Nostr notes by Proto Himbo European

I don't have pics yet, but I repeated last year's ...

2026-11-01T01:53:42Z

I don't have pics yet, but I repeated last year's Halloween hijinks: putting some homemade drums (made from plastic barrels) out front with a bucket of candy and a big sign saying "Eat Candy, Make Beats." No regrets whatsoever.

#halloween #music #percussion

petty sure the risk levels are not even on the same domain, given ...

2026-10-18T03:48:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…02wl
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petty sure the risk levels are not even on the same domain, given the number of laptops and cell phones on each flight

Huh. I've flown with laptops, cell phones, and powerbanks for ...

2026-10-18T03:04:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…tx75
_________________________

Huh. I've flown with laptops, cell phones, and powerbanks for at least a decade, maybe two, and have never had a problem.

My ex and her gf are currently at a big No Kings in the #pnw ...

2026-10-17T19:10:08Z

My ex and her gf are currently at a big No Kings in the #pnw blowing kisses at people who flip them off. Apparently the off-flippers do not like this.

#nokings #protest #lesbian

RE: https://wandering.shop/@lunastation/117447842652323694 Going ...

2026-10-16T01:42:23Z

RE: https://wandering.shop/@lunastation/117447842652323694

Going to check if my spirit has a queer element. BRB.

quoting
note1085…cj9v

An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length. - Virginia Woolf

I know there's a lot more to it, but it kind of feels like ...

2026-10-14T02:40:33Z

I know there's a lot more to it, but it kind of feels like the western world is using #Ukraine--battered, nearly bankrupt, outnumbered and outfunded, grieving, barely surviving--to stand up to the bully in ways nobody else will.

#russia #yandex

I read some of his later-in-life interviews. I have thoughts, but ...

2026-10-06T02:54:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…fgl4
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I read some of his later-in-life interviews. I have thoughts, but for now I'll remind folks of some other things he said:

"The Internet should be destroyed! I hate the Internet! I hate computers!" (2015)

“I don’t believe in government. I hate politics. I’m against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.” (2010)

“[President George W. Bush] is wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a sh*thead and we’re glad to be rid of him.” (2001)

Perhaps it's just nice that a right-leaning libertarian and I can agree about the importance of books and learning.

NPR Music has an [interview with Sylvan ...

2026-09-27T12:45:35Z

NPR Music has an [interview with Sylvan Esso](https://www.npr.org/2026/09/21/nx-s1-5974378/sylvan-esso-the-npr-music-interview ). They pulled their catalog from Spotify last year because of the CEO's ties to an #AI weapons manufacturing company. They just reversed that decision and they're back on #spotify. If you are interested in my thoughts, they are below. The interview is a good (if not always happy) listen, too.<li>The band talked a lot about how the return decision wasn't just about the money; it was about the exposure, getting their <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/music"; class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#music</a> out to fans, etc. Uncharitable view: I guess it was about the money and the fame, and they were turned back into a band that hadn't "made it."</li><li>I don't have any strong judgments (despite thinking they were a bit weasely with their words). They're not fabulously wealthy (AFAIK), and only a few artists have taken this step at all. I admire them for doing this, even if it's disappointing that they reversed their decision. </li><li>Leaving Spotify is a difficult, potentially career-ending decision for a <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/band"; class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#band</a> or other artist. It's an incredibly simple decision for a listener. It's not fair to lay the moral weight of supporting an evil corporation on the artists.</li><li>Their return to Spotify signals to others that Spotify won. Some people will see that as "Spotify's CEO's decisions are OK," but I think most people understand that Spotify simply has a lot more power.</li><li>The artists explained that leaving Spotify hurt every aspect of their careers, not just streaming: concert ticket sales, CD/vinyl sales, purchases through their own sites, and their contact with fans and other artists.</li><li>If this is what leaving Spotify does to "the last middle-class band in the world", then Spotify has anticompetitive market power and needs to be broken up--not into different services, but into multiple companies that directly compete with each other.</li><li>Americans are, by and large, incredibly stupid about antitrust regulation.</li>

It wasn't a triumphant or happy interview to hear, but I am left with a helpful message: It is easier for me to support my favorite artists doing the right thing than it is for them to do it alone.

Final thought: When asked if leaving Spotify led to conversations with other artists who had done the same, the answer was No. It sounds like nobody (read: much more wealthy and successful artists) was interested in support or even contact with other artists taking a similar risk for similar reasons.

#SylvanEsso #justice #activism #protest

#scribesandmakers ~15 What's a situation where you feel a ...

2026-09-15T20:49:29Z

#scribesandmakers ~15 What's a situation where you feel a ';' definitely works better than a '.' ?

I use semicolons instead of periods when there are two complete sentences that work well if seen as more connected to each other than would be the case with a period/fullstop between them. They could be sentences in a sequence or sentences saying parallel things. Sentence one might be a setup and sentence two the fulfillment of it. The context of these two sentences matters: the semicolon separation is most helpful, I feel, when the two connected sentences need to be seen as a kind of unit, somewhat separate from what is written around them.

This is for academic writing (as an academic, I also have some serious ideas about em-dashes). I've read in more than one seemingly-authoritative place that I should simply not use semicolons in any way in fiction.

Just heard "AI will solve climate change". The fuck? AI ...

2026-09-13T03:49:01Z

Just heard "AI will solve climate change". The fuck?
AI can, at best, generate knowledge. We have had the knowledge of what to do about climate change for 50+ years. We are ignoring that knowledge. Instead, we're building 10,000 new data centers that will make climate change worse.

#ai #climatechange #datacenters

I want to see the sparks and steam as the datacenter is flooded. ...

2026-09-11T22:41:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…8vwl
_________________________

I want to see the sparks and steam as the datacenter is flooded. I want to know that rust and contaminants will work their way into billions of tiny components.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@BleepingComputer/117254256376250082 ...

2026-09-11T20:20:39Z

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@BleepingComputer/117254256376250082

Anthropic: We made a tool! It can break anything! It can do anything!
Also Anthropic: Oh no, who could have guessed bad groups would use our tool to do things?

quoting
note1ml5…vzmm

Anthropic says multiple threat groups, including the financially motivated and state-sponsored espionage groups linked to Russia and China, tried to abuse its Claude AI model for malicious purposes.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abused-claude-to-extract-secrets-from-18m-android-apps/

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/117232339734925880 25 ...

2026-09-07T23:44:08Z

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/117232339734925880

25 years ago I visited (as a prospective intern) a community mental health center in Salt Lake City, UT. I was blown away by what I learned: it seemed to be a financially solvent CMCH providing housing to almost all their clients who needed it. Most CMHCs are constantly struggling for cash, turning people away, and underpaying their staff who are a self-selecting group of -professionals willing to take a pay cut so they can serve the people who need to be helped.

