Libraries are awesome
About a week ago, I had the pleasure of answering some interview-style questions from Hyde that got posted to his blog series, Over/Under.
Give it a read, as I had a lot of fun writing my responses, such that I forgot to actually answer "Overrated/Underrated" to some of his questions. 😄
(Luckily, it was easy enough to infer what I was saying from the novella I provided in response to each question, and he was able to add in the implied one-word answer 🤦♂️ 😂)
This morning, as I was getting ready and having some quiet time to read, I was excited to see there was a new episode/post, with our mutal fedifriend Amin answering the questions.
The first question was about libraries, and I'm obviously in agreement with both of them: libraries are incredibly underrated!
Some of my warmest memories as a kid were from spending long hours at the enormous six-floor library at the university where my mom was a graduate student. I always found something to do there: working on homework, looking at children's books, and later technical magazines like MacWorld, and of course, playing around with the amazing IBM 3270 terminals that the library catalog was accessed through.
I could wax poetic about how libraries are like grand, holy temples to human knowledge, but more importantly, they are the very last remaining truly public gathering space in our modern lives that aren't built, regulated, and controlled by corporations.
Libraries are truly of and for the people, and are a safe space for children and adults to go to to pursue their own betterment.
I simply can't think of anything better than that.
100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 16
Technology has promised so much, has *delivered* so much, and yet, I'm horrified.
I was an 80s kid. I grew up in a booming and optimistic time. The future held so much promise: all kinds of cures for disease, technology and automation would free humanity from the drudgery of labor (heh), and the Information Age would bring an acceleration to learning and innovation …
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You can *never* be apolitical
Content Warning: This post deals with religion and politics
Last Sunday, I did something that I really don't like doing.
I left church early.
With a heavy and conflicted heart.
The Sunday prior, I walked into church and spoke briefly with the pastor. I told him I was shocked to …
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"Ableism" and the Linux Aristocracy
Being an armchair FOSS advocate, there are a lot of anti-FOSS arguments I've become quite used to seeing and answering. Some of them are honestly just pretty dumb:
eloquent_FOSS_apologia();
Well, I just don't CARE about that!
Well …
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Mozilla and the Death of Virtue
A fedifriend mentioned me yesterday on a post about a recent kerfuffle regarding some decisions that Mozilla has been making, particularly in regards to buying an advertising company (and integrating advertising into the browser) and adding "A.I." features into recent builds of Firefox.
I had intended to reply with …
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The Toxicity Dance
There's been some kerfuffle today on the fediverse over the issue of toxicity in the Linux and Open Source community. "Toxic" is one of those trigger words that immediately gets fingers a-pointing. The great irony is that just to mention the word "toxic" can in itself be a toxic statement …
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The unfolding horrors of Toxic Masculinity
Content Warning: This post deals with the issue of toxic masculinity. If that (or the discussion thereof) is upsetting to you, please skip this one. Also, a minor bible reference is included.
I thought I had a pretty fair grasp on the idea and archetypes of toxic masculinity. I am …
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Use what works for good
Exactly a month ago, I wrote an article challenging the prevalent pragmatist-argument for choice in the digital world.
I'd like to refine that thought a bit further, based on recent experiences.
A little over a week ago, I started crafting an article covering FOSS keyboards for Android. This is one …
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