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Manton Reece

www.manton.org — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:51:46 +0000

We have a special Election Day episode of Core Intuition today:Every Four Years.

Voting doneee

jollyanchorblog.bearblog.dev — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:37:05 +0000

**Voting doneee** We went out and voted, then went to our favorite sandwich place and got food, then got some coffee to eat and drink at home, much needed after getting up earlyyyyyy

Today’s Political Comment – News From ME

www.newsfromme.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:24:15 +0000

**Today's Political Comment** Remember the good ol' days when if someone running to be President of the United States said one thing that could be spun as a lie or one thing that suggested they were not all there mentally or one thing that someone could find disgusting, they lost massive support? I seem to recall that Howard Dean's march to the White House ended when he came on too strong in a victory speech… Well, at least he didn't simulate performing oral sex on his microphone. Sigh. Actually, I think Trump's behavior the last week or three will cost him some votes. Will it cost him enough? I dunno. I'm feeling good about tonight. Behind a paywall that most of you probably can't read,Josh Marshallmade a strong case that the Harris/Walz crew has run a nearly-flawless campaign. Everyone I've heard who has faulted it is someone who was never going to support that ticket anyway. Still, no matter who gets sworn in next January, I think we're going to spend the rest of our lives wondering and trying to explain to younger folks how Donald Trump had the support he has had. There are multiple reasons to be sure but I don't think any of them or all of them answer that question. The one thing Harris has said that I disagree with — and I understand why she's saying this — is that a victory for her will end the divisiveness in this country. No matter who wins, it'll still be a country where nearly half considers the rest enemies. Another sigh. So right now, I think Kamala's going to win but the only thing we can all be sure of is that Trump will claim victory and insist that every single thing that didn't go his way was rigged. Can you imagine playing poker with this guy?

Github Actions: multiple docker images

thiagowfx.github.io — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:05:22 +0000

**Github Actions: multiple docker images** Problem statement: Given a monorepo on Github with multiple docker images in it, write a github workflow to build and push all of them. Here is an abridged version of the resulting workflow. The images are listed one by one for fine-grained control purposes, but it would also be possible to glob them with a single command. A matrix strategy kicks off independent multiple build jobs all at once. Docs:https://github.com/docker/build-push-action

That Ain't Working

www.seekhifi.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:58:29 +0000

There is a strong argument that Money for Nothing by Dire Straits is the production standard for dynamic range and clarity. Money for Nothingby Dire Straits broke cultural ground as an MTV pioneer when it was released in 1985. That's fine. I'm more interested in the indulgent intro that lies somewhere betweenShine on You Crazy DiamondandOrinoco Flow.Featuring guest vocals by Sting, this build starts low and slow, simmers, and then boils over into a towering guitar riff ear worm for the ages. Songwriting and cultural impact aside (both of which are considerable), there is a strong argument to be made that this production isthestandard for dynamic range and clarity. Let's get this out of the way; it would be remiss not to mention this song says the slur "faggot"thricein its lyrics. This isn't a trigger warning–those don't work or at leastnot the way we think they do. Also, it seems quaint to even mention in an age where Eminem is playable cartoon avatar in Fortnite. I won't spend much time discussing it; plenty of others already have. This is an old song and an old controversy. "Money for Nothing" has been censored and re-released; altered and re-re-released; and uncensored and re-re-re-released. I prefer the original recording. In context, Dire Straits leading man Mark Knopfler, is obviously mocking the jealousy and homophobia of the song's fictional POV character. I'll leave it at that. I've linked the original version above. If you'd like a censored radio edit, it's here:Money for Nothing (Single Edit) [2022 Remaster]. Either version you choose to listen tosoundssublime. So much so that I contemplated not recommendingMoney for Nothing.It's a cliche choice when talking about high-fidelity audio. But I just have to. It's fabulous. Cliches are such for a reason, yes? Listening toMoney for Nothingplay on an original vinyl through a pair ofMcIntosh XR-19sI once restored remains one of my most singular musical experiences. (And I am not a big vinyl guy.) Fuzzy Les Paul guitar rips along over tight drum beats and synth warbles I could feel in my chest. The symbol splashes are shiny and bright, with the vocals nestled perfectly in the mix. You can listen to any of the parts at any time throughout the track. It's a simple song outside the intro, but sounds deep and wide like almost nothing else when played on a high end audio system. There's also the MTV of it all. Thecheesy early-CGI videowas groundbreaking and a cultural phenomenon at the time. I don't think it's aged well, but I'm sure it sold a lot of color TVs. From a songwriting perspective, I actually findMoney for Nothinga bit underwhelming. This is not a hot take. The avant-garde intro and eight-minute-plus track length are not justified by what is a by-the-numbers radio rock song. (Hello, radio edit.) However, the execution is genuinely flawless. The ceiling on how satisfying this record can sound is about as high as it gets: it simply does not run out of steam. Money for Nothingis a jam begging to be kicked out. Turn it up. Song: Money for NothingAlbum: Brothers in ArmsArtist:Dire StraitsGenre: RockYear: 1985Length: 8:26Composer:Mark KnopflerProducer:Mark Knopfler,Neil Dorfsman Thenumber one thingyou can do support me is share this with someone who might find it interesting. Forward it to a like-minded individual with the same excellent taste you have. A close second is becoming a premium member bysubscribing to one of my paid tiers. This keeps the site ad-free and let's me spend more time and money on content and perks for members.

Bald eagle near the Gros Ventre River, Grand Teton National Park. November, 2024.

www.allencompassingtrip.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Bald eagle near the Gros Ventre River, Grand Teton National Park. November, 2024. Published onNovember 5, 2024 Photographed with a Fujifilm X-T5 + XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR - 600 mm focal length - 1/50″ at f/8 - Bald Eagles - Wildlife - XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR

Monthly report: October 2024 | Jeremy Cherfas

www.jeremycherfas.net — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 14:42:00 +0000

**Monthly report: October 2024** Back to work (haha) with quite a lot of time spent catching up with all the many things I didn't keep up with in Ireland. And then all over again after a week in London. Decidedly a good month, with some splendid warm, bright, blue-sky days. - A week in London seeing my Mum and a great Van Gogh show - Restarted HIIT - Moved from Pinboard to Linkding; win. - Mending shirt collars with the sewing machine - Dentist, kinda sorta - Lots of visitors to town - Delivered a good webinar on biofortification - Getting a grip on subtitles in app for the podcast - Clean keyboard! Once again, being in a different city, even if for only a week, boosts the step count with no obvious distress. And getting back into HIIT was not as hard as I expected it to be. Made an executive decision not to start big bread bakes, and was glad of that, while domestic bakes got the starters going again. The kefir is slowly coming back to life too. - Reading: 15 - Steps (avge): 9349 - Podcasts: 22 (18 of themlogged). - In bed/asleep 9:02/8:00 - 7 Minutes: 8 days - Cycled: 4 days - Weight (avge): 87.9 - Naps: 5 Work for money went well, although I am still not entirely comfortable spouting forth on Zoom etc. Finished season six of Line of Duty and remebered to cancel my free two weeks with Acorn TV. The mystery remains: how did they get the rights when everything else they offer is of minimal interest (to me)? Six blog posts, not too shabby, even if two of them were regular features. Redesign of the podcast site is going too slowly, not least because I quite like the current version. The obstacle to customising it -- and the drive towards my own -- is the sheer difficulty of understanding what it is doing and bending it too my will. The sync problem, getting better with each spell away from home, but not perfect yet. Oh, and, a fair amount of existential dread. Promotion/marketing is hard.

Nessie Point and Counterpoint; Who Owns the ‘Facts’ on the Loch Ness Monster? — Tetrapod Zoology

tetzoo.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 14:37:28 +0000

**Nessie Point and Counterpoint; Who Owns the ‘Facts’ on the Loch Ness Monster?** Regular readers of this blog might be aware of my bookHunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths, initially published as an ebook in 2016 (Naish 2016) and appearing in hardcopy in 2017 (Naish 2017)… Caption:at left, cover of the2016 ebook versionofHunting Monsters, and – at right – the2017 hardcopy version. I really like both covers. Because the two works differ in minor ways and have different publication dates, I’m treating them here as separate publications. Hunting Monstersdiscusses hypotheses and cases relevant to six main subject areas: (1) the history, function, role and future of cryptozoology; (2) sea monsters; (3) lake monsters; (4) bigfoot and such; (5) mokele-mbembe and such; and (6) Australian cryptids. It’s mostly an exploration of a cultural, ‘post-cryptid’ view of cryptozoology. This posits that sightings of and encounters with monsters – while often or sometimesrepresenting genuine events of some sort– mostly stem from the creation and maintenance of cryptids as objects within the ‘cultural landscape’ inhabited by the experiencer. As I’ve always tried to make clear, I’m not in the least bit original in stating any of this, and the sociocultural theory I promote has its roots in the writings of several who went before me (e.g.,Binns 1983,2017,Meurger & Gagnon 1988,Loxton & Prothero 2013). Caption:noted books on mystery animal/monster research that are relevant to, or promote, the ‘post-cryptid’, sociocultural view of cryptozoology also endorsed inHunting Monsters. I read or consulted most of the books shown here prior to writingHunting Monsters, but not Samantha Hurn’sAnthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures(published 2017). I’m currently re-readingMeurger & Gagnon (1988)because I need better notes on it. Eight years after publication, I can say that the response toHunting Monstershas been mostly predictable: people with a sceptical or scientific approach to cryptozoologygenerallylike it and have said positive things about it, and people who want cryptids to be accepted as real, and dislike the critical approach employed by sceptics,mostlydislike it and have said how it represents a close-minded, blinkered, elitist mindset of the sort typical among nay-sayers. The former set of people are better at recording their thoughts than the latter, and it’s partly for that reason thatHunting Monstershas had a net positive reception, currently scoring 4.2 out of 5 at amazon. It’s hardly perfect, of course, and I accept that a good number of valid criticisms have been directed at it. Those are topics I’ll address at another time. Incidentally, the hardcopy version of the book (Naish 2017) is now out of print, and indeed hard to get and generally only sold at high price. The ebook version (Naish 2016) continues to sell well though. Caption:several Nessie models exist around the edges of Loch Ness. This green plesiosaur – presumably based specifically on an elasmosaurid (if you want to know about plesiosaur diversity and evolutionary history,see my 2023 bookAncient Sea Reptiles) – is on show at the Clansman Hotel in Bracla, on the loch’s north shore, north of Drumnadrochit. The sign near the model says DO NOT RIDE. Among those who’ve criticised the book is Loch Ness Monster advocate and independent researcher Roland Watson, author of several Nessie-themed books and the blogLoch Ness Monster. I’ve had reason to address Watson’s commentson previous occasionsand am not a fan of his approach, most of which revolves around the idea that (1) Nessie’s existence should be considered more plausible than the oppositeand(2) that Nessie sceptics can only be framed as biased, sloppy-thinking, pseudo-sceptical rejectionists. Back in 2016, Watson published a review ofHunting Monstersat his blog,and at amazon. Much of what he said was contestable or just factually wrong, and as a consequence I felt compelled to write a long response, which I also shared on amazon on August 21st 2016. However, I’ve recently discovered that it’s no longer there. Why, I have no idea, but there’s no trace of it. That bothers me because it was my fair right of reply,anda worthwhile contribution that has been cited in the literature (Binns 2017, p. 203). So, what I’ve done is dig it out and republish it here. While some of the text below does require a bit of background knowledge, I think that it’s mostly easy to follow, even if you haven’t read Watson’s original review. Nevertheless, the picture captions should help add context when that’s otherwise absent. Ok, here we go… Caption:here’s proof that my initial response to Watson’s review was published at amazon during August 2016. It’s a bit concerning that amazon then later removed it. Does the site routinely do that to comments written as responses to reviews? If so… yikes. In a comment written in response to his review of my bookHunting Monsters, Roland Watson “[wishes] that these comments [pertaining to the Loch Ness Monster] … would actually address the issues I raise than rather than cast general aspersions which target nothing expect [sic] the person”. Fair enough, challenge accepted. Let’s look in detail at Watson’s various claims… Claim number 1:Watson dislikes the contention that “the diversity of creatures described points more to human imagination than actual animals awaiting discovery” and argues that “Even though [witnesses] may have seen something large and alive, the finer the detail described, the greater the room for error”. Caption:Nessie proponents like Watson want us to accept that Nessie sightings represent the same one animal species, whereas what we actually have is a disparate mess of basically any and everything you could imagine… a fact more consistent with the idea that people are interpreting observations of all kinds of things as ‘the monster’. The variety of reported monsters is reflected in efforts to imagine Nessie as real. Is it a friendly, small-headed plesiosaur, a shaggy, humped quadruped, a rough-skinned horror with an undulating appendage, or a twin-humped, snorkel-headed animal with great diamond-shaped flippers? In reality, it is all of these things, and also none of them. Images: Darren Naish. Response:in promoting (via his blog and books) the view that the large number of Loch Ness Monster accounts might actually describe a genuine undiscovered large animal species, Watson is routinely guilty of both confirmation bias and a seeming inability to understand the principle of parsimony. InHunting MonstersI stated repeatedly how the diversity of Loch Ness Monster accounts makes it likely that diverse animals and phenomena have been witnessed, reported, interpreted and misinterpreted within the context of both a folkloric belief and sociocultural expectation that monsters might be seen. This is a clearly stated hypothesis noted several times in the book. How does it stand up to the alternative: that people are reporting an unknown species but failing to describe it consistently? When we combine this with the impressive lack of compelling evidence of any sort, the literalist interpretation has to be considered a failure. To argue otherwise does have a wilful desperation and a tinge of romanticism, so good luck with it. Claim number 2:Watson says that the proposal that the Spicer sighting was influenced by King Kong “is not a convincing theory”. Response:well, it’s not a “theory” for starters. Nevertheless, it remains an interesting possibility worth noting (the exact wording used inHunting Monstersis that “a case can also be made that the account was inspired by the release of King Kong” (Naish 2017, p. 86). In other words, this is put out there as an interesting possibility, and it remains so; not as a point that can be dismissed simply because it fails to accord with personal bias. Caption:it’s now a well-known idea that the amphibious, aggressive brontosaur of 1933’s King Kong might have been inspirational to the Spicers, and somehow affected their recalling and retelling of their Loch Ness encounter.Loxton & Prothero (2013)are among several authors who’ve discussed this proposal, and it would be wrong – in a review that discusses the evolution of ideas on the Loch Ness Monster – to not mention it. I was kinder inHunting Monstersthan I am to this concept today though, since there’s an argument (made by monster researcher Charles Paxton) that we don’t know for sure that the Spicers saw the movie prior to their sighting. Claim number 3:Watson says it’s a mistake to say that the Fordyce sighting is relevant to accounts of the early 1930s (to quote Watson: “that story was not made public until 1990 and had nothing to do with the mood "at the time"”). Response:Fordyce’s sighting apparently occurred in 1932, and it is thus fully justifiable to say that it is relevant to things “afoot at the loch at the time”. Having said that, I have modified the choice of wording for the hardcopy version of the book, a disclaiming clause (“though note that this report did not come to light until 1990”;Naish 2017, p. 89) now added. Caption:in July 1933, Mr and Mrs Spicer reportedly witnessed a large, unusual animal cross the road (General Wade’s Military Road, or the B852) adjacent to Loch Ness’s southern shore, between Dores and Inverfarigaig. It was said at times to have what looked like the head of a “lamb or small deer” neat its middle, a component that later morphed into a tail tip (in which case the body and tail were bent around to the side). Author Rupert Gould interviewed the Spicers, and eventually concluded that they’d seen a group of deer bounding quickly across the road. The interpretation of the event shown here comes from the third, 1976 edition of Tim Dinsdale’sLoch Ness Monster. Claim number 4:Watson regards it as “an example of exaggerated narrative” to say of the Spicer sighting “Over the years, the description became increasingly sensational. It started out as 2–2.5 m in length but gradually increased to 9m”. Watson goes on to say that it “is completely wrong” to refer to this as a “monster [story that grew] with the telling”, and quotes Gould’s quoting of Spicer’s justification of this increase in length. Response:Hunting Monstersstates that “Over the years, the description became increasingly sensational. It started out as 2-2.5 m in length but gradually increased to 9 m” (Naish 2017, p. 85). The fact that Mr Spicer explained to Gould – within the space of 10 months of the initial sighting – how an initial leap in size occurred as a consequence of his direct measuring of the road is said by Watson to be an “omitted detail”. He then objects to my implication that the monster “gradually” increased in size with retelling. I concede that my idea of the monster “gradually” increasing in size was inspired by Ronald Binns (“Their estimate of the monster’s size also changed dramatically. From being between six and eight feet in length it grew and grew as Spicer retold his story until it was twenty-five, even thirty feet long”;Binns 1983, pp. 90-91), and also by the fact that there are sources where Mr Spicer stated the monster to be 30 ft long, and even 40 ft and 50 ft long. In short, it remains true that the Spicer’s monster did increase in length with the retelling of the story, and did so in step with an increasingly sensational interpretation of the account. Couple this with Gould’s conclusion that “I think the Spicers saw a huddle of deer crossing the road”, and it again seems clear that a pro-monster interpretation of the sighting appears to be the problematic one. Caption:an artistically brilliant but very much hyper-sensationalized view of the Spicer sighting, now depicting their undulating, amorphous creature with a possible lamb-like head as a giant predatory plesiosaur. This is by the brilliant Gino D’Achille. Claim number 5:Watson claims – contraHunting Monsters– that the Hugh Gray and Peter O’Connor photos are not images of, respectively, a swan and an inverted kayak, and that he has ‘dismantled’ these proposals. Response:I leave others to judge whether the proposals endorsed in my book (that the Hugh Gray photo depicts a swan and the O’Connor photo depicts an inverted Tyne Prefect kayak) are reasonable and likely and serve as superior alternative explanations to Watson’s use of these images as depictions of an unknown giant animal or animals. Further details on why the swan and kayak interpretations should be supported are included within the book (Naish 2016,2017). The kayak hypothesis is discussed at length in Dick Raynor’s article ‘A Study of the Peter O'Connor photograph of the Loch Ness Monster’,available here. Caption:the Peter O’Connor Nessie photo of 1960 (one version of which is shown at upper left) is of very dubious provenance. I agree with Dick Raynor that it likely shows a specific kayak (Dick’s photo of that boat is at lower left). At right are illustrations from my discussion of the photo and how its ‘anatomy’ matches that of the kayak. Images: © Peter O’Connor;Dick Raynor; Darren Naish. Claim number 6:Watson opines, contra a suggestion inHunting Monsters, that the Fordyce sighting does not resemble a pony (not a “donkey”, as per Watson) carrying a deer, and – says Watson – it would be “Better to say nothing and take a neutral position”. Response:Watson might prefer it if the door were left as far open as possible as goes the proposed existence of large unknown animals at Loch Ness. Again he is, alas, all too keen to demonstrate his inability to adopt the principle of parsimony. The fact is, a pony carrying an antlered stag really does look suspiciously like the creature Fordyce reported. It might be difficult to find a photo that exactly matches what Fordyce described, but it is easy – based on the photos findable online – to imagine one, unless one is too biased, of course. Caption:the Fordyce ‘camel’ sighting is one of the weirdest Loch Ness Monster sightings. So: what to do? Should we just ignore it as potentially fictional (in which case… why not do the same with most or even all other accounts? That hardly seems right), or should we aim to rationalise it? At left is the drawing of the creature as reimagined for Mike Dash’sFortean Timesarticle of 1991 (Dash 1991); at right is an 1873 painting by Richard Ansdell showing the technique whereby a pony is used to carry a deceased stag. Watson used a dirty trick in deliberately saying “donkey” (instead of pony) throughout his discussion of this idea. Images: Dash (1991); The Cheltenham Trust and Cheltenham Borough Council (original here). Claim number 7:Watson argues that my “handling of the folklore of the Loch Ness Water Horse is unsatisfactory”, since I dismiss all pre-1933 accounts. Specifically, Watson notes that my dismissal of “Richard Franck's 17th century "floating island" at Loch Ness, as a man-made raft runs completely counter to what even Franck theorised about this strange object from 1658”. Response:I have read Watson’s book on his interpretation of pre-1933 accounts and found nothing more than credulity and confirmation bias, as mentioned above. As noted inHunting Monsters, my approach to the pre-1933 accounts is heavily inspired by Ulrich Magin’s 2001 article ‘Waves without wind and a floating island – historical accounts of the Loch Ness Monster’ (Fortean Studies7, 95-115). I would encourage those curious to read Magin’s article and see whether it makes a more convincing set of arguments than Watson’s pro-monster claims and book. Caption:views of Urquhart Castle as seen from the water. A few Nessie encounters have been reported from around the castle, some involving the creature supposedly crawling onto land. As you can see from these shots (taken in 2016), sufficient vegetation has grown up around the banks and the ruins to obscure them relative to how they looked in Nessie’s heyday (the 1930s, or the 60s and 70s, take your pick). Images: Darren Naish. Claim number 8:Watson ends his review with a series of bizarre and childish suggestions that I might be being “groomed” (his term) as “the successor” to noted and respected sceptical investigators Dick Raynor and Adrian Shine. To quote: “Perhaps Darren is seen as "The One", but in my view, once Dick and Adrian get out their slippers and pipe, Loch Ness scepticism will go down the plug hole”. Response:Firstly, it is an honour to be compared to these upstanding individuals who have done so much to carefully, thoroughly and diligently bring critical thinking and scientific analysis to the Loch Ness enigma. Secondly, there are weird and sinister overtones as goes the reference to ‘grooming’. Nevertheless, the opinion put forward here is nonsense: it implies that Raynor and/or Shine sought me out and wilfully modified my thoughts or intellectual approach for personal means. As is well documented in a paper trail that stretches back about 20 years (see my articles from the 1990s, published in cryptozoological periodicalAnimals & Men, my 2000 article ‘Where be monsters?’ inFortean Times132, my 2001 article ‘Sea serpents, seals and coelacanths: an attempt at a holistic approach to the identity of large aquatic cryptids’ inFortean Studies7, and other publications), I have followed a distinct individual pathway of cryptozoological investigation that has been evidence-led and sceptical for quite some time. Caption:nobody cares enough to find out (why would they?), but an interested person could chart the changing of my cryptozoology views over time. I started out as substantially more credulous than I was in 2016/2017, or am today. The images here show publications of mine dating to 1995, 1996, 2000 and 2001. For years now I have corresponded with Dick and Adrian and have found my views to match theirs. It is insulting and ridiculous to imply that there has been any effort on their part to influence or lead my own views and conclusions, and I put it that this proposal does the accuser no favours; in fact it indicates that he inhabits a worrying and idiosyncratic intellectual landscape. Thirdly and finally, there is no effort involving myself or anyone else to have me installed as “The One” when it comes to Loch Ness scepticism; as is obvious from everything we might glean about Loch Ness, the cryptozoological literature, and collective human knowledge in general, scepticism – if not rejection – of the Loch Ness Monster’s purported existence is the mainstream, widely accepted view for obvious reasons (these being the impressive lack of evidence and the unsatisfactory, clutching-at-straws nature of the arguments coming from LNM proponents). It is thus highly amusing to speak of “Loch Ness scepticism going down the plug hole”. Next you’ll be saying that the theory of evolution and the heliocentric model of the solar system are in danger too. Again, I thank the reviewer for reading my book and for taking time to encourage others to read it too. For previous TetZoo articles on the Loch Ness Monster, lake monsters, and cryptozoology more generally see… The Loch Ness monster seen on land, October 2009 Dear Telegraph: no, I did not say that about the Loch Ness monster, July 2011 Photos of the Loch Ness Monster, revisited, July 2013 My New BookHunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths, February 2016 Usborne’s All About Monsters, April 2019 A Review of Robert L. France’s Disentangled: Ethnozoology and Environmental Explanation of the Gloucester Sea Serpent, November 2019 f you enjoyed this article and want to assist me in what I do — and see behind-the-scenes stuff in development — please support me at patreon. Click anywhere on this text in bold. Binns, R. 1983.The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. Open Books, London. Binns, R. 2017.The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded. Zoilus Press. Dash, M. 1991. The camels are coming.Fortean Times58, 52-53. Loxton, D. & Prothero, D. R. 2013.Abominable Science!Columbia University Press, New York. Meurger, M. & Gagnon, C. 1988.Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Fortean Times. London. Naish, D. 2017.Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Triple Glazing in Sunny London (2012)

www.earth.org.uk — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 14:24:28 +0000

