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  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  2. <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><title>p1k3::feed</title><subtitle>writing by brennen</subtitle><link href="https://p1k3.com/"/><link href="https://p1k3.com/feed" rel="self"/><icon>https://p1k3.com/favicon.png</icon><author><name>brennen</name></author><id>https://p1k3.com/</id><generator>App::WRT.pm / XML::Atom::SimpleFeed</generator><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated><entry><title>Thursday, January 11, 2024 - a concise theory of notes about notes</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2024/1/11"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2024/1/11</id><content type="html">
  3.  
  4. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, January 11, 2024&lt;/h1&gt;
  5.  
  6. &lt;h2&gt;a concise theory of notes about notes&lt;/h2&gt;
  7.  
  8. &lt;p&gt;Previously:&lt;/p&gt;
  9.  
  10. &lt;ul&gt;
  11. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes-on-notes/&#34;&gt;notes on notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  12. &lt;li&gt;2020: &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/20/&#34;&gt;meta meta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  13. &lt;li&gt;2020: &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/7/27&#34;&gt;the zettelkasten / the zeitgeist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  14. &lt;/ul&gt;
  15.  
  16.  
  17. &lt;p&gt;I came across an argument about what exactly makes something a zettelkasten,
  18. and then thought: &#38;ldquo;Zettelkasten&#38;rdquo; is a pretty great example of how one of
  19. the best ways to fuck up a neat idea is to have a bunch of people get really
  20. excited about it.&lt;/p&gt;
  21.  
  22. &lt;p&gt;Taking notes is one of those things in the unfortunate position of being:&lt;/p&gt;
  23.  
  24. &lt;ol&gt;
  25. &lt;li&gt; Surprisingly deep as a subject&lt;/li&gt;
  26. &lt;li&gt; Capable of being focused back on itself&lt;/li&gt;
  27. &lt;/ol&gt;
  28.  
  29.  
  30. &lt;p&gt;I guess nearly any practice can disappear up its own asshole under the right
  31. conditions, but some are extraordinarily susceptible.&lt;/p&gt;
  32.  
  33. &lt;p&gt;That&#38;rsquo;s my working model of what happens.  If you can say a lot about something,
  34. and you can use the something to say it, well, watch yourself.  You might just
  35. be teetering on the edge of the pit.  People should get a warning about the
  36. risks of this drilled into them right around the age they&#38;rsquo;re ready for
  37. something like &lt;em&gt;The Neverending Story&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  38.  
  39. &lt;p&gt;This post is mostly just the short version of &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/5/20&#34;&gt;meta meta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  40.  
  41.  
  42.  
  43. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;notes-on-notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/writing&#34;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/zettelkasten&#34;&gt;zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  44. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2024/&#34; title=&#34;2024&#34;&gt;2024&lt;/a&gt; /
  45. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2024/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  46. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2024/1/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  47. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  48.  
  49. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, december 14, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/12/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/12/14</id><content type="html">
  50.  
  51. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, december 14, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  52.  
  53. &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s december&lt;br /&gt;
  54. and that old hollow feeling&lt;br /&gt;
  55. biding something holy&lt;br /&gt;
  56. or forgotten, reappearing&lt;/p&gt;
  57.  
  58.  
  59. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  60. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  61. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  62. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/12/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  63. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  64.  
  65. </content><updated>2024-01-12T19:22:02Z</updated></entry><entry><title type="html">Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - reading: more patrick o&#39;brian</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/11/15"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/11/15</id><content type="html">
  66.  
  67. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, November 15, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  68.  
  69. &lt;h2&gt;reading: more patrick o&#39;brian&lt;/h2&gt;
  70.  
  71. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Previously: &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/1/18&#34;&gt;reading: master and commander&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  72.  
  73. &lt;p&gt;After thinking for a while that I should pick up more of this series
  74. (apparently for &lt;em&gt;five years&lt;/em&gt;), I bought copies of the following:&lt;/p&gt;
  75.  
  76. &lt;ul&gt;
  77. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Post Captain&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  78. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;H.M.S. Surprise&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  79. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Mauritius Command&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  80. &lt;/ul&gt;
  81.  
  82.  
  83. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m through the first two and about halfway into &lt;em&gt;The Mauritius Command&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  84.  
  85. &lt;p&gt;These remain really strange and wonderful books.  They cycle through subtle
  86. and complicated human relationships, absurdly specific sailing nerdery, comedy,
  87. tragedy, violence, the machinery of empire.&lt;/p&gt;
  88.  
  89. &lt;p&gt;Every bit worth the time, so far.&lt;/p&gt;
  90.  
  91.  
  92.  
  93. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  94. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  95. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  96. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/11/15/&#34; title=&#34;15&#34;&gt;15&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  97. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  98.  
  99. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, November 14, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/11/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/11/14</id><content type="html">
  100.  
  101. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, November 14, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  102.  
  103. &lt;p&gt;A windy day. The leaves clattering down out of trees surprisingly late.  The
  104. sun down behind the hills by 4pm.  The cat dissatisfied.&lt;/p&gt;
  105.  
  106.  
  107.  
  108. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  109. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  110. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  111. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/11/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  112. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  113.  
  114. </content><updated>2023-11-28T04:52:21Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, August 13, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/8/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/8/13</id><content type="html">
  115.  
  116. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, August 13, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  117.  
  118. &lt;p&gt;I revisit this thought:&lt;/p&gt;
  119.  
  120. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;the ironies of a bunch of hyperliterates using a giant text machine to
  121. bootstrap text into a thing that exceeds the bounds of comprehension and then
  122. totally overwhelms all the tools of literacy itself&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  123.  
  124. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve spent most of my life enmeshed in language, with words as my main power,
  125. and also a lot of time dwelling on the insufficiency of language to what life
  126. is really like.  These days the latter sometimes feels like the &lt;em&gt;main thing&lt;/em&gt;
  127. about words.  Or at least the main thing about the dominant culture of words,
  128. the technology and system of them.&lt;/p&gt;
  129.  
  130. &lt;p&gt;The tools of literacy &#38;mdash; I don&#38;rsquo;t exactly mean to run them down.  We just live
  131. in a time when, for whole classes of human, a kind of hypertrophied literacy
  132. has enmeshed and eclipsed the experience of reality.  This isn&#38;rsquo;t so much &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt;
  133. as it&#38;rsquo;s just newly vast, encompassing, interconnected.  The language machine is
  134. so big, so ramified, that the sheer &lt;em&gt;mathematical accumulation&lt;/em&gt; of its products
  135. now feeds deafening oceans of noise back into the workings.  Whether by this I
  136. mean the outputs of machine learning or the behavior of a few billion minds
  137. over-saturated with internet bullshit:  I&#38;rsquo;m not sure it even matters.&lt;/p&gt;
  138.  
  139. &lt;p&gt;We&#38;rsquo;ve all had our part in building this, and you can get endlessly meta about
  140. the endless meta of it, which is part of how it exceeds the bounds of
  141. comprehension.  All of that is&#38;hellip;  Not really how I want to spend my time.  I don&#38;rsquo;t
  142. have any grand thesis here, or at least I don&#38;rsquo;t have any grand &lt;em&gt;prescription&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  143.  
  144. &lt;p&gt;There was a time when I was a big word fish in a small word pond, I guess.
  145. Somewhere along the way the contemporary internet happened and also I got a job
  146. where being a big word fish was a basic prerequisite.  Circa now: Sweet Christ
  147. am I ever weary of paragraphs.  There&#38;rsquo;s something useful in knowing that, if I
  148. don&#38;rsquo;t chase my own tail about it too much.&lt;/p&gt;
  149.  
  150.  
  151. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  152. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  153. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; /
  154. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/8/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  155. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  156.  
  157. </content><updated>2023-10-10T01:41:11Z</updated></entry><entry><title>tuesday, august  1, 2023 - one for jack</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/8/1"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/8/1</id><content type="html">
  158.  
  159. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;tuesday, august  1, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  160.  
  161. &lt;h2&gt;one for jack&lt;/h2&gt;
  162.  
  163. &lt;p&gt;here we are in one of those times of dying&lt;br /&gt;
  164. and i&#39;m fucked if i know what to do&lt;br /&gt;
  165. i&#39;ve never known, i likely never will&lt;/p&gt;
  166.  
  167. &lt;p&gt;it was so dark at 5 o&#39;clock that the streetlight came on&lt;br /&gt;
  168. in the alley out back, and i started flicking switches&lt;br /&gt;
  169. on the lamps&lt;/p&gt;
  170.  
  171. &lt;p&gt;water poured through the kitchen window when it rained&lt;br /&gt;
  172. and i got one of those fancy new reverse 911 calls&lt;br /&gt;
  173. about the flash flood warning&lt;br /&gt;
  174. and now in the aftermath&lt;br /&gt;
  175. the mice in the walls are more agitated than usual&lt;br /&gt;
  176. i suppose they may have gotten wet&lt;/p&gt;
  177.  
  178. &lt;p&gt;now the storm has shuffled off east, and&lt;br /&gt;
  179. there&#39;s a thin mist rising off the streets&lt;br /&gt;
  180. and i&#39;m on the couch, drinking iced whiskey and orange soda&lt;br /&gt;
  181. out of an aluminum camp mug&lt;/p&gt;
  182.  
  183. &lt;p&gt;i should kill the mice in the walls&lt;br /&gt;
  184. (god damn them, i don&#39;t want to kill anything at all)&lt;br /&gt;
  185. i should fix the windows&lt;br /&gt;
  186. i should muck the rainwater out of the crawlspace&lt;br /&gt;
  187. i should be stone sober, waiting for what comes next&lt;/p&gt;
  188.  
  189. &lt;p&gt;but it&#39;s true enough:&lt;br /&gt;
  190. the times you should be most in your right mind&lt;br /&gt;
  191. are often the times you least want to be in that&lt;br /&gt;
  192. mind at all.&lt;/p&gt;
  193.  
  194. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  195. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  196. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; /
  197. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/8/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  198. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  199.  
  200. </content><updated>2023-08-02T02:50:20Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, July 10, 2023 - recent fiction intake, first half of 2023 edition</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/7/10"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/7/10</id><content type="html">
  201.  
  202. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, July 10, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  203.  
  204. &lt;h2&gt;recent fiction intake, first half of 2023 edition&lt;/h2&gt;
  205.  
  206. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gilligan&#38;rsquo;s Island&lt;/em&gt;, the first (mumble) episodes or so on DVD while killing
  207. time in a ski town (I don&#38;rsquo;t ski).  I had only ever caught smatterings of this
  208. back in the era of teevee re-runs.  It&#38;rsquo;s often kind of charming and also
  209. periodically extremely racist, which I guess maybe sums up a lot of
  210. mid-20th-century American television.&lt;/p&gt;
  211.  
  212. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reservation Dogs&lt;/em&gt;, season 2.  I think this show might be about as good as TV
  213. has ever gotten.&lt;/p&gt;
  214.  
  215. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Prayer for the Crown Shy&lt;/em&gt;, Becky Chambers.  A &lt;em&gt;Monk &#38;amp; Robot&lt;/em&gt; book.  I like
  216. these, they&#38;rsquo;re enjoyable, but if I&#38;rsquo;m honest they feel pretty slight compared to
  217. the &lt;em&gt;Wayfarers&lt;/em&gt; books.  Intentional I&#38;rsquo;m sure.  A fine way to spend an evening
  218. without dwelling on the numbing horror of the actual world, but they don&#38;rsquo;t
  219. stick in my head all that much.&lt;/p&gt;
  220.  
  221. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wednesday&lt;/em&gt;, Netflix.  This could have been good.  There&#38;rsquo;s a lot of talent
  222. involved, it&#38;rsquo;s (mostly) well cast, it&#38;rsquo;s often very pretty, the costuming is a
  223. delight, and the writing is&#38;hellip; Ok, first of all, why are they doing a &lt;em&gt;Harry
  224. Potter&lt;/em&gt;?  Second, why does Wednesday need to learn about the power of
  225. friendship?  Why does she just kind of suck as a character, despite Jenna
  226. Ortega&#38;rsquo;s completely dialed-in inhabiting of the part?  Why does the overall
  227. mode of this thing undermine all the appealing aspects of the Addams Family
  228. material it&#38;rsquo;s drawing on?&lt;/p&gt;
  229.  
  230. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Letterkenny&lt;/em&gt;.  We&#38;rsquo;re kind of always watching this.&lt;/p&gt;
  231.  
  232. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Avatar: The Way of Water&lt;/em&gt;.  You know what, I smoked a bowl in the parking lot
  233. before the movie, and I had a blast.  It&#38;rsquo;s gorgeous.  It&#38;rsquo;s the first time I&#38;rsquo;ve
  234. felt anything more than polite indifference about a 3D glasses kind of
  235. experience.  Also, at this late date, and thinking back on &lt;em&gt;Titanic&lt;/em&gt; (a movie
  236. which came out so long ago that I saw it on a youth group trip to a mall
  237. theater) I kind of enjoy the meta of &#38;ldquo;&lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; very expensive James Cameron movie
  238. is totally gonna bomb so hard you guys, just wait&#38;rdquo;.  Many criticisms of the
  239. basic ideas and form of these movies are valid, and also I am still waiting to
  240. hear that Cameron has cut Alan Dean Foster a very, very large check.&lt;/p&gt;
  241.  
  242. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lincoln Lawyer&lt;/em&gt;, Netflix.  My girlfriend was out of town.  I was looking
  243. for something to watch with the cat while I sat on the couch and wrote shitty
  244. code on my laptop.  It was Fine.  They draw it out a bit too much.  The whole
  245. plot with the tech mogul&#38;hellip;  Ehhhh.  The main guy is implausibly good and
  246. decent.  It&#38;rsquo;s sort of pleasantly low-key.  It delivers a couple of really good
  247. lines.  This is airport novel material but sometimes you just want airport
  248. novel material.&lt;/p&gt;
  249.  
  250. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Point Break&lt;/em&gt;.  It had been so long since I saw this.  It&#38;rsquo;s way more over the
  251. top than I remembered.  &#38;ldquo;Quit being in the FBI and go surfing but maybe don&#38;rsquo;t
  252. rob banks in a murdery way&#38;rdquo; is a reasonable stance.  If this movie has a
  253. stance.&lt;/p&gt;
  254.  
  255. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Supernatural&lt;/em&gt;.  A procedural ghost murder thing with stupid but surprisingly
  256. consistent rules?  &lt;em&gt;The X-Files&lt;/em&gt; by way of &lt;em&gt;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&lt;/em&gt;?  I
  257. dunno.  We&#38;rsquo;re a couple seasons in.  This show is completely absurd, and
  258. intermittently flat-out appalling, but if I&#38;rsquo;m honest it&#38;rsquo;s grown on me.
  259. Better-crafted than it has to be, and whoever does the visual effects knows
  260. what they&#38;rsquo;re about.  More overt about its religious preoccupations than I
  261. usually expect.  Weirdly obsessed with quirky vintage motel room interiors.
  262. Too much of the thing where the main characters yell at each other about the
  263. same stuff over and over again.  Like many of its genre cousins, I suspect this
  264. works best as an anthology series with a frame of loose continuity and some
  265. recurring secondary characters, and kind of hope it won&#38;rsquo;t get eaten by the Big
  266. Plot stuff as it goes along.  But then also, holy shit, there are somehow &lt;em&gt;15
  267. seasons&lt;/em&gt; of this?&lt;/p&gt;
  268.  
  269. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ronin&lt;/em&gt;.  I had never actually seen this.  The car chases &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; legit.&lt;/p&gt;
  270.  
  271. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Witcher: Sword of Destiny&lt;/em&gt;.  We watched the Netflix show.  I liked it
  272. despite not being that into all the violence and only knowing what was going on
  273. maybe half of the time.  I&#38;rsquo;ve been reading some of the story / book stuff.  I
  274. expected it to be easier to follow the overall plot of the books than the show,
  275. and I was wrong.  On the whole, this is derivative schlock in a very uneven set
  276. of translations, and it&#38;rsquo;s frequently pretty sexist, but it&#38;rsquo;s also&#38;hellip;  Kind of
  277. appealing and humane in an unexpected way?&lt;/p&gt;
  278.  
  279. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lucifer&lt;/em&gt;, Netflix.  I was home alone again.  I wanted pulpy and ignorable.
  280. &#38;ldquo;The literal devil runs a nightclub&#38;rdquo; is one thing as a setup, &#38;ldquo;Lucifer uses his
  281. oddly-limited and very specific powers to help the LAPD solve crimes and it&#38;rsquo;s
  282. kind of basically &lt;em&gt;Castle&lt;/em&gt;&#38;rdquo; is another.  It has its moments, but I&#38;rsquo;m not sure
  283. I&#38;rsquo;m overly motivated here.  It&#38;rsquo;s a little too standard network murder
  284. procedural with hot cops.  The cat was indifferent.&lt;/p&gt;
  285.  
  286. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Name of the Wind&lt;/em&gt;, Patrick Rothfuss.  A couple of trusted friends have
  287. recommended this as something special, and they were right.  That rare big slab
  288. of fantasy that felt like something new despite a lot of familiar genre
  289. furniture (with hyper-competent protagonist in a school setting).  I am
  290. somewhat wishing my trusted friends had mentioned that there&#38;rsquo;s a second book
  291. but not yet (or maybe ever) a third.  I&#38;rsquo;ll probably read the second one anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
  292.  
  293. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves&lt;/em&gt;.  This was great.  A well-resourced
  294. action fantasy where the action and the fantasy are both good and the story is
  295. constrained enough to make for an entertaining, self-contained film with
  296. relatable stakes.  Actually funny.  Visually appealing in a way that&#38;rsquo;s
  297. meaningfully distinct from the standard visual language of fantasy movies circa
  298. now, which is kind of amazing for a product of a media empire that I&#38;rsquo;ve always
  299. thought of as deriving entirely from a slurry of standard fantasy components.
  300. There&#38;rsquo;s a straightforward lesson here that I very much doubt the movie
  301. machinery on the whole is prepared to learn, which is &lt;em&gt;go smaller&lt;/em&gt;.  (Even when
  302. you&#38;rsquo;re going big.)  Also: Jarnathan.  More bird guys, please.&lt;/p&gt;
  303.  
  304. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse&lt;/em&gt;.  This was also great.  I&#38;rsquo;m full up on
  305. superhero material in the general case, but this really stands out.
  306. The maximalist, meta-textual multiverse thing is probably getting worn out
  307. fast, but here it works and has things to say.  If you&#38;rsquo;ve seen it or aren&#38;rsquo;t
  308. worried about spoilers, I recommend Eric&#38;rsquo;s
  309. &lt;a href=&#34;https://ericsipple.com/superheroes-miles-morales-and-the-fallacy-of-hard-choices/&#34;&gt;Superheroes, Miles Morales, and the Fallacy of Hard Choices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  310.  
  311. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Priscilla Queen of the Desert&lt;/em&gt;.  Flawed, I think, but kind of an amazing movie
  312. in ways I wasn&#38;rsquo;t expecting.&lt;/p&gt;
  313.  
  314. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What We Do in the Shadows&lt;/em&gt; (tv show version).  I guess we&#38;rsquo;re a couple of
  315. seasons behind?  Somewhere along the way this kind of devolved into a mishmash
  316. of its constituent parts and characters doing stuff in a way that suggests it
  317. probably should have wrapped things up a while ago, but at the same time it&#38;rsquo;s
  318. still a pleasant enough diversion with individually funny bits.&lt;/p&gt;
  319.  
  320. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Bear&lt;/em&gt;, season 1.  I was iffy on this at the start, because I&#38;rsquo;m weary of
  321. &#38;ldquo;people yell fruitlessly at each other&#38;rdquo; as a driving mechanic and stories about
  322. the aftermath of suicide are hard even (or maybe especially) when they&#38;rsquo;re done
  323. well (see also &lt;em&gt;Reservation Dogs&lt;/em&gt;).  On the other hand, I&#38;rsquo;m a sucker for
  324. workplace stuff.  Anyway, it&#38;rsquo;s good.  The second-to-last episode of the season
  325. is a basically perfect chunk of shit-hitting-the-fan chaos.&lt;/p&gt;
  326.  
  327. &lt;p&gt;(Did I read a sentence like that last one somewhere else about this show?
  328. &lt;em&gt;Probably&lt;/em&gt;.  I&#38;rsquo;m not sure I&#38;rsquo;m even capable of original thoughts or phrases at
  329. this stage of the game.)&lt;/p&gt;
  330.  
  331.  
  332.  
  333. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/watching&#34;&gt;watching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  334. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  335. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  336. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/7/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  337. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  338.  
  339. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, July  7, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/7/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/7/7</id><content type="html">
  340.  
  341. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, July  7, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  342.  
  343. &lt;p&gt;A thought I posted elsewhere not so long ago:&lt;/p&gt;
  344.  
  345. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;the ironies of a bunch of hyperliterates using a giant text machine to
  346. bootstrap text into a thing that exceeds the bounds of comprehension and then
  347. totally overwhelms all the tools of literacy itself&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  348.  
  349.  
  350.  
  351. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  352. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  353. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  354. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/7/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  355. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  356.  
  357. </content><updated>2023-08-09T04:48:16Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, June 29, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/6/29"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/6/29</id><content type="html">
  358.  
  359. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, June 29, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  360.  
  361. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s Thursday afternoon.  I&#38;rsquo;m sitting outside, on an otherwise-deserted stone
  362. patio, under an umbrella, drinking my second lager of the afternoon.  Motorized
  363. tourist traffic pulses through the 25mph zone at a steady 30 or 40mph, with an
  364. occasional outlier in a Tesla or a lifted truck or a very clean late model Jeep
  365. pushing it closer to 50 just to drive home the impression that its occupants
  366. feel very important and would not really mind killing a pedestrian all that
  367. much.&lt;/p&gt;
  368.  
  369. &lt;p&gt;Some guy just went past hauling a no-shit speedboat all decked out in giant
  370. chrome exhaust pipes, which confuses me on a couple of levels.  Where are you
  371. going?  What are you possibly going to do with that thing when you get there?
  372. I&#38;rsquo;m sure there&#38;rsquo;s a place for it somewhere around here, albeit one that hinges
  373. on a great deal of engineering and the expressed whims of a wealthy population
  374. who should never have moved so far from naturally occurring bodies of navigable
  375. water.  It&#38;rsquo;s just a striking discongruity in this arid expanse of grass, small
  376. cactus, prairie dogs, tiny rivers, looming mountains.&lt;/p&gt;
  377.  
  378. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s been warm for a week now, but there are storms in the forecast and the
  379. hills are still an unlikely green.  &lt;em&gt;Elsewhere&lt;/em&gt; in the States, a
  380. record-shattering heat wave is going into weeks of duration, at least.&lt;/p&gt;
  381.  
  382.  
  383. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  384. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  385. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  386. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/29/&#34; title=&#34;29&#34;&gt;29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  387. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  388.  
  389. </content><updated>2023-07-07T14:40:27Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, June 27, 2023 - a thing, falling apart</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/6/27"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/6/27</id><content type="html">
  390.  
  391. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, June 27, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  392.  
  393. &lt;h2&gt;a thing, falling apart&lt;/h2&gt;
  394.  
  395. &lt;p&gt;(Context: American west, Great Plains, midwest.)&lt;/p&gt;
  396.  
  397. &lt;p&gt;Here&#38;rsquo;s something I notice:  Buying a fast food hamburger is borderline
  398. impossible a lot of places.&lt;/p&gt;
  399.  
  400. &lt;p&gt;You walk into let&#38;rsquo;s say a McDonalds situated at an interstate exit.  There are
  401. giant touch-screen kiosks you&#38;rsquo;re supposed to order from, but even if they&#38;rsquo;re
  402. turned on they don&#38;rsquo;t really work.  No one is at the counter, although if you
  403. wait long enough a teenager who doesn&#38;rsquo;t know how to work the register may
  404. appear.  Don&#38;rsquo;t try to spend cash; it will snarl the transaction.  (Unless the
  405. card reader is down, in which case you will have no choice, but the transaction
  406. will still be snarled.)  Wait longer and you may get food, if not exactly the
  407. food you ordered.  Odds are it will be grimly inedible:  Appalling even by the
  408. standards of early 21st century American franchise burger joints and quite
  409. possibly unsafe to eat.&lt;/p&gt;
  410.  
  411. &lt;p&gt;I hold no brief for the American chain fast food restaurant, but
  412. there&#38;rsquo;s something unsettling about this experience.  Like a kind of implicit
  413. contract has come unraveled.&lt;/p&gt;
  414.  
  415. &lt;p&gt;You expected that these institutions were, at root, evil.  You knew that they
  416. abused animal life, the environment, the labor pool, and the economy as a whole
  417. to deliver a product which was harmful to its consumers.  On the other hand,
  418. you had a feeling that they were &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt;.  Whatever the externalities,
  419. they &lt;em&gt;worked&lt;/em&gt; in a sense that would be recognized both by a person in a minivan
  420. at a drive-thru window and a stockholder in an evil megacorporation.&lt;/p&gt;
  421.  
  422. &lt;p&gt;You would be somewhere that might well be a food desert and you would need
  423. calories.  A local outcropping of an efficient corporate machine organized &#38;mdash;
  424. ruthlessly and immorally &#38;mdash; by competent people would take some of your money
  425. and give you a paper bag full of food-shaped objects in exchange.&lt;/p&gt;
  426.  
  427. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m a pragmatist about roadtrip utility, and I have spent a substantial part of
  428. my life on highways, subsisting on trash from chains and truck stops.  Still, I
  429. didn&#38;rsquo;t quite realize how fundamental this system seemed until I found it in
  430. tatters with a carload of sobbing toddlers and exhausted, sleep-deprived
  431. 30-somethings in tow.&lt;/p&gt;
  432.  
  433.  
  434.  
  435.  
  436. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/food&#34;&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/systems&#34;&gt;systems&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/travel&#34;&gt;travel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  437. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  438. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  439. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/27/&#34; title=&#34;27&#34;&gt;27&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  440. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  441.  
  442. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, June 14, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/6/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/6/14</id><content type="html">
  443.  
  444. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, June 14, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  445.  
  446. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s midway through a rainy, stormy, cool and clouded June.  The river&#38;rsquo;s up,
  447. frothing in a usually-sedate channel.  I just pulled a load of laundry off the
  448. line outside, wetter than when I hung it up three days ago, and scattered it
  449. over surfaces inside the house before it could get rained on again.&lt;/p&gt;
  450.  
  451. &lt;p&gt;My garden is yellowing in the moisture and filtered light, battered by hail.
  452. We left town for a few days and the grass tripled in height.  Our negligence in
  453. mowing has tiny bees zipping around wildflowers we didn&#38;rsquo;t know were growing.
  454. Green-white flower spiders hide atop the chives.  Two days in a row:  A double
  455. handful of strawberries, vivid standouts in a bed half consumed by grass,
  456. bindweed, and runaway oregano.&lt;/p&gt;
  457.  
  458. &lt;p&gt;There were grim levels of smoke, for a while, and then it drifted east.  A
  459. round of those &#38;ldquo;[city] has among worst air quality in the world&#38;rdquo; headlines.  I
  460. expect there to be smoke again before long.  Canada is still burning, after
  461. all, and it&#38;rsquo;s only June.  There&#38;rsquo;s allergy-generating pollen now.  Not as bad as
  462. some years, worse than others.  I can breathe, a lot of the time.  My eyes itch
  463. but they aren&#38;rsquo;t streaming yet, or burning so much that I just have to close
  464. them and lay down.&lt;/p&gt;
  465.  
  466. &lt;p&gt;I feel like I&#38;rsquo;m suspended for a moment between things that will force me to
  467. hide indoors, only half-able to think, my whole self just rendered useless by
  468. one irritant or another.  Part of this I&#38;rsquo;m sure is just the faltering strength
  469. of being 40-something rather than 30-something.  The shift in my relative
  470. position with respect to infirmity, the limits of the self and the system it
  471. inhabits, mortality.  But then part of it feels like something that&#38;rsquo;s changed
  472. about the world.  I suppose because it is.&lt;/p&gt;
  473.  
  474.  
  475. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  476. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  477. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  478. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/6/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  479. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  480.  
  481. </content><updated>2023-06-27T06:02:26Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, April 14, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/4/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/4/14</id><content type="html">
  482.  
  483. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, April 14, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  484.  
  485. &lt;p&gt;The end of this month will make 26 (twenty six) years of this.  I posted here
  486. 13 times last year.  A low number.  It included this one about &lt;a href=&#34;/2022/2/21&#34;&gt;not blogging
  487. much&lt;/a&gt;, so I won&#38;rsquo;t bother to repeat it so soon.  The state of things
  488. is just, you know, all of that but more.  Enough more that I go around
  489. muttering to myself about how quantity is a type of quality.&lt;/p&gt;
  490.  
  491. &lt;p&gt;Sometimes I feel a sense of vertigo, a sense of the world tilting.  Sometimes
  492. it&#38;rsquo;s just one thing that does it.  Something big that changes on the horizon,
  493. or something small throws it all into relief.  But sometimes it&#38;rsquo;s just:
  494. Everything.&lt;/p&gt;
  495.  
  496.  
  497. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  498. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  499. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  500. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/4/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  501. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  502.  
  503. </content><updated>2023-06-15T04:25:58Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, march 2, 2023</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2023/3/2"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2023/3/2</id><content type="html">
  504.  
  505. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, march 2, 2023&lt;/h1&gt;
  506.  
  507. &lt;p&gt;the way that midmorning&lt;br /&gt;
  508. on a tuesday&lt;br /&gt;
  509. can be the worst time&lt;br /&gt;
  510. to think of weekends&lt;br /&gt;
  511. and the distance&lt;br /&gt;
  512. from the last one&lt;br /&gt;
  513. to the next&lt;/p&gt;
  514.  
  515. &lt;p&gt;the way february&#39;s a&lt;br /&gt;
  516. bad month to think&lt;br /&gt;
  517. back on christmas&lt;br /&gt;
  518. and contemplate&lt;br /&gt;
  519. september&lt;/p&gt;
  520.  
  521. &lt;p&gt;3:13 in the morning&lt;br /&gt;
  522. is a grim interval&lt;br /&gt;
  523. in which to see&lt;br /&gt;
  524. the bedside numerals,&lt;br /&gt;
  525. segments floating red&lt;br /&gt;
  526. in the dark over&lt;br /&gt;
  527. her shoulder&lt;/p&gt;
  528.  
  529. &lt;p&gt;and remembering the&lt;br /&gt;
  530. day past, wonder if&lt;br /&gt;
  531. you&#39;ll sleep before the&lt;br /&gt;
  532. daylight on its way&lt;/p&gt;
  533.  
  534. &lt;p&gt;the threads of this life&lt;br /&gt;
  535. weave in and out of&lt;br /&gt;
  536. some pattern i cannot see&lt;br /&gt;
  537. or they fray at the&lt;br /&gt;
  538. edge of a spreading tear&lt;/p&gt;
  539.  
  540. &lt;p&gt;i waver without saying&lt;br /&gt;
  541. much, between joy and ---&lt;br /&gt;
  542. well, what i cannot say.&lt;br /&gt;
  543. a sense of loss or&lt;br /&gt;
  544. one of foreboding?&lt;/p&gt;
  545.  
  546. &lt;p&gt;my yesterdays all read&lt;br /&gt;
  547. like missed exits&lt;br /&gt;
  548. and letters left cruelly&lt;br /&gt;
  549. unanswered for years on end&lt;br /&gt;
  550. this time of night&lt;/p&gt;
  551.  
  552. &lt;p&gt;i get up to write this&lt;br /&gt;
  553. but all the lamps are&lt;br /&gt;
  554. too bright for a sleeping&lt;br /&gt;
  555. house&lt;/p&gt;
  556.  
  557. &lt;p&gt;so i light a dusty candle&lt;br /&gt;
  558. out of the clutter on&lt;br /&gt;
  559. my grandma&#39;s kitchen table&lt;br /&gt;
  560. and half the lines have left me&lt;br /&gt;
  561. before i get them to the page&lt;/p&gt;
  562.  
  563. &lt;p&gt;you might imagine better ones&lt;br /&gt;
  564. the way i imagine all the&lt;br /&gt;
  565. tomorrows i might have made&lt;br /&gt;
  566. had i been better then.&lt;/p&gt;
  567.  
  568. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  569. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/&#34; title=&#34;2023&#34;&gt;2023&lt;/a&gt; /
  570. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  571. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2023/3/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  572. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  573.  
  574. </content><updated>2023-03-06T20:33:25Z</updated></entry><entry><title>sunday, december 18, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/12/18"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/12/18</id><content type="html">
  575.  
  576. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;sunday, december 18, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  577.  
  578. &lt;p&gt;driving out east of denver&lt;br /&gt;
  579. in the early hours after sunrise&lt;br /&gt;
  580. onto the winter plains&lt;/p&gt;
  581.  
  582. &lt;p&gt;frost and haze,&lt;br /&gt;
  583. black cattle moving slow&lt;br /&gt;
  584. in the muted light&lt;/p&gt;
  585.  
  586. &lt;p&gt;the grass all gold and brown,&lt;br /&gt;
  587. the sky all gray and&lt;br /&gt;
  588. white, pale blue and&lt;/p&gt;
  589.  
  590. &lt;p&gt;industry bellowing steam&lt;br /&gt;
  591. into the layer of smog&lt;br /&gt;
  592. just above the horizon&lt;/p&gt;
  593.  
  594.  
  595.  
  596. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  597. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  598. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  599. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/12/18/&#34; title=&#34;18&#34;&gt;18&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  600. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  601.  
  602. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, December  7, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/12/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/12/7</id><content type="html">
  603.  
  604. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, December  7, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  605.  
  606. &lt;p&gt;Submitted:&lt;/p&gt;
  607.  
  608. &lt;ol&gt;
  609. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you haven&#38;rsquo;t adopted a somewhat science fictional frame of mind in the
  610. last decade or so, you probably don&#38;rsquo;t understand things as well as you
  611. could.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  612. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you&#38;rsquo;re operating entirely on that basis, you&#38;rsquo;re still probably pretty out
  613. of the loop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  614. &lt;/ol&gt;
  615.  
  616.  
  617.  
  618.  
  619.  
  620. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  621. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  622. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  623. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/12/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  624. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  625.  
  626. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>wednesday, november 30, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/11/30"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/11/30</id><content type="html">
  627.  
  628. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;wednesday, november 30, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  629.  
  630. &lt;p&gt;the blazing light at the edges of the ice on the sidewalk&lt;br /&gt;
  631. wakes up something in my mind, some sense of the real&lt;br /&gt;
  632. and i tell myself it doesn&#39;t mean anything at all&lt;br /&gt;
  633. except for snow and sun and everything that entails&lt;br /&gt;
  634. but then i guess that&#39;s a lot, maybe that&#39;s most of it&lt;/p&gt;
  635.  
  636. &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s hard to find the world beautiful when it&#39;s dying&lt;br /&gt;
  637. it&#39;s hard to love what you&#39;re going to lose&lt;br /&gt;
  638. but then if you can&#39;t find beauty in what&#39;s dying&lt;br /&gt;
  639. what else would you find it in at all?&lt;/p&gt;
  640.  
  641.  
  642.  
  643. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  644. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  645. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  646. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/11/30/&#34; title=&#34;30&#34;&gt;30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  647. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  648.  
  649. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>tuesday, november  1, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/11/1"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/11/1</id><content type="html">
  650.  
  651. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;
  652. &lt;h1&gt;tuesday, november  1, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  653.  
  654. &lt;p&gt;some days i think&lt;br /&gt;
  655. you&#39;re only ever&lt;br /&gt;
  656. talking to yourself&lt;/p&gt;
  657.  
  658. &lt;p&gt;other days it seems like&lt;br /&gt;
  659. we dwell in the&lt;br /&gt;
  660. warmth of some&lt;br /&gt;
  661. shared understanding&lt;/p&gt;
  662.  
  663. &lt;p&gt;(like there&#39;s a &lt;i&gt;we&lt;/i&gt;,&lt;br /&gt;
  664. all told, lit with the light&lt;br /&gt;
  665. of other souls)&lt;/p&gt;
  666.  
  667. &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s always fleeting,&lt;br /&gt;
  668. too brief, an unstable&lt;br /&gt;
  669. configuration&lt;/p&gt;
  670.  
  671. &lt;p&gt;except when it seems&lt;br /&gt;
  672. bigger than the whole world&lt;/p&gt;
  673.  
  674. &lt;p&gt;the way a mountain&lt;br /&gt;
  675. in the distance&lt;br /&gt;
  676. is part of the landscape&lt;br /&gt;
  677. while one underfoot&lt;br /&gt;
  678. is the whole of it&lt;/p&gt;
  679.  
  680. &lt;p&gt;we&#39;re left i guess&lt;br /&gt;
  681. unable to agree&lt;br /&gt;
  682. what it all meant or&lt;br /&gt;
  683. should mean&lt;/p&gt;
  684.  
  685. &lt;p&gt;but i still find myself&lt;br /&gt;
  686. reaching for the idea&lt;br /&gt;
  687. that it meant&lt;br /&gt;
  688. that it means&lt;br /&gt;
  689. something&lt;/p&gt;
  690.  
  691.  
  692. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  693. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  694. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  695. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/11/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  696. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  697.  
  698. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>monday, october 17, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/10/17"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/10/17</id><content type="html">
  699.  
  700. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;monday, october 17, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  701.  
  702. &lt;p&gt;there was one i was trying to write&lt;br /&gt;
  703. i had the pieces in my mind&lt;br /&gt;
  704. and then the most of them&lt;br /&gt;
  705. rattled out to nothing in the&lt;br /&gt;
  706. juttering motion of the year&lt;/p&gt;
  707.  
  708. &lt;p&gt;the bit i can remember, it&#39;s been&lt;br /&gt;
  709. a theme of late, this little mysticism&lt;br /&gt;
  710. i&#39;m carrying in my pocket and taking&lt;br /&gt;
  711. out now and then to turn over in the light:&lt;/p&gt;
  712.  
  713. &lt;p&gt;an idea of the past&lt;br /&gt;
  714. looping back into my life&lt;br /&gt;
  715. 20 years since i first left home&lt;br /&gt;
  716. half a life-so-far ago&lt;br /&gt;
  717. cycles and rhymes in the shape of the days&lt;br /&gt;
  718. distant lights through the trees&lt;/p&gt;
  719.  
  720. &lt;p&gt;i&#39;m a natural sucker for these minor pareidolias&lt;br /&gt;
  721. born to a people who still read the hand of god&lt;br /&gt;
  722. in passing birds and the placement of telephone poles&lt;/p&gt;
  723.  
  724. &lt;p&gt;or maybe i just have eyes, once in a while, for&lt;br /&gt;
  725. drifts and currents in the way of things&lt;br /&gt;
  726. even if i can&#39;t say what rocks and channels&lt;br /&gt;
  727. give them a shape&lt;/p&gt;
  728.  
  729. &lt;p&gt;either/or i guess&lt;/p&gt;
  730.  
  731.  
  732. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  733. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  734. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  735. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/10/17/&#34; title=&#34;17&#34;&gt;17&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  736. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  737.  
  738. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, September 21, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/9/21"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/9/21</id><content type="html">
  739.  
  740. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, September 21, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  741.  
  742. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s late September, and we&#38;rsquo;re back from the big burn, back from bluegrass in
  743. Kansas.  Outside the open window of my mud-room office, a light rain is falling
  744. and the temperature drifts towards the 50s.  Camping gear and festival stuff is
  745. everywhere.  My desk and the adjacent workbench are covered in the detritus of
  746. a month&#38;rsquo;s traveling and unpacking.&lt;/p&gt;
  747.  
  748. &lt;p&gt;(My immediate field of view just below the monitors:  2 Altoids tins (1x actual
  749. mints; 1x weed), a vintage Leatherman tool, a chapstick, 2 lighters, a pile of
  750. dusty stickers, six pens &#38;amp; 2 pencils, $1.42 in change, some ink cartridges,
  751. matchbox, coffee mug, 2 festival wristbands, plastic Snoopy pencil sharpener
  752. dated 1958, microfiber glasses cloth, 2 pill bottles, some washers, 3 packing
  753. checklists, button that says &#38;ldquo;God Bless John Prine&#38;rdquo;, necklace with a tiny
  754. pewter guitar that says &#38;ldquo;THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS&#38;rdquo;, index card that just
  755. says &#38;ldquo;Shit.&#38;rdquo; in large underlined letters, T25 driver bit, some screws, empty
  756. nitrous cartridge, beercan pop tabs, RockyGrass stage schedule.)&lt;/p&gt;
  757.  
  758. &lt;p&gt;I can&#38;rsquo;t find anything.  Every time I locate something like a pair of glasses, a
  759. wallet or a keychain goes missing.  My phone&#38;rsquo;s been absent since Sunday at the
  760. latest.  I think it&#38;rsquo;s probably in a pocket, a plastic tub, the corner of a
  761. rolled-up tent.  Odds are decent I&#38;rsquo;ll see it again but I don&#38;rsquo;t know when.  I
  762. admitted defeat a few minutes ago and ordered a new one.&lt;/p&gt;
  763.  
  764. &lt;p&gt;Out in the yard, a good-sized buck is sitting under the neighbor&#38;rsquo;s tree.  We
  765. made eye contact for a while after I stepped out the back door to watch the
  766. rain.  He didn&#38;rsquo;t seem inclined to leave.  Later, he&#38;rsquo;ll probably eat more of my
  767. garden.&lt;/p&gt;
  768.  
  769.  
  770. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  771. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  772. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/9/&#34; title=&#34;9&#34;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt; /
  773. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/9/21/&#34; title=&#34;21&#34;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  774. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  775.  
  776. </content><updated>2022-10-10T19:06:28Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, August  5, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/8/5"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/8/5</id><content type="html">
  777.  
  778. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, August  5, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  779.  
  780. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s pushing midnight.  It&#38;rsquo;s hot and the air is thick.  I&#38;rsquo;m sitting on the bed
  781. in my childhood bedroom, eating cold roast beef with Miracle Whip on a
  782. hamburger bun, drinking a Bud Light.&lt;/p&gt;
  783.  
  784. &lt;p&gt;This room has changed since I lived here.  The worn-out carpet and the twin
  785. mattress and the computer desk that used to house my Gateway 2000 are long
  786. gone.  The shelves are still full of science fiction novels and comic strip
  787. anthologies though, and they&#38;rsquo;ve never painted over all the places I drew on the
  788. walls.  The paint is peeling now, water damage from a leak a dozen years ago.&lt;/p&gt;
  789.  
  790. &lt;p&gt;The house here has, in defiance of strict necessity or practicality, grown
  791. substantially since my siblings and I lived here.  A series of DIY additions
  792. and renovations have added a window seat here, a family room there, expanded
  793. roof lines, an entire &lt;em&gt;covered walkway&lt;/em&gt;.  It&#38;rsquo;s excessive, but it&#38;rsquo;s hard to say
  794. it&#38;rsquo;s unjustified.  I think the effort keeps them going.  It&#38;rsquo;s something like an
  795. art project at this point.  Decades of salvage materials and a lifetime of
  796. know-how going back into &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, even if it&#38;rsquo;s not strictly the most
  797. necessary thing.  You have to keep it moving.  You can&#38;rsquo;t just accumulate 2×6s
  798. and daydream, you&#38;rsquo;ve got to build.&lt;/p&gt;
  799.  
  800. &lt;p&gt;A place like this, like anywhere people live, isn&#38;rsquo;t a static fact.  It&#38;rsquo;s
  801. &lt;a href=&#34;/2014/12/1&#34;&gt;something people keep doing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  802.  
  803.  
  804.  
  805. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  806. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  807. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; /
  808. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/8/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  809. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  810.  
  811. </content><updated>2022-10-04T04:55:58Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, July 15, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/7/15"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/7/15</id><content type="html">
  812.  
  813. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, July 15, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  814.  
  815. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2019/12/18&#34;&gt;One from 2019&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  816.  
  817.  
  818.  
  819. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  820. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  821. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  822. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/7/15/&#34; title=&#34;15&#34;&gt;15&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  823. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  824.  
  825. </content><updated>2022-07-15T07:14:10Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, June 27, 2022 - aphoristic noodling</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/6/27"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/6/27</id><content type="html">
  826.  
  827. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, June 27, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  828.  
  829. &lt;h2&gt;aphoristic noodling&lt;/h2&gt;
  830.  
  831. &lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/100-things-every-web-developer-should-know/&#34;
  832. title=&#34;136 facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling&#34;&gt;this
  833. post by Baldur Bjarnason&lt;/a&gt;, listing &#34;Everything I’ve learned about web development in the almost twenty-five years
  834. I’ve been practising&#34;, and &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/the-curious-case-of-the-crashing-conic-gradient/&#34;&gt;this
  835. followup&lt;/a&gt;, which says:
  836.  
  837. &lt;blockquote&gt;
  838.  
  839.  &lt;p&gt;Some of the aphorisms ended up not-so-pithy, but it was overall a fun little
  840.  experiment that I recommend: note down everything relevant about the craft that
  841.  you can think of over the space of a week.&lt;/p&gt;
  842.  
  843. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  844.  
  845. &lt;p&gt;I thought about this, and then I thought: Ok, what exactly is my craft?  I
  846. do computer shit.  So I started a list about that, challenging myself to be
  847. &lt;i&gt;descriptive&lt;/i&gt; about things and not veer too far into pure advice.&lt;/p&gt;
  848.  
