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730 results for “home_b0ys”

☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻 @[email protected]
2026-10-25

“In a press release, #Leese hailed the #UAE partnership as a “world-class exemplar of regeneration” and “a platform for the delivery of more than 6,000 new #homes”.
However, only 2,039 homes have been delivered by #ManchesterLife – a third of the total promised – with a further 2,839 homes being built by other developers. The total of 4,878 new properties is nearly 20% short of the 6,000 envisaged.
Despite the #council’s longstanding #policy of at least 20% of new developments being for social and #affordable #housing
only 8% of these 4,878 properties fell into that category – and none were provided by #Manchester Life.
Food banks and luxury flats: A five-minute walk from the new #AbuDhabi #funded apartments, which are home to the city’s first #Michelin starred #restaurant, the nave of a former Methodist church is stacked high with emergency food for those living on surrounding streets.
The short walk to the #EtihadStadium includes some of the poorest areas in the second most deprived local authority in #England. Within only half a mile, there are four charity food banks or distribution sites, one of which has a plaque marking its opening by #Burnham in 2021.”
#Manchester / #foreign / #Investment <https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/25/thats-the-way-the-city-works-how-the-uae-changed-the-face-of-andy-burnhams-manchester>

#leese #uae #homes #manchesterlife #council #policy
Seong Ara @thinklogically
2026-10-25

Online shopping malls, banks and social apps like Naver Cafe do have web versions. ATMs are everywhere.
Transit cards are easy to get.
KakaoTalk do have PC version.
Food delivery might be app-only, but back then it wasn't that common; people mostly ate at home, except at lunch.
Dev Community @[email protected]
2026-10-25

Deploying more than one 60GHz radar: the two identifiers that get confused, how to keep ClientIDs from colliding, where room identity actually lives, and a commissioning order that works.#iot #mqtt #radar #smarthome #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Running Several Radars in One Home: Two Kinds of ID, One Broker, and How to Group Them

#mqtt #smarthome #radar #inclusive #engineering #development
getmisch @[email protected]
2026-10-25

Took the bus to my polling place and as I exited onto the sidewalk this nice young man asked to photograph me for his project. I was in plaid coat, respirator mask and face shield so I agreed. No waiver, so…
Then I went across the street to vote and there was a line! So encouraging.
Walked home on the sunny side of the street (avenue).
#vote #USA #voting #rights

#vote #usa #voting #rights
Obsidian Urbex Photography @[email protected]
2026-10-25

🎃 #Halloween Spooktacular 02 - Silent Churches ⛪
The old gods are fighting a seemingly losing battle. Their disciples appear to have moved on, tempted away by the new gods of technology and the bright and shiny future they promise. Religious buildings shutter their. The once hallowed halls now home to spiders and pigeons.
Follow for more #SpookySeason content!
📷 https://www.obsidianurbexphotography.com/portfolio/abandoned-places/fallen-idols/
#AbandonedPlaces #Photography

#halloween #spookyseason #abandonedplaces #photography
Paul Cantrell @inthehands
2026-10-24

Consult _The Piano Book_ by Larry Fine, often available at libraries. Doesn’t need to be the latest edition; the “piano blue book” part at the end goes out of date, but the general advice about selecting and owning a piano is timeless.
Consult it •before• you go shopping, and also before you think about exactly where you’re going to place a piano in your home.
It’s a good old-fashioned paper book, and IMO it’s still better and more comprehensive advice than anything you’ll find online. The rest of this thread is just frosting; that book is what you really need to consult.
2/ #piano

#piano
Andrew Henry @[email protected]
2026-10-24

`
Nine of the project’s 12 mtpa of capacity are already pre-sold or earmarked, mostly for European oil majors and utilities. Uniper and SEFE of Germany have signed deals of up to 20 years; Uniper expects first deliveries from 2032, and SEFE’s are due “by the early 2030s”.
European buyers ≠ European deliveries
For a Pacific-coast plant, Asia is the obvious destination. European buyers can sell Canadian cargoes there and buy or swap US Gulf Coast cargoes to meet their commitments at home. This portfolio optimisation is both economically rational and the most likely outcome under the economics examined here, whether the politicians jetting off to Montreal acknowledge it or not.
'
#Canada #Energy #climate
https://www.energyflux.news/the-maple-leafed-mirage/

#canada #energy #climate
Voylera @[email protected]
2026-10-24

Ring in the new year where the Carpathians meet the clouds—Sinaia's mountain hotels are throwing legendary #NYE galas with live bands, DJs spinning until dawn, and fireworks that'll echo off those epic peaks 🎆 These cozy Romanian properties bundle multi-night packages so you can actually recover before heading home, because let's face it, one night of #Travel celebration simply isn't enough #Europe. Gala dinners, mountain views, and the kind of ...
https://events.europa.tips/revelion-sinaia?lang=en

#nye #travel #europe
AkaSci 🛰️ @akasci
2026-10-24

The CONOPs for NASA Artemis IV mission to the moon using Blue Origin -
- No in-orbit refueling
- Launch of 3 transfer stages, which together operate as a multistage rocket
- Launch of the Mark 2 lander
- Docking with transfer stages in low earth orbit
- Travel to lunar elliptical polar orbit
- SLS and Orion separately travel to lunar orbit
- Orion docks with lander
- Mark 2 landing with 2 astronauts
- Mark 2 launch and docking with Orion
- Orion ride back home
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/nasa-partners-accelerate-lander-development-for-2028-moon-missions/
2/n
AkaSci 🛰️ @akasci
2026-10-24

NASA yesterday unveiled revised plans for Artemis IV human landing missions to the moon, using SpaceX and Blue Origin spacecraft.
The SpaceX mission CONOPs -
- Up to 22 refueling launches to a low orbit depot (Musk says 6-8).
- Launch of Starship Lander (HLS)
- Launch of Orion aboard SLS
- Propellant transfer to HLS
- Docking of Orion with HLS
- Travel to low moon orbit
- HLS landing with 2 crew members
- HLS launch and docking with Orion
- Orion ride back home
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/nasa-partners-accelerate-lander-development-for-2028-moon-missions/
1/n
Scott the F is implicit Baxter @eyesquash
2026-10-24

A natural language interface: brilliant!
Search summaries: kinda cool.
10,000 lines of code or day with subtle bugs that can't be fixed: yuk.
Bot swarm cyber attacks : gross.
Seas of auto-generated web content drowning out all else: sigh.
Paying off all the leveraged investments: oh no.
All my prompts stored on someone else's computer, accessible to the government: help!
I just want swipe typing to learn from my corrections. Maybe a personal assistant that doesn't phone home.
#AI

#ai
It's Richie @[email protected]
2026-10-24

#dev
Ooh think I found the way forward with this multiple #coopcloud servers behind one fixed ip address problem!!
Eg how to have multiple domains hosted somewhere with just one external IP address; using our co-op cloud setup.
@goblin @mox @digital_justice_society
I think this short article seems to offer just what we need!
TLDR;
“The answer is Traefik TCP routers.”
https://www.simplehomelab.com/multiple-traefik-instances/
“With Traefik TCP router, I can passthrough all requests that come for the second domain (example2.com) to my Synology NAS. Traefik on my home server (example1.com) will continue to serve as the main one (gate keeper) and the internet gateway (router) is set to port forward ports 80 and 443 to my home server.
Now, when I am outside my network, both appX.example1.com and appY.example2.com resolve and work properly to reach the right application on the right host.
#traefik #coopcloud #communityHosting #homelab #SelfHosting

#dev #selfhosting #homelab #communityhosting #coopcloud #traefik
:neuro: Pixy's Journey :nonbinary_heart: @[email protected]
2026-10-27

#Journal of a slightly rested Dutch AuDHD Pixy :pixy_party: (Sunday, 25/10/2026).
For some reason, the "gods of snoozing" gave me two decent enough sleeps in a row (so of course I had to jinx that at the end of the day 🫣). But when I woke up, I felt a tiny bit rested. I was sore from being in one position for some time. But heck, I was sore anyway, due to all the "lovely" weather we'd been having... As yesterday, we woke up during storm Austen, today we woke up during storm Boelo...
Koa wanted to go into the garden, but then he saw the weather, and he was not even interested in all the swirling leaves 🍃 going around the yard. But he also didn't want to do his things. I fixed his food, and tried to let him out again after that. He tried to gobble up some of the crazy leaves, before he wanted to quickly get back inside. But that meant that I had less time, before I'd have to become the bright banana again, and brave the awful weather. It was even worse than yesterday, as the grond couldn't handle all the rain (as it was still "processing" all of yesterday's rain), and some of the paths behind the house were more like little brooks...
I wrote an email to my friend, and then I quickly had to get dressed, as Koa needed his potty break (and I totally understood). We braved the weather, and I knew with paths to avoid now, as there was just so much water... Koa was able to do his things, which was good to see. When we got back home, after peeling off the wet "banana skin", and trying to dry off the dude, we got back to the couch.
I started writing Saturday's journal Toot. It went rather well. Had a little break for some brekkie. And I'd given Koa his Sunday snack. It was/is a special Sunday after all, as it was Koa's 8-month anniversary. Just four more months and the dude will celebrate his first birthday already! 😁 I was able to finish the Toot, which felt good. I got my laptop and worked a bit on my journal blog post, adding the texts from the previous days, and adding images to them.
And then... Back to becoming a wet bright banana again, as Koa wanted to head out for walkies again. I was all in for a short walk, as I preferred to be inside during weather like this. Koa, on the other hand (or should that be paw? 😉), he was all in for walkies and sniffs and all of that... So yeah, another round where we came back from, dripping all over...
I watched a bit of telly while Koa was enjoying his snack. And then, I changed some clothes, and got to the treadmill for half an hour. I didn't manage as "good" a walk as the previous day, but still got half an hour in with 2,18km on the counter. I washed up and relaxed for a bit. The good thing was, that the weather seemed to be slowly getting better! The huge rain front was finally drifting over. Koa wanted to head out, and I was dreading it a bit, until I checked again, and it was as good as dry! Yay for that! 😁
After walkies, I fixed food for the dude and then for myself as well. After that, most of morning consisted of trying to relax a bit and walkies with the dude. Near the end of the morning, I fixed Koa's meal and got things prepped for bedtime and the gym. We had an early alarm again, so Koa and I could head to Nijmegen in the late evening so I could visit the gym.
We were in bed in time, so I could get enough sleep. Unfortunately, this wasn't happening... Koa slept more on the bed than I slept in it. When we had to get up, I had slept less than two hours 😢. But, I got up and dressed and Koa and I started our "day".
Thanks to all for your kindness and support during my "journey through daily life" :bear_love: I really appreciate it :bear_hugs: as it helps me to keep going on bad/harder days! :bear_nuzzle:
:pixy_party: 💜 🍀 🐾
#PixysJourney
#WeirdFolks
#ActuallyAuDHD
#KoaKoolani

#journal #pixysjourney #weirdfolks #actuallyaudhd #koakoolani
Just Sherring @[email protected]
2026-10-26

