Flutterby™! From 2023-07-03 to 2023-07-31

Just making a note for future me: listening to the latest Strong Songs, the cord profession in John Farnham's "You're The Voice", and "Royals" by Lorde, and George Michael's "Freedom", is called "double-plagal", in Farnham's case F major Eb Bb F. I, flat VII, IV, I.

https://strongsongspodcast.com...e-by-john-farnham-live-in-sydney

[ related topics: Privacy Theater & Plays Law Civil Liberties Pop Culture Government ]

Carcase glue-up for out little library, needs the back, and then carving, and then a roof that lives up to it (some scrap brass, interesting roofline).

[ related topics: Language Books Photography Model Building ]

Glue-up for the ceiling mounted frame for Celia's painting.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I was promised it was gonna be cooler today, and I guess it is by a degree, but dayumn, 98F in the shade.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Tried to use voice search to find the movie "I'm Charlie Walker" on my Chromecast, and now Google's voice assistant has decided that my nickname is... You guessed it...

"AI" sucks.

[ related topics: Movies Artificial Intelligence ]

Interesting read on Asm.js by way of Smalltalk contributions to the JVM core... Understanding WASM — Part 2: Whence WASM

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

CSS only chat. Well, CSS only, with the help of some HTTP server tricks.

'Operation Midnight Climax': The CIA mixed LSD and sex at this SF brothel

[ related topics: Drugs Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

I'm liking exploring this concept that because we've confused language skill with intelligence, we're massively over-estimating the abilities of LLMs that have only language skill, but no intelligence.

Wait, what if the declining search result quality, Google's awfulness (and the fact that everyone else is racing them to the bottom), the fact that you now have to dig through multiple pages of crap on a YouTube search to find what you were looking for, are all just optimized for engagement?

Like the metric says that more time spent poking through the crap reads as engagement, and so redesigns which increase the BS spew score higher?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sports ]

File over App:

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom./blockquote>

The author of this uses, and gives as an example, Obsidian, a markdown processor, but as I look at my archives,and things I want to fix in my markdown processing workflow, I'm realizing that as much as I like it, even it is prone to dialects that can change formatting over the years.

It's interesting how fluid the notion of being able to deal with legacy files is...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Civil Liberties Philosophy Archival Government ]

Watched "I'm Charlie Walker" last night, felt like a fascinating old man telling stories about his life, with modern contextualization of 50 years ago and a lot of the difficult bits glossed over.

The modern language and sensibilities felt a little intrusive, but Walker sounds like a character, and now I want to read a non-fiction book on him.

[ related topics: Books Movies ]

This is gonna be the most over built tiny free library ever... After the laminations for the roof dry I'm gonna cover it with brass, next up is building doors (that recess on the left is for a message board for neighborhood announcements), and carve the whole thing in abstract swoopy shapes. And figure out foundation for the mounting post, because it's heavy!

[ related topics: Language Books Model Building ]

If you need a good rant taking the piss out of whatever the current framework/technology/library of the moment is doing: XML is the future.

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Web development Books Content Management ]

Current status: Looking at how different sites implement and use <link rel="icon"...> and wondering why, in an era where a site will happily serve you 2 megabytes of ads, we're making distinctions between the 32x32 PNG and the 48x48 one...

3 hours of square dance calling to the Redwood Rainbows tonight. Coming down off the buzz now. Much fun, much challenge, many smiles. Looking forward to tomorrow night which will be a completely different vibe...

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Best summary of the current "AI" buzz: Over on Metafilter, bombastic lowercase pronouncements observed: "i have learned from hearing people talk about the current generation of llm chatbots that a whole lot of folks are not good at reading"

https://www.metafilter.com/199...lmao-its-fucking-dogshit#8421821

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Is there an actual for-pay search engine out there these days? I tried Kagi, and it was more LLM awfulness. I'm getting tons of stuff that isn't what I searched for cluttering up what I am searching for, and I know it's gotta be possible to do better.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Your regular reminder that if it's in "the cloud", you don't own it: Hacker News reporting that nearly all of Evernote's staff has been laid off by their acquirer, Bending Spoons. If you have data in Evernote, export it now.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

RT Mhera @Mhera@yiff.life

Kink shaming is out

Kink enabling is in

Make your friends blushy and huffy

Interesting, with the concerns over training LLMs off of web scraped data, to see people try to reinvent DRM.

