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Entry tags:

me,
pols,
us

Well, we're finally here [me, pols]

This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.

I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.

Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.

I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.

I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.

Entry tags:

Slipping on into ICE [curr ev, pols]

This is blackly hilarious and absolutely worth a read.

Leftist journalist Laura Jedeed showed up at an ICE recruiting events to do scope it out and write about what she found. What happened next is... eye widening.

2026 Jan 13: Slate: "You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof." [Paywall defeater] by Laura Jedeed:

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

[...]

I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.

“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”

As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.

And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”

The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”

By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.

Click through to read the whole thing.

International Station

https://xkcd.com/3195/

Welcome to the International Space Station Exclamation Point!

https://xkcd.com/3195/

Software as Fast Fashion

Posted by tante

https://tante.cc/2026/01/15/software-as-fast-fashion/

https://tante.cc/?p=7748

Clothes have never been cheaper. These days a t-shirt is often cheaper that a decent cup of tea in a cafe. The wonders of capitalism. At least that is how it is often described. And when you point at the underpaid, gruesome labor that people in poorer regions of the planet have to do to make this possible the answer tends to be: “Well, they are having jobs and can provide for their families now, so it’s reducing poverty.”

Now of course the situation is a bit more complex, has more angles. Because fast fashion causes about 10% of the world’s carbon emissions (about one EU), that is more than all international flights and all maritime shipping combined. And because the clothing is cheap and what experts call shit it ends up in a landfill or burned. Because those shirts and pants don’t survive contact with the real world for long.

Fast fashion is not about durability and sustainability, it’s about novelty. Not just can fashion companies sell you more stuff, get you into their stores more often, you can also express yourself more. Buy a fun t-shirt just for this one party. Or – maybe even worse – just for a haul video on Instagram or TikTok.

But if you do not think about the context, the externalities (fancy way of saying the way it fucks up the world and the people in it) too much, fast fashion is great: You have a fun idea about how to attend a party or how to make a statement of any kind somewhere and you can probably order something for cheap.

This is exactly where we are with software now. We are turning software into fast fashion. Because “AI”.

One of the current trends in software is “vibe coding”: You no longer have a person who more or less knows what they are doing write software but you have an LLM do it. There’s a few optimized ones out there that even get the code to actually compile or run most of the time. Sometimes the results are even correct.

This is often framed as liberation: Every human being can now have the software tool they want. Without having to learn to code or without having to ask someone else. You think it, you get it.

Now most people will admit that the code is utter garbage. It’s inconsistent, inefficient and mostly unmaintainable. But it does what the user wants it to do … maybe. So who cares? We don’t need to maintain this stuff. If we need something similar later we don’t build on this, we just have it generated anew.

Software is no longer seen as an asset, as something to care for, to maybe even take pride in. It’s a throw-away product. Like a napkin. Just get one quick, wipe your mouth and throw it away. Like a novelty t-shirt.

There is software you need only once. A quick script to automate a few things. Like renaming a bunch of files or so. And if LLMs would just be used to write those I would care a lot less about it.

But that’s not the narrative: The promise is that you can built full online services or meaningful products (think a web browser) that way. It might even work almost. Some of the time.

Software has become an important part of our lives. It structures a significant part of our experiences given how much time we spend in front of some sort of screen. The vision that “AI” companies are selling under the label “democratization” of software development is a world where the only clothes you can buy are fast fashion throw away items. Shirts that are basically not worth putting into the washing machine cause they won’t survive anyway.

But just as with fast fashion there are consequences. Let’s not even talk about the environmental cost of LLM use, the water, the electricity, the e-waste.

When was the last time you were really frustrated by a piece of software you had to use? Your bank’s app not allowing you to change your address but forcing you to talk to a chat bot that kept trying to do the wrong thing. Your music player making your laptop’s fan spin eating up your battery while not playing any music, just generating a “busy” cursor. Your email client crashing while you are writing. The options are endless. How long ago was that? An hour? 5 minutes?

Software has gotten bad in weird ways. It’s not just that everything is basically just a half-assed website pretending to be an app with even simple text editors bringing almost a whole browser along just to show a bunch of characters on the screen (as long as the file doesn’t get long). I have to use Microsoft 365 at work and literally none of the paid tools work properly. Features are missing or just do not work as documented. Everything is dog slow and doesn’t integrate well. Now apply that everywhere.

