lnr | Network

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sport-2

Hovertext:
The weird part is I'll get complaint emails about the 2037 Olympics not being possible, and not, like, the rest of this idea.

Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sport-2

conuly

The fare is $3. If you commute, you take the bus or train twice a day, five days a week. Every week you spend $30*. You'd have to be caught and ticketed more often than once every five weeks in order to make this math not work out in your favor. And that is never going to happen, because there aren't nearly enough enforcement agents. As it is, the ones we have cost more than they make back. It's all a racket, but you'll notice the buses still aren't free because Albany is still in control of the MTA.

* I'm making a few assumptions here, first, that you're not sharing the same card among several family members with staggered schedules; once you spend $35 in a week on the same card, subsequent trips are free. Also, this is the full fare for most buses and trains, but not for the express bus.

firecat

I wrote what I thought was a fun and helpful comment somewhere on R3ddut. The mods decided it was written by AI so they removed it. Do I get a statue with three arms and six fingers per hand as a reward? Should I missspel more words in my next comment?

james_davis_nicoll

Human paleontologists have the professional opportunity of a lifetime... but there's a catch.

Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick

seekingferret

Spring Experience by Boston Ballet

After choreographed by Lia Cirio, music by Lera Auerbach

This didn't really land for us. Immediately afterward we were speculating that maybe we just didn't have an eye yet for non-narrative ballet, but the next two pieces belied that theory, so all I can say is that this didn't land for us. The set consisted of a large white structure of curves, somewhat resembling a miniature Gehry building, but the dancers didn't really interact with it. I think there was some fusion of classical ballet and modern dance vocabulary, but it didn't spark anything for me.

Herman Schmerman choreographed by William Forsythe, music by Thom Willems

On the other hand, this landed. An energetic duet (pas de deux?) followed by a section for 5 dancers, to an interesting miminalist electronic score. I loved the way the dancers moved to the music and how they played off each other, I loved the bits of humor sprinkled throughout. Also the asymmetries of the 5 dancers played out in really satisfying ways. My girlfriend said it seemed like they were having fun out there above all else.

Dances at a Gathering choreographed by Jerome Robbins, music by Chopin

Seeing this was the reason

chestnut_pod recommended we go to this performance and it didn't disappoint.

Ten dancers each in distinctive colored outfits perform in a series of smaller ensemble dances, mixing and matching relationships, to a sequence of short Chopin piano pieces. The dancing was beautiful, graceful and physical and surprising. But it was really the combinatorics that were striking, the way the dancers mixed and mingled in different interactions, playing out their personalities by way of the dance. It was an utterly enchanting experience.

tamaranth

2026/068: She Made Herself a Monster — Anna Kovatchevka

"Humans have always needed people like me—as long as we’ve needed monsters.”
... “Do people need monsters?”
“A person can’t fight a plague, but they can fight the beast that cursed them with it. If not vampire or varkolak, it’s the Devil, or it’s witches. My way doesn’t end in witch burnings.” [loc. 1308]

Anka was orphaned on the night she was born: a house fire, a mother giving birth on bare earth lit by flames. The people of Koprivci, a small town in Bulgaria, believe Anka is the reason for the streak of stillbirths and fevers that has claimed nearly all of the children born in the last sixteen years.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: hopeful

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/05/copy-fail-linux-vulnerability.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=72023

This is the worst Linux vulnerability in years.

TL;DR

copy.fail is a Linux kernel local privilege escalation, not a browser or clipboard attack. Disclosed by Theori on 29 April 2026 with a working PoC.
It abuses the kernel crypto API (AF_ALG sockets) plus splice() to write four bytes at a time straight into the page cache of a file the attacker does not own.
The exploit works unmodified across Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, SUSE, Amazon Linux, Fedora and most others. No race condition, no per-distro offsets.
The file on disk is never modified. AIDE, Tripwire and checksum-based monitoring see nothing.
Kubernetes Pod Security Standards (Restricted) and the default RuntimeDefault seccomp profile do not block the syscall used. A custom seccomp profile is needed.
The mainline fix landed on 1 April. Distros are rolling kernels out now. Patch.

