With three episodes left to go, I have a feeling they’re not going to explain the madness, just keep running with it.

(via)

FYI, there are two kinds of quick-cooking oats: rolled and steel-cut. Only one is suitable for baking cookies.

The same applies to hiring writers and directors for science-fiction television shows. If you know what I mean and I think you do.

This week’s Doctor Who seems to have been constructed by scribbling down the ending, then drunk-browsing TV Tropes pages until they found somewhere they could call a start, throwing in everything they found along the way. I feel pretty safe in saying that, since the credited writer has exactly two previous credits on IMDB. For a teen drama. Seven years ago.

Dec 17: Tumblr removes adult content.

Dec 24: Tumblr shuts down completely.

Seriously: “photos, videos or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples” is about 95% of their content. The rest is emo kids and SJWs, who aren’t going to provide much ad revenue.

It started with an apparently-failing keyboard, a common problem with modern Apple Laptops. Painfully for a Unix guy, it was the “|” key, either doubling or skipping.

For a first test, I just wanted to power-cycle the machine rather than drive 40 minutes to an Apple store, but since there was a security update and a Safari update, I made sure my backups were up to date, installed those, and after it came back up to the login prompt, powered off.

When I powered it back on, the screen flashed red during boot, and then came up to a screen complaining that the OS installation was incomplete, with boilerplate making it sound like I had nothing useful on the disk at all.

My external backup drive took forever to boot from (FFS, Apple, your OS has gotten that slow on spinning disks now?!?), but when it came up, it showed the perfectly-intact internal drive.

It also tried to start syncing with cloud services and kick off a Time Machine backup, which I managed to cancel despite the incredibly poor performance.

I made Yet Another bootable backup, just in case, which took a few hours, and then tried to bring it back up. Same error. Booted in Safe Mode and it came up, so I fscked the disks and rebooted again.

Same error. I manually selected the startup disk, told it to restart, and (without resetting the progress bar) it booted successfully.

Checked installed updates, and the most recent security update isn’t on the list, and isn’t available, either. Power-cycled again, and all seems to be well.

Immediately kicked off Time Machine, followed by one of the bootable external backups…

Oh, and my “|” key? None of this changed anything, but some vigorous testing seems to have destroyed whatever tiny bit of dust crept into Apple’s fragile design.

Update

Three hours later, it’s offering me the security update again…

…and Time Machine is doing a full sync of 300+ GB, joy.

While it’s kind of sad that a cheesy zombie idol anime is ten times more fun to watch than Doctor Who, it’s even sadder that it’s got more of a plot.

…which thickens in this episode, with a slap and a bang. Will they play it straight next episode, or go for the mind-fuck? Excuse me, braaiiiiins-fuck.

In other news, as the ratings for DW continue to drop, the rumor mill has Chibnall and Whittaker both leaving, either after one more season or as soon as the New Years special airs. The other rumors have the BBC just killing the show off completely. Either way, they’ll blame fans for being cisracistsexisthatinggarbage, which their shills are already doing in between bouts of ratings denial.

As this will be one of the few images to survive the coming Tumblr purge, we’d better get to work…

(via)

[Update: whoops! forgot the link]

If you like melons…

and you like kitties…

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More than three million people have stopped watching Doctor Who. How many of those remaining are newly-minted anti-fans, we don’t know, but the BBC will find out when they get the merchandising and DVD sales figures.

I managed to make it through the season ender, but it wasn’t easy. Or particularly entertaining. It’s another “cosmic fly-swatter” story, where they’ve invented something new that’s orders of magnitude more powerful than necessary to explain its impact on the story. And since they blew the effects budget earlier in the season, the phenomenal cosmic power looks like it was actually copied directly from a Seventies DW episode.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find a mop to clean up the stupid that leaked out of my television onto the floor.

A bit too busy for a background screen, but still plenty of fun.

Before I do anything with this fabric, I’m going to press it, set it up on my copy stand, and shoot it with a flat-field lens to capture the design. This quick grainy snap doesn’t do it justice.

…please, tell me more about you and your friends, Toumi. Better yet, don’t tell, show.

NSFW

(via)

Despite setting up and then cheerfully ignoring Chekhov’s Warning Sign, this week’s angsty teen zombie drama reveals that Our Heroine is trope-ariffic.

They also drop some more clues about Our ZombieMaster, but do not go so far as The Big Reveal. Instead, we’re in that crucial moment of the classic underdog sports story, where the hero has lost confidence the night before the big game.

Will Vaughn pitch the strikeout that the Indians need to win the pennant? Tune in next week, for Idol League (no relation; also no relation).

…and send me a list of those web sites I’ve supposedly been visiting. They sound like a lot more fun than the ones I know about.

