Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Spirituality and Detachment

    Lately I have been struggling somewhat with spirituality and the frequent requirement of detachment it requires. A detachment from things external to the soul seems to be paramount to most spiritual paths, whether we're talking about Christianity, stoicism, Buddhism, or myriad others.

    Obviously a degree of detachment is necessary. One cannot live a fulfilling life always at the whim of external circumstance. I think we have all seen this absolutely devastate someone we love. Certainly something can be said for the necessity of a certain level of detachment and for the ability to detach oneself from circumstance. I myself have found great strength and solace in stoicism and its application in many areas of my life.

  • RE: softwarepagan - Spirituality and Detachment

    If we come to accept that attachment stems from the fear of loosing something, or the fear of not being able to sustain ourselves without it, maybe we can untangle this a bit. While we are beings with basic needs that need to be fulfilled in order to persist, the fear to not persist is an emotion after all. An emotion that lives in our egos.

  • The UK's current attitude to shoplifting

    There's currently a spate of stories in the UK media about supermarket staff getting fired for confronting shoplifters.

    This has brought forth extraordinary commentary, to the effect that stores should rely on the police and not their own staff, and that individuals should not try to prevent manifest crime unless they've been specifically trained to do so. It has not been clearly stated whether the apparent principle here is supposed to extend to self-defence in relation to physical or sexual assault on staff. The proponents do not explicitly avow that sexually assaulted women should not act in their own self-defence without prior training, but nor do they wish to hear the same denied. Nor, to be sure, does the principle seem to generalise particularly well outside the context of retail stores.

  • In response to [the above]

    I believe it is essentially that:

    a) If an employee is injured things get messy... is it worth it for a near minimum wage employee to get injured or killed over some product?

    b) there's a cost involved with regard Insurance and/or making a financially gesture to support an employee that's injured or a family who is now a member down.

    c) the employee and/or company will likely be sued if the perpetrator is injured, killed or *eugh* has their rights breached. Because the UK is mental.

  • tarot pips

    here's how i personally understand and use the numerology of the tarot pips, based on many of the marseille and cartomancy resources in my tarot links section. while reading pips i do mostly a mix between visuals and numerology. the numerology gives me the parts at play, the pictures shape the progress of the overall story via how the geometry changes from card to card, how these patterns affect the individual energies.

• Politics and World Events

  • resisting authoritarianism #8: support local independent businesses

    Citizens United supercharged the relationship between economic and political power. Now, money really can buy you policies. Or not, if you have none.

    The more money big corporations have, the more they can pay politicians to give them the policies they want - not the ones you need. Yes, they're doing this. Ever wonder why the last media privacy law we got was in the 1980s? Curious why Congress hasn't passed a single privacy law regarding your actions online? Social media sites (among others) have deep pockets and a vested interest in hoovering up your data with no rules to stop them. That's why.

    The less money big corporations have, the less they can use to buy shitty policies. This goes for everything from privacy to the environment to wage and labor laws.

    Supporting small local businesses, on the other hand, supports your community directly. Just one example: My cousin cuts my hair. When I pay her, I know that cash is going to feed her adorable kids, keep their house together, and restock her supplies so she can keep cutting hair. It's *not* going to a corporation that will buy a politician to deny me a right to access birth control or some equally creepy nonsense.

• Technology and Free Software

  • lusers on the system again, running crap that they don't understand

    So, my login jail appears to be working as planned and I LOVE IT.

    Sadly, only two out of several users realized that their coding agents (read: LLM TRASH) were running without their consent. I mean, I appreciate that they're honest about what happened and are now aware. The old gray beard attitude I have at the moment is that they'll be jailed again.

  • The G4 bulb

    Replaced an old halogen bulb with an Energizer S18747 LED. Turns out “G4” standardises the pin spacing but not the length of the unit, so the new bulb only barely fits in the space.

  • Fix for a Simple gcurl in Bash

    I’m sorry, but I made a copy-and-paste error in the script version I released yesterday, which didn’t show in my testing.

    I passed `-crlf` to `openssl s_client`, even though I have the `\r` already added in the `printf`, which lead to OpenSSL adding an additional `\r` to the request, effectively doubling the carriage return control character.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Introducing Scout, an iOS native Gemini client

      This was a side project I started in December of last year and I practically finished it, but due to a lot of other life circumstances had to pause efforts of publishing it. Really enjoyed building something I wanted to use every day, and it feels good to make it available for anyone else who wants to try it.