“Local privilege escalation” sounds dry, so let me unpack it. It means: an attacker who already has some way to run code on the machine, even as the most boring unprivileged user, can promote themselves to root. From there they can read every file, install backdoors, watch every process, and pivot to other systems.

Why does that matter on shared infrastructure? Because “local” covers a lot of ground in 2026: every container on a shared Kubernetes node, every tenant on a shared hosting box, every CI/CD job that runs untrusted pull-request code, every WSL2 instance on a Windows laptop, every containerised AI agent given shell access. They all share one Linux kernel with their neighbours. A kernel LPE collapses that boundary.

News article.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/05/copy-fail-linux-vulnerability.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=72023

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/5/12/never-underestimate-the-importance-of-aunties

Via Monterey Bay Aquarium, which writes:

Ivy helps Willow grow to new heights. 🌿☀️

Before new otters Suri and Willow joined our exhibit, the pair spent several weeks settling in behind-the-scenes with the help of our animal care team.

While Suri proved to be a bit more confident, cautious Willow was slower to warm up to her new home. But the moment she met Ivy, Willow’s confidence bloomed! 💚🌷

At 14, Ivy is currently our oldest (and blondest!) exhibit otter. Her mature, mellow presence helped Willow relax and we saw her confidence grow! Ivy was instrumental in helping her acclimate to her new home.

Willow’s already branched out after her first few weeks on exhibit. She’s spending more time with lively youngster Opal, while Suri’s totally captivated by our confident and clever Selka. Their care team has even noticed Suri mimicking her new mentor!

In the wild, southern sea otters like ours live in social groups called rafts, floating through the waves with fellow female companions of many different ages and temperaments. 🦦 The ever-changing relationships between our non-releasable otters give us humans a rare and precious peek at the unique social dynamics of this beloved species.

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/5/12/never-underestimate-the-importance-of-aunties

andrewducker

1. Gaining or losing a Prime Minister between general elections in the norm and not the exception: (tags:politics uk history )
2. Why a slice of Edinburgh is being bought up by overseas owners: (tags:housing edinburgh scotland migration )

sorcyress

But the critical thing is that _I like SCD again._

This has been happening ever since I started my class, but this was maybe the first time since 2020 that I was _looking forward_ to attending Cambridge Class.

I still think there are large swaths of my hobby that don't love me back, but gee golly, the more my cohort grows, the more likely I'll be facing a partner who I can make eyes at across the set when the MC says "we're going to be using the role terms 'tartans' and 'rainbows'" and then eight bars in tells us to dance a ladies' chain. Callahan was right, shared pain *is* halved, and more importantly, pain *can* be transumuted into joy, if you have the right batch of people to share the schadenfreude with.

(Is it still schadenfreude if it's your own pain? I guess?)

It's also really nice that the dances that have been coming to class recently have had excellent flow and been beautiful to dance. It's making me think a lot about my own teaching, and what and how to emphasize things to get that as well. How do I make people shut up and focus on the flow, which would cut the number of unnecessary questions down _significantly_.

I'm excited for upcoming Mondays, and I'm excited to put together a program for my class party and keep running that, and I'm excited for Pinewoods (both work weekend in a couple weeks and ESCape, but I'm also _excited for Scottish Sessions_! I have been quietly tolerant of Scots for a couple years now (ever since the ill-fated applause year), but I am so excited to be _excited_ for camp!

I've had a zine series idea for a while: queers are stealing your hobby. Do an issue on bellringing, on ham radio, on morris, on pub sings. And absolutely this. On Scottish Country Dance. Because we are and it's great! And I think it's entirely plausible that some of the less conservative old guard will start to realize that the tradeoff for them dancing with us weirdos who are on the "wrong" side of the set all the time is getting to dance with people who are pretty practiced at being quick-thinking from anywhere in the set and able to keep the dance flowing a lot better.

