Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 2026 tarot project

    as part of my bigger year of contentment, i decided to really focus on using the tarot decks in my inadvertent collection. deck acquisition has been a long and winding road for me. as a teen i wasn't really advised well on where to start (the worst of both worlds: a "lazy-pips" deck with curated art for the majors and courts), so from the get-go there was the sense that i might be able to "buy myself into" a better understanding. obviously the tool you use makes a difference, especially at the learning stage. and over the years, what with the rise of tarot's popularity, the boom in indie publishing, the rise of tarot youtube channels - intentionally or not - promoting acquisition and having a wide choice of decks, well it all got to me and i bought in.

  • 🔭 The Work Essay

    Hello and welcome to the Human Competency Assessment. Today we'll be using your desperation as free labor to train our A.I. agent for a temporary role which might not actually exist. If you avoid the kaizo blocks—don't hold your breath for feedback, though, please note, this is not a substitute for actual medical advice—you'll be pitted against poorer, even more desperate man-hour fungibles for table scraps and who's a good boy, you're a good boy, sit, now speak, now beg, prole, beg, in an ontic dystopia as Super Tech Smash Bros. battle statesmen, oligarchs, and war profiteers over the Irony Throne in a post-Neo-colonial バトル・ロワイアル ^[Battle Royale] for narrative and literal time and space. ((Donkey!))

    In this interview, we're going to test whether you can maintain that trembling reverse-frown while making constant eye contact with swirling screensaver lights as we quote your LLM/William S. Burroughs cut-up résumé at you in the form of question-adjacent statements. You know, like Cobumbo, a derriere-based detective that definitely doesn't infringe on “Columbo,” a bit from “Black Books,” or that Japanese detective show where the protagonist has a literal butt for a head and no one mentions it, perhaps out of politeness.

  • 🚘 The Devil Went Down to Georgia Auto Mechanics

    Joyce Ferguson considered it a coincidence that a man in a baby-blue suit happened to walk up to her stalled Toyota Camry seconds after she muttered the words, “I would sell my soul to the devil if this car never broke down again.”

    “Do you mean that?” the stranger asked in a voice as silky as soymilk in a vegan latte on a hot Georgia day.

    Which it was. Only Joyce didn’t have anything to quench her thirst. She thought she’d be home from work thirty minutes ago. Sweat soaked through her work blouse, and she’d thrown her blazer in the car.

• Technology and Free Software

  • I actually really dislike my own shots

    When I got my best friend hooked on photography four years ago I didn't think that he'd ever rub into my face that he can afford expensive gear (and at the same time the German government is hell bent on abolishing retirement and social security payments). Right after the flex he decided to ghost me and probably wouldn't have apologized at all if I wouldn't have blocked him for this sudden dick move.

    What was particularly hurtful to the point of making me cry was how he suddenly started to pretend to be some long-time professional giving me advice I wasn't asking for at all and the subsequent ghosting. I showed him some tricks and sent him my Lightroom copy that I've been using since 2013, only pretty much to be told that my photos suck compared to his latest ones he shot with a mid-range Sony and a Sigma Art. Meanwhile I've been using my Canon EOS 700D since 2014 and was forced to replace my telelenses – both of which I had to save money for – decided to become friends with mold. Replacing both with a cheaper alternative, which may have turned out to be better than both lenses, hurt because the first replacement had to be sent back due to also being moldy, whereas the final lens ultimately hurt my bank account.