👻🕸️💀🦇🎃🕯️mk30🕯️🎃🦇💀🕸️👻

wastewater specialist in training (back in school), art doodler, plant person, aspiring forest hag, living off-grid on hawai'i island. aloha 'aina!

plant/garden alt: @mk30

Public Key

npub1mhm5uzsaswhsqnp9kv5qxc7vrn947yzh000yz6jdmscu253lru0su9w328

NIP-05 Address

mk30@tilde-zone.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdma6wpgwc8tcqfsjmx2qrv0xpej6lzpthhhjpdfxacvw92gl378cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds276h5u

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1mhm5uzsaswhsqnp9kv5qxc7vrn947yzh000yz6jdmscu253lru0su9w328

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Last Notes

2026-09-04 03:49:46 UTC

off-grid friends: do you have experience with inexpensive low-voltage cutoff devices for your solar setup?
my secondary solar setup is a 12v DC system that has an electric cooler on it. i'd like to get a device that cuts power around 12.2, and brings power back on maybe around 12.7 or 12.8.
this is the device i'm currently looking at: https://www.amazon.com/CZH-LABS-Voltage-Disconnect-Module-30Amp/dp/B07WDLFFFB/141-1924090-9727262
it has several settings for disconnect/reconnect, including a disconnect at 12.1v and a reconnect 12.8v. that would work for me, but the reviews are very mixed. some people say their device blew out after a few months, others say that the voltage meter in the device was inaccurate and the system wasn't cutting off or turning back on at the right voltage, etc. so i'm a bit hesitant to try this one, but it is the closest one to my needs that's pretty affordable.
if anyone has experience with this exact device or recommendations for similar devices, i'm all ears.
#offgrid #solar

2026-08-23 10:20:50 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 I hate when that happens! Because the enron scandal (and many other horrible things of the past, like GW bush, or Watergate, or the Vietnam war) were genuinely very bad, and the gargantuan badness of stuff today can make one desensitized to how bad that other stuff was too. 😿

2026-08-22 18:53:56 UTC

Happy caturday from Anza and her box!
#caturday #cats
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/117/140/671/333/638/001/original/3fb5ba2852ecec19.jpg

2026-08-14 21:56:31 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 the people who say things like that, are they Europeans?

2026-08-06 09:28:24 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 **cries**. Even compared with a state school? **Cries some more**

2026-08-06 09:16:09 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 I imagine that private universities that aren't top of the line are probably big losers in the current situation. Parents might still pay premium to send a child to a top-tier school, but with ROI this poor overall, it just doesn't make sense to send a child to an expensive school that doesn't also carry significant prestige.

2026-08-06 00:30:00 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 hehe, I know Paul. Rather, I met him a couple times back when I lived in the bay. Is he a dev on bluesky?

2026-08-05 18:36:33 UTC

hey linux friends:
i have to do a hardware repair on my laptop and would like to do a backup in case something goes wrong. i have an external hard drive, but i've never done a full system backup before.
i run lubuntu 24.04 and if possible, would like to take a snapshot of the current file system (apologies if this isn't the correct terminology).
do you have any recommendations for how i should do this?
thanks!
#linux #lubuntu

2026-08-04 22:31:25 UTC

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@nprofile…qq32 @nprofile…3kqn I knew the replies on this would be filled with nerd quarrelling over which axis should be up 🤣

2026-07-29 00:27:19 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn fuuun!

2026-07-24 10:05:31 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 can you imagine how much hassle they'd save if they just wrote their dang code themselves?
The crazy thing to me is like...software and services are already so complicated and convoluted and these companies are just adding more and more layers of convolution...

2026-07-22 19:48:53 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 I was helping my mom with some stuff on her FB account, and at one point, the "reset password" button went to a modal that had no fields to fill in...

2026-07-09 20:07:34 UTC

If you're in Hilo this Sat. July 11th, come visit me at the Zine Scene Fest 2026 at EHCC!
In the years I've been living here, this is the first zine fest I've known about. I'll be selling my zines + my mega-zine "Keep Dreaming of Structured Settings", which is about the twin dreams of living in space and living underwater.
I'm soooooo excited to meet people and see what everyone else brings ^-^
Event details: https://ehcc.org/content/zine-scene-fest-2026
#zines #hilo #hawaii #art
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/891/811/167/454/008/original/f12911288805d94d.jpg
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/891/814/657/491/742/original/a872ce7f5740f850.jpg

2026-07-06 22:25:22 UTC

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@nprofile…zpa3 my folks are continually surprised that I am completely fine living in a shack in the countryside, because they see our family as city people. But that's only for a couple generations. Everyone before that was on the land or sometimes servants for wealthy landowners.

