Any time, and this is no an exaggeration, any time I stumble upon a piece of code, a translated string, a design, or a text that looks "off" I always ask the author "did you use any sort of LLM to make this?" and the answer is always "yes".

This shit is wrong, it produces wrong things, it gives the illusion of efficiency and productivity but it's just wrong.

Today is day 8 of 25 Christmas Songs in 25 Days. The year is 1963. The artist is Johnny Cash. The album is The Christmas Spirit. The label is Columbia, although my copy is a European release on the DOL label.

As much as I love this album and want everyone to hear it at least once, I’m enough of a realist to know that it is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. There are two reasons for this. For one, this is by no means your cheery Christmas album with bouncy songs. For another, this album leans heavily on the religious aspects of the holiday. However, if that’s your thing, and you somehow haven’t heard this album yet, I totally recommend it.

Track List

A1

The Christmas Spirit
Written-By – J. Cash*
A2

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Arranged By, Adapted By – Johnny Cash
Written-By – H. W. Longfellow*, J. B. Calkin*
A3

Blue Christmas
Written-By – B. Hayes*, J. Johnson*
A4

The Gifts They Gave
Arranged By – J. Cash*
A5

Here Was A Man
Written-By – J. Bond*, T. Ritter*
A6

Christmas As I Knew It
Written-By – J. Howard*, J. Carter*
B1

Silent Night
Arranged By, Adapted By – J. Cash*
B2

The Little Drummer Boy
Written-By – B. Simeone*, H. Onarati*, K. K. Davis*
B3

Ringing The Bells For Jim
Written-By – J. Howard*, J. Carter*
B4

We Are The Shepherds
Written-By – J. Cash*
B5

Who Kept The Sheep
Written-By – E. J. Carter*, J. Cash*
B6

The Ballad Of The Harp Weaver
Written-By – E. St. Vicent

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/d…

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters

Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisis

^{Oliver Milman (The Guardian)}

Werewolf Wrapped 2025

​​ You transformed on every full moon. Not like you have a choice there.
​​ You traveled a distance of 2158 km. Where the hell were you going??
​​ You awooed 147 times. We can't blame you, awooing is fun.
​​ You successfully kept your secret. Here's to another year!

When I moved in three winters ago I noticed a pattern during snowstorms: everyone would shovel their own section of walkway and nothing else -- sometimes just from the door to the street and not the public crossway or they'd just shovel their driveway and nothing else. This lead to there being a 20 foot section of sidewalk that was clear, then 20 foot not clear, then maybe another clear section down and on and off again all the way down the street, forever. The sections that were not cleared would freeze and become impassable, school kids would wipe out on them, the mail carrier would have to navigate through yards, etc. And through all of this I was watching some people clear their short sections of walkways with gas powered, self-propelled blowers.

So I started shoveling the entire block each and every snow. Sometimes my idiot self would use an actual shovel so I could be a total dork and do it while partialing (gets lots of car honks, cheers, and photographs. I apparently made the village Facebook group a few times with people thanking whoever it was doing this anonymous work), other times I'd use a handheld electric snow thrower thing and just wear my tail so that anyone viewing security cam footage to see who did the work was a weirdo. But I always went from one corner all the way to the other. Then last winter I started doing both sides of the street as well as the block south of mine because I expanded my arsenal of batteries to two. I did this over and over again regardless of how much snow or time or took - sometimes it needed several clearings in a day/night - because it was a decent replacement for my gym and actually resulted in something tangible I could see -- a clear path three blocks long with no interruptions. A thing of beauty. Each time I'd be sore as hell but feeling wonderfully accomplished.

Now and then my neighbor would see me doing his portion and would tell me that I didn't have to do that, he'd handle it later, etc. Did it anyway. And then it started to click for others. Last winter I noticed someone up the street from me began clearing half of the block to widen the path I'd created. Then my neighbor began to clear the south side of my block to complete it. Across the street someone now widens my path for a row of five houses. With the storm yesterday I did my paths and then returned home to find someone had cleared the south block after more snow accumulated. This morning, I did it again. A few hours later: engine noises. Four snow blowers out there making sure the path was completely clear block to block, end to end including cross streets. Someone has taken to start clearing up to some people's doors as well. It's incredible.

I did this because some people don't care but also I know some people simply can't due to age or physical ability and it's cool as hell because now I feel like we have an secret, unspoken group of Guardians of the Neighborhood thing going. I freaking love it.

Hey everyone else: 3200-3300 Maple Ave blocks are putting you all to shame. Step up.

Antisemitism in the U.S. has hardened into a "durable" new normal as fewer Americans feel any obligation to push back, according to a sweeping new survey shared first with Axios.

The survey also reveals a widening empathy gap amid rising hate incidents and a public increasingly convinced antisemitism is either exaggerated or not their problem two years after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

The big picture: Around 3 in 5 U.S. adults think antisemitism is a minor problem or not a problem at all, the 2025 Antisemitism Landscape Survey released Thursday by the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate found.

#Antisemitism

archive.is/tvnfy

My mom has a habit of ordering all kinds of garbage online that she doesn't really need (hello early dementia) and refuses to listen to us when we advise her on this. She texted me today asking for help as some "Amazon people have called and scolded her for ordering pallets of cat litter and potatoes" which I figured was some weird scammer thing

Talked to my brother. It's him and his wife. They're crank calling my mom pretending to be Amazon to make her stop ordering shit.

Pretty funny. Let's see how it works out.

#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/?radd=1… today brings you 17 updated and 1 added apps:

* Medical Calendarlog: a privacy-focused medical event tracking using your device's calendar system 🛡️

3 #Magisk modules have been updated at apt.izzysoft.de/magisk

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo

IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).

^{IzzyOnDroid App Repo}

230+ enviro groups have written a letter demanding a moratorium on Meta, OpenAI, crypto and Google's, supersized datacenter land/water/grid grab in the US.

While encouraging, it seems the locals are already bringing the squeeze:

"At least 16 datacenter projects, worth a combined $64bn, have been blocked or delayed due to local opposition to rising electricity costs."

Water protests too, are ramping up.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/d…

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters

Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisis

^{Oliver Milman (The Guardian)}

Trump before: "I'm OK releasing the full footage of us blowing up the boat."

Trump now: "I never said that! Fake news! You're a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE reporter!!" (Of course it was a woman.)

...Reporters--why, WHY, for the love of God WHY!!--do you not yet show up at every press briefing with a little video queued up on your phone, showing which Trump quote you're going to ask Trump about, so the VERY MOMENT he denies ever saying it, LIKE YOU SHOULD KNOW HE WILL, you can quickly say, "Here, Mr. President," & play his own words RIGHT THERE IN THE MOMENT with cameras on you? As opposed to offering some mealy-mouthed fact check later when no one is paying attention anymore. WHY in this age of instant videos & smart phones do NONE of you do this? WHY??

No wonder a senile old bat like Trump (can't remember what he said a day or so ago) continues to win the media war.

Yay! After 2 years, the left-side control of my reclining couch repaired itself!

Laziness totally pays off!

And so does thriftiness!

Two years ago, I spilled some drink onto the control. From that point forward, one of the buttons stopped working. I used a workaround by pressing two other buttons. I also looked for a replacement, but I decided they were too expensive.

I also opened the control to see if there was an easy fix, but there wasn't.

So I used the workaround all this time, but today I found that the button that did not work anymore works.

So if someone gets on your case to repair something, just say that you're giving it a good two years to see if it will repair itself.

#diy #repair