I learned how to solder this weekend. It was something that I'd wanted to learn a while back, but something that I never got around to. I think it's a valuable skill and the impetus for finally learning in this case was my Palm Vx.
Recently I noticed that the battery wouldn't charge past 40%, and this was a "new" battery I'd put in last year. I guessed that maybe battery calibration might do something, however I couldn't information on how to do that. So I looked into going back to the backup devices I have which run on AAA batteries. These are my Fail Safe/Future Proof devices because you can always get AAAs, right?
As an ideological centrist trying to be guided in life by the truth (that which, with the help of my modest powers of reason or intuition, I judge to be true), I increasingly encounter the accusation of argumentum ad temporantiam. The more polarized the world, the more people identify with the sides of (any of the currently imposed on us) conflicts, the sooner this argument comes up in conversation. "How come, you criticize not only my opponents, but also my own camp? That's argumentum ad temporantiam, and you are bland and ideologically conformist!". Such people see no other way but escalation ("If the opposing camp lies, we must lie, and maybe even more so because the end justifies the means. We are fully justified, it's their fault."), they live in a reality in which argumentum ad temporantiam, or the argument to moderation, is the only possible explanation for why someone might not support 100% of their ideological option. Moderation, however, more often than not seems to be more truthful and extremes have the quality of being located on the periphery, where the chance of overstepping the bounds of what is true is greatest. And so the accusation of an error of reasoning increasingly follows from errors of reasoning and the next meaning, the next definition turns upside down. Why exactly polarization leads to the reversal of meanings or whether it is just a coincidence of events, this I do not yet fully understand (I invite you to write).
I watched a spider weaving a web today. Flies were flying through the empty fields of his emerging web. They flew over again and again. They squatted on the beam right next to him, almost as if they were mocking his efforts. But he worked straight and tirelessly, weaving a beautiful pattern without a shadow of falsehood.
This years I won't celebrate about the fourth anniversary of Gemini, I believe that we have wasted enough time and we should settle the pending stuff once and for all.
People that are arriving recently and missed everything, for instance I missed the first year and a half, are having (or will have) hard time to understand how to implement the specifications and to make their own projects since specs aren't closed nor clear.
Solderpunk, no hard feeling. We all owe you one, but for the second time you have disregarded your commitments; it is time for you to step back definitely.
[...]
We need an "ad-interim" leadership to settle down conflicts when there is no common or majority agreement. Someone that has a broad knowledge on how implementing Gemini in every aspect. I have my personal preference and for such role I would summon Skyjake.
I really like his vision of Gemini, I love his commitments, I can understand that some others can have a different bias over a Skyjakecentric vision of Gemini and therefore we need another (and possibly last) round table!
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.