The account that was supposedly “hacked” was a vendor-specific email alias that tells me whose customer database got scooped up. In this case, it was from my purchase of SoundSoap some years back. I don’t even think they had customer accounts, so this is someone who couldn’t afford any of the real “hacked service” databases. Also, it was a plain-text message, so the “timer” claim is even more bullshitty than usual.

It was fun to read the fractured English out loud at the office.

From: <_REDACTED_>
To: <_REDACTED_>
Date: 13 Dec 2018 12:09:07 -0600
Subject: Security Alert. _REDACTED_ was hacked by criminal group.

Hello!

I have very bad news for you.
19/08/2018 - on this day I hacked your OS and got full access to your
account _REDACTED_

So, you can change the password, yes... But my malware intercepts it
every time.

How I made it:
In the software of the router, through which you went online, was a
vulnerability.
I just hacked this router and placed my malicious code on it. When you
went online, my trojan was installed on the OS of your device.

After that, I made a full dump of your disk (I have all your address
book, history of viewing sites, all files, phone numbers and addresses
of all your contacts).

A month ago, I wanted to lock your device and ask for a not big amount
of btc to unlock.
But I looked at the sites that you regularly visit, and I was shocked
by what I saw!!!
I'm talk you about sites for adults.

I want to say - you are a BIG pervert. Your fantasy is shifted far
away from the normal course!

And I got an idea....
I made a screenshot of the adult sites where you have fun (do you
understand what it is about, huh?).
After that, I made a screenshot of your joys (using the camera of your
device) and glued them together.

Turned out amazing! You are so spectacular!

I'm know that you would not like to show these screenshots to your
friends, relatives or colleagues.
I think $743 is a very, very small amount for my silence.
Besides, I have been spying on you for so long, having spent a lot of time!

Pay ONLY in Bitcoins!
My BTC wallet: _REDACTED_

You do not know how to use bitcoins?
Enter a query in any search engine: "how to replenish btc wallet".
It's extremely easy

For this payment I give you two days (48 hours).
As soon as this letter is opened, the timer will work.

After payment, my virus and dirty screenshots with your enjoys will be
self-destruct automatically.
If I do not receive from you the specified amount, then your device
will be locked, and all your contacts will receive a screenshots with
your "enjoys".

I hope you understand your situation.
- Do not try to find and destroy my virus! (All your data, files and
  screenshots is already uploaded to a remote server)
- Do not try to contact me (this is not feasible, I sent you an email
  from your account)
- Various security services will not help you; formatting a disk or
  destroying a device will not help, since your data is already on a
  remote server.

P.S. You are not my single victim. so, I guarantee you that I will not
disturb you again after payment!
 This is the word of honor hacker

I also ask you to regularly update your antiviruses in the future.
This way you will no longer fall into a similar situation.

Do not hold evil! I just do my job.
Have a nice day!

Last night I ordered a holiday fruit basket from Harry & David, but it just has apples and pears…

NSFW

(organic produce by Masa)

I first encountered the Idolm@ster franchise about 12 years ago, through screenshots and trailers for the Xbox version of the game. The franchise has gotten bigger since then, and so have the girls. Especially in the hands of fan artists…

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CtrlAltDel’s experience with horse control makes me wonder how anything ever got done in the Old West…

When you’re delivering 2 42-pound packages with adult signature required, it’s generally a good idea to ring the bell and knock a few times before leaving a tag that says “I’ll try again Monday”.

This advice is not just for 4-days-to-Christmas.

Bonus fuck-you to customer service for taking half an hour to pick up the phone, only to automatically change the packages so they’re held for pickup rather than redelivery, which I definitely did not request. Because we have nothing better to do than their job.

(actually, he changed one of the packages to be held, and seemed to know nothing about the other one on the InfoNotice until I told him; Gold Stars For Attendance all the way around)

Update

Oh, FFS; turns out the driver who left the InfoNotice tag hadn’t even bothered to scan its barcode into the system. There was no record of it when we drove over to pick up the packages, and they had to look up both tracking numbers instead.

So I’ve now watched the finale of Zombieland Saga, in which the Indians do, in fact, win the pennant, despite Sakura’s secret superpower.

While adding only one tiny hint of explanation, namely Our ZombieMaster’s deepest, darkest, dorkiest secret.

My overall rating for the series is two Stenza and a Pting. No, wait, that’s what I want to feed to Tae-chan; I meant four dried squid out of five.

In other news, I watched some really good Doctor Who episodes…

…involving River Song, Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Martha Jones…

Looks Christmas-y to me…

I’ve been bookmarking every pic I post from Pixiv, because they’re used to weight the recommendation algorithm. Unfortunately, doing something like posting a big batch of Idolmaster pics skews the results, so that lately most of what I’ve been seeing are more Idolmaster pics.

With that in mind, I queried my DB for all the pics I’ve downloaded that are tagged with strings containing ネコ, ねこ, or 猫. Cats and cat-ears galore!

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