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Back in my schooldays, there was a neighbour of ours who used to prep his engine for departure. Every morning he'd start his car, despite the car obviously not wanting to start. It would take several noisy attempts to turn the engine over. Once turned over, it would sputter a few times, and stop. Only for this process to be repeated several times. Then eventually the engine would kick and roar into life, and the neighbour would spend several minutes revving it up and down. Then he'd leave the engine running noisily for about 15 minutes, presumably while he went back inside and had breakfast or something, so that it was nice and warmed up. And finally, about half an hour after this whole spectacle* had begun, he'd rev the engine into spitting, snarling, protesting life, and make his way out on to the street, where the sound of the engine would fade away into the distance for the next 5 minutes.
All before the time I had to get out of bed to prepare for school.
* Is it okay to call something experienced purely aurally a "spectacle"? I'm saying it is.
2026-02-12 Rerun commentary: Oh wow... I'd almost forgotten about that. And now reading it again has brought the trauma back. Whether I'm talking about Serron being sensible or the neighbour noisily starting the car is left as an exercise for the reader.
Update on legal cases: one new victory! :) One new restriction :(
Feb. 10th, 2026 03:03 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_newsWe're very sorry to have to do this, and especially on such short notice. The reason for it: on Friday, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Age-Appropriate Design Code Act into law, with an effective date of immediately. The law is so incredibly poorly written it took us several days to even figure out what the hell South Carolina wants us to do and whether or not we're covered by it. We're still not entirely 100% sure about the former, but in regards to the latter, we're pretty sure the fact we use Google Analytics on some site pages (for OS/platform/browser capability analysis) means we will be covered by the law. Thankfully, the law does not mandate a specific form of age verification, unlike many of the other state laws we're fighting, so we're likewise pretty sure that just stopping people under 18 from creating an account will be enough to comply without performing intrusive and privacy-invasive third-party age verification. We think. Maybe. (It's a really, really badly written law. I don't know whether they intended to write it in a way that means officers of the company can potentially be sentenced to jail time for violating it, but that's certainly one possible way to read it.)
Netchoice filed their lawsuit against SC over the law as I was working on making this change and writing this news post -- so recently it's not even showing up in RECAP yet for me to link y'all to! -- but here's the complaint as filed in the lawsuit, Netchoice v Wilson. Please note that I didn't even have to write the declaration yet (although I will be): we are cited in the complaint itself with a link to our August news post as evidence of why these laws burden small websites and create legal uncertainty that causes a chilling effect on speech. \o/
In fact, that's the victory: in December, the judge ruled in favor of Netchoice in Netchoice v Murrill, the lawsuit over Louisiana's age-verification law Act 456, finding (once again) that requiring age verification to access social media is unconstitutional. Judge deGravelles' ruling was not simply a preliminary injunction: this was a final, dispositive ruling stating clearly and unambiguously "Louisiana Revised Statutes §§51:1751–1754 violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution", as well as awarding Netchoice their costs and attorney's fees for bringing the lawsuit. We didn't provide a declaration in that one, because Act 456, may it rot in hell, had a total registered user threshold we don't meet. That didn't stop Netchoice's lawyers from pointing out that we were forced to block service to Mississippi and restrict registration in Tennessee (pointing, again, to that news post), and Judge deGravelles found our example so compelling that we are cited twice in his ruling, thus marking the first time we've helped to get one of these laws enjoined or overturned just by existing. I think that's a new career high point for me.
I need to find an afternoon to sit down and write an update for
dw_advocacy highlighting everything that's going on (and what stage the lawsuits are in), because folks who know there's Some Shenanigans afoot in their state keep asking us whether we're going to have to put any restrictions on their states. I'll repeat my promise to you all: we will fight every state attempt to impose mandatory age verification and deanonymization on our users as hard as we possibly can, and we will keep actions like this to the clear cases where there's no doubt that we have to take action in order to prevent liability. In cases like SC, where the law takes immediate effect, or like TN and MS, where the district court declines to issue a temporary injunction or the district court issues a temporary injunction and the appellate court overturns it, we may need to take some steps to limit our potential liability: when that happens, we'll tell you what we're doing as fast as we possibly can. (Sometimes it takes a little while for us to figure out the exact implications of a newly passed law or run the risk assessment on a law that the courts declined to enjoin. Netchoice's lawyers are excellent, but they're Netchoice's lawyers, not ours: we have to figure out our obligations ourselves. I am so very thankful that even though we are poor in money, we are very rich in friends, and we have a wide range of people we can go to for help.)