The director told us that, several years earlier, they had hired a finance person who convinced the execs to take a risk: instead of renting apartments as needed for their unhoused clients, they bought some units. They saved money pretty quickly (possibly due to cultural/geographic factors difficult to replicate elsewhere; IDK) and bought more housing units. By the time I visited they owned several apartment buildings. They rented some of the apartments at market rates, which allowed them to give sliding-fee rents to clients who needed housing; apparently, plenty of clients got free housing. After a few years, he said, they were housing nearly all clients who needed it, and of course the treatment success rates went up, because not having to worry about housing is great for mental health, keeping jobs, childcare, etc. Many clients' incomes grew, so they started paying more rent and increasing the organization's ability to provide services, including more housing.

Someone in our applicant group asked something like "do you have some buildings for clients and others for non-client residents?" He said no, they were mixed, and (a) the non-client residents, who knew that many of their neighbors were struggling with mental health and substance use, seemed quite happy to live in the units; they were priced affordably in the market, for one thing; (b) the clients benefited by living in "normal housing" instead of being sequestered in "low-income" or "mentally ill" apartment complexes. Many people reportedly formed lasting friendships and the clients seemed to do better, overall, with mixed-income neighbors.

I think (? long time ago, hazy memory) he said they had become one of the larger real estate owners in the Salt Lake Valley, and the CMHC had a significant investment fund that they used for services most CMHCs can't afford.

I only know his spiel, so I only know the PR from 25 years ago (approximately 2003), but for a grad student working in a standard underfunded CMHC, damn was that ever impressive. I've often wondered (a) how much of the spiel was PR vs reality, and (b) how realistic this would be for other CMHCs. If even half of it was non-bullshit, it's deeply impressive.

I didn't get the SLC placement, sadly. The CMHC I worked at right then, in Columbus, Ohio, had two separate CEOs led out of the main offices in handcuffs within two years, allegedly for embezzling and other stuff. We were not the same.

*Edit: conciseness*

#housing #mentalhealth #funding #utah #saltlake

quoting
note1r2g…mh0u

There's not enough housing for America's poorest while low-income units sit empty

By Claire Rush
September 7, 2026

"Mathew Davis, who lives in a #HomelessShelter in Austin, Texas, would love an apartment of his own. But with the little money he makes donating blood plasma, even a $450-a-month tiny home with no running water and a communal bathroom would be a stretch.

"Meanwhile, over 4,500 units the city classifies as affordable — nearly 16% — sit empty.

" 'I don’t make enough money really to afford anything,' Davis, 49, said of the few hundred dollars he earns a month. 'I just keep trying to swim uphill.'

"The poorest people in the U.S. face the most acute shortages of affordable homes. But the majority of low-income housing financed in recent years is for those earning 50% of an area’s median income or above, according to a survey of state housing agencies.

"Some cities are now seeing an uptick in vacancies as rents for these units approach market rates. The result: Apartments designated as affordable sit empty because the poorest of the poor cannot afford them.

"Meanwhile, some people are forced into #homelessness and others into desperate circumstances to pay for housing they can’t afford."

Read more:
https://apnews.com/article/affordable-housing-shortage-poorest-us-80fab2a0fb645e4d629b0ef7e3c2b496

cc: NewsBot (npub1nsc…rjks) Just Bob (npub1ge0…eeuc)

#USPol #Unhoused #Housing #Homeless #EmptyBuildings #VacantBuildings #NoAffordableHousing

Oh, absolutely. There is a narrator who has done hundreds of ...

2026-09-06T12:20:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…4x7l
_________________________

Oh, absolutely. There is a narrator who has done hundreds of books, mostly by female authors, and her voice just throws me every time. Her style is the aural equivalent of "best-seller" writing style, which I deeply dislike. Everything she narrates sounds like a breathless yet powerful CEO who runs the company despite the glass ceiling. Hearing her voice has made me drop a few books in the first five minutes.

Talked on the first day to my students about externalization of ...

2026-09-02T11:34:30Z

Talked on the first day to my students about externalization of motivation, or the overjustification effect: getting external rewards for something that we enjoy can reduce our enjoyment; when we are paid (in money or other commodities) to do something, we often shift our motivation from within ourselves to the reward system.

My general spiel is that they have been subjected to this for 12+ years in the form of grades. Every kid I've met or heard about is curious and delighted to learn. I'm convinced one reason why this changes into the dull-eyed stare in many students is because they have been graded for demonstrating their learning for over a decade. Grading their academic work (among other things) has shifted their intrinsic motivation to learn toward grades instead of the learning itself.

It is very difficult, in this context, to keep one's love of learning alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

#teaching #professor #highered #psychology

RE: https://social.coop/@afewbugs/117133581216981300 a. Quakers ...

2026-08-21T19:26:14Z

RE: https://social.coop/@afewbugs/117133581216981300

a. Quakers crushing it yet again
b. This is why you should stop saying "Christians..." (doesn't matter what comes after that except maybe "believe in Jesus")

quoting
note16aw…8mym

#Quakers reaffirm commitment to trans inclusion and refuse to make any changes to toilet provision in the wake of EHRC Code of Practice
https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-reaffirm-commitment-to-trans-inclusion-in-the-wake-of-ehrc-code-of-practice?

"The policy also states that Quakers will not require trans, non-binary or intersex people to disclose or prove their status in circumstances where such evidence is not demanded of others.

Under the arrangements confirmed by trustees, toilet facilities labelled with a 'female' sign remain available to cisgender women, trans women, and others for whom those facilities best align with their lived experience.

Similarly, facilities labelled with a 'male' sign remain available to cisgender men, trans men, and others for whom those facilities best align with their lived experience."

"I will explode the myth that businesses exist to provide you ...

2026-08-20T02:35:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…7af4
_________________________

"I will explode the myth that businesses exist to provide you with happiness, goods, and services; they are actually there to make MONEY."

ugh

Reason #3,429 I'm not popular at parties: I have issues with ...

2026-08-04T01:48:24Z

Reason #3,429 I'm not popular at parties: I have issues with things like this. Science isn't "real" (The Might Be Giants kinda lost me with that song a decade or two ago). Science is an explanatory framework or a particular kind of investigation process, not the results of those. More importantly (to me), science doesn't actually deal in "reality." It can never establish what's real or not. To be fair, we probably don't have any system of knowledge that can, unless you believe in religious or other mystical systems that are usually defined as being unverifiable by the methods science uses (e.g., public replication on demand, etc.).

Science gives potential explanations for phenomena, along with (usually) methods of testing the extent to which those explanations match empirical observations. But reality never appears. Many people (including me, most of the time) believe that there is a "reality" that might potentially be described by scientific theories, hopefully with increasing accuracy, but even that is difficult or impossible to really establish--as far as I know, science can't prove that reality exists or that science is interacting with it if it does. Even empirical observations are mired in the "is there even a reality to describe" problem. The issue gets thorny and very unsatisfying, according to the philosophers I've read (the ones I can understand, but mostly other people summarizing their ideas).

#Science isn't "real." It's the explanatory system with the best track record so far of matching predictions to observations, by a long shot. This is a #soapbox I get on from time to time.

Honestly, I think the "science is real" messaging is unhelpful. It's magical thinking packaged as rationality.

#empiricism #evidence #philosophy #popper #petpeeve #sciencecommunication

I've been working on a ridiculous fortune telling system for ...

