evilstevie @evilstevie@mastod1.ddns.net

I mean who *doesn’t* play bagpipes on their cat? #TimelineCleanser

As I remember London

When I moved to the UK at the tail end of the last millennium, I wasn’t in a good place. I was hired by a US company to work in their German office, and they sent me over to the US to work on their product. I lived in a hotel for a few months, coming home to an empty, cleaned room every day. It was very “Lost in Translation”. The German part of the company went bankrupt during this trip, so I was asked to move to the UK to stay with them. Anglophile as I was, I took this opportunity and had a few trips in between the US and the UK to find a place to live.

My partner of five years also said they’d love to make that move with me and start a new chapter. That didn’t work out – I was dumped in a call on a pay phone in a hotel in San Francisco, went out and got really drunk. When the US stint ended, I went to London, checked into my new flat and waited for my stuff from Germany to arrive.

And then I plunged into London. I went clubbing a lot. I spent the day in the office and went to the pub with my colleagues in the evening. I enjoyed and fell in love with the place. I met people from all over the world, I dated people of many races and backgrounds. I had food I never had, I heard music and saw bands I’ve never heard of or even knew existed. I’ve been to Notting Hill Carnival, immersing myself in this wonderful, wild and colourful scene.

London opened my mind, it made me find the great in lots of cultures and seeing them bringing that to the UK lifestyle was at times a hilarious clash, but wonderful to witness. Very early on I realised one thing: being British is not the same as being a pasty white uptight person, Brits come in all shades and sizes. The most British person I know with a clipped accent, fierce devotion to the Royals and a fetish for a good cuppa is a gay friend who is dark Indian.

Working in Soho I got to know a lot of LGBTQ folk and a few of my colleagues came out or even changed gender during the time I worked there. And they got support from everyone, it wasn’t a problem or a scary thing. London was inviting, colourful, open and amazing. That’s the London I miss.

It’s a big city. In my 16 years tenure I had one laptop, a mobile and a bike stolen. I got into some fights and had three attempted muggings. All by white young dudes, by the way. I lived next to a huge mosque and the area two streets down was hard-core Jewish. My butcher was Algerian and when I ordered in French-ish, I got better prices. It worked.

Then UKIP came around and told people that everything is terrible and its all the forrins’ fault. And disappointed and disgruntled people believed that nonsense. I left the country after Brexit and moved to Berlin, which is great but does feel like a Tesco value version of the London I encountered.

So if people claim that they remember a safer, cleaner and racially homogenous London they either never lived there, or didn’t immerse themselves in it. Or completely talk out of their arse following an utterly different agenda, one that I find despicable, regressive and governed by fear and hate and not inclusion and inspiration.

ID cards are bad. Very bad.

1. Once they exist it will become necessary to always carry it. If you don't you must have something to hide, etc.
2. They can't stop people working in the 'black economy' because people currently employing those working for cash don't care.
3. It is another attack on trans and NB people (very unlikely someone would be allowed to have multiple IDs)
4. Massive data loss of personal information is highly likely.
5. Who pays? Why should they?
6. Police state becomes more likely with having your ID inspected whenever a copper wants to harass someone, especially POC.
7. OTHER OPTIONS ALREADY EXIST!

ID cards are a very bad, very dangerous, very expensive, and very risky idea.

ps I'm not a 'Brit'. I'm British, or more specifically English!
#IDcards #PoliceStateUK #BritCard

I use Tailscale for home purposes, mostly so I can access movies from other locations without having to deal with reverse proxies and security. It's great software. I'm just saying this as preface: I would recommend it to anyone looking for a remote networking solution.

Yesterday they sent out an email about various events they would have a presence at, general marketing stuff, mostly in tech hubs and cons. Nothing remarkable. One of the events was that they were sponsoring a family movie night with another company. The movie picked was Harry Potter, but most people don't care, and it's a fine family movie. I shrugged and moved on with my day. Life's too short to get pissed off about stuff like that.

