Strange. August has just begun and the first geese already are heading south. The nights are unusually chill and the days mostly windy and rainy. Better hope that the upcoming winter won't be a strong one, as the last one was exceptionally warm.
Two-hour performance a couple hours from now at an old haunt: a beautiful second floor deck overlooking one of the world's biggest lakes. Once upon a time we were "in good" with a restaurateur that provided the venue food (fantastic Mediterranean cuisine), so we had a nearly weekly gig there one summer - never mind free drinks. No wonder I can't remember for shit anymore.... ;-)
Actually, he was one of the first people we met when we were new to this town. We were in walking distance to a weekly farmers' market, so we'd wheel the equipment there on a hand truck. We happened to be placed next to his table. The rest is all kinds of wonderful history.
i’m not sure what exactly triggered this memory from my childhood a few minutes ago but let me tell you a weird thing.
there was a small room in our house that wasn’t occupied by anyone for a long time. we literally called it “the small room” and used it as storage of random stuff from all around the house.
i eventually cleaned it up and started using it as a hang out place for myself where i’d tinker with software, linux, watch the british tv series “skins” (the only thing made for teenagers i enjoyed back then) and just be alone.
I just finished a vocal lesson and have been working on preparing for a few events. The lesson was great, it confirmed my suspicion: I sing from my sternum too often, especially in higher registers. I need to take advantage of the diaphragm for support, and I need to open my jaw a little more so the sound is fuller.
social reproduction as “the creation, socialization, and subjectivation of human beings more generally, in all their aspects. It also includes the making and remaking of culture, of the various swaths of intersubjectivity that human beings inhabit – the solidarities, social meanings, and value horizons in and through which they live and breathe.” (32)
Historically, the split between “productive” waged labor and “reproductive” unwaged labor has underpinned modern capitalist forms of women’s subordination. (33)
all capitalist societies entrench a tendency to social-reproductive crisis – over and above the tendency to economic crisis theorized by Marx. ... this strand of crisis is grounded in a structural contradiction – in the fact that the capitalist economy simultaneously relies on and tends to destabilize its own social-reproductive conditions of possibility. (35)
I've been re-reading some of David Foster Wallace's essays and journalism in the collection 'Consider the Lobster and Other Essays' (2005). Last night, I couldn't sleep until the small hours - and years of insomnia have taught me that the thing to do is accept it, get up and read (rather than, say: stay laying down in a state of somewhat wakefulness, conscious of the night, of the silence, of the changing cadence of the street outside (this can drag for hours, and almost never leads to sleep)). So I spent a few hours of the night getting absorbed in Wallace's piece of journalism 'Up, Simba', originally written for Rolling Stone magazine; an account of the 2000 Republican nominee campaign trail following John McCain, who at the time was up against his main competitor and now ex-President George Bush Jr.
i often experience intense emotions. these don't stem from relationships, anger, despair, happiness, or hatred. they come from a deep passion and love for humanity, the idea of it.
i can "feel" when others are passionate. i get emotional when i do. it's like a strong sense of empathy.
it's weird. i can literally cry from watching a video of someone talking about something they made, or witnessing people helping each other.
Which is sad in a way, but perfect in many others, because that means SpaceBeans will live on without a big investment on my part.
I would have stayed on the open source version of Akka, or ignore the license and upgrade to the latest version -which I considered for a while-, but I can't honestly keep using a project when it is not really open source any more. Not only because I wouldn't be complying with the license, but also because I would be "promoting" in a way a project that doesn't deserve such promotion any more.
I still don't know if SpaceBeans is important for anyone but me, but I'm happy to say the project will live on thanks to Apache Pekko.
I was listening to Gemini Radio Episode 51. Ben was talking about how he would wake up early to watch the animated Highlander TV show and then play FFVI on SNES. Which is just so me… and I really miss it.
That feeling of waking up an hour or so before school popping on the TV and watching some cartoon. For us this was Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z. I assume Power Rangers as well! But I don't know if that was a weekend or afternoon show. It was really cute. My house had an extra room my dad used as his office. It was stacks and stacks of papers in boxes, a medium sized CRT television with wood paneling on the side. I assume this was previously the primary TV but when we moved house this was too small for the space? I should ask him about it next time we talk. But we'd sit on the floor and look up at his desk and watch TV in there as kids before work. He worked in the city but had a home office for whatever reason! I know my mom used it for her job which was part time and WFH but I don't know. Memories are weird!
I posted some feedback on the spec based on writing a toy Guppy client and server.
A technique for algorithmic composition is to pick something least recently used. This could be deterministic, or one might randomize the selection.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.