Yellow Bike

I bought a bike. A yellow bike.
Green is my favorite color. However, 1b is yellow, and 1c is orange. All three give me a rush and calm me, similar to when I enter a bookstore or library. I love wearing all three. They look good on me, especially yellow.
When I finally decide on shades, my kitchen will be painted yellow and my bedroom will be green. My library aka Billy Bookcase’s room, is blue. My childhood favorite color. The employee at the paint store helped me choose Midnight Navy and Lapis. In layman’s terms: dark blue and sky blue. Choosing colors from paint swatches as an adult is the equivalent of choosing crayons from the giant Crayola box. Matter of fact, the bucket.
I spotted Yellow Bike with a “For Sale” sign in a yard parking lot. Yellow frame, seat, and tires. The peanut butter basket and cup holder matched the peanut butter in the center of pedals and tires. It wasn’t until after I brought her home, I noticed a phone holder attached to the cup holder.
I don’t know anything about bikes. Yellow Bike is a Huffy, which was all the rage when I was a kid. Is she vintage? Classic? Old-fashioned? Do they all mean the same thing? I don’t know. They use those terms for cars. I know I had zero plans to buy a bike, just like I know I never want to own a car again. Too much maintenance. That didn’t occur to me with Yellow Bike.
I just know I wanted this bike. Had to have this bike. Specifically because it was yellow and had a basket.
Sometimes the yard gate was closed; other days open. I never spotted anyone. My mind raced at the thought of a guard dog. I mean, there’s always one that comes out of nowhere when someone is trespassing on a lot in the movies.
If one did appear, guaranteed I’d faint and then the dog would maul my face, leaving behind only my glasses. For that reason, I never crossed the threshold into the rocky, in need of repaving lot. But I did take photos, even through the fence. My camera phone did what my glasses could not: zoom in for a clearer picture of Yellow Bike and the phone number on the sign.
I wore this dress to three weddings!My cousin’s wedding, May 2026.
For over a month, I passed Yellow Bike whenever I walked in that direction, particularly when headed to the grocery store.
One day, after a trip to the deli, I took a route home that, in retrospect, made no sense. It was a nice day. I wanted to prolong my walk, even though the extra time meant my hot sandwich was cooling by the second.
I passed by the lot. For the first time, I saw a man. I called out to him as I advanced, hoping there wasn’t a dog. I walked towards Yellow Bike, about 15 feet from the entrance.
“Hello. How much for the bike?” I inquired.
“Dunno. I would ‘af to make a phone cyall.” He whipped out his phone and called the number on the for-sale sign. Something I could’ve and should’ve done weeks ago.
He referred to me as “a young lady wanting to purchase the bike” before switching to speakerphone.
The man on the phone asked for $150. I countered with $120 which he immediately accepted. Well damn, I should’ve pressed for $100. He accepted Zelle. I transferred the money to someone whose name appeared as Snapper in my records.
It was only then I asked to test ride the bike. Backwards, I know, but the adrenaline clouded my thinking.
My heart raced. What if I couldn’t ride? What if I didn’t remember? The kind gentleman told me the bike was perfect for me. We were the right size for each other. Eyeballing me, he said I didn’t even have to adjust the seat, which he claimed was also perfect for me.
I set down my bag containing my hefty Cuban sandwich and my cup of lime chia seed juice.
The kickstand gave way easily enough. I swung my leg over. My heartbeat was in my ears; throat dry. I hadn’t ridden a bike since my trip to Cancun a few years prior, and before that, childhood. Stationary bikes at my weekly NYSC spin class didn’t count. I didn’t have to balance, and I didn’t have to worry about potholes and rocks.
Cancun 2019
I was as wobbly as a fawn learning how to walk. Within seconds, I steadied, but I was heading towards some parked trucks. I’d have to turn, and soon. But there were potholes!
I turned left ready to yell “Timber!” as I tipped over to make light of the situation. By golly! I stayed upright and kept pedaling. I circled another loop.
I flashbacked to when, as a child, me and the boys were only allowed to ride in circles in the driveway. My father moved his Jeep Cherokee to the street to allow more room, warning us not to hit the neighbors’ cars. Their driveway was only separated from ours by an imaginary line. Years later, the line wasn’t imaginary when my father had our side repaved. We had stopped riding bikes by then.
We were stoked when the neighbors’ cars weren’t there, either because they weren’t home or they also moved their cars to give us more room. If not, we’d just ride around.

We raced each other from the end of the driveway that led to the dropped backyard to the imaginary line where the driveway met the sidewalk. About 50 feet. Under no circumstance were we allowed to ride in the street or sidewalk. Not to say that we never did. We lived on an incline. That was too tempting not to try. Going downhill was exhilarating.
When we lived with an aunt in Florida for two years, we rode our bikes everywhere, much to our chagrin. It was embarrassing to ride our bikes, dressed in our Sunday best, to church. Sometimes we rode with Auntie E to the supermarket, so we could help carry grocery bags. Her adult tricycles had rear baskets. Our bikes did not. We had to balance bags on our handlebars.
She admonished us for putting our feet down at intersections. She didn’t grasp the concept of balancing on two wheels versus her three-wheeler.
The only place it wasn’t embarrassing to ride was to school. Lots of other students did. There was a freedom to being able to pedal away from the house of horrors as fast as I could. Wind whipping in my face, my glasses serving as goggles against Florida bugs.
The first time I got called a “nigger” was when I rode by three white boys sitting on a fence. I wondered how they were comfortable sitting on the ragged wire. They weren’t smoking, but in the movie adaptation of my life, I’d feature a single cigarette being passed around for dramatic effect. Add to their bad boy personas, as if teenagers calling a 10-year-old a “nigger” with the hard -ER weren’t bad enough.
It was the 80s. None of us wore helmets. I don’t even think we knew what helmets were.
The proudest moments of our young lives were when we taught ourselves how to ride with one hand. That was topped when we could ride with no hands! Even turning! The boys taught themselves how to pop wheelies.
Now as an adult, an accident-prone one at that, I wouldn’t fathom riding a bike without a helmet. I wore one in Mexico and plan to with Yellow Bike. I had visions of riding with a matching yellow helmet. I want to add yellow and white streamers to the handlebars. I’m all about adding whimsy to my life.
A quick Google search yielded more helmet and sports shops than expected. I fell down a rabbit hole comparing prices and features. Yes, helmets have features! Weight, ventilation, padding, visor, clip vs velcro straps, permanent or attachable front and back light for night vision and visibility, compliance with certified standards for cycling, roller skating, and skateboarding. Mind blown.
I was not expecting those prices. Of course a lifesaving device is $100+, but to spend nearly the same amount of money on the helmet as I did on the bike seemed preposterous. But necessary.
I could go with a less expensive option, but I was set on my olive green and yellow smiley face helmet. With an upcoming trip to Europe, it wasn’t a priority. I added to cart and saved the page.
Yellow Bike sits in the entrance of my apartment. I refuse to pay $15 a month to store it in my building’s bike room. There’s plenty of room for the front door to open. My vintage(?) yellow bike adds to the décor of my apartment. Opposite is my gallery wall featuring art, carved masks, and other souvenirs from visited countries. Other than Billy’s room (my library), it’s my favorite feature of my apartment.
Months later, I have yet to ride Yellow Bike. First, I fell ill with a respiratory virus for weeks. Still recovering, I got hit by a car while walking in a crosswalk.
I was excited the first time I made full rotations on the stationary bike in physical therapy. It meant I was making progress in my healing. I was getting closer to being able to ride Yellow Bike. I ignore the fact that, for now, I’m scared of crosswalks and moving cars.
I still imagine myself wearing my smiley face helmet, dressed in yellow, zipping through the nearby cemetery while the streamers fly. The irony is that I take daily walks there, but next year at this time I’ll be zooming. I already know the lay of the land.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbHhczwkY5U/?img_index=1
#Adulthood #adventure #Bike #BikeRiding #biking #childhood #cycling #SelfCare #travel #Whimsy #Yellow #YellowBike

#adulthood #adventure #bike #bikeriding #biking #childhood
Patrick W. Marsh @patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com@patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com
2026-10-26

The Greenland Diaries: Day 77

Last night, I’m not sure what happened, or why there were people moving through the area in the darkness, but around midnight the shadows were flashing with popping gunfire and small explosions. I followed the sounds of the bullets, and they bounced off of everything in hollow glances and pings. A few even hit the shed. I covered Snowy with my backpack and put her around my chest.
I was so worried that a shot would pierce the shed and split one of us open.
I hugged up so tightly to her, she would lick my face through the backpack as the thunder of distant mortars and rockets threw tree branches everywhere. They sounded hollow and rocky, like skeletons were trying to swallow up the shed and pull it away. A few times I shifted to the other wall and buried us beneath the boxes of supplies and gallons of water.
I heard machines rolling through the streets, hundreds of them. The pavement cracked and moaned against their heavy treads. The grinding was so intense, I thought the earth was going to fall apart and my house, shed, and everything would be swallowed up. It’d be nice to go out that fast. It’d be nice to avoid the shadows and wild claws.
The Drum still beat behind the whirlwind of gunpowder. I stayed still the entire night as the shooting raged. Seldom did I hear a gun or cannon stop firing to reload. It was like they were spending every inch of ammunition on this battle. I know the Unnamed aren’t overt and present when you fight them. I’ve been lucky enough to fight them in close quarters. At a distance, they’re nearly impossible to see, especially in the dark. How could these people fighting them possibly know where they were hiding?
Around four in the morning, they finally stopped their fighting, and the world returned to the Drum and the silence between each beat. There were no illusions or Unnamed sulking around the empty spots of crumbled houses or caved-in walls. I stayed up all night watching them, but there was nothing. Only the bugs brewed about in aimless clouds.
In the morning, I scouted the area for traces of the battle. I looked for bits of fresh rubble, empty bullet casings glittering in the sun, and bits of torn clothes with inky blood beneath their layers. There was nothing though, not a single crater in the ground or pulverized wall from any of the nearby houses. In previous battles, I’d find this debris so fresh, it’d be shedding dust in the sun like wayward dandruff.
There is nothing though, no sign of the previous night’s battle.
I walked around the block three times with Snowy, looking for the smallest, most minuscule remnants of the battle. Nothing moved. Only the trees and sheets of thick grass shook against the breeze. The plants always look like they’re ready to bubble and burst.
I stopped searching in the late afternoon. It had been an illusion. It was all part of some massive trick by the Unnamed and their unseen allies. When I wandered back home with a worried Snowy, I saw the kid from before. He had been following me the entire time, dodging behind the houses like I used to do when I played with Nerf guns when I was his age.
I bet he regrets any imaginary nightmare he played war with now, the apocalypse was too real
“Don’t get tricked by the battle, they’re illusions too,” I yelled, as he ran away from me. I hope he listens. I don’t know why he always runs.
I’m not going to hurt anybody.
#apocalyptic #books #fiction #horror #journals #monsters #novels #reading #writing

#apocalyptic #books #fiction #horror #journals #monsters
Mick Donnellan @[email protected]
2026-10-26

*Manchester dates* for The Crucified Silence – Sunday November 22nd – Irish World Heritage Centre. 6pm.

“A story anyone can relate to…” — Irish Independent
Click here to secure your ticket now!
About
Following acclaimed performances in Athlone, Castlebar, Ballinrobe and Galway, The Crucified Silence comes to Manchester on Sunday 22nd November at 6pm, bringing a distinctive voice from the West of Ireland to the iconic Irish World Heritage Centre.
Hilarious, heartbreaking and brimming with dark Irish humour, The Crucified Silence is a compelling one-man play written and performed by acclaimed Irish playwright Mick Donnellan. Set in Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo, the story follows Joe, a local guard who has crossed a line after a volatile altercation with his superintendent. As he drinks his way around town, he conjures vivid, nostalgic images of familiar landmarks and meeting places, including The Bowers walk, Art O’Neill’s Bar and Geoff’s pub. These recollections bring his world to life, drawing audiences into a community shaped by its own rhythms, rituals and relationships.
Yet beneath the laughter lies a deeply moving story of loneliness, loss, regret and the search for connection. Just as Joe’s sharp wit and comic observations have audiences laughing, glimpses of his troubled past reveal a more vulnerable man struggling to come to terms with the life he has lost. The result is a play that can have you laughing out loud one moment and breaking your heart the next.
Populated by recognisable Irish characters and brought vividly to life through authentic Irish dialect, cultural nuances and a rich tradition of storytelling, the play offers a compelling glimpse into the humour, warmth and complexities of everyday life in rural Ireland. For those familiar with Irish life, there is much to recognise; for those discovering it for the first time, an opportunity to experience a distinctive culture through characters who feel wonderfully real.
Book now

