Flutterby™! From 2022-11-02 to 2022-11-30

And now we sand.....

[ related topics: Photography ]

At a Daily Acts rain catchment workshop. They keep referencing building a "shallow depression", and I'm like "yeah, pretty solidly there already, dude".

Putting this here so I can remember to subscribe when I'm on my phone: Michael Hobbes has started an If Books Could Kill podcast, on airport books which have harmed society, starting with Freakonomics https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/i-have-a-new-podcast

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Invention and Design Aviation ]

I think this is the second-to-last coat of finish for the frames, need to build the panels and back flanges now.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Even just the sanding sealer is starting to make that mahogany express itself. Next up, rubbing the pore filter into 25 panels. But who's counting?

[ related topics: Photography ]

So much sawdust...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Of *course* Safari puts an NSURL on the pasteboard rather than an NSImage when you right click and "Copy Image". Why would it do the sensible thing that real browsers do?

Gizmodo: Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump — A new Homeland Security report details orders to connect protesters arrested in Portland to one another in service of the Trump's imaginary antifa plot.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement Race ]

So I've been making Pindo fruit wine, and this weekend while mixing up the next batch read that the seeds, which we've been discarding, are 45% oil. Someone stop me from buying yet another stupid toy that I don't need, like an oil press... https://piteba.com/

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits hubris ]

And this is my end-to-end test to make sure that my posts to my Flutterby.net feed are going to my @danlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host account.

Ack! Apologies for the runaway cronjob. Okay, now my posts should only post once.

The norms around content warnings on Mastodon are letting me see how getting people's politics when I want to see how they're doing is people impacts me. Thinking about what this means for my blogging, and my online personae.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Beginning to think I might actually get these doors finished at some point. The polyurethane is still wet, and I'm saving the satin coat for last, but the mahogany is starting to pop.

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources @waDNR

Update: The Twitter wildfire is at 44 billion acres and 0% contained.

Your encryption is only as good as your key validity verification mechanism...

Mysterious company with government ties plays key internet role — TrustCor Systems vouches for the legitimacy of websites. But its physical address is a UPS Store in Toronto. And it's a root certificate authority with Panamanian registration and ties to US Government communications interception services.

[ related topics: moron Net Culture Cryptography ]

As Mastodon enters its Eternal September, and I am part of that wave, I'm fascinated by watching how the cultures merge, and how individual instances (and the Federated timeline on each) develop their own character.

Playing chicken with the 20% chance of rain. And if anyone can tell me what markup I'm missing so that Mastodon can pick up thumbnails from these links to my images, I'd be grateful.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Birds ]

Playing chicken with the 20% chance of rain. And if anyone can tell me what markup I'm missing so that Mastodon can pick up thumbnails from these links to my images, I'd be grateful. (Now with picture)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Food Birds ]

For the last coat I hand sanded so that I didn't go too deep. 25 doors. My arms are physically tired, but I've milled all the retaining strips too and am getting close....

[ related topics: Photography ]

Two decades ago I delicately and carefully wrote a high performance threaded database core using pthreads. Now I spend a lot of time debugging race conditions because people just throw queues and timers around without engineering in threads from the start. Sigh.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Databases ]

Backlash to racial justice movements may boost risk of high BMI, obesity

Hyun Joon Park, a recent Penn State graduate student in psychology and now an assistant professor of psychology at Connecticut College, said the findings suggest that being exposed to negative sentiments toward race-related issues doesn’t affect just mental health but physical health, as well.

Exposure to anti-Black Lives Matter movement and obesity of the Black population

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114265

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Current Events Law Enforcement Education Model Building ]

Like a movie that's so bad that the reviews of the badness are entertaining, cryptocurrency does offer us something of value: Matt Levine on Bloomberg: FTX’s Balance Sheet Was Bad

$16 billion of dollar liabilities and assets consisting mostly of some magic beans that you invented yourself and acquired for zero dollars? WHAT? Never mind the valuation of the beans; where did the money go? What happened to the $16 billion? Spending $5 billion of customer money on Serum would have been horrible, but FTX didn’t do that, and couldn’t have, because there wasn’t $5 billion of Serum available to buy. FTX shot its customer money into some still-unexplained reaches of the astral plane and was like “well we do have $5 billion of this Serum token we made up, that’s something?” No it isn’t!