It turns out that when you don't have to actually worry about adhering to an extremely strict enforced binary, there's a lot more space to just do interesting things! (this is not a metaphor.) ((this is _definitely_ a metaphor))

~Sor
MOOP!

watervole

Those who love 'The Good Place' as much as I do will probably recognise the quote.

'The Law of Unintended Consequences' says that it's not possible to live a perfect life in modern society. Everything we do impacts negatively on the environment or involves low-paid labour, unethical working practices, etc.

But there are some things we can do.

We can't win, but we can nibble at the edges.

Shampoo

Advertisers work hard to convince us that we need to wash our hair ever single day to keep it perfect, but our ancestors didn't have shampoo. Shampoo didn't reach the UK until the eighteenth century.

I used to suffer from regular problems with my ears. I thought it was earwax build up, until the lady syringing my ears said it was thin slivers of skin.

I wondered what was triggering it, and considered that shampoo might be a possible cause.

Taking a deep breath, I began cutting out shampoo at a week long folk festival - where so many people were camping that no one would notice if I was looking a mess.

My hair got greasy, but not as badly as I'd expected. I carried on with the experiment...

After two months of not stripping all the natural oils in my hair and scalp, my body stopped over-producing them in an effort to replace them.

Over 30 years later, I still haven't gone back to using shampoo, and my hair isn't greasy. I wash it with water, and that's all. Brushing distributes the oils evenly and keeps it silky, but not greasy.

Another member of my family who went the same way, briefly tried shampoo recently, and promptly got dandruff (which they'd never had before).

Not saying this will work for everyone, but you can save a LOT of money, and reduce your environmental impact as well. (detergent kills fish). If you do go for it, cut down gradually. Reduce the amount of shampoo you use, and reduced the frequency of washes. If you cut down gradually, then you'll avoid the greasy phase. Maybe use some sort of tiny measuring cup to measure the amount you use?

oursin

Happy birthday,

shehasathree and

themis1!

rydra_wong

In my defence, most of 2026 so far has been spent dealing with incapacitating levels of fatigue, which might finally be getting better (and that needs to be a separate post).

But the major problem is that I wanted to re-read Cascade, the first book in the trilogy, before starting Blight.

And while I loved Cascade -- here is my rave from way back when -- it produces an overwhelming sense of dread in me, even more than it did so on first read, because it captures, with remarkable precision and effectiveness, the sense of living in a liberal democracy that is teetering on the edge of ceasing to be one, and the stomach-dropping sensation when things begin moving unspeakably fast.

It's a very good book, but -- you see the problem.

Anyway, in recent weeks I finally got myself to re-read Cascade, and then I tore through Blight in a few days. Weirdly, I found it a much less difficult read because it's (both politically and environmentally) a post-apocalyptic novel, in which some kind of fightback is beginning.

Anyway it's fucking fantastic, without any of the common middle-book-of-a-trilogy doldrums. A really spectacular and unique mixture of wild magic, cosmic horror, and organizing for revolution, the last written with gritty specificity. The author is dead and all that, I don't know what's firsthand knowledge and what's research, but this is a book that (for example) writes with deep credibility about what it feels like to be in a crowd being tear-gassed.

As well as being a very good book, it also feels it's maybe a psychologically useful book to read right now.

