Notices by Kit Bashir (unixbigot@aus.social), page 3

@foone I worked for the company that made these in the 90s. and they got bigger than that.

Why this, when

SuperJuicyFlavouristicSpecialAussieCitrus

was right there?

The “carer notes” for my release from hospital today cautioned to be aware of impaired judgment after anaesthesia and said “the patient may appear to understand. and acknowledge instructions but fail to carry them out” and my beloved spouse of almost 30 years said “how is this new?”.

The stone circle had stood for twelve thousand years. On midwinter eve and at other times, followers of the old religion still gathered to perform the ancient rites at turn of the seasons.

The druids assembled in the center of the circle by torchlight, to chant the ancient cadences.

The chant was wrong. Where the stones should ring and glow, there was only a dull *thud*

A woman in a lab coat and wearing the skull of a bear emerged from behind Old Placidity, the larger of the central stones.

“Oh, you’re here. I’m sorry but the maintenance window has run overtime, one of the Diamonds Of Eternity has fallen into the tape reader and bent one of the pins. Until Colin gets back from Inverness with a replacement the Circle is stuck in safe mode”.

The lead celebrant protested. “But, but. It’s **midwinter*+. The rite /must/ be completed lest Fimbulwinter manifest and the sun be banished!”

“Yeah, it’s a pain, eh?. Have you got a cellphone? No? Here use mine, you can run the rite on the emulator just fine.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

Do not speak to me of the ancient magic, witch, I was there when it was released.

You might think working a phone repair kiosk is a waste of my skills. Yeah nah.

Today, this kid came in with an iPhone that was more than cracked, it was banana-fied.

“What happened?” I asked, turning the wreckage over in my hands. I don’t think there was a single salvageable part. “And have you considered just upgrading?”

“My novel’s on there”, the kid said, wringing his hands anxiously. “It got ran over by a hauler bot.”

“Got a backup?”. The tears in the kid’s eyes were all the answer he needed to give. “Okay, event rebasing is the only way to fix this”, I gestured at the price board, “can you afford that?”

He gulped. “Uh, just.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Can you really fix it?”. Hope flickered in his eyes.

“Let’s see, no win no fee”.

I held the smashed and bent phone-ana in my hands and turned it over, feeling its shape in space and time. With my /other sight/ I saw its lifeline leading away from where the kid had been, a shimmering trail of history leading back in time. With the fingers of my mind, I felt back along the lifeline until i felt the bump, beyond which the device had been a flat rectangle. Exploring the shape of the damage event I twisted the lifeline into a loop. Now here’s the tricky bit; if you have the knack, and you dig your nails in /just so/ you can pinch out a moment in time and detach it. I rubbed the lifeline with my mental fingers, smoothing out the join where the excised moment had been.

Blinking back to the present, I powered on the phone and handed it back to its owner. “All good?”

The kid’s fingers flew over the screen as he checked on his preciousss, and breathed a huge sigh. “All good. That’s incredible, can you fix *anything* like that?”

“Almost. Like?”

He avoided my gaze, staring down at my hands on the counter with their iridescent nails, matching the highlight colours in my hair. He made eye contract briefly, wide eyes again a bit teary. “Even…..me?”

Oh, that. “Absolutely not. *wink* Such things are not done and definitely not by me. Clear?”

*nod*

“Okay, hold still.” It’s a different technique than rebasing, especially because i like to spread the change over a few years to conceal the edit.

“All done”.

“Oh wow”, she said, reaching up to feel her shoulder length mauve hair (clearly I’d nailed that detail), then taking a twirl. “How, how much do I owe you?”

“On the house and you weren’t here. “

The tears were back. “Thank you thank you, this is the best. “

“My pleasure, have a great life”

“Thanks, you too” she said. “Bye!”

“Wait! Don’t forget your phone!”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

@bri_seven grew my nails out and did this last year but then backslid and bit nails. Trying again. Have acquired all the resistor-code colors.

BRISBANE (AAP): Cat lovers applaud breakthrough in quantum research.

According to a paper in the RSPCA Journal of Quantum Mechanics and Hairball Management, issues on sale today, the phenomenon of unpredictable behaviour that cat lovers know as “chasing the brain cell” can indeed be traced to quantum mechanical origins. Trace amounts of iodine 131 in the hypothalamus undergo beta-minus decay with the emitted quanta initiating a neural cascade, activating the same pathways as more normally triggered by neurotransmitter uptake.

One practical outcome of this research is a formal proof that the “belly trap” experiment (where a proffered belly that is rubbed results unpredictably in either in purring or biting) is exactly isomorphic to the so called “Schrödinger’s Cat” experiment. In both cases a quantum phenomenon (radioactive decay) induces the experimental outcome, with “rubbing the belly” being the measurement equivalent to “opening the box”

The paper goes on to speculate about the potential for important advances in feline mechanics such as

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

“WHO DARES AWAKEN ME FROM MY AEONS-LONG SLUMBER?!”

“Yes, very good, excellent delivery, forgive me for not laughing, but you’re the sixth one today. You girls should have workshopped your jokes together before going into stasis”

“Oh. Ah? How long have we got until the big 10k, and how are my investments doing? And do you still have updog in the future?”

