@chr
If this is your first moot
You _have_ to toot.
I used to be a lot weirder. I'm a middle-aged geek, father to two boys, and I bang out code at #Google. I live near Boston now, but I grew up in central Mississippi.
I know the conlangs #Lojban and #TokiPona. I write hobby code in #Tcl and #CommonLisp.
I play a bunch of #music instruments, but none well enough to perform. I've been playing around with a DAW.
I started the cantos.social instance, trying to be a part of the small-scale Internet.
I try to be as kind as I can.
Disappointed to learn Cohost has been started by people from the fediverse. You know what the fediverse is but you learned the wrong lessons from it. Yes, I also think some servers are not operated professionally and blocks often get misused, but that is not a reason to replace a free and open system with a locked down one. I wrote on why decentralization matters back in 2018:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/12/why-does-decentralization-matter/
I really enjoyed this piece on video game design philosophy, and how the prevailing risk-averse trend of making games only with mechanics that are already legible to players has stunted the possibility of an innovative future of game design https://blog.kylekukshtel.com/game-design-mimetics
Actual #LifeProTip -
You have plastic storage. You have plastic storage lids. They want to be together, nestled up. "We love each other!" but NO. They must be kept apart, for the good of the kitchen. Put the containers on one shelf, sorted by nestable type. Put the lids on another shelf, sorted by size. How easy it can be!
Now step back and admire your work. Pick out a container and easily find its companion lid. You have brought peace to the kitchen. and yourself.
I've been reading some recently on the effects on a person when their identity is smeared across time on the internet. Being pressured in a way to be the same person forever, since stuff from your past can be dredged up.
When we practiced the old ways, we used only pseudonyms and discarded them when they became inconvenient. To choose a name was power. To hold another person's True Name had power (see story by Vernor Vinge).
Maybe we should get back to that. Maybe *I* should get back to that.
"The simplification of interaction trajectories and the uniformisation of editorial recommendations creates a runaway process that eliminates complexity, leading to a loss of noodiversity that eventually causes the intelligence and computational power of society to collapse." https://berjon.com/retrofuturism/
Quoted in the article:
"[...] Never read when you can reflect; read only, except in moments of recreation, what concerns the purpose you are pursuing; and read little, so as not to eat up your interior silence."
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reading-ourselves-to-death
@junbird yes, there are some major issues with incompatibilities.
I often name "ad-hoc #interoperability" to be a major cause for the current situation where #ActivityPub interop becomes harder and harder, having to take all kinds of app-specific extensions and incompatibilities into account.
Recently found some great reading on it in several #IETF drafts, e.g this one on "The Harmful Consequences of the Robustness Principle"
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-07.html
Specifically they mention Protocol Decay.
covid-19
https://medium.com/@socialcreature/the-covid-event-horizon-37dc504bf503 (via @craigmaloney) is one of the most disheartening things I've read so far, especially when I'm in the middle of my third case of covid.
I'm seriously contemplating what lifestyle I might accept to utterly minimize my chances, and the chances of my family, from ever contracting this again. Outdoor schools? Moving away from population centers?
This insight brought to you by a recent rediscovery of how bad infinite scrolling apps are to have on a mobile phone. The temptation is to check them any time you're not doing something else, and it can really add up. Better to not have them constantly available at all.
The act of reading consumes spoons.
Moving your eyes across the letters, forming them into words, interpreting their syntax, reflecting on their meaning, integrating it into memory - all of this combines into a high-focus activity consuming finite brain resources. It can stealthily deplete you. If you're mentally exhausted, think about how much you're reading, not just what you're reading.
Dear Lazyfed:
I really need an Android app and/or website for family health logging. I should be able to log, per person, timestamped events with custom fields and optional levels per field. And then give me some graphs. This could be a generic tool rather than a specific thing.
I can find a ton of apps that will do this for a single individual (Bearable seems particularly nice even though the premium upsell is relentless), but none that work for families.
LWN is now on Mastodon https://lwn.net/Articles/895898/ #LWN
The common sort of #lisp hacker, #MartialArtist, spiritual nomad, and father. I like #conlangs, #coding, and #BeeKeeping. I live near #boston. I run the cantos.social instance.