Alhadis

@alhadis

Cynical optimist. I'm just here to post shower-thoughts, weird facts I've just learned (but have nobody specific to share them with), and other irreverent bullcrap. 🇦🇺 Nature lover and tree-hugger proudly hailing from Melbourne, Australia.

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Alhadis@alhadis· 11d

> using dark-mode > opens page > flashbanged I almost can't believe there was a time when most sites used white backgrounds.

A picture of the online streamer "Limmy" reacting to a blindingly bright light with squinted eyes and an expression resembling one of subdued pain and shock. The image's brightness has been greatly increased to wash out most of the photo's details in shades of white, emphasising the discomfort of a sudden, unexpected bright light when one's eyes have adjusted to low-light conditions.

Alhadis@alhadis· 23d

A silhouetted drawing of fish crowding around a bucket of worms being emptied. The bucket is labelled "Bait" and the image is captioned "He's going all out". The picture is a variant of a reaction image used to respond to blatantly inflammatory posts or poorly-disguised attempts at trolling other users in discussion threads.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jul 7

I've customised Firefox to hide all that bullshit on YouTube that I don't need or want to use or look at (github.com/Alhadis/.fil...). Notice the conspicuous lack of a sidebar full of distracting video recommendations, a wider video player by default, and the removal of buttons I never use.

Screenshot of one of Dan's videos open in Firefox, showcasing the removal of distracting and/or unused UI elements that I've configured Firefox's userContent.css to hide. This screenshot partially displays the comments section, and the bottom-half of the video player region.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 21

I'd switch, but at a portly ~120kg (18 stone for you Imperial Unit-enjoyers) I'd need a hammock that's anchored to something really, really strong. At least I'm well-prepped for the knot-tying aspect of hammock-making.

A picture of a copy of The Ashley Book of Knots (Clifford W. Ashley, 1944), widely regarded as the bible of knots. The illustrated slipcase features a sailor sitting on a barrel at a dock with a pipe in his mouth, holding up a rope tied in a Tom Fool's knot.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 16

Programmer AND graphic designer with a focus on interface design here: … just to validate your hatred and confirm that this shits me too. Also, splitting a menu in two and moving them to different sides of the browser viewport is peak "Interface Design Is My Passionᵀᴹ"

A screenshot of Atlassian's Bitbucket webapp, annotated to draw attention to two regions of interest to the logged-in user: a sidebar on the left where most of the site's functionality is accessed through, and a tiny disclosure in the top-right corner where a selection of user-account-related functions are accessed (despite there being no logical reason to split the user's attention between two distant sides of the viewport.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 16

Found a better sign that says "report account" instead. 👍

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 16

The unique fringe benefit of living in a surveillance state: cameras everywhere, some of them positioned better than others. New favourite picture from the World Cup, BTW:

An unflattering, ground-level close-up of the face of the Netherlands goalkeeper, Bart Verbruggen, skidding errantly into the side of the goal-net, eyes half-shut as Daichi Kamada and other Japanese players celebrate their second equaliser goal of the World Cup.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 15

Happy International LaTeX Day! Hope I'm not banned for posting something this sexy.

A bunch of random maths equations and formulae typeset using LaTeX, a formatting system specialising in high-quality mathematical output.

The contents of these formulae are virtually impossible to transcribe as a plain-text description, not that this author understands them anyway. (The point of the image is a joke about deliberately misinterpreting the #InternationalDayOfLatex hashtag that's currently trending, which is—obviously—BSDM-related).

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 15

Birds are trending on Bluesky, yay. My ornithophile arse has an excuse to spam some feathers. The Superb Fairy Wren (Malurus cyaneus). #BirdOfTheDay #AussieBirds

A superb fairy wren perched on a fern branch, bill agape in mid-call. The striking electric-blue plumage indicates the bird is a male during breeding season; the wren's feathers are a plain fawn colour the rest of the year. The brilliant blue feathers are also highly reflective of ultraviolet light, making the wren potentially more eye-catching to other birds than they appear to human vision.

Image source/credit: https://brunyisland.com.au/birdlife/superb-fairy-wren

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 11

Swiss, actually.