I am not a fashionable or stylish person. I basically buy a thing that works 5-10 times and then I am done for a long time. But I am in the position that I don’t have to buy fast fashion (and I know some people have so few resources that that is the only thing they have access to, it’s tragic) and I would never buy a shitty t-shirt for 5 bucks or whatnot that will annoy me after 3 rounds of laundry. I want to have the things in my life work. Ideally be even a bit nice. And I think we all deserve that. Deserve having access to objects that have a level of quality and care put into them.

It’s not just about giving people access to something. My guiding ethic is to give people access to good things. Because that’s what is right.

I keep coming back to the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness from Terry Pratchett’s novel Men at Arms:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

We are working towards a digital world where we’ll all be having wet feet. And that makes me very sad.

https://tante.cc/2026/01/15/software-as-fast-fashion/

https://tante.cc/?p=7748

Entry tags:

hist,
in memoriam

Sohlangana ezulwini (How can I keep from singing?) [in memoriam, hist]

2026 Jan 14: NYT: "Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program" by Adam Nossiter. "He played a key role in ending apartheid South Africa’s secret weapons program in the 1980s by helping the African National Congress bomb critical facilities."

Renfrew Christie in 1988.

Renfrew Christie, a South African scholar whose undercover work for the African National Congress was critical in hobbling the apartheid government’s secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, died on Dec. 21 at his home in Cape Town. He was 76.

The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Camilla Christie said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa paid tribute to Dr. Christie after his death, saying his “relentless and fearless commitment to our freedom demands our appreciation.”

The A.N.C., in a statement, called Dr. Christie’s role “in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” an “act of profound revolutionary significance.”

From the doctoral dissertation he had written at the University of Oxford on the history of electricity in South Africa, Dr. Christie provided the research needed to blow up the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station; the Arnot coal-fired power station; the Sasol oil-from-coal facilities that produced the heavy water critical to producing nuclear weapons; and other critical sites.

The explosions set back South Africa’s nascent nuclear weapons program by years and cost the government more than $1 billion, Dr. Christie later estimated.

By the time the bombs began going off, planted by his colleagues in uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the A.N.C., Dr. Christie was already in prison. He was arrested by South African authorities in October 1979 on charges of “terrorism,” three months after completing his studies at Oxford, and spent the next seven years in prison, some of that time on death row and in solitary confinement.

“While I was in prison, everything I had ever researched was blown up,” he said in a speech in 2023.

Terrorism was a capital offense, and Dr. Christie narrowly escaped hanging. But as he later recounted, he was deliberately placed on the death row closest to the gallows at the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. For two and half years, he was forced to listen to the hangings of more than 300 prisoners.

“The whole prison would sing for two or three days before the hanging, to ease the terror of the victims,” Dr. Christie recalled at a 2013 conference at the University of the Western Cape on laws regarding torture.

Then he recited the lyrics of an anti-apartheid folk song that reverberated in the penitentiary: “‘Senzeni-na? Senzeni-na? What have we done? What have we done?’ It was the most beautiful music on earth, sung in a vile place.”

Watch on YouTube

“At zero dark hundred,” he continued, “the hanging party would come through the corridors to the gallows, slamming the gates behind them on the road to death. Once they were at the gallows there was a long pause. Then — crack! — the trapdoors would open, and the neck or necks of the condemned would snap. A bit later came the hammering, presumably of nails into the coffins.”

In an interview years later with the BBC, he said the “gruesome” experience affected him for the rest of his life.

Dr. Christie acquired his fierce antipathy to apartheid at a young age, growing up in an impoverished family in Johannesburg.

Many of his family members fought with the Allied forces against the Germans in World War II, and “I learned from them very early that what one does with Nazis is kill them,” he said at a 2023 conference on antinuclear activism in Johannesburg. “I am not a pacifist.”

At 17, he was drafted into the South African Army. A stint of guard duty at the Lenz ammunition dump south of Johannesburg confirmed his suspicions that the government was building nuclear weapons. “From the age of 17, I was hunting the South African bomb,” he said at the conference.

After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC.

