I woke up too early and I have terrible brain fog today, so of course there's big news about how the Linux kernel is getting dumber and Linus is isolating himself even more from people who might point out that he's being an incredible ass, again. Once again I quote Uncle Willy from THE PHILADELPHIA STORY: "This is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed."

Every now and then I start to think "co-op internet would be great and I have the skills to do that" but then I remember how hard it is to ensure email delivery and how stressful it was when my sister was planning meetings for an org and the email I hosted for her would bounce or get silently filtered to spam on one end or the other. Like, as soon as people are counting on you it seems like the "co-op internet" model would just kind of collapse on itself (cf. every Mastodon instance that abruptly goes poof). What if I get hit by a bus? What if I get hit by a week long burst of fatigue where I just can't? What if the disks are full and there's no money to buy more?

Also Calibre is slop (and it was awful before it was slop) and I recently ran into a problem where I could no longer upload ACSM files for automatic conversion on my server. I managed to fix it but I'm still not sure why it broke in the way it did. It's not mission critical so I'm OK just maybe having it be broken for a bit even if she's paying for the storage, but I would still feel somewhat guilty.

My sister asked me if I could host a Calibre library for her so her kids could download books for their own e-readers. I already host one for me, so I have the technical capability, but I'll have to add storage to my VPS. She says she'll pay for the extra storage, but this pile of dependencies and new things to manage is how people end up paying for dedicated cloud services for every little thing.
https://distraction.party/notice/BBJJizMWJXRfm9lWds

"Just" host it yourself.
"Just" shop for and buy the hardware.
"Just" find out how to install the software yourself.
"Just" configure everything.
"Just" sign up for GitHub and Discord and Reddit and and and in order to learn why something doesn't work or provide feedback on it.
"Just" stay on top of software updates.
"Just" manage disk space and RAM allocations.
"Just" install and configure your own firewall and VPN because you need that too.
"Just" learn to program in multiple languages so you can fix that bug.
"Just" make sure you're not supporting fascists with everything you use.

"Just" do everything else you already have to do to get by without also considering your new workload.

2 AM bus thoughts: Somebody named their restaurant CRAB PLUG. Do not ever listen to the voice in your head that hates you and says you’re doomed to failure, because then you will never name your restaurant CRAB PLUG.

Weirdly after being put in timeout for a bit it did power on again, but it's been disconnecting and reconnecting randomly so it doesn't seem reliable enough to earn its place on a crowded desktop.

The 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display that I brought home from the office in 2017 no longer powers on as of today. Part of me wants to try to fix it, but it was already old when I brought it home and it’s been underutilized for years. I assume it’s time to let it go.

Yesterday an open source project with an anti-AI policy posted about how they will reject LLM-generated pull requests without looking at them. Then they got a reply from some dude to the effect of "I hope you change your minds, because if you don't you'll never be able to incorporate my patches." I'm not naming the project or the dude, because I don't think people need to go jump into replies on either side, but this has stuck with me. Imagine being so full of yourself, so high on LLM farts, that you think anybody in a project with an anti-AI policy wants that reply or your slop.

#AskFedi does Google Maps (or some other third party app) on #WearOS have "approaching stop" and/or "get off now" alerts for public transit? Please only reply if you KNOW the answer. Speculation is not helpful. (Please boost for reach).

Full problem description: my young adult niece has Down syndrome and she is currently in a workforce training program. She understands how public transit works, and she has an Android phone, but she tends to zone out (or even fall asleep) and miss her stop. She did great last week, but it is only Wednesday and she has missed stops twice this week. She needs to be able to take transit reliably in order to become more independent. Her mom is thinking of getting her a watch to pair with her phone, but only if it will actively remind her to get up and get off the train or bus.

Also, because I'm not new here: please assume I already have educated opinions about Google itself and answer the question as asked, instead of lecturing me about why Google is bad.