I would like to do a proper write-up but I still have no idea what my energy's going to be doing day to day, so in the meantime here's a hype post, and if you want a review here's

james_davis_nicoll's:

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/land-of-hope

ETA: Also it's on the Aurora Award shortlist for Best Novel:

https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/current-ballot/

Ob!disclaimer that the author is an internet acquaintance, but I do in fact love the book.

skygiants

I don't know that Angela Thirlwell's Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal Heroine was particularly mind-blowing for me as a text in terms of new knowledge or insights on As You Like It. However, it certainly was satisfying for me to read, in the way it is always satisfying to read a book with someone who passionately agrees with you about a mildly contrarian fannish opinion, like:

Angela Thirlwell: I simply think Rosalind is the absolute top-tier Shakespeare heroine
Me [nodding vigorously]: How true!
Angela Thirlwell: she is so witty and clever and in absolute total narrative control of her text and also doing gender like nobody else in Shakespeare
Me [nodding vigorously]: I think everyone who puts on an As You Like It should read your book!
Angela Thirwell: and As You Like It is a brilliant work that hangs together brilliantly in its entirety
Me [nodding en--pausing]: well I'm not sure I agree entirely with that
Angela Thirlwell: and here's my chapter on Rosalind's Daughters which includes every literary heroine I've ever loved. Elizabeth Bennet is kind of a Rosalind when you think about it.
Me [nodding politely]: I see, I see. Do you have any evidence for that?
Angela Thirlwell: Well, no. But! I believe it in my heart. Because Rosalind is the best!
Me [nodding vigorously]: She's the best!

The part that was probably most interesting for me in terms of actual new thoughts about Rosalind and As You Like It was the contextualization of the play in in terms of when, exactly, it was written, and what other plays it sits alongside in its canonical period, including some that are relatively unfamiliar to me -- I don't actually have a great constant sense in my head of Shakespeare's timeline (other than the obvious TEMPEST IS THE LAST) and the Great Chronological DWJ Project has made me much more interested in tracing the way a train of thought evolves over the course of somebody's work. It's interesting to see Rosalind and Viola as different ways of working out a concept that begins all the way back in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Thirlwell makes much of the fact that Viola is stressed and and serious and poetic whereas Rosalind is almost always speaking in comic prose, and takes charge of her own epilogue. Indeed she never forgets to remind us that Rosalind has the epilogue. You can tell what Thirlwell's favorite bits of the play are because she will quote them at least times in the text in order to prove five different points, blissfully unconcerned with repetition. I personally did not need to return quite so many times to the Bay of Portugal but I guess even the fact that Rosalind speaks the greatest percentage of her play of any Shakespeare heroine [good for her!] does not provide that many Rosalind lines to quote from.

Anyway. Do I think you ought to read this book if not for the pleasure of nodding vigorously along with various enthusiastic statements about Rosalind? Like, do I think it will transform you into a person who nods vigorously along with enthusiastic statements about Rosalind, if you were not one previously? Who could say! Report back if you find out!

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/11/raising-the-roof/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60655

In the further adventures of home renovation, the back deck has been laid and now the roofing is being put up, for shade and to keep rain off the deck. It’s looking.. pretty good! There’s more to be done, obviously. But it’s coming along nicely.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/11/raising-the-roof/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60655

apnic_blog_feed

Posted by Job Snijders

https://blog.apnic.net/2026/05/12/repairing-the-rpkiviews-h1-2026-archives/

https://blog.apnic.net/?p=101010

Guest Post: RPKIViews captures the constantly changing global RPKI dataset without storing wasteful full snapshots. By using CCRs, deduplication, and high-efficiency compression, rpkispools make long-term RPKI research practical at scale.

https://blog.apnic.net/2026/05/12/repairing-the-rpkiviews-h1-2026-archives/

https://blog.apnic.net/?p=101010

sineala

So the other day

lysimache introduced me to one of those daily web games that has apparently been going for a while, but she just found out about it recently: Catfishing.

It is a Wikipedia-based game, sort of like Redactle. Redactle, as you may know, gives you one redacted Wikipedia entry per day, and you unredact the entry by guessing words that you think appear in it, until you have guessed enough words to be able to guess the name of the entry.

