purplerabbits

1. Elon Musk doesn't want you to know Tesla's response to the NHTSA's Robotaxi questions

(tags:Tesla automation driving OhForFucksSake )

2. US safety regulators contact Tesla over erratic robotaxis

(tags:USA automation safety Tesla driving doom )

3. Some fascinating discussion on Romeo and Juliet

(tags:shakespeare women history )

4. New bat viruses discovered in China raise concerns about potential pandemic

(tags:virus bats china )

1. Mechanical Watch: Exploded View

(tags:watches design )

2. Language is complicated (Japanese star edition)

(tags:japan English language )

3. Reminder that you can be lovely to your friends and family and still a disgustingly awful genocidal murderer

(tags:Nazis history people )

4. What Britain looks like after Brexit (written in 2016, about 2025). Anyone want to assign it marks for accuracy?

(tags:UK Europe OhForFucksSake )

5. Voyager 2 Illuminates Boundary of Interstellar Space

(tags:space )

6. Upcycling plastic into painkillers: Microbes transform everyday waste into acetaminophen

(tags:plastic medicine recycling )

7. Some great photos from Edinburgh's Pride March

(tags:lgbt edinburgh photos )

8. Businesses still gatekeep jobs for graduates - it's harmful and cruel

(tags:business academia university OhForFucksSake )

9. What does the new Industial Strategy mean for Scotland?

(tags:scotland government )

10. The USA is definitely not at war. Probably. Maybe. Kinda.

(tags:war USA Iran Israel video funny )

1. Publishers are facing existential threat from AI

(tags:publishing internet ai business )

2. Video of Lava Fountains Likely Setting New Record For Kilauea Eruption (June 20, 2025)

(tags:lava volcano Hawaii video )

3. New EU rules for durable, energy-efficient and repairable smartphones and tablets

(tags:Technology phones europe regulation )

4. The Largest Camera Ever Built Releases Its First Images of the Cosmos

(tags:space )

D and I both are encouraged by the healthcare system to take our blood pressure more regularly and/or without the white-coat syndrome (that one's me, though it's not "I'm stressed to be at the doctor's office" so much as "I'm stressed about the anti-fatness I must tolerate imminently in order to sometimes get the healthcare I need").

We had to measure our upper arms today in order to make sure the machine we're ordering has a cuff big enough.

And it turns out they are the same circumference! To the centimeter. How romantic!

First climbing experience, and after an hour of trying different walls Sophia made it to the top!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. How Christopher Priest wrote for Doctor Who, and what happened next

(tags:drwho history scifi bbc writing )

2. Trans woman swims topless in protest at being forced to swim with men

(tags:bigotry lgbt transgender swimming )

3. Scottish government to remove WhatsApp from phones

(tags:transparency phones communication government Scotland )

4. Giving a wide range of researchers the same data and the same hypothesis to test gives a massive range of results

(tags:research doom statistics )

5. Denmark Let Amateurs Dig for Treasure—And It Paid Off

(tags:denmark archeology )

6. The FDA Just Approved a Long-Lasting Injection to Prevent HIV (2 injections a year have 99.9% effectiveness)

(tags:hiv vaccine GoodNews )

I read about this NatGeo documentary about Sally Ride last week and D and I watched the first half or so tonight (before I got too sleepy).

I remember being floored by a photo of Sally Ride in space, in the shuttle, that I saw in my social studies textbook in I wanna say third or fourth grade. American women could go to space. I think I was probably just about grown out of my desire to be an astronaut by this point (I'd seriously considered it until I decided my mom would worry too much about me so it wasn't a good idea...seeing how much she still worries about me, this seems very astute (the fact that I can't see did not occur to me as a dealbreaker until I was much older, by the way)) but I was fantastically interested in astronauts and the space shuttle (I had a toy version, complete with the truck to slot it on to for the drive across the country), the Voyagers still encountering planets at the time, and all that.

Reading about and especially watching the documentary now, I'm struck by how familiar parts of her story are. Never showed her emotions? Had parents who never modeled how to? (In a way that's referred to as "Norwegian"?!) This shit could literally be taken from my counseling sessions, heh.

This person as remote as the space she traveled to still feels as close as I was to that social studies textbook in elementary school.

Sophia is watching the boys in the street have a water fight.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Good things Labour have achieved this week

(tags:Labour GoodNews politics UK )

2. YouTube Playlists Are Advertising "No AI" as Entire Site Gets Choked by AI Slop

(tags:ai music videos YouTube )

3. It's True: The JAWS Shark is Public Domain

(tags:sharks copyright art movies books )

4. Finding Peter Putnam - The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

(tags:history philosophy computing viaPatrickHadfield )

5. Edinburgh Council agrees on proposal to explore halt on new accommodation

(tags:Edinburgh university housing )

The reason British people talk about the weather all the damn time is that two weeks ago I got hailed on, yesterday was hot enough that I sweated through my clothes, and today there's haar stopping me seeing more than 100m.

Happy Nystagmus Awareness Day. I wrote a kind of FAQ about nystagmus a while ago.

I had to explain the basics of what nystagmus is to the assessor who did my PIP assessment the other day. (They used to at least tell you they were a physio or a nurse or whatever, now they don't even bother letting on how unqualified they are to be assessing your particular condition.)