**Earth Notes:Triple Glazing in Sunny London (2012)** We tried to get triple glazing (AKA "triple-pane" windows or "3G" or "treble glazing", and eg in French/Spanish "triple vitrage/acristalamiento") sorted whensuper-insulating our living room. We did not get very far. Even the quotes were painful to get. This year (2012) we decided that too many of our double-glazed (2G) units are leaky and misted/blown and generally an eyesore. So we'd like to try changing out some or all of them for triple glazed (3G) units. An important step was to call the council (2012-07-02) to ensure that as long as we use a Part-P/FENSA installer that building control won't need to be involved. (Planning confirmed also that if we're being sensible they don't need to be involved.) Hats off again to RBK BC and Planners! Summary Questions and Answers Does triple-glazing work? Yes. Our house is more comfortable, needs less heat, is quieter, and looks better. Does triple-glazing have to be expensive? No. Some slightly better frames and an extra pane of glass need not add anything significant to cost once a manufacturing line is up and running. It is suggested that in some places where 3G is very common, 2G (double glazing) now requires a premium. Does triple-glazing eliminate condensation? Often. For our home we'd still need more ventilation (etc) for some areas to reduce humidity to eliminatecondensationon the coldest days. Should I upgrade my windows to triple-glazed soon? They should be late on your to-do list along with (say) adding solar panels. Both are good to do, but if you are interested in saving money or trimming your carbon footprint then there are almost certainly cheaper and more effective things that you could do first. Possible Energy and Carbon Savings This project is primarily driven by aesthetics as the misted windows are very annoying. Repeatedly trying to tackle the air leakage is also annoying. Clearly I'm also going to try for quite a lot of improvement given the expenditure of just getting fitters to turn up, thus the 3G. Technical bit: assuming that the existing 2G is ~2.8W/Km^2 and ~10m^2 and average temperate drop across the window is ~10°C (7°C external, 17°C internal) and given an average heating load across 6 months of ~4MWh (minimum) or ~900W then at most the windows could drop that by ~200W. But 100W or ~10% might be a more reasonable hope, so ~400kWh of gas or ~76kg CO2 per year saved. So that's about five times my previously declared 500kWh/year/£1000 carbon target for heat savings. It nicely illustrates why window replacement should generally low priority from a purely carbon-cutting point of view. For windows at the front (east) of the house, the windows' U-values will now be about as good as that of the walls they sit in, astonishingly. So drawing curtains to reduce heat loss will be of marginal value! In the aerogel dry-lined walls with U-values between ~0.21 and 0.3W/Km^2 the new windows will still be significantly worse than the walls. So drawing the thick/lined curtains at night will still be a useful exercise from a heat-loss perspective. 2012-07: Triple Is Available! 2012-07-05: Hurrah, our favourite localWarmlitenow does 3G: "With the addition of a glazing flipper and a thermal dam the window is Passivhaus Compliant. The 'U' value [for the complete window] is 0.8 W/m2K." 2012-07-09: Warmlite visited today to measure up to get us a quote. Warmlite would apparently source the 3G units fromWhitelineusing their new 70mm profile. From Whiteline's site: - Industry leading 6 chamber PVCu frames and sashes for optimum insulation - Structural PVCu, not heat conducting steel, with no need for thermal inserts - Argon filled cavities and warm edge spacer bars for greater insulation performance ... PlatinumNRG Triple Glazing far exceeds current Building Regulations on thermal efficiency and is Passivhaus Compliant. Cautions/Advice A suggestion from the [archive]GBF (jms452): A note of caution is that the cills are bog standard with three cavities - the outermost cavity essentially open to outside and that it seems standard practice is to just sit the window on it (not very airtight). Glad I was home to insist that we water mist and PU fill the inner cill cavities and that the cill is siliconed onto the window! If you get the fitter to cut the cills to length you can then fill the rear cavities and give them some time to set before trimming them back - otherwise you risk making a real mess. Silicone should go along the back very back of the cill to prevent drainage issues. You may also need to make a 'bespoke' long tube to fill the rear cill cavities with (two feet of hozepipe off-cut tightly over the end of the gun works well). Of course white line might do U=0.8 cills but I wouldn't count on it! There is also a contiga tape for airtightness around windows if you are going to town! (CONTEGA FC - see green building store) 2012-07-19: Got a quote in for £4220 (including fitting and VAT) and with the following to be inserted into the sale conditions: I'm paying a 25% deposit today, full survey is due 2012-08-02 (was going to be the 1st at noon but the Olympic Cycling Time Trials might mess up traffic!), install some time in September. The make up of the triple glazed units is as follows: External pane of 4mm Clear Float/12mm Argon gas-filled cavity/4mm Planitherm Total+ Clear Toughened Safety Glass/12mm Argon gas-filled cavity/4mm Planitherm Total+ clear inner pane. The spacer bar in between the panes of glass is a 'Swiss V' Warm-Edge bar. See theprofilec/o Warmlite; note the addition of the 'flipper' gasket and thermal insert. 2012-08-02: survey done today. I stressed issues of air leakage and thermal bridging. Existing reveals (including aerogel ones upstairs) will be left as-is, and resealed with good anti-fungal stuff. Hoping to have work done before Open House weekend in September so we can show new windows off to vistors! 2012-08-15: originally I wanted the living room replacement for the second patio door to be entirely one fixed light for an unobstructed view of the garden. I was told that that wasn't possible while achieving Passivhaus requiring thicker (6mm vs 4mm) glass and preventing use of a warm edge spacer. I was persuaded to have an openable window at the top (horizontal transom). That should in fact make it possible to externally ventilate the living room room without actually leaving a door ajar as we have had to until now. Warmlite called today to say that the bottom part cannot actually be done all in one piece for the same reasons, so have suggested a horizontal transom bar of ~70mm width at a height of ~800mm or a little less. I have urged them to make it as low as reasonably possible to minimise obstruction of the view when sitting on a chair/sofa. We do now have an install date in early September, in time for our SuperHome open weekend later in the month! 2012-09: Installation 2012-09-11:yesterday and today the windows were replaced, three windows at a time, upstairs first. 2012-09-12: it was ~8°C or cooler overnight and condensation on theoutsidethe rear windows upstrairs only, which is good. ~7°C has been the outside temperature below which condensation has typically formed inside those windows before (B3G!). We noticed that the child-safety locks are not that robust, and could be defeated by the kids with a little effort. So I had a word with them about safety and not standing on furniture near open windows, etc. Also, the locks aren't click-to-lock like our old ones, but actually need the key. A minor issue, but needs slightly different 'key management' algorithms! The internal cills are narrower than before due to the fatter window profile. In the bathroom we have removed the grotty wooden reveals and put in a temporary plastic reveal, lightly attached for easy removal. We can slip in insulated reveals to minimise condensation / heat loss. And we can consider a ventilation grille between bathroom and toilet so that the latter gets some of the fresh-air benefit of the MHRV. Anyhow, all done, and we're pleased with the look, especially in the living room, without the old fat vertical mullion. The sound-proofing of the new windows seems good too. 2012: First Two Months After 2012-09-13: a letter arrived from theBBA(not the British Bankers' Association, of LIBOR fame!) wanting to inspect the installation (presumably from a sample of installs). Inspection is booked for the 21st. (Finally happened on 2012-10-02!) 2012-09-22: there have been several nights now where external air temperature has been a degree C or so either side of the magic ~7°C at which condensation used to form inside the windows. Often some visible outside but none inside now! 2012-09-29: extensive dew/condensation on the outside of almost all windows and doors this morning (not noticeably on sheltered front door) and a tiny tiny bit of condensation in (bottom) corners inside in bedrooms. Lots of dew on cars and garden furniture also for example. So presumably quite humid last night before temperatures dropped to ~9°C. 2012-10-02: BBA ispection of behalf of FENSA finally happened;a couple of interesting laser/continuity gadgetswere used to check for presence and location of low-E coating and for glass spacing, and the triple-glazing and >40mm depth caused slight indigestion for one of them! 2012-10-04: dew/condensation on the outside of almost all windows at ~6am with outside air temperature ~7°C. Boy's room still reasonably warm at that time, which is good. 2012-10-07: ~5°C outside overnight and lots of dew at ~8am; a small amount of condensation inside on lower corners of kids' bedroom windows and double-glazed living room windows. None at all on triple-glazed living room windows for example. 2012-10-14: not much above freezing overnight (maybe ~2°C) and much dew evident on outside of most windows (though lowest porch iButton reading 5.5°C), with a tiny amount of condensation in bottom corners of several windows. The rest of the family was away, so that mainly represents 'standing' humidity in the house. Quite noticeable condensation on inside of rear 2G doors including bottom of flying mullion and other 'openable' frame parts: those will be the ones to watch for mould, etc. Interior temperatures dropped from ~18°C to ~16°C overnight. In the afternoon on the west of the house temperatures came back to ~18+°C with direct sunshine. 2012-11-12: some pictures showingthermal bridging through the framewith some condensation near the frame on the inside where the inner pane is coolest, and a lack of dew on the outside where that same flow of heat is keeping the external pane warmest. We're seeing more internal condensation than I'd like on very cold nights. But I know that we need to keep working on ventilation to keep RH down. 2012-11-24: we're continuing to see some internal condensation after cold nights. Though less than before I think. We'll need to see some really cold nights to make sure that we're not getting the huge quantities that we used to. I suspect that the volume of water condensed will be in proportion to the U-value / heat flow given the latent heat of evaporation that has to be removed. So, the occasional wipe-down of the windows will remain necessary. As will be working on keeping RH below 70%, which seems to be key. It seems very roughly to require outside temperatures below 7°C and internal RH over 70% to get significant internal condensation on the triple glazing. Unit Failures 2013-11-11: explosion 1 2013-11-11: rather alarmingly, in the middle of the night, for the two smallest 3G sealed units that we had fitted about a year ago, the outer panes of glass spontaneously shattered with a muted bang (midnight for the bathroom, 3am for the toilet). This would have been the coldest part of the night at ~3°C. I looked around for evidence of foul play (eg air-rifle pellets, teenagers prowling, other damage) but did not see any. And I can't imagine that it was a bat strike for example. The muted bang at 3am was followed by a series of quieter noises, which I assume were other cracks forming as stresses were relieved. Very odd. 2013-12-02: shattered windows replaced, seals/positioning on all windows inspected and adjusted as necessary. Thanks Warmlite! 2017-11-07: explosion 2 2017-11-07 evening: downstairs watching TV the family heard a loud noise. In the morning it turned out to be the outer pane (of the opening part of the window in the boy's bedroom) partly shattering. Theouter pane is cracked throughout, with sometiny flakes of glass visible in the outer cavity. Unremarkableexternal temperature of ~10°C, internal ~15°C. The inner panes and thus the window as a whole are still functional; we're just down to (good) double glazing for that part! 2017-11-13: the man from Warmlite has been here to look, helpful as always! 2017-12-04: the man from Warmlite replaced the sealed unit in about 10 minutes, no fuss! (See thefailed unitafter removal.) 2018-01-03: explosion 3 2018-01-03 ~01:55: Guess what? I was woken from sleep by a bang, which I thought was my computer screen exploding. Except that I now have a laptop, so that would be tricky... Our (master bedroom) side-opener outer pane had failed with much the same fracture pattern as the boy's room window. It's rainy and a bit windy,~10°Coutside (9.625°C in the porch, 9°C according to the BBC weather) ~18°C inside (18.25°C at the rad, and 16°C at the other end of the sill reported by a SmartThings sensor that I happen to have sitting there), so nothing dramatic thermally or otherwise. Are we suffering from aNickel Sulphide Inclusionsproblem? Not according to [archive]this Green Building Forumthread ("Ian1961"): Velux have had a well documented failure in some of their double glazed rooflight units with inner panes of float glass breaking. I believe the problem was caused by failure of the edge seals allowing the argon gas to escape resulting in changes in pressure that the float glass couldn't withstand. https://www.velux.co.uk/help-and-advice/product-pane-warning If your issue is not one of edge seal failure the other main suspect would be that the glass units were fitted too tight to the frames with not enough allowance for differential thermal movement between the glass and the frame. The problem won't be nickel sulphide inclusions as that only affects toughened glass. 2018-01-05: the man from Warmlite has been and measured up. (See thefailed unitstill in place.) 2018-01-12: Warmlite has been and replaced the failed unit in ~10 minutes. 2020-01-06: explosion 4 2020-01-06: the (side opener) kitchen window has shattered; we noticed ~07:45Z. The outer pane has failed. Outside temperature is ~7°C. 2020-01-16: Warmlite arrived at 08:30 to replace the unit. (We even salvaged our Ecotricity window sticker after ~8 years!) 2020-12-22: explosion 5 2020-12-22 17:10: the side opener in our girl's room has shattered while she was in the room. (I heard a thud from my room.) The outer pane has failed. Outside temperature is ~10°C, inside 19°C. Given tier-4 lockdown, Christmas and Brexit, this could take a while to fix... Amazingly I had a response to my email from Warmlite in 5 minutes, even though Warmlite is closed for Christmas, reopening 4th Jan. I sent over some photos of the affected window. 2023-02-08: explosion 6 At 08:30Z, standing in the kitchen, I heard a bang and saw some small things fall, as if a sparrowhawk had been at a pigeon. But it was the outer pane of the large fixed light in the master bedroom (front) window doing the explosion trick. There were following small noises as further stress was relieved. The temperature outside was somewhat below freezing and falling. I don't think that this is the coldest it has been lately however. Air pressure ~1037 hPa. Fairly bright sunshine. This window has always been visibly dished/bowed/concave in the right light, I think. The replacement cost has been quoted as £167: we are out of warranty. 2023-02-09: Warmlite was round to measure up the next morning, and will put an order in. 2023-02-23: Warmlite replaced the failed unit quickly and efficiently (~10 minutes). (Note that these 'explosions' are probably more accurately 'implosions'!) 2024-11-05: misted Recently it has become evident that the bathroom unit has partly failed because it has misted up and has some condensation in it. How to light the landing at night, with a partly self-recharging LED-based automatic nightlight: what could be better?

📍 Where Dreams Die in a Sea of Red

krueger.ink — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:53:00 +0000

**📍 Where Dreams Die in a Sea of Red** 11-05-2024 I was born, raised, and still live in Wisconsin, the state known for its cheese and beer. The state in which Packers football is second only to God. The state that shows its true color during an election year — deep, dark red — even when blue somehow wins out. My hometown of Manawa is a small, rural, opinionated place of 1,300 people. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and as a result, everyone knows everyone else’s business. If you made the Honor Roll, it was in the local paper. If you were caught at an underage drinking party, that was in the local paper, too. High school sports were a true spectacle, despite the teams sometimes being mediocre. If you weren’t into sports (God forbid), the Art Team at Little Wolf (now Manawa) High School was what mattered. Around the time I turned eight, the town decided to build a new, much bigger library, thanks to a donation from the richest family in town. To say I spent time there every day is not an exaggeration. Every day after school, I was there. Every day in the summer, I was there. When the library was open on Saturdays, I was there. Three of the librarians, including the director, became great friends as I grew older. They’re all retired now, but we still stop to chat whenever we see each other when I’m back in town. I owe a lot of who I am to those three ladies and that library. I learned things there that I’m still interested in today, and learning those things played a big role in helping me to see that culture mattered, everyone is equal, and open-mindedness is key to a good life. Manawa is located in Waupaca County, one of the reddest counties in the entire state. People were nosy and judgmental. Everyone owned guns. Everyone thought they were right and that their opinion was fact. In the 22 years since I left the town limits, none of these things have changed. In fact, they’ve gotten worse. Attending a four-year university isn’t encouraged, despite the high school allowing university representatives to come meet with interested students. Book bans have reared their ugly, ridiculous heads in the past ten years, but thankfully, the town librarians stood their ground. Guns are everywhere. When there are benefits or charity functions, raffle prizes always include guns. Gay people are tolerated, but most of us wait to come out until we’ve escaped the town. Over the years, a few African American families have come and gone, also tolerated but not made to feel overly welcomed. So many people I grew up with are still there. They either never left or moved back after college, if they went. There are people I spent years and years being friends with who now refuse to talk to me because I’ve come out. I’ve been threatened by one of my high school best friends for liking women. Everyone believes they know what’s right, what’s best, and what you should be doing with your life. Hatred lives a healthy life in Manawa. It’s a bleak place if you’re educated, open-minded, and welcoming. It crushes your soul and its people dance on the shards. During an election year such as this, the hatred and anger are amplified. Republican and fascist yard signs are everywhere, plain as day — up to and beyond the election, even if the candidate of choice loses the election. People are set in their ways, and should you try to have a civil conversation, you’re met with more anger, defensiveness, insults, and thinly-veiled threats. It’s a tough place to be. It’s painful to know I grew up there. It’s disappointing to see that so many people I love have never bothered to leave there. And what’s the most shocking to me is that nobody cares to educate themselves about anything. Those of us who have gone to college and left the area are the enemy. In Manawa, Wisconsin, ignorance truly is bliss.

blast-o-rama.

www.blast-o-rama.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:36:35 +0000

I appreciate that this is a good use of Live Activities on iOS, butGOOD LORD I COULD NOT WANT ANYTHING LESS THAN LIVE, ONGOING ELECTION NUMBERS STARING ME IN THE FACE EVERY TIME I LOOK AT MY PHONE Tuesday November 5, 2024

Jay Perry

www.jayperry.works — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:18:00 +0000

**Nightfall, chapter 3 is up!** Chapter 3of my new essay is up!The upside-down peopleconsiders the world from a bat’s point of view, and the ways our own point of view — so different from theirs — makes it easy for us to misunderstand them.

Voted

www.andrlik.org — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:44:11 +0000

If you need me for the rest of the day, I’ll likely be trying to stave off an election-related panic attack. In the meantime, if you’re a US citizen, please make sure to vote.1 Unless you’re a fascist, in which case, you don’t give a shit about democracy anyway.↩︎ Let’s face it. Things are bad right now. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s hard to be happy about anything at the moment, unless you’re, I don’t know, a bridge troll, I guess? You need something to take your mind off things for a bit so that you don’t spend your nights and weekends staring into the Void.1Sure, there are innumerable excellent podcasts about history, news, and politics that you could consume, and perhaps you should. But if you want to keep your sanity, you occasionally need some time away from them. The New York Times reports that a Seattle-based company has announced that they will be increasing the minimum wage for all of their employees to $70,000 per year. “The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. Swatting is the disturbing practice of calling in an anonymous police report in order to trigger a SWAT response to a person’s home. It’s been in the news more and more recently, with a number of prominent feminists in the tech industry being targeted in particular. In New Jersey, one legislator set out to try to do something about it, only to become a target himself.

