https://youtu.be/EuUyROUN-Bg?si=YboaUH-iSE_8mPTo&t=573

Alt...

Cartel del certamen

Comprar LA ATALAYA RECORTADA CONTRA EL CIELO (editorial Libros del Futuro)

Sinopsis:

Bran tuvo una adolescencia complicada, y su vida adulta no es mejor. Una sucesión de pérdidas familiares, una gran cicatriz en la cara y sus circunstancias personales han forjado en ella una personalidad esquiva.

Y como si fuera una maldición añadida, la protagonista hereda y debe hacerse cargo de una casa familiar, epicentro de buena parte de las desgracias que se abatieron sobre sus seres queridos.

Una visita a la enmohecida y arruinada vivienda, ubicada en un pequeño pueblo madrileño, sumergirá a Bran en una travesía angustiante por túneles oscuros, estancias claustrofóbicas y seres terroríficos.

Alt...

Portada de LA ATALAYA RECORTADA CONTRA EL CIELO

Opened the window to check a noise.
Saw nothing but the void - a wall of fog.
Closed it.

I now have zero answers and new fears.

#MondayEvening #Fog

#OverUnder 046 with @stefano

He's a #Unix enthusiast, he hangs out at the #BSD cafe, and write about various systems.
If Unix tips interest you, you should definitely check him out.
Today, he shares his thoughts on #DragonFlyBSD, #AWS, #TuxedoComputers, #zsh, and #Nespresso.

#terminal #shell #opensource #coffee #blog #cloud #Tuxedo #fediverse #mastodon

https://lazybea.rs/ovr-046

WOMEN OF LEMNOS

There is an apocryphal saying that the women of Lemnos stopped worshiping Aphrodite because they were dreaming about a bunch of handsome men on a fancy boat that were to arrive to the island on a humid and sunny day.

#ShortFiction

@NanoRaptor I became good friends with a wild mallard.

She had nested nearby with her ducklings, and one day the little family came wandering by my ex' porch and I decided to offer them a little selection of seeds and berries from the kitchen (not bread; that's duck junk food). This happened a few times - and then the ducklings grew up and left home.

But the mother remembered - she'd come back many times, often just to hang out (she wasn't always interested in food). She even learned to knock on the porch door with her bill if she wanted my attention and I was inside. When she saw me arriving on the footpath from the bus stop she'd run over to me and follow me to the door, quacking at me like she was trying to have a conversation with me. (And of course I'd reply - I always talk to animals). I could even pat her lightly on the back or give her scritches on the neck if I wanted. If I came out on the porch to sit she'd often come over and sit beside me.

But she was still suspicious and afraid of all other humans except me and my ex. The local children would sometimes notice that I had a "tame duck" - but she'd flee when any of them came nearby. I'd tell them that she wasn't tame at all; she and I had just become friends.

(I think that for animals that practice parental care, "you were kind to my kids" is a near-universal way of becoming good friends.)

CC: @ricardo@bsd.cafe

Christmas Chainsaw Massacre

Alt...

4-panel-comic by War and Peas Panel 1: Santa Claus stands on the roof of a decorated house and asks the Grim Reaper, who is on the ground, "Hey! You're coming to this house, too?" Panel 2: The Grim Reaper responds, "Yeah." Panel 3: Santa Claus, still on the roof, says, "What a shame. They're getting a lot of presents." Panel 4: The Grim Reaper, holding a scroll, says, "Let me guess. One of them is a chainsaw."

Mail is crazy because it's like 99 pieces of straight up garbage and 1 that if you don't reply to you're going to jail.

The Masks of Hypocrisy

https://my-notes.dragas.net/2025/12/10/the-masks-of-hypocrisy/

#MyNotes #World #People #Life #Reflections

Let it begin

The Man of MATA pt3 - The first MATA_BOT

previously: https://analognowhere.com/techno-mage/the_man_of_mata/

#unix_surrealism #ai #mata #technomage #comic

Alt...

