about to finish my "collectable vintage ice cream" - Frankie & Jo's seasonal Salty Lime & Watermelon, best by Jan 30, 2022.

looks like I bought this pint August 2021… and have been eating it for 4 years. tastes the same.

Frankie & Jo's only made this flavor once. now they tend towards overly-sweet flavors like everyone else.

Does anyone in Seattle still make truly weird ice cream flavors? Kryse's weekly concoctions were my favorites: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/handcrafted-experimental-flavors-of-ice-cream-debut-each-week-from-new-pop-up-business/

#seattle #icecream

good explanation of Reddit platform manipulation at scale: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1kvzeit/how_paradise_media_hijacked_10_top_subredditsand/#mudfjq3

(also see the parent post: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1kvzeit/how_paradise_media_hijacked_10_top_subredditsand/ . plenty more examples in r/TheseFuckingAccounts)

Reddit is just as manipulated as any other social media site, it's just harder to spot - and harder to get Reddit to act.

#privacy

while I'm dreaming of #Firefox features (https://mas.to/@troyd/114541174025895562), how about "Copy visible link"?

Firefox has "Copy clean link" (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1924493). That requires Mozilla to maintain a list of query parameters to strip. It's already outdated; it doesn't even strip Google's "srsltid" param.

I'd settle for a "Copy visible URL." On sites like Google Images that use JS to display one URL when hovering, yet actually link to a different URL, it would copy the URL visible in the status bar.

Anyone know how #Cloudflare avoids blowback from proxying web sites for so many scammers and spammers? Nearly every phishing scammer or spammer links to a Cloudflare-proxied site.

CF makes it all but impossible to report these via their abuse@ alias (weeks later, your report *might* be read) and annoying to use the web form.

More than that, it's the same scammers misusing CF on different throwaway domains. Their service & onboarding creates a negative externality for the rest of us.

"From Nobel buzz to hiring halt: Trump funding cuts hobble UW protein design startup machine": https://www.geekwire.com/2025/from-nobel-buzz-to-hiring-halt-trump-funding-cuts-hobble-uw-protein-design-startup-machine/

#seattle

Rudy Boysen's granddaughter's farm is holding its annual online sale of boysenberry plants today: https://www.rudysoriginal.com/bare-root-boysenberry-plant/

3 for $25. they'll sell out in the next 24 hours.

these are the most vigorous boysenberries I've seen. if you love berries, can plant in full sun (6+ hours/day), and can tolerate the thorniest of thorny plants, these are for you.

#boysenberries #yoloberryfarm

my picks for canned, unsweetened sparkling water, in no particular order:

La Croix Passionfruit

Polar Ginger Lime Mule

Polar Tart Cherry Limeade

La Croix "Curate" Múre Pepino (Blackberry Cucumber)

"What happens on your device, stays on your device – until it doesn’t": https://obdev.at/blog/what-happens-on-your-device-stays-on-your-device-until-it-doesnt/

and… #macOS Sequoia adds a new option to disable.

credit: @noheger

good explanation from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/opinion/luigi-mangione-writer-tim-urban.html (https://archive.ph/ZQ2AF):

"And what I want to say to these people is, you don’t get to pick only your favorite causes. Maybe you are hugely pro-choice — when you’re celebrating this, you are also theoretically celebrating the future murder of the Planned Parenthood C.E.O. You are celebrating the murder of the Pfizer C.E.O. by an anti-vaxxer. You’re celebrating the attempted assassination of your favorite senator."

Day in the Life of a Seattle Native: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVrU15y5JWw

#seattle

FastMail's spam filter provides a much better experience than Gmail's.

I sometimes have a side-by-side comparison for the same spam campaign. #Gmail doesn't let users send high-scoring/obvious spam to the trash. hundreds of messages per day can land in spam - too many to even skim.

#FastMail lets users adjust the threshold so obvious spam is deleted (https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000278142-Improving-spam-protection#settings). only the few borderline emails land in spam.

particularly for less-savvy users who might click phishing scams, FM wins

welp, this happened:

• asked an LLM about a $2,500 product; got a fairly thorough answer, only without much nuance or firsthand experience.

• emailed my questions to the company's support.

• they replied with ~the same message that the LLM gave me, only with less detail because their LLM prompt was worse.

customer service already acts like LLMs have replaced customer service.

(Zendesk's 👍👎 feedback tool needs a "We've both pasted my email into an LLM, now what?" link)

#LLM #customerservice

Do I know anyone who knows anyone at Bandwidth.com? They're pretty grey-hat regarding SMS spam enforcement, and one might even say dark grey -- like knowingly ignoring/refusing to investigate cases where their direct customers are sending opt-out bulk SMS spam.

It's sad to watch what used to be a reasonably well-regarded carrier put revenue above ethics. Maybe someone in management would care enough to learn more.

#sip #telecom #raleighnc