Mastodawn

David Penfold

1h ago

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David Penfold

2d ago

@slothrop @cstross @jon

We once had a hornets' nest in an old false acacia tree trunk about 100m from the house. My wife insisted I DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT so I eventually bought a spray thing with an alleged 6 metre range. To be sure I'd be safe, I wore a straw hat and used clothes pegs to attach net curtains to it. I then set off in the 4x4 which I left about 20 metres from the nest with the door open and the engine running. Obviously, as soon as I started spraying, a horde of very pissed off hornets came at me and I somehow managed to leg it to the car and slam the door shut behind me. Within a nanosecond or two, they were swarming all over the bonnet.

After this I did a bit of research and ended up proclaiming to my wife that they're endangered and we should actually leave the poor sods alone.

Equipped with my newfound Buddha-like calm, I saw one of the hornets in the house and gently spent half an hour escorting it out the door. It finally obliged but as I was closing the door the little bastard swept back, stung me, and buggered off. From that point on I exterminated any of his mates that came to the house by having an external light on in the evening, with an open door shutter between me and them so I could spray the little twerps from behind the gap. No quarter was shown to my yellow and black nemeses.

I've since moved house.

@davep Woke ticks wanting us to be vegetarian!

David Penfold

11h ago

What?!

This is simultaneously terrifying and potentially a pathway to a more plant-based diet which uses far less land, water etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis

David Penfold

11h ago

geekysteven 11h ago

I feel like I'm getting less patient with sales people that knock on my door. I still tell them “capitalism is on fire and I await it's ashes” but I don't have the same cheerful cadence about it anymore

@neil @davep My own email server was in the bookcase behind me.

David Penfold

12h ago

Neil Brown 15h ago

Sometimes, I receive questions which leave both me, and the person asking, bamboozled.

> Your website loads so quickly! What CDN do you use?

There is no CDN. It is just really small and simple, mostly text.

> Sure, but is that Cloudflare, or...?

None. It is a tiny website, just a few kilobytes per page, on a tiny server, at my home, connected to the Internet via my ISP, Andrews & Arnold.

> But are you / they in the cloud?

No. The webserver is in Newbury, in my garage.

> Neil, please can you pass my questions to your technical person? I don't think you understand, your website cannot be in your home. It must be in the cloud or have a CDN.

*Neil puts on glasses and false nose and moustache*

Next week, France is forced yet again to reduce output and in some cases completely shut down nuclear reactors as the high temperatures heats up the cooling water they take from rivers beyond acceptable limits. This is the new normal now and will only get worse over the following years as we collectively ignore #ClimateChange

brettezeleliquide 1d ago

Seigneur protégez-nous du soleil

Le figuier de la baie de Moreton (Ficus macrophylla) est un grand arbre à feuillage persistant de la famille des Moraceae d’origine australienne

tags : isolation thermique par l’extérieur, végétalisation de la toiture, auprès de mon arbre, l’arbre qui cache la maison, #canicule #trees #houses #shadow #silentsunday #photography

David Penfold

15h ago

Am I being totally dozy? Could someone explain how to remove old clients' accounts from the PC MS Teams program? I've had a root around and nothing seems to give the option to get rid of the accounts. Yes Teams, I know there's a bloody problem with them, they've deleted the sodding accounts, numbnuts.

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Signal	Dave.14
CO2 ppm at birth	321.37