From there, it was possible to calculate how many nuclear bombs could be produced. Six such bombs had reportedly been made by the end of apartheid in the early 1990s; the United States had initially aided the regime’s nuclear program. Thanks to the system of forced labor, South Africa “made the cheapest electricity in the world,” Dr. Christie said, which aided the process of uranium enrichment and made the country’s nuclear program a magnet for Western support. (South Africa also benefited from its status as a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union.)

Dr. Christie turned his findings over to the A.N.C. Instead of opting for the safety of England — there was the possibility of a lecturer position at Oxford — he returned home and was arrested by South Africa’s Security Police. He had been betrayed by Craig Williamson, a fellow student at Witwatersrand, who had become a spy for the security services and was later granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

After 48 hours of torture, Dr. Christie wrote a forced confession — “the best thing I ever wrote,” he later told the BBC, noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.

“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.

Two years later, in December 1982, Koeberg was bombed by white A.N.C. operatives who had gotten jobs at the facility. They followed Dr. Christie’s instructions to the letter.

“Of all the achievements of the armed struggle, the bombing of Koeberg is there,” Dr. Christie said at the 2023 conference, emphasizing its importance. “Frankly, when I got to hearing of it, it made being in prison much, much easier to tolerate.”

Renfrew Leslie Christie was born in Johannesburg on Sept. 11, 1949, the only child of Frederick Christie, an accountant, and Lindsay (Taylor) Christie, who was soon widowed and raised her son alone while working as a secretary.

He attended King Edward VII School in Johannesburg and was conscripted into the army immediately after graduating. After his discharge, he enrolled at Witwatersrand. He was twice arrested after illegally visiting Black students at the University of the North at Turfloop, and was also arrested during a march on a police station where he said the anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela was being tortured.

He didn’t finish the course at Witwatersrand, instead earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cape Town in the mid-1970s before studying at Oxford. At Cape Town, he was a leader of the National Union of South African Students, an important anti-apartheid organization.

On June 6, 1980, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under South Africa’s Terrorism Act, with four other sentences of five years each to run concurrently.

“I spent seven months in solitary,” Dr. Christie said in the 2023 speech. “Don’t let anybody kid you: No one comes out of solitary sane. My nightmares are awful.”

After his years in prison, he was granted amnesty in 1986 as the apartheid regime began to crumble. (It officially ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president.) He later had a long academic career at the University of the Western Cape, retiring in 2014 as dean of research and senior professor.

In addition to his daughter Camilla, he is survived by his wife, Dr. Menán du Plessis, a linguist and novelist he married in 1990; and another daughter, Aurora.

Asked by the BBC whether he was glad he had spied for the A.N.C., Dr. Christie didn’t hesitate.

“I was working for Nelson Mandela and uMkonto we Sizwe,” he said. “I’m very proud of that. We won. We got a democracy.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

– Pete Seeger

16-Part Epoxy

https://xkcd.com/3194/

Some surfaces may seem difficult to glue. But if you research the materials, find tables of what adhesives work on them, and prepare your surfaces carefully, you can fail to glue them in a fun NEW way that fills your house with dangerous vapors.

https://xkcd.com/3194/

Entry tags:

crafts,
crochet

A Little Bit of Bling Shawl Crochet Pattern

A Little Bit of Bling Shawl Crochet Pattern
Finished Size: Adjustable. Photographed sample is 50” (127 cm) wingspan length, 13.5” (34 cm) spine length, excluding fringe.

Materials:

Galler Yarns Kismet (87% polyester/13% nylon, 8 oz/227 g/1,400 yds/1,280 m) – 1 cone in 901 Silver, or approximately 300 yds (274 m) in any metallic, light weight yarn.
Galler Yarns Flore II (75% Kid Mohair/15% Wool/10% Nylon, 1.75 oz/50 g/100 yds/91 m/) – 3 skeins in 1005 Ocean, or approximately 300 yds (274 m) in any light weight mohair blend yarn.
L-11/8 mm crochet hook, or any size needed to obtain correct gauge.
Yarn needle.
Gauge: 10 fdc = 4” (10 cm) across. Exact gauge is not critical for this project.