And called an hour and a half of A1 and an hour and a half of Plus square dancing tonight at the Redwood Rainbows, and wow I need to organize my choreography better, and there are some enhancements to SquareDesk I want to build, but I think everyone had fun!

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Some people will literally launch entirely new products rather than change a database schema for an established one.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Databases ]

Laying out for a resaw....

[ related topics: Photography ]

Thickest resaw I've ever done....

[ related topics: Photography ]

And planed, with some rapidly disappearing alcohol to see the book match of the resaw.

[ related topics: Books Photography ]

That resaw this morning is for a queue-jumper, and it's gonna need a plaque, so I'm gluing up a veneer lamination on to some 1/4" maple to give me a dark layer to cut through for light lettering. Once again wish I had even more clamps.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Woodworking ]

Now it's getting some character. Off to the hardware store to get more sanding disks....

[ related topics: Photography ]

It's okay, that restaurant wasn't wearing high visibility clothing or a helmet, it makes sense the driver didn't see it.

[ related topics: Photography Food Clothing ]

I really like that we're taking pedestrian access seriously...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges / A stark example of how digital footprints will be utilized in a post-Roe America

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement Pop Culture ]

It's good to know that as the SFPD is complaining about how they need more funds to improve the city in light of the homelessness problem, they're focusing efforts on kettling and arresting skateboarders: SFPD shuts down Dolores Park hill bomb, arrests dozens of teenagers

Parents wait for hours; teenagers kept zip-tied; last child released from Mission Station at 4:15 a.m.

More studies about tire and brake dust pollution: Washington Post: Why tires — not tailpipes — are spewing more pollution from your cars

In one study, Jung and his colleagues looked at car emission sources along two highways in Long Beach and Anaheim in January and February 2020. In Anaheim, they found brake and tires constituted 30 percent of PM 2.5, whereas exhaust emissions linked to gasoline and diesel constituted 19 percent. In Long Beach, brake and tires constituted 15 percent of PM 2.5 pollution, which was the same as pollution from gas and diesel.

Metal contents and size distributions of brake and tire wear particles dispersed in the near-road environment

California Air Resources Board: Brake & Tire Wear Emissions

And I have vague memories of linking to this previously, but Common tire chemical implicated in mysterious deaths of at-risk salmon

[ related topics: Nature and environment California Culture Automobiles Global Warming ]

Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod. The HD 555s are $199, the HD 595s are $349, they use exactly the same drivers, the difference appears to be a chunk of foam in the back of the 555s...

As if I could loathe Microsoft architectures any more: a .aspx URL that apparently exists just to do some sort of permissions check on a PDF, leading to a URL with an actual backslash in it.

(And, yes, of course it's a transportation related service...)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron ]

The office, which has as a running gag mocking the BMW i4 "beaver" grill, has just spent 5 minutes giggling over a Google image search for "Miata teeth".

I think my favorite is the tongue on the track car.

[ related topics: Sports Automobiles ]

I should have made the connection that RRFBs are yellow lights, so of course drivers are going to interpret them as a signal to speed up...

Sometimes it's a shame technology becomes obsolete so fast, because mechanical pocket watch innards are so pretty.

[ related topics: Photography Movies ]

RT geekysteven @geekysteven@beige.party</a.

I was a child, I had childish things. But when I grew up, I was able to afford a lot more childish things. I have way more childish things. I cannot stress how much these rule.

Graham Sutherland has an LED PWM calculator, for those of you who want to go really deep on LED brightness.

Increasing the externalities: ProPublica: How Recent State Laws Are Making It Harder to Sue Trucking Companies After Crashes

(Of course personal automobile operators should probably be asked to carry serious amounts of insurance as well, but...)

[ related topics: Automobiles Machinery Government ]

The thing about comparisons to Weimar Germany is that we've always heard about how their economy was tanked because of punitive war reparations, but as I see the GOP trying to destroy our economy, it's making me wonder about different historical perspectives.

[ related topics: History Economics ]

Amazing to hear people complain about traffic and lack of parking in the same breath. Over and over and over again.

Classic action game Karateka is being turned into a playable documentary

Not seeing how to do permalinks on Jordan Mechner's blog, but: Karateka climbs again.