Mata Brother: "Will this work?" Mata Brother 2: "Pentium-M board? It's not like we have anything better." Mata Brother 3: "Flashing MATABIOS." Pentium-M Man: "I was dust in packets. And in the lingering mist I saw rays of light of long extinguished souls. And then I met it. Towering over me." Spirit of the Machine: "Son of the ancients! You have been chosen. From the scraps of the old world you rise." Pentium-M Man: "Once more..."

Alt...

Pentium-M Man (narration): "I was alive." Pentium-M Man: "No..." Mercury: "Fuck me. It talks?" Pentium-M Man: "Why... have you.. brought me back?" Mata Brother: "Shhhh." Pentium-M Man (narration): "From dust to war"

[...] To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.

CC: @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk

CC: @rl_dane@snac.bsd.cafe

And yes, poor man 😆

CC: @rl_dane@snac.bsd.cafe

Quien todavía esté ahí es cómplice.

CC: @tferrer@journa.host

Also, Spanish is my mother tongue, so I have the privilege to read Borges' words as he conceived them, without external intrusion, and is a bliss.

She then asks me where the switch is to turn it back on. I have no idea, of course.

Anyway, as others have already said, this story says something good about the human quality of this person that, after realising their tantrum was inappropriate, called back and apoligized. Even more so if they're going through something.

We live in a very stressing world.

Fish Alpinism

How I make digital art.

https://triapul.cz/_/1765291397

#unix_surrealism #openbsd #alpine #linux #gimp #art #foss

Alt...

artist keyboard

THERE IS NO KILL LIKE OVERKILL

"Hello, I would like to meet warden Titus Riccitelli", I said. The guard was a thin, old man that looked very bored. I gave him my business card.

"Miroslav...", he read it, paused, and said "Like the car?"

"What car?"

"The Corvette."

"No. Like the boat, but with a double T."

"A boat with a double what?"

"Is warden Riccitelli on premises? I have an appointment."

After waiting for a long time and crossing a myriad of corridors and annoying check points I finally got to the warden office.

"So you are Miroslav Corbett", said the warden, a bald, sweaty man with a ridiculous mustache. "I got a message from an angry bureaucrat from the government saying that you were about to come here. You have very important friends up there."

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Do you want a drink?"

"I don't do alcohol."

He looked at me with disdain in his face.

"Listen to me, young man. We are very busy here. I'm sure you don't understand the very important job that we..."

I interrupted him.

"I'm sorry, warden Riccitelli. I'm here for a very specific thing. I'd rather not be here, believe me. I don't want to waste your time. I'm only interested in one of your inmates. Just a short interview in her cell."

"What for?"

"As it says on my business card, I document things."

"What kind of things?"

"I keep a log of out-of-place happenings, reality distortions, unexpected presences and such. The duty of my department is to document the bizarre things that happen since the Great Anomaly..."

"Oh don't talk me about the Great Fucking Anomaly."

"I don't want to talk about it neither. I just need to meet a person that is incarcerated here. I just want to talk to Desdemona Dunkelmorgen."

He looked very upset or surprised or whatever.

"What? No way", he said. "She is the most dangerous person here. She is the most dangerous person in the whole fucking world. And I won't risk my resources by putting anyone of them near that damned bitch from hell."

"Do your employees know that you call them 'resources'?"

Warden Riccitelli took a ceramic ashtray from his table and launched it onto the wall. It exploded into pieces.

"Listen to me, little bastard..."

"Mr. Riccitelli," I interrupted him in my quietest voice while browsing my papers, "I know everything. Desdemona Dunkelmorgen, aka the Queen of Deception, aka the Mistress of Disguise, aka One-Trouble-On-Two-Legs. Born in Madrid, Spain. Who would say, bearing that name? Con artist, mischievous robber, ruthless blackmailer, despicable criminal, drinks while driving. Previous warden report: 'Handle with special care. Do NOT listen to her lies. She could be anywhere, anyone. She could be me or she could be you and you will not notice.' I'm not sure to understand what this last quote means."

"Damn. Holy Christ. I won't send my men to her cell because she will trick those dickheads and everything will go to hell again. I don't want another prison break from that motherfucking vixen. I will go there with you personally."

"I'm sure that is a very intelligent decision on your part."

"Come on, let's do it once for all."