In cases where Netchoice filed the lawsuit before the law's effective date, there's a pending motion for a preliminary injunction, the court hasn't ruled on the motion yet, and we're specifically named in the motion for preliminary injunction as a Netchoice member the law would apply to, we generally evaluate that the risk is low enough we can wait and see what the judge decides. (Right now, for instance, that's Netchoice v Jones, formerly Netchoice v Miyares, mentioned in our December news post: the judge has not yet ruled on the motion for preliminary injunction.) If the judge grants the injunction, we won't need to do anything, because the state will be prevented from enforcing the law. If the judge doesn't grant the injunction, we'll figure out what we need to do then, and we'll let you know as soon as we know.
I know it's frustrating for people to not know what's going to happen! Believe me, it's just as frustrating for us: you would not believe how much of my time is taken up by tracking all of this. I keep trying to find time to update
dw_advocacy so people know the status of all the various lawsuits (and what actions we've taken in response), but every time I think I might have a second, something else happens like this SC law and I have to scramble to figure out what we need to do. We will continue to update dw_news whenever we do have to take an action that restricts any of our users, though, as soon as something happens that may make us have to take an action, and we will give you as much warning as we possibly can. It is absolutely ridiculous that we still have to have this fight, but we're going to keep fighting it for as long as we have to and as hard as we need to. I look forward to the day we can lift the restrictions on Mississippi, Tennessee, and now South Carolina, and I apologize again to our users (and to the people who temporarily aren't able to become our users) from those states.
Sheesh, some people need everything explained to them.
Don't you ask where Loren's hair has gone, either.
On a completely unrelated note: I've recently returned from my trip to South America, and I have a request that I want to throw to a wide audience.
While in Peru, in several locations (restaurants, cafes, hotels, etc) I heard background music being played. And often I'd recognise one of the tunes as a western pop/rock song, only to be surprised when the lyrics or main tune began, in that it was very obviously a cover version by a Latin American band. In some cases the lyrics were being sung in Spanish, in others the instrumentation was completely bizarre, with things like Andean pipes or a mariachi-like band playing the song - occasionally both weird instrumentation and Spanish lyrics.
In particular, on several occasions I heard different U2 songs being given this treatment, including an extremely memorable version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" with mariachi guitars and trumpets, and Spanish lyrics. I also heard some Blur and Oasis, and even The Verve being given this treatment. I searched for CDs of such recordings while in Peru, but fruitlessly. If anyone knows of what I speak, or can get their hands on a CD of Latin American covers of western pop songs, I'd love to be able to get some of these. In particular, a whole album of Latin American U2 covers would be ideal.
I did manage to find two CDs by a Peruvian folk band called Yawar, volumes 1 and 2 of Beatles covers done with instrumental Andean pipes. They are awesome in a completely bizarre way (and I was astonished to find that the iTunes database knew these albums when I ripped them for my iPod), but I desperately want those U2 covers. Please let me know if you have any leads.
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who pointed me at Rhythms del Mundo. That hits at least a couple of my desires. Oh my... I have found what I'm looking for!
2026-02-10 Rerun commentary: Clearly wigs don't survive time displacement. It's a case of hair today, gone tomorrow.
This comic took several hours to make, because I had to wait for the ice to freeze.
Yes, that's real ice. I was hoping it would come out more clear than that, allowing you to see Ardaxar's body through it a bit more clearly. There's a trick you can do to achieve that, by freezing the ice in several thin layers, one layer at a time, adding more water on top after each layer has frozen. This allows the dissolved gases within the water to escape rather than being frozen into the ice and forming those streaky patterns of bubbles that obscure vision.
But having waited so long to make this block of ice, I didn't feel like spending ten or more times as long doing it again.
