Riley S. Faelan

The notion of a broken clock being sometimes right is based on a gross misunderstanding of what information is.

A clock that always shows the same time is never right, even in the moments of the day when the time happens to be what it shows, because you don't gain any information about what time it is by looking at the clock.

This reasoning also applies to chatbots. If you can't tell whether what you have been given is useful information unless you alreay know the information, then you haven't been given useful information.

In false crime (and historical ESfasc) news ...

Spain is to formally pardon a group of 53 women who are among thousands who were incarcerated by the Franco regime on the grounds that they were supposedly “fallen or in danger of falling”.

The women were locked up as adolescents by the Board for the Protection of Women, a collection of institutions run by religious orders. The board, which had echoes of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene laundries, was overseen by Carmen Polo, the wife of the dictator Gen Francisco Franco.

Originally founded in 1902 to stamp out sex work, in 1941, two years after the end of the Spanish civil war, its role was extended to clamp down on female behaviour that deviated from norms laid down by the Catholic church. The board was not closed down until 1985, 10 years after Franco’s death.

In a ceremony next week, the government will pardon the 53 survivors and recognise them as victims of Francoist repression. A statement from the ministry of democratic memory said that any punishment, whether legal or administrative, they had suffered was null and void as it resulted from “the repression and violence exercised by the Board for the Protection of Women for political, ideological reasons or because of their gender”.

[...]

One woman was locked up ​o​n suspicion of being a lesbian – simply because she had written a letter discussing sexuality. [...]

Another was detained because she was considered by authorities to be “too fond of the street”.

[...]

“The board could rely on broad public support and people became its ally and accomplice,” said the historian Carmen Guillén, who earlier this year published a book on the institution.

“People had assimilated the ideas of what made a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ woman and what was seen as a deviation from the feminine. It was a form of panoptic control exercised by their families and neighbours as well as the authorities.”

[...]

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/mar/10/spain-formally-pardon-women-incarcerated-franco-regime

In fairness-in-women's-sport news ...

USA Track & Field has denied an appeal after its Half Marathon Championship in Atlanta ended in chaos.

With less than two miles to go in the women’s race, Jess McClain had a significant lead over Ednah Kurgat and Emma Hurley when the guide vehicle took the trio off course. [...]

McClain also missed out on the $20,000 prize awarded to the winners of the men’s and women’s races.

[...]

In a statement, USATF said: “The jury of appeals found that the event did not meet USATF Rule 243 and that the course was not adequately marked at the point of misdirection. This violation contributed to the misdirection taken by the athletes within the top four at the time of misdirection. However, the jury of appeals finds no recourse within the USATF rulebook to alter the results order of finish. The results order of finish as posted is considered final.”

Under race rules, athletes are responsible for knowing the route of course.

I'm sure there will be loud and outraged complaints about such an unfair outcome from Teh Terves, and multi-million-dollarpound Gofundme campaigns to compensate the misguided runners. Any minute now.

(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/mar/01/us-half-marathon-championship-ends-in-chaos-as-lead-runners-guided-in-wrong-direction.)

TIL that Epstein was also a chaser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7gKz7Wrr-0

I'm pretty sure that's my record so far.

Onwards! To three nines!

If you liked complaining about purity testing, you might also enjoy: praising dirtiness testing.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the immediate cancellation of all military attendance at Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Brown, MIT, and a host of other elite universities, the same institutions where a number of his own senior Pentagon appointees earned their degrees.

The announcement, delivered in a video statement posted to X on Feb. 27, 2026, comes three weeks after the Pentagon severed ties with Harvard University and formally extends the ban to a broad range of unnamed institutions.

Hegseth offered no data to support his characterisation of the universities as ideologically compromised. The move deepens a confrontation between the Trump administration and higher education that has already cost universities billions in research funding.

Source: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/pentagon-cuts-ties-elite-universities-ideological-concerns-1782174

Tirritate fans of 4X games by pointing out that even when they don't include extermination as a mandatory victory condition, they always whitewash and normalise growth for growth's sake.

RE: @DeutscherWetterdienst@social.bund.de

So much for the first day of spring. :blobcatsweat:

If you liked the Department of External Services, you might also enjoy: the External Action Service.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/_en

Looks like Khamenei has died of Epstein Files, and he wasn't even in them.

Since cats have trouble extracting fancy molecules from plant matter, their counterpart to herbalists are piscalists, specialists in the lore of seafood, who tell them which marine morsel is good for fixing the ailment du jour into a proper ailuroment.

Great. Another "non-partisan" "free enterprise" "personal freedom" "think tank" has written a pamphlet about how bad it is to decriminalise sex work.

plastic, n. The art of beating a dead dinosaur's spirit into a shape.

#dixonary

Why does the DOS function 440Ah in DOSBox tell me that everything is "remote" (attribute word 0x8000), even files on a mounted floppy image?

:blobcatflop:

#retrocomputing

The one in which Belle even fact-checks the audience's laughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-imO74WEa0

And I'm home, with my special kitty. :blobcatevening:

Meanwhile, in Canada ...

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ordered former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 for violating the Human Rights Code by publishing hate speech and discriminatory content against 2SLGBTQ+ people.

"Mr. Neufeld invoked negative and insidious stereotypes about LGBTQ people, especially trans people, which denied their inherent dignity and, in some cases, reflected the hallmarks of hate against them as a group," the tribunal said in a decision Wednesday.

Neufeld was one of the "loudest critics" against the B.C. government's move in 2017 directing school boards to update codes of conduct to address bullying based on "SOGI," or sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the tribunal’s decision.

Kudos to CBC for correct use of quote marks! Loud bigotry is not criticism, at most it can be "criticism".

"For five years, he publicly denigrated LGBTQ people and teachers and associated them with the worst forms of child abuse," said the tribunal members, adding that the effect was a discriminatory work environment for 2SLGBTQ+ teachers in the district.

[...]

Neufeld's publications included Facebook posts, a speech at a gathering, a widely-circulated email, and comments at a school board meeting and in the media.

The tribunal found six of his publications were likely to expose trans, gay and lesbian people to hatred or contempt based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

"These publications demonize and delegitimize trans people (and in one case, lesbian and gay people) and cast them as a powerful menace threatening the security of children and their families."

More than 20 of Neufeld's publications indicated discrimination or an intention to discriminate against 2SLGBTQ+ people in the Chilliwack School District.

But wait! There's more!

A second decision from the tribunal, also released Wednesday, ordered Neufeld to pay $10,000 in punitive costs for improper conduct during the complaint.

The tribunal said Neufeld "repeatedly and flagrantly demonstrated his disregard for the Human Rights Tribunal and its process" and deliberately violated the tribunal's rules and orders.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/barry-neufeld-former-chilliwack-bc-trustee-pay-hate-speech-tribunal-2slgbtq-9.7098536