Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • satisfaction vs joy, tarot style

    things are coming together, even the disgruntlement seems to be serving its function very well. i was mostly feeling a little stagnant with all the tarot projects - how come i'm doing so many different things with my special interest (DROPM78, tangled blessings, Lisa Papez's book, waiting to be done with that one to be able to start using my handmade journal for the shadowplay) and yet feel so bogged down? it's all jobs and no reward. add to that the "staying off the internet" which requires more activities to be introduced elsewhere. and the recent bright flare of an old special interest that fizzled out just as quickly as it arrived. it was a rush and now that it's gone i'm feeling even more bereft.

  • Inspiration strikes!

    I have been having a rough time recently remembering myself as my days become lost to sleep attacks and body image issues. I had no drive to work out, knowing that if I worked out and ate in a calorie deficit, it would become unhealthy for the sole reason that I was doing it to look a certain way. In the past I had tried, and had nearly starved myself. I always wanted to take up less space. So I conceded my energy to nothing but my studies and my work. I had none left for myself.

  • The De-divinizing of Divination

    It's all well and good that some take a psychological approach to divination as a means of wrestling with ourselves internally, but it should be understood and made clear to everyone that that's an extremely modern, extremely secularized, extremely woogity-denying stance that does not agree with any historical or traditional approach. If you don't think divination can actually predict things, okay, that's on you, regardless of your actual ability to do so. But saying that others cannot actually do so, or that they should not do so because it's somehow "unethical", is more of a stretch than what most contortionists could ever attain. Sure, there are laws in many places that prohibit divination and fortune-telling—but many of those same laws are also infringements against the right to the free practice of religion. Whether or not those laws stand, breaking an unjust law is not unjust, because legality is not the same thing as justice. There are, after all, also laws against malpractice or fraud in general; we don't see laws against professions of medicine or law just because people get swindled there, too. What's unethical is fraud, not breaking an overreaching and improperly-written law. (At least for medicine and law, there are ethics boards that can remove fraudulent practitioners; there's no such protection or regulation for diviners or magicians out there, which does lead to there being fraudulent practitioners in these fields, so as ever, caveat emptor.)

  • Tuesday

    Oh, wow, just noticed this is post 2323, which number kindles warm almost memories of so enjoying "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" back in darker-haired days.

    I think what kills me most about the internet is that it just plain really doesn't contain much of interest.

    Don't get me wrong. It seemed to. You know, the "those heady times" context. So many links, so much content, everyone coming together.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: BUEMNRC Wordo: MELBA

  • drip drop

  • Music day

    Learning folk songs is great fun. Now if I only were to do my homework to study them. The tempo for the melody lines are quite something, but that's primo practice goals to strive towards.

• Politics and World Events

  • Commentary on the 2024 US Presidential Election

    Nothing scientific, just a gut feeling, but I think Harris will win the presidential election tomorrow, and that exit polls will show overwhelming support from female voters. I think prior polls are underestimating just how pissed off American women are about Roe v. Wade being overturned. The sad reality is that some women have to pretend to support Trump when in front of their husbands or friends, so they have to keep their votes secret, and we won't know about the effect of these votes until after the election.

    I would like to be right, but of course if we wake up Wednesday morning to a Trump presidency, the US (and by extension Canadians and the rest of the world) are in for a rough time. We definitely don't need 4+ more years of chaos.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Self-hosted web browser bookmarks syncing

  • The End of Block

    Twitter's engineering team posted the above two days ago. And thus began the change that Elon Musk has wanted for a while, to see the block function reduced to barely more than the existing mute. I'm surprised he didn't have them remove it altogether.

    The change allows users to see all the tweets of people who have blocked them. They can't interact, but in a sense, that doesn't matter - it's an enormous violation of privacy, one that allows anyone who's been blocked to see what they've been missing. Sometimes blocking is done capriciously - when I was on that site, I'd often block someone the moment they barged into my mentions. But sometimes it's done for a real good reason. Think threats, and stalking. Deranged randos. Creepy exes. People have for years been writing tweets with the expectation that the worst people in their lives can't see them. That's no longer the case, and this is all timed, very coincidentally, with election day.

  • Street-parking? You need an app for that

    Yesterday we visited an acquaintance in another city.

    Parking on the streets in the area now requires a mobile app. This is the only way you can pay for your parking.

    The vendor-machine that sells the parking tickets was replaced a few years ago. The new machine doesn't print out parking tickets, you have to enter the license plate and pay your fee, with cash or a card.

    Yesterday we discovered that these machines have been removed. A new shield is affixed high on the lampposts in various locations in the neighborhood, stating only an parking area code that you have to enter in some app, and that failure to do so will lead to a parking fine.

  • Sample NNCP Configuration File

    When I started using NNCP, I had a lot of trouble navigating its configuration file. I feel it is poorly documented: a newly-generated config file works as-is, but most of the features have little explanation, and there's no clarification about which options are mandatory and which are not. Most information can be found on NNCP's homepage^, but even that doesn't cover everything.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Name one capsule

      Hi BBS, let's play a game. Name one capsule that you like (and that's *not* your own), and say a few words about why you like it. And to be fair, don't choose one that's already been chosen in the thread.

    • Gomphotherium helps you forget

      If you use GoToSocial, like I do, then your posts do not expire. Mastodon, on the other hand, has that feature.

      Now, you could use Mastodon Archive. But that makes you archive your toots before expiring them.