classified as hops juice? Sign me up!"

This is all because I can't drink grapefruit juice.

PSA: if you take basically any medication, you should check before you drink grapefruit juice or eat grapefruit. It contains an enzyme which interferes with your stomach's ability to metabolize medications, and it can lead to overdosing on *a lot* of drugs. Check before you risk it, because not all meds carry this warning that should.

Hops does not involve the same risks, obviously, though alcohol and meds are a standard risk that you shouldn't take lightly.

Ok fedi experts: I have a bluski filter set up to catch posts that link to bluski, but I'd like to filter based on usernames to catch bridge accounts that people boost into my timeline. How do I do this? I'm using Fedilab if that makes a difference.

I know I can block the bridge, but occasionally I want to see these things.

The CHUDs who are the most visible vanguard of the fashy dipshit brigade, the ones who say the quiet stuff loud, just say this shit because it gets views. They believe it, don't get me wrong, but we've moved past the era when it was considered impolite to say fashy stuff loudly. They count on your shock to drive an audience to them.

So fashy CHUD stormtroops of memetic glory, they're going gloves off because the immune system of the body politic has pretty much failed. Any audience is a good audience. Any view is a good view. You can't do "sunlight is the best disinfectant" with these people. The solution, and I don't like it but there it is, is to bully them. It's to make fashy dipshits scared to share their fashy opinions again.

That's not sufficient, of course. You've got to do more than simply drive it underground. But the problem right now isn't that people need to be made more aware of the fashy dipshit talking points.

We don't argue with fascists. We make them shut up. Take that to mean whatever you want it to mean.

I've realized that I don't really like hot beverages because, well, they make me hot and I'm already overheated pretty much constantly. So I'm macrodosing cold brew and chocolate covered graham crackers because my body is a finely-tuned machine which converts stimulants into desperation.

@dalias
You don't have to lie. They're legally not allowed to call to harass you, at least in my state. Most people don't know that though, unfortunately. I'm more amused by their desperation than anything else.

The debt collection agency my spurious medical bill has been transferred to is getting desperate. They're offering reduced rates. All debt must go. Etc.

Collection agencies are bullshit. Credit ratings are bullshit. Medical debt is bullshit. The financial system is propped up by bullshit.

My parents never lied to me about Santa. Other grownups did, but my parents were very forthright. "Santa didn't give you presents this year because he's doing a stretch upstate for indecent exposure," they told me every year. And I appreciate that.

Of course, when Santa got out of the pen and I turned 15, I got to put away childish things and help my mother on the roof where she waited every Christmas Eve to try to snag the neighbors' gifts as Santa dropped them down the chimney. We had a secondhand pool skimmer and some football cleats. It was fun, apart from the time my mother fell off the roof and landed in the prizewinning hydrangea bushes. That wasn't a fun Christmas.

If I ever had kids, I would tell them the truth: Santa didn't bring them presents this year because my mother accidentally shot him with the crossbow she kept to ward off prowlers. I guess Santa was a little late that year, and my mother thought he was a prowler, so she winged him with a broad tip and we didn't get presents anymore. Or ever, really.

But I believe. I heard Santa yelling expletives and then flying away with his coked-up reindeer. My father always said he would have stolen the catalytic converter from the sleigh if Santa hadn't been so watchful, and really, that kind of puts the lie to my mother's claims that she thought Santa was a prowler, but she never lied about his existence, and that's the important thing.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

@RegGuy
They will in the 2030s right before the second coming of Jesus. Nostradamus said so, and he's never been wrong about anything.

@perdantperdant @pikesley
They don't count 😝

@perdantperdant @pikesley
No, in all seriousness, I couldn't think of good jokes for them.

People in the future are going to be super confused by Windows versions.

"So there was Windows, right?"

"Well, mostly Windows 3.1."

"Which was the third version?"

"No."

"So then Windows 4 must have come after that."

"No, they jumped to version 95."

"So then Windows 96..."

"No, then they skipped to 98."

"Oh, but it was for the year it came out, right?"

"Kinda."

"But surely after that..."

"Well, after that they actually moved away from version numbers and gave them names."

"Oh, like MacOS!"

"Sort of..."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the first version was XP."

"What does that stand for?"

"No idea."

"Did they just use letters after that?"

"No, then they named the next version Vista."

"Like... the stuff you see out of a window! Ok, so the version after that was Windows Outlook, right?"