“It’s 2288, forget about year ten thousand we’ve got bigger problems. Your investments tanked in the quantum wars. And nice try but the last corpsicle got me with that one”

“Fuck. What now?”

“Asteroid impact is what
now”

“Cool, and you need programmers to calculate how to divert it.”

“Nope, we did that already.”

“And that worked?”

“Noooooot as such, no. Typo in the value of the gravitational constant.”

“Woopsy, so you need a cadre of 21st century digital girls to brainstorm a last minute plan B?”

“Nope, plan B worked just fine, the folks at the Indonesian moon base worked an incantation to kick the Earth a day forward in time, while the asteroid sailed through the empty spot. Well mostly fine; I can’t get used to the month being four days longer now.”

“Aha! You need us to work out how to get the moon back in orbit?”

“No, we’ll live with that. We need you to fix the timezone data files”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

Hello Friends, my current contract role wraps up at the end of January, so I am looking to get #FediHired FT or PT in the arena of Internet of Things #IoT , Embedded Systems, and Making Friends With The Robot Overlords When They Were Babies.

I have an electronics and advanced manufacturing lab in Brisbane, so am ideally placed to assist businesses who need a "hardware wizard on retainer".

LBT¹: A reminder that when any journalist or politician says “The Economy” you should substitute “Rich People’s Yacht Money”.

eg: “Increased Investment in AI will benefit Rich People’s Yacht Money”

¹ https://mastodon.social/@anon_opin/113877064367952191

What passes for logic in industrial design at Queensland Rail. The last generation of trains had two big green "open doors" buttons at either side of the doors.
The new generation trains instead have the "emergency open" and "emergency intercom" buttons in THOSE EXACT SAME LOCATIONS. Both of these bear "large fine for misuse" warnings.

The actual open-door button is in the middle of the doors. The PA reminds passengers of the location of the exit button at every stop, because bad design is forever.

The coffee machine was huge, and stainless steel, and took beans from an enormous hopper, ground them and produced a beverage that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee (GNU DNA).

Spotting my face another attendee indicated a corner of the room with their cup hand. “Try that one over there, it’s better. “

“Looks the same”, “I noted, what’s different”

“I got into the service menu and switched it from ‘entirely unlike’ to ‘sort of like’!”

“Only ‘Sort of’?”

“That’s as high as it goes”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

I laughed and laughed when you gave me that nightstand lamp with black LEDs. Perfect gag gift for a tech nerd, I thought.

Imagine how surprised I was when it WORKED. It drowns out all the blue and white LEDs in my chargers and other bedside kitsch. On max darkness it even holds back the dawn for an hour.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

ETA: inspiration by @james Cridland

Hear me out here
< http >
< head >
< link rel=“street_address” … >
< link rel=“business_hours” … >

“Residents of Chryse Planitia are urged to evacuate immediately…” my handunit was relaying the emergency broadcast “…before the approaching terrastorm cuts off egress. Bring medications and pets but leave household robots…”.

Not on my watch. “Janie, prep the crawler and the cargo pod.” I called. To K7-VA I said “put the word out on the Mesh, K: assemble at the Cenotaph, we’ve got room for every ‘bot in town.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

*SLAM* "Damn!". Another morning leaving the house in a rush, another set of car keys still on the key-hook behind the locked door.

Any parent knows that messaging the TeenEaters "Hey, let your dad in, I'm locked out" NEVER WORKS. But I have a trick that does. Adjacent universes differ by only the tiniest details. So if I slip next door to a universe where I'm home, I can borrow a key (chaoswalking runs in my family). The key always fits. It's just like borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbour.

It takes a few more universes today before I find one where other-I'm home. When she opens the door she looks me up and down---"locked out, eh? you're a long way from home, sonny".

The key still worked.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

I signed up for a black-market time-travel tour as soon as I heard about them. (The first rule of Time Club etc.)

There’s an hour long pre-mission briefing on how you must be extremely careful in what you say or do as the smallest event could have future-changing consequences.

After that, they give you back your money, admit that there is no time machine, and tell you “now go and do the smallest thing you can to make the future better”.

I’m not even mad.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

In North Queensland (the pointy bit at the top of Australia) it is typically mid 30s Celsius (mid 90s F) and 90% humidity all summer. You can’t swim in the ocean because this time of year is when the venomous jellyfish breed. You can’t swim in rivers because they are teeming with four metre long estuarine crocodiles. The only place to swim is fast flowing mountain gorges. These places are extremely popular, having not so many killer animals, and plenty of opportunity for young humans to be loud and splashy. However vortices in the water kill a few people every year by pinning them against rocks underwater. There are also venomous plants (the worst pain i have ever experienced). I’m not sure if there are any killer fungi, but i would be entirely unsurprised. I don’t know why i am telling you this.

@cstross oh yeah, so if I’d stuck with “15yo” that would have been accurate (the trade paperback I have says ©2011). (Hey is that a cameo from @feorag as the Beer Nerd in the home brew shop?)