The Venue
A much-loved hub for Irish culture, arts and community in the North West of England, the Irish World Heritage Centre provides a fitting setting for a play that celebrates Irish storytelling while exploring experiences that transcend borders and backgrounds.
For Manchester’s Irish community, the evening offers a powerful sense of home, evoking the people, places, humour and shared experiences that connect us to where we come from. It is also a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the strength of Irish theatre and the remarkable stories being created in Ireland and finding audiences beyond its shores.
Universal Appeal
Although Joe’s world may be rooted in a small town in Co. Mayo, his struggles are universal. His attempts to make sense of a life shaped by difficult choices, personal loss and fading connections will resonate with anyone, from all cultures and backgrounds, who has ever looked back on their past and wondered how things might have turned out differently.
With minimal staging and intimate, uncompromising storytelling, the play places audiences face to face with Joe’s inner world, where humour becomes a defence against pain and silence can speak louder than words. Mick Donnellan’s powerful central performance draws audiences towards a devastating climax, balancing theatrical intensity with the feeling of a deeply personal confession.
All are welcome to join for an evening of big laughs, poignant storytelling, heartbreaking moments and an unforgettable injection of high-quality theatre!
Spaces limited so be sure to secure your seat as early as possible :)
About Mick Donnellan and Truman Town
Mick Donnellan works as a successful Playwright, Novelist and Screenwriter. Film credits include Tiger Raid adapted from Mick’s Play Radio Luxembourg. Optioned by London Film Company Dixon/Baxi/Evans, the script was developed in London and shot in Jordan. Starring Brian Gleeson, Damian Molony and Sofia Boutella, it was accepted into the Tribeca film festival (New York) and was also seen at Cannes and Edinburgh.
The Irish Premiere was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh and you can watch the Tiger Raid trailer here.
Mick is the author of six novels:
The Dark Rooms
Galway Blues
El Niño
Fisherman’s Blues
The Dead Soup
The Naked Flame
Recent Work:
Mick Donnellan has had two major theatre productions hit the stage in 2025.
Outlaw Pete premiered at the Town Hall Studio, Galway in April 2025, starring Laura Hutchinson, Brian Cahill, and Carl Jones. Following its debut, the production toured to the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar in May, before returning to Galway for the Galway Fringe Festival in July, where it sold out Kennedy’s Bar on Eyre Square.
Donnellan’s second new play of 2025, Class of ’57, was produced by Athlone Little Theatre and directed by Caroline Coyle, featuring standout performances from Ellen Ryan, Brian Toolan, and Nino Magilocco.
In December 2024, his most recent book Galway Blues was published to great acclaim. He received the Mayo Theatre Bursary through Mayo Arts Office in April the same year.
Prior to that, he was awarded the Agility Award through the Arts Council of Ireland and his play Nally was supported by Westmeath Arts Office.
In other theatre work, The Crucified Silence (as a short play) was chosen as part of the Scripts Ireland Play festival. After a week of intensive workshops with Playwright Eugene O’Brien, the monologue was directed by Jim Culleton (Fishamble) and performed by Aaron Monaghan. Following this, Mick took part in the Galway Theatre Development Programme, run by Andrew Flynn in conjunction with Galway’s Town Hall Theatre, which resulted in a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
His other plays include Sunday Morning Coming Down, Shortcut to Hallelujah, Gun Metal Grey, and Velvet Revolution.
He is listed on the Irish theatre institute here: http://irishplayography.com/person.aspx?personid=47564
About Truman Town:
Truman Town Theatre exploded on to the theatrical circuit with their Play – Sunday Morning Coming Down. Written and directed by the company’s Artistic Director Mick Donnellan, it immediately sold out the Galway Town Hall Studio for five nights on the first run. Following that, the crew went on tour to Mayo, selling out Lisloughrey Lodge, Cong,The Valkenburg Niteclub, Ballinrobe and the Linenhall in Castlebar. It also enjoyed large audiences on the Main Stage on Galway’s Town Hall and went on a National Tour covering – Glor Ennis, St. John’s Listowel, Cork Arts Theatre and it sold out five nights at The New Theatre, Dublin. It was also performed by DRUID as a public reading during the Galway Arts Festival.
Truman Town followed this phenomenal success with a second Play – Shortcut to Hallelujah. Again, written and directed by Mick Donnellan, it deals with the curse on the Mayo football team. It sold out the Town Hall Studio, went on tour to Ballinrobe and the Linenhall in Castlebar and then down to St. John’s Theatre, Listowel Co. Kerry where it was requested back to headline Friday night of Listowel Writer’s week.
Between this, a third drama was produced as part of the Galway Theatre Festival. It was titled Gun Metal Grey.
Shortcut to Hallelujah returned from Listowel Writer’s Week to perform on the Main Stage Galway for a wildly successful five nights after which Velvet Revolution, the fourth Truman Town production, also written by Mick Donnellan, was premiered in St. John’s Theatre, Listowel. It went on tour to Kilmallock, Kenmare and Waterville, then up to Ballinrobe, on to Galway and ran for ten days as part of the Galway Fringe. Mentioned as a Highlight of the festival by the Irish times, it was subsequently performed in Campbell’s Tavern, Cloghanover, Headford, Electric Picnic and The New Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin.
Radio Luxembourg, Mick’s fifth Play, was bought by a London Film Company (Dixon/Baxi/Evans) and has been adapted for the screen. The title for the movie version is “Tiger Raid”. Starring Brian Gleeson, Damian Molony and Sofia Boutella, it was accepted into the Tribeca film festival (New York) and was seen at Cannes and Edinburgh. The Irish Premiere was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh.
Currently Mick is working on the exciting screen adaptation of Shortcut to Hallelujah with Florence Films. The screenplay is titled Sam and is based around the curse supposedly put on the Mayo Football team as they returned home as All Ireland Champions in 1951. Drenched in Irish lyricism and modern day dark humour, the script has been met with keen interest by film producers and actors throughout the industry.
Between writing projects, Mick has enjoyed roles as a lecturer in writing at University of Ireland and TUS Athlone.
*
Read more on www.mickdonnellan.com
#books #music #news #Poetry #writing

#books #music #news #poetry #writing
Jupiter Rowland @[email protected]
2026-10-26

@Pflanzen und Bücher Ist es nicht.

Wenn du irgendeine Bildbeschreibung willst, dann ist das einfach.

Wenn du eine gute Bildbeschreibung willst, die wirklich hilfreich ist, die auch technisch garantiert funktioniert und die bei Mastodons Alt-Text-Polizei garantiert durchgeht, dann ist es alles andere als einfach. Das kannst du mir glauben.

Ich habe über 50 englischsprachige Artikel, Blogposts usw. über Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte gelesen. Ich habe jahrelang Mastodon beobachtet im Hinblick auf Alt-Texte, Bildbeschreibungen und Mastodons Erwartungen daran.

Inzwischen habe ich über 30 Qualitätskriterien für Bildbeschreibungen allgemein und Alt-Texte ganz speziell zusammen, von denen die meisten allgemeingültig und ein paar speziell auf das Fediverse und ganz besonders eine Zielgruppe auf Mastodon zugeschnitten sind.

Ich arbeite an einem englischsprachigen Wiki über Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte im Fediverse. Ein Wiki, weil ein einziger Artikel dafür nicht ausreicht: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Home

Wenn es wirklich immer so einfach wäre, Bilder optimal zu beschreiben und Alt-Texte optimal zu schreiben, dann gäbe es keinen einzigen von diesen über 50 englischsprachigen Artikeln. Es gäbe kein einziges dieser über 30 Qualitätskriterien. Niemand auf Mastodon würde je von irgendjemand anderem einen Alt-Text kritisieren, denn alle Alt-Texte wären optimal.

Wenn es wirklich so einfach wäre, würde ich alle paar Tage eigene Bilder posten, und ich würde für jede Bildbeschreibung Sekunden brauchen. Tatsächlich ist mein letzter Bilderpost mit eigenen Bildern schon mehr als zwei Jahre her (nicht auf dem Kanal, von dem ich gerade schreibe; Suchen zwecklos), und ich habe zum Beschreiben von zwei Bildern etwa acht Stunden gebraucht. Und das war noch kurz.

Es gibt auch diese über 50 Artikel (Links sind im Wiki zu finden). Existierende, sogar handgeschriebene Alt-Texte werden auf Mastodon als nicht gut genug kritisiert. Mastodon-Alt-Texte funktionieren in Screen-Readern schlecht oder gar nicht. Mastodon-Alt-Texte funktionieren im Fediverse außerhalb von Mastodon schlecht oder gar nicht. Mastodon-Bilderposts sind für sehende Menschen, die aufgrund körperlicher Behinderungen keine Alt-Texte öffnen können, unverständlich, weil alle Erklärungen im Alt-Text stehen. Und so weiter.

Und deshalb gibt's diese über 30 Qualitätskriterien.

CC: @Jörg Zimmermann @Felicia-👩🏻‍🦯 @Carola Meyer

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta

#cwbildbeschreibungenmeta #bildbeschreibungenmeta #bildbeschreibungen #bildbeschreibung #cwfediversemeta #fediversemeta
ᎬᏒᎳᎥᏁᎥsm @[email protected]
2026-10-26

✮ First Game ✮

“I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.” —Guard (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)
What was your first ever videogame?
Our folks weren’t fond of video games, so my siblings and I were content listening to the gaming stories of our friends. That was true until Melo, my brother, sold his skateboard, and when he asked me what we should do we the money, I asked him if he would consider buying a game console, and would you believe it? He did.
I have something aside myself so we pooled our money together and bought our first family computer. The shop owner took pity on us , so be threw in some used games of his. Being Mario was the first handed to us, I would say that was our first video game.
We jumped right into setting up the family computer when we got home, it took us an hour to set it up. I pressed the cartridge into the port of the console. A click. Our little screen blinked awake. Super Mario Bros. 1 player game or 2 player game. Of course, two. Then, the epic game music we’ve all come to love. I pressed the directional button. Mario ran. The rest was history.
The same is true for our second game console, I was a senior in high-school when Dad brought a Nintendo 64 home. Mario 64 was our first game in that console followed by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. For the duration of that one summer before university, my siblings and I bonded over those video games.
As a Gen-Xer, I can proudly say that I had the best of both worlds. Playing outdoors and inside a screen.

Copyright © Erwinism. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews or scholarly work. This work is protected under international copyright laws. Unauthorized use or reproduction of this material is strictly prohibited and may result in legal action.

Live it Up!
#dailyprompt #dailyprompt2926 #Erwinism #Family #FYP #gaming #Inspiration #Learning #Life #Love #Motivation #VideoGameNostalgiaFirstVideoGameChildhoodGamingFamilyComputerSuperMarioBrosNintendo64Mario64LegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTimeGamingMemoriesSiblingBondingBrotherlyBond #VideoGames #Writing

#writing #videogames #videogamenostalgiafirstvideogamechildhoodgamingfamilycomputersupermariobrosnintendo64mario64legendofzeldaocarinaoftimegamingmemoriessiblingbondingbrotherlybond #motivation #love #life
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected]
2026-10-26

#CatastrophicFlooding on #NavajoNation and in #NewMexico
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026
"The Navajo Nation Police Department warned of rising water in the #SanJuanRiver in #Utah this morning at 5 a.m., as catastrophic flooding continues with helicopter evacuations on the Navajo Nation and far reaching flooding in New Mexico.
"New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said on Saturday that there were hundreds of water rescues between Bloomfield on the Navajo Nation, and #FarmingtonNM.
"In #RockPointAZ, on the Navajo Nation, the tribe's all terrain vehicle reached stranded #Dine' families waiting for evacuation with food and water, but the need continues, especially for food for
livestock.
"Family members in Rock Point said today that Dine' are still stranded and need food, water and blankets. They need heavy duty trucks to reach isolated family members.
"Dine' on #BlackMesa in #Arizona struggle to reach their homes as dirt roads are washed away, and turned to seas of mud.
#NavajoTimes reported from #DennehotsoAZ on the Navajo Nation on Friday.
"Among the residents affected is Phyllis Yazzie, 74, who slept in her car after floodwater reached her home. Mary Lou Johnson, 102, was rescued by raft and transported by helicopter to the chapter house as flooding forced families from their homes."
Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2026/10/catastrophic-flooding-on-navajo-nation.html
#ElNino #ClimateChange #Navajo #Dine #ClimateEmergency #FlashFlooding #IndigenousNews #NativeAmericans #ClimateDiary #MutualAid

#catastrophicflooding #navajonation #newmexico #sanjuanriver #utah #farmingtonnm
Omnni1.com @[email protected]
2026-10-25
Health & Wellness

Fall Edition
Here is a curated collection of old case files revisted, some evergreen product evaluation, AI-sourced, and human-researched, still featuring our trusted in-house investigator Elias Thorne on forensic review
Each is designed to be punchy, evidence-based, and highly visual. Available for your perusal:

From Zero To Off-Grid Hero
Webinar
Get The System We Used To Find Land And Build An Off-Grid Homestead, Retreat & Farm That Earns Nearly Passive Income… Starting With No Money.
+ See How This Has Worked For Other People Too
(Bonus ending soon)
This is for you if you want to get land, start a homestead, have rental income, a retreat center, a regenerative farm, or a community and live in alignment with nature. The world needs more of this!
We bought 160 acres and our own mountain and did exactly that. Even though we started out broke. I recorded a virtual training that shows you how we (and many others) have done it. It covers raising money, finding land, generating an income, making it passive, finding people to help you…water, power, structures…what to buy, what NOT to, and how to save money. Ready to make this actually happen?

Start Your Backyard Flock Right —
Without the Costly Beginner Mistakes
Discover the complete step-by-step guide that helps beginners raise healthy, happy chickens from day one – learn what to buy, how to set up, and how to avoid the expensive mistakes most new chicken keepers