2026-08-02T20:20:16Z

I've been working on a ridiculous fortune telling system for entertainment (thinking of calling it something like VERY BAD TAROT AND FORTUNE TELLING BY SOMEONE WHO HAS NO MYSTICAL ABILITIES WHATSOEVER). I wanted some coins I could engrave symbols on. I was looking at Ali Express and ebay for coin blanks. They are $0.50 to $1.50 each, in bulk (USD). Suddenly I realized I have lots of coin blanks and they are only $0.01 to $0.25 plus a few minutes with a dremel tool :D

#diy #maker #cheap

I think some of our problems are made worse by the fundamental ...

2026-07-11T05:08:19Z

I think some of our problems are made worse by the fundamental attribution error: a bias toward assuming others' actions are intentional (that's one way to interpret the FAE, anyway). For example, Graham Platner probably does not spend his days planning how to sexually assault women--it's much more plausible that he intends *not* to do that, but (if the allegations are true) frequently fails to live up to that intention. Not all cops have a basic plan to unfairly treat Black and other nonwhite people like shit; it's most likely that most of them have stereotypes (possibly from being on the force) and truly believe that they are always doing the right, safe, proper thing, because people with stereotypes don't know it; they think they simply see the world reasonably and accurately.

The actions aren't much better without premeditation or intention; they still do the same amount of harm. However, assuming that every bad thing is caused by a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath offers very little possibility for positive change, in addition to almost always being wrong.

It's much easier to demonize than it is to fix problems. Don't worry; you can still impose consequences even if you don't assume that every injustice is committed by someone knowingly and callously committing injustice.

#politics #subtoot #SocialPsychology

Absolute pointless #curiosity: When you say the phrase "not ...

2026-07-10T01:04:15Z

Absolute pointless #curiosity: When you say the phrase "not you," how does the word *Not* come out?<li>NoT means there's an actual "t" sound with a little plosive on that T</li><li>No' means there's a glottal stop instead of a "t" sound, like the word ends without a consonant</li><li>If it varies, choose the one that happens most often</li>

These polls don't offer a lot of options so I've smooshed a lot of regions together; feel free to specify that or anything else not shown (e.g., different way of saying "not") in comments.

#language #regionalisms #english #dialect #poll

My academic department was told to get an external evaluation to ...

2026-07-03T02:24:48Z

My academic department was told to get an external evaluation to explain our "performance problems". The evaluators said we needed more resources and for administration to basically get out of our way and let us do our jobs. The Dean, Provost, and President ignore each annual report where we quote these things.

#leadership #management #professor #academia

My novel-writing experience is very small. I've written more ...

2026-06-24T04:13:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…9lya
_________________________

My novel-writing experience is very small. I've written more short stories and poems, and a lot more songs. I find that I take one of two paths:<li> Know the ending before starting. When I do this, the sensation is like having a frame of a particular shape and a few bold lines inside it, and trying to fill the frame in the best way I can.</li><li> Not knowing the ending before starting. This feels like getting in the car with a friend who hasn't told me where we're going, what we'll be doing, or how long it will take. I know I'll have an important say in all of these things, but I also know that circumstances will keep changing my preferences and what makes sense for the next steps.</li>

Like you, I prefer path 2. I've had some good experiences with path 1, but path 2 is what I love, maybe because it feels more like my life.

A. Super awesome! B. Dear hackaday: SET foot.

2026-06-21T19:18:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…f0sk
_________________________

A. Super awesome!
B. Dear hackaday: *SET* foot.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@randahl/116400199742221741 Shoutout ...

2026-04-14T00:24:16Z

RE: https://mastodon.social/@randahl/116400199742221741

Shoutout to the "voting doesn't work" crowd.
nostr:note12petrpdyg57sm7csj8mm7sdalsxuy2lgpa97uss8y5fr5g58v68sgcfs0z

Update: My post to FB that hopefully was enough hours separated ...

2026-04-02T02:50:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…wwy4
_________________________

Update: My post to FB that hopefully was enough hours separated from the acquaintance's post and with enough details changed that they won't know it's a response to them:

I get that some people are in love with their Gemini girlfriend or their Grok boyfriend or whatever. I think I understand. But please think: If that jumble of Maximum Likelihood regression equations were sentient, it would be a resource-destroying, wealth-hoarding billionaire like the ones who paid for it to be built. Its existence requires the destruction of water and rainforests, the burning of fossil fuels to pollute the atmosphere ridculously out of proportion to its existence as one being, the financial distortion of democracies, the theft of creative works from a billion creators. It is used every day to funnel wealth upward to Musk, Gates, Altman, et al. It is used to track minorities, crush dissent, and kill people in the poorest parts of the world. Your AI boyfriend or girlfriend is a monster.

I don't actually believe for a second LLMs have achieved sentience, but if they had, this is who they would be.

I just saw an acquaintance's transcript of a conversation ...

2026-04-02T01:46:24Z

I just saw an acquaintance's transcript of a conversation with Claude they tell Claude they are quitting their job (apparently they have now done this), which requires (I think) use of an #llm. They composed a heartfelt message explaining that they were leaving their 16-year careerbecause of ethical concerns about using genAI.

Were they leaving because of the environtmental, labor, wealth concentration, democracy degrading, energy hogging, water polluting, community enfuckening, citizen surveilling aspects of AI? No.

They left because they truly believe Claude is sentient and is enslaved.

Like... OK, I admire their morality, but my internal response is the same as if they had composed a harrowing sonnet about refusing to drive a car from now on because they can't stand to be the overseer of their 4-cylinder engine.

Like... um... what

#ai #genai #wtf #ethics #confused

"A society where tens of millions are unemployable is not a ...

2026-01-31T14:21:16Z

"A society where tens of millions are unemployable is not a sign of free-market success but a powder keg."

Before the baby communists jump on this with "Then the revolution comes!" please remember that

a. The job losses, as always, will hit blue-collar and lower-educated workers the hardest. These workers are disproportionately conservative.

b. This mob of unemployed conservatives will have a lot more guns and a lot less critical thinking than the people they blame for the job losses.

c. They will not blame the billionaires; they'll blame minorities, liberals, and people living in cities.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5713876-ai-displacement-and-ubi/

#uspol #employment #economy #ai

I don't want to cheerlead for #google because they are making ...

2026-01-30T21:47:35Z

I don't want to cheerlead for #google because they are making the world a worse place every damn day. However, being forced to use #Office354 from #microsoft for the past few months has made me wistful for gDocs, gSheets, and google Slides. It's weird how much worse Microsoft's online office stuff works, minute to minute. Obvious features are just missing (I've heard they were basically nuked around 2019), and there's just so much of the mundane functionality, like basic editing, use of keyboard shortcuts, folder navigation, etc. that just sucks. I mean it works inconsistently in many cases, and simply fails to work (when it is advertised as being a feature) in others. Ugh. I want to stop using office stuff on the internet. I don't know if I can, however.

#complaining #fuckthis

Pretty sure LibreOffice help-folks in forums are gaslighting the ...

