Finished reading: Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks 💙📚 Adventure! Romance! Intrigue! Androids! Ancient tombs and weapons and space wars and chained monks. Fun!
Finished reading: Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks 💙📚 Adventure! Romance! Intrigue! Androids! Ancient tombs and weapons and space wars and chained monks. Fun!
Finished reading: Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod 💙📚 Moving. Heartbreaking. A quick slow read. Beautiful photos and scenes
In a coffee shop in Huntsville, AL. Until I just opened my laptop no one in here was on a device. People are talking to each other with eye contact and interest. Notebooks and binders, pens and pencils. What phones I can see are untouched and unregarded, flipped on their faces.
Looking to brave the storms and listen to some live music? I’m Emcee at tonight’s Nightfall in Chattanooga’s Miller Plaza. Music starts at 7 with Flashdrive; 8 is headliner Sinkane. Come on out & enjoy sub 90º temps! @chorddrift.com #wutc
I’m of an age that when I see a headline like “Lizzo Drops My Face Hurts From Smiling”, I think:
Oh, no! That’s so sad! What happened?
… before I remember and stop embarrassing my nieces.
I try not to be too grumpy when I comment on things on-line, but sometimes ya just gotta grump:
The U.K.-based James Bond International Fan Club is welcoming [Denis] Villeneuve’s hiring, saying on its website that the choice “will delight Bond fans the world over.”
via NPR
Delight is not the word I would use. Resigned exasperated eye roll better describes my feelings. The movie will likely look pretty while we watch Bond stand around significantly looking at things. As a big Dune & 007 📚+🎥 fan, I’m not looking forward to the new releases
The Battle of Agincourt is one of the most-studied military engagements in history. It wasn’t particularly large, or pivotal (not in the long run), but it makes for an elegant case study in the fragility of structured power and how perfect order, under the wrong conditions, becomes the perfect target. Rituals of command are not the same thing as strategy. And hierarchy, when ossified, becomes less a way of organizing action and more a way of distributing delay.
Without truth there is no kindness; without kindness the truth cannot be told.
— Tolstoy
Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.
— Solon
Chord Drift is on air now! www.wutc.org and 88.1FM Chattanooga & the Tennessee Valley! Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck++Grateful Dead++Mad River++Led Zeppelin chorddrift.com
This is a fun memory I’d forgotten: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lescamoteur:
Behind an unassuming door marked with a whimsical bicycle symbol, a narrow staircase leads to a steampunk attic packed with curiosities: antique birdcages, a floating leather sofa, old-world globes, and enough gears and gadgets to make Nikola Tesla blush.
I vacationed in Kyoto & Nara during Golden Week once. Faint recollections of a delightful drunken night locked in when I saw this article. I had a blast & strong recommend
A la Advice To A New Emacs User—Reddit🔗，my2¢:
JIC #emacs-mac users have homebrew upgrade errors, try:
cp -r /opt/homebrew/Cellar/emacs-mac /opt/homebrew/Cellar/emacs-mac@29
※＇@29＇is important
Maybe railwaycat made recent changes they rolled back, triggering updates；might only apply if one built w／–head previously GitHub Tix
My Wordpress is acting up again, so here:
One approach to setting up and using #Emacs to experience RSS feeds via #elfeed and #fresshrss by way of elfeed-protocol and #nextcloud for syncing things. Much to refine and improve. It works for me. YMMV, as always.
TIL Emacs org2blog package will publish a region if selected instead of the full buffer if one is not careful. I expect it’s by design and not a bug. Could actually prove useful as long as I don’t keep tripping over it. #emacs #org2blog
So yes, I care. I care desperately. I care because not caring isn’t an option. I care because the moment we accept that truth and morality are meaningless is the moment we guarantee they’ll never matter again. I care because somebody fucking has to … Because caring isn’t naive. Because documentation isn’t pointless. Because hope isn’t for fools.
I’d be surprised if I’m the first to say this: Welcome to OS Vista
I need to figure out how to tie casual-timezone into the coordinates I pull for Journelly on my Mac
Finished reading：Surface Detail by Iain M．Banks 💙📚My 2nd or 3rd Culture book．Interesting 2025 parallels．Lots of ships／AIs to keep track of．🔥Hell🔥 plays a big role．A gripping read w／v．grim backstory；I would not start here if toe dipping into Culture series
An occasional reminder: Detroit -vs- Everybody t-shirts＆the whole bullshit concept is totally fucking stupid＆self defeating．It says the city doesn’t need anyone; outsiders aren’t welcome．Cut it out already＆let it the fuck go；stop mythologizing．Embrace what makes Detroit great for all
via Laura Olin:
“There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man: they wanted what he promised; they didn’t believe what he promised; or they didn’t understand what he promised. Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak. And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.”
if i had one piece of advice for everyone, but that i need to take myself, it’s “you can acknowledge your weaknesses while also being kind to yourself”.
She exhales. “That natural human proclivity to say, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel right’ – he doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. They’re spending no time in shame, and shame is a righteous emotion. It’s not an emotion you want to live in, but it’s an emotion you want as a motivator sometimes. And where is it? Where’s the shame?”
— Abigail Disney via John Harris via The Guardian
Periodic reminder that it is at least a million times harder to build something valuable than it is to destroy it.
And social media … has gone from a wellspring of deeply reported storytelling to what feels like a video-infested wasteland devoid of clear thinking, curiosity or compassion.