Balance – various bits

variousbits.net — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:39:14 +0000

**Balance** There are many depressing things about this particular moment in history and there are many people writing about these depressing things and much more knowledgeable and eloquent ways than I would be able to. But I feel that as someone who owns a blog it is important to write something now about what is about to happen (tonight? tomorrow? several weeks hence? apparently,it depends…) in the US. Overall of course this doesn’t really make any difference to me, or to anyone else in my family, or street, or in Cornwall, or the SW, or really in England at all… – and that’s the thing to remember when attempting to retain some kind of sanity here. What’s happening Over There may well feel like a terrible car crash that you just can’t help looking at – (and I guess there may be meta changes to big things around the world like supply chain, Ukraine, etc if The Orange One gets in) – but ultimately life will roll on in the same way it’s rolled on for my last 52 years. And there’s really nothing that I – or you – or anyone else we knock about with – can do about it anyway. The Buddhist idea ofThe Second Arrowis pertinent here (namely, we can’t stop the pain of the first arrow [the US is a horror show] but we can create ways to be more mindful and manage the second [our – probably unfounded –worryabout the horror show]…) Nonetheless, there is something significant about today’s presidential election. On the one hand of course is the depressing fact that 50% of a country as apparently modern as America would consider this appalling orange parody of a human being to be fit for anything other than putting in a corner and laughing at. Even ignoring anything political (hard to do, I know) and looking at the personality, he is without doubt in my mind a truly damaged entity, someone devoid of any humanity, or meaning, or love. There seems to be no direction or morals, a figure who is actually fairly seriously mentally ill, entirely narcissistic, wholly self interested. In a way I’d probably have a bit more respect for him as a person (even though it’d make him infinitely more dangerous) if he actually had a purpose, a sense of direction, an ideology. But his ideology appears to be simply ME ME ME, which in any other universe would be sad for that individual, while in this one he is apparently being taken seriously as a presidential candidate …again. But – we have to acknowledge the fact that however much us leftiesjust don’t get it– there is something appealing about this. Yes, it’s a cult, yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “tear all the things down” and terribly hard to build, slowly and gradually on the long history of progress – but nonetheless it’s clear that Trump has something which appeals, and round about now 170 million people are popping a cross (is that how they do it in the US?) in a little box next to his name, truly believing that he’ll make their lives better (even thoughall the evidence: financial, social and otherwise points to the opposite being true…). Trump aside, perhaps the most depressing thing of all is the breakdown in discourse. There is apparently a complete inability of either side to see that nuance, subtlety, forgiveness and compassion are all necessary parts of a modern society. This is of course all about social media, but it’s also about the TV Personality approach to populist politics which has been largely created and built by Trump and his cohort. A political situation where you find yourself presiding over a country where 50% of people believe you are completely and utterly wrong about absolutely everything you do and 50% of people believe that you are completely and utterly right about everything you do is soobviously a disaster. The fact that Candidate 1 managed to squeeze themself over the line by 0.5 of a percent or whatever means – of course – that the truth about democracy is uncovered: ultimately it runs the risk of having 49.99% of people who are terribly sad about the current situation and 50.01% of people who are absolutely delighted. And in this scenario the truth is starkly highlighted – there is just no way to make any kind of democracy work when there is this deeply combative approach being taken by both sides. There is something similar going on in this country with our politics – it is blindingly obvious to literally anyone that we need to find more money in order to continue living in the comparative luxury that the lucky among us have become used to. In the UK we can say without doubt that: - lives are going on much longer than ever before, - this means more people need more healthcare and support, - all of this costs money. How refreshing would it be if the Tory and Labour parties both got together and acknowledged these facts before also acknowledging that in order for this lifestyle to continue, we need much more focus on equality – which pretty much leads itself to acknowledging that tax rises are inevitable? I digress. But the point is that in a functioning democracy you require a strong party in opposition – but you also have to acknowledge that these peopledo actually have some good ideas and strengthsand that working together is the only way you can get anything done. There is a whole other thread here that needs unpicking and I’ll do it in a longer post one day. But in brief: as a lifelong liberal lefty (LLL!) I have spent my life not giving a shit whether someone is black, brown, white, male, female, gay, undecided, disabled, whatever – but I’ve also always been able to actuallytalk about stuffthat is to do with these issues, and acknowledge thathere too there is nuance. It isn’t always good news to have mixed toilets, for example – and there are reasons for talking about why that is. Ditto, I have some considerable time for JK, because she makes some (note – not all) good points about females and feminism. Similarly, it also isn’t great to have entirely open borders. Call me a racist, TERF, whatever you like – but accepting that there are very real things to be talked about / concerned with here is true, and it’ll always be true, no matter how loud and hard those tiny minorities of X-dwellers might be shouting “QUICK! CANCEL THAT FUCKING FACIST!”. Science teaches us some things about how this works. Science is predicated on the fact that you only know what you know based oncurrent best knowledge– and that next week a new bit of research might turn your entire thesis upside down and prove you 100% wrong. The acceptance that this is a fact is the first step in a process – you enter into it knowing that you publish your work with the full knowledge that the whole point of publishing that work is that it exists for others to criticise, prove otherwise, maybe strengthen with further evidence or whatever. But you do this with a humble, human, “I am likely to be proved wrong one day” knowledge, rather than this rather breathless shouty “I KNOW I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG” approach that we seem to have fostered in our current dialogue. Nuance and intelligence is what is required here, not blind sweeping statements that Thing One Is Good and Thing Two Is Bad. Talking about these things and chewing through all the ideas on the table isthe only way to find consensusand consensus isthe only way to make progress. This goes for both the political right and the political left – somewhere in the middle is where we need to be to truly embrace any kind of acceptable future in this chaotic, crazy-assed world that we find ourselves in. Good luck out there, Kamala. Bring some sanity back – we need it.

that gradient reflects the centrality of a technology to the narrative – Velcro City Tourist Board

www.velcro-city.co.uk — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:32:37 +0000

**that gradient reflects the centrality of a technology to the narrative** Here’s Cory Doctorow taking a stab at the (always somewhat risky) business of defining science fiction, in the context of a plug for Neal Stephenson’s newest: Science fiction isn’t collection of tropes, nor is it a literary style, nor is it a marketing category. It canencompassall of these, but what sf really is, is anoutlook. At the core of sf is an approach to technology (and, sometimes, science): sf treats technology as a kind of crux that the rest of the tale revolves around. The Bechdel test invites us to notice that in most fiction, stories revolve around men – that it’s rare for two or more non-male characters to interact with one another, and if they do, that interaction is triggered by a man. The sftnal version of this would go something like this: “a story gets increasingly stfnal to the extent that interactions among characters either directly relate to a technology, or are triggered by the consequences of such a relation, or fears, plans or aspirations for same.” (Note that this implies that science fiction is a spectrum: things can be more or less science fictional, and that gradient reflects the centrality of a technology to the narrative.) Noting this here as a mainstreaming of a theory of sf first codified as an “evaporated genre” by the eternally affable Gary K Wolfe, which I myself have tended to bastardise by saying something along the lines of sf not being a thing that a textisoris not, but rather a thingin which a text may (or may not) partaketo a greater or lesser degree. (Of course, somewhat contra to Cory above, sf is also still very much a marketing category—which is why it’s a site of clashes over identity politics, because we’re still very much stuck in a paradigm where we think of ourselves as being defined by what we consume.) I would personally also prefer to come at the question in terms of the sociotechnical, having spent far too much time thinking about the problematics of an episteme that considers “technology” to be ontologically distinct from the social conditions of its design, production, use and disposal… but then Cory, gawd bless him, writes like a man whose aim is to make things simpler for the reader, rather than more complicated.

AMA - What advice would you give someone graduating from high school?

louplummer.lol — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:30:00 +0000

**AMA - What advice would you give someone graduating from high school?** 05 Nov, 2024 The question is fromBrandon-What advice would you give someone graduating from high school? This question is a cross between what it says and what I'd like a chance to do if I were 18 all over again. It would be cool to have nearly 60 years of accumulated knowledge crammed into an 18-year old head. Let's go. Yep, go to college All the people out there making noise about how college isn't for everyone and that becoming a plumber or joining the army are good solid alternatives, you know the ones I'm talking about, those people are anti-education conservatives who went to college themselves and who plan on sending their children. They are trying to cover for the inability or unwillingness to make education affordable to the masses like the social democracies in Europe do—the countries that aren't sending half their tax revenues to defense contractors. People who go to college make more money, have longer life expectancies, and are happier than the people who don't go. DO NOT JOIN THE MILITARY!!! I am a vet and I do not hate the military, but it is not a job program, nor is it safe if you happen to be female. One out of three people who enlist do not finish their service with an honorable discharge. The usual pattern for that segment of enlistees is a general discharge for some sort of misconduct, health issues, weight issues, or incompatibility with military life. For those who don't complete their enlistment, all of the wonderful benefits described by their recruiters are no longer attainable, including the educational benefits. Exercise and Eat Right Starting Now Don't wait until you get out of shape to start exercising. Make going for a walk or run and going to the gym a habit starting right now. Just get used to the idea that you need 30 minutes to an hour each day to take care of your body. I'm not telling you that you can't eat pizza. I'm saying don't eat a whole pizza. Also, if you never worry about your alcohol consumption, then you are doing it right. If you do worry about it, that's a very good sign that drinking is not right for you. Weed probably isn't a better alternative. You need to get used to getting high on life. Start Practicing Gratitude Every day for the rest of your life, take a minute and write down three things you are grateful for. Your list doesn't have to be deep and philosophical. Did you find a good parking space today? Write that down! Did someone treat you nicely today? Write it down! Make it a habit to be continually on the lookout for things to be grateful for. It will do more for your outlook on life than anything else I can think of. Vote Democrat The Republican Party is a front for the top 1% of Americans on the wealth scale. They've discovered things that fire up white people and made that what they pretend to represent, but what they are really about is maintaining a system in this country where the richest people get richer and the rest of us fight over the scraps. I'm not saying that the Democrats are perfect because they are not, but they do not preach white supremacy, the subjugation of women, and the perpetuation of the war machine above all other government functions like the Republicans do. Avoid Debt as Much as Possible Go to a state-supported school, preferably one that has reduced tuition. Start a habit of saving money from your very first paycheck. When you want something, start saving for it instead of borrowing money. There is a huge difference between what you need and what you want. Internalize that fact and let it guide your spending habits. You may want a fancy car, but what you need is reliable transportation. You may want a big screen TV in your dorm room, but all you need is the laptop you use for school. Miscellaneous Advice Use protection. Kids are great and I love mine, but unplanned pregnancies change your life. Wear sunscreen.Kurt Vonnegut was smart AF and he said that so I am going with it. Stay close to your family. If you've made it this far without too much trauma, that's awesome. Family is the best mutual aid society ever developed.Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇 - if (document.querySelector("body").classList.contains("post")) { function setContent(child) { switch (child["wm-property"]) { case "in-reply-to": return child.content?.text; case "like-of": return "liked this"; case "repost-of": return "reposted this"; default: return "interacted with this post in an unknown way"; } }

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A bit of a redesign

www.baldurbjarnason.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:06:00 +0000

**A bit of a redesign** - design Generally speaking, I don’t think redesigns or rebrands are constructive. Change tends to jazz up interest and rebrands and redesigns are no exceptions, but I’m strongly of the opinion that brands genuinely don’t matter that much – whatever positive associations a brand has comes from consistency – and if companies invested the same time and effort into actually serving their customers, they would see the same effect. But because we don’t exist in a multiverse, you can’t A/B test a rebranding or a identity redesign. So, this is not that. I’m not pushing a new design to rebrand or jazz up interest. The primary reason why I redesigned the site was simple: I hate Hugo. It is a pain in the ass. It’s fast but keeps breaking to such an extent that just the thought of updating the hugo binary is anxiety-inducing. Themainreason for the redesign is a switch toEleventywhich has been my preferred tool for making websites for a long while now. This change shouldhopefullymake me less hesitant to tweak and polish the site over time. I’ve been putting this switch off for a while – the basic theme design was mostly done last year – but I kept making excuses for putting it off: - I haven’t implemented any support for dark mode. Just add it later. - The design has a bunch of rough spots.Just fix it later. It’s already more polished than the old design. - I need to go over hundreds of posts in the archive to make sure they render properly. They’ll be fine. Check them out over time. - I’m afraid I’ll break something. That last part is a valid concern but, honestly, what can I break that the tech industry hasn’t already broken? Search traffic is gone. Twitter traffic is gone. LinkedIn penalises external links. Bluesky and Mastodon are a bit of a mess, but they mostly direct people to what’s linked, so if the new and popular posts look okay, they’ll be fine. Sure, you can always make it worse, but tech has already taken the “things that are likely to go wrong in a site redesign” and one by one just outright made those failure modes the default. Pushing a new design and new static site generator is also an effective method for distracting myself from all the other anxiety-inducing crap that’s happening with a bit of anxiety that’s marginally less harmful. In the process of switching the site to Eleventy I added a few morefeedsand added two new categories of posts: - Coding The notes category exists primarily to prevent off-topic posts from pushing on-topic essays down the list and make it easier for people who are primarily following the site for my coverage of tech, web, and software development to find those essays. Hopefully this will also alleviate some of my anxiety about publishing off-topic notes on my site. The coding category is an experiment. I haven’t had a place to jot down short coding notes online. I don’t know if this will be useful to me or others, but I’m going to try. I also imported all the essays fromthe newsletter archive. I haven’t changed their canonical location but this way you can find everything of note that I’ve written all in one place. I did remove the ConvertKit newsletter script. The form is supposed to work just as well without it and I figure less JS is a good thing. If newsletter signups drop off completely, then I won’t have to guess why, but hopefully that won’t happen. There’s a good chance I’ve broken something in this transition. Files that I forgot to copy over, URLs that have broken, or something that’s just outright broken. If you find an issue,let me know.

Lessons Learned at The Worst Firearms Training I've Ever Attended

swiftsilentdeadly.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 11:00:51 +0000

**Lessons Learned at The Worst Firearms Training Class I’ve Ever Attended** It finally happened: I attended a bad firearms training class. I don’t have the deepesttraining resume, but I have trained with quite a few national-level trainers. Though I once wrote a couple scathing reviews of alocal concealedcarry class, most of my classAARs are glowing; I love training and it’s not hard to make me happy. Here is what happened at the worst firearms training class I have ever attended. Full Disclosure: I paid out-of-pocket for this class. I hate to write a bad review, but the tipping point for this one was safety, which we’ll get to. In addition to at least one egregious safety violation, there was all around bad instructional methodology throughout. My purpose in writing this is to tease out some lessons-learned, rather than just complain.I have also tried to provide some good, real-world examples of instructors who do a great job in these areas. Before we get into it: one important note: I am not going to name this instructor here. I grappled with this decision, and reached out to a couple other, more experienced bloggers for their opinions, because I don’t want you to spend your money on him, but I also don’t want to fuel drama in the gun industry. If you think you may be attending one of his classes, contact me and I may confirm or deny the instructor’s name. I reserve the right to make a case-by-case decision on this, however. To the Firearms Instructors Reading This I’m not a firearms instructor. I don’t make my living teaching gun stuff (or teaching at all, anymore). I’m not on my high horse as an instructor claiming to be better than you at your job. But I have seen a good bit of firearms instruction. I am also representative of at least some portion of your student body, being a more-active-than-average attendee of firearms training. Take that for what it’s worth. However, I know that neither I nor the three friends with whom I attended this class will ever spend money with this particular instructor again. Additionally, if asked about this instructor I will discourage anyone from attending his classes. Some of the following examples may seem extreme. It may even seem as if I’m exaggerating or even making stuff up. I assure you, I am not. I vetted this through two fellow attendees to make sure I wasn’t overstating anything. The Worst Firearms Training I’ve Ever Attended First, the background. The class itself was a two-day pistol/carbine class. It cost $600 and was close to capacity. The range facility was fine, as was the classroom. The instructor isn’t among the normal collective of instructors I generally follow (The Rangemaster Mafia†) but he does have some name recognition. Looking at his website it is obvious he has a military background and is a very high-level competitor. Satisfied with this, I booked my spot. I thought just about all of the national-level, traveling trainers were solid, but was to be thoroughly disabused of this notion at this class. I attend a lot of training by myself, which is certainly useful, but it’s also fun to train with friends. For some reason the stars aligned and I was responsible for no fewer than four tickets sold to this class: mine, a local friend, an out-of-town friend, and his brother, the latter two who drove eight hours to attend. I had people on the line to commiserate with…but also the guilty knowledge that I roped them into spending time and money on a bad class. Lesson Learned for Students: Vet your classes, vet your instructors! In the future I will vet instructors more carefully. I will look closely at their training resumes, read reviews of their classes, and attempt to learn more about them through videos and public articles/videos. I will do much more due diligence about the classes I talk friends into attending. If I’d done some homework I would have found reviews calling this instructor’s classes “disorganized,” “stream-of-consciousness,” and “perhaps a bit freestyle.” Let’s look at what made this the worst firearms training I’ve ever attended. †I say that good-naturedly, of course, as I have had exceptionally good experiences with Rangemaster-trained instructors. I am also aRangemaster-certified instructorand I have already registered for Tom’sDefensive Shotgun Instructorclass in 2025. Poor Instructorship: Classroom The first morning began in the classroom. I’m not going to bash the instructor too much here. I don’t think he had planned to teach in the classroom, but some unforeseen circumstances conspired to force us to remain “cold” for an hour or so. Instead of utilizing the A/V system in the classroom, the instructor had his bullet points written out on a target. It was impossible for some students to see his handwritten lesson from the back of the room. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing topics out on a target if you are only teaching on the range where students can gather around. If your class does have a classroom block, however, use the best possible means to present it. I have anarticle on using Powerpointto help you in this endeavor. Most instructors use the classroom portion to make clear, upfront, what will be covered on the range. Very often I see a building-block approach of, “we’ll do A, which will let us do B, then we’ll incorporate C.” The instructor did have some catchy little phrases about his approach to training, yet I could discern no unified approach to his methodology. More often than not lesson points diverged into stories and anecdotes that did nothing to improve the students’ experience. The entire time just seemed like he was shooting from the hip. Lesson Learned: Develop a cohesive lesson plan and teach it. Don’t shoot from the hip. Don’t improvise your entire class. Have a clearly-defined way to train the points of performance that are important to your class. This seems like a small point, but it impacted the rest of the class, as we will see. Simon Golob had a very clearly-defined lesson plan in hisOn Demand Performanceclass that I took back in June. It’s not necessary to lay out the whole lesson-plan right up front, but Simon clearly built on each point of performance, culminating in demonstrable, quantifiable improvement from the students. This is ultimately why people pay tuition and travel to attend classes. Leaving the classroom and walking to the range I asked one of my friends what he thought. “I’m reserving judgment,” he said, but allowed that, “it doesn’t look too good.” My friend has also attended a lot of very expensive, very high-level training (he is still the real fucking deal, operationally speaking) and we were both on the same page. Time Management Time managementissues drive me crazy in a class. In a two-day class, 16-hour class, wasting an hour and forty minutes means wasting 10% of the student’s investment. I firmly believe you should give students the maximum amount of training value possible. Time management was a huge part of what made this class the worst firearms training I’ve ever attended. The general flow of the class, once we arrived on the range was this: the instructor would gather us into the middle of the line. He would talk for a while, then say, “Ok, go practice. Wait…one more thing.” Then he would talk, sometimes as long as forty-five minutes. Frequently these anecdotes were only tangentially related to the class. Lesson Learned: Minutes quickly add up to hours, which add up to significant lost training time. Additionally, students are only going to stay engaged for a few minutes of talk. Keep your anecdotes brief and relevant. Your students paid to get better, not hear about the time you hung out with Rob Leatham. Better yet, avoid them altogether! Stay on topic! Tom Givens is an absolute MASTER at time management. His classes are so refined that even his targets are chosen to give maximum value, while spending minimal time changing out targets. Drills are carefully selected and so smoothly run that just when you think you need to reload mags, relays would swap and you’d have a chance to reload. Givens’Protective Pistolcraft IDCis an excellent course, and one I’d highly recommend this instructor attend. Lesson Learned: More Time Management The second day of class was particularly bad. We were told we would be doing pistol for about an hour, then switching to carbine. The first drill of the day was a USPSA match-style stage. It took almost two hours to run students through two iterations each of this COF. The first iteration was scored, which I supposed provided some value. The second iteration was not scored, and was shot on a target that was badly shot-up. I question the value of this as relevant defensive training, where marksmanship is crucially important, not only to stop the threat, but to avoid hitting a non-threat. These two iterations put us at lunchtime with two magazines fired. I want to be clear that I don’t judge a class based on the number of rounds fired. However, I received no personalized instruction during this entire day. I made no improvement in my technique at all, and that is a metric for how I judge a class. This left only half a day for carbine. We did a couple of rifle drills, then the rest of the second day was spent doing three competition-like stages. There were no structured drills to improve on errors made during the execution of the stages. It seemed like a tremendous outlay of time to get to shoot three competition stages. Lesson Learned: Choose drills and exercises that give maximum training time and repetitions to all students. Running through match stages consumes a tremendous amount of time, but provides extremely little instruction. If you are going to teach a competition-focused class, choose drills that support this while still giving all students maximum return on their investment. Also market the class as Mike Seeklander did an superb job of teaching individual elements from stages in hisCompetition Handgun, which I took back in 2018. This maximized time and instructor attention, and gave students maximum time on the range. Everyone left feeling like they got something out of the class, and the class was specifically marketed as a competition-oriented class. Poor Instructorship: On the Range The instructor also had poor instructional style on the range. Here is a list of my grievances: Something that quickly became a pet peeve was the instructor’s tendency to coach over gunfire. He would walk up in the middle of a string of fire, and begin yelling into a student’s ear-muff. Despite multiple students asking him to repeat himself, he continued this style of coaching. I got nothing whatsoever from his coaching because I could not hear it. Lesson Learned: Do not attempt to coach over gunfire! Wait until shot strings have died down to begin coaching a student so your corrections can be heard and acted on. This is much easier to do if you are actually running the firing line, so all shooters are shooting at the same time, and all are not shooting at the same time. This has been the case in every other firearms class I have ever taken. This is much easier if you actually call strings of fire instead of just turning students loose to shoot, as we will see. Of my little group of four people, the instructor only coached two of us. Out of the four of us there were drastically varying levels of skill, training, and experience. Between me and my partner, I had a drastically higher level of skill, and my partner had difficulty performing some of the prescribed drills. However the instructor never once attempted to provide her with any individualized coaching. Even worse I’m not sure he even watched her shoot enough to notice that she wasn’t performing the drills correctly. Lesson Learned: Make sure all of your students get your time and attention where needed. This requires spending a few minutes observing each and every student to check for comprehension and progress, and providing coaching as needed. If you can’t help each and every student in your class apply the techniques you are teaching, you need an assistant instructor. The Haughtsdo a phenomenal job with this. Every student gets individual attention, tailored to his or her performance. They are able to do this because there are three instructors, all of whom know the curriculum and know how to coach, not just one guy trying to do it iall. The instructor would bring the line into the middle of the range and talk. And talk. And talk. He would then send us to the line with the instruction to “shoot a couple of magazines doingthat.” It is no exaggeration to say that by the time we were sent back to the line I had only a vague idea of what we were supposed to be doing. Secondly, the vague instructions lead to several minutes of sustained gunfire as a student would finish two magazines, then see other people shooting…then shoot a little more. This greatly exacerbated the problem of trying to coach over gunfire. Lesson Learned: Control your range! Actually run the range, don’t just say, “go shoot!” (which this instructor literally said). I have shot with a lot of big-name instructors. One thing all of them, without exception, do is provide clear guidelines on when to shoot and how much to shoot. I know, this sounds like “firing squad practice,” but I’ve also attendedJohn HearneandDustin Soloman‘s classes, where you shoot on a given visual stimulus and stop shooting when said stimulus goes away. This still lets you shoot (or not) as many rounds as possible without having a SPENDEX, and with built-in breaks for instructors to instruct. At this point, even without the safety issue I will discuss in the next section this class was bad. I certainly wasn’t learning anything, nor were the friends with whom I attended. But it was about to get so much worse. Safety The biggest complaint I have about the worst firearms training I’ve ever attended is safety. Never before in a firearms training class have I seen the muzzle of another student’s firearm. On the second afternoon, the instructor demonstrated one of the competition-style rifle stages. It required some shooting on the move. After several students had done a walk-through, the instructor abruptly stopped and demonstrated shooting on the move (SOTM). He then told students, “go back there and practice,” pointing to the uprange area. Meanwhile, he remained where he was and continued to watch students do walk-throughs. About this time I had to answer nature’s call. When I returned, I walked back onto the range at the extreme uprange end. I was walking back toward the 25-yard line where my gear was staged. Something caught my eye and I looked to my left; a student had his rifle raised and was advancing laterally across the range, in my direction, dry firing. I realized he was following the instructor’s directions and practicing SOTM. The range had not been secured and the instructor was not supervising this dry practice. Not only was he failing to provide feedback on technique, he was also not monitoring the range for safety. This incident occurred after some carbine live-fire, without a formal clearing of weapons in between, and it scared the shit out of me. I accept some responsibility for not checking my surroundings but again, I was in the UPRANGE area. No barriers, safety officers, or anything else were put in place to alert me that I was walking into a newly-designated downrange area. At this point I decided to go ahead and leave. The out-of-town half of my party stayed for the rest of the afternoon. My line partner and I packed up and left the worst firearms training I’ve ever attended. Lesson Learned: Maintain control of your range. Safety is everyone’s responsibility, but ultimately the safety of your students falls on YOU. If you separate groups of students (i.e. one doing walk-throughs and the other dry-practicing), both need to be supervised! Downrange areas need to be controlled, especially if they were previously safe, uprange areas (as Tom Givens points out, “don’t say ‘no one would be stupid enough to walk through there!’ because someone will prove you wrong.”). Safety rules need to be clear, unambiguous, and violations immediately corrected. Closing Thoughts on the Worse Firearms Training I’ve Ever Attended I sincerely hope this doesn’t just come across as a bitch-fest, or as me having an axe to grind with a particular instructor. I admit being a bit upset – I spent hard-earned money and didn’t get a single useful thing out of this class, which is really rare for me. Not only did I spend my money, but three other people spent money and time because I encouraged them to. Some of them may not ever attend firearms training again because of this bad experience. None of my group felt their time or money was well-spent. Believe me, that is a pretty terrible feeling. For the students out there, I hope this has given you a good reason to vet the background of your instructor before spending money on a class. There are just so many excellent instructors out there, you shouldn’t spend your money on a bad one! For you instructors, avoid these pitfalls. Don’t get complacent. Following best practices will give your students a good return on investment. Following good safety practices will literally save lives – maybe even your own.