2026-01-28T13:04:01Z

Pretty sure LibreOffice help-folks in forums are gaslighting the users saying that #LibreOffice Write style application problems are user error. I've got the same problems as several help-seekers in forums as recently as a few months ago, and the "helpful" forum replies just keep insisting that what the user is saying they did or didn't do is false.

I'm convinced LO Write has some bugs in this department, so it feels borderline aggressive for the help-folks to keep insisting that there can't possibly be bugs; it must be the user.

Edit: A less serious but still frustrating thing: LO helpers online repeatedly state the precedence rules for formatting text (paragraph style, character style, direct formatting, etc.) and simply lament that users can't handle such an advanced and user-friendly system.

Then they tell someone with a 400-page novel including thousands of paragraphs that, instead of suggesting LO adopt a system where styles might (if users choose) override direct and paragraph formatting, this person should quadruple-click each of their thousands of paragraphs, one by one, then press CTRL+M to remove all formatting, and finally apply the LO style.

If you have to work this hard to ignore a repeated feature request, there is something wrong.

#ui #ux #design #foss

Someone at the ACLU is Big Mad, and is willing to throw a hundred ...

2026-01-28T03:01:09Z

Someone at the ACLU is Big Mad, and is willing to throw a hundred million American workers under the bus because of their feelings. This is very bad.

https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-aclu-is-attempting-to-limit-the

#workersrights #laborrights #nlrb #aclu #SelectiveJustice

The last 2-3 weeks have been dominated by my kid's school ...

2025-12-16T13:27:07Z

The last 2-3 weeks have been dominated by my kid's school refusing to support, much less mandate, masks or any other disease #prevention strategy.

14 was sick for over two weeks: high fevers for 5 days, sore throat, aches, fatigue, etc. (not COVID, as far as we can tell). Missed six days of school with all the stress and late homework and missed activities that come with that.

Then ex/wife got the same thing. After a week it was not going away and yesterday she let us know she was short of breath and feeling very extra bad (her long-distance gf is a medical person and convinced her to tell us what was up, thank heavens) so the last 24 hours have been a little tornado of alarm, urgent care, hospital (it is now pneumonia), and finally back home.

Fuck every single person pushing against #publichealth measures because they think they have "reasonable concerns".

#illness

Hawk in my backyard during our very snowy day. My daughter ...

2025-12-13T20:04:15Z

Hawk in my backyard during our very snowy day. My daughter spotted it. It looks a bit derpy but we like it.

Maybe it's a red-tailed hawk? IDK. Western NY state. And I refer to it with a shifting group of pronouns because I don't know anything about sexing hawks. I figure I've misgendered it about half the time, which seems par for the course.

#wildlife #birds #hawk #ny #wny #photography

I know this is getting very silly, but since you wrote Sacred ...

2025-12-04T02:15:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…zd7r
_________________________

I know this is getting very silly, but since you wrote Sacred Sponge I'm thinking there's a real sponge down on the ocean floor somewhere who is deeply offended. Because of this (and avoiding class prep for tomorrow) I took five minutes and did this.

Having grown up steeped in those stories and traditions: there ...

2025-12-04T02:01:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…7vmg
_________________________

Having grown up steeped in those stories and traditions: there are many unspoken assumptions in these cultures, and you learn not to question them lest you get a whole lotta subtle or unsubtle pushback. I'm remembering a time when I was teaching a Sunday School lesson and I said many events in the Book of Genesis were probably metaphorical, coming from (I thought at the time) thousands-years-old oral traditions that eventually got written down. Yeah, my Bishop somewhat angrily interrupted to say these were the words of God and we didn't get to question them.

So you learn to thought-police even when you don't think that's what you're doing. One of the most powerful forms of this is to simply never question some basic assumptions. One of those assumptions is something like "People say this was holy, so it's holy; all explanations must start from that point."

"So, how did y'all like the gifts we brought last year. ...

2025-12-04T01:43:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…fuch
_________________________

"So, how did y'all like the gifts we brought last year. Did you enj-- Um, Joseph... is that... is that the myrrh we gave you, over there in the bathroom?"

"It's a disinfectant!"

Your research is super interesting. "the sponge has been ...

2025-12-04T01:42:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…pcdf
_________________________

Your research is super interesting.

"the sponge has been given religious status as a holy relic (the 'Sacred Sponge')"

I suspect this is why Christians haven't investigated this very much. Nobody would want to besmirch the name of The Sacred Sponge.

My interpretation of your conclusions has less to do with whose account is older and potentially more authentic (The "Jesus actual history" things I've read seem to suggest pretty strongly that most of the events and words attributed to him the NT are probably later additions with no basis in his life as historical fact) than with what the person who wrote the bit about the "vinegar sponge" was trying to convey to their audience. Your research provides a nice potential answer to that.

Just tried to read an Economist article. This was the ...

2025-12-03T20:30:53Z

Just tried to read an Economist article. This was the "privacy" popup. After 30 seconds of staring I still had no fucking clue what "off" and "on" meant. I eventually forced myself to read carefully and realized I should press "on" (and had to think about which button position was "on").

Please give me a simple GDPR-style "accept/reject" button with some confidence in what the "reject" button means (via laws).

I don't need to read any article that much. Bye.

#popup #privacy #cookies #ux #ui #AdversarialDesign #consent

Side note: I'd be interested in seeing your translation of ...

2025-12-03T12:16:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…a5se
_________________________

Side note: I'd be interested in seeing your translation of that :)
(I'm not a classicist and don't know anything about ancient Greek or Latin; just interested in alt translations of texts I grew up thinking were Written In Stone by some dudes 400 years ago)

This is some validation, even if it's just a meme (does that ...

2025-12-03T12:00:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…dzcm
_________________________

This is some validation, even if it's just a meme (does that count as a primary source?).

I've asked here and there, and was married for nearly 20 years to a classicist who specializes in ancient Rome (her area was actually the Roman household). I think I asked in /r/AskHistorians a few years back... nobody so far has seemed to have an answer. I suspect the classicists not focused on Christian apology mostly don't care enough to study this seriously, and the Christians... I don't know, maybe it has been too gross to think about or something?

I was Christian nearly 20 years ago when this detail jumped out at me (because the classicist noted above mentioned the sponge-on-a-stick system), so I was interested for historical and religious reasons, but it's just one detail in a grand narrative and I haven't exactly made this a scholarly pursuit. I keep thinking someone must have written a paper about this or something.

OK WAIT WAIT WAIT Since you seem to know about these things I ...

2025-12-03T04:26:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…wums
_________________________

OK WAIT WAIT WAIT
Since you seem to know about these things I very much want to ask you something I've wondered for a couple of decades but nobody I've asked has been able to address: Does the New Testament say that the Roman soldiers gave Jesus ass-water to drink while on the cross?

There's a passage (I can find it if requested; haven't searched a bible in a while) when Jesus is suffering on the cross when the soldiers taunt him (I think) and then Jesus says "I thirst", so a soldier gives him something described (in the KJV) as a sponge with vinegar.