  849. &lt;p&gt;A year or so passed, and I noticed this post was still sitting in my &#34;work
  850. in progress&#34; directory.  I tried picking it back up and noticed how much
  851. overlap it would have with other posts like these:&lt;/p&gt;
  852.  
  853. &lt;ul&gt;
  854.  &lt;li&gt;2013: &lt;a href=&#34;/2013/12/4/&#34;&gt;on software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  855.  &lt;li&gt;2014: &lt;a href=&#34;/2014/9/6/&#34;&gt;language things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  856.  &lt;li&gt;2015: &lt;a href=&#34;/2015/5/5/&#34;&gt;YOUR CODE IS TOO COMPLICATED&lt;/a&gt;
  857.  &lt;li&gt;2019: &lt;a href=&#34;/2019/10/5&#34; title=&#34;sfe&#34;&gt;this entry on the experience of working at SparkFun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  858.  &lt;li&gt;2021: &lt;a href=&#34;/2021/7/21/&#34;&gt;rules&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  859. &lt;/ul&gt;
  860.  
  861. &lt;p&gt;This style of writing is basically catnip to people like me, whether it&#39;s of
  862. much use to anyone else or not.  This post ultimately felt like a dead end,
  863. because instead of a blog post, it really wants to be some long document where
  864. I collect all sorts of aphorisms, pithy quotes, eponymous laws, and so forth
  865. about technical work and maybe just work generally.  Maybe I&#39;ll start that
  866. document one of these days.&lt;/p&gt;
  867.  
  868. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✯ &lt;/p&gt;
  869.  
  870. &lt;p&gt;Anyway, that very partial and uneven list:&lt;/p&gt;
  871.  
  872. &lt;ol&gt;
  873.  
  874.  &lt;li&gt;Caching is hard to think about and breaks often.
  875.  
  876.  &lt;li&gt;Cleverness in code is generally a sign of danger.
  877.  
  878.  &lt;li&gt;Business ruins everything.
  879.  
  880.  &lt;li&gt;Some forms of interoperability are a trap.
  881.  
  882.  &lt;li&gt;Bad ideas aren&#39;t limited to bad people.
  883.  
  884.  &lt;li&gt;Good people aren&#39;t limited to good ideas.
  885.  
  886.  &lt;li&gt;An aesthetic is not an ethic.
  887.  
  888.  &lt;li&gt;The customer is usually wrong.
  889.  
  890.  &lt;li&gt;If it&#39;s written in:
  891.    &lt;ul&gt;
  892.      &lt;li&gt;C: It&#39;ll work, but I should remember there&#39;s a buffer overflow or something.
  893.      &lt;li&gt;PHP: It&#39;ll probably work, but there&#39;s an SQL injection vulnerability somewhere and the cool kids will be shitty about it being PHP.
  894.      &lt;li&gt;Python: 50/50 whether it&#39;ll just barf stack traces into my terminal for non-obvious reasons.
  895.      &lt;li&gt;Ruby: Decent chance I&#39;ll wind up reading the source code and cursing at clever Ruby programmers.
  896.      &lt;li&gt;Haskell: It works, but I&#39;m not smart enough to understand it.
  897.      &lt;li&gt;Rust: Probably works, if they finished writing it.  I&#39;m not smart enough to understand the code.
  898.      &lt;li&gt;Go: Total crapshoot, but either way I bet the CLI has a bunch of infuriatingly nested subcommands.
  899.      &lt;li&gt;JavaScript: Life is too short to deal with whatever package management and runtime I&#39;m supposed to use for this now.
  900.      &lt;li&gt;Java: If I have to &lt;i&gt;find out&lt;/i&gt; it&#39;s Java, I&#39;m probably in trouble.
  901.    &lt;/ul&gt;
  902.  &lt;/li&gt;
  903.  
  904.  &lt;li&gt;Lightweight markup languages are fundamentally in tension with the range
  905.  of structures that their users will inevitably want to express.
  906.  
  907.  &lt;li&gt;Design, marketing, and management are all real undertakings, but they are
  908.  also aggressively self-reproducing ideological systems and political
  909.  projects.
  910.  
  911.  &lt;li&gt;Environments within which small tools can be combined to operate on
  912.  simple abstractions are powerful.  An environment might be what you think of
  913.  as an operating system, a programming language, a database, or an
  914.  application.  All else being equal, the ones that can bridge to other
  915.  environments are more powerful.
  916.  
  917.  &lt;li&gt;There are few abstractions in computing more stable than filesystems,
  918.  standard IO, text files, and the shell. Boring relational databases aren&#39;t
  919.  too far behind, but the barriers to entry and data transfer are higher.
  920.  
  921.  &lt;li&gt;Technology is at least as fashion-oriented as the sartorial choices of
  922.  highschoolers, actors, and musicians.  Changes are driven as much by a desire
  923.  for difference from the perceived status quo as anything else.
  924.  
  925.  &lt;li&gt;Technical politics are also organizational, labor, and identity politics.
  926.  The currents of power they involve are illegible without taking those factors
  927.  into account.
  928.  
  929.  &lt;li&gt;There&#39;s no guarantee that your technical preferences will match up with
  930.  the ideas, people, or power structures you find agreeable in other domains.
  931.  (Or vice versa.)
  932.  
  933. &lt;/ol&gt;
  934.  
  935.  
  936. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/work&#34;&gt;work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  937. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  938. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  939. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/6/27/&#34; title=&#34;27&#34;&gt;27&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  940. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  941.  
  942. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, May 29, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/5/29"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/5/29</id><content type="html">
  943.  
  944. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, May 29, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  945.  
  946. &lt;p&gt;One earlier this month from Tyler &lt;a href=&#34;https://tylercipriani.com/blog/2022/04/30/ive-used-all-the-notebooks/&#34;&gt;on notebooks and paper
  947. notes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  948.  
  949. &lt;p&gt;This was a reminder that I&#38;rsquo;d been meaning to update &lt;a href=&#34;/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;notes on
  950. notes&lt;/a&gt; with the current shape of my system.  My habits haven&#38;rsquo;t
  951. changed drastically in three years, but I&#38;rsquo;ve made some extensions worth
  952. describing.  (In particular, I now make heavy use of the &lt;a href=&#34;/2021/1/4/&#34;&gt;tagged log
  953. format&lt;/a&gt; I wrote about last year.  In turn, that&#38;rsquo;s shown me some things
  954. that could be better.)&lt;/p&gt;
  955.  
  956. &lt;p&gt;On a meta level, that document is still mostly boring technical specifics. I&#38;rsquo;d
  957. like it to include more of the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; of things, the stuff I&#38;rsquo;ve come to realize
  958. after years of overthinking.&lt;/p&gt;
  959.  
  960.  
  961.  
  962. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notebooks&#34;&gt;notebooks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  963. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  964. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  965. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/5/29/&#34; title=&#34;29&#34;&gt;29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  966. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  967.  
  968. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>wednesday, march 16, 2022</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/3/16"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/3/16</id><content type="html">
  969.  
  970. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;wednesday, march 16, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  971.  
  972. &lt;p&gt;what&#39;s the distance&lt;br /&gt;
  973. between a nervous habit&lt;br /&gt;
  974. and a ritual tradition?&lt;/p&gt;
  975.  
  976. &lt;p&gt;maybe just time and the collection plate&lt;br /&gt;
  977. or how much group dynamics and trappings of&lt;br /&gt;
  978. the numinous you can gin up&lt;/p&gt;
  979.  
  980. &lt;p&gt;but i notice how&lt;br /&gt;
  981. a lot of us have lost all touch with the latter&lt;br /&gt;
  982. while accumulating a distinct excess&lt;br /&gt;
  983. of the former&lt;/p&gt;
  984.  
  985. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  986. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  987. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  988. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/3/16/&#34; title=&#34;16&#34;&gt;16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  989. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  990.  
  991. </content><updated>2022-03-25T05:48:37Z</updated></entry><entry><title type="html">Monday, February 21, 2022 - why i don&#39;t blog much, any more</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/2/21"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/2/21</id><content type="html">
  992.  
  993. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, February 21, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  994.  
  995. &lt;h2&gt;why i don&#39;t blog much, any more&lt;/h2&gt;
  996.  
  997. &lt;p&gt;I read Tyler&#38;rsquo;s &lt;a href=&#34;https://tylercipriani.com/blog/2022/02/21/why-i-blog/&#34;&gt;Why I Blog&lt;/a&gt; earlier today, and it reminded me of a
  998. draft I started here back in early January.  I thought:  These are compelling
  999. reasons to write in public, or at least I used to think so.  Then I remembered
  1000. I&#38;rsquo;d been been writing about not doing that any more.&lt;/p&gt;
  1001.  
  1002. &lt;p&gt;I used to.  Lately&#38;hellip; Well, prior to a &lt;a href=&#34;/2022/2/7&#34;&gt;bit about writing on paper&lt;/a&gt;
  1003. from the 7th, I last posted anything of length here in July.  In &lt;a href=&#34;/2021&#34;&gt;all of
  1004. 2021&lt;/a&gt;, I wrote 19 entries.  This is the fewest in any year that I&#38;rsquo;ve had
  1005. a blog, including the ones where it lived on GeoCities or still had a tilde in
  1006. the URL.  Reading back over the year, there&#38;rsquo;s not much weight to any of it.  A
  1007. few incomplete thoughts.  Some rabbitholing on mundane topics.  Mostly: Going
  1008. through motions and repeating myself.&lt;/p&gt;
  1009.  
  1010. &lt;p&gt;I could overthink this, but it isn&#38;rsquo;t warranted.  The reasons not to write here
  1011. are all just themes I&#38;rsquo;ve been repeating at (numbing) length for years:
  1012. Self-expression in the open seems like an attack surface.  A public record is,
  1013. as much as anything, a liability.  Kinds of text that once felt liberating now
  1014. feel like an embarrassment at best.  The internet in general is owned by bad
  1015. people and has gone septic as a culture, even as it determines culture as a
  1016. whole.&lt;/p&gt;
  1017.  
  1018. &lt;p&gt;Besides all of that, writing on the internet in 2022 is a lot like photos in
  1019. 2022: There&#38;rsquo;s just &lt;em&gt;so much&lt;/em&gt; of the stuff.  It&#38;rsquo;s not just that anything I write
  1020. here might be used to train a language model a la &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3&#34;&gt;GPT-3&lt;/a&gt;, it&#38;rsquo;s that
  1021. increasingly it feels like it could be the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; of one.&lt;/p&gt;
  1022.  
  1023. &lt;p&gt;And so it naturally works out that instead of writing more p1k3 entries, I chat
  1024. with my friends, post to a handful of people on Mastodon, and take notes in
  1025. local files.&lt;/p&gt;
  1026.  
  1027. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✦ &lt;/p&gt;
  1028.  
  1029.  
  1030. &lt;p&gt;I still feel some kind of an attachment to this.  It&#38;rsquo;s my longest-running
  1031. project, more or less, and writing here has been a lot of how I sorted out the
  1032. world for myself.  &lt;a href=&#34;/2017/10/16&#34;&gt;Back in 2017&lt;/a&gt;, I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;
  1033.  
  1034. &lt;blockquote&gt;
  1035. &lt;p&gt;On the other hand.  Writing is one of the only real powers I&#39;ve ever had,
  1036. and the surface of this terrible website is still mine to write on.  The web is
  1037. dead to me, as a hope or a cause, and the world it&#39;s made &#38;mdash; the world
  1038. that so many thousands of us helped to make &#38;mdash; is in bad shape and getting
  1039. worse.  But why should I give up my only real canvas, the only place where I
  1040. have any voice at all?&lt;/p&gt;
  1041.  
  1042. &lt;p&gt;Possibly (almost certainly) having a voice is itself an illusion, irrelevant
  1043. to the course of things now.  But I guess it&#39;s something.&lt;/p&gt;
  1044. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1045.  
  1046.  
  1047. &lt;p&gt;Over time, though, it feels less and less like something.  On matters public,
  1048. there are infinite voices.  The repetition and variation, the algorithmic
  1049. swell, is vast.  If I have anything to say, someone else is probably saying it
  1050. better.  At least if it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be said in any useful way.  The usefulness of
  1051. &lt;em&gt;saying things&lt;/em&gt; itself is frequently washed out in the deluge.  The
  1052. impossibility of communication feels like a defining feature of the age.&lt;/p&gt;
  1053.  
  1054. &lt;p&gt;The only thing that&#38;rsquo;s left is whatever&#38;rsquo;s particular to my perspective, and it
  1055. rarely feels like the networked ebb and flow has a healthy use for that.&lt;/p&gt;
  1056.  
  1057. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✾ &lt;/p&gt;
  1058.  
  1059.  
  1060. &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&#38;rsquo;m repeating myself again.&lt;/p&gt;
  1061.  
  1062. &lt;p&gt;For a while I&#38;rsquo;ve been thinking about changing the structure of this whole site
  1063. into something less reverse-chronological, writing something besides the
  1064. personal narrative that a blog lends itself to, or just publishing somewhere
  1065. away from the public web.  Maybe somewhere away from screens altogether.  Who
  1066. needs Substack when you&#38;rsquo;ve got a laser printer and a roll of stamps?&lt;/p&gt;
  1067.  
  1068. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m not sure what I&#38;rsquo;ll do any different, if anything.  It&#38;rsquo;s just hard to let go
  1069. of something you&#38;rsquo;ve made at considerable length, even if it isn&#38;rsquo;t worth much,
  1070. even if it&#38;rsquo;s just a habit of talking mostly to yourself.  Maybe I&#38;rsquo;ll let it lie
  1071. fallow for years until I get hit by a bus, or find some better use for the
  1072. hosting costs and let it drop off the web without fanfare.  Maybe I&#38;rsquo;ll change
  1073. my mind about all of this in six months or a decade.&lt;/p&gt;
  1074.  
  1075. &lt;p&gt;(Of course this is more &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/5/20/&#34;&gt;meta-whatever&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;
  1076.  
  1077.  
  1078.  
  1079. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/writing&#34;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1080. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  1081. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  1082. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/2/21/&#34; title=&#34;21&#34;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1083. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1084.  
  1085. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, February  7, 2022 - paper again</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2022/2/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2022/2/7</id><content type="html">
  1086.  
  1087. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, February  7, 2022&lt;/h1&gt;
  1088.  
  1089. &lt;h2&gt;paper again&lt;/h2&gt;
  1090.  
  1091. &lt;p&gt;What is it that paper has that the computer lacks?&lt;/p&gt;
  1092.  
  1093. &lt;p&gt;The answer might be humility.&lt;/p&gt;
  1094.  
  1095. &lt;p&gt;Paper doesn&#38;rsquo;t seek to consume and mediate all things &#38;mdash; or at least the age in
  1096. which it did so long ago fell to digital computers, databases, and networks
  1097. between them.&lt;/p&gt;
  1098.  
  1099. &lt;p&gt;Paper forms a part of the world computer, but in so many ways an almost
  1100. forgotten part.  Uncontested, or nearly so.&lt;/p&gt;
  1101.  
  1102. &lt;p&gt;If it seemingly offers few features and little apparent leverage compared to
  1103. software, then it also makes very few demands.  It extracts little from the
  1104. user&#38;rsquo;s autonomy and privacy, while remaining transferable, repurposable, cheap,
  1105. generic, accessible.  It&#38;rsquo;s not subject to platform degradation, malicious
  1106. updates, DRM, new rents at vendor whim, or remote code execution
  1107. vulnerabilities.  There will probably never be a CVE issued for my favorite
  1108. brand of paper, and I do not need to assume that three-letter agencies are
  1109. automatically indexing its contents with the cooperation of its manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;
  1110.  
  1111. &lt;p&gt;What can be expressed on paper is vastly more constrained in many respects, but
  1112. limited as it may be, it&#38;rsquo;s also &lt;em&gt;open&lt;/em&gt;:  To whatever can be expressed through
  1113. ink, graphite, scissors, glue, binding, tape, staples, stitches, and filing.
  1114. Paper can&#38;rsquo;t embed full motion video or execute complex instructions on my
  1115. behalf, but neither are its possibilities bound by the hyper-elaborated
  1116. techno-social systems that govern the display of media formats or the
  1117. implementation of language runtimes.&lt;/p&gt;
  1118.  
  1119. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ⭒ &lt;/p&gt;
  1120.  
  1121.  
  1122. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s a line of thinking here that risks the kind of reductive rabbitholing
  1123. on a tool fetish you so regularly get from people fixated on a process idea:
  1124. People convinced that only plain text will serve as a format for any purpose.
  1125. Zettelkasten devotees who will stringently insist that connecting notes remain
  1126. grindingly manual.  Angry holdouts lecturing mailing lists about the evils of
  1127. HTML e-mail while the world conducts its business on Facebook and Slack.  That
  1128. sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;
  1129.  
  1130. &lt;p&gt;All the same, I think there&#38;rsquo;s something to it, just like there&#38;rsquo;s something
  1131. vital that motivates a lot of hopeless impulses to digital minimalism and
  1132. performative exercises in retrocomputing.&lt;/p&gt;
  1133.  
  1134. &lt;p&gt;Here&#38;rsquo;s an age when the computer is the network and the network is a threat &#38;mdash;
  1135. simultaneously the only tool for thought and the thing that makes thought
  1136. nearly impossible.  It&#38;rsquo;s exhausting, enervating, periodically shattering.  Its
  1137. healthy effects are constantly overshadowed by its pathology.  It&#38;rsquo;s owned by
  1138. bad people and operated by a fundamentally compromised class of technocrats
  1139. whose occasional glimmers of self-awareness can never overwhelm the home truth
  1140. of who and what writes their paychecks.&lt;/p&gt;
  1141.  
  1142. &lt;p&gt;Against this backdrop, other channels of thought can feel like an escape hatch,
  1143. respite, a balm, a view of other paths that maybe aren&#38;rsquo;t entirely closed just
  1144. yet.  Opening a notebook, like going for a walk down by the river or messing
  1145. around in a garden or sitting with friends around a campfire somewhere away
  1146. from cell reception, can feel like sanity.&lt;/p&gt;
  1147.  
  1148. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✮ &lt;/p&gt;
  1149.  
  1150.  
  1151. &lt;p&gt;Of course paper is a technology, embedded in an industrial economy:  And this,
  1152. as usual, is to say that it is an ecological catastrophe.  It consumes trees,
  1153. soil, and landscapes.  It poisons water and air, clogs transport networks and
  1154. waste streams, facilitates consumption, and often assists in extending the
  1155. control of computerized systems deep into the physical realm.&lt;/p&gt;
  1156.  
  1157. &lt;p&gt;All the same, in the torrent of junk mail, grocery store fliers, BPA-coated
  1158. thermal printer labels &#38;amp; receipts, redundant bills, bank notices, invoices,
  1159. address change forms, fast food packages, and all the rest of it &#38;mdash; well, the
  1160. handful of notebooks and letters I spend in any given year feel comparatively
  1161. benign.&lt;/p&gt;
  1162.  
  1163. &lt;p&gt;(Drafted on paper.)&lt;/p&gt;
  1164.  
  1165.  
  1166.  
  1167. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notebooks&#34;&gt;notebooks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/paper&#34;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/systems&#34;&gt;systems&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/writing&#34;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1168. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/&#34; title=&#34;2022&#34;&gt;2022&lt;/a&gt; /
  1169. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  1170. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2022/2/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1171. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1172.  
  1173. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, December 23, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/12/23"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/12/23</id><content type="html">
  1174.  
  1175. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, December 23, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1176.  
  1177. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s 2021, and I&#38;rsquo;m sequestered in the guest house at my parents&#39; place, waiting
  1178. the results of a COVID-19 test.&lt;/p&gt;
  1179.  
  1180. &lt;p&gt;When we moved to this property, late in the 1980s, you could still tell it had
  1181. once been a prosperous working farmstead on the model of the early 20th
  1182. century.  Along with wooden barns, corn cribs, machine sheds, and all the rest,
  1183. most of it decaying rapidly as pigs rooted around the foundations, there was
  1184. this little house.  At the time it consisted of two rooms and a partially
  1185. enclosed porch.  Much of the structure was full of raccoon shit and corn cobs.&lt;/p&gt;
  1186.  
  1187. &lt;p&gt;Most of the original outbuildings have been gone for 25 years or better.  The
  1188. little house has been fixed up for guests, deteriorated again, moved a hundred
  1189. feet or so, and fixed up a second time.  We built a new outhouse once, but it&#38;rsquo;s
  1190. plumbed now.  Hooked up to the electric, insulated, with new windows and a new
  1191. woodstove in one corner.  The woodstove burns too hot for a building this size
  1192. and my dad&#38;rsquo;s got plans to put in a wall-mounted propane heater.&lt;/p&gt;
  1193.  
  1194. &lt;p&gt;We&#38;rsquo;ve always figured, and maybe my parents were once told, that this was the
  1195. hired man&#38;rsquo;s house.  It would make sense for the patterns around here.  I know
  1196. the name of a couple families that owned the farm at one time, but I couldn&#38;rsquo;t
  1197. guess at who lived in the little house.  A lot of the elders around here who
  1198. might have had stories are gone now, along with most of the farms that they
  1199. inhabited and worked.&lt;/p&gt;
  1200.  
  1201.  
  1202. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1203. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1204. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  1205. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/12/23/&#34; title=&#34;23&#34;&gt;23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1206. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1207.  
  1208. </content><updated>2022-04-09T06:34:43Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, december 2, 2021 - spectra</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/12/2"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/12/2</id><content type="html">
  1209.  
  1210. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, december 2, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1211.  
  1212. &lt;h2&gt;spectra&lt;/h2&gt;
  1213.  
  1214. &lt;p&gt;the richness of the colors&lt;br /&gt;
  1215. that come early in a deep drought:&lt;/p&gt;
  1216.  
  1217. &lt;p&gt;sometimes we have a false idea&lt;br /&gt;
  1218. of the variation within some range&lt;br /&gt;
  1219. we see as narrow&lt;/p&gt;
  1220.  
  1221.  
  1222.  
  1223. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/drought&#34;&gt;drought&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1224. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1225. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  1226. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/12/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1227. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1228.  
  1229. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>monday, september 20, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/9/20"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/9/20</id><content type="html">
  1230.  
  1231. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;monday, september 20, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1232.  
  1233. &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s always the last day of the festival&lt;br /&gt;
  1234. you&#39;re always packing to go home&lt;/p&gt;
  1235.  
  1236.  
  1237.  
  1238. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1239. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1240. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/9/&#34; title=&#34;9&#34;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt; /
  1241. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/9/20/&#34; title=&#34;20&#34;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1242. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1243.  
  1244. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>friday, july 23, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/7/23"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/7/23</id><content type="html">
  1245.  
  1246. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;friday, july 23, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1247.  
  1248. &lt;p&gt;one thing i notice&lt;br /&gt;
  1249. the hotter it gets&lt;br /&gt;
  1250. the harder it is&lt;br /&gt;
  1251. to give a shit&lt;br /&gt;
  1252. about industry &#38;amp; thrift&lt;/p&gt;
  1253.  
  1254.  
  1255.  
  1256. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1257. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1258. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  1259. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/23/&#34; title=&#34;23&#34;&gt;23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1260. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1261.  
  1262. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - rules</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/7/21"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/7/21</id><content type="html">
  1263.  
  1264. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, July 21, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1265.  
  1266. &lt;h2&gt;rules&lt;/h2&gt;
  1267.  
  1268. &lt;p&gt;I was doing the laundry a while ago (I first started writing this in May of
  1269. 2019), and I got to some stuff where I wasn&#38;rsquo;t sure whether it was &lt;em&gt;actually
  1270. dirty&lt;/em&gt; and needed a wash, or if I&#38;rsquo;d just tossed it on top of the pile on the
  1271. way to the shower one night thinking I&#38;rsquo;d sort it later.  Should I trust my past
  1272. self to have made a definitive decision that everything in the pile was dirty?
  1273. Or did my past self act on the belief that my future self would make informed
  1274. decisions about the pile&#38;rsquo;s contents?&lt;/p&gt;
  1275.  
  1276. &lt;p&gt;In thinking about this, I came to something like a general rule:  &lt;em&gt;Minimize the
  1277. trust that you need to place in past and future versions of yourself.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1278.  
  1279. &lt;p&gt;That is, past-Brennen would have done best to make the decisions about whether
  1280. something was dirty instead of deferring them to future-Brennen.  And indeed I
  1281. washed pretty much everything in the laundry pile because it&#38;rsquo;s easier to assume
  1282. past-Brennen was sending a clear signal than to re-evaluate the whole pile, but
  1283. I think in more serious situations it&#38;rsquo;s important to always keep in mind that
  1284. past-Brennen is at least as likely to have screwed up as now-Brennen.&lt;/p&gt;
  1285.  
  1286. &lt;p&gt;Ideally, you shouldn&#38;rsquo;t have to make leaps of faith about your past selves&#39;
  1287. correctness, and you should operate with an awareness that your future selves
  1288. will have a lousy memory and shortages of time/energy to deal with your
  1289. unfinished work.  Consequently, you should label things, document interfaces,
  1290. write tests for your software, put your keys and wallet in the same place every
  1291. time they aren&#38;rsquo;t on your person, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
  1292.  
  1293. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❦ &lt;/p&gt;
  1294.  
  1295.  
  1296. &lt;p&gt;I have to think about that rule and its phrasing for before I add it to my
  1297. overall List of Rules, but it has promise.  I&#38;rsquo;ve been thinking about rules of
  1298. this sort&#38;mdash;aphorisms, rules of thumb, personal commandments, proverbs,
  1299. epigrams, whatever&#38;mdash;for a long time.  Now and then some phrase or
  1300. injunction-to-self will prove itself useful for a while, and the idea of a
  1301. personal canon of them seems attractive.&lt;/p&gt;
  1302.  
  1303. &lt;p&gt;Two that I&#38;rsquo;ve thought about lately: The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, and my
  1304. colleague &lt;a href=&#34;https://liw.fi/rules/&#34;&gt;Lars&#38;rsquo;s list&lt;/a&gt;, quoted here in full:&lt;/p&gt;
  1305.  
  1306. &lt;blockquote&gt;
  1307. &lt;ol&gt;
  1308. &lt;li&gt;Always copy and paste a URL.&lt;/li&gt;
  1309. &lt;li&gt;A will-do attitude trumps skills.&lt;/li&gt;
  1310. &lt;li&gt;Always ask the simple troubleshooting questions first.&lt;/li&gt;
  1311. &lt;li&gt;Externalize your memory: write things down, always carry a notebook.&lt;/li&gt;
  1312. &lt;li&gt;Measure, don&#39;t guess.&lt;/li&gt;
  1313. &lt;li&gt;Write flames, but don&#39;t send them.&lt;/li&gt;
  1314. &lt;li&gt;Always write unit tests for error handling.&lt;/li&gt;
  1315. &lt;li&gt;Aim for 100% test coverage. You&#39;ll never get there, but bugs mostly happen
  1316. in the parts without tests.&lt;/li&gt;
  1317. &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t be late in telling you&#39;re late.&lt;/li&gt;
  1318. &lt;li&gt;If you cannot automate it, make a checklist out of it.&lt;/li&gt;
  1319. &lt;li&gt;Be careful what you reward, because you will get more of it.&lt;/li&gt;
  1320. &lt;li&gt;Be careful what you measure, because you will optimize for that.&lt;/li&gt;
  1321. &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t debate with analogies.&lt;/li&gt;
  1322. &lt;li&gt;Always indicate time zone explicitly.&lt;/li&gt;
  1323. &lt;/ol&gt;
  1324. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1325.  
  1326.  
  1327. &lt;p&gt;Those are pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;
  1328.  
  1329. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❀ &lt;/p&gt;
  1330.  
  1331.  
  1332. &lt;p&gt;Here&#38;rsquo;s a crack at the list that&#38;rsquo;s been floating around in my head:&lt;/p&gt;
  1333.  
  1334. &lt;ul&gt;
  1335. &lt;li&gt;Do the dishes.&lt;/li&gt;
  1336. &lt;li&gt;Only break one law at a time.&lt;/li&gt;
  1337. &lt;li&gt;Ask the stupid questions early.&lt;/li&gt;
  1338. &lt;li&gt;Don&#38;rsquo;t deploy on a Friday.&lt;/li&gt;
  1339. &lt;li&gt;Don&#38;rsquo;t let your gas tank drop below half.&lt;/li&gt;
  1340. &lt;li&gt;Remember that avoiding temptation is easier than resisting it.&lt;/li&gt;
  1341. &lt;li&gt;Never mistake an aesthetic for an ethic.&lt;/li&gt;
  1342. &lt;li&gt;Don&#38;rsquo;t mistake a shared experience for a shared understanding.&lt;/li&gt;
  1343. &lt;li&gt;Don&#38;rsquo;t trust systems that rely on the benevolence of a few powerful actors.&lt;/li&gt;
  1344. &lt;li&gt;If you figure it out: Write it down.&lt;/li&gt;
  1345. &lt;li&gt;If you have to figure it out three times: Automate it.&lt;/li&gt;
  1346. &lt;li&gt;&#38;ldquo;Read the manual&#38;rdquo; is good advice; &#38;ldquo;write the manual&#38;rdquo; is a moral imperative.&lt;/li&gt;
  1347. &lt;li&gt;If a server is broken, first make sure that something in &lt;code&gt;/var/log&lt;/code&gt; hasn&#38;rsquo;t
  1348. filled up the disk.&lt;/li&gt;
  1349. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1350.  
  1351.  
  1352. &lt;p&gt;It seems like there should be more of these and they should be pithier, or
  1353. something.&lt;/p&gt;
  1354.  
  1355.  
  1356.  
  1357. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/idealogging&#34;&gt;idealogging&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/rules&#34;&gt;rules&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1358. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1359. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  1360. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/21/&#34; title=&#34;21&#34;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1361. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1362.  
  1363. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, July 13, 2021 - an appeal to people who sell stuff on the internet</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/7/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/7/13</id><content type="html">
  1364.  
  1365. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, July 13, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1366.  
  1367. &lt;h2&gt;an appeal to people who sell stuff on the internet&lt;/h2&gt;
  1368.  
  1369. &lt;p&gt;This is a suggestion that people in business should be better at it.  It&#38;rsquo;s a
  1370. departure for me, inasmuch as I kind of hate business.  All the same, if you
  1371. work for or own a company that does e-commerce, build a web site that sells
  1372. stuff, etc., this is one is addressed directly to you.  (Unless the company /
  1373. site we&#38;rsquo;re talking about, is for example, Amazon, in which case my only message
  1374. to you is &#38;ldquo;stop that&#38;rdquo;.)&lt;/p&gt;
  1375.  
  1376. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☼ &lt;/p&gt;
  1377.  
  1378.  
  1379. &lt;p&gt;My job doesn&#38;rsquo;t involve selling physical goods on the internet now, but it&#38;rsquo;s
  1380. something I spent around a decade on.  Since I moved on to other things, it&#38;rsquo;s
  1381. been unpleasant to watch so many of the people still doing it become so &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;
  1382. at it.&lt;/p&gt;
  1383.  
  1384. &lt;p&gt;Let&#38;rsquo;s start with this:  Your job is hard to do well.  It was never exactly a
  1385. cakewalk, but the whole environment has changed, and mostly not in a way that
  1386. favors your chances.  Web retail used to be an area where you could stumble
  1387. into a growing revenue stream just by having something people wanted and
  1388. posting half-decent pictures of it on a barebones shopping cart site.&lt;/p&gt;
  1389.  
  1390. &lt;p&gt;Now you have to contend with:&lt;/p&gt;
  1391.  
  1392. &lt;ul&gt;
  1393. &lt;li&gt;Amazon&#38;rsquo;s all-devouring maw&lt;/li&gt;
  1394. &lt;li&gt;Google&#38;rsquo;s adtech protection racket&lt;/li&gt;
  1395. &lt;li&gt;More and faster competition from a global supply chain&lt;/li&gt;
  1396. &lt;li&gt;Ubiquitous phones&lt;/li&gt;
  1397. &lt;li&gt;Facebook, Twitter, Instagram&lt;/li&gt;
  1398. &lt;li&gt;How you&#38;rsquo;ve probably hired marketing professionals&lt;/li&gt;
  1399. &lt;li&gt;The grotesque absurdity of contemporary web development tech&lt;/li&gt;
  1400. &lt;li&gt;&#38;hellip;just all of it, really.&lt;/li&gt;
  1401. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1402.  
  1403.  
  1404. &lt;p&gt;I mostly wrote code for a living, but that meant I got to see the moving parts
  1405. of a web retail business: Product design, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory
  1406. control and catalog management, content marketing, customer service and
  1407. technical support, picking/packing/shipping, fraud prevention, taxes,
  1408. regulatory compliance, etc.  I know there&#38;rsquo;s a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; that might live behind any
  1409. given shopping cart icon.&lt;/p&gt;
  1410.  
  1411. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✺ &lt;/p&gt;
  1412.  
  1413.  
  1414. &lt;p&gt;Still, here I am.  I buy things on the web: Electronics, computers, audio gear,
  1415. notebooks, pens, tools, books, music, concert tickets.  I feel bad when I give
  1416. money to Amazon.  I don&#38;rsquo;t operate under an illusion that your business is
  1417. ethical, because mostly businesses are unethical, but all the same I would
  1418. rather pay smaller organizations.  Maybe your employees seem better treated,
  1419. maybe I want to support manufacturing where you&#38;rsquo;re located, maybe I just like
  1420. your product.&lt;/p&gt;
  1421.  
  1422. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s 2021, and I am a person with money who might like to give you some of it.
  1423. Help me to help you.&lt;/p&gt;
  1424.  
  1425. &lt;p&gt;What I want:&lt;/p&gt;
  1426.  
  1427. &lt;ul&gt;
  1428. &lt;li&gt;To give you money in return for a thing&lt;/li&gt;
  1429. &lt;li&gt;To know up front what the thing costs&lt;/li&gt;
  1430. &lt;li&gt;To see clear pictures and a description of the thing I&#38;rsquo;m buying, including
  1431. relevant technical specs&lt;/li&gt;
  1432. &lt;li&gt;To have the thing shipped to me&lt;/li&gt;
  1433. &lt;li&gt;To know where to ask for help if something goes wrong with getting the thing&lt;/li&gt;
  1434. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1435.  
  1436.  
  1437. &lt;p&gt;Things I won&#38;rsquo;t mind along the way if you manage not to louse it up:&lt;/p&gt;
  1438.  
  1439. &lt;ul&gt;
  1440. &lt;li&gt;Reading some reviews of the thing from your other customers&lt;/li&gt;
  1441. &lt;li&gt;Showing me the similar things you have for sale&lt;/li&gt;
  1442. &lt;li&gt;Getting an e-mail when I place the order and one when it ships (but seriously like 2
  1443. e-mails, no I don&#38;rsquo;t want your newsletter)&lt;/li&gt;
  1444. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1445.  
  1446.  
  1447. &lt;p&gt;What I do not want:&lt;/p&gt;
  1448.  
  1449. &lt;ul&gt;
  1450. &lt;li&gt;To load dozens of actively hostile 3rd-party spyware services&lt;/li&gt;
  1451. &lt;li&gt;To figure out which half dozen actively hostile 3rd-party spyware services I need to
  1452. tell my adblocker to ignore for your site to work&lt;/li&gt;
  1453. &lt;li&gt;To discover much later that my order has been silently canceled without notification&lt;/li&gt;
  1454. &lt;li&gt;To drive an hour to retrieve my order at a distribution center because you shipped it
  1455. to an undeliverable address&lt;/li&gt;
  1456. &lt;li&gt;To be remarketed at, anywhere, ever&lt;/li&gt;
  1457. &lt;li&gt;To install an actively hostile mobile app in order to access and/or transfer
  1458. ownership of the thing I purchased&lt;/li&gt;
  1459. &lt;li&gt;To give up and buy the thing on Amazon because your website doesn&#38;rsquo;t work&lt;/li&gt;
  1460. &lt;li&gt;To like and subscribe&lt;/li&gt;
  1461. &lt;li&gt;To fill out a survey&lt;/li&gt;
  1462. &lt;li&gt;To know I&#38;rsquo;m being A/B tested&lt;/li&gt;
  1463. &lt;li&gt;To engage with your brand&lt;/li&gt;
  1464. &lt;li&gt;Just about anything the marketing professionals you hired probably want&lt;/li&gt;
  1465. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1466.  
  1467.  
  1468. &lt;p&gt;To a first approximation and as best I can figure it out, &lt;a href=&#34;/2019/10/5&#34;&gt;the
  1469. business&lt;/a&gt; I know the most about took off because some people in
  1470. college stumbled into a growing revenue stream by way of posting decent
  1471. pictures of stuff or whatever.  As it grew, it was built and operated by a
  1472. bunch of mostly-20-something stoners and freaks, most with scant experience.&lt;/p&gt;
  1473.  
  1474. &lt;p&gt;I know it&#38;rsquo;s grim out there, but it keeps surprising me in 2021 just how
  1475. thoroughly almost everyone seems to have thrown up their hands in defeat.  A
  1476. decade ago, us misfit toys were halfway competent at this.  Now what happens is
  1477. the laptop fans spin furiously in order to show me a giant popover about the 16
  1478. ways you want to abuse my privacy while a couple layers of video try to play in
  1479. the background and the infinitely scrolling gallery of product photos fails to
  1480. load correctly for some reason, the little counters on the adblocker widgets
  1481. ticking ever upward.  Later, you cancel my order but neglect to mention it to
  1482. me.  The second time I place an order, you send it to an address I told you not
  1483. to use and I have to figure out which giant FedEx building a county over has
  1484. ahold of it.  When I finally open the box, a cable is missing.  Soon afterwards
  1485. I realize I&#38;rsquo;ve been subscribed to your newsletter.&lt;/p&gt;
  1486.  
  1487. &lt;p&gt;As the cast of &lt;em&gt;Letterkenny&lt;/em&gt; would say:  Figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;
  1488.  
  1489.  
  1490.  
  1491. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/business&#34;&gt;business&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1492. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1493. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  1494. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/7/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1495. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1496.  
  1497. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>wednesday, june  2, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/6/2"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/6/2</id><content type="html">
  1498.  
  1499. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;wednesday, june  2, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1500.  
  1501. &lt;p&gt;sure the self dissipates and hollows&lt;br /&gt;
  1502. and all dignity is temporary at best&lt;br /&gt;
  1503. while memory itself will betray you&lt;br /&gt;
  1504. at every turn&lt;/p&gt;
  1505.  
  1506. &lt;p&gt;but all the same, if you&#39;re lucky,&lt;br /&gt;
  1507. you&#39;ll look back sometimes&lt;br /&gt;
  1508. across the sweep of time&lt;br /&gt;
  1509. and discover there was some extraordinary freedom&lt;br /&gt;
  1510. even in places you once read as trapped and lonely&lt;/p&gt;
  1511.  
  1512. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1513. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1514. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  1515. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/6/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1516. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1517.  
  1518. </content><updated>2021-07-14T05:45:07Z</updated></entry><entry><title>tuesday, april 27, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/4/27"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/4/27</id><content type="html">
  1519.  
  1520. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;tuesday, april 27, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1521.  
  1522. &lt;p&gt;there was a flood once,&lt;br /&gt;
  1523. and then it was years before&lt;br /&gt;
  1524. the sound of rain on a roof&lt;br /&gt;
  1525. for more than a few minutes&lt;br /&gt;
  1526. stopped being a reminder i didn&#39;t want&lt;/p&gt;
  1527.  
  1528. &lt;p&gt;you&#39;d see it in the people who&lt;br /&gt;
  1529. were there  &#38;mdash;  one of those rare wet&lt;br /&gt;
  1530. days would set in and they&#39;d&lt;br /&gt;
  1531. get a little nervous around the eyes&lt;/p&gt;
  1532.  
  1533. &lt;p&gt;last summer we patched together the&lt;br /&gt;
  1534. failing gutters on this old house&lt;br /&gt;
  1535. and added a section or two&lt;/p&gt;
  1536.  
  1537. &lt;p&gt;it was shoddy work and the lesson i&lt;br /&gt;
  1538. learned about gutters is next time&lt;br /&gt;
  1539. i&#39;ll hire it done, but they carry water&lt;br /&gt;
  1540. down to the ground better than before&lt;/p&gt;
  1541.  
  1542. &lt;p&gt;now, nearing midnight, it&#39;s been raining&lt;br /&gt;
  1543. steady since before sundown&lt;br /&gt;
  1544. i can hear it streaming through those&lt;br /&gt;
  1545. aluminum troughs, probably pooling in&lt;br /&gt;
  1546. the low spots i can&#39;t figure out how&lt;br /&gt;
  1547. to build up, trickling down into the&lt;br /&gt;
  1548. crawlspace we&#39;ll have to fix for real&lt;br /&gt;
  1549. one of these seasons&lt;/p&gt;
  1550.  
  1551. &lt;p&gt;and what i feel is just the old midwestern&lt;br /&gt;
  1552. calm of a roof overhead in weather&lt;br /&gt;
  1553. the quiet pleasure of being alive in a world&lt;br /&gt;
  1554. that&#39;s happening at some greater scale than mine&lt;/p&gt;
  1555.  
  1556. &lt;p&gt;the grass all lifting up to meet it&lt;br /&gt;
  1557. the birds waiting to make riot at dawn&lt;br /&gt;
  1558. the rabbits huddled under the scrubby&lt;br /&gt;
  1559. trees in the fenceline&lt;/p&gt;
  1560.  
  1561. &lt;p&gt;just rain on the roof.&lt;br /&gt;
  1562. i&#39;ll take it.&lt;/p&gt;
  1563.  
  1564.  
  1565. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1566. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1567. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  1568. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/27/&#34; title=&#34;27&#34;&gt;27&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1569. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1570.  
  1571. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, April 12, 2021 - software as government</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/4/12"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/4/12</id><content type="html">
  1572.  
  1573. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, April 12, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1574.  
  1575. &lt;h2&gt;software as government&lt;/h2&gt;
  1576.  
  1577. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m sketching an incomplete thought here.  For context:&lt;/p&gt;
  1578.  
  1579. &lt;ul&gt;
  1580. &lt;li&gt;GitHub eating open source, Microsoft eating GitHub.  Google eating
  1581. e-mail, the web, corporate communications.  Apple with its infinite dollars
  1582. and stranglehold on a class of users with deep, identity-defining emotional
  1583. attachments to its stuff.  All the usual monopoly-and-aspiring-monopoly stuff.&lt;/li&gt;
  1584. &lt;li&gt;The totality of cloud computing&#38;rsquo;s ideological and conceptual triumph in
  1585. the space of a decade, to the point where people tend to view a business
  1586. that owns servers and runs stuff on them instead of renting them from an
  1587. approved megacorporation as aberrant and maybe kind of offensive.&lt;/li&gt;
  1588. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2021/3/23/&#34;&gt;RMS and the Free Software Foundation&#38;rsquo;s apparent ongoing collapse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1589. &lt;li&gt;A few years&#39; experience working for a technical nonprofit embedded in a
  1590. large community.&lt;/li&gt;
  1591. &lt;li&gt;The way most of the general-purpose computers are phones now, and how much
  1592. less general purpose they&#38;rsquo;re looking these days.&lt;/li&gt;
  1593. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1594.  
  1595.  
  1596. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❃ &lt;/p&gt;
  1597.  
  1598.  
  1599. &lt;p&gt;So, the recurring thought: &lt;strong&gt;A lot of the things that people gravitate towards
  1600. or become dependent on in software are effectively governments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1601.  
  1602. &lt;p&gt;That is, partly, things which:&lt;/p&gt;
  1603.  
  1604. &lt;ul&gt;
  1605. &lt;li&gt;Build and maintain infrastructure&lt;/li&gt;
  1606. &lt;li&gt;Create / enforce standards&lt;/li&gt;
  1607. &lt;li&gt;Police at least some kinds of bad actor&lt;/li&gt;
  1608. &lt;li&gt;Extract rents / taxes&lt;/li&gt;
  1609. &lt;li&gt;Provide employment to a class of technocrats&lt;/li&gt;
  1610. &lt;li&gt;Provide frameworks for cultural affiliation&lt;/li&gt;
  1611. &lt;li&gt;Express or enact aspects of the civic religion&lt;/li&gt;
  1612. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1613.  
  1614.  
  1615. &lt;p&gt;While often what a lot of us in FOSS / digital rights / free knowledge circles
  1616. are striving for is some combination, depending on priors and priorities, of:&lt;/p&gt;
  1617.  
  1618. &lt;ul&gt;
  1619. &lt;li&gt;Software anarchism - things that don&#38;rsquo;t require government, operate outside of
  1620. it, or actively defy it&lt;/li&gt;
  1621. &lt;li&gt;Mutual aid&lt;/li&gt;
  1622. &lt;li&gt;Certain kinds of resource sharing and cooperation between entities that
  1623. are effectively (and sometimes literally) competing governments&lt;/li&gt;
  1624. &lt;li&gt;Better governance&lt;/li&gt;
  1625. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1626.  
  1627.  
  1628. &lt;p&gt;There are thus contradictions that arise:&lt;/p&gt;
  1629.  
  1630. &lt;ol&gt;
  1631. &lt;li&gt; Within those aims&lt;/li&gt;
  1632. &lt;li&gt; Between those aims and the dominant forms of power&lt;/li&gt;
  1633. &lt;li&gt; Between those aims and the needs / wants / habits of users&lt;/li&gt;
  1634. &lt;/ol&gt;
  1635.  
  1636.  