Oh speaking of, I got a phone call today, from an 800 number I'd been ignoring for a few days because it never left a message or anything. I mostly answered it by accident today. And it turned out to be from Maximus or whichever shitty entity the DWP have outsourced their assessments to in my region, saying they need more information from me so now I have to talk to them on the phone on Monday! Ugh. I've never had this happen before.

Got a text this morning saying that I need to book a blood test before I get more meds too. Ugh! More needles and more lectures about being fat. Not a fun day for admin relating to having a body!

1. Rachel Reeves Promised Oil Industry 'Quid Pro Quo' Over Windfall Tax in Private Meeting

(tags:pollution Labour tax globalwarming )

2. How to waste £37bn on HS2, from botched contracts to political meddling

(tags:hs2 trains politics transport uk epicfail )

3. New emissions guidance published for North Sea oil and gas projects

(tags:globalwarming oil gas uk )

4. Scoring Computer Games (Ori's Ginso Tree Escape)

(tags:music games video )

5. Britons support rejoining the EU by 56% to 34% (but think it's not the top priority)

(tags:UK Europe polls )

6. If you get a body party amputated you can apply to keep it!

(tags:bodies video )

Last Friday ever of dropping her off at school and him off at nursery!

Off to the Highland Show this afternoon. Going to be 28 degrees, so we'll all probably burst into flames.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Doctor uses robot to remotely perform surgery on patient thousands of miles away

(tags:surgery robots )

2. General-purpose robots are very nearly here

(tags:robots ai video impressive )

3. How roundabouts transformed Carmel, Indiana

(tags:transport planning roads design usa )

4. Beware the gaze of raccoons!

(tags:raccoon comic funny literature )

5. Banning smartphones in schools has little or no impact on the wellbeing of students or their education or on the prevalence of online bullying

(tags:phones school )

6. A Provocative Argument About What Creates Serial Killers (possibly Heavy Metals)

(tags:murder brain pollution )

7. Scottish Government advice on school uniforms now says that you shouldn't need branded items.

(tags:school clothing GoodNews )

I knew it'd be awful but the PIP assessment was really awful.

I've mostly had nice assessors in the past, which helps as much as anything can. But this one wasn't doing a good job of hiding her glee at her petty power over me. Mean-girl vibes.

When we told V we were having coffee and cake afterward, they expressed their approval and said they'd hoped I would be. I said I learned this from them the first time I had one of these fucking assessments and they went along with me: they had to buy me the cake after that because I was too poor to do it myself, so I remember it.

V replied: "They will not be allowed to take away our joy." Damn right.

1. James Gunn Says the Movie Industry Is Dying Because Films Are Made Without Finished Scripts

(tags:movies writing )

2. EHRC backs down (somewhat) on single-sex toilets

(tags:transgender bigotry toilets uk lgbt )

3. MPs vote to decriminalise abortion for women in England and Wales

(tags:abortion England law GoodNews )

4. Orkney Islands Council ends investigation into leaving UK

(tags:UK Scotland independence Norway )

The meme that goes "what a week/Captain, it's Wednesday"?

I basically said both parts of that myself today, in a meeting with an equally tired and frazzled colleague.

And it was only much later that I realized.

It isn't even Wednesday today. It's only Tuesday.

First thing tomorrow morning I have my PIP assessment. It's for a review from 2024 of a decision made in 2021. So much has happened. Looking over my descriptions from both these documents tonight, I am overwhelmed.

After the assessment, I will rush in to avpresentation for a webinar with a couple of colleagues (which is actually way more stressful than doing it myself). As long as the DWP's (expensive outsourced) assessors don't keep me waiting an arbitrary amount of time for it as one of their little games, something they are known to do.

1. You can now clone a voice from about 5 seconds of recording. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close!

(tags:voice ai fraud )

2. The EHRC's Code of Practice will Hurt Cis People Too

(tags:bigotry law UK transgender LGBT gender )

3. If you use LLMs to write essays then you stop being good at writing essays

(tags:ai writing psychology )

4. I'm Iranian. Some here are cheering Israeli air strikes — and I understand why

(tags:iran politics israel war )

5. Would you like a "Maybe I'm Trans?" badge

(tags:transgender lgbt CrowdFunding )

6. Scottish government to end two-child benefit cap from March

(tags:uk scotland welfare children )

7. 'Star Wars' "Looks Terrible" in Screening of Original 1977 Version

(tags:StarWars movies history )

The way my voice now resonates in my body feels better to me than I ever thought it could.

I was thinking of this this morning because I talked with a fellow trans dude about singing over the weekend; him dealing with changes to his range made me ponder how I've been kinda avoiding trying to find what my singing might be like?

I know voice training and documenting changes, in speaking and singing, is a Thing for a lot of trans people but the notion gave me big anxiety so I've stayed away from it.

Today I am carefully singing along with the radio (in the sense that I am doing it with care, rather than just finding myself doing so while I am working or whatever) and I don't really care how I sound but I love how it feels.

I said this on fedi and was charmed to have one of my dadliest friends (who we call Other Erik because he's another Erik) say

I hope you never lose that joy! For my part, I still love the feeling and I’ve had a mature low “adult” voice for over 30 years. I find myself humming low-range tunes to myself rather frequently just for the feeling of it in my chest.

It's nice to know it can stay fun for that long!