Tarus

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: Why aren’t AI companies competing directly with their customers? (13 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Five Years Ago I Became Old

Five years ago on this day I was in a traumatic car accident that left me with a broken neck, a crushed left ankle and other injuries. While I think about it every day, I haven’t really taken the time to write up what happened and the aftermath, so in honor of this anniversary I figured I’d do so.\nTrigger warning: some of the images and descriptions in this tale may disturb some folks. If you think you are one of them, please skip this post.\n

Abdelkader Boudih (@seuros@bsd.cafe)

One year ago, AWS deleted my 10-year account over a disputed $100 bill. That day I learned something uncomfortable: unless you are a customer capable of causing a PR disaster, your monthly bill doesn’t buy much leverage. That same week I noticed something else. Vendor lock-in isnt just a cloud problem. Its a hardware problem too. Here in Tangier (Morocco), there are warehouses filled with computers that Europe has already written off. Machines with 2-8 GB of RAM and 64-256 GB SSDs, sold by th

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Barcelona 2026

I recently visited Barcelona for the fourth time. This was a work trip so I didn’t have much time for sightseeing, but I did get to spend a little time in what has become my favorite city in the world.\nI don’t drink coffee, so usually when I land in a new city I go in search of a grocery store where I can buy Coke Zero (preferably Cherry Coke Zero). This being Sunday, my store choices were limited, and the one I did find that was open had no Coke Zero (they did have Diet Coke which still works)

Tempest vs Tempest

The Making and Remaking of Atari's Iconic Video Game

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Watch Duty: Real-time Fire Notifications

I was extremely happy to find out that Watch Duty is now available in my area of the US.\nI was introduced to Watch Duty during the Los Angeles fires back in January of 2025.\nI used to live in LA County and I still have friends there, so I was often texting them to make sure they were okay. One of them introduced me to this app and I found it invaluable.\n

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

Spanish Lady

As this was the inspiration for the Oaxacan Lady, I decided to make the Spanish Lady: 3/4 ounce aged rum (Havana Club 7 Year) 3/4 ounce Bénédictine 3/4 ounce Amaro Montenegro 3/4 ounce lemon juice 1 dash Angustora bitters Shake all ingredients with ice, then strain into a coupe. One reason I made this cocktail is that I’m lazy. In our old house we actually had a room with a dedicated bar. It was a bit by accident. In the southern United States it was common for houses to have a “formal living ro

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

Oaxacan Lady

Yet another drop down into the equal proportions cocktail rabbit hole. I present the Oaxacan Lady: 3/4 ounce mezcal 3/4 ounce Bénédictine 3/4 ounce Amaro Montenegro 3/4 ounce lime juice 2 dashes Bitterman’s Xoxolatl Mole bitters Shake all ingredients with ice, then strain into a coupe. Back when Twitter had a non-zero signal-to-noise ratio, I used to love chatting and following other cocktail nerds like Ted Haigh, David Wondrich, Brother Cleve (who, unfortunately, is no longer with us but once s

James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 (@freequaybuoy@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Fool! Doctor Doom toots as he pleases! #toot #mastodon #johnmastodon #doctordoom #doom #fantasticfour

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Review: Brandon Sanderson's Elantris

After the joyride that was Mistborn, as eager as I was to continue on in that series I decided to follow a list I found on the internet with a preferred reading order of the Cosmere works, which brought me to Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel.\nThe first thing I realized is that Sanderson is a masochist. Many fantasy authors either labor over their magic system, like Rothfuss, or ignore the rules altogether, like Tolkien, but few make up new ones for each set of stories.\n

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Beaver Mitigation

As I mentioned in my last beaver post, we are dealing with an issue where a beaver keeps trying to clog up the overflow for our lake. We used to have a different overflow solution but moved to a simpler design that just has one flaw: it is much easier for beavers to dam.\nAnd now our beaver is bringing along a kit to help out:\nYour browser does not support the video tag. There are several methods for dealing with beavers, but a couple, shooting and trapping, are off the table. When the lake is

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Sing, Beast, Sing

In the middle of the 1980s I spent a couple of years near Los Angeles. During that time I got introduced to Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation.\nThis was a touring show that would bring award winning animated short films to theatres in the area, and I always looked forward to it as it was the only way to get access to this wonderful art form (this was pre-YouTube).\n

What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all

If you work in or around the film industry, there is a decent chance you have used the work of The Numbers this month, whether you realise it or not.

Adventures in Open Source Software

Revisiting Email

NOTE: As usual, this blog expresses my opinions and not those of my employer\nAs an “old” I really love email. It was one of the first ways I was able to reach other people distant from me. Even before I had access to computers on the internet, I would send messages using a Bulletin Board System (BBS) called WWIV.\nWWIV had the ability to connect to other WWIV instances using WWIVnet, and I had a friend in Reno I where I could send notes from the instance I used to the instance he used.\n