Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • The First Post, Finally.

    Hey! So I'm James, I'm 24, and I've had this site for maybe a year and a half now? I was so excited about having a place to put my thoughts and to talk about my hobbies and ideas and interests that I became kind of overwhelmed by that fact and became too terrified of openly sharing those things where somebody can read them that I still haven't done anything on here apart from just the home page.

    As well as that I have all of these ambitions that I just kind of cycle between because I haven't had the time and energy to do much outside of personal relationships and having a full time job. I desperately want to do so many things. I've always loved science and I have a physics degree that I graduated from 2 years ago now, and had always pictured myself making some grand discovery, but even though I managed a first class degree, I always had this huge amount of imposter syndrome in my last 2 years of my course, I was struggling really bad through a lot of it. I even feel like since then I've just straight up forgotten a lot of the stuff that I learnt, and sometimes struggle to reconcile the idea that I didn't get anything from it, educationally speaking. I know that I did, and I would never choose to not do that course at that University, I just wish I wasn't struggling like I was and managed to retain more, I just need to try refreshing on it all I suppose. Luckily because of covid all of my exams were remote and open book even in my final year. I still want to do science because I love it and I am so so so passionate about it, my 4th year project was on black holes and I found it super interesting but had personally found it very difficult to work with my supervisor - I never even looked at my results for that project cus I was too terrified of what his feedback was going to have been! But because of it I was put off from looking for PhDs which was my original plan upon leaving University. Maybe at some point I will look at them some more? Sadly scientific research on signficant topics isn't something you can just *do* at home.

  • water painting

    My daughter loves water painting. She dips her brush in water and traces abstract patterns on the brown craft paper. With a light touch the stroke fades right away, leaving a thin playful ribbon chasing after. With a heavy touch the soaked splotches last for a minute or so, blooming in reverse slowly back to nothing.

    There's nothing to clean up, which is nice. But what's even better -- and I say this with all kindness towards her -- is that there is nothing to exhibit on the fridge when she is done. Growing up, I remember being hovered over and "good job!"-ed into indifference or paralysis. I try my best to say nothing and just leave her to it.

  • inside

    the first time I'm in your bed
    you ask me a dangerous question
    and all I can think is 
    how do you ask me now
    when you are inside me
    and yes is the only word I have left
    now you ask me
    when all I can do is surrender
    to this constant state of want
    you have gotten me into
    so effortlessly
    

  • dream; wolverine

    I Was outside, a young man was about to discard a small rodent, a rat maybe, but a bit bigger.

    My dad intervene, the animal was still alive and he left it there so it could rest. It looked like a small puppy, but with bear feature, it was a young wolverine.

  • oatmeal cookies

    Mix all your dry ingredients together, I slightly blend the nuts/chocolate and oats in a food processor to make them finer, but it's not strictly necessary. Then mix them in with the other dry ingredients.

    Mix all your wets together, I've fully converted to using olive oil for everything but other fats will work. Its best to let the flax egg sit for a few minutes before mixing in with the rest to ensure a good soak. I generally have ground flax in the freezer, ground fine. If kept out it goes rancid pretty quickly.

    Mix the dry and wets together. Form small balls, or just scoop out with a medium spoon onto a tray lined with baking paper. If you like a flatter cookie you can you the back of a spoon or fork to depress the cookies before baking.

• Politics and World Events

  • Political violence for me but not for thee

    I oppose political violence and it’s easy to build a consistent philosophical take against it.

    But.

    Political violence in favor of bad things happen on the daily. The government we voted in and trust sell weapons to warring nations and invest in settler colonialism and wreck the planet with their gasoline. Tyranny in protection of wealth is endorsed and loved by them.

• Technology and Free Software

  • LLMs are so great they’re nerfing low-code solutions

    One annoyance: You can’t just ask an LLM to make one for you like you can, say, a bookmarklet. You can have an LLM make you the code bits of a Shortcut or Automator action, but I tried to make a Shortcut and ChatGPT couldn’t whip one up.

    Zapier isn’t public, so you can’t short it, but plain text is starting to rule everything not only around me, but around increasingly normal people as well.