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We have a very wise saying in New York. Don't piss into the wind!!!! foxnews.com/politics/trump-primary-challenger-weld-admits-gop-voters-arent-into-insurgents

Chairman Kim sent up some of his little Rockets. That's all right. Very confident that he will keep his promise to me.

Also love how he called Joe Bidan a Low IQ person -- and worse. Possibly a very special signal to me? foxnews.com/world/north-korea-joe-biden-editorial

Here in Calgary, summer is like a fart in the wind. You spend all year looking forward to it, then it's over in the blink of an eye. The season of summer starts June 21, and runs through September 21. That is the warm season here -- only 3 months. In Calgary, there are really only two seasons, winter and summer. Fall lasts for the month of October, and spring is mid-May until summer. From November 1 until May 15 it's winter.

Everyone here tries to make the best out of our fleeting summer. Despite being cold most of the year, we have a ton of outdoor patios to enjoy. My mom's house is FULL of plants that she can't wait to get into her gardens. The leaves on the trees are finally popping out. The grass is more green than brown. Last week, I had the street cleaners come by and take the gravel away.

Summer here is a fevered frenzy as everyone tries to book and plan their vacations. Here in Calgary, that usually means going to one of the many lakes in B.C. I've got my first vacation booked. My wife, daughter and I are going camping at McDonald Creek Provinal Park. We have 5 nights booked there in early July.

I've been busy getting ready for summer too. My campervan stopped working last Fall --technically Summer -- after a scary-ass snowstorm near Bow Lake (seriously look at this picture. I think it's prettier than Moiraine Lake or Lake Louise) We were coming back from camping near Jasper and it started SNOWING. Like fat flake spring snow. I was in my van - a 1985 dodge - and it was terrifying. When I'm in my car with my winter tires, I LOVE driving in the snow. In a heavy-ass van with summer tires and no ABS/ASC, it's not fun. The snow packed down and created sheer ice on the mountain highway. Traffic was moving at 20km/h and I gave us a 50/50 chance of ending up in the ditch. We made it home safely, but after that the van woudn't start.

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to get the van going again. I'm not a mechanic. I'm not handy, but I'm learning. I asked my Uncle to come over and help me out one day and together we found that the starter relay wasn't grounded properly. I fixed that, but it still woudn't start. I replaced the starter, and it started(!), but the second start had a not-good-sounding grinding noise. Turns out I got a defective replacement starter. I got it swapped out for another and the van is working great! I was really proud of myself because I've never done actual car work like that before. I'm sure replacing the starter is just about the easiest part to replace, but I'm celebrating my victory.

With the van running well, I'm ready for summer. Like I said before, my first trip is first two weeks of July. I normally like doing things in September when people are back at work too, so hopefully I can get something lined up there as well. I'd also like to try 'random' camping on crown land here. Apperantly there are hundreds of free camp sites all over the place. I've never done that before, so I'd like to try a couple nights like that this year and see if that's my thing.

That's the plan! I can't wait!

Thanks to the helpful people here on soylent telling me about bandcamp, I have published an album of my music on bandcamp!

I really appreciate the help and the advice, and I would like you to listen to my music. You can listen for free. If you like it any purchase would be massively appreciated. Believe me, and my broke ass, I need all the help I can get.

http://f4music2.bandcamp.com/releases/

It will have an angry Mickey Mouse for the album cover (sue me Disney I don't have a pot to piss in).

I call my band "F4" (though I'm the only one) and the name of the album is "beginning".

I hope you enjoy it, and if you don't that's ok also. Thanks for being such cool people! I'll try to be cool too.

A few days ago while wasting my life on reddit, I came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

Two high school (?) kids are given 4 minutes to figure out how to dial a number on a rotary phone. It's adorable.

I love how they 'reset' the phone between tries. The dial tone impersonation also cracked me up.

Damn kids these days...

