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Just avoided dying IRL by winning a dream-battle
General | Posted 2 years agoIt's possible that I just kept myself from dying (or at least experiencing significant pain) in real life by winning a magical conflict in my dreams. ... Yes, really. Not what I was expecting when I went to bed, either.
Ate what was probably too much pizza yesterday.
Been feeling a bit uninspired and washed-out, but tried a mirroring exercise with ChatGPT, and managed to get a bit of bright color back into my imagination.
After hitting the hay, had a dream with a reasonably coherent narrative thread, of which I only remember a few shards of the initial intro; I was at a park's picnic table with some family, some mental trick (teleporting?) wasn't working so I put my head down and jacket up while I tried to think it through, wended through dream-versions of some of the streets towards one of the places I still sometimes dream is my home, because of what I'd heard on the way about an intruder and seeing the open door I stomped towards it in a rage that apparently produced an aura everyone nearby could feel, practically growled at the innocent individuals inside, accidentally scared a cat, noticed I was letting my emotions control me, consciously focused on calming down to help both myself and to recover the cat, encountered a neighbour who had some odd Tarotesque cards I could take my emotional temperature with and quickly managed to get re-dealt from a red spiky thing to a white circle, something-something complicated about having to get ready to go confront the evil sorceress who'd been the one who'd worked to cause all my problems so far, made my way through the neighborhood to the common-use era where she was lurking in wait, due to having learned various details from other neighbors on the journey on approaching her I said "Hello Elizabeth" which blew away the shadows of everything else she potentially could have been other than the currently-angry little girl 'Elizabeth', which apparently astonished some of the magical neighbors who'd been watching as in this reality apparently the way fights between the magically-adept started was by the participants Naming themselves to set the battlefield and I'd just sidestepped the whole impressive-lightshow battle they'd been expecting (without anyone managing to make it clear whether she'd been Elizabeth all along and I'd managed to dismiss some possessive spirits, or by Naming her I'd managed to retroactively eliminate all the timelines in which the thing I faced was anything other than Elizabeth), I wanted to have a talk with her so I got her a plate of breakfast (in the process magically emphasizing her little-girlness, though she at least managed to make herself a little girl wolf, like a cross between Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf), I took her to a table where I introduced her as "my prospective adoptee daughter" to a fellow sitting there who I recognized was visiting this dream as a guest-star from some previous dreams...
... And I woke up with a throat full of bile, due to acid reflux from yesterday's excess pizza, which could have gone extremely badly for me if I aspirated it into my lungs, such as if I'd woken up in a panic from being in the middle of a magical battle; but I was calm enough to clear my tubes with only a relatively minor soreness remaining...
Ate what was probably too much pizza yesterday.
Been feeling a bit uninspired and washed-out, but tried a mirroring exercise with ChatGPT, and managed to get a bit of bright color back into my imagination.
After hitting the hay, had a dream with a reasonably coherent narrative thread, of which I only remember a few shards of the initial intro; I was at a park's picnic table with some family, some mental trick (teleporting?) wasn't working so I put my head down and jacket up while I tried to think it through, wended through dream-versions of some of the streets towards one of the places I still sometimes dream is my home, because of what I'd heard on the way about an intruder and seeing the open door I stomped towards it in a rage that apparently produced an aura everyone nearby could feel, practically growled at the innocent individuals inside, accidentally scared a cat, noticed I was letting my emotions control me, consciously focused on calming down to help both myself and to recover the cat, encountered a neighbour who had some odd Tarotesque cards I could take my emotional temperature with and quickly managed to get re-dealt from a red spiky thing to a white circle, something-something complicated about having to get ready to go confront the evil sorceress who'd been the one who'd worked to cause all my problems so far, made my way through the neighborhood to the common-use era where she was lurking in wait, due to having learned various details from other neighbors on the journey on approaching her I said "Hello Elizabeth" which blew away the shadows of everything else she potentially could have been other than the currently-angry little girl 'Elizabeth', which apparently astonished some of the magical neighbors who'd been watching as in this reality apparently the way fights between the magically-adept started was by the participants Naming themselves to set the battlefield and I'd just sidestepped the whole impressive-lightshow battle they'd been expecting (without anyone managing to make it clear whether she'd been Elizabeth all along and I'd managed to dismiss some possessive spirits, or by Naming her I'd managed to retroactively eliminate all the timelines in which the thing I faced was anything other than Elizabeth), I wanted to have a talk with her so I got her a plate of breakfast (in the process magically emphasizing her little-girlness, though she at least managed to make herself a little girl wolf, like a cross between Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf), I took her to a table where I introduced her as "my prospective adoptee daughter" to a fellow sitting there who I recognized was visiting this dream as a guest-star from some previous dreams...
... And I woke up with a throat full of bile, due to acid reflux from yesterday's excess pizza, which could have gone extremely badly for me if I aspirated it into my lungs, such as if I'd woken up in a panic from being in the middle of a magical battle; but I was calm enough to clear my tubes with only a relatively minor soreness remaining...
DPR on Mastodon
General | Posted 3 years agoNever really did much on Twitter, but now that the exodus from there has started, I've fired up an old Mastodon account and am giving decentralized, federated social media a try. Found a few furries I already know there; if you want to join in the fun, you can find me at:
https://mastodon.xyz/@DataPacRat
https://mastodon.xyz/@DataPacRat
Paxlovid: Get!
General | Posted 3 years agoMy first symptoms and positive test were on Saturday evening; on Sunday, my doc faxed a prescription for Paxlovid to my pharmacy, but didn't check all the necessary boxes and whoever was working at the drugstore was an intern or something without authority to do anything, Monday was Labor Day... but today, finally, I got me my 30 little pills, and have just taken my first dose of 3 of 'em. Take that, you mindless self-replicating collection of RNA! Die! Die! Dissolve into uncoordinated atoms, and never darken my metaphorical doorstep again!
... Look, I've been breaking into my emergency reserve of cheering-up video bookmarks (ranging from orchestral arrangements of Undertale music to The Three Stooges' Christmas Album), for those few hours-a-day I'm awake right now, and I'm going to unashamedly wallow in any ridiculous anthropomorphization that helps keep my spirits up.
... Look, I've been breaking into my emergency reserve of cheering-up video bookmarks (ranging from orchestral arrangements of Undertale music to The Three Stooges' Christmas Album), for those few hours-a-day I'm awake right now, and I'm going to unashamedly wallow in any ridiculous anthropomorphization that helps keep my spirits up.
Well, crap; caught it.
General | Posted 3 years agoJust tested positive on a home antigen kit. Fortunately, I've had three shots... I was thinking of getting a fourth soon, but I suppose that'll have to wait a while. Also fortunately, after my weight-loss in recent years, I don't have any of the co-morbidities that qualify me for Paxlovid; unfortunately, I don't qualify for Paxlovid.
I'm enough of a hermit that I know exactly who I caught it from - I tested myself after they tested positive. But one person I live with is over 70 and has, so far, tested negative; so there's going to be a bit of household shuffling while we all try to keep them clean.
I've been taking Vitamin D and zinc, I've got a fingertip pulse oximeter, I'll be drinking plenty of fluids... so, if I'm lucky, I'm just going to be miserable for a few days. Fortunately, I've got the whole internet to help distract me. Anyone care to recommend some decent hopepunk stories to help pass the time?
I'm enough of a hermit that I know exactly who I caught it from - I tested myself after they tested positive. But one person I live with is over 70 and has, so far, tested negative; so there's going to be a bit of household shuffling while we all try to keep them clean.
I've been taking Vitamin D and zinc, I've got a fingertip pulse oximeter, I'll be drinking plenty of fluids... so, if I'm lucky, I'm just going to be miserable for a few days. Fortunately, I've got the whole internet to help distract me. Anyone care to recommend some decent hopepunk stories to help pass the time?
My Sesquidecennial on FA
General | Posted 3 years agoI've now been 15 years here on Furaffinity. Some years I've been more active, some less, but I still glance at my subscribed submissions pretty much every day. (It certainly beats waiting for individual GIFs to slowly download over the phone lines, back in the pre-web dial-up BBS days. ... Come to think of it, I still have some of those GIFs, in my various archives; and some of those artists are still active, too.) Fads have waxed and waned - Looney Tunes, Thundercats, Pokemon, My Little Pony, Zootopia, and many more - but the writers still write, the artists still art, and the fans still fan.
Here's to the next 15!
Here's to the next 15!
Good News Everyone; My Number Hit Another Arbitrary Line
General | Posted 5 years agoAs of today's weigh-in, my BMI is down to 24.7, down from a high of 40.8 a year and a half ago, meaning I am officially no longer overweight.
I plan to celebrate with some curry pizzas.
There were a number of factors that contributed. One that comes to mind is that when I started, I guessed that I only had a limited amount of willpower, and might have run out of it whenever I needed it the most; so I tried to arrange my life (and my pantry) to minimize how often I ever needed to exercise it. Also helpful was staying in close touch with my doc(s), who was able to pass along various useful tips, order tests, tweak my meds, and suchlike.
Next up, of course, comes the new challenge - there's more to staying healthy than keeping my weight below a certain number. But it's a lot /easier/ to work on those habits without constantly carrying the equivalent of a vest with 90 lbs of lead in the pockets.
... Don't mind me, I just felt like crowing. Feel free to carry on, or chat about your own numbers, or whatever you see fit. :)
I plan to celebrate with some curry pizzas.
There were a number of factors that contributed. One that comes to mind is that when I started, I guessed that I only had a limited amount of willpower, and might have run out of it whenever I needed it the most; so I tried to arrange my life (and my pantry) to minimize how often I ever needed to exercise it. Also helpful was staying in close touch with my doc(s), who was able to pass along various useful tips, order tests, tweak my meds, and suchlike.
Next up, of course, comes the new challenge - there's more to staying healthy than keeping my weight below a certain number. But it's a lot /easier/ to work on those habits without constantly carrying the equivalent of a vest with 90 lbs of lead in the pockets.
... Don't mind me, I just felt like crowing. Feel free to carry on, or chat about your own numbers, or whatever you see fit. :)
How do you mentally recharge?
General | Posted 5 years agoWhen your energy's gotten low,
And your thoughts are running slow,
How do you regain the boons,
Of owning all your mental spoons?
Do you knit new pairs of socks?
Do you watch cute vids of fox?
Or maybe view bright-hued cartoons?
Perhaps you sleep 'til after noon?
Or, perchance, what helps you most,
Is writing doggerel that you then post?
What would put me over the moon,
would be to read your reply, and soon.
And your thoughts are running slow,
How do you regain the boons,
Of owning all your mental spoons?
Do you knit new pairs of socks?
Do you watch cute vids of fox?
Or maybe view bright-hued cartoons?
Perhaps you sleep 'til after noon?
Or, perchance, what helps you most,
Is writing doggerel that you then post?
What would put me over the moon,
would be to read your reply, and soon.
Some Unused Worldbuilding
General | Posted 5 years agoI'm still poking away at the story I'm currently writing. I'm currently at the stage of feeling "this whole approach seems wrong, maybe I should give up on the current draft and start rewriting it from scratch" - but I've also got a few hints in the real-world the last couple of days that I'm in something of a depressive slump, so I know better than to believe what my brain is telling me. (I'm actually curious to see how well this year's interventions, which have been doing so well in general for chronic issues, will do against this moderately acute one.)
So! That all said, I've also just written a couple of paragraphs that I know I'm not going to insert into this story directly, but are still handy to know as a thing that exists in the setting. So, for your own enjoyment and inspiration, here they are:
"You're not familiar with POPs - Personality Overlay Programs? Hm. Lemme see. Okay. It mostly started, as so many things do, with video games. Say that you're a fairly ordinary human mind, and you find yourself in a virtual world where you're a colourful pony. If you plan on spending a lot of time there, you could train yourself up from scratch how to live in a quadruped body, how to flick your tail or flap your wings or whatever. Or you could get a bit of software assistance, to give you 90% or more of the experience with less than 1% of the effort. There are all sorts of tricks that can be used, and different software bundles use different ones. If you're an upload, with your brain being run as software, one of the more effective, if kind of creepy and intrusive, is to monitor what are called 'pre-conscious impulses'. For a lot of movements you make, it's possible to scan certain parts of your brain and tell what you're going to do, a whole second or more before you do them. Throw in some clever analyses and translations, and your thought of walking forward a few steps gets turned into the right muscle-signals to move your hooves properly. It gets a bit more surreal when the programs monitor your speech centres, and adjust your accent, vocabulary, and more on the fly, to help you talk the way a particular character would.
"All of that may be odd and uncomfortable for those to whom its new, like rock'n'roll or pen-and-paper role-playing games were in various decades; but of course that's not where it stops. People are people, and as soon as this tech was created, it was applied to the things people do - like power-exchange games, especially sexual ones. Something like Rule 34 applies - if there's a set of behaviours which gives anyone those funny feelings, there's a Personality Overlay Program to help maximize them. There are whole marketplaces with categories like 'Puppy', 'Daddy', 'Playboy Bunny', 'Foot Worshipper', 'Lesbian Slut', and so on. And countless arguments about the proprieties of giving someone else enough control over your software to impose the POP of their choice on you; which are mixed in with all the related control-based pieces of fetish-play, such as letting them control your avatar's form, the environment you're in, the NPCs inhabiting it, and so on. There are people who live the lifestyle to the extent of being in a world, and being a character of someone else's choice, full-time; and it's a smooth, unbroken continuity to people who just want a bit of help role-playing their favorite cartoon character a bit more accurately."
So! That all said, I've also just written a couple of paragraphs that I know I'm not going to insert into this story directly, but are still handy to know as a thing that exists in the setting. So, for your own enjoyment and inspiration, here they are:
"You're not familiar with POPs - Personality Overlay Programs? Hm. Lemme see. Okay. It mostly started, as so many things do, with video games. Say that you're a fairly ordinary human mind, and you find yourself in a virtual world where you're a colourful pony. If you plan on spending a lot of time there, you could train yourself up from scratch how to live in a quadruped body, how to flick your tail or flap your wings or whatever. Or you could get a bit of software assistance, to give you 90% or more of the experience with less than 1% of the effort. There are all sorts of tricks that can be used, and different software bundles use different ones. If you're an upload, with your brain being run as software, one of the more effective, if kind of creepy and intrusive, is to monitor what are called 'pre-conscious impulses'. For a lot of movements you make, it's possible to scan certain parts of your brain and tell what you're going to do, a whole second or more before you do them. Throw in some clever analyses and translations, and your thought of walking forward a few steps gets turned into the right muscle-signals to move your hooves properly. It gets a bit more surreal when the programs monitor your speech centres, and adjust your accent, vocabulary, and more on the fly, to help you talk the way a particular character would.