Catfishing is like a reverse, shortened version of that. Instead of the article itself, you get a list of all the categories the article appears in, some of which make it much more obvious than others (e.g., "Les Misérables characters, Fictional mayors, Fictional outlaws, Fictional French people, Fictional French criminals, Literary characters introduced in 1862, Fictional characters from the 19th century, Fictional thieves, Fictional Catholics, Food theft") and then you have to use that information to guess the name of the article. (e.g., "Jean Valjean").

(Both Redactle and Catfishing have some kind of minimum notability threshold implemented somehow, so it's generally going to be something you have heard of, or something you will feel like you probably should have heard of.)

Every day you get ten new articles to guess, and they will let you play all previous days. So far my best score is 8/10, which I achieved on the first day. I have played about a month of older entries and I have not equaled my previous score, so I guess it's all downhill from here.

Anyway, you should play it. It's fun!

Current Mood: amused

cosmolinguist

Not only did diffrentcolours greet me this morning with "Happy Minnesota statehood day," this evening he got me blueberry muffins.

Because the other day when he looked up Minnesota's state soil (when the polycule was talking about gardening and V and I were waxing poetic about how amazing soil is, as we do) he saw that a) this date was coming up and b) the state muffin is blueberry!

(Of course states are bullshit, the United States doubly so. Land back! But blueberries are tasty.)

twistedchick

Somewhere along the last few years my Introvert/Extrovert balance must have shifted to the left.

My doctor ordered a blood test that requires a 12-hour fast, so I did the fast, went to get the test first thing after I woke up, then went with the SU to our favorite deli, which was normally busy, and got home -- and I am completely exhausted. Too many people in too little time, also in too small a space. Yet this is the deli we've been going to since 1989, except that we weren't there for the last six years. The food is great, the wait staff is friendly and longterm -- I saw a couple of people who've worked there for more than a decade -- and it's a good place.

Yet I am feeling radically overpeopled, as if I'd had to sing an opera in the round, with no wings at the side of the stage to rest in.

Next time, one or the other; clinic or deli. Not both.

ETA: Also, I am having trouble with Etsy. It won't let me sign in with my always-used email, kitmason@gmail.com. And I can't contact Customer Service to ask them why this is happening because they are only contacted once you've signed in. Suggestions, anyone?

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lnr

Where you can find me

May 2026

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Page Summary

smbc_comics_feed - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Sport
conuly - The sign at the bus stop reminds me that farejumping comes with a fine up to $150
firecat - Firsts
james_davis_nicoll - Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick
seekingferret - More ballet
tamaranth - 2026/068: She Made Herself a Monster — Anna Kovatchevka
jazzyjj in awesomeers - Just one thing: 12 May 2026
bruce_schneier_feed - Copy.Fail Linux Vulnerability
daily_otter_feed - Never Underestimate the Importance of Aunties
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 12-05-2026
sorcyress - To quote the Morris Dancers...
watervole - The Law of Unintended Consequences
oursin - (no subject)
rydra_wong - An apologia for it taking me a fucking YEAR to read "Blight" by Rachel Rosen
skygiants - (no subject)
scalziwhatever_feed - Raising the Roof
apnic_blog_feed - Repairing the RPKIViews H1 2026 archives
sineala - Catfishing!
cosmolinguist - State muffin
twistedchick - huh?

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Page generated May. 15th, 2026 12:08 am

A slight case of overblogging

Network

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Sport

The sign at the bus stop reminds me that farejumping comes with a fine up to $150

Firsts

Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick

More ballet

2026/068: She Made Herself a Monster — Anna Kovatchevka

Just one thing: 12 May 2026

Copy.Fail Linux Vulnerability

Never Underestimate the Importance of Aunties

Interesting Links for 12-05-2026

To quote the Morris Dancers...

The Law of Unintended Consequences

(no subject)

An apologia for it taking me a fucking YEAR to read "Blight" by Rachel Rosen

(no subject)

Raising the Roof

Repairing the RPKIViews H1 2026 archives

Catfishing!

State muffin

huh?

Profile

May 2026

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