Wales Weekend - thejaymo

www.thejaymo.net — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 10:53:27 +0000

**Wales Weekend** We went to Wales on Friday and spent the weekend away in a cottage in the middle of nowhere with some friends. I wasJUST SAYING that Weeknotes should be a Sunday thing, and here I am posting them on Tuesday! - Wales Weekend Wales Weekend It’s ok though. We went to Wales on Friday and spent the weekend away in a cottage in the middle of nowhere with some friends. Lots of beers, wine, hot tub, shared meals, long walks in the woods and on the beach. It was great. Had such a wonderful time, we got back yesterday afternoon, and by the time that dinner, washing and housework were sorted, I just went to bed instead of faffing with my blog. It was my first time visitingproperlyvisiting Wales (I went to Cardiff for a meeting once and didn’t see anything more than an industrial park and the train station). The landscape there is wild, like an alien Landcape so far removed from where I grew up. Walesreally isa different/foreign country. It’s also the first November in .. 10 years? That I haven’t doneNanowrimo. It feels a bit weird, but I’m happy to cruise though the month, I’ve got lots to do anyways without adding an extra 1600 words a day on top of everything else I’ve got going on into my life. I wrote a note about AI and LLM User Interfaces – the idea of ‘knowledge objects’ and using ꙮ symbol as a Machine Readable Markup to direct a models attention: when we drop a document—a PDF, say—into an LLM’s context window, the document has a kind of gravity. It pulls and pushes the model toward certain ideas contained in the text, reshaping its context landscape and responses based on the content. No show as I was away obviously! Only two more episodes left this year anyways, so lets eek season 13 out? - Another writing session on PROJECT FORK - Finessing language on a one pager for PROEJCT DIVE - Half day on PROJECT ENTRY will make it up at some point in November - New codename began – PROJECT COLLECT Tony Tran did‘Promptober‘last month. He was posting his results on social media, and in a Discord I’m in. You know,I’m allaboutdoing creative work with rhythm and consistency so it was cool to see Tony’s project unfold over the month.My favourite is the middle Tolktober line. The ‘ petertodd’ phenomenon — LessWrong It’s important to note that the ‘ petertodd’ phenomenon varies between GPT models[1],so it may be better thought of as a family of closely related phenomena. Here’s What the Fight For Your Attention Really Looks Like I was thinking about the gamification of our leisure time earlier this week while talking to a friend who’s an executive at an entertainment company lamenting that they didn’t have enough time to keep up with any trend over the last couple years let alone new ones Mordheim: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About GW Release Cycles and Love a 25 Year Old Game Despite it being basically out of stock for over 20 years, this isn’t some sort of retrospective. This game is alive and well, surviving in the dark corners of the hobby, its dense multi-story ruins furtively glimpsed in gaming clubs, Instagram posts and homes around the world. This game is still fed and nurtured by a surprisingly committed community who are still producing content for it, continuing to bolt on additional house rules, scenarios and factions to create some grim palimpsest homunculus of a game. GenAI Video as a New Form So, what are the “neumorphic” applications of GenAI video? “Fortnite” is more than a game. It’s the single most important influence on popular culture If you’ve spent the last year utterly confused by, well, everything in pop culture, chances are you just weren’t paying attention to where a significant chunk of it comes from now: “Fortnite” I finished readingPuppet: An Essay on Uncanny Lifeby Kenneth Gross this week. It’s a truly remarkable essay/book. Gross sees puppets as more than objects—they are lifeless but seem alive. They reflect our fears, our need for control, and our questions about identity. Puppets, in his view, bring out truths that actors and real people can’t quite express. YUP I burnt though Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker the “founder of modern management”. This short 2005 books seems like the UR book written for the emerging knowledge worker at the time. Started reading:Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our Worldby Kelly Clancy. A wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress Still on deck:Wisdom – Letters of St. Joseph the Hesychast, Puppets, Gods, Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan, Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing Infinite Icon – Paris Hilton What a weird age we live in. Katy Perry puts out an absolutely terrible widely panned album powered by the fumes of former pop glory, meanwhile Paris Hilton drops an album of super camp wall to wall Y2K era pop bangers. What is going on? A lot of folks in the Dark Forest chats are super mad that I like this album so much lol, but I don’t care. Maybe they should examine their own biases. I came out of Taylor Lorenz’s book Extremely Online with a big respect for Hilton surviving the early 00’s – basically inventing the influencer playbook. The character she played on Simple Life has become strong armour. Plus 20 years on we can see the infamous sex tape for what it actually was – spiteful revenge porn – we even have a word for it now. I think my fav song is probably the the late album track Stay Young. Also addition, the piano driven balled about having ADHD is a perfect sing along song but the main thing I want to share about the song is the music video. What the hell is going on? The future arrived here a couple of weeks ago and nobody noticed. Because that’s how the future always arrives. You don’t realise it’s here until you bump into it.

Thinking of the disaster in Valencia with urban planner's eyes - ][ Stefano Maffulli

www.maffulli.net — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 10:24:54 +0000

**Thinking of the disaster in Valencia with urban planner’s eyes** This post has a short recap and a useful map to see the changes in the riverbed and the new developments in the south of the city. How Valencia Turned A Crisis (And a River) Into a Transformative Park Satellite images of the recent disastershow that the center of town was largely spared from the flood, but the south suffered a massive devastation. I’d be interested in reading future studies and proposals to mitigate the risk of new floods

Back to Berlin

thebluemoment.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:58:29 +0000

**Back to Berlin** “A lot of people have died recently,” Otomo Yoshihide remarked to his Berlin audience on Sunday night, halfway through a set by his 16-piece Special Big Band. “This is for them.” The band’s marimba player, Aikawa Hitomi, began to trace out some quiet, limpid phrases, with a sound like pebbles dropping in a pond. One by one, her colleagues joined in. I don’t really know how to explain what was happening, whether or not it was a written composition or completely improvised, but each player added a layer of sadness to the piece until it gradually, and completely without ostentation, reached a critical mass of emotion. It was amazing. The non-specific nature of Yoshihide’s introduction allowed the listeners — and the musicians, I guess — to direct their mourning wherever they wished. And having created something so sombre and profound, Yoshihide didn’t take the bandleader’s easy option by then lifting the mood with one of the absurdly entertaining rave-ups in which his band specialises, and with which they would eventually send the audience home smiling fit to burst. Instead his accordionist, Okuchi Shunsuke, squeezed out the gentle melody of “Années de Solitude”, a graceful composition by the great Astor Piazzolla. Soon the lonely accordion was joined the baritone saxophone of Yoshida Nonoko, before the other horns entered in a rich arrangement ending with hymn-like cadences. After that, it was time to change the mood in a set that contained an unusually large proportion of the gamut of human emotions, from cheesy film and TV themes and a perky “I Say a Little Prayer” through a pretty version of Eric Dolphy’s “Something Sweet, Something Tender” and a suitably stirring reading of Charlie Haden’s “Song for Che”. The encore was a completely bonkers piece of Japanese pop music featuring the all-action singing and dancing of three of the group’s women — Hitomi, the electronics player Sachiko M and the saxophonist Inoue Nashie — with a kind of rap from Yoshihide. For the closing performance of the 2024 JazzFest Berlin, Yoshihide’s ensemble was the perfect choice. Twenty four hours after the Sun Ra Arkestra had occupied the same stage in their tinsel and cooking-foil Afrofuturist costumes, recessing from the stage one by one with a chanted recommendation for Outer Spaceways Incorporated, the men and women of the Japanese band came dressed like refugees from a Comme des Garçons sample sale. Were they from the West, Felliniesque would be one obvious way of describing their presentation. With two drummers, a tuba and a very emphatic bass guitarist, and with the leader’s guitar sometimes throwing in some of the noise elements for which he is well known, they made me think of what might happen if you merged the Willem Breuker Kollektiev with the Glitter Band, with Carla Bley providing the arrangements. One amusing thing they did in the up-tempo pieces was to have each member leap up to give cues and perhaps conduct a few bars before resuming their places: a kind of daisy-chain of instructions and cheer-leading. It made me think of something I’d seen that morning on stage at the Jazz Institut, where the festival’s Community Sunday, centred on the multicultural Moabit district of Berlin, began with a concert featuring children. While a young piano trio played, a group of kids, perhaps six to 10 years old, stood in front of them, giving the sort of signals — faster! slower! stop! start! — familiar from the techniques of conduction. It was a good game, everyone enjoyed it, and it made me wonder whether, a few decades ago, someone had tried something similar in Japan, laying the foundations for Otomo Yoshihide’s Special Big Band. Almost certainly not, but there was the same sense of play at work, as it were. And if you give that opportunity to a bunch of kids, there must be a chance that it will open up a world for some of them. The Moabit adventure continued with a mass walk through the streets, audience and musicians stopping off at various points for pop-up musical events. It ended in a church, where Alexander Hawkins played the organ and members of the Yoshihide band and the Swedish bassist Vilhelm Bromander’s Unfolding Orchestra took part, along with a young people’s choir and local musicians with various cultural backgrounds. The special project of Nadin Deventer, now seven years into her tenure as the festival’s artistic director, it proved to be a brilliant way to involve a community and its children, and deserves to become a permanent feature of an institution celebrating its 60th birthday. For me, other highlights of the four days included Joe McPhee reading his poetry with Decoy; the French pianist Sylvie Courvoisier’s new quartet, Poppy Seeds, featuring the vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Dan Weiss, playing compositions of great intricacy with superb deftness; and the trio of two British musicians, the pianist Kit Downes and the drummer Andrew Lisle, and the Berlin-based Argentinian tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia, entrancing a packed A-Trane with warm gusts of collective improvisation. In the main hall on Saturday night there was also a moving ovation for the pianist Joachim Kühn, who made a speech announcing that, at 80, this appearance with his current trio would be his last at the festival, having made his first in 1966, aged 22. A festival with an ending, then, in more than one sense, but also full of beginnings and new possibilities, just as the visionary jazz critic and impresario Joachim-Ernst Berendt envisaged 60 years ago when he persuaded the West German government that its slice of Berlin, marooned in the GDR, needed something with which to demonstrate a sense of vibrant modernity to the world, and that thing was jazz. In very different circumstances, it still is.

Monthly report: August 2024 | Jeremy Cherfas

www.jeremycherfas.net — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:52:00 +0000

**Monthly report: August 2024** Phew! What a scorcher! Seriously, August was hotter for longer than I can remember. Almost impossible to go for a walk at any reasonable hour, and although I managed a few early morning rides, they got pretty hot pretty fast too. Highlights of the month: - Faked new blogging thing -- Blaugust -- by recycling Our Daily Bread - Plants snagged in Puglia planted up and thriving - Mackup proved to be a bit of a disaster - Put new shifters on the Raleigh and rode - New mattress! More than 20 years on ... - One good day at the lake - Traditional, by now, supper and walk on the beach - Good art show of Carla Accredi at the Palazzo della Esposizione with a good lunch - 250 issues of Eat This Newsletter - Up to Tuscany for a successful painting show for Lucy Activities Very sedentary on account of the heat. Still a few good long bicycle rides on the roadster. - Walking with sticks: 0 - Reading: 19 - Steps (avge): 6713 - Podcasts: 11 (All of themlogged). - In bed/asleep 8:22/7:04 - 7 Minutes: 0 days - Cycled: 3 days - Weight (avge): 88.5 - Naps:28 - Walking with sticks: 0 - Reading: 22 - Steps (avge): 7473 - Podcasts: 11 (All of themlogged). - In bed/asleep 8:18/7:16 - 7 Minutes: 0 days - Cycled: 0 days - Weight (avge): N/A (no scales) - Naps:25 Stuff Done Got quite involved in some work for money that I can’t really talk about and that has been going quite well. Not that I enjoy online teaching, but still. Previous years are still onan archive page. Lots of posts, thanks to recycling Our Daily Bread, but that’s cheating, a bit. Redesign of ETP site stalled somewhat under the pressure of actually putting out the first episode of the new season and that paid work thing eating into free time. Niggles The lack of sync I alluded to last month has me thinking that what I really ought to move towards is a single computer, a laptop, plugged into a big old screen at home. Also, I need to figure out a longer ride for the roadster bicycle without just doubling back to do the cyclepath twice. Final remarks I really need to be more protective of my time and not take on paid work just because somebody nice asks me to do something interesting. Here’s the table

Testing latency to Azure datacenters around me | tabs ↹ over ␣ ␣ ␣ spaces by Jiří {x2} Činčura

www.tabsoverspaces.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:20:00 +0000

Testing latency to Azure datacenters around me 5 Nov 20242 minsAzure, Cloud, Network Purely out of curiosity I decided to test latencies to a fewAzure datacentersaround me. Specifically, Germany West Central (Frankfurt), Poland Central (Warsaw) and West Europe (Amsterdam). I wanted to test Azure DC in Austria as well, but it is not yet available. My (second level) ISP is peering in bothNIX.CZandPeering.cz(two biggest peering points here in Czech Republic) andMicrosoft (AS8075)is peering there as well (although the peering policies can change how the packets flow at the end). Once it is in Microsoft’s backbone network, we can only guess how the packets flow. For my test I created VNET with default configuration in each location and Debian VMs usingsize. I didn’t want to use only ICMP for the tests, but also TCP to better simulate “real” traffic. For that reason, I usedon both sides. The first test usedand the second test usedon the client side, while server used always default configuration. All tests used IPv4. Without further ado, here are the results (all numbers are averages). So, Germany West Central (Frankfurt) is clearly closest to me in terms of network latency. Not sure what I can do with this knowledge, but it will come handy at some point. Sadly it is also useless numbers because it can change at any time in the future. Finally for you (or rather your ISP), dear reader, the numbers will be different. But you can try i.e.Azure Speed Test 2.0to get some comparison between regions.

Singer Francisca Valenzuela on learning to call yourself an artist – The Creative Independent

thecreativeindependent.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Francisca Valenzuela Francisca Valenzuelais a Chilean-American singer, composer, writer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. She has released six studio albums under her own label Fantastic. In 2016, she founded the feminist festival Ruidosa, which she currently runs. The song “Déjalo Ir,” from her newest album,Adentro, is currently nominated for a Latin Grammy. **On learning to call yourself an artist** Back in your teenage years, you published your first books,Defenseless WatersandAbejorros: Madurar. At the time, did you have any expectations about what publishing those books would bring? Since I was a teenager I was obsessed with writing and being creative, the idea of having something published was success enough. It already felt so surreal that I think I had no expectations regarding the outcome or the experience. I was genuinely just in love with the process and open to new experiences.I had zero expectations, and I had no notion as to what a successful release or what a release even looked like. Everything was just a gift, and I did work hard.I mean, I did write everything. We edited everything. I illustrated one of the books. We had a book tour. I was performing music and reading throughout the summer, meeting writers, and going to workshops. I was committed to the process, and the environment in California and the Bay Area if you want to double-click, was so rich for writing and cultural stuff. So I felt inspired and really oblivious, doing whatever felt was exciting and a good opportunity. I was lucky to meet great people who guided me through the process. You started your writing practice with poetry. How was the process of transitioning to writing songs? It was pretty natural, but it was different. I always feel like a writer first, and I think words and storytelling are the most important thing. Then, in parallel when I began to write music, it didn’t have words originally. I was doing a lot of music, like jazz-inspired or more kind of contemporary kind of piano pieces. Eventually, it occurred to me to bring them together with more intention. I was always writing songs in parallel to poetry with the guitar more than the piano because I only knew three or four chords on the guitar versus the piano, which was a kind of methodic, classical upbringing. So it was interesting, because with the guitar, I would be playing three or four songs, and I’d write songs imitating other songs. So I’d write songs about love and sunsets and fantasy, and I remember I wrote a song about a lost sock. I lost one sock, and I had the other one. Where was the other one? I’d write all these songs, and then eventually it made sense to explore with more intention, the piano-songwriting aspect and the idea of making songs. Then, my approach was very poetic. It was very wordy, and I would imitate a lot of the songwriters that I loved. From Alanis Morissette to Leonard Cohen and Mariah Carey, to musicals. I was more attentive to rhythm and repetition. In poetry, I was very in love with the words and with the vocabulary and phonetics.So the silence of the page allows you to build in a certain way that a song doesn’t and vice versa.It was kind of an instinct and a natural transition. Looking back at your previous work, how do you feel about it? Is there a creative element that has particularly evolved since you started? There has been a very strong evolution in many aspects. On one hand,there’s an overall process of self-exploration and self-acceptance that helps with the creative process. Everyone creative, unless you are prodigious, struggles with who you are as an artist and who you are as a creative voice, and sometimes the only way through that process is just doing the stuff. On the other hand, there’s an overarching process of, through exploration and creation, coming to my own as an artist, and understanding who I am and my point of view.You see that exploration throughout the different stages, and in more concrete terms, there is an evolution in skills and ability.What I was able to do at the beginning of my career towards what I can do now is a natural progression of someone who’s dedicated time and effort consciously to a craft. Also, in the process of recognizing and accepting who you are and feeling more comfortable with that, I have been pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Whether it’s with songwriting, production, live shows, and vocally, musically, or performance-wise, there’s a lot of growth there, and I’ve been fortunate enough thateven through the darker or more difficult periods of creativity, for me, there’s always an essence and an identity that’s been there throughout, whether it’s in the lyrical aspect, the storytelling, or the song structure, overall, I’m okay with it. But looking back, there are certain times when you think, “Ah. If I had done differently, or if I only knew then what I know now, or maybe I listened to other people instead of listening to myself,” and all those things that kind of distract you from that creative connection that allows you to be the best version of the time of who you are as an artist or a creator. You have released six albums and have collaborated on many projects. Is there a specific time when you started calling yourself an artist? I am always curious as to people who create or are artists when that happens. I’m always asking everyone.There’s always been a feeling of self-knowing that there’s an artistic or just natural, crazy delirious impulse to create, create, create, create, and put yourself out there, and I think, as an adult, it was much harder to accept and give myself the right to call myself an artist.As a teenager, I felt very artistic, and I kind of knew I wanted to be an artist, but in my early 20s, through my work in music, people going off to college, and kind of professional choices, I did get confused. I was not allowing myself to feel like I was an artist, and it wasn’t until I would say the third album in, where I was like, “Yeah. No, no. This is for real. I think I am an artist.” I wonder if I had that strength and clarity before in the way I told myself the story.I wonder if it would’ve been different in my approach to certain things because there was this constant insecurity and uncertainty that made me feel like I was less of an artist or maybe I was less capable than I was.For most of my career, I was fully committed to it, but at the same time, there was a lot of self-doubt, and I didn’t think I had earned the name “an artist,” though I had been living a laborious, artistic life, working for many years. When I ask that question people have different answers on when and how it started. I fully agree. I left Chile and lived in LA for a while, and I think when I was in LA working, doing music for TV shows and doing all other stuff, that was a worker of the arts that wasn’t just for me, I had suddenly this city and new time and a new environment, I began to understand the life of an artist, like a serious, methodical life. It was interesting. I got interested in the creative process and met so many professionals in the arts. And I had never really met, or been exposed to any adults that were artists in any capacity before, so it was interesting when I finally began to meet people that were professionals in art and had careers, and it wasn’t just a hobby that had to end eventually and you had to put on a student’s tie or put on some sort of suit, some grown-up work. Have you always been this comfortable performing live? No. I think I always loved the idea of it, but I struggled, for sure. On the one hand, I would get very nervous. It’s very natural, very nervous and flustered, and had stage fright. In the beginning, it was very hard for me to focus. I’d be so just hyperventilated. To regulate my breathing and seeing, it took a while to get comfortable and not only get comfortable, but enjoy, feel pleasure, and understand that the closer I am to feeling good, the better show I can put on. When I started, it was nerve-racking. Then, I got really into it, because I was really into the fact that I had a live band with me, and it was a lot about performing and playing instruments, but I think it took me a second to feel confident and feel like I could trust myself and trust the show. The exposure to people also is really demanding, like the energy, and opening yourself up.It can be scary. It took me a while to get to that place, but I understood, that if there is a sense of empowerment and joy, you feel pleasure, and you feel like you’ve prepared enough to let go, something happens that makes sense, and you feel it on the stage, and I think you feel that people feel it, hearing, watching, or being there with you. You released your most recent albumAdentroafter a breakup, and the lyrics feel very personal. Did you have any hesitations about releasing something so different from your previous work? I did. It’s interesting because in previous albums I had been personal in one song maybe, here and there, but not in a body of work that was so cohesive and clear with a story. I don’t think, since the first album that came out, I had been so consistent in that openness and that emotional openness, whether it was through lyrics and through music because sometimes you also make songs that have to do with more the style of the song, the production of the song, and not necessarily the story. So I think that it’s probably the body of work that feels most raw and emotional, and I was hesitant at one point. It’s interesting, I’ve had hesitation through different eras of my music with songs. I’ve trained myself to be like, “This hesitation is not justified. It’s not a logical one. It’s more just a natural fear of exposing yourself.” And what I do in those moments is I trust who I’m collaborating with, so whether it’s producers that I’m working with, engineers, friends, my band, or someplace where I feel seen and I have some sort of reinforcement and some kind of point of reference. WithAdentro, my dear friend, Francisco, said, “It’s good to be embarrassed. If you’re embarrassed, it’s good.” You foundedRuidosa, a music festival and community platform focused on creating more equity, representation, and participation for women in Latin American music. With a recent edition at the Lincoln Center in New York and eight years since it started, what do you think has contributed to the festival’s sustainability? I think the idea of creating a space that celebrates female and dissonant voices, while addressing the issues they face, resonated with so many people that continuing the project made sense. Still, it hasn’t been easy, as managing a creative project on your own is difficult enough as it is. As an entrepreneur, it is difficult to make a sustainable project in a whole different area that is a collective kind of communal, independent thing that’s interdisciplinary and has a social objective.In practical terms, it operates under the label and the production company that I have as an artist, and that I’ve been lucky enough to build to a certain point. The fact that a space like this didn’t exist, and seeing the opportunity to create it, with the unique characteristics of Ruidosa, has allowed it to continue. I’ve been conscious of creating something that feels and makes sense in every aspect. It’s not only saying, “Yes, there’s a problem with representation and we need more women, and here’s a show with more women,” but it’s diverse women. And it’s about hearing the stories behind those projects and those journeys. And then it’s looking at the data. It’s also about looking at the opportunity to really empower and create community, not just sit there passively, but feel like you’re a part of something, so I think all that work, that focus, has allowed it to make it sustainable. You are so articulate and have a lot of clarity in how you describe yourself and your work. Do you think being able to communicate effectively is an important asset for artists? It’s not always easy to talk about yourself. The idea of being able to articulate a point of view that complements the art or the creation in itself was a learning curve for me because as an independent artist, I had to learn how to do everything, build all the teams, and make my point of view come across.Trying to learn how to see yourself in the environment you work…I think what happens when you create something or are passionate about building something is that you’re always looking from the inside of yourself. That’s the way you should be doing things because you want to listen to yourself, but there is a point in whatever project, where you go into the outside world, andit’s important to understand who you are or where you stand in that reality and where you want to get to.So it’s like these two brains. You have one of the artistic, flowing, safe, delicate, vulnerable sides, and then the more executive side. Once I understood that that was operating, I began to try to understand how to respect and strengthen, each side. In the beginning, I didn’t know how to do it. I think I also was really intense, and people would be like, “Oh my God. I can’t. I don’t know how to digest all this information that you’re giving me.” I was super on top of everything, and I was nervous all the time. It took me a while to understand how to navigate, not only music, but the extra-musical stuff and how to communicate, and also how to try to feel like I can present myself in a balanced way with what I want, who I know I am, what I’m capable of doing, and then also what’s really happening in the world outside of myself with who I am or what I’m making. It’s been a trial and error also, but I do think that, at a certain point, I did commit to the idea of being an artist, as we talked about before, and that included thinking about who I am as an artist and what that looks like. I would add tobelieve what you’re doing. To also trust your point of view and your authenticity.One of the things that would make me very nervous and would make me shut down before was that I didn’t feel like I was anybody else, right? I think we all go through that. I was like, “Well, I’m not this kind of artist. I don’t talk like this. I don’t dress like this. I don’t say these things,” and so I was all the time trying to kind of fit in.Once I owned, not only my identity, but the way I wanted to work, propose things, and be okay to pioneer or open things and do them differently, that was really liberating and also very effective. Are there any big creative revelations that have helped you in your creative practice? One discovery is thatthe closer you are to yourself, the better it will be.It sounds so selfish and kind of out of place because everything else in the world seems that it’s not that way, but it really is. As an artist, if you are the truest to yourself, the more powerful it can be. The other one is legitimizing in your mind, the love to live an artistic and creative life.I think it took me a minute to be like, “It’s okay that I’m different, maybe than my family, my classmates, I can choose and be an artistic person, live a poetic life, and choose those things,” and see what does that look like. Then, I can build that, and it sounds kind of maybe specific, but it’s really hard because you do feel like you have to go into a grind of a way things should be in your life or who you should be, so to clear that out and commit to living artistically or having a poetic life or your own rhythm or point of view.The last creative revelation is that there are no shortcuts to your own story. You have to just put in the work, and remember that, between you and the idea is the making of the idea, and that making can only get better the more you work at the idea. Believe in the craft from that sense and not be afraid to put in the work. Francisca Valenzuela recommends these poets: Cecilia Vicuña Alejandra Pizarnik Ada Limón Carolyn Forché Francisca Valenzuela singer, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, poet Jesus Soto Related to Singer Francisca Valenzuela on learning to call yourself an artist:

