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people are told that equinox is the start of autumn and yet can't understand why it starts to feel like autumn weeks before. but if you go by the old calendars, equinox isn't the start: it's when autumn really comes into itself and is entirely its own season.

it used to be, in celtic countries but also elsewhere, that the quarter days — equinoxes and solstices — marked the mid points of the seasons, whereas the cross-quarter days marked their beginnings. the cross-quarter days are at the beginning of february, may, august, and november, and correspond to the modern/christian groundhog's day/candlemas, may day, lammas, and hallowe'en/all saints'.

but just like solstices and equinoxes, the cross-quarter days are specific astronomical points in the year and technically fall sometime during the first week of the month in question.

so northern hemisphere spring is born in february, when the wind begins to change and the air feels different sometimes. summer in may, when the world has truly come to life. autumn in august, when the wind changes again, and winter in november when the world begins to sleep.

this is why winter and summer solstice are traditionally known as midwinter and midsummer. and in china, this time of year is when the mid-autumn festival occurs.

so if the dates of the seasons have never really made sense to you, maybe this is why?

whatever you do, have a blessed and beautiful equinox. may we all find balance today, and rest in the darkness to come.

in golden evening sunlight, a field of dried corn (maize) glowing almost copper-bronze. the sky above is pale blue with scattered grey and white clouds. the maize runs on a slight diagonal up from the bottom left of the image, and there's some dried grass just visible in the bottom right.

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Today I refactored the code when sending files in FluffyChat. Now the app does not try to load all bytes from the files at once. It first checks the sizes and queries the max file size from the server.

Previously the app could even crash when picking a too large file. Especially videos. Now it is possible to pick large videos and let the app try to compress them, without the risk, that the app crashes.

This should make sending large files a much smoother experience.

github.com/krille-chan/fluffyc…

mastodon - Link to source

🚲 Rolling through life one pedal at a time.

Can you imagine a city with less noise and less air pollution?

Today we experienced it here in Brussels and in hundreds of EU cities on #CarFreeDay!

1929 cities from 43 countries are participating with a single motto: ‘Shared public spaces’ and show their commitment to cleaner and more sustainable urban transport during #MobilityWeek.

This image shows a street scene with cyclists and runners moving towards a large mural in the background that reads "THE FUTURE IS EUROPE." In the foreground, a person on a bike wearing a pink jacket and helmet is on the left, while two runners are on the right, one wearing a red shirt and the other in black running gear. Additional cyclists are seen further down the road, heading toward the same direction. The surrounding area features tall buildings and urban infrastructure, with street signs, lampposts, and some pedestrian activity. The atmosphere is active, with the mural being a prominent focal point.
#mobilityweek #carfreeday

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The BT Speak (blazietech.com/bt-speak-pro), particularly in its "traditional" (non-GUI) mode, takes such an interesting approach to implementing a UI specifically for blind people.

From the mid 2000s until I got my BT Speak, I thought the only viable options were to either implement a screen reader for a GUI, or implement a fully custom UI designed specifically for speech output and whatever kind of keyboard or keypad the device supports. The BT Speak does neither. 1/?

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in reply to Matt Campbell

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Jayson Smith

Very interesting writeup on this. Now if they want to keep everything open-source, I don't really see how they can allow NLS talking book playback. Yes I know that in a good security system only the private keys and not the source code need to stay hidden, but still I can't see NLS being happy with anyone being able to look at the source code on-device and find out where those keys are stored.

sharkey - Link to source

In der Anwendung von freier, offener und wirtschaftlich fair betriebener Software sehen die Lukis eine praktische Verbindung zur #Freiheit des Evangeliums und vieler Narrative biblischer Texte.

Das war auch an diesem @luki@kirche.social Wochenende im Theologischen Seminar Herborn wieder zu spüren.