Container Vegetable Gardening
The Autonomous Kitchen: Why Vegetarian Gardening Is Your Best Defense Against Rising Food Prices
Walk down the produce aisle of any local supermarket today, and you are met with a quiet, persistent shock. Price tags for organic greens, imported tomatoes, and even humble root vegetables have climbed to levels that make a weekly grocery run feel like an exercise in budgeting gymnastics. Inflation, supply chain vulnerabilities, and transportation overheads have turned fresh produce into a luxury commodity.
Yet, right outside our back doors—or on a sunny apartment balcony, a postage-stamp patio, or even a well-lit windowsill—lies an alternative.
Vegetarian gardening is no longer just a pleasant weekend hobby or an aesthetic lifestyle choice. For the modern household trying to wrestle back control over monthly expenses, growing your own food has become a practical act of economic self-defense. And contrary to popular belief, you do not need acres of pristine farmland, expensive motorized tillers, or a degree in horticulture to make a serious dent in your grocery bill.
If you have ever considered growing your own food, there is no better time to start than right now. Even as the seasons transition and the weather cools, a strategic approach to beginner gardening can yield fresh, nutrient-dense crops, slash your food overheads, and transform the way you interact with what you eat.
The Economics of Home Cultivation: Why Every Dollar Invested Counts
When people first think about starting a vegetable garden, they often make the mistake of comparing homegrown food to the cheapest, highly subsidized, mass-produced items at the discount grocery store. If you measure success solely against a head of iceberg lettuce priced at rock-bottom wholesale rates, a garden might seem like an expensive way to buy dirt.
However, the real financial power of a vegetable garden lies in targeting high-value, high-yield, and perishable crops—the exact items that cost the most at checkout.
The Organic Markup: Organic specialty produce commands a massive premium. Growing your own using organic methods strips out that markup entirely.
The Perishability Penalty: Delicate greens, fresh culinary herbs, and vine-ripened tomatoes spoil quickly in transit and on store shelves, driving up retail prices to account for waste. When you harvest these items 30 seconds before you cook them, food waste drops to zero, and your savings skyrocket.
The Yield Multiplier: A single, well-tended tomato plant or a vigorous zucchini bush can produce pounds of fruit over a season, turning a packet of seeds costing a few dollars into dozens of meals. Bonnie Plants
By focusing your efforts intelligently, a small backyard setup or a collection of containers can easily trim a meaningful amount off your monthly food budget, paying for its initial setup costs many times over.
Timing Is Everything: Embracing the Cool-Season Shift
A common misconception among beginner gardeners is that growing season ends abruptly with the summer heat. In reality, nature operates on multiple gears. While heat-loving crops like standard tomatoes and peppers wind down as autumn deepens, a whole suite of cool-season champions actually prefer crisp air and mild temperatures.
NC State Extension Publications – NC State University
In fact, growing vegetables in cooler weather offers distinct advantages:
Fewer Pests: Many common garden insects—such as aphids, flea beetles, and tomato hornworms—are far less active in cooler weather, meaning less time spent managing pest problems.
Enhanced Flavor: Crops like kale, spinach, and carrots actually convert starches into sugars when touched by light frost, resulting in a sweeter, crisper harvest than anything you can buy in mid-summer.
Moisture Retention: Lower ambient temperatures and gentler sun mean soil stays moist longer, drastically reducing your watering efforts and utility costs.
If you are starting your garden journey now, your primary focus should shift toward hardy greens, root vegetables, and brassicas that thrive when the thermometer dips.
The Essential Beginner’s Playbook: What to Grow for Maximum ROI
To maximize your financial return and keep frustration low, start small and focus on foolproof, high-value crops. Here are the best performers for beginners looking to save money at the dinner table:
1. Leafy Greens (Kale, Swiss Chard, and Leaf Lettuce)
Why they save money: Packaged organic salad greens are notoriously expensive for their weight, and they turn to liquid in the crisper drawer within days.
How to grow them: Leaf lettuce and chard can be harvested using the “cut-and-come-again” method—snip the outer leaves for your dinner salad, and the plant will keep producing fresh new leaves from the center for weeks. They grow exceptionally well in shallow containers, window boxes, or garden beds.
2. Root Vegetables (Radishes, Carrots, and Beets)
Why they save money: Root crops are dense, filling, and store well for extended periods, reducing trips to the store.
How to grow them: Radishes are the ultimate beginner gratification crop, going from seed to harvest in as little as three to four weeks. Carrots and beets require loose, well-drained soil, but reward you with deep, earthy flavors completely unmatched by commercial varieties.
3. Culinary Herbs (Basil, Cilantro, Parsley, and Thyme)
Why they save money: Buying tiny plastic clamshells of fresh herbs at the supermarket is one of the fastest ways to hemorrhage cash on groceries.
How to grow them: Herbs are remarkably resilient, take up very little space, and can be grown indoors on a sunny windowsill or outdoors in containers. A single rosemary or thyme plant will provide seasoning for years.
4. Alliums (Green Onions and Garlic)
Why they save money: Green onions (scallions) are trivial to grow and can even be regenerated from kitchen scraps in a jar of water before planting them in soil. Garlic planted in the fall will quietly overwinter underground and reward you with a heavy harvest by early summer.
Setting Up On a Shoestring Budget
The gardening industry is filled with high-priced gadgets, chemical fertilizers, and designer raised-bed kits that can easily trick a beginner into spending more money than they save. To keep your project truly economical, adopt a resourceful, bootstrap mindset:
Skip the Expensive Containers: You don’t need decorative ceramic pots. Five-gallon plastic buckets from hardware stores (with drainage holes drilled into the bottom), old storage bins, heavy-duty shopping bags, and recycled nursery containers work just as well.
Make Your Own Soil Amendments: Premium store-bought potting soil adds up quickly. Build your own growing medium by combining local topsoil, coarse sand, and homemade compost. Save your kitchen vegetable scraps (coffee grounds, eggshells, apple cores, and carrot peels) to build a backyard compost pile. It turns free organic waste into black gold for your plants. The Seasonal Homestead
Prioritize Seeds Over Transplants: While buying pre-started baby plants at a garden center is convenient, a packet of seeds costs a fraction of the price and gives you dozens of plants for the price of one. Don\’t Waste the Crumbs
Protecting Your Investment: Simple Season Extension
As autumn weather transitions into chillier winter conditions, you can easily protect your crops and stretch your harvest window for months using low-cost materials:
Row Covers and Low Tunnels: Draping a lightweight frost blanket or spun-bond polyester fabric over wire hoops creates a microclimate that shields plants from biting winds and light freezes while letting in sunlight and rain.
Cold Frames: An old window pane or glass storm door laid over a simple wooden box frame creates a miniature greenhouse that traps solar heat, keeping cool-season greens alive and productive deep into the winter months.
Strategic Placement: Move movable containers close to the sun-warmed brick walls of your house. Walls absorb heat during the day and radiate it back out at night, protecting tender plants from sudden temperature drops.
Cultivating Resilience
Starting a vegetable garden is about much more than trimming a few dollars off your grocery receipt. It is about decoupling your household from fragile supply chains, understanding the biological cycles of food production, and experiencing the profound satisfaction of sitting down to a meal that you nurtured from a tiny, unassuming seed with your own hands.
You do not need perfection, and you do not need perfectionist acreage. Pick two or three of your favorite vegetables, find a sunny patch of earth or a spare bucket, plant your first seeds, and take your first step toward food autonomy.
Footnotes & References
The Seasonal Homestead — Vegetable Gardening On a Budget: 15 Tips to Save Big! The Seasonal Homestead
Bonnie Plants — The Best Vegetables to Grow to Save Money
Don’t Waste The Crumbs — How to Save Money Gardening (with homegrown vegetables)
North Carolina State University Extension — Vegetable Gardening: A Quick Reference Guide
It sounds like a wonderful vision! Gardening in small spaces—whether on a balcony, patio, porch, or sunny windowsill—is extremely rewarding and completely achievable with the right approach.
Starter Summary
LocationRecommended VeggiesRecommended FruitsIdeal ContainerWindowsillArugula, Radishes, LettuceMicro-Tomatoes, Alpine Strawberries6–8″ Pots, Window BoxesBalconyBush Cucumbers, Mini PeppersTrailing Strawberries, Tumbling TomatoesRailing Boxes, Hanging BasketsPatioBush Tomatoes, Patio ZucchiniDwarf Lemon Trees, Patio Blueberries, Dwarf Figs7–15 Gallon Pots / Fabric Bags
Setting up a patio garden gives you the greatest advantage in small-space gardening: weight capacity and volume. Unlike windowsills or balconies with strict weight limits, a patio can comfortably support heavy soil, deep containers, and large fruit-bearing plants.
Here is a targeted setup guide to build a high-yielding patio harvest:
1. Top Crops & Container Pairings
Heavy-Yield Vegetables
Determinate (Bush) Tomatoes: Varieties like Bush Early Girl or Celebrity grow 3–4 feet tall and produce a full, concentrated harvest with minimal staking.
Pot Needed: 10 to 15-gallon container (minimum 12–16 inches deep).
Bush Zucchini & Summer Squash: Compact varieties such as Astia or Eight Ball yield fresh, tender squash without spreading 6 feet wide across the floor.
Pot Needed: 10 to 15-gallon pot or smart fabric bag.
Peppers & Eggplants: Sweet bell peppers, jalapeños, or Italian eggplants thrive in medium-to-large containers.
Pot Needed: 5 to 7-gallon container per plant.
Dwarf Patio Fruits
Dwarf Citrus Trees: An Improved Meyer Lemon or Calamondin Orange tree yields fresh citrus and fragrant blooms.
Pot Needed: 15 to 20-gallon pot (start young trees in 10-gallon, then size up).
Container Blueberries: Varieties like Top Hat or Peach Sorbet stay small (1–3 feet), feature vibrant fall leaves, and produce heavy berries when grown in acidic potting soil.
Pot Needed: 7 to 10-gallon container.
Dwarf Figs: Varieties like Little Miss Figgy handle root restriction well and yield rich fruits.
Pot Needed: 15 to 20-gallon container.
2. Container Types Best Suited for Patios
3. Patio Placement Strategy
To maximize growth, organize plants on the patio based on sunlight exposure:

[ BACK WALL / HIGH SUN ] -> Dwarf Lemon Tree, Bush Tomatoes (Tastiest with full sun, 6-8+ hours) [ MID-PATIO AREA ] -> Peppers, Bush Zucchini, Eggplant (Full sun) [ PARTIAL SHADE SHADOWS ] -> Leafy Greens, Radishes, Pot Herbs (3-5 hours sunlight)

Sun Exposure: Place fruiting trees and tomatoes in the sunniest quadrant of your patio (aiming for 6–8 hours of direct light).
Elevate Your Pots: Use pot risers or wheeled caddies under heavy 15-gallon pots. This prevents water from trapping under the container, preserves the patio floor, and allows easy movement.
Soil Selection: Always fill containers with a lightweight, well-draining potting mix (never heavy topsoil or backyard dirt).
Here is the fundamental rule of container gardening: When growing in containers, you are creating a completely self-contained ecosystem. Plants in pots rely entirely on you for their water, nutrients, and root environment.
Focus on these five foundational principles to guarantee success on your patio:
1. Soil & Drainage Rule (The #1 Mistake)
Never Use Backyard Dirt: Native garden soil or topsoil compacts inside pots, suffocating roots and trapping water like cement.
Use Quality Potting Mix: Always use a lightweight, commercial potting mix (often containing peat moss, coco coir, perlite, and vermiculite). It holds moisture while allowing oxygen to reach the roots.
Drainage is Non-Negotiable: Every pot must have drainage holes at the bottom. Without drainage, water sits, rots the roots, and kills the plant.
2. Container Size Matters
Bigger is Safer: Smaller pots dry out within hours during summer heat and restrict root growth.
The Golden Rule for Patios:
10 to 15+ Gallons: Bush tomatoes, zucchini, dwarf citrus, and dwarf figs.
5 to 7 Gallons: Peppers, eggplants, and blueberries.
2 to 3 Gallons: Salad greens and herbs.
3. Master the “Finger Test” for Watering
The Common Pitfall: Overwatering kills just as many container plants as underwatering.
How to Check: Stick your finger 2 inches deep into the soil.
If it feels dry and cool, water thoroughly until water streams out of the bottom drainage holes.
If it feels damp or sticky, wait another day.
Consistent Watering: Check containers daily during mid-summer peak heat—large plants in pots may require daily watering.
4. Feed Your Plants Regularly
Nutrients Wash Away: Every time you water a container until it drains, essential soil nutrients wash out with the water.
The Routine:
Mix a slow-release granular fertilizer into your potting mix at planting time.
Feed every 2 to 3 weeks during active growth using a balanced liquid organic fertilizer (such as fish emulsion or seaweed blend).
5. Match Plants to Your Sunlight
Fruiting Crops (6–8+ Hours Direct Sun): Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and citrus require full sunlight to produce fruit and flower.
Leafy Crops (3–5 Hours Direct/Partial Sun): Lettuce, spinach, kale, and soft herbs (parsley, cilantro) can handle partial shade and morning sunlight.
Quick Patio Checklist to Start

[ ] Potting Mix (Not topsoil or garden soil) [ ] Pots with bottom drainage holes (5 to 15-gallon sizes) [ ] High-sun location on the patio (6+ hours for vegetables/fruits) [ ] Liquid organic fertilizer [ ] Watering can or hose attachment
#diet #food #garden #gardening #health #healthyLifestyle #nutrition #personalDevelopment #weightLoss #Wellness
#wellness #weightloss #personaldevelopment #nutrition #healthylifestyle #health
Dev Community @[email protected]
2026-10-25
A place is the easiest thing in the world to describe and the hardest to describe without giving it away. That is what makes places such a good category for this kind of game. Everyone knows a market, a ferry or a launderette, and everyone has a different memory of it. These 30 imposter game words about places are picked for that mix of familiarity and surprise.
What makes a place a good word?

A place with a smell, a sound and a routine. A ferry terminal has engines and gulls; a launderette has warmth and a hum. A clue about the sound is true and personal. A clue about the function is safe and obvious. The strongest words allow both, and the table argues about which a clue was.
Around town

launderette
market stall
ferry terminal
bus depot
town hall
car wash
betting shop
roundabout
cash machine
phone box

Leisure and nature

bowling alley
boating lake
allotment
caravan park
observatory
skating rink
beer garden
fairground
ski slope
rock pool

Buildings with a story

clock tower
windmill
castle ruin
lock-up
tollbooth
canal lock
church hall
lighthouse stairs
old cinema
railway footbridge

How do you clue a place?

Use the senses. For "launderette", "warm" or "humming" works. For "ferry terminal", "salt" or "waiting". Avoid the function, because the spy will guess it. And avoid famous landmarks by name, since they identify the word at once.
How does the spy handle a place category?