9 Notable Brazilian Guitar Pedal Brands

www.guitarpedalx.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

**9 Notable Brazilian Guitar Pedal Brands** Brazil is a fascinating guitar pedal marketplace - mostly inward looking, and mostly closed off from the rest of the world. I was the first European I believe to get Aura Amps and Tone Ink pedals shipped out of Brazil. Some of those brands have some experience of shipping up the landmass and into Central and North America, but little or nothing ventures across the waters in either direction. Andy Timmons has long favoured the GNI/ NIG Music OctaFuzz (as pictured left of centre) - where I’ve been trying to get my hand on one of those for many a year - they’re just not generally available for us Europeans, and very few of those Brazilian brands operate on Reverb.com or Ebay. I was initially going to do a deeper and wider post covering off as many of those numerous Brazilian Pedal Brands as I could uncover and decipher, but that seemed a slightly futile exercise - as those mostly aren’t bothered about shipping outside of Brazil or the American Continent - so of no real purpose for a large swathe of my readership. Several of the Brands I touched on for myCentral and South America coverage- are no longer operational - like Stomp Audio Labs for instance - their last Insta post is from many years ago now, also Onerr (Roland / Boss collaborator) seems to be long since defunked with quite a few others. So to find what was viable for this feature I spent several hours on the main Brazilian Online Marketplace -Mercado Livre. Where all the early pages are filled with Caline, Joyo, M-Vave, Nux, and various budget brands - alongside a Brazilian brand calledFuhrmannwhich seems to be a fairly mainstream Brazilian operator with seemingly mostly entry-level pedals. A little further on (Mercado Live) I came acrossKappa Electronics- where I was particularly taken by its extended range Fuzz takes - where I feature the Fuzzion - essentially a Zvex Fat Fuzz Factory take with searing Soviet Germanium Transistors and additional Big Muff style Tone Stack - super handy and well priced (R$490 / US $86). In trying to find further suitably viable and genuinely interesting and differentiated pedals I somewhat struggled, and decided to favour quality over quantity! So in the end I settled on just 9 notable brands - which are mostly making some attempt to break outside their boarders to a degree, while some have little discernible purpose in that direction - so I guess dealers are still very much needed to bridge some of those gaps. The most notable one for me in recent times isKrozz Devices- but that is in great part thanks to enterprising individuals likeSteve at FX Pedal Planet- Steve was very much the bridge I needed to connect with that brand and its founder Murilo. In fact most of the Brazilian pedal marketplace is somewhat opaque and hidden from the rest of the world - in fact as is the case with much of Japan’s pedal landscape, while more of those typically end up on retail resources that we can easily access. I believe Steve is making some moved next year to connect with more Brazilian and South American brands - to give them a wider outlet! There are three brands here that I have a genuine connection with - Victor atAura Amps, Murilo atKrozz Devices, and Emanuel atTone Inkand I definitely want to collaborate further with them. I’m always happy to collaborate with Brazilian brands - but for a lot of them the rest of the world doesn’t seem to matter too much most of the time. I guess they already have their hands full with local demand - which is understandable with Brazil’s 210 million plus population. And as mentioned there is a little spillover into neighbouring countries and into North America, but nothing notable really across the water. It’s important to touch onBeetronics FXandElectric Eye Audioalso - where those are former Brazilian brands - but their owners are now wholly operational within the USA - and therefore a lot more mainstream and easy to get hold of! I’ve been trying to connect with Beetronics’ Filipe for a while - but that door remains closed to me. I also used to have a decent relationship with Silas at Electric Eye - but he seems to be mostly ghosting me these day for whatever reason! So here follow 9 of the most notable Brazilian Brands that I have encountered to-date - and I’m glad to say most of those have appeared on this site already in some guise! As always - if you feel I’ve left something significant out - do let me know - and if any Brazilian brands are reading this and wish to be featured on GPX - for wider worldwide consideration - then do drop me a line! Here then are the featured brands - represented by selected ambassador pedals : - Aura Amps: Diamond Dual Rectifier style High Gain Distoriton - R$819.90 / US $156 - Deep Trip FX: Page Bender TB MKII - US $199 / R$949 - Fire Custom Shop: Carpe Diem Compact Classic - R$629 / US $110 - GNI / NIG Music: OctaFuzz - R$497 / US $87 - Kappa Electronics: Fuzzion - R$490 / US $86 - Krozz Devices: Airborn Flanger - US $249 - Monstro (Monster) Effects: Rotten Body Brutal / Extreme High Gain Distortion - $769 / US $133 - Tone Ink: Raven 3-Mode Brute and High Gain Distoriton - R$799 / US $140 - VTR Effects: Kailani Reverb - R$ 1299.99 / IS $228 And here below are the summary brand overviews : Aura Amps auraamps.com/pedais Aura Amps Range Overview : - Bella Overdrive (BluesBreaker) - Buddy Guy Dumble Drive - Clean Station (Compact 70's SilverFace style Amp) - Chainsaw Bass Distortion (HM-2 inspired?) - Crunch Master Crunch / Boost / 10th Anniversary Edition / Black (Classic Rock to High Gain coverage) - Diamond High Gain Distortion(MESA/Boogie Dual Rec) - Flow Time Analog Delay / Flow Time Gold Edition - French Press OTA style Compressor - Griffen Compact Klone - Jim Tonic Bella + Viking (BluesBreaker / JTM45 + 2204 JCM800) - Jimmy Vibe Uni-Vibe / Purple (Hendrix style) - Le Brown Sugar Overdrvei (Plexi + JCM800) - Signos Klon Klone / Black Series - St Booster (Strat styled) - St Fuzz (Strat styled) - Tl Overdrive (Tele styled) - Triple Bell Air 3 Overdrive Combo (Tube Short, Bella and Brown Sugar) - Tube Short Overdrive / Boost (TS808 + TS9 + Harmonic Boost) - Twin Trouble Victor Pradella Signature Screamer (TS808/TS9 x 2) - Viking Distortion (Classic MESA/Boogie) - White Sugar Overdrive/ Gold / Blue Pearl (Plexi + JCM800 + Additional Power Stage / Knob) Prices range from R$480 - R$1500 / $85 - $265 I've indicated my favourites in bold - which also happen to be the ones that I own - both excellent - and the Diamond is possibly the most authentic sounding Dual Rec out there - it could do with a little more output volume though. And interesting selection of understandably mostly gain pedals, and a lot of dual and even triple format pedals for this mainly Amp maker brand - as the name implies. The ambassador pedal here is the most authentic of Dual Rec takes! Deep Trip deeptripland.com/pedals-ok Deep Trip Range Overview : - BOG Fuzz / BOG Josh Smith Mod (Hendrix Band of Gypsys style Fuzz) - Capivara Classic Fuzz (near identical NKT275 style Fuzz Face) - Hellbender Fuzz / Hellbender Lead Mod(Heavy Tone Bender MKII) - Kryptone Fuzz (Vox Tone Bender) - Malacxêta Pepeu Gomes Signature Ovedrive / Distortionwith 3-Band EQ and Semi Parametric Mids - Muffasaur Fuzz(Triangle / Ram's Head Muff) - Onça-Pintada Booster/Drive/Fuzz (Uses 2 x MP26A Germanium Transistors) - Pagebender Fuzz(Tone Bender MKII) - Stormy Monday Vintage Overdrive / Sparkling Blue Edition (Unique Deep Trip circuit) - Sucuri Fuzz (Unique Biting Fuzz circuit) Prices range from $199 - $249 / R$949 - R$1299 I should really have gotten at least one of these in by now - they universally sound fantastic, slightly larger enclosures than I'm typically comfortable with but justified by extended-range controls. The most intriguing one for me here is the almost always out of stock Malacxêta, while the Tone Bender and Muff takes here also have plenty of appeal with their extended topologies - I've highlighted by favourites in bold. I should have included this pedal in my Distinct Enclosures features - as these are most definitely very distinctively obviously Deep Trip! I selected the Page Bender as the ambassador here as its artwork and overall look is particularly captivating! Fire Custom Shop firepedals.com/demos/ Fire Custom Shop Range Overview : - Ariete +30dB Clean Boost - Bobber Wah Pedal - Booster Equalizer (Clean Boost with EQ and Dirty Switch) - Buffer Mini - Carpe Diem Dual-Channel Plexi style Overdrive / Distortion - Carpe Diem Compact Clasic Plexi style Overdrive - Direct Box - Dust 'n' Tones High Gain Overdrive Compact - Fire Overdrive - HIghway A/B Box - Hill Billy Compact Personality Drive - Kronos Analog 940ms Delay - Little Boy Juninho Afram signature Drive / Distortion - Lone Wolf Dual Drive - Loop Trail 2-Loop Switcher - New Wave Analog Phaser - Power Bridge 9V Supply - Power Bridge 18V Supply - 9 / 18V - Power Bridge Pro Supply - 9 / 12 / 18V - Sirius Analog Chorus - Speaker Simulator T.A.S.T. - Spring Reverb Compact - Stoner Age Compact Classic Fuzz - Sweet Chilly Transparent but Spicy Overdrive - Sweet Chilly Compact - Time Trek Compact Delay with Analog Voicing - Trip 'n' Fuzz Extended Range Classic Fuzz - Ultimate High Gain Distortion Prices range from R$219 - R$1289 / $40 - $230Obviously the Carpe Diem Plexi is still the star of the show here - I've gone for the newer compact edition as my Ambassador pedal for this brand - while some will say it should be the original! Also of interest here as the Kronos Delay, Little Boy Juninho Afram Drive, Extended Range Trip 'n' Fuzz, and the 'Ultimate' High Gain Distortion. GNI / NIG Music gnimusic.com/pedais.asp GNI Music Range Overview : Pocket Compacts - PADT - Analog Tap Tempo Delay - PED - Easy Drive 'n Booster - PBB - Black Clean Volume Booster - PBL - Felipe Andreoli (Angra) Signature Bass Plus Overdrive - PCM - Pocket Compressor - PFT - Fuzz Tortion - PHD - Hot Drive - POC - Octa Fuzz - PPD - Fat Power Distortion Squares - MCS - Cacau Santos Signature Phaser & Ring Modulator - MKL - Kiko Loureiro (Megadeth) Signature Distortion Boutique Series / Super - ADSC - Analog Dual Chorus - AS1 - Amp Simulator - BSH - Bass Shaper Preamp - DD1 - Dual Drive - FZD - Multi Fuzz and Vintage Distortion - FZD 300 Ltd Andy Timmons Edition - Multi Fuzz and Vintage Distortion - LS1 - Path Finder Line Selector - PHF - Phaser & Flanger - SP1 - Shred Pro - XD1 - Xtreme Distortion Prices range from R$389 - R$1100 / $70 - $195 Some intriguing pedals across all the three ranges - there still seem to be some of the Andy Timmons FZD ones on MercadoLivre. The OctaFuzz still remains a priority for me - the Fuzz Tortion and Fat Power Distortion are also of interest, as it the Kiko Loureiro one, the big extremed range FZD types, and of course the XD1 Xtreme Distortion!Plenty to get excited about here! I feel these used to be in greater international distribution at some stage, but are now relatively few and far between outside of Brazil! Kappa Electronics kappaelectronics.mercadoshops.com.br Kappa Electronics Range Overview : - 5051 EVH style Distortion - Antagonist Overdrive (Morning Glory) - Doom High Gain Distortion (REVV G3) - Flow Muli-Modulator - Tremolo / Chorus / Flanger / Phaser / Filter / Vibrato - Fuzzion Germanium Fat Fuzz Factory with added Muff Tone Stack - Jammy Timmy / Jan Ray Overdrive - Joker All-Rounder Versatile Overdrive - Kremlin Extended Range Russian Muff with Boost - Krusher Marshall in a Box (Crunch Box / Riot / Angry Charlie) - Octpus CE-1 style Boost / Preamp - Optical Compressor - Orion Multi Reverb - Room / Spring / Hall / Plate / Shimmer / Echo - Pulse Preamp & IR Loader - Pumpkin JFET Orange Rockerverb style Distortion - Rectifier Dual Rec style High Gain Distortion - Royal Boost Drive Screamer Prices range from R$418 - R$1089 There are several intriguing Extended Range pedals within this collection - Overdrives, Fuzzes and Distortions. I've highlighted my favourites in bold. The Fuzzion Fat Fuzz Factory take with added Muff Tone Stack is my Ambassador pedal of choice here - it has fantastic searing Soviet NOS MП20 type Germanium Transistors onboard! Krozz Devices www.krozzdevices.com/collections/all Krozz Devices Range Overview : - Airborn Pscychedelic Analog Flanger - Albino Rhino Versatile Overdrive with Wild and Tame Voicings - Hammerhead VCA Compressor - Krakenheart Vibe Abyssal Analog Uni-Vibe Prices range from $209 - $269 I feel I already have two of the very best from this range - the Airborn and Krakenheart - both superb top tier pedals in their respective categories. I struggled to pick between those two as to which one was to be the Ambassador - it could have been either one on any given day. It's a little like my experience with my 2 PedalPal Overdrives - on some days I prefer the PAL987 and on other days I prefer the PAL800 - like my two Krozz Devices both are wholly superb. While the Airborn is an essential for my preferred EVH tone - so I kind of use the Flanger a little bit more these days - and that's therefore the current favourite! Monstro (Monster) Effects monstroeffects.com.br Monstro Effects Range Overview - '70 Germanium / '70 Silicon Fuzz (Fulltone) - 808 Overdrive Compact Screamer - Axis 69 Germanium Fuzz Face - Bat Amp '68 Preamp (Matamp) - Big Smurf One Knob Muff - BlackFace '65 (Fender) - Black Wizard High Gain Preamp (Black Sabbath / Laney Supergroup) - BlowerBox Bass / Low-End Drive - Chicago Gainster Overdrive (Clark Gainster) - Day Of The Titan High Headroom JFET Overdrive - Direct Drive KT66 style MIAB / Plexi - Dirty Rat LM308 Distortion with Germanium Diodes - Distortion +++ (MXR Distortion+ with all the Mods) - El Sagrado Low End Booster (Perfect for Bass) - Ezekiel 25:17 Bass Overdrive Preamp (D*A*M Ezekiel) - Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! 60's Garage Fuzz - FlyBuzz Fuzz (Jack White / TMH / Union Tube & Transistor Bumble Buzz) - FuzzRite Fuzz - FY2 Shin-Ei style Companion Fuzz - GloryDay Overdrive (JHS Morning Glory) - Golden Sun One Knob Sludge Fuzz - HW 100 Preamp (Hiwatt DR103) - Kashmir TubeSound Overdrive Screamer - Kraken Preamp (Krank / Krankenstein) - LD-1 Hot Bonx Buffer + Class A Line Driver - Mad Nitro High Gain Distortion (Punk / Hardcore / Metalcore) - MadMan Chris Wolstenholme style Bass Preamp - Mars Attacks! Clean Boost - Megalithium Super Saturator Fuzz - Stoner / Droner / Doomer - MetalBox Heavy Distortion (inspired by Disturbed, Godsmack, Korn, Lamb of God, Avenged Sevenfold) - Monga Transmorphous Fuzz - Obsessive Compulsive Driver Super V3 (Fulltone) - Orange Factor 72 Preamp (Orange OR120) - Parallel Logic Chaos Fuzz + Oscillation + Gate - Pinhead Brutal Fuzz (D*A*M Meathead Deluxe) - Plexi 800 MIAB Overdrive / Distortion - Psychor Seductive Chorus - Punch Bass Compressor - RangeMaster Germanium Treble Booster - Rectifier Preamp (MESA/Boogie Dual Rec) - RiffMaker Distortion (Queen inspired) - Ritual One Knob Fuzz (inspired by QOTSA and Electric Wizard) - Rocket Booster Plus Silicon Treble Booster / RangeMaster - Rotten Body Brutal / Extreme High Gain Distortion - Russian Muff - Scarlet Germanium Overdrive - Shooter Fuzz (Blackout Effectors Musket) - Shred Metal (Marshall Shred Master) - Sonic Noise Gate - Stereoid 2 Channel Split - Supercollider Fuzz / Fuzztortion (Earthbound Audio Supercollider) - SynthLab Analog Synth - Tone Bender MK 1.5 Germanium - Tone Bender MKII Germanium - Tuber One Knob Tube-style Overdrive - Tweed '57 Preamp (Fender) - UltraLord Stoner / Droner / Doom Fuzz - UniDrive Dirty Booster / Overdrive (Univox) - UP! Octave Up Pedal - Vintage 30 Loudspeaker Cab Simulator - Vox Repeat Percussion Tremolo - Warhead Preamp (Randall Warhead) - Watch The Fuzz (WTF) Wide Spectrum Overdrive / Fuzz-Drive / Fuzz Prices range from R$319 - R$789 / $56 - $138 63 Pedals in All! What a prolific pedal maker - surely one of the most prolific in the world! Such a wide range coverage for gain pedals in particular - so much to intrigue here. Certainly you can suffer a little bit of option paralysis - but there's actually not much duplication here at all - for some pedals you get One Knob, Compact and Extended varieties - but that is a relative rarity.It was hard to pick out an Ambassador pedal for this vast range - but I ended up on the Rotten Body Xtreme Distortion - it sounds great, and something about that name really tickled me. My favourites are indicated in bold as usual! Tone Ink toneink.com.br/produtos/ Tone Ink Range Overview - Clear Active Bass Preamp - Cold Shot Clear Overdrive- 808 / Klon / Morning Glory / Fender Twin Reverb / Marshall JTM45 / Dumble ODS (also Blackout Edition) - CSS Clear Solid State Peamp - Face Breaker Germanium Classic Fuzz- Face / Bender (also Blackout Edition) - Gambit Mutant Booster Clean Boost- MXR Microamp / TS808 / Timmy / KOT / DOD250 - Head Captro DI Box - Line Pumper Preamp / Booster / Buffer / DI - Rage Master NKT275 style Treble Booster- Jimmy Page / Brian May / Eric Clapton / Cream - Raven Brute & High Gain Distortion- MB Dual Rec / Bogner Ecstasy Red / Peavey 5150 - Red Briton MIAB Distortion- BluesBreaker / Guv'nor / Angry Charlie (also Blackout Edition) - Rotten Classic Rat Distortion- OCD / 1981 DRV / Rat 2 - Tone Creamer Booster & Preamp- Xotic RC / BluesBreaker / KOT (also Blackout Edition) Prices Range from R$699 - R$867 / $123 - $152 I only have the Raven to-date - which I totally love - it needs to be run at 18V though for maximum impact! - great sounding high gain pedal. I always wanted to do more with this range / brand, and since Emanuel loved my Raven review - I thought there would be more collaborations - but it hasn't quite happened yet. I already said at the start that I wanted all those Extended Range Classic Editions - Cold Shot, Face Breaker, Raven, Red Briton and Tone Creamer as was back then, and we have additional pedals now including the Rotten - Rat style circuit.Great looking pedals with smart functions. I've loved this brand from first encounter and would love to add more of these to my Reference Collection - they are the perfect form factor for my preferences! VTR Effects vtreffects.com.br/loja/ VTR Effects Range Overview : - Kailani Reverb- Spring / Hall / Plate / Room / Cathedral / Lo-Fi / Shimmer / Dive / Ephemeral / Expand / Divided / Infinity / Mod - Loki Modulation - Chorus / Harmochorus / Flanger / Phaser / Tremolo / Harmwave - Helios Analog Overdrive with Advanced Digital Features, including Preset - Narciso Delay- Digital / Analog / Tape / Overnotes / D-Space / Resonant / Dual / Reverse / Tap3 - Tokamak 9V Multiples Power Supply - 10 Outputs, 500mA / 7, and 3 x Isolated 500mA Prices range from R$855 - R$1299,99 / $150 - $228 A Sasha Ivantic demo put me onto these. Mostly digital formats here - which are continuously updated - so there will be even better versions in a month or two!. Currently the Kailani Reverb looks the most interesting - and has the most flavours - so that's my Ambassador Pedal Pick here. A lot of these are somewhat reminiscent of the more compact GFI System line - but with more algorithms onboard here! 2022 Best New Distortion Pedals of the Year 2022 Best of the Best Guitar Pedals of the Year 2022 November Pedal-Chain Update - Episode XI - Looper Trooper 2022 October Pedal-Chain Update - Episode X - Another Lost in the Post Edition! 9 of the Best Matamp Style Pedals Andy Timmons Pedalboard Dynamics and Essential Tone Components Aura Amps Diamond High Gain Distortion is about the most authentic Dual Rectifier in pedal format you can get - with 3 flavours of Rectification onboard Aura Amps White Sugar Drive / Distortion turns out to be a really smart and great sounding secret 3-Channel MIAB Pedal Best of Central and South American Guitar Pedals and Pedal Builders Brazil's Tone Ink Makes a Quintet of Highly Compelling Extended Range Overdrive, Fuzz and Distortion Pedals End of Year Pedal-Chain Update - Final Formation - Class of 2022 Full Metal Racket! - 32 of the Best Compact High Gain Metal Distortion Pedals - 2024 Ultimate Selection Krozz Devices' Airborn Analog Psychedelic Flanger beautifully combines Highest Fidelity Components with smart extended range delivery Krozz Devices' Krakenheart V2 Abyssal Uni-Vibe delivers next level output shaping to match its expansive depth of flavour Krozz Devices re-tools its original flagship pedal - the highly unique and expansively deeply textured Krakenheart Uni/Vibe Tone Ink's Raven Brute & High Gain Distortion Pedal is a Killer Compact Triple Threat!