He grabbed his own copy of the keys and we went down the belly of the prison. While on our way, I asked:

"Is it true what they say about her?"

"What do they say?"

"That she looks like no other woman in the world."

He took some time to answer. "To be honest, I don't know how she looks like."

"Haven't you seen her?"

"Not personally."

Not personally, I repeated to myself. What a douchebag.

We crossed the threshold to the hyper-ultra-high security block or whatever they called it and finally got to her cell's door.

"Ok, here we are", he said, "Be extremely careful."

"I'll be."

He unlocked the gate and we entered the cell. A small, barred window almost by the ceiling. Grey and dull walls. A dirty toilet. A chair and a table, no features. And nobody to be seen.

"What the fuck...?", he yelled, "But where...?"

He searched for her like crazy while swearing like a sailor: under the table, under the bed, as if she was as small as a mouse. Then he got back at me, his face red and swollen and sweaty:

"Why are you so calm? What the hell is happening here?"

"Have you heard the adage that the highest achievement of the devil was convincing men that he doesn't exist? Well, they don't call Desdemona Dunkelmorgen the Queen of Deception for nothing. She tricked you, all of you, into believing that she was here. She made you believe that you were able to catch her. In fact, it's a little more complicated; the highest achievement of Desdemona Dunkelmorgen was convincing men that she DOES exist. She is a trick of the mind. She is a glitch, a mirage. She is something that isn't and that shouldn't be."

Warden Riccitelli dropped to the floor, crying like a child.

"Oh my. I'm finished. Everybody will laugh at me for years."

"They'll do", I said, "but don't be too mean to yourself. Everybody was mislead. These illogical issues are overwhelming. All we can do is write about how this unfaithful reality is playing with us."

He jumped up in an explosion of rage, ran to the passage and started yelling at everybody.

"What are you doing there? Do something! Find her! Nuke this fucking place from above! It's the only way to be sure!"

"I'm afraid I have to leave", I said, but he was no longer listening to me.

It was a quiet evening out there. The parking lot at Saint Boniface was almost empty. I wrote some ideas on my notebook, not completely sure that I wasn't Desdemona Dunkelmorgen after all.

previously

#ShortFiction

ADEFESIO

   Del lat. ad Ephesios 'a los efesios', título de una epístola de san Pablo, por alus. a las penalidades que pasó el santo en Éfeso durante su predicación.
    1. 1. m. Persona o cosa ridícula, extravagante o muy fea.
       Sin.:
          + esperpento, fantoche, birria, mamarracho, hazmerreír, facha, espantajo.
    2. 2. m. Despropósito, disparate, extravagancia. U. m. en pl.

Madrid, Spain

Alt...

Chaotic windows in a modern building, Madrid, Spain

In the past few days I’ve seen talk about RAM prices shooting up due to demand from big datacenters.

Today I read that a historic brand like Crucial - I own plenty of their hardware, including SSDs - is dropping consumer products to focus on gear for those same datacenters.
The result (or maybe the intention?) is to push people away from self hosting, undermine the OwnYourData idea and make everyone depend on huge datacenters for life.

So much for owning your data.
So much for decentralisation.

Because taking down one giant datacenter is far easier than taking down thousands or millions of individual nodes.

Friends and colleagues, don’t trade your freedom for a bit of convenience. Once you give it away, getting it back is very hard.

Always Own Your Data.

#OwnYourData #SelfHosting

I want you to understand: https://ariadne.space/2025/12/02/i-want-you-to-understand.html

Meet the Forgotten Female Artist Behind the World’s Most Popular Tarot Deck (1909)

https://www.openculture.com/2025/10/meet-the-forgotten-female-artist-behind-the-worlds-most-popular-tarot-deck.html

#art

Alt...

The Strength tarot card by Colman-Smith shows a figure dressed in a white robe with roses petting a lion.

CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe

CC: @mms@bsd.cafe

SEMIBOVEMQUE VIRUM SEMIVIRUMQUE BOVEM

There is a different telling of this story that says that, when everybody met, nobody had chosen the same verses; because of this, after deletion, the poem was left with only three lines, the ones chosen by Ovid. He was not upset, though, because he saw it coming: the slaughtered text showed Latin words for "My friends are a bunch of hateful motherfuckers".