  1637. &lt;p&gt;#2 is sort of a given, though we could do with a lot more self-awareness about
  1638. just how much our work is the foundation of now-dominant powers.  #1 and #3
  1639. bear more thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;
  1640.  
  1641. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s nothing new here, and I suppose it rhymes with stuff I&#38;rsquo;ve been saying
  1642. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2013/12/4/&#34; title=&#34;on software&#34;&gt;for&lt;/a&gt; a
  1643. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/14/&#34; title=&#34;the world computer: a marginally coherent bathtub rant&#34;&gt;while&lt;/a&gt;.
  1644. The frame, though, feels like recognizing something I&#38;rsquo;ve been bad at looking
  1645. at directly.&lt;/p&gt;
  1646.  
  1647.  
  1648.  
  1649. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/free-software&#34;&gt;free-software&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/idealogging&#34;&gt;idealogging&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1650. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1651. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  1652. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1653. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1654.  
  1655. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title type="html">Sunday, April 11, 2021 - observations on gear nerdery &#38; utility fetishism, 2021 edition</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/4/11"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/4/11</id><content type="html">
  1656.  
  1657. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, April 11, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1658.  
  1659. &lt;h2&gt;observations on gear nerdery &#38;amp; utility fetishism, 2021 edition&lt;/h2&gt;
  1660.  
  1661. &lt;ol&gt;
  1662. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In most settings, a big van covers about 70% of the utility afforded by a
  1663. pickup truck, plus you can sleep in it and the stuff inside won&#38;rsquo;t get rained
  1664. on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1665. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before you buy or gift a synthesizer, remember that owning a synthesizer is
  1666. like having a little robot voice whispering in your ear about how cool it
  1667. would be to own &lt;em&gt;more and better&lt;/em&gt; synthesizers and synthesizer accessories.
  1668. (The voice isn&#38;rsquo;t necessarily wrong, but it will never be satisfied.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1669. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However many audio cables you think you&#38;rsquo;re going to need, double it and add
  1670. one for good measure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1671. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whatever comes after USB-C, I&#38;rsquo;m already mad about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1672. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2021, the primary determinant of what power tool you&#38;rsquo;re going to buy is
  1673. usually whatever brand of lithium batteries you already own a bunch of.&lt;/p&gt;
  1674.  
  1675. &lt;p&gt;It took concerted effort by some very smart people to create a situation
  1676. this thoroughly stupid.  I&#38;rsquo;d boycott the whole market if I didn&#38;rsquo;t already
  1677. own a bunch of tools encased in yellow plastic and dislike messing with
  1678. extension cords.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1679. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My Casio G-Shock still works great.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1680. &lt;/ol&gt;
  1681.  
  1682.  
  1683. &lt;p&gt;Previously:&lt;/p&gt;
  1684.  
  1685. &lt;ul&gt;
  1686. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;2011/8/30/&#34;&gt;recent observations on gear nerdery &#38;amp; utility fetishism&lt;/a&gt; (2011)&lt;/li&gt;
  1687. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2012/4/12/&#34;&gt;more observations on gear nerdery &#38;amp; utility fetishism&lt;/a&gt; (2012)&lt;/li&gt;
  1688. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1689.  
  1690.  
  1691.  
  1692.  
  1693. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/synthesizers&#34;&gt;synthesizers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/usb&#34;&gt;usb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1694. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1695. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  1696. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/4/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1697. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1698.  
  1699. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - the weather</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/3/24"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/3/24</id><content type="html">
  1700.  
  1701. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, March 24, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1702.  
  1703. &lt;h2&gt;the weather&lt;/h2&gt;
  1704.  
  1705. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Written back in March, posted 2021-07-14. Discusses a mass shooting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1706.  
  1707. &lt;p&gt;I moved out of Boulder almost a decade ago.  Writing this now, I don&#38;rsquo;t remember
  1708. if I thought I was making a decision about &lt;em&gt;leaving Boulder&lt;/em&gt;.  I think I
  1709. figured I&#38;rsquo;d be back sooner or later.  I was just getting worn out on living in
  1710. basements, my landlords upstairs were about to have a baby, and it seemed like
  1711. time to make a change.  When I went to look, it turned out I could rent a
  1712. massive old 3 bedroom house in one of the L-towns for what a decent
  1713. above-ground apartment was running in Boulder.&lt;/p&gt;
  1714.  
  1715. &lt;p&gt;When I left, the exodus of most people I knew in town was just getting
  1716. underway.  The stuff that made it permanent seems pretty concrete and
  1717. inescapable now, but it accumulated gradually.  One formulaic conversation
  1718. about real estate and the money moving in at a time; the same story as every
  1719. other place in America that people from somewhere else want to live.&lt;/p&gt;
  1720.  
  1721. &lt;p&gt;Looking back on it now, those two years in a basement in South Boulder were the
  1722. best that town ever treated me.  Martian Acres, with Martin Park for a back
  1723. yard.  The bike path all the way out to Gunbarrel for work, or jamming onto the
  1724. crowded bus up Broadway.  Beers at the Southern Sun, breakfast at the Walnut
  1725. Cafe to go with the hangovers.&lt;/p&gt;
  1726.  
  1727. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s nothing much &lt;em&gt;extraordinary&lt;/em&gt; about that part of town.  As far as I
  1728. know, it&#38;rsquo;s just 1950s and 60s development that grew into something lived in.
  1729. Cheap little ranch houses on irrationally curving streets.  It felt a little
  1730. more real than the places the money had completely eaten by then, and by virtue
  1731. of that reality also maybe a little weirder in the way things around here are
  1732. &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to be weird.  They get fewer by the year, but Boulder as I knew it
  1733. was a place of little pocket-universe neighborhoods.  You&#38;rsquo;d find yourself in
  1734. some hidden corner and think: This is how it used to be.  This is why people
  1735. keep coming back.&lt;/p&gt;
  1736.  
  1737. &lt;p&gt;People in that part of town were good to me.  It&#38;rsquo;s the part I always feel like
  1738. I can still imagine living in.&lt;/p&gt;
  1739.  
  1740. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✢ &lt;/p&gt;
  1741.  
  1742.  
  1743. &lt;p&gt;There are things you remember about a neighborhood.  Mundane but also defining.
  1744. I wind up with strong opinions about grocery stores.  The Table Mesa one was my
  1745. favorite King Soopers around here.  Nice produce selection, friendly people at
  1746. the checkout.&lt;/p&gt;
  1747.  
  1748. &lt;p&gt;A couple of days ago, a guy walked in the door there and shot ten people to
  1749. death with, most probably, an AR-15 knockoff.  Nobody I know died, though I was
  1750. as worried about that as I&#38;rsquo;ve ever been during one of these.&lt;/p&gt;
  1751.  
  1752. &lt;p&gt;Some unbelievable asshole was streaming from the parking lot on YouTube during
  1753. all of this.  I watched more of it than I feel good about, with a more acute
  1754. version of that same sick dread you feel when a tornado is bearing down on
  1755. somewhere you know.&lt;/p&gt;
  1756.  
  1757. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✾ &lt;/p&gt;
  1758.  
  1759.  
  1760. &lt;p&gt;This is the weather in America.  If you live in a place where the violence is
  1761. usually at a distance, you put it in the mental background.  You figure today
  1762. probably isn&#38;rsquo;t the day a mass murder hits while you&#38;rsquo;re picking up groceries or
  1763. going to work.  Most days aren&#38;rsquo;t.  You&#38;rsquo;d take sensible precautions but there
  1764. aren&#38;rsquo;t any to take.  It&#38;rsquo;s like living in tornado alley, but you can&#38;rsquo;t look for
  1765. a house with a basement.&lt;/p&gt;
  1766.  
  1767. &lt;p&gt;I hate my country.&lt;/p&gt;
  1768.  
  1769.  
  1770.  
  1771. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/boulder&#34;&gt;boulder&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/colorado&#34;&gt;colorado&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/violence&#34;&gt;violence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1772. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1773. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1774. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/24/&#34; title=&#34;24&#34;&gt;24&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1775. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1776.  
  1777. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, March 23, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/3/23"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/3/23</id><content type="html">
  1778.  
  1779. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, March 23, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1780.  
  1781. &lt;p&gt;The RMS thing has come up again.  I wrote at some length about this back &lt;a href=&#34;/2019/10/20/&#34;&gt;in
  1782. October of 2019&lt;/a&gt;.  I felt messed up about it then, and I still
  1783. do.  If anybody wants or needs my opinions, they haven&#38;rsquo;t changed much since I
  1784. wrote that piece.&lt;/p&gt;
  1785.  
  1786. &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I signed &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io/blob/main/index.md&#34;&gt;the open letter&lt;/a&gt;.  I could quibble with aspects of
  1787. the demands there, but I guess this feels like a necessary push right now.  A
  1788. lot of friends and colleagues are on that list, and it seems like for the right
  1789. reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
  1790.  
  1791. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t want to see the Free Software Foundation destroyed.  I would very much
  1792. like to see it saved from some of the worst impulses in this scene.  If that
  1793. can&#38;rsquo;t happen, then we as a community probably need to stop treating the FSF as
  1794. a useful proxy for the radical libre software position and put that effort,
  1795. time, and money into less damaged undertakings.&lt;/p&gt;
  1796.  
  1797. &lt;p&gt;At any rate:  I won&#38;rsquo;t personally renew my membership with the FSF until, and
  1798. unless, meaningful changes are made.&lt;/p&gt;
  1799.  
  1800.  
  1801.  
  1802. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/free-software&#34;&gt;free-software&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/richard-stallman&#34;&gt;richard-stallman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1803. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1804. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1805. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/23/&#34; title=&#34;23&#34;&gt;23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1806. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1807.  
  1808. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, March 14, 2021 - reading: a desolation called peace</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/3/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/3/14</id><content type="html">
  1809.  
  1810. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, March 14, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1811.  
  1812. &lt;h2&gt;reading: a desolation called peace&lt;/h2&gt;
  1813.  
  1814. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.arkadymartine.net/a-desolation-called-peace-press-publicity&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Desolation Called Peace&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Arkady Martine, Tor Books, March 2021.&lt;/p&gt;
  1815.  
  1816. &lt;p&gt;The followup to &lt;em&gt;A Memory Called Empire&lt;/em&gt;, which I &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/11/13/&#34;&gt;read in November of last
  1817. year&lt;/a&gt;.  More overtly Space Opera in its plot mechanics and fantasy
  1818. physics, but digs deeper into the first novel&#38;rsquo;s most interesting ideas, and
  1819. pays off all over the place.  Doubled themes of memory, language,
  1820. theory-of-mind, small cultures surviving at great cost in the face of larger
  1821. ones, cultures and polities transformed by what they attempt to subsume.&lt;/p&gt;
  1822.  
  1823. &lt;p&gt;I have marginal notes like &#38;ldquo;this is so fucking good&#38;rdquo; in a couple of places.  If
  1824. this is a &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of thing you enjoy, you will very likely enjoy this instance
  1825. of it.&lt;/p&gt;
  1826.  
  1827.  
  1828.  
  1829.  
  1830. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/arkady-martine&#34;&gt;arkady-martine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1831. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1832. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1833. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1834. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1835.  
  1836. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, March  3, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/3/3"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/3/3</id><content type="html">
  1837.  
  1838. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, March  3, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1839.  
  1840. &lt;p&gt;We loved computers:  That&#38;rsquo;s a simplification, almost a category error.  What
  1841. happened is we found computers, we got on the network, and before long we lived
  1842. as much inside the possibility space of computing as we did anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;
  1843.  
  1844. &lt;p&gt;Maybe what we got wrong is this:  From the beginning, computers appeared to us
  1845. as a kind of liberation.  Because we were young and our horizons were close, we
  1846. mistook the ways they opened the world to us for their most important quality.
  1847. What we couldn&#38;rsquo;t see then was that they were born as instruments of the
  1848. oppressor, and would help us become the same.&lt;/p&gt;
  1849.  
  1850. &lt;p&gt;Even when we grasped that the scaffolding of computation came from power, when
  1851. we were running free around those systems we felt like we understood their real
  1852. purpose in a way that the institutions that built and purchased them couldn&#38;rsquo;t.
  1853. Nevermind that they couldn&#38;rsquo;t exist without an industrial economy, ranked tiers
  1854. of exploited workers, and a relentlessly degraded environment.&lt;/p&gt;
  1855.  
  1856. &lt;p&gt;Computation was a power that we could see how to take for ourselves.  It
  1857. unfolded in front of us in a way that the authorities in our lives could, for
  1858. the most part, barely even perceive.  Sometimes they&#38;rsquo;d glimpse it and lash out
  1859. in fear or contempt.  We mistook their fear for a sign we were on the right
  1860. track.&lt;/p&gt;
  1861.  
  1862. &lt;p&gt;And maybe some of us were, for a while.  But we didn&#38;rsquo;t understand that what
  1863. power serves is usually power itself.&lt;/p&gt;
  1864.  
  1865.  
  1866. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1867. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1868. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1869. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/3/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1870. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1871.  
  1872. </content><updated>2021-03-04T05:31:45Z</updated></entry><entry><title>sunday, february 28, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/2/28"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/2/28</id><content type="html">
  1873.  
  1874. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;sunday, february 28, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1875.  
  1876. &lt;p&gt;in the transient world&lt;br /&gt;
  1877. nothing is incorruptible&lt;br /&gt;
  1878. except perhaps corruption itself&lt;/p&gt;
  1879.  
  1880.  
  1881.  
  1882. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1883. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1884. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  1885. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/2/28/&#34; title=&#34;28&#34;&gt;28&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1886. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1887.  
  1888. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>sunday, february 14, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/2/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/2/14</id><content type="html">
  1889.  
  1890. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;sunday, february 14, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1891.  
  1892. &lt;p&gt;days and days into weeks and weeks and months&lt;br /&gt;
  1893. and months go by with all the variation of&lt;br /&gt;
  1894. fenceposts outside a car window&lt;br /&gt;
  1895. on a road through western kansas&lt;/p&gt;
  1896.  
  1897. &lt;p&gt;and then it&#39;s the late winter again&lt;br /&gt;
  1898. in february, we finally get a stretch&lt;br /&gt;
  1899. of cold weather&lt;/p&gt;
  1900.  
  1901. &lt;p&gt;i leave my desk and go out for a walk one day&lt;br /&gt;
  1902. and see a coyote hunting prairie dogs in the&lt;br /&gt;
  1903. grass, a bald eagle looking down over the&lt;br /&gt;
  1904. half-frozen saint vrain&lt;/p&gt;
  1905.  
  1906.  
  1907. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1908. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1909. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  1910. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/2/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1911. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1912.  
  1913. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - reading: the steerswoman (series)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/1/26"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/1/26</id><content type="html">
  1914.  
  1915. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, January 26, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1916.  
  1917. &lt;h2&gt;reading: the steerswoman (series)&lt;/h2&gt;
  1918.  
  1919. &lt;p&gt;These are by Rosemary Kirstein, and available as e-books &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/13953&#34;&gt;on
  1920. Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  1921.  
  1922. &lt;ul&gt;
  1923. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Steerswoman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1924. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Outskirter&#38;rsquo;s Secret&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1925. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lost Steersman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1926. &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Language of Power&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1927. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1928.  
  1929.  
  1930. &lt;p&gt;I came across these by way of &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2019/03/20/0&#34;&gt;a blog post by Sumana Harihareswara&lt;/a&gt;, I
  1931. think with my ambient sense that I should read them enhanced by &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-345-46105-3a.html&#34;&gt;a review by
  1932. Russ Allbery&lt;/a&gt; and a blurb from Jo Walton.&lt;/p&gt;
  1933.  
  1934. &lt;p&gt;On first inspection, &lt;em&gt;The Steerswoman&lt;/em&gt; is a particular and familiar sort of
  1935. fantasy with one or two mildly interesting conceits.  It quickly becomes
  1936. something deeper than that, and after working through all four in the space of
  1937. a couple of weeks, I&#38;rsquo;d rank them with the classics of their genre.&lt;/p&gt;
  1938.  
  1939. &lt;p&gt;This is an unfinished series, the first of which was published in 1989, with a
  1940. whole lot of unresolved questions.  I normally try not to encourage people to
  1941. take up this kind of thing; most readers of speculative fiction have been
  1942. burned by &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; long-running series or another by now.  I&#38;rsquo;ll make an exception
  1943. for this one:  I eagerly await the concluding volumes, but even if they&#38;rsquo;re
  1944. never published, the first four are all worth the time.&lt;/p&gt;
  1945.  
  1946.  
  1947.  
  1948.  
  1949. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/rosemary-kirstein&#34;&gt;rosemary-kirstein&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/the-steerswoman&#34;&gt;the-steerswoman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1950. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1951. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  1952. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/26/&#34; title=&#34;26&#34;&gt;26&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1953. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1954.  
  1955. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>wednesday, january 20, 2021</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/1/20"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/1/20</id><content type="html">
  1956.  
  1957. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;wednesday, january 20, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1958.  
  1959. &lt;p&gt;somewhere a little after 10pm&lt;br /&gt;
  1960. a mandolin, amplified loud enough for&lt;br /&gt;
  1961. most of town to hear it&lt;br /&gt;
  1962. plays a triumphant instrumental.&lt;br /&gt;
  1963. and then a single firework&lt;/p&gt;
  1964.  
  1965. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  1966. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  1967. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  1968. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/20/&#34; title=&#34;20&#34;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  1969. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  1970.  
  1971. </content><updated>2021-01-21T05:36:56Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, January  4, 2021 - keeping a log: 9 months / ~1k entries in</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/1/4"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/1/4</id><content type="html">
  1972.  
  1973. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, January  4, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  1974.  
  1975. &lt;h2&gt;keeping a log: 9 months / ~1k entries in&lt;/h2&gt;
  1976.  
  1977. &lt;p&gt;Previously: &lt;a href=&#34;/2017/1/22&#34;&gt;org mode, vimwiki, timeslice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  1978.  
  1979. &lt;p&gt;Mechanisms inspired directly by: A &lt;a href=&#34;http://demo-journal.liw.fi/&#34;&gt;demo&lt;/a&gt; &#38;amp; talk
  1980. from Lars Wirzenius on his &lt;a href=&#34;https://ikiwiki.info/&#34;&gt;ikiwiki&lt;/a&gt;-based external
  1981. brain and journal; fediverse discussion of the &lt;a href=&#34;https://orgmode.org/&#34;&gt;Org mode&lt;/a&gt;
  1982. agenda; and possibly too much &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/7/27/&#34;&gt;reading about the Zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  1983.  
  1984. &lt;p&gt;Back in March, in the throes of a bunch of &lt;a href=&#34;/zettelkasten&#34;&gt;rabbitholing about
  1985. note-taking&lt;/a&gt;, I roughed out a system for keeping short,
  1986. granular log entries in my VimWiki.  I agonized for quite a while about how to
  1987. do this before deciding to start with the stupidest thing that could possibly
  1988. work.&lt;/p&gt;
  1989.  
  1990. &lt;p&gt;The short version is that I have a hotkey to create datestamped files in
  1991. a &lt;code&gt;log/&lt;/code&gt; directory, like these:&lt;/p&gt;
  1992.  
  1993. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;./vimwiki/log/2021-01-04-2033-33.wiki
  1994. ./vimwiki/log/2021-01-04-1719-51.wiki
  1995. ./vimwiki/log/2021-01-04-1516-18.wiki
  1996. ./vimwiki/log/2021-01-04-0914-03.wiki
  1997. ./vimwiki/log/2021-01-04-0142-59.wiki
  1998. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  1999.  
  2000. &lt;p&gt;A new entry opens with a template like the following:&lt;/p&gt;
  2001.  
  2002. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;%date 2021-01-04 21:46:40.056011313-07:00
  2003. %title
  2004. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2005.  
  2006. &lt;p&gt;I then give the entry a human-readable title, links to relevant topics, and as
  2007. much text description as seems useful.  A typical entry looks something like:&lt;/p&gt;
  2008.  
  2009. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;%date 2020-12-11 16:49:51.356943342-07:00
  2010. %title Configuring digiKam again
  2011.  
  2012. [[/configuration]] [[/photos]] [[/digikam]]
  2013.  
  2014. Digging around in the guts of an old `digikam4.db`.  Changed the album root to
  2015. point to the new path in `~/workspace/photos`.
  2016. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2017.  
  2018. &lt;p&gt;Then, when I&#38;rsquo;m viewing a topic page like &lt;code&gt;digikam&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;photos&lt;/code&gt;, I can press
  2019. another hotkey to pull up a window with any linked log entries.  When I&#38;rsquo;m
  2020. viewing the diary page for a given day, a bit of shell boilerplate shows me
  2021. all the log entries for that date.&lt;/p&gt;
  2022.  
  2023. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❉ &lt;/p&gt;
  2024.  
  2025.  
  2026. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve elaborated on this all a bit since March, but the underpinnings are still
  2027. just a few hundred lines of hacky scripting and Vim configuration.  Before I put any
  2028. work into cleaning it up, I thought I&#38;rsquo;d try to outline some stuff I&#38;rsquo;ve learned.&lt;/p&gt;
  2029.  
  2030. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ll use the time-honored form of &#38;ldquo;answers to questions no one has actually
  2031. asked me&#38;rdquo;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2032.  
  2033. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why a log?&lt;/strong&gt;  Because in taking notes, I&#38;rsquo;m worried about two dimensions:
  2034. Subject matter and time.  A single flat wiki namespace can be workable for
  2035. navigating the &lt;em&gt;who/what/where&lt;/em&gt;, but it&#38;rsquo;s lousy for navigating the &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2036.  
  2037. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve also spent a lot of my life keeping logbooks, looking at logfiles on
  2038. computers, writing a journal, and publishing a datestamped blog.  At Wikimedia,
  2039. I&#38;rsquo;ve been particularly impressed by how useful the &lt;a href=&#34;https://sal.toolforge.org/production&#34;&gt;server admin logs&lt;/a&gt;
  2040. are, and I pretty much live and die by command-line history and bookmarks.
  2041. It&#38;rsquo;s a notion with an overwhelming amount of precedent in my life.&lt;/p&gt;
  2042.  
  2043. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What distinguishes a log entry from any other wiki page?&lt;/strong&gt;  Its placement in
  2044. the &lt;code&gt;log/&lt;/code&gt; namespace and a handful of formatting conventions.&lt;/p&gt;
  2045.  
  2046. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was this actually a good way to approach the problem?&lt;/strong&gt;  Yeah, I think so,
  2047. with caveats.&lt;/p&gt;
  2048.  
  2049. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the implementation sound?&lt;/strong&gt;  Not by miles, but it holds up better than I
  2050. expected.  Eventually the flat directory structure will get cumbersome in the
  2051. shell, and grepping through files like I&#38;rsquo;m doing some places might get less
  2052. practical.&lt;/p&gt;
  2053.  
  2054. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How are the ergonomics?&lt;/strong&gt;  Not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; bad, but there should be as few
  2055. keystrokes as possible involved in writing a new entry, and this doesn&#38;rsquo;t quite
  2056. cut it.&lt;/p&gt;
  2057.  
  2058. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&#38;rsquo;s a good fit for this kind of log entry?&lt;/strong&gt;  Finding a new piece of
  2059. software, writing a letter, taking notes on a meeting, setting up or
  2060. decommissioning a piece of gear, finishing a book, garden/yard work, house and
  2061. vehicle maintenance, phone calls, general life events, sysadmin work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
  2062.  
  2063. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&#38;rsquo;s not?&lt;/strong&gt;  The single thing I&#38;rsquo;ve done the most of that probably makes the
  2064. least sense in this format is logging individual expenses and financial
  2065. transactions.  This has been useful enough to convince me that tracking what
  2066. I&#38;rsquo;m doing with money is a good idea, but clunky enough that I&#38;rsquo;ve learned stuff
  2067. like &#38;ldquo;paid the mortgage&#38;rdquo; and &#38;ldquo;bought groceries&#38;rdquo; should be structured,
  2068. query-able data.  The most that I have to bash out with a keyboard in that
  2069. context should be an annotation on a specific record or group of records.
  2070. That&#38;rsquo;s not to say I&#38;rsquo;m thrilled at the prospect of keeping a rigorous
  2071. double-entry ledger that balances out for every transaction in my life, but I
  2072. can see the appeal in a way I couldn&#38;rsquo;t really before.&lt;/p&gt;
  2073.  
  2074. &lt;p&gt;This generalizes I guess:  A lot of the history I care about lives in
  2075. structured, formal-ish systems like version control, banking, various databases
  2076. &#38;mdash; and other parts of it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;.  Like sometimes I log specific weather
  2077. events, but usually when I want to know about weather in the past, what I&#38;rsquo;d
  2078. really like is a way to quickly aggregate a bunch of data points.&lt;/p&gt;
  2079.  
  2080. &lt;p&gt;That points at two categories of &#38;ldquo;log entry&#38;rdquo;:  The loosely-typed human-readable
  2081. kind that make sense as wiki pages, and the granular, highly-structured and
  2082. repetitive kind that make more sense in something like a database table.  Then
  2083. there&#38;rsquo;s a third that doesn&#38;rsquo;t quite fit in either box.  Sometimes I paste a
  2084. lengthy shell transcript into a log entry, for example, and while that&#38;rsquo;s more
  2085. or less fine, it points at a gap in the tools I use.  It would be way nicer
  2086. just to push a button when I&#38;rsquo;m doing something in the terminal that it&#38;rsquo;s
  2087. important to remember exactly, and then it can record until I tell it to stop
  2088. and let me add some tags and a summary to the session.&lt;/p&gt;
  2089.  
  2090. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what next?&lt;/strong&gt;  Well, I&#38;rsquo;ve arrived at something I&#38;rsquo;m going to keep using.
  2091. I&#38;rsquo;d miss it if I quit, and it&#38;rsquo;s easy to accumulate a useful record this way.  I
  2092. might clean up the mess a bit and package its components as a VimWiki addon.
  2093. After that, I&#38;rsquo;m going to spackle more stupidest-things-that-could-possibly-work
  2094. on top to augment it, and think about more ways to surface and integrate other
  2095. parts of the meta-log that are scattered all over the systems I use.&lt;/p&gt;
  2096.  
  2097.  
  2098.  
  2099. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/data&#34;&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/logging&#34;&gt;logging&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/vimwiki&#34;&gt;vimwiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2100. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  2101. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  2102. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2103. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2104.  
  2105. </content><updated>2024-03-26T00:08:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, January 2, 2021 - reading in 2020 (books edition)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/1/2"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/1/2</id><content type="html">
  2106.  
  2107. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, January 2, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  2108.  
  2109. &lt;h2&gt;reading in 2020 (books edition)&lt;/h2&gt;
  2110.  
  2111. &lt;p&gt;As I &lt;a href=&#34;/2021/1/1&#34;&gt;look over the set of books I&#38;rsquo;ve piled up in my house&lt;/a&gt;, the
  2112. other thing that strikes me is that, in the years these books have been
  2113. accumulating, both the relationship of books to the culture and the nature of
  2114. reading itself have been rearranged.  Like I &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/1/1/&#34;&gt;wrote three years
  2115. ago&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2116.  
  2117. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because really what I read in 2017, in most of the last several years, was
  2118. the internet. Not even, in any real sense that registers, individual
  2119. documents hosted on the network, or the work of authors I can clearly
  2120. identify. Just the endless scroll.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2121.  
  2122. &lt;p&gt;&#38;hellip;it&#38;rsquo;s like that but more so, now.&lt;/p&gt;
  2123.  
  2124. &lt;p&gt;The last book I read in 2020 was Kim Stanley Robinson&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;The Ministry for the
  2125. Future&lt;/em&gt;, which has this bit (chapter 30):&lt;/p&gt;
  2126.  
  2127. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;So how you feel about your time is partly or even largely a result of that
  2128. time’s structure of feeling. When time passes and that structure changes, how
  2129. you feel will also change— both in your body and in how you understand it as a
  2130. meaning. Say the order of your time feels unjust and unsustainable and yet
  2131. massively entrenched, but also falling apart before your eyes. The obvious
  2132. contradictions in this list might yet still describe the feeling of your time
  2133. quite accurately, if we are not mistaken. Or put it this way; it feels that way
  2134. to us. But a little contemplation of history will reveal that this feeling too
  2135. will not last for long. Unless of course the feeling of things falling apart is
  2136. itself massively entrenched, to the point of being the eternal or eternally
  2137. recurrent individual human’s reaction to history. Which may just mean the
  2138. reinscription of the biological onto the historical, for we are all definitely
  2139. always falling apart, and not massively entrenched in anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2140.  
  2141. &lt;p&gt;The moment&#38;rsquo;s structure of feeling has changed, and you can tell it in just
  2142. about every text you encounter.  It&#38;rsquo;s also pretty hard to stop encountering
  2143. texts even if you want to.  The stuff is inescapable and much of it has a
  2144. quality of self-replicating churn that makes me feel kind of queasy about the
  2145. entire enterprise of human thought.&lt;/p&gt;
  2146.  
  2147. &lt;p&gt;I wonder if it felt something like this when literacy really took off as a
  2148. technology in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;
  2149.  
  2150. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✢ &lt;/p&gt;
  2151.  
  2152.  
  2153. &lt;p&gt;Anyhow, what booklike objects did I read this past year?&lt;/p&gt;
  2154.  
  2155. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;February&lt;/strong&gt;: I ordered a copy of Sönke Ahrens&#39; &lt;em&gt;How to Take Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt;.
  2156. Note-taking was on my mind a lot over the course of the year, and I spent too
  2157. much time reading other people&#38;rsquo;s ideas about it.  By July I managed to post
  2158. some &lt;a href=&#34;zk&#34;&gt;notes on the idea of the Zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt; that serves as a partial
  2159. review / summary of &lt;em&gt;Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt; and related things.&lt;/p&gt;
  2160.  
  2161. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2020/5/14&#34;&gt;May&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: I binged my way through Martha Wells&#39; &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.marthawells.com/murderbot.htm&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Murderbot
  2162. Diaries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  Popcorn SF, socially anxious heart-of-gold protagonist.
  2163. I started &lt;em&gt;The Elephant in the Cornfield: The Politics of Agriculture and
  2164. Climate Change&lt;/em&gt;, by Chris Clayton, which I should probably revisit.&lt;/p&gt;
  2165.  
  2166. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2020/10&#34;&gt;October&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/10/9&#34;&gt;Meghan O&#39;Gieblyn&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Interior
  2167. States&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (essays), &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/10/11&#34;&gt;Vanessa Veselka&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;The Great Offshore
  2168. Grounds&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (a novel), &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/10/12&#34;&gt;Ron Chernow&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Grant&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  2169. (biography).  The first two were quite good and I still haven&#38;rsquo;t finished the
  2170. Grant biography.&lt;/p&gt;
  2171.  
  2172. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;November&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/11/13&#34;&gt;Arkady Martine&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;A Memory Called Empire&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, first of a
  2173. trilogy.  The first two of a trilogy by &lt;a href=&#34;eden-robinson&#34;&gt;Eden Robinson&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Son of
  2174. a Trickster&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Trickster Drift&lt;/em&gt;. All recommended.&lt;/p&gt;
  2175.  
  2176. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;December&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Trail of Lightning&lt;/em&gt;, Rebecca Roanhorse.  I liked some characters
  2177. and scenes and ideas in this, and didn&#38;rsquo;t exactly love it as a novel.  Mileage
  2178. might vary.&lt;/p&gt;
  2179.  
  2180. &lt;p&gt;And then &lt;em&gt;The Ministry for the Future&lt;/em&gt;.  Near future SF, barely a novel at all
  2181. for a lot of its length.  A book that seems more deliberately pitched to be
  2182. read &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; than a lot of short-shelf-life fiction is just by accident.
  2183. Among other things, it&#38;rsquo;s partly an argument that the end of ecocidal capitalism
  2184. is achievable, partly a claim that eco-terrorist violence is likely (and quite
  2185. possibly necessary) as the climate struggle intensifies, and partly a fantasy
  2186. that cryptocurrency might have some kind of pro-social role to play in
  2187. engineering a survivable economy.  I will be thinking about this one for a
  2188. while.&lt;/p&gt;
  2189.  
  2190.  
  2191.  
  2192. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/climate&#34;&gt;climate&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/murderbot&#34;&gt;murderbot&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2193. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  2194. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  2195. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2196. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2197.  
  2198. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, January 1, 2021 - shelves</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2021/1/1"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2021/1/1</id><content type="html">
  2199.  
  2200. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, January 1, 2021&lt;/h1&gt;
  2201.  
  2202. &lt;h2&gt;shelves&lt;/h2&gt;
  2203.  
  2204. &lt;p&gt;I rearranged my office back in mid-December.  This is always tricky because we
  2205. have more stuff (hand-me-down furniture, old computers, bins full of
  2206. electronics) than we really have house to put it in.  As per usual one thing
  2207. led to another and I wound up moving all of my books.&lt;/p&gt;
  2208.  
  2209. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve finally got just enough room to shelve most of them again, thanks to
  2210. secondhand bookshelves and a partner who went on a building spree for her own
  2211. collection over the summer.  It&#38;rsquo;s been a couple of houses since they were
  2212. anything like organized, though.  Half of them have been trapped behind a cat
  2213. tree and an armchair for years.&lt;/p&gt;
  2214.  
  2215. &lt;p&gt;I went for alpha-by-author ordering, with a handful of category exceptions:
  2216. Poetry, reference works, religious texts, computer stuff, a bottom shelf for
  2217. the oversized volumes.  It&#38;rsquo;s a mess because I&#38;rsquo;m doubling up to fit everything
  2218. and the books are wildly different sizes.  I can see one of the flimsier sets
  2219. of shelves coming apart under the load as I type this, and the U&#38;ndash;Z stacks
  2220. are still sitting on the bedroom floor because I ran out of space.&lt;/p&gt;
  2221.  
  2222. &lt;p&gt;So it&#38;rsquo;s imperfect, but it&#38;rsquo;s also really the first comprehensive view I&#38;rsquo;ve had
  2223. of this set of books since I was 6 or 7 years younger and it was a much smaller
  2224. set.  It&#38;rsquo;s kind of a strange experience.&lt;/p&gt;
  2225.  
  2226. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✥ &lt;/p&gt;
  2227.  
  2228.  
  2229. &lt;p&gt;From the time I started reading on my own until pretty far into college, I
  2230. lived in books.  As a kid I read and re-read my dad&#38;rsquo;s pile of genre paperbacks,
  2231. thrived on trips to the library, spent hours arranging things on shelves, was
  2232. always in the process of reading &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.  Once my friends and I could
  2233. drive, it meant I could go to B. Dalton and Waldenbooks before we saw whatever
  2234. the movie was that week.  Eventually the internet started to tell me about
  2235. writers and my personal canon expanded slowly outward, one novel-length trip at
  2236. a time.  It felt so weird to leave a book unfinished that until at least my
  2237. early 20s I could remember everything I&#38;rsquo;d ever bailed on (a &lt;em&gt;Hardy Boys&lt;/em&gt;
  2238. mystery with a scene containing a skeleton that wigged me out, the copy of
  2239. &lt;em&gt;Cujo&lt;/em&gt; that my mom got banned from the school library after I accidentally left
  2240. it where she could find it, &#38;hellip;).&lt;/p&gt;
  2241.  
  2242. &lt;p&gt;The books I have physically to hand in middle adulthood are a different kind of
  2243. animal.  There are, sure, beloved volumes from childhood, things that have
  2244. changed how I think, the kinds of books I go to for solace and perspective.
  2245. But looking at the whole spread, I&#38;rsquo;m honestly not sure I&#38;rsquo;ve even read more than
  2246. half of this stuff.&lt;/p&gt;
  2247.  
  2248. &lt;p&gt;Some of it I read but hated, or liked fine but never actually finished.  There
  2249. must be 30 lbs of assigned reading I&#38;rsquo;ve been lugging around since college.  A
  2250. dozen literary relics of relationships (romantic or otherwise) that have been
  2251. defunct for many multiples of the brief time they existed.  Detritus like the
  2252. copy of Jordan Peterson&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos&lt;/em&gt; that I
  2253. bought used and hate-read for reasons that now escape me but must surely
  2254. reflect poorly on my character.  Books about math that I own because I liked
  2255. the idea of being a person who would read them.  Poets who just leave me with a
  2256. sour feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Things that looked mildly interesting
  2257. on the book swap shelf at a coffeeshop I frequented in 2003, but which are in
  2258. fact bad.  I have a copy of &lt;em&gt;Battlefield Earth&lt;/em&gt; for some reason.  (It was
  2259. probably on the free table at SparkFun.)&lt;/p&gt;
  2260.  
  2261. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s at least as much dross in this collection as there is gold waiting to
  2262. be found, and then it&#38;rsquo;s funny how much of it belongs to some now-distant idea
  2263. of who I was &#38;mdash; or wanted to be &#38;mdash; as a reader or a thinker or a
  2264. person in general.&lt;/p&gt;
  2265.  
  2266. &lt;p&gt;I suppose all of that&#38;rsquo;s pretty normal for a stack of books sitting around going
  2267. into one&#38;rsquo;s 5th decade.  If you hold still for very long in this culture, stuff
  2268. accumulates around you, and plenty of it outlasts the parts of your life that
  2269. it attached to in the first place.  A library is a kind of memory and an index
  2270. to memory, but what it remembers can often be strangely fractured and unevenly
  2271. focused across time.  Not unlike the way things actually go in a given life I
  2272. guess.&lt;/p&gt;
  2273.  
  2274. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✣ &lt;/p&gt;
  2275.  
  2276.  
  2277. &lt;p&gt;Still and all:  I haven&#38;rsquo;t let go of the idea of a personal library, and I doubt
  2278. I will.&lt;/p&gt;
  2279.  
  2280. &lt;p&gt;Putting this stuff on shelves makes me think of what it was like at 10 or 12
  2281. years of age, crouching on the floor halfway through reordering a stack of
  2282. paperbacks, accidentally caught up in reading &lt;em&gt;The Green Hills of Earth&lt;/em&gt; or
  2283. &lt;em&gt;The Call of the Wild&lt;/em&gt; over again.  It also reminds me of what it was like at
  2284. 21, wandering deep in the stacks of a big university research library: All
  2285. those weird pathways and strange wonders.  Outcroppings of the sublime or the
  2286. sturdily useful in the most unexpected places, amidst treacherous pools of
  2287. boredom and fossilized nonsense.  All the times I intersected with some
  2288. decades-old choice in curation and bounced off of it as a slightly different
  2289. person.&lt;/p&gt;
  2290.  
  2291. &lt;p&gt;I think a library should be a refuge, but it should also be something with the
  2292. capacity to surprise and unsettle you.  Maybe a personal one should serve as a
  2293. reservoir of things you used to think and things you still might.&lt;/p&gt;
  2294.  
  2295.  
  2296.  
  2297. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/libraries&#34;&gt;libraries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2298. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/&#34; title=&#34;2021&#34;&gt;2021&lt;/a&gt; /
  2299. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  2300. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2021/1/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2301. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2302.  
  2303. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, December 28, 2020 - the yak queue: end of year 2020 - linux audio: pacmd, pavucontrol, and pasystray - limiting wacom tablet pen input to a single screen under X.Org - google pagespeed metrics for p1k3.com - displaying moon phase emojis for current phase of moon</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/12/28"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/12/28</id><content type="html">
  2304.  
  2305. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, December 28, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2306.  
  2307. &lt;h2&gt;the yak queue: end of year 2020&lt;/h2&gt;
  2308.  
  2309. &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving&#34;&gt;Yak shaving&lt;/a&gt;:
  2310.  
  2311. &lt;blockquote&gt;
  2312.  &lt;p&gt;Noun: yak shaving (uncountable)&lt;/p&gt;
  2313.  
  2314.  &lt;ol&gt;
  2315.    &lt;li&gt;
  2316.      Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome
  2317.      intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem.
  2318.  
  2319.      &lt;dl&gt;&lt;dd&gt;&lt;i&gt;I was doing a bit of &lt;b&gt;yak shaving&lt;/b&gt; this morning, and it
  2320.      looks like it might have paid off.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/dd&gt;&lt;/dl&gt;
  2321.    &lt;/li&gt;
  2322.  
  2323.    &lt;li&gt;
  2324.      A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to
  2325.      procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.
  2326.  
  2327.      &lt;dl&gt;&lt;dd&gt;&lt;i&gt;I looked at a reference manual for my car just to answer one
  2328.      question, but I spent the whole afternoon with my nose buried in it, just
  2329.      &lt;b&gt;yak shaving&lt;/b&gt;, and got no work done on the car itself.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/dd&gt;&lt;/dl&gt;
  2330.    &lt;/li&gt;
  2331.  &lt;/ol&gt;
  2332. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2333.  
  2334. &lt;p&gt;As Lars &lt;a href=&#34;https://yakking.branchable.com/posts/debugging/&#34;&gt;is fond of saying&lt;/a&gt;,
  2335. &#38;ldquo;queue your yaks, don&#38;rsquo;t stack them&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2336.  
  2337. &lt;p&gt;That&#38;rsquo;s good advice which I&#38;rsquo;m bad at following, but early in 2019 I started a
  2338. list of yaks where I can stash problems as they come up.  Sometimes, at least,
  2339. I manage to put something on that list and then go back to whatever I was
  2340. nominally working on.  I think I would recommend this practice as a way to
  2341. eliminate some brain clutter.&lt;/p&gt;
  2342.  
  2343. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s the tail end of the year now, cold and snowy outside, and I have some days
  2344. off of work, so it seemed like a good time to go through the yak-shaving list
  2345. and try some things.  Here then is brief documentation of some problems solved
  2346. (or further complicated) along the way.&lt;/p&gt;
  2347.  
  2348. &lt;h3&gt;linux audio: pacmd, pavucontrol, and pasystray&lt;/h3&gt;
  2349.  
  2350.  
  2351. &lt;p&gt;I have a Behringer UMC404HD audio interface for recording synthesizer output
  2352. and other audio.  You plug it into USB and it gives you some new interfaces.
  2353. Works out of the box with Audacity and Ardour, no driver fiddling required.
  2354. You can plug headphones into it and monitor what it&#38;rsquo;s recording, or use it as
  2355. an output from the computer.&lt;/p&gt;
  2356.  
  2357. &lt;p&gt;This all works pretty well, but at least on my Debian Buster system, it made
  2358. juggling the builtin sound card, a set of external speakers, and the headphones
  2359. plugged into the UMC404HD kind of clunky.&lt;/p&gt;
  2360.  
  2361. &lt;p&gt;I searched and found out that you can use &lt;code&gt;pacmd&lt;/code&gt; at the command line to switch
  2362. which audio streams are going to which &#38;ldquo;sink&#38;rdquo;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2363.  
  2364. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# Get a list of sinks - i.e. output devices, I guess:
  2365. pacmd list-sinks
  2366.  
  2367. # List sink inputs, i.e. apps sending audio somewhere:
  2368. pacmd list-sink-inputs
  2369.  
  2370. # Move an input to a different sink, for example from external
  2371. # sound card to builtin:
  2372. pacmd move-sink-input 79 0
  2373. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2374.  
  2375. &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, &lt;code&gt;pacmd&lt;/code&gt; has verbose output and is tedious to work with.  I was
  2376. afraid I was going to wind up writing some kind of hacky wrapper script, but
  2377. then people on Mastodon told me about &lt;code&gt;pasystray&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;pavucontrol&lt;/code&gt;, which
  2378. expose GUIs with a view of what&#38;rsquo;s playing and let you select what hardware it
  2379. goes to.  &lt;code&gt;pasystray&lt;/code&gt; in particular gives you a little tray icon, which is
  2380. pretty much what I wanted.  There&#38;rsquo;s also &lt;code&gt;pamix&lt;/code&gt;, which seems to expose some of
  2381. the same info in a terminal interface.&lt;/p&gt;
  2382.  
  2383. &lt;p&gt;These are in Debian, so:&lt;/p&gt;
  2384.  
  2385. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;sudo apt install pavucontrol pasystray
  2386. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2387.  
  2388. &lt;p&gt;Not perfect, but much improved.  I &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/bpb-kit/commit/ccb5db7f94db8c2e79dae219e2c65c8a8cfcfa18&#34;&gt;added pasystray&lt;/a&gt; to my
  2389. xmonad startup script.&lt;/p&gt;
  2390.  
  2391. &lt;h3&gt;limiting wacom tablet pen input to a single screen under X.Org&lt;/h3&gt;
  2392.  
  2393.  
  2394. &lt;p&gt;I have a Wacom Intuos pen &#38;amp; touch drawing tablet.  I don&#38;rsquo;t think this version
  2395. has been made for a while, but it&#38;rsquo;s probably similar to current models.  It
  2396. acts as both a pen input device and a trackpad.  I&#38;rsquo;ve always had the problem,
  2397. when using two displays, where the pen input is mapped across both screens so
  2398. that (typically) whatever image I&#38;rsquo;m working on I can only use half the tablet
  2399. for.&lt;/p&gt;
  2400.  
  2401. &lt;p&gt;I haven&#38;rsquo;t done much drawing on the computer since I got a second monitor
  2402. anyway, so I never dug into it all that deeply.  This time when I looked I
  2403. found &lt;a href=&#34;https://feldspaten.org/2017/05/06/ubuntu-linux-map-wacom-to-one-screen-when-using-multiple-screens/&#34;&gt;a blog post from 2017 on feldspaten.org&lt;/a&gt; with pretty clear
  2404. instructions.&lt;/p&gt;
  2405.  
  2406. &lt;p&gt;I wound up running (sample output in comments):&lt;/p&gt;
  2407.  
