Hemingways_Shotgun

Because -isms exist in a binary world (sexism, racism, etc…)

Any increase in visibility for whatever minority they happen to hate, is a decrease in visibility for them (in their feeble transactional little minds) and it drives them bonkers.

The notion that “facts matter”.

I’ve spent my entire life believing that facts don’t care about feelings. That scientific truth doesn’t require your belief in it in order to be true. That at the end of the day, reasoning will beat emotion…

By far the most dis-heartening thing about the last few years (to me) has been accepting the idea they “facts” are “whatever is shouted the loudest”.

It, more than anything else, makes me feel helpless. If the enemy isn’t even playing with the same fact-sheet… How do you even begin to fight that?

Zebra F-301

You are free to learn ‘Xi Jinping thought.’ Doubt this is for the progress of humanity.

That’s not how Open Source works. Is this Chinese version of the AI likely biased? Yes…almost certainly.

But Open Source means that anyone can download and use the same source code and same technology to tinker with it and create one that isn’t biased and has nothing to do with the Chinese government.

The power of Open Source is that regardless of who creates the software originally, a million eyes are literally looking at the code. It’s nearly impossible to hide any shenanigans.

Well shit, NOW whose films am I going to confidently proclaim to understand while secretly googling for an explanation on my phone…

Wait until they learn about parking your half-tonne on it, building a hut and sitting there fishing with some beers for hours.

Exactly. This is the good thing about federation. If you don’t like the community you’re in, move to another one that better aligns to your values. No one’s speech is “limited”, but other instances aren’t forced to listen to you unless they want to.

That’s a very fair point. But it’s still annoying.

Not when every app decides to use a different point version of the same damn platform.

"Hello Mr. Application. I see you’d like to use the Freedesktop-SDK 23.08.27

“Oh…well hello other application. What’s this? You want to use Freedesktop-SDK 24.08.10? Well…I guess so…”

Edited to add: Yes, I know that flatpaks will upgrade to use updated platforms. But it doesn’t automatically remove the old one, forcing you to have to run flatpak remove --unused every week just to keep your drive clean. That’s hardly user friendly for the average person.

I don’t mind flatpaks in a pinch, but having to use them for literally every app on my computer is an unreasonable amount of bloat.

So this is half on me, and half on my father. (I inherited my “stupid idea” gene.

When I was 16 my dad was building a greenhouse on our small acreage. Frame was up, everything was ready and it became time to lay down the heavy clear plastic sheeting that would form the surface.

As he was up in the top nailing down each corner, it was my job to hold each corner down as tight as I could from the ground by using a rope attached to the corner of the sheet. (I don’t know if i’m describing this properly).

Any way, my father’s fault in the story is this: The only “rope” we could find was baler twine. It’s thin, coarse, and can easily slice like a saw. We secured a long piece of it to the corner of the sheeting and my job was to basically “tug of war” the corner in order to keep it taut for my father to secure.

Anyone raised in the country already sees exactly where I’m going with this…

MY stupid part in this story is this…

In an attempt to get a better purchase on the baler twine, I wrapped it a few times around my hand, through my fingers, etc…

Did I mention it was a bit windy that day? So a guest of wind took the corner and ripped it out of my hands, with the twine literally zipping through my fingers, slicing them nearly to the bone because friction + baler twine = weirdly effective saw.

Four fingers on my right hand were left with ring scars from where the twine zipped through them and my right hand was out of action for about a week

There’s still a lot of bad blood between the Danes and the Canadians. A lot of good young men watched booze being spilled in front of them. It was horrific. I just don’t know if there’s any coming back from the kind of horrors both countries saw in the Whiskey War.

The irony of all of it is that technically I can become a dual citizen anytime I wanted to file the paperwork since my parents are Portuguese citizens. But up until recently I’ve never felt the need for that particular escape valve.

I’ve always known I would have to get it eventually in order to handle my now ageing father’s finances over there when he passes. And I always regretted not doing it when I was young and free to travel before life gets one bogged down in trivialities.

Is there some kind of loophole where Canada can join the EU? I mean we’re not really that far away if you fly over the North Pole and down again.

Pretty please? Think of the better costs for Poutine and Maple Syrup!

That is essentially the vibe I got from that argument. We didn’t last much longer after that.

The moment I knew that I had to break it off with my ex was when a comment about tea-cup saucers turned into an accusation that I “always had to be right”.

We were having cake for dessert:

Her: “Can you grab plates?”

Me: Grabs a couple of small plates.

Her: “No, those aren’t for cake. It’s the really small ones.”

Me: “Okay, but FYI the small ones are actually teacup saucers. You can tell the difference because they have the indent in the middle so the teacup doesn’t slip around.”

Her: “You just always have to be right, don’t you?”

What followed was a truly bonkers argument where I found myself accused of “lording my intelligence” and told that I had to be right in everything.

For the record, I told her I literally didn’t give a shit what she wants to eat cake off of. I’m the guy that would happily use a Tupperware lid as a plate if it was the closest thing to hand. I was just pointing out an “interesting fact” (in my mind at least).

I wouldn’t necessarily call those two facts “incidental”. I’d be pretty confident calling it “cause and effect”.

Once Kdenlive got its stability issues sorted out, I was shockingly impressed with just how good it’s gotten. I still wouldn’t put it against DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro or anything, but it sits along with Inkscape and Blender as a great example of what Open Source is capable of in a professional setting.

Lato, League Spartan, League Gothic are my three most used fonts by a wide margin. Lato and its variety of weights for most things, League when I am doing design work and need a cleaner title or header.

Lately ive been weirdly taken with TT2020 Style G, which is an odd name for a no-name font that replicates an old imperfect typewriter. For whatever reason, switching my writing software to that (Manuscript) suddenly fired up my writing flow.

I’m the guy who is consistently picking up old games that he’s always wanted when they go on a steam sale years later for single digits. So I’m constantly three or four (or more years) behind. And I don’t really mind because I’m always a single player who doesn’t enjoy any form of online multiplayer.

So do I care that I only last month picked up EU4 and a bunch of DLC for cheap, not one bit. Same for Civ 6.

I’ll happily chug away at my old games that no one cares about anymore.