Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Shrooms of Slovenia

    We arrived in Slovenia, yesterday. Picked up our car and drove to Kranjska Gora. Today we walked from Rateče to Tromeja, where Italy, Austria and Slovenia meet. There’s an actual three-country hiking event every year. What a nice idea. On our way, we saw a gazillion mushrooms. This post is all about mushrooms.

  • Hiking in Kranjska Gora

    We went hiking near Kranjska Gora. We walked from Rateče to Tromeja, where Italy, Austria and Slovenia meet and we saw many mushrooms. The views from the top were fascinating. It was a two hour steep hike up and a two and a half hour hike back down, mostly easier on the knees and feet. We climbed around 650 m of altitude.

  • portal

    I sink into my mattress 
    and hope it's a portal 
    you know where I want to be
    
    
    good, comfy, cuddl
    

• Politics and World Events

  • Catastrophe Ethics

    Catastrophe Ethics examines what the author calls The Puzzle, a term for a problem that is caused by everybody's actions in aggregate, but that nobody can individually solve or influence by changing their own habits. The poster problem for The Puzzle, and the one most deeply analyzed by the book, is climate change. The collective behaviors of (most of) humankind, like the dependency on fossil fuels and the high consumption of animal products, contribute to the increase of the average global temperature, with dire consequences. Nevertheless, if I stopped driving my car or eating steaks, I wouldn't move the needle at all. Sure, changing my behavior could make me feel more righteous, but to what end? What is one to do in the face of such overwhelming problems like climate change?

    To answer this question, the author brings you on a whirlwind tour of ethics. In what feels like mental contortions (in a good way), you explore questions like: Is it good, or moral, to fly? Is it bad, or immoral? What if, by not flying, I am unable to honor moral commitments to my family, who lives abroad? Do we have a duty to avoid flying, and can we force people to stop flying? If not, do we need to justify our decision to fly? To whom? And why?

• Technology and Free Software

  • Bolt Industries' New Trainer Boards Put Your Knowledge of Ohm's Law to the Test

    Bolt industries' Ian Dunn is crowdfunding a hands-on way to learn about Ohm's Law — combining printed problems in theoretical calculation with real circuits you can measure with a multimeter to provide an answer key.

    "Most people learn Ohm's Law the same way: a worksheet, a formula, and a row of blanks to fill in," Dunn explains. "You do the math, write down a number, and then you wait. A teacher grades it eventually, or you just shrug and assume you got it right. Either way, you never actually find out for yourself, on the spot. If you learn by doing, not by reading, that's a pretty thin deal."

    Ohm's Law, named for physicist and mathematician Georg Ohm, is the observed relationship between voltage (V) and current (I) passing through a resistor (R) — leading to the commonly-used triad of calculations V=IR, I=V/R, and R=V/I.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • ROOPHLOCH 2026: Phirst Phost!

      My phirst ROOPHLOCH twenty twenty six phost, yay exclamation point. I am transmitting on the Sonim XP three nine zero zero flip phone with the RK BT keyboard and it is not configured properly so I have missing characters, like numbers and some punctuation, joy...

      I gotta fix that, but not right now.

      So my phost is weird.