A photo of six buns of Schoggi Brötli (a type of Swiss breadroll, glazed and sprinkled with almond flakes). Image source taken from a Swiss recipes website that also documents how to make Schoggi Brötli: https://www.helvetickitchen.com/recipes/schoggi-brotli

Alhadis@alhadis· Jun 10

Yeah, as you can see, Baudot Code didn't have punctuation, which is why telegraphs had to literally write the word "STOP" to indicate the end of a sentence.

A chart displaying the encoding of (capital) letters in Baudot Code, a pre-ASCII character encoding. The following description is taken from the image's page at Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baudot_Code_-_from_1888_patent.png):
===================================
Page 6 of 11 from patent US 388244 A (1888). Excerpt:

"Patented in France January 6, 1882. No. 146,716 To all whom it may concern:
Be it known that I, JEAN MAURICE EMILE BAUDOT, a citizen of the French Republic, and a resident of Paris, France, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Electric Telegraph Printing Apparatus, of which the following is a specification. ... Fig. 24 is a chart showing the various combinations of the manipulator corresponding to the different letters or characters to be printed. ... To clearly perceive the action of the system, let us suppose that the operator has pressed the keys 2, 4, and 5 in order to transmit the signals, the combination of which should form the letter M, as shown by the chart, Fig. 24."

Alhadis@alhadis· May 30

I also could've Googled the paper's title and probably turf up a DOI or some other academic paper identifier, but creating a throwaway account named "Devin Null" using a Firefox Relay address was funnier.

A screenshot of a dialogue window on emia.edu, titled "Send a note", with an explanatory caption reading "Let Ogirdor Carvallaso [the author] know what sparked your interest in downloading this paper".

The response form reads, in earnest:
"I couldn't find a DOI [Digital Object Identifier], so I was unable to download this paper from a more reputable vendor like Sci-Hub."

Alhadis@alhadis· May 17

Publishing companies:

A cartoon of a man sitting in a tree, sawing through the branch he's sitting on, apparently oblivious to the self-destructive nature of his behaviour.

Source/credit: https://museumofpsychology.org/2019/03/28/sawing-off-the-branch-you-are-sitting-on/

Alhadis@alhadis· May 2

I came within an inch of closing another AI-generated pull-request to add a new (AI-generated) programming language to GItHub linguist using this snarky passage, because this time it was a "DSL for writing smart contracts to instruct AI agents", and my hatred of AI nearly breached containment.

A comment field on a GitHub pull-request thread with the body of the comment reading (verbatim):

"A domain-specific programming language for interfacing with a natural language interface (AI) that serves as a crude surrogate for programming languages in general.

Excellent. We've reached the peak of pointless AI hype: infinite recursion. Let's ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in a domain-specific language that instructs another AI agent to ask ChatGPT to write a script in …"

Alhadis@alhadis· May 2

I downloaded this stock photo this morning. Does that count?

An iStock photo of a Eurasian magpie perched on a wooden post, one foot partially grasping a small, toy tiara with colourful, iridescent plastic beads embedded into it. The bird's distinctive black-and-white plumage contrasts with the shades of green foliage behind it.

Credit: fotostok_pdv at iStockPhoto.com (https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/bird-with-small-jewelry-gm593302202-101806783).

Alhadis@alhadis· Apr 27

Your resident animals are grey, mine are black-and-white. (Pictured: six magpies waiting for their breakfast, having learned the daily routine…)

A picture of a wooden table and chairs on an open deck looking out onto a grassy backyard, with six Australian magpies perched on furniture and railings, awaiting their morning handouts of cheese (which might be a low-fat, high-calcium version, but it's still high in sodium and thus bad for birds).

In the background, grazing on the lawn and pulling up grass seeds is a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo, minutes away from being scared off with a green laser-pointer (cockies = vandals).

Alhadis@alhadis· Apr 22

I got Vietnamese. What the fuck, Google.

A screenshot of Google Translate, with the input text "sprezzatura" auto-detected (incorrectly) as Vietnamese. Not shown: the translated result (or lack thereof) in English, which is just "sprezzatura".

Alhadis@alhadis· Apr 21

Django Unchained. Tarantino might be an asshole, but holy shit, his movies are soooo fucking goooood.

