Notices by abadidea (0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange), page 2

The changes are disorienting, but Amsterdam Zuid Station does feel like a major train station now and not like a dorp platform that’s perpetually having its busiest day of the century

RE: https://oldbytes.space/@Kroc/116855628444343133

I distinctly remember that my edition of Encarta (they released a new one every year for a while) would play a recording of Martin Luther King Jr saying “I have a dream” at bootup. The ability to browse hundreds of such historically significant little clips was considered revolutionary for personal edification. We all had a lot of dreams back then

found a relic from a happier, more naive age.

(I did not work for Twitter Security team, they gave me this shirt as a gift at defcon in 2014 or so)

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/116843978394340259

fresh reminder to make sure all your lovely Bandcamp albums are backed up locally before you wake up one day and the download button is gone

#bandcamp #BandcampFriday

I have clarified any and all confusions you may have had about ancient Chinese political thought in one convenient chart.

#history #politics #classicalchinese #philosophy

Terribly amused by this alleged "CEO" who set up a bot to make himself sound smart by generating "intellectual discourse" replies on his behalf, which proceeded to write a comically high-brow pseudo-intellectual reply to a joke diagram, get flagged by one of Mastodon's biggest accounts (hi) and vaporized by mods within literal seconds (thank you mods) :neodog__w_:

Be on the lookout for these sorts of deep-sounding but vacuous replies. There's probably more of them being run by the same person/group and whatever reason they have to want to build up fake "intellectual discourse" on mastodon can't be good

(LONG POST) Fell down a fascinating rabbit hole today about a few little boys and a little girl in ancient China about 2100 years ago.

Emperor Wu went mad with paranoia in his old age, accusing everyone of using witchcraft against him. This led to him needlessly launching attacks on his own eldest son, who never intended to betray him, and the prince's own sons. This whole branch of the royal household was wiped out in the attack. Except... there was a baby. A brand new baby boy, only a few weeks old, the Emperor's great-grandchild. The baby's name was Bingyi.

Someone brought baby Bingyi to a prison rather than kill him as ordered. The prison warden personally took good care of him; when word got out and he was ordered to finish the job, he refused to kill the baby, knowing it would presumably cost him his life. However, the Emperor came to his senses and stopped the witch hunt. The order to kill baby Bingyi and this random prison warden along with him never came. Bingyi safely disappeared into the household of distant relatives, to live an ordinary middle-class life.

Emperor Wu died of old age, and his dying wish was for the crown to skip over all the sons he distrusted and go straight to the only one not yet old enough to have earned his distrust, the surprise offspring of a May-December fling. Emperor Zhao was still a small child. He was immediately married-on-paper to another small child, Lady Shangguan.

A few years later, Lady Shangguan's family was accused of planning a coup by Zhao's regent and executed, but she was spared on account of being too young to have possibly been in on it.

Zhao was, apparently, a completely reasonable and level-headed young man. He showed wisdom in dealing with court rumors and did not do the ridiculous things young people with power often do. When he found out that Bingyi was alive, he visited with the other boy, treated him with kindness and made sure his needs were met.

Unfortunately, Zhao dropped dead when he was 20. (No indications of foul play, he was just unlucky). He had no children; his marriage to Lady Shangguan may not have even ever been consummated. The Empress Dowager was 15 years old.

A nephew of Zhao was brought in to be the new emperor; he was slightly older than Lady Shangguan, at 17. And he... partied. Immediately. Extremely. Incessantly. He was hinted to stop. He was told to stop. He was told more boldly and explicitly to stop. He did not stop.

An entire 27 days after this loser nephew took the throne, Lady Shangguan put on her best dress, entered the court, sat down on the throne, and called for the nephew. He came in. She unrolled a list of over 1000 complaints that had accrued since he arrived at the palace. She fired him. A 15-year-old girl with no actual hard power fired the Emperor of China in front of all his ministers. And he turned around, left, and went home.

(And in a very Ancient Chinese approach, he was allowed to live but most of his attendants were executed for allowing him to grow into such a brat. Only a handful who were known to have boldly rebuked him were spared.)

Lady Shangguan was now in direct defacto control of the empire. However, she understood that trying to hold on to that for the rest of her life would be destabilizing, since her claims were paper-thin as the childless widow of a child-emperor, whose family was already executed for treason. She sent for Bingyi.

Bingyi ruled under the name Emperor Xuan, and is considered to have been one of the wisest emperors, being possessed of common sense and moral sympathy for the poor after a heathy, normal upbringing. Lady Shangguan quietly stepped back after thus saving the empire from disastrous misrule, never remarried, and was pretty much the only person on either side of her family to never get executed, exiled or driven to unalive.

Lady Shangguan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Empress_Dowager_Shangguan

Emperor Zhao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Zhao_of_Han

Bingyi / Emperor Xuan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Xuan_of_Han

Loser Nephew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_He_of_Changyi

#history #longpost

Odin saw y'all's posts

news article for business audiences: "An algorithm is a set of instructions that tells AI what to do."

[I lay my head down on my desk and wait for the oceans to rise]

the temperature has dipped below 30 after a high of 37 (99), so I think it's safe to call that Odin has officially survived The Hottest Day Of His Life (So Far)

He was a real trooper about it. Didn't fuss, though he can't have been comfortable. We hosed him down three times.

One more “Peoples of the North, hear my plea” for the Netherlands and friends today:

If you leave your child or dog in the car today while you run into the grocery store, they will seriously actually literally be dead by the time you get back.

When I lived in Virginia, they put signs up in grocery store parking lots with dog icons to remind you of this. It only takes a few minutes of a windows-closed car parked in direct heatwave sunlight to kill a toddler or a dog.

Since such heat rarely happens here, I expect a lot of people don’t realize just how serious this is.

#netherlands #heatwave #amsterdam

Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words

1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)

2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)

3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.

4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.

10:30 pm shenanigans after a hot day

"Hmm. This website is kinda sketchy. I think I'll actually check the privacy policy"

[the specific page of the privacy policy is error 500]

"Ominous. And the terms of service?"

[the specific page of the terms of service is error 500]

Every once in a while, I ride the train past a spot where I know for a fact that there was a serious train accident a few years ago. Whole train lifted off the rails, flew over a canal and landed on its side in a field. (No fatalities among passengers — good safety design.)

I saw the aftermath with my own eyes. I can mark exactly where it made impact in a random nondescript field. But the scars are gone. Anyone who didn’t already know would never guess what a strange, memorable thing happened in this boring field.

I think all land inhabited by humans must be like this. Pockmarked by psychic scars of the strange, fantastic, wonderful and terrible, the best and worst moments of someone’s life. And it just looks like some billowing grass.

I made the mistake of saying “she’s not here” out loud which only served to convince Odin that we absolutely must not move until She appears.

(10:20 pm, no camera shenanigans)

I'm rather bee-phobic after a Formative Childhood Experience. A live bumblebee tumbled out of Odin's fur onto my bare foot. I am proud of myself for getting it out of the house alive without panicking (and grateful that it, in turn, did not panic-sting me)

“I could do that before breakfast” turns out to be a Boast Most Ancient.

#classicalchinese #history

@rysiek gods, I hate being called an expat. People who don’t *think* of themselves as white supremacists buy into this framing and try to drag me into it

We’re both so normal.