2026-07-06 22:18:40 UTC

Lucky for me, I come from a long line of eastern European peasants (briefly disrupted by the relative "middle-class" urban stability of the USSR that my parents grew up in), so I think that genealogically-speaking, I should be well-adapted to peasant life. The fact that I feel completely fine living in a shack in the woods just feels like further evidence.
I suspect a lot of people have peasantry starting just a few generations back. The real slap in the face of people today who are being pushed out of the middle class and into poverty is that they are being made to be LANDLESS peasants. peasants with some land can live ok if the land has water and can support life (and if they're free from say, narcos, militias, bombings, and other sources of violent chaos and displacement! 😭), but landless peasants are really really screwed 😞.
#nevent1q…q6av

2026-07-02 09:17:39 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 I'm 3 for 3 😅

2026-07-01 06:57:31 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 it says I have to be signed in to bluesky to see the thread

2026-06-28 10:18:47 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 are you referring to the "forward teacher's emails to wife" guys? (because there are already well-developed tools that automate that kind of redirection... i'm thinking of ifttt.com)

2026-06-27 01:02:39 UTC

Meanwhile in my neighborhood: https://youtube.com/shorts/KIuGXUeVPf4
#peacock #hawaii

2026-06-18 10:14:49 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 oh boy. "Hey kids, come get baptized in AI jesus's dippin' pod!"

2026-06-04 20:46:40 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn i know you've been considering a career change. is math education something you've considered? (also, the benefit of working with college students is that usually they're already interested in the subject - you don't have to convince bored kids to be interested!)

2026-06-04 20:32:46 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn are you familiar with the moscow puzzles? https://www.artofplay.com/products/the-moscow-puzzles

2026-06-04 20:31:18 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn i think that with arithmetic, a certain amount of memorization and basic practice is necessary, but after that, i wonder if "puzzle solving" and framing certain kinds of problems as puzzles might be helpful. of course, if the puzzle is too difficult many kids will turn off (like me! i don't like puzzles and it's mostly because i could never figure them out 😖 ).
have you ever considered math education as something you might try? even something like kids math tutoring at the hackerspace sometime.

2026-06-04 18:39:18 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn what would that look like? 🤔

2026-06-04 18:15:38 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn no, because i liked art hehe.

2026-06-04 09:36:38 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn my main issue with learning math in school was that I didn't really learn what it was for. It was just a bunch of techniques to do a bunch of calculations. So at the end of every school year, I flushed all the math I had learned down the drain 😕

2026-06-03 07:52:01 UTC

School/work update:
classes ended in may, and i just submitted my first draft septic design to the engineer that i'm interning with 🥹
i don't know if i did it right, but at least i did it in a fairly timely manner.
I was struggling with LibreCAD the entire time. during classes, I had a loaner windows PC from the school that was pre-loaded with AutoCAD. all of our instruction was in AutoCAD. But now that's gone, so i'm getting used to LibreCAD. I still haven't figured out how to do like a layout for print, with titles and a little scale annotation on the bottom 🤔
anyway, it feels nice to be working in the realm of physical things. i think that was maybe one of the (many!) things that i found frustrating about software: there was no referent in the real world. nothing i could hang my hat on. and i couldn't keep all the abstractions in my head 😖 . with these septic designs, it's like "ok, i drew the design for that part, what's next? ok i need to do the drawing for this part. what do i need to know in order to do that?" i dunno. maybe it'll get harder, but so far it seems easier for my particular brain.
As a bonus, here's a photo from the location where the septic is going to go. We went out there yesterday to do a soil percolation test.
#work #ContinuingEducation #CareerChange #wastewater
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/685/091/522/056/589/original/f3ecdf7cb5451c02.jpg

2026-06-02 21:31:35 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn the thing is, it shouldn't happen because AI can't do those jobs. I think that's what you were intuiting with your prediction. But apparently that doesn't matter to managers 😕

2026-05-27 18:36:14 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 oy vey. i'm working on a mega-zine about the industrial food system and its rise in the 50s-60s and i just finished a page about the insane engineering of factory processing of foods...and i wonder what those guys in the 50s and 60s who were trying to get to 10,000 cans an hour (while ensuring that the contents don't get contaminated or filled with rotting food and also without modern computing power!) would think about these loons and their "engineering" for "business objectives".

