The most terrifying Halloween story I know.
https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/111329860712410917

☝️The most terrifying Halloween story I know.

It’s happening.

These were waiting for me on the lectern when I got to class this morning. Not sure who left them. Do we think they are safe to eat or what?

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born #OTD in 1910. He established an upper limit on the mass of stable white dwarf stars, and made numerous contributions to astrophysics and relativity.

Above the Chandrasekhar Limit – about 1.44 solar masses – electron degeneracy pressure cannot prevent a stellar remnant’s gravitational collapse into a neutron star or black hole.

Photo: Stephen Lewellyn / AIP

Eh, it’s back now

100k new users is nothing compared to all the Brazil signups a few months ago. This sounds more like a denial of service attack. (Which Elon would definitely do.)
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bluesky-x-twitter-elon-musk-block-b2630894.html

@jonberger That’s a very sweet story!

@bytebro What a magical time. I talked my dad into splurging for the high-end (2400 baud) modem and spent a summer discovering regional BBSs that wouldn't rack up long distance charges.

[cracks knuckles]

[cracks neck]

[unfurls tattered wings and a terrible barbed tail]

🎃 Halloween playlist times 🎃

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/hell-toup%C3%A9e/pl.u-7yzmSe7q1N

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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/ward-christensen-bbs-inventor-and-architect-of-our-online-age-dies-at-age-78/

One minute your kid is four and they are handing you a plate of batter with a candle in it saying “I made pancakes,” and the next thing you know they are twelve and they found a recipe on an Italian cooking blog and that’s the third course of the anniversary meal they made for you and your spouse.

And it’s good.

Eighteen years ago today, I very selfishly used up the entire world supply of good luck. My deepest apologies if you were affected personally by the resulting shortage. But in my defense, it was worth it.

@gruber Lol, I can see that. But wow, what a remarkable performance. I know the prosthetics are a big part of it, but talk about the actor just disappearing into the character.

@glennf I choose to believe it was 20.

It is stupid and it sucks, but it's reality.

This is the point in the election where a united front is important, where we stop feeding people's doubts and creating excuses for them to not support the scenario where something good can actually happen.

Feel free to think I'm cynical or a sellout or whatever, but I know the difference between having some chance and having worse than no chance at all.

"But this is when we have power to make the candidate do what we want, by threatening to withhold our votes!"

No, we're three weeks out. We have a chance with one candidate IF they win. Demanding unequivocal commitment is asking them to maybe alienate another constituency in a coin-flip election. All their intelligence is telling them there is zero room for error here, with razor-thin margins. It's not like they have a few months to try to win back a faltering bloc.

One way the post-Twitter social media networks remind me of that place in the early-to-mid 2010s, is that I see a lot of folks attacking a candidate who either supports or could be persuaded to support much of what they want, but not talking about how they're going to stop the guy who 100% will gleefully burn everything to the ground, not only preventing progress but rolling back a century-plus of what has passed for progress in the US.

As remarkable as it was to see the northern lights here in Chicago, it was the shots my mom was getting down in *East Tennessee* that really blew me away.

“I’ll have the RFK Jr”
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/113289555482674945