Journal

Friday, February 23, 2024

Substack’s Dilemma

“I will pelt you to death with marshmallows” is not very credible, though it might conceivably be done if one had a great many marshmallows.

How many HTTP requests does it take to read a blog post versus a thread? What does it mean when it matters? What does it mean when it doesn’t?

My Secret Teaching Framework (Revealed)

[Organize your message by: 1) starting with the point up-front; 2) tell a story to demonstrate; 3) make it more relatable with a metaphor; and 4) re-state the point.]

Unlike “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them” this focuses on starting with useful information. I’ve been organizing myself lately to share ’nuggets’, which gives you something without having to read further, and like the idea of progressively adding layers or enriching what was previously stated.

Sustainable Open Source

[Find more contributors by: 1) always recruiting; 2) caring about people first, contributions second; 3) documenting your processes.]

[Sunlight helps your skin produce melanin, which keeps hair black, skin tanned, and influences the amount of hair. Eyes also have some.]

[Lack of vitamin B1 (thiamin) can cause white hairs to appear.]

[Copper is essential for producing melanin and can be found in seafood (oysters, mussels, crustaceans), liver, nuts (cashews, Brazil nuts), legumes (lentils, beans) and dark chocolate.]

[Yanking out hairs can destroy their roots and over the long-term create gaps in your beard. Doing it gently can help keep the root alive. It might produce the same white hair again if melanin production in this particular root stopped for some reason.]

Paying people to work on open source is good actually

Every time a maintainer finds a way to get paid, it’s a win.

Until we have fully automated luxury gay space communism every. single. person. who figures out a mechanism to write free software and still pay rent represents a win and we should celebrate accordingly.

Thinking about GitHub while trying to sleep is kind of like being on GitHub while trying to sleep.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

[Make a simple paste from olives, garlic, salt, and oil.]

The very end of a batch of olive paste should become vinaigrette. Whisk in a tiny bit of mustard, a few drops of red wine vinegar, fresh lemon juice, and olive oil, and mix with romaine.

If it’s hot dogs or cinnamon toast that reminds your heart that it can be moved by food, make hot dogs or cinnamon toast.

Part of An Everlasting Meal.

Seek wisdom, humanity, relational existence, cooperation over competition, and you won’t find much in startups and business.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Sleep is a process. Sleep is a practice.

quick tips for difficult conversations

[Have a difficult conversation by: 1) avoiding small talk or “how are you?” and starting with “thanks for making the time to speak with me”; 2) state that you need help with what to do or feel about the subject; and 3) finish by sharing that you feel settled or like the direction, and then ask “how about you?”]

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Adrian Holovaty: Melodic Guitar Music (2023)

Pure instrumental arrangements with guitar and bass. Tasteful improvising over django swing vibes.

Marta Gómez: Canciones de sol (2016)

Sweet simple melodies with complex rhythms and accompaniment, punctuated with a children’s chorus.

The benefits of interop are greater than the convenience of not caring about standard formats.

Monday, February 19, 2024

What is the Difference Between a Radler and a Shandy? | Druthers Brewing Company

Shandy originated in the 1850s in England where it was earlier known as Shandygaff. The Shandygaff was a mixture of beer and ginger ale or ginger beer. By the late 19th-century, the ginger ale in the Shandygaff was replaced by lemonade or lemon soda, and the “gaff” was dropped to shorten the word to just Shandy.

Phenology, Time and Synchronization

[Befriending a bird, the news spreads to other animals.]

[We refer to plants in English as “whats” and “its”, implying an object, rather than “whos”, implying living beings.]

What would it mean to speak a language thousands of years older than English?

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Let’s talk about a gofundme for Trump….

[Someone working at $15 per hour wanting to raise 355 million dollars would have had to start in the year 678, BC, and that assumes a twenty-four hour workday with no weekends or holidays.]

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Forked cors-anywhere to replace cors-proxy.fringe.zone with cors.rosano.ca in Joybox, OSFeedbox, and home.

YunoHost has an ‘Edit’ button on their homepage which lets you directly modify the content and send them a ‘patch’.

I wasn’t able to submit my change because of a ‘File not found’ error, but still find it fascinating to not require people to use GitHub or Git in order to contribute.

The logic is in the seemingly random ‘gertrude’ repository (which has not much of a README or description for what it is, and it looks like the ‘patch’ is just the full HTML page content; perhaps someone can manually integrate it later. They claim to require email verification to catch spam before actually sending the change.

If it was possible to put a mailto on the internet without spam, it could remove friction from this kind of collaboration and create steps for people to do larger things.

Start where you are instead of implementing a concept, especially somebody else’s concept—an overarching strategy isn’t necessary.