  2408. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# I didn&#39;t have this installed:
  2409. sudo apt install xinput
  2410.  
  2411. xrandr | grep primary
  2412. # DisplayPort-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 598mm x 336mm
  2413.  
  2414. xinput | grep -i Wacom
  2415. # ⎜   ↳ Wacom Intuos PT M Pad pad                   id=16   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  2416. # ⎜   ↳ Wacom Intuos PT M Pen stylus                id=17   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  2417. # ⎜   ↳ Wacom Intuos PT M Pen eraser                id=18   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  2418. # ⎜   ↳ Wacom Intuos PT M Finger touch              id=19   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  2419.  
  2420. xinput map-to-output 16 DisplayPort-0
  2421. xinput map-to-output 17 DisplayPort-0
  2422. xinput map-to-output 18 DisplayPort-0
  2423. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2424.  
  2425. &lt;p&gt;I left the &#38;ldquo;Finger touch&#38;rdquo; input alone, and sure enough the pen input winds up
  2426. locked to my primary display while the tablet can still be used as a trackpad
  2427. across both displays.&lt;/p&gt;
  2428.  
  2429. &lt;p&gt;Not totally perfect and I&#38;rsquo;m not sure what the appropriate way to make this
  2430. permanent is, but at any rate it removes a frustration and makes
  2431. &lt;a href=&#34;http://mypaint.org/&#34;&gt;MyPaint&lt;/a&gt; fun to use again.&lt;/p&gt;
  2432.  
  2433. &lt;h3&gt;google pagespeed metrics for p1k3.com&lt;/h3&gt;
  2434.  
  2435.  
  2436. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t generally worry about Google&#38;rsquo;s opinion of this website, but it seemed
  2437. vaguely useful to be aware of the things they&#38;rsquo;re tracking here.  Profiling
  2438. usually reveals something you&#38;rsquo;ve missed.  So I read through the &lt;a href=&#34;https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fp1k3.com%2F&#34;&gt;PageSpeed
  2439. Insights for p1k3.com&lt;/a&gt;.  A few things:&lt;/p&gt;
  2440.  
  2441. &lt;ul&gt;
  2442. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They suggest inlining CSS and JavaScript files.  This would be easy enough, I
  2443. guess, but I&#38;rsquo;m probably not going to do it.  It&#38;rsquo;d bulk up each page with a bunch of
  2444. boilerplate and anyway it kind of grosses me out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2445. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enable text compression:  Ok, easy enough.  I uncommented the line
  2446. &lt;code&gt;gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript
  2447. text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;&lt;/code&gt; in
  2448. &lt;code&gt;/etc/nginx/nginx.conf&lt;/code&gt;, which upped the score from 90 to 98, so I guess it
  2449. just wasn&#38;rsquo;t enabled for&#38;hellip;  Some type. See also: &lt;a href=&#34;https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/web-server/compression/&#34;&gt;nginx docs on compression&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2450. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They suggest minifying JavaScript.  There&#38;rsquo;s a copy of jQuery on here - used for
  2451. almost nothing, but handy every now and then.  I swapped it out for the minified
  2452. version of the latest version from the &lt;a href=&#34;https://jquery.com/download/&#34;&gt;official download page&lt;/a&gt;.
  2453. That got the score to 100.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2454. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It looks like I could tweak cache lifetimes on some files, but I think I
  2455. won&#38;rsquo;t bother.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2456. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2457.  
  2458.  
  2459. &lt;h3&gt;displaying moon phase emojis for current phase of moon&lt;/h3&gt;
  2460.  
  2461.  
  2462. &lt;p&gt;A while back I learned about the moon phase emojis:&lt;/p&gt;
  2463.  
  2464. &lt;p&gt;🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘 🌑&lt;/p&gt;
  2465.  
  2466. &lt;p&gt;I immediately wanted a way to display these in the terminal for (approximately)
  2467. the current phase, but I didn&#38;rsquo;t initially have much luck finding a utility that
  2468. would just spit out the phase of the moon without calling a web API or
  2469. anything.&lt;/p&gt;
  2470.  
  2471. &lt;p&gt;I realized while digging into this that &lt;code&gt;gcal&lt;/code&gt; will display moon phases,
  2472. although the documentation is impenetrable and trying to construct the right
  2473. format string gave me a headache, so on to other approaches&#38;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;
  2474.  
  2475. &lt;p&gt;Paul Carleton &lt;a href=&#34;https://pcarleton.com/2018/06/18/cli-for-the-moon/&#34;&gt;wrote up a solution&lt;/a&gt; in Rust which uses a US Navy
  2476. Observatory API, but I&#38;rsquo;d rather network access not be a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;
  2477.  
  2478. &lt;p&gt;I did find a handful of libraries:&lt;/p&gt;
  2479.  
  2480. &lt;ul&gt;
  2481. &lt;li&gt;Perl: &lt;a href=&#34;https://metacpan.org/pod/Astro::MoonPhase&#34;&gt;Astro::MoonPhase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2482. &lt;li&gt;Python: &lt;a href=&#34;https://astral.readthedocs.io/en/latest/package.html&#34;&gt;astral&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/sffjunkie/astral&#34;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2483. &lt;li&gt;PHP: &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/solarissmoke/php-moon-phase&#34;&gt;solarissmoke/php-moon-phase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2484. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2485.  
  2486.  
  2487. &lt;p&gt;Of these, Samir Shah&#38;rsquo;s PHP code was the least hassle to work with.  It doesn&#38;rsquo;t
  2488. really satisfy my goal of &#38;ldquo;a shell script I can toss in &lt;code&gt;~/bin&lt;/code&gt; and use for
  2489. whatever&#38;rdquo;, but it lets me stop thinking about the problem, so here&#38;rsquo;s a few
  2490. lines of PHP called &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/phasemoji&#34;&gt;phasemoji&lt;/a&gt; (also &lt;a href=&#34;https://packagist.org/packages/brennen/phasemoji&#34;&gt;on packagist&lt;/a&gt;,
  2491. though that distribution isn&#38;rsquo;t set up in any kind of useful way).&lt;/p&gt;
  2492.  
  2493. &lt;p&gt;Also, because I&#38;rsquo;m a dumbass, I bought a novelty domain and set up a web service.
  2494. Behold: &lt;a href=&#34;https://phase.city&#34;&gt;phase.city&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2495.  
  2496.  
  2497.  
  2498. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/audio&#34;&gt;audio&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/emoji&#34;&gt;emoji&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/google&#34;&gt;google&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/linux&#34;&gt;linux&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/moon&#34;&gt;moon&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/phase-city&#34;&gt;phase-city&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/phasemoji&#34;&gt;phasemoji&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/php&#34;&gt;php&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/yak-shaving&#34;&gt;yak-shaving&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2499. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2500. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  2501. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/12/28/&#34; title=&#34;28&#34;&gt;28&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2502. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2503.  
  2504. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, December  5, 2020 - the garden cart - the short version - the long version - directions for further research</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/12/5"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/12/5</id><content type="html">
  2505.  
  2506. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, December  5, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2507.  
  2508. &lt;h2&gt;the garden cart&lt;/h2&gt;
  2509.  
  2510. &lt;h3&gt;the short version&lt;/h3&gt;
  2511.  
  2512. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve been lugging a lot of heavy stuff around the place lately, which has had
  2513. me wanting a utility item that was a staple of the gardening and building
  2514. projects of my childhood:  A garden cart.&lt;/p&gt;
  2515.  
  2516. &lt;p&gt;My parents own several of these by now, but there&#38;rsquo;s a specific version I think
  2517. of as The Cart.  It&#38;rsquo;s probably been around for 30 years, give or take.  I
  2518. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2009/1/3/&#34;&gt;wrote about it back in 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2519.  
  2520. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;It consists of two wheels, four pieces of plywood, and some metal tubing +
  2521. trim. Its construction is far less complex than that of most bicycles. It&#38;rsquo;s
  2522. easy to load, capacious, and surprisingly sturdy. The wheels are positioned
  2523. so that the cart seems almost to lift itself when you tug upwards on the
  2524. handle. It moves easily over broken ground. It stands square on one end for
  2525. dumping or storage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2526.  
  2527. &lt;p&gt;Theirs turns out to be a Garden Way cart; unfortunately a company that went
  2528. bankrupt a while back.  Looking for the closest approximation I could find,
  2529. these are what I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;
  2530.  
  2531. &lt;ul&gt;
  2532. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gardeners.com/&#34;&gt;Gardener&#38;rsquo;s Supply Company&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gardeners.com/buy/large-garden-cart/8609662.html&#34;&gt;Large Gardener&#38;rsquo;s Supply Cart&lt;/a&gt; - USD 349.00&lt;/li&gt;
  2533. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://cartsvermont.com/&#34;&gt;Carts Vermont&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&#34;https://cartsvermont.com/shop/garden-carts/large-garden-cart/&#34;&gt;Large Garden Cart&lt;/a&gt; - USD 399.95&lt;/li&gt;
  2534. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2535.  
  2536.  
  2537. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ll probably order one of those (although reading reviews of both has me
  2538. nervous about materials &#38;amp; build quality).  I&#38;rsquo;d also be remiss not to mention
  2539. the Whizbang Garden Cart, a wooden do-it-yourself design (by a guy also notable
  2540. for his homebrew chicken plucker):&lt;/p&gt;
  2541.  
  2542. &lt;ul&gt;
  2543. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://gardencartblog.blogspot.com/&#34;&gt;The Whizbang Garden Cart Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2544. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.planetwhizbang.com/&#34;&gt;Planet Whizbang - Down-To-Earth Books, Tools &#38;amp; Inspiration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  2545. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.planetwhizbang.com/gardening&#34;&gt;Plans on offer here&lt;/a&gt; - find-in-page for &#38;ldquo;Garden Cart&#38;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;
  2546. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2547.  
  2548.  
  2549. &lt;h3&gt;the long version&lt;/h3&gt;
  2550.  
  2551.  
  2552. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve wanted one of these for years, but I spent a lot of this summer &#38;amp; fall
  2553. dragging tools, dirt, and building materials around our yard, and when I saw a
  2554. recent Mastodon post with a cart in the background I decided to do something
  2555. about it.  I spent an evening grubbing through search results, and &lt;a href=&#34;https://pinboard.in/u:brennen/t:garden-carts/&#34;&gt;bookmarked
  2556. a bunch of stuff along the way&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2557.  
  2558. &lt;p&gt;Garden Way seems to have been out of business since 2001, at least under that
  2559. brand name, which it appears was once the parent company of Troy-Bilt.  From
  2560. the depths of Troy-Bilt&#38;rsquo;s support site, an article about &lt;a href=&#34;https://support.troybilt.com/s/article/449-1&#34;&gt;parts for Garden Way
  2561. carts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2562.  
  2563. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt; Where can I order parts for Troy-Bilt &#38;amp; Garden Way Garden Carts?&lt;/p&gt;
  2564.  
  2565. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution&lt;/strong&gt; These garden carts are products that we have licensed another
  2566. company to build and support.  Service, parts and/or warranty inquiries
  2567. should be directed to the phone numbers and address below: …&lt;/p&gt;
  2568.  
  2569. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Older Models:&lt;/strong&gt; Prior to the 2001 closure of Garden Way Inc., similar
  2570. garden carts were sold as &#38;ldquo;Garden Way Garden Carts&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2571.  
  2572. &lt;p&gt;And one &lt;a href=&#34;https://support.troybilt.com/s/article/218-1?language=en_US&#34;&gt;about Garden Way&#38;rsquo;s bankruptcy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2573.  
  2574. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt; What happened to the OLD Troy-Bilt manufacturing company?&lt;/p&gt;
  2575.  
  2576. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution&lt;/strong&gt; The product brand names Troy-Bilt® and Bolens® were formerly
  2577. manufactured under the parent company Garden Way Inc. of Troy, NY.&lt;/p&gt;
  2578.  
  2579. &lt;p&gt;In 2001 Garden Way Inc., filed for bankruptcy and is no longer in business.&lt;/p&gt;
  2580.  
  2581. &lt;p&gt;On September 1, 2001 MTD Products Inc. out of Cleveland, Ohio purchased most of
  2582. the remaining assets under the Troy-Bilt® and Bolens® names from the bankruptcy
  2583. court.&lt;/p&gt;
  2584.  
  2585. &lt;p&gt;MTD Products Inc. then transferred the Troy-Bilt® brand to the Troy-Bilt LLC
  2586. Corporation.  Troy-Bilt LLC Inc. is now manufacturing Troy-Bilt® brand outdoor
  2587. power equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2588.  
  2589. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s a &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/01/nyregion/lyman-p-wood-86-founderx-of-garden-products-company.html&#34;&gt;obituary for Lyman P. Wood&lt;/a&gt;, the founder of Garden Way:&lt;/p&gt;
  2590.  
  2591. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&#38;ldquo;Lyman was an incredible mix of entrepreneur, futurist and marketer,&#38;rdquo; said
  2592. David Schaefer, a Burlington public relations man who was once host to a
  2593. syndicated gardening television program about Mr. Wood&#38;rsquo;s company. &#38;ldquo;Our last
  2594. conversation was about how are the political systems and resources of Earth
  2595. going to stand up to increased population growth.&#38;rdquo; …&lt;/p&gt;
  2596.  
  2597. &lt;p&gt;Mr. Wood is known for his book, &#38;ldquo;The Have More Plan,&#38;rdquo; a 1944 volume offering
  2598. a thrifty wartime population a way to live off the land.&lt;/p&gt;
  2599.  
  2600. &lt;p&gt;In the 1960&#38;rsquo;s he founded the privately held Garden Way Manufacturing Company,
  2601. expanding New York&#38;rsquo;s Troy-Bilt rototiller company into publishing, retail
  2602. stores and other ventures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2603.  
  2604. &lt;p&gt;Which brings us to the carts themselves, in their current incarnations:&lt;/p&gt;
  2605.  
  2606. &lt;ul&gt;
  2607. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gardeners.com/&#34;&gt;Gardener&#38;rsquo;s Supply Company&lt;/a&gt;
  2608.  
  2609. &lt;ul&gt;
  2610. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gardeners.com/buy/large-garden-cart/8609662.html&#34;&gt;Large Gardener&#38;rsquo;s Supply Cart&lt;/a&gt; - USD 349.00&lt;/li&gt;
  2611. &lt;li&gt;66″ long, 42.25″ wide, 30″ high&lt;/li&gt;
  2612. &lt;li&gt;&#38;ldquo;For over 25 years, our garden carts have been a beloved tool of gardeners everywhere.&#38;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;
  2613. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2614. &lt;/li&gt;
  2615. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://cartsvermont.com/&#34;&gt;Carts Vermont&lt;/a&gt;
  2616.  
  2617. &lt;ul&gt;
  2618. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://cartsvermont.com/shop/garden-carts/large-garden-cart/&#34;&gt;Large Garden Cart&lt;/a&gt; - USD 399.95&lt;/li&gt;
  2619. &lt;li&gt;67.25″ long, 41.50″ wide, 30.25″ high&lt;/li&gt;
  2620. &lt;li&gt;&#38;ldquo;Home of the original “made in Vermont” garden cart and multi-purpose
  2621. hauler. Carts Vermont has the tried and true garden, firewood, and
  2622. utility carts for over 30 years!&#38;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;
  2623. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2624. &lt;/li&gt;
  2625. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2626.  
  2627.  
  2628. &lt;p&gt;Based on photos and slightly differing measurements, I don&#38;rsquo;t &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; those are
  2629. exactly the same cart off of the same assembly line, but they&#38;rsquo;re close enough
  2630. they must have originated from the same plans somewhere along the way.&lt;/p&gt;
  2631.  
  2632. &lt;p&gt;I got closer to an origin story with &lt;a href=&#34;nancy-wood&#34;&gt;this piece by Nancy Wood&lt;/a&gt; -
  2633. Lyman Wood&#38;rsquo;s daughter:&lt;/p&gt;
  2634.  
  2635. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;But first, here’s a bit of clarification about the origin of Country Home
  2636. Products. The article says it was founded by Lyman Wood (my father) in the
  2637. 1960s and that it “became known as Garden Way.” In fact, they were two
  2638. completely separate companies. Lyman and others founded Garden Way in the
  2639. 1960s with the rebirth of the original Rototiller, which became the Troy-Bilt
  2640. rear-end tiller manufactured in Troy, New York. That successful mail-order
  2641. business provided the funding for the growth of several Garden Way divisions
  2642. in Vermont, including Garden Way Publishing (books for country living),
  2643. Garden Way Research (manufacturer of the Garden Way carts) in Charlotte, plus
  2644. the Garden Way Living Center retail store and the nonprofit Gardens For All
  2645. in Burlington.&lt;/p&gt;
  2646.  
  2647. &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as it grew larger, not everyone ascribed to that mission. A
  2648. group of dissidents in Troy who were more concerned about profits
  2649. masterminded an internal takeover on January 28, 1982, ousting Lyman and
  2650. other key employees in Vermont on that day. Within two years, all of the
  2651. Vermont operations had been sold or closed and over 200 employees relieved of
  2652. their jobs. The nonprofit, Gardens for All, was the one exception, and it
  2653. continues today as the National Gardening Association.&lt;/p&gt;
  2654.  
  2655. &lt;p&gt;Many of those Vermont employees started new businesses (such as Vermont Teddy
  2656. Bear, Gardeners Supply and Williamson Publishing), and Lyman was no
  2657. exception. Even though he was forced out of Garden Way, he was still subject
  2658. to a non-compete agreement. Garden-related products were out, so he
  2659. investigated other possibilities. With his friends John Gibbons (former owner
  2660. of Harrington’s) and Dick Raymond (former gardening guru and author at Garden
  2661. Way) he came up with the name Country Home Products.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2662.  
  2663. &lt;p&gt;Drama, intrigue, garden industry strife!&lt;/p&gt;
  2664.  
  2665. &lt;p&gt;Anyway, based on this, it seems like the Gardener&#38;rsquo;s Supply cart is a clear
  2666. lineal descendant of the original.  I&#38;rsquo;m pretty much assuming the same is true
  2667. of the Carts Vermont one &#38;mdash; though I haven&#38;rsquo;t seen anything to indicate
  2668. what, if any, relationship they&#38;rsquo;ve got to the original company / factory.&lt;/p&gt;
  2669.  
  2670. &lt;h3&gt;directions for further research&lt;/h3&gt;
  2671.  
  2672.  
  2673. &lt;p&gt;I wound up ordering a copy of &lt;em&gt;What a Way to Live and Make a Living: The Lyman
  2674. P. Wood Story&lt;/em&gt;, by Roger Griffin.&lt;/p&gt;
  2675.  
  2676. &lt;p&gt;Mostly I just want to buy a cart, but there&#38;rsquo;re hints of a cultural history
  2677. lurking in this kind of thing.  Back-to-the-land ideas that were circulating in
  2678. the 1960s&#38;ndash;70s, mail-order retail, the ubiquitous rototiller infomercials
  2679. of the 1990s, whatever it is that leads people to do things like burn wood for
  2680. heat and can their own green beans.  It&#38;rsquo;s probably roughly one step from the
  2681. Garden Way garden cart to, say, the &lt;em&gt;Whole Earth Catalog&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2682.  
  2683. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m not sure how much I&#38;rsquo;m really going to pull on any of those threads, but
  2684. it&#38;rsquo;s a good reminder that most things run deeper than it seems at first.&lt;/p&gt;
  2685.  
  2686.  
  2687.  
  2688. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/garden&#34;&gt;garden&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/garden-carts&#34;&gt;garden-carts&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/lawn-and-garden&#34;&gt;lawn-and-garden&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/tools&#34;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2689. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2690. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  2691. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/12/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2692. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2693.  
  2694. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, November 29, 2020 - notes from a time (4)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/11/29"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/11/29</id><content type="html">
  2695.  
  2696. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, November 29, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2697.  
  2698. &lt;h2&gt;notes from a time (4)&lt;/h2&gt;
  2699.  
  2700. &lt;p&gt;COVID-19 numbers for late November 2020:&lt;/p&gt;
  2701.  
  2702. &lt;ul&gt;
  2703. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;who-dashboard&#34;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt; global numbers:
  2704.  
  2705. &lt;ul&gt;
  2706. &lt;li&gt;Current: ~61.87 million confirmed cases and ~1.45 million deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2707. &lt;li&gt;November 18th: 53.7 million cases / 1.3 million deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2708. &lt;li&gt;Early June: 6,535,354 cases / 387,155 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2709. &lt;li&gt;Late April: 2,804,796 cases / 193,710 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2710. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2711. &lt;/li&gt;
  2712. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/blob/master/us.csv#L314&#34;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt; US numbers:
  2713.  
  2714. &lt;ul&gt;
  2715. &lt;li&gt;Current: 13,311,031 cases / 265,940 deaths in the US&lt;/li&gt;
  2716. &lt;li&gt;November 18th: 11,439,304 cases / 248,462 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2717. &lt;li&gt;Early June: 1,883,033 cases / 108,194 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2718. &lt;li&gt;Late April: 938,590 cases / 48,310 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2719. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2720. &lt;/li&gt;
  2721. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://covid19.colorado.gov/covid-19-data&#34;&gt;colorado.gov&lt;/a&gt;:
  2722.  
  2723. &lt;ul&gt;
  2724. &lt;li&gt;Current: 228,772 cases and 2,521 deaths; 1,749 currently hospitalized&lt;/li&gt;
  2725. &lt;li&gt;November 18th: 176,694 cases and 2,324 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2726. &lt;li&gt;Early June: 27,615 cases and either 1,524 or 1,274 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  2727. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2728. &lt;/li&gt;
  2729. &lt;/ul&gt;
  2730.  
  2731.  
  2732. &lt;p&gt;Earlier this year, I started a series of posts under the heading of &#38;ldquo;fragmentary
  2733. notes from a bad time getting worse&#38;rdquo; (&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/21/&#34;&gt;April 21&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/26/&#34;&gt;April 26&lt;/a&gt;,
  2734. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/6/5/&#34;&gt;June 5&lt;/a&gt;).  And then I thought well, that could pretty well just be this
  2735. blog&#38;rsquo;s subtitle, so I guess I might as well ease up on the whole conceit.&lt;/p&gt;
  2736.  
  2737. &lt;p&gt;I spent a lot of time reading the internet about the virus in those early
  2738. months.  For a while I &lt;a href=&#34;https://pinboard.in/u:brennen/t:covid19/&#34;&gt;bookmarked a lot of it&lt;/a&gt;.  I was curious how
  2739. much, so I checked:&lt;/p&gt;
  2740.  
  2741. &lt;!-- exec --&gt;
  2742.  
  2743.  
  2744. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ cut -c 1-7 ./bookmarks-by-date.tsv | sort | uniq -c
  2745.     92 2020-03
  2746.    102 2020-04
  2747.     10 2020-05
  2748.     15 2020-06
  2749.      7 2020-07
  2750.      1 2020-08
  2751.      7 2020-09
  2752.      4 2020-10
  2753.     10 2020-11
  2754. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  2755.  
  2756. &lt;!-- end --&gt;
  2757.  
  2758.  
  2759. &lt;p&gt;I didn&#38;rsquo;t stop reading, but at some point it started to blur together and
  2760. tracking my idea of what was going on and when started to feel hopeless: too
  2761. unfocused and reflexive to carry any real signal.  Around the time the
  2762. bookmarking fell off at the end of April, I jotted a note about a call with my
  2763. sister: It just says &#38;ldquo;the sense that we burned out on being terrified and have
  2764. moved on to some form of resignation&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2765.  
  2766. &lt;p&gt;In August I came down with something weird for a couple of days - the symptoms
  2767. seemed right but a test by the time they&#38;rsquo;d mostly abated came back negative.
  2768. No one I&#38;rsquo;d been in contact with ever got sick.  My partner got an antibody
  2769. test when giving blood a while later and it, too, was negative.  I wrote that
  2770. one off to &#38;ldquo;probably something random&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2771.  
  2772. &lt;p&gt;Early on I had a lot of thoughts like:  Shit, what do we do about feeding the
  2773. cat if we both wind up in a hospital?  Now I think that&#38;rsquo;s not very likely, and
  2774. anyway I have a plan in place.  Mostly what I&#38;rsquo;ve worried about is family and
  2775. friends.  My family is full of old people in rural middle America with the
  2776. genes and lifestyle factors that get you heart disease, diabetes, and bad
  2777. lungs.  My friends run heavily to chain-smoking alcoholics with no health
  2778. insurance.&lt;/p&gt;
  2779.  
  2780. &lt;p&gt;So where are we now?  I&#38;rsquo;m not sure I know.  Cases are, as predicted, surging as
  2781. we go into the winter.  By mid-October I think I could have told you two people
  2782. I knew personally who&#38;rsquo;d had it.  A few days later I heard some extended family
  2783. in the midwest had tested positive and now I&#38;rsquo;m sitting at maybe 17 plus some
  2784. near misses.&lt;/p&gt;
  2785.  
  2786. &lt;p&gt;I feel overwhelmed trying to write about the dimensions of the pandemic,
  2787. nevermind the moment as a whole.  I don&#38;rsquo;t think I have anything to offer a
  2788. general reader on the subject.  There&#38;rsquo;s been such an ocean of text about this.
  2789. I&#38;rsquo;m not privy to any special perspective.  I just now and then feel like there
  2790. should be some index to memory of it amidst the other trivial crap I write
  2791. here.&lt;/p&gt;
  2792.  
  2793. &lt;p&gt;If I were trying to tell someone a few decades on a whole story about the
  2794. strange dimensions of life on earth just now, I wouldn&#38;rsquo;t know where to start.
  2795. I wonder what I risk forgetting.&lt;/p&gt;
  2796.  
  2797. &lt;p&gt;Maybe how quickly and radically things can change.  Not just at the scale of an
  2798. individual life, that one I knew already, but at the scale of &lt;em&gt;things
  2799. generally&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2800.  
  2801. &lt;p&gt;How much relationships will bend and dissolve and reconfigure across the
  2802. conceptual and epistemic fault lines that some system-level event reveals.&lt;/p&gt;
  2803.  
  2804. &lt;p&gt;The strange paralysis that can seep through things when a polity and a culture
  2805. are really riding the edge of decoherence and murderous collapse.&lt;/p&gt;
  2806.  
  2807. &lt;p&gt;The way I start to see some of how my grandparents got the way they were.&lt;/p&gt;
  2808.  
  2809. &lt;p&gt;How much of a self is contained and expressed in and through the places you go
  2810. and the people around you.  What happens when you stop going places.&lt;/p&gt;
  2811.  
  2812.  
  2813.  
  2814. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/america&#34;&gt;america&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/covid19&#34;&gt;covid19&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2815. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2816. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  2817. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/11/29/&#34; title=&#34;29&#34;&gt;29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2818. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2819.  
  2820. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, November 13, 2020 - reading: a memory called empire</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/11/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/11/13</id><content type="html">
  2821.  
  2822. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, November 13, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2823.  
  2824. &lt;h2&gt;reading: a memory called empire&lt;/h2&gt;
  2825.  
  2826. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.arkadymartine.net/teixcalaan-memory&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Memory Called Empire&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,
  2827. Arkady Martine, Tor Books, March 2019.&lt;/p&gt;
  2828.  
  2829. &lt;p&gt;This evidently won the 2020 Hugo for Best Novel, which is not surprising.  I
  2830. thought as I was reading it &#38;ldquo;this is going to win some major awards&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;
  2831.  
  2832. &lt;p&gt;Space opera / vast empire / political intrigue in imperial capital city,
  2833. elements of romance, some fairly well-handled mind/memory/identity stuff.
  2834. Starts out kind of dry, works its way towards an emotional register that feels
  2835. a little like Guy Kay.&lt;/p&gt;
  2836.  
  2837. &lt;p&gt;First in a trilogy.  I&#38;rsquo;ll be reading the followup.&lt;/p&gt;
  2838.  
  2839.  
  2840.  
  2841.  
  2842. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/arkady-martine&#34;&gt;arkady-martine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2843. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2844. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  2845. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/11/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2846. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2847.  
  2848. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, October 13, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/10/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/10/13</id><content type="html">
  2849.  
  2850. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, October 13, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2851.  
  2852. &lt;p&gt;I went for an aimless drive on Saturday.  It was accidental.  I set out to haul
  2853. the recycling and buy a can of Coke at the gas station, which they didn&#38;rsquo;t have
  2854. so I settled for a 20oz plastic bottle.  I left the gas station and got stuck
  2855. in the turn lane where I&#38;rsquo;d usually make a u-turn back towards home and thought
  2856. whatever, why not just go for a couple of miles.  It felt good to be out.  It
  2857. was pretty weather, apart from the wildfire smoke, and the fall colors were in
  2858. full effect.  A couple of miles turned into 20 or 30.&lt;/p&gt;
  2859.  
  2860. &lt;p&gt;I was feeling relaxed when I got back to town, turning over ideas about stuff I
  2861. wanted to write and stuff I needed to do in the yard.  Then I came around a
  2862. curve and there were a bunch of flags waving, which resolved as I got closer
  2863. into a little Trump rally:  MAGA hats, banners, oversized pickups, jeering
  2864. shitheads.  I flipped them off as I went past and caught a full wave of rage
  2865. noises, although the only specific phrases that stuck in my memory were a
  2866. chorus of &#38;ldquo;fuck you!&#34;s and a single &#34;God bless America!&#38;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
  2867.  
  2868. &lt;p&gt;I went back to the house all keyed up on stupid animal loathing and made a
  2869. &#38;ldquo;YOUR GUY SUCKS&#38;rdquo; sign on a cardboard box, but by the time I headed out the door
  2870. to stand across the street and get screamed at they&#38;rsquo;d dispersed for the day.
  2871. It was down to three teenagers looking a little confused about where to stand
  2872. while trading insults with drivers.  A few big coal-rolling pickups with flags
  2873. in the back trickled through town over the next hour or two and that was it,
  2874. more or less.&lt;/p&gt;
  2875.  
  2876. &lt;p&gt;&#38;ldquo;YOUR GUY SUCKS&#38;rdquo; isn&#38;rsquo;t much of a message.  I couldn&#38;rsquo;t think of anything more
  2877. high-minded that was also true.  I just didn&#38;rsquo;t want them there, being the way
  2878. they are, and I wanted them to know it.&lt;/p&gt;
  2879.  
  2880. &lt;p&gt;They feel, I&#38;rsquo;m sure, the same way about me.&lt;/p&gt;
  2881.  
  2882.  
  2883.  
  2884. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2885. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2886. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  2887. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2888. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2889.  
  2890. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, October 12, 2020 - reading: grant</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/10/12"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/10/12</id><content type="html">
  2891.  
  2892. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, October 12, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2893.  
  2894. &lt;h2&gt;reading: grant&lt;/h2&gt;
  2895.  
  2896. &lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of annoying biography:&lt;/p&gt;
  2897.  
  2898. &lt;ol&gt;
  2899. &lt;li&gt;The kind where the author hates the subject.&lt;/li&gt;
  2900. &lt;li&gt;The kind where the author loves the subject.&lt;/li&gt;
  2901. &lt;/ol&gt;
  2902.  
  2903.  
  2904. &lt;p&gt;This one, a biography of Ulysses S. Grant by Ron Chernow, is so far the second.
  2905. I&#38;rsquo;m a hundred pages in, out of 960-odd.  It&#38;rsquo;s a slightly disjointed read, in
  2906. that bouncing-from-source-to-source and speculating-about-motives kind of way.
  2907. It tells us how great its subject is with a regularity that quickly becomes
  2908. grating.  Still, it&#38;rsquo;s full of detail and deeply researched.  I&#38;rsquo;m learning stuff
  2909. and I&#38;rsquo;ll likely persist.&lt;/p&gt;
  2910.  
  2911.  
  2912.  
  2913. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/history&#34;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/war&#34;&gt;war&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2914. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2915. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  2916. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2917. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2918.  
  2919. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, October 11, 2020 - reading: the great offshore grounds</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/10/11"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/10/11</id><content type="html">
  2920.  
  2921. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, October 11, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2922.  
  2923. &lt;h2&gt;reading: the great offshore grounds&lt;/h2&gt;
  2924.  
  2925. &lt;p&gt;A novel by the author of &lt;em&gt;Zazen&lt;/em&gt;, a book I first read &lt;a href=&#34;/2012/11/14/&#34;&gt;back in
  2926. 2012&lt;/a&gt;.  At the time, you could &lt;a href=&#34;https://web.archive.org/web/20160310205938/http://redlemona.de/vanessa-veselka/zazen&#34;&gt;read the whole thing on the
  2927. web&lt;/a&gt;, which I did, clicking through until the end.  I then bought the
  2928. paperback and read it again.&lt;/p&gt;
  2929.  
  2930. &lt;p&gt;I got to &lt;em&gt;Zazen&lt;/em&gt; by way of &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.metafilter.com/121345/Invisible-People&#34;&gt;a MetaFilter thread&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gq.com/story/truck-stop-killer-gq-november-2012?verso=true&#34;&gt;&#38;ldquo;The
  2931. Truck Stop Killer&#38;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;, a long piece she wrote for GQ drawing on
  2932. her experiences hitchiking as a teenager and a bunch of research into serial
  2933. killers.  It&#38;rsquo;s probably one of the most disturbing things I&#38;rsquo;ve ever read.&lt;/p&gt;
  2934.  
  2935. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Great Offshore Grounds&lt;/em&gt; is a book you can tell didn&#38;rsquo;t come easy to write,
  2936. and although it&#38;rsquo;s not a slow read, it&#38;rsquo;s also not exactly an easy one.  Scenes
  2937. in here will stick with me for a long time.  Recommended.&lt;/p&gt;
  2938.  
  2939. &lt;p&gt;(Veselka, Vanessa.  &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525658078&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Great Offshore
  2940. Grounds&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  New York: Borzoi
  2941. Books / Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.)&lt;/p&gt;
  2942.  
  2943.  
  2944.  
  2945.  
  2946. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/books&#34;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/vanessa-veselka&#34;&gt;vanessa-veselka&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  2947. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  2948. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  2949. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  2950. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  2951.  
  2952. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, October  9, 2020 - reading: interior states</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/10/9"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/10/9</id><content type="html">
  2953.  
  2954. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, October  9, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  2955.  
  2956. &lt;h2&gt;reading: interior states&lt;/h2&gt;
  2957.  
  2958. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Interior States: Essays&lt;/em&gt;, Anchor Books, 2018.&lt;/p&gt;
  2959.  
  2960. &lt;p&gt;An essay collection by &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.meghanogieblyn.com/&#34;&gt;Meghan O&#39;Gieblyn&lt;/a&gt;,
  2961. picked up after a friend linked me to one of the included essays,
  2962. &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/ogieblyn_su16.html&#34;&gt;&#38;ldquo;Dispatch from Flyover Country&#38;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  2963.  
  2964. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many of our friends who grew up here now live in Brooklyn, where they are at
  2965. work on “book-length narratives.” Another contingent has moved to the Bay Area
  2966. and made a fortune there. Every year or so, these west-coasters travel back to
  2967. Michigan and call us up for dinner or drinks, occasions they use to educate us
  2968. on the inner workings of the tech industry. They refer to the companies they
  2969. work for in the first person plural, a habit I have yet to acculturate to.
  2970. Occasionally they lapse into the utopian, speaking of robotics ordinances and
  2971. brain-computer interfaces and the mystical, labyrinthine channels of capital,
  2972. conveying it all with the fervency of pioneers on a civilizing mission. Being
  2973. lectured quickly becomes dull, and so my husband and I, to amuse ourselves,
  2974. will sometimes play the rube. “So what, exactly, is a venture capitalist?”
  2975. we’ll say. Or: “Gosh, it sounds like science fiction.” I suppose we could tell
  2976. them the truth—that nothing they’re proclaiming is news; that the boom and
  2977. bustle of the coastal cities, like the smoke from those California wildfires,
  2978. liberally wafts over the rest of the country. But that seems a bit rude. We
  2979. are, after all, Midwesterners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  2980.  
  2981. &lt;p&gt;O&#39;Gieblyn comes from somewhere I half know — a life unlike mine but also not
  2982. that many degrees off of it: The definite Midwest rather than the ambiguous
  2983. Plains states of its western edge; evangelical Christianity rather than
  2984. conservative Lutheranism and rural Methodism; homeschooling like I watched
  2985. shape friends; an academic/literary path I didn&#38;rsquo;t go down.&lt;/p&gt;
  2986.  
  2987. &lt;p&gt;As I went through the book, I realized I&#38;rsquo;d read a few of the included pieces
  2988. before, somewhere on the internet, usually with a sense of recognition for
  2989. their subject matter.  These are good essays.  It occurs to me that reading
  2990. them from a place of immediate recognition (I, too, saw &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carman_(singer)&#34;&gt;Carman&lt;/a&gt; in
  2991. front of a packed house on a mid-90s tour) probably isn&#38;rsquo;t quite like reading
  2992. them in the &lt;em&gt;New Yorker&lt;/em&gt; as someone who grew up on a coast and feels a vague
  2993. anthropological interest in the in-between places.  I suppose that kind of
  2994. reader is closer to who these are written for, but it&#38;rsquo;s to the author&#38;rsquo;s credit
  2995. that they still work if you&#38;rsquo;ve spent time inside the frames they discuss.&lt;/p&gt;
  2996.  
  2997.  
  2998.  
  2999. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/essays&#34;&gt;essays&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/michigan&#34;&gt;michigan&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/religion&#34;&gt;religion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3000. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3001. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  3002. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/10/9/&#34; title=&#34;9&#34;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3003. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3004.  
  3005. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, July 30, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/7/30"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/7/30</id><content type="html">
  3006.  
  3007. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, July 30, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3008.  
  3009. &lt;p&gt;Earlier today I found myself in one of those moments of tractionless inaction
  3010. that people at the attention deficit end of the scale come to know well.  I was
  3011. in the midst of staring at logs and rolling back a broken deployment of
  3012. MediaWiki while outside a torrential downpour was overwhelming the failing
  3013. gutters and flooding the crawlspace under the house.&lt;/p&gt;
  3014.  
  3015. &lt;p&gt;I was thinking that maybe we&#38;rsquo;d lose power again, or something crucial in the
  3016. local infrastructure would get struck by lightning, and that maybe I should
  3017. have somebody&#38;rsquo;s phone number in case they had to pick up where I left off.
  3018. Then would I even have cell service in that situation?  Not if it was anything
  3019. like last time.  I wished again for a landline.  The kind that, more often than
  3020. not, still works when the electric is out.  (Albeit also the kind that gets
  3021. struck by lightning, sometimes, and then your phone rings violently and bursts
  3022. into flame, or at least that&#38;rsquo;s what happened in my aunt&#38;rsquo;s narrative about
  3023. this.)&lt;/p&gt;
  3024.  
  3025. &lt;p&gt;The cat, unsatisfied with the size of his afternoon meal, was yowling piteously
  3026. at the back of my head.  The rollback finished, the error logs stopped
  3027. exploding, I copied an error message to file a task, I opened the issue
  3028. tracking software in the wrong browser and copied the wrong 2-factor auth code
  3029. trying to log in and found myself locked out.&lt;/p&gt;
  3030.  
  3031. &lt;p&gt;Wait 57 seconds, it said.  I knew instinctively that I had just hit a cognitive
  3032. limit and was destined to lose track of all the pieces I was holding in my
  3033. mind and that would be it for the day, more or less.  At least I&#38;rsquo;d held it
  3034. together past 4pm on a day I touched production systems.&lt;/p&gt;
  3035.  
  3036. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s often like this inside my head.  Not always, maybe not even most of the
  3037. time, but not seldom either.  Everything happens at once, and because of that
  3038. nothing can happen at all.&lt;/p&gt;
  3039.  
  3040. &lt;p&gt;Stimulants of one description or another would probably help, for a while at
  3041. least, but I&#38;rsquo;m scared of a dependency on legal speed and I just can&#38;rsquo;t handle
  3042. caffeine the way I used to.  Weed used to help me dial in on things; these
  3043. recent years it typically leaves me with the working memory of a goldfish (&#38;ldquo;the
  3044. little plastic castle is a surprise every time&#38;rdquo;) and sprays my attention all
  3045. over the landscape like my nervous system is some kind of malfunctioning
  3046. glitter cannon.&lt;/p&gt;
  3047.  
  3048.  
  3049. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3050. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3051. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  3052. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/7/30/&#34; title=&#34;30&#34;&gt;30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3053. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3054.  
  3055. </content><updated>2021-03-14T21:08:01Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, July 27, 2020 - the zettelkasten / the zeitgeist - background -  - further research or whatever</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/7/27"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/7/27</id><content type="html">
  3056.  
  3057. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, July 27, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3058.  
  3059. &lt;h2&gt;the zettelkasten / the zeitgeist&lt;/h2&gt;
  3060.  
  3061. &lt;p&gt;Discussed: The idea of a Zettelkasten, note-taking, index cards, wikis,
  3062. &lt;a href=&#34;https://takesmartnotes.com/&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to Take Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Sönke Ahrens.&lt;/p&gt;
  3063.  
  3064. &lt;p&gt;This post roughly continues a thread that goes something like:&lt;/p&gt;
  3065.  
  3066. &lt;ul&gt;
  3067. &lt;li&gt;2006: &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2006/4/19/&#34;&gt;this one about notes on index cards&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3068. &lt;li&gt;2014: &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2014/8/23/&#34;&gt;a notes.txt / TODO file format&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3069. &lt;li&gt;2019: &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes-on-notes/&#34;&gt;notes on notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3070. &lt;li&gt;2020: &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/20/&#34;&gt;meta meta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3071. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3072.  
  3073.  
  3074. &lt;h3&gt;background&lt;/h3&gt;
  3075.  
  3076.  
  3077. &lt;p&gt;For the unfamiliar: &#38;ldquo;Zettelkasten&#38;rdquo; is German for &#38;ldquo;slip box&#38;rdquo;.  It refers to a
  3078. note-taking method where ideas and bibliographic references are stored on index
  3079. cards or slips of paper.&lt;/p&gt;
  3080.  
  3081. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s a decent chance my first exposure to the word was on a blog by Manfred
  3082. Kuehn called &lt;a href=&#34;https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/&#34;&gt;Taking note&lt;/a&gt;, which started publishing in 2007 &lt;a href=&#34;https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html&#34;&gt;with an entry
  3083. about Niklas Luhmann&#38;rsquo;s Zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  3084.  
  3085. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the more interesting systems for keeping such index cards was
  3086. developed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998). […] Luhmann
  3087. claimed that his file was something of a collaborator in his work, a largely
  3088. independent partner in his research and writing. It might have started out as
  3089. a mere apprentice when Luhmann was still studying himself (in 1951), but
  3090. after thirty years of having been fed information by the human collaborator
  3091. it had acquired the ability of surprising him again an again. Since the
  3092. ability of genuinely surprising one another is an essential characteristic of
  3093. genuine communication, he argued that there was actually communication going
  3094. on between himself and his partner in theory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  3095.  
  3096. &lt;p&gt;By the time I read that, I&#38;rsquo;d already spent time thinking about index cards as a
  3097. way to organize knowledge, and experimented with a card box that might have
  3098. become a full-fledged paper Zettelkasten if I&#38;rsquo;d kept at it.  I think these
  3099. ideas were on my mind because of &lt;a href=&#34;http://wiki.c2.com/?IndexCard&#34;&gt;C2&#38;rsquo;s stuff about index cards&lt;/a&gt;
  3100. in software development, the notion of the &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda&#34;&gt;Hipster PDA&lt;/a&gt;, and my
  3101. friend Brent&#38;rsquo;s fixation on David Allen&#38;rsquo;s &lt;a href=&#34;https://gettingthingsdone.com/&#34;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  3102.  
  3103. &lt;p&gt;Hypertext had been a preoccupation of mine for quite a while by the time I
  3104. heard of Niklas Luhmann:  HyperCard in the early 90s, the web, the wiki (with
  3105. its roots in a HyperCard stack), Ted Nelson&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Computer Lib/Dream Machines&lt;/em&gt;.
  3106. Apart from introducing me to Ward&#38;rsquo;s Wiki, Extreme Programming, Agile, and GTD,
  3107. Brent Newhall wrote a &lt;a href=&#34;http://walawiki.org/&#34;&gt;simple filesystem-backed wiki in Perl&lt;/a&gt; with
  3108. some unique features.  I wound up maintaining that code for years, and used it
  3109. to keep a personal wiki on this site for at least a decade.  (Any readers I
  3110. retain from back then might remember that it functioned as a comment /
  3111. &#38;ldquo;marginal notes&#38;rdquo; / linkblogging system here for much of that time.)&lt;/p&gt;
  3112.  
  3113. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/&#34;&gt;Luhmann&#38;rsquo;s Zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt; was a kind of paper hypertext.  He numbered individual
  3114. cards/slips in such a way that related things could be found in physical
  3115. proximity, and made links between cards by referencing those identifiers.&lt;/p&gt;
  3116.  
  3117. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✦ &lt;/p&gt;
  3118.  
  3119.  
  3120. &lt;p&gt;So now it&#38;rsquo;s 2020 and the Zettelkasten is having a moment.  Sort of a nested
  3121. moment, inside of a larger one about note-taking and &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base&#34;&gt;personal knowledge
  3122. systems&lt;/a&gt;.  I haven&#38;rsquo;t really traced out the web of influence
  3123. here, but there&#38;rsquo;s been an escalating flurry of pieces like these:&lt;/p&gt;
  3124.  
