Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — ACFUOTM Wordo: SPITS

  • How to Maintain a Healthy Self-Image With Autism

    In my previous entry "Labels¹", I talked about how living as an undiagnosed autistic person in this neurotypical world caused me to accrue a bunch of hurtful, inaccurate labels assigned to me by people who were ignorant about what autism is. Being assigned these labels damaged my self-esteem and left me with a confused self-image.

    I should not have listened to those people, but at the same time, one doesn't want to rely entirely on oneself to gauge who one is. Each of us has biases and blind spots in our individual perception. Also, the input of others can be useful because others have diverse perspectives and experiences we don't have, and can show us things about ourselves that we alone can't see.

    So how can you, as an autistic person, filter out the inaccurate input given to you by ignorant neurotypicals who don't know what autism is so that you can gain useful insights about yourself from others, without being left with a twisted self-image and destroying your self-esteem in the process? Do you just put less stock in what anybody else says about you? What is the solution?

  • I have a burgeoning theory that most living things desire to be smaller for safety

    I have a burgeoning theory that most living things desire to be smaller for safety. Someone has probably written about this more formally, but just bear with me even though most of this is probably not scientific per se... when there's any kind of box shaped surface, my cat will try to fit onto it, even if it is much smaller than she is. This does not phase her: she just shifts around until she finds a comfortable position. Given that I mostly grew up with punk/feminist (or adjacent) influences, I was always kind of embarrassed that diet or wellness culture had such a hold on me for so long. It's not that I wanted to conform to a normative body type or be accepted or desired in any way aligned with thinness, but I think this desire for smallness is deeper, more animalistic than social/cultural/popular norms. Anyways, now I want to be strong, like an old tree, but that original desire for smallness still rests in some ways. I've been mostly wearing these tight white tank tops this summer because I want to look like a hunk with my top surgery: my shifting pecs and formidable scars show through the sheer tank.

  • Plastic flowers

    There's a pot on our kitchen window sill. It contains flowers. Made of plastic.

    They were there a few months ago, left behind by the house's previous owner.

    I hate them. They don't change. Every day since we moved in, they've been the same vivid colour, the same perfect texture.

    Anti-tethical to the thing they are a weak fascimile of, they stand there, lacking the dynamic and short-lived beauty of their natural counterparts.

  • Stiff drink for a rough day

    I made the mistake of reading the news, you see. I should have known better. Since I was a kid, after reading Zamyatin, Orwell and being fed so many concentration camps and STASI stories I've had one terrible fear. To see an alliance of the strong creating the perfect police state. An untoppable tyranny, where the weak are stomped on over and over by mechanized bureaucracy. Where the strong stay unpunished no matter how vile their crimes. Where ignorance conquers mind after mind because knowledge does not matter, as it cannot save you.

  • A new life

    I hope that if you haven't done so already, you will get vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis. I also hope that if you notice characteristic symptoms in someone, you will remember my story and respond with good advice. As you can see, doctors still don't always have sufficient knowledge, and sometimes you have to find a suitably qualified specialist. But above all, it's worth just getting vaccinated and not taking any risks. If you know someone who seems unconvinced or claims to be too busy, feel free to share the link to my story. I think this attitude stems solely from a lack of knowledge about the course of the disease. Even though I decided to get vaccinated, I didn't manage to do so for six months because I always had other priorities.

  • fleeting relief

  • Reflection on the last few years

    I quit my job last week and don't have any plan to seek another for at least a few months. This is a huge change in my life. Its the first time I have been unemployed since I was fourteen. I am already struggling with the anxiety and guilt resulting from the internalised stigma of unemployment. But I need this time to focus on my health and well being.

    The last two decades have been a whirlwind. But the last five or so years have been particularly hard. My partner and I lost our daughter around a year and a half ago and I still haven't found peace in the wake of her death. While that was clearly traumatic for me, I have been getting worn down for much longer.

  • Getting started

    I have admired the gemini protocol and the community that has grown around it for a few years now. I finally have some time to dedicate to endeavours other than paying rent so I thought I would try my hand at writing. I hope it proves to be of interest to someone out there.

• Politics and World Events

  • you have to ignore politics (re. kensanata)

    he talks about how he can't ignore politics because politics is how society is organised, a statement I find a bit on the nose. I chose my politics a long, long time ago. I am an anarchist to my core, I will not be goverened by you or them, I am staunchly anti-war, I believe in body autonomy, and I believe we are custodians of Earth and its life, not rulers of it.

    now I can't read his mind, but when I read his post I can form a reasonably solid impression that when Alex says politics he's doing so in, let's call it the "Reddit" interpretation of politics - his politics, his "moral choice" are HIS politics and what he finds "reprehensible" is THEIR politics. interpret that how you wish.

• Appliances

  • Dryer repair

    Earlier this week, my wife informed me that the dryer wasn't moving. I took a quick look and started the dryer. The motor was running, but no movement from the drum. I figured that it might be a roller or belt that was causing the problem. I opened the top of the dryer to inspect the drum and did not see the belt that goes around the thing. I took a flashlight and saw part of the belt on the floor of the dryer. Looked like the belt broke, so I ordered the part.

    The belt came this afternoon and was able to get the dryer working again in about an hour. Easy fix. Thank God for online washer/dryer videos. This is probably the 4th or 5th time I've had to reference online videos to fix my washer and dryer. Prior to this, I knew nothing except how to operate the washer and dryer. Now I learn how to fix and buy parts for cheap. Big savings in parts and labor.

• Technology and Free Software

  • 28 July 2025

    Well, things are moving in the right direction again. After cleaning up (most of) my parents financial misadventures (or at least sorting so much out that a there is a light at the end of the tunnel) everything calms back down a bit.

    I also got a moment for trying to reanimate the DevTerm again which - surprisingly - had some success: With a newly written SD card it boots up again (but only with the R01 core) but weirdly, after a couple of boots, the (newly bought) SD card is dead. A behaviour that can be replicated as i found out while killing another freshly bought card.

    Weird... something i have to keep digging into... later.

  • Two popular external commands can make you a shell REST API king

    There exists a widespread myth that you need at least Python or some other full-featured programming environment to interact with modern REST APIs of various online services. In fact though, if you are running a normal OS like Linux or BSD, you only need two external commands available in any distribution's package manager. Everything else is already there in the POSIX environment, and I'm going to show you how to make use of it.

    The first of these two commands is, of course, curl. This is the Swiss army knife of clients that does pretty much all the legwork for you when it comes to connection through all sorts of different protocols (up to the newest HTTP versions, WebSockets (need to research that more though) and even Gopher, yeah), all you need is specify what to send and (optionally) which parts of the response to return. The only things curl can't do (_yet_) are torrenting and parallel chunk downloads (well, you've got aria2 for those things) but those are not relevant to our API story anyway. The mainstream has adopted curl so much that all sorts of API manuals even show its command-line calls alongside Python, JS and other languages in their example sections. That's quite a success story, I must admit.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Hello Gemini

      Hi. I've been blogging since 2004. Frequency of posts heavily declined after I finished uni and started a full-time job. Something else also has changed. At that point in life I've been quite optimistic about technology in general, I can't say I'm that optimistic anymore.