2026-05-27 18:20:45 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 it boggles the mind...inventory is like..a perfect use case for programming. it's probably one of the first business objectives that programming was applied to, and one where you reeeeeaallly want to have that deterministic output.
also, i'm sure that the problems were identified when they were testing the thing before rolling it out, but they still rolled it out. really wonder how much money it lost the company and whether the people who orchestrated the whole thing will get fired (i suspect not).

2026-05-21 08:01:37 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 so convoluted! 😵‍💫

2026-05-18 06:52:03 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 @nprofile…jv0l he also posted this:
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/594/250/152/645/114/original/52e646cd18c0eaf8.jpg

2026-05-15 16:54:33 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 is AP very popular in Barcelona?

2026-05-11 18:07:11 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 on the plus side, the art for that article is A+! (and definitely made by a human)

2026-05-05 07:49:26 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 relatedly, there are so many audiobooks on audible where the narrator is "virtual voice"...and there's no way to filter those out when you search.
i canceled my audible subscription recently....switched to libro.fm.

2026-05-02 19:28:15 UTC

work continues on my industrial ag mega-zine. we're getting into the "consequences of pesticide use" section, and unsurprisingly, it's much more complicated than i expected. it turns out that pouring a bunch of poison onto the land has complicated and unexpected consequences that are extremely difficult to trace throughout an ecosystem! (nevermind the effects on agriculture itself...see: "pesticide treadmill".)
anyway, i've just started looking through "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" by Adam M. Romero and came across this quote:
"You may be asking yourself what war has to do with the transformation of waste into agricultural inputs. When I first began this project, I was not sure that it had anything to do with it. I was already familiar with Edmond Russell’s classic book "War and Nature", in which he describes the coevolution of agriculture and war since World War I. But as I read the Journal of Economic Entomology cover to cover..."
i looked up at the top of my screen and saw that this is a 365 page book and i was only at the beginning. so i guess i have a long road ahead. at least i don't have to read any issues of the journal of economic entomology!
#IndustrialAgriculture #environment #ecology #pesticides #pollution

2026-04-29 17:45:27 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn I don't know about monitors, but increasing font size and increasing the scale of UIs helped me a lot. A long time ago, I kind of ruined my vision a bit with a computer that had very small text and UI. These days my text and UIs are set to be almost comically large and it doesn't hurt my eyes. I don't know if you have the same problem, but I just wanted to share what happened with me.

2026-04-28 00:42:01 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 so they had no idea about what the token could do...which means that the AI created the token and set its permissions, right? Because if they had set up the tokens, they would know its permissions, right?

2026-04-21 12:21:14 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 watching it with the sound off was really funny.

2026-04-09 09:13:53 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 sounds like one of those impossible jobs!
I bet a lot of companies are going to realize the LLM code is not maintainable, and will then end up writing brand new versions from scratch. At least, that's what I assume would happen after the nth time that an employee hired to "fix the mess" tells them that it's not fixable, and really the thing should be re-architected in such and such way. 🤷

2026-03-03 19:50:02 UTC

any recommendations for modernist depictions of agriculture and food production?
i've included some example images below.
some keywords:
* mechanized agriculture
* industrial farming
* industrial food production
* farm as factory
* farm modernization
* chemical agriculture
i've got the following materials on my to-read list:
* "every farm a factory: the industrial ideal in american agriculture" by deborah fitzgerald
* Ch. 8 of "seeing like a state": "Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility
and Simplicity" by james c. scott
* "Farming according to 'the laws of beauty': Aesthetics and agriculture" by david cooper (https://www.academia.edu/14380031/Farming_according_to_the_laws_of_beauty_Aesthetics_and_agriculture)
* "the american technological sublime" by david nye (not sure if it has anything about agriculture specifically)
* "the machine in the garden: technology and the pastoral" by leo marx
if you're familiar with any written works looking at this kind of aesthetic specifically, i'd love to hear about it.
#sundaylibrarian #history #art #ArtHistory #agriculture #GreenRevolution #food #aesthetics #modernism #industrialization #ResearchLibrarian
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/166/908/582/724/501/original/0dc82d4f07f155ed.jpg
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/166/934/702/325/427/original/49ab6c58900a0373.jpg
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/166/936/870/717/102/original/7b52e352526250a4.jpg
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/116/166/941/812/449/417/original/dc8d1cfa2915f16a.jpg

2026-02-27 07:28:57 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 i hear ya about DC! soooo much new construction there. my brother and his family live in silver spring, and holy cow, the silver spring downtown has changed so much in the last ten years. the crazy thing is that there's so much demand that rents and house prices are still very high in the DC area.
i don't know what's up with barcelona...i imagine that it's a very complicated set of factors that all come together to create gridlock.