  3125. &lt;ul&gt;
  3126. &lt;li&gt;Magnus Eriksson - &lt;a href=&#34;https://omxi.se/2015-06-21-living-with-a-zettelkasten.html&#34;&gt;Living with a Zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt; - 2015-06-21&lt;/li&gt;
  3127. &lt;li&gt;Roberto Zoia - &lt;a href=&#34;https://zoia.org/2018/11/13/zettelkasten/&#34;&gt;Zettelkasten, a method for note-taking&lt;/a&gt; - 2018-11-13&lt;/li&gt;
  3128. &lt;li&gt;abramdemski on LessWrong - &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1&#34;&gt;The Zettelkasten Method&lt;/a&gt; - 2019-09-20&lt;/li&gt;
  3129. &lt;li&gt;Clerestory - &lt;a href=&#34;https://clerestory.netlify.app/zk/&#34;&gt;Zettelkästen?&lt;/a&gt; - 2019-10-09&lt;/li&gt;
  3130. &lt;li&gt;Clerestory - &lt;a href=&#34;https://clerestory.netlify.app/zk1/&#34;&gt;Zettelkasten!&lt;/a&gt; - 2019-11-09&lt;/li&gt;
  3131. &lt;li&gt;Nat Eliason: &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes&#34;&gt;How to Take Smart Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide&lt;/a&gt; - 2020-02-07&lt;/li&gt;
  3132. &lt;li&gt;Jethro Kuan: &lt;a href=&#34;https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/&#34;&gt;How To Take Smart Notes With Org-mode&lt;/a&gt; - 2020-02-14&lt;/li&gt;
  3133. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://jonathanlorimer.dev/posts/smart-notes-review.html&#34;&gt;Book Review: How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens&lt;/a&gt; - 2020-03-19&lt;/li&gt;
  3134. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3135.  
  3136.  
  3137. &lt;p&gt;There seems to be a thread of interest in the rationalist / LessWrong scene.
  3138. Apart from that, I&#38;rsquo;d guess much of this is due to the work of Christian Tietze
  3139. and Sascha Fast, who maintain a long-running blog and forum at
  3140. &lt;a href=&#34;https://zettelkasten.de/&#34;&gt;zettelkasten.de&lt;/a&gt;, sell note-taking software for the Mac, and have
  3141. recently begun promoting an online video course on the method.  (I believe
  3142. there&#38;rsquo;s also a book in the mix somewhere, albeit one not yet translated to
  3143. English.)&lt;/p&gt;
  3144.  
  3145. &lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, the community at &lt;a href=&#34;https://forum.zettelkasten.de/&#34;&gt;forum.zettelkasten.de&lt;/a&gt; is the most
  3146. direct place to watch an entire ideological complex, complete with in-group
  3147. vocabulary and evangelical fervor, crystallize around the core idea.  That
  3148. said, it feels like it&#38;rsquo;s spreading and mutating in the wild by now, and would
  3149. probably continue to do so independent of any particular guru figure or
  3150. canonical text.&lt;/p&gt;
  3151.  
  3152. &lt;h3&gt;&lt;i&gt;how to take smart notes&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
  3153.  
  3154.  
  3155. &lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; a canonical text in English, at the moment it would probably be
  3156. &lt;em&gt;How to Take Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt;, by Sönke Ahrens.  That&#38;rsquo;s the book that gets
  3157. mentioned over and over again.  I bought a copy back in February, after
  3158. skimming the first chapter and reading a bunch of blog material like the stuff
  3159. linked above.&lt;/p&gt;
  3160.  
  3161. &lt;p&gt;I decided to write up my notes here after I recommended reading it to a friend
  3162. who turned out to thoroughly hate it, and seeing similar reactions elsewhere.
  3163. Although it fails to make as strong a case for its ideas as it intends, I&#38;rsquo;ve
  3164. personally found it helpful for thinking about my habits.&lt;/p&gt;
  3165.  
  3166. &lt;p&gt;This is a short book - 170 pages with bibliography and a very brief index in
  3167. this edition.  It&#38;rsquo;s also substantially longer than it needs to be, which isn&#38;rsquo;t
  3168. unusual for this sort of self-help nonfiction.  To its credit, it&#38;rsquo;s fairly
  3169. dense, but it veers into evangelism and salesmanship often enough to be
  3170. frustrating, and makes claims that some readers will find questionable, if not
  3171. off-putting.  It also comes with a dose of pop-psych material.&lt;/p&gt;
  3172.  
  3173. &lt;p&gt;Construed strictly, Ahrens&#39; idea that &#38;ldquo;nothing else counts than writing&#38;rdquo; is too
  3174. narrow a conception of work for most people.  It&#38;rsquo;s simply not true for
  3175. programmers, engineers, designers, customer service reps, or project managers —
  3176. let alone general contractors, farmers, or electricians.  Most people who could
  3177. benefit from note-taking habits aren&#38;rsquo;t chiefly concerned with writing documents
  3178. even when documents are integral to their work.  Where the exhortation that
  3179. writing is the only thing &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; ring true is when your goal is to produce
  3180. written artifacts, e.g. to turn your reading into research output.&lt;/p&gt;
  3181.  
  3182. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt; as a whole tends that way:  It&#38;rsquo;s explicitly aimed at students,
  3183. professional academics, and nonfiction writers.  While I occasionally qualify
  3184. as that last, none of those roles map to the scope of my note-taking.
  3185. Accordingly, this is a book I read selectively and with a critical eye,
  3186. gleaning what I could and generalizing where useful.  I&#38;rsquo;d suggest other readers
  3187. approach it the same, particularly if, like me:&lt;/p&gt;
  3188.  
  3189. &lt;ul&gt;
  3190. &lt;li&gt;You don&#38;rsquo;t work in an academic field.&lt;/li&gt;
  3191. &lt;li&gt;You aren&#38;rsquo;t much concerned with writing papers.&lt;/li&gt;
  3192. &lt;li&gt;You rely on your notes to archive collections of specific facts and
  3193. remember sequences of events as much as to connect and synthesize ideas.&lt;/li&gt;
  3194. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3195.  
  3196.  
  3197. &lt;p&gt;I do think it&#38;rsquo;s a useful read if you&#38;rsquo;re interested in the mechanics of a
  3198. Zettelkasten and haven&#38;rsquo;t found what you&#38;rsquo;re looking for in other writeups, or if
  3199. you&#38;rsquo;re just looking to yak-shave a personal knowledge system.&lt;/p&gt;
  3200.  
  3201. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t, strictly speaking, keep a Zettelkasten.  I have, however, been
  3202. borrowing ideas from people who do.  After finishing &lt;em&gt;How to Take Smart Notes&lt;/em&gt;,
  3203. here&#38;rsquo;s some of what I think I&#38;rsquo;ve taken away from it and related sources:&lt;/p&gt;
  3204.  
  3205. &lt;ul&gt;
  3206. &lt;li&gt;Your notes can be:
  3207.  
  3208. &lt;ul&gt;
  3209. &lt;li&gt;An extension of your long-term memory.&lt;/li&gt;
  3210. &lt;li&gt;A living system.&lt;/li&gt;
  3211. &lt;li&gt;Capable of surprising you with new connections, forgotten ideas,
  3212. and emergent patterns.&lt;/li&gt;
  3213. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3214. &lt;/li&gt;
  3215. &lt;li&gt;Writing is a means of thinking.&lt;/li&gt;
  3216. &lt;li&gt;Read (or work) with a notebook to hand.  Jot stuff down as you go.
  3217.  
  3218. &lt;ul&gt;
  3219. &lt;li&gt;Using the same notebook for everything will save you thinking about
  3220. which one to write in.&lt;/li&gt;
  3221. &lt;li&gt;The notebook can function like an inbox.  Process things from there into
  3222. permanent note storage, be that in electronic form or on index cards.&lt;/li&gt;
  3223. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3224. &lt;/li&gt;
  3225. &lt;li&gt;Track citations / bookmarks / bibliographical references.
  3226.  
  3227. &lt;ul&gt;
  3228. &lt;li&gt;Luhmann&#38;rsquo;s paper Zettelkasten seems to have used a dedicated card file for
  3229. this.  Ahrens recommends tooling like &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.zotero.org/&#34;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  3230. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3231. &lt;/li&gt;
  3232. &lt;li&gt;Work in small units.&lt;/li&gt;
  3233. &lt;li&gt;Summarize/restate ideas instead of just quoting or excerpting things.
  3234. Link them to other ideas already in your notes.
  3235.  
  3236. &lt;ul&gt;
  3237. &lt;li&gt;Just reading a text isn&#38;rsquo;t the same as understanding it.  Restating
  3238. an author&#38;rsquo;s ideas and integrating them with your existing knowledge is a
  3239. kind of self-test, and facilitates learning.&lt;/li&gt;
  3240. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3241. &lt;/li&gt;
  3242. &lt;li&gt;Add stuff to your notes if:
  3243.  
  3244. &lt;ul&gt;
  3245. &lt;li&gt;It connects to something already in the notes.&lt;/li&gt;
  3246. &lt;li&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s open to future connections.&lt;/li&gt;
  3247. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3248. &lt;/li&gt;
  3249. &lt;li&gt;You might understand something if you can effectively teach it.&lt;/li&gt;
  3250. &lt;li&gt;Hierarchy is likely to get in your way.  Draw connections within the whole
  3251. space of ideas, without being limited to the current level/tier/box/rank.&lt;/li&gt;
  3252. &lt;li&gt;&#38;ldquo;To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a
  3253. good draft;&#38;rdquo; for a draft, a series of notes, for a series of notes,
  3254. rearranging what&#38;rsquo;s already in the slipbox, which you&#38;rsquo;ve written as you go.
  3255. &#38;ldquo;All you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; have to do is have a pen in your hand when you read.&#38;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;
  3256. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3257.  
  3258.  
  3259. &lt;p&gt;That last one cuts pretty close to the heart of the method the book espouses.
  3260. It&#38;rsquo;s focused on writing an academic paper, but if you fuzz it out a little I
  3261. think it gestures at something more generally useful.&lt;/p&gt;
  3262.  
  3263. &lt;p&gt;Most of the work of understanding things is incremental and piecemeal: Refining
  3264. and tending a fragmentary web of memories, perspectives, practices, states, and
  3265. relationships.  Notes are a technology for &lt;em&gt;accumulating&lt;/em&gt; that work and
  3266. extending its durability outside of our skulls.  Used well, they&#38;rsquo;re a
  3267. foundation for making new things and a solid place to stand when faced with
  3268. recurring problems.&lt;/p&gt;
  3269.  
  3270. &lt;h3&gt;further research or whatever&lt;/h3&gt;
  3271.  
  3272.  
  3273. &lt;p&gt;Anyhow, while I find the Zettelkasten thing interesting as a cultural
  3274. happening, I&#38;rsquo;m not concerned with replicating it.&lt;/p&gt;
  3275.  
  3276. &lt;p&gt;In the broad outlines, the notes I keep in VimWiki look a lot like an
  3277. electronic slipbox.  There&#38;rsquo;s a bunch of stuff in the Luhmann / Kuehn / Ahrens /
  3278. zettelkasten.de trains of thought that seems useful to borrow, and lines up
  3279. well with things I&#38;rsquo;ve already learned working with wikis, version control
  3280. systems, bookmarks, and a couple decades of paper notebooks.  On the other
  3281. hand, there&#38;rsquo;s a lot in how I model the world and how I think in writing that
  3282. doesn&#38;rsquo;t fit.&lt;/p&gt;
  3283.  
  3284. &lt;p&gt;I often need to think in terms of when very specific things happened:  State
  3285. changes to complicated systems, what happened when I ran some technical
  3286. procedure, when I planted a bed of onions.  While restating ideas and
  3287. situations in my own words is a good way to get a handle on various things, I
  3288. also find it useful to archive verbatim fragments of conversation, specific
  3289. texts, chunks of code, and long transcripts of program output.  Some of my
  3290. &#38;ldquo;notes&#38;rdquo; are really executable scripts, and a lot of my external memory lives in
  3291. source code repositories, wikis, README files, command-line histories, and
  3292. issue tracking systems.&lt;/p&gt;
  3293.  
  3294. &lt;p&gt;All of that&#38;rsquo;s led me to thinking in terms of logs and journals, and roughing
  3295. out some tools for a 2-axis time vs. topic approach that I&#38;rsquo;ll elaborate on one
  3296. of these days.  I&#38;rsquo;d also like to make more room in my system for integrating
  3297. drawings, photos, and structured data, though I&#38;rsquo;m not entirely sure how to go
  3298. about it.&lt;/p&gt;
  3299.  
  3300. &lt;p&gt;In the meanwhile, I&#38;rsquo;ve been thinking a lot about various collections of public
  3301. notes (some more Zettelkasten-adjacent than others), stuff like:&lt;/p&gt;
  3302.  
  3303. &lt;ul&gt;
  3304. &lt;li&gt;Found by way of &lt;a href=&#34;https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1128/compilation-of-public-zettelkastens-external-brains&#34;&gt;a Zettelkasten Forum thread&lt;/a&gt;:
  3305.  
  3306. &lt;ul&gt;
  3307. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://notes.andymatuschak.org/&#34;&gt;Andy Matuschak&#38;rsquo;s working notes&lt;/a&gt; are
  3308. full of interesting thoughts and presented in a format I fully intend to
  3309. steal from.&lt;/li&gt;
  3310. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;http://bactra.org/notebooks/&#34;&gt;Cosma Shalizi&#38;rsquo;s Notebooks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3311. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3312. &lt;/li&gt;
  3313. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;http://dannyreviews.com/&#34;&gt;Danny Yee&#38;rsquo;s Book Reviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3314. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3315.  
  3316.  
  3317.  
  3318.  
  3319. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notebooks&#34;&gt;notebooks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/zettelkasten&#34;&gt;zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3320. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3321. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  3322. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/7/27/&#34; title=&#34;27&#34;&gt;27&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3323. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3324.  
  3325. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, june 18, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/6/18"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/6/18</id><content type="html">
  3326.  
  3327. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, june 18, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3328.  
  3329. &lt;p&gt;the sky turns heavy all afternoon&lt;br /&gt;
  3330. the cheap hardware store thermometer on the front porch&lt;br /&gt;
  3331. drops 20 degrees in a few hours&lt;/p&gt;
  3332.  
  3333. &lt;p&gt;in the evening, it rains for a long time&lt;br /&gt;
  3334. we&#39;re out walking when it starts, halfway through&lt;br /&gt;
  3335. a habitual loop down to the river, past the labyrinth&lt;br /&gt;
  3336. and the parking lot full of deputies and the post office&lt;/p&gt;
  3337.  
  3338. &lt;p&gt;it rains while i chop vegetables,&lt;br /&gt;
  3339. while we sit on the couch eating stir fry,&lt;br /&gt;
  3340. while we stand in the kitchen washing dishes,&lt;br /&gt;
  3341. and while i sit again at my desk, scratching notes&lt;br /&gt;
  3342. in ink and thinking that i ought to be thinking&lt;br /&gt;
  3343. something that weighs something&lt;/p&gt;
  3344.  
  3345.  
  3346.  
  3347. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3348. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3349. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  3350. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/6/18/&#34; title=&#34;18&#34;&gt;18&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3351. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3352.  
  3353. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, June 5, 2020 - fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (3)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/6/5"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/6/5</id><content type="html">
  3354.  
  3355. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, June 5, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3356.  
  3357. &lt;h2&gt;fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (3)&lt;/h2&gt;
  3358.  
  3359. &lt;p&gt;Back on the 25th of May, four police officers in Minneapolis murdered a black
  3360. man named George Floyd on camera.&lt;/p&gt;
  3361.  
  3362. &lt;p&gt;In 2018, on a &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/3/27&#34;&gt;list of guesses&lt;/a&gt; to check after 5 and 10 years, I
  3363. wrote:&lt;/p&gt;
  3364.  
  3365. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;No meaningful reforms of policing in America will have gained any traction.
  3366. When I go to look at this list again, I will be able to recall one or more
  3367. killings of an unarmed black civilian by law enforcement within the previous
  3368. 2-3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  3369.  
  3370. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s only been two years, but the pattern has held and in a basic way I expect
  3371. that it will continue to hold for years and decades to come:  Because American
  3372. law enforcement is a violently racist system.  A system that both reflects the
  3373. racism of the society it operates within and actively works to entrench that
  3374. racism.&lt;/p&gt;
  3375.  
  3376. &lt;p&gt;George Floyd isn&#38;rsquo;t the first black person I&#38;rsquo;m aware of being murdered by
  3377. on-duty cops or cop-affiliated parties this year.  He wasn&#38;rsquo;t even the first one
  3378. that I learned about in &lt;em&gt;May&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup class=footnote&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3379.  
  3380. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m a work-from-home white desk-job professional living in one of the whiter
  3381. places on the planet, surrounded by entrenched wealth.  In my small-town
  3382. neighborhood, the cops speed-trap tourists on their way to a national park and
  3383. are otherwise largely ignorable.  How many cop murders would I have known about
  3384. this year if I lived in that enormous swath of America where the police
  3385. function day-to-day as a hostile occupying force?&lt;/p&gt;
  3386.  
  3387. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❃ &lt;/p&gt;
  3388.  
  3389.  
  3390. &lt;p&gt;What if the pattern didn&#38;rsquo;t hold?&lt;/p&gt;
  3391.  
  3392. &lt;p&gt;This time feels different than the last &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; iterations of this grim cycle.
  3393. There&#38;rsquo;s been, as best I can tell, an explosion of police violence in response
  3394. to a wave of protest that seems vast and not yet remotely contained.  As I
  3395. write this, people in my family are are marching.  Cities like Lincoln, NE have
  3396. seen actual unrest.&lt;/p&gt;
  3397.  
  3398. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s long seemed to me that, for the most part, America knows how to neutralize
  3399. street protest as a political force.  The machinery contains, suppresses,
  3400. deflects, and misinforms.  Structures within government, law enforcement,
  3401. news media, and activism itself all function to render it a kind of theater that
  3402. mostly plays out for its own participants.&lt;/p&gt;
  3403.  
  3404. &lt;p&gt;Whenever it feels like that machinery is breaking down, something is up.&lt;/p&gt;
  3405.  
  3406. &lt;p&gt;Maybe it feels that way in part because the vicious, bullying, riot-inciting
  3407. brutality of the cops is on such unguarded display right now.  A display that
  3408. might satisfy the longing to inflict pain and fear that fuels so much of our
  3409. politics, but also throws the hypocrisy and complicity of authority into sharp
  3410. relief and must put an incredible strain on the quiet consensus that usually
  3411. keeps these things so &lt;em&gt;manageable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  3412.  
  3413. &lt;p&gt;Don&#38;rsquo;t mistake this for hope.  I&#38;rsquo;m not hopeful.  All the same, it&#38;rsquo;s possible to
  3414. imagine this as the moment it becomes &lt;em&gt;thinkable&lt;/em&gt; to cut police department
  3415. budgets, restrict police unions, end qualified immunity, scrap a bunch of
  3416. surplus military gear, fund alternative forms of emergency response, and fire a
  3417. lot of overt white supremacists.&lt;/p&gt;
  3418.  
  3419. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✴ &lt;/p&gt;
  3420.  
  3421.  
  3422. &lt;p&gt;And then meanwhile:  The pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;
  3423.  
  3424. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s been well over a month now since &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/4/26/&#34;&gt;I first felt like&lt;/a&gt; social
  3425. distancing efforts had pretty well ended where I live.  There&#38;rsquo;s been almost a
  3426. kind of weird sense of stasis since then.  Things are more open than they were.
  3427. The bar across the street is having bands in again.  The road&#38;rsquo;s full of cars.
  3428. But I think I underestimated the degree to which people were still laying low
  3429. in late April, and even now it&#38;rsquo;s clear that things are far from normal.&lt;/p&gt;
  3430.  
  3431. &lt;ul&gt;
  3432. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;who-sitrep&#34;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt;: 6,535,354 confirmed cases and 387,155 deaths globally
  3433.  
  3434. &lt;ul&gt;
  3435. &lt;li&gt;Late April: 2,804,796 and 193,710 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  3436. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3437. &lt;/li&gt;
  3438. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/blob/master/us.csv#L137&#34;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;: 1,883,033 cases and 108,194 deaths in the US
  3439.  
  3440. &lt;ul&gt;
  3441. &lt;li&gt;Late April: 938,590 cases and 48,310 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  3442. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3443. &lt;/li&gt;
  3444. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://covid19.colorado.gov/covid-19-data&#34;&gt;colorado.gov&lt;/a&gt;: 27,615 cases and either 1,524 or 1,274 deaths&lt;/li&gt;
  3445. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3446.  
  3447.  
  3448. &lt;p&gt;It doesn&#38;rsquo;t seem, here, like there&#38;rsquo;s been the wild spike in cases I feared as
  3449. things loosened in April.  Nor does it seem like it&#38;rsquo;s anywhere near over.
  3450. Talking to friends scattered around the country about this recently, a rough
  3451. consensus: America ran out of attention span, now we wait and see how much of a
  3452. tragedy that is.  Of course that&#38;rsquo;s flippant and doesn&#38;rsquo;t really acknowledge the
  3453. crushing economic and social pressures to reopen, but it&#38;rsquo;s not exactly wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
  3454.  
  3455. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☆ &lt;/p&gt;
  3456.  
  3457.  
  3458. &lt;p&gt;How does the state of the pandemic interact with mass street protest?  I guess
  3459. we&#38;rsquo;re going to find out.&lt;/p&gt;
  3460.  
  3461. &lt;p&gt;How does the pandemic&#38;rsquo;s function as an ideological pivot point interact with
  3462. mass protest?  We&#38;rsquo;re going to find out, but I already know I don&#38;rsquo;t like the
  3463. answer.&lt;/p&gt;
  3464.  
  3465. &lt;p class=footnote&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;
  3466.  &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Ahmaud_Arbery&#34;&gt;wp: Shooting of Ahmaud Arbery&lt;/a&gt;
  3467. &lt;/p&gt;
  3468.  
  3469.  
  3470.  
  3471.  
  3472. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/colorado&#34;&gt;colorado&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/covid19&#34;&gt;covid19&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/george-floyd&#34;&gt;george-floyd&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/policing&#34;&gt;policing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3473. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3474. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  3475. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/6/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3476. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3477.  
  3478. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, May 25, 2020 - feeds: linkblogs</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/5/25"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/5/25</id><content type="html">
  3479.  
  3480. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, May 25, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3481.  
  3482. &lt;h2&gt;feeds: linkblogs&lt;/h2&gt;
  3483.  
  3484. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Background:&lt;/em&gt; I&#38;rsquo;m &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/5/8&#34;&gt;writing some posts&lt;/a&gt; linking to feeds that I
  3485. like.&lt;/p&gt;
  3486.  
  3487. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Today&#38;rsquo;s theme:&lt;/em&gt;  Blogs that curate interesting links.&lt;/p&gt;
  3488.  
  3489. &lt;p&gt;Linkblogs were once a really common form, and if done lazily can be a formulaic
  3490. waste of time, but there are a few people with a real knack for sifting out the
  3491. good stuff who I find worth tracking.  Three examples:&lt;/p&gt;
  3492.  
  3493. &lt;ul&gt;
  3494. &lt;li&gt;Leah Neukirchen&#38;rsquo;s &lt;a href=&#34;http://leahneukirchen.org/trivium&#34;&gt;trivium&lt;/a&gt; is a low-volume, high-value roundup of
  3495. mostly-technical links that nearly always contains something worth my time.
  3496.  
  3497. &lt;ul&gt;
  3498. &lt;li&gt;Feed URL: &lt;a href=&#34;http://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/index.atom&#34;&gt;http://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/index.atom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3499. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3500. &lt;/li&gt;
  3501. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;http://danny.oz.au/blog/&#34;&gt;Pathologically Polymathic&lt;/a&gt; is a linkblog by Danny Yee, author of the
  3502. consistently excellent &lt;a href=&#34;http://dannyreviews.com/&#34;&gt;Danny Yee&#38;rsquo;s Book Reviews&lt;/a&gt;.
  3503. Math, art, lit, news, politics, transportation, science, etc.
  3504.  
  3505. &lt;ul&gt;
  3506. &lt;li&gt;Feed URL: &lt;a href=&#34;http://danny.oz.au/blog/rss.xml&#34;&gt;http://danny.oz.au/blog/rss.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3507. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3508. &lt;/li&gt;
  3509. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://waxy.org/&#34;&gt;Waxy.org&lt;/a&gt; is Andy Baio&#38;rsquo;s blog - there&#38;rsquo;re occasional
  3510. longer pieces in the mix, but often just quick links.  Andy Baio is one of
  3511. the cool kids, and thus his tastes reflect cool-kid concerns that I don&#38;rsquo;t really
  3512. share, but a lot of this stuff is good anyway.
  3513.  
  3514. &lt;ul&gt;
  3515. &lt;li&gt;Feed URL: &lt;a href=&#34;https://waxy.org/feed&#34;&gt;https://waxy.org/feed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3516. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3517. &lt;/li&gt;
  3518. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3519.  
  3520.  
  3521. &lt;p&gt;I do some linkblogging of my own.  You can see stuff I&#38;rsquo;ve shared lately in the
  3522. &#38;ldquo;linkdump&#38;rdquo; sidebar on the &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;front page of this site&lt;/a&gt;, or
  3523. subscribe to:&lt;/p&gt;
  3524.  
  3525. &lt;ul&gt;
  3526. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://pinboard.in/u:brennen/&#34;&gt;My public Pinboard bookmarks&lt;/a&gt;
  3527.  
  3528. &lt;ul&gt;
  3529. &lt;li&gt;Feed URL: &lt;a href=&#34;https://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:brennen/&#34;&gt;https://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:brennen/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3530. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3531. &lt;/li&gt;
  3532. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://brennen.newsblur.com/&#34;&gt;My shared posts from NewsBlur&lt;/a&gt;
  3533.  
  3534. &lt;ul&gt;
  3535. &lt;li&gt;Feed URL: &lt;a href=&#34;https://brennen.newsblur.com/social/rss/98457/brennen&#34;&gt;https://brennen.newsblur.com/social/rss/98457/brennen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3536. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3537. &lt;/li&gt;
  3538. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3539.  
  3540.  
  3541. &lt;p&gt;The Pinboard one in particular is strictly &#38;ldquo;stuff I want to remember&#38;rdquo;, not
  3542. &#38;ldquo;stuff I think anyone else cares about&#38;rdquo;.  It informs a lot of things I write
  3543. here or work on elsewhere, and stands a fair chance of being deathly boring for
  3544. readers who aren&#38;rsquo;t me.&lt;/p&gt;
  3545.  
  3546.  
  3547.  
  3548. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/feeds&#34;&gt;feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3549. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3550. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  3551. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/25/&#34; title=&#34;25&#34;&gt;25&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3552. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3553.  
  3554. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, May 22, 2020 - feeds: stuff that makes me think</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/5/22"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/5/22</id><content type="html">
  3555.  
  3556. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, May 22, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3557.  
  3558. &lt;h2&gt;feeds: stuff that makes me think&lt;/h2&gt;
  3559.  
  3560. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Background:&lt;/em&gt; I&#38;rsquo;m &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/5/8&#34;&gt;doing some short posts&lt;/a&gt; linking to feeds that I
  3561. like.&lt;/p&gt;
  3562.  
  3563. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Today&#38;rsquo;s theme:&lt;/em&gt;  Some stuff that complicates how I think about the world in a
  3564. useful way.&lt;/p&gt;
  3565.  
  3566.  
  3567. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✥ &lt;/p&gt;
  3568.  
  3569. &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://mattstoller.substack.com/&#34;&gt;BIG by Matt Stoller&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; is
  3570. technically an e-mail newsletter, I guess, but &lt;a href=&#34;https://substack.com/&#34;&gt;Substack&lt;/a&gt;
  3571. provides RSS feeds so that&#39;s how I subscribe.  The tagline is &#34;[t]he history
  3572. and pollitics of monopoly power&#34;.  Stoller is a thinktank type at something
  3573. called the American Economic Liberties Project.  I&#39;m not actually sure I have
  3574. much of a bead on his politics as such, and I&#39;m frankly not smart enough to
  3575. evaluate a large chunk of the claims made here, but I&#39;ve found its take on monopolies
  3576. pretty striking.&lt;/p&gt;
  3577.  
  3578. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Feed URL:&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://mattstoller.substack.com/feed/&#34;&gt;https://mattstoller.substack.com/feed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3579.  
  3580. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Sample posts:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3581.  
  3582. &lt;ul&gt;
  3583.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/on-the-spotify-joe-rogan-deal-and&#34;&gt;On
  3584.  the Spotify-Joe Rogan Deal and the Coming Death of Independent Podcasting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3585.  
  3586.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/uber-grubhub-how-the-pandemic-is&#34;&gt;Uber-Grubhub:
  3587.  How the Pandemic Is Launching the Era of Online Platform Regulation&lt;/a&gt;
  3588. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3589.  
  3590. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✧ &lt;/p&gt;
  3591.  
  3592. &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/&#34;&gt;A Corner of Tenth-Century
  3593. Europe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; is a blog on medieval history that talks about stuff like coinage,
  3594. charters, architecture, and administrative matters.  A special kind of drily
  3595. fascinating, and a window into the kinds of deep research that you don&#39;t seem
  3596. to get from a lot of popularizing works.&lt;/p&gt;
  3597.  
  3598. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Feed URL:&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/feed/&#34;&gt;https://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/feed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3599.  
  3600. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✪ &lt;/p&gt;
  3601.  
  3602. &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/&#34;&gt;Kiwi Hellenist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;
  3603. offers detailed breakdowns of all sorts of stuff in classical antiquity and its
  3604. footprint in modern culture.&lt;/p&gt;
  3605.  
  3606. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Feed URL:&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default&#34;&gt;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3607.  
  3608. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Sample posts:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3609.  
  3610. &lt;ul&gt;
  3611.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2020/05/ancient-greek-colours.html&#34;&gt;How to make sense of ancient Greek colours&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3612.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2020/02/bridges.html&#34;&gt;Did Roman engineers stand under bridges?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3613.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2019/10/spartan-losers.html&#34;&gt;Spartan losers&lt;/a&gt; - especially good if you&#39;re looking for some &lt;i&gt;300&lt;/i&gt; bashing.&lt;/li&gt;
  3614.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2019/01/sea-shanties-assassins-creed-odyssey.html&#34;&gt;Shanties in &lt;i&gt;Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  3615. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3616.  
  3617. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✵ &lt;/p&gt;
  3618.  
  3619. &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://blog.ayjay.org/&#34;&gt;Snakes and Ladders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; - A while
  3620. back, I made an effort to follow more conservative (religious or otherwise)
  3621. outlets and writers, consciously trying to get outside of my filter bubble.  A
  3622. lot of it didn&#39;t stick, but I kept reading &lt;a href=&#34;http://ayjay.org/&#34;&gt;Alan
  3623. Jacobs&lt;/a&gt; in various formats.  He&#39;s a writer, an academic, and the sort of
  3624. person who publishes in places like &lt;i&gt;The American Conservative&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  3625.  
  3626. &lt;p&gt;You should read that last as a disclaimer of many of his probable views,
  3627. because he keeps intellectual &#38;amp; cultural company with some people I find it
  3628. pretty hard to stomach.  Once in a while I come pretty close to unsubscribing.
  3629. All the same, I often read his work with some interest and find that it makes
  3630. me more aware of a conservative Christian intellectual culture that, while
  3631. super messed up about all kinds of things, is more complicated than the
  3632. American talk radio / Focus on the Family / Fox News / beat-your-children side
  3633. of things would suggest.&lt;/p&gt;
  3634.  
  3635. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Feed URL:&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://blog.ayjay.org/feed/&#34;&gt;https://blog.ayjay.org/feed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3636.  
  3637. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❁ &lt;/p&gt;
  3638.  
  3639. &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://granolashotgun.com/&#34;&gt;Granola Shotgun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; has some
  3640. rich-guy-prepper-landlord vibes, which might be offputting here and there, but
  3641. also a ton of interesting thoughts and background on housing, urban planning,
  3642. regulation, etc.  I take this one with a substantial grain of salt, but it&#39;s
  3643. filtered into my thinking about the dynamics of the American built landscape
  3644. and how much dry goods I&#39;d like to have on hand.  Also uses just piles of
  3645. photos, which while often individually mundane do an effective job of conveying
  3646. a story or idea when taken in the aggregate.&lt;/p&gt;
  3647.  
  3648. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Feed URL:&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://granolashotgun.com/feed/&#34;&gt;https://granolashotgun.com/feed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3649.  
  3650. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Sample posts:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3651.  
  3652. &lt;ul&gt;
  3653.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://granolashotgun.com/2018/09/20/methodist-urbanism-ocean-grove/&#34;&gt;Methodist Urbanism: Ocean Grove&lt;/a&gt;
  3654.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://granolashotgun.com/2019/06/03/levittown/&#34;&gt;Levittown&lt;/a&gt;
  3655. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3656.  
  3657. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3658. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3659. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  3660. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/22/&#34; title=&#34;22&#34;&gt;22&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3661. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3662.  
  3663. </content><updated>2020-05-23T09:11:18Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - meta meta</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/5/20"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/5/20</id><content type="html">
  3664.  
  3665. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, May 20, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3666.  
  3667. &lt;h2&gt;meta meta&lt;/h2&gt;
  3668.  
  3669. &lt;p&gt;Opening my notebook to where I left off, I notice that the most recent pages
  3670. are full of the distracted scrawl and half-hearted jottings that result from
  3671. leaving it open on my desk while I work.  There&#38;rsquo;s a scratchpaper quality to all
  3672. of it.  Random TODOs, unfinished lists, scraps of conversation, doodles,
  3673. context-free exclamations.  It was probably useful for thinking earlier, but it
  3674. doesn&#38;rsquo;t tell me much now.&lt;/p&gt;
  3675.  
  3676. &lt;p&gt;Musing about this in writing &#38;mdash; writing about an act of writing, its
  3677. materials, etc. &#38;mdash; is a particular kind of thing.  Let&#38;rsquo;s call it &lt;em&gt;meta&lt;/em&gt;.
  3678. Meta-whatever:&lt;/p&gt;
  3679.  
  3680. &lt;ul&gt;
  3681. &lt;li&gt;Metawriting&lt;/li&gt;
  3682. &lt;li&gt;Metaprogramming&lt;/li&gt;
  3683. &lt;li&gt;Metaprocess&lt;/li&gt;
  3684. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3685.  
  3686.  
  3687. &lt;p&gt;Writing about writing.  Programming about programming.  Meetings about
  3688. meetings.  The mind reflecting on its own function.&lt;/p&gt;
  3689.  
  3690. &lt;p&gt;Meta-whatever can be both potent and dangerously tempting.  It&#38;rsquo;s not for
  3691. nothing that it shows up so many places, and at times it yields deep insights
  3692. or significant gains in power.  It&#38;rsquo;s also striking how often it seems to trap
  3693. people in localized loops and hopeless ruts.&lt;/p&gt;
  3694.  
  3695. &lt;p&gt;Methodology cults like Agile, Getting Things Done, and the recently emerging
  3696. nerd-frenzy over the Zettelkasten method are rife with process obsessions,
  3697. semi-stable patterns of recurring inquiry/argument, and people who mainly use
  3698. their methods of choice to refine their methods of choice.  You don&#38;rsquo;t have to
  3699. spend much time around any given large organization to notice how much effort
  3700. is burned on recursive bureaucracy, or how many contemporary jobs have
  3701. collapsed into closed-loop no-external-reality meta-work.&lt;/p&gt;
  3702.  
  3703. &lt;p&gt;This is all frustrating both to observe and to experience, when it gets out of
  3704. control.&lt;/p&gt;
  3705.  
  3706. &lt;p&gt;Maybe part of the reason it gets away from people is the high from when it pays
  3707. off.  Runaway metaprogramming might turn into such a nightmare &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; it
  3708. starts with sharpening your tools to a keen edge, or with an act of
  3709. leapfrogging tiers of abstraction.  Automating your automation can feel like
  3710. the purest response to that age old imperative of the hacker, that you make the
  3711. computer do the stupid shit.&lt;/p&gt;
  3712.  
  3713. &lt;p&gt;Of course, follow that impulse too far, angle it the wrong way &#38;mdash; and pretty
  3714. soon you&#38;rsquo;re Mickey Mouse trying to bail while the ensorceled brooms flood the
  3715. whole joint.&lt;/p&gt;
  3716.  
  3717. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☆ &lt;/p&gt;
  3718.  
  3719.  
  3720. &lt;p&gt;Writing about writing might not have quite the same potential for nested,
  3721. generative dysfunction, but it often produces artifacts just as unintelligible.
  3722. Self-referentiality in fiction can be a real punch in the brain pan sometimes,
  3723. but stories about stories get tiresome sooner or later.  Taking the framework
  3724. apart and putting it back together can be amazing; it can also become deeply
  3725. annoying when a reader&#38;rsquo;s looking for a framework that &lt;em&gt;contains&lt;/em&gt; something.&lt;/p&gt;
  3726.  
  3727. &lt;p&gt;Sure, all narrative is a sort of trick &#38;mdash; but artifice that&#38;rsquo;s purely
  3728. interested in its own mechanics eventually leads to &lt;em&gt;boring tricks&lt;/em&gt;.  It&#38;rsquo;s like
  3729. painting that&#38;rsquo;s purely about how paint adheres to a surface without any
  3730. particular interest in or reference to external objects and context: There&#38;rsquo;s
  3731. nothing &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; with that sort of thing, but there&#38;rsquo;d be something kind of
  3732. depressing about a world where it was the only kind of painting.&lt;/p&gt;
  3733.  
  3734. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❃ &lt;/p&gt;
  3735.  
  3736.  
  3737. &lt;p&gt;To circle back to notes about note-taking, because that&#38;rsquo;s where this started:
  3738. It&#38;rsquo;s a fruitful line of inquiry, up to some limit of circularity, some moment
  3739. where you risk crawling up your own asshole about refining a System instead of
  3740. using it to learn other things and think other thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;
  3741.  
  3742. &lt;p&gt;This is a reminder I need, periodically.&lt;/p&gt;
  3743.  
  3744.  
  3745.  
  3746. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/systems&#34;&gt;systems&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/writing&#34;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/zettelkasten&#34;&gt;zettelkasten&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3747. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3748. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  3749. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/20/&#34; title=&#34;20&#34;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3750. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3751.  
  3752. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, May 14, 2020 - the world computer: a marginally coherent bathtub rant</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/5/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/5/14</id><content type="html">
  3753.  
  3754. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, May 14, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3755.  
  3756. &lt;h2&gt;the world computer: a marginally coherent bathtub rant&lt;/h2&gt;
  3757.  
  3758. &lt;p&gt;I was pondering Amazon just now, as I sat in the bathtub sweating profusely and
  3759. reading an installment of &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.marthawells.com/murderbot.htm&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Murderbot Diaries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; on an old e-ink
  3760. Kindle in a sandwich baggy.&lt;/p&gt;
  3761.  
  3762. &lt;p&gt;I started thinking about how I &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/artificial-condition-1&#34;&gt;bought a DRM-free edition of the book somewhere
  3763. besides Amazon&lt;/a&gt; and jumped through several hoops to get it in a
  3764. readable format on the Kindle (a device given to me by a former employer so I
  3765. could participate in a book club for reading the blend of self-help, technical
  3766. propaganda, and management porn that the class of people who go through startup
  3767. incubators pretty much swim in).&lt;/p&gt;
  3768.  
  3769. &lt;p&gt;And then I thought: For fucksake, the sheer &lt;em&gt;futility&lt;/em&gt; of this kind of
  3770. exercise, when we as people who read books all more or less live inside the
  3771. machinery constructed by Amazon.  I mean, sure, I have a copy of a book that I
  3772. can stash for later and read on some other gadget, which has some practical
  3773. value.  But if you think of it as some minor act of resistance to the bullshit
  3774. status quo&#38;hellip;  I mean, it feels good, I indulge in this kind of theatrics all
  3775. the time, but fundamentally Amazon still owns publishing and for fractally
  3776. similar reasons total assholes still control most of the code on pretty much
  3777. every device on the planet.&lt;/p&gt;
  3778.  
  3779. &lt;p&gt;From one reasonable but doomed point of view, the Kindle is a special-purpose
  3780. computer I own.  But that elides a whole lot of its essential nature, doesn&#38;rsquo;t
  3781. it?  What the Kindle &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; is: A fragment of Amazon&#38;rsquo;s computer that happens
  3782. to be physically located in my house, interfaced with both my credit card
  3783. balance and my brain.&lt;/p&gt;
  3784.  
  3785. &lt;p&gt;And then I thought: We&#38;rsquo;re over the threshold.  It&#38;rsquo;s not so much that there
  3786. are a lot of computers.  20 years ago there were a lot of computers.  Now it&#38;rsquo;s
  3787. more like there&#38;rsquo;s one massive computer and we&#38;rsquo;re all inside it.  We&#38;rsquo;ve
  3788. collapsed into the state where cyberspace isn&#38;rsquo;t just a meaningful concept; it&#38;rsquo;s
  3789. very nearly coterminous with human existence.&lt;/p&gt;
  3790.  
  3791. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✶ &lt;/p&gt;
  3792.  
  3793.  
  3794. &lt;p&gt;The same thought from a different angle:  I was reading a thread about this
  3795. &lt;a href=&#34;http://strlen.com/treesheets/&#34;&gt;pretty interesting piece of desktop software&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&#34;https://lobste.rs/s/7catij/how_do_you_take_notes_organize_your#c_9syeuc&#34;&gt;someone
  3796. said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  3797.  
  3798. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;This does look intriguing, but I can’t help but be disinterested in it
  3799. because it doesn’t look like you can share and collaborate over the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  3800.  
  3801. &lt;p&gt;And I thought:  Right.  This is where we are.  Abstractions like &#38;ldquo;a kind of
  3802. file that this software can read&#38;rdquo; have become implementation details for the
  3803. technical class.  Even for the technical class, what doesn&#38;rsquo;t open onto the
  3804. network is essentially dead.  And in an age and architecture when scale and
  3805. corporate platform availability (Android, iOS, Facebook) are prerequisites for
  3806. meaningful participation, &#38;ldquo;the network&#38;rdquo; means what&#38;rsquo;s wholly owned.  The
  3807. network&#38;rsquo;s the computer, the computer is the megacorporation.&lt;/p&gt;
  3808.  
  3809. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✧ &lt;/p&gt;
  3810.  
  3811.  
  3812. &lt;p&gt;But that understates the case.  The &lt;em&gt;meta&lt;/em&gt;-megacorporation is the network is
  3813. the computer.  Amazon doesn&#38;rsquo;t own the whole machine, or Microsoft, or Apple, or
  3814. Facebook, or Google, or the governments of [the United States, China, Russia,
  3815. &#38;hellip;].  Vast territories are delineated within the network, but their boundaries
  3816. are permeable and ill-defined.  It&#38;rsquo;s impossible to cleanly disentangle client
  3817. hardware from operating systems from databases from protocols from supply
  3818. chains from datacenters.  Just as it&#38;rsquo;s impossible to disentangle computation
  3819. from the flow of money, the flow of goods, the flow of surveillance, the
  3820. software-riddled cognitive state of populations.  Scale permeates everything,
  3821. even scale.&lt;/p&gt;
  3822.  
  3823. &lt;p&gt;So:  There&#38;rsquo;s a computer and most of us live there now.&lt;/p&gt;
  3824.  
  3825.  
  3826.  
  3827. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/amazon&#34;&gt;amazon&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/business&#34;&gt;business&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/murderbot&#34;&gt;murderbot&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3828. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3829. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  3830. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3831. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3832.  
  3833. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Friday, May  8, 2020 - feeds for your consideration: a preamble</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/5/8"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/5/8</id><content type="html">
  3834.  
  3835. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Friday, May  8, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3836.  
  3837. &lt;h2&gt;feeds for your consideration: a preamble&lt;/h2&gt;
  3838.  
  3839. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s 2020, which makes &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed&#34;&gt;RSS and its siblings&lt;/a&gt; something on the
  3840. order of 20 years old as a technology in actual use.  It&#38;rsquo;s been a bit over 7
  3841. years since Google killed off Google Reader, and a year since &lt;a href=&#34;/2019/1/2/&#34;&gt;Firefox removed
  3842. feed discovery&lt;/a&gt; features, the last visible form of support in a mainstream
  3843. browser.&lt;sup class=footnote&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3844.  
  3845. &lt;p&gt;And yet:  Feeds are still widely published and remain surprisingly effective
  3846. for reading a slice of the web that isn&#38;rsquo;t overtly terrible.&lt;/p&gt;
  3847.  
  3848. &lt;p&gt;Maybe this is an accident, or an emergent nerd conspiracy.  Feed publishing
  3849. isn&#38;rsquo;t that hard for programmers to implement, and rarely comes to the malign
  3850. attention of marketing departments or upper management.  It remains baked into
  3851. enough widely-used software (WordPress, for example) that a lot of sites
  3852. probably publish feeds without even realizing it.  Podcasting is a whole thing
  3853. and is built on the same underlying tech, which probably helps too.&lt;/p&gt;
  3854.  
  3855. &lt;p&gt;This is tech I still use every day, and I feel like more people would benefit
  3856. if they knew about it, but unlike the last few times I&#38;rsquo;ve written about this
  3857. topic, I won&#38;rsquo;t waste space on the (doomed) idea that a browser vendor or the
  3858. software industry as a whole might behave any differently.  After decades of
  3859. very hard work, we&#38;rsquo;ve achieved the natural equilibrium of the web: It totally
  3860. sucks.  The infrastructure is all owned by assholes with bad ideas and the
  3861. technology is dominated by grotesque, unwieldy nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;
  3862.  