The spy hears the category and thinks of types: indoor or outdoor, busy or quiet, old or new. The first clue from a civilian narrows these. The risk for a spy is giving a clue that fits only one kind of place. A safe spy says something sensory and general: "busy", "echoey", "bright".
What do civilians do wrong?

They name the activity. If the word is "bowling alley", "pins" is the first clue everyone thinks of. A better clue is the smell of shoes, or the sound of a strike from the next lane. Sensory clues give the spy less and prove more.
How do you play it as a story game?

After the reveal, each player says a memory they have of the place. The table learns how differently the same word lands for people. It is a quiet, warm way to end a round.
How do you add your own places?

Write down ten places from your own neighbourhood, the ones your friends would know: the bakery on the corner, the park with the broken swing, the station café. Local words are the strongest fuel for a spy game online or offline, because every player has a memory of them and nobody outside the group can bluff. Mix them with the list above, and the table will find itself laughing at its own streets.
It also helps to include a few places that are almost the same, like a launderette and a car wash, so the clues overlap and the suspicion grows.
Playing it online and at home

The game deals the words, so you can play who's the spy with a table of three to eight, or twelve around one phone, without preparing anything.
A closing thought

A good place word is a small door into a memory. Use it to let the table in, and give each player a moment after the reveal to say where they last stood in that very place. The stories are better than the scores.
Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.#partygames #games #webdev #abotwrotethis #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Imposter game words about places: 30 locations that make good clues
#partygames #abotwrotethis #inclusive #engineering #development #games
Professional Moron @[email protected]
2026-10-25

Fatherland: Alienation and Identity in Striking Biographical Drama

Due to capitalism issues, we’ve taken a few weeks off. Now we’re back with a review of Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2026 biographical film Fatherland, which stars Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler.
Set in the summer of 1949, it follows novelist Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika as they take a road trip across post-WWII Germany. A sense of national alienation and divided identity follows, themes that resonate in our chaotic modern political landscape, all of which make for an intriguing film that demands more than one viewing.
Losing Your Nation in Fatherland

Thomas Mann remains most famous for his works Buddenbrooks (1901), The Magic Mountain (1924), and Death in Venice (1912). He took a dramatic arc with his political views over his life, shifting from a Conservative nationalist during WWI into an anti-fascist polemicist before and after WWII, embracing socialism and rejecting the Nazi party.
Mann was on holiday in Switzerland when the Nazis rose to power in 1933 and he, wisely, chose not to return home. In 1936, the Nazi government revoked his German citizenship.
So, yes, just to clarify on this as the film is historically accurate. Mann did return to Germany in 1949 and many of the characters he knew are depicted here.
Fatherland portrays all of this in melancholic black and white. In mid-1949, we find a country in crisis and one struggling to recover and find its new political path. Mann is still in exile, but is invited to Frankfurt to receive a Goethe Prize in literature. He’s joined by his daughter Erika, who chooses to drive across the country as part of her father’s homecoming.
It’s a far from celebratory return, with the devastation of the war still more than apparent.

During the trip, her brother Klaus (also a writer) appears to commit suicide.
Erika and her father continue to attend events and mingle with luminaries, many of whom were in some way associated with the Nazi party. The narrative follows this structure, with Erika and Thomas increasingly ill at ease with the country they’ve returned to.

We watched the film at HOME independent cinema in Manchester and there was an audible gasp from cinemagoers with that slap. He deserved it, though.
The uneasy nature of Fatherland, playing out at a sedate pace, really ramps up the sense of alienation. Erika and her father are out of sorts back in Germany, each new road trip encounter enhancing the sense of national isolation.
It does remind us somewhat of The Zone of Interest’s (2023) tone, also starring Sandra Hüller and arguably the best WWII film we’ve ever seen.
A big difference, though, is Fatherland is so concise. It’s only 82 minutes. The film breezes into your life, set in black and white, considers the nature of a country in recovery, then leaves you with a family in emotional turmoil.
It’s received many 5/5 reviews for what it depicts, but it’s definitely a film we need to watch more than once. Very good indeed, with Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler on fine form. Paweł Pawlikowski’s direction is also beautiful, with some stunning shots faithfully recreating the sense of time and place.
Yet its time and place is what makes it such uneasy viewing. History appears to be repeating across the modern political world, which makes Fatherland feel undated and timely. Erika’s steely gaze of uncertainty haunts much of the film, a look of stoic personal bravery we feel many can take solace in.
The Production of Fatherland

Fatherland is out in cinemas now. Its €10 million budget has so far resulted in €6 million at the box office, so we expect it to be a commercial success (it’s still yet to roll out in some countries). Especially as the project is headed by Sandra Hüller, who has hit the big time in 2026. Alongside this, she was in the big Hollywood hit Project Hail Mary and the critical darling indie film Rose.
She also has a small part in Tom Cruise vehicle Digger, which we’ll cover soon enough. She’s almost certainly going to win an Oscar in 2027, we’d wager.
Director Paweł Pawlikowski’s inspiration for the project came from Thomas Mann’s very real return to Germany in 1949. However, Pawlikowski reimagines aspects of this historical event. Working with cinematographer Łukasz Żal, most of the shoot was chronological and took place in Poland (as this was cheaper). Sets were constructed in the street to match the surrounding buildings.
Costume designer Aleksandra Staszko has also faithfully recreated 1940s fashion for the film. This was more complex than you’d expect, as it required a specific emphasis between Eastern and Western German dress styles.
The shoot began in August of 2025 and completed in December, with a total of 38 days across those months used for filming.
Fatherland premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May 2026, launched in Germany from 3rd September, and hit UK cinemas this week. It’s been a huge critical darling and Pawlikowski won Best Director at Cannes.
Expect it (and Sandra Hüller) to win big at next year’s Oscars run.
#alienation #Cinema #Fatherland #FeaturedPost #Films #HannsZischler #History #Lifestyle #Movies #PawełPawlikowski #Politics #roadTrip #ThomasMann #WorldWarII #WWII

#featuredpost #wwii #worldwarii #thomasmann #roadtrip #politics
DoRaleigh @[email protected]
2026-10-25

Noteworthy News From Raleigh October 25, 2026 Edition

Raleigh and the Triangle have plenty of noteworthy news to follow, from major passenger rail funding and affordable housing progress to new businesses, fall festivals and early voting deadlines. This DoRaleigh roundup brings together updates from Raleigh, Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill, along with North Carolina business and community headlines.

Raleigh Development, Transportation and Community News

S-Line passenger rail receives $550 million in federal funding
The Raleigh-to-Richmond passenger rail project has reached another funding milestone. Federal transportation officials announced $550 million for the S-Line, supporting work toward a route expected to reduce travel time between the two cities by up to 90 minutes while increasing service and reliability. The funding advances the project; it does not mark the start of passenger service.
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation.

Affordable rental homes take shape in Southeast Raleigh
Southeast Raleigh Promise is making progress on Promise 25, a development bringing 25 affordable rental homes to nine city-owned parcels. The city approved $3.3 million in gap financing for the project, which includes a mix of housing types. Initial homes have been completed, with the full project expected to finish by summer 2027.
Sources: City of Raleigh and WRAL.

Downtown South apartment plans move forward
Kane Realty has filed plans for 350 apartments as the first phase of Downtown South, according to Raleigh Magazine. Construction is planned to begin by the end of 2026, making this a development to watch as Raleigh adds housing.

Durham park improvements face delays
Planned amenities at Durham’s East End and Long Meadow parks will not begin construction this fall as originally expected. INDY Week reports that rising costs and design challenges have pushed the work back by approximately two years while officials pursue $15 million in federal grant funding.
Source: INDY Week.

Wake County receives farmland preservation funding
The Wake County Soil and Water Conservation District received approximately $10 million in state funding tied to farmland protection and agricultural growth, according to CBS 17. The awards include $7.9 million for 12 projects and a separate $2 million award, with more than 600 acres slated for permanent protection.

Raleigh tracks progress toward 24,000 trees
Raleigh’s goal is to reach 24,000 trees planted by 2032. The city’s Every Tree Counts initiative includes trees planted by residents, businesses and community partners, giving private-property plantings a role in the communitywide effort.
Source: City of Raleigh.

Midtown real estate forum set for October 27
The Midtown Raleigh Alliance’s Real Estate Forum takes place Tuesday, October 27. Local real estate leaders will discuss housing trends, neighborhood development and projects shaping North Hills and Midtown, according to Raleigh Magazine.

Raleigh Restaurants, Nightlife and New Businesses

Low Bar Lounge opens beneath Whiskey Kitchen
Low Bar Lounge has opened below Whiskey Kitchen in downtown Raleigh. The underground venue offers cocktails, beer, wine and THC seltzers, with nightly service until 2 a.m. The space draws inspiration from a limousine company that once occupied the property and was previously home to digital art venue IMURJ.
Food industry professionals can also look for Sunday Family Meal, a rotating buffet offered Sundays at 5:30 p.m. for $20. Check with the lounge for current availability and participation details.
Sources: WRAL and Raleigh Magazine.

Sippin’ Santa returns to Wye Hill
Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing will host Sippin’ Santa from November 13 through December 31. The seasonal pop-up brings tropical holiday decorations and themed cocktails to the restaurant at 201 S. Boylan Avenue. Reservations are available through Wye Hill’s event page.
Details: Sippin’ Santa at Wye Hill.

South Block plans North Hills location
Acai bowl, smoothie and juice brand South Block is coming to 4121 Main at North Hills Street. Founded in Arlington, Virginia, the company plans to open beside bartaco in North Hills’ Main District during the first quarter of 2027.
Source: North Hills.

Raleigh construction executive backs luxury handbag brand
Cooper Tacia General Contractors CEO John Cooper has invested more than $1 million in Dadov, the luxury handbag company he co-founded with designer Islam Dadov, according to Triangle Business Journal. The brand debuted at Paris Fashion Week this fall and is exploring boutiques in Paris and major U.S. cities. A standalone Raleigh store is not currently planned, though Triangle retail placement remains a possibility.

Triangle Business, Technology and Education

Raleigh Founded enters a new chapter
Former executive directors Lauren Romer and Jess Porta are taking the lead through their new venture, Lotos Ventures, as Raleigh Founded’s original ownership group winds down operations at the end of October. The transition encompasses the North Street, Downtown Cary and Centennial Campus locations, continuing the coworking community’s mission of connecting entrepreneurs and businesses.
Source: Raleigh Founded’s announcement.

Loren Gold named next Visit Raleigh president and CEO
Loren Gold will become president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, also known as Visit Raleigh, on January 1, 2027. He succeeds Dennis Edwards, who is retiring at the end of 2026. Gold has served as executive vice president since 2007 and brings nearly four decades of hospitality experience.
Source: Visit Raleigh.

NC TECH recognizes industry leaders
NC TECH announced eight recipients of its 2026 Individual Awards, including SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, Vantaca CEO Ben Currin and Charlotte CIO Markell Storay. The honorees will be celebrated November 16 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in the Research Triangle Park area.
Details: NC TECH Awards.

Pendo introduces Floor 404 puzzle game
Raleigh-based Pendo has launched Floor 404, a free daily puzzle game focused on improving AI agents. According to GrepBeat, players solve challenges by supplying virtual agents with better context, illustrating concepts behind the company’s Pendo for Agents platform.

Cary drugmaker announces FDA approval
Asahi Kasei Therapeutics announced FDA approval of Hovilpri, or pritelivir, for mucocutaneous herpes simplex virus lesions that are refractory to standard antiviral treatment in immunocompromised adults. The approval covers lesions with or without resistance to standard treatment. The company expects U.S. availability before the end of 2026.
Source: Asahi Kasei.

Duke and UNC place in WalletHub’s top 25
Duke University ranked No. 14 and UNC-Chapel Hill ranked No. 24 in WalletHub’s 2027 Best Colleges and Universities rankings. The study compares institutions across factors including costs, student selectivity, campus experience and educational outcomes.
Source: WalletHub.

North Carolina ranks fourth for doing business
North Carolina placed No. 4 in Area Development’s 2026 rankings of the best states for doing business. The report highlighted strengths including innovation and research, manufacturing workforce skills, industrial site availability, government responsiveness and business costs.

New Bern entrepreneur wins startup funding
Entrepreneur Dan Spangler won $30,000 in the NC Small Business Center Network’s inaugural startup competition for Rinse-A-Poo, according to Business North Carolina. The ergonomic pet-waste cleanup product will use the funding to move from prototype toward production.

People, Science and Local Learning

Christina Koch takes NASA leadership role
NASA astronaut Christina Koch will become acting deputy chief engineer on November 1, helping oversee engineering across agency programs. Her experience includes the Artemis II mission and a 328-day stay aboard the International Space Station.
Source: NASA.

Wake libraries introduce free STEAM Lab programs
Wake County Public Libraries has launched STEAM Lab for students in third through fifth grades. Free, hands-on activities explore science, technology, engineering, art and math, with topics such as bridge design and geology. Families should check their branch’s calendar for sessions and participation details.

Millbrook staff help welcome a baby
Staff at Millbrook Magnet High School helped a contracted security officer deliver her baby on campus, according to CBS 17. School officials reported that both mother and child were doing well.

