(Mastodon web client scrambles order of my posts in this thread attempt, after I did edits. So sad.)

/6

Kid wanted me to retell story last night after dinner.

But as I got to the last part, I choked up.

Why?

Why react like that, to some stupid 1966 SF story?

Because we aren't turning our ship or waking our drive.

Because in our own real situation, we are still perplexed, still not figuring out alien hostile intentions, and none of us is making the difficult snap decisions that might still save us.

Because the enemy induction weapon is turned on us and we are now being roasted.

/5

Human pilot reaches seat, wakes drive, full on, swings ship about, brings rear telescope online.

Alien captain speaks to alien weapons officer, asks if humans really think they can get away on tenth G thrust. Weapons officer says of course not, light pressure too weak!

Alien captain asks, what type of light, again?

Realises. Shouts too late to weapons officer,

"Burn them!"

Then alien captain vaporizes, terrible red light slices alien ship in half, depressurizing, killing all aliens.

/4

The alien captain directs his telepath to find and examine the minds of the humans. Instant headaches as thoughts and memories are examined.

Telepath reports that humans are completely peaceful, have no weapons, expect friendly contact.

Alien captain says, kill humans with induction heating weapon. Search their ship afterward to find their homeworld for conquest.

Humans notice their ship getting warm, metal surfaces burn them. Human pilot leaves crying crewmates, goes to controls of ship.

/3

My younger kid knows the Larry Niven story, "The Warriors", because I told it to him when he was little.

"Tell me a story."

Yeah, not a great author, not a great story, I know.

But it was a story that made an impression, reading it as a kid, so I told it:

A human ship is 11 years out from Earth, pushed gently on a steady beam of coherent light. An alien ship snaps up at 200G. First contact time.

The humans signal, call on radio, are perplexed to get no response.

The aliens? warlike.

/2

It's a day of grief. It is.

It's a terrible day, one stacked on top of so many.

Those of us that see what we see, that still give a shit, for us, it's a day of grief.

/1

#america

Flashed the 8.1 firmware to the Morserino M32 Pocket, www.morserino.info

New firmware has "Morsel" and "Morse Invaders".

Morsel is much like https://morsle.fun/, where you try to guess the word being sent, first at a frantic 48 WPM, then slower each time you don't get it.

Morse Invaders is like the old "Space Invaders" video game, but with letters dropping from the top of the screen. You have to key the character correctly to blast them away.

#Morserino #MorseCode

Nested dreams last night!

I was dreaming that I was talking to an old Santa Cruz person I used to know, Dee, and telling her about a recurrent dream I had.

The inner dream I described, was going back to a house I used to rent a room in.

I was confused by nonsensical changes in the house, extra rooms, a precarious balcony, extended outbuildings.

And worrying that I had never given notice when I left, just wandering off, abandoning my belongings, and owed years of back rent.

#dream

Tried a bit of ham radio while driving to work.

Elecraft KX3 propped in front of gear shifter. Tried to get power from car accessory socket, but cord's tiny blade fuse was popped.

Where are the replacement fuses? On workbench in an old mint tin? How's that any good?

So no power but what was in the NiMH AA batteries.

No contacts, but that's ok. Tried. Mostly listening.

Not logging, not playing in the #FieldDay contest.

Maybe stop by the local club's Field Day tomorrow morning?

#HamRadio

Understanding quasi-religious belief structures important, because these are everywhere now, and mostly weapons against us:

Current hulabaloo about AI data centers in orbit.

2 years ago, coworker with "Occupy Mars" Musk stan t-shirt.

Creepo 5th-gen-warfare fuckaloo, Mike Flynn, leading evangelicals in Elizabeth Clare Prophet's prayer.

Retired doctor babbling that Ivermectin cures the covid.

Each example sits inside weaponized belief structures, created and then planted like landmines.

I keep thinking of odd sort of atheism.

Imagine an absurd cult, I mean: go make one up!

Gather some ridiculous beliefs it would have, create some nonsense claims it would have!

Since it's fake, freshly thought-up, unrelated to all others, it might be easier to hold such a belief system at arm's length and consider it, yes?

Might be fun thought experiment?

Hopefully I'm not going to step on anyone's toes, because there are no believers yet!

Consider, could it still be dangerous?

#atheism

I want to use this device in a particular limited way, plugged into a USB port of my desktop computer, letting my computer send packets to my repeater 10m away, up over the roof, then connecting me to others in this region of California.

Bouncy-bouncy packets of chat traffic.

Small, only 136 chars. But it's Unicode.

Slow, as simplex repeaters listen and retransmit.

Might be a few seconds.

Not always reliable. Because users are building the network themselves.

But that relaying part? It means means a message gets carried a long way.

Sonoma to San Luis Obispo. Santa Cruz to the Sierras.

And doing that on $100 repeaters that run on small solar panels and a few 18650 batteries.

It works off grid. Off the Net.

#meshcore

Here's how it works and what it's for:

The little modules connect to a chat app called "MeshCore", running on a phone or computer. The modules have radios that talk and listen on the ISM unlicensed band up at 910 MHz, using low power and some robust proprietary protocol.

Some devices are personal, used to chat to the mesh network.

Others are repeaters, standalone nodes often placed high up, that relay the chat traffic.

So type on phone, radio sends it, message bounces along repeaters!

Got shipment with $11 Seeed ESP32S3 µC and SX1262 LoRa board today. Such tiny things!

Used Chromium on Hackberry Pi and USB-C data cable, pressed tiny BOOTSEL button on µC when plugging in USB, and got into DFU upgrade mode.

On https://meshcore.io/flasher page, chose "Seeed Studio Xiao S3 WIO", then "Companion USB", checked "Erase", then "Flash".

Reboot, started web app https://app.meshcore.nz/ , found device, gave it name and US presets, sent advert and hello-world.

Works!

#meshcore

#Caturday

Maybe Fooble is listing to one side, but he is certainly floof-boating...

#CatsOfMastodon

"If the cat lays on her side, we call that a floop. If a squirrel makes itself flat on the fence rail, that's a sploot. But what should we call it when our tabby goes on his back to get belly rubs?"

"A floof-boat?"

#caturday on wednesday

Of course, it would have been better to also toot that info from Tootle running on the Hackberry.

At least, that's where this comment is coming from.

Testing thrift store junk bin USB headphones on Hackberry Pi, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W cyberdeck.

cvlc https://20ft-radio.radiocult.fm/stream

Works!

#linux