Working hard on the AIDS, folks. I'm a New Yorker. From the roughest, toughest part of New York City, known as Queens. We had a lot of them, believe me. And the AIDS there was almost an epidemic. We lost, sadly, so many "people" to that one (RIP!). Including my 1st. lawyer, Roy Cohn. But I hear that the pills they have for it now are so incredible. So I looked into, can we do something to get those pills to more people. To the ones that need them -- our beautiful and hard working Porn Stars, our amazing sex workers (also known as Hookers), our fabulous gays, and the regular folks -- you know who you are -- for whom one "partner" is never enough. I talked to Gilead Sciences of California. One of our finest Pharma Companies. And got a MAGNIFICENT deal on the pills. Regular price $20,000. For "President" Donald J. Trump, $0. ZERO DOLLARS. Brilliant Negotiating Skills -- priceless. Big discount and, it's a total and complete discount. And it's not just for me. It's for 200,000 "people." Lot of people and it's going to mean a lot less AIDS going around. Party of Healthcare, folks. Party of Healthcare!!!! foxbusiness.com/healthcare/trump-strikes-big-hiv-drug-deal-to-knockout-virus

Right now, I'm surfing the Soylent waters using this procedure:

1. Go to my user preferences / comments page
2. Assign an automod of -6 to foes
3. Assign an automod of -6 to anonymous posters
4. Save my user preferences
5. Set the viewing threshold to 0 and [✓] Save and then click change in a story's comments
6. Assign trolls as a "foe" by clicking the little face by one of their posts
   • Repeat #6 as needed

So what the above should do is bury comments (stop them from being expanded in a comment listing) posted by the trolls I have placed in my foes list, and also all anonymous posters, which also should keep the trolls who use anonymous posts to get past the foes list automod (and those who are simply trolling anonymously) buried as well.

The annoying downside of this approach is that anonymous posts from non-foes also get buried, because the Soylent code doesn't know who the anonymous poster is, so it cannot determine if the anonymous poster is on my foes list.

That lack of knowledge could be addressed for logged-in users, as the Soylent code does know who it is when logged-in users [✓] Post Anonymously, but short of requiring log-in to post, that isn't possible.

Having actually tried the above -6,-6 setup now, I have found the general burying of anonymous posts to be less painful than accidentally reading the various troll garbage (I read very fast, gulping down whole paragraphs at a glance... so to even glance at a post is to peruse a good chunk of it, no matter how troll-ish and/or awful it is.)

Further, I know that anonymous posters could just as securely create a unique pseudonym and post as logged-in users with no loss of anonymity, other than that people would know both post A and post B are both from the same author (a total win, frankly.) Considering this, I see no decent excuse for posting without logging in anyway, and so feel quite justified in brushing off those who can't be arsed to log in.

I could live with the above -6,-6 setup, except... it doesn't actually work.

The Top-Level Comment Bug

Soylent's "Apply automod" feature does not obey its settings when a comment is at the outer, or "top" level of a story's comments. Not if the commenter is anon; and not if they're in my foes list. Top-level comments appear no matter what the automod is set to. Ouch. Garbage out, ...garbage in.

But it's even worse than that. If you click on a comment link (for instance, one that has replies on your user page, or on the replies notification page), then first-level replies in the resulting comment subset also don't obey the automod(s.) It doesn't matter if the comments aren't actually top-level in the entire comment stream; if they're first-order comments to the comment one is now looking at, then the bug manifests again.

I humbly submit that this should receive dev attention ASAP; the whole point of automods is made moot by these behaviors.

--
I'd agree with you, but then
we would both be wrong.

A friend has made a preliminary listing for spherical cows, penguins and suchlike on EBay. Due to EBay making PayPal compulsory and PayPal being shiftier than it's co-founder (the serial fraudster and US$5 billion corporate welfare king, Elon Musk), further sales and payment options will definitely be forthcoming.

Anyhow, spherical critters are currently available via EBay user spherical_critter_emporium and one random plushie is available for £10 with free global shipping. All proceeds after taxes, fees and materials go towards food and drink for whoever attends a weekly London geek meeting which you are cordially invited to attend. If the spherical critters are popular then it will be a free evening of food, drink and geekery.

After some back-and-forth, the text of the listing is as follows:-

♪♫ They're lumpy,
They're bumpy,
They're easily squashed,
Damaged and lost... ♫♪

♪♫ Spherical Critters!
Spherical Critters!
'Round and 'round
the absurdity goes!
Spherical Critters!
Spherical Critters!
Why we love them,
Nobody knows! ♫♪

These spherical animals not perfectly spherical nor are they living animals. They have a diameter of approximately 18cm (7 inches) but are easily squashed like a cushion. They are made from synthetic sponge and short synthetic fur. They have a small bounce to them which makes them surprisingly suitable for keepy-uppy or hackisack type amusement despite being smaller than a football and significantly larger than a hackisack.

Spherical cows are based on an old physics joke: "Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multi-disciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer, 'I have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum.'" Further spherical cow jokes can be found on the Internet including spherical steak searing pans and the Uncyclopedia's lunar migration cycle of spherical cows. We also recommend Rollin' Wild, a series of short animations which were shown in IMAX cinemas. (The spherical cheetah is particularly funny. Likewise for the scene with the cowshed.)