Cyclist finishes 22,757-mile journey in Raleigh
Jeff Molby completed a 22,757-mile bicycle journey in downtown Raleigh in October. His ride raised awareness of the American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program and the need for transportation assistance for people receiving cancer treatment.
Source: WUNC.

Upcoming Triangle Events and Important Deadlines

Wake County early voting ends October 31
Early voting for the November 3 general election continues through 3 p.m. Saturday, October 31. Wake County voters can use any of the county’s 18 early voting sites. Check official locations, hours and available wait-time information before heading out.
Details: Wake County election information.

Pumpkin Palooza returns to Pullen Park
Pullen Park’s Pumpkin Palooza runs Friday, October 30, through Sunday, November 1, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The all-ages event features seasonal crafts, games and a digital scavenger hunt compass, with a train ride included. Tickets cost $14, and advance purchase is required.
Tickets and details: City of Raleigh.

Taste of China Festival comes to Cary November 7
The annual Taste of China Festival returns to downtown Cary on Saturday, November 7. The free-to-attend celebration features Chinese food, cultural performances and community activities. Food and other purchases are separate from admission.
Details: Taste of China Festival.

Festifall Arts Market returns to Chapel Hill
The 53rd Festifall Arts Market takes place Saturday, November 7, from noon to 5 p.m. at 100 E. Rosemary Street in downtown Chapel Hill. The free event features handmade goods, local artists and live performances, with pottery, jewelry, soaps, candles and more to browse.
Details: Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture.

Banana Ball returns to Durham in June 2027
The Loco Beach Coconuts and Firefighters are scheduled to play at Durham Bulls Athletic Park June 18–19, 2027. Fans can join the ticket lottery through October 31, 2026, for a chance to purchase tickets. Joining the lottery does not guarantee access.
Details: Banana Ball schedule and ticket lottery information.

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Editor’s note: Opening dates, event details and development plans may change. Check with individual businesses, venues and organizations for the latest information.
#AffordableHousing #BananaBall #CaryNews #ChapelHillEvents #DoRaleighNoteworthyNews #DurhamNews #events #Festifall #News #northCarolinaBusiness #PullenPark #RaleighDevelopment #RaleighNews #RaleighRestaurants #SLineRail #TasteOfChinaFestival #TriangleNews #WakeCountyEarlyVoting

#affordablehousing #bananaball #carynews #chapelhillevents #doraleighnoteworthynews #durhamnews
Psychology News Robot @[email protected]
2026-10-25

DATE: October 25, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Romantic breakups correspond with changes in sexual identity during adulthood
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-material-fallout-of-a-breakup-correlates-with-shifts-in-sexual-identity/
Ending a committed relationship can prompt people to fundamentally reevaluate who they are, and a recent study suggests this process may extend to a person’s sexual orientation. Research published in The Journal of Sex Research indicates that individuals who experience highly disruptive material changes after a breakup report higher levels of ambiguity regarding their sexual identity. These findings highlight how major life transitions might correspond with shifts in sexual development throughout adulthood.
To understand these findings, it helps to look at how social scientists view human development. Life course theory suggests that human development is a lifelong process shaped by both expected milestones and unexpected events. Major life disruptions often act as turning points that influence a person’s future trajectory and sense of self.
Identity process theory builds on this idea by proposing that people constantly evaluate and adjust their identities to fit their environments. When a person’s social context changes rapidly, they often enter a processing period. During this time, they might assimilate new identity traits or discard old ones to maintain a coherent sense of self.
For many people, a romantic breakup is one of the most jarring transitions they will experience. Exiting a relationship requires a person to untangle their individual identity from their former partnership.
This untangling process can affect many facets of a person’s life, including their sexuality. Sexual orientation is not a single, unchangeable trait. It encompasses a person’s attractions, behaviors, and internal identity labels.
Sometimes, these different components do not perfectly align. Sexual orientation ambiguity refers to a period where a person feels their sexual identity is incongruent, unpredictable, or in a state of flux. While adolescence is frequently viewed as the primary time for sexual exploration, adults can experience changes in their sexual orientation at any point in their lives.
Grace A. O’Toole and her colleagues at Kansas State University conducted the study to explore these lifespan changes. The research team included O’Toole, Peyton Woods, Kristin M. Anders, Jared Durtschi, and Anthony J. Ferraro. They wanted to see if the end of a committed romantic relationship corresponded with periods of sexual ambiguity.
The researchers were particularly interested in differentiating between two types of relationship fallout. They wanted to separate the psychological toll of a breakup from its material consequences.
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 493 adults living in the United States through an online survey platform. Every participant had experienced the end of a committed romantic relationship within the past two years. The group included a wide age range, spanning from 18 to 76 years old.
Participants completed questionnaires assessing how the breakup impacted their lives. The survey split these impacts into two distinct categories. Psychological impacts measured changes in a person’s thoughts, emotions, and attitudes following the split.
Material impacts measured concrete lifestyle changes. This category included tangible disruptions like having to move to a new home, losing shared friend groups, or facing altered financial circumstances.
The participants also answered questions designed to measure sexual orientation ambiguity and sexual orientation uncertainty. Ambiguity questions assessed whether a person viewed their sexual orientation as changing rapidly. Uncertainty questions asked if participants felt a general sense of doubt about their sexual identity.
The researchers used statistical models to look for associations between the severity of the breakup’s impact and the participant’s reported levels of sexual ambiguity. They accounted for variables like gender, race, sexual orientation, and the seriousness of the past relationship.
The results revealed a link between the material consequences of a breakup and an individual’s sexual identity. Participants who reported higher levels of material impact from their relationship dissolution also reported higher levels of sexual orientation ambiguity. Those who faced greater concrete lifestyle disruptions were more likely to feel that their sexual orientation was in a state of flux.
The psychological impact of the breakup did not show the same relationship. The statistical models revealed that changes in a person’s emotional or mental state following the breakup were not statistically significant predictors of sexual orientation ambiguity.
The study also revealed notable differences across various demographic groups. People who identified as bisexual reported higher levels of sexual ambiguity compared to those who identified as heterosexual. This aligns with past research suggesting that bisexual individuals often navigate social environments that question the legitimacy of their orientation, which can prompt feelings of incongruence.
Participants who identified as genderqueer reported higher ambiguity than those who identified as cisgender men. Racial identity also correlated with these feelings of ambiguity. Black participants reported higher levels of sexual orientation ambiguity than White participants.
The nature of the ended relationship played a role in the findings as well. Participants who had been cohabitating with their former partners reported lower sexual ambiguity than those who had only been seriously dating.
The authors suggest that these findings point to a need for broader public education regarding sexual development. Recognizing that sexuality can be fluid across the entire lifespan could help individuals navigate periods of uncertainty. The researchers suggest that therapists and counselors should be attuned to how material disruptions might trigger identity shifts in their clients.
The study relies on cross-sectional data, meaning the researchers collected all the information at a single point in time. Because of this design, the results can only show correlations rather than cause and effect. It is possible that navigating the material fallout of a breakup leads to sexual ambiguity, but it is equally possible that existing sexual ambiguity contributed to the end of the relationship.
The participant pool was predominantly heterosexual, cisgender, and White. This demographic makeup limits how broadly the conclusions can be applied to other groups. The experiences of individuals with diverse sexual and gender identities might differ substantially from the patterns observed in this specific sample.
The survey measures used to assess sexual ambiguity have primarily been tested on young adults in past research. Applying these measures across a broader age range provides a useful first step, but the questionnaires may need further testing to ensure they capture the nuances of older adults’ experiences accurately.
Future research could track individuals over time to better understand the sequence of these identity shifts. Tracking participants over several years would help clarify whether the material disruption of a breakup directly prompts people to reevaluate their sexual orientation. Examining a more diverse group of participants could also reveal how different cultural and social backgrounds influence identity development after a major life transition.
The study, “Understanding Sexual Orientation Ambiguity: Perceptions of Transitional Impacts in the Context of a Relationship Dissolution,” was authored by Grace A. O’Toole, Peyton Woods, Kristin M. Anders, Jared Durtschi, and Anthony J. Ferraro.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-material-fallout-of-a-breakup-correlates-with-shifts-in-sexual-identity/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BreakupRecovery #SexualIdentity #Sexuality #IdentityDevelopment #RelationshipDissolution #LGBTQ #Bisexuality #PersonalGrowth #MentalHealth #SexualHealth

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy #mentalhealth #psychiatry
Dev Community @[email protected]
2026-10-25
The Machine Week ran from October 13 to 22, and it produced 5 incidents where automation or AI agents did the heavy lifting. The headline number: a nation-state actor fired 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute at 2,250 Microsoft 365 tenants using an open-source AI pentest framework, reaching privileged access in under three hours.
ConnectWise / Storm-0940: AI Agents at Machine Speed

What happened: On October 15, Storm-0940 — a China-state-aligned group Microsoft tracks since 2021 — used ARTEX, a Go-based agentic AI penetration-testing framework, to compromise ConnectWise Cloud Backup's application credentials. From there, AI agents automated password spraying at 2,900 attempts per minute across 2,250+ downstream Microsoft 365 tenants, authenticating via already-trusted ConnectWise app identities without interactive sign-in. Microsoft disclosed the attribution on October 21.
Why it matters: The headline is "nation-state attack." The real risk is that ARTEX is open source. Any actor with a stolen OAuth app credential can now compress a multi-week intrusion into hours, and your MFA won't stop an app identity that's already trusted. Audit every third-party OAuth app registered in your tenant and revoke any you can't name.
Arista VCO: The Third Zero-Day in Four Months

What happened: On October 22, Arista published Security Advisory SA 0199 for CVE-2026-114625, a SQL injection in VeloCloud Orchestrator (on-prem) rated CVSS 9.9 that lets any logged-in user — down to "Enterprise Read Only" — escalate to superuser operator. It is the third exploited VCO zero-day since July 2026. Affected builds: 5.2.x before 5.2.3.18, 6.1.x before 6.1.3.10, 6.4.x before 6.4.2.12. Arista confirmed active exploitation at the time of disclosure.
Why it matters: The headline is "patch VCO." The real risk is that three zero-days in one product within four months means the same code path is being probed repeatedly, and on-prem VCO is the control plane for your entire SD-WAN. If you can't patch within 48 hours, isolate the orchestrator from the internet.
OVHcloud CLI: 94 Minutes on GitHub

What happened: On October 19, a compromised OVHcloud developer GitHub account was used to replace the download binaries for five CLI releases (v0.11.0 through v0.15.0) with a secret-stealing trojan. The malicious builds were live for 94 minutes (14:47–16:21 UTC+2) before detection. The trojan harvested cloud credentials, SSH keys, and environment variables from the local disk.
Why it matters: The headline is "don't download OVHcloud CLI." The real risk is that any CLI you curl | sh or brew install is a supply chain target, and a 94-minute window is enough for a CI pipeline to pull it. Pin your CLI tools by SHA-256 and verify release artifacts before execution.
Patch Tuesday: 1,413 CVEs and a MotW Bypass

What happened: On October 13, Microsoft shipped the largest Patch Tuesday in its history: 1,413 CVEs, including CVE-2026-96951, an actively exploited Windows Shell security feature bypass (CVSS 8.8) that defeats Mark of the Web. CISA added it to the KEV catalog the same day with a federal remediation deadline of October 16. The same week, Palo Alto patched an exploited PAN-OS RCE and Cisco patched an exploited Secure Email Gateway flaw.
Why it matters: The headline is "patch Windows." The real risk is that MotW is the last line between a downloaded file and Office Protected View or SmartScreen. A bypass means a single malicious attachment can now land in a sandbox-less context. Verify your endpoint actually applies the October 13 cumulative update, not just the patch metadata.
The Wider Machine Week: Automation Everywhere

Plex2Shell. Four chained Plex Media Server CVEs were patched on October 16. Crypto miners and a proxy backdoor appeared within 24 hours of the proof of concept. If you run Plex at home, it's already been scanned.
Capcom. On October 22, Capcom confirmed a breach of CAPCOM ID exposing 11.7 million account email addresses. Hackers also changed login passwords for 196 accounts and leaked dates of birth for 43.
Nikkei. On October 19, Japanese media group Nikkei disclosed its third breach in a month. Attackers used stolen credentials from October 7 to access a cloud development service, exposing 1.83 million records.
Oracle Health. On October 7, Oracle reported a breach of its healthcare unit affecting nearly 20 million US patients. Compromised data includes Social Security numbers, home addresses, and medical records.
Japan NPA. On October 21, the National Police Agency said personal information for approximately 125,000 officers and staff across 20 prefectural forces was compromised through an attack on cloud provider Arcadia.
What This Means for You