Abbreviations Used in This Pattern:

beg fdc – beginning foundation double crochet – Ch 4, turn, sk 3 sts, yo, insert hook in next ch, yo and draw up a loop, yo and pull through 1 loop (counts as ch 1), [yo and draw through 2 loops] twice.
ch – chain
fdc – foundation double crochet – Yo, insert hook in ch 1 from previous st, yo and draw up a loop, yo and pull through 1 loop (counts as ch 1), [yo and draw through 2 loops] twice.
ea – each
rep – repeat
sc – single crochet
sk – skip
sl st – slip stitch
sp – space
st(s) – stitch(es)
yo – yarn over
* Rep instructions after asterisk as indicated.

Pattern Notes:

Entire shawl is crocheted holding one strand of each yarn together.
Shawl is worked from top (long) edge with steady decreases to point.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

pols,
ω

Massachusetts is next [Ω, MA/US]

Heads up, locals! Observers report evidence of ICE/DHS activity preparing for an operation in MA, imminently.

2026 Jan 13 5pm: u/rarelighting in r/Boston: Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge, points at:

2026 Jan 13: Axios: Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge by Mike Deehan

Discussion at Reddit:

OP:

While listening to the Sam Seder podcast today, someone sent in a report about increased activity at the Burlington ICE facilities. Stay alert folks.

u/Neat-Beautiful-5505 • 4h ago

Another Reddit post showed three 18-wheel trucks hauling several new SUVs each to the Burlington ICE facility.

u/_still_truckin_ • 4h ago

Two dozen white Ford Explorers. They’re the same Interceptor models that real police departments use. You can spot them by the searchlight mounted to the driver side A-pillar and lack of tracks for roof racks. Saw them in the parking lot of the Burlington ICE building.

u/ThePirateKing01 • 4h ago

Shoutout to @BearingWitnessBurlington on YouTube and TikTok

To those who say protesting peacefully doesn’t amount to much, this person has been both protesting and monitoring the facility almost 24/7. Without people like this we wouldn’t have the heads up that we do now

u/minilip30 • 4h ago

“The bottom line: While no operation has been officially confirmed, Boston is not waiting to find out — it is mobilizing now.”

Good!

Remember, ICE needs a warrant to enter any private residence or business. Business that aren’t fascist supporting should have signs that they will not allow ICE entry without a warrant.

u/beanandcod • 4h ago

A judicial warrant, signed by a judge

u/Pnoman98 • 4h ago

A lot of police presence at Alewife& Gov Center

u/cccxxxzzzddd • 4h ago

The Rindge / fresh pond apartments at alewife are home to many immigrants, particularly Ethiopians

This is not good

Edit: not good that ice is there

u/mysteriousfrittata • 4h ago

Saw a car full of them parked outside of MGH yesterday evening. All wearing DHS fatigues etc. Naturally the assholes were parked in an ambulance parking spot. I called to report a strange vehicle parked there.

u/HolyMoleyGuacamoly • 4h ago

they appear to be staying at that marriott right next door. was by there for a bit and saw a ton of activity in and out of there of single white men in suvs with beards

Happy_Literature9493 • 3h ago

Copied and pasted from Safari reader mode [the Axios article:]

“Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge Mike Deehan Boston City Hall is privately getting ready for a potential spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

Why it matters: Even without a confirmed federal operation, the city is "planning for the unthinkable," according to Mayor Michelle Wu.

Escalating tensions and violence in other cities are deepening anxieties within immigrant communities and worsening the friction between sanctuary communities and federal authorities. The latest: Wu confirmed on WBUR this week that she is discussing enforcement scenarios with Boston Police leadership.

Her goal is to establish clear protocols to ensure local police resources are not co-opted into federal immigration efforts. Wu maintains that Boston police will not leak information to ICE, a stance she views as crucial to maintaining community trust. The big picture: Boston isn't alone in bracing for federal action.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has stated plans for a larger presence in Boston, promising more agents following disputes over sanctuary policies. Past initiatives mobilized large-scale enforcement across Massachusetts. Zoom in: Unverified but persistent reports from residents and activists note a delivery of SUVs to the Burlington ICE Field Office last week.

Advocates interpret the arrival of three car carriers hauling SUVs as a sign that the local ICE branch is staffing up. What we're watching: If federal enforcement accelerates, pressure will mount on public-facing institutions and communities with sanctuary policies.