"All of that may be odd and uncomfortable for those to whom its new, like rock'n'roll or pen-and-paper role-playing games were in various decades; but of course that's not where it stops. People are people, and as soon as this tech was created, it was applied to the things people do - like power-exchange games, especially sexual ones. Something like Rule 34 applies - if there's a set of behaviours which gives anyone those funny feelings, there's a Personality Overlay Program to help maximize them. There are whole marketplaces with categories like 'Puppy', 'Daddy', 'Playboy Bunny', 'Foot Worshipper', 'Lesbian Slut', and so on. And countless arguments about the proprieties of giving someone else enough control over your software to impose the POP of their choice on you; which are mixed in with all the related control-based pieces of fetish-play, such as letting them control your avatar's form, the environment you're in, the NPCs inhabiting it, and so on. There are people who live the lifestyle to the extent of being in a world, and being a character of someone else's choice, full-time; and it's a smooth, unbroken continuity to people who just want a bit of help role-playing their favorite cartoon character a bit more accurately."
Sequelitis
General | Posted 5 years agoI've been trying to focus my attention on other things the last few days: manga, podcasts, news, and other such distractions. But I'll put it this way; I just spent the last two hours with a sleep-mask over my eyes and a desktop fan as a white-noise generator, and ended up thinking up about one and a half chapters of a sequel to this novel. (The first line: "The secret to telling a story with a happy ending is knowing when to stop talking.") I seem to be the opposite of burnt-out from pulling off a NaNoWriMo. So... this is a thing that could be happening.
Just finished a first draft of a novel... any advice?
General | Posted 5 years agoAt the end of last month, I started a mid-year NaNoWriMo thing, to start regaining some decent writing habits by writing a terrible novel. (The point being to get a novel written; if it's not quite as bad as all that, so much the better.) It's relatively hard SF, with a number of furry characters; if anyone wants to help with beta-reading, I can PM you a link to the GDoc.
I find myself in a novel (ahem) situation, now. I just finished up the first draft; there's still plenty of fixes, tweaks, and general touching-up I'll want to do before making it public. But as far back as I can recall, my previous attempts at writing have generally taken the approach of shoving the first draft out the door as soon as I finished typing it out; so I'm a bit inexperienced about what I should do next. Anyone have any advice? For example, would you recommend a thorough re-read to fix every last detail I notice needs improvement, or starting some other project, or just throwing the barn doors open for anyone to read and comment, or posting to RoyalRoad / FictionPress / FurAffinity / etc, or something else entirely...?
I find myself in a novel (ahem) situation, now. I just finished up the first draft; there's still plenty of fixes, tweaks, and general touching-up I'll want to do before making it public. But as far back as I can recall, my previous attempts at writing have generally taken the approach of shoving the first draft out the door as soon as I finished typing it out; so I'm a bit inexperienced about what I should do next. Anyone have any advice? For example, would you recommend a thorough re-read to fix every last detail I notice needs improvement, or starting some other project, or just throwing the barn doors open for anyone to read and comment, or posting to RoyalRoad / FictionPress / FurAffinity / etc, or something else entirely...?
Anyone want to beta-read a terrible novel?
General | Posted 5 years agoHello, world;
A couple of weeks ago, I finally felt up to getting back into the writing habit. To get back into having a decent writing process, I started doing a mid-year NaNoWriMo thing, knowing that the results were going to be terrible, and being comfortable with that fact.
I just broke 30,000 words, so I think I've got the daily contribution part well in hand. It's time I started working on incorporating other important parts of the process, such as dealing with regular feedback.
Anyone care to offer constructive criticism, pointing out how I could improve any particular part? If so, let me know, and I'll send you a private message with a link to the GDoc.
(The story is technically furry, but focuses more on being relatively-hard SF, if that affects your decision.)
A couple of weeks ago, I finally felt up to getting back into the writing habit. To get back into having a decent writing process, I started doing a mid-year NaNoWriMo thing, knowing that the results were going to be terrible, and being comfortable with that fact.
I just broke 30,000 words, so I think I've got the daily contribution part well in hand. It's time I started working on incorporating other important parts of the process, such as dealing with regular feedback.
Anyone care to offer constructive criticism, pointing out how I could improve any particular part? If so, let me know, and I'll send you a private message with a link to the GDoc.
(The story is technically furry, but focuses more on being relatively-hard SF, if that affects your decision.)
"I am not a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire."
General | Posted 5 years agoI'm getting close to being in the writing habit again.
For the last while, I've been jotting down notes and ideas; I have some thoughts on a protagonist, some themes (see journal's title for one), a cobbled-together selection of worldbuilding tropes, and the start of a plot. I also have a few thoughts about some of the standard rules for writing that might be worth breaking, if I can pull off the right way to break them.
I am fully aware that, if I were to start trying to write a story out based on what I have so far, it would be crap, in several dimensions, and possibly even fractally. I am also fully aware that I am perfectly comfortable writing a crap story after having spent so long having written so little. There are a great many worse things I could be spending my time on than writing terribly-written fiction... and, of course, there's always the hope that whatever I write afterwards would be ever-so-slightly less terrible.
So keep an eye on this space. I don't expect to spend the next month trying for a full-fledged NaNoWriMo (NaJuWriMo?), but it's not out of the question.
External blog's thought of the week: Would you rather live where "you enjoy the right to hoard while others starve, or the right not to starve while others hoard"?
For the last while, I've been jotting down notes and ideas; I have some thoughts on a protagonist, some themes (see journal's title for one), a cobbled-together selection of worldbuilding tropes, and the start of a plot. I also have a few thoughts about some of the standard rules for writing that might be worth breaking, if I can pull off the right way to break them.
I am fully aware that, if I were to start trying to write a story out based on what I have so far, it would be crap, in several dimensions, and possibly even fractally. I am also fully aware that I am perfectly comfortable writing a crap story after having spent so long having written so little. There are a great many worse things I could be spending my time on than writing terribly-written fiction... and, of course, there's always the hope that whatever I write afterwards would be ever-so-slightly less terrible.
So keep an eye on this space. I don't expect to spend the next month trying for a full-fledged NaNoWriMo (NaJuWriMo?), but it's not out of the question.
External blog's thought of the week: Would you rather live where "you enjoy the right to hoard while others starve, or the right not to starve while others hoard"?
Do Your Dreams Have Consistent Geography?
General | Posted 5 years agoA good portion of my dreams take place in what's recognizably a city I've spent forty years, more or less, wandering through... but not /quite/ any version of the city I've ever known. For example, whenever I dream about a particular road that crosses a railway, in my dreams that road always goes over it with a bridge, instead of being at the same level; another road that goes up a straight hill, in my dreams the road goes straight up it instead of reality's bend to be at a shallower angle.
Sometime last year, I dreamed that the city's main bus terminal had some non-existent stairs and elevators leading down to a subway station, and spent most of the dream exploring the place. A later dream, I went down there and took a long-distance subway ride to Toronto (which is an hour's drive away). Last night, the existence of the subway system was taken so much for granted that I just assumed its existence while I was deciding where to go.
(Last night's dream also involved some sort of political/civil unrest. There wasn't any sort of natural disaster or war or similar emergency, but there were lots of nervous people milling around, the occasional demagogue shouting to an attentive audience, and the thought of calling emergency services in case of looting or mob violence simply never occurred as a possibility. So I decided to get away from the dangerous-feeling areas by seeking shelter at the subway terminal. Also, texting my family involved a MLP-themed app. Also, for some reason, I was in a wheelchair; something was wrong with my left ankle, which ached.)
There are other such consistent changes to reality, and it's not just the larger features. Whenever I dream about a certain one of my childhood homes, in my bedroom closet is a hatch just big enough for me to wiggle through, to a deeper secondary closet that somehow fits inside the walls. Another childhood home has a much-expanded basement.
Not counting fantasy stories where dreams exist in their own dimension, I don't remember ever reading about anyone else's dreams not just being funhouse reflections of reality, but the distortions lasting for more than one dream.
How about you? Does the landscape you visit when you're asleep stay the same from night to night?
Sometime last year, I dreamed that the city's main bus terminal had some non-existent stairs and elevators leading down to a subway station, and spent most of the dream exploring the place. A later dream, I went down there and took a long-distance subway ride to Toronto (which is an hour's drive away). Last night, the existence of the subway system was taken so much for granted that I just assumed its existence while I was deciding where to go.
(Last night's dream also involved some sort of political/civil unrest. There wasn't any sort of natural disaster or war or similar emergency, but there were lots of nervous people milling around, the occasional demagogue shouting to an attentive audience, and the thought of calling emergency services in case of looting or mob violence simply never occurred as a possibility. So I decided to get away from the dangerous-feeling areas by seeking shelter at the subway terminal. Also, texting my family involved a MLP-themed app. Also, for some reason, I was in a wheelchair; something was wrong with my left ankle, which ached.)
There are other such consistent changes to reality, and it's not just the larger features. Whenever I dream about a certain one of my childhood homes, in my bedroom closet is a hatch just big enough for me to wiggle through, to a deeper secondary closet that somehow fits inside the walls. Another childhood home has a much-expanded basement.
Not counting fantasy stories where dreams exist in their own dimension, I don't remember ever reading about anyone else's dreams not just being funhouse reflections of reality, but the distortions lasting for more than one dream.
How about you? Does the landscape you visit when you're asleep stay the same from night to night?
Good News Everyone; My Number Crossed An Arbitrary Thresh...
General | Posted 5 years agoI do the lifelog thing, keeping track of whatever personal numbers are easy to keep track of and that my future self might find interesting.
Today, one of those numbers has finally dropped all the way down to 29.9...
... which means that I am, officially, no longer "obese"; I am merely "overweight". :)
Last summer, my BMI peaked at 40.8, and I managed to make arrangements to get enrolled in the local weight-loss clinic. We tried a few things, and my weight gradually got better, but my progress kind of stalled out at the start of the year. About two months ago, three things happened at once: I had one of my prescriptions changed from one that people who take it tend to gain weight to one that people who take it tend to lose weight; I got a new prescription for anti-diabetes medication; and due to Current Events, I stopped regularly visiting the nearest franchise of a Brazilian-owned, nationalistic-themed café chain. (Given how said chain treated their employees as Current Events became more widely-known, I also made a resolution not to patronize them even after Current Events resolved.) I don't know which of those three, singly or in combination, did the trick, but my numbers have been gradually improving ever since.
Naturally, if I try, I can find a dark cloud inside every silver lining. For example, as my depression has been lifting and my mood has been getting better, my senses have also been having a veil pulled back; I've been smelling scents I haven't in years. Unfortunately, half a week ago, when I had some asparagus for dinner, I gagged so hard I nearly lost the rest of what I'd eaten; and when I tried to get back on the horse the other night and tried it again, I flinched and couldn't stomach the stuff. And taking out a tape-measure, I should be wearing pants with a waistband two inches smaller than what I've been wearing for some time, but due to Current Events, it's not really practical to try a few pairs on in fitting rooms, so I'm wearing a belt that overlaps itself to a somewhat ridiculous degree.
Of course, given that a recent study's flow-chart ( https://www.zdnet.com/article/nyu-s.....ritical-cases/ ) suggests that by crossing that arbitrary line, my odds of needing hospitalization should I become infected with COVID-19 have gone from 70% to 13%, I think I've just managed to increase my estimated future lifespan by a larger amount than anything I've done since, oh, 2012... which makes the previous paragraph a teensy, tiny puff of a cloud, indeed.
Given the complications of Current Events, I think that I shall hold off on ordering in the traditional celebratory pizza, and continue with my previous plans for a dinner based around roasting some fish onto which some basil pesto has been spread.
Today, one of those numbers has finally dropped all the way down to 29.9...
... which means that I am, officially, no longer "obese"; I am merely "overweight". :)
Last summer, my BMI peaked at 40.8, and I managed to make arrangements to get enrolled in the local weight-loss clinic. We tried a few things, and my weight gradually got better, but my progress kind of stalled out at the start of the year. About two months ago, three things happened at once: I had one of my prescriptions changed from one that people who take it tend to gain weight to one that people who take it tend to lose weight; I got a new prescription for anti-diabetes medication; and due to Current Events, I stopped regularly visiting the nearest franchise of a Brazilian-owned, nationalistic-themed café chain. (Given how said chain treated their employees as Current Events became more widely-known, I also made a resolution not to patronize them even after Current Events resolved.) I don't know which of those three, singly or in combination, did the trick, but my numbers have been gradually improving ever since.
Naturally, if I try, I can find a dark cloud inside every silver lining. For example, as my depression has been lifting and my mood has been getting better, my senses have also been having a veil pulled back; I've been smelling scents I haven't in years. Unfortunately, half a week ago, when I had some asparagus for dinner, I gagged so hard I nearly lost the rest of what I'd eaten; and when I tried to get back on the horse the other night and tried it again, I flinched and couldn't stomach the stuff. And taking out a tape-measure, I should be wearing pants with a waistband two inches smaller than what I've been wearing for some time, but due to Current Events, it's not really practical to try a few pairs on in fitting rooms, so I'm wearing a belt that overlaps itself to a somewhat ridiculous degree.
Of course, given that a recent study's flow-chart ( https://www.zdnet.com/article/nyu-s.....ritical-cases/ ) suggests that by crossing that arbitrary line, my odds of needing hospitalization should I become infected with COVID-19 have gone from 70% to 13%, I think I've just managed to increase my estimated future lifespan by a larger amount than anything I've done since, oh, 2012... which makes the previous paragraph a teensy, tiny puff of a cloud, indeed.
Given the complications of Current Events, I think that I shall hold off on ordering in the traditional celebratory pizza, and continue with my previous plans for a dinner based around roasting some fish onto which some basil pesto has been spread.
The Writing Bug Bit
General | Posted 5 years agoI just finished assembling 2,765 words of prose, over the last couple of hours. I've spent the last few days thinking about various details of the latest variant of the character/fursona in my gallery, it's all first-draft stuff, and it's more science-fiction background first-person narrative infodump than anything particularly furry... but it's 2,765 more words of prose than I've written in quite some time.
"Here's a question for you - would you rather be an unskilled immigrant, or dead?
"Unhappily, based on the actions of nearly everyone I met during my first life, just about everyone from my native culture chose 'dead'. Which is why I chose to sign up for cryo, based on my best guess that it would give me a five percent chance of waking up as the future equivalent of an unskilled immigrant, instead of a one-hundred percent chance of staying permanently dead if I hadn't signed on the dotted line. As is obvious, I succeeded at that one-in-twenty chance, so here I am, while nearly everyone else from back then isn't.
"Yes, I'm getting therapy. Lots and lots of therapy."
--
"Employment, whoo. Insulo Tri - the O'Neill Cylinder station here in L4 - has specific job requirements in order to get a work visa for permanent residence, and doing all the scrimping and saving I can, the best budget I've been able to put together still needs €1200 per month. I am /extremely/ uneducated and unskilled by modern standards, which places severe limits on what anyone's willing to hire me for. Fortunately, one of the visa-qualifying jobs is 'Interactive Video Scripter', the current hybrid descendant of movies and video games, for which I can be my own boss, and for which my having written most of a couple of prose novels lets me squeak through the technical qualifications; and while I'm not particularly good or popular, the current versions of Patreon let me pick up around €360 per month. Far from enough to live on, but enough to get my foot in the door. I have to put in three and a half, maybe four hours a day on it to keep my subscribers happy, which leaves lots of time to hustle up more paying work.
