Notices by Reay (reay@beige.party)

@aral Wow.

Sorry to hear you had to deal with that.

@readbeanicecream @Binder No idea why statements like theirs are even bothered with any more.

If they denied it, there would still be question about whether they’re doing it and just lying. But to neither confirm nor deny it? 100% they’re doing it.

Normalize 30 hour days so you can get all the obligations and work and such out of the way and can then have six hours for yourself to do whatever the hell you want to.

My post yesterday got ZERO replies, which is unlike you lot, so let's try a far more succinct post:

Does anyone have any suggestions for privacy/security-minded email service providers?

Something just occurred to me yesterday: I’ve never driven outside of North America, and don’t recall seeing much to answer this on TV or in movies, so I’m curious: Are basic traffic signs the same as they are here?

And what are some of the more unusual ones that you know of?

For instance: Is an everyday stop sign a red octagon with white letters in it?

Is yield (to oncoming traffic, moving ahead only when an opening is available) an inverted, rounded red triangle?

#RoadSigns

@Daojoan Let’s try this:

“We’re banning common sense to protect rich white men from ever being accountable.”

Wow, it really does work!

@cyberlyra @tk Wondering if it’ll actually be news to Trump that threatening to invade a country while also slapping tariffs on it results in fewer travellers from that country.

I don’t want to brag, but a lot of hot women have been following me recen—

*reads Masto timeline*

… oh.

@chris Does that mean Canada would finally start using A4 paper and its much more sensible family of paper sizing?

It wasn’t long ago that I was writing a blog entry that came around, somehow, to paper sizing. And I wanted to look up how many backward countries aren’t using “letter” sized paper, only to be totally humbled when I discovered that Canada is one of only around ten counties on the planet, along with the U.S. (shocker!) that use that sizing system.

@br00t4c @kimlockhartga Sounds like a great plan.

The best response to new biological threats, as history tells us, is to just sit back and let it happen. Even with Covid vaccines, over a million people in the U.S. died from it. So yes, on the cusp of a new viral threat, doing nothing is clearly the best course of action.

Does anyone know if languages other than English use apostrophes?

Curious if it’s an Anglophone linguistic creation: a placeholder for missing letters that other languages don’t (need to) use.

Anyone?

@dalias @JosephMenn I’m in Canada so not sure this’ll particularly affect me (I also use a third party backup service, so would be less affected than some either way), but I was curious for anyone affected if that would be a usable workaround.

@dalias @JosephMenn Sincere question that just occurred to me: Would a VPN work for this?

@derek I get up in my head about it. Like, I’d seen a debate online years back about it and someone pointed out that reading a book and hearing a book activate much of the same parts of your brain and so what’s really the fundamental difference if we call listening to a book “reading”, but in a quick check online I can’t verify that and then I realize I’m WAY overthinking it and should just enjoy what I enjoy.

… having said that, I’m totally calling it reading for the sake of seeing how many books I can get though (COUGHreadCOUGH) this year.

When I worked in a news environment years back, I found that (hold onto your butts) hearing hours of news a day was an emotional and spiritual grind, so sought out more comedy to offset it. Podcasts especially.

Well, it won’t surprise you to find I’m looking for more comedy these days, plus trying to read (/listen to audiobooks… shut up, it’s still kind of reading) more.

If anyone’s looking for good, funny audiobooks, I’d recommend any by Samantha Irby and at least All Things Aside by Iliza Shlesinger (the only one of hers I’ve tried out), both read by the authors, and SO good because of that.

Added bonus to audiobooks: Apps like Libby let you borrow audiobooks from libraries and are nuanced enough that you can control their speed. Irby talks (reads?) a bit slowly for my tastes, so I notched those books up to an added speed of 15%.

Do check out those books.

And meanwhile, if you have any favourite comedy podcasts or funny books to recommend, please send them my way in the comments.

#bookstodon

@AnthonyJK @falcennial Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit Exhibit A: Denmark.

They have an exceptional financial safety net that ensures that every working person can leave their current job to look for other work they’d prefer, while their basic bills are covered. This allows them to take needed time to find work that’s a good fit rather than feeling pressured to take anything they can get.

I assume this also pushes businesses as a whole r o offer good wages and benefits because they would need to entice workers to them instead of offering crap wages knowing someone desperate will just have to take it.

I suspect this may be part of why they’re consistently rated among the happiest countries on the planet.

@Infoseepage @protonprivacy @molly0xfff I signed up for Tuta last night and will be shifting everything there away from Protonmail as quickly as possible.

I can't and won't abide by Yen doing this in the first place, then him blaming the readers for mistaking his words (I mean, are you kidding me?), and how it's all been handled since then, by him and evidently the company as well.

This isn't how you handle things, folks. As the mass exodus should demonstrate.

@GottaLaff @Wileymiller And there will absolutely be those who voted for him who will come to regret doing so — the likes of that lady in his first term whose illegal alien husband was deported and she was explaining that she thought Trump meant OTHER illegal aliens, which was why she voted for him — but yes, to your point, meanwhile, everyone who didn’t vote him has to deal with him, too.

Afternoon, all --

My 14-year-old is considering joining Masto and has some pretty specific interests.

Rather than having them go through the wild west of the global Masto feeds to find accounts of interest like I had to -- that was a loooong process for me initially when I joined, when I had to curate a list of follows by checking out random-ass feeds from everyone everywhere, and it was very much
Post in Tamil
Post about German politics
Dad Joke
Gay porn
Deep dive question about Linux
More Tamil
Photo of tree reflected in lake
GAY. PORN.
Quippy web comic...
-- so to spare the child any undue mental trauma, a) what advice would parents of young Mastonians have for keeping things age-appropriate and practical? And b) could anyone please suggest teen-friendly accounts covering any/all of these topics for me to scope out:

Animals/Oceans (I know of some Hourly/Daily animal photo accounts, but throw them all my way)

Space/NASA

Drawing and animation

Nature

Therian

Caves and cave diving

Creative writing advice

Age-appropriate fan fic

Sure, sex is great, but have you ever seen someone driving super aggressively to get ahead of everyone and then, even keeping a steady, decent speed and driving politely, pulled up next to them at the next red light?