Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Shrinkflation & Decay

    In my early 20s, I visited my childhood home again about a decade after we had moved out. This was the suburban single-family home that defined every aspect of me growing up. From my birth, to my almost teenage years, that house was part of it. Within the walls, it stored a memory bank that I had mostly forgotten about. Helped with the entropy of time, recessing memories of childhood abuse, and the lack of physical experience seeing the neighborhood again as reminders, I was flooded with feelings.

  • Torquato Tasso (1790)

    The name "Goethe" keeps coming up. He seems to have been one of those figures in history whose influence has seeped everywhere, but who, at least in American culture, isn't directly relevant. Prior to this expedition I could probably have made the connection between Goethe and Faust, but certainly not more than that. But something about his work seems to be directly relevant to me and my interests, so I stuck his name on my "to read" list.

    And that name stayed on that list for quite a while, until finally I ran across it enough times to reach critical mass. I found a copy of "The Essential Goethe" and started in. Unfortunately, I did not finish it.

  • My Legal Psilocybin Trip in Oregon

    On the 7th of August, I had an appointment with one of my cardiologists. She told me that they wanted to do another procedure on me: a second cardiac ablation. This isn't a cure. It's a band-aid that can calm the ventricular tachycardia (VT), but they can't make it go away permanently because of the extensive scarring of my heart. I asked her if she could estimate my life expectancy, and she gave me an answer: perhaps ten years at most. It wasn't an answer I wanted, but it was an honest answer, and I appreciate her for not giving me any bullshit or blowing smoke up my ass. I went on to ask about end-of-life options. "Well, you can refuse treatment and we can deactivate your defibrillator." I think in that scenario, I'd at least have palliative care. And to be honest, it sounded really attractive at the time. It still does, in its own sort of way. I was left pondering a deep existential question. Why should I go on living? Why should I risk a good deal of potential future suffering for a chance at a few more years of life? Realize that I've already been through a very traumatic heart-related episode. I was shocked some 17 times in an hour by the device inside me.

  • Minimalist Shoes

    My mother-in-law has been recommending these inexpensive minimalist shoes she's been wearing to half of Quebec, and she managed to convince me to give them a try. For the past few months, I've worn the shoes I bought nearly every day and have found them incredibly confortable after a short adjustment period. I did feel like I needed to pay more attention to the forces I was subjecting my feet to and the muscles I needed to use than I ever had before, which was an odd feeling, but it quickly felt fun and then perfectly comfortable.

• Politics and World Events

  • Musing about the Possibility of a Second Civil War and What We Might Learn from Previous Failed States

    I wrote this a bit less than two weeks after the 2024 election. It went up on blog.the-brannons.com. I wasn't active in geminispace at the time, so it didn't end up here. Now is just as good a time as any to post it.

    I’m going to put on my prophet’s hat for a moment.

    I think that if everything does not fall apart before 2028, we will have elections. But I also think there’s a pretty good chance that things will fall apart. That cold civil war we’ve been fighting since April 14 of 1865 might very well turn hot before 2028.

    I’ve been reading Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor. Essentially this is a memoir of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

• Science

  • SV407 Wide Angle Binocs: Initial Impressions (publ. 2024-12-05)

    My SVBONY SV407 wide-angle binoculars arrived around a week or so ago, and I've been able to use them twice for stargazing. These are advertised as 21x42mm binoculars. On Amazon they are advertised for use as astronomy binoculars or as opera glasses, like for sports or concerts.

    Structurally, they look durable enough. They include a little cloth bag to store them in, as well as four (rubber? plastic?) caps to cover the glass. They are small and easily portable, but if I was planning to throw them in luggage, I would try to find some kind of hard case to put them in. They have the standard hole for mounting to a tri-pod but I haven't tried that yet. For focus, there is one focus knob around each eyepiece. So you just focus each eyepiece independently.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Network Stuff

    On the plus(?) side, I now have IPv6 routing to the internet, again, as the who knows how old ISP router here does not support IPv6. Previous encounters with IPv6 were when I setup lots of subnets with IPv6 (which went poorly, as some folks in the group that managed the network later claimed that IPv6 was not supported) or before that a hurricane electric tunnel.

  • Working at Google

    I worked for Google in 2012 and 2013. I've never really written about my experience there and why I left. But I was inspired to do so by a conversation several days ago. The summary is that I could not, as a self-respecting Socialist, work for a place where the difference between haves and have-nots was so obvious.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Subvert

      Subvert is trying to be the cooperative replacement for Bandcamp which can hopefully provide a fair and stable platform for both artists and fans. I'd really like something like this to succeed.

    • Who Is Eric Wayne?: an Unsolved IoT Mystery

      I posted this to the Fediverse way back in late 2023. It was almost lost, because I switched Fediverse accounts. But thanks to the life-changing magic of archived PostgreSQL dumps, I found it. I'm putting it here for the sake of permanence.

    • Agate (Gemini Server)

      Agate is a simple Gemini Protocol server. It's a single binary, needs only minimal configuration, and sets up TLS certs for you. It only serves static files, but you can also enable multiple hostnames, directory listings and custom headers if you want to, so you can redirect pages that have moved or use it as a download server.

    • BBSes

      There oughta be more BBSes on Gemini. I don't mean copies of this capsule, I mean actual BBSes (dial-in or telnet) that also have a Gemini frontend. Log in, check messages and new files, play a door game or two, check your favourite FidoNet echoes.

    • all the notes

      the existence of dedicated websites that lets you compare features of the plethora of note-taking applications just shows that so many of us--regardless of background--are interested in (sometimes obsessed with) better systems for note-taking, task management, and really just productivity. doing more with less time and less mental overhead.

      I was reminded of what I read or heard some time ago, taking notes and recording our life being easier than ever has a negative impact on ourselves and society -- with regards to memory, our perception of memory, and how we interact and share information.