"Unfortunately, until I can train myself up, most of the other jobs I can get only pay around €400 a month. Even working my tail off with three jobs, working for eleven hours a day seven days a week, that still falls short of my best-possible budget. However, I have found two options that let me get over the hump.
"Being a piece of software, and with my digital brain having enough silicon to run my mind at up to ten times realtime speeds, I am also able to cheat, to a certain degree. While I can't move my body any faster, I can get eight hours of sleep in forty-eight minutes. To keep my mental circadian rhythm from drifting too far from all the bio-sapients around me, right now, I speed myself up to ten times mental speed for two hours forty minutes per day, objective time, giving me twenty-one hours twenty minutes per day at realtime speed, giving me forty-eight hours subjective for every twenty-four objective. I take one sleep period in fast-time, and do my writing there, too. But there are only so many things I can do to get paid while thinking too fast for real socialization with almost everyone else stuck at realtime.
"Other than that cheat, I've come across just one option that's enough to cover the gap: renting out my womb, and acting as a surrogate mother, for €660 a month. It sounds like I just have to wait and let myself get bulkier, but the contracts actually involve a lot of tracking of my activity, ensuring I do the right sorts of exercise, diet, keeping my mood from drifting too far from the optimal hormonal balance, and all sorts of other inconveniences.
"So writing, being pregnant, and one other job is enough to keep me going month to month. Right now, my third job is being part of an AI rights activist collective, only partly since I'm technically an AI myself. Donations are highly variable, though; I'm looking into swapping that into something more steady, like using augmented-reality overlays to let my body act as something almost, but not quite, like a living remote-controlled drone.
"If I had a better background, had lived for decades knowing that various algorithms were tracking me in all sorts of ways, and had optimized my behaviour to increase my trust metrics, I'd be able to get paid a lot more for a lot less effort. I I were purely digital, my costs would drop down to just renting server space, though there are a /lot/ of other software people who've already worked hard at finding every possible niche that a purely software person can exploit. If the revival trust that had paid for my mind to be uploaded and a new body constructed for me, within certain parameters, hadn't let me choose my preferred physical sex, my current best-paying hustle would be ruled out.
"So, my weekly timesheet is... weird. For every objective week, I experience 336 hours, of which 112 of them are spent asleep, and 75 are dedicated to my gigs, leaving me 149 hours per week for study, recreation, socializing, and whatever else I feel like. If I were to spend eight subjective hours a day, 112 hours per objective week, on studies, it would take me around 18 objective weeks to get through all the remedial classes that would just bring me up to par with modern-day high-school graduates. And, as best as I could estimate, it would take a similar amount of time to raise my trust-metrics enough to, roughly, where I'd be able to rake in two, maybe two and a half times what I am now. At that point, I'd finally be able to afford and qualify for some serious modern education. I mean, I live in /space/, and how could I not want to go further into the black than this station, which, while impressive, is still mostly a few square miles of imitating Earth? Once I've gone through the standard 38ish weeks and given birth to the sproglet, I'm thinking of going for a spacer's license, and then one or more of host-services license, ship operation's license, and piloting license, maybe some degree of paramedic... maybe try being a microgravity worker, or farhauler pilot.
"Of course, that's all assuming that everything goes well, and nothing comes out of left field to derail such plans. That's why it's a good idea to have general goals, and to arrange your plans so that each little part advances you towards at least one goal all on its own, so that no matter what happens, you're still making progress. I mean, maybe I'll meet someone I like enough to want a relationship with, and spending time with them will make all my first guesses about scheduling my education completely pointless. Or something medical will go wrong with the pregnancy, or I'll cross a line while protesting and get arrested, or I'll offend modern sensibilities with my writing so much that I lose my work-visa ticket and have to leave the station. But I can make guesses about lots of those, and make plans for just-in-case so I'm not caught flat-footed. And modern social safety nets are comprehensive enough that any medical needs I, er, need are covered; getting enmeshed in the local justice system is more about surveillance and rehabilitation than punishment; and even if I'm deported to somewhere with a lower standard of living, the cost-of-living will also drop far enough I'll still be able to keep my head above water. Even in a worst-case scenario, where my digital brain gets scrapped, I've got backups of my mindstate in three separate offsite locations, so I'd only suffer amnesia of whatever I did since I mailed off my latest mindstate.
"All-in-all, my life is a frantic mess, there's all sorts of things about the modern world I'm completely in the dark about ranging from fundamental physics to the latest in-jokes, I'm too poor to afford all sorts of modern conveniences and luxuries, I have to swallow my pride and put up with all sorts of embarrassing invasions of what I consider my private life, and I'm barely keeping my bank account from getting smaller... but I have enough leeway to, at least on occasion, just relax and play; and I expect things to, gradually, get better. And, presumably with the occasional interruption, keep on getting better. Some future version, or versions, of me could still me kicking around in a hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand, or more.
"Put another way, I made it past the hump of the worst life's likely to throw at me, and the future's looking better.
"Put yet another way, before I died, I didn't believe anything like 'heaven' existed. But I'm happy to consider being able to cover my debts and having educational opportunities to improve myself as close enough an approximation."
--
"Hooboy. Let me try to sum up. Doing a lot of exploring of the wide world and net for breadth, and with deep-dives here and there on particular subjects that catch my fancy, I think I've identified an opportunity I might be able to take better advantage of than most... but I haven't decided if trying to is going to be worth the risk and effort.
"Put simply, I've found a weird, old spaceship in a junkyard that nobody's using, and I think I could not only afford to buy it, but make a profit with it.
"Its frame is a standard, forty-foot cargo container. It's a bit large to use as a workpod, too small to use as an OTV - sorry, orbital transfer vehicle - its fuel is too expensive for regular runs as an interstation transport pod, its thrust too small to land anywhere much bigger than Ceres, and it has nowhere near enough cargo space to make a profit running interplanetary cargo, and nowhere near enough radiation shielding to carry VIPs very far. It was originally built as a space ambulance; it's got enough cargo space to carry a surgical theatre and some robodocs, enough thrust to make orbital changes in a reasonably small time, and enough delta-v to travel all throughout Earth-Luna orbital space, and then some. Heck, it's so overpowered with delta-v that you could load it with supplies, point it at Pluto, and rendezvous in five years. Assuming you didn't mind picking up around 250 rads from cosmic rays during the trip.
"My thoroughly-improved body has enough tricks up its sleeve to actually handle that level of radiation... but that's not what I'm considering using it for. I've been running numbers, and if I get a good deal on it because it's been used, if I arrange to get another few certifications to qualify for some government subsidies, and if I get a bank loan and mortgage that I'll be paying off for the next twelve years, then I can just about afford to buy the ship, get it into working order, and fit it out for use. If I add up my monthly starving-student-lifestyle living expenses, the mortgage payments, the subsidies, insurance, union dues, docking fees, taxes, then I'd be spending €7,313 per month, plus fuel. Fuel for this thing is nine meters-per-second delta-v per €1.
"Based on the trust metrics about myself that I've managed to optimize, and on other people who've worked in similar fields, if I were to use that ship to go out and salvage defunct satellites, clear up orbital debris, let myself be hired for in-place repairs of satellites /before/ they become defunct, and pick up the occasional charter, then I could expect to make an average of €10,000 per month. Plus, once the mortgage is paid off, I'd own the ship free and clear, and my expenses would drop to €5,561 per month, plus fuel. It's about 2,970 meters-per-second to get from L4 to the graveyard orbit near GEO, or about €660 per round trip, plus maneuvering; my projected budget covers about four such trips per month, during the mortgage payments, six afterwards. More, if I spend more time around GEO and LEO instead of heading back to L4 each time. Or equivalent trips elsewhere, depending on where the best junk is to be found.
"The term for this profession is, unfortunately, 'vacuum cleaner'.
"The financial numbers... work out. Well enough, anyway. Probably. I've got a business plan showing the evidence that I'd at least break even most of the time, and do better often enough to almost certainly cover lean months. And if the lean times last too long, worst case is that as an independent business owner, I'd have to file for corporate bankruptcy and the bank would reposess the ship and all the other business assets - so the bank would be happy either way. I'd be back to starting from scratch - that is, just about where I am now - plus a few more years of experience to add to my résumé. And in the meantime, and if-and-when I manage to pay off the mortgate... I'd be living the life of just about every space-fangirl's dream. Oh, sure, I wouldn't be any Han Solo or Harry Mudd or Malcolm Reynolds, but I'd be my own boss, with my own ship, able to travel anywhere in Earth-Luna space I saw fit. Sure, I'd be spending most of my time inside the tiny cabin and cockpit of a space-Mack-truck, or in a spacesuit, but I'd be /in space/, not just spinning through the days in a piece of imitation-Earth. Heck, don't tell the banks that I've even thought of this, but if there was something important enough for me to be willing to tank all my trust-metrics and suffer the consequences of piloting a ship the bank claimed was its, I could get to anywhere in the Solar System in about as much of a hurry as any ship-class you care to name. Or, you know, without defaulting on the payments, if someone felt it was important enough to cover my expenses over the 4 months it would take to reach the asteroid belt, do whatever was worth doing there, and the 4 months to come back... or wherever else might be worth going.
"This plan is something I /can/ do, it's something I /want/ to do... I'm just not sure yet if it's something I /should/ do. By the time I'd be ready to tackle being an independent vacuum cleaner, I'd be just about ready to serve as an engineer for somebody else's business, making, oh, €13,000 per month, steady, and without anywhere near the expenses of running the Pumpkin. ... That's the former-ambulance's name, if I didn't mention. Going that way, I could switch from the starving-student lifestyle to a pretty decent modern life, with more luxuries than I could shake my tail at; or instead of going sybaritic, I could work on accumulating €140,000 per year for whatever else I thought was important, such as donating to an anti-existential-risk charity. Even if I decided to be completely selfish, only interested in preserving my own mind and values into the long-term future, it's not obvious whether I'd be better served by slightly reducing the odds of the Earth getting wiped out by grey goo or an unfriendly super-intelligent AI through such donations, or having a ship to be able to skedaddle away from any planet that looks like it's in trouble, or some other course entirely, like focusing on getting around the local biosapients' culture that's kind of squeamish about uploaded minds having more than one active copy running at a time. And that doesn't include the minor paradox that selfishly working for my values includes the value that I'm not completely selfish.
"All of which adds to me being in the entirely enviable position of having to decide not just what I want and can get, but what I want /most/ out of all the things I can work towards accomplishing - and then acting on that decision, and working towards it. Fortunately, modern science and engineering have come up with a few new tricks to help measure how strong someone's wants are, and how those wants are likely to change; so the next thing I'm going to be doing is running all sorts of analyses of my mindstate program, and getting quantifiable numbers of my desire-strengths - and their Bayesian-likelihood projections through various Monte Carlo simulations of various scenarios - to use to make my subsequent plans. I've got a small futures-prediction market set up to pay out based on what the results turn out to be; so, do you think you know me well enough to place some bets?"
"Here's a question for you - would you rather be an unskilled immigrant, or dead?
"Unhappily, based on the actions of nearly everyone I met during my first life, just about everyone from my native culture chose 'dead'. Which is why I chose to sign up for cryo, based on my best guess that it would give me a five percent chance of waking up as the future equivalent of an unskilled immigrant, instead of a one-hundred percent chance of staying permanently dead if I hadn't signed on the dotted line. As is obvious, I succeeded at that one-in-twenty chance, so here I am, while nearly everyone else from back then isn't.
"Yes, I'm getting therapy. Lots and lots of therapy."
--
"Employment, whoo. Insulo Tri - the O'Neill Cylinder station here in L4 - has specific job requirements in order to get a work visa for permanent residence, and doing all the scrimping and saving I can, the best budget I've been able to put together still needs €1200 per month. I am /extremely/ uneducated and unskilled by modern standards, which places severe limits on what anyone's willing to hire me for. Fortunately, one of the visa-qualifying jobs is 'Interactive Video Scripter', the current hybrid descendant of movies and video games, for which I can be my own boss, and for which my having written most of a couple of prose novels lets me squeak through the technical qualifications; and while I'm not particularly good or popular, the current versions of Patreon let me pick up around €360 per month. Far from enough to live on, but enough to get my foot in the door. I have to put in three and a half, maybe four hours a day on it to keep my subscribers happy, which leaves lots of time to hustle up more paying work.
"Unfortunately, until I can train myself up, most of the other jobs I can get only pay around €400 a month. Even working my tail off with three jobs, working for eleven hours a day seven days a week, that still falls short of my best-possible budget. However, I have found two options that let me get over the hump.
"Being a piece of software, and with my digital brain having enough silicon to run my mind at up to ten times realtime speeds, I am also able to cheat, to a certain degree. While I can't move my body any faster, I can get eight hours of sleep in forty-eight minutes. To keep my mental circadian rhythm from drifting too far from all the bio-sapients around me, right now, I speed myself up to ten times mental speed for two hours forty minutes per day, objective time, giving me twenty-one hours twenty minutes per day at realtime speed, giving me forty-eight hours subjective for every twenty-four objective. I take one sleep period in fast-time, and do my writing there, too. But there are only so many things I can do to get paid while thinking too fast for real socialization with almost everyone else stuck at realtime.
"Other than that cheat, I've come across just one option that's enough to cover the gap: renting out my womb, and acting as a surrogate mother, for €660 a month. It sounds like I just have to wait and let myself get bulkier, but the contracts actually involve a lot of tracking of my activity, ensuring I do the right sorts of exercise, diet, keeping my mood from drifting too far from the optimal hormonal balance, and all sorts of other inconveniences.
"So writing, being pregnant, and one other job is enough to keep me going month to month. Right now, my third job is being part of an AI rights activist collective, only partly since I'm technically an AI myself. Donations are highly variable, though; I'm looking into swapping that into something more steady, like using augmented-reality overlays to let my body act as something almost, but not quite, like a living remote-controlled drone.
"If I had a better background, had lived for decades knowing that various algorithms were tracking me in all sorts of ways, and had optimized my behaviour to increase my trust metrics, I'd be able to get paid a lot more for a lot less effort. I I were purely digital, my costs would drop down to just renting server space, though there are a /lot/ of other software people who've already worked hard at finding every possible niche that a purely software person can exploit. If the revival trust that had paid for my mind to be uploaded and a new body constructed for me, within certain parameters, hadn't let me choose my preferred physical sex, my current best-paying hustle would be ruled out.
