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German security researchers studying biometric capture devices popular with the U.S. military got more than they expected for $68 on eBay: A military database of fingerprints and iris scans for 2,632 people from Afghanistan and Iraq. It wasn't a one-time mistake. A second SEEK II device they bought had the biometric profiles of American service members. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-ebay-a-military-database-of-fingerprints-and-iris-scans.html

His owners I think go with "Tort" a lot which is fine but also makes me think of lawsuits which is the opposite of dog vibes

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Still think about the dog in our neighborhood named Tortellini and how calling to him must be such a pain

newsletter soft launch 

buttondown.email/perfectsenten

this newsletter is mostly for fun and also to help me be a more attentive reader; it's pay what you want and very low stakes/volume. First newsletter will be out on January 1.

More or less since 2018 my main Christmas activity has just been to go hard on cleaning the apartment and honestly I'm really looking forward to it

I'm listening to the audiobook of The Power Broker and it's narrated by the same guy who did the audiobook of William Gibson's Zero History. He's a good reader, but I keep wondering when Milgrim is gonna show up.

a feature @sam and I have been talking about adding to horse town is custom css so people on the instance can deck our their profile pages, this feels more important to me than The Discourse

"no quadrilaterals on my website" will definitely make people subscribe to my newsletters lol

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designing a new website for ecommerce/newsletter stuff and fighting the urge to make incredibly unhinged design decisions like "what if the page slowly disintegrates if you leave it alone for too long" or "what if everything is tilted at a 3-degree angle"

setting up baby's first cron job, please wish me luck

trying to figure out a good price for selling an annual subscription for the plotter postcards I've thus far been sending only to Patreon supporters. $50/year for 4 plotter drawings ($12.50 each) is my ballpark based on like, cost of wear and tear on the machine, materials, and time, but I don't know if that's a realistic amount for someone to pay for four 4x6 plotter drawings.

Some of my closest friendships emerged from that web page. The apartment I've lived in for the last five years? We took over the lease from friends I met on twitter, and who I first met IRL when they invited me over to this apartment to hang out and watch a movie to take my mind off my dad recently dying. Twitter hasn't really been that kind of online place in a long time, but it's weird and sad to think about the role it played in my stupid little life.

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cross-posting: I know it's stupid but when my dad died 9 years ago a lot of people I only knew from twitter showed up for me and it meant a lot, so as I get extra messy and sad leading up to the anniversary of his death this week there's also some weird grief for twitter in there too

once again I have convinced myself in the days leading up to the anniversary of my father's death that I can get a lot of work done and instead am just gripped with anxiety, ha ha ha

still kind of amazed that all the banning outside social media URLs on twitter went down on like, not only a Sunday but also in the middle of the World Cup final

"Area Theater Troupe Wins Award" --NYC public radio covering the Tony Awards basically

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WNYC just did a little news bit about Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and called her a "Long Island native"—I love when they use "local girl makes good" as the hook for talking about famous people as though NYC is a small town and isn't it funny someone from around here "made it"

It wouldn't be a December 9 without me reminding everyone that on this day they released the US Senate Torture Report, never forget

FYI this appears to be the most current guidance on contributing to a strike fund for New School PT faculty on strike instagram.com/p/ClzLqxELvY6/

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Horsin' Around

This is a hometown instance run by Sam and Ingrid, for some friends.