Kind: Notes
Short content: a post or status update with just plain content and typically without a title.
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Not sure I'm a fan of these new ultra-minimalist Christmas trees.
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Display bed of Christmas trees outside a hardware store except each pot, labelled with its species and approximate height, is empty.
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For the last few years I've been running a proxy of the BBC News RSS feeds (https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev) that strips out duplicate content, non-news content, and (optionally) sports news.
This weekend, for the first time, somebody asked if it could produce an edition that included only the sports content. Which turned out to be slightly more difficult, because it's the kind of scope-creep that my "uninterested-in-sports-news" brain couldn't conceive that anybody would want! But I got there in the end.
If anybody's looking for their fill of "BBC News Feeds... But Better!", give it a look.
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We got our dog a Christmas jumper.
My favourite thing about it is that its coat hanger contains instructions for use:
"Please insert dog" 🤣
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Christmas jumper for a dog, featuring blue-and-white stripes and sequin Christmas trees; its hanger contains an arrow pointing down alongside the text 'please insert dog'.
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I find a lot of these "this company is tried to usurp your brand with Chinese domain name purchases" emails in my spam folder, corresponding to my (many) domains. They're a scam, of course: the scammer is trying to goad me into saying "No, please help protect my brand identity, I'll pay you over the odds for these .cn domains!"
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Screenshot of scam email which begins "Dear CEO, This is a formal email. We are the Domain Registration Service company in Shanghai, China. I have something to confirm with you. Baokang Ltd sent a request on December 3, 2025. They desire to register "danq" as their internet keyword and Chinese domain names..." and goes on to try to bait the recipient into replying and expressing an interest in the domain names mentioned.
But I've always wondered - what happens if you reply and say "Yes, Baokang Ltd DO represent my business interests in China, please go ahead and let them register these domains." I'd know that was a lie, and the scammer would know that was a lie (the company, if it even exists, is under their control in the first place)... but they can't admit that they know that.
Anybody tried baiting this kind of scammer in that way before? (With the usual scambaiting precautions, of course!)
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Fellow folks at the interest-intersection of "public transport" and "queer activism" (I know you're out there!): I had an idea for a t-shirt.
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T-shirt design: a sign in the typographic and graphical style of British road signs, showing the words 'Trams rights at all times' on a background in the blue/pink/white of the trans pride flag, with an outline of a tram whose pantograph is reshaped to resemble the trio of the masculine, feminine, and combined symbols used as a trans symbol.
Do I print it? Or give up on graphic design and go back to backend programming where I belong?
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Can it perhaps be time that we stop saying "ethical non-monogamy"?
Nobody feels the need to say "ethical monogamy"; monogamous folks are given the benefit of the doubt and assumed to be practicing a relationship ethically.
I feel like polyamory, open relationships, relationship anarchy and other forms of non-monogamy are now sufficiently accessible to popular culture that we can drop the word "ethical" and still be understood. (Ideally we do so before it starts to look like virtue-labelling.)
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This form dynamically changes the labels for the Surname and Forename field based on the value of the Gender field. Wut?
Because a Male Surname is totally distinct and nothing like a Female Surname, I guess?!?
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A form asking for Surname, Forename and Gender (with options Male, Female, and Both) changes its labels to e.g. Male Surname/Male Forename or Female Surname/Female Forename when the Gender option is changed.
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Happy Polyamory Day y'all. (Plus max props to Petra without whom I'd have forgotten about it, like most years.)
Closest thing I did to celebrating it was going out to the pub last night for beer and food with my metamour, while our partner-in-common took our kids to see a film. Polyfam life isn't always glamorous; but it is full of love.
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This telegraph pole in the centre of Eynsham carries the scars of hosting countless community announcements, notices, and flyers over the last 30 years.
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Close-up of a wooden telegraph pole littered with rusted staples and drawing pins of different sizes and ages, with an out-of-focus urban street disappearing into the distance.
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Gorgeous autumn dawn this morning with a razor-sharp moon hanging above the shifting hues of the South-East.
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A silver sliver of a crescent moon in the indigo part of a colourful autumn sunrise framed between spindly tree branches above and roofs below.
It's going to be a cold one. (At last; it's been an unseasonably-warm November so far!)
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I really liked Only Murders in the Building. It started with a fun premise. It grew into something hilariously self-aware. I'd recommend it.
But man, the fifth season had the most-disappointing reveal/conclusion imaginable.
Hoping the promised sixth season does better.
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Second "surprising Finnish confectionary" is Vihreät Kuulat Jaffa Cakes. I ran vihreät kuulat through a translation tool and apparently it means "green balls", which doesn't tell me much.
Knowing it was neither lime nor apple (which were also available in the supermarket I visited) I had to try them, but I couldn't place the flavour. They were tasty, though. We finished eating them before I looked it up.
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A box of Vihreät Kuulat Jaffa Cakes. The cross-section cutaway shows a green jelly within the biscuit, and alongside are pictures of spherical green jellies.
Turns out it's pear flavour, which apparently I have a blind spot for (back in 2013 at an "eat mystery food in the dark" restaurant I failed to identify that I was eating poached pears for dessert).
Now I need to be on the lookout for actual green balls.
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Buying a bag of Haribo in Finland, I shouldn't have been surprised (given the country's love of salmiakki) that the black ones were liquorice flavoured.
And yet somehow, when I chucked a handful onto my mouth, I was.
(Not in a bad way. But definitely in a surprised way.)
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A bag of Haribo ClickMix, opened, held on a white hand.
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Good morning Lapland!
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Feels a little They Live in the alley down the back of Witney Co-Op!
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Brick building stencilled with SP£ND in two places.