Sam Vilain

@sam.vilain.net

373 Followers 1730 Following

Activated Tech Worker; Free Software writer. That's me in the sponsorship credits of MeidasTouch PodCasts. Resistance sifter. #golang #voron #git

A hand in a rubber glove holds a small clean glass crack pipe. The end is spherical with a vent/speed hole on the top, with a long cylindrical glass “straw”.

A screenshot of a YouTube stream interviewing an older man with a light grey goatee and glasses sitting inside his vehicle. The red box microphone with the name of the media organization, 11Alive, pokes through his driver side window. His expression looks very slightly incredulous. like he just said something he feels a /little/ bit naughty about.

A view from a helicopter pointing at the intersection of an active shooter situation in Atlanta, Georgia. Trees line the strees, and there are approximately 2 dozen black vehicles, police vehicles surely, that are on the scene.

It’s a map showing tidal energy released from the M8.8 earthquake. Color coding indicates where tidal waves are expected to be highest based on a computer simulation. The peninsula of Kamchatka is shown in red, with a band of progressively more blue colors through the rainbow. It looks a bit like a giant false color flame emerging from Kamchatka, pointing roughly perpendicular from its coast into the deep Pacific Ocean towards a target you can’t see because of how the map area is cropped. The map mostly includes North-Eastern Russia through Northern China, Japan and Ocean with some unmarked Pacific islands.

Screenshot of an NSF stream with a large explosion forming a billowing, bright mushroom cloud. In the corner it says “Ship 36” and time is 11:02:06PM CDT

Panorama of a street, crowded mainly on the far side but still a lot of people on the road. Signs are all original and hand-made and say things like “I teach future doctors, artists and dreamers - not ILLEGALS” and “Elect a rapist—expect to get [screwed]”.

It’s a can of Pilsbury Crescent rolls. This packaging format is sealed under pressure, and has a novel way to open it that involves peeling the label and pushing a spoon into a seam until the whole thing POPs open sideways, and you can take the product out of the cylinder sideways without having to muck with the dough more than you need to (which ruins pastry dough)

It’s the “Spectrum of Sex” graphic from I thing SciAm article delving into intersex conditions

It’s a picture of a check from Treasury for $260k. The headline is “Seniors born 1951-1979 Receive 22 Benefits This Month if They Ask”

Short S23 "C" Class or "Empire" flying boat

It's terminal output, showing someone searching the Unicode database for icons representing pregnant people. Three unicode codepoints are listed: U+1F930 -🤰- PREGNANT WOMAN;U+1FAC3 -🫃 - PREGNANT MAN, and U+1FAC4 - 🫄- PREGNANT PERSON along with undecipherable unicode character attribute flags for each.

“Fixed it for you” infamous White House tweet marked up with editor adjustments to make it read “Fashed it for you”.

Labeled diagram of a pair of eyeglasses, breaking down an eyeglass size into what each number refers to. The example shows 54 - 20 - 140, with 20 being the "Bridge width" in the middle (for the nose), 54 being the "eye size" although labeling the width of one glass, and 140 being the "temple length", while labeling the arm of the glasses. The label lines specifically do not go all the way to the corners/hinges of the glasses.

A table showing the pharmacy cost break-down. It leads with, "Show Me the Math", then we have:
* Average Retail Price: $560.99
* Our Discounted Price: $20.90
* Amount Plan Paid: -$0.00
* Additional Savings: $0.00
* What you pay: $20.90
* Plan Savings: $540.09

A brown dog, Australian Shepherd breed, sits in a grassy area wearing a blue halter harness, with a bright green ball sitting not far from him. Small white tufts are visible under his neck and near his rear end fluff, and he looks like he is smiling and licking his lips.

It’s the iOS task switcher, showing two apps, one of them is Tubi. In the Tubi app, you can see text imploring the user to download… the Tubi app.

An old, white haired but mostly bald white guy wearing glasses in a suit wears a ceremonial Māori _kaha huruhuru_ (feathered cloak), a taonga (sacred artifact) of the Māori people, as well as an ornate pendant, and a British Monarchic fur coat. His expression and gait say more, “G’day mate, I’m not sure which paint brush is right for my DIY project. Will a nylon bristled brush work with acrylic or do I need horse hair?” than someone who is respectfully donning an indigenous peoples’ early gift to European settlers.

Section of a year–end donation–eliciting letter. Leading up to the highlighted section, it reads:

“Will you please continue supporting hungry children and families by making a special gift to our Matching Gift Challenge Fund today?

Your gift of $200 becomes $400… $300 becomes $600… and if you can give $400, it becomes [BEGIN HIGHLIGHT]$800, ensuring one less child will go to sleep hungry tonight. [END HIGHLIGHT]

If your donation is received by December 31, …”

Excerpt of Google AI summary of web results for “earthquake correlation lunar declination”
Limited evidence:
While some studies have observed a statistical link between earthquake occurrence and lunar declination, the evidence is not conclusive and the effect is considered relatively small compared to other factors influencing earthquakes.
Other factors:
Many other variables, such as tectonic plate movement, local geological conditions, and stress accumulation, play a much larger role in triggering earthquakes.

Screenshot of the Wikipedia page for the "Juan de Fuca plate", a techtonic plate (or "micro–plate", as the article describes) off the Coast of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

Picture of the back of a large SUV, stuffed with plastic bag, expanded foam and cardboard recycling

The coffee glass from the previous video is shown. The carbon dioxide has kept bubbling and filled the entire glass with bubbles, filled with white vapor. Sam drinks some more, fighting back the bubbles that get in the way of drinking the liquid.

“You’ve tried iced coffee, but have you tried… DRY ICE’d coffee?”

Sam reaches offscreen and deposits a block of dry ice in the glass coffee cup. It instantly starts frothing and bubbling with fume and clouds coming up.

He takes a drink and purports to enjoy the taste.

Screenshot of the tweet the message is in reply to. The handle shows as "⚠Invalid Handle"

Screenshot from the rssboard.org site

Text reads "At the time of the board's launch, here's how the founding members described its purpose:

Is the advisory board a standards body?

No. It will not create new formats and protocols. It will encourage and help developers who wish to use RSS 2.0. Since the format is extensible, there are many ways to add to it, while remaining compatible with the RSS 2.0 specification. We will help people who wish to do so.

What does the advisory board actually do?

We answer questions, write tech notes, advocate for RSS, make minor changes to the spec per the roadmap, help people use the technology, maintain a directory of compatible applications, accept contributions from community members, and otherwise do what we can to help people and organizations be successful with RSS.

This remains the purpose 140 dog years later. In addition to maintaining the current RSS specification, we are the official publisher of Netscape's RSS 0.90 and RSS 0.91 specifications and Yahoo's Media RSS specification."