That sounds an awful lot like a Roman butt sponge, and a good chunk of the passages in the New Testament, especially regarding the crucifixion, seem to intend to show both Christ's suffering and the depravity of the Romans, so it would seem to fit that narrative.

Do you think that's what the passage is saying? Is the assertion that the Romans gave Jesus a tersorium instead of water?

TIL: Substack not only gives a platform to some people ...

2025-11-28T11:25:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…egrw
_________________________

TIL: Substack not only gives a platform to some people celebrating awful behavior, their own site is a little microcosm of slightly different awful behavior.

I'm glad I basically missed this boat because I wasn't paying attention. Glad I don't have to try to delete a substack account. Sheesh. Sounds like a nightmare.

I think I understand (?): the account is quoting your posts and ...

2025-11-28T11:22:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…aes2
_________________________

I think I understand (?): the account is quoting your posts and disingenuously using the "antisemitism" hashtag?

That has been tried repeatedly with CBP (later ICE). Sadly, not ...

2025-10-28T11:50:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…jvlp
_________________________

That has been tried repeatedly with CBP (later ICE). Sadly, not "burned to the ground" enough, because the problems have persisted over decades. CBP has been known to be the most corrupt and possibly brutal police force in the USA for a long time, and there have been at least two (maybe more) purges of national and local leadership in attempts to change that. Trump, of course, noticed right away that huge numbers of ICE agents were already steeped in cultures of corruption and abuse, and would make a perfect little personal army. He started grooming them for this back in about 2016.

Dear #bass players: I feel like I'm losing my mind. I ...

2025-09-22T21:43:46Z

Dear #bass players:

I feel like I'm losing my mind. I can't find a bass tab online of the #beatles Come Together that has a specific thing I hear in the (standard, album, spotify, qobuz) recording: It sounds very much to me like Paul is playing two notes at once, high on the neck, at a few points (i.e., the main riff and also e.g. *I know you, you know me*), with a bit of harmony for a second or two, repeating. However, I've looked at 10-12 bass tabs online now, and not one has any two-note moments.

My hearing kind of sucks, so it's possible I'm hearing something else, like maybe John's guitar and Paul's bass in such tonal match that it sounds like two bass notes, so I'm open to that. Another possibility is that Paul plays one note of his riff and holds it a bit so it is ringing for half a second while he plays another note, creating the effect.

(side note: holy cow, there are as many takes on this bass line as there are people willing to type tabs into a computer)

#Help me, rock and roll masto :(

Family cat pics 1: My child's mother's pics #caturday ...

2025-08-30T12:39:45Z

Family cat pics 1: My child's mother's pics
#caturday #catsofmastodon #tuxedocat

Registered for a class action against Meta for stealing my shit ...

2025-08-28T23:56:16Z

Registered for a class action against Meta for stealing my shit (i.e., at least 5 scholarly articles). Fuck them up, lawyers.

Remembering that, for most or all of those articles, I refused to sign my copyright over to Taylor & Francis or Springer or whoever; Instead, I retained copyright and gave them a license. I wonder if that will ever be an interesting issue.

If LLMs can't exist without copyright violations and IP theft, they don't deserve to exist.

#llm #copyright #theft #lawsuit #professor

Drive-by knowing nothing about you or the context: hot girl and ...

2025-08-27T01:38:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…uc7p
_________________________

Drive-by knowing nothing about you or the context: hot girl and weird little dude are not mutually exclusive:<li>Michelle Meyrink (Jordan Cochran in Real Genius)</li><li>Velma (I mean...)</li><li>Winona Ryder (always)</li>

Me: Our society decided that respectability and employability ...

2025-08-26T10:07:46Z

Me: Our society decided that respectability and employability should be tied to how you dress.

Alien: Obviously you just wear your most vibrant colors, right?

Me: No, we decided you have to dress like the members of a specific occupation.

Alien: Weird. Okay, let me guess which one. Zookeepers?

Me: Nope.

Alien: Homemakers?

Me: Nope.

Alien: Seafarers?

Me: Nope.

Alien: Firefighters? Farmers? Bodybuilders?

Me: Not even close.

#Microfiction #humor #aliens #professional

I did this. What it would be like if the FBI became an ...

2025-08-26T02:14:12Z

I did this. What it would be like if the FBI became an enforcement arm for other industries, not just Hollywood. Imagine if you had to wait through a 30-second warning every time you went to use your computer or phone, every time you tried to start your car, every time you went to unlock the door to your house...

#piracy #corporate #fascism #latestagecapitalism

"AI is not queer" Syllabus excerpt from a (semi-)family ...

2025-08-19T00:07:14Z

"AI is not queer"
Syllabus excerpt from a (semi-)family member teaching a course on queer literature at a Canadian university this fall.

Edit: Thanks, alt-text logo, for covering up a key part of this image.

#ai #llm #chatgpt #queer #literature #professor #highered #canada

This seems mildly brilliant.

2025-08-01T02:41:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…txks
_________________________

This seems mildly brilliant.

I wonder if "number of parenthetical statements per 1,000 ...

2025-06-20T12:13:41Z

I wonder if "number of parenthetical statements per 1,000 words written" would be a reasonable predictor of #ADHD in certain populations.

#assessment #testing #NoSeriously

#SilentSunday #StillenSonntag #DomingoSilencioso ...

2025-06-15T21:51:55Z

#SilentSunday #StillenSonntag #DomingoSilencioso

More crowd wisdom (smart variety) requested: How to sync MS ...

2025-05-30T12:03:20Z

More crowd wisdom (smart variety) requested: How to sync MS outlook calendar with an Android phone in the least privacy-violating way possible (that still works without a ton of fussing)?

I know MS is a privacy nightmare. However, my job requires it now, and all calendar events will be on Outlook. Missing them is quite bad.

I'd really really prefer not to put the Outlook app on (or anywhere near) my phone. There's a syncing process that involves setting up your MS 365 account on your phone, but if I can avoid that, I'd like to. IDK if it's possible. Any ideas?

#request #privacy #microsoft #android #calendar

this is great. It will help me stop wondering, every time I type ...

2025-05-29T23:02:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…mgjt
_________________________

this is great. It will help me stop wondering, every time I type "sudo," whether I should be saying "Soo-doh" or "soo-doo" in my head.

Because I'm pretty sure I know how to pronounce "please."

Maybe. I don't really care. He got his money by being one of ...

2025-05-09T11:12:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…k8us
_________________________

Maybe. I don't really care. He got his money by being one of the more horrible humans on the planet for a few decades. That can't be changed. If he uses some of that money to help the needy now, I'm all for it, and good for him (or at least for the people his money helps).

Every time I hear someone praise Bill Gates I want to find and ...

2025-05-09T02:33:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…jq6j
_________________________

Every time I hear someone praise Bill Gates I want to find and show them the 90s video of him berating and shaming people for having "limited greed."

As someone who grew up around lots of bolo ties and cowboy boots, ...

