Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 2024 Week 30/31/32: Photos

    I'm holding off writing small thoughts in this post. My goal is to break them out into slightly larger posts over the week.

  • Recently

    If you follow this site you may have noticed that in April I stopped doing the monthly update I started back in 2019. These last months have been a bit hard and I failed to get the energy to follow the update scheme I self-imposed so I'm going to break with that and do, at least for this one, a simpler one.

  • A few tired thoughts

    Have a lot of random thoughts bouncing around in my head today. I was on a bus between cities yesterday which, y'know, was hard since that meant I was wearing a mask for over three hours straight without a sip of water. (this is a rare instance where my instincts of self-deprivation are helpful)

    But it did give me a chunk of time unplugged and just a notebook and pen to occupy me. And it got me thinking about how, even though I have a huge collection of digital notes (at some point I'll write a gempost about how I use the emacs package denote for this...oh look of course my capsule is down as soon as I'm not there to fix it) that there's something inherently very different about pen & paper vs. digital collection.

  • So much time on busses lately

    As someone who can't drive but feels caged inside my apartment I use the bus a lot, at least when the distance is further than I can walk. My "walking radius" has gotten longer and longer over the pandemic to be maybe two miles one way comfortably if I'm also planning to walk back *immediately* and three to four miles if I'm going to have some time to rest or do other things before coming home.

    But *but* even with all of that it means this city has started to feel very terribly small because years of mostly sticking to the same maybe 10sq mile zone has made me feel more like I live in a tiny town that a real city

  • A Thorny Thing

    I have a dream. A foolish dream that will never come true, but that's all right. Some dreams are like that.

    Once upon a time, the English alphabet had more letters than it does now. And my dream is to bring some of them back.

    In particular, I want to resurrect the old letter thorn[1] for the english dental fricative, "th", sound. Is that not a common enough sound to warrant its own letter? It only fell out of favor because early German-made printing presses didn't have that letter[2]. But haven't we moved beyond those limitations by now?

  • Fast Food

    Microwave some frozen peas; add olive oil, walnuts, minced shallots, vinegar, and some soy sauce. Chopping up the shallots is probably most of the time, but there are reputed benefits to eating onions more towards the raw side. Soak the shallots in vinegar for a bit to cut down on some of the burn, or cook them for a bit, unless you hate vinegar or really anything else listed here.

  • when the days blend together

    what a week/weekend it's been. ~bartender, just a beer please, whatever's on tap.

    I haven't been able to step into the Pub since the last post I made thanks to being away from my internet, and we ended up losing my father-in-law. It's been a crazy week with family coming in and out, memorial planning, and all the usual stuff.

    With everything going on the days blended together. I woke up on Saturday thinking it was Friday until I checked my phone. Thankfully, I just got back home last night and caught up on some sleep - at the in-laws' place, we were sleeping on an air mattress, and my back doesn't seem to like them. I maybe slept for 3-4ish hours each day that we were over there.

  • *hiccup*

    Archetypal chaos, wondrous wonder. Why am I like this? No need, no weed. Fearsome frowning going on over there. Please, amphetamines! Consider this, *proceeds to shoot the public*, The End. Ferocious fallacy, first man in space, last man in my heart! A collection of lofty remedies. Prescription psyllocibin. Fill an opera hall, with weed! Eww. Distorted peninsula, partake in party activities. Poor people person. Burst into laughter, find a way out! Paranormal paranoia, crazy babies, genderfluid licuefaction.

  • Deleting everything

    Every few years I feel like I should just remove everything, stop talking with everyone and hope that I no longer exist.

    Maybe every year actually.

    Realistically, every month.

    This blog is very much in line of sight for everything removal. I said stupid things and I hate it. I knew I would say stupid things before starting, and it doesn't actually make things less stupid.

• Politics and World Events

  • I don't really like (the parts I saw) of Seattle

    My spicy take from having seen mostly just the city core is that, y'know, I think seattle is kind of the bad end for portland: like what would happen if we got completely eaten by the tech sector. Everything was even more expensive than here in pdx, the air stank with car exhaust, there were fewer trees and transit was even worse.

    It definitely gave me more appreciation for the fact that portland, despite being having a population of ~1 million people, still feels more like a small town except with a functional transit system. Yeah, okay I didn't expect to come back with a new appreciation for trimet but I sure do. At least when a bus is late it's still going to arrive.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Zines and things

    So I've been a "smol internet" person for years now (...which reminds me I'm still grumpy that my capsule went down as I was leaving town when I'd just checked it that morning. I haven't wanted to deal with the hassle of setting it up so I can ssh into it outside my own wifi but maybe I will in the future.) and my partner tor has been into 'zine making for about as long