Ganz praktisch ging es z.B. um #GNUTaler, /e/OS, digitales in Kirchengemeinden, #Grist, #Matrix und Bots, #DeltaChat, #ElementX und die Server-Admin bei @hostsharing@geno.social

Die Location war ünrigens einzigartig ;-)

#FediKirche #digtialeKirche #selbstbestimmtDigital#Linux #FOSS #OpenSource

Ein Teil des Schlosses Herborn von unten mit zwei Türmen fotografiert. Davor herbstlich gefärbtes Laub, blauer Himmel im Hintergrund.
#linux #foss #matrix #opensource #deltachat #Freiheit #ElementX #fedikirche #selbstbestimmtdigital #gnutaler #grist #digtialekirche @Hostsharing eG @LUKi e.V.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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I've got some news about office environments. The absolute worst part for me was dealing with the rampant gossip and laziness. People would chat all day, accomplish next to nothing, and then pretend they were some kind of heroes for staying late. People walk around, take lunch or bathroom breaks, attend meetings, etc. Office or Home people will walk around. Stop writing stupid stories to promote back-to-office culture and risk everyone’s health.
Are remote workers really working all day? No. Here's what they're doing instead. USA TODAY by Jessica Guynn in USA Today website

akkoma - Link to source

Sensitive content

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Reading about how social media collapses contexts so Black Women in particular feel compelled to put forth a lowest common denominator "respectable" self to real and imagined white audiences. There is little room for code switching to be able to present your authentic self when spaces aren't created with you in mind. academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/…

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From a Mailing List:

As some of you may already know, System76 is working on their new Linux graphical interface, the COSMIC desktop. They have created a form with some questions related to accessibility. If anyone is interested in participating in the survey, please access the address below:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

#accessibility #Linux #foss #orca #blind

#Accessibility #linux #foss #blind #orca

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akkoma - Link to source

one of my regrets is when i wrote that article on stylometric fingerprinting. i should have waited to get better at stylometric mimicry and focused on how i did that to improve anonymity and make it harder to connect alts (a bunch of custom vale.sh rules to remove style and conform to a boring technical style, then reintroducing a target’s style). instead i kind of spawned this community of people interested in using it for forensics.

i know they’ll see this post but idc at this point lmao

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Seirdy

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Seirdy

on the other hand, LLM slop awareness has created more bad stylometric analysts than any blog post of mine ever could.

“this was clearly written by an LLM because it uses [very common vocabulary preferences]!”

There are clear tells, and LLMs like ChatGPT do have a set of (cringeworthy) emergent loose style guides, but I usually don’t rely on this sort of thing. I don’t have a linguistics background. I can claim to be good at fingerprinting avoidance but actual fingerprinting is too error prone.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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My BT Speak Pro (blazietech.com/bt-speak-pro), a pocket computer designed for blind people using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, consistently has an internal CPU temperature of around 50 degrees Celsius (as reported by "vcgencmd measure_temp") when mostly idle (that is, all that's happening is the SSH connection from my PC where I'm running that command). I wonder if that's normal for the Pi 4, and if it can be lowered, or if that's just a limitation of that SoC.
in reply to Stewart Russell

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Matt Campbell

@scruss I don't actually depend on this device for anything important; I bought it specifically to experiment with it. So as long as I don't brick it and can undo my changes, I'm happy to try things that might degrade performance, especially if they can reduce power consumption (which I assume is correlated with heat) and prolong battery life.
@Stewart Russell

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“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

When people call you a “snowflake” just remember they're quoting Fight Club.

Fight Club.

A satire written by a gay man about how male fragility causes men to destroy themselves, resent society, and become radicalized. And that Tyler Durden isn't the hero but a personification of the main character's mental illness.

His “snowflake” speech is a dig at how fascists use dehumanizing language to breed loyalty from insecure people.

#FightClub #MentalHealth #ToxicMasculinity #Psychology #MentalIllness #Snowflake

Tyler Durden in Fight Club
#MentalHealth #psychology #snowflake #toxicmasculinity #fightclub #mentalillness

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Google have really stolen an accessibility march on Apple with image descriptions with rich detail, built right into Talkback.
No more sharing to other apps, just focus on an image, single tap with three fingers and select Describe Image.
Browsing images on social media has never been so interesting or easy.
Here is an example, taken at Bewdly safari park:

A rhinoceros is standing in a grassy field in front of a wooden fence. The rhinoceros is facing the left of the image, its head is down and its long horn is visible. The rhinoceros is gray in color with a large, bulbous body and short, thick legs. The grass in the field is a vibrant green. The fence is made of brown wood and has a wire mesh on top. Beyond the fence, there are trees with green foliage. The image is taken from a slightly elevated angle. The time is 11:29.
Thank you Google. As a totally blind person from birth, I never thought I would be interested in pictures, I love them now.

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