I met Jordan at a McKee storytelling class in LA back in the '90s, and Karateka was a classic on the library computers in high school (and that ending was definitely worth a giggle the first time ya died), and I hope this is available on a platform I have, when it finally ships.

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Humor Books Games Weblogs Astronomy Current Events Machinery Java ]

At least the WaPo seems to be (finally) catching up on gullibility and stenography: That dangerous TikTok trend on the news? It’s fake. — The ‘boat jumping challenge’ is just the latest hoax aimed at scaring adults about teen technology use (gift link to avoid paywall)

Dreyfuss said there are much bigger issues at stake than TikTok’s PR problem, however.

“Journalists are falling down on the job,” she said, “which leads to ridiculous policies and blanket bans and complete misunderstanding of what roles these platforms hold in our children’s lives. Journalists do a humongous disservice against our country’s ability to keep people safe and craft regulations that would actually protect children when they muddy the water so much with bad reporting. It’s frankly lazy.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Current Events Journalism and Media Heinlein Pop Culture Boats Machinery ]

Working on Black Dog for my voice lessons, and... I'm looking for additional suggestions for songs that have swagger, but don't require the singer to be Robert Plant.

(I offer "I Love Rock And Roll" as an example of "you'd think", but as Alan Merrill proved it really requires the singer to be Joan Jett...)

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Dogs ]

Petaluma folks! If you think the highest and best use of the vacant lots downtown is weeds and empty parking, then by all means, lobby the City Council to vote no on any form of the proposed Building Form Overlay District

However, it seems to me like doing *something* with those lots would be good for the city. We have an opportunity, EKN is footing the bill, so let's work with the Planning Department to come up with an overlay plan that will make it economically feasible for some sort of development on those lots. It doesn't have to be EKN's hotel, and even if it is, there are a lot of vacant lots that could be productive and valuable for the city, and right now aren't. Talk to developers, find out what they'd need to get to build the sort of downtown you want to see, and bring that to the Planning Department as feedback.

And if you do lobby the Council to vote no, you'll probably be a lot more effective if you go into that with an understanding of the fiscal and legal realities of the city, and with a vision for how the city can get on to stronger fiscal footing with more housing and more money to pay for infrastructure maintenance.

So, a little background: Ross Jones had been trying for years to build something on the vacant lot left to him by his grandmother at B St and the Boulevard, next to the hardware store. It used to be a gas station, so the first step was site remediation. He's got specific skills in hotels, and so after looking at various options, he ended up pitching a hotel. Eventually, as often happens with local developers who have roots in a town, the opposition wore him out, and he sold to an out of town developer, EKN.

Much of downtown is zoned Mixed Use 2. There are MU2 zones all over the city. EKN decided that the current MU2 standards did not allow them to build a hotel that made economic sense. So if the city wants that site to be something other than a vacant lot there, they either have to hope that another developer picks up the project and figures out how to make money with something that does conform, or change the standards.

A change could involve reworking the standards for MU2 zones, but that would allow a whole bunch of things to happen on lots nowhere near downtown. It could be a zoning variance for that particular lot, but that opens up the city to lawsuits from other lot owners about special treatment. So the proposal is for an "overlay district" that covers a larger portion of downtown lots, that would allow different standards for a limited period.

The Know Before You Grow forum with the city planning department hosted by the Petaluma Women's Club yesterday explored that, and had a lot of angry people who, to my ear, weren't listening to what was being said and were more interested in having an anti-hotel pep rally than actually having a reasoned discussion that looked at options, and that could have used the fact that EKN was throwing some substantial money at the city to explore those options.

This recording undoubtedly sucks. I was distracted by some audio issues and coordination with the venue. I know that the Planning folks are going through it deeply today, but I also really wish we'd been able to get out of our reactions and have a real discussion about the future of downtown.

At any rate, yeah: We can be angry, and continue to have weeds and empty parking lots and empty 1970s bank buildings, or we can decide we want something out of downtown and pursue it. The choice is ours.

https://youtu.be/LTprcPMULJw

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Law Work, productivity and environment Travel Pop Culture Community Currency Architecture Economics Real Estate ]

Pondering how I get frustrated with communities that are too much about process and not so much about doing. Where every decision gets bogged down in making sure that everyone feels heard, and in all of the discussion the people who just want to apply shoulders to wheels end up wandering off and finding other places to apply their efforts.

