Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • morning write therapy

    A bit of self-reflection, write therapy about relationship and where I stand with it.

    I'm dubious about the freedom that I have. I don't like to use the word abusive relationship, but the relationship I had with my ex-wife left some stigma.

    I don't like to use the word abusive since I don't feel like she was doing the abuse. Maybe I was feeling the abuse that she received as a child? Maybe I was feeling the abuse from the culture? In any case I accepted that toxicity. I can suffer as long as the people I am with aren't suffering.

  • Kipple and Impermanence

    Philip K. Dick had a word for the useless stuff that accumulates around us: kipple. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, kipple seems to reproduce on its own until it crowds out everything else. I have always liked that word. Entropy is probably the more obvious term for the general tendency I am trying to describe, but entropy comes with a precise scientific meaning and encourages grand declarations about the nature of the universe. Kipple is closer to how I actually experience it.

    A surprising amount of daily life consists of pushing back against kipple. Dishes accumulate in the sink. Laundry moves from the hamper to the machine to a drawer and then back to the hamper. The floor gets dirty. The mail piles up. Food is bought, prepared, eaten, and replaced. None of this is surprising, and none of it is a problem that can be solved once and crossed off forever.

    My mind likes solving problems. I like getting things done, being productive, and moving on to whatever comes next. This makes me well suited to some kinds of work, but it also means that I am unusually aware of the queue. After I finish one thing, I tend to look forward at what still needs to happen rather than backward at what I accomplished.

    The frustrating part is not that I cleaned a room and the room somehow failed to remain clean. I do not expect that. It is the knowledge that cleaning it again will claim another portion of my limited time and energy. When I am tired, every recurring task represents time in which I cannot simply rest or do something more interesting. I know the task will end. I also know that another task will follow it.

  • so lightly

    lips touching so lightly
    it's almost not even a kiss at all
    yet it carries something so vast 
    the rising sun the next morning 
    won't be the same 
    but it will witness what comes next
    the timeline rocked out of its course
    it won't matter
    what comes next
    the world just shifted
    for the better
    

  • Chamboree

    I have spent the past week with 2 other adults who decided to take a group of 9 young people camping with 6000 or so other people for a week. You may think this mad but I had a lovely time.

    I was at Chamboree, a jamboree or large camp in Cheshire, England, UK. Near Knutsford for those who want a more precise location. It is towards the north with cities like Chester, Manchester and Liverpool near by. At the event, we had participants from as far away as Australia there. The camp is divided into small sub-camps which you get to live in. In my sub-camp, we had Austrian, Irish and Thai groups camping with us. Most Jamborees has themes as it makes decorating and planning activities easier. For this one, it was animals. As such, each sub-camp was named after a particular climate zone. Well, loosely. They were Amazon, Artic, Atlantic, Sahara and Savannah. Oh and the service team were in Everest. Yes, slightly odd choices going on there.

  • Peace lily

    Today I was thinking about a plant. Weird, right? I keep a lot of houseplants, have a number of favorites, and attach deep meaning to a few of them. Of these, my peace lily is perhaps the most meaningful, due to the circumstances around which I received it.

    In the late 2000's, my dear grandmother passed on from this world. She had a good life, but was quite sick and was debilitated and suffering in her final weeks. She struggled to breathe, and existed in a perpetual state of literal suffocating panic and anxiety. Life is fleeting and precious, but there are certain circumstances where I believe that death can be a mercy.

• Science

  • Magic Moments 5: Partial Solar Eclipse

    A few days ago a total solar eclipse presented itself to whoever was lucky enough to possibly notice it. While I have watched my share of partial solar eclipses[a,b], and while I did not expect much, I have to say that 90% coverage is quite amazing!

    What I did not anticipate is the funny fact, that my newfangled digital camera would be unable to focus on the sun through said filter --- a 4 inch circular thing. So the resulting image is a poor sight, but nonetheless the only picture I have of that fleeting moment.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Tutorial Mutt

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Hello, smol.pub!

      This is probably the first time I have felt boredom in a while, which I think is a good thing. It caused me to start writing my first post here, after all, despite having signed up a few days ago already.

      There's so much I want to talk about, but I probably need to do some kind of introduction first.

• Programming

  • The play that should not be named by its true name

    While Lady Macbeth has a famous blood scene, it is actually Macbeth who has the most lines that have at least one mention of blood. The long-tail distribution is probably not intentional, and appears a lot in nature, like how there are a lot of small fissures in rocks but only a few large ones, a few very big cities and a lot of small ones, etc.