Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — BILOVUS Wordo: TOVES

  • In the Lost Lands

    We went to see this film in the cinema last week. It's the latest film from creative team Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich (who did the Resident Evil films) and it adapts a George R. R. Martin short story.

    My wife and I didn't like it, but I'm not particularly interested in writing negative reviews here. I just thought there are some interesting creative decisions to unpack in it. For clarity I should say we left the cinema early, so there may be plot points revealed later that I'm not including because I was driving home when they came up.

    Jovovich (who I think is a really underappreciated contributor to genre fiction - I might circle back to this) plays a witch called Gray Alys. A very odd thing about her character is her neutrality. She has a policy of accepting any task that someone pays her for. The central quest of the story is for her to acquire shapeshifter powers for the queen. The queen, who is already powerful and who is not portrayed as benevolent, wants additional power. Gray Alys agrees, and seems non-judgemental about it. Incidentally, when the queen leaves the room, one of her loyal men (who believes the shapeshifter plan is crazy) pays Gray Alys to make the previous thing she was just paid for fail, which she also agrees to.

  • "ukay ukay": the practice of thrifting in the philippines

    i didn't even know the practice was illegal, until i saw this video pop up... which is a shame, because ukay ukay—or the practice of "digging through clothes", as it came from the filipino word "hukay"—is actually a huge part of filipino culture. especially for those in the lower classes, ukay ukay was a way to get unique clothes for a very cheap price. in some stores, lots of high quality pieces can go for low as less than a us dollar!! it's an accessible way for people to get a necessity, to clothe themselves in comfort without sacrificing too much.

    it's illegal, yes, but there are actually a lot of ukay ukay stores in opperation. since it is so ingrained in filipino life, i don't think i've heard anyone get arrested for it.

    but i suppose the downside of its status against the law, those whose livelihoods get destroyed in disasters, fire, or even have their goods stolen... there's no way for them to get the help they deserve. and do know that ukay ukay vendors are usually just ordinary filipinos too, trying to make a living in an already shitty economy.

• Politics and World Events

  • fearing power

    I was chatting with a friend and he was complaining about the job market.

    I was surprised to hear him complain about the state of the world. I'm in a place where I feel like I'm creating my reality and if I complain about a certain thing, I'm actually creating the thing that I am complaining about. Re-inforcing this reality that isn't useful for me.

    I mentioned it to him. I told him that he is a powerful human being (because he is) and he can create any reality he wants. He then replied to me 2 facts, two ideas that I once held as truth:

    I don't want to change reality as it could makes things worst.

  • Against a retrospective right to participate in leasehold enfranchisement

    There's much talk of letting existing leaseholders participate in the enfranchisement of partially enfranchised blocks of flats.

    Such a thing has a lot of pratical and technical problems with it, not least that it can impfringes the human rights of other leaseholders who tried to do the right thing by buying out their freehold (in particular the right to freedom of association).

    At least some of the discussion is motivated by outright leasehold abolitionism: unenfranchised leaseholders in partially enfranchised blocks have no effective statutory route out of leasehold. They do of course have the remedy of a section 24 court-appointed manager, but effectively no recourse to RTM.

  • How to lower the RTM threshold

    This would remove the minimum participation threshold, which stands at 2 or 50%, whichever is higher. Without the threshold, the minimum participation defaults to the provisions of the Companies Act, which has for decades requires a minimum of just one company member/shareholder.

    The problem with this is that it requires a criminal prosecution to rein in rogue directors of companies, and this means a director, e.g., a rogue leaseholder or a rogue managing agent, could set up an RTM company and then not let other leaseholders join, in contravention of section 74(1) which says which leaseholders are entitled to be RTM company members.

• Science

  • What tea boils down to

    Tea bags apparently emit microplastics. Besides, the sortiment available in bags is limited, and they don't taste as good as loose leaves. And OP is preferable to BOP.