For quite a while, it has been possible to purchase spherical cow tshirts and cross stitching. However, spherical cows in any form have been in short supply. Therefore, we purchased stereotypical black and white splotchy Holstein cow print fur and began making spherical cow stuffed toys/plushies. This rapidly expanded into spherical tigers, spherical leopards, spherical ladybirds/ladybugs, spherical sheep (black or white), spherical penguins and, by special request, spherical Sully print which definitely isn't Sully from Monsters Inc because it is significantly darker.

Each of the patterned spherical critters is unique because it is cut from a different offset of patterned fabric. Regardless, examples shown are representative of future supply. If sources of fur fabric differ significantly then we will update pictures prior to sale.

Spherical critters are likely suitable for small children nominally of three years old, but please use your own judgement if buying for children, and ask us any questions you have. Each item is lovingly and ethically home made by genuine physicists from five pieces of car washing sponge purchased from Poundland and two pieces of synthetic fur typically purchased from Dalston Mill Fabrics and double stitched with rip-stops using the coarsest pound shop thread that money can buy. (Leopard print and Sully print was purchased from EBay seller midtexltd.) No innards are smaller than than 50 cubic centimetres (3 cubic inches) and the basic design has no outer piece which is significantly smaller than half of the surface area.

By special request, spherical critters are available in kit form so that you can sew your own spherical stuffed toys. Please ask us to list the design of your choice with or without scissors, needles and/or thread. All kits are supplied with cutting template (whether it is required or not) so that you can advance your skills with the least impediment. We typically list a pre-cut, pre-joined spherical tiger sewing kit supplied with sponge filling because it is easiest to complete. Also by special request, spherical critters are available with eyes, ears, tails, cow bells and/or other adornments. Please ask us to list any requested variations. However, please note that each addition will typically be £2 extra and eyes for stuffed toys may be more. With additions, they may not be safe for children.

Bulk discounts are available (contact us) and we challenge you to purchase unusual quantities so that we sphere pack them into unusual shaped parcels. For example, 10 critters will pack nicely into a tetrahedral pyramid. Indeed, with 41 critters in stock [at time of writing], we currently have the world's largest tetrahedral pyramid of spherical stuffed toys (see first picture). This could be yours for a reasonable price. You may laugh now but you'll be laughing even harder when you're avalanched by furry balls!

To keep any synthetic stuffed toy in optimal condition, occasionally brush lightly with a wig brush. Wash stains by applying diluted detergent to surface only. Do not soak. Do not machine wash. Do not use hair dryer. Do not place in microwave oven. Keep away from naked flame. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Ingress of water to middle of stuffed toy encourages mold. Excessive heat causes synthetic fur to curl or melt.

Unfortunately, due to the use of bright yellow synthetic sponge and relatively short synthetic fur, designs with significant quantities of light fur (sheep, penguin) may appear discoloured from some angles. This may be corrected in future if we can find uncoloured synthetic sponge or alternative filling at a similar price. Please let us know how we can improve this product or any other product.

Also, my friend currently holds an informal world record for a spherical critter tetrahedral pyramid with 35 spheres. We're now working towards 120 unless stock diminishes.

Edit 1: EBay listing with choice of critter.

I'm not sure we actually have any mothers here... I can only think of one cis-female (Azuma) and one noncis-female(can't remember the name... not sure if they even post here anymore). Oh, and cafebabe. I don't think that any of them are mothers yet though.

Nonetheless, maybe there is a lurker mom. Azuma might be a cat mom, but if so, her cats wont get her anything because cats are selfish like that.

I do want to make a special call out to Mrs Gaaaaark, because she is a fucking saint.

And to all you ungrateful sons who still have moms with us, CALL YOUR MOM this Sunday. She would love to hear from you!

Any good children have special plans for you mom? If so share them below so all of us late planners can steal your idea.

As for me, my lack of planning was able to successfully delay Mother's day until next weekend. My siblings are taking mom out Sat and Sun, so she is fully booked this weekend. My plan is to take her and my daughter to a local petting zoo. My mom can parade her around like a proud grandma. Maybe I'll make some sandwiches for a picnic there... We'll see.

Not sure what to do for my wife. I might make my daughter make a card for her tonight so we can present it on Sunday.

Anyways, post your plans below so I can steal them if they are better than my ideas!