"No, the version after that was Windows 7."

"7?!"

"Yeah."

"But... It wasn't the seventh version of Windows even."

"Yeah, but the version after 7 was 8."

"Okay, back on track!"

"Not really. The next version was 10."

"Because it came out in 2010?"

"No."

"Fuck."

"Then came Windows 11, and they stopped releasing new versions for a while and just added LLM panopticon nonsense until everyone switched to Linux in the 2030s and then when the second coming of Jesus fried everyone's hard drives..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Windows II: The Empire Strikes Back..."

"No, that was Windows V."

"I give up."

Instead of reporting on the dollar amounts of corporate fines, the news should just say how many minutes of profit the fine represents. "The EPA slapped Apple with a two second fine," is much more honest.

Tell you what: reply to this toot with a number and I'll give you a sentence from that page of the book I haven't actually written.

I voted with my wallet and now I can't get my credit card out of the voting machine send help

I'm pretty good at eating sunflower seeds. I can remove the shells with my teeth and spit the shells out while maintaining a stock of unshelled seeds in one cheek and chewing the kernel on the other side. It's not exactly a socially-acceptable talent to have, but through practice I've gotten pretty good regardless.

I don't really like the outdoors or my neighbors, but if I did, I'd sit on my porch in a rocker or something and go through bags of sunflower seeds while people-watching, I guess. That's probably what I'd do if I were of a different era. "There's ol' Whatsisname, the town recluse," they'd say, gesturing vaguely in my direction. "He's harmless enough. Just sits there, mostly. If you bring him a bag of sunflower seeds he'll tell you a weird story that don't make no sense about how he once bit William Henry Harrison. Don't pay him no mind though."

Did I ever tell you about the time I bit Bill Clinton? He was visiting my town and the Secret Service rounded up all the vagrants and ne'er-do-wells (ne'er-does-well?) and made us sweep the street for the Presidential motorcade because they were concerned that Bill might try jogging and trip over a stick or something. As a principle ne'er-do-well (ne'er-did-well?) I was philosophically opposed to street-sweeping as an occupation, so I was trying to sabotage my broom by drinking sloe gin and walking funny, and suddenly there was Bill Clinton, Slick Willie himself, staring me in the face with that slick look of his. At the time, we didn't know just how slick, but it still was pretty slick.

So naturally, being the bon-vivant (ne'er-doing-well?) and raconteur that I am, I felt it incumbent upon me to strike up a conversation, though I have to say that Bill wasn't the charismatic and ebullient character he's often made out to be. Mainly he kept saying that I was making a mistake, that he wasn't Bill Clinton at all but merely a janitor at the elementary school and would I please stop shouting. But I think we all know Slick Willie's games, so I didn't believe him.

My mouth was feeling terribly dry after all the talking I was having to do with this massive blowhard of a president, so obviously I had to take a sip or five of my tipple of choice, which I said was sloe gin but was actually just paint thinner that I had poures some lemon-scented Pledge into for flavor, if we're being totally honest with each other as friends should. It was akin to sloe gin, and that's what matters. I offered our twenty-third president a slug as well, being the friendly sort that I think we can all agree I am. Well, in the honesty I'm striving for, I didn't do much offer as I poured some down his throat, given that he was the goddamn seventeenth president of these United States and therefore couldn't be seen to be accepting strange liquor from a ne'er-do-well (ne'er-do-better?) as myself, which I understood.

Things get a little hazy at that point, probably because of the lingering head trauma, but when next we find ourselves, our intrepid hero is administering CPR to Mr. William Thomas Jefferson Clinton Rodham President with enthusiasm, because apparently Slick Willie can't handle his booze. There are crying children gathered around us for some reason. What crying children are doing in the street during a presidential motorcade I can't say, and why the Secret Service didn't enlist them to help gather sticks is uncertain, but what I can say is that Mr. William George Jefferson Clinton suddenly returned to the land of the living in a miracle, as your intrepid hero is many things but a knower of how to do CPR is not among them.

The police arrived and escorted me away, as they were bound to do. I mean, I'd just saved the life of the president. Ne'er-do-well indeed?! (E'er-do-well?) I expected a medal, but I guess goodness is its own reward.

Then later, at his second inauguration, I jumped onto stage and bit Bill Clinton because I didn't think much of his fiscal policy. You probably didn't hear about it. They kept it out of the papers.

Now there's your story. Where are my seeds?