"So, my weekly timesheet is... weird. For every objective week, I experience 336 hours, of which 112 of them are spent asleep, and 75 are dedicated to my gigs, leaving me 149 hours per week for study, recreation, socializing, and whatever else I feel like. If I were to spend eight subjective hours a day, 112 hours per objective week, on studies, it would take me around 18 objective weeks to get through all the remedial classes that would just bring me up to par with modern-day high-school graduates. And, as best as I could estimate, it would take a similar amount of time to raise my trust-metrics enough to, roughly, where I'd be able to rake in two, maybe two and a half times what I am now. At that point, I'd finally be able to afford and qualify for some serious modern education. I mean, I live in /space/, and how could I not want to go further into the black than this station, which, while impressive, is still mostly a few square miles of imitating Earth? Once I've gone through the standard 38ish weeks and given birth to the sproglet, I'm thinking of going for a spacer's license, and then one or more of host-services license, ship operation's license, and piloting license, maybe some degree of paramedic... maybe try being a microgravity worker, or farhauler pilot.
"Of course, that's all assuming that everything goes well, and nothing comes out of left field to derail such plans. That's why it's a good idea to have general goals, and to arrange your plans so that each little part advances you towards at least one goal all on its own, so that no matter what happens, you're still making progress. I mean, maybe I'll meet someone I like enough to want a relationship with, and spending time with them will make all my first guesses about scheduling my education completely pointless. Or something medical will go wrong with the pregnancy, or I'll cross a line while protesting and get arrested, or I'll offend modern sensibilities with my writing so much that I lose my work-visa ticket and have to leave the station. But I can make guesses about lots of those, and make plans for just-in-case so I'm not caught flat-footed. And modern social safety nets are comprehensive enough that any medical needs I, er, need are covered; getting enmeshed in the local justice system is more about surveillance and rehabilitation than punishment; and even if I'm deported to somewhere with a lower standard of living, the cost-of-living will also drop far enough I'll still be able to keep my head above water. Even in a worst-case scenario, where my digital brain gets scrapped, I've got backups of my mindstate in three separate offsite locations, so I'd only suffer amnesia of whatever I did since I mailed off my latest mindstate.
"All-in-all, my life is a frantic mess, there's all sorts of things about the modern world I'm completely in the dark about ranging from fundamental physics to the latest in-jokes, I'm too poor to afford all sorts of modern conveniences and luxuries, I have to swallow my pride and put up with all sorts of embarrassing invasions of what I consider my private life, and I'm barely keeping my bank account from getting smaller... but I have enough leeway to, at least on occasion, just relax and play; and I expect things to, gradually, get better. And, presumably with the occasional interruption, keep on getting better. Some future version, or versions, of me could still me kicking around in a hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand, or more.
"Put another way, I made it past the hump of the worst life's likely to throw at me, and the future's looking better.
"Put yet another way, before I died, I didn't believe anything like 'heaven' existed. But I'm happy to consider being able to cover my debts and having educational opportunities to improve myself as close enough an approximation."
--
"Hooboy. Let me try to sum up. Doing a lot of exploring of the wide world and net for breadth, and with deep-dives here and there on particular subjects that catch my fancy, I think I've identified an opportunity I might be able to take better advantage of than most... but I haven't decided if trying to is going to be worth the risk and effort.
"Put simply, I've found a weird, old spaceship in a junkyard that nobody's using, and I think I could not only afford to buy it, but make a profit with it.
"Its frame is a standard, forty-foot cargo container. It's a bit large to use as a workpod, too small to use as an OTV - sorry, orbital transfer vehicle - its fuel is too expensive for regular runs as an interstation transport pod, its thrust too small to land anywhere much bigger than Ceres, and it has nowhere near enough cargo space to make a profit running interplanetary cargo, and nowhere near enough radiation shielding to carry VIPs very far. It was originally built as a space ambulance; it's got enough cargo space to carry a surgical theatre and some robodocs, enough thrust to make orbital changes in a reasonably small time, and enough delta-v to travel all throughout Earth-Luna orbital space, and then some. Heck, it's so overpowered with delta-v that you could load it with supplies, point it at Pluto, and rendezvous in five years. Assuming you didn't mind picking up around 250 rads from cosmic rays during the trip.
"My thoroughly-improved body has enough tricks up its sleeve to actually handle that level of radiation... but that's not what I'm considering using it for. I've been running numbers, and if I get a good deal on it because it's been used, if I arrange to get another few certifications to qualify for some government subsidies, and if I get a bank loan and mortgage that I'll be paying off for the next twelve years, then I can just about afford to buy the ship, get it into working order, and fit it out for use. If I add up my monthly starving-student-lifestyle living expenses, the mortgage payments, the subsidies, insurance, union dues, docking fees, taxes, then I'd be spending €7,313 per month, plus fuel. Fuel for this thing is nine meters-per-second delta-v per €1.
"Based on the trust metrics about myself that I've managed to optimize, and on other people who've worked in similar fields, if I were to use that ship to go out and salvage defunct satellites, clear up orbital debris, let myself be hired for in-place repairs of satellites /before/ they become defunct, and pick up the occasional charter, then I could expect to make an average of €10,000 per month. Plus, once the mortgage is paid off, I'd own the ship free and clear, and my expenses would drop to €5,561 per month, plus fuel. It's about 2,970 meters-per-second to get from L4 to the graveyard orbit near GEO, or about €660 per round trip, plus maneuvering; my projected budget covers about four such trips per month, during the mortgage payments, six afterwards. More, if I spend more time around GEO and LEO instead of heading back to L4 each time. Or equivalent trips elsewhere, depending on where the best junk is to be found.
"The term for this profession is, unfortunately, 'vacuum cleaner'.
"The financial numbers... work out. Well enough, anyway. Probably. I've got a business plan showing the evidence that I'd at least break even most of the time, and do better often enough to almost certainly cover lean months. And if the lean times last too long, worst case is that as an independent business owner, I'd have to file for corporate bankruptcy and the bank would reposess the ship and all the other business assets - so the bank would be happy either way. I'd be back to starting from scratch - that is, just about where I am now - plus a few more years of experience to add to my résumé. And in the meantime, and if-and-when I manage to pay off the mortgate... I'd be living the life of just about every space-fangirl's dream. Oh, sure, I wouldn't be any Han Solo or Harry Mudd or Malcolm Reynolds, but I'd be my own boss, with my own ship, able to travel anywhere in Earth-Luna space I saw fit. Sure, I'd be spending most of my time inside the tiny cabin and cockpit of a space-Mack-truck, or in a spacesuit, but I'd be /in space/, not just spinning through the days in a piece of imitation-Earth. Heck, don't tell the banks that I've even thought of this, but if there was something important enough for me to be willing to tank all my trust-metrics and suffer the consequences of piloting a ship the bank claimed was its, I could get to anywhere in the Solar System in about as much of a hurry as any ship-class you care to name. Or, you know, without defaulting on the payments, if someone felt it was important enough to cover my expenses over the 4 months it would take to reach the asteroid belt, do whatever was worth doing there, and the 4 months to come back... or wherever else might be worth going.
"This plan is something I /can/ do, it's something I /want/ to do... I'm just not sure yet if it's something I /should/ do. By the time I'd be ready to tackle being an independent vacuum cleaner, I'd be just about ready to serve as an engineer for somebody else's business, making, oh, €13,000 per month, steady, and without anywhere near the expenses of running the Pumpkin. ... That's the former-ambulance's name, if I didn't mention. Going that way, I could switch from the starving-student lifestyle to a pretty decent modern life, with more luxuries than I could shake my tail at; or instead of going sybaritic, I could work on accumulating €140,000 per year for whatever else I thought was important, such as donating to an anti-existential-risk charity. Even if I decided to be completely selfish, only interested in preserving my own mind and values into the long-term future, it's not obvious whether I'd be better served by slightly reducing the odds of the Earth getting wiped out by grey goo or an unfriendly super-intelligent AI through such donations, or having a ship to be able to skedaddle away from any planet that looks like it's in trouble, or some other course entirely, like focusing on getting around the local biosapients' culture that's kind of squeamish about uploaded minds having more than one active copy running at a time. And that doesn't include the minor paradox that selfishly working for my values includes the value that I'm not completely selfish.
"All of which adds to me being in the entirely enviable position of having to decide not just what I want and can get, but what I want /most/ out of all the things I can work towards accomplishing - and then acting on that decision, and working towards it. Fortunately, modern science and engineering have come up with a few new tricks to help measure how strong someone's wants are, and how those wants are likely to change; so the next thing I'm going to be doing is running all sorts of analyses of my mindstate program, and getting quantifiable numbers of my desire-strengths - and their Bayesian-likelihood projections through various Monte Carlo simulations of various scenarios - to use to make my subsequent plans. I've got a small futures-prediction market set up to pay out based on what the results turn out to be; so, do you think you know me well enough to place some bets?"
Philosophical Rambling: "Ten to the n"
General | Posted 5 years agoOne of the ideas I've known about for years, and have found handy more than once, is dividing learning up into two types: "packing" and "mapping". Packing is taking a factoid and remembering it, and another, and another, until you've got lots and lots of individual facts you can look up; mapping is looking at a pile of facts, seeing some correlations, and realizing you can turn a pile of a dozen facts into a single, smaller map. The classic examples are probably looking at the equations for electricity and magnetism, and realizing they could be mapped out into a single electromagnetic force; or all sorts of insights in pure mathematics; or in much less abstract and personal terms, listing out a pile of things that you like and noticing a pile of them could be described as subsets of a larger category, and said category introducing you to new things you like. (For example, I happen to like Morse Code, Lojban, Tengwar, Commodore 64s, and Fortran, among other related things, which I could all file under "obscure and obsolete communications and computations". Which suggested I might like Unifon, IBM 790 mainframes, and balanced-ternary-logic computers.)
In my depression-inspired story "IO.SYS" ( https://www.datapacrat.com/IO.SYS.html ), I made a passing reference to a motto, "ten to the n", which I can describe as "the goal of surviving for 10^n years into the future, where n is a real number", which is a ridiculously complicated way of saying "goal: not dying, now or ever". This happens to take a pile of individual goals, ethics, and philosophies - from extropianism and transhumanism (which itself is merely a simplification of humanist ethics to avoid having to deal with exceptions for non-human people) to Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the prepper mindset to politics to Scouting to all sorts of other things.
Ie:
For n = -6, the duration is 30 seconds. What do I have to do to survive the next half a minute? Usually, not much, but when my survival for that period is in question, I'm going to work as hard as I can - put pressure on an arterial spray, try to swim to the surface, run away from the carbon-monoxide alarm, trying to avoid active bullets.
For n = -4, that's most of an hour. Is there anything, beyond what I need to do to survive a half-minute, to survive the next hour? Again, usually not much, but whatever it is, is going to be almost as high in priority as for n = -6; avoiding hypothermia, calling poison control, and a lot of the other first-aid training you might learn in Scouting.
For n = -2, we're dealing with half a week. We're starting to climb into the basics of Maslow's Pyramid, making sure we've got the basics for survival: shelter and clothes to avoid too much exposure to the elements, enough water to drink, that sort of thing.
For n = -1, around a month, we've nudged up a bit on Maslow, and are in the prime prepper mindset territory; either having a large enough pantry to avoid having to shop for weeks at a time, or having enough of a bank account or income to continue to afford food.
For n = 0, that's working on surviving for one full year. In Maslow's terms, we're edging from what he calls 'survive' to 'thrive' motivations; having enough stability in employment (or other income) to avoid having to worry about running out of cash before getting another job, engaging with family and community and whatever other social support structures are feasible, having enough slack time to do enjoyable stuff and avoid a depressive spiral.
For n = 1, we're working on surviving a full decade. By this point, we're branching into larger-scale stability, trying to find ways to help the local large-scale social-support organization system - which, these days, basically means "government", from front-line health-care to disability payments - keep being able to support you. I can't realistically expect to test all my own food for botulism; if I get cancer or have a heart attack, I'm not going to be able to pay the full cost of hospitalisation and treatment. The very least I can do is vote against whoever wants to reduce my safety net. (And as my depression gets wrestled into something more manageable, I can start doing more than the very least.)
For n = 2, we're talking about surviving for a full century. I'm an adult, so living this long is going to require living longer than anyone has managed in reliably-recorded history. There are a few possibilities; if I keep good enough care of myself, and technology continues advancing gradually, I just might live long enough for science to reach "actuarial escape velocity". If a Singularity happens in 10-30 years, I just might be able to help find a way to nudge the event away from an extinction threat and more towards, say, mind-uploading, ala Robin Hanson's "The Age of Em". If I die before either of those, I could have myself cryonically preserved, my just-barely-dead body preserved until such time as technology advances to the point where it can cure both whatever killed me plus the extra problems introduced by cryopreservation.
For n = 3, surviving for a millennia... the range of what can be experienced is so incredibly broad that it's hard to make any predictions. But a few very general ideas can be figured out; for one, I'd have to have already survived through n = 2, meaning some form of transhuman technology is on the table. For another, a basic tenet of digital data storage is much like the prepper's "rule of 3": if you only have one copy, then given how often bad things happen, you really only have zero copies, so you'd better spread backups to multiple offsite locations.
... All of which manages to compress and map 9 orders of magnitude of time, and a host of disparate modes of thought, into a single approach, which itself can be summed up into a 3- or 4-characters mnemonic: 10^n (or 10ⁿ, if your character-set includes superscript letters).
Of course, the usual caveats apply; no map is perfect, no map covers all possibilities in full detail, a map is simply a handy mental tool that's useful for helping make decisions. But as long as the map is reasonably consistent with reality, it can be a /very/ useful tool for the area and scale it covers.
In my depression-inspired story "IO.SYS" ( https://www.datapacrat.com/IO.SYS.html ), I made a passing reference to a motto, "ten to the n", which I can describe as "the goal of surviving for 10^n years into the future, where n is a real number", which is a ridiculously complicated way of saying "goal: not dying, now or ever". This happens to take a pile of individual goals, ethics, and philosophies - from extropianism and transhumanism (which itself is merely a simplification of humanist ethics to avoid having to deal with exceptions for non-human people) to Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the prepper mindset to politics to Scouting to all sorts of other things.
Ie:
For n = -6, the duration is 30 seconds. What do I have to do to survive the next half a minute? Usually, not much, but when my survival for that period is in question, I'm going to work as hard as I can - put pressure on an arterial spray, try to swim to the surface, run away from the carbon-monoxide alarm, trying to avoid active bullets.
For n = -4, that's most of an hour. Is there anything, beyond what I need to do to survive a half-minute, to survive the next hour? Again, usually not much, but whatever it is, is going to be almost as high in priority as for n = -6; avoiding hypothermia, calling poison control, and a lot of the other first-aid training you might learn in Scouting.
For n = -2, we're dealing with half a week. We're starting to climb into the basics of Maslow's Pyramid, making sure we've got the basics for survival: shelter and clothes to avoid too much exposure to the elements, enough water to drink, that sort of thing.
For n = -1, around a month, we've nudged up a bit on Maslow, and are in the prime prepper mindset territory; either having a large enough pantry to avoid having to shop for weeks at a time, or having enough of a bank account or income to continue to afford food.
