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@outeast

i have forgotten how to be happy

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Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir outeast.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jul 13

Ahh he grew up

A picture of a young Adam Silver from the famous cover of Weekly World News with the headline "Bat Boy Found in Cave"

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jul 12

Morning Womble! I'm partway through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Green City Wars. So far I don't think it's one of his best (I even set it aside and read something else in the interim) but I'm hopeful it'll pick up. Or maybe it's just me.

The cover of Green City Wars. Skyscrapers covered in plants rise in the background, with a raccoon looking out at the reader.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jul 7

Yes, this is indeed all the fingers

A picture of a hand from the Simpsons, with three fingers and a thumb.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jul 5

Afternoon Womble! I'm on VE Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, having finished Bury Our Bones In the Midnight Soil yesterday. Both were saved recommendations from the Womble weekend reading poll. It's becoming a pattern. ;)

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jul 4

This Anthony Browne picture book based on Koko and his kitten was a favourite when my kids were small.

The cover of Little Beauty, a picture book by Anthony Browne. A watercolour painting of a gorilla's head and face. He has a wide, rather goofy smile and sad, wrinkly eyes looking up. A very, very tiny kitten is sitting on his head.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 30

I know designers who use subtext and they're all cowards #pride

A box for Aubergines / Eggplants called "Purple Pride"

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 28

Morning Womble! The Malevolent Eight by Seb Castell. It's the daringly named sequel to the Malevolent Seven, which I think was recommended here last week & which turned out to be good, silly fun.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 27

Omg

Xkcd cartoon. Two geochemists talking.

Geochemist 1: SILICATE CHEMISTRY IS SECOND NATURE TO US GEOCHEMISTS, SO IT'S EASY TO FORGET THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON PROBABLY ONLY KNOWS THE FORMULAS FOR OLIVINE AND ONE OR TWO FELDSPARS.

Geochemist 2: AND QUARTZ, OF COURSE.

Geochemist 1: OF COURSE.

Caption: EVEN WHEN THEY'RE TRYING TO COMPENSATE FOR IT, EXPERTS IN ANYTHING WILDLY OVERESTIMATE THE AVERAGE PERSON'S FAMILIARITY WITH THEIR FIELD.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 23

Fify

The photo of workers from the original article, but rotated 180 degrees so they're upside down like bats

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 22

Ah - a commission for a magazine cover. Still undeniably cursed but at least it makes sense this way.

The same painting, but this time as the cover of The Sunday Times magazine alongside the title "Her First Year".

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 22

Oh good lord. I went to see if it's available in Audible here (most of VES's books are geo locked) and I see we now get an AI summary of the book cover précis in case *book lovers* can't maintain concentration through 12 lines of text. I hate it.

The book description from Audible with a two-line "summarized by AI" box at the top.

What it's about

A woman cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets lives for 300 years - until someone finally remembers her name.

Summarized by Al

Summary

"[Narrator Julia] Whelan's performance is unforgettable in this darkly romantic fantasy about one young woman cursed always to be forgotten... Her depiction of the darkness is smooth with a low cadence, capturing listeners' attention and their heart strings." -Booklist

In the vein of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab's genre-defying tour de force.

A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever-and is cursed to be... (Image cropped here)

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 22

Morning, Womble! I've just started The Faithless, by C L Clark (of this parish), having finished its predecessor last night. A mix of empire, romance, magic, bad decisions, betrayals and war crimes. I still can't decide how I feel about it all, tbh, but... well, I did move straight on to the sequel.

The cover of the book showing a woman dressed in blue sitting slumped in a carved throne.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 21

Good morning. It's been too hot so I slept on the balcony. Downside is being woken at 4.30. Upside is being woken at 4.30.

Screenshot from Merlin of today's dawn chorus:

Common Wood-Pigeon

Eurasian Blackbird

Eurasian Blackcap

Great Tit

Common Swift

Eurasian Collared-Dove

House Sparrow

Eurasian Blue Tit

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 16

Well, apparently the CJEU has just ruled in favour of point 4. Half the responses seem to be absolute dismay and the other half jubilation, with each side dismissing the other as perfidious fools. Being a mere ignorant fool, I don't pretend to understand. But interesting times?

110 In the light of recital 42 of Directive 2000/31, these two conditions of knowledge and control should be understood as being alternative and autonomous from each other. Hence, the operator of an information society service that controls the stored information is excluded from the benefit of Article 14(1) of that Directive, even if he does not take cognisance of that information because of the automation of its processing.

111 However, as noted, in essence, by the Advocate General in point 239 of his findings, it is in particular by means of the algorithm used that such an operator exercises control over the stored information. As long as it has predetermined, by means of this algorithm, the conditions for the dissemination or not of such information, it is irrelevant that the operator does not itself carry out additional interventions with the effect of promoting, modifying or deleting information stored for its dissemination.

112 In that regard, it is important to specify that if, beyond a simple categorisation and indexation of information with a view to its better accessibility, the algorithm used determines, in the interest of the operator or his service, under what conditions, how and in what order of priority this information is disseminated or is not disseminated, the operator exercises control over it, so that the service it offers cannot be classified as a "information society service consisting of storing information provided by a recipient", within the meaning of Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31 (see, to that effect, judgements of 23 March 2010, Google France and Google, C-236/08 to C-238/08, EU:C:2010:159, paragraphs 115 and 117; of 12 July 2011, L'Oréal and others, C-324/09, EU:C:2011:474, paragraph 116, and of 22 June 2021, YouTube and Cyando, C-682/18 and C-683/18, EU:C:2021:503, paragraph 114).