Courthouses are typically a flashpoint for arrests. City community centers and schools will need to know how to respond if agents appear at their doors. ICE likely won't limit large-scale enforcement to Boston. Municipalities with large immigrant populations like Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Revere and Lynn could also be in the crosshairs. Threat level: Activists have staked out the Burlington ICE office for months and will likely be among the first to know of any major rollout.

Expect throngs of Massachusetts residents to demonstrate against ICE if a surge happens here. The bottom line: While no operation has been officially confirmed, Boston is not waiting to find out — it is mobilizing now.”

Sailing Rigs

https://xkcd.com/3193/

I wanted to make the world's fastest yawl, so I made the aft sail bigger, but apparently that means it's not a yawl anymore! It's a real ketch-22.

https://xkcd.com/3193/

Current Mood: chill
Current Music: Baldur's Gate 3 soundtrack

Entry tags:

Spring Flowers

I buy primroses and pots full of bulbs as soon as they are available, it does so much for my mood to have them where I can see them from the couch. I have daffodils, grape hyacinths, a couple of different hyacinths and these netted irises.

Entry tags:

IYKYK [cur ev]

"What I 'erd, this nobby, 'iz bird got fingered over a tin o'beans, only shot the poor cow, didn't they? So, like, everybody's tooled up, an'..."

– V for Vendetta, Alan Moore & David Lloyd, 1988

January bridleways

A bright cold morning, the fields silvered with frost, and the paths an entertaining mix of ice and mud.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Photos: Contorta Willow

I took some pictures yesterday but didn't have time to upload and post them until today. The night before, a windstorm blew down the contorta willow sapling that used to stand between the house yard and the south lot, near the big maple tree.

( Walk with me ... )

Entry tags:

cheesecake,
dessert

Coconut Carrot Cake Cheesecake

Coconut Carrot Cake Cheesecake
Prep time: 25 MINUTES cook time: 50 MINUTES total time: 1 HOUR 15 MINUTES + 2 HOURS FOR CHILLING yields: MAKES ONE (9-Inch) CAKE

Ingredients

Cheesecake Layer
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Carrot Cake Layer
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
1 1/3 cups grated carrot
1/2 cup unsweetened or sweetened, shredded coconut

Coconut Cream Topping
1 (14 ounce) can cold, full-fat coconut milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Toasted coconut, for topping

( Read more... )

Planetary Alignment

https://xkcd.com/3192/

We're going to need to modify the surface to mount it on the test stand. Which ocean basin do you like the least?

https://xkcd.com/3192/

US Flight routes

Hello, everyone!

So, I'm writing a fic where a plane disappears in the US. As in, it drops from all radars for a few minutes and it's presumed down for a few hours. I need to know any plausible flight routes within the US from Boston where this could happen. Any stretches of land where a pilot could make an emergency landing and the plane still be presumed down for like an hour or three is good for me.

Personal computing

Posted by tante

https://tante.cc/2026/01/08/personal-computing/

https://tante.cc/?p=7719

When computers entered the homes it was often as toys or toy-like artifacts: These machines, usually called “home computers“, were often used like gaming consoles with magazines giving you code to type in to have simple games on them. Their use was limited to people who wanted to play arcade games without losing all your money or people who just loved technology.

After a while and through some marketing the term personal computer was established and describes the machines people have at home till this day (Apple probably would disagree since they love to always invent their own lingo to claim to be unique, but TBH fuck Apple). The personal computer was a stand alone system that people could run at home for their personal (but of course also professional) tasks: Word processing, some simple data management, gaming and later media consumption and the web.

I find the prefix “personal” a bit underexplored. As I remarked in my post about my attempts to untangle my personal infrastructure from billionaires and fascists:

I think that infrastructures are deeply personal because our needs and wants are personal. The way we have pushed for a harmonization of everyone’s digital life through centralized platforms for the last decades has been a deeply inhumane endeavor.

I thought it might make sense to dwell on this a bit more.

The Platform Age

My family got their first computer when I was still in primary school so somewhere in the middle/end of the 1980ies. It was an Epson 80286 with an amber monitor. It came with some software for certain tasks and I remember my mom getting the word processor she was also using at work because she knew how it worked.