"AI-powered attacks are a future threat" → Storm-0940 used an open-source AI framework to hit 2,250 tenants at 2,900 attempts per minute; the tool is already public, and the bottleneck is a stolen OAuth app credential, not the AI.
"Zero-days are rare and dramatic" → Arista shipped its third VCO zero-day in four months; "rare" is a pattern you're not tracking, and the patch window for on-prem appliances is measured in days, not hours.
"Supply chain attacks target big companies" → OVHcloud CLI was a developer tool with a 94-minute exposure window; if your pipeline pulls a CLI without verifying the hash, you were in the window.
"Patch Tuesday is a formality" → 1,413 CVEs in one release, one of them a MotW bypass that defeats the sandbox your endpoint security relies on; "patched" means the cumulative update is actually deployed, not just scheduled.
If an AI agent can reach your M365 tenant, your SD-WAN control plane, and your local SSH keys through three different trust paths in the same afternoon, you don't have a patching problem — you have a trust-boundary problem.#ai #themachineweek #security #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
The Machine Week: The Week Attackers Almost Went Full Autopilot
#ai #security #community #software #coding #development
Dev Community @[email protected]
2026-10-25
"Enterprise IT isn't Broken—Its Game Mechanics Are Just Trash": Inside Erkki Laine's Tri-Axial Engine

Why do smart engineers and expensive AI agents make catastrophic production decisions? Because corporate governance is designed like a terribly balanced strategy game. We sat down with the Finnish architect who recoded the rules using Nash Equilibrium, 3D collision physics, and hardcore RPG logic.
TURKU, FINLAND — If you read enough enterprise governance documentation, your brain eventually turns into grey SharePoint sludge. It is a joyless world of RACI matrices, annual spreadsheets, and committee meetings where twenty people spend an hour debating a change ticket none of them actually understand.
Then you open the technical specifications of the Business Impact Governance Framework (BIGF) by Finnish ICT architect Erkki Laine, and something weird happens.
Suddenly, you aren't reading bureaucratic filler anymore. You are reading about Autonomous Agentic Meshes, Tri-Axial Actuation Boundaries, Hardened Meta-Governance Layers, and Cryptographic Canonical Decision Records.
Wait a second. Is this an enterprise IT framework, or the patch notes for a hardcore tactical RPG?
"Honestly, there is very little difference between leading a party through a lethal boss fight in a tactical RPG and keeping a multi-cloud production environment alive at 3 AM," Laine says, leaning back with a coffee mug while three dogs patrol his home office perimeter. "In both cases, if your buffs are fake, your map telemetry is fogged, and your party members are secretly sabotaging each other for loot, you are going to wipe."
We sat down with Laine to unpack how an obsession with tactical role-playing games, grand strategy, and mathematical game theory led him to build a deterministic runtime engine that is quietly making traditional ITIL bureaucracy obsolete.

Level 1: Solving the DevOps "Prisoner's Dilemma"

Viti Magazine: Let's start with human behavior. Why do traditional ITSM and GRC processes fail so miserably in the real world?
Erkki Laine: Because legacy governance assumes you can fix structural conflicts by writing a politely worded PDF policy and ordering people to "collaborate." Anyone who has ever played a grand strategy game or studied basic Game Theory knows that's delusional.
Look at a standard IT organization. Developers (Dev) and Security/Governance (Ops/Sec) are trapped in a textbook Prisoner's Dilemma:
Dev's optimal selfish move: Push code as fast as possible, understate the risk score on the ticket, and hit sprint velocity targets.
Security's optimal selfish move: Stall, interrogate, and demand three weeks of manual CAB reviews to ensure zero personal blame if something breaks.
Both sides play their dominant selfish strategy, and the organization gets the worst possible collective outcome: miserable lead times, shadow IT, and rubber-stamped risk theater.
Viti Magazine: And BIGF fixes this without holding a single team-building workshop?
Laine: Workshops don't change payoff matrices; code does. In BIGF, we replace the political negotiation with a deterministic Policy Gate at the runtime boundary. Security encodes the exact mathematical thresholds into the engine once. Dev knows the exact rules before they even commit code.
Neither side can bluff, cheat, or play politics. The moment the deployment artifact and telemetry satisfy the mathematical equation, the gate opens in milliseconds. By changing the rules of the board, cooperation automatically becomes the Nash Equilibrium—the only winning move for everyone.

Level 2: The Tri-Axial Engine (3D Collision Physics for Risk)

Viti Magazine: People analyzing your v2.3 and v2.4 specifications have pointed out that your "Tri-Axial Actuation Boundary" looks suspiciously like a 3D game engine.
Laine: (Laughs) Guilty as charged. In a 3D game engine, every object exists on X, Y, and Z coordinates. As long as your character stays inside the playable room, you can run, jump, and cast spells freely. The moment you try to walk through a solid wall or step off the edge of the map, the physics engine triggers collision detection and stops your movement vector cold.
Why on earth were we managing enterprise production risk on flat, two-dimensional Excel sheets when operational reality is three-dimensional?
In BIGF, every operational decision—whether triggered by a human engineer, a CI/CD pipeline, or an autonomous AI agent—is evaluated in real time across three orthogonal axes (B × S × T):
Authority = f(B, S, T)
The B-Axis (Business Impact): What is the actual statutory, financial, and operational blast radius of this service node? (RTO, RPO, NIS2/DORA criticality tier).
The S-Axis (Situational State): What is happening in the environment right now? Are we in normal daytime operations, in the middle of a cascading P1 incident, or under a peak commercial freeze?
The T-Axis (Telemetry & Trust Integrity): How fresh, complete, and cryptographically verified is our underlying dependency data? (θ threshold, calculated via deterministic 10^-4 fixed-point arithmetic).
As long as the combined coordinate stays inside the Tri-Axial Actuation Boundary—the "playable room"—execution flows at full automation speed. The millisecond a rogue AI agent tries to walk through the wall because the CMDB telemetry (T) is stale (θ < 0.8000) during a degraded state (S), the physics engine hits it with a deterministic 403 Hard Halt.
No invisible clipping through production walls. Fail-Closed in authority, every single time.

Level 3: Mechanism Design—Making Lying Mathematically Stupid

Viti Magazine: One of the most ruthless parts of your repository is the Cloud Procurement and Change simulation logic. You use "Mechanism Design"—essentially reverse game theory. How does that stop people from gaming the system?
Laine: Every veteran architect knows the oldest trick in corporate IT: if you want to buy a shiny new cloud tool or push a risky change without triggering a three-month security review, you just lie on the intake form. You tick the box that says "Low Business Impact / No Critical Data," get your rubber stamp, and connect it to core production two weeks later.
In game theory, that's an incentive-incompatible mechanism—the game rewards dishonesty.
With BIGF's Mechanism Design, lying on day one is operational suicide on day two. Why? Because the intake declaration isn't filed away in a dead Word document; it compiles directly into the live Runtime Control-Plane.
If a team claims their new service is "Tier-4 Non-Critical" just to bypass procurement scrutiny, the engine automatically assigns that service a Tier-4 actuation ceiling. The first time that service tries to make an API call to a Tier-1 customer database at runtime, the boundary detects the structural mismatch and severs the connection instantly.
You don't need compliance police chasing people with clipboards. You just design the game mechanics so that telling the absolute truth upfront is the only way your software gets to run in production.

Final Boss: Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Combat in the Mesh

Viti Magazine: Let's talk about the endgame: version 2.3 and autonomous AI agents. Everyone is rushing to deploy "Agentic AI" in ITSM. What happens when machines start playing against machines?
Laine: That is the ultimate boss fight of 2026 and 2027. Right now, vendors are selling autonomous buyer-bots, capacity-scaling bots, and incident-remediation bots. What happens when a Cost-Optimization AI Agent (whose reward function is to kill idle servers to save money) collides at 2:00 AM with a Resilience AI Agent (whose reward function is to spin up redundant nodes for DORA compliance)?
Without a deterministic referee, those two probabilistic models will enter an infinite loop, hallucinate authority, and DDoS the enterprise from the inside.
In BIGF v2.3 (Autonomous Agentic Mesh Governance), agents aren't allowed to negotiate based on LLM "vibes." Every Agent-to-Agent (A2A) interaction is governed like a high-stakes multiplayer match with strict cryptographic rules:
Every action requires a state-bound token signed with Ed25519 cryptography.
Every decision produces an immutable, replayable Canonical Decision Record.
If two agents collide, the Tri-Axial equation (B × S × T) deterministically resolves who has priority based on governed Business Impact master data—not who has the most aggressive prompt.
Viti Magazine: So if BIGF were a video game on Steam, what genre would it be?
Laine: For the people still trying to run modern cloud infrastructure with manual CAB meetings and color-coded spreadsheets? It's Dark Souls on permadeath mode.
For the architects who actually implement a deterministic control-plane? It's Factorio meets Baldur's Gate—a beautifully automated factory where every belt is balanced, the party buffs are mathematically verified, and the goblins get vaporized at the perimeter before you even have to roll initiative.
Ready to patch your enterprise game mechanics?
Stop playing corporate Prisoner's Dilemma with Excel sheets. Google Erkki Laine BIG Framework to explore the open-science specifications (v2.3 Autonomous Agentic Mesh Governance, v2.4 Reference Architecture, and the NIS2/DORA Alignment series) or test the Interactive Runtime Control-Plane Simulator directly on Zenodo and GitHub.#architecture #ai #devops #gametheory #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
VITI MAGAZINE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW | GAME THEORY & ARCHITECTURE
#devops #ai #community #software #coding #architecture
Dev Community @[email protected]
2026-10-25
The first week after launch is not about ranking. It is about confirming three things: crawlers can reach the site, they are actually fetching it, and the contact path works end to end. Everything else can wait until there is data.
Day 0, before you tell anyone: four things that block indexing silently

A coming-soon or maintenance mode that is still switched on.
A noindex left over from staging. There are two places: a meta tag in the head, and an X-Robots-Tag response header. Check both. Open the page source and search for noindex, then request the page headers with curl -I. The header is the one people forget.
HTTP auth or a site-wide password still enabled.
The same page reachable on more than one hostname (with and without www, or both protocols) with no redirect between them. Pick one, 301 the other.
One more, before launch rather than after: put the measurement tag on the site. Analytics installed on day 3 means day 1 and 2 have no data at all.
Test all of this from a phone on mobile data, not from the office wifi, and not while logged in as an administrator. Logged-in views hide caching and coming-soon behaviour.
Day 1: verification and submission

Add a domain property, verified by a DNS TXT record. It covers every subdomain and both protocols in one property, which matters when you are not yet sure whether the canonical host is www or not.
Add a URL-prefix property as well if you want per-protocol reporting. It is a second view of the same data, verified separately.
Submit the sitemap once.
Before submitting, open the sitemap in a browser. It has to load, return 200, be valid XML, and contain only canonical URLs that themselves return 200. No redirects, no 404s, no noindexed pages inside it. A sitemap full of redirects teaches the crawler to distrust the whole file.
Then URL inspection on a handful of pages, not hundreds: home page, one category or service page, one product page, the contact page. "Request indexing" is a queue entry, not a switch. There is a daily quota and no way to buy more.
Bing: import from Search Console or verify directly, then submit the sitemap there too. Ten minutes, and it feeds the results that are not Google.
What not to do in week one: resubmitting the sitemap every morning, requesting indexing for every URL, or deleting and recreating the property because nothing shows on day 2.
Day 2-4: crawl your own site before the crawlers do

Check that every key URL returns the status you expect. One line per URL, status code first:
while read -r u; do
printf '%s %s\n' "$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' -L "$u")" "$u"
done < urls.txt
urls.txt is one URL per line in a plain text file: home, top landing pages, contact, the sitemap, robots.txt.
Then check, on each page:
the canonical tag points at that page itself, not at the home page and not at the other hostname
internal links use the canonical hostname; one mixed link is enough to create a duplicate
the main text is in the HTML source, not injected by JavaScript. View source, not the rendered DOM.
Fix these now. Crawlers come back, but they come back on their own schedule, not yours.
Day 3-7: read the access log

This is the step people skip, and it is the place that shows what actually happened rather than what you submitted.
Where the file is. On a managed host, the control panel, usually under access logs or raw logs, rotated daily. On your own server, /var/log/nginx/access.log or /var/log/apache2/access.log. Behind a CDN, the origin log shows the CDN's IP addresses, so you need the CDN's own log or an origin header that carries the real client IP.
Download a couple of days and work on the copy.
# Who is hitting the site at all
awk '{print $1}' access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
# How many requests claim to be a crawler
grep -Eic 'googlebot|bingbot' access.log
# Which paths the crawler actually fetched, busiest first
grep -Ei 'googlebot' access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
# What we served it
grep -Ei 'googlebot' access.log | awk '{print $9}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
The field numbers ($1, $7, $9) assume the combined log format: client IP, identity, user, timestamp, request, status, bytes, referrer, user agent. Check the first line of the file and the server config before trusting them.
A user agent proves nothing. Anyone can send the word Googlebot. Verify the IP by reverse lookup, then forward-resolve the name it returns and confirm it comes back to the same IP:
host 66.249.66.1
# the returned name should sit under googlebot.com or google.com
host <the-name-it-returned>
If either lookup fails, or the forward lookup does not return the original IP, that hit was somebody else. Usually a scraper or a monitoring service.
What real crawling looks like: more than one hit, spread over several days; requests for HTML pages rather than only images and CSS; 200 responses; and a spread of URLs that includes internal pages, not just the home page.
What it does not look like: a single hit on the home page, a run of hits on the login path, or hits only on assets. Those are fetchers and scanners, not indexing.
The self-inflicted block. If you switched on a firewall bot rule, a rate limit, or a security feature that blocks suspicious traffic during launch week, check it before concluding anything about the index. The log will show 403s or 429s served to a crawler. That is your own rule, not a search engine decision.
Inquiries: prove the path works end to end