2026-02-21 10:23:52 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 "even internal support tickets are failing to reach human reviewers with the authority to resolve these systemic blocks." Truly impressive.

2026-02-17 08:46:03 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 uggghhh https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/comments/1qx3jux/what_the_hell_is_wrong_with_gpt_wow_this_is_awful/
The people who made this are so so so irresponsible. Just the fact that it's allowed to pretend to be a person is sooooooo irresponsible.

2026-02-08 22:43:28 UTC

just got an email from the university saying that all university of hawai'i and hawai'i community college classes are cancelled tomorrow. all public schools are closed tomorrow too, and all non-essential state services will be closed as well.
the email says that it's because of predicted heavy winds, existing power outages, and restrictions on local air travel. they encourage everyone to stay home.
my rain gauge here in puna said we got 1.75 inches of rain last night, but it was never like...the pounding rain... we've had some rain today, but currently it's quiet (still overcast though).
anyway, it's a big storm system...it's across all the islands: https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/HAWAII_loop.gif
they're saying the biggest impact will be tonight, with heavy winds.
#hawaii

2026-02-06 16:54:35 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 omg. Now I want to know so much more about how that all works, what the remote operators do, etc. surely a reporter can find one of these workers and talk to them!

2026-01-31 18:28:24 UTC

excellent reporting on the tech tools used by ICE, including the palantir software that they use to pick areas to target, and the facial recognition software they use: https://youtu.be/DbUCP2y_ZII
#ICE #immigration #USPol #tech

2026-01-24 18:42:43 UTC

A sad caturday, as I think about another ICE murder in MN and overnight bombings in Ukraine and all the other awful things...
But here we had a rainbow, and the cats were sleeping in a cute way, so I'm sharing that with you.
#caturday #cats #rainbow #hawaii
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/951/540/402/912/122/original/947e9f27d5a31d20.jpg
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/951/542/949/579/594/original/39ed202a62bdd6a7.jpg

2026-01-16 00:29:13 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn that's fantastic to hear! I'm glad you found it interesting and valuable

2026-01-16 00:28:27 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn yes, I mistyped

2026-01-16 00:27:56 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn ha! How was chaos camp btw? 😊

2026-01-16 00:26:38 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn that's my usual strategy 😅

2026-01-16 00:25:10 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn I guess so 😅 but he's also extremely thin-skinned and will act like a hurt child if you are honest with him! It's extremely unpleasant and one of the many reasons why 2 of his 3 children don't talk to him. (And the only reason *I* talk to him is because my mom blackmailed me)

2026-01-16 00:22:34 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn that's very diplomatic! He'd probably push back on both fronts (some variant of "everyone does it" etc etc), but I can try. He's the kind of person who will tell me about a movie he recently saw, tell me to watch it, and then if I say that it's not really my thing, will say things like "why not? It was very interesting" and then I have to justify my lack of interest in his movie 😵. In other words, he's not the kind of person who takes "no" or "no thank you" without a fight. 🫩
But I appreciate your advice.

2026-01-16 00:14:11 UTC

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@nprofile…3kqn yea

2026-01-16 00:09:14 UTC

Request for advice:
My dad (retired for ~15 years) told me the other day that many jobs these days want "experience with AI" and that I should consider taking an online AI course so that I could put it on my resume 🫩. Now he's emailing me links to AI courses.
Any advice for uhh gently rebuffing him on this?
My mom also secretly gave him a copy of my resume (she asked if she could see it after I applied for a job at the end of last year, and I told her I didn't want my dad's feedback because it's always extremely nitpicky and useless and she promised it was just for her own interest and that was apparently a lie.) Anyway, he returned it with helpful edits like "lie about your dates of employment so that it looks like you have fewer gaps in your resume", and a question mark next to the word 'wiki'. 🫩
So this is someone who thinks he's in the know, but has no idea what's going on...
#family #advice