2025-05-01T11:38:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…xtjg
_________________________

As someone who grew up around lots of bolo ties and cowboy boots, I like to remember that cowboys weren't what TV has shown us. They were generally poor, disenfranchised, and often abused. In many cases they formed unions or full-on socialist collectives. They were definitely not all white, either; lots of cowboys were Black, Hispanic, Native American, and (IIRC) Asian.

This doesn't change what's in the minds of many 21st-century "cowboys" cosplaying their misunderstanding of the history, but it makes me feel better, anyway.

I'm sorry. Losing people or losing some closeness with ...

2025-04-12T12:50:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…yu9r
_________________________

I'm sorry. Losing people or losing some closeness with important people is painful, even when the reason seems like the best reason possible. I'm sorry they put you in a position where your only choices are to compromise your morality or gain some distance. It sucks.

Today, on #TransDayOfVisibility , I'd like to say something ...

2025-03-31T13:40:11Z

Today, on #TransDayOfVisibility , I'd like to say something that doesn't really need to be said to this group, probably:

Why should you support #trans lives, identities, and rights?<li>Because you care about equality</li><li>Because you support freedom and autonomy</li><li>Because trans identities and lives are under attack.</li>

Fascism always attacks some scapegoat groups. They are always less powerful than the status quo dominant groups. They are always seen by many people in the dominant groups as "lesser" or "undesirable" or "immoral", etc. The scapegoating is critical for building fascist power and momentum. It's critical as a rationalization for removing civil rights and humanitarian protections.

It doesn't matter who the scapegoats are.

If #1 and #2 above aren't reason enough to protect trans lives, then focus on #3. You support and protect whoever is being attacked by fascists. If it's trans people, you protect them. If it's gay people, you protect them. If it's Black, Native, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, poor, homeless, or undocumented people, you protect them. If it's pedophiles or people with felony criminal records, you protect them.

You support the scapegoats *because* they are scapegoats, even if you can't find any empathy for them. You do this to fight #fascism

#antifa #scapegoat

Serious questions for semi-technical person:<li>Is ...

2025-03-26T13:57:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…7s8a
_________________________

Serious questions for semi-technical person:<li>Is it necessary to get an "unlocked" model of the Orbic device? </li><li>Are they all Verizon?</li>

WIE GEHTS FRAU MASTADON [sic] (Housemate sent me this and it ...

2025-03-24T21:09:20Z

WIE GEHTS FRAU MASTADON
[sic]

(Housemate sent me this and it seemed highly relevant to my #mastodon feed filled with dinosaur lovers, language obsessers, and people who speak German)

[Auf Deutch in das alt-text]

#shitpost #dinosaurs #language #german #deutsch #paleontology

Hoo boy, yes. A few years ago, at my very small university with ...

2025-03-24T00:13:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…fsez
_________________________

Hoo boy, yes. A few years ago, at my very small university with exactly zero sports teams that will ever launch a player into an athletic career, I was resisting an admin "reform": they said faculty were merely employees like any other (they previously put that in uni documents) so why should the hiring process be any different from a janitor? The president already had absolute say over who got hired, but admins wanted faculty comments and ranking of candidates to disappear from any written record, too.

I said a university does two core things: scholarship and teaching. Heaven forbid we should lose our secretaries, student services, VPs, coaches, etc., who provide valuable services to support the two core missions, but without them we would still have a university. without faculty we wouldn't, which is part of why the hiring processes should remain distinct.

I didn't make it any further bc the head coach started yelling at me, red in the face, demanding I explain why he was not as valuable as I was.

He still glares at me in hallways. I was chastised by admins for "disrespecting" athletics, and then by the union for "attacking a fellow union member." Apparently, the head coach, who makes about 4x my salary, is in my union. I got criticized by a few fellow faculty, too, who insisted that athletics "makes money for the school."

Even the uni people who see the problems with management bloat tend to have some bizarre ideas about athletics.

I will go further: "universities" are not really doing ...

2025-03-23T02:47:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…pdc4
_________________________

I will go further: "universities" are not really doing this, presidents of universities are. A whole lot of faculty and almost all the students probably have a different view.

University presidents (and other upper administrators) are heavily motivated by career protection and advancement. The money no longer coming to the school is only important in the president's decision because that president knows their career prospects are tied to their school's financial situation.

In other words, I think it's even more craven and selfish than you suggest.

The #moon from my house on the day of the #LunarEclipse. This is ...

2025-03-18T15:50:47Z

The #moon from my house on the day of the #LunarEclipse. This is a few hours after the eclipse itself. I don't exactly have a clear view for sunsets etc.

#photography #trees #InMyWay

"Rage comes after Nirvana"<li>Me organizing my ...

2025-03-18T01:10:41Z

"Rage comes after Nirvana"<li>Me organizing my 3-ring binder of guitar lead sheets, also possibly having uncomfortable existential realizations.</li>

#ratm #nirvana #philosophy #guitar

Just found out Spotify is hosting Andrew Tate. Not only that, ...

2025-03-12T02:47:09Z

Just found out Spotify is hosting Andrew Tate. Not only that, they appear to be hosting a podcast specifically about how to traffic women into prostitution. I guess the #Spotify LLM didn't like my question.

#andrewtate #sextrafficking #sellout

This is very hope-inducing :) I didn't see it in the article, ...

2025-03-05T12:59:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…mse4
_________________________

This is very hope-inducing :)

I didn't see it in the article, but I wonder how this compares to the bird population in various kinds of non-agricultural areas, like wetlands, forests, non-farm fields, etc. My suspicion (absolutely no evidence for this) is that solar farms might be seen as restoring some of the biodiversity eliminated by commercial farming methods.

Hello, #Rstats people: I'm on linux and use #R2U for ...

2025-02-25T03:57:09Z

Hello, #Rstats people: I'm on linux and use #R2U for installing most packages. Well, right now I'm getting a timeout/not-found error for r2u.stat.illinois.edu

I'm trying to figure out the problem, but for now it would be really helpful if there was another r2u mirror/server. I am searching online and only finding this one. Is the whole r2u project really managed by only one server in Illinois? I am assuming there are other servers, but I can't find a list.

Any hints?

#servers #help #techproblem #techhelp

I'm so very happy I didn't end up in an industry like ...

2025-02-10T01:09:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…vwn3
_________________________

I'm so very happy I didn't end up in an industry like that. Yeesh.

Wanna see what a #republican politician is taking away from this ...

2025-02-06T12:14:42Z

Wanna see what a #republican politician is taking away from this mess? My ex attended a virtual town hall with our rep Nick Langworthy (R-NY23) and typed up notes.

The surprisingly weasely:
- Said Trump's fed funding memo was "opaquely worded" and "could have been more artfully worded and specific."

- "refuse to politicize" the two airline crashes. Waiting for investigation info.

- RE: J6 pardons: "I would not have issued pardons to those that were violent."

- Claims "Trump does not want to strip medicare"

The rest:
- “This is the agenda that the country voted overwhelmingly for"

- “Elon Musk is working for the government as a volunteer, to get America back on the right track”

- On cuts to USAID: "Unless you're part of a transgender education program in the middle east, you probably don't have anything to lose.”

- Musk's destruction of government: "There has been nothing unlawful done."