EDIT: Thanks to the dozens of people who wrote to say that another method of producing clear ice is to boil the water first to eliminate the dissolved gases in it. Also apparently the MythBusters tackled this problem and found the best way to produce large amounts of clear ice is to use a vibrating freezer, which actively shakes out the bubbles as the water freezes.
2026-02-09 Rerun commentary: I'm just glad I never tried physical props for Kyros's fireballs.
Baba Yaga is a famous hag-like witch in Slavic folklore. She is a common villain in many Slavic stories and fairy tales, typically kidnapping children. But she is perhaps most well known to Western culture today as being the owner of a magical hut, which walks around on giant chicken legs.
The first time I remember hearing of Baba Yaga and her mysterious magical hut was in the original 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. On page 156 it lists among the fabulous and powerful artifacts and relics of the AD&D world one item known as "Baba Yaga's Hut". It describes it as follows:
Ages ago the most powerful female mage ever known spent much of her power in the creation of a magical dwelling of superb character. When she passed to another plane, her hut disappeared and has only been rumored to have been seen once or twice since. Baba Yaga developed a small hut of ordinary appearance - a circular, thatched structure of 15' diameter and 10' high. To this dwelling are attached two powerful fowl legs 12' long, which appear to be stilts. Furthermore, the Hut has intelligence (high) and human senses, plus infravision to 120' and ultravision. Inside, the Hut is a small palace - garden, fountains of water and wine, and 30 rooms on 3 floors, all lavishly and richly furnished! Despite the commodious interior, the bird legs can move Baba Yaga's Hut at up to 48" speed over swamp, 36" over rough or normal terrain, 12" over hills, through forests, etc.The description goes on to give the hut various game statistics and magical abilities. Already it sounds pretty cool. And it's interesting to note that Baba Yaga herself is described as "most powerful female mage ever known".
But wait, there's more! In Dragon magazine #83, published in 1984, appeared an adventure called "The Dancing Hut", which featured the miraculous hut, and Baba Yaga herself, evidently returned from whatever plane she had passed to. But rather than simply map a 30-room palace inside the tiny hut exterior (something akin to the interdimensional properties of a TARDIS), the adventure expanded on the original description by establishing that the hut was built around an interdimensional tesseract, a four-dimensional hypercube consisting of 24 faces. In the adventure map, each face of the tesseract was itself the location of several thematically linked rooms, some of which by themselves were larger than the "small palace" originally envisioned.
It was an epic adventure and Baba Yaga and her hut earned iconic status within the Dungeons & Dragons setting. Not that Monty or Ginny would know anything about that - but as active adventuring archaeologists of the cliffhanging era, they would of course know the source legends.
As for the Egg of Koschei the Deathless, that's a story for another day.
2026-02-08 Rerun commentary: Baba Yaga's miraculous hut was also featured in the 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. Rather than reuse the interior layout of the Dragon magazine adventure, it states that that layout is only one of many possible layouts, and that the hut's interior design changes radically whenever it shifts into other worlds or planes of existence:
The interior of Baba Yaga's hut always configures itself around a precise geometric shape. In some worlds, it takes the form of a tesseract (a four-dimensional figure composed of eight normal cubes joined along their faces) and has 48 areas; each "area" can be composed of several rooms [this is the configuration of the Dragon magazine version]. In other worlds, it takes the form of a four-dimensional sphere with 30 areas.
In this adventure, the hut's interior is configured in a series of equilateral triangles nested together in groups that share the same three-dimensional space, similar to a geometric fractal.
Inside the hut, there are a total of 36 areas on three levels [...]
Wow, the Nigerian Finance Ministry sure works quickly.
2026-02-07 Rerun commentary: That's a dead link. I created a T-shirt design that said exactly that and stuck it on Cafe Press. As far as I know, nobody ever actually bought it.
One of Winston Churchill's most famous speeches, of course. Now you know how it was written.
2026-02-06 Rerun commentary: Yeah, I don't know what the Parliament would have made of someone wearing Ophelia's outfit standing there while Winston gave a speech.
Previously for the gardens outside President Allosaurus's windows, I've used a photo of the gardens around California's State Capitol in Sacramento that I took in 2004, as I've previously mentioned.
