This Day on Slashdot – March 23

2011 Apple Removes Gay Cure App From App Store 917
2010 US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card 826
2008 Network Solutions Suspends Site of Anti-Islam Film 874
2005 When Would You Accept DRM? 1288
2004 The Unhappy World of IT Professionals 981

Re: The Unhappy World of IT Professionals

npistentis writes
“According to an article on ZDNet.com, only 1 in 7 IT professionals rate themselves as “very happy” with their chosen profession- which stands in stark contrast to one in three hairdressers, plumbers and chefs, and one in four florists. But then again, very few plumbers have to deal with users who consistently download BonziBuddy, blindly click on suspicious email attachments and use their cd trays as cupholders.”
Of course, it should be noted that by and large IT professionals earn more money then most other jobs – which I suppose is once again a warning of money != happiness.

La Plaza Marketplace – Aurora Colorado – March 21, 2026

15200 E Colfax Ave Aurora, CO 80011
https://www.laplazacolorado.com/mercado

Where Community Comes Together
At La Plaza Colorado, we bring together food, culture, and community in one vibrant destination. Explore 24 unique food kitchens serving authentic flavors, shop unique local vendors, enjoy live entertainment, and let the kids play in our three-story playground and arcade. Whether you’re here to eat, shop, or connect, La Plaza offers something for everyone.

Exceptionally High Temperatures – Denver – March 2026

DENVER (KDVR) — Denver weather broke the all-time record high temperature for March hitting 85 degrees on Thursday, and heat in the coming days is expected to shatter that record, too.

Before this week, the highest temperature ever recorded during March in Denver was 84 degrees, set on March 26, 1971, according to National Weather Service data.

Denver had it’s hottest March day ever recorded with Thursday’s record-breaking high temperature

Phil Collins – Psychological Thriller Vibe of Songs

In ”One More Night,” Mr. Collins’s recent number-one hit, a ticking snare drum injects a whisper of lurking fear into a song that suggests a sweeter, tenderer reprise of ”Against All Odds.” And in the impassioned ”Don’t Lose My Number,” the singer offers solace to a criminal suspect- turned-fugitive. Like many of Mr. Collins’s songs, ”Don’t Lose My Number” is defiantly vague, sketching the outlines of a melodrama but withholding the full story. The album’s final song,”Take Me Home,” is another interior monologue, in which the protagonist may or may not be a discharged mental patient. ”I’ve been a prisoner all my life,” he sings. ”They can turn off my feeling like they’re turning off my light, but I don’t mind.” The singer wants only to be taken home ”because I don’t remember.”

Mr. Collins’s astringent voice, with its petulant undertones and grim, wound-up edge is as important as the drums in sustaining a mood of dramatic suspense. And by double-tracking and electronically phasing the vocals, Mr. Collins and his producer Hugh Padgham, accentuate the sense in his singing of ominous psychological submergence.

On the surface, ”No Jacket Required,” is an album bursting with soulful hooks and bright peppy tunes. But beneath its shiny exterior, Mr. Collins’s drums and his voice carry on a disjunctive, enigmatic dialogue between heart and mind, obsession and repression. The jacket that the album title assures us is not required may not be a tuxedo but a straitjacket.

PHIL COLLINS: POP MUSIC’S ANSWER TO ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Review of No Jacket Required by Stephen Holden

Borg – The Drink – Defined, Usage of

@grok explains in detail the situation in that video
The video shows a chaotic St. Patrick’s Day weekend scene on a downtown Chicago sidewalk outside Amorino gelato. Revelers carrying “Borgs” (gallon milk jugs filled with vodka, Kool-Aid-style mixers, electrolytes, and green food dye) dumped or spilled dozens of them, creating a slippery mess of white/green liquid, empty jugs, and cans.

Chicago PD officers respond: one in a black jacket bends down repeatedly picking up jugs and cans while another in a neon vest joins to help contain the spill amid the crowd of green-clad partiers watching and filming. The original post humorously calls the soaked officer a ” rat” looking rough after a “weekend in the sewers” from the boozy cleanup. Classic Chicago chaos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(drink)

A borg (sometimes BORG, short for blackout rage gallon) is a mixed drink made in a plastic gallon jug, generally containing water, vodka, flavored drink mix such as MiO or Kool-Aid, and sometimes electrolyte mix such as Pedialyte. The drink gained popularity at universities in the United States in the early 2020s, spreading among members of Generation Z on TikTok in late 2022 and early 2023. A borg is designed to be held and consumed by one individual throughout a party, distinguishing it from older communally-served party drinks (which may have similar ingredients) such as jungle juice and punch. Drinkers typically label their borg jug with a nickname, often a pun on the word “borg.”
…
In popular culture
The 2024 Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Sam Gold, prominently featured a borg as a prop, held by Lord and Lady Capulet (portrayed by Sola Fadiran) throughout the play and used by Romeo (Kit Connor) to ingest the poison pill at the play’s climax. Described by Today as “Chekhov’s borg”, the jug was labeled with various Shakespearean puns at each performance, including “to borg or not to borg” and “William Shakesborg”.

