New to me, that is. Two new thrift store books, $1/ea:
the life-changing magic of tidying up (2014), Marie Kondo and The Land Breakers (1964), John Ehle
Both are hardcover. My wife has the digital version of the Marie Kondo book, and tells me that the book itself suggests being given away, so it's not odd to see it at a thrift store. Seems like sound advice. It's a book about letting things go. Maybe it was secretly written by the League of Thrift Store Masters, as propaganda to replenish their shelves?
It's probably not a familiar word if you're an American, maybe more of a British/Canadian thing, but today I learned that "Tory" (as a nickname for Conservatives) is derived from the Irish tóraidhe; appropriately, "bandit".
On Saturday I went up to my parents' for a family get together with my dad's sister, my mom's sister, and my mom's aunt. I don't much care for my mom's side of the family and while I tried coming at them with an open mind and heart, it being a number of years since I'd last seen them, they proved to repeat the same negative traits that has pushed me away from them. My dad and his sister agreed so we ended up spending a lot of time together, hiding from my mom's half. One of the things I did to stay busy away from the family was prepping an old metal horse trough to be turned into a raised planter box. I had to drill a few holes in the bottom for drainage and load it, as well as a bucket of composted horse manure, into the back of my car. I unloaded it all as soon as I got home that night.
Yesterday I mentioned I was having audio issues with my Pixel. I never got it sorted out on the default Camera app, despite all the suggestions I found on reddit.
So I tried plan B: downloaded Open Camera from the Play Store, tried a few recordings on a few different instruments.
Just another ".tex" file that shows how to factorize some quintic polynomial.
But to have arrived at this non-take, I have had a couple of hot or not so hot takes.
I participated on Geminispace.org quite a bit. But my foremost reason to participate was because I agree with @skyjake in dog-fooding Gemini for issue tracking for Lagrange. So I had a snack.
Because I added my email address to Geminispace.org, I received notifications. I participated in more subspaces. The slow web got faster. Uneasily faster. But the gained value from staying in the loop had more upside than downside; collaboration increased. Still, there was the lingering feeling that I moved from a cozy zen retreat to the hustle and bustle of a metropolis. All those feelings still apply after a week.
Sometimes I miss the direct and immediate feedback of social media. Most times I’m happy to not hunting down notifications.
Sometimes I miss validation for something I wrote or created. Most times I’m happy with just expressing myself.
In any case, why should Gemini cater to only one of these groups and not the other? The protocol is simple for sure, but it's perfectly capable of serving the needs of both groups. Anyone regardless of their preferred communication style can enjoy the other benefits of Gemini, such as privacy, lack of bloated web technologies, no unsolicited ads, and being in control of the overall experience with their client selection, to name a few.
This is total speculation, but I feel like the long-form gemlog-preferring group is much smaller than the microbloggers. There are many reasons, but an important one is that serious long-form blogging is more like an art form in that takes dedication and focus, and these things are in short supply. Microblogging is something that many more people are able to partake in, enabling them to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that seems impactful. Here we should be very careful before making value judgements about which form of communication is "better": one may favor thoughtfulness, and the other immediacy and feedback loops, but both have their strengths and weaknesses.
The sourdough protostarter is not really bubbling, yet, and mostly smells of flour. I suspect the environment is more about bleach than yeast, a win from the War on Bacteria. There aren't any wheat fields visible, though there may be some off in somewhat walking distance range? I'm already doing the "leave the water in a jar for a day so it smells less like a swimming pool" thing.
[...]
Not sure why bread is still stuck on bubble sort, presumably someone would have invented a better method by now? Okay, that joke was a bit of a stretch. You did not need to hear any of this!
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