Why does testing take so long?

testandanalysis.home.blog — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 07:26:10 +0000

**Why does testing take so long?** Sometimes testers are asked ‘why does testing take so long?’ The question should not make testers feel defensive. We should always be looking to improve our test process. Testers can use a technique from Toyota to answer the question and improve our process. Testers want their testing to flow easily from one task to the next, whether exploratory testing or test automation. Testers don’t want to be delayed or held up but sometimes, something causes delays. It could be that configuring the automation environment is fiddly, or it could be that getting an answer on how a piece of functionality should work holds up your testing or it could be something else. The problems holding up your testing are problems and you want to remove so that your testing can flow smoothly. Removing the problem that is slowing testing the most should be where to start because it will have the biggest impact. To help you choose which problem you should work on removing first you could use the Lean metaphor of rocks slowing the flow of a river.Taiicho Ohnoat Toyota wanted to “focus the process improvement efforts”[1] at Toyota because they would have the biggest effect on improving the flow of work. He used the size of rocks in a river as a metaphor to enable him to find the biggest problem to remove: “rocks are the problems disturbing the flow. There are many rocks at the bottom of the river and it takes time and effort to remove them. The question is which rocks are important to remove. The answer is given by reducing the water level; those rocks which emerge above the water are the ones that should be removed.”[1] Testers want the process of testing to flow smoothly. Testing can be viewed as a flowing river, and the problems that are slowing the flow of testing can be viewed as the rocks that are slowing the river’s flow. If testing is viewed in this way the ‘rocks’ are the problems that are causing testing to take so long. The ‘rocks’ that are slowing testing should be identified. An experiment can be conducted, as Ohno suggested, in which the amount of testing is reduced so to see which problems are affecting the flow of testing. Once identified, the problems can be analysed to find the largest ‘rock’ which ‘emerges above the water’. Toyota used theFive Why’sto identify the root causes of problems that were slowing the flow of work.[1] The testers may not have the authority to make the changes required to remove the largest rock which is slowing the flow of testing. Management should help the testers plan how to remove the largest ‘rock’ so that testing flows more smoothly and does not take so long. The largest ‘rock’ can then be removed and testing will flow more smoothly. I am using this approach to reduce the time taken to run automated test packs by analysing the tests to find the ‘rocks’ slowing them down. I am looking for the largest ‘rock’ so that it can be removed. Testers should find the problems that slow testing and focus improvement efforts on removing the largest problem. I’d like to thank the Profound Book Club for introducing me toStanding on the shoulders of Giantsby Eli Goldratt. [1]Standing on the shoulders of Giantsby Eli Goldratt (2006, p6)

Gift of 9th Army items to 'Through Their Eyes' exhibition - Paratrooper.be

www.paratrooper.be — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 07:00:00 +0000

**Gift of 9th Army items to ‘Through Their Eyes’ exhibition** Last weekend, I visited Valkenburg to hand over a gift of 9th Army secret maps and documents to the curator of theexhibition ‘Through Their Eyes’.I first visited the exhibit at Museum Valkenburg at the end of September. It is really well put together, with many large-size period photographs on the walls and artifacts from collectors in the area. I bought this 9th Army lot 15 years ago, because it was from the area where I grew up. But it has remained in a box, as it didn’t really fit with the rest of my collection. After talking to David Loozen, the curator of the exhibition, I decided to offer the items on permanent loan. Hopefully, this exhibition will become permanent, for everyone to enjoy and learn from. The items came from the 9th Army surgeon. As a member of General Simpson’s staff, he must have been on the circulation list of all these official documents and maps. The documents mostly cover logistics and operational issues and many South Limburg towns are mentioned in them. The 9th stayed in Limburg from October 1944 – March 1945. Other American troops remained in South Limburg until August 1945, and as a result, the region became the most ‘Americanized’ part of the country so their impact on the local community was strong (more on US Embassy website). Do visit this exhibition in Valkenburg! And while you are at it, I recommend you swing by thenew visitor center / museum at the Margraten American Cemetery. It’s nearby. I will add a post about this shortly.

● The Chain | wood•life•studio

www.woodlifestudio.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 06:01:00 +0000

**● The Chain** No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.– Frederick Douglass SJ ✔️__________ National election day in the United States isNovember 5, 2024

The Kindle Paperwhite and Nintendo 3DS | Neil Macy

www.neilmacy.co.uk — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 06:00:00 +0000

**The Kindle Paperwhite and Nintendo 3DS** I usually love the latest gadgets, but I’ve started keeping two older devices beside my bed, and using them frequently over the last few weeks. My Amazon Kindle Paperwhite from 2015, and my Nintendo 3DS (technically New 3DS XL, but that's a ridiculous mouthful of a name) from 2014. (Yes, 2014-15 is old now...) I've been reading on my iPhone a lot in the last year or so, mostly due to the necessity of doing things one-handed while dealing with sleeping children. For the same reason, I haven't really played many games other than iPhone games for a few years. Now that I've got that bit more freedom to use both of my hands during my leisure time, I can consider other options. Reading The Kindle is a nice way to read a book. My Paperwhite is showing its age, in that it's pretty unresponsive now when I open it up and when I browse my library, so it takes ages to actually let me start reading. But once I do start reading, it's smooth, and it's really relaxing not to have notifications pop up. It's great not to have the draw of "oh I'll just pop out and check RSS/Mastodon". And it's more comfortable to have the bigger screen to read on, so that I'm not constantly turning pages. Overall, it just feels like a better way to read a book than my phone does. Funny, that. Gaming I love my Nintendo Switch, but I still find it a bit big to use in bed or to carry around. And the games I want to play on it, like Tears of the Kingdom, are big games that I feel like I want to play on the big TV to fully experience. That’s not an option often enough for me to get into the games properly. So instead, I've been trying out my 3DS again, and it's a great device for sitting in bed, on the couch, or commuting. It's small, it's portable, and it has some really good games. Right now, I'm finally playing through The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for the first time, which I bought on the 3DS store years ago. After that, I'm probably going to play through Pokemon Yellow again, which I also bought years ago and have just left sitting on the 3DS that whole time. Pokemon games are great for jumping in and out of on mobile platforms. And I'm browsing eBay and Vinted to find other games that I didn't play at the time (e.g. I never played Super Mario 3D Land or Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire), and having fun doing it. I'm excited to play games again, thanks to a 10 year old console that was never that big a hit in the first place. Gadgets don't stop being good just because something new was released. Take another look at what you've got sitting around in drawers, you might find something useful or fun. Published on 5 November 2024

fluffy

tumblr.beesbuzz.biz — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:15:43 +0000

smitethestate: “ayeforscotland: “Voters in Iowa have the opportunity to do something very funny here. ”

#3725: Moon Knight

thefigureinquestion.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

**#3725: Moon Knight** MOON KNIGHT “After a near-fatal encounter at an ancient Egyptian temple, mercenary Marc Spector agrees to become the Earthly Avatar for the deity Khonshu” Hey, you guys, guess what I’m reviewing today! That’s right, it’s Moooooooooooooooooooooooooon Kniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight! Gotta do the long, drawn out Moon Knight bit. It’s one of my signature things. Of course, it was a more distinctive thing when there weren’t so many fricking Moon Knight figures, but who am I to complain about Moon Knight figures? Just not the right guy, I tell ya. And this way, I’m never too far away from another Moon Knight review, and isn’t that just the world we all want to live in? Well, it’s certainly the world *I* want to live in. Moon Knight is Figure 1 in the Blackheart Series ofMarvel Legends. As I touched on in my Bloodstorm review, this assortment is Fan Channel, and is themed “Strange Tales.” Moon Knight’s connection to the theme is still a little loose, but closer than Bloodstorm’s, I feel, and it’s another chance to get a “name” in the set. We’ve gotten a variety of Moon Knight looks inLegendsin the last few years, but this one aims for a different one; he’s based on Moon Knight’s look from the short-livedFist of Khonshuseries from ’85….well, mostly. I’ll get to that. It’s only a slight tweak to his classic look, but it’s a design that’s not gotten theLegendstreatment yet (though a slight variation of it showed up in Toy Biz’s 10-inch line in the ’90s). It’s also one of his three skins fromUltimate Alliance(meaning we just need his “Ultimate” costume to wrap that up; your move, Hasbro). The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 34 points of articulation. He uses the adjusted version of the 2099 body with the pinless elbows and knees, which is a little more sleek and clean. He’s using the same masked head (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it), and the lower legs from the classic Moon Knight, but gets a new cape, gauntlets, and belt. The cape’s not drastically different from the original piece, but it sits a little better on the body and no longer drags atthe feet, which are both plusses. The gauntlets and belt are based on the more ornate pieces from theFist of Khonshuseries, and are quite nicely done, and accurate to the source material. He’s got very minimal paint work, but what’s present really works, and it’s all pretty crisp and clean. He’s got the traditional moon crescent logo, rather than the Ankh that he initially had with this design, meaning he’s really using the West Coast Avengers variant of the look, which is just fine by me. Moon Knight is packed with two pairs of hands (the gripping and fists from his 2017 release), a large crescent blade, three smaller ones, Gambit’s staff in white, which are all re-used from prior releases. He also gets a new Ankh (which is the only of the additionalFist of Khonshuweapons we get), as well as the head to the Blackheart Build-A-Figure. It’s a new Moon Knight, so obviously there was no chance of me passing this one up. Honestly, it’s a look I’m happy to get, since he has it during the his WCA tenure, and that served as my earliest exposure to the character. It’s a solid figure; it takes what works from prior Moon Knights, and improves and adds the new costume elements, making it a solid update that’s not making the earlier figures redundant. Hey, do you wanna own a thing from this review? Well, if it’s the Moon Knight, that’s too bad, because he’s mine and you can’t take him. But, if you’re in the market for Blackheart’s head, or perhaps some other items from the official Figure in Question collection (TM), check out myeBay page. Or, you know, don’t, I guess. It’s your time. Who am I to account for it?

📹 Twenty Four Years

so.axodys.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:55:00 +0000

Welcome New Visitors – 5 Nov. 2024 Edition – Tim Boucher

www.timboucher.ca — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:42:17 +0000

Time to post an updated welcome note, as I expect there may be a few new visitors from a podcast I’ll appear on in short order (details to follow on that). - If you’re new here, I recommend diving into myAbout pageand following whatever trails pique your interest. - My AI-assisted bookscan be seen here. The most recent ones are at the top. - Check out myprior welcome notefrom the end of August of this year for more in-depth links to explore. Lots of details there I won’t rehash again here. - A set of blog posts from mid-October aboutusing AI within a creative/artistic contextmake for a nice summation of my recent thinking and work. - I’ve written in the past (2023 especially) about the intersection of art, copyright & generative AI in this submission to the US & Canadian copyright offices’ public consultation, reproducedhere on Berkeley Law. - I’ve also been getting into building low-tech “human-powered” robots and drawing machines, which you can see someexamples of and thinking around here, where I am trying to get to the bottom of what it means to be a “real artist” exercising the creative spark/modicum of creativity (and required for copyrightability) versus merely executing purely mechanical processes. That’s already a lot of links for anyone curious enough to dive in. Enjoy! (Image created with Dalle) - Entity Class: Without Providers - Distributed story structure - Why I filed a GDPR complaint against Midjourney - Glyph assigment - Arche (Greek Philosophy)

Chris's Wiki :: blog/linux/LibvirtVMsReturnToLastState

utcc.utoronto.ca — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:13:00 +0000

A rough equivalent to "return to last power state" for libvirt virtual machines Physical machines can generally be set in their BIOS so that if power is lost and then comes back, the machine returns to its previous state (either powered on or powered off).The actual mechanics of this are complicated(also), but the idealized version is easily understood and convenient. These days I have a revolving collection of libvirt based virtual machines running on a virtualization host that I periodically reboot due to things like kernel updates, and for a while I have quietly wished for some sort of similar libvirt setting for its virtual machines. It turns out that this setting exists, sort of, in the form of thelibvirt-guestssystemd service. If enabled, it can be set to restart all guests that were running when the system was shut down, regardless of whether or not they're set to auto-start on boot (none of my VMs are). This is a global setting that applies to all virtual machines that were running at the time the system went down, not one that can be applied to only some VMs, but for my purposes this is sufficient; it makes it less of a hassle to reboot the virtual machine host. Linux being Linux, life is not quite this simple in practice, as is illustrated by comparing my Ubuntu VM host machine with my Fedora desktops. On Ubuntu, libvirt-guests.service defaults to enabled, it is configured through /etc/default/libvirt-guests (the Debian standard), and it defaults to not not automatically restarting virtual machines. On my Fedora desktops, libvirt-guests.service is not enabled by default, it is configured through /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests (as inthe official documentation), and it defaults to automatically restarting virtual machines. Another difference is that Ubuntu has a /etc/default/libvirt-guests that has commented out default values, while Fedora has no /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests so you have to read the script to see what the defaults are (on Fedora, this is /usr/libexec/libvirt-guests.sh, on Ubuntu /usr/lib/libvirt/libvirt-guests.sh). I've changed my Ubuntu VM host machine so that it will automatically restart previously running virtual machines on reboot, because generally I leave things running intentionally there. I haven't touched my Fedora machines so far because by and large I don't have any regularly running VMs, so if a VM is still running when I go to reboot the machine, it's most likely because I forgot I had it up and hadn't gotten around to shutting it off. (My pre-libvirt virtualization software was much too heavy-weight for me to leave a VM running without noticing, but libvirt VMs have a sufficiently low impact on my desktop experience that I can and have left them running without realizing it.)

Links and listens October ’24

www.lkhrs.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 03:20:54 +0000

**Links and listens October ’24** November 4, 2024 My favorite part about this photo didn’t make itself known until I was exporting it for this post: whoever painted the door last took care to paintaroundthe sticker. TheHolotypic Occlupanid Research Groupwould like you to know that the little plastic clips on bread bags are an understudied species. Below The Wasteby Goat Girl has been a obsession for the last few weeks, and it quickly reached rank #26 on my most played albums of all time on Last.fm with191 scrobbles. “ride around” and “tcnc” are particularly excellent, but this is one of those special albums that I start at track 1 and let it spin on through. The album’s exit track “wasting” evokes later Pink Floyd. The Disappearance of an Internet Domaindetails what happens to a TLD when a country ceases to exist, which is currently happening with. I’m actually a fan of this TLD going away. It was a status symbol for tech bro culture and if your cool website didn’t use it, who even were you? Clearly you haven’t talked to a VC or navigated high-velocity exit strategies—which leads me to theArc browser nonsenseand there’s no way anyone could havepredicted this. Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information. I found a few old haunts on this list and made accounts on a bunch of other ones. It’s great to see forums are still around and even thriving. I met my best man on a forum about building forums, we playedPortal 2, and now we both live in Chicago. Embark on a bass- and synth-filled journey toPlanet Pearlwith Pearl and the Oysters. This album has a particular sound I’ve been noticing in more music lately; it gives late 1970s–early 1980s educational programming vibes. Great for fall—which feels so weird to say, like how are therefour entire seasonsup here?! It blows my mind that there’s a whole season dedicated to the dusty harmonies of the 2-stroke combustion engine mounted to a glorified pipe whose sales brochure includes a section titled “Frequently Asked Questions About Leaf Blowers”. I loved reading about anhvn’sspooky homepage process, and the easter egg is a great touch. Fictional forumgoers debate whether the happenings in aspooky screensaverare real or imagined. viawaxy I took thePlungeon Sam Evian’s new album a couple weeks ago. The bright yellow cover stood out and I hit play without even checking what genre it was. “Jacket” and “Rollin’ In” are my faves and I love the 60s-inspired sound of the whole thing.