2026-01-14 20:25:45 UTC

i've upgraded from lubuntu 22.04 LTS to lubuntu 24.04 LTS. so shiny!
congrats to the lubuntu team for making an upgrade experience that didn't break my system. i'm truly grateful!!!
@nprofile…guqc 😍 💻 💗
#lubuntu

2026-01-11 21:33:21 UTC

request for advice regarding family (for a person who's completely scarred from having a difficult family life growing up): how to stop seeing family as a burden? (like, the entire concept of "family".)
i grew up with difficult parents, where everything was governed by sacrifice, burden, obligation, etc. no one was happy, but everyone was trying hard. after trying really really hard to make my parents happy for many years, i realized that there was nothing i could do to make them happy, so i stopped.
i now live very far away, have my own life, and rarely see them. i still talk to them on the phone a fair bit (and it feels like a burden), but i can manage it.
recently my mom came to visit for a week, and as usual, i put my life on pause and spent all my waking hours taking her around and making sure she was happy. she was staying in the guest room of a friend of mine (who has a good relationship with her family) and my friend was shocked to hear that i would be relieved (instead of sad) when my mom left. she honestly couldn't understand it. it left me feeling guilty and ashamed.
but the truth is that i find it exhausting to be around my parents because it's 100% about their needs and i just have to meet their high expectations or fail. maybe it sounds selfish to say "when i'm with them, it's not about me", but that's exactly what i don't like about family: that it's just obligation. i don't feel anything positive afterwards. i guess i feel some satisfaction from a "job well done" after sending my mom back home with her having had a nice vacation, but that's all it is: i just feel like i fulfilled my duty and now i can go back to my life. i guess that's a horrible thing to think, right?
anyway, my friend can't believe that i see my parents this way. i also see having children this way: that it's just a 20 year slog of obligation, sacrifice, work, and doing things you don't want to do, to take care of someone who will probably be ungrateful in the end.
i'm obviously scarred by my difficult experience growing up (I have CPTSD), and i'm ok with not having children, but i do wonder if there's a healthier attitude i can have toward the entire idea of family. if anyone has any ideas on how i can change my perspective, i'm all ears.
#CPTSD #family #advice #MentalHealth #DamagedGoods

2026-01-08 06:10:10 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 the restraint of the populace is truly incredible. These fools don't even realize how restrained the populace is being, you know?

2026-01-07 23:01:48 UTC

I just watched this whole interview with Stephen Miller where he says that "international niceties" are all well and good, but really it's strength and power that rules the world....then he says "f yea we did" when asked about taking over Venezuela. When asked whether the US will or won't use force to take Greenland, he refuses to say, but also says basically "who would oppose us?" https://youtu.be/kLFkQbPWWDI
So yea, ole boy is feeling strong and hard. He's on top of the world! America can do whatever it wants, who would step up to stop us??
Famously, those who are drunk on power and feel invincible never face any comeuppance, right? It's not like there are any possible repurcussions to kicking the little guy when one is on top, right? What's the little guy gonna do to *you*? He's little, after all... And that's what being the big guy is all about, right? Just wailing on those below you and laughing in their face at how powerless they are... Right?
#USPol #power

2026-01-03 17:14:01 UTC

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@nprofile…kt0j that's always the issue with having an extremely wealthy neighbor with a huge plot of land. You never know when his nightmare attention will happen to hit your own small piece of jungle.

2025-12-28 18:18:58 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p is that ghoul in the first pic really Ryan seacrest?

2025-12-27 18:08:39 UTC

Happy caturday from Star cat's side eye.
#cats #caturday
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/792/864/023/012/529/original/67b15ed547321c46.jpg

2025-12-23 20:00:39 UTC

now i'm down the percussion rabbithole (one of my favorite rabbitholes).
here's a video comparing xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, and glockenspiel, which are all ~idiophones~
https://youtu.be/SWi5EGygvEc?t=75
#percussion #music

2025-12-19 16:39:54 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p this is wild. And I'm assuming they're not offering a salary that would be appropriate for someone with all these skills.
When I see huge laundry lists like this, what that tells me is that they don't necessarily have a specific project for the person, but want a unicorn who will magically do whatever thing they decide (if they ever decide).

2025-11-29 21:13:21 UTC

Happy caturday from Anza, who has NEEDS!
#caturday #cats
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/635/044/057/270/001/original/35cb0ff2eed9f710.jpg

2025-11-29 17:56:29 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p the Harvard and NYT types are usually the last to figure anything out.