Agentic vs Mimetic

The future will belong to people with a very specific combination of personality traits and psychosexual neuroses. An AI might be able to code faster than you, but there is one advantage that humans still have. It’s called agency, or being highly agentic. The highly agentic are people who just do things. They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like bulldozers through whatever’s in their way. When they see something that could be changed in the world, they don’t write a lengthy critique—they change it. AIs are not capable of accessing whatever unpleasant childhood experience it is that gives you this hunger. Agency is now the most valuable commodity in Silicon Valley. In tech interviews, it’s common for candidates to be asked whether they’re “mimetic” or “agentic.” You do not want to say mimetic. Once, San Francisco drew in runaway children, artists, and freaks; today it’s an enormous magnet for highly agentic young men. I set out to meet them.

Child’s Play
Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking
by Sam Kriss
Harper’s Magazine

Note – Interesting article on San Francisco’s tech culture

Somehow people manage to live here. But of all the strange and maddening messages posted around this city, there was one particular type of billboard that the people of San Francisco couldn’t bear. People shuddered at the sight of it, or groaned, or covered their eyes. The advertiser was the most utterly despised startup in the entire tech landscape. Weirdly, its ads were the only ones I saw that appeared to be written in anything like English:

hi my name is roy
i got kicked out of school for cheating.
buy my cheating tool
cluely.com

One night in a Dublin street I watched an extraordinary scene – Frank O’Connor on Potential Maupassant Story

One night in a Dublin street I watched an extraordinary scene between a tramp and a prostitute whose sad little affair had broken up – his hope of a home, hers of a husband. Bit by bit she stripped off the few garments he had bought for her, threw them at his feet, and stood in the cold night air shivering. Suddenly I looked around and saw a beautiful girl who was also watching the scene and realized that she was easily the most interesting figure in the little group. On her face was a look that I can describe only as one of exaltation. Maupassant would have followed that girl to her home.

The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story
Frank O’Connor
The Lonely Voice is the definitive work of Irish non-fiction on the art of writing short fiction, and has long been held up as one of the greatest works in global literature on the short form.

Desultory Blue Sky Posts – Movie Within Movie Double Feature – Online Dooming – Pot Dealer’s Movie Preferences

Y’know when the characters in a movie go to see a movie and it feels really meta? Well, with an “Ultimate Double Feature,” we play the first movie up until the point when they enter a cinema to watch a different film… then we play that film… then we go back to the first film to finish that story.

— The Brattle Theatre (@brattletheatre.bsky.social) February 18, 2026 at 4:03 PM

If you are anxious and sad about the state of the world, that’s fine, and there are plenty of strategies for dealing with that. But I think you already know that drive-by online dooming isn’t a strategy. It’s selfish and adolescent. It’s a contagion that only spreads the worst of you, not the best.

— Ken Jennings (@kenjennings.bsky.social) January 7, 2026 at 8:51 PM

BOONDOCK SAINTS was voted movie of the year by the American Association Of Pot Dealers Who Want You To Stay And Hang Out After You Buy Pot From Them seven years in a row

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— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 11:22 PM

Venting Not Shown to Quell Anger

Venting when angry seems sensible. Conventional wisdom suggests that expressing anger can help us quell it, like releasing steam from a pressure cooker.

But this common metaphor is misleading, according to a 2024 meta-analytic review. Researchers at Ohio State University analyzed 154 studies on anger and found little evidence that venting helps. In some cases, it could increase anger.

“I think it’s really important to bust the myth that if you’re angry you should blow off steam – get it off your chest,” said senior author and communication scientist Brad Bushman when the results were published.

“Venting anger might sound like a good idea, but there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to support catharsis theory.”

https://www.sciencealert.com/venting-doesnt-reduce-anger-but-something-else-does-review-finds

Random Website Generator / Discovery Tool / StumbleUpon alternatives

What is the equivalent of Netscape’s random site button now?
Google AI:
The spiritual successor to the Netscape “What’s Cool” or random site button—most famously embodied in the 2000s by StumbleUpon—is found today in a variety of “random website generators” and serendipity-driven discovery tools.

Here are the best equivalents to the random site button in 2026;
Top Random Website Tools (Closest to “Netscape” Feel)
  • Cloudhiker (cloudhiker.net): Curates interesting, weird, and awesome websites, providing a high-quality, hand-picked alternative to purely random generators.
  • Random Web Button (randomweb.click): Inspired by “The Useless Web,” this site provides a simple button to land on weird, delightful, or absurd websites.
  • Random Website Machine (whatsmyip.org/random-website-machine): A classic, simple tool that sends you to a random website from a database of millions.
  • The Useless Web (theuselessweb.com): While not purely “random” in the sense of finding any site, it brings you to the best, weirdest corners of the internet in a similar spirit of discovery.