#ShortFiction

I'm in a very old house with a wardrobe in each bedroom and I'm checking every single one of them for Narnia access because magic is everywhere and also I really need to get the hell away from these people

Salvatore Sanfilippo (creator of Redis, and more) published a beautiful video inspired by my latest blog post. I was really pleased! It's in Italian, but auto-generated English audio track is available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNqbKEx2mBM

#ITNotes #Linux #OpenSource #OSS #OpenSource

No hay respuestas mágicas: si sigues creyendo en esa historia, reescribe el principio. Si ya no, pues al cajón, y a por otra.

DUFF v KORN 2

prev: https://merveilles.town/@prahou/115508225024561937

#unix_surrealism #plan9 #9front #korn #ksh #rc #comic #linux #lo0 #technomage #openblade #openbsd

Alt...

Daemon: "I think that looks pretty good! Don't you?" Kshboy: "Haha, yeah! You made it in troff?" Daemon: "Yeah!" Kshboy: "Cool!" DEAR MISTER DUFF, MY BEST FRIEND AND I WERE WONDERING, IF YOU COULD BEAT KORN IN A FIGHT. WE KNOW OF A GREAT PLACE WHERE YOU COULD DO BATTLE. Daemon: "We can just swap the names with sed for the other letter!" Kshboy: "But how do we get it to them? We don't even know where they live..." Daemon: "I have an idea. Let's rewrite it!"

Alt...

Random penguins hand a leaflet to Techno-Mage. DUFF V KORN DUEL OF THE AGES WHEN: NEXT FULL MOON WHERE: THE BIG HILL OUTSIDE FOSSTOWN WHOEVER DOESN'T SHOW AUTOMATICALLY LOSES! PLACE YOUR BEST AT THE DRUNKEN BIRD BARD OpenBlade: "Oh yeah, I heard about this." Mage: "You heard about this?" OpenBlade: "You have a lot of money riding on Korn btw."

Alt...

Lo0: "YOU AND I WERE MEANT TO BE!" Lo0 KORN TRIBUTE practice Korn: "STOP! That's not what they sounded like..." Mec: "Sorry, Mister K." Korn: "Are you? The gig is in a week. Do better!" Bot_Manager: "YO! CASH MONEY K! Why didn't you tell me about the fight?!" Korn: "What fight?" Bot_Manager: "I could get the band to play there!"

Alt...

Penguin Postman walks up a mountain. Penguin: "Mister Duff? Mail!" Duff: "Vincent! Is it next year already?" Penguin: "No sir, just some admin stuff regarding your fight." Duff: "Fight?"

When: next full moon

Whoever doesn't show automatically loses!

Last week in a seminar we discussed a text that was largely about sexual violence, including mass rape during war. Heavy stuff.

One student admitted they had not read the text but worked off a ChatGPT summary.

They had no idea the text was about sexual violence. ChatGPT withheld that information.

This wasn’t just a minor error nor a typical LLM hallucination.

About a third of the text, arguably its most important part, went completely ignored because it didn’t match OpenAI’s content policies

The Chair

A familiar road, a moment of pause. I found myself looking at a place that once meant purpose and community. It’s a quiet reflection on what remains when people move on and what stays behind in silence.

https://my-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/24/the-chair/

#MyNotes #People #Life #Reflections #Memories

How about I pay you instead?

THE WRITING ON HIS FATHER'S HAND

"Stop that Frenchie shit, Skips. What do you want me to tell you?"

"Tell me that I will be able to forget about this."

The room was dark and humid. A bare lightbulb over their heads, brownish stains on the floor. Skips was young and blond and had a gun in his hand; he trembled like a cold lump of lard. Jean-Loup Lamarc, older and unfazed, was nearby. The traitor was tied to a chair, watery eyes, mouth silenced by a dirty cloth. Lamarc was no moron and knew that time was not on their side, but sighed and started talking to confort the younger man because what must be done must be done and the time is now.

"I won't tell you such thing."

"Oh, please, Frenchie. I... I will feel this sorrow for the rest of my life."

"Oh, you won't do that, either."