2025-11-26 02:10:05 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p i almost feel bad for hank green. he talks about so many different things...so every week, like a different group of subject matter experts destroy him. 🤷

2025-11-20 19:28:02 UTC

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@nprofile…xf5c @nprofile…9ld8 o was 100% certain that this was a fake image, but no. it is real.

2025-11-18 07:00:16 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p what happened?! Or just another mystery freakout that will probably swing the other way in a couple days?

2025-11-14 22:40:28 UTC

Rainfall from the last ~24 hours.
#hawaii #puna
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/550/453/491/370/485/original/0077eeab5210bde0.jpg

2025-11-14 07:14:22 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p but if one is a sharp and good software person, wouldn't you rather come up with your own data models and logic and architecture and functions? I just don't get it.

2025-11-14 07:09:32 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p Jesus Christ...I wonder how that place is doing these days ...
I feel like I would just give up at a certain point! I honestly don't know how one can reason about AI generated code...

2025-11-11 03:33:47 UTC

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@nprofile…0fmu lmk what you think. i watched the first two eps.

2025-11-09 19:23:19 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p it's a really shitty situation. you have to hustle up clients yourself, or develop a specific niche in programming that not many others have (and then become very good at it), or create some popular libraries, or hustle and network in person, or create a business around some software product you create. if you just want to get hired for a job and do that job - i think it's incredibly difficult if you don't know people.
this landscape is one of the reasons why i am retraining out of tech - because i just want to get hired to do a job, and i am terrible at networking.

2025-11-01 21:06:24 UTC

Snapshots of Halloween in Hilo last night, including me in my costume. I was a sort of ~sea queen~.
Had a lot of fun, didn't get rained on too much, saw a lot of fantastic costumes, and made it to bed by 10pm! 😸
#halloween #hilo #hawaii
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2025-10-30 19:09:55 UTC

"Modern climate change is 27x faster than historic global warming mass extinction events": https://schampton.substack.com/p/modern-climate-change-is-27x-faster
Featuring one of my least favorite graphs (shown below).
This is for anyone who wants to compare current warming to periods of warming in the past.
As the author writes: "Climate change during these past events, considered rapid in geologic time, would have scarcely been noticed by animals on the ground. Animals did not go extinct by dropping dead; they just had a lower reproductive rate such that their populations slowly declined until none were left." So yea, all us animals noticing climate changes within our lifetime - this shows just how different the current changes are compared to previous periods of warming.
#ClimateChange #climate #science #ClimateDiary
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2025-10-30 17:47:27 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p aww, post was removed

2025-10-30 04:48:50 UTC

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@nprofile…0fmu omg i had cheesecake for my bday too! and so did my sister in law. maybe it is the year of birthday cheesecake ^-^

2025-10-29 18:21:33 UTC

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@nprofile…0fmu did you have a nice bday? ^-^

2025-10-29 04:29:25 UTC

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@nprofile…0fmu happy birthday! 🥳 🎂 🎈
https://media.tilde.zone/media_attachments/files/115/455/565/163/381/185/original/45b37b41a127105d.mp4

2025-10-28 01:58:13 UTC

dear bookstodon,
i was hoping y'all might be able to provide some recommendations for scifi audiobooks.
to give you an idea of the kinds of books i like, here are a few of the scifi audiobooks i've enjoyed listening to in the last couple years:
"the body scout" by lincoln michel
"venomous lumpsucker" by ned beauman
"finna" and "defekt" by nino cipri
"midnight project" by christy climenhage
"isaac steele and the forever man" by daniel rigby
"floating hotel" by grace curtis
"when we were real" by daryl gregory
"escape velocity" by victor manibo
"camp zero" by michelle min sterling
"long way to a small, angry planet" series by becky chambers
thanks for any suggestions! 💗
#bookstodon #books #scifi #audiobooks

2025-10-21 08:27:14 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p probably mostly smelled like cigarettes and heavy cologne 🤢

2025-10-18 08:07:46 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p anyway, this is part of the reason I decided to leave tech... I was applying for remote jobs as a not-particularly-special candidate and I just saw the writing on the wall. I'm re-training in wastewater and so far I'm enjoying it much more than I ever enjoyed computers! Still don't know if there will be a job at the end of my course, but at least it's based on a local need and is not really in danger of AI takeover.

