Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Januari Questions of Christina

    Quite some years ago, when I still had an account on Goodreads, I saw several suspected follow requests. These came from freshly made accounts, with new history at all. I always ignored these.

    On the Fediverse, when someone starts to follow me, I look into their account and what they have posted. If there is no history, I ignore them, otherwise I try to get an impression of the kind of posts and decide if I follow back.

  • 🖼️ xkcd — Anyone Else Here #3188

  • When the year starts 📆

    I notice a few people mentioning the arbitrariness the first day of the year. It's true, there's no magic to new year's day. The year could begin on Christmas day (a quarter day) or on the shortest day (solstice). But there's a given day for letting off fireworks and wishing people happiness, and it's 1 Jan.

    But that's only the start of the calendar year. There's the academic year that begins at Michaelmas (29 Sep). The start of the year for legal contracts, particularly in farming, was Lady Day (25 Mar). I read an entertaining book by a man who was a farm labourer before WW2. He was contracted to a farmer for a year from Lady Day, as were all the other labourers. He described the subtle negotiations between him and the farmer as the date approached. Usually neither of them wanted to move, so the only issue was pay. But the only way to bargain was to make the other half-believe that the contract wouldn't be renewed. The book described a lot of hint-dropping and almost no direct discussion.

  • 🔤SpellBinding — CEUGLNF Wordo: SOLAR

  • Reading in 2025

    My reading this year has been dominated by a book club I started going to. I've had little time to read outside of that because my year got rather more interesting than last — I left my job and went back to college. I'm proud of making that big change but it does mean life is a lot busier now!