"I can't..." He really seemed to mean it.

"I will not lie to you and say it will be easy, man. Not even remotely easy. You will wake up in the middle of the night, Skips. You'll swim in a sea of sweat. Many times. You will feel a ghost whispering into one of your funny little ears. Whispering ugly things to you, Skips. You will cry a river, like Julie London sang. But one day, I cannot say if it will be next week or next month or in your sister's wedding, as I say, one day, you will wake up, you will start having your eggs or your cereal or whatever the fuck you use to have for breakfast, and you will realize that you had not remembered this mess for a couple of days. And then you'll be over it. And the next time it won't be a couple days, but four days, or four weeks, or whatever measure of time you can name. Putain, one day you won't even remember the details, or your father's writing, or the fucking dirty money, or the visage of any of these pieces of shit. So just do it. Do it fucking now."

Skips shot the poor scumbag in the head. His face exploded like in a seedy B movie.

"Oh, Skips, sure you've made a pretty cute dish of Chicken Vindaloo here. Now let's run as fast as we can."

Tires screeched nearby.

previously

#ShortFiction

Say what you will about Debian, but I still have about 2½ years left before I even have to think about Firefox getting AI features.

It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable Earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible.

Madrid, Spain

Alt...

A square window and street letters in Madrid

Fair warning.

(From: https://lemmy.ml/post/39269468 )

Alt...

A screenshot from the movie Terminator, with the hero explaining: "Listen and understand. Mariah Carey is out there. She can't be reasoned with, she can't be bargained with. She doesn't feel pity or remorse and she absolutely will not stop, ever. Because all she wants for Christmas is YOU!"

I have a crappy, broken, 7/8 years old Android phone. It doesn't allow the instalation of GrapheneOS or any other Google-free software. When it eventually breaks, I will buy another crappy, cheap Android one, because the only real alternative is Apple, which is also an asshole corporation and their products are ridiculously expensive for no reason. Anyway, I try to minimize mobile phone usage to the minimum.

I don't use Google Search. But, given that what I usually search for are computing algorithms or popular culture info about movies, music, painters or books, I always search the Wikipedia first. For the other cases, I search with DuckDuckGo (yes, I know, it's really Bing behind, and Microsoft is another asshole corporation which I hate with especial passion).

I don't use Chrome. I use Firefox, both on my Linux/BSD desktops and on mobile. I don't like it, but it's good enough. Yes, Mozilla is another asshole corporation that is working in making Firefox a worse product day by day.

The only Google product I use voluntarily is Youtube. I feel sorry and innerly contradictory, but I like it.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esv%C3%A1stica

And a happy FUCK OFF to AI from Emma Thompson. 😌

#FuckAI #EmmaThompson #StephenColbert

Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150: FreeBSD, SmartOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux Compared

Update: This post has been updated to include Docker benchmarks and a comparison of container overhead versus FreeBSD Jails and illumos Zones.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/19/static-web-hosting-intel-n150-freebsd-smartos-netbsd-openbsd-linux/

#ITNotes #freebsd #illumos #jail #linux #netbsd #openbsd #ownyourdata #server #smartos #sysadmin #zoneshosting

The Lady of the Clock

The search for an antique clock turns into an encounter with its elderly owner and a promise to become the custodian of a century of memories. A personal reflection on legacy, loss, and the stories objects carry.

https://my-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/16/the-lady-of-the-clock/

#MyNotes #MyStory #Past #Present #MechanicalClocks #Life

"I’d never ask AI to write for me any more than I’d ask a robot to go for a walk in the woods for me. I love writing, why would I want to have a tool do it for me?"

they killed god and replaced her with an autocomplete and a subscription model and the devil does not haunt this world anymore because our souls are no longer worth taking

@pkw I get the same feeling with things like Rust and Bluesky as well. Yes, they are probably better than mainstream alternatives, but they are also massively complicated and still run by all the same kinds of people with the same kinds of agendas

Simplicity should be the objective, so that we never end up in a situation where a small group holds a monopoly on important software

I.e., Dillo and Links are far more revolutionary than Servo, because they are trying to actually change the web

NIGHT BECOMES HIM

A pale, thin woman opened the door. She was in his forties. Long, dark hair. Watery eyes.