2025-10-18 08:03:56 UTC

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@nprofile…9j4p if you know people who can hook you up with work, it can be quite lucrative. But if you're just a connection-less person without a well-known project or body of work (especially if you're applying for remote jobs), I think it's extremely difficult.

2025-10-07 21:30:57 UTC

from @nprofile…qz4x : "The fact that someone did something tells you nothing about whether they *chose* to do so – to understand whether someone was coerced or made a free choice, you have to consider the power relationships involved.
Conservatives hate this idea. They want to live in a neat world of "revealed preferences," where the fact that you're working in a job where you're regularly exposed to carcinogens, or that you've stayed with a spouse who beats the shit out of you, or that you're homeless, or that you're addicted to Oxy, is a matter of *choice*." - https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/08/water-thats-not-wet/
#power #politics #USPol #tech #surveillance

2025-08-27 19:08:33 UTC

my dad is supportive of my new wastewater education journey (he respects the engineering part of it and has a newfound appreciation for water).
my mom is not happy because she thinks it's "gross" and that i'm her princess*, and "what will i tell my friends, that my daughter works with garbage?", but she is happy because she can once again ask me "how was school today". i'm one of those sullen children that stopped telling my parents anything about my life around age 13 (they are not safe recipients of that kind of info), so being able to ask a sullen child "what did you learn in class today?" is a gift for the parent.
as for me, i'm fine. adjusting to a much busier (for me) schedule. i'm used to having 95% of my time to myself, so it's an adjustment. also trying to figure out how to stay engaged in online classes.
pop quiz: what are the things that must be considered when coming up with possible alternatives to a new municipal wastewater facility? answer: uhhhh....population growth? let me check the reading... 😖
* the princess thing is super weird and i've only recently realized that this really is how she imagines me to be. which is bizarre, because i'm quite schlubby, enjoy digging in the dirt, don't mind living in my shack in the woods, hate being in positions of power over people, don't have a taste or longing for fancy things, try not to see myself as being above others, don't particularly value wealth, and usually i'm not particularly clean. i *do* enjoy leisure time, but i don't expect anyone else to provide for me...
anyway, i guess this "princess" thing is one of the reasons she's so disappointed in me in general: when you imagine yourself as the queen and imagine your daughter as your perfect princess, it would certainly be a big disappointment to end up with ME. sorry mom, i am what i am: much more of a forest hag than a pretty princess.

2025-06-10 19:52:53 UTC

art announcement: i'm very happy to announce that i have graduated from zine to MEGA-zine!
"keep dreaming of structured living" is a 44 page full-color magazine of original collages on the theme of living in space and living under the ocean.
from the back cover:
"The year is 2025. The Amazon burns. Time is running out. How will humans live? The world is desperate for solutions.
In this magazine, you'll discover wondrous new opportunities for continued human life! Living with the dolphins, your own personal pool on Mars, exploration without limits, and so much more.
Join artist Marina Kukso on this new visual/textual adventure into the possible and ask yourself: is this a world you want to inhabit?"
it's available on etsy right now for only $10, so please consider getting one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4316916338/mega-zine-keep-dreaming-of-structured
❤️ 🌌 🌊
#art #collage #space #solarpunk #SF #scifi #clifi #fiction #dystopia #environmentalism #zines
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2025-06-07 20:26:27 UTC

Who are the artists who let nature do the artistry?
For example, pic 1 is a pattern on cardboard where a slime mold grew and then died (when I dried the cardboard out in the sun). Pic 2 shows the same kind of slime mold when alive.
The mark it left is beautiful in my opinion. Many artists (including myself) are very inspired by the beauty of the natural world. Especially here in hawai'i, the reason you see so much art depicting the landscapes and flowers is because they're so beautiful and edifying. By attempting to make art of the natural world, we're honoring its beauty and hoping to share it with people.
But in my art, even as I seek to honor and convey the beauty of nature, I always feel like I'm falling short of its actual beauty, complexity, and ability to affect the viewer. And it's not just about my poor technical skills.
So this (along with the many beautiful things found in nature, from delicate songbird nests, to tiny mushrooms, to the trails left by little critters in downed logs, to the ever-changing nature of waves) is what led me to initially wonder about art that lets nature actually create the marks.
So if you know of any artists who work this way, I'd love to hear about them.
#art #artists #nature
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2025-06-06 22:25:13 UTC

