Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • No future for healthcare in Kentucky

    Healthcare has no future in Kentucky. Healthcare and prison industries replaced coal in eastern Kentucky. Former miners are now mined for pain, insulin, diabetic amputation, alcohol and fentanyl detox, dialysis, heart surgery, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, long-term acute care and skilled nursing, and for-profit hospice.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: EHMNYUP Wordo: JETON

  • more degu names

    Houdini has just been named. For repeatedly escaping from the large enclosure. He’s now in a temporary unit with the un-named male that remains. They are the smallest two of the three youngest males. Houdini has a notable patch of white right next to his nose, but the remaining un-named male doesn’t really have any distinguishing features or personality quirks, so I don’t know what I’m going to name him yet.

• Science

  • Stargazing + Aurora (publ. 2025-11-27)

    I went out yesterday evening (2025-11-26) around 8:45pm for stargazing out in the front yard. Temperature was around 1 ℉, and despite wearing my thick winter pants, two coats, a winter hat, a hood, my winter boots, and my heated gloves, I still felt cold. I had some snowpants somewhere but lost track of them.

    I discovered that, regardless of which battery I attach to it, my left heated glove does not turn on. I suppose I'll need to rip that glove open and see if I can find a loose wire or something.

    When I got outside, the eastern sky seemed very bright, from the light pollution. Also, street lights and car lights and house lights were glaring brightly at me from every direction, so it was difficult to build up good night vision for naked eye star gazing. But I tried my best. Because of the tall trees and because of the position of my porchlight, I can't look to the western or northern sky very easily.

  • Unexpected legacy of Timothy Leary

    I don't condone the use of psychedelics. I've never tried them myself either. But it's difficult for me not to be in awe of the life Timothy Leary led.

    I never knew much about him other than that he developed LSD, and I suspect that's what most people think of when they hear his name. There is quite a legacy behind the person.

    The following text is quoted from the Facebook page This Day in History, with my own paragraph spacing added.

• Technology and Free Software

  • BOM or not BOM ? 🐧

  • in pursuit of neovim nirvanna

    I’ve been increasingly more frustrated with Neovim lately. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because of my lack of understanding. I started to try to articulate my issues in another note, but I didn’t get very far.

    I toyed a bit with NVF and decided I should instead focus on creating a new configuration for Neovim 0.11 where I just try to make it do one thing really well. So I started a Compulsive Notes configuration. Forget the why for now, and focus on the method.

    It should eliminate any friction in writing Markdown notes by staying out of the way with too much fanciness, but also reduce or simplify repetitive aspects of making notes while being aesthetically pleasing – to me.

  • Interesting episode of Late Night Linux podcast

    Yesterday I listened to Late Night Linux podcast episode 358, where the hosts were at a recent Ubuntu summit and they got to interview Mark Shuttleworth.

    A lot of what Shuttleworth said resonated with me -- he mentioned he's fascinated by the small things self-hosting and IoT stuff. He also discussed the merits of Snap packages, which made me less hostile to the fact that Ubuntu prioritizes them over regular .deb packages.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Hot take on Vivaldi browser

      So I installed Vivaldi to use Netflix for Stranger Things 5, and holy crap. It's like the KDE of browsers in terms of appearance and configurability.

      It's such a shame that it's partly proprietary. But I don't know. It's tempting for me to be open-minded about using it.