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 15

Cartoon of a man shouting, "I don't like thing". A beatific angel flies down to bestow upon him a precious message. After she ascends back to the heavens, he reads it. It says, "Ok". The cartoon is signed Jo Bee Art.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 14

Hi Womble, having finished the Buffalo Hunter Hunter I'm re-reading Nick Hathaway's Sleeper Beach: Hunter was excellent but left me needing something with more faith in humanity... like a story of murder and corruption in a world controlled by post-human trillionaires, yeah, I know

The cover of Sleeper Beach by Nick Hathaway. Executed in black and gold, it shows a lighthouse on a rocky coast against the silhouette of a man. A cover quote by William Gibson describes the book as "cross-genre brilliance"

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 11

Those screenshots again with alt text. Thanks for sharing the story :)

Pokémon Go Scans Quietly Trained The Navigation Tech Now Headed Into Military Drones

Haye Kesteloo

10-12 minutes

Hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players spent years filming the streets, parks, and buildings around them to earn in-game rewards. Those roughly 30 billion environmental scans are now owned by Niantic Spatial, and they helped train a camera-based navigation model that a U.S. defense contractor is preparing to put into drones and other military robots. Most of the players had no idea.

The pipeline runs from a mobile game to the battlefield in three steps. Players scanned the physical world. Niantic Spatial turned those scans into a 3D map that lets a machine locate itself by sight when satellite signals fail. And in December 2025, Niantic Spatial announced a partnership with Vantor, the defense and intelligence firm formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, to fuse that ground-level system with Vantor's aerial navigation software for use in GPS-denied operations.

The collected scans, around 30 billion of them according to Trouw, became the raw material for a Visual Positioning System, or VPS. Where GPS depends on a satellite signal, VPS works out where a camera is by matching what it sees against a detailed 3D model of the world.

Two recognizable reference points a few
pixels wide can be enough to fix a

location. Niantic Spatial CTO Brian

McClendon, who previously led the team

behind Google Maps, Google Earth, and

Street View, has said the approach suits

robots operating where GPS regularly

drops out, such as dense cities, and where

signals are deliberately blocked, such as war zones.

Vantor Will Pair the Ground Map With Aerial Drone Navigation

The Vantor partnership, announced on December 16, 2025, joins two positioning systems into one. Niantic Spatial handles localization on the ground by aligning a camera feed against its model. Vantor's Raptor software, launched in February 2025, does the same job in the air using a drone's camera and Vantor's proprietary 3D terrain data. Combined, the companies say, a drone overhead and a vehicle or dismounted operator below can share the same coordinates in real time with no satellite link. The principle is already turning up on the other side of the front, where a downed Russian drone was found matching live camera feeds against preloaded terrain imagery rather than trusting a single GPS module.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 10

Dodos *were* pigeons, weren't they? Hmm well cousins anyway, apparently. The dodo's closest living relative being the Met Gala pigeon.

An incredibly chic pigeon clearly pausing to be papped. It's mostly a restrained slate black but with glorious long green and blue feathers worn as a kind of short cape and a shimmer of the same colours down its back. It has a pronounced cere on its beak, that being the structure that contains the nares (so now you know). OK, technically it's the Nicobar pigeon not the Met Gala pigeon.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 9

Dandelion from the film version of Water ship Down

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 7

Morning Womble! I moved on to The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty, the sequel to the Amina al-Sarafi adventure I was reading this time last week. It's actually better than its predecessor.

The cover of the book. A wooden ship - a dhow - lies splintered on rocks beneath a tattered sail, waves crashing around it. A griffin stoops, grasping claws extended, beak open in a screech and wings beating the air. Behind, a golden city of towers and domes rises above red cliffs.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 6

Encountered in Prague: potato vending machine.

A large vending machine, all polished steel, with 20 glass-fronted doors. A large sign says "Bramboromat", a portmanteau of Brambor - potato - and automat.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 5

RIP Anthony Head. Yes, we're all remembering Giles, but you were more than that. More than Nescafé, even.

Anthony Head as Frank n Furter in London, 1990. In this black-and-white image he's standing cockily akimbo, heeled feet planted, hands on hips. Torn fishnets show off surprisingly shapely legs - we always knew Giles was a sex bomb under those tweeds - and he's wearing a tightly laced bustier. His hair looks rather glam rock and he's smirking.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· Jun 4

This is a real picture. It's clearly different. The OP's image even has the fountain in the wrong place!

The white house and south lawn. On the left, as it was, with a fountain at the far end of the lawn. On the right, with a stage and cage between the fountain and white house.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 26

Oh snap

A field of red flowers almost identical to the field in the first picture.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 26

If I fits I... ah fuck it

A cat sitting in an egg box. As the cat is twice the size of the box, he's actually just got the front half in the box. But whatever guy he's chillin

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 21

Hastings had this last year and it absolutely went viral.

An ad for Hastings Pirate Festival 2025 with the slogan "Peg or be pegged"

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 19

Sigh. This is where a refusal to cheat gets you. By a bizarre coincidence, however, it's from 18th May 2016: one day from exactly a decade ago. Now preserved for future historians.

A very blurry accidental shot of what's probably a bit of bedsheet. It's pink and there's a bit of shadow in one corner.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 15

A few months later....

The so-called pregnant guppy aircraft, a plane used for large cargo such as parts used in the Apollo space program. It looks rather like a normal plane that's been inflated to three times it's expected size.

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 8

This fella's well Thelwell

A pony's nose poking out from under a fringe of hair that a 1980s glam rocker would be proud of

felt smart, might delete later@outeast· May 7

Is this woke 2.0?