My long, difficult period of catlessness is over! Now I have kittens 🥰🥰🥰
I already love them very much and feel very lucky to have them.
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2025-05-22 16:32:02 UTC

Apparently it's world biodiversity day. I used to have a hard time understanding why biodiversity was important, but I learned a lot from this bill Nye episode (I especially liked the Jenga demonstration): https://youtu.be/tx40NhM8hqM?si=YIXR5nTwKAZnSOwU
#biodiversity #nature #WorldBiodiversityDay

2025-05-17 20:25:45 UTC

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@nprofile…du53 he really is an excellent science communicator

2025-05-17 20:24:11 UTC

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@nprofile…du53 I hope they have him a buddy so that when he went "wait was I on 4567 or 4566?" The buddy could confirm.

2025-05-13 01:29:15 UTC

Work in progress: I'm not normally one for moodboards, but I felt the urge to make a large botanical-themed collage in the moodboard style.
This is incomplete, but the main elements are there.
I have a bunch of dried, pressed flowers that I'll stick everywhere. And of course washi tape embellishments will happen.
It's not as creative as many other collages, but really I just wanted to get a bunch of images onto the page and didn't want to spend excessive time arranging things. This art is just for me.
As if I'm not already surrounded by enough plants lol! I gotta remind myself what I'm working towards 💓
Oh, and in the photo, you can see the size of it based on my feet at the very bottom.
#wip #art #collage #plants #gardening
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2025-05-13 00:10:44 UTC

A banyan tree growing on top of the ruins of an old sugar mill that shut down in the 1900s.
Located on the farm of @nprofile…4mp2 's friend.
Here's a history of the mill and plantation it was a part of: https://www2.hawaii.edu/~speccoll/p_kauhut.html
It's in a very remote part of the island. It's hard to get to today, and I can't imagine how hard it was to get there back in the early 1900s. But that's how profitable it was to farm sugar.
Colonials established plantations in the middle of the Pacific ocean, on other people's land, growing a plant not from there, bringing in laborers from various other countries, and shipping the output to other places. All of this was vastly profitable, until it wasn't, and they shut everything down and left. That's extractivism. The banyan (another non-native plant) has the last laugh.
#hawaii #history #plants #sugar #colonialism #empire #labor #ecology #agriculture
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2025-05-08 18:17:42 UTC

"I've long maintained that the threat from AI to workers isn't that AI can do your job – it's that an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job" - @nprofile…qz4x
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts
#tech #AI #ML #labor

2025-05-05 00:30:00 UTC

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@nprofile…du53 what a neat idea! You just need a catchy hashtag.

2025-04-24 18:17:01 UTC

trail cam pics of my night cat, who i've never met in person. he's such a pretty boy!
i'm slowly moving his feeding area closer to my main cabin (it started out near cabin 1.0, which is now used for storage only). i'm moving it about 3 feet along the trail every few days. so far we're about halfway to the main cabin. maybe one day i'll meet him 😅
#cat
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2025-04-22 18:30:59 UTC

y'all, they re-did oblivion in unreal engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJ3PZuAjK4
insert "take my money" gif here.
i hope they didn't change any of the music!
#oblivion #games

2025-04-15 21:51:03 UTC

"Their wives protected them from interruptions; their housekeepers and maids brought them breakfast and coffee at odd hours; their nannies kept their children out of their hair. Martha Freud not only laid out Sigmund’s clothes every morning, she even put the toothpaste on his toothbrush. Marcel Proust’s housekeeper, Celeste, not only brought him his daily coffee, croissants, newspapers and mail on a silver tray, but was always on hand whenever he wanted to chat, sometimes for hours. Some women are mentioned only for what they put up with, like Karl Marx’s wife – unnamed in the book – who lived in squalor with the surviving three of their six children while he spent his days writing at the British Museum.
Gustav Mahler married a promising young composer named Alma, then forbade her from composing, saying there could be only one in the family. Instead, she was expected to keep the house utterly silent for him. After his midday swim, he’d whistle for Alma to join him on long, silent walks while he composed in his head. She’d sit for hours on a branch or in the grass, not daring to disturb him. “There’s such a struggle going on in me!” Alma wrote in her diary. “And a miserable longing for someone who thinks OF ME, who helps me to find MYSELF! I’ve sunk to the level of a housekeeper!”" - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/woman-greatest-enemy-lack-of-time-themselves
For more on this subject, I recommend the book "who cooked Adam Smith's dinner".
#feminism #patriarchy