For n = 0, that's working on surviving for one full year. In Maslow's terms, we're edging from what he calls 'survive' to 'thrive' motivations; having enough stability in employment (or other income) to avoid having to worry about running out of cash before getting another job, engaging with family and community and whatever other social support structures are feasible, having enough slack time to do enjoyable stuff and avoid a depressive spiral.
For n = 1, we're working on surviving a full decade. By this point, we're branching into larger-scale stability, trying to find ways to help the local large-scale social-support organization system - which, these days, basically means "government", from front-line health-care to disability payments - keep being able to support you. I can't realistically expect to test all my own food for botulism; if I get cancer or have a heart attack, I'm not going to be able to pay the full cost of hospitalisation and treatment. The very least I can do is vote against whoever wants to reduce my safety net. (And as my depression gets wrestled into something more manageable, I can start doing more than the very least.)
For n = 2, we're talking about surviving for a full century. I'm an adult, so living this long is going to require living longer than anyone has managed in reliably-recorded history. There are a few possibilities; if I keep good enough care of myself, and technology continues advancing gradually, I just might live long enough for science to reach "actuarial escape velocity". If a Singularity happens in 10-30 years, I just might be able to help find a way to nudge the event away from an extinction threat and more towards, say, mind-uploading, ala Robin Hanson's "The Age of Em". If I die before either of those, I could have myself cryonically preserved, my just-barely-dead body preserved until such time as technology advances to the point where it can cure both whatever killed me plus the extra problems introduced by cryopreservation.
For n = 3, surviving for a millennia... the range of what can be experienced is so incredibly broad that it's hard to make any predictions. But a few very general ideas can be figured out; for one, I'd have to have already survived through n = 2, meaning some form of transhuman technology is on the table. For another, a basic tenet of digital data storage is much like the prepper's "rule of 3": if you only have one copy, then given how often bad things happen, you really only have zero copies, so you'd better spread backups to multiple offsite locations.
... All of which manages to compress and map 9 orders of magnitude of time, and a host of disparate modes of thought, into a single approach, which itself can be summed up into a 3- or 4-characters mnemonic: 10^n (or 10ⁿ, if your character-set includes superscript letters).
Of course, the usual caveats apply; no map is perfect, no map covers all possibilities in full detail, a map is simply a handy mental tool that's useful for helping make decisions. But as long as the map is reasonably consistent with reality, it can be a /very/ useful tool for the area and scale it covers.
Plushies!
General | Posted 5 years agoOkay, it looks like I'm not quite done with the "Me me me!" journals. :)
Using the rough definition of 'soft surface, soft filling, probably animal-shaped', I just ran a head-count, and I've got 52 of the things in my bedroom, assuming I didn't miss any. (Plus assorted hard-plastic toys, finger puppets, and whatnot). It may sound like a lot, but all but 4 of them are lined up along the tops of my bookshelves, or tucked into the shelves in spots where books don't fit. (3 of the remainder are on non-book-filled shelves, and the last is a MLP Luna keeping guard at the head of my bed.) (In case you're curious, other than the bookshelves, the most prominent decorations in my room are a variety of reproductions of old local maps, of varying degrees of inaccuracy, starting from ones in the 1600s that barely accept that where I live even exists. Oh, and one highly-inaccurate but nice-looking map of the celestial sphere.)
All but 4 are shaped more like the actual critters they represent than classic teddy-bears; of those last, 1 is a cartoonish mouse holding cheese, 1 a cartoonish tiger in a t-shirt, 1 is a teddy-bear wearing an HBC scarf (I was a bit of a fanboy of the Hudson's Bay Company for some years), and 1 is a teddy-bear in a park ranger's uniform.
I've got more than a couple of mice and rats, as you might guess, plus squirrels, bunnies, foxes, skunks, raccoons, horses, seals, dolphins... and (at least) one each of buffalo, bat, hedgehog, badger, red panda, non-red panda, dog, leopard, giraffe, otter, sheep, hippo, and a lobster. (Yes, the lobster is also plush; I got it at the amusement park Canada's Wonderland.)
One of them, I think I've had since 1980 - a beigeish/yellowish seal, which accompanied me on my school-age trips from BC to Nova Scotia, and even down into the US. Most of my plushies, I mostly think of as decorative, easily replaced if ever lost; this one I'd be genuinely sad if something happened to it. For the last couple of years, it's been resting alongside my great-great-grandfather's diaries, family cookbook, and similar mementos.
So, how about you? Care to share any part of yourself that might be revealed through stories about your own plush toys? :)
Using the rough definition of 'soft surface, soft filling, probably animal-shaped', I just ran a head-count, and I've got 52 of the things in my bedroom, assuming I didn't miss any. (Plus assorted hard-plastic toys, finger puppets, and whatnot). It may sound like a lot, but all but 4 of them are lined up along the tops of my bookshelves, or tucked into the shelves in spots where books don't fit. (3 of the remainder are on non-book-filled shelves, and the last is a MLP Luna keeping guard at the head of my bed.) (In case you're curious, other than the bookshelves, the most prominent decorations in my room are a variety of reproductions of old local maps, of varying degrees of inaccuracy, starting from ones in the 1600s that barely accept that where I live even exists. Oh, and one highly-inaccurate but nice-looking map of the celestial sphere.)
All but 4 are shaped more like the actual critters they represent than classic teddy-bears; of those last, 1 is a cartoonish mouse holding cheese, 1 a cartoonish tiger in a t-shirt, 1 is a teddy-bear wearing an HBC scarf (I was a bit of a fanboy of the Hudson's Bay Company for some years), and 1 is a teddy-bear in a park ranger's uniform.
I've got more than a couple of mice and rats, as you might guess, plus squirrels, bunnies, foxes, skunks, raccoons, horses, seals, dolphins... and (at least) one each of buffalo, bat, hedgehog, badger, red panda, non-red panda, dog, leopard, giraffe, otter, sheep, hippo, and a lobster. (Yes, the lobster is also plush; I got it at the amusement park Canada's Wonderland.)
One of them, I think I've had since 1980 - a beigeish/yellowish seal, which accompanied me on my school-age trips from BC to Nova Scotia, and even down into the US. Most of my plushies, I mostly think of as decorative, easily replaced if ever lost; this one I'd be genuinely sad if something happened to it. For the last couple of years, it's been resting alongside my great-great-grandfather's diaries, family cookbook, and similar mementos.
So, how about you? Care to share any part of yourself that might be revealed through stories about your own plush toys? :)
Worldbuilding: Coming up with a Better Future
General | Posted 5 years agoI'm starting to get that old itch to start writing again...
I'm trying to identify a pile of details for a setting where the people are notably better off than in the present, but can still be recognized as being a future iteration of present-day society. (I may not know how any of these would actually be accomplished, but I can still write Star Trek fanfiction even without knowing how to build a warp drive.) Not a paradise, but somewhere a good number of people from today's first-world societies might consider immigrating to.
Given the general shape of the points I've jotted down so far, can you think of any important aspects I'm forgetting?
- Some bad things happened. People fought back, and tried various ways to keep them from happening again, with varying levels of success and side-effects. The more successful approaches led to those groups becoming wealthier and more militarily effective, thus gaining international prestige, thus leading less-successful groups to try to emulate them.
- Standard economies include:
- a Basic Universal Income (plus whatever further tweaks are needed to avoid any rampant inflation or other problems therefrom);
- single-payer health-care (including dentistry, prescriptions, psych, etc);
- effectively free tuition;
- widespread unionization;
- Possibly: Lots of worker-owned businesses?;
- national ministries of ombudsmen, embedded into the other ministries and able to accept complaints about them, without those complaints getting lost in internal processes that never find any fault by the bureaucrats;
- police held accountable for their actions by non-police-dominated investigations;
- significant surveillance of the finances of politicians and elected officials;
- political tweaks to prevent regulatory capture, gerrymandering, capturing of courts by political parties;
- strong anti-trust legislation;
- rules against vulture capitalism;
- externality costs that are currently offloaded onto the general public by capitalist corporations reloaded right back onto them, so that they can't extract private profit by making the world worse for the public as a whole;
- actually-effective money-laundering prevention, even when dealing with international shenanigans (such as corporations claiming to be headquartered in Ireland when nearly-to-all of their business is conducted elsewhere);
- collapse of real-estate bubbles propped up by international investors wanting to convert their dirty assets into 'clean' registered land holdings; thus bringing down the price of home ownership to an achievable goal for most of the general population
- a fairly low number of people earning more than, say, ten times the average salary of skilled professional engineers, doctors, or generals, and a near-total lack of billionaires;
- personal privacy protections for average citizens at least as good as Europe's current GDPR, including effective anti-tracking regulations on the ad insdustry;
- better understanding of how brains work, more widespread acceptance of neurodiversity (including diversenesses that we of the present-day are unaware of);
- architecture generally including the principles of handicap/disability-focused design (much like how subtitles and wheelchair ramps have improved the lives of more than people with deafness and paraplegia);
- To a much better extent than in present, improvements made to the lives of various marginalized groups, to the extent that they're effectively not really marginalized anymore. (Eg, in Canada, getting around the political problems and finally coming to generally-mutually-acceptable solutions for First Nations reconciliation, treaties, and other disagreements.)
- copyrights lasting no more than 15 years (as has been mathematically demonstrated to be the longest term that can provide more good than harm);
- penal systems focused on rehabilitation and recompense to the harmed rather than gratuitious punishment or corporate-owned-prison profiteering;
- Possibly: Widespread application of future-prediction market techniques to improve various proposed plans?...
- Marginal tax rate of 90% on annual incomes over, say, $3M in today's dollars (ie, the rate the US had from 1944-1963)
I'm trying to identify a pile of details for a setting where the people are notably better off than in the present, but can still be recognized as being a future iteration of present-day society. (I may not know how any of these would actually be accomplished, but I can still write Star Trek fanfiction even without knowing how to build a warp drive.) Not a paradise, but somewhere a good number of people from today's first-world societies might consider immigrating to.
Given the general shape of the points I've jotted down so far, can you think of any important aspects I'm forgetting?
- Some bad things happened. People fought back, and tried various ways to keep them from happening again, with varying levels of success and side-effects. The more successful approaches led to those groups becoming wealthier and more militarily effective, thus gaining international prestige, thus leading less-successful groups to try to emulate them.
- Standard economies include:
- a Basic Universal Income (plus whatever further tweaks are needed to avoid any rampant inflation or other problems therefrom);
- single-payer health-care (including dentistry, prescriptions, psych, etc);
- effectively free tuition;
- widespread unionization;
- Possibly: Lots of worker-owned businesses?;
- national ministries of ombudsmen, embedded into the other ministries and able to accept complaints about them, without those complaints getting lost in internal processes that never find any fault by the bureaucrats;
- police held accountable for their actions by non-police-dominated investigations;
- significant surveillance of the finances of politicians and elected officials;
- political tweaks to prevent regulatory capture, gerrymandering, capturing of courts by political parties;
- strong anti-trust legislation;
- rules against vulture capitalism;
- externality costs that are currently offloaded onto the general public by capitalist corporations reloaded right back onto them, so that they can't extract private profit by making the world worse for the public as a whole;
- actually-effective money-laundering prevention, even when dealing with international shenanigans (such as corporations claiming to be headquartered in Ireland when nearly-to-all of their business is conducted elsewhere);
- collapse of real-estate bubbles propped up by international investors wanting to convert their dirty assets into 'clean' registered land holdings; thus bringing down the price of home ownership to an achievable goal for most of the general population
- a fairly low number of people earning more than, say, ten times the average salary of skilled professional engineers, doctors, or generals, and a near-total lack of billionaires;
- personal privacy protections for average citizens at least as good as Europe's current GDPR, including effective anti-tracking regulations on the ad insdustry;
- better understanding of how brains work, more widespread acceptance of neurodiversity (including diversenesses that we of the present-day are unaware of);
- architecture generally including the principles of handicap/disability-focused design (much like how subtitles and wheelchair ramps have improved the lives of more than people with deafness and paraplegia);
- To a much better extent than in present, improvements made to the lives of various marginalized groups, to the extent that they're effectively not really marginalized anymore. (Eg, in Canada, getting around the political problems and finally coming to generally-mutually-acceptable solutions for First Nations reconciliation, treaties, and other disagreements.)
- copyrights lasting no more than 15 years (as has been mathematically demonstrated to be the longest term that can provide more good than harm);
- penal systems focused on rehabilitation and recompense to the harmed rather than gratuitious punishment or corporate-owned-prison profiteering;
- Possibly: Widespread application of future-prediction market techniques to improve various proposed plans?...
- Marginal tax rate of 90% on annual incomes over, say, $3M in today's dollars (ie, the rate the US had from 1944-1963)
Four Hundred Eighteen RSS feeds
General | Posted 5 years agoI've taken my full list of feeds in RSSOwlnix ( https://github.com/Xyrio/RSSOwlnix ), trimmed out any that are particularly personal or that I can think of some other reason not to post, and stuffed the resulting list at https://www.datapacrat.com/temp/rss.....020-04-08.opml , for anyone to download and make use of. You should be able to simply import the whole thing in one gulp into RSSOwlnix, if you're trying that program out; if you're using some other feed reader, the OPML file is plaintext, and if that reader can't import it, it should be easy enough to figure out the folders, feed names, and feed URLs.
(If you do subscribe to the whole bunch, I suggest letting your reader populate your copies of the feeds, and then mark the whole thing as read; so that you can pay attention to only the new posts as they come in.)
I admit 418 seems like a lot, but 114 of them can be ignored and deleted by anyone not in Canada, another 121 are webcomics, and at least 46 are connected to the LessWrong online diaspora, leaving only 137 of general interest. (I've tried subscribing to several thousand feeds over the years, trying out things like grabbing feeds from every newspaper, TV station, or other mass media outlet I could find; or focusing in on specific topics from Fortran to the First Nations; but dropped most of the ones I found myself not paying attention to. RSSOwlnix is a very useful program, but even it can start to chug a bit with how many feeds I've occasionally managed to fill it with.)
I won't list all the feed URLs here - that's what the OPML file is for :) - but here's a summary of what's what:
The first half-dozen feeds are my general online news, mostly feeds that I've been subscribed to for years: Boing Boing, Slashdot, Metafilter, kottke.org, and the top-voted items of Hacker News. (Pluralistic is new, but it's run by Cory Doctorow, who's been part of Boing Boing for years.) Following them are two feeds from KnowYourMeme, which helps me keep track of whatever new in-jokes the young'uns keep coming up with and sending through the intertubes.
Next up is what I've been calling 'Emergencies', which for some time I've been treating as 'the actual international news' - plane crashes, earthquakes, floods, and all the other things that you'd expect to be covered in newspapers and the six o'clock news, but so rarely actually are. This section has two subgroups for Canada's health agencies, reporting product recalls, food safety, and other things. And lastly for this set, my newest collection of feeds: submissions to a half-dozen COVID-19 subreddits.
If you subscribe to nothing but the above two sets, you'll be better informed about current events than a disappointing proportion of the general population. (Though you probably want to be a bit wary of those subreddits, which are imperfectly moderated at best, so you have to watch out for propaganda and outright falsehoods.)
