Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • A Year of Composting

    Last year I started a compost pile in our backyard. The reason was twofold: I wanted to create nutrient-rich soil for our garden, and I no longer wanted to buy yard bags to haul away the grass clippings from our lawn. We picked up four posts and a spool of chicken wire from the hardware store, sectioned off an area next to the treeline, and began pouring our bags of cut grass there.

    At first, the grass just sat there. The top layer would dry in the sun, and the interior would start to decompose, creating an awful smell. It was only later, and after adding some vegetable waste to the pile, that I learned about turning compost.

    I played with various timings to turn the pile and aerate the layers underneath. Initially, I would flip about once every two days, but I soon realized that that was much too often, and almost no heat was building up inside. I quickly moved to turning once a week and adding water. With a pile made almost entirely of grass, that was still a little too frequent. I now turn the pile about once every two weeks, or about three days after my next mow, whichever comes first.

  • the ink stash

    ok... i counted all the inks. quite a few of them are my partner's, mostly the blues (but they're not using them, either). still, we have them and if i can i'll try to use them up. this is going to be really embarrassing and humbling. don't come at me, i already know. i'm putting it out there in all my discomfort exactly so that i might think twice (or thrice or however many more times it takes) next time i have an idea to just get a little "harmless something". here they are, by size and fullness.

  • Jumping into space again 🌜

    The song also says "Now you can lift an elephant" which sounds foolish, but maybe in the same circumstances where you could jump into space, you could also lift an elephant?

• Technology and Free Software

  • Fucking Fedora 44, why?!? Holy shit, I experienced my first and almost completely failed Fedora upgrade since 2011!

    The issue was that X11 (fucking solid, why fix things that aren't broken?!?) was deprecated and removed from the Fedora Budgie Spin in version 44.

  • The Struggle

    Pope Leo XIII, in his Magnifica Humanitas, outlines the creeping threat we face as a species. We are in an era-changing epoch, where the world we've known in our lifetimes is on the cusp of dramatic transformation. This isn't hyperbole, though there is much of that around. This is a hard truth.

    We live in a deeply cynical and misanthropic age. Social media has created a culture of "terminally online" individuals who've lost touch with their fellow human beings. From "Happy Slapping" and online bullying, to trolling and rage baiting, we've raised a damaged generation.

  • A Response to Anthropic's Response to "Magnifica Humanitas"

    While I looked with interest at the release of Magnifica Humanitas, I found it an awfully mild document for my taste. However, Anthropic's response - written by co-founder Chris Olah - is worth a closer look.

    I won't pretend to be even-handed on this one, nor will I pretend it's my best work. I am opposed to LLMs and I believe the Roman Catholic Church as an institution lowers itself by seeking dialogue and common ground with those who are attacking human dignity in the pursuit of their own dangerous eschatological program.

    On that cheerful note, let's get this show on the road.

  • GTD overwhelm

    If I get back on the GTD wagon there’s a lesson I want to take with me and really hammer home.

    When I’m off GTD the bad thing that happens is that I get an idea for an essay or something and I have to go do it right away because there’s no “bookmark” for it so I get driven by the latest and loudest. Fun, but it happens at the expense of working on bigger projects and if I have more than one new idea at once that feels physically bad from the stress that I can’t “catch” them all.

  • My favourite moment from my favourite video game

    I'll try not to spoil too much of it but I will be spoiling one ending, which if you've played the game before, you may or may not recognize as the ending with the light show and fire escape.

    The Stanley Parable is kind of hard to explain as a game. It's a first person walking simulator where you explore an office building. A narrator tells the story as you explore. You can make decisions that follow the narrator's story, or you can resist it. The ways you interact with the narration shape the story into one of a whole bunch of different stories.

    In one of those stories where you defy the narrator several times, he tells you that he's trying to show you something beautiful. If then you finally follow his instructions, he takes you to an otherwise dark room where you can look out over a beautiful, abstract display of lights. The narrator tells you that the two of you can stay there forever, together, happy.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Crawlers on gemini

      Stack wrote about how annoying and potentially problematic crawlers can be. There's a discussion going on BBS, but I don't have an account there, so I'm just jotting down my thoughts here instead.