  3863. &lt;p&gt;Instead of worry about that, I thought maybe I&#38;rsquo;d just write a series of short
  3864. posts linking to feeds that I enjoy or get some value out of, so look for that
  3865. when / if I get around to it&#38;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;
  3866.  
  3867. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✤ &lt;/p&gt;
  3868.  
  3869.  
  3870. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; How do you subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds, you might reasonably ask?
  3871. Well, you need a feedreader.&lt;/p&gt;
  3872.  
  3873. &lt;p&gt;On the web, I use &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.newsblur.com/&#34;&gt;NewsBlur&lt;/a&gt;, a paid option with a free trial
  3874. that&#38;rsquo;s also open source.  On the desktop, I&#38;rsquo;ve used
  3875. &lt;a href=&#34;https://lzone.de/liferea/&#34;&gt;Liferea&lt;/a&gt;.  If you want to self-host a web app,
  3876. &lt;a href=&#34;https://tt-rss.org/&#34;&gt;Tiny Tiny RSS&lt;/a&gt; is popular.  For Firefox and Chrome,
  3877. there&#38;rsquo;s a plugin called &lt;a href=&#34;https://nodetics.com/feedbro/&#34;&gt;Feedbro&lt;/a&gt; that doesn&#38;rsquo;t
  3878. seem to be open source (which sketches me out a bit), but does seem to offer a
  3879. decent user experience.&lt;/p&gt;
  3880.  
  3881. &lt;p&gt;In Firefox, I use the &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/&#34;&gt;livemarks&lt;/a&gt;
  3882. extension to see when pages have a feed I can subscribe to and turn some of
  3883. them into &#38;ldquo;live bookmarks&#38;rdquo;.  For Chrome, Google offers
  3884. &lt;a href=&#34;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-extensio/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd/&#34;&gt;RSS Subscription Extension&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  3885.  
  3886.  
  3887. &lt;p class=footnote&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; I use both &#34;noticeable&#34; and &#34;mainstream&#34; lightly
  3888. here, given that the features were buried in a settings menu years before their
  3889. removal, and Firefox itself exists at the financial and technical sufferance of
  3890. the adtech search monopoly that owns the only browser anyone cares about
  3891. supporting.&lt;/p&gt;
  3892.  
  3893.  
  3894. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/feeds&#34;&gt;feeds&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/firefox&#34;&gt;firefox&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/syndication&#34;&gt;syndication&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/web&#34;&gt;web&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3895. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3896. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  3897. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/5/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3898. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3899.  
  3900. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, April 26, 2020 - fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (2)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/4/26"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/4/26</id><content type="html">
  3901.  
  3902. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, April 26, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  3903.  
  3904. &lt;h2&gt;fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (2)&lt;/h2&gt;
  3905.  
  3906. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I don&#38;rsquo;t know what I&#38;rsquo;m talking about.  These posts are snapshots of
  3907. what I was thinking on a given date so I can check myself later.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3908.  
  3909. &lt;p&gt;As I write this, early Sunday morning:&lt;/p&gt;
  3910.  
  3911. &lt;ul&gt;
  3912. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;who-sitrep&#34;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt;: 2,804,796 confirmed cases and 193,710 deaths globally&lt;/li&gt;
  3913. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/blob/master/us.csv#L97&#34;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;: 938,590 cases and 48,310 deaths in the US&lt;/li&gt;
  3914. &lt;/ul&gt;
  3915.  
  3916.  
  3917. &lt;p&gt;In my rough personal chronology, I&#38;rsquo;m marking today, or at any rate this
  3918. weekend, as the point at which it seems like any very effective degree of
  3919. social distancing ended locally.  A steady trickle of people in neighbors&#39;
  3920. yards, a straight up party a few blocks down the way, a trip to the beer store
  3921. where it was pretty clear that no one shopping or working there had any fucks
  3922. left to give about transmission-limiting measures.  Big packs of old guys on
  3923. Harleys and young guys on crotch rockets, rumbling and screeching,
  3924. respectively, through town.  It&#38;rsquo;s probably not evenly distributed, but I&#38;rsquo;m
  3925. guessing it feels similar a lot of places up and down the Colorado Front Range.&lt;/p&gt;
  3926.  
  3927. &lt;p&gt;So: Does the disease move like I think it does after reading far too many &#38;ldquo;an
  3928. expert said this&#38;rdquo; articles, or is it somehow not as bad as all that?&lt;/p&gt;
  3929.  
  3930. &lt;p&gt;I think we&#38;rsquo;re going to find out, because it seems like we&#38;rsquo;ve just about
  3931. exhausted whatever social / political / administrative capacity we had to
  3932. mitigate things in a lot of the US.&lt;/p&gt;
  3933.  
  3934. &lt;p&gt;We&#38;rsquo;ve been stricter than average about limiting contact with people outside our
  3935. household, I think.  We&#38;rsquo;ve got computer jobs that can happen from home, which
  3936. makes that a lot more possible.  Still, the social pressure to give up on it is
  3937. substantial.  I can feel myself shifting into the category of humorless,
  3938. uptight asshole in the context of my relationships around town.  Mostly, people
  3939. are going to yield to pressures like that, sooner rather than later.&lt;/p&gt;
  3940.  
  3941. &lt;p&gt;I wonder what this is going to look like in a week, or a month.  I have some
  3942. guesses and I hope I&#38;rsquo;m wrong about all of them.&lt;/p&gt;
  3943.  
  3944.  
  3945.  
  3946. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/colorado&#34;&gt;colorado&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/covid19&#34;&gt;covid19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  3947. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  3948. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  3949. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/26/&#34; title=&#34;26&#34;&gt;26&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  3950. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  3951.  
  3952. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, April 21 - fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (1)</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/4/21"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/4/21</id><content type="html">
  3953.  
  3954. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, April 21&lt;/h1&gt;
  3955.  
  3956. &lt;h2&gt;fragmentary notes from a bad time getting worse (1)&lt;/h2&gt;
  3957.  
  3958. &lt;p&gt;This isn&#38;rsquo;t going to be well-written and it&#38;rsquo;s probably not worth your time.  I&#38;rsquo;m
  3959. just pinning some thoughts where I can see them and check myself after a while.&lt;/p&gt;
  3960.  
  3961. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✦ &lt;/p&gt;
  3962.  
  3963.  
  3964. &lt;p&gt;As I&#38;rsquo;m writing this, the &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200421-sitrep-92-covid-19.pdf&#34;&gt;WHO situation report for today&lt;/a&gt; lists
  3965. 2,397,216 confirmed cases and 162,956 deaths worldwide.  For the United States
  3966. it has 751,273 cases and 35,884 deaths.  The &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html]&#34;&gt;New York Times map&lt;/a&gt;
  3967. shows 804,701 cases and 40,266 deaths for the US, though it&#38;rsquo;s not yet reflected
  3968. in their &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/blob/master/us.csv&#34;&gt;CSV data&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  3969.  
  3970. &lt;p&gt;Both numbers are lower bounds on both the number of people infected and the
  3971. number of dead.  I&#38;rsquo;m wildly unqualified to guess how much bigger the real
  3972. numbers are.&lt;/p&gt;
  3973.  
  3974. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✮ &lt;/p&gt;
  3975.  
  3976.  
  3977. &lt;p&gt;I tried to look back in my notes and see when the virus first really entered my
  3978. awareness.  The best I can come up with is that I remember talking about it on
  3979. the phone with my dad.  I was standing in a hotel lobby at a conference in San
  3980. Francisco, full of coworkers who&#38;rsquo;d traveled internationally to attend.  The
  3981. 27th or 28th of January, I&#38;rsquo;d guess.  It was in the news by then in an
  3982. escalating kind of way.&lt;/p&gt;
  3983.  
  3984. &lt;p&gt;A throw away line in &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/1/&#34;&gt;an entry from the airport&lt;/a&gt; a few days later:
  3985. &#38;ldquo;People in face masks because the network made them afraid of a potential
  3986. pandemic.&#38;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
  3987.  
  3988. &lt;p&gt;I think the fear really set in towards the end of February.  My mom was in town
  3989. and we were in the car coming back from lunch one day.   I opened a laptop to
  3990. check work mail and skimmed some headlines and it hit me:  &lt;em&gt;This one is
  3991. happening.&lt;/em&gt; I was nervous about her taking a plane back home.  The same day she
  3992. left, I drank beers with a bunch of old work friends and we very carefully
  3993. didn&#38;rsquo;t talk about it.&lt;/p&gt;
  3994.  
  3995. &lt;p&gt;I began stocking up on canned food and dry goods in earnest somewhere around
  3996. then.  Work events started getting canceled.  I remember a series of social
  3997. gatherings haunted by that sense that this might be the last one before things
  3998. got real.  A series of those conversations where people said &#38;ldquo;wait, you really
  3999. think this is going to be a big deal?&#38;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
  4000.  
  4001. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❁ &lt;/p&gt;
  4002.  
  4003.  
  4004. &lt;p&gt;I haven&#38;rsquo;t regretted those early trips to the grocery store for a second.&lt;/p&gt;
  4005.  
  4006. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✪ &lt;/p&gt;
  4007.  
  4008.  
  4009. &lt;p&gt;I started bookmarking some of my reading &lt;a href=&#34;https://pinboard.in/u:brennen/t:covid19/&#34;&gt;under a covid19 tag&lt;/a&gt;
  4010. on the 1st of March.&lt;/p&gt;
  4011.  
  4012. &lt;p&gt;In the weeks after that, I argued with older relatives and talked to neighbors
  4013. and realized that the nature (and existence) of the disease had become a
  4014. partisan question and a focus for the kind of conspiratorial paranoia that
  4015. usually centers around chemtrails and cell towers.&lt;/p&gt;
  4016.  
  4017. &lt;p&gt;Fewer people tell me it&#38;rsquo;s just the flu now.  My nearest acquaintance with a
  4018. chemtrails / deep state / 5G / FEMA camps obsession decamped for New Mexico a
  4019. while back.  I don&#38;rsquo;t think the conceptual shear has gotten any less pronounced
  4020. overall, though.  The focus has just shifted a little.&lt;/p&gt;
  4021.  
  4022. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✧ &lt;/p&gt;
  4023.  
  4024.  
  4025. &lt;p&gt;It was always clear that, at best, Donald Trump is morally vacuous and
  4026. profoundly stupid.  For a long time I had conversations where people who shared
  4027. that premise would ask how much it really mattered.  Sure, Trump was personally
  4028. appalling, every bit the mobbed up piece-of-shit real-estate con artist you
  4029. knew you were getting.  But was this administration really any worse or more
  4030. extreme in terms of outcomes than x-random 2020-era Republican would have been?
  4031. I haven&#38;rsquo;t heard anyone ask these things lately.&lt;/p&gt;
  4032.  
  4033. &lt;p&gt;Of course, a lot of people don&#38;rsquo;t share that premise.  In the early days, back
  4034. when I still had the capacity to worry about things like national elections, I
  4035. said: It seems like the only way Trump is likely to lose the election in
  4036. November is if the pandemic and its consequences get bad enough.  I expected
  4037. some kind of reversal in popular understanding if a lot of people died and a
  4038. lot of jobs went away, but what we seem to be getting instead is a hardening
  4039. cultural divide over whether the virus is itself a serious threat and whose
  4040. fault it is if so.&lt;/p&gt;
  4041.  
  4042. &lt;p&gt;So: The US is decently likely to have federal leadership which combines
  4043. world-historical incompetence with actual villainy for the duration of this
  4044. thing.  As a bonus, we&#38;rsquo;re now a population permanently unable to agree on the
  4045. most basic questions of fact about an event that&#38;rsquo;s going to reshape politics,
  4046. culture, and the economy for decades.&lt;/p&gt;
  4047.  
  4048. &lt;p&gt;Then again, I guess you could say the same about a majority of the really big
  4049. things that have happened during my lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;
  4050.  
  4051. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☆ &lt;/p&gt;
  4052.  
  4053.  
  4054. &lt;p&gt;Today I feel like the American federal project is collapsing.  This is an
  4055. empire not just in slow decline but in a state of active disintegration.  How
  4056. much of that did I think already?  How deep down did I feel it?  I&#38;rsquo;m not sure.
  4057. Maybe it&#38;rsquo;ll look different in a season or five.&lt;/p&gt;
  4058.  
  4059. &lt;p&gt;Right now you can watch the cracks open in realtime.  I don&#38;rsquo;t mean that there
  4060. won&#38;rsquo;t be a United States of America when we wake up one of these quarantine
  4061. days.  I think it&#38;rsquo;s a fair bet American militaries will still be murdering
  4062. people for resource extraction long after my natural lifespan runs out.  But
  4063. regional pandemic compacts between state governments, defunded public health
  4064. agencies, and governors making back-channel deals to smuggle medical supplies in
  4065. so they can&#38;rsquo;t be seized by the feds:  I don&#38;rsquo;t think this stuff is ephemeral in
  4066. its effects.&lt;/p&gt;
  4067.  
  4068. &lt;p&gt;Structures are failing.  Money and power are going to build other structures to
  4069. compensate.  Channels are going to shift, boundaries and systems are going to
  4070. reconfigure.&lt;/p&gt;
  4071.  
  4072. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s useful to have read &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine&#34;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Shock Doctrine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; right about now.&lt;/p&gt;
  4073.  
  4074. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❃ &lt;/p&gt;
  4075.  
  4076.  
  4077. &lt;p&gt;Plenty of recent experiences have caused me to think some pretty anarchist
  4078. thoughts again.  The pandemic has complicated that.  Or maybe it&#38;rsquo;s only
  4079. informed it.  My politics don&#38;rsquo;t feel any more coherent than they did 6 months
  4080. ago.  Maybe it would be a bad sign if they did.&lt;/p&gt;
  4081.  
  4082. &lt;p&gt;The already-patchworky set of stay-at-home orders and other restrictions are
  4083. about to loosen, driven partly by death-cult consensus politics, and partly
  4084. just by the impossible pressures of keeping a lid on so many people and
  4085. systems.  Too soon and badly managed is what I expect out of this.&lt;/p&gt;
  4086.  
  4087. &lt;p&gt;&#38;ldquo;Fuck you I won&#38;rsquo;t do what you tell me&#38;rdquo; is simultaneously the best and worst of
  4088. American impulses.&lt;/p&gt;
  4089.  
  4090.  
  4091.  
  4092. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/covid19&#34;&gt;covid19&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/history&#34;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/policy&#34;&gt;policy&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4093. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4094. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  4095. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/21/&#34; title=&#34;21&#34;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4096. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4097.  
  4098. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, April 13</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/4/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/4/13</id><content type="html">
  4099.  
  4100. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, April 13&lt;/h1&gt;
  4101.  
  4102. &lt;p&gt;I learned how to dial on a rotary phone.  Listen for the dial tone.  Put a
  4103. finger in the hole over the number you want, turn it &#38;lsquo;til it stops, and let it
  4104. roll back.  Listen to the clicks.  Repeat.&lt;/p&gt;
  4105.  
  4106. &lt;p&gt;In the 90s, when half of what my dad seemed to do for a living was an elaborate
  4107. resource allocation game conducted in the menu trees of corporate voicemail
  4108. systems, he had this gadget that would play touch tones into the handset so you
  4109. could use the old rotary phones that were still littered all over the
  4110. landscape.  The kind of technical ephemera that you get as one kind of network
  4111. thrashes its way towards becoming another thing altogether.&lt;/p&gt;
  4112.  
  4113. &lt;p&gt;If you&#38;rsquo;d told me back then that I&#38;rsquo;d mourn fundamental qualities of that phone
  4114. system (with its by-the-minute long-distance charges and 14.4 modems) in a time
  4115. when I have access to hundreds of computers and an always-on Internet
  4116. connection, I&#38;rsquo;m not sure what I would have thought.&lt;/p&gt;
  4117.  
  4118. &lt;p&gt;My parents got rid of their landline earlier this year.  I don&#38;rsquo;t think they
  4119. would have, necessarily, but the service had degraded beyond usability by the
  4120. time they finally gave up on it.  For a while there, it&#38;rsquo;d go out completely if
  4121. it rained enough.  There was strange crackling on the line, and finally just an
  4122. error tone of some sort when you tried to dial in.  This is how the old world
  4123. dies: Piece by piece, quietly, at the edges, a decade or three after the fact
  4124. of its obsolescence.&lt;/p&gt;
  4125.  
  4126. &lt;p&gt;(I wrote a draft of this fragment a month ago, and looking through my bookmarks
  4127. I guess it must have been prompted by reading &#38;ldquo;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/opinion/landine-phone.html&#34;&gt;A Longing for the Lost
  4128. Landline&lt;/a&gt;&#38;rdquo;,
  4129. which is exactly the sort of NYT opinion piece you&#38;rsquo;d expect from the title.)&lt;/p&gt;
  4130.  
  4131.  
  4132.  
  4133. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/phone&#34;&gt;phone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4134. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4135. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  4136. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4137. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4138.  
  4139. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, April  5, 2020 - wrt 7.0.0 - new features - title extraction and entry caching - a tagging system - json feed output - a repl for debugging - breaking changes - future work / observations</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/4/5"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/4/5</id><content type="html">
  4140.  
  4141. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, April  5, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4142.  
  4143. &lt;h2&gt;wrt 7.0.0&lt;/h2&gt;
  4144.  
  4145. &lt;p&gt;Links:&lt;/p&gt;
  4146.  
  4147. &lt;ul&gt;
  4148. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt related entries here on p1k3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4149. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://metacpan.org/release/App-WRT&#34;&gt;wrt on CPAN as App::WRT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4150. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt repo on code.p1k3.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4151. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt mirrored on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4152. &lt;/ul&gt;
  4153.  
  4154.  
  4155. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s been nearly a year since I released a version of wrt, the tool I use for
  4156. publishing this site from a collection of flat files.  I hacked on it for a
  4157. while late in 2019, and got somewhere in the neighborhood of a 7.0.0 release
  4158. before getting sidetracked by illness, a fried computer, and holiday travel.&lt;/p&gt;
  4159.  
  4160. &lt;p&gt;I checked on the state of the code last night and realized I&#38;rsquo;d left a bunch of
  4161. changes dangling and had mostly lost track of the mental state I&#38;rsquo;d built up
  4162. around my plans.  I even had a release blog post mostly written.  I went ahead
  4163. and cleaned up a few obvious loose ends and published a release, which I&#38;rsquo;ll now
  4164. attempt to describe.&lt;/p&gt;
  4165.  
  4166. &lt;h3&gt;new features&lt;/h3&gt;
  4167.  
  4168.  
  4169. &lt;p&gt;Minor stuff:  There&#38;rsquo;s some refactoring, improvement here and there of how
  4170. things outside of ASCII are handled, and probably a slightly better test suite
  4171. (it&#38;rsquo;s still abysmal, though).&lt;/p&gt;
  4172.  
  4173. &lt;h4&gt;title extraction and entry caching&lt;/h4&gt;
  4174.  
  4175.  
  4176. &lt;p&gt;I decided a while ago that wrt should know what an entry&#38;rsquo;s title is, so that it
  4177. can be used to do things like populate &lt;code&gt;&#38;lt;title&#38;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tags, display navigation links
  4178. for each entry, or generate an index for a site.  I was already doing some of
  4179. those things, on an ad hoc basis, but I wanted a general solution.
  4180. Before this version, an entry like today&#38;rsquo;s would have been made up of the
  4181. following files:&lt;/p&gt;
  4182.  
  4183. &lt;ul&gt;
  4184. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/index&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4185. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-wrt.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4186. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-technical.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4187. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-perl.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4188. &lt;/ul&gt;
  4189.  
  4190.  
  4191. &lt;p&gt;Where &lt;code&gt;index&lt;/code&gt; contains the body of the entry for the 5th, and &lt;code&gt;tag-wrt.prop&lt;/code&gt;
  4192. says that the entry has been tagged &#38;ldquo;wrt&#38;rdquo;.  The &lt;code&gt;.prop&lt;/code&gt; extension indicates a
  4193. &#38;ldquo;property&#38;rdquo;, and right now it just represents a boolean or a flag - either an
  4194. entry has a property or it doesn&#38;rsquo;t.&lt;/p&gt;
  4195.  
  4196. &lt;p&gt;I considered adding values to properties, based on the contents of the file,
  4197. and then using &lt;code&gt;title.prop&lt;/code&gt; to specify an entry&#38;rsquo;s overall title.  So, for
  4198. example, &lt;code&gt;2020/4/5/title.prop&lt;/code&gt; would have contained the string &#38;ldquo;App::WRT
  4199. 7.0.0 &#38;hellip;&#38;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;
  4200.  
  4201. &lt;p&gt;It was easy to implement this, and it &lt;em&gt;worked&lt;/em&gt;, but I wasn&#38;rsquo;t happy with it as a
  4202. user.  I like to change entry titles as I&#38;rsquo;m writing, and I sometimes have more
  4203. than one top-level heading, or a set of subheadings in an entry that I&#38;rsquo;d like
  4204. the title logic to capture.  I&#38;rsquo;ve also never bothered teaching wrt to display
  4205. any kind of a page / date header separately from the text of an entry, and
  4206. entry titles are typically just represented with inline header tags.  It seemed
  4207. weird to duplicate the title into another file.&lt;/p&gt;
  4208.  
  4209. &lt;p&gt;Since keeping titles in separate files is cumbersome, the other obvious option
  4210. is getting them out of the body of the entry itself.  wrt now does this by
  4211. rendering the HTML for every entry in the archive and parsing it with a library
  4212. called Mojo::DOM, then extracting the text of tags &lt;code&gt;&#38;lt;h1&#38;gt;&lt;/code&gt; through &lt;code&gt;&#38;lt;h6&#38;gt;&lt;/code&gt; into
  4213. a title cache which can be queried later.&lt;/p&gt;
  4214.  
  4215. &lt;p&gt;Out of laziness, I started adding this feature by storing the rendered HTML for
  4216. each entry in memory, and accidentally discovered that by doing so I can avoid
  4217. rendering most entries at least twice - once for an individual date and once
  4218. for the display of every entry in a month, with a handful additionally showing
  4219. up on the index page and in feeds.&lt;/p&gt;
  4220.  
  4221. &lt;p&gt;As a downside, this is really slow for an operation like rendering a single
  4222. entry.  But at least displaying an entry can reference data extracted from
  4223. all the other entries.&lt;/p&gt;
  4224.  
  4225. &lt;p&gt;I feel a bit queasy about loading thousands of blog entries into memory at once
  4226. in order to display any given one of them.  But in thinking about it, I&#38;rsquo;m
  4227. pretty sure it would have worked fine even on the machine I used to write the
  4228. first version of wrt (originally called display.pl), circa 2001.  In 2019 I
  4229. guess I don&#38;rsquo;t really have a problem assuming that the systems I use for this
  4230. will have at least half a gig of RAM.  It would probably be good if wrt adjusted
  4231. its behavior for really constrained environments, but my gut says that even a
  4232. low end laptop or cheap shared hosting shouldn&#38;rsquo;t be too affected by this.&lt;/p&gt;
  4233.  
  4234. &lt;h4&gt;a tagging system&lt;/h4&gt;
  4235.  
  4236.  
  4237. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve been using, as mentioned above, property files named like &lt;code&gt;tag-foo.prop&lt;/code&gt;
  4238. to add tags to p1k3 entries and display them on a &lt;a href=&#34;/topics&#34;&gt;topic index&lt;/a&gt;.  This
  4239. was partially supported (if undocumented) in wrt, but mostly made up of ad hoc
  4240. stuff in the &lt;code&gt;Makefile&lt;/code&gt; that generates p1k3.&lt;/p&gt;
  4241.  
  4242. &lt;p&gt;Although it&#38;rsquo;s still not really documented and probably has lingering issues,
  4243. this release of wrt now fully supports a similar scheme, where the filenames
  4244. become something like:&lt;/p&gt;
  4245.  
  4246. &lt;ul&gt;
  4247. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/index&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;index&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4248. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-wrt.prop&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;tag.topics.wrt.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4249. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-technical.prop&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;tag.topics.technical.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4250. &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;archives/2020/4/5/tag-perl.prop&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;tag.topics.perl.prop&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4251. &lt;/ul&gt;
  4252.  
  4253.  
  4254. &lt;p&gt;A property file starting with &lt;code&gt;tag&lt;/code&gt; is treated as a link between the entry
  4255. containing it and another entry path with dots as directory separators, so
  4256. &lt;code&gt;tag.topics.wrt.prop&lt;/code&gt; tags &lt;code&gt;/2020/4/5&lt;/code&gt; as related in some way to &lt;code&gt;/topics/wrt&lt;/code&gt;.
  4257. If &lt;code&gt;/topics/wrt&lt;/code&gt; exists in the archive, it&#38;rsquo;ll be rendered like usual followed
  4258. by a list of tagged entries.  If it &lt;em&gt;doesn&#38;rsquo;t&lt;/em&gt; exist, it&#38;rsquo;s treated as a
  4259. &#38;ldquo;virtual&#38;rdquo; entry and the tag list still renders.&lt;/p&gt;
  4260.  
  4261. &lt;p&gt;This is kind of confusing, but it allows for an arbitrary number of
  4262. user-defined tagging schemes.&lt;/p&gt;
  4263.  
  4264. &lt;h4&gt;json feed output&lt;/h4&gt;
  4265.  
  4266.  
  4267. &lt;p&gt;wrt 7 uses JSON::Feed to output &lt;a href=&#34;https://jsonfeed.org/&#34;&gt;JSON Feed&lt;/a&gt; data in
  4268. addition to Atom feeds.&lt;/p&gt;
  4269.  
  4270. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m not really sure how many feedreaders support this format, but it was
  4271. relatively painless to implement, and at least &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.newsblur.com/&#34;&gt;NewsBlur&lt;/a&gt;
  4272. seems to handle it.&lt;/p&gt;
  4273.  
  4274. &lt;h4&gt;a repl for debugging&lt;/h4&gt;
  4275.  
  4276.  
  4277. &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;wrt repl&lt;/code&gt; in a repository root will now yield a simple commandline where you
  4278. can interactively inspect the &lt;code&gt;App::WRT&lt;/code&gt; object.  Handy for development
  4279. purposes, more than anything.&lt;/p&gt;
  4280.  
  4281. &lt;h3&gt;breaking changes&lt;/h3&gt;
  4282.  
  4283.  
  4284. &lt;p&gt;I removed &lt;code&gt;entry_map&lt;/code&gt; from configuration and hardcoded its assumptions about
  4285. how entries are laid out.  This is a major change if you were using it, but I&#38;rsquo;d
  4286. be even more surprised if anyone had been than I already would be if anyone
  4287. were using wrt in the first place.  (As always, if I&#38;rsquo;m wrong, please do let me
  4288. know.)&lt;/p&gt;
  4289.  
  4290. &lt;p&gt;I got rid of the &lt;code&gt;embedded_perl&lt;/code&gt; toggle, since turning it off would have broken
  4291. templates.  (The underlying embedded Perl feature is still in place, though I
  4292. may deprecate it in future.  It really shouldn&#38;rsquo;t be used for anything besides
  4293. templates.)&lt;/p&gt;
  4294.  
  4295. &lt;p&gt;The old (undocumented) tagging system has been ripped out and replaced, as
  4296. described above.&lt;/p&gt;
  4297.  
  4298. &lt;p&gt;Since it uses Mojo::DOM to parse the HTML of rendered entries, wrt will now
  4299. issue warnings for parsing errors.  For the most part, I don&#38;rsquo;t &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; this
  4300. will break anything, but it may surface stuff like character encoding issues.
  4301. It led to me noticing that I had some 20-year-old entries originally written
  4302. in&#38;hellip; Well, something that definitely wasn&#38;rsquo;t UTF-8, at any rate.&lt;/p&gt;
  4303.  
  4304. &lt;h3&gt;future work / observations&lt;/h3&gt;
  4305.  
  4306.  
  4307. &lt;p&gt;Apart from improving and fully documenting the tagging system, I&#38;rsquo;d like to
  4308. spend some time making sure wrt could actually be used by someone else without
  4309. the scaffolding and assumptions built into the one site where I routinely use
  4310. it.  My thought right now is to build a manual published with wrt itself.
  4311. We&#38;rsquo;ll see how that goes, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;
  4312.  
  4313. &lt;p&gt;In some ways this release feels a little shaky.  It&#38;rsquo;s got ideas in it that
  4314. deviate from the stark simplicity of most of this code&#38;rsquo;s history, and it brings
  4315. the total of external library dependencies to 16, at least a couple of which
  4316. are non-trivial.  Mojo::DOM in particular makes me a bit nervous.&lt;/p&gt;
  4317.  
  4318. &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it adds a couple of things I&#38;rsquo;ve wanted for years, and some
  4319. of the underlying changes are a good foundation for solving the problems that
  4320. remain.  I continue to think of wrt as both a format for storing writing and a
  4321. concrete implementation of a tool for publishing that format.  For what they
  4322. are, I&#38;rsquo;m happy with both.&lt;/p&gt;
  4323.  
  4324. &lt;p&gt;(Elsewhere: I&#38;rsquo;m thinking hard about how I take notes and conduct research, how
  4325. doomed the web generally feels as a platform, and what language ecosystems I
  4326. want to spend my remaining time as a programmer in.  All of that might
  4327. influence future extensions to the wrt format, or lead to implementations in
  4328. something besides Perl.  Time will tell.)&lt;/p&gt;
  4329.  
  4330.  
  4331.  
  4332. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/perl&#34;&gt;perl&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4333. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4334. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  4335. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/4/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4336. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4337.  
  4338. </content><updated>2024-03-26T00:08:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, March 28, 2020 - a sheltered-in-place lawn and garden report</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/3/28"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/3/28</id><content type="html">
  4339.  
  4340. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, March 28, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4341.  
  4342. &lt;h2&gt;a sheltered-in-place lawn and garden report&lt;/h2&gt;
  4343.  
  4344. &lt;p&gt;We start the day somewhere after noon with a Bloody Mary each and
  4345. egg-and-cheese sandwiches on English muffins.  The bloodies are from a
  4346. store-bought bottle of mix, but I doctor the mix with homemade hot sauce and
  4347. the eggs are bartered farm eggs, so in terms of authenticity it could be worse.&lt;/p&gt;
  4348.  
  4349. &lt;p&gt;Outside: Blue skies, a breeze out of the south, a little chill but warm enough
  4350. if you&#38;rsquo;re moving around.  We start cleaning up around the shed we plan to tear
  4351. down out back, moving piles of scrap wood and old brick and rocks to different
  4352. corners of the property.  There are often slugs, snails, or earthworms on the
  4353. undersides of these objects.  No mosquitoes yet, but here and there you see
  4354. little clouds of gnats.  Patches of boxelder bugs mill around where the sun
  4355. warms a wall or fence.&lt;/p&gt;
  4356.  
  4357. &lt;p&gt;There was snow yesterday.  Today the grass is half-green, through the shag of
  4358. last fall&#38;rsquo;s final growth.  There are buds on the apple tree.  I uncover my
  4359. strawberry patch and find that most of the plants have survived under the
  4360. mulch.&lt;/p&gt;
  4361.  
  4362. &lt;p&gt;Later, after dinner, I start a batch of bread dough for tomorrow&#38;rsquo;s baking.
  4363. This will make a week since I picked it up again, after better than a decade
  4364. out of the habit.  The no-knead approach where you let it sit overnight has a
  4365. lot to recommend it, for a man as lazy as I am.&lt;/p&gt;
  4366.  
  4367. &lt;p&gt;We try not to read the news.&lt;/p&gt;
  4368.  
  4369.  
  4370.  
  4371.  
  4372. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/bread&#34;&gt;bread&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/colorado&#34;&gt;colorado&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/food&#34;&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/garden&#34;&gt;garden&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/weather&#34;&gt;weather&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4373. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4374. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4375. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/3/28/&#34; title=&#34;28&#34;&gt;28&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4376. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4377.  
  4378. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>tuesday, march  3, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/3/3"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/3/3</id><content type="html">
  4379.  
  4380. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;tuesday, march  3, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4381.  
  4382. &lt;p&gt;the old cat snoozes in his bed&lt;br /&gt;
  4383. i sit at my desk, wrapped up in the&lt;br /&gt;
  4384. immediate confusion of code and&lt;br /&gt;
  4385. the remote-for-now thrum of pandemic anxiety&lt;br /&gt;
  4386. suddenly a shadow breaks the sunlight&lt;br /&gt;
  4387. blazing from just above the hills through&lt;br /&gt;
  4388. the grime on my back windows&lt;br /&gt;
  4389. wondering what in the hell,&lt;br /&gt;
  4390. i stand in time to see a pair of enormous&lt;br /&gt;
  4391. crows swooping down to pause on the dead&lt;br /&gt;
  4392. grass&lt;/p&gt;
  4393.  
  4394.  
  4395.  
  4396. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/birds&#34;&gt;birds&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/corvidae&#34;&gt;corvidae&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4397. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4398. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4399. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/3/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4400. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4401.  
  4402. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, February 25, 2020 - extracting filenames from packages available in debian</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/2/25"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/2/25</id><content type="html">
  4403.  
  4404. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, February 25, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4405.  
  4406. &lt;h2&gt;extracting filenames from packages available in debian&lt;/h2&gt;
  4407.  
  4408. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2016/7/11&#34;&gt;Back in 2016&lt;/a&gt;, I wanted to check the names of existing
  4409. command-line utilities in order to avoid a collision when I renamed my blogging
  4410. software to &lt;a href=&#34;/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  4411.  
  4412. &lt;p&gt;I wound up using &lt;code&gt;apt-file&lt;/code&gt; data to see what binaries are available from Debian
  4413. packages, and I&#38;rsquo;ve referenced the list of files I generated then a bunch of
  4414. times since.  It&#38;rsquo;s obviously way out of date by now, and today I had a similar
  4415. question to answer, so here&#38;rsquo;s a scripted version of that process that worked on
  4416. my current machine, running Debian Buster:&lt;/p&gt;
  4417.  
  4418. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#!/bin/sh
  4419.  
  4420. # Make sure we&#39;ve got apt-file and lz4 compression utils:
  4421. sudo apt install apt-file lz4
  4422.  
  4423. # Update lists:
  4424. sudo apt-file update
  4425.  
  4426. cd /var/lib/apt/lists
  4427. lz4cat ./*.lz4 | \
  4428.  grep -E &#39;^(usr/bin/|sbin/|bin/)&#39; | \
  4429.  cut -f1 -d&#39; &#39; | \
  4430.  perl -pe &#39;s/^(.*)\/(.*)$/$2/&#39; | \
  4431.  sort | uniq &#38;gt; ~/used_names.txt
  4432. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  4433.  
  4434. &lt;p&gt;Then you can &lt;code&gt;grep whatever ~/used_names.txt&lt;/code&gt; to look for binaries.&lt;/p&gt;
  4435.  
  4436. &lt;p&gt;The main difference here is that the contents lists are now in
  4437. &lt;code&gt;/var/lib/apt/lists&lt;/code&gt;, as LZ4-compressed files named like
  4438. &lt;code&gt;deb.debian.org_debian_dists_buster_main_Contents-amd64.lz4&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  4439.  
  4440. &lt;p&gt;I haven&#38;rsquo;t taken the time to investigate whether this data is still just loaded
  4441. for &lt;code&gt;apt-file&lt;/code&gt;&#38;rsquo;s benefit or is in some way more integrated with &lt;code&gt;apt&lt;/code&gt; or what.
  4442. Maybe I&#38;rsquo;ll revisit at some point.&lt;/p&gt;
  4443.  
  4444. &lt;p&gt;Today&#38;rsquo;s &lt;a href=&#34;/2020/2/25/used_names.txt&#34;&gt;used_names.txt&lt;/a&gt; is attached to this post
  4445. just in case it&#38;rsquo;s helpful to people coming in from web search.&lt;/p&gt;
  4446.  
  4447. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;more:&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/25/used_names.txt&#34; title=&#34;used_names.txt&#34;&gt;used_names.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4448.  
  4449.  
  4450. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/apt&#34;&gt;apt&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/debian&#34;&gt;debian&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/shell&#34;&gt;shell&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4451. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4452. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  4453. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/25/&#34; title=&#34;25&#34;&gt;25&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4454. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4455.  
  4456. </content><updated>2024-03-26T00:08:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, february 20, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/2/20"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/2/20</id><content type="html">
  4457.  
  4458. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, february 20, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4459.  
  4460. &lt;p&gt;i took the trash out just now,&lt;br /&gt;
  4461. and turning around to go back inside&lt;br /&gt;
  4462. caught the layer of new snow in the porch light&lt;br /&gt;
  4463. it shines more perfectly than&lt;br /&gt;
  4464. any i&#39;ve seen in recent memory&lt;br /&gt;
  4465. almost incorporeal&lt;br /&gt;
  4466. offers no tangible resistance to my steps&lt;br /&gt;
  4467. and when i scoop a handful from the ground&lt;br /&gt;
  4468. in the seconds before it collapses into slush&lt;br /&gt;
  4469. and meltwater, the outlines of individual&lt;br /&gt;
  4470. flakes all set on edge against one another are&lt;br /&gt;
  4471. visible in sharp crystal relief&lt;br /&gt;
  4472. gleaming stars and polygons, lattices and&lt;br /&gt;
  4473. near-symmetries.&lt;/p&gt;
  4474.  
  4475.  
  4476.  
  4477. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4478. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4479. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  4480. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/20/&#34; title=&#34;20&#34;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4481. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4482.  
  4483. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, February  1, 2020</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/2/1"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/2/1</id><content type="html">
  4484.  
  4485. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, February  1, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4486.  
  4487. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m sitting in an airport bar at roughly 11am after my employer&#38;rsquo;s annual
  4488. all-hands meeting in San Francisco.  I have just paid $15 for avocado toast
  4489. (which was pretty good) and I am carefully not thinking about how much for a
  4490. mediocre bloody mary.&lt;/p&gt;
  4491.  
  4492. &lt;p&gt;SFO is science fictional as fuck, in the way that modern airports along the
  4493. money&#38;rsquo;s path tend to be.  Automated trains along elevated tracks.  Concrete
  4494. shapes that would work on the cover of some trade paperback featuring a
  4495. slightly abstracted spaceport.  People in face masks because the network made
  4496. them afraid of a potential pandemic.  In the distance out the windows, through
  4497. the fog slowly burning off, the surface of California&#38;rsquo;s engineered vastness.&lt;/p&gt;
  4498.  
  4499. &lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&#34;/2019/2/1&#34;&gt;year ago&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  4500.  
  4501. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Downtown SF in 2019:  A grotesque and surreal environment.  Gleaming towers,
  4502. all the trappings of an unfathomable wealth, the sidewalks and doorways
  4503. scattered with people in the throes of debilitating addiction and untreated
  4504. mental illness.  You&#38;rsquo;re quickly socialized to ignore the screaming and step
  4505. around the bodies and assume that someone else will attend to it if this or
  4506. that figure sprawled out across the pavement is dead instead of merely
  4507. unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  4508.  
  4509. &lt;p&gt;This hasn&#38;rsquo;t changed, as far as I can tell.  Maybe it&#38;rsquo;s worse.&lt;/p&gt;
  4510.  
  4511. &lt;p&gt;I usually try to travel light these days.  A backpack with some changes of
  4512. clothes, a laptop, a notebook and some pens, toothbrush and some laundry soap
  4513. for the hotel sink.  But of course the lightness of these habits is mostly a
  4514. fiction, apart from the convenience of skipping baggage claim in airports.
  4515. What I&#38;rsquo;m &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; carrying is ready access to credit and enough social capital
  4516. to get me through any very likely situation, along with a home in a prosperous
  4517. and stable region, white skin, a steady job, health insurance, and all the rest
  4518. of it.&lt;/p&gt;
  4519.  
  4520. &lt;p&gt;Self-flagellation about having good shit in life seems like a pointless
  4521. exercise, but I&#38;rsquo;m aware these days of what feels like a divide becoming a chasm
  4522. between me and the set of people tending bar, waiting tables, driving for Uber.&lt;/p&gt;
  4523.  
  4524. &lt;p&gt;The threat of precarity is real for nearly all of us, but it isn&#38;rsquo;t evenly
  4525. distributed.  Like most people, I&#38;rsquo;m one bad hospitalization away from financial
  4526. ruin.  In relative terms I also have a hell of a lot more buffer than it&#38;rsquo;s
  4527. likely the guy who made my drink does.  As long as I stay lucky and stay useful
  4528. to some slice of the technocracy, that&#38;rsquo;ll probably stay true.  There&#38;rsquo;s a
  4529. feeling of sickness in knowing these things.  In the movie of my life, it&#38;rsquo;s
  4530. something dissonant and droning swelling on the soundtrack while I bullshit my
  4531. way through these paragraphs on an expensive laptop in a gleaming airport.&lt;/p&gt;
  4532.  
  4533.  
  4534.  
  4535. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/airports&#34;&gt;airports&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/california&#34;&gt;california&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/san-francisco&#34;&gt;san-francisco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4536. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4537. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  4538. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/2/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4539. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4540.  
  4541. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - watching: solo: a star wars story</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2020/1/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2020/1/7</id><content type="html">
  4542.  
  4543. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, January 7, 2020&lt;/h1&gt;
  4544.  
  4545. &lt;h2&gt;watching: solo: a star wars story&lt;/h2&gt;
  4546.  
  4547. &lt;p&gt;The prequel: On the one hand, a narrative frame within which storytelling that
  4548. nominally coheres with its source material is usually flattened, trivialized,
  4549. and robbed of any sense of freedom or possibility.  A sure-fire antidote to the
  4550. sense of expansiveness or openness that once attended a big story.&lt;/p&gt;
  4551.  
  4552. &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a frame which typically renders efforts at revelation and
  4553. expansion totally incoherent.&lt;/p&gt;
  4554.  
  4555. &lt;p&gt;But: Donald Glover does a heck of a good Lando.&lt;/p&gt;
  4556.  
  4557.  
  4558.  
  4559.  
  4560. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/movies&#34;&gt;movies&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/star-wars&#34;&gt;star-wars&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/watching&#34;&gt;watching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4561. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/&#34; title=&#34;2020&#34;&gt;2020&lt;/a&gt; /
  4562. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/1/&#34; title=&#34;1&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; /
  4563. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2020/1/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4564. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4565.  
  4566. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>wednesday, december 18, 2019 - notes to a much younger self, to the extent that i can reconstruct him</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/12/18"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/12/18</id><content type="html">
  4567.  
  4568. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;wednesday, december 18, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4569.  
  4570. &lt;h2&gt;notes to a much younger self, to the extent that i can reconstruct him&lt;/h2&gt;
  4571.  
  4572. &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;(posted wednesday, july 13, 2022)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4573.  
  4574. &lt;p&gt;i&#39;ll start by saying that it&#39;s&lt;br /&gt;
  4575. better after a while&lt;br /&gt;
  4576. for you at least&lt;/p&gt;
  4577.  
  4578. &lt;p&gt;the dimensions of your&lt;br /&gt;
  4579. life, they do expand&lt;/p&gt;
  4580.  
  4581. &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s worse, too, and&lt;br /&gt;
  4582. sometimes for years on end&lt;/p&gt;
  4583.  
  4584. &lt;p&gt;there are things ahead&lt;br /&gt;
  4585. that are going to destroy parts of you&lt;br /&gt;
  4586. there are things ahead&lt;br /&gt;
  4587. that are going to tear at the whole frame&lt;br /&gt;
  4588. of the world you inhabit&lt;br /&gt;
  4589. one of the things that life is&lt;br /&gt;
  4590. is a series of losses&lt;br /&gt;
  4591. that you never quite recover from&lt;/p&gt;
  4592.  
  4593. &lt;p&gt;and in all that,&lt;br /&gt;
  4594. you&#39;re going to fuck up a lot&lt;br /&gt;
  4595. you&#39;ll learn most of what you learn&lt;br /&gt;
  4596. the hard way&lt;br /&gt;
  4597. you&#39;ll fail altogether&lt;br /&gt;
  4598. to learn far too much&lt;/p&gt;
  4599.  
  4600. &lt;p&gt;but all the same you&#39;ll make some friends,&lt;br /&gt;
  4601. fall in love more than once&lt;br /&gt;
  4602. and in more than one way&lt;br /&gt;
  4603. wake up on some mornings&lt;br /&gt;
  4604. to find yourself strong and able&lt;/p&gt;
  4605.  
  4606. &lt;p&gt;maybe fear will always be with you, and&lt;br /&gt;
  4607. far too much of it&lt;br /&gt;
  4608. but the walls that arise in your mind&lt;br /&gt;
  4609. between you and some imagined truer self&lt;br /&gt;
  4610. they fall away with time&lt;/p&gt;
  4611.  
  4612. &lt;p&gt;along, maybe, with the idea that&lt;br /&gt;
  4613. there&#39;s any truer self to be found.&lt;/p&gt;
  4614.  
  4615.  
  4616. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4617. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4618. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; /
  4619. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/12/18/&#34; title=&#34;18&#34;&gt;18&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4620. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4621.  
  4622. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, november  7, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/11/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/11/7</id><content type="html">
  4623.  
  4624. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, november  7, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4625.  