This time, however, I've had to back up many of my old photos from my computer's internal hard drive to redundant external backups to clear up some space for new photos. So my 2004 photos aren't easily accessible any more. However, I do have a photo I took of the exact same gardens in Sacramento in 1990 on my Flickr account, so I used that here instead. It does have the slight disadvantage of showing the California Capitol building in the background, but I figured that was less of an issue than digging out my external backup drives just to find one photo.
The interesting thing about this photo is that I only realised after I got back home to Australia that it shows the US flag flying on the Capitol building at half-mast. I took the photo on 30 June, 1990, and despite trying, I've never managed to find out why the flag was flying at half-mast on that day. I presume someone important to the Government of California had recently died, but I've never tracked down who it might be.
If anyone knows, I'd appreciate an e-mail or a forum comment about it.
EDIT: Some possibilities:
- There was a major wildfire in southern California that had killed two people by 30 June.
- Best-selling author and screenwriter Irving Wallace died in Los Angeles on 29 June.
2026-02-05 Rerun commentary: Wow... Thankfully that period of having many of my photos only on external backup drives is well and truly over. Since then, and probably shortly afterwards, I've upgraded to computers with plenty of internal storage for all of my photos. My current machine has 3 terabytes of storage, a shade under 2 terabytes of which is being used. 2004 was a time when I was just starting to use a compact digital camera. That particular trip to the USA I took... [goes through files]... 1448 photos. 629 of them were on my film SLR, and 819 were on a compact digital camera. I remember halfway through the trip the memory card on my camera was full and we had to find a place (in 2004!) that could read the files off and burn them on to CDs so I could take them home and erase my memory card to take more photos. I recall that we found a photo processing place that could do it, and it took them a few hours and we had to come back later in the day to pick up the CDs and memory card. I only had one memory card because they were damn expensive back then. On later trips I just bought more memory cards whenever I filled the ones I had.
"'O Sole Mio" is not exactly opera, but you have to start somewhere.
2026-02-04 Rerun commentary: I checked my Italian knowledge and yes, I could read and understand all of the dialogue without looking at the subtitle translations. Unfortunately I've fully completed Duolingo's Italian course, and I've been slack in finding some other regular way to practise and improve my skills, so it's been drifting off a bit. Maybe I should write more comics in Italian.
Hi all!
I'm doing some minor operational work tonight. It should be transparent, but there's always a chance that something goes wrong. The main thing I'm touching is testing a replacement for Apache2 (our web server software) in one area of the site.
Thank you!
One of the group pet peeves we love discussing in my circle of friends is the current misuse of the word "literally", as in "It was so funny I literally died laughing."
Is your funeral planned in the next few days? No? Well then you didn't literally die laughing. You may certainly have figuratively died laughing, in which case it's understood that you laughed loudly and substantially while not actually dropping dead. You can even state this merely as, "I died laughing," where it is through idiomatic convention generally accepted that you are in fact speaking figuratively, and not literally.
It's a perfectly good figure of speech, and there is no beef with that. Figures of speech add colour and poetry to a language, and we would be the poorer without them. But being a figure of speech, it is a figurative expression - the opposite of a literal expression. To take an expression like this and then add the word "literally" to it is ... an interesting evolution of the English language.
Because of course criticising people for using words in new ways that contradict their older established meanings is a losing battle. The best you can do is rail against it like an old fogey yelling at kids to get off your lawn.
So get off our lawn!
P.S. Bonus sentence that you should try to use: "Barnacles littorally covered the rocks."
2026-02-03 Rerun commentary: Of course since that original annotation was written things have just become worse. Or better, depending on your point of view.
What else would Spanners be whistling while he works on the engines?
2026-02-02 Rerun commentary: I don't know about whistling, but some insects definitely hiss.
I realised after putting this together that it was supposed to be evening. Let's just assume it's a late twilight.
In our reality, the Reichstag caught fire late in the night in February, when it would certainly have been dark.
2026-02-01 Rerun commentary: I'm pretty pleased with that burning Reichstag background that I Photoshopped together in the last panel. It still looks pretty good.