Alhadis@alhadis· Apr 2

A still from the 1997 comedy film "Mousetrap" showing the unfortunate juxtaposition of a bunch of children singing outside of "Epstein's Bakery" (0:51:21). This scene wasn't meant to be funny, but it was, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

A still from the 1997 dark comedy film "Mousehunt", depicting the two protagonists on the street at night, looking away from the camera at a group of Christmas carollers (of primary/middle-school age) singing outside of a shopfront with the lettering "Epstein's Bakery" overhead. The tone of the scene was intended to be sentimental and reflective, but wound up being darkly comedic in its own right when rewatched in 2026.

Alhadis@alhadis· Mar 27

The only CI server I'll be satisfied with owning is a musty old VAX running an outdated version of OpenVMS from the early 1980s, powered by a basement full of vacuum tubes and communicable only via morse code.

A sepia-toned photograph of a DEC VAX 11/780, with a gramophone in the foreground beneath the title "OpenVMS", embossed with a gold relief and surrounded by an old-timey floral ornament. Beneath the vintage lettering is the quote "What the fuck is an environment variable?", set in gold-coloured in an Old West-style typeface.

Alhadis@alhadis· Mar 15

It's always 0. From IEEE-754 6.3: “When the sum of two operands with opposite signs (or the difference of two operands with like signs) is exactly zero, the sign of that sum (or difference) shall be +0 under all rounding-direction attributes except roundTowardNegative”

Screenshot of IEEE-754:2019 § 6.3 "The sign bit", with the last three paragraphs selected for context. The full text of the section reads:

"6.3 The sign bit

When the sum of two operands with opposite signs (or the difference of two operands with like signs) is exactly zero, the sign of that sum (or difference) shall be +0 under all rounding-direction attributes except roundTowardNegative; under that attribute, the sign of an exact zero sum (or difference) shall be −0. However, under all rounding-direction attributes, when x is zero, x + x and x − (−x) have the sign of x.
When (a×b)+c is exactly zero, the sign of fusedMultiplyAdd(a, b, c) shall be determined by the rules above for a sum of operands. When the exact result of (a × b) + c is non-zero yet the result of fusedMultiplyAdd is zero because of rounding, the zero result takes the sign of the exact result.
Except that squareRoot(−0) shall be −0, every numeric squareRoot result shall have a positive sign."

Alhadis@alhadis· Mar 9

5/? Oh yeah, and eBay reviewed my report and decided that a deceptively-advertised purely-digital listing with "only 4 left in stock" wasn't violating their site's seller policies. Despite the one I already outlined in post #3 above, and also the clear sale of tools DESIGNED TO HELP PIRATE SOFTWARE.

An automated message from eBay (viewed on eBay), informing me that their underpaid, lazy, possibly-AI-automated customer service agent didn't find the extremely sketchy-looking digital-only listing for an ostensibly hardcopy version of Adobe Creative Suite 6 was, in actuality, violating none of eBay's policies (except the one that, you know, explicitly prohibits the sale of software keys that sellers aren't authorised to sell… which I suppose applies to an infinitely-reusable crack that circumvents the need for software keys in the first place).

Alhadis@alhadis· Feb 27

MAN, Mussolini was even shorter than I remember.

A cropped version of the OP's image focussing on a bald, pale figure standing behind the men in the foreground, standing between two taller men, the top of his head barely reaching their shoulder-height.

Alhadis@alhadis· Feb 24

There'e a comment posted by Ashleigh Withenshaw's on that article that explains the issue perfectly to an ignorant user who posted some very… uneducated tripe (read: extremely stupid shit): deadline.com/2026/02/john...

A comment from a user named Ashleigh Withenshaw, posted in response to a shamelessly ignorant user who asked "why Tourette's people can't replace racial slurs with random words, or slurs in other languages". The response from Ashleigh reads as follows:

[QUOTE]: It’s clear you’re trying to make sense of something complex, but the assumptions you’re making about Tourette syndrome aren’t grounded in how the condition actually works. Tourette’s isn’t a moral failing, a choice, or a moment of “knowing better but doing it anyway.” It’s a neurological disorder that causes involuntary movements and vocalizations—involuntary being the key word.