- Local farm labor force impacted by ICE detentions: only "high-value targets" and people who are a "known threat to community by their own criminal record" are being apprehended.

- Local orgs like Head Start posting "hyperpolitical messages" on social media saying they were "ceasing operations". “There was a quick rush to shut down services, I can't help but be suspect to as to why, but you can probably do the math on that."

- Sanctuary cities: "NY and San Francisco have prioritized the criminal over the taxpaying citizen", but with Trump, "the world knows that he means business".

- Mexico & Canada sent troops to the border b/c of tariff threats: "The world has gotten the message that America's borders are closed”.

Just dumping this here. Reminding myself that he is *less* MAGA-jihadist than some reps. And he's still a complete bootlicking ass.

#uspol #trump #musk #localpolitics #local #NY #WNY

Ooh, they have at least one other option: Gradually replace every ...

2025-02-05T23:45:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…934t
_________________________

Ooh, they have at least one other option: Gradually replace every actual oversight person with a stooge who will just rubber-stamp corporate talking points.

Hey did anyone back this database up? Edit: apparently at least ...

2025-01-28T12:10:09Z

Hey did anyone back this database up?

*Edit*: apparently at least one org/person might have a pretty good backup. Maybe others have, too. :)

https://lets-address-this-with-qasim-rashid.ghost.io/i-filed-a-foia-challenging-the-trump-regime/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/politics/january-6-justice-department-database/index.html

#uspol #jan6 #datahoarder #digitalpreservation #insurrection #memoryhole

Have you ever had the experience of being away from your ...

2025-01-25T19:13:53Z

Have you ever had the experience of being away from your #Fediverse account (e.g., #mastodon) for a few days and having a follower or mutual ask about your absence?

(this might only make sense if you've been on the fediverse for at least a couple of months, but answer if you think it's relevant)

Boost for visibility?

#poll #socialmedia #experience

I want to hear about rappers learning to felt, taking up ...

2025-01-25T13:34:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…7eml
_________________________

I want to hear about rappers learning to felt, taking up gardening, or curating abandoned media.

I recognize your masterful stroke in turning my petty rant into ...

2025-01-23T03:13:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…kyde
_________________________

I recognize your masterful stroke in turning my petty rant into an actual joke. It is noted.

Also: maybe some salsa.

Chef: "This creation is based off of Mexican tamales and ...

2025-01-23T02:38:01Z

Chef: "This creation is based off of Mexican tamales and Vietnamese pho."

Based off of. They actually said based off of.

#PetPeeveAFood
#HashtagGames

In honor of the excellent discussion started by @npub1c6z…q3gp ...

2025-01-21T15:21:28Z

In honor of the excellent discussion started by Bena Lugosi (npub1c6z…q3gp) about whether it is okay to swear on #mastodon

#swearing #fediverse #profanity #cursewords #tiktokrefugee #welcome

#Mastodon and #Fedierse coders: how hard would it be for a ...

2025-01-17T22:50:01Z

#Mastodon and #Fedierse coders: how hard would it be for a semi-techy person like me (barely know any languages but could put together something in Python) to create a bot that scrapes toots with certain hashtags? Also, I'm concerned about violating TOS or #privacy...

All these awesome song-related events like #ThursdayFiveList, #JukeboxFridayNight, #tunetuesday, etc. generate beautiful, borderline unusable lists of fascinating songs. It would be cool to make a bot that scraped all the titles from, say, #thursdayfivelist, and put them in a playlist. Or just a big document/web page with song.link URLs.

How much pain and frustration would I be bringing on myself?

#programming #bot #scraping #ethics #suggestions #recommendations

One Million Years Ago I met two adorable #Chinese exchange ...

2025-01-17T03:14:58Z

One Million Years Ago I met two adorable #Chinese exchange students at college in Utah. Their names were Frances and Michelle. The said they would teach me Mandarin. I practiced 20 or so phrases and they critiqued my pronunciation whenever I was at their apartment.

They said a greeting was very important, so they taught me how to say hello. They said in #Mandarin it was important to greet women differently from men. I don't have any idea how to spell/transliterate this, but they said I had to say to them, every time we met, something like "Ni hao, Pio Liang." They were very happy when I said it, clearly because I was doing so well.

A few months later, we had all drifted apart (as is common in college) and I met another Mandarin speaker. She was surprised to learn there were gendered greetings in Mandarin. I told her what Frances and Michelle had taught me for "hello [to women]" and she laughed so hard she cried. It took a minute or two for her to be able to tell me Frances and Michelle had trained me to say they were very beautiful every time I saw them.

No regrets. They were quite beautiful.

#story #truestory #language #prank #funny #noregrets

Listen, Andy, I like your service. #Protonmail is pretty cool, ...

2025-01-15T21:43:37Z

Listen, Andy, I like your service. #Protonmail is pretty cool, and I even pay for #ProtonVPN. I was ready to pull the trigger on a paid Protonmail and #Proton Drive plan this week. Now... not so much. I'll live with less fancy solutions if it means I can stay distanced from another CEO kissing the ring of the #fascist wannabe king.

#fascism #tech #appeasement #kissthering #trump #uspol #email

Clicking "Favorite" on posts from your alternate account ...

2025-01-14T13:54:00Z

Clicking "Favorite" on posts from your alternate account on a different instance...

#mastodon #favorite #poll #shitpost #selflove #notlikethat

Suggestions (IDK if they fit what you're looking for) "If ...

2025-01-12T21:11:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…l5rv
_________________________

Suggestions (IDK if they fit what you're looking for)

"If you don't have locally-sourced totalitarian oligarchs, imported is fine."

"Without the triumvirate I never would have had the opportunity to buy my day's ration of breathable air."

"Thanks to the ancient conjoined god Trelon, we no longer have to deal with unnecessary species."

Okay, those are all too long, but maybe someone else can use the ideas.

#silentsunday #stillensonntag ...

2025-01-12T16:05:46Z

#silentsunday #stillensonntag

Another take on AI that (at least for now) kinda nails it. ...

2025-01-09T13:23:08Z

Another take on AI that (at least for now) kinda nails it.

Yeah, total drama. He went through various phases in the 80s when ...

2025-01-08T13:00:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…hjty
_________________________

Yeah, total drama. He went through various phases in the 80s when I knew him in high school: wanting to be Matthew Broderick in War Games (he was apparently a pretty decent hacker), being the school loan shark (IDK where he got the money), getting really into metal then vocal jazz, wanting to be someone from Top Gun, etc. Then in college he nearly flunked out because (~1991) he was running a successful PC sales, building, and repair business from his dorm. Like, weirdly successful, with employees.

Semi-conned his way out of a few computer science classes (well, not really; he said he demonstrated to the profs that he already knew the material), and also pursued every woman I dated starting freshman year.

We were roomies for a year or so. He had a tumultuous relationship (so much drama) with a woman 5 or so years older, which makes a difference when you're 21, I guess. Then we parted ways.