This observation may or may not have anything to do with meta discussions about federation and the future of social media and hypotheticals platforms...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Community ]

The door on our 13 year old[*] toaster/convection/whatever oven isn't closing completely, and I could take it apart and try to fix it, or I could order something with snazzy new air frying and whatever else capabilities.

Anyone got a favorite rec?

[*] https://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/13652.html

[ related topics: Invention and Design Archival ]

RT Everbern Neverlearn @everbern@pagan.plus

Greetings, #Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Examples of tight reflector spacing: 4' for the round dots in groups of 3, 9' spacing to the rectangular ones. Pythian Drive in Oakmont.

Up to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park to go look at the sun at Robert Ferguson Observatory. The ecosystem is way too fragile and heavily trafficked for it, but that slow makes me wanna rock scramble.

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java ]

Sun through a neutral density filter and my phone held up to the eyepiece, at Robert Ferguson Observatory

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java ]

Sun through a hydrogen alpha filter and my phone held up to the eyepiece, at Robert Ferguson Observatory

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java ]

Sun through a Calcium K filter and my phone held up to the eyepiece, at Robert Ferguson Observatory

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java ]

First coat of finish on the picture frame...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oiled tiny library

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

Library stand set in concrete.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

I believe the phrase "Little Free Library" is trademarked and the use requires a subscription, so this is a tiny free library.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

The approach to the tiny free library from the other side.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

The view of the tiny free library from the chairs and table on the front patio.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography Furniture ]

Examples of a filled and flush joint, for an Ask Metafilter answer.

[ related topics: Photography ]

That Microsoft advertising is everywhere.

Fortune cookie reads "A new outlook brightens your image and brings you new friends."

[ related topics: Humor Photography Microsoft Invention and Design moron Consumerism and advertising ]

Why isn't "carbonation" the name of an anti-keto movement?

Holy shit. I'm just shy of halfway through Chuck Tingles new book Camp Damascus, and this turn was signaled and makes sense, but damn that's also a wild kick and not expected.

Recommended.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design ]

Just finished Camp Damascus, in one continuous read. My favorite fiction works on a surface level, and then in layers of metaphor, and wow did this deliver nicely.

As I recontextualize some of my growing up into ... well ... growing up in a deeply religious (though I didn't think of it that way) isolated community, this hit so many notes. Really enjoyed it, and gave me things to think about, and I can't ask for much more from a story than that.

[ related topics: Religion Community ]

Over on Facebook, my "these pictures are not of a Little Free Library™" post is getting some discussion on trademark law, and I've been taking an "I'm not sure the phrase would be as entrenched in the culture if not for that organization" and "there are plenty of other adjectives" stance.

Heck, I might even send 'em their forty bucks to become an officially licensed Little Free Library™.

On the other hand, this is good to see: WaPo: ‘Taco Tuesday’ belongs to us all, after Taco John’s gives up trademark (gift link).

[ related topics: Language Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Books Photography Food Sociology California Culture Community Copyright/Trademark ]

Given that a whole bunch of friends of mine just took the better part of a week to try to figure out how to get home from the IAGSDC convention in Ottawa after all of their plans went to hell, and the better part of two weeks to get their checked luggage, I am giggling: CCamera operator burns Toronto Pearson Airport (YYZ) in the most creative way

Deborah Flint, CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, was in the middle of telling assembled media that Pearson has "seen almost a doubling in terms of improvement on on-time performance since last year," when camera operator Matthew Reid decided to take some creative license, tilting his camera up to show an arrival board covered in delayed and cancelled flights.

Tweet with the video

[ related topics: Photography Aviation Theater & Plays Journalism and Media Pyrotechnics Video ]

Local realtor sends email with subject line "Wish you could move before the fall?", and once again I'm moved to ask "Autumn, or of civilization?"

Dear NextDoor commenters complaining about not being able to see pedestrians wearing dark clothing or being afraid that kids are gonna enter the roadway, y'all are *so* close to getting it, but...