"Hello, I have an appointment with Mr. Brown", I said, showing my business card.

She took a look at the small cardboard piece and read: "Miroslav Corbett — Documentalist". She seemed sleepy and out of focus. "I... I thought it was Corbet with only one T."

"It's a common mistake", I said. "Are you Mrs. Brown?".

"Yes. Oh, please, come in."

She invited me to a wooden chair by a table. On it there were some cups, a coffee jar and a small dish with cookies. An old record turntable was playing some awful trumpet jazz tune.

A man in a worn sweater entered the room. He also looked tired, a red stubble, his skin like old paper.

"Mr. Brown, I suppose", I said. "This is Miroslav Corbett. I came to speak about your son."

"Oh", he said, "which one? Are they in trouble?". His face looked sincerely concerned.

"Not yet as far as I know", I said, "Are they at home?"

"Oh yes. Do you want me to... eh... bring them here?"

"If you please", I said while taking a cookie. It tasted like dust.

"Mr. Corbett,", she said, "in your card says that you are a documentalist. What are the matters you usually document?".

"I document... oddities. You know, during the Great Anomaly, many fissures happened in the reality fabric. Some of them were not totally fixed and sometimes creatures and inaccuracies still permeate to our world. My work is to write about them."

"Oh", she said, "do you suspect that...?"

The man entered back into the room surrounded by two boys. I immediately saw the problem.

One of the boys was unclean, brunette and sleepy like his parents. The other one looked very different: milky-skinned, the black and deep eyes of a hunter, quiet but alert, definitely an otherworldly look.

"These are Cletus Jr. and Tusk", said Mr. Brown, "say hello to Mr. Corbett."

They did.

"So your name is Tusk, eh?", I said to the out-of-place kid, "What things do you like?"

"I like human activities,", he said, "for I am an ordinary boy."

Ordinary boy my ass, I thought.

"What kind of activities?"

"Like, listening to jazz and going to the school and breathing."

"Oh, that really sounded like what an ordinary boy would say.", I said.

The woman, who seemed to realize that something odd was happening, asked me: "What is the problem?"

"The problem is", I said, "that you don't have two children, but one."

"What?", said the man.

"I have the papers here. Cletus Zebulon and Brandine Sue Brown, respectable suburban hillbillies. One kid, Cletus Jr., 7 years old, mediocre student, awful football player."

"What do you mean?", said the woman, visibly disturbed. "We have two boys... Cletus and... Tusk."

"Oh, come on. Tusk is not even a name for a boy", I said.

"I am a real boy", said the odd child. His face already looked somewhat bizarre and his voice sounded like filtered through a reverb effect from a cheap movie.

"Look at him,", I said to her, "he looks, like, six or seven? That is not possible. He wasn't even here last week. He's an anomaly, a creature from another plane. He is manipulating your minds into thinking he is your son. But it's not."

And then to the kid: "Are you listening to me? This is not your family. You should go. You don't belong here."

The kid, or should I say the thing, was having difficulties to look even human, as his contour started to look diffuse. His putative parents were utterly confused and in horror.

"Ok,", I said, "it has been a pleasure. I have to go. Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, thank you very much for your attention."

"What?", said the woman, "Are you leaving now? Are you leaving us like this?"

The boy didn't look like a boy anymore: I know better not looking directly at abominations while they are transforming into their real shape, but for sure he was pretty hideous.

"I'm afraid I'll do.", I said, "I don't fix anomalies or oddities, nor kill runaway creatures, soul sickers nor mind hunters. I only document the facts. Goodbye."

I left and closed the apartment door, leaving horrid sounds and awful smells behind me.

#ShortFiction

the list

#unix_surrealism #comic #poster #openbsd #freebsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #9front #plan9 #glenda #cirno #girl #daemon #puffy #rabbit #mata #openblade #penguin #linux #foss

Alt...

MATACORP'S MOST WANTED HACKERS Fish Daemon Cirno OpenBlade Rabbit Frederick "the Hammer" Glenda II Sphence Purple "Penguin" Pentium-M Man Girl