Even with later computers: Whenever you got a new device (think a Sound Card – those didn’t used to be built-in) you got some new software with it, there was the shareware scene where you got little programs and tools on disks attached to magazines or something. But what was interesting is how nobody’s computer looked the same. Sure. At some point everyone had Windows 3.11 or even Windows95 at some point but the sets of tools were a lot more local. I remember how when one got to a new school, met new kids that they’d use completely different tools for the same things and one would (not usually legally) share whatever nifty thing one had access to.

The software landscape wasn’t ideal or maybe even better, but it was highly personalized. Mostly based on software being not that easy to get.

Then came the platforms. Not only did Microsoft win the battle around office tools but web platforms created these very streamlined, homogenized infrastructures that – because many were free – everyone adopted. Think Google Mail and Docs for mailing and collaborative editing. Operating Systems kept getting more and more locked down – mobile platforms being the worst offenders in this regard – and the app stores with their ratings would make sure that everyone would pick the same tool when searching for he same thing.

The promise of the “global village” was manifesting through centralized platforms everyone was on: How could you be a digital participant without a Facebook or a Google account?

Criticism against this is often framed in terms of anti-monopoly rhetoric: It’s bad if everyone is on the same platform because it harms the market and one player gets too much power and all that. But I think it’s also very inhumane, very violent in a way. We are different, our needs and wants, our skills and willingness to endure friction in our computing are different. And all that heterogeneity is made invisible, untouchable. It’s not that these systems actively fight our individuality, they make expressing it, make perceiving where you want to reshape something harder.

The monoculture of digital infrastructures has made people forget (or never learn) that software is by definition malleable. But the iPad taught people to just be good consumers and shut the fuck up. (Not just the iPad but I love hating on those devices. Grant me some fun here.)

The Anything Systems

There has been a response to those thoughts. Because of course we all see ourselves as brilliant individuals who have specific desires and needs. I call those the “Anything Systems”.

Some of you might know Notion but there’s a whole bunch of systems like that. Notion allows you to build your own workflows and data structures: It’s not a knowledge management system with clearly defined processes and capabilities. It’s more a set of building blocks for you to express yourself.

Not this might sound like a great approach: You can now build exactly your workflows and tools even without programming. But we are losing something when end-user software no longer carries semantics.

Stephen Farrugia (follow him) could probably go on quite the tangent here but you are stuck with me so here it goes: Anything Systems are not tools. As I have written about when it comes to generative “AI” systems, a tool is not just a thing that you maybe can use for a specific purpose. A tool is designed for that purpose, it contains assumptions about the problem space, you as the user of the tool, it is often the current iteration of a long line of attempts to optimize a certain tool for specific use cases. When people want to talk about tools and they are looking for a simple example they often use a hammer but if you have ever worked on a construction site you will know that there are many different kinds of hammers for very specific use cases, materials, contexts etc. “Hammer” is not an object but a category of objects.

Anything Systems claim to help you built the best workflow or solution for your case but they disconnect you from the experience and expertise that goes into the design and development of tools: A good tool brings with it an understanding of how to solve a problem the optimal way. That sometimes takes a bit of learning or the realization that a specific tool and its approach does not work for you or your context but it is a large part of what makes tools so good: You are not poking in the darkness hoping to figure out a good solution on your own, you are standing on the shoulders of giants.

Anything Systems give you a great box of toys to play around with but when things do not work for you, it’s your fault for not configuring it right. It’s a form of refusing to take responsibility for the things you put out into the world. The opposite of what I consider engineering to be. Anything Systems will keep you busy though: You can keep dicking around with your processes and structures for the rest of your life without ever really being happy with it. Maybe if you add just another thing then it will be perfect? Those systems are absolutely fantastic if you want to mask the bullshittiness of your job but are you really making progress? Or are you keeping busy?

The Everything Machines

We are not in the age of what the journalist Karen Hao calls “Everything Machines”, the age of so-called “AI”. This is an interesting amalgamation of the platform logic and the Anything System: Modern “AI”s want to turn everything into a chat interface (JUST LIKE IN STAR TREK!!!11). There is just one way of setting up digital interfaces: As chatbots. That is the future. And the present.