I'm looking at this more now and trying to figure out what they were thinking when they authored the file. Almost all the styles are just applied as paragraph elements with different classes, instead of doing sensible things like using different header declarations for section headers and chapter titles. The standard text paragraph gets the style `p.TX`, a minor section break is set off with its first paragraph having `p.TNI`, and a more major break gets `p.CO` set on its first paragraph (with a dropcap on the first letter that doesn't work right because I have fonts overridden). They also mix `px` and `em` in ways that seem to have relied on a very specific font metric that, of course, doesn't work if your system font doesn't have the exact same metrics. I just want to disable publisher font choices and justified text, but instead I'm now having to customize things around their choices so I can tell when new sections start. Phooey.

It's come to this: I have default formatting I like in KOReader, and every now and then I encounter an ebook that doesn't play nice with it, but the book's own default formatting isn't great for other reasons. So yesterday I finally dug into the ePub for one, found a couple of class declarations the publisher seems to use a lot, and then added a book-specific custom tweak in KOReader.

Me: All I want is a black and white e-ink reader with page turn buttons.

Kobo: Have you considered color?

Amazon: Here's a new reader that doesn't have buttons, and it costs more than the model it replaces, and it still doesn't have buttons, but we'll finally sell you a remote with buttons for even more money.

Me: I want the buttons on the reader itself, not a remote I can lose.

Kobo: No really, have you considered color?

Amazon: We'll also sell you a case with buttons, but it's only compatible with the most expensive version of the new reader.

Me: ಠ_ಠ

After being in the chat queue for two and a half hours, I thought I'd test a hypothesis. And it turns out that I was correct: if I ignored the "your seat selection is no longer available" error at the very top of the screen, and then submitted the rebooking without trying to select new seats at all, we got approximately* the correct price for the rebooked flights — and the seat selection interface after the rebooking was complete reflected "Economy Comfort" on both legs. This allowed me to select the right seats without paying again. I have now submitted a bug report to KLM via their chat interface, but I'm sure it will never get to the right people.

* We're now being overcharged by a total of $5.60, because for some reason the seat upgrades came in at a slightly higher cost basis. I mentioned this in the chat and if they fix it, great. If they don't, then they've cost me a bunch of time and an extra $5.60, which I'm annoyed about but can stomach.

We're most likely changing our travel dates for our trip to NL and BE. This should be easy, right? Modify new trip, accept new price, done, right? Apparently not if you paid for KLM's "Economy Comfort" upgrade. For some reason it wants us to pay all over again for our seat upgrades, making the date change cost us twice as much as it should. I've been in their chat support queue for over an our now, waiting for somebody to be able to change our flights and have them cost the same as they would if I just bought all new tickets and paid for the same upgrades. Come on KLM, get it together!

Good news! The starter culture is much more active today. It’s not baking strength yet, but that should happen in another feeding or two.

Between summer heat and life I haven't baked any sourdough in months, but I fed the starter yesterday. Between dormancy and kind of a cool temperature in the kitchen it took almost 24 hours to show some life. I fed it again this morning and put it in the "proofing box" (the microwave with the range light on) instead of leaving it on the counter, but I have to be careful with that. The new microwave runs warmer than the old one did, presumably because it's a lot lighter and thus not as good of a heat sink. My kingdom for an over-the-range microwave with a "proofing box" mode that cycles its own light on and off to maintain a yeast-friendly temperature.

As if on cue, my wife’s phone notified her that the traffic is bad. Note: we are a five minute walk from the restaurant once the bus gets to its stop.

Our next #TalesOnTourDC event is in Georgetown, so we are on a bus stuck in traffic where Pennsylvania and M merge. Why on earth do people drive here.

As we left the hotel this morning a guy in performative black tactical clothing got on the elevator with a badge for the “Defending the Flock Conference.”

Then at the airport there was a guy with a t-shirt that said “ONE GOD, ONE WIFE, LOTS OF GUNS.”

Is …is Christianity OK?