    During the four years when I had a reasonable and regular income I used to frequent a really exclusive tea shop, an international chain that had just planted their first two outposts in my city. Now I think only one of them remains. They had some very good varieties, all kinds of black, green, white, fermented, flower decorated, organic, Nepalese, Georgian, Kenyan, ten year olds, expensive, and super-expensive sorts of tea. They used to demonstrate the Japanese manner of preparing Oolong, you had to have special equipment and be quite pernickety about temperature, quantities, timing, how to pour water, and so on. Then they would prompt you to buy their tea ceremony equipment and take their tea ceremony course.

    They usually had three or more qualities of every main sort of tea, such as Yunnan or Darjeeling, ranging from tasty and almost affordable to the most exquisite and expensive. You have to understand Veblen's point of conspicuous consumption. The higher the price, the better it's supposed to taste. Well, I came to other conclusions and preferred a cheaper Yunnan which was kind of thick and muddy to their most refined sort which was thin and pure. I think the shop keeper must have been on a mission to educate the customers' taste. At the same time, it was impossible to distinguish that possible mission from a marketing strategy, to hook up customers on luxury teas. They used to offer discounts if you carried a special member card, but then they dropped the card and made the system digital. They would collect email addresses so they could assure that their customers remained hooked, but at that point I had gotten a bitter taste of their overdone customer stalking and stopped visiting them.

  • Hydrolic Hijinks

    So apparently in "Rings of Power" an assault is launched across a riverbed after catapults of dubious design and curiously striking power knock rocks off a cliff and dam a river. Knocking rocks into a river usually results in harrowing rapids, and not a dam.

• Technology and Free Software

  • emacs has me remembering Technoweenie Man

    The keyboard shortcuts are giving me "where have you been all my life??" vibes. Just being able to power through documents. Awesome. Beautiful. Neglected in most programs that let you input and mess with text.

    It's also reminding me of a boss I once had. We (the office staff) referred to him as "Technoweenie Man." This was a man who needed one of us to double-click his email icon for him. I don't think he ever sent an email, though. He usually called whoever had emailed him and talked to them instead - more than once, reading the email they'd sent to him back to them over the phone.

    Part of my job at the time was to digitize old records; the manager and I had to explain to him on FIVE SEPARATE OCCASIONS that I was scanning them, not photocopying them. When this finally sank in, he made us retain the hard copies anyway - putting them right back in the storage room we were supposed to be emptying of them. Then he complained about why we didn't have sufficient storage space.

  • The big A is Back

    I'm back to downloading the Lose It app to be aware of what I eat. And now that's Spring, my plan is to go outside and move more. And when I feel emotional or bored, I need to "vibe code" aka play around with web projects, or draw, walk on my walking pad, go outside, or watch a show. Talking about it helps me, so I will keep it here on this smol blog.

  • Jujutsu is the Real Deal

    An experience report from using jj as my primary git frontend for a few months.

    I'm one of those older generation of software engineers who tends to view the new weekly tech fads with a bit of suspicion - not exactly quick to jump on the next bandwagon. But after seeing the new Jujutsu VCS pop up on the lobste.rs homepage a bunch of times over a few weeks, I had to at least investigate.

    Jujutsu is for sure an improvement on git. It includes a simpler, more DAG-forward data model, commands that push you towards a better workflow, and dramatically better conflict resolution. But what really sets it apart from the numerous VCSes that can be said to be "better" than git, is the upgrade path to begin using it.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Tinylog

      So I'm finally here. Time passed and I didn't be active in 2024. Now it's 2025. I've changed the tinylog file for the new year and I've renamed last-year ones. The new empty space is opened for my text web thoughts. I'm still so excited to be here. But I'm not in the proper mood to be active. My Internet activity is limited to my WWW blog now. But I will be back.

    • Toby's tinylog

      I built this #RaspberryPi based 7-inch #diy #tablet a while back and it's been my daily #linux #mobile #computer since. It's the perfect size for reading websites and e-books and lasts about 7 hours on a 10,000mAh powerbank. It's very responsive to touch and works with a standard install of RPi OS, no setup or modifications needed. The build required making custom cables, a PWM injector for controlling backlight brightness, and the 3d printed case.