  4626. &lt;p&gt;the light through the library windows&lt;br /&gt;
  4627. the leaves still on the trees, just&lt;br /&gt;
  4628. against the fog rising from the snowmelt&lt;br /&gt;
  4629. on the mountainsides&lt;br /&gt;
  4630. the road rising gray through the grass&lt;br /&gt;
  4631. all bright in its browns and yellows&lt;br /&gt;
  4632. russets and dull greens&lt;br /&gt;
  4633. frostcolored and the patches of early&lt;br /&gt;
  4634. snow the black cattle here and there&lt;br /&gt;
  4635. on the hillsides between expensive&lt;br /&gt;
  4636. houses and failing barbed wire fences&lt;/p&gt;
  4637.  
  4638.  
  4639.  
  4640. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4641. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4642. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  4643. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/11/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4644. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4645.  
  4646. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, November  4, 2019 - ...or you might just get it</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/11/4"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/11/4</id><content type="html">
  4647.  
  4648. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, November  4, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4649.  
  4650. &lt;h2&gt;...or you might just get it&lt;/h2&gt;
  4651.  
  4652. &lt;p&gt;I woke up this morning thinking about the class of technical problems where for
  4653. years you hope for some kind of solution to emerge, and then when it finally
  4654. does, the solution entails such an egregious technical and political context
  4655. that you wonder if you ever should have wished for it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;
  4656.  
  4657. &lt;p&gt;FOR EXAMPLE, I wanted straightforward, usable transcription of speech.  Well,
  4658. it&#38;rsquo;s 2019 and it&#38;rsquo;s there if you want it, more or less.  All it took was massive
  4659. data hoarding, warehouse-scale computing, and universal networked surveillance
  4660. under the control of a handful of megacorporations.  A little piece of the
  4661. Panopticon in every pocket.  What I probably &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; it would require was
  4662. something on the order of better software and more computing power.  What it
  4663. took in practice was nothing short of a revolution in human affairs.&lt;/p&gt;
  4664.  
  4665. &lt;p&gt;The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like these problems are
  4666. everywhere.  Oh, you wanted to travel to that far off place where your family
  4667. lives in a day or so?  Wait &#38;lsquo;til you get a load of the environmental, cultural,
  4668. and political footprint of automotive transit.  You&#38;rsquo;re gonna love it.&lt;/p&gt;
  4669.  
  4670. &lt;p&gt;The crucial difference is that things like cars and the modern road network
  4671. were in place by the time I was born.  Now I&#38;rsquo;m getting old enough to have
  4672. watched expectations I had for the future unfold in realtime.  And they&#38;rsquo;ve come
  4673. not just &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; unintended consequences, but &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; consequences of entire
  4674. undesired systems.&lt;/p&gt;
  4675.  
  4676. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s some kind of lesson here.  Probably.&lt;/p&gt;
  4677.  
  4678.  
  4679.  
  4680. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/idealogging&#34;&gt;idealogging&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/systems&#34;&gt;systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4681. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4682. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/11/&#34; title=&#34;11&#34;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt; /
  4683. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/11/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4684. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4685.  
  4686. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, October 27, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/10/27"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/10/27</id><content type="html">
  4687.  
  4688. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, October 27, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4689.  
  4690. &lt;div class=photos&gt;
  4691. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8711.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4692.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8711.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4693. &lt;/a&gt;
  4694. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8744.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4695.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8744.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4696. &lt;/a&gt;
  4697. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8777.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4698.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8777.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4699. &lt;/a&gt;
  4700. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8817.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4701.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8817.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4702. &lt;/a&gt;
  4703. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8823.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4704.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8823.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4705. &lt;/a&gt;
  4706. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8842.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4707.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8842.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4708. &lt;/a&gt;
  4709. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8846.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4710.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8846.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4711. &lt;/a&gt;
  4712. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8900.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4713.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8900.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4714. &lt;/a&gt;
  4715. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8903.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4716.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8903.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4717. &lt;/a&gt;
  4718. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8908.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4719.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8908.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4720. &lt;/a&gt;
  4721. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8920.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4722.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8920.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4723. &lt;/a&gt;
  4724. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8927.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4725.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8927.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4726. &lt;/a&gt;
  4727. &lt;a href=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/IMG_8939.JPG&#34;&gt;
  4728.  &lt;img height=&#34;200&#34; src=&#34;/files/photos/./2019-10-27/Thumbs/IMG_8939.JPG&#34; width=&#34;200&#34;&gt;
  4729. &lt;/a&gt;
  4730. &lt;/div&gt;
  4731.  
  4732.  
  4733. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/cat&#34;&gt;cat&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/gallery&#34;&gt;gallery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4734. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4735. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  4736. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/27/&#34; title=&#34;27&#34;&gt;27&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4737. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4738.  
  4739. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>tuesday, october 22, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/10/22"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/10/22</id><content type="html">
  4740.  
  4741. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;tuesday, october 22, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4742.  
  4743. &lt;p&gt;outside my back window leaves swirl in the wind&lt;br /&gt;
  4744. and the streetlight over the alley flicks on&lt;br /&gt;
  4745. against the sky pale blue and pink&lt;/p&gt;
  4746.  
  4747.  
  4748.  
  4749. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4750. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4751. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  4752. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/22/&#34; title=&#34;22&#34;&gt;22&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4753. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4754.  
  4755. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, October 20, 2019 - on rms / necessary but not sufficient</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/10/20"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/10/20</id><content type="html">
  4756.  
  4757. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, October 20, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4758.  
  4759. &lt;h2&gt;on rms / necessary but not sufficient&lt;/h2&gt;
  4760.  
  4761. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m old enough now that, of the famous people I admired when I was young, more
  4762. have fallen in my estimation than not.  At best I&#38;rsquo;ve learned about the
  4763. difference between a person and the construct of their fame, and something
  4764. about how to put the work I still admire in context and acknowledge its
  4765. problems.  At worst, well, plenty of days I&#38;rsquo;m just disgusted.  The idea that
  4766. you shouldn&#38;rsquo;t have heroes at all resonates in these times, even if there are a
  4767. few I still find it hard to let go.&lt;/p&gt;
  4768.  
  4769. &lt;p&gt;I couldn&#38;rsquo;t tell you exactly when I first ran into Richard M. Stallman&#38;rsquo;s
  4770. thinking.  I spent an ocean of time on Slashdot and IRC in the 90s.  I probably
  4771. read &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html&#34;&gt;&#38;ldquo;The Right to Read&#38;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt; right after it was published.  I was running
  4772. a Linux desktop by late 1998, and read &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution&#34;&gt;Steven Levy&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Hackers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; right around then.  I
  4773. was 17, which must be right about the age when radical ideas take hold with the
  4774. most ferocity: You&#38;rsquo;re old enough to entertain big thoughts, but not old enough
  4775. to have many defenses against taking them on wholeheartedly.&lt;/p&gt;
  4776.  
  4777. &lt;p&gt;Since then, I&#38;rsquo;ve built my working life and quite a few personal beliefs on
  4778. ideas that originated and developed in hacker culture.  Even so, most of the
  4779. people, places, and institutions that crop up in the hacker mythos have stayed
  4780. in the realm of abstraction or distant figure for me.&lt;/p&gt;
  4781.  
  4782. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve shared both antipathy and (I hope) friendship with people from the orbit
  4783. of MIT, but it was never anywhere near my orbit.  American East- and West-Coast
  4784. cultures crop up repeatedly in my life, but they aren&#38;rsquo;t exactly &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; culture either.
  4785. I haven&#38;rsquo;t worked on public projects of much significance (until recently,
  4786. anyway), and I don&#38;rsquo;t do conferences all that often.&lt;/p&gt;
  4787.  
  4788. &lt;p&gt;As a result, I&#38;rsquo;ve never been in direct social proximity to RMS, the staff of
  4789. the Free Software Foundation, or most of the people who work on GNU projects.
  4790. I also haven&#38;rsquo;t spent much time on the mailing lists, forums, or IRC channels
  4791. that would have given me more experience of them as distinct individuals.  I
  4792. suspect the same is true of many people who rely on GNU tools, advocate
  4793. software freedom, publish work under the GPL, and donate to orgs like the FSF.&lt;/p&gt;
  4794.  
  4795. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; &#38;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  4796.  
  4797.  
  4798. &lt;p&gt;The way it now reads to me, RMS has behaved like an asshole for a long time,
  4799. and the moment of his resignation from the FSF after ill-advised opinionating
  4800. about the Epstein scandal was bound to come in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; form eventually.  A lot
  4801. of people in that scene have written to the effect that there&#38;rsquo;s a long term
  4802. pattern here, and/or that they and others tried and failed to get him to behave
  4803. less like an asshole.&lt;/p&gt;
  4804.  
  4805. &lt;p&gt;Some links:&lt;/p&gt;
  4806.  
  4807. &lt;ul&gt;
  4808. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu&#34;&gt;thoughts on rms and gnu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4809. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/&#34;&gt;Joint statement on the GNU Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4810. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84&#34;&gt;A reflection on the departure of RMS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4811. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/&#34;&gt;Richard Stallman Does Not and Cannot Speak for the Free Software Movement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4812. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00007.html&#34;&gt;Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  4813. &lt;/ul&gt;
  4814.  
  4815.  
  4816. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t think these read as simple efforts at character assassination, and they
  4817. appear to come from people who share the values of the movement and have put in
  4818. the work to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;
  4819.  
  4820. &lt;p&gt;I also find it credible that there&#38;rsquo;s been an ongoing problem here because I
  4821. paid a little attention during a couple of previous blowups about RMS, and
  4822. I sent this to the FSF late in 2018:&lt;/p&gt;
  4823.  
  4824. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Howdy,&lt;/p&gt;
  4825.  
  4826. &lt;p&gt;I wasn&#38;rsquo;t really sure where to write, but as someone who continues to support
  4827. the FSF financially, I wanted to register with the organization in some way
  4828. that I broadly agree with what Bradley M. Kuhn has to say here:&lt;/p&gt;
  4829.  
  4830. &lt;p&gt;http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/11/22/gnu-kind-communication-guidelines.html&lt;/p&gt;
  4831.  
  4832. &lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;
  4833.  
  4834. &lt;p&gt;&#38;ndash;
  4835. Brennen Bearnes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  4836.  
  4837. &lt;p&gt;And then:  I&#38;rsquo;ve talked with women who have said that RMS&#38;rsquo;s behavior is
  4838. alienating or that they&#38;rsquo;ve stayed away from the FSF because of his reputation.
  4839. I have every reason to think that this &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of thing drives people away from
  4840. a movement that&#38;rsquo;s supposed to be liberatory and fundamentally concerned with
  4841. human agency.&lt;/p&gt;
  4842.  
  4843. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; &#38;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  4844.  
  4845.  
  4846. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m not writing this to throw fuel on any fires.  Not that it would be needed;
  4847. reaction in some quarters has been more or less on par with the systemd
  4848. flamewars of these last 5 or 6 years or the least pleasant threads I&#38;rsquo;ve slogged
  4849. through on Wikimedia mailing lists.&lt;/p&gt;
  4850.  
  4851. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m tired of that kind of thing.  I&#38;rsquo;m tired of technical work and technical
  4852. politics being defined by fear and loathing.  I&#38;rsquo;m far less willing than I used
  4853. to be to participate in the outrage cycle that&#38;rsquo;s overtaken social media and
  4854. journalism.  I&#38;rsquo;m weary of callouts, pile-ons, and network-amplified harassment.
  4855. I&#38;rsquo;m way beyond jaded by the dysfunctions and endless self-immolation of
  4856. activist culture.  I have friends and colleagues who are decent people without
  4857. sharing many of my beliefs, and for the most part I&#38;rsquo;m happy to collaborate with
  4858. them on things that seem beneficial regardless of that.&lt;/p&gt;
  4859.  
  4860. &lt;p&gt;So:  As little sympathy as I have for the view that free software isn&#38;rsquo;t a
  4861. political project, I understand the desire to avoid getting drawn into the
  4862. unrelenting nightmare of partisan politics and its ancillary culture war.&lt;/p&gt;
  4863.  
  4864. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; &#38;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  4865.  
  4866.  
  4867. &lt;p&gt;But free software &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a political project.&lt;/p&gt;
  4868.  
  4869. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Software&lt;/em&gt;, broadly speaking, is a political project, and it&#38;rsquo;s one that has
  4870. come to govern human existence.  So far it&#38;rsquo;s done so mostly without the consent
  4871. of the governed, and it operates to an intolerable degree in the interests of
  4872. concentrated wealth and unaccountable power.&lt;/p&gt;
  4873.  
  4874. &lt;p&gt;Computation is everywhere.  Less and less of it is subject to the understanding
  4875. or control of its individual users.  Or, for that matter, to any democratic
  4876. representation or governance.  Systems that define our jobs and social lives
  4877. are managed by a technocratic class beholden to megacorporations and
  4878. billionaires.  These systems&#39; workings are opaque, their maintenance is an
  4879. unrelenting nightmare, and everyone involved is fundamentally compromised.&lt;/p&gt;
  4880.  
  4881. &lt;p&gt;Free software saw much of this coming and tried to stop it.  It failed, in ways
  4882. large and small.  It&#38;rsquo;s a very incomplete set of answers to a problem of almost
  4883. incomprehensible scope.  But any humane future for computation is going to
  4884. require ideas and practices that have thrived within the free software
  4885. movement.  The content of the ideas matters, and without them we&#38;rsquo;re basically
  4886. fucked.  That&#38;rsquo;s what&#38;rsquo;s at stake.&lt;/p&gt;
  4887.  
  4888. &lt;p&gt;Accordingly:  I think it&#38;rsquo;s reasonable to ask better of people with authority in
  4889. our community, and &lt;em&gt;imperative&lt;/em&gt; that we outgrow cults of personality as an
  4890. organizing principle.  I&#38;rsquo;m not still in this after 20 years because I admire a
  4891. particular dude.  I&#38;rsquo;m in this because at heart I&#38;rsquo;m an anarchist a lot of the
  4892. time.  Free software isn&#38;rsquo;t whatever RMS says it is.  Free software is what we
  4893. make of it: We who want to be free, we who want others to be free.&lt;/p&gt;
  4894.  
  4895. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; &#38;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  4896.  
  4897.  
  4898. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve been using the phrase &#38;ldquo;state of total defeat&#38;rdquo; when I talk about the goals
  4899. of free software and related ideas, but I recognize that that&#38;rsquo;s hyperbolic and
  4900. not especially nuanced.&lt;/p&gt;
  4901.  
  4902. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m writing this on a computer that, even if I can&#38;rsquo;t inspect it all the way
  4903. down to the metal, runs &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.debian.org/&#34;&gt;an operating system&lt;/a&gt; and a bunch of
  4904. applications I can crack wide open any time I feel like it.  The OS and its
  4905. package repositories are a product of anarchy in the real sense, assembled over
  4906. the course of decades into a mostly-coherent whole by a distributed collective
  4907. of volunteer hackers from the work of thousands of other projects.&lt;/p&gt;
  4908.  
  4909. &lt;p&gt;Free and open source software has given me both a tolerable scope for my
  4910. individual use of computers, and the ecosystem where I make a living.  To the
  4911. extent that free software was about wanting the freedom to hack and freely
  4912. exchange the fruits of your hacking, this hasn&#38;rsquo;t gone so badly.  It could be
  4913. better, but I remember the 1990s pretty well and I can tell you that much of
  4914. the stuff trivially at my disposal now would have blown my tiny mind back then.
  4915. Sometimes I kind of snap to awareness in the middle of installing some package
  4916. or including some library in a software project and this rush of gratitude
  4917. comes over me.&lt;/p&gt;
  4918.  
  4919. &lt;p&gt;The elephant in the room is that open source, combined with the networks it did
  4920. so much to help build, has provided much of the technical architecture for a
  4921. proprietary control over computing that exceeds all but the wildest dreams of a
  4922. few decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;
  4923.  
  4924. &lt;p&gt;There are plenty of ways that RMS-style obsession with terminology has done
  4925. more harm than good in the last few decades.  The conflation of &#38;ldquo;free/libre
  4926. software&#38;rdquo; and &#38;ldquo;open source&#38;rdquo; into one thing might even be a good idea, provided
  4927. the political motivations of the &#38;ldquo;libre&#38;rdquo; side of the question are retained.
  4928. But it&#38;rsquo;s still worth making some distinctions, and worth knowing some history.
  4929. Open Source&#38;trade; set out partly to make open code palatable to business, and
  4930. it succeeded in that.&lt;/p&gt;
  4931.  
  4932. &lt;p&gt;In fact, tons of people taught business that open source / FOSS was a good way
  4933. to get economic leverage:  At one end of the scale, just people like me and a
  4934. lot of my coworkers, who started out as amateurs on shoestring budgets, wanting
  4935. to make a living with the stuff we already knew and liked.  At the other end,
  4936. straightforward predators of the sort who found tech companies and hold upper
  4937. management positions:  People who looked at open code and open standards and
  4938. saw unpaid labor and a commons ripe for enclosure.&lt;/p&gt;
  4939.  
  4940. &lt;p&gt;Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Netflix, Uber, and so on down the
  4941. line:  To varying degrees, they&#38;rsquo;ve all used FOSS as a basic technical
  4942. foundation for their current empires.  Google and Facebook&#38;rsquo;s history is riddled
  4943. with instances of using an open technology or medium to gain the leverage
  4944. necessary to subvert the tech&#38;rsquo;s openness:  Mail, RSS/Atom, the web itself.&lt;/p&gt;
  4945.  
  4946. &lt;p&gt;Android and Chrome use open source rhetoric and development practices to drive
  4947. their adoption while operating purely in furtherance of Google&#38;rsquo;s agenda &#38;mdash; a
  4948. pattern you can see replicated in countless products and systems.  Locked-down
  4949. APIs replace protocols, personal computers are relegated to the status of
  4950. &#38;ldquo;client&#38;rdquo;, and keystone projects like web browsers become impossible to replace
  4951. without billions in funding and hundreds of engineers.&lt;/p&gt;
  4952.  
  4953. &lt;p&gt;The scale, complexity, and rent-seeking of megacorps have poisoned our
  4954. expectations for software and the practice of software development to an extent
  4955. that&#38;rsquo;s hard to get your head around.  Technical work is well-paid, at least for
  4956. the skilled and well-connected, but that typically comes at the price of a
  4957. livelihood held hostage by terrible people in service of terrible goals.&lt;/p&gt;
  4958.  
  4959. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; &#38;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  4960.  
  4961.  
  4962. &lt;p&gt;It could be otherwise, but I think we first have got to recognize that the
  4963. existing tools of FOSS aren&#38;rsquo;t remotely sufficient to remedy everything that&#38;rsquo;s
  4964. broken about software.  What the communities writing and publishing all this
  4965. code have accomplished is astonishing, but it remains embedded in a system of
  4966. exploitation and a profoundly damaged larger culture.&lt;/p&gt;
  4967.  
  4968. &lt;p&gt;Technical culture is broken, generally concentrating rather than diffusing the
  4969. inequities and pathologies of the one that surrounds it.  Employment is broken
  4970. and jobs are rife with bullshit.  What Diana Thayer calls the poverty gun &#38;mdash;
  4971. the relentless, asymmetrical threat of unemployment pointed at anyone in
  4972. conflict with the whims of capital &#38;mdash; stifles most meaningful dissent.
  4973. Capitalism, however inevitable or useful some of its basic elements are, is
  4974. broken.&lt;/p&gt;
  4975.  
  4976. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t know how to solve those problems.  What I think I know at the moment is
  4977. that free software is necessary, but it&#38;rsquo;s not sufficient.  As something
  4978. necessary, it needs to be better.  As something insufficient, it needs to be a
  4979. place where more people can find a home.&lt;/p&gt;
  4980.  
  4981.  
  4982.  
  4983. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/free-software&#34;&gt;free-software&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  4984. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  4985. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  4986. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/20/&#34; title=&#34;20&#34;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4987. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  4988.  
  4989. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, October 5, 2019 - sfe</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/10/5"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/10/5</id><content type="html">
  4990.  
  4991. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, October 5, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  4992.  
  4993. &lt;h2&gt;sfe&lt;/h2&gt;
  4994.  
  4995. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I&#38;rsquo;ve edited this since initial publication, mostly to add links to other
  4996. entries, but there&#38;rsquo;s some new text as well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  4997.  
  4998. &lt;p&gt;Late summer into middle fall seems to be a time when things get kind of loose
  4999. around the edges and I think about what I&#38;rsquo;m doing and, often enough, make
  5000. decisions that change the whole structure of my life.&lt;/p&gt;
  5001.  
  5002. &lt;p&gt;Not coincidentally, it&#38;rsquo;s coming up on 5 years
  5003. &lt;a href=&#34;/2014/11/3&#34;&gt;since I quit SparkFun Electronics&lt;/a&gt;.  They&#38;rsquo;ve been eventful
  5004. years, for good and ill both.  I&#38;rsquo;ve had some times, man.  Even so, I
  5005. wonder in a clichéd way how it&#38;rsquo;s been this long already.&lt;/p&gt;
  5006.  
  5007. &lt;p&gt;Mostly, SparkFun gets further from my mind all the time.  Every passing year
  5008. fewer of my friends are trapped there while it decays into the kind of thing it
  5009. used to repudiate just by existing.  I&#38;rsquo;m still bitter, but it&#38;rsquo;s a bitterness I
  5010. don&#38;rsquo;t have to think about very much.  Still, it comes back in waves now and
  5011. then.  This time I wondered:  What did I learn from all of that?&lt;/p&gt;
  5012.  
  5013. &lt;p&gt;There was probably a lot.  After all, it was seven years of my life, and on one
  5014. end of it I was still young and on the other I wasn&#38;rsquo;t really.  I probably knew
  5015. a lot of things in the middle of that experience that I&#38;rsquo;ve lost since.&lt;/p&gt;
  5016.  
  5017. &lt;p&gt;So, first: You won&#38;rsquo;t always know more than you used to.&lt;/p&gt;
  5018.  
  5019. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❦ &lt;/p&gt;
  5020.  
  5021.  
  5022. &lt;p&gt;When I started working on sparkfun.com it was an e-commerce site written mostly
  5023. in a programming language called PHP, and when I left it was still an
  5024. e-commerce site written mostly in PHP.  We made plenty of mistakes along the
  5025. way, but I&#38;rsquo;m pretty sure we were right not to do a wholesale replacement of a
  5026. functioning system using trendier tech.&lt;/p&gt;
  5027.  
  5028. &lt;p&gt;If you are not familiar with the politics of programming languages, a thing you
  5029. should understand is that it&#38;rsquo;s important to the way technical culture operates
  5030. that some tools (and often by extension the people who use them) be understood
  5031. as generally bad and without value.  PHP is, in this model, marked as
  5032. fundamentally misguided and thoroughly regrettable, and is thus an acceptable
  5033. target of derision and mockery.&lt;/p&gt;
  5034.  
  5035. &lt;p&gt;Just as important are two other facts:  First, that despite its nastiness and
  5036. reflexive contempt, this understanding is in many ways &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt;, insofar as it
  5037. applies to tooling.  Second, that it errs mainly in being applied so narrowly.
  5038. Which is to say that yes, PHP is a bad programming language, but generally so
  5039. are the programming languages preferred by PHP&#38;rsquo;s most vocal detractors.  (I
  5040. should know, as I have often been a vocal and ardent detractor of PHP.)  I have
  5041. yet to find an exception to this, though I continue to learn programming
  5042. languages and may one day be pleasantly surprised.&lt;/p&gt;
  5043.  
  5044. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;ve spent most of my working life using tools that are, as I&#38;rsquo;ve written
  5045. elsewhere, terminally unhip.  SparkFun was an extended lesson in the difference
  5046. between something&#38;rsquo;s received reputation and its consequences in practice.&lt;/p&gt;
  5047.  
  5048. &lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;
  5049.  
  5050. &lt;ul&gt;
  5051. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2014/9/6&#34;&gt;language things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5052. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2010/12/11&#34;&gt;and all history unfolds before you&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5053. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5054.  
  5055.  
  5056. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✪ &lt;/p&gt;
  5057.  
  5058.  
  5059. &lt;p&gt;I learned that you should be kind to customer service reps and tech support.&lt;/p&gt;
  5060.  
  5061. &lt;p&gt;There were a lot of times I was unkind to the people I worked with, and I&#38;rsquo;ve
  5062. learned to regret that.&lt;/p&gt;
  5063.  
  5064. &lt;p&gt;I learned that &#38;ldquo;the customer is always right&#38;rdquo; is poisonous, and that there&#38;rsquo;s
  5065. some joy in explaining to the kind of person who has always used that notion as
  5066. a weapon that their business isn&#38;rsquo;t worth the abuse.&lt;/p&gt;
  5067.  
  5068. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✴ &lt;/p&gt;
  5069.  
  5070.  
  5071. &lt;p&gt;I already knew how to program when I started at SparkFun, or at least I thought
  5072. I did.  While I was there, I learned how to make software.  A bunch of the
  5073. apparatus and the tooling, but more than anything that you have to work with
  5074. people.  That it&#38;rsquo;s a shared thing.  That, mostly, you&#38;rsquo;re going to do it
  5075. together or you&#38;rsquo;re going to fail at it.&lt;/p&gt;
  5076.  
  5077. &lt;p&gt;I learned a lot about unintended consequences, and the ways that design
  5078. decisions unfold into patterns you never anticipated.  I learned to mistrust
  5079. cleverness and prize the explicit.&lt;/p&gt;
  5080.  
  5081. &lt;p&gt;Models are always wrong, maps are territories unto themselves, and shared
  5082. understanding is a harder thing to build than almost any other kind of
  5083. technical artifact.  If people use the tools you create, even if they helped
  5084. you build them, they&#38;rsquo;re going to do it in ways that break every expectation you
  5085. had and put the lie to every unstated assumption you made.&lt;/p&gt;
  5086.  
  5087. &lt;p&gt;I discovered all that at painful length, and then I thought that when I got
  5088. into the wider technical world I&#38;rsquo;d find out how unsophisticated we&#38;rsquo;d been about
  5089. the whole thing.  In some ways that&#38;rsquo;s what happened, and it&#38;rsquo;s painful (but also
  5090. funny) to think about how little I knew back then.  In others it turns out that
  5091. most people are groping in the dark and a lot of what gets sold to you as
  5092. sophistication just curls back around into wishful thinking, technical debt,
  5093. and bureaucratic churn.&lt;/p&gt;
  5094.  
  5095. &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&#34;/2013/11/7&#34;&gt;late 2013&lt;/a&gt; I wrote this:&lt;/p&gt;
  5096.  
  5097. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Programmers must, as long as we hope to be effective, sustain a dispassionate
  5098. awareness that all we do is dust in the wind: That entropy is destiny,
  5099. disorder is law, and futility is the architecture of existence. We succeed,
  5100. to the extent that success is possible, only as long as we remember that our
  5101. efforts are but brief disturbances in the ordinary course of time’s certain
  5102. triumph over the integrity of all built systems. Everything you make will
  5103. surely die, and unlike the children of your body or the structure of a great
  5104. city, the code you write will probably die long before you do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5105.  
  5106. &lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;
  5107.  
  5108. &lt;ul&gt;
  5109. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2013/12/4&#34;&gt;on software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5110. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5111.  
  5112.  
  5113. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✵ &lt;/p&gt;
  5114.  
  5115.  
  5116. &lt;p&gt;I learned that salespeople will find a way around you, and that no one is more
  5117. susceptible to marketing than marketers.&lt;/p&gt;
  5118.  
  5119. &lt;p&gt;I came to think of marketing itself as an aggressive ideological cult, or maybe
  5120. just the most visible part of one &#38;mdash; a complex of ideas spidering out into
  5121. most domains of human endeavor, and hungrily grasping at whatever cognitive
  5122. territory remains unconquered.  Marketing as a mask worn by something deeper in
  5123. the culture and harder to name or delineate, let alone contradict.&lt;/p&gt;
  5124.  
  5125. &lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;
  5126.  
  5127. &lt;ul&gt;
  5128. &lt;li&gt;This one on &lt;a href=&#34;/2013/9/6&#34;&gt;the idea that numbers create meaning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5129. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2013/12/4&#34;&gt;on software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5130. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2014/11/24&#34;&gt;so spam is normal behavior, but what if you stopped?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5131. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2019/7/9&#34;&gt;still creepy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5132. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5133.  
  5134.  
  5135. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☼ &lt;/p&gt;
  5136.  
  5137.  
  5138. &lt;p&gt;I learned that you should moderate the comments, &lt;a href=&#34;/2012/11/10&#34;&gt;if you have them at
  5139. all&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; something about how.&lt;/p&gt;
  5140.  
  5141. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✤ &lt;/p&gt;
  5142.  
  5143.  
  5144. &lt;p&gt;I learned to ride a bicycle again, commuting as many days as not on an aluminum
  5145. road bike from the early 80s with downtube shifters and straps on the pedals.
  5146. A coworker found it on craigslist and helped me tune it up - the first bike
  5147. I&#38;rsquo;ve ever owned that &lt;em&gt;wanted&lt;/em&gt; to go fast.&lt;/p&gt;
  5148.  
  5149. &lt;p&gt;Despite an ocean of beer and liquor and all the attendant bad decisions, I was
  5150. probably healthier then than I&#38;rsquo;ve been any time before or since.  I was
  5151. definitely more plugged into the landscape and the seasons where I live.  Every
  5152. working day bookended by little adventures.&lt;/p&gt;
  5153.  
  5154. &lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;
  5155.  
  5156. &lt;ul&gt;
  5157. &lt;li&gt;This one &lt;a href=&#34;/2009/1/3&#34;&gt;about bikes, garden carts, technological determinism, utility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5158. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5159.  
  5160.  
  5161. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❁ &lt;/p&gt;
  5162.  
  5163.  
  5164. &lt;p&gt;Some things about hiring:&lt;/p&gt;
  5165.  
  5166. &lt;ul&gt;
  5167. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s hard and very often the people doing it are flailing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5168. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interviews are mostly nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5169. &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hiring your friends (and maybe relatives) is an entirely rational way to go
  5170. about things, &lt;em&gt;to a point&lt;/em&gt;.  What you have to deal with is this: Some of your
  5171. friends might be incompetent or worse, and even if they&#38;rsquo;re not, leaning too
  5172. hard on your existing social connections reinforces all the privileges and
  5173. biases and latent power structures that put you in the position to hire
  5174. somebody in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5175. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5176.  
  5177.  
  5178. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ☆ &lt;/p&gt;
  5179.  
  5180.  
  5181. &lt;p&gt;I learned how much quality matters and how much it doesn&#38;rsquo;t:  From how hard we
  5182. tried to get things right in the software and how little it probably mattered
  5183. in the final analysis.  From selling things that were basically pretty good and
  5184. also from selling bottom-dollar no-utility garbage, both with enormous
  5185. externalities.&lt;/p&gt;
  5186.  
  5187. &lt;p&gt;I was pretty good at not thinking about those externalities: Cheap labor and
  5188. industrial pollution in someone else&#38;rsquo;s country.  Fuel oil and gasoline and jet
  5189. fuel in transit.  I was fully complicit, and I knew it on some level, but as
  5190. long as we were getting &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; right I &lt;a href=&#34;2010/11/20&#34;&gt;felt like&lt;/a&gt; we were
  5191. ahead of the game anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
  5192.  
  5193. &lt;p&gt;We sold stuff with open designs and open code and showed people how to use it.
  5194. A faction of us free software partisans fought pretty hard on that &lt;em&gt;open&lt;/em&gt; part,
  5195. and got listened to for a while.  A lot of the people I worked with were
  5196. teachers in the best and simplest sense.  I couldn&#38;rsquo;t begin to guess how many
  5197. people learned to solder and write a simple program from SparkFun workshops and
  5198. tutorials.  It worked for a long time.  Maybe we &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; ahead of the game.
  5199. Maybe we made people more free, gave them greater agency in a time when the
  5200. tech in general is spinning wildly out of their control.&lt;/p&gt;
  5201.  
  5202. &lt;p&gt;Then again maybe we mostly taught the children of technocrats to put more tiny
  5203. computers in everything, to the long-term advantage of the billionaires and
  5204. authoritarian scumbags currently hastening civilization along to an end state
  5205. that&#38;rsquo;d slot pretty cleanly into the &lt;em&gt;Mad Max&lt;/em&gt; franchise.&lt;/p&gt;
  5206.  
  5207. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s hard to say exactly.&lt;/p&gt;
  5208.  
  5209. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✩ &lt;/p&gt;
  5210.  
  5211.  
  5212. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2014/3/23&#34;&gt;Erik Winn&lt;/a&gt; always said business ruins everything.  I learned I
  5213. think he was right, for the most part.  I also learned that you have to work
  5214. with people to get anything done, and that businesses are a lot of where that
  5215. happens, for better and worse both.&lt;/p&gt;
  5216.  
  5217. &lt;p&gt;&#38;ldquo;Community&#38;rdquo; has to be one of the most abused and debased words in the
  5218. contemporary vocabulary.  There&#38;rsquo;s this Greg Brown recording I half remember
  5219. where he makes fun of the idea of intentional community and says that
  5220. community is what happens when you have to get along with the people you&#38;rsquo;re
  5221. stuck with.&lt;/p&gt;
  5222.  
  5223. &lt;p&gt;Well, for years I went to work in a gray-carpeted room in a shabby building in
  5224. a half-empty suburban office park, and after a while I woke up looking forward
  5225. to it as often as not, because I was going to work with my friends.&lt;/p&gt;
  5226.  
  5227. &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&#34;/2014/11/23&#34;&gt;Sunday after my last day at Sparkfun&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  5228.  
  5229. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can be an astonishing thing, in a certain sort of life, to look around and
  5230. understand that you have, and have had for a long time now, a lot of friends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5231.  
  5232. &lt;p&gt;I still feel like that.&lt;/p&gt;
  5233.  
  5234. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✪ &lt;/p&gt;
  5235.  
  5236.  
  5237. &lt;p&gt;A lot of what I learned from SparkFun came right at the end.&lt;/p&gt;
  5238.  
  5239. &lt;p&gt;I learned never to mistake an aesthetic for an ethic.  That the signifiers of
  5240. style can&#38;rsquo;t be relied on as the signs of a lived belief or a worked
  5241. understanding.  That a keg in the break room and a high tolerance for stoner
  5242. hijinks makes a pretty good smokescreen for lousy wages and bad faith.&lt;/p&gt;
  5243.  
  5244. &lt;p&gt;I learned just how easy it can be to kill something from the top, even if it
  5245. got built from the bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;
  5246.  
  5247. &lt;p&gt;I knew for a long time before SparkFun that employment was mostly bullshit, and
  5248. that the interests of the owners are not the interests of the workers.  I
  5249. managed to set that one aside for a while, but it all came back in a rush: More
  5250. complicated by all the contradictions of experience, but true all the same.&lt;/p&gt;
  5251.  
  5252. &lt;p&gt;As long as there&#38;rsquo;s no shared power that can check and hold to account the
  5253. owning class and their enablers, we&#38;rsquo;re &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; their enablers.  Individual
  5254. workers are, more often than not, left with rage-quitting an organization as
  5255. the only means of signalling meaningful dissent.  And at that it&#38;rsquo;s a form of
  5256. dissent open only to the few who are cushioned enough by their skills, family
  5257. wealth, or social status to exercise it at will.&lt;/p&gt;
  5258.  
  5259. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❁ &lt;/p&gt;
  5260.  
  5261.  
  5262. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s late on a Saturday night and I&#38;rsquo;ve been trying to write this for days
  5263. without getting half of what I wanted to say into it.&lt;/p&gt;
  5264.  
  5265. &lt;p&gt;I guess for now I&#38;rsquo;m going to call it good and close this set of entirely too
  5266. self-serious reflections with some dialog from the Coen brothers&#39; &lt;em&gt;Burn After
  5267. Reading&lt;/em&gt;, as quoted on IMDb.com:&lt;/p&gt;
  5268.  
  5269. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?&lt;/p&gt;
  5270.  
  5271. &lt;p&gt;CIA Officer: I don&#38;rsquo;t know, sir.&lt;/p&gt;
  5272.  
  5273. &lt;p&gt;CIA Superior: I don&#38;rsquo;t fuckin&#39; know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;
  5274.  
  5275. &lt;p&gt;CIA Officer: Yes, sir.&lt;/p&gt;
  5276.  
  5277. &lt;p&gt;CIA Superior: I&#38;rsquo;m fucked if I know what we did.&lt;/p&gt;
  5278.  
  5279. &lt;p&gt;CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it&#38;rsquo;s, uh, hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;
  5280.  
  5281. &lt;p&gt;CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5282.  
  5283.  
  5284.  
  5285. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/business&#34;&gt;business&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/hardware&#34;&gt;hardware&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sparkfun&#34;&gt;sparkfun&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/work&#34;&gt;work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5286. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5287. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/&#34; title=&#34;10&#34;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; /
  5288. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/10/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5289. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5290.  
  5291. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>monday, august 19, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/8/19"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/8/19</id><content type="html">
  5292.  
  5293. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;monday, august 19, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5294.  
  5295. &lt;p&gt;it was damn near a hundred again today&lt;br /&gt;
  5296. over at the airport where they measure&lt;br /&gt;
  5297. a little cooler here on the edge of things&lt;br /&gt;
  5298. the river is running low, like it&#39;s august in fact&lt;br /&gt;
  5299. as well as by date&lt;/p&gt;
  5300.  
  5301. &lt;p&gt;so like you expect,&lt;br /&gt;
  5302. the grass turns gray-brown and gold in the sun&lt;br /&gt;
  5303. but all told it&#39;s been a green year in colorado&lt;br /&gt;
  5304. the way the locals seem to remember their childhoods:&lt;br /&gt;
  5305. thunderstorms in the summer afternoon,&lt;br /&gt;
  5306. big rains and little ones&lt;/p&gt;
  5307.  
  5308. &lt;p&gt;the orb weavers, growing fat now, build outsized&lt;br /&gt;
  5309. webs on what will hold still long enough  &#38;mdash;  my bike,&lt;br /&gt;
  5310. the trashcan by the corner of the house,&lt;br /&gt;
  5311. the bucket hanging on my garden fence&lt;/p&gt;
  5312.  
  5313. &lt;p&gt;bees hum where i&#39;ve let the herbs go to flower&lt;br /&gt;
  5314. i wonder if some of them fly home to the hive&lt;br /&gt;
  5315. in the cracked brick walls&lt;br /&gt;
  5316. of the first house i lived in here&lt;br /&gt;
  5317. it&#39;s fourteen years this month&lt;br /&gt;
  5318. or a couple of lifetimes depending on how you count&lt;/p&gt;
  5319.  
  5320. &lt;p&gt;in the mountains, my niece is learning to crawl&lt;/p&gt;
  5321.  
  5322. &lt;p&gt;while out on the plains my family waits to bury&lt;br /&gt;
  5323. my great aunt, gone at 95, who had already seen&lt;br /&gt;
  5324. i can&#39;t begin to guess how many lifetimes&lt;br /&gt;
  5325. by the year i was born&lt;/p&gt;
  5326.  
  5327. &lt;p&gt;everything is always happening&lt;br /&gt;
  5328. all at once&lt;/p&gt;
  5329.  
  5330. &lt;p&gt;and i&#39;m not sure i can tell any more&lt;br /&gt;
  5331. all the joy from the grief&lt;br /&gt;
  5332. or the longing from the gratitude&lt;/p&gt;
  5333.  
  5334.  
  5335. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/colorado&#34;&gt;colorado&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5336. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5337. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; /
  5338. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/8/19/&#34; title=&#34;19&#34;&gt;19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5339. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5340.  
  5341. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, August 12, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/8/12"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/8/12</id><content type="html">
  5342.  
  5343. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, August 12, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5344.  
  5345. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m sitting in a Barnes &#38;amp; Noble Starbucks, a class of institution I don&#38;rsquo;t
  5346. really expect to exist a few years hence.  Heavily sweetened coffee drinks
  5347. aren&#38;rsquo;t going anywhere, of course, but chain bookstores feel pretty doomed and
  5348. it&#38;rsquo;s not really clear to me that this one can manage a transition to selling
  5349. random toys and board game crap instead of books.&lt;/p&gt;
  5350.  
  5351. &lt;p&gt;I love independent bookstores, and spend most of my book money at several, but
  5352. I&#38;rsquo;m going to have some feelings when B&#38;amp;N kicks the bucket.  I grew up in the
  5353. country, and the mall bookstore chains in the nearest city big enough to have a
  5354. mall were my primary option for anything I couldn&#38;rsquo;t get at our small-time
  5355. library.  Those first trips to a big, well-stocked Barnes &#38;amp; Noble were
  5356. revelatory.  The SF&#38;amp;F section alone felt bigger and more expansive than the
  5357. entirety of a B. Dalton / Waldenbooks.&lt;/p&gt;
  5358.  
  5359. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s strange to think of that sense of things opening up as a side effect of
  5360. the end stages of an entire economy and medium, but I suppose that&#38;rsquo;s more or
  5361. less what it was.&lt;/p&gt;
  5362.  
  5363.  
  5364.  
  5365. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5366. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5367. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; /
  5368. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/8/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5369. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5370.  
  5371. </content><updated>2020-01-15T06:49:58Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, July  9, 2019 - still creepy</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/7/9"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/7/9</id><content type="html">
  5372.  
  5373. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, July  9, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5374.  
  5375. &lt;h2&gt;still creepy&lt;/h2&gt;
  5376.  
  5377. &lt;p&gt;I read a &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/opinion/email-tracking.html&#34;&gt;New York Times opinion piece by Charlie Warzel&lt;/a&gt;, about tracking
  5378. behavior in a mail client called Superhuman &#38;ndash; it embeds tracking pixels in all
  5379. its sent mail so it can report views back to the sender.  The piece starts off
  5380. with a succinct and reasonably accurate reading of how this sort of thing
  5381. usually plays out:&lt;/p&gt;
  5382.  
  5383. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Call it the Five Stages of Privacy Erosion.&lt;/p&gt;
  5384.  
  5385. &lt;p&gt;Tech Company builds popular product.&lt;/p&gt;
  5386.  
  5387. &lt;p&gt;Product is exposed in the press for doing something shady behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;
  5388.  
  5389. &lt;p&gt;Tech Company apologizes/clarifies/signals a fix.&lt;/p&gt;
  5390.  
  5391. &lt;p&gt;Brief phase of collective rejoicing and moving on.&lt;/p&gt;
  5392.  
  5393. &lt;p&gt;It’s revealed (usually by the same people) that Product was never really fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5394.  
  5395. &lt;p&gt;&#38;hellip;and then midway through it comes to this disclaimer:&lt;/p&gt;
  5396.  
  5397. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I want to pause here to offer an email-tracking disclosure and some
  5398. clarification. Tracking is a tricky subject. It isn’t inherently nefarious.
  5399. This newsletter tracks things like how many times the newsletter email is
  5400. opened and what links are clicked, which helps to improve the newsletter.
  5401. But like all privacy issues, it’s a matter of transparency and
  5402. expectations. When it comes to marketing emails and newsletters, which
  5403. often come from corporate entities, there’s often more of an expectation
  5404. that open rates might be tracked. In Superhuman’s case, as Davidson notes,
  5405. the tracking takes place with every personal email sent, which is more
  5406. likely to violate the expectation of privacy.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5407.  
  5408. &lt;p&gt;Which I think demonstrates how fucked we are just about as well as anything.
  5409. The tracking is creepy, under this model, when you don&#38;rsquo;t expect it from an
  5410. individual quite as much as you do from a &lt;em&gt;company&lt;/em&gt;, which has legitimate
  5411. reasons to hoard your data.  Don&#38;rsquo;t you want the newsletter to improve?&lt;/p&gt;
  5412.  
  5413. &lt;p&gt;This is the mode of reasoning that&#38;rsquo;s gotten us where we are now, after decades
  5414. of principled objection from people with both functioning consciences and a
  5415. coherent grasp of privacy:  to an ever-ratcheting state of intrusive,
  5416. unregulated, irremediable surveillance.  Surveillance as a cornerstone of the
  5417. economy and a baseline expectation of business, publishing, government, and
  5418. law.&lt;/p&gt;
  5419.  
  5420. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t mean to pick on Charlie Warzel and if he reads this I hope he doesn&#38;rsquo;t
  5421. take it as mean-spirited.  I don&#38;rsquo;t disagree with the rest of the column, and
  5422. including that parenthetical disclosure shows more self-awareness than the
  5423. majority of editorializing you read about this stuff, hosted as it is on
  5424. websites with dozens of embedded trackers and ad services.  But!  When a
  5425. journalist specializing in privacy topics explains that the technology he&#38;rsquo;s
  5426. calling out as creepy isn&#38;rsquo;t creepy &lt;em&gt;when it&#38;rsquo;s built into the platform he writes
  5427. on&lt;/em&gt;, it says something about what understandings are possible and allowed.&lt;/p&gt;
  5428.  
  5429. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s possible to understand that these behaviors &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; inherently nefarious,
  5430. but taking that idea seriously, let alone saying so out loud, isn&#38;rsquo;t compatible
  5431. with keeping a lot of jobs.  You always have to soften the blow, to acquiesce
  5432. in ways that undermine either your own awareness or your honesty.  You might
  5433. try to fight it, but in most situations it&#38;rsquo;s like shoveling back the tide with
  5434. a fork.  I&#38;rsquo;ve tried more times than I can count and I&#38;rsquo;ve lost pretty much every
  5435. time, in every way that matters.&lt;/p&gt;
  5436.  