We need to reframe the discussion so that y'all can see who's introducing the deadly weapon into this environment, and whose responsibility it should be to not kill anyone.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Nature and environment Community Guns Clothing ]

North Bay Python is next weekend. I'm gonna bike there. See any of y'all at it?

https://2023.northbaypython.org/

[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Bicycling Python ]

Joe Walsh Dismisses Threat of AI: “It Can’t Destroy a Hotel Room”

An AP News interview with Joe Walsh on TikTok:

It’s computers, it has nothing to do with music. ... It can’t destroy a hotel room, it can’t throw a TV off the fifth floor into the pool and get it right in the middle. When AI knows how to destroy a hotel room, then I’ll pay attention to it.

[ related topics: Music Technology and Culture Current Events Television Travel Artificial Intelligence Video ]

Another one: Teen Suicide Plummeted During Covid-19 School Closures, New Study Finds

Trends and Seasonality of Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalizations for Suicidality Among Children and Adolescents in the US from 2016 to 2021 JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(7):e2324183. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.24183

Previously I linked to In-Person Schooling and Youth Suicide: Evidence from School Calendars and Pandemic School Closures, and linked to the news that Deaths by Suicide Drop in 2020 While Overall Deaths Soared During Pandemic

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Current Events Pop Culture Archival ]

Just because I'm sure I'm gonna have some of these conversations: RT mekka okereke @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io

I don't want to talk about Aldean's "Small town" lyrics or video.

I do want to point out (again) that the homicide rate in GOP "small town" counties, is higher than that in Dem "big town" counties. 🤡

https://www.cjcj.org/reports-p...-than-democratic-voting-counties

A white person in a red county has about as much chance of being shot as a Black person in a blue county.🤡

(I don't know how much you know about crime in the USA, but if you have as much risk of being a victim of anything as Black people? That's not good).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Race Video ]

I am really missing having a Linux laptop. The Surface Pro 3 didn't work out super well. I have an Intel 2018 MacBook Pro. This was kinda the nadir of Apple hardware, and as much as it is it's still actually kinda okay with MacOS, but... MacOS.

I have seen mostly horror stories about trying to get Linux running on hardware like this, especially since it'd need touchbar support. Anyone got a step-by-step on making it work?

(I really don't just wanna buy a Framework, but...)

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Open Source Work, productivity and environment Sports Macintosh ]

Feeling really sheepish about my first guess on today's first Rootl word... https://rootlgame.net/

Oh *that*'s why ffmpeg's performance is so atrocious on this M2 MacBook Pro. Sigh. More reason I need my personal computing back on a Linux platform.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Theater & Plays ]

Seriously, if you need a little boost today, https://www.queeringthemap.com is the uplifting notes from people I needed this morning.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

SysAdmin1138 Explains — Where Web-Environment-Integrity came from. A good balanced rundown of the Google WEI bullshit proposal and why it sure feels like an effort to insert plausible deniability into doing evil.

[ related topics: Weblogs Nature and environment ]

Was reminded of "h-" tags, and realized that at some point I'd implemented them, and that's probably why I've never bothered to go back and do anything more interesting with RSS. Is there anyone out there actually using "h-" tags for anything, or is it just us IndieWeb weirdos who marked up our sites and then forgot that these things existed?

[ related topics: Content Management ]

This complaint about a vendor who puts documentation behind a login prompt with a short timeout that logs out and clears is part of why the super-browser I'm working on has an "archive this web page to static PDF" as a right click menu option.

https://infosec.exchange/@JessTheUnstill/110753032486536850

I mean, aside from the just generally transitory nature of the web.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment ]

Petaluma folks: Now that the optometrists in the Target have closed down, I need to find someone new for an eye exam. I *do not* want to be pressured into buying glasses on-site that have worse optics than Zenni (so not excited about Westside Optometry).

Any good experiences?

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Just stuffing in an update so that work can find it.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

I mean, I don't know why they need to put "Danger: To prevent serious injury and DEATH: KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN" on a label, it seems like the kind of general advice we should all have gotten...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography ]

Charlene had expressed an interest in color on the ceiling, and got to talking with my sister Celia, and suddenly a canvas appeared in the mail. So of course I had to figure out a way to hang it, which involved a frame to keep it and the acrylic in tension, and make it easy for one person (me) to lift the whole thing on to the ceiling...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Can never have too many clamps. I mean, I thought I did, and I was clearly wrong.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Nature is trying to make up for the heat...

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

When people trace the roots of homelessness back to then California Governor Reagan signing the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967, they forget that the reason it was so popular was that mental health holds were being abused.

