It is the aggressive megacolony of fungus embedding its mycelia in the base of the tree

PCR has been around since the 80s, though it has continued getting more efficient and cheaper

Madam Harkonnen

I recently read The Parable of the Sower and it really affected me, both because I felt empathy for the characters and because I saw some uncomfortable parallels in the recent history of our world. I also was disturbed by The Sparrow. Though frankly I wouldn’t recommend it for a lot of reasons. Battle Royale is intensely violent, in a really personal way. For graphic novels, From Hell is a really rough read honestly, but also really interesting

I normally don’t post about my blog here, but I literally posted this today so…https://dantheclamman.blog/2024/04/24/environmentally-youve-got-to-hand-it-to-sauron/

I was hoping it would help me save on international transfer fees when I was an overseas postdoc, but it would have actually cost more between the exchange fees and my time setting up all the exchanges in various countries, meanwhile also introducing risk in me being robbed of said money and screwing something up and introducing myself to some sort of tax liability. Needless to say, I continued to just pay for the bank transfers

Yes, this seems designed to target the broad “who was in this area” warrants. Must have been a big enough headache for them that they came up with this new system. For me, I keep this location on indefinitely. Has been handy for me in a couple situations: I’m a scientist and helped me reconstruct my field work locations when I lost some field notes, and it helped me contact trace when I caught covid!

Yes, they still can build a targeted profile per user, but no longer store a database of who was in an area that the police can issue a broad warrant to find out. So they get to have their cake and eat it too!

Yep, I did! I also use its shizuku integration to install in the background, which is awesome

Inkscape just gets out of my way. I was using it for a quite particular application of drawing CNC mill plans though, and through that, I got into using it for other graphics stuff!

I didn’t say it was bad. Just that the UX isn’t great.

It’s not perfect, but it’s just miles ahead of anything else on the market in capability!

Desktop: Zotero, RStudio, Thunderbird, Sumatra PDF, Notepad++, NoMacs (image viewer), Espanso (text expander), qBittorrent, Inkscape

Android: FairEmail or K9 Mail, Authenticator Pro, Feeder, F-Droid, Pocket Casts, SD Maid

Multi-platform: Home Assistant, Wireguard, Syncthing, Jellyfin, Kodi, Samba, Firefox

Honorable mentions that don’t have the best UX but are still hugely appreciated for existing: Joplin, QGIS

Runs nicely for me on a Pi 4B

It’s the most customizable, has the most advanced add ons system, syncs well between mobile and PC (though sadly with no tablet app), and it’s not part of the Chrome hegemony. Lately it has become faster and faster!

I still visit posts from search, but I’ve given up most of the logged-in experience (upvoting, commenting, submitting on a weekly basis). 99% of my previous activity was via third party apps on mobile, so I have little incentive to go back and contribute content. I don’t feel like contributing for free to some portal run by a private company. Reddit used to be a steward of their community but now feel they own it. I don’t need to work for them for free

I have felt this way for a few years now. It doesn’t help that many of the family and friends closest to me are getting older. They definitely can’t read as well as they used to. I have to make sure to word my posts on Facebook and Instagram very carefully and with concise, efficient diction. Any sarcasm or meaning left implied just flies over their heads. It scares me regarding when I get to their age.

I’ve observed how these streaming services engage in borderline elder abuse. They make it extremely easy to sign up, and then to cancel, they require clicking through five different settings pages with tiny buttons and dark patterns. They obscure what each charge is on billing statements, and they are constantly increasing price, merging with each other, which creates confusion. I’ve had to help elder family and friends get out of subscriptions so many times, and each time, I essentially have to audit what they’re paying for. I think the Feds should mandate that every website has a giant red “Cancel subscription” button in the corner. The FTC is working on something like that, but it is unclear what it will look like in the final version.