  5437. &lt;p&gt;All the same, that this is an intractable situation for anyone whose livelihood
  5438. is caught up in it doesn&#38;rsquo;t change that the shady behaviors are shady.  The
  5439. creepy stuff is still creepy even when a respected media outlet does it for
  5440. reasons that seem to bolster the media outlet&#38;rsquo;s interests.&lt;/p&gt;
  5441.  
  5442.  
  5443.  
  5444. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/new-york-times&#34;&gt;new-york-times&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/panopticon&#34;&gt;panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/surveillance&#34;&gt;surveillance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5445. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5446. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  5447. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/7/9/&#34; title=&#34;9&#34;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5448. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5449.  
  5450. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, July  3, 2019 - word of the day: wildering</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/7/3"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/7/3</id><content type="html">
  5451.  
  5452. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, July  3, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5453.  
  5454. &lt;h2&gt;word of the day: wildering&lt;/h2&gt;
  5455.  
  5456. &lt;pre&gt;
  5457. $ dict wildering
  5458. 2 definitions found
  5459.  
  5460. From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
  5461.  
  5462.  Wilder \Wil&#34;der\, v. t. [imp. &#38; p. p. {Wildered}; p. pr. &#38; vb.
  5463.     n. {Wildering}.] [Akin to E. wild, Dan. forvilde to bewilder,
  5464.     Icel. villr bewildered, villa to bewilder; cf. AS. wildor a
  5465.     wild animal. See {Wild}, a., and cf. {Wilderness}.]
  5466.     To bewilder; to perplex.
  5467.     [1913 Webster]
  5468.  
  5469.           Long lost and wildered in the maze of fate. --Pope.
  5470.     [1913 Webster]
  5471.  
  5472.           Again the wildered fancy dreams
  5473.           Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose. --Bryant.
  5474.     [1913 Webster]
  5475.  
  5476. From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
  5477.  
  5478.  Wildering \Wild&#34;er*ing\, n. (Bot.)
  5479.     A plant growing in a state of nature; especially, one which
  5480.     has run wild, or escaped from cultivation.
  5481.     [1913 Webster]
  5482. &lt;/pre&gt;
  5483.  
  5484.  
  5485.  
  5486. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/dict&#34;&gt;dict&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5487. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5488. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; /
  5489. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/7/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5490. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5491.  
  5492. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, June 25, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/6/25"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/6/25</id><content type="html">
  5493.  
  5494. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, June 25, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5495.  
  5496. &lt;p&gt;I rode my bike for utility this morning:  Dropping off a vehicle at the shop
  5497. and pedaling the dozen miles or so home.  I&#38;rsquo;m years out of this habit, by now.
  5498. I work from home and find some plausible rationale to ride more than half a
  5499. mile maybe once every couple of months.&lt;/p&gt;
  5500.  
  5501. &lt;p&gt;It brought me back to thoughts I used to have constantly:  Speed is a kind of
  5502. abstraction over distance.  Rolling wheels are a kind of abstraction over
  5503. surfaces and spaces not really accessible by foot or rarely traversed at less
  5504. than 35mph by car.  The landscape and the culture built on top of it are so
  5505. much different at every speed.&lt;/p&gt;
  5506.  
  5507.  
  5508. &lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5509. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5510. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  5511. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/25/&#34; title=&#34;25&#34;&gt;25&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5512. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5513.  
  5514. </content><updated>2020-01-19T01:57:17Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, June 18, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/6/19"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/6/19</id><content type="html">
  5515.  
  5516. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, June 18, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5517.  
  5518. &lt;p&gt;Some weeks ago, I read &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/books/review/upheaval-jared-diamond.html&#34;&gt;a New York Times review&lt;/a&gt; of Jared Diamond&#38;rsquo;s
  5519. latest:&lt;/p&gt;
  5520.  
  5521. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you’ve ever been at a wedding or conference or on board a United
  5522. connection from O’Hare, and been cornered by a man with Theories About It
  5523. All, and you came away thinking, “That was a great experience,” have I got
  5524. the book for you.&lt;/p&gt;
  5525.  
  5526. &lt;p&gt;Jared Diamond’s “Upheaval” belongs to the genre of 30,000-foot books, which
  5527. sell an explanation of everything. I travel often and see them a lot: at
  5528. airport bookstores, where Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari (both of whom
  5529. blurbed “Upheaval”) and Diamond, of course, deserve permanent shelves; and in
  5530. the air, where I’ve noticed that a pretty disproportionate fraction of
  5531. readers who read in the quiet of 30,000 feet have a preference for writers
  5532. who write from the viewpoint of 30,000 feet.&lt;/p&gt;
  5533.  
  5534. &lt;p&gt;&#38;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;
  5535.  
  5536. &lt;p&gt;When Diamond describes “highly egalitarian social values” as an ethos that has
  5537. “remained unchanged” in Australia, despite having written a chapter about the
  5538. country’s history of legalized racism, he is using a definition of egalitarian
  5539. that applies only to white people. When he says, “Social status in Japan
  5540. depends more on education than on heredity and family connection,” he is
  5541. ignoring what it means to be born a woman. “Of course, my list of U.S. problems
  5542. isn’t exhaustive,” he admits. “Problems that I don’t discuss include race
  5543. relations and the role of women.” You know, the problems affecting the vast
  5544. majority of Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5545.  
  5546. &lt;p&gt;I don&#38;rsquo;t quote this by way of piling on Diamond.  I&#38;rsquo;m pretty sure I won&#38;rsquo;t read
  5547. &lt;em&gt;Upheaval&lt;/em&gt;, but I also doubt it&#38;rsquo;s going to do as much damage in the world as,
  5548. say, any given bestseller by the NYT&#38;rsquo;s own Thomas Friedman.&lt;/p&gt;
  5549.  
  5550. &lt;p&gt;I mention it here because that review got me thinking about a time when I was
  5551. really drawn to this kind of book:  Big, framework-y pop science and history
  5552. narratives with (at least ostensibly) a grand cross-disciplinary synthesis to
  5553. communicate.  Stuff like Diamond&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human
  5554. Societies&lt;/em&gt;, Steven Pinker&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human
  5555. Nature&lt;/em&gt;, E.O. Wilson&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge&lt;/em&gt;.  (Subtitles
  5556. included for maximum effect.)&lt;/p&gt;
  5557.  
  5558. &lt;p&gt;I pulled that specific grouping of books out of memory, but the list probably
  5559. stuck in my head in the first place because I wrote &lt;a href=&#34;/2004/9/13/&#34;&gt;this p1k3
  5560. entry&lt;/a&gt;, or others like it.  It&#38;rsquo;s cringey material, like a lot of
  5561. things I wrote in those years.  I was at the time 23 years old, inexperienced,
  5562. constantly drunk, and months out of a mediocre undergraduate degree with no
  5563. idea what to do next.  I had spent time around very smart people who were
  5564. nevertheless too much in the grip of Evolutionary Psych and similar ideas, and
  5565. I was too lazy by far to be a tenth as well-read as I pretended to be.  In
  5566. general I was insufferable, and it comes through in the text.&lt;/p&gt;
  5567.  
  5568. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✵ &lt;/p&gt;
  5569.  
  5570.  
  5571. &lt;p&gt;As usual, &#38;ldquo;I didn&#38;rsquo;t understand a lot of things when I was younger&#38;rdquo; is true, but
  5572. not very interesting.  I have plenty of regrets, but if I couldn&#38;rsquo;t forgive
  5573. myself for being a posturing jackass when I was trying to figure out my place
  5574. in the world, I&#38;rsquo;d just be permanently crippled by self-loathing, which is no
  5575. use to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
  5576.  
  5577. &lt;p&gt;Anyhow, what strikes me now, aside from a lot of ideological drift, is how much
  5578. my own hopes and ambitions have changed since then.  I once wanted to write
  5579. something big, encompassing, cross-cutting, etc.  I wanted, even if I didn&#38;rsquo;t
  5580. have the work ethic or the cognitive capacity, to understand as much as I could
  5581. and abstract it across as many domains as I could touch.  I was inclined to
  5582. manifestos, grand plans, programs, prescriptions, the idea of an overarching
  5583. research project.  At least I thought about those things a lot.  And even once
  5584. I&#38;rsquo;d mostly given up on &lt;em&gt;designing&lt;/em&gt; that kind of project, maybe I sincerely
  5585. thought that something more or less whole, greater than the sum of its parts,
  5586. could emerge from the slow iteration of my work. (&lt;a href=&#34;/2007/4/1&#34;&gt;One from 2007&lt;/a&gt;
  5587. and &lt;a href=&#34;/2016/1/14&#34;&gt;one from 2016&lt;/a&gt; suggest as much.)&lt;/p&gt;
  5588.  
  5589. &lt;p&gt;In 2019, I still hold plenty of strong opinions (a few even grounded in
  5590. experience), but I hope I have fewer illusions about their coherence or my
  5591. grasp of the overall set of problems.  I think a lot about just how brittle and
  5592. partial and misleading the materials of history tend to be, how difficult and
  5593. fallible it is to construct science, journalism, or historical narrative that
  5594. doesn&#38;rsquo;t crucially misrepresent the world.  The feeling that once kept me from
  5595. writing fiction &#38;mdash; an uneasiness about my ability to describe or portray any
  5596. experience outside my own &#38;mdash; has deepened and spread to other domains.&lt;/p&gt;
  5597.  
  5598. &lt;p&gt;These days I&#38;rsquo;m uncomfortable, despite a long-time &lt;a href=&#34;/2010/6/28/&#34;&gt;fixation on the idea that
  5599. you should write &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; someone&lt;/a&gt;, with the idea of publishing at all,
  5600. at least in the deranged and weaponized shitstorm climate of the modern
  5601. network.  I haven&#38;rsquo;t given up on the &lt;a href=&#34;/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;long project&lt;/a&gt; of a
  5602. lifetime&#38;rsquo;s jotting and correspondence.  If anything I do more of it &#38;mdash; but I
  5603. don&#38;rsquo;t expect it to yield much besides a better memory and some communication
  5604. with friends.  Those are good things in themselves, and I&#38;rsquo;m not seeking any
  5605. broader justification for the habits that underpin them.  Still, they&#38;rsquo;re very
  5606. different from the work of the writer I might have become, if I&#38;rsquo;d had more raw
  5607. ability and worked harder at it.&lt;/p&gt;
  5608.  
  5609. &lt;p&gt;I&#38;rsquo;m not altogether sure that&#38;rsquo;s a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;
  5610.  
  5611. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❦ &lt;/p&gt;
  5612.  
  5613.  
  5614. &lt;p&gt;(As a postscript, I want to acknowledge the strong possibility that I&#38;rsquo;m still
  5615. insufferable.)&lt;/p&gt;
  5616.  
  5617.  
  5618.  
  5619. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/history&#34;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/jared-diamond&#34;&gt;jared-diamond&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/steven-pinker&#34;&gt;steven-pinker&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/writing&#34;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5620. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5621. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  5622. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/19/&#34; title=&#34;19&#34;&gt;19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5623. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5624.  
  5625. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, June 13, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/6/13"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/6/13</id><content type="html">
  5626.  
  5627. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, June 13, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5628.  
  5629. &lt;p&gt;Maciej Cegłowski, &lt;a href=&#34;https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm&#34;&gt;the New Wilderness&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  5630.  
  5631. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;So why have the gravediggers of online privacy suddenly grown so worried
  5632. about the health of the patient?&lt;/p&gt;
  5633.  
  5634. &lt;p&gt;Part of the answer is a defect in the language we use to talk about privacy.
  5635. That language, especially as it is codified in law, is not adequate for the
  5636. new reality of ubiquitous, mechanized surveillance.&lt;/p&gt;
  5637.  
  5638. &lt;p&gt;In the eyes of regulators, privacy still means what it did in the eighteenth
  5639. century—protecting specific categories of personal data, or communications
  5640. between individuals, from unauthorized disclosure. Third parties that are
  5641. given access to our personal data have a duty to protect it, and to the
  5642. extent that they discharge this duty, they are respecting our privacy.&lt;/p&gt;
  5643.  
  5644. &lt;p&gt;Seen in this light, the giant tech companies can make a credible claim to be
  5645. the defenders of privacy, just like a dragon can truthfully boast that it is
  5646. good at protecting its hoard of gold. Nobody spends more money securing user
  5647. data, or does it more effectively, than Facebook and Google.&lt;/p&gt;
  5648.  
  5649. &lt;p&gt;The question we need to ask is not whether our data is safe, but why there is
  5650. suddenly so much of it that needs protecting. The problem with the dragon,
  5651. after all, is not its stockpile stewardship, but its appetite.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5652.  
  5653.  
  5654.  
  5655.  
  5656. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/facebook&#34;&gt;facebook&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/google&#34;&gt;google&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/panopticon&#34;&gt;panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/policy&#34;&gt;policy&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/politics&#34;&gt;politics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/scale&#34;&gt;scale&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/surveillance&#34;&gt;surveillance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5657. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5658. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  5659. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/13/&#34; title=&#34;13&#34;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5660. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5661.  
  5662. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, June  2, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/6/2"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/6/2</id><content type="html">
  5663.  
  5664. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, June  2, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5665.  
  5666. &lt;p&gt;I recently read &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/intermediate-vim/&#34;&gt;At least one Vim trick you might not know&lt;/a&gt;, which is
  5667. a pretty high-quality example of the stuff-about-text-editors blog post.&lt;/p&gt;
  5668.  
  5669. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are- very roughly- two categories of Vim users. &lt;strong&gt;Purists&lt;/strong&gt; value
  5670. Vim’s small size and ubiquitousness. They tend to keep configuration to a
  5671. minimum in case they need to use it on an unfamiliar computer (such as
  5672. during ssh). &lt;strong&gt;Exobrains&lt;/strong&gt;, on the other hand, stuff Vim full of plugins,
  5673. functions, and homebrew mappings in a vain attempt to pretend they’re using
  5674. Emacs. If you took away an exobrain’s vimrc they’d be completely helpless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5675.  
  5676. &lt;p&gt;Not too unreasonable a model of the thing, probably.  I&#38;rsquo;m definitely
  5677. &lt;a href=&#34;/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;somewhere in &#38;ldquo;exobrain&#38;rdquo; territory&lt;/a&gt; at this point.&lt;/p&gt;
  5678.  
  5679. &lt;p&gt;I ought to write one of these eventually - or maybe follow Tyler&#38;rsquo;s lead and
  5680. write a &lt;a href=&#34;https://tylercipriani.com/blog/2017/06/14/literate-vimrc/&#34;&gt;literate .vimrc&lt;/a&gt;.  My &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/bpb-kit/src/branch/main/home/.vimrc&#34;&gt;existing one&lt;/a&gt; has a lot
  5681. of comments, but it&#38;rsquo;s not exactly a coherent document.&lt;/p&gt;
  5682.  
  5683.  
  5684.  
  5685. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/vim&#34;&gt;vim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5686. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5687. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; /
  5688. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/6/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5689. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5690.  
  5691. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>thursday, may 9, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/5/9"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/5/9</id><content type="html">
  5692.  
  5693. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;thursday, may 9, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5694.  
  5695. &lt;p&gt;a may snow, all day&lt;br /&gt;
  5696. the skies gray and&lt;br /&gt;
  5697. the grass growing taller&lt;br /&gt;
  5698. while it falls, tulips&lt;br /&gt;
  5699. blooming round the side of the house&lt;br /&gt;
  5700. the frogs across the street&lt;br /&gt;
  5701. sounding low and slow through&lt;br /&gt;
  5702. the patter of barely frozen&lt;br /&gt;
  5703. water falling on the just-unfolding&lt;br /&gt;
  5704. leaves&lt;/p&gt;
  5705.  
  5706.  
  5707.  
  5708. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5709. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5710. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  5711. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/9/&#34; title=&#34;9&#34;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5712. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5713.  
  5714. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Wednesday, May 8, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/5/8"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/5/8</id><content type="html">
  5715.  
  5716. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Wednesday, May 8, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5717.  
  5718. &lt;p&gt;Thesis:  The complexity ratchet in technology is designed (or has evolved, take
  5719. your pick) to drive the concentration of administrative power.&lt;/p&gt;
  5720.  
  5721.  
  5722.  
  5723.  
  5724. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5725. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5726. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  5727. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/8/&#34; title=&#34;8&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5728. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5729.  
  5730. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - App::WRT v6.0.0.</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/5/7"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/5/7</id><content type="html">
  5731.  
  5732. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, May 7, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5733.  
  5734. &lt;h2&gt;App::WRT v6.0.0.&lt;/h2&gt;
  5735.  
  5736. &lt;p&gt;Links:&lt;/p&gt;
  5737.  
  5738. &lt;ul&gt;
  5739. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/wrt&#34;&gt;related entries on p1k3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5740. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://metacpan.org/release/App-WRT&#34;&gt;on CPAN as App::WRT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5741. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;on code.p1k3.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5742. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;mirrored on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5743. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5744.  
  5745.  
  5746. &lt;p&gt;Despite the bump in major version number, this one is &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; a bugfix
  5747. release.  A hypothetical user wouldn&#38;rsquo;t notice many changes, but I&#38;rsquo;m rearranging
  5748. things further in a direction I &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/4/9/&#34;&gt;started on a year ago&lt;/a&gt;,
  5749. abstracting interaction with the underlying directory structure to a class that
  5750. caches the full set of entries and some metadata about them.  More on this in
  5751. the &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/wrt/commit/be13fadb7c428cf801bad3e2fd00d12fec1032d5&#34;&gt;latest commit message&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  5752.  
  5753. &lt;p&gt;This kind of change has gotten easier as I&#38;rsquo;ve added more tests, even if the
  5754. tests themselves are sort of ridiculous, which is a useful lesson.&lt;/p&gt;
  5755.  
  5756. &lt;p&gt;As I wrote last year:&lt;/p&gt;
  5757.  
  5758. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was an interesting way to kill some time, both because I revisited an
  5759. algorithm I’d forgotten about, and because every time I hack on a project like
  5760. this I’m in a dialog with basic decisions I made before I knew how to write
  5761. software at all. And maybe, by the same token, looking with fresh eyes at norms
  5762. that I’d take for granted in any more modern context. wrt isn’t a good piece of
  5763. software by any contemporary standard, and the approach it represents isn’t one
  5764. I’d use for anything bigger than a trivial shell script at my day job, but
  5765. there’s a curious durability to it all the same.&lt;/p&gt;
  5766.  
  5767. &lt;p&gt;Every few years I revisit some facet of this tiny, mundane tool and apply a bit
  5768. of understanding I lacked when it was first written, and some structure comes a
  5769. little clearer that lives in the space between my ignorance at 20 and my
  5770. experience, such as it is, at whatever age I’ve reached.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  5771.  
  5772.  
  5773.  
  5774.  
  5775. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/perl&#34;&gt;perl&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5776. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5777. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  5778. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/7/&#34; title=&#34;7&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5779. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5780.  
  5781. </content><updated>2024-03-26T00:08:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Monday, May  6, 2019 - reading: the raven tower</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/5/6"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/5/6</id><content type="html">
  5782.  
  5783. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Monday, May  6, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5784.  
  5785. &lt;h2&gt;reading: the raven tower&lt;/h2&gt;
  5786.  
  5787. &lt;p&gt;(Structural spoilers may follow.)&lt;/p&gt;
  5788.  
  5789. &lt;p&gt;Previously:&lt;/p&gt;
  5790.  
  5791. &lt;ul&gt;
  5792. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2015/10/20&#34;&gt;Reading: &lt;em&gt;Ancillary Justice&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Ancillary Sword&lt;/em&gt;, by Ann Leckie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5793. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2018/1/1&#34;&gt;reading in 2017&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5794. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5795.  
  5796.  
  5797. &lt;p&gt;Leckie&#38;rsquo;s earlier novels have fallen roughly in the space opera / military SF
  5798. zone.  This one is fantasy, with recognizable genre apparatus (swords, horses,
  5799. fortresses, hereditary nobility, etc.), but in terms of plot mechanics and tone
  5800. it&#38;rsquo;s not a radical departure.  It&#38;rsquo;s concerned with a world where gods are real
  5801. and intervene routinely in human life, but once you grant the basic premise it
  5802. unfolds a system of rules and consequences in a way that rings far more science
  5803. fictional than mystical or theological in the usual sense.&lt;/p&gt;
  5804.  
  5805. &lt;p&gt;I read the whole thing in a sitting last night, having wrecked my ability to
  5806. fall asleep by combining too much of microbrew, espresso, and cheap cigars into
  5807. a low-level panic attack, so I was grateful for the distraction.&lt;/p&gt;
  5808.  
  5809. &lt;p&gt;The ending felt a little rushed, but on the whole I think the author may have
  5810. gotten better at pacing since her first big trilogy.  I would happily spend
  5811. more time with these characters.  Recommended.&lt;/p&gt;
  5812.  
  5813.  
  5814.  
  5815.  
  5816. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/ann-leckie&#34;&gt;ann-leckie&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5817. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5818. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  5819. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/6/&#34; title=&#34;6&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5820. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5821.  
  5822. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>saturday, may 4, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/5/4"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/5/4</id><content type="html">
  5823.  
  5824. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;saturday, may 4, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5825.  
  5826. &lt;p&gt;few animals&lt;br /&gt;
  5827. are as satisfying to contemplate&lt;br /&gt;
  5828. as the bumble bee, all round and&lt;br /&gt;
  5829. purposeful&lt;/p&gt;
  5830.  
  5831.  
  5832.  
  5833. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/poem&#34;&gt;poem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5834. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5835. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/&#34; title=&#34;5&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; /
  5836. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/5/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5837. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5838.  
  5839. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, April 14, 2019 - App::WRT v5.0.0</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/4/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/4/14</id><content type="html">
  5840.  
  5841. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, April 14, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5842.  
  5843. &lt;h2&gt;App::WRT v5.0.0&lt;/h2&gt;
  5844.  
  5845. &lt;p&gt;It&#38;rsquo;s been almost a year, so I&#38;rsquo;m putting together a release of wrt, the site
  5846. generator I use for p1k3:&lt;/p&gt;
  5847.  
  5848. &lt;ul&gt;
  5849. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://metacpan.org/release/App-WRT&#34;&gt;on CPAN as App::WRT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5850. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;on code.p1k3.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5851. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;mirrored on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  5852. &lt;/ul&gt;
  5853.  
  5854.  
  5855. &lt;p&gt;v5.0.0 abandons the idea of running persistently under FastCGI, &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/5/28&#34;&gt;handles
  5856. character encoding more gracefully for Atom feeds&lt;/a&gt;, adds &lt;code&gt;wrt ls&lt;/code&gt;
  5857. and &lt;code&gt;wrt config&lt;/code&gt; commands for listing entries and dumping configuration values,
  5858. refactors a bunch of the logic for finding and displaying entries, and fixes a
  5859. slew of minor bugs.  It should be substantially more performant, though as a
  5860. tradeoff it uses more memory.&lt;/p&gt;
  5861.  
  5862. &lt;p&gt;Here&#38;rsquo;s (I think) the full changelog since the last time I pushed this thing to CPAN:&lt;/p&gt;
  5863.  
  5864. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;v5.0.0 2019-04-14
  5865.  
  5866.  - Add bin/wrt-ls for listing entries in current archive
  5867.  - Add bin/wrt-config for displaying configuration info
  5868.  - Allow header tags with attributes
  5869.  - Minor documentation cleanup
  5870.  - Bump XML::Atom::SimpleFeed to 0.900; remove wrt-fcgi
  5871.  - Concatenation instead of variable interpolation in HTML::tag()
  5872.  - Remove hardcoded &#34;public&#34; from renderer directory path copying
  5873.  - Remove unused feed_url param from wrt-init and example dir
  5874.  - Remove an extraneous JSON-&#38;gt;convert_blessed(1) call
  5875.  - WRT::entry(): fix glitch with contents list for binfile_expr matches
  5876.  - Correctly encode feed output - see https://p1k3.com/2018/5/28/
  5877.  - Add App::WRT::Util::file_get_contents();
  5878.  - Optionally cache included files in-memory
  5879.  - Add EntryStore, a class for wrapping various methods for finding entry lists
  5880.  - Refactor display()
  5881.  - Use Carp for errors
  5882.  - Remove old LaTeX markup stuff
  5883.  - Add this Changes file
  5884.  
  5885. v5.0.0-alpha 2018-04-19
  5886.  
  5887.  - Use 5 most recent entries for home page instead of latest month
  5888.  - Remove accessor methods for instance variables / configuration
  5889.  - Give absolute paths to imgsize() so it chills out on Cwd::getcwd() calls
  5890.  - Remove local_path(), recent_month(), month_before, and feed_print_latest()
  5891.  - Stop using a() in entry_markup()
  5892.  - Cache get_date_entries_by_depth() results
  5893.  - Swap out state vars for stashing things on $self in get_all_source_files()
  5894.  - Add get_date_entries_by_depth()
  5895.  - Tweak link_bar() behavior to retain link for current page
  5896. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  5897.  
  5898. &lt;p&gt;Actually, looking at some of this, I think my history of version numbers vs.
  5899. Git tags vs. releases is&#38;hellip;  Less than accurate.  In future I&#38;rsquo;m going to just
  5900. increment the &lt;a href=&#34;https://semver.org/&#34;&gt;semver&lt;/a&gt; patch version for every commit and release to CPAN
  5901. routinely.&lt;/p&gt;
  5902.  
  5903.  
  5904.  
  5905.  
  5906. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/cpan&#34;&gt;cpan&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/perl&#34;&gt;perl&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/semver&#34;&gt;semver&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5907. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5908. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/4/&#34; title=&#34;4&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; /
  5909. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/4/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5910. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5911.  
  5912. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, March 30, 2019 - skipping over already-visible workspaces in xmonad</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/3/30"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/3/30</id><content type="html">
  5913.  
  5914. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, March 30, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5915.  
  5916. &lt;h2&gt;skipping over already-visible workspaces in xmonad&lt;/h2&gt;
  5917.  
  5918. &lt;p&gt;I recently went back to a two-monitor setup on my work system (an &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/11/11/&#34;&gt;Intel NUC I
  5919. bought back in November&lt;/a&gt;).  For the most part this has been a big
  5920. improvement, and &lt;a href=&#34;https://xmonad.org/&#34;&gt;xmonad&lt;/a&gt; handles multi-screen layouts just as well
  5921. as I remembered.  Each screen displays a workspace, and they can be switched
  5922. independently.&lt;/p&gt;
  5923.  
  5924. &lt;p&gt;I have had one nagging complaint:  I have a bunch of pre-configured workspaces
  5925. and tend to cycle through with them with the arrow keys. When I switched to a
  5926. workspace that was already displayed on the other screen, it&#38;rsquo;d swap onto the
  5927. current screen.  This seems like a pretty minor thing, but in practice it tends
  5928. to add confusion - I might, for example, have a page of notes up on one display
  5929. and be trying to quickly navigate on the other display for items from mail,
  5930. code, IRC, etc., to summarize in the notes.  If that workspace jumps around,
  5931. it&#38;rsquo;s easier to lose track of what I&#38;rsquo;m doing.&lt;/p&gt;
  5932.  
  5933. &lt;p&gt;I wondered if it was possible to &#38;ldquo;lock&#38;rdquo; a workspace to a specific display.
  5934. I still don&#38;rsquo;t know the answer to that question, but skimming the docs for
  5935. &lt;a href=&#34;https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.15/docs/XMonad-Actions-CycleWS.html#g:5&#34;&gt;XMonad.Actions.CycleWS&lt;/a&gt;
  5936. I found an alternative that mostly solves my problem.&lt;/p&gt;
  5937.  
  5938. &lt;p&gt;Originally I had the following keybindings in my &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/bpb-kit/src/branch/main/home/.xmonad/xmonad.hs&#34;&gt;xmonad.hs&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  5939.  
  5940. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  (&#34;M-&#38;lt;Right&#38;gt;&#34;, nextWS)
  5941. , (&#34;M-&#38;lt;Left&#38;gt;&#34;, prevWS)
  5942. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  5943.  
  5944. &lt;p&gt;These have been replaced with:&lt;/p&gt;
  5945.  
  5946. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  (&#34;M-&#38;lt;Left&#38;gt;&#34;, moveTo Prev HiddenWS)
  5947. , (&#34;M-&#38;lt;Right&#38;gt;&#34;, moveTo Next HiddenWS)
  5948. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  5949.  
  5950. &lt;p&gt;In practice this means that the workspace cycling for mod-Left and mod-Right
  5951. will skip over any already-visible workspaces, leaving them in place on the
  5952. other display.  There are other possibilities, including the next/previous
  5953. &lt;em&gt;empty&lt;/em&gt; workspace, but this is pretty close to what I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;
  5954.  
  5955.  
  5956.  
  5957. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/xmonad&#34;&gt;xmonad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5958. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5959. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5960. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/30/&#34; title=&#34;30&#34;&gt;30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5961. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5962.  
  5963. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Thursday, March 14, 2019</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/3/14"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/3/14</id><content type="html">
  5964.  
  5965. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Thursday, March 14, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5966.  
  5967. &lt;p&gt;Every time I declare tab bankruptcy and close the 15 to 25 things I have open
  5968. in a web browser, I suspect I&#38;rsquo;m losing state I will later regret being unable
  5969. to retrieve.&lt;/p&gt;
  5970.  
  5971. &lt;p&gt;That generalizes, I suppose.  I have this sense that a lot of what we do in
  5972. software is something like writing code before the use of version control
  5973. systems became a norm.&lt;/p&gt;
  5974.  
  5975. &lt;p&gt;All kinds of relationships and structures remain implicit, undescribed, and
  5976. impossible to model because they live purely in ephemeral application state.
  5977. The best we have in a lot of cases is fragile browser history, notification
  5978. backlogs in e-mail, or logs accumulated on other people&#38;rsquo;s computers for
  5979. purposes directly hostile to our interests.&lt;/p&gt;
  5980.  
  5981.  
  5982.  
  5983. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/version-control&#34;&gt;version-control&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5984. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  5985. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  5986. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/14/&#34; title=&#34;14&#34;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  5987. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  5988.  
  5989. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Sunday, March  3, 2019 - notes on notes</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/3/3"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/3/3</id><content type="html">
  5990.  
  5991. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Sunday, March  3, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  5992.  
  5993. &lt;h2&gt;notes on notes&lt;/h2&gt;
  5994.  
  5995. &lt;p&gt;First of all, I wrote up some &lt;a href=&#34;/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;notes on my current note-taking process&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  5996.  
  5997. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ❂ &lt;/p&gt;
  5998.  
  5999.  
  6000. &lt;p&gt;I started to do this the other day as a regular, dated p1k3 entry, but it got
  6001. sort of long and I found myself wanting to do it as a standalone document that
  6002. I could update over time.  It seemed like a table of contents would be nice,
  6003. but that&#38;rsquo;s not something that &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt; supports, so I decided to see
  6004. how hard it would be to add based on the &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/userland-book/src/branch/master/render.pl&#34;&gt;hacky rendering script&lt;/a&gt; I
  6005. wrote for &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/userland-book/&#34;&gt;userland&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  6006.  
  6007. &lt;p&gt;That turned out to be a hassle to do well for various reasons, so I turned to
  6008. &lt;a href=&#34;https://pandoc.org/&#34;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt;, which supports generating a table of contents out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;
  6009.  
  6010. &lt;p&gt;There&#38;rsquo;s a &lt;a href=&#34;https://metacpan.org/pod/Pandoc&#34;&gt;Perl wrapper&lt;/a&gt; for the &lt;code&gt;pandoc&lt;/code&gt; binary, so I first tried
  6011. using that to add a simple &#38;lt;pandoc&#38;gt;&#38;hellip;&#38;lt;/pandoc&#38;gt; pseudo-tag to wrt&#38;rsquo;s
  6012. markup processing the way I&#38;rsquo;ve done for Textile, Markdown, and other things in
  6013. the past.  It turns out that in order to get a table of contents out of Pandoc
  6014. while still generating an HTML fragment (rather than a complete document), you
  6015. have to write a custom template file.  It also turns out that if you want to
  6016. automatically put self-links next to headers, you need to write a
  6017. &lt;a href=&#34;https://pandoc.org/filters.html&#34;&gt;custom filter to transform Pandoc&#38;rsquo;s abstract syntax tree&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  6018.  
  6019. &lt;p&gt;I gave up on modifying wrt to handle this and switched to writing a small
  6020. &lt;code&gt;Makefile&lt;/code&gt;, a &lt;code&gt;filter.py&lt;/code&gt;, and a template to generate HTML for inclusion
  6021. by wrt.  You can see the results &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/archives/notes-on-notes/&#34;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or
  6022. &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/p1k3/src/branch/master/archives/notes-on-notes&#34;&gt;on my gitea instance&lt;/a&gt;.  I kind of hate the
  6023. outcome and I&#38;rsquo;m not sure I&#38;rsquo;ll do anything this way again, but I definitely
  6024. learned some stuff about Pandoc.  I suppose this might be a useful example
  6025. for someone.&lt;/p&gt;
  6026.  
  6027.  
  6028.  
  6029. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/notes&#34;&gt;notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/pandoc&#34;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/wrt&#34;&gt;wrt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  6030. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  6031. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; /
  6032. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/3/3/&#34; title=&#34;3&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  6033. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  6034.  
  6035. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Saturday, February 16, 2019 - NOAA weather data</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/2/16"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/2/16</id><content type="html">
  6036.  
  6037. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Saturday, February 16, 2019&lt;/h1&gt;
  6038.  
  6039. &lt;h2&gt;NOAA weather data&lt;/h2&gt;
  6040.  
  6041. &lt;p&gt;Resources discussed in this post:&lt;/p&gt;
  6042.  
  6043. &lt;ul&gt;
  6044. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/jaor/xmobar/blob/master/src/Xmobar/Plugins/Monitors/Weather.hs&#34;&gt;Current source of xmobar Weather plugin&lt;/a&gt;, and
  6045. &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/jaor/xmobar/blob/132c4c459763c81ddf60aeedf5b87b619bb5f1ce/src/Xmobar/Plugins/Monitors/Weather.hs&#34;&gt;at the time of this writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6046. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/decoded/&#34;&gt;Directory listing of decoded METAR stations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6047. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/info&#34;&gt;HTML list of METAR stations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6048. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.aviationweather.gov/docs/metar/stations.txt&#34;&gt;A more complete text list of METAR stations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6049. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;http://fungi.yuggoth.org/weather/&#34;&gt;The &lt;code&gt;weather&lt;/code&gt; utility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6050. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://xmonad.org/&#34;&gt;xmonad&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&#34;https://xmobar.org/&#34;&gt;xmobar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6051. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/bpb-kit/src/branch/master/home/.xmobarrc&#34;&gt;My current .xmobarrc file&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  6052. &lt;/ul&gt;
  6053.  
  6054.  
  6055. &lt;p&gt;This post is just about using public weather data to display a temperature in
  6056. my windowing environment, but at some point I&#38;rsquo;d like to use it as a jumping off
  6057. point for more deeply exploring the available data.  It&#38;rsquo;s really cool how much
  6058. of this stuff is available as simple text files and the like.  Your tax dollars
  6059. at work, but in a good way.&lt;/p&gt;
  6060.  
  6061. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✪ &lt;/p&gt;
  6062.  
  6063.  
  6064. &lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&#34;https://xmonad.org/&#34;&gt;xmonad&lt;/a&gt; for window management, and along with it a simple
  6065. status bar called &lt;a href=&#34;https://xmobar.org/&#34;&gt;xmobar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  6066.  
  6067. &lt;p&gt;xmobar offers some monitoring plugins that display various bits of system
  6068. status and other things.  One of them is a weather plugin that can grab
  6069. temperature and other values from NOAA-supplied weather data.  I&#38;rsquo;ve been using
  6070. the temperature from a METAR site at Denver International Airport, code &lt;code&gt;KDEN&lt;/code&gt;,
  6071. but I wondered if there was something closer to home available.&lt;/p&gt;
  6072.  
  6073. &lt;p&gt;I always have the vague sense that there&#38;rsquo;s a ton of public weather data like
  6074. this out there, but I don&#38;rsquo;t have a very good mental map of where it lives and I
  6075. usually wind up fumbling around until I hit a directory full of text files on
  6076. some FTP site.  The docs for xmobar also aren&#38;rsquo;t very clear on what the station
  6077. codes actually reference.&lt;/p&gt;
  6078.  
  6079. &lt;p&gt;Some notes follow for the next time I&#38;rsquo;m thinking about this.&lt;/p&gt;
  6080.  
  6081. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✴ &lt;/p&gt;
  6082.  
  6083.  
  6084. &lt;p&gt;xmobar&#38;rsquo;s weather plugin (&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/jaor/xmobar/blob/master/src/Xmobar/Plugins/Monitors/Weather.hs&#34;&gt;source on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;) uses
  6085. decoded METAR station data, available in text files &lt;a href=&#34;https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/decoded/&#34;&gt;from tgftp.nws.noaa.gov&lt;/a&gt;.
  6086. The path to the site is, at this writing, hardcoded in the plugin.&lt;/p&gt;
  6087.  
  6088. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METAR&#34;&gt;METAR itself&lt;/a&gt; (&#38;ldquo;Meteorological Aerodrome Reports&#38;rdquo;) is evidently a
  6089. standard that&#38;rsquo;s been around since 1968 in some form.  The data looks something
  6090. like this:&lt;/p&gt;
  6091.  
  6092. &lt;!-- exec --&gt;
  6093.  
  6094.  
  6095. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ curl --silent https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/stations/KDEN.TXT
  6096. 2019/02/16 21:48
  6097. KDEN 162148Z 36016G27KT 1 1/2SM -SN BKN022 OVC026 M02/M05 A2952 RMK AO2 PK WND 36027/2142 WSHFT 2118 SNB2057 P0000
  6098. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  6099.  
  6100. &lt;!-- end --&gt;
  6101.  
  6102.  
  6103. &lt;p&gt;And NOAA also offers decoded versions, which is what xmobar is parsing:&lt;/p&gt;
  6104.  
  6105. &lt;!-- exec --&gt;
  6106.  
  6107.  
  6108. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ curl --silent https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/decoded/KDEN.TXT
  6109. DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, CO, United States (KDEN) 39-52N 104-40W 1640M
  6110. Feb 16, 2019 - 04:48 PM EST / 2019.02.16 2148 UTC
  6111. Wind: from the N (360 degrees) at 18 MPH (16 KT) gusting to 31 MPH (27 KT):0
  6112. Visibility: 1 1/2 mile(s):0
  6113. Sky conditions: overcast
  6114. Weather: light snow
  6115. Precipitation last hour: A trace
  6116. Temperature: 28 F (-2 C)
  6117. Windchill: 15 F (-9 C):1
  6118. Dew Point: 23 F (-5 C)
  6119. Relative Humidity: 79%
  6120. Pressure (altimeter): 29.52 in. Hg (999 hPa)
  6121. ob: KDEN 162148Z 36016G27KT 1 1/2SM -SN BKN022 OVC026 M02/M05 A2952 RMK AO2 PK WND 36027/2142 WSHFT 2118 SNB2057 P0000
  6122. cycle: 22
  6123. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  6124.  
  6125. &lt;!-- end --&gt;
  6126.  
  6127.  
  6128. &lt;p&gt;In Debian, you can install a package called &lt;code&gt;weather-util&lt;/code&gt; which makes for easy
  6129. searching of the data.  Here&#38;rsquo;s a station at the airport in Longmont:&lt;/p&gt;
  6130.  
  6131. &lt;!-- exec --&gt;
  6132.  
  6133.  
  6134. &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ weather KLMO
  6135. Searching via station...
  6136. [caching result Vance Brand Airport, US]
  6137. Current conditions at &#38;lt;UNKNOWN&#38;gt;
  6138. Last updated Feb 16, 2019 - 04:35 PM EST / 2019.02.16 2135 UTC
  6139.   Temperature: 36.0 F (2.2 C)
  6140.   Relative Humidity: 70%
  6141.   Wind: from the E (100 degrees) at 3 MPH (3 KT)
  6142.   Sky conditions: partly cloudy
  6143. &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
  6144.  
  6145. &lt;!-- end --&gt;
  6146.  
  6147.  
  6148. &lt;p&gt;Finally, I couldn&#38;rsquo;t figure out why I was just getting the string &#38;ldquo;Updating&#38;hellip;&#38;rdquo;
  6149. instead of a temperature after swapping in &lt;code&gt;KLMO&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;code&gt;KDEN&lt;/code&gt;, then I realized
  6150. that you also need to change the station name in the template.  Here are the
  6151. &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/bpb-kit/commit/c9d406b1a4590e3d5b4c49420a7ce37225ddd0a5&#34;&gt;changes I made to my .xmobarrc while writing this post&lt;/a&gt;.
  6152. They also include a tweak to display sky conditions and a slightly different
  6153. date format.&lt;/p&gt;
  6154.  
  6155.  
  6156.  
  6157. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/bpb-kit&#34;&gt;bpb-kit&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/data&#34;&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/noaa&#34;&gt;noaa&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/technical&#34;&gt;technical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/warelogging&#34;&gt;warelogging&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/weather&#34;&gt;weather&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/xmobar&#34;&gt;xmobar&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/xmonad&#34;&gt;xmonad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  6158. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  6159. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  6160. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/2/16/&#34; title=&#34;16&#34;&gt;16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  6161. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  6162.  
  6163. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry><entry><title>Tuesday, February 12 - reading: astounding</title><link href="https://p1k3.com/2019/2/12"/><id>https://p1k3.com/2019/2/12</id><content type="html">
  6164.  
  6165. &lt;article&gt;&lt;div class=&#34;entry&#34;&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Tuesday, February 12&lt;/h1&gt;
  6166.  
  6167. &lt;h2&gt;reading: astounding&lt;/h2&gt;
  6168.  
  6169. &lt;p&gt;With the full subtitle, it&#38;rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov,
  6170. Robert A.  Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, by
  6171. Alec Nevala-Lee.  I mentioned this one a bit &lt;a href=&#34;/2018/1/1&#34;&gt;over a year ago&lt;/a&gt;.  While
  6172. the author&#38;rsquo;s preoccupations and tastes aren&#38;rsquo;t always mine, &lt;a href=&#34;https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/&#34;&gt;his
  6173. blog&lt;/a&gt; continued to offer up a lot of fascinating material over the
  6174. last year, and the book is such an obvious fit for my interests that I both
  6175. gave and received a copy of the hardcover for Christmas.&lt;/p&gt;
  6176.  
  6177. &lt;p&gt;Literary and musical biographies have been a disproportionate part of my
  6178. reading in adulthood, despite the genre usually leaving an unpleasant taste in
  6179. my mouth.  Writers, like musicians, are often difficult figures even when
  6180. presented charitably, and it seems to be the rare biographer who inhabits that
  6181. space between character assassination and outright hagiography.  I think
  6182. Nevala-Lee manages in an interesting way here, though it probably helps that
  6183. I&#38;rsquo;m going in expecting to actively dislike some of these people and already
  6184. have complicated feelings about the rest.&lt;/p&gt;
  6185.  
  6186. &lt;p class=&#34;centerpiece&#34;&gt; ✯ &lt;/p&gt;
  6187.  
  6188.  
  6189. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;/2018/1/1&#34;&gt;Last year in January&lt;/a&gt; I tried to summarize my reading for 2017 and
  6190. wound up concluding:&lt;/p&gt;
  6191.  
  6192. &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because really what I read in 2017, in most of the last several years, was the
  6193. internet.  Not even, in any real sense that registers, individual documents
  6194. hosted on the network, or the work of authors I can clearly identify.  Just
  6195. the endless scroll.&lt;/p&gt;
  6196.  
  6197. &lt;p&gt;The internet:  A tide of incoherent technical documentation, error logs,
  6198. seething sociopolitical rage, ideological agitation and condemnation (somewhere
  6199. between authentic and engineered/rehearsed, on some spectrum it is no longer
  6200. possible for me to easily parse), clickbait, reaction, comment vitriol,
  6201. disinformation, machine-generated pseudojournalism, notification spam,
  6202. marketing, infographical non-info, hot-take product, autoplaying video, and
  6203. generalized memetic spew.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  6204.  
  6205. &lt;p&gt;I could have written the same thing today, I think.  Maybe with the difference
  6206. that I&#38;rsquo;ve retreated even further from the general stream of clickbait and
  6207. commentary, and post almost nowhere in public.  Which in turn leads to
  6208. reading less of the stuff that people post about in endless, saturated loops of
  6209. indignation and competitive meta-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;
  6210.  
  6211. &lt;p&gt;The general sense that the news is bad and getting worse has only grown
  6212. stronger, and click-mongering hyperbole aside I think that reflects an
  6213. underlying reality which is in fact pretty fucking grim.  Somehow though,
  6214. paying the growing hum of the looming abyss less mind has left me, bit by bit,
  6215. feeling a little more able to deal with the grimness itself.&lt;/p&gt;
  6216.  
  6217.  
  6218.  
  6219. &lt;p class=&#34;tags&#34;&gt;&lt;b&gt;tags:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/reading&#34;&gt;reading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/sfnal&#34;&gt;sfnal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&#34;datestamp&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/&#34;&gt;p1k3&lt;/a&gt; /
  6220. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/&#34; title=&#34;2019&#34;&gt;2019&lt;/a&gt; /
  6221. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/2/&#34; title=&#34;2&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; /
  6222. &lt;a href=&#34;https://p1k3.com/2019/2/12/&#34; title=&#34;12&#34;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  6223. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/article&gt;
  6224.  
  6225. </content><updated>2024-03-25T18:45:12Z</updated></entry></feed>

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