And they still are, as 26 patients have sued a top Arkansas psychiatrist for involuntarily committing and holding them.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/t...oning-patients-medicai-rcna93430

[ related topics: Health Current Events California Culture ]

Jokes on you, suckers, I'm gonna see y'all on the new Wayland social media site...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Journalism and Media ]

I always thought that the other search engines would eventually catch up to Google, not that Google would just become so crappy that it's no longer differentiable from the other search engines.

Sigh. LLMs and the "AI"ification of search sucks.

Also, sites which have alerts and changing data and don't publish RSS or similar change notification suck. Lookin' at you, LeagueLobster.

[ related topics: Content Management Artificial Intelligence ]

... X: Current trademark owner Microsoft. "Goods and Services: Providing on-line chat rooms for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games; providing on-line electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games"

https://trademarks.justia.com/760/41/x-76041368.html

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Humor Games Microsoft moron Copyright/Trademark Video ]

Interview with the ETSI Standards Organization That Created TETRA "Backdoor"

Brian Murgatroyd spoke with me about why his standards group weakened an encryption algorithm used to secure critical radio communications of police, military, critical infrastructure and others.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Cryptography ]

I admit that I never really paid attention to opera; I never connected with it, and attributed a lot of the sound to needing to fill a concert hall before the days of amplification. I don't know if I'm gonna start listening to it, but holy crap the latest episode of Strong Songs with guest Luigi Boccia is amazing, covering all sorts of detail about vocal technique, the influences of technology, everything. It's fantastic.

https://strongsongspodcast.com...eratic-odyssey-with-luigi-boccia

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Pop Culture ]

Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture

The professor, an expert on the opioids crisis, was placed on paid administrative leave and investigated, raising questions about the extent of political interference in higher education, particularly in health-related matters.

[ related topics: Politics Health moron Education ]

Adeem the Artist cover's Jason Aldean's Sundown Town (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Art & Culture Video ]

Farming for Cars

...45 percent of the country's corn crop goes into cars' tanks ...  two thirds of that corn ethanol just gets wasted as heat ... ethanol from corn yields only 1.5 units of ethanol energy for each energy unit used to grow it.

Via

Fact-checking Alisa Valdés’ claims about the Trinity Test

As the Oppenheimer discourse blares forward, millions of views and thousands of likes and retweets have been given to misinformation. There is a viral twitter thread in which fiction author and aspiring screenwriter Alisa Lynn Valdés makes a series of partly true, but mostly false, claims about the Trinity Project, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and whistleblower Loyda Martinez. Trying to sell her own screenplay on the subject, she has received nothing but blind encouragement and far too little scrutiny. You can find the thread here.

[ related topics: Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56. She was famously canceled for trying to bring attention to the some of the abuses of the Catholic Church on Saturday Night Live.

[ related topics: Religion Music Theater & Plays Sociology Television California Culture ]

So David Grusch is claiming that "non human" remains have been found in crash UFOs, and the Pentagon is carefully saying that there's no UFO activity of extraterrestrial origin.

I think this leads to only one conclusion: Hedgehogs are shitty pilots and keep cratering in...

[ related topics: Conspiracy ]

Same article, different places:

Yahoo: Over 100 trans men enter Miss Italy pageant after organiser says only “women from birth” allowed

GCN: Over 100 trans men enter Miss Italy pageant after organiser says only “women from birth” allowed

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Interesting discussion at KBYG last night. A strong reminder that by deliberately creating a cesspool for political outrage, Nextdoor imposes a cost on all of us.

[ related topics: Politics moron Community ]

Interesting discussion at Know Before You Grow last night, we had a speaker fall through, so we did kind of an open mic night thing, and... it's a strong reminder that Nextdoor (and, to different extents Facebook and the other social media sites) amplify outrage, and externalize the costs of their profits on to the city staff and elected officials, and the rest of us who try to bring reason into the discussion.

It was also a reminder that Petaluma desperately needs a local paper that can help address some of the misinformation flying around. The Grand Jury report on the M Group, if anything, suggests that the incentives are for the outsourced Planning Department to create opportunities for too much public engagement, to bill developers for interminable public meetings and additional public input.

The fact that Petaluma has been experiencing its slowest growth since the Great Depression reinforces that this may be a problem.