Following all that seriousness are the webcomics. Mostly sorted out, I've got a pile of political comics and newspaper editorials; furry comics; gaming comics; newspaper strips; science-fiction comics; and a smattering of random ones.
After that I've got feeds from a variety of authours (from published professionals to silly homebrew worlds), some furry blogs, feeds specific to my local area, politically-focused blogs and newspapers, a wide selection from the LessWrong/Rationality community, feeds about particular pieces of software, and a final half-dozen I haven't sorted anywhere in particular. Oh, and a trio of RSS feeds for some YouTube channels, mostly to show how you can do that for your own preferred channels.
(The last part of the OPML file includes my current preferences for RSSOwlNix, such as fonts and standard feed-refresh times, and that I prefer to run a "clean-up" of the database once a month.)
These feeds - plus the ones I'm not including in this sampler - are how I get around three-quarters of my online news. Most of the other quarter are from sites that aren't so handy to keep up with via RSS, such as furry art sites; and the remainder come from a dozen or so email lists. As I've mentioned in a recent journal, I don't bother with Facebook or Instagram or the like; and I mostly avoid Twitter's unending stream and dark-pattern nudges by just keeping an eye on particular Twitter accounts' RSS feeds. After trying and discarding all sorts of other approaches over the years, this is what's turned out to work for me; and, hopefully, at least some of it will work for you, too. :)
(If you do subscribe to the whole bunch, I suggest letting your reader populate your copies of the feeds, and then mark the whole thing as read; so that you can pay attention to only the new posts as they come in.)
I admit 418 seems like a lot, but 114 of them can be ignored and deleted by anyone not in Canada, another 121 are webcomics, and at least 46 are connected to the LessWrong online diaspora, leaving only 137 of general interest. (I've tried subscribing to several thousand feeds over the years, trying out things like grabbing feeds from every newspaper, TV station, or other mass media outlet I could find; or focusing in on specific topics from Fortran to the First Nations; but dropped most of the ones I found myself not paying attention to. RSSOwlnix is a very useful program, but even it can start to chug a bit with how many feeds I've occasionally managed to fill it with.)
I won't list all the feed URLs here - that's what the OPML file is for :) - but here's a summary of what's what:
The first half-dozen feeds are my general online news, mostly feeds that I've been subscribed to for years: Boing Boing, Slashdot, Metafilter, kottke.org, and the top-voted items of Hacker News. (Pluralistic is new, but it's run by Cory Doctorow, who's been part of Boing Boing for years.) Following them are two feeds from KnowYourMeme, which helps me keep track of whatever new in-jokes the young'uns keep coming up with and sending through the intertubes.
Next up is what I've been calling 'Emergencies', which for some time I've been treating as 'the actual international news' - plane crashes, earthquakes, floods, and all the other things that you'd expect to be covered in newspapers and the six o'clock news, but so rarely actually are. This section has two subgroups for Canada's health agencies, reporting product recalls, food safety, and other things. And lastly for this set, my newest collection of feeds: submissions to a half-dozen COVID-19 subreddits.
If you subscribe to nothing but the above two sets, you'll be better informed about current events than a disappointing proportion of the general population. (Though you probably want to be a bit wary of those subreddits, which are imperfectly moderated at best, so you have to watch out for propaganda and outright falsehoods.)
Following all that seriousness are the webcomics. Mostly sorted out, I've got a pile of political comics and newspaper editorials; furry comics; gaming comics; newspaper strips; science-fiction comics; and a smattering of random ones.
After that I've got feeds from a variety of authours (from published professionals to silly homebrew worlds), some furry blogs, feeds specific to my local area, politically-focused blogs and newspapers, a wide selection from the LessWrong/Rationality community, feeds about particular pieces of software, and a final half-dozen I haven't sorted anywhere in particular. Oh, and a trio of RSS feeds for some YouTube channels, mostly to show how you can do that for your own preferred channels.
(The last part of the OPML file includes my current preferences for RSSOwlNix, such as fonts and standard feed-refresh times, and that I prefer to run a "clean-up" of the database once a month.)
These feeds - plus the ones I'm not including in this sampler - are how I get around three-quarters of my online news. Most of the other quarter are from sites that aren't so handy to keep up with via RSS, such as furry art sites; and the remainder come from a dozen or so email lists. As I've mentioned in a recent journal, I don't bother with Facebook or Instagram or the like; and I mostly avoid Twitter's unending stream and dark-pattern nudges by just keeping an eye on particular Twitter accounts' RSS feeds. After trying and discarding all sorts of other approaches over the years, this is what's turned out to work for me; and, hopefully, at least some of it will work for you, too. :)
Some Collections of Podcasts
General | Posted 5 years agoI don't listen to /every/ episode of every podcast as they come out, but my phone's new SD card has more than enough space to just grab 'em all anyway, letting me binge whenever I feel like.
My top recommendations - the ones I /do/ listen to every episode immediately - are The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe; Revolutions; Under the Influence; Decoder Ring Theatre; Welcome to Night Vale; and the top five or six of the 'insight porn' list.
They should all be easy enough to find links to; if they're not, just ask and I'll provide 'em.
* Canada-focused podcasts:
- Canadaland: A bit meta, talking about Canadian media.
- Canadaland's other shows: Commons; Oppo; Cool Mules; Taste Buds; Thunder Bay; The Imposter: Commons and Oppo are about national politics, the others about particular topics
- Ontario Loud; Wag the Doug: Ontario politics
- The Secret Life of Canada
- The House from CBC Radio
- Sandy and Nora talk politics
- Talking Radical Radio
- Law Bytes; The Docket; Lawyered; The McGill Law Journal: All four about Canadian law.
* Ham radio podcasts:
- ARRL The Doctor is In
- ARRL Audio News
- This Week in Amateur Radio
* Sciencey shows:
- Science Friday
- This Week in Science
- Astronomy Cast
- Quirks and Quarks
- Everything Hertz
* Rationalism shows:
- The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: If there's one podcast that started pointing me in the right direction to clear my thought processes, it's this one. Getting a feel for this level of skepticism helped prepare me to get a good foundation for figuring out more difficult truths, and trickier ways of telling truths from falsehoods.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Goes through the fanfiction HPMOR, and then a few other stories of the same general theme.
- Tsuyoku Naritai!
- The Bayesian Conspiracy
- Rattle Fiction Podcast
- Rationally Writing
* History shows:
- Revolutions: Listen to this one from the beginning. In an engaging and non-boring way, the host covers ten of the most important revolutions in history. A lot of the modern world makes a lot more sense after hearing about the sharp-left-turns events took to get here.
- Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
- You Must Remember This
- The Podcast Very Different From Ours: A reading of the book "Law Systems Very Different From Ours", a good resource for anyone who wants to worldbuild a setting that's interesting, self-consistent, and noticeably distinct from the present-day.
- Cautionary Tales
* Music podcasts:
- Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
- Monthly Best of Electro Swing
* "Insight Porn": Each episode is usually a different topic, and after you listen to each one, you have the feeling that you've learned something, even if you forget it all by the time next week's episode rolls around.
- Radiolab
- Freakonomics Radio
- Invisibilia
- 99% Invisible
- Futility Closet
- Reply All
- More or Less: Behind the Statistics
- TED Talks Daily
- Stuff You Should Know; Stuff To Blow Your Mind; Stuff You Missed in History Class; Stuff Mom Never Told You; Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
* Fiction:
- Decoder Ring Theatre: The "Red Panda Adventures" is one of the best pulp-era comic-book universes, bar none. Their other productions aren't too shabby, either.
- Welcome to Night Vale: Hard to give a good description of, but worth listening to from the first episode.
- Hello From The Magic Tavern: Improv fantasy, of the "Yes, and..." worldbuilding style, and a lack of shame that frequently hits NSFW levels.
- PodCastle; PseudoPod; Escape Pod: Regular short stories of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, respectively.
- Mission to Zyxx: Feels a lot like 'Magic Tavern', except sci-fi.
- Improvised Star Trek
- Clarkesworld Magazine
* Random individual topics:
- FurCast: The only still-running furry podcast I could find.
- Under the Influence: All about the marketing industry, by an ad professional. Much better than that sounds, and a lot of handy lessons about advertising-manipulation tricks to watch out for. Worth hitting the archives for; used to be called 'Age of Persuasion'.
- Savage Lovecast: Relationship and sex advice from Dan Savage.
- Democracy Now! Audio: Daily politics and news.
- Ear Hustle: Describes what life is actually like behind bars.
- Off the Hook; Off the Wall: Produced by 2600, the magazine for white-hat hackers.
My top recommendations - the ones I /do/ listen to every episode immediately - are The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe; Revolutions; Under the Influence; Decoder Ring Theatre; Welcome to Night Vale; and the top five or six of the 'insight porn' list.
They should all be easy enough to find links to; if they're not, just ask and I'll provide 'em.
* Canada-focused podcasts:
- Canadaland: A bit meta, talking about Canadian media.
- Canadaland's other shows: Commons; Oppo; Cool Mules; Taste Buds; Thunder Bay; The Imposter: Commons and Oppo are about national politics, the others about particular topics
- Ontario Loud; Wag the Doug: Ontario politics
- The Secret Life of Canada
- The House from CBC Radio
- Sandy and Nora talk politics
- Talking Radical Radio
- Law Bytes; The Docket; Lawyered; The McGill Law Journal: All four about Canadian law.
* Ham radio podcasts:
- ARRL The Doctor is In
- ARRL Audio News
- This Week in Amateur Radio
* Sciencey shows:
- Science Friday
- This Week in Science
- Astronomy Cast
- Quirks and Quarks
- Everything Hertz
* Rationalism shows:
- The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: If there's one podcast that started pointing me in the right direction to clear my thought processes, it's this one. Getting a feel for this level of skepticism helped prepare me to get a good foundation for figuring out more difficult truths, and trickier ways of telling truths from falsehoods.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Goes through the fanfiction HPMOR, and then a few other stories of the same general theme.
- Tsuyoku Naritai!
- The Bayesian Conspiracy
- Rattle Fiction Podcast
- Rationally Writing
* History shows:
- Revolutions: Listen to this one from the beginning. In an engaging and non-boring way, the host covers ten of the most important revolutions in history. A lot of the modern world makes a lot more sense after hearing about the sharp-left-turns events took to get here.
- Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
- You Must Remember This
- The Podcast Very Different From Ours: A reading of the book "Law Systems Very Different From Ours", a good resource for anyone who wants to worldbuild a setting that's interesting, self-consistent, and noticeably distinct from the present-day.
- Cautionary Tales
* Music podcasts:
- Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
- Monthly Best of Electro Swing
* "Insight Porn": Each episode is usually a different topic, and after you listen to each one, you have the feeling that you've learned something, even if you forget it all by the time next week's episode rolls around.
- Radiolab
- Freakonomics Radio
- Invisibilia
- 99% Invisible
- Futility Closet
- Reply All
- More or Less: Behind the Statistics
- TED Talks Daily
- Stuff You Should Know; Stuff To Blow Your Mind; Stuff You Missed in History Class; Stuff Mom Never Told You; Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
* Fiction:
- Decoder Ring Theatre: The "Red Panda Adventures" is one of the best pulp-era comic-book universes, bar none. Their other productions aren't too shabby, either.
- Welcome to Night Vale: Hard to give a good description of, but worth listening to from the first episode.
- Hello From The Magic Tavern: Improv fantasy, of the "Yes, and..." worldbuilding style, and a lack of shame that frequently hits NSFW levels.
- PodCastle; PseudoPod; Escape Pod: Regular short stories of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, respectively.
- Mission to Zyxx: Feels a lot like 'Magic Tavern', except sci-fi.
- Improvised Star Trek
- Clarkesworld Magazine
* Random individual topics:
- FurCast: The only still-running furry podcast I could find.
- Under the Influence: All about the marketing industry, by an ad professional. Much better than that sounds, and a lot of handy lessons about advertising-manipulation tricks to watch out for. Worth hitting the archives for; used to be called 'Age of Persuasion'.
- Savage Lovecast: Relationship and sex advice from Dan Savage.
- Democracy Now! Audio: Daily politics and news.
- Ear Hustle: Describes what life is actually like behind bars.
- Off the Hook; Off the Wall: Produced by 2600, the magazine for white-hat hackers.
Meatspace Journalling
General | Posted 5 years agoA habit I've acquired and developed, which might be worth considering...
A few years ago, I was in a sleep study, in which I had to keep a record of my sleeping habits. While the study's long over, I kept on keeping track, and started throwing in more things. These days, a typical day's entry looks something like this.
______________________________________________
Sat, Apr 4: 8:45am: Wake
9am: [morning meds]
9:30: Exercise: Stretches, 10 burpees
10am: Brush, floss, mouthwash. Shower. 183 lbs.
10:30: [more meds], Supplements
Oatmeal, 120 Cal
11:30: Cookies, 160 Cal
2pm: Papaya, dried, ~100 Cal
6:30: Pasta + cheese + ham, carrots: ~500 Cal
Ginger Ale, ~200 Cal
7pm: [evening meds]
5040 steps, 1080 Cal
6/5: 12:30am: Sleep
________________________________________________
The horizontal lines make it easy to tell one sleep-cycle from the next; I keep the dates in the leftmost part of the page, the times all in their own column, and whatever I'm actually describing to the right of that. I don't worry about pinning the times more accurately than the nearest half-hour, and usually write any entry down within a half-hour of doing whatever I'm writing about, though I've occasionally gone most of a day before bothering. (I started keeping track of the daily hygiene line as a proxy for how badly I was depressed that day.)
While not a regular thing, I also jot down any symptoms I notice, from sniffles due to allergies to headaches to headaches or back pain or the time I sprained an ankle. If I get any other interesting data, such as blood-test results or getting my blood pressure taken or seeing an interesting stutter in my pulse in my oximeter's display, that gets written down, too.
Every so often, I take the three most trackable numbers - weight, steps, and calories - and add them to a spreadsheet, so I can graph out how they're changing over time. (For steps and calories, the numbers vary so wildly that I use Google Sheets' ability to graph a multiple-day running average.)
I started out using some el cheapo mini-composition notebooks and ballpoint pens, keeping one of each in a pocket. I eventually decided I might as well go for some acid-free pens and moleskine mini-notepads. An important detail I learned early on was to make sure each journal (and pen) would fit in my pocket without any unsightly bulges, so that it was always ready to hand. (A minor detail I started doing was to keep a second, backup pen in my coat pocket, in case my main pen ran out of ink or got dropped off a bridge or something.) To keep track of steps, I clip a pedometer to my belt every day. I also now regularly wear a digital watch; my wrist adornment of choice is the astonishingly inexpensive, and ridiculously rugged, Casio F-91W.