[ related topics: Movies Currency Clowns Woodworking ]

Gotta admit I've got a little schadenfreude here: Cop Nails Unmodified 2022 Hyundai Elantra N for Loud Exhaust. Dude was in "track mode", got a noise citation, the Smog Referee tested the car in track mode, now there's a whole legal struggle over whether that's the right mode to test the car in, it's not the mode the car starts in, but it'd cost about $4,000 to somehow remove that mode.

Since it isn't the mode the car starts in, but is the loud mode, I'm gonna side with the police officer on this one...

[ related topics: Law Current Events Law Enforcement California Culture Automobiles ]

Oh cool. on Mastodon, Simon Willison mentions the trend of pushing scraped data to github with the tag "git-scraping" topic.

So you can see trends over time, but also just a way to discover cool data repos.

Went downtown (Petaluma) to scrub the pride crosswalk in preparation for repairing the vandalism tomorrow.

[ related topics: Photography ]

After scrubbing and rinsing the crosswalk wandered around a bit, listening to The Beat Masters.

[ related topics: Photography Pop Culture ]

Written for Facebook, whence the more background than I'd usually write here:

So: Mastodon. I've been involved in online community for 4 decades or so. My main blog (they weren't called that when I started) is coming up on 25 years, and though nobody follows the personal one I've been trying (and mostly failing) to do more personal journalling on another one. Grad students have contacted me to chat with me about the history of social media and blogging. I'm pretty active in looking at where trends are going, even if I've never really gotten some of them (MySpace, Instagram, TikTok).

And since the rise of FaceTwitSpace I've been looking for something that takes our media back away from "the algorithm", back to seeing material from people we follow.

When Mastodon first fired up, I created accounts on a couple of servers, didn't get the UI, didn't find the critical mass of people there, and ignored it. But the recent Twitter implosion has driven a lot of people over there, and I've been spending time on Mastodon.

Mastodon has evolved some interesting culture around "Content Warnings", which means that a lot of the re-posting of news articles and such end up behind an additional click. It has an option to display those articles without the click, and I thought "I'm a tough hearty guy, I'll do that."

Yesterday, a particularly egregious, but almost believable, bit of propaganda from Newsweek floated across my feed, and I realized why that culture has evolved. I could feel the adrenaline rise, the outrage, the feeling of ineffectual hopelessness. And I got it.

I want to connect with *people*. Often times that's done under the guise of exchanging bits of mass media, but splattering our political leanings across the space for those dopamine isn't really doing that. I've complained before that Facebook shows us all of someone, so we discover that the person we've enjoyed dancing with is also a QAnon spouting insurrection apologist, but it's worse than that: It amplifies the trivial about people.

And the lack of advertising on Mastodon (I upped my Patreon contributions to the person who hosts my Mastodon server) has made it even more apparent that on Facebook and Twitter I'm the product, not the customer.

Anyway, it's made me conscious of making sure that my Facebook feed is even more about me, rather than about the media (news or otherwise) that I consume, and it's making me think a lot about how I use my primary blog (that's long been a "this news article is interesting and I'll want to refer back to it" sort of resource).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics User Interface Weblogs Technology and Culture moron Space & Astronomy Sociology Current Events Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Television California Culture Community ]

By DM from Max of Fucking Inappropriate comes A Dangerous Game Over Taiwan — For decades, China has coveted its island neighbor. Is Xi Jinping ready to seize it?

