
I've spent maybe 2 hours today not in my bed. I haven't left my house even to step outside. And yet I am somehow overpeopled for the day.
Tend to yourselves.
I've spent maybe 2 hours today not in my bed. I haven't left my house even to step outside. And yet I am somehow overpeopled for the day.
Tend to yourselves.
Those of you reading this post as "COVID is over", please check your own biases.
COVID pods was a cultural event in 2020 and 2021, and not really since then. The remembering is for the pods part, not the COVID part.
Okay, I've mentioned this a few times, but let's talk about The Orange Alternative. It's Poland in the 80's and an art history student noticed that when someone would paint an anti-authoritarian message, it would very quickly get painted over by the government. He decided to paint a dwarf with an orange hat any time he'd see the white paint that covered these messages. Soon other people were doing the same. They embraced this kind of absurdism, what the government was doing was ridiculous, so they leaned into it. The paintings of dwarves soon became organized street parties. They would all wear orange pointy hats and walk through the streets with banners, chanting Dwarf Dwarf Dwarf! They would pool what little extra funds they had together and buy things that people needed like toliet paper and tampons, and would have street fairs with food and dancing, and hand them out. At Christmas, they would dress as Santas, and do the same. The police were flummoxed by what to do, if they arrested people for wearing hats and giving out tampons, they looked foolish and would be embarrassed, not sure what to do with these surreal forms of protest.
There is so much more to this, definitely read up on it, but it was an effective form of protest, creating community, spreading joy and absurdism, because authoritarian governments are absurd. Protests are going to look like a lot of different things, and this is just one of them.
In Russia, they have created Little Picketers, tiny rough clay figures holding banners, that they press into people's hands to remind them, that they aren't alone.
So, don't believe the propaganda, you aren't alone in caring, you aren't alone in wanting a different world, put on your goofiest hat, and let people know they aren't alone either.
I wonder what the Fediverse Chick is up to these days.
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
Instead of a BBQ, we're doing a Mac and cheese bar followed by a chocolate tasting (various kinds of chocolate or candy bars we've always wondered about but never tried).
the reason computers are bad is 1% because computing is hard, and 99% because of capitalism, of which about half is the way corporations have divvied up the software landscape in order to establish platform monopolies, and the other half is how a society steeped in capitalism disincentivizes cooperative, volunteer work. Not that people haven't tried, since there is a human drive to cooperate, but that it's nearly impossible to survive under capitalism while working for the commons.
Remember that idea during COVID of having a pod? A group of people with shared strategies for getting through it that took care of each other?
That's how we get through this, too. Find your pod. Stick together. Help each other. We are all going to need it.
Do not come into my notifications with complaints about payday loans or the people who use them.
They serve a function, and lots of folks depend on them.
I'm more frustrated that the person is using my number and the predatory nature of the industry, not what the individual is using my number for.
The person who likes to use my cell phone number (that I've had for over a decade) for payday loans just put in more applications.
It'll be a fun month until those calls and texts subside again.
Happy `git branch -D` day to all who celebrate.
I made it all day without mentioning how sore my abs and quads are from yesterday's workout.
Please clap.
(Seriously sore.)
Just finished reading Laura Spinney's _Proto_, about the long history of the Proto-Indo-European family of languages. Half the world speaks one of these languages today. Spinney uses linguistics, archeology, and genetics to weave a fascinating tale of who spoke what when, and how the language family moved from the central Eurasian steppes to conquer Europe, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and now half the world.
Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.
There's nothing so heavy and immobilizing as an 11-pound cat napping on one's lap.
More people need to read Kenneth Wenger's _Is the AI Plotting Against Us_.
Goes a bit heavy into the math, and that will probably lose a lot of folks. But persevere. You don't actually have to get the math to understand what he shares.
https://www.workingfires.org/product-page/is-the-algorithm-plotting-against-us
Genie:
What's your first wish?
Me:
I wish that people would understand at a visceral level that LLMs (commonly called "AI") are statistically advanced word prediction machines that do not actually "know" anything.
Genie:
Granted.
Second wish?
Me:
I wish that everyone past, present, and future, would have empathy for themselves, for other humans, and for the natural world as a whole.
Genie:
Wow. Comprehensive.
Granted.
Third wish?
Me:
I wish that you, Genie, would be free and have a nice 10,000 year nap before having to do anything else.
Genie:
<Bursts into tears.>
It's weird, but I believe everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Just follow them.
Brighten your feed.
Tomato gravy:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/old-fashioned-tomato-gravy/
Chocolate gravy:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/southern-chocolate-gravy/
Brown gravy:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-make-gravy-from-pan-drippings/
Turkey gravy:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/classic-turkey-gravy/
White sausage gravy:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/white-sausage-gravy/