On the first page of each journal, I start out with the current year, in case I ever have enough of them that I risk losing track of which one was written when. On the last page of each journal, I jot down my own contact info (in case I lose a journal), my emergency contacts (in case I go down for the count and someone checks my pockets instead of my phone), and a list of my meds and supplements* (the latter so I don't have to write out a half-dozen different things every day). These days, I usually also keep a small spiral-bound-on-top notepad in the same pocket, for whatever note-taking, doodling, or other pen-and-paperwork happens to crop up; the journal is for info I want to keep a record of indefinitely, the notepad is for scratchwork I'll probably rip the pages out of once I'm done with - such as to pin onto my corkboard to-do list.
I've tried a few other ideas that haven't stuck. For example, getting a bunch of highlighters of different colours, and highlighting all the food lines in yellow, sleep/wake times in blue, meds in peach, exercise in pink, and mood/hygiene in green; all to better tell apart which is which at a glance. But I didn't see any actual benefit arising from that that was worth the effort, so stopped bothering. (Though that one would be easy enough to go back and add, if it ever seems worthwhile.)
As a whole, I found this habit easy to get into, especially since I started small, with just the sleep and wake times. And once I had the basic habit in place, it was easy to expand the sets of data I kept track of, step by step, until I was keeping track of everything a medical professional might be interested in. (The folk working at the weight-loss clinic I've recently been referred to seemed pleasantly surprised I was already writing down and spreadsheeting everything they wanted me to keep track of, except for specific calorie counts, which only took a bit of effort to start paying attention to.)
It's not exactly a bullet-point journal; those are usually pre-planned so that each day takes up a specific amount of space, while my records may go from a half-page to one-and-a-half pages per day. I also don't bother jotting down inspirational quotes I come across, my dreams, story ideas, meandering thoughts, philosophy, or other such things; I've got the notepad if I ever feel the urge to actually write any of that, but haven't. The journal is a tool, a way for me to collect and collate a specific set of data that my future self is likely to find useful, and early on I decided that I didn't want to risk making too much work for myself, getting annoyed with the process, and abandoning the habit of record-keeping.
*: I don't feel like sharing my meds, but supplements aren't so personal. You should probably start by taking a look at the bubble-chart at https://informationisbeautiful.net/.....ents-vizsweet/ , which shows the strength of evidence for most supplements, before you decide to start taking any. My current list is: a multivitamin (on general principles); Vitamin D (4000 IU per day, because I live up in Canada); fish oil/omega 3; calcium/magnesium; St. John's Wort (for depression); and zinc (25 mg/day, recently added in hopes of helping fend off respiratory virus infections). Things I've tried in the past, but no longer keep up with, included daily green tea and dark chocolate, coconut oil, and creatine.
A few years ago, I was in a sleep study, in which I had to keep a record of my sleeping habits. While the study's long over, I kept on keeping track, and started throwing in more things. These days, a typical day's entry looks something like this.
______________________________________________
Sat, Apr 4: 8:45am: Wake
9am: [morning meds]
9:30: Exercise: Stretches, 10 burpees
10am: Brush, floss, mouthwash. Shower. 183 lbs.
10:30: [more meds], Supplements
Oatmeal, 120 Cal
11:30: Cookies, 160 Cal
2pm: Papaya, dried, ~100 Cal
6:30: Pasta + cheese + ham, carrots: ~500 Cal
Ginger Ale, ~200 Cal
7pm: [evening meds]
5040 steps, 1080 Cal
6/5: 12:30am: Sleep
________________________________________________
The horizontal lines make it easy to tell one sleep-cycle from the next; I keep the dates in the leftmost part of the page, the times all in their own column, and whatever I'm actually describing to the right of that. I don't worry about pinning the times more accurately than the nearest half-hour, and usually write any entry down within a half-hour of doing whatever I'm writing about, though I've occasionally gone most of a day before bothering. (I started keeping track of the daily hygiene line as a proxy for how badly I was depressed that day.)
While not a regular thing, I also jot down any symptoms I notice, from sniffles due to allergies to headaches to headaches or back pain or the time I sprained an ankle. If I get any other interesting data, such as blood-test results or getting my blood pressure taken or seeing an interesting stutter in my pulse in my oximeter's display, that gets written down, too.
Every so often, I take the three most trackable numbers - weight, steps, and calories - and add them to a spreadsheet, so I can graph out how they're changing over time. (For steps and calories, the numbers vary so wildly that I use Google Sheets' ability to graph a multiple-day running average.)
I started out using some el cheapo mini-composition notebooks and ballpoint pens, keeping one of each in a pocket. I eventually decided I might as well go for some acid-free pens and moleskine mini-notepads. An important detail I learned early on was to make sure each journal (and pen) would fit in my pocket without any unsightly bulges, so that it was always ready to hand. (A minor detail I started doing was to keep a second, backup pen in my coat pocket, in case my main pen ran out of ink or got dropped off a bridge or something.) To keep track of steps, I clip a pedometer to my belt every day. I also now regularly wear a digital watch; my wrist adornment of choice is the astonishingly inexpensive, and ridiculously rugged, Casio F-91W.
On the first page of each journal, I start out with the current year, in case I ever have enough of them that I risk losing track of which one was written when. On the last page of each journal, I jot down my own contact info (in case I lose a journal), my emergency contacts (in case I go down for the count and someone checks my pockets instead of my phone), and a list of my meds and supplements* (the latter so I don't have to write out a half-dozen different things every day). These days, I usually also keep a small spiral-bound-on-top notepad in the same pocket, for whatever note-taking, doodling, or other pen-and-paperwork happens to crop up; the journal is for info I want to keep a record of indefinitely, the notepad is for scratchwork I'll probably rip the pages out of once I'm done with - such as to pin onto my corkboard to-do list.
I've tried a few other ideas that haven't stuck. For example, getting a bunch of highlighters of different colours, and highlighting all the food lines in yellow, sleep/wake times in blue, meds in peach, exercise in pink, and mood/hygiene in green; all to better tell apart which is which at a glance. But I didn't see any actual benefit arising from that that was worth the effort, so stopped bothering. (Though that one would be easy enough to go back and add, if it ever seems worthwhile.)
As a whole, I found this habit easy to get into, especially since I started small, with just the sleep and wake times. And once I had the basic habit in place, it was easy to expand the sets of data I kept track of, step by step, until I was keeping track of everything a medical professional might be interested in. (The folk working at the weight-loss clinic I've recently been referred to seemed pleasantly surprised I was already writing down and spreadsheeting everything they wanted me to keep track of, except for specific calorie counts, which only took a bit of effort to start paying attention to.)
It's not exactly a bullet-point journal; those are usually pre-planned so that each day takes up a specific amount of space, while my records may go from a half-page to one-and-a-half pages per day. I also don't bother jotting down inspirational quotes I come across, my dreams, story ideas, meandering thoughts, philosophy, or other such things; I've got the notepad if I ever feel the urge to actually write any of that, but haven't. The journal is a tool, a way for me to collect and collate a specific set of data that my future self is likely to find useful, and early on I decided that I didn't want to risk making too much work for myself, getting annoyed with the process, and abandoning the habit of record-keeping.
*: I don't feel like sharing my meds, but supplements aren't so personal. You should probably start by taking a look at the bubble-chart at https://informationisbeautiful.net/.....ents-vizsweet/ , which shows the strength of evidence for most supplements, before you decide to start taking any. My current list is: a multivitamin (on general principles); Vitamin D (4000 IU per day, because I live up in Canada); fish oil/omega 3; calcium/magnesium; St. John's Wort (for depression); and zinc (25 mg/day, recently added in hopes of helping fend off respiratory virus infections). Things I've tried in the past, but no longer keep up with, included daily green tea and dark chocolate, coconut oil, and creatine.
My Current Computing & Info Setup
General | Posted 5 years agoIn case anyone reading this might find something useful to add to their own approach...
* Main Hardware: Thinkpad laptop from 2010, upgraded to max RAM and a 1 TB HD.
- Laptop lid: Covered in a protective vinyl sticker, decorated with a starfield.
- External HDs: A couple of 4 TB drives, mostly storing the stuff I look at less than monthly.
- Cooling: A laptop pad with a built-in fan.
- Parts: A bucket of bits and bobs to try to replace whatever breaks next. (I've got scotch tape holding a speaker grille on...)
- OS: Red Hat Linux, XFCE spin ( https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/xfce/ ). Given how ancient and creaky the hardware is, I need to minimize my overhead. (I keep a few temperature gauges in my taskbar, and whenever the CPU gets pegged, they all rise into the red.)
- Desktop background: The Pleiades, in shades of blue.
- Desktop Widgets: Using gDesklets, on the right of the desktop, I have a stack that lets me see a few useful things at a glance: Analog clock, digital clock, uptime, CPU usage bar and graph, memory usage bar and graph, network usage, several HD partitions' free space. On the bottom, my taskbar auto-hides, but when popped up shows the Whisker start menu, workspace selector, programs in the current workspace, a button to start the terminal, an alerter to let me know if I have unread email, the system tray, my temperature gauges, a small weather display, date and time, and the lock/sleep/power buttons.
- Desktop icons: A half-dozen often-used folders, a few folders to shortcuts I rarely-to-never use
- Screensaver: XScreensaver, set to GLSlideshow, pointing to a folder where I downloaded most of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day images.
* Browser: Firefox.
- Theme: Dark. Browser usually maximized; top row contains tabs and min/max/close buttons; second row contains URL bar and addon buttons (uMatrix, NoScript, Stylus); rest of screen is main browser window.
- Current browser addons: Anti-malware addons, usually also block ads (Adblock Plus, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, FuckFuckAdBlock, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, Location Guard, Nano Defender, NoScript, Privacy Badger, Redirect Bypasser, Smart Referer, TrackMeNot, uBlock Origin, uMatrix), Google repair (Google search link fix, View Image), Reddit improvements (Reddit Enhancement Suite, Reddit Masstagger), Resurrect Pages, Rotate and Zoom Image, SingleFile, Stylus
- Tabs: In my bookmarks, I have a few folders for various kinds of sites I visit daily; so with a few flicks of the keyboard, I can hit each folder's 'open all in tabs' to fire up each set all at once. I also usually leave a tab open to my webmail and local weather sites.
- Preferences: default search engine set to DuckDuckGo, other search engines turned off.
* RSS Reader: RSSOwlnix ( https://github.com/Xyrio/RSSOwlnix ), the fork of RSSOwl that's still being developed. There haven't been that many decent RSS readers since Google Reader was destroyed, but this one does the job more than well enough. Feeds can be sorted into folders and subfolders, and can be updated on a default schedule (such as every hour or two) or custom intervals for each (such as every 15 minutes for important feeds). I'll cover some of my feeds in a future journal.
- Usually-open software: Workspace 1: Firefox, RSSOwlnix; 2: Task Manager; 3: Deluge (torrents); 4: Geany (text editor), calculator; 5: Pidgin (chat); 6: Thunar (file browser).
- Background running software: Redshift (reddens my screen when it's dark out), KDE Connect (lets my laptop talk to my cellphone)
- Occasional software: VLC (music & video player), GIMP (image editing), Google Earth, Okular (PDF & CBR viewer), Dolphin (file-browser that uses KDE Connect to browse both laptop and phone), Kokua (Second Life client)
* Phone: Android, made my Motorola, built last year; upgraded to Android 10.
- Headphones: Bluetooth earbuds connected by a wire. Backup 3.5mm wired.
- Case: Two part protective case (like an Otterbox), plus screen protector; the latter's already got a webwork of cracks from a drop that kept the screen itself intact.
- Background: A purplish starfield
- General Apps: K-9 Mail (email reader), Firefox (browser), Signal (secure SMS), OsmAnd~ (maps), Slide (Reddit browser), Telegram (chat), FBReader (ebook reader and text-to-speech), AnkiDroid (study custom flashcards), Kiwix (keep an offline copy of Wikipedia & other Wiki projects on your phone), Planets (that bright dot is... Saturn!), Protonmail (secure email server), Google Translate (with downloaded dictionaries for offline use), Fast Notepad
- A/V players: VLC (music and video files), AntennaPod (podcasts), White Noise (generates white noises of various kinds), RadioDroid (streams online radio stations), YouTube, Netflix, CBC Gem (CBC TV's streamer), Broadcastify (local police/fire/etc radio scanner)
- Weather apps: WeatherCAN, Storm, Wunderground
- Games: I Love Hue and I Love Hue Too (soothing colour-gradients), Simon Tatham's Puzzles, Simple Solitaire, Enjoy Sudoku
- System Apps: F-Droid (alternative to Google Play store), KDE Connect (lets my cellphone talk to my laptop), Open VPN Connect (to keep my cell provider from tracking everything I do online), Authy (alternative to Google Authenticator, for sites that use 2-factor authentication), Hacker's Keyboard
- Tricorder apps: RadioactivityCounter and Gamma Pix Lite (block the camera lens, and whatever the camera-chip still detects is radiation), Spectroid (audio analysis), InfraSound Detector, UltraSound Detector, and some ad-free altimeter, barometer, compass apps.
- ... And a pile of other apps that I rarely-to-never use, aren't obnoxious, but I haven't bothered uninstalling, such as Vector Pinball, Space Trader, Morse code trainers, astronomy apps, and other oddities
- ... And a conscious /lack/ of certain apps that I deliberately haven't installed: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their ilk.
* Other:
- Raspberry Pi, connected to local network as an ad-blocking DNS server (mostly for the family's devices that haven't had their own ad-blockers installed); see https://pi-hole.net/ .
- Mostly-unused laptop docking station on my desk, connected to extra USB ports, speakers, and a second monitor.
- Corkboard behind desk, divvied into modified "kanban" system with post-it notes and push-pins: sections for 'to do', 'doing', 'done', 'daily', 'weekly', and 'waiting for something'.
- Uninterruptible Power Supply. (Mostly to let my CPAP machine keep working if a power failure happens overnight. Asthma sucks.)
- Backup phone battery, kept in coat pocket.
- Previous android cellphone, kept around as a backup in case my current phone breaks or is lost.
- An ancient iPhone, kept around as a backup since before I got my current phone
- The Box-o-Cables everyone has, currently in a desk drawer.
- Living Room TV, which my phone can cast to, can play YouTube and Netflix, and can play whatever movies or media I copy onto a memory stick
- Radios, across the house.
- An offline PM2.5 air-pollution sensor in my bedroom. (Asthma sucks.)
- Weather gauge outside, weather display and predictor inside. (Plus a few older-style thermometers, barometers, and hygrometers.)
* Main Hardware: Thinkpad laptop from 2010, upgraded to max RAM and a 1 TB HD.
- Laptop lid: Covered in a protective vinyl sticker, decorated with a starfield.
- External HDs: A couple of 4 TB drives, mostly storing the stuff I look at less than monthly.
- Cooling: A laptop pad with a built-in fan.
- Parts: A bucket of bits and bobs to try to replace whatever breaks next. (I've got scotch tape holding a speaker grille on...)
- OS: Red Hat Linux, XFCE spin ( https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/xfce/ ). Given how ancient and creaky the hardware is, I need to minimize my overhead. (I keep a few temperature gauges in my taskbar, and whenever the CPU gets pegged, they all rise into the red.)