[ related topics: Games Gambling ]

Nothing makes me shake my head more at the kids these days who are horning in on my profession than typos propagated through autocomplete fairly widely throughout the project. When I was a kid we typed out our function and variable names completely, and we liked it.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Children and growing up Mathematics ]

Mad props to Renee and the Amor Para Todos folks for repairing the vandalism damage on the Pride crosswalk. #Petaluma

[ related topics: Photography ]

So, yeah, wherever you are on Mastodon, whoever's running the https://brands.town/explore instance is masterfully satirizing corporate social media engagement. It is a thing of beauty.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Sports ]

The great thing about listening to podcast fiction set in a dystopian future (Moonbase Theta, Out) is that sometimes I can't tell if the ads for Peloton are part of the story, or actual sponsorship...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Pop Culture ]

The great thing about listening to podcast fiction set in a dystopian future (Moonbase Theta, Out) is that sometimes I can't tell if the ads for Peloton are part of the story, or actual sponsorship...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Pop Culture ]

Huh. Thought I had "warn me about posting dups" features in my content management. Guess that's broken. Sorry about that...

[ related topics: Content Management ]

Today in signs that feel like they should be redundant: "do not enter" at the end of a dock.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oooh, stickers for when I finally get that new laptop: Unsafe Warnings, might have to get the "magic smoke cannot be reinserted once released" one, and the OwO hazard diamond.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Clowns ]

Well, just got confirmation from Apple that something is a known bug with no known fix. I liked computing better when we could go all the way down to applying solder to the motherboard if we wanted to fix things.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama ]

This article on the impacts of ranching on Point Reyes National Seashore is why I pay for local journalism. And why we in Sonoma County need to take a good long look at local agriculture. https://bohemian.com/the-befou...f-point-reyes-national-seashore/

[ related topics: Bay Area Journalism and Media ]

Just putting things away in the shop and... Wow that's a flashback to many years ago...

[ related topics: Photography ]

So all of the anti-drag rhetoric from right-wing politicians finally paid off for them. Stochastic terrorism is a thing, and any of the slimeballs playing the drag card right now are culpable in the murders Club Q in Colorado Springs this weekend. But apparently it takes a good guy with his bare hands to stop a bad guy with a gun: Army veteran recounts subduing gunman at Colorado LGBTQ club.

[ related topics: Guns Gambling ]

Dear freakin' every vendor: I am happiest when I have to put the least effort into completing the transaction. Asking me for my feedback and to complete a questionnaire after every single purchase makes me less happy. Thank you.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Blast from the past! For years I've had an "if anyone uses webmentions, contact me" on my web page, and someone just did. And the code still works. A little susceptible to spam, but daaang.

And as I looked through the code to try to figure out what this was all about, I'm starting to think okay, maybe ActivityPub after all.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam History Monty Python ]

Lesson from the past few days: there are people who can read Cards Against Humanity plays in a way that is funny. I dare say that this is even most people. I am not one of them. I am the least competent CAH player ever. Not sure how I feel about this.

[ related topics: History ]

I will buy tickets right now if this is what it takes to get this movie made: Okay, But What About A ‘Knives Out’ Sequel Starring Daniel Craig And The Muppets?

https://uproxx.com/movies/knives-out-muppets/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies ]

Listened to the Multiamory ep on Monogamy and Relationship anarchy back-to-back with the latest Life on the Swingset. Both delving into how interacting more authentically with our communities is challenging and scary, but necessary to deepening connections. Giving me good stuff to ponder as the Fediverse gives me opportunities to rebuild my virtual community in new forms.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Invention and Design Community ]

Currently wondering if I can just hang that door off a single hinge. Think it'd save me like $80...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

Ob: I see a lot of people saying it's "Cyber Monday", but not a whole lot of "A/S/L?"

Coworker observed that in the spring, western Sonoma County is like The Shire, and in fall, fire season, is like Mordor. Looking forward to the coming rain.

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

The Lunar Flashlight mission, to use near IR lasers to map ice in shadowed moon regions, is really cool, but dang I had to read the name of it a couple of times because the mix of people I follow on social media...

