Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Against Cynicism

    I don't really know what to do with this post but it keeps rattling around inside my head so I need to exorcise it and put it into words and put it to rest.

    I keep seeing what I think of extreme cynicism in my online social circles. On the fediverse, in my rss blog feeds, in some irc channels. What it looks like when I see it is somebody categorically panning an entire technology or discipline or language or platform. Usually in the form of hot takes or rants. Web dev is crap. Javascript is crap. C is crap. TDD is crap. Free software is crap. Corporate software is crap. This protocol is crap. That platform is crap. Computers are crap. The Internet is crap.

    There are a lot of things that might lead to this kind of hot take: feelings of inferiority or insecurity, a past negative experience, feeling overwhelmed.

    And there are a lot of purposes that this kind of opinion may serve for the opinion haver: security and safety, looking or feeling smart.

  • Where are the opportunities to use a second language?

    I have dreams where I'm back in Korea. I miss using the language, but I can't say that I ever really got into an immersion environment even though I lived in Korea for 3 years and had at least 1000 words before stepping off the plane the first time.

    The closest I ever felt to being immersed was in a week long class that I took as part of my orientation for EPIK (English Program in Korea). It was upper-intermediate and the content was the "your level + one" N+1 content that really stretched and pushed me. I guess I'm answering my own question by pointing out that a serious classroom is a great place to find the immersion I still pine after. But I also don't really want to spend an extended time in Korea ever again, unless the air quality really improves, ha.

  • 🔥 Y Sawna

    At the end of the first month in Finland, I was invited to a birthday party thrown for my partner’s grandfather. I’d not met any of her wider family, so it was a good way to meet a load of people and break the ice. Nice venue, nice food, and everyone was keen to put a name to a face. A couple of hours in, mid-afternoon, it was time for the Sauna. I’d had a few before, but mostly at people’s houses, post-pub, this was my first at the lake, on a sunny day, in one of the larger wood burning public ones, of which there are many. Dudes go first – yeah, I know – and Ladies take the second slot. What I wasn’t expecting, as I walked out bollock naked, was for the female side of the family to be sat at the edge of the lake supping their Lonkeros… If you’re going to meet someone’s granny, well, doing it with your nob out is one way…

  • Hermit Crab on Laundry Day

    Okay but did you know

    some animals have clothes

    it’s called Hermit Crab

    So it’s not dumb that humans have clothes

    And also in humid hot places

    like rain forest

    they don’t use that much clothes

    In hot dry places like desert

    you do need lots of clothes. 🧕🏻

    And it’s a way to get to hang out

    with G-d on the daily

    So don’t be discouraged

    just cause Adam and Eve

    noshed on the science fruit

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ADKLRPN Wordo: FIERY

  • hi, from over yonder

  • priorities in reverse

    I just saw a thing about the RayBan/Meta smartglasses, and I had no idea these existed. Not expensive apparently, and they are "Google Glass but normal-looking". 15 years ago, I'd be all over it. I wanted Google Glass to be successful, too. Google Now was incredibly useful/amusing, I thought. Now (years later, post-Snowden, Iris, privacy awareness everywhere, and for good reason!) I see stuff like this (RB/Meta glasses, Google Glass, et al) and think of the obvious and terrible consequences and privacy invasion they bring about.

    I'd say that prior to Google, and them running a full on "marketing campagin" (or at least setting the tone/narrative of "just trust us") online, that I, and many others, did not have any intention of handing over any data to a company whatsoever - online or off. But we (some, but really all) people do hand over (or get stolen) their data, and they (Google (+ other tech co's)) are no longer trusted (though were never trustworthy).

• Politics and World Events

  • Atheism

    Yeah, yeah, atheists are technically correct, because that one thing that they don’t believe in—

• Technology and Free Software

  • New Laptup Update, or my Hate for Amazon Sellers/Delivery Services

    Ahh, last week. The week when I was super enthusiastic about receiving the new laptop that I ordered. So excited, in fact, that I even posted a gemlog entry with my musings about which Linux distro I was going to put on in and how I might potentially customise it: [...]

    [...]

    My laptop was due to be delivered early this week. It's now Friday and, sadly, it isn't here. Even more unfortunately, one of the reasons I ordered it was to have it for when I'm travelling for a bit from Sunday. I'm definitely not going to have it for that trip now, and that sucks.

    I don't even know fully who to be annoyed at! The laptop I was suppose to be receiving is being sold by a seller on Amazon, one that specialises in distributing older, recycled/refurbished hardware. I received a tracking number from parcel delivery company DPD just prior to when it was suppose to be sent, but any attempt to track it yielded an error saying they hadn't received the package yet. Yesterday, it finally updated with a message stating that the package was likely "lost."

  • Emacs Info Buffers: Putting the Manual Name Inside the Buffer Name (publ. 2024-10-11)

    I always view info manuals inside of Emacs, and there are about a dozen advantages to doing that. But one thing that I find annoying in the default Emacs configuration is that the info buffer name does not include the manual name. To clarify: the manual name is shown on the mode line, but it is not part of the buffer name itself. Consequently if you have multiple info buffers open — very common in my case — and you want to switch to the buffer you opened for the elisp manual, the buffer completion list might show something like *info*, *info<1>*, *info<2>*, which is not very helpful.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • The Mind and Dropping Off The Internet

      I've been pretty active on Gemini for the past 2.5 to 3 years, but for the last month and a half I haven't been around quite as much. Unlike what I've seen here before, it wasn't because I was bored of Gemini, or didn't like it anymore; it was that I noticed I was on my phone too much and so I bought a "dumb phone" i.e., a flip phone with limited features. Initially I intended on performing a digital detox of sorts, but because I found that certain parts of my life improved - with overall enjoyment of life being one of them - I decided to keep it going.