Coprolalia, the tic that involves taboo or offensive words, affects only a small percentage of people with Tourette’s. And when it does appear, it’s not because someone “learned it and wants to say it”—it’s because the brain is wired to latch onto the most socially charged, high‑impact words available. That’s why it’s rarely “RADIO” or “MOOSE.” The brain isn’t selecting at random; it’s misfiring around the very things society labels as forbidden. It’s the same reason people with Tourette’s in Greece or Russia do sometimes tic in Greek or Russian. The idea that it only happens in English simply isn’t accurate.

What you’re describing isn’t a generational excuse—it’s a medical reality. Expecting someone with Tourette’s to “just not do it” is like expecting someone with epilepsy to “just not seize.” It misunderstands the condition and unfairly blames the person living with it.

If we want to have a real conversation about this, it starts with recognizing the difference between a choice and a symptom. One deserves accountability. The other deserves understanding.
[END QUOTE]

Alhadis@alhadis· Feb 11

It's kind of alarming how frequently I type out crap like this before realising it's dumb/inappropriate/irrelevant to the post in question, purely because my ADHD brain plucked a random factoid and tried to shoehorn it into an utterly inappropriate discussion.

A post from The Guardian about some scandal in Norwegian politics caused by the Epstein saga and/or the release of the ███████ files (I didn't read the article, I'm just sleep-deprived and my brain's shitpost-mechanism is on auto-pilot). Tonight, this article closely dodged a nuclear shower-thought from yours truly that read, quote:

"Don't worry, my Norsk friends. This still isn't as bad a look on the world stage as Denmark's zoophilia tourism industry that only ended in 2015 when the country *finally* banned bestiality.

I mean, they're both bad [referring to paedophilia and zoophilia], but are they as bad as inventing the word "kennel-brothel"? [end quote]

Not-so-fun-fact: according to criminal psychology, zoophiles and paedophiles tend to be the same types of people. Shoutout to Yardfish's YouTube channel for his excellent work on explaining why baby-monkey haters exist and why there're so many of them… it's kind of the thing I wish I could go back to never knowing about in the first place).

There's 900 characters left in this rambling alt-text that I'm sure is tiring people with screen-readers, so if you got this far, uh, hi. My real name is John, and I haven't slept in 24+ hours.

Alhadis@alhadis· Feb 11

Nice try, Murdoch. But I'd rather piss both my money and self-respect against the wall by buying an NFT in ${CURRENT_YEAR} than give money to Murdoch Misinformation Machine (The other "Triple-M"). *uses Inspect Element to change "Subscribe Now" to "Fuck Off" and presses it before closing the tab*.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jan 20

Nope, I'm afraid not. I noticed the `-webkit-backdrop-filter` property is ostensibly supported, and the autocomplete suggestions in Safari's devtools even list the usual filter effects (see second attachment), but they didn't appear to have any visible effect when I added them.

Another screenshot of the aforementioned codepen as displayed by Safari 17.6, with no discernable difference from the previous screenshot.

A screenshot of Safari's devtools, showing the active CSS styles for the affected element being edited by the user. The value of the `-webkit-backdrop-filter` property is being edited, and a list of autocomplete suggestions is displayed beside the text-cursor, directly above a `backdrop-filter` property that's greyed out, indicating that the property is invalid or unsupported. The selector of the ruleset being edited is `nav{ &::before, &::after{ … } }`.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jan 19

I'm on an older version of Safari (version 17.6), and this is what I'm seeing: (It's supported on newer versions, as reported by @skybrina.org, but this is what lack of support looks like on Safari, in case that information is helpful for you…)

A screenshot of Ana Tudor's CodePen displayed on Safari 17.6, illustrating a clear (pun-intended) lack of support for backdrop-filters; the element to which the effect is applied is completely transparent.

Alhadis@alhadis· Jan 14

Awh HELL yeah.

A picture of the character M. Bison from the "Street Fighter" franchise, with glowing white eyes and a clenched jaw, captioned "Now we're talking".

Alhadis@alhadis· Jan 5

Got an e-mail from Google titled "You’re now using Gemini on web" (because I think I visited their "gemini." subdomain by accident or something). When I went to disable it and delete whatever it considered my "prior usage", I was presented with this absolute gold nugget of user interface design. 🏆