Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Christina's questions for December

    1. Is there anything from 100 years ago you'd like to see revived today?

    life without an automobile. 100 years ago was a bit of a tipping point for normalizing the automobile IIRC, it's where they first started being more commonplace rather than a luxury item. I love a lot of what happened after, the evolution of the automobile, the automobile industry and the way it shaped the course of human history. as well as car culture both broadly and how it affected my life more personally or intimately, but I think cars have had their time in the sun and it's time for the first world to graduate from them. we're far more technologically savvy now, we're far more better supplied in our day-to-day by what we find locally and far better served as human beings by being part of a local community than a huge sprawling motorway-connected network. it's a change I don't think we'll ever see without some sort of harsh, unignorable shock to the current system, and even if such a shock was to happen today a complete change is still pretty unlikely within my lifetime, but it's nice to daydream about.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: CDYILSH Wordo: MOTEL

  • And the band kept on playing (until it didn’t)

    Sweden disastrously had the biggest year-over-year CO₂E emissions increase since 1990 as a direct and immediate consequence of our elected government’s policies—it’s proven that their diesel pricing was the culprit. When people tell me “We’re such a tiny country, we don’t need to do anything” that’s so wrong because: [...]

• Politics and World Events

  • THAT Arrived

    I was finally able to receive a THAT unit (THe Analog Thing) from Anabrid. The long delay was not Anabrid's fault, but was related to some tariff misclassifications by US CBP and also UPS not being able to get things fixed in a timely manner. I don't want to go into all the details, but in fairness to UPS, I should mention that UPS told me that duty disputes were backed up several months due to the removal of the De Minimis rule. Anyhow, my THAT came in a few days ago, so it feels like an early Christmas present!

  • Passion and Creativity

    When one undertakes a passionate work, the artist imbues his suffering into such a work. For example, take the archetype of the "mentally ill actor". When he escapes into his characters, he infuses them with the passion of a suffering soul. Or Edvard Munch's 'The Scream': Munch's pain is channelled into each stroke of the brush, leaving a tangible artifact of suffering. At a broad level, the very act of creating cannot escape showing some faint traces of the suffering of the creator. For if creation involves the use of the psyche of the creator at the most subconscious level, then whatsoever harms the psyche and whatsoever the psyche remembers per se influences the creator's work.

    I had the pleasure of meeting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's son, Ignat. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a gruelling account of the gulag system in 'Gulag Archipelago'. That book (technically an anthology of books), though not for the faint of heart, exemplifies suffering's explicit influence on his creative works.

• Technology and Media

  • Re: No Comment

    I have to admit I don't watch Euronews, because it doesn't seem to run on my streaming hardware. But I have to make a short statement to jsreed5's comment on 'No Comment' of Euronews.

    jsreed hits the nail! But he seems to think that the news in Europe are less opinionated than in, I think he comes from the US. It may be worse in the USA with it's Trump administration but nevertheless. Even here in Germany you aren't presented the facts *AT ALL*! Everything is opinionated and biased towards one or the other side. All in a monologuos, objective cadence as if its fact what in reality is opinion. But it's as hard to find out what really happened as in the US news or everywhere else in Europe I believe.

  • 17 December 2025

    A couple of days ago i met the older brother and one of his friends through his parents, a couple we know for a while now. They have - somehow, perhaps through my wife - heard that i do analogue photography and that i am into "weird, old computer stuff". Well, THIS was an noteworthy encounter.

    He is 13 and part of a perhaps growing counter culture / trend, whatever you want to call it. Those kids who had to bear the full impact of growing up during the covid lockdowns, who where remote schooled through Zoom, who only were allowed to see their friends through screens, those kids have grown to resent social media, the developments around AI and to some extend modern technology as a whole.

  • One week without a phone

    If spending time online involves doomscrolling the news, what do you do instead when forced offline? Yesterday's newspapers are about as fresh as today's, their ink smells the same and very rarely does the world change dramatically overnight. The roll of the news, as sampsa points out (if I understand him correctly) is to maintain the narrative and provide us with a shared world view. Turn off the news for a period and no-one tells you what to think about what's going on in the world, so you may have to think a little bit more for yourself and direct your attention to things closer at hand.

    Occasionally I read a print newspaper when they offer a three week trial for free. Those three weeks, with the rag appearing six days out of seven, are more than sufficient to learn what to expect from their editorial line, and for anyone who has accessed the wealth of well-informed independent journalism and commentary online their narrative biases and selective omissions are not hard to spot. Of course there's a use even for less than excellent newspapers, such as covering the table when doing gouache paintings to avoid spilling paint on the table cloth.