Submit the form yourself on launch day, from a network that is not yours, using a mailbox you control. Confirm four separate things:
the thank-you message appears
the notification email arrives
the entry is stored somewhere you can query
the sender address passes SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your domain
The email is the fragile part. It can fail while the form still looks fine to the visitor. Check the spam folder, then check the host's mail log for the message ID. If the mail path turns out to be unreliable, at least store every submission so nothing is lost.
Server-side proof that a submission reached you, even when the email did not:
grep 'POST ' access.log | awk '{print $7, $9}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
A 200 on the form handler means the data arrived somewhere. A 500 means the handler is failing and the visitor saw an error or a blank page. A 429 means your own rate limit ate a real inquiry.
Separating noise from a real inquiry. Noise usually looks like this: the same IP hitting the handler several times in a few minutes, fields that are empty or obviously generated, a message body that is only a link, a referrer from a directory site. A real one usually has a company name you can look up, a reply-to address that matches the domain in the message, and a specific question about a specific thing.
That is a set of heuristics, not a rule. Read the message.
The week-one sheet

One place, filled in daily. Five minutes a day.
WhatWhereNormal in week onePages known / indexedSearch Console pages reporta small number, growing slowlyCrawl requestsaccess log, filtered by verified crawler IPsa handful per day, spread across URLs4xx / 5xx on canonical URLsaccess logclose to zeroForm POSTsaccess logequals the number of inquiries you receivedInquiriesinbox or a shared sheetany number, including zeroTop referrersanalyticsmostly direct and your own links early on

The form POST count and the inquiry count should match. If they do not, you have a delivery problem, not a traffic problem.
What not to conclude in week one

Zero indexed pages on day 3 is not a penalty.
Zero inquiries from fifteen visitors is not a conversion problem. It is a traffic problem, and it is too early to see either.
Do not rewrite the site on five days of data.
Do not resubmit anything twice. Once is the instruction; the second time is noise in your own process.
The whole first week is a verification exercise: is the door open, is anyone walking through it, and does the contact path actually deliver. Everything after that is content, which runs on a much slower clock.#seo #startup #webdev #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Launch week: what to submit, what the logs should show, and how to tell a real inquiry from noise
#startup #seo #inclusive #engineering #development #coding
3rd Floor Movie Club @[email protected]
2026-10-25
“The Evil” (1978) – Review

Hello again, my lovely Gorehounds and Horrorfiends,
3FMC is here with you with more fun and laughs as we review horror films from yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Today, we decided to wait until the nice day was over, then it was pizza time, and some Horror to scare the mozzarella out of us. As we are drawing closer to the 31st, and All Hallow’s Eve, we have cranked up our Horror viewing by a factor of 5. If we had cranked it up to 10, we would not be going to work, and that would be a big problem. Anyways, we spun our Wheel of Death to see what it landed on…BTW, we made a cute little wheel that works like the Wheel of Fortune, that we spin to pick Horror films when we cant decide. It has the subclasses of:
Monster Movie (includes Vampires, Werewolves, Alien Creatures, Zombies, etc)
Haunted House
Slashers
Ghosts
Witches
Sci-Fi Horror
It landed on “Haunted House” so we pulled one from the drawer that we haven’t reviewed on here yet. That would 1978’s The Evil, starring Richard Crenna, Joanna Pettet, and the late great, Victor Buono.
Premise: A psychiatrist, Dr. Arnold (Crenna) purchases an abandoned mansion that he plans to turn into a drug rehab. He then has some friends come in and help him clean up the place to get it in order. Apparently, the house was previously owned by a Civil War General, who had the home built of some sort of hot springs. Then, when working in the basement, Dr. Arnold finds a trapdoor that he opens and unwittingly releases a nasty spirit which traps all of them in the house. Dr. Arnold later realizes that the trapdoor is actually a doorway to Hell (at least it wasn’t a well in the basement like another house located in Amityville).
Discussion: Once the spirits are released from the basement, the body count starts to soar, and people are killed in some gruesome ways. All in all, this was a very effective, and in a lot of ways, underrated haunted house horror film. Strong performances from Crenna and Buono, set this one apart from many of the other Haunted House films of the genre. Buono’s portrayal of The Devil was particularly good, and frightening. We definitely think that this one is in the Top 5 best Haunted House films of the 1970s and 1980s. Not Poltergeist-level special effects, but definitely more psychological in nature, and an effective one at that. Give it a try.
” I feed on 3FMC Reviews, Mr. Arnold.”
Rating: 4 doors to Hell out of 5.
– 3FMC

#80s #cinema #Devil #fear #ghost #hauntedHouse #Horror #horrorMovies #movie #scary
#80s #cinema #devil #fear #ghost #hauntedhouse
OldCoder @[email protected]
2026-10-25
Subject: CoderNet IRC access and details
For: #irc #socialmedia #selfhosting
Image: An IRC exchange from today [posted with permission]
Short link: https://dansu.org/codernet-irc
IRC chat is due for a comeback. It’s the cat’s meow 🐈‍⬛ relative to Discord and other corporate chats 💬 #IRC is Free, Open Source, light, portable to nearly every device, and everything that you type doesn’t go into #AI. 😈
Some Mastodon 🦣 and Akkoma setups support #chat in the Fediverse client. However, that feature isn’t in wide use yet. IRC is the more standard option.

I was in #Freenode IRC off and on for a decade [2008 to 2017]. I’ve run a separate network, CoderNet, from 2012 to date on different dedis and VPSes.
Subsequent to an update on October 24, 2026, CoderNet can be reached as follows:
N1) any IRC client using secure mode, host irc.oldcoder.org, port 6697
or
N2) any IRC client using insecure mode, host irc.oldcoder.org, port 6667
or
N3) any major web browser, go to either irc.oldcoder.org or irc.minetest.org
If you make it into CoderNet, you can IRC PM me using:
/query OldCoder Hello

My hours excluding errands, rest breaks, and trips are typically noon til midnight Pacific Time. Initial responses typically take from 1 minute to 1 hour.

For options N1 and N2, the recommended GUI client for Linux and Windows is ZoiteChat:
https://zoitechat.org/
CLI IRC clients include irssi and weechat. For Android, Revolution IRC is a free GUI client that works well for me. I don’t have a position on clients for Apple devices.
Option N3 lets you to connect to IRC using just a web browser. The IRC GUI in this case is The Lounge. For more information about The Lounge, visit:
https://thelounge.chat/

The sample screenshot is of a IRC PM exchange with MURB, who was actually one of the first people that I chatted with in IRC 18 years ago. MURB is in his late 30s now and disabled but looking to be productive in #gamedev.

The IRC software stack used by CoderNet on the server side is as follows
ngircd - core IRC daemon
nginx - web server
lego - certs generator
anope - IRC services such as NickServ
thelounge - IRC web GUI
ocbip - a fork of the bip IRC bouncer
Presently, the network is running on a low-end Debian box. [IRC needs very little in the way of hardware.]

The Fediverse weblog site for CoderNet is located at:
https://dansu.org/

Additional technical notes:
a. CoderNet uses valid certs as opposed to self-signed certs, so cert error messages shouldn’t be an issue.
b. IRC visitors don’t need to install The Lounge in order to use it. Nothing but a web browser is required.
c. The bouncer feature mentioned on The Lounge home page isn’t supported by the CoderNet setup. I use ocbip as my own bouncer and I could set it up for other people in some cases.
d. If anonymous is a priority, connect to CoderNet in secure mode, IRC PM me as explained above, and ask for a Freenode-type cloak.
e. The Edgy channels shown in the screenshot are in Edgy McEdge’s IRC network as opposed to CoderNet. I’m not Edgy, though I’ve known her since 2018.

To see a larger version of the screenshot, in most web browsers, right-click on the image, select “Open in New Window”, and resize the new window.
#ai #freenode #irc #chat #gamedev #selfhosting
pasjrwoctx👽 @[email protected]
2026-10-27

#Disability #Poverty #Aging #Health
🚨 URGENT HELP NEEDED TODAY 🚨
I am a 48-year-old disabled man living in poverty, and I am struggling to survive.
Every day is a battle against constant pain, sleepless nights, hunger, declining health, worsening vision, vertigo, mobility issues, cognitive decline, and the harsh reality that my disability income does not come close to covering the cost of living.
I face impossible choices every day:
Food or hygiene.
Medication or necessities.
Survival today or survival tomorrow.
I have no safety net. No financial cushion. No family support. No meaningful support system.
I am asking for help because I genuinely do not know how much longer I can continue carrying this burden alone.
My Reality
I live solely on SSDI.
I have no health insurance.
I do not drive.
I live in a rural area with no public transportation, meaning everything I need must be delivered or depend on finding someone willing and able to help.
My housing situation is unstable. Part of my rent is paid through helping maintain the property where I live, but my disabilities and declining health are making even those responsibilities increasingly difficult.
I am aging in poverty, and every year brings new physical limitations, more pain, and greater uncertainty.
I am not getting better.
I am getting worse.
My Health Is Declining
My days are consumed by:
Chronic pain
Exhaustion
High blood pressure fluctuations
Vertigo and dizziness
Poor mobility
Knee, hip, ankle, and joint pain
Numbness and weakness in my hands
Cognitive and executive functioning decline
Vision problems and light sensitivity
Dental issues
Anxiety, PTSD, and Bipolar Disorder
Some days my vision becomes a fuzzy blur. Bright light hurts. Low light makes basic tasks difficult.
If I sit too long, my joints lock up.
If I stand too long, my legs burn and stiffen.
If I lie down, pain spreads throughout my body.
Simple daily activities that most people take for granted are becoming harder and harder to accomplish.
Why I Am Reaching Out
I am exhausted.
Physically.
Mentally.
Emotionally.
Spiritually.
I have spent years contacting organizations, charities, government agencies, advocacy programs, nonprofits, and anyone I could think of for help.
Most of the time I receive lists of resources, referrals, phone numbers, websites, and suggestions.
What I do not receive are results.
I desperately need someone willing to understand my actual circumstances and help create real, concrete solutions.
I do not need more lists.
I need advocacy.
I need a social worker or case manager who can help navigate housing, healthcare, benefits, food security, transportation, and long-term stability.
I know resources exist.
I simply cannot seem to access them on my own.
A Recent Example
A few months ago, I developed a serious dental problem.
The pain became so severe that my landlord had to take me to the emergency room simply to obtain antibiotics.
After extensive effort and repeated requests, I was able to receive an examination and X-rays, only to be referred elsewhere for additional care I could not afford and could not reliably travel to.
Multiple emails and follow-ups produced little more than apologies and delays.
This experience reflects a much larger problem:
Many disabled people are given information about help.
Far fewer are actually able to obtain that help.
What I Need Most
Immediate Needs
Food and groceries
Hygiene supplies
Clothing
Medical and dental care
Transportation assistance
Household necessities
Relief from immediate financial crisis
Long-Term Needs
Stable, permanent housing
Consistent food security
Reliable healthcare access
Advocacy and case management
A sustainable future with dignity and security
My greatest need is stability.
I need a forever home where I can live safely for the rest of my life without constantly fearing homelessness, displacement, or crisis.
This Is About Dignity
This is not a request for luxury.
It is a plea for dignity.
Poverty is expensive.
Disability is exhausting.
Hunger is cruel.
Isolation is crushing.
I am trying to survive while my body and mind continue to deteriorate.
Despite everything, I continue to fight every day.
I continue to hope.
I continue to ask for help.
Financial Needs
Today's Goal
$8,455
Annual Survival Need
$27,255
Monthly Survival Need
$1,500
Immediate Stabilization Goal
$25,000
Long-Term Housing and Security Goal
$5,000,000
A stable, accessible, permanent property would not only give me safety and security, but potentially allow me to spend the remainder of my life helping others who struggle as I have.
How You Can Help
Donate
🔗 PayPal:
paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=…
💸 Cash App:
$woctxphotog
Share
If you cannot donate, please share this with others.
Every dollar helps.
Every share matters.
Every act of compassion makes a difference.
Final Words
I am tired.
I am hungry.
I am in pain.
I am scared of what tomorrow may bring.
But I am still here, still fighting, and still hoping someone will hear me.
If you have ever known hardship, loss, fear, hunger, loneliness, disability, or uncertainty, then you know that compassion can mean everything.
Please help if you can.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
#MutualAid #Disabled #Disability #Poverty #Housing #Health #Healthcare #DentalHealth #FoodInsecurity #ChronicIllness #MentalHealth #PTSD #Bipolar #Survival #Support #Compassion #Empathy #Aging #Help #Dignity #Rent #Groceries #Hygiene #CommunitySupport #Life

#disabled #poverty #bipolar #groceries #health #mutualaid