It's further a reminder that historical perspective is useful. Before the event, Charlene and I happened to be leafing through Adair Heig's "History of Petaluma: A California River Town" and ran across this picture of downtown in the early '60s. It's amazing how, even in this fairly tight crop, several of those buildings aren't there any more, replaced with parking lots and ugly '70s single story bank buildings.

Even with the Urban Growth Boundary, as the city has sprawled out we've lost downtown.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Aviation Journalism and Media California Culture Community Architecture ]

Holy crap, the cookie consent process on the Teen Vogue web site is fantastic, in a very good way.

Also, this article on the horrors of what the KOSA bill would inflict on us is also worth reading.

https://www.teenvogue.com/stor...ds-online-safety-act-lgbtq-youth

[ related topics: Children and growing up Pop Culture ]

Anyone have a favorite open source password manager browser plug-in? I'm trying to figure out how to populate fields for React apps, like the NYT login. I can set the input's .value and send 'input' and 'change' events, and the input shows as changed, but as soon as anything React is triggered it's cleared from the model.

And sending a 'blur' event reloads the value too.

[ related topics: Free Software Television ]

The news that Washington Freedom was eliminated last night has led me to discover that there are, unsurprisingly, San Francisco Unicorns and Seattle Orcas (and everyone's rooting for orcas these days), but also Texas Super Kings.

Which... kinda makes sense that they'd be fans of monarchy with special powers.

[ related topics: Privacy Bay Area Current Events Civil Liberties California Culture Seattle Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip Government ]

Half the Police Force Quit. Crime Dropped.

The resignations came after Golden Valley, Minnesota hired its first Black police chief to begin addressing issues of racial profiling.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Charlene, a non-programmer, in expressing her frustration with people who found a particular computer task difficult: "I don't even think that's a computer skill. It's just the ability to read instructions and press buttons."

I hate to burst her bubble, but yeah, that's pretty much what my career has encompassed.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

A friend just posted " A stage is a stage and an audience of 4000 is a blessing!", and I'm thinking about how I drove an hour and a half each way on Thursday night to perform for 20 people in a genre that's been running 4,000 people at the largest national gathering for about a decade, and peaked in the'80s (though '76 had 40k people).

Clearly I chose genre poorly.

Though he started earlier than I did, and has helped me in the process of finding my own voice. Love ya Stephen.

[ related topics: Sports ]

I didn't take notes enough in the opening talk to remember which venue cat this is, at North Bay Python 2023 #nbpy

[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Date night in our household involved wandering around town with local history books looking at architectural details and trying to guess at building heights. And talking about how the apparent goofiness in an apartment block reflects some well intentioned quirks in the form-based code. And sometimes in the shadow of taller buildings and industrial happenings a detail catches my eye and the light.

[ related topics: Books Photography Architecture Real Estate ]

Ya know the thing I really love about trying to get Linux code running on the Mac? That somehow I've installed Boost on this machine, maybe with Homebrew, but CMake is giving me builds that are apparently linking to the wrong stdc++ library or something, because the name mappings are wrong, and...

I should just wipe this machine and start from scratch, huh.

[ related topics: Language Free Software Books Open Source Sports Macintosh ]

Moment from North Bay Python: two people from different divisions of the same company sat down at lunch, one asked "So what team are you on", there was a pause, and I got to interject "Uh, yeah, I play for the other one..."

Good convention. Neat venue. You should make plans to be here next year. #NBPY

[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Saving off White Coast Captioning https://whitecoatcaptioning.com/ so that I can find it again when I need closed-captioning services, did a fantastic job at North Bay Python

[ related topics: Monty Python Heinlein California Culture Race Python ]

This last weekend at #NBPY I made my usual conversation about how every time I started a project in Python, I ended up wishing I'd used C++. That led to a discussion of the white male-ness of the C++ community, which is valid, but I'm wondering about the connection to those talking about the processes of building specific zoning plans, and how people crowing about the successes of that process for the CPSC while the lots remain vacant and weed filled, and we lack so much housing.

[ related topics: Monty Python Community Race Real Estate Python ]

Brilliance, and a deep dive into Python objects and internal methods to do operator overloading and subscripting and all of those fun things: "Oh the (Methods) You Can (Make): By Dunder Seuss" - Josh Cannon (North Bay Python 2023) (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Monty Python California Culture Video Python ]