Well, today they sent out an email apologizing for the choice of movie and promising to do better in future.

I'm not stanning a corp. I wish there were a decent open-source option (well, they're built atop the open-source option, but goddamn do they make it easier). But it was nice to see. In a world which has gone full-on transphobia and doesn't seem to think that Jowling Kowling Rowling is worthy of comment, I guess enough technical people who use Tailscale aren't assholes and complained, or who knows, maybe someone at the company pointed it out, but whatever the reason, they rethought the movie choice. And they didn't just do it, they apologized for it to everyone on their mailing list.

It's a small thing, but I thought I'd share it both to say that I will continue to use Tailscale because it really is good software, but also if you need a nice thing, I guess this is a nice thing.

Dear Christians that didn't get Raptured,
Just proves that you're no better than this atheist.
As an atheist, I dream of the rapture where the rest of us can get on and along without the drag of the religious cancer on our society.
Sadly, that wasn't today.

I posted the above and this meme today, EIGHT YEARS ago...

So they keep forgetting to carry that zero still. 🤣

#Rapture2025 #Atheism #Atheist #ReligionIsPoison

Can someone please make an Oregon Trail mod where you play as RFK Jr. and your travelers constantly fall ill with the most preventable diseases known to man?

If drones have been sighted above Scandinavian airports, it is VITAL that convincing evidence be shared.

When Gatwick & Heathrow were closed for the same reason, no evidence was provided. After years of FOI requests the authorities finally admitted there was never any direct evidence; they were chasing phantom drones.

I covered this for Hackaday, one of very few journalists questioning the official line because it sounded fishy.

There needs to be clear evidence published to avoid a repeat.

"Tylenol tempteth demons into thy soul to curseth thee with the Goblin Autism Pox. Verily, a forest spirit hath told me so in dreams"
#ASD #Autism #paracetamol

"Lesbians are responsible for 100% of all space crime" is by far my favorite statistic to date. Just barely edging out "Mars is populated entirely by robots".

Detour

#CowsOfMastodon #Nature #Photography

The maths proved it was a time machine. The issue was that the speed of travel was one second per second.

"Can you make it go faster?"

"Impossible. We can make it go slower though."

"So you age faster inside the machine? What use is that?"

"We thought we'd try it with some wine and cheese?"

#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

@GossiTheDog what a massive cunt. someone kick him in the head a couple times.

Just gonna leave this here

Representation’s important, esp during times like now where people are marginalised and turned into scapegoats regularly.

So here’s some stuff that, while none of your business, I’ll share in case it helps anyone feeling alone:

I’m non-binary & have gender dysphoria.
I’m prob demisexual & polyamorous.

I’ve got ADHD, ASD, & a history of depression, & panic/anxiety disorder.
I take anti depressants monitored by a psychiatrist, & see a therapist regularly.

Long COVID gave me Chronic Fatigue

RIP #DJTwitch https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yjjdv68y7o

Blah blah cyber attack.

Maybe we should just stop centralising and interconnecting absolutely everything to absolutely everything else.

These days you can’t even visit a website without it pulling the fonts, styles, images from a bazillion different sources rather than the site itself. Never mind ads and all the other cruft.

Now think about how we do that with entire IT systems and consider how trivial it is to break one thing that impacts a bazillion other things in an instant.

Made this sea glass puppy recently

From the country that brought you Boaty McBoatface comes Network Rail's leaf-removal train:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/19/train-named-ctrl-alt-deleaf-leaves-uk-tracks-network-rail

THIS IS THE RIGHT KIND OF CANCEL CULTURE.
So Disney is offering massive discounts for 6 months if you try to cancel your subscription. For those who weren’t cancelling bc their young kids, it’s worth at least trying to cancel and take the discount they offer to keep you. Then cancel before the promotion period ends.

They are also spending a fortune on ads to get people back. The boycott is working. Soooo many people are fighting back.
#Disney #boycott