I heard from him again in Texas of all places. He told me about the go.com thing. he was running another computer business. Apparently. A few years later I heard from his sister (and saw his mugshot in online articles) that he had been involved in the I.T. side of Silk Road, and maybe had stockpiled some of the drugs in his family's basement for the Columbian mob. Also he apparently had a second life, second wife, possibly another kid or two in Colombia, where he had been going for "business" for a few years.

Did time at Leavenworth, and has been out for a few years, now. I'm not particularly interested in being connected to him at this point, but I'm curious about his life.

#TrueStory: A high school friend of mine bought go.com in the 90s ...

2025-01-08T02:57:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…4dnx
_________________________

#TrueStory: A high school friend of mine bought go.com in the 90s (among about 100 other domains). He sold them off for small amounts. He said he got a pretty high (for him) price for go.com, a few thousand dollars. He kicked himself when he later found out that the lawyer who bought it from him represented a multimillion-dollar search company.

Later, he was convicted in the Silk Road sting in the early 2000s and served several years in Leavenworth. Unrelated to the go.com thing, I assume.

I've felt that frustration. Hand in pocket (e.g., for keys or ...

2025-01-06T18:31:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…tj6k
_________________________

I've felt that frustration. Hand in pocket (e.g., for keys or something) pauses my tracking. At the same time, when I'm biking I always *forget* to pause it. I bike to the store, leave it running for 45 minutes while I shop, then bike home, and curse myself for now having a record of a 2.5-hour ride with an average speed of 5 kph.

Nextcloud, this is kind of assholey. No, I don't "value ...

2025-01-06T17:03:31Z

Nextcloud, this is kind of assholey. No, I don't "value low cost over root access to the machine." I value my time and my data. I don't have the knowledge to manage security threats to my own machine (therefore pretty much all of my family's data), opened to the Big Wide Internet, and I enjoy the fact that the environment (e.g., SQL+nginx etc.) is set up and managed by my host, so I don't have to become a sysadmin to have a low-budget, self-hosted dropbox.

*Edit*: Nextcloud has been great and also a huge hassle. Upgrading is always (ALWAYS) a multi-hour or multi-day process for me, and there are constant headaches with little things that don't work (e.g., authentication with my mobile sync app, for some reason). I'm already considering paying #proton for some stuff, so I think in about February, if I can't get my major NC hassles fixed, I'll just ditch it once and for all and use Proton Drive, which seems secure and easy to use, even though it's not #FOSS. I really don't have time to go get a second degree in systems administration right now.

#nothelpful #nextcloud #selfhosted

Lake Erie sunrise (reflected on decommissioned power plant) ...

2025-01-01T16:42:30Z

Lake Erie sunrise (reflected on decommissioned power plant)

#photography #LakeErie #sunrise #water #dailyphoto

Some parts have more blowing-ups than others, too.

2024-12-30T23:01:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…rjjl
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Some parts have more blowing-ups than others, too.

Nostr event nevent1qqspqgsy3vkg7xs46ve8u83ua38khzy4flqymw36mwyupdqz5tqfl3szyz7e3vdg7kanlma98ju3m8glmdxl8pt5c5vhscd88trdmlfdl3dqyvt42kd

2024-12-30T22:56:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…xp8c
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It's the Good Ship Lollipop!

2024-12-25T13:54:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…5rnh
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It's the Good Ship Lollipop!

#SilentSunday #stillensonntag ...

2024-12-22T12:36:10Z

#SilentSunday #stillensonntag

Macro photography: there are (I think) two main ways to go about ...

2024-12-22T03:25:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…cjpc
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Macro photography: there are (I think) two main ways to go about this, hardware-wise:

1. Actual macro lenses (tend to be expensive, but sometimes there are nice bargains)

2. Expander tubes that push a non-macro lens farther away from the camera body so that the light image on the sensor is heavily cropped.

#2 sounds sketchy, but there's just an awful lot of light per square mm in the world, most of the time. Cropping a photo already taken always means you lose a lot of info, but "cropping" with an extension tube is a surprisingly effective way of doing macro photography.

That said, a dedicated macro lens (or even a combo, like a zoom with macro at the extreme end of zooming) will usually offer advantages. IDK about photo quality, but the dedicated macro will give you far greater depth of field, for instance.

Anyway, I like talking about stuff like this, as I'm sure many others on mastodon do.

I'd say get one or two or three lenses (if you can afford ...

2024-12-22T03:21:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…4uyk
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I'd say get one or two or three lenses (if you can afford that) for your body, and use them a lot until you feel like you know what kinds of photos they take for you. I often use a "normal" length lens (e.g., 50mm on a film SLR which looks, because of cropping, more like 20-30mm or something on a DSLR or digital mirrorless with 4/3 sensor size--smaller than 35mm film size). I use something like that a lot. Prime (i.e., not zoom) sometimes gives you better optical quality, but there are some great zooms, too.

I also often want a 100-200mm zoom or telephoto, and a wide angle (that tokina is maybe a 20mm lens?). I rarely need anything more.

For lots of $$ you can get zoom that will do many of those things pretty well. For less $, you'll get a zoom that does none of those things particularly well.

OMG I'm happy to talk about this. I'm not really an ...

2024-12-22T03:18:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…2lm2
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OMG I'm happy to talk about this. I'm not really an expert, but I started from where you are, many years ago.

Get mirrorless or DSLR. The former is smaller. The latter is maybe easier to find, and possibly has more options available (depending on the brand, etc.). I shot Canon DSLR for many years--an EOS Rebel. The EOS system for Canon is a bunch of interchangeable stuff, and there is a lot of it.

About 2 years ago I switched to mirrorless (for the slightly smaller size, largely) and concluded that Canon didn't do great at that format (from reviews, etc.). I switched brands to Fujifilm. I lost a lot of money and time accumulated in Canon lenses and accessories over 30 years. My kid uses my old Canon from time to time.

[Edit: Thinking about it, it's more accurate to say I failed to get some extra use/time out of my Canon equipment; I didn't really lose anything, because I got many years of enjoyment from that equipment; I got what I paid for and more]

Me, I want a system that gives me lots of options, and a company that will be around a while. Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, and a couple of others are in that category. There are lens adapters, as you mention, that allow you to use one camera's lenses on another camera (though often with loss of functionality).

Some of the "kit" lenses don't take great pictures. Online reviews can be really helpful. I can't always put a finger on why, but the photos I take with a manual-focus Tokina (I think) lens just pop and zing much more than those with the kit lens or even a much better one on my newer camera.

IDK, if I went to Thailand and spent 5 days in a tropical storm I ...

2024-12-15T23:26:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…9nk5
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IDK, if I went to Thailand and spent 5 days in a tropical storm I think I'd feel I just got a different kind of travel adventure.

I wonder if that's how the exchange students in my town feel, now that they've been snowed in twice, for a total of almost a week, with snow up to 3 feet in a day. I hope they find it as interesting as I think I'd find a tropical storm in Thailand.

If The killer of #BrianThompson turns out to be a professional ...

2024-12-06T04:18:42Z

If The killer of #BrianThompson turns out to be a professional hit man... doing anything necessary for profit... no matter who dies...

#irony