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/lunar-flashlight

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Journalism and Media Maps and Mapping ]

My Facebook feed is currently full of ads for "TomboyX Tucking Bikini Underwear", and I think I'm old because I'm not sure why tomboys would be tucking, though I am kinda cool with the gender inception that this implies.

[ related topics: Clothing ]

Fascinating. I've been wondering what the conventional car manufacturers catching up with Tesla is going to look like. Turns out that may come from the repair business... Marketwatch: Why GM dealers are quietly repairing Teslas

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Social media is seeing the same jokes you read over 4 decades ago in Reader's Digest at your grandmother's house, over and over again, until you die.

Sometimes, though, they're accompanied by pictures and called "memes".

[ related topics: Photography Journalism and Media Real Estate ]

As I watch the looming rail strike where workers are asking for 4 sick days (currently ), I'm reminded of an overspeed accident where I commented that for a couple of hundred bucks per unit you could do in-cab warnings, and was told that I didn't understand.

At the time, of course, the trucking industry was doing it. I was helping. But the rail industry is all "oh, no, we're stuck in the 1800s and on ultra thin margins and can't spend on safety".

[ related topics: Movies Machinery Trains ]

And sometimes the dish drain breaks and the only thing for it is to bend some brass clips to hold that sucker together.

[ related topics: Photography Model Building ]

neighbor dropped by and asked if I wanted to finish off their persimmon tree. Threw the riper ones in the dehydrator, for a few days to figure out what to do with these. More wine, perhaps?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Wines and Spirits ]

European Central Bank: Bitcoin's last stand:

Since Bitcoin appears to be neither suitable as a payment system nor as a form of investment, it should be treated as neither in regulatory terms and thus should not be legitimised. Similarly, the financial industry should be wary of the long-term damage of promoting Bitcoin investments - despite short-term profits they could make (even without their skin in the game). The negative impact on customer relations and the reputational damage to the entire industry could be enormous once Bitcoin investors will have made further losses.

Via TechCrunch: Bitcoin ‘rarely’ used for legal transactions, on ‘road to irrelevance’, say European Central Bank officials which I got to from /..

[ related topics: Games Weblogs Law Economics ]

Broke Ass Stuart: The Vallejo Police Department Is Corrupt, And Why You Should Care.

If we are what we proclaim to be, how did we allow a city that sits just 30 miles from San Francisco to become a killing field for one of the most violent police departments in the country? And why did it take articles in every major publication in the United States and a fucking Vice documentary for activists in other Bay Area cities to care?  

Also links to Officers in Vallejo, California, bent badges to mark each fatal police killing, ex-captain says and Inside One of America’s Deadliest Police Departments — At just 22 years old, Sean Monterrosa became the 33rd person killed by the Vallejo Police Department since 2000.

“My sergeant, after my first officer-involved shooting, said wouldn’t it be nice if you could look around and see a visual indicator of people you can trust in a moment of chaos? And then he took my badge, and he bent it,” Joshua Coleman, a former officer who worked at the department for ten years, told VICE News. 

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement California Culture ]

New NASA camera spots methane ‘super emitter’ in New Mexico — An International Space Station instrument looks for dust and finds a methane vent in the Permian Basin near Carlsbad. Looks like it's a Marathon Oil well leaking somewhere between "...22 to 44,000 pounds of methane per hour", though Marathon denies that it's their leak.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Astronomy Sports ]

SGX.fail: How stuff gets eXposed, a look at hacking Intel's Software Guard Extension (SGX) framework to extract BlueRay keys from PowerDVD.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

A "hey, did you realize you're posting pictures with GPS coordinates" query (yes, it's intentional) led to me looking at the map and realizing that my phone probably doesn't have an L5 receiver, because dang that's pretty far off.

So I've been thinking a little bit about positioning, and then this article about using Starlink for location information crossed my feed... https://www.technologyreview.c...-signals-reverse-engineered-gps/

[ related topics: Photography Maps and Mapping Gambling ]