- Desktop background: The Pleiades, in shades of blue.
- Desktop Widgets: Using gDesklets, on the right of the desktop, I have a stack that lets me see a few useful things at a glance: Analog clock, digital clock, uptime, CPU usage bar and graph, memory usage bar and graph, network usage, several HD partitions' free space. On the bottom, my taskbar auto-hides, but when popped up shows the Whisker start menu, workspace selector, programs in the current workspace, a button to start the terminal, an alerter to let me know if I have unread email, the system tray, my temperature gauges, a small weather display, date and time, and the lock/sleep/power buttons.
- Desktop icons: A half-dozen often-used folders, a few folders to shortcuts I rarely-to-never use
- Screensaver: XScreensaver, set to GLSlideshow, pointing to a folder where I downloaded most of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day images.
* Browser: Firefox.
- Theme: Dark. Browser usually maximized; top row contains tabs and min/max/close buttons; second row contains URL bar and addon buttons (uMatrix, NoScript, Stylus); rest of screen is main browser window.
- Current browser addons: Anti-malware addons, usually also block ads (Adblock Plus, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, FuckFuckAdBlock, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, Location Guard, Nano Defender, NoScript, Privacy Badger, Redirect Bypasser, Smart Referer, TrackMeNot, uBlock Origin, uMatrix), Google repair (Google search link fix, View Image), Reddit improvements (Reddit Enhancement Suite, Reddit Masstagger), Resurrect Pages, Rotate and Zoom Image, SingleFile, Stylus
- Tabs: In my bookmarks, I have a few folders for various kinds of sites I visit daily; so with a few flicks of the keyboard, I can hit each folder's 'open all in tabs' to fire up each set all at once. I also usually leave a tab open to my webmail and local weather sites.
- Preferences: default search engine set to DuckDuckGo, other search engines turned off.
* RSS Reader: RSSOwlnix ( https://github.com/Xyrio/RSSOwlnix ), the fork of RSSOwl that's still being developed. There haven't been that many decent RSS readers since Google Reader was destroyed, but this one does the job more than well enough. Feeds can be sorted into folders and subfolders, and can be updated on a default schedule (such as every hour or two) or custom intervals for each (such as every 15 minutes for important feeds). I'll cover some of my feeds in a future journal.
- Usually-open software: Workspace 1: Firefox, RSSOwlnix; 2: Task Manager; 3: Deluge (torrents); 4: Geany (text editor), calculator; 5: Pidgin (chat); 6: Thunar (file browser).
- Background running software: Redshift (reddens my screen when it's dark out), KDE Connect (lets my laptop talk to my cellphone)
- Occasional software: VLC (music & video player), GIMP (image editing), Google Earth, Okular (PDF & CBR viewer), Dolphin (file-browser that uses KDE Connect to browse both laptop and phone), Kokua (Second Life client)
* Phone: Android, made my Motorola, built last year; upgraded to Android 10.
- Headphones: Bluetooth earbuds connected by a wire. Backup 3.5mm wired.
- Case: Two part protective case (like an Otterbox), plus screen protector; the latter's already got a webwork of cracks from a drop that kept the screen itself intact.
- Background: A purplish starfield
- General Apps: K-9 Mail (email reader), Firefox (browser), Signal (secure SMS), OsmAnd~ (maps), Slide (Reddit browser), Telegram (chat), FBReader (ebook reader and text-to-speech), AnkiDroid (study custom flashcards), Kiwix (keep an offline copy of Wikipedia & other Wiki projects on your phone), Planets (that bright dot is... Saturn!), Protonmail (secure email server), Google Translate (with downloaded dictionaries for offline use), Fast Notepad
- A/V players: VLC (music and video files), AntennaPod (podcasts), White Noise (generates white noises of various kinds), RadioDroid (streams online radio stations), YouTube, Netflix, CBC Gem (CBC TV's streamer), Broadcastify (local police/fire/etc radio scanner)
- Weather apps: WeatherCAN, Storm, Wunderground
- Games: I Love Hue and I Love Hue Too (soothing colour-gradients), Simon Tatham's Puzzles, Simple Solitaire, Enjoy Sudoku
- System Apps: F-Droid (alternative to Google Play store), KDE Connect (lets my cellphone talk to my laptop), Open VPN Connect (to keep my cell provider from tracking everything I do online), Authy (alternative to Google Authenticator, for sites that use 2-factor authentication), Hacker's Keyboard
- Tricorder apps: RadioactivityCounter and Gamma Pix Lite (block the camera lens, and whatever the camera-chip still detects is radiation), Spectroid (audio analysis), InfraSound Detector, UltraSound Detector, and some ad-free altimeter, barometer, compass apps.
- ... And a pile of other apps that I rarely-to-never use, aren't obnoxious, but I haven't bothered uninstalling, such as Vector Pinball, Space Trader, Morse code trainers, astronomy apps, and other oddities
- ... And a conscious /lack/ of certain apps that I deliberately haven't installed: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their ilk.
* Other:
- Raspberry Pi, connected to local network as an ad-blocking DNS server (mostly for the family's devices that haven't had their own ad-blockers installed); see https://pi-hole.net/ .
- Mostly-unused laptop docking station on my desk, connected to extra USB ports, speakers, and a second monitor.
- Corkboard behind desk, divvied into modified "kanban" system with post-it notes and push-pins: sections for 'to do', 'doing', 'done', 'daily', 'weekly', and 'waiting for something'.
- Uninterruptible Power Supply. (Mostly to let my CPAP machine keep working if a power failure happens overnight. Asthma sucks.)
- Backup phone battery, kept in coat pocket.
- Previous android cellphone, kept around as a backup in case my current phone breaks or is lost.
- An ancient iPhone, kept around as a backup since before I got my current phone
- The Box-o-Cables everyone has, currently in a desk drawer.
- Living Room TV, which my phone can cast to, can play YouTube and Netflix, and can play whatever movies or media I copy onto a memory stick
- Radios, across the house.
- An offline PM2.5 air-pollution sensor in my bedroom. (Asthma sucks.)
- Weather gauge outside, weather display and predictor inside. (Plus a few older-style thermometers, barometers, and hygrometers.)
Some of my recent YouTube watches
General | Posted 5 years agoA complete and accurate depiction of human nature in 3 minutes 10 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNF_F6oeRU . :)
Four of Evelyn Lambart's shorts for the National Film Board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhGkCMgG-4A , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoeP8V5u2M , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahUyhTdiZAA , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoAwd3rMZ4 . This is the sort of content that I grew up watching, on the Canadian version of PBS.
Furry animated shorts: "Die Young" animated by Vivziepop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKNuZovuSw , "Shut Eye" animatic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgNo8EoNxmo , "Hadidance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykaGNl67iI , "Fox Fires" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5goxeTfjc , "You're The One That I Want" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNK_xBAGTBI . Mostly musical, mostly amusing, should help populate your Youtube suggestions with more of the same.
Second Life furry music & dance videos (lyrics occasionally NSFW, visuals as SFW as twerking ever is): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=second+life+furry+dance&sp=CAM%253D . Note that the top entry in this list was made in 2011; that's practically ancient in internet time, but I'd say the whole approach still holds up.
"No Evil" series by Betsy Lee at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....vzNW_9b00VUxiE . Starts out with a few classical and North American myths and songs, and develops into a fascinating world and story all its own.
Lucas the Spider: https://www.youtube.com/user/joshuaslice/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid . It's a particularly cute spider; what more needs be said?
Sir Mashalot's top two: Six-song country mashup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o and "Even Better" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0VXubTsAoE . It's hard to explain without making it sound terrible, but give 'em a try and I think you'll enjoy the music.
"Your Racist Friend" by TMBG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFGQdvYIJ0M . Thirty years old, and unfortunately more relevant than ever.
VoicePlay, https://www.youtube.com/user/theVOICEPLAYdotcom/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid . I'm a sucker for a capella (or even barbershop quartets, such as https://www.youtube.com/user/BarbershopHarmony38 ), but this group is matched by only a few. Their version of "This Is Halloween", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL44YFyNLys , got me to insta-subscribe before I heard anything else, and they've gone above and beyond for several others, such as "Grim Grinning Ghosts" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5TYZ8GqZbU and "Zombies vs Hillbillies Survivor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYzwzbqUJXk . Even when they just do a five-minute medley of Queen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcU5xmlzqA , they can't help but turn it into something more.
Adam Savage: https://www.youtube.com/user/testedcom . Offline, I've also been binging on old episodes of Mythbusters, since I've got the time.
Four of Evelyn Lambart's shorts for the National Film Board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhGkCMgG-4A , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoeP8V5u2M , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahUyhTdiZAA , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoAwd3rMZ4 . This is the sort of content that I grew up watching, on the Canadian version of PBS.
Furry animated shorts: "Die Young" animated by Vivziepop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKNuZovuSw , "Shut Eye" animatic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgNo8EoNxmo , "Hadidance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykaGNl67iI , "Fox Fires" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5goxeTfjc , "You're The One That I Want" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNK_xBAGTBI . Mostly musical, mostly amusing, should help populate your Youtube suggestions with more of the same.
Second Life furry music & dance videos (lyrics occasionally NSFW, visuals as SFW as twerking ever is): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=second+life+furry+dance&sp=CAM%253D . Note that the top entry in this list was made in 2011; that's practically ancient in internet time, but I'd say the whole approach still holds up.
"No Evil" series by Betsy Lee at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....vzNW_9b00VUxiE . Starts out with a few classical and North American myths and songs, and develops into a fascinating world and story all its own.
Lucas the Spider: https://www.youtube.com/user/joshuaslice/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid . It's a particularly cute spider; what more needs be said?
Sir Mashalot's top two: Six-song country mashup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o and "Even Better" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0VXubTsAoE . It's hard to explain without making it sound terrible, but give 'em a try and I think you'll enjoy the music.
"Your Racist Friend" by TMBG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFGQdvYIJ0M . Thirty years old, and unfortunately more relevant than ever.
VoicePlay, https://www.youtube.com/user/theVOICEPLAYdotcom/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid . I'm a sucker for a capella (or even barbershop quartets, such as https://www.youtube.com/user/BarbershopHarmony38 ), but this group is matched by only a few. Their version of "This Is Halloween", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL44YFyNLys , got me to insta-subscribe before I heard anything else, and they've gone above and beyond for several others, such as "Grim Grinning Ghosts" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5TYZ8GqZbU and "Zombies vs Hillbillies Survivor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYzwzbqUJXk . Even when they just do a five-minute medley of Queen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcU5xmlzqA , they can't help but turn it into something more.
Adam Savage: https://www.youtube.com/user/testedcom . Offline, I've also been binging on old episodes of Mythbusters, since I've got the time.
Current & Local Events, in the days of COVID-19
General | Posted 5 years agoUp here in Ontario, I was lucky enough to get wind of the exponential curve fairly early, so I was able to stock up on essentials before the hoarding stripped any shelves, and to offer suggestions to my family to do likewise. And, keeping an eye on potential disruptions to supply chains, such as knock-on effects from requiring migrant farm labourers to spend two weeks isolated, have tried a few longer-term plans, such as signing onto some "Community Supported Agriculture" (pay a local farm a certain amount up-front, and get a weekly basket of veggies for a few months in summer and fall) and buying some big bags of rice to store in a lidded metal trashcan in case calories get a bit harder to come by. (I've been meaning to get some diatomaceous earth to mix in with it to prevent bug infestation, but didn't think of it until after the gardening stores were closed.) I've known the dance of the preppers since before Y2K was fended off, I've just rarely had good enough reason to convince the fam to join in.
Government-wise, all "non-essential" businesses are closed down (there was even a recent story that when a drug-dealer was arrested, they also dinged him on a charge of operating a non-essential business in violation of this law) (mind you, most local chatter I've seen says that the list of what's "essential" is over-broad, including such things as non-urgent construction, and until recently, cannabis stores), local parks and such are closed, groups of more than five are prohibited (not counting actual family households and such). Grocery stores are making arrangements to keep customers at least six feet apart, including only letting so many people in at once.
The other day, the provincial government released to the public the numbers and projections they've been using to base their responses on. Roughly, if no containment measures had been done, they projected around 1% of the population would have died; with the current set of measures, they predict around a tenth of that; and more stringent measures could reduce that by another order of magnitude. There is a certain segment of the population which is, shall we say, bug-nuts crazy, who believe that the coronavirus is a hoax, that the virus is being spread by the government for nefarious purposes, and that it's a good thing to let it kill off the elderly and unhealthy in order to reduce the surplus population, usually all at the same time; but outside of that, most of the grumbling I've been seeing has been that the various levels of government haven't gotten their acts together to make sure everyone can afford both rent and food for the duration (there are some new supports in place, but they don't cover everyone, such as recent graduates who had jobs lined up that are now cancelled), and that the (notoriously corrupt and incompetent; see recent scandal on replacing stamped-metal license plates with peeling stickers for just one of many examples) provincial government has seemed to place "the economy" as a higher priority than containing the virus well enough to actually keep our health system from getting overwhelmed within the next few weeks.
All-in-all, local opinion seems to be "it sucks, but it could be worse".
Government-wise, all "non-essential" businesses are closed down (there was even a recent story that when a drug-dealer was arrested, they also dinged him on a charge of operating a non-essential business in violation of this law) (mind you, most local chatter I've seen says that the list of what's "essential" is over-broad, including such things as non-urgent construction, and until recently, cannabis stores), local parks and such are closed, groups of more than five are prohibited (not counting actual family households and such). Grocery stores are making arrangements to keep customers at least six feet apart, including only letting so many people in at once.
The other day, the provincial government released to the public the numbers and projections they've been using to base their responses on. Roughly, if no containment measures had been done, they projected around 1% of the population would have died; with the current set of measures, they predict around a tenth of that; and more stringent measures could reduce that by another order of magnitude. There is a certain segment of the population which is, shall we say, bug-nuts crazy, who believe that the coronavirus is a hoax, that the virus is being spread by the government for nefarious purposes, and that it's a good thing to let it kill off the elderly and unhealthy in order to reduce the surplus population, usually all at the same time; but outside of that, most of the grumbling I've been seeing has been that the various levels of government haven't gotten their acts together to make sure everyone can afford both rent and food for the duration (there are some new supports in place, but they don't cover everyone, such as recent graduates who had jobs lined up that are now cancelled), and that the (notoriously corrupt and incompetent; see recent scandal on replacing stamped-metal license plates with peeling stickers for just one of many examples) provincial government has seemed to place "the economy" as a higher priority than containing the virus well enough to actually keep our health system from getting overwhelmed within the next few weeks.
All-in-all, local opinion seems to be "it sucks, but it could be worse".
Is there a (Transformers) artist in the house?
General | Posted 5 years agoI have an idea for a robot; does anyone know an artist currently taking commissions, whose prices aren't too dear, who enjoys the mechanical side of things?