But those systems are not exactly specific. When you open ChatGPT it basically tells you to ask it anything. The interface and UI claims the system can do everything. Which is true if you don’t know much about the thing you are dealing with or are willing to accept garbage solutions. But that’s of course not the promise. The promise is that you have a subservient, willing slave-genius at your disposal – for a small fee.

Recently one of the banks I have an account with changed their whole interface. I can no longer see my account information on a website or in the app. I have to ask a chatbot for that information. Because chat is the only interface left. How could one just build a small form on a web site that allows me to change my address or anything? That’s past shit. Legacy design. Everything needs to be a chatbot because chatbots can do everything. Well. There’s still that asterisk.

Personal computing

As I wrote in my article on rebuilding my digital infrastructure: That article is not a howto. You probably should not do what I did because your needs are different. Maybe some things I did make sense to you and you can apply. Some might not fit your needs, budget or are things you don’t want to deal with. That is very healthy thinking.

I think it is important to share more about or computing with each other. But not (only) in the form of howtos but more as a small tour with explanations. Why did you pick certain tools and not others? What did you want to achieve? Which inconveniences are you living with?

I was very lucky. I grew up in a time where digital infrastructure wasn’t so standardized and locked down. Where I could experience the digital as something to built and shape and change. When I look at my 5 year old son I wonder if he will have that opportunity. And I want him to have that, I want him to experience that digital systems can be humane and can enhance our lives as long as we can shape them around our needs and that that reshaping is possible and doable.

I still really like technology. I like building systems for myself or others that work based on what the users want and need. And I don’t want to glorify the old days too much: Yeah, everyone’s system was different but it was often hard to collaborate and share. Because file formats and whatever.

Personal computing must be based on individual human or group needs but also on the technology side based on open standards that allow different tools and infrastructures to connect and share and collaborate. And it’s a social project of all of us building things, trying things, learning from one another. So we can built upon each others successes and failures. It’s “human needs, community sharing and standards” instead of “platforms” or “everything machines”.

That’s what I want to keep pushing more towards.

https://tante.cc/2026/01/08/personal-computing/

https://tante.cc/?p=7719

Superstition

https://xkcd.com/3191/

It's important to teach yourself to feel responsible for random events, because with great responsibility comes great power. That's what my wise Uncle Ben told me right before he died; he might still be alive today if only I'd said rabbit rabbit that year!

https://xkcd.com/3191/

Entry tags:

side dish

Cabbage Fried Rice

Cabbage Fried Rice
Time: 20 minutes Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients
2 tablespoons cooking oil
8 cups green cabbage, finely sliced
1 cup carrots, peeled and grated
1 cup onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter/margarine
3 cups jasmine rice, cooked
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

Step 1 - Heat a large, heavy-bottomed skillet or wok over high heat.
Step 2 - Add the cooking oil to the skillet and toss in the green cabbage, carrots, and onions.
Step 3 - Sauté the vegetables until the cabbage is wilted and starting to turn a little brown, about 7-10 minutes.
Step 4 - Stir constantly so the vegetables don't scorch to the bottom of the pan. The vegetables will shrink to about 1/3 to 1/2 of their original size.
Step 5 - Lower the heat to medium-low and add the butter and the jasmine rice to the vegetable mixture; stir to combine until the butter is melted, about 4-5 minutes.
Step 6 - Add the soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper to the vegetable mixture and stir until it is well combined, for about 5 minutes.
Step 7 - Serve.

Entry tags:

music

Yaybahar III Nadiri [music]

2026 Jan 6: Görkem Şen (Yaybahar on YT): Yaybahar III Nadiri

Watch on YouTube

The description text:

The essence of gold was rare, he conquered with his virtue, offered his gifts and fell behind the sun...

Dedicated to the soul of my dear friend's father, Nadir Oğuz...

I am surmising that "Nadiri" means "Of Nadir". Yaybahar is the instrument, the artist is its inventor:

The name yaybahar (pronounced /jajba'har/) has Turkish origin. It is a composite of two words: yay means a "string" or a "coiled string" and bahar means the season "spring." According to Gorkem Sen, the name is derived from the idea of a new life or a new beginning. [1]

I assume this is the third one of its kind the artist has made.

Artist's website: https://www.gorkemsen.com/