> get lamp

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/03/for-the-first-time-an-irish-nationalist-will-lead-northern-irelands-government/

Sinn Fein Vice President Michelle O’Neill was named first minister in the government that under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord shares power equally between Northern Ireland’s two main communities — British unionists who want to stay in the U.K., and Irish nationalists who seek to unite with Ireland. [...]

“This is a historic day which represents a new dawn,” O’Neill said. [...]

O’Neill will share power with deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly from the Democratic Unionist Party. The two will be equals, but O’Neill, whose party captured more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 2022 elections, will hold the more prestigious title.

The post subject refers to this, if anyone reading this doesn't know:

Hey WHAT THE FUCK

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/06/23/supreme-court-limits-ability-to-enforce-miranda-rights/

Crows everywhere, and Sunnyvale’s going to do something about it

WHAT

Deterrance, not culling. But why the hell do you think crows are something that needs doing about? Lay off my corvid buddies! Yeah, the racket they make at dusk in downtown is pretty loud. I think it's super cool seeing these giant flocks of crows fill the trees and trade the day's news. But you know what? Then they mostly go to sleep after a little while. You can put up with it for like 30 minutes a day, humans, GEEZ.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/19/breaking-evacuations-begin-as-winds-reignite-fires-in-santa-cruz-mountains-czu-burn-scar/

UGGGHHH could we not

Sen. Feinstein draws criticism after hugging Sen. Graham

WHAT THE ACTUAL. And even besides the whole "um... you have got a pretty outdated picture of the dignity of the Senate or some such blah blah blah in your head, haven't you, lady?" and "Lindsey Graham does not deserve kudos for this" things, why in the chicken-fried hell would you get in close physical contact like that in a pandemic?!

Of course, DiFi was just re-elected in 2018 so she's not up again until 2024, at which point she'd be 93 -- not that it stopped Strom Thurmond, behind whom she'd become #2 oldest if elected again (she would be about 93 and 7 months when she took office), or Chuck Grassley for that matter (he's only about 3 months younger than Feinstein).

Big Sur tribe regains land 350 years after being removed:

In a deal rich with historic significance, the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County closed escrow to purchase 1,199 acres in Big Sur as part of a $4.5 million acquisition involving the state and an Oregon-based environmental group.

The purchase secures a property for the tribe slightly larger than San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Located along Palo Colorado Road on the north side of the Little Sur River about 20 miles south of Monterey and 5 miles inland from the ocean, the land features endangered steelhead trout, old-growth redwoods, oak woodlands and meadows along scenic ridge tops.

Most important, it represents the first time that the Esselen Tribe has regained any of its former territory more than 300 years after Spanish missionaries upended the tribe's society, causing 90% of the roughly 1,000 Esselen people by the early 1800s to die of disease and other causes. Simply put, the Esselens are landless no more.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-great-google-hangouts-shutdown-begins-october-2019/

Somehow I didn't manage to hear of this 11 months ago. ARGH. How many messengers is this I've had to replace, now? I just want to talk to my husband while I'm at work and he's at home on our desktop computers (is the use case 75-90% of the time depending on his class schedule; more rarely I message from my desktop or tablet to his phone), preferably with changeable userpic, display name (not that Google passes that through - a feature we lost when we had to give up MSN), and status message. Why has that gotta be so hard?

(Specifically what we use is the Google Talk protocol in Instantbird, itself no longer developed, but the message history is shared with both Hangouts as app and as integrated in Gmail.)

That Time I Unseelied a Tree, and Why You Should Too (from Living Liminally, Morgan Daimler's blog)

Karl the Fog keeps things cool in Q&A about his first book

wut.