Half the Country

www.spectrecollie.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:10:00 +0000

**Half the Country** On the day before the election, I’m mentally back to where I was a couple of months ago As much as I love Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg, I’ve been avoiding watching their sketches playing Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff onSaturday Night Livebecause I need pure, earnest enthusiasm to mentally handle this election season. But I watchedlast weekend’s cold open with a guest appearance from Harris, and I was surprised. Surprised that it was actually funny, surprised at how much of the material they can gather for a sketch without having to make anything up1Yes, the Republican candidate for the President of the United States did mimic fellating a microphone at one of his rallies., and surprised to be reminded of how easy it is to feel joyful and hopeful. Even out of office, Trump has spent so many years doing psychic damage on all of us that it’s surprising when we’renotfeeling beaten down and paranoid. It was unsettling to watch something and not be spinning through all of the reasons I should be rolling my eyes, and instead just see two quite wealthy and famous women having such a good time goofing off with each other that they could not stop smiling and giggling. Yes, “Keep Calmala and Carry Onala” is inexcusably silly, but yes, I will absolutely allow it and would even consider buying the T-shirt. I’ve never seen anybody in Trump’s circle ever look genuinely happy. The closest they get is a kind of coked-up mania, or a self-satisfied sneer as they’re saying something particularly racist, misogynistic, or transphobic. Apart from that, they’re always dour and mean, even when they’re trying to be light and funny. They’re the personification of Melania’s horrible Christmas display. They’re not just joyless; they actually tried to make the case that being joyful was bad or shameful. Early in Harris’s campaign, people said that she was running on “vibes.” Emphasizing being free and joyful. And the pundits all lost their shit at the idea, insisting that Americans really care about serious business like policy proposals. If nothing else, we’ve seen that that’s demonstrably false. Because one of the two major parties in this election has brought jack shit to the table in terms of policy, and it’s still apparently a close race. Just complete incompetence, despite the media’s desperate attempts to help legitimize them, repeatedly excusing them for having no policies, or translating their nonsense into an absurdly generous interpretation of what they might have tried to almost be saying. They have nothing to promise except ethnic cleansing and higher prices for everything. The party of freedom and fiscal responsibility is running on thepromisethat if they win, it’s going to be a dictatorshipthat will mean hardship for most Americans. It’s nothing new to point out that they’re just so spectacularly bad at everything2And so smug about it, which is the part that always gets me. How anyone can support these clowns and be not just embarrassed, butarrogant, is beyond me., but at this point it’s completely bottomed out. They have nothing left. And all the people who are still desperately trying to make it all seem sane and normal have nothing left to defend them with besides “half the country.” I’ve complained about it lots of times before, but it’s one of the most pernicious lies that people across the political and sanity spectrums insist on repeating, that “half the country supports Trump.” It’s still objectively false, since half the country doesn’t bother to vote. And of the half that does, only a relatively small percentage are actually the MAGA stereotypes that we keep seeing getting dunked on and/or exhaustively interviewed in the media. It would be more accurate to say that “a little less than a quarter of the country isn’t bothered enough by Trump to vote for a Democrat.” The reason I think it’s a distinction worth pointing out: once Kamala Harris is in office, and Trump loses yet another presidential election and starts having to answer for his long list of criminal offenses, that’s only the start of fixing everything that’s broken. No doubt there will be some MAGA types trying to First Order their way back into relevance, but I feel like they’ve blown it with this campaign, and they’ve become too much of a liability for all the billionaires hiding behind them. I think the more pervasive enemy is apathy and cynicism. It’s obvious that there’s been a huge propaganda push telling Americans that there’s no real difference between the two parties, and that everybody’s corrupt. But propaganda can’t force people to believe something that they didn’t already suspect on some level. So personally: I’m feeling optimistic that Kamala Harris is going to win the popular vote —as long as every eligible voter does their basic civic duty and votes!— and I’m confident that they’re prepared to jump through the inevitable hoops that the GOP will try to put them through in order to steal the election. That’s not based on any real info, just feels. It feels like the message is connecting with people, it feels like people are motivated to vote, it feels like Republicans have once againspectacularlyunderestimated how strongly women feel about their autonomy, and it feels like enough people still remember 2016-2020 and have no desire to see an even worse version of it. But more than any of the positive signs, I’m optimistic just because my despair reserves are empty. It’s no exaggeration to say that people are exhausted. I’m tired of seeing those assholes constantly being shoved in my face and demanding my attention, cackling like Emperor Palpatine, begging me to hate them. I’m hoping that they’re all resigned to an America where they have no relevance apart from being on trial, being voted out of office or disbarred, and of course, appearing onDancing With the Starsbefore vanishing completely. My secret special wish is that they manage to take Elon Musk with them. And I’m back to feeling like I did on that first White Dudes for Harris Zoom call, when I heard Governor Walz come on and lay out the facts. All the things that we’ve known for years, but the media acted like we weren’t allowed to say. That it’s 2024, and we care more about competence and confidence than outdated ideas about whether race or gender alone makes somebody “electable.” That nobody actually wants the bullshit the GOP is selling, stoking fears of immigrants and trans people that normal people don’t actually have. And that it’s just plainweirdhow we lived through the batshit insanity of the Trump administration, and all our institutions insisted on treating it like it was all normal. I refuse to believe that “half the country” actually supports Trump’s bullshit, and I don’t believe they’ll even get the people who used to begrudgingly tolerate Trump’s bullshit. I don’t even believe that half the country supports Kamala Harris! But I don’t believe it’s naive, unrealistic, or overly optimistic at all to believe that half the country is tired of the dysfunction of the past ten years, and we’re all ready for a reboot. - 1Yes, the Republican candidate for the President of the United States did mimic fellating a microphone at one of his rallies. - 2And so smug about it, which is the part that always gets me. How anyone can support these clowns and be not just embarrassed, butarrogant, is beyond me.

Wood End and Beyond: Airfix mineral wagon final

unnycoombelala.blogspot.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:00:00 +0000

Tuesday 5 November 2024 Airfix mineral wagon final The final wash of Humbrol 33, to suggest a thin layer of coal dust, was applied with the wagon held upside down and then some wagon works gothic 6" brush lettering. There is a lot wrong with the Airfix 16 tonner, but considering its age it's still workable into something fun and acceptable. All for two bob.

The Other Side blog: Dracula, The Hunters' Journals: 4 November; Dr. Seward's Diary, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker's Journal

theotherside.timsbrannan.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:00:00 +0000

Dracula, The Hunters' Journals: 4 November; Dr. Seward's Diary, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker's Journal More updates from Dr. Seward, a rare one from Van Helsing himself, 4 November.—To-day we heard of the launch having been detained by an accident when trying to force a way up the rapids. The Slovak boats get up all right, by aid of a rope and steering with knowledge. Some went up only a few hours before. Godalming is an amateurfitterhimself, and evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again. Finally, they got up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off on the chase afresh. I fear that the boat is not any better for the accident; the peasantry tell us that after she got upon smooth water again, she kept stopping every now and again so long as she was in sight. We must push on harder than ever; our help may be wanted soon. Memorandum by Abraham Van Helsing. 4 November.—This to my old and true friend John Seward, M.D., of Purfleet, London, in case I may not see him. It may explain. It is morning, and I write by a fire which all the night I have kept alive—Madam Mina aiding me. It is cold, cold; so cold that the grey heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the ground is hardening to receive it. It seems to have affected Madam Mina; she has been so heavy of head all day that she was not like herself. She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps! She who is usual so alert, have done literally nothing all the day; she even have lost her appetite. She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well. However, to-night she is morevif. Her long sleep all day have refresh and restore her, for now she is all sweet and bright as ever. At sunset I try to hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown less and less with each day, and to-night it fail me altogether. Well, God’s will be done—whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead! Now to the historical, for as Madam Mina write not in her stenography, I must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so each day of us may not go unrecorded. We got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise yesterday morning. When I saw the signs of the dawn I got ready for the hypnotism. We stopped our carriage, and got down so that there might be no disturbance. I made a couch with furs, and Madam Mina, lying down, yield herself as usual, but more slow and more short time than ever, to the hypnotic sleep. As before, came the answer: “darkness and the swirling of water.” Then she woke, bright and radiant and we go on our way and soon reach the Pass. At this time and place, she become all on fire with zeal; some new guiding power be in her manifested, for she point to a road and say:— “This is the way.” “How know you it?” I ask. “Of course I know it,” she answer, and with a pause, add: “Have not my Jonathan travelled it and wrote of his travel?” At first I think somewhat strange, but soon I see that there be only one such by-road. It is used but little, and very different from the coach road from the Bukovina to Bistritz, which is more wide and hard, and more of use. So we came down this road; when we meet other ways—not always were we sure that they were roads at all, for they be neglect and light snow have fallen—the horses know and they only. I give rein to them, and they go on so patient. By-and-by we find all the things which Jonathan have note in that wonderful diary of him. Then we go on for long, long hours and hours. At the first, I tell Madam Mina to sleep; she try, and she succeed. She sleep all the time; till at the last, I feel myself to suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm her; for I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done something; I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I look down and find Madam Mina still sleep. It is now not far off sunset time, and over the snow the light of the sun flow in big yellow flood, so that we throw great long shadow on where the mountain rise so steep. For we are going up, and up; and all is oh! so wild and rocky, as though it were the end of the world. Then I arouse Madam Mina. This time she wake with not much trouble, and then I try to put her to hypnotic sleep. But she sleep not, being as though I were not. Still I try and try, till all at once I find her and myself in dark; so I look round, and find that the sun have gone down. Madam Mina laugh, and I turn and look at her. She is now quite awake, and look so well as I never saw her since that night at Carfax when we first enter the Count’s house. I am amaze, and not at ease then; but she is so bright and tender and thoughtful for me that I forget all fear. I light a fire, for we have brought supply of wood with us, and she prepare food while I undo the horses and set them, tethered in shelter, to feed. Then when I return to the fire she have my supper ready. I go to help her; but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already—that she was so hungry that she would not wait. I like it not, and I have grave doubts; but I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of it. She help me and I eat alone; and then we wrap in fur and lie beside the fire, and I tell her to sleep while I watch. But presently I forget all of watching; and when I sudden remember that I watch, I find her lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes. Once, twice more the same occur, and I get much sleep till before morning. When I wake I try to hypnotise her; but alas! though she shut her eyes obedient, she may not sleep. The sun rise up, and up, and up; and then sleep come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake. I have to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when I have harnessed the horses and made all ready. Madam still sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid!—I am afraid of all things—even to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch. 4 November, evening.—The accident to the launch has been a terrible thing for us. Only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago; and by now my dear Mina would have been free. I fear to think of her, off on the wolds near that horrid place. We have got horses, and we follow on the track. I note this whilst Godalming is getting ready. We have our arms. The Szgany must look out if they mean fight. Oh, if only Morris and Seward were with us. We must only hope! If I write no more Good-bye, Mina! God bless and keep you. Notes:Moon Phase:Full Moon Seward and Godalming are making their way by boat. Van Helsing has a rare journal entry. Of course it is needed because Mina is slipping under Dracula's power more and more and it unreliable for the first time in 27 chapters. Mina knows the countryside, not just because she read her husband's journal but because she is in mental communication with Dracula. We also see she is sleeping more. Jonathan has little to offer here.

fresh off a five gram dose...

bennettchidoro.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 01:15:00 +0000

**fresh off a five gram dose...** November 5, 2024 I ended up popping a little over five grams of B pluses… Last Friday night. It took like three weeks of ‘psyching’ myself out... just to work up the nerves to finally pop them... It’s never a quick thing. From the time that I decide it’s time for a heroic dose (to reset myself), to the time that I actually pop the shrooms… That’s because… at least for me, a big trip is nothing to play with. Everything’s intensified. So, I'm always a little cautious. And I make sure to really check in with myself before jumping in the deep end. I’ll get into my trip more, later. But this time I was legit charged up for 12 hours straight. Bouncing off the wall... jumping around... blasting my favorite rap songs over my headphones... I was out my fucking mind! And I enjoyed every bit of it... I was even pacing back and forth around my apartment... talking to myself. Giving myself the play-by-play as I was getting downloads from the shrooms... In real time. What the f**k is he talking about? That’s what you're probably thinking right now. Let me rewind real quick. I wanna say… this was my third big trip of the year. And when I say big trip I mean I popped a little over five grams. Some call it a heroic dose. I like to say big trip. But anyways, I did one a little after my brother passed away. That was around March of this year. And I’m pretty sure I did another one around my birthday. Which would've been around January 17th. So yea… I was right. This was my third big trip of 2024. For the past two years, I’ve been using these big trips to “reset” myself. And for the ones that've have never experienced that "reset" feeling you get when you take a shit ton of shrooms... you're missing out on a life changing experience. It’s not for everybody though… It’s almost like your brain is being bathed in holy water… Everything feels so fresh… so clean. Even the air tastes different. When you come down from your trip... your brain is like a freshly tilled garden... and all you have to do is plant the seeds of positivity and you're good as new. The word liberated comes to mind... when it comes to “how you feel” after taking a heroic dose of shrooms. Almost like you’re freed from being “trapped” in your own mind… So I’ll do these big trips every 4-months or so to reset myself… and give myself a fresh boot. I can always tell when I’m off my game and it’s time to do a large dose… My signs are as follows: I'll miss a bunch of workouts... stay up super late a few nights in a row... and I'll start having way too many pointless conversations with myself. Then things start to trend downward... and eventually they spiral. Then I'm stuck in the negative habit loop and it's hard to break myself out. I can keep going on and on… But it’s not that deep. Majority of my "problems" stems from me straying from my routine. Especially when I know I should be heads down... balls to the wall. See if this makes sense… Our brains are supercomputers. Software and hardware... and we know how often we get hit with updates... think about how many updates get sent to our iPhones... it's non stop! And if we don't... things start to get laggy and slow, and even become obsolete. So why I constantly uses the tools out there to achieve this? That's part of my reasoning for doing several big trips a year... With each shroom dose... you get access to a newer (and much... much) better version of YOU. I forgot who said this, but I agree: "the only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life." You gotta push it to the limit. every. single. day. But that's when I'll decide it's time for a big trip... I just sit back... and let the shrooms work their six hour update on me. I know the whole "brain bathed in holy water reset" feeling can happen through other means. Like... working out, journaling and meditating after a beautiful walk through the forest. That's why I make sure I do these on the daily... at least working out and journaling. Shrooms is for when you wanna go to the next level... I can’t state enough how AMAZING I’m feeling. It's been a week and I'm still buzzing. I love how quiet things are right now... it's like a zen garden up in there. Let me say this, then I'm out. Don't get me wrong... tripping balls is fun and all... But, there's something much bigger... and that's what you do with the information that you get from your trip... You're having all types of thoughts and revelations while you're tripping. You're in GOD MODE... you have the keys to unlock the universe... you can see things that were invisible to you just a few hours ago. Everything makes sense. These are the downloads. The “theme” around my downloads (for the past 5 trips or so) has been pretty much the same… When I’m peak trip… and I close my eyes. Everything goes dark. I get a cold chill up the back of my spine... then I sit there... and meditate on the fact that my mom’s gone... and that she's never coming back. The twisted thing is that I’m not sad or anything… and I don’t feel any emotions. I just have that deer in the headlights look. This next THING... feels like it comes from deep in the abyss of my subconscious mind. This THING… or whatever it is, keeps telling me: “you don’t have much time” "you don' have much time"... and that "time is running out." That’s why I’m out here on this MARATHON... 24/7/365. No. days. off. I gotta get rich as fast as possible! PS. for the ones that are curious about HOW I took them… I ended up lemon tekking them bad B's... I weighed them out… threw them into my coffee grinder… ground them up into a fine… fine powder... put said powder into a super small bowl (like the ones you get at chinese restaurants for your soy sauce). Squeezed the juice from two lemons onto the powder… waited 15 minutes… making sure to stir it every five. Then I took it like a shot. This was my first time doing it this way and I was actually impressed. It didn’t taste like shit going down (because of the lemon juice) and there was no bad aftertaste. 10/10 recommend.

Can Trump Legally Deport Millions of Migrants i.e., Drug Cartels & Latino Gangs Under 'Alien Enemies Act' Without Declaring Military War Against Foreign Countries? - NewsBlaze News

newsblaze.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 01:08:49 +0000

Former President Donald Trump declared bold promises at his recent rallies across the nation.Trump’s booming voice made it clear that if he regains the presidency, he will expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. Trump, along with his advisors, asserts that state and local law enforcement, the military, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will play crucial roles in what he proclaims will be“the largest deportation in American history,”while also invoking“wartime powers.” Approximately 11 million or more undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, comprising about 3% of the total population, a CBS news article reported.The majority, approximately 80% have established their residence in the country for a decade or longer. Trump’s mass deportation campaign promise warrants scrutiny. “If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,”former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homansaid in Julyas he warned that no one would be off the table. At a campaign rally in Colorado, President Trump emphasized that he would use his legal power to execute a specific law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Trump’s stated objective revolves around dismantling foreign criminal syndicates operating like a lean, mean machine in the United States. Subsequently, Trump has often mentioned this long-standing legislation as a mechanism for implementing large-scale deportations. “Look at the history of ICE and the Trump years, where there was no lack of political will to deport people,”says John Sandweg in a recent CNN news story. Sandweg was an acting director of the agency during the Obama administration.“And the maximum amount they could do (in one year) was 267,000.” “It doesn’t matter how many people you arrest,”Sandweg explained to the CNN reporter,“because the Constitution requires that they get due process, which means they have an opportunity to pitch their case to an immigration court.” “It’s nearly impossible to implement,“saysLaura Collins, an immigration policy expert at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. “There are still legal processes that we have to go through in order to remove somebody,”Collins stated during her CNN interview.“They have the right to mount a defense. … Just because you’re not a citizen doesn’t mean you don’t have legal rights in this country.” “It’s selling a fantasy to people,”Sandweg said. What cannot be overlooked is the assessment of the potential human and financial implications associated with such a course of action. TheAmerican Immigration Council(ACC) conducted an important studyand discovered that mass deportation could result in the removal of millions of construction, hospitality and agriculture workers – reducing the GDP by $1.7 trillion. Still the overriding question remains: can Trump legally carry out such massive deportations without federal intervention? Will the Former President Re-Win the White House on November 5th, 2024? What is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798? The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grants the President of the United States the authority to detain or expel migrants from adversarial nations during military conflict. This legislation was established as a component of the Alien and Sedition Acts when the country encountered potential hostilities with France. Despite its existence, presidents have only exercised the Alien Act power on three occasions: during the War of 1812, World War I, and in the aftermath of the attack onPearl Harbor during World War II.Throughout World War I, more than 6,300 people classified as“enemy aliens,”predominantly German citizens, were interned by the United States. Shortly before World War II ended, the government detained over 31,000 foreigners hailing from various countries, which included Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary, Germany, Japan, and Italy. While the Alien Enemies Act is still good law certain parts of the Alien and Sedition Acts have since been declared unconstitutional. Writing for theBrennan Center news website,Katherine Yon Ebright, reported these glaring facts,“The Constitutiongives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war, so the president must wait for democratic debate and a congressional vote to invoke the Alien Enemies Act based on a declared war.” Ebright further writes,“But the president need not wait for Congress to invoke the law based on a threatened or ongoing invasion or predatory incursion. The president hasinherent authorityto repel sudden attacks – an authority that necessarily implies the discretion to decide when an invasion or predatory incursion is underway.” Alien Enemies Act Violated By Former Presidents Former presidents blatantly violated The Alien Enemies Act by prolonging the civil detention of foreigners on U.S. soil as acknowledged by the Supreme Court in its landmark2001 Zadvydas v. Davis decision. In times of war, detentions are uncertain as the duration of hostilities between dueling countries cannot be predetermined. This uncertainty becomes evident when looking back at World War II, where certain immigrants were held in internmentfor over a decade, despite being civilians and never facing any criminal charges. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Harry S. Truman continued using the Alien Enemies Act after World Wars I and II ended,despite the act having only been used during wartime battles. The Wilson government interned German and Austro-Hungarian immigrants under the statute until 1920, even after World War I ended in 1918. Thereafter, when World War II ended in 1945, the Truman administration continued to use the statute to deport and detain people until 1951. Drug Cartels Not A Nation Drug cartels and Latino gangs are individuals operating under organized crime networks. They are not a nation the government can declare a legal war against. Another dilemma Trump may face trying to deport foreign drug cartels and Latino gangs in the U.S. illegally is that the government hasn’t declared war against the countries they came from like Mexico, and Central and South America because drug cartel criminals are individuals, not a nation. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) have already introduced a repeal bill, theNeighbors Not Enemies Act,in the House and Senate. Yet the bill hasn’t passed at this point. A mass deportation is also likely to trigger theFifth Amendment on constitutional grounds.The Fifth Amendment serves as a safeguard for both American citizens and immigrants, shielding them from discriminatory practices and infringements on their rights by the federal government. Legal precedents can lead to the invalidation of policies that show bias towards specific categories like race or lineage, as well as those that encroach upon essential freedoms. U.S. Alien Sedition Acts: Many Elements Declared Unconstitutional Legal experts doubt Trump can succeed in invoking this law, which presidents rarely use. The most prominent criticism centers around the fact that the United States has not officially declared war against any nation. For example, the law stipulates that the President of the United States can remove or restrain aliens residing within the U.S. without affording them due process, but only under specific conditions. These conditions include a formal: - Declaration of war between the United States and any foreign nation or government,” or in situations where there is an - “Invasion or predatory incursion”that is either perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the United States territory by any foreign nation or government. This legal framework raises important questions about the limits of presidential power and the protections afforded to individuals within U.S. borders. U.S. Government Hasn’t Declared War on Central or South American Countries: Drug Cartels Are Organized Crime Individuals Not a Nation The U.S. has not declared war on any Central or South American country. Drug cartels operating in Mexico and South America are not a foreign government that the U.S. can declare war on. Nor do they comprise a“nation.”Instead, they are gangs made up of private individuals. Trump’s proposed use of the Alien Enemies Act would contradict centuries of precedents. Historically, whenever this Act has been invoked, Congress had declared war on a foreign nation, and foreign nationals residing in the U.S. were treated as prisoners of war rather than being deported. This practice ultimately resulted in the notorious Japanese internment camps of the 1940s – after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. How Will the Courts Interpret the Alien Enemies Act Against Alien Gangs, Individuals, and Drug Cartels A new Trump administration will likely face hard-hitting legal challenges if he invokes the Alien Enemies Act. While the majority of Americans are convinced that the surge of migrants who illegally entered the country was nonetheless an invasion, the interpreted term“invasion”in the context of the Alien Enemies Act is a big stretch. As stated, the Alien Act was originally passed in anticipation of a declaration of war and has been historically used during wartime. Therefore, it would be challenging to argue that the law applies to individual criminals or criminal organizations, no matter how well-organized they may be. Mexican drug cartels, MS-13, and other Latino gangs from South America or Central America who are residing illegally in the U.S. are, as mentioned earlier, individuals operating as a criminal enterprise, not as a nation. So how can a new Trump Administration declare war against a group of people instead of a nation as the law requires? Perhaps Trump will utilize the invasion angle to show the cartels came here illegally and they’re not U.S. citizens. Keep in mind, as the saying goes, some judges may bend the law to make it work for Trump. For instance, the courts may invoke thepolitical questions doctrineand conclude the U.S. judiciary isn’t the shot caller in defining an invasion. Undoubtedly, legal obstacles will rise to the mountaintop if the Alien Act is applied as Trump described during recent rallies. However, the outcome remains unpredictable. Immigration Logic When considering the practical limitations of mass deportations, it’s important to set aside the Alien Enemies Act. The growing number of people seeking asylum, permanent residency, and visas to enter the United States has overwhelmed the already understaffed immigration courts, making logistics extremely challenging, if not unfeasible. Currently, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) faces a backlog over 3.7 million cases. To handle the backlog, several new immigration judges must be hired to handle the backlog, and what a monumental task that would be. Regarding the practice of turning away migrants or placing them in detention centers upon arrival into the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the government cannot detain undocumented immigrants indefinitely if their home countries refuse to accept them back. Undertaking such a large-scale deportation initiative would also come with significant financial implications.According to the American Immigration Council, a group committed to advocating for undocumented immigrants in theUnited States, the projections suggest that executing this extensive deportation campaign would incur a hefty expense of $315 billion for the nation. This endeavor creates the establishment of new detention facilities including the recruitment, training, and deployment of a substantial police workforce dedicated to immigration enforcement. Can Trump Deport Millions of Migrants Without Due Process? The ongoing turmoil at the U.S.-Mexico border and the persisting challenges of drug cartels infiltrating the United States have garnered much attention. Federal authorities acknowledge the severity of the issue, particularly emphasizing the concerning prevalence of drug trafficking. As the nation grapples with this pressing concern, one pivotal question emerges: how can this complex problem be effectively addressed while navigating sensitive issues such as family separations, the humane treatment of detained immigrants, safeguarding their rights, mitigating potential labor shortages due to increased deportations, and mitigating the considerable economic disruptions arising from any large-scale deportation investigations. Is it legally within President Trump’s power to deport millions of immigrants without affording them due process if he assumes office in the United States? The answer is not straightforward. While adhering to due process Trump could potentially facilitate the deportation of ‘hundreds of thousands of immigrants.’ Legal constraints may continue to go ‘around and around’ until the pressure becomes too much and explodes, leaving clouds of smoke and confusion over what to do. Once the situation becomes clearer, and if Trump is reelected, could he facilitate the largestdeportationsin American history? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, Americans await the outcome of the presidential election between Vice President Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday. Senior NewsBlaze Legal Affairs Reporter Clarence Walker Jr.writes about politics, political history, general interest news stories, criminal justice, legal decisions, true crime and small business. Hecan be reached at[email protected]

Bluesky and Enshittification

www.justinvollmer.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 01:00:00 +0000

**Bluesky and Enshittification** Two days ago, Cory Doctorow’s daily Pluralistic post showed up in my RSS reader, and the title caught my attention:Bluesky and enshittification. I’ve read a number of his previous posts regarding “enshittification”, a term he coined to refer to a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality, and so I started skimming this article to see what Bluesky had done to catch his attention. The details are probably not ultimately important for this blog post, but the short version is that Bluesky raised $15M in a series A funding round, led by venture capital fund Blockchain Capital. Many in the fediverse are concerned by the effects venture capital can have on platforms, and are especially skeptical of anyone involved with blockchains (seethis articleon The Fediverse Report for more details). A few hours later, Molly White’sthoughts on the topiccrossed my Mastodon feed, and I decided that I wanted to add to the conversation in my own little way, though it took me a couple of days to get around to it. While I tend to not be quite as dogmatic as many in the fediverse when it comes to these topics, I too have begun to think more critically about where I post content, and how to have more control over the platforms on which I share my thoughts. That is one of the underlying reasons I started this website a decade ago, and is also one of the driving forces behind recent changes to eventually allow me to become aPOSSE-er, joining individuals like Cory Doctorow, Molly White, and others on the IndieWeb whose voices I respect. I like the idea of this website being my home on the internet, my little corner of the web, and being able to syndicate from here to the world. I like being able to point friends, family, coworkers, and anyone who is curious to a single location, from which they can read my thoughts, and learn about who I am, and what I value. I’ll close with this quote from Doctorow. It’s a little more direct that my current views, but I more or less agree with the underlying sentiment: “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.”

Notes on binary soup @ marginalia.nu

www.marginalia.nu — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

**Notes on binary soup** I recently put together a small library calledSlop, for intermediate on-disk data representation for the search engine, replacing a few ad-hoc formats I had in place before. This post isn’t so much an attempt to convince anyone else to use this library, as it makes trade-offs catering to a fairly niche use case, but to explore some of its design ideas, as it all came together very nicely, in the hopes that other libraries can draw ideas from it. The entire library is written on a stringent abstraction budget, with the design goal that you should be able to as quickly as practically possible find the relevant implementation details of any given code, from the calling code. This is somewhat flying in the face of common programming advice promoting decoupling and implementation hiding via interfaces and abstractions, but has turned out very well. This is arguably bothbecauseandwhythe library is very small. Schema as code Ad hoc binary formats are kind of a pain to maintain, and have atrocious portability; meanwhile, common off the shelf ways of serializing data seem to revel in making the format as complex as possible. Many formats solve the reader-writer synchronization problem by either storing a schema in a different location from the code, sometimes in the binary data itself. This adds friction whenever you want to read or write to the format, having three places in the code base that are relevant, the reader, the writer, and the schema; and typically also adds a fair amount of overhead to serialization and deserialization, as the schema is not available at compile time. I opted instead to put the schema information in the code itself, as code. Let’s describe some demographics data to show what I mean: Descriptive filenames Putting the schema as code doesn’t solve the portability problem on its own, what does is how file names are assigned from this schema description. Each column maps to one or more files on disk, and each file has a deterministic name that describes its contents, function, type, compression, etc. The storage format is designed to be trivially reverse engineered from the file-names themselves, in fact the hope is that anyone finding these files will be able to reverse-engineer an entire library for reading and producing them in short order, just fromalone. This idea above anything else associated with this data format has worked incredibly well. The file name is incredibly under-used for describing the contents of a file, especially in programmatic contexts. Having the data in a a structured and human-understandable directory structure like this makes it easy to use other tools to deal with the data. It’s possible to copy particular columns with command line tools, and put together something that reads only those columns. Low indirection code As we are on an abstraction budget, the schema doesn’t get registered anywhere, instead each column can beopenedfor reading, orcreatedfor writing from the schema code itself; the schema description is referencing the very classes that are responsible for reading and writing. This is very much a design choice. If, in an IDE, you jump to StringColumn, you’ll end upat the implementation. It’s wrappingByteArrayColumn, which is equally transparent. The only indirection in the column I/O code is via the StorageReader and StorageWriter classes, but this is again a veryshallow hierarchythat permits different storage mediums. Since each column type is fully self-describing and there’s no central registry that instantiates the columns, it’s easy to extend the library with new column types as needed. The same isn’t possible for storage types, this was a trade-off between adding even more flexibility and making the code yet more boilerplaty. As such thestorage selection mechanismis hard coded into the library. Example An idiomatic example of a table storing demographics data with basic read and write capabilities: The resulting code is a bit on the boiler-platy side, but as a trade-off the Lego sensibilities in the library also permits the implementation of ad-hoc projections and predicate pushdowns. Theclass seen above manages basic consistency checks for the alignment of the readers and writers, to give somebasicdata sanity guard rails, but overall the library is written with a very “C++” attitude toward foot-guns. The low abstraction programming style also has the benefit that it’s extremely fast, as particularly for primitive column types, the entire I/O workflow can be written to perform zero allocations and zero copies, and reads can be performed directly from memory mapped files. This is not because Slop is a complex oradvancedstorage format, but because it’s not.

Introducing Swift Testing. Traits.

swiftwithmajid.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Swift Testing. Traits. The most powerful feature of the Swift Testing framework is the trait system. Traits allow us to annotate a test or test suite to customize its behavior. This week, we will learn how to use built-in trait types to modify tests. TheTestandSuitemacros allow us to enable a trait or set of traits related to the test or test suite and pass built-in trait types. As you can see in the example above, we use thedisabledtrait to skip the test. Xcode Test Navigator shows disabled tests as skipped by coloring them in gray. You can also provide a comment to indicate the reason for skipping the test, which will be easily accessible in the Test Navigator. The Swift Testing framework allows us to skip tests conditionally. For example, it might be useful to skip tests for features disabled by a particular flag. As you can see, we use theenabledtrait with a boolean value to conditionally allow the test. We can use conditions both withdisableandenabletest traits. The real power of the traits system appears when you combine multiple traits to achieve the desired behavior. For example, you can use numerousenabledtraits to run the test only when all conditions are met. Whenever you use multiple conditions, all of them should pass to run the test. Sometimes, you might skip the test because of a bug. For this case, the Swift Testing introduces thebugtrait, allowing us to attribute the corresponding bug identifier or URL. The Swift Testing framework allows us not only to skip tests but also to limit them by time. For example, you might have a test that takes much time and resources to run. In this case, you can limit it by time to fail on timeout. Whenever you apply the time limit trait to a test suite, it recursively applies to every test. Suites allow us to organize related tests. In many cases, we might need another organization type that allows merging multiple suites or selecting only crucial functionality. For this purpose, the Swift Testing framework introduces tagging functionality. First of all, we have to define a tag. We can create tags only by defining extensions on theTagtype in pair with the@Tagmacro. Then, we can use thetagtrait to add tags to the particular test or test suite. As you can see in the example above, we define thecrucialtag and mark two test cases with it. The Test Navigator in Xcode has the special tab showing tags allowing you to run the tests by tag and visualize if all the tests in the tag pass. Keep in mind, that you can define as many tags as you need and annonate a suite or test case with many different tags. I hope you enjoy the post. Feel free to follow me onTwitterand ask your questions related to this post. Thanks for reading, and see you next week! - Introducing Swift Testing. Lifecycle.29 Oct 2024

Santa Fe, New Mexico, A Magical Place to Visit

linkage.lol — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

**Santa Fe, New Mexico, A Magical Place to Visit** 05 Nov, 2024 One of my Internet friends is lucky enough to be going to New Mexico on business this week. Saturday he's heading up to Santa Fe and that makes him a lucky man. My wife and I spent a week's vacation there a while back and it was fantastic. There are so many great places to eat, hike, ride bikes and make day trips to. If you are into art, there are plenty of museums and galleries to captivate you. Here are a few places I can recommend from personal experience. Chamisa Trail- in Santa Fe is a beautiful hiking trail that offers stunning views of the surrounding landscape. It is a popular destination for both locals and tourists looking to explore the outdoors. You can find more information about Chamisa Trail in Santa Fe by visiting this website:Chamisa Trail Santa Fe. Armijo Trail- Explore this 4.7-mile loop trail near Cedar Crest, New Mexico. Generally considered a moderately challenging route, it takes an average of 2 h 11 min to complete. This is a very popular area for hiking and horseback riding, so you'll likely encounter other people while exploring. Restaurants The Shed- Located in a building dating back the the 1660s - We offer locals and visitors alike a time tested taste of the best that Northern New Mexico has to offer both in cuisine and hospitality. We are a family owned and operated business now under the management of the 3rd generation of Carswells. Visitors and locals returning to Santa Fe don't feel like they have arrived in Santa Fe until they have tasted the Shed chile once again. Bumble Bee's Baja Grill- Great vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options along with organically raised meats. "When we say the “freshest of ingredients” we mean that all our meats are freshly grilled to include a fine selection of skirt steak, natural New Mexico lamb, Mahi-mahi from off the coast of South America, farm raised shrimp, skinless chicken breasts and tender pork carnitas which are braised and slow-cooked in special spices. We also prepare whole natural chickens that are marinated with our secret recipe and roasted on an imported French rotisserie. Fresh vegetables and fruits are brought in daily to prepare the savory garnish and fillings that adorn many of the selections." The High Road to Taos- This route takes the traveler through an authentic remnant of Old Spain, still evident in the religion, architecture, topography, history, and people along the route. The byway travels through Chimayo, a community known for the beautiful Santuario de Chimayo and the El Posito, a hole in the floor of a side chapel filled with healing earth. Along N.M. 76, the byway follows through the creased and crinkled badlands, polka-dotted with scrubby piñon and juniper, with the Jemez Mountains enormous on the horizon.Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇 #NaBloPoMo#Travel#WritingMonth

as days pass by — My Keys

www.kryogenix.org — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:50:00 +0000

My Keys I have a problematic relationship with keys. Well, that's not true. I have a problematic relationship with keyrings. For some reason, my pockets are a violently hostile environment for things I put in them. I don't really understand why this is, but it's true. Keyrings bend out of shape; the concentric rings separate, and my actual keys fall off of them. People have expressed scepticism about this in the past, and they've been wrong and I've been right. The last time I complained about this, I thought I'd come up with a solution where I bought a keyring which was a tiny padlock. It lasted three days before a bolt sheared off. You can see the whole thing onposts made to twitter. At that point most people would give up, or be sad, or just live with split rings continually letting them down. But most people don't have a dad who is a king of engineering. My dad made me this. It's a keyring. It's a solid block of brass with the middle cut out, so it looks like a very shallow "U", or like three sides of a long rectangle. There's a hole drilled in each of the short ends, and a long bolt is threaded through those holes. On one end of the bolt is a nut, tight against the outside of the "U", and the bolt protrudes out about an inch where there's another, locking, nut. All the keys are hung from the bolt. To add a new key, I undo the locking nut on the end, undo the tight nut, pull the bolt out, hang another key from it, and then do everything back up. It'sbrilliant. I've not had a single problem with it. Those of you carefully studying the picture will notice that there is writing on the brass "U". (And will also notice that I've blacked out the details of the actual keys, because you can cut a key based on a picture, and I'm not stupid.) That's engraving, which mentions my website, so if I lose my keys (which I am really careful to not do1) then whoever finds them can get in touch with me to tell me that happened but my address is not on the keys, so a nefarious finder gets less benefit from it. I love my keyring. It's the best. I do not know why more keyrings are not like this. It works just like a normal keyring (I have non-key things on mine, such as a USB stick and a tiny flashlight, but they would go on a regular split-ring keyring as well), but it doesn't just fail all the time like normal ones do. I surely can't be the only person who experiences this? Anyway, I don't mind, 'cos I have the solution. Cheers, dad. Maybe I should make this a product or something. - the historical version of checking your pockets, as a man, was to feel for "spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch" -- this was actually a ribald mnemonic for how to cross yourself as a Catholic, but this modern day man checks his pockets for keys, wallet, and phone in the same way to check they're not lost↩

This is what comes of reading more than you talk to actual people.

thebloggess.com — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:45:48 +0000

**This is what comes of reading more than you talk to actual people.** A few days ago I admitted onthreadsthat I have been mispronouncing the word “calamity” for my entire life and I only found out that I’d been mispronouncing it when I used it incorrectly on a conference call becauseof course I did. And then people on threads were like, “Wait, how do you pronounce it?” and I was like, “Lamè, llama, Lamar…cuh-LOM-uh-tee” to explain why I thought it was pronounced that way but then a bunch of people were like, “Wait,have I been pronouncing it wrong my whole life too??” and I felt a little better that I wasn’t the only one fucking it up, but then I realized that quite a few people were thinking that I was giving the corrected pronunciation (rather than explaining why I’d always mispronounced it) and then they thought that they were wrong for rhyming “calamity” with “manatee” even though that’s (apparently) the correct way and so now I think I’ve accidentally convinced a lot of people who were pronouncing it correctly to now mispronounce it and this seems like a very good example of a calamity even though I’m still not entirely sure how to pronounce it.

Revisiting old writing

bzg.bearblog.dev — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:13:00 +0000

**Revisiting old writing** 04 Nov, 2024 I've decided to move my entire poetry collection from a single giant Google Doc page to a more structured, tag-oriented program called Zim. The migration is painful, not only physically by needing to copy paste everything from one document to the other, but also emotionally because I catch words here and there that cause my body to react to the nostalgia of what I just read. I've written a lot of poetry. Basically since I started journaling when I was 19 until now and probably until I'm dead. I started writing when I had no sense of poetic voice. In high school I thought it was an interesting format, but I didn'tgetit. I liked lyrics and how they acted as an instrument within the context of music. But reading poetry alone was completely alien to me. My first poem, written on August 1, 2020, is now in retrospect, a bizarre event. I remember writing the poem, probably because it was my first, but I have no idea what inclined me to write it. For me now, writing a poem is such a simple thing because now can I recognize my ability in communicating emotionally in that medium. The first one I wrote feels like an attempt to speak a new language without ever having studied it. I can hit the beats, make the sounds that other people are making and maybe, to other people who also don't know, it seems like I am doing the right thing. I'm fortunate I've always had an inclination to archive anything I make to preserve it, because my early writing is such a fascinating look into how my approach, voice and content itself changes over time. If you have access to old writing, drawings, artwork or anything that you have produced in your life, go back and look at it now. I guarantee that no matter the content of it, there will be a deep sense of nostalgia for that period of time. This is why I archive everything. Every once in a while, I go blind to what I am doing right now, in the present. Going to the past, through art, is a deep vessel into which you can relive moments that had been lost in the noise of everything. Occasionally I'll read an old poem of mine and remember that I had scribbled it on a piece of cardboard and then lost it somewhere. If I had never bothered to quickly archive it before it was gone, that poem would have ceased to exist. The words might yet still exist on that piece of cardboard, somewhere, but the memory of it would be so buried under years of life that no excavation could bring it out so quickly as a title and some words in a document could. When a memory like this pops up it makes for such a bizarre sensation all throughout the body. There is a confused freezing through my spine that arrests the moment and I feel a bittersweet sadness reading these words again. Not because of the content of the writing, but memory that arises out of it. The poem that I have paused my migration on, number 242, sucks. But I still have it because of that. Reading it, I remember where I was on that day, June 14, 2023. I remember how I went to the gas station before work in the morning and when I filled up my car I had paid $66.66. I thought it was funny so I took a photo of this and sent it to my friends. I was on the last page of the notebook I had at the time and eager to start the next, so I scrawled out some words quickly. I remember that I named itSplinter-Crossbecause I listened toMichael DeMaio's Half Crossthat week and the wordcrosshad some level of significance in that moment. I remember even after writing it I wasn't exactly satisfied and probably said something like "oh well, onto the next booklet" and did so accordingly. Not remembering the origin of a piece of writing is the exception to this. More or less, I can recall the circumstances behind a piece of writing. The content of the poem itself is secondary to the nostalgia. At best, it serves as an abstract gesture to the event of my life at that time. No matter how impersonal a piece of writing is, it was done by a person, and that person will show through. Even when so much time has passed, I can certainly recognize my voice in writing from long time ago. There is personality in word choice. I like to read old writing because it feels like such a vague history of myself that only arises when the memory is unearthed.

The Founder

www.bfoliver.com — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:08:46 +0000

**The Founder** The story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the man who discovered the McDonald’s burger joint in the late 50s then bought it off the founders and grew the business into the huge thing it is today. OK here’s another corporate origin tale, albeit one that surely can’t have been approved by McDonald’s. It paints a picture of a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and that is the man who bought and built McDonald’s. This is all at the expense of the original founders who invented the 30-second burger system, valued quality over quantity and got shafted out of their own business by Ray Kroc. And yet you can’t help but think thatThe Founderkind of wants to paint Kroc as a well-meaning businessman just trying to make a living. Benefit of the doubt, perhaps we are just seeing the world through Kroc’s eyes, but given that some of the film happens from the point of view of the McDonald’s brothers it just seems like the tone is really confused. It’s not a story I was familiar with though, and muddled tone aside it’s still interesting to see the morally bankrupt business machinations that built one of the world’s biggest corporations. - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder

That Which Gave Chase

www.tartley.com — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:56:38 +0000

**That Which Gave Chase** 2024-11-04 15:56 Released in 2023, played on Linux in 2024. Mush your dog sled across cruel Arctic wastelands, driven onwards by a brisk and intense companion, who hired you to take him back to some remote spot, where it becomes apparent he had some sort of revelation, or maybe a breakdown. The low-res, dithered presentation conveys the harsh, blinding conditions, as you struggle to make out details through the relentless wind and ice. Smash cuts disorient you, making the days and nights of the journey blur into one another, leaving only fragmentary, disjointed memories: sledding across the ice; nights in crude wooden huts, collapsing into rough bunks; righting the sled while your companion curses you for a fool; silent moments alone, outside in the dark; mounting the sled before dawn. The sense is of endless, exhausting time spent covering the distance, through punishing conditions, and it's surprisingly evocative. The narrative leans into the disorientation, making nothing clear. Your companion becomes increasingly cryptic. He urges you onward, never pausing more than absolutely necessary. The deer behave increasingly strangely. Your companion regales you with sickening tales of the investigative mistreatment he subjected them to on his previous visit. By the time the strange mushrooms come into play it is very obvious that you are in a place to which you should never have come, very far from anywhere or anyone, with mounting dread, alone with with a madman. What happened the last time he took this route? What did he leave behind here? What awaits at your journey's end? Doesn't outstay its welcome, all done in an hour. But the memories remain.

Soundtrack Discoverability on Bandcamp

blog.radicaldream.land — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:44:39 +0000

**Soundtrack Discoverability on Bandcamp** 04 Nov, 2024 You know how, for the past however many years, Bandcamp has had a little Discovery chart at the bottom that tracks best-selling albums in various categories? Well, now it looks a bit like this: There's something very weird to me about hiding the discoverability of albums behind a series of links without any...you know, albums on display. The biggest thing to me, however, is the categories chosen & what seems very noticeably omitted... Soundtracks are nowhere to be found. Game music is a huge part of Bandcamp's presence, and game soundtracks have always felt like an embarrassing little side-effect of Bandcamp's popularity. Nearly every editorial focuses on indie hits, the big hitters that've come to the platform, etc. etc... Yet somehow, Epic bought Bandcamp at one point in time before it was quickly shuffled over to Songtradr (a fact that people in games still don't really know about due to how quiet the change-over was)... There was going to be cross-store integration (I consulted on some amount of what ended up never happening, like purchasing bandcamp albums from Epic Store game pages) and obviously that won't be happening anymore. So, where do Soundtracks live in the current Bandcamp paradigm? Currently, only made visible by clicking "Start Digging", "View More ->", or "Bandcamp Discover" (really keeping things consisting huh) and then realizing there's a 'Soundtrack' option on the far right side... But also tackle the weird tag aggregation system such as adding as many game music tags as you can until the only albums listed are ones that include every single tag you've clicked on. It's clumsy, and with the limited sources remaining at Bandcamp, I'm unsure if it'll get any better. I hope it does! I hope there's more Bandcamp Daily coverage of game music. I hope there's anyone still there who cares enough about soundtracks to write another The Best Soundtracks on Bandcamp, November 2024 (there haven't been consistent Game Soundtrack articles on Bandcamp Daily since 2020, by my searching). I really want the world to continue caring about supporting indie composers, especially those working in games. It's fucking hard out here to get anything noticed anymore. Celeste was my Big Hit, and it's very likely nothing else I work on will ever see the kind of spotlight it got. I'll likely have to keep living off royalties from mostly one game for the rest of my life. Most other composers won't even have that! There's game music in the Grammys now, but fat chance of any non-AAA franchise being recognized any time soon. Unless there's any degree of awareness around the amazing work being done in games, especially the indie side of things, all we have really are Steam soundtrack bundles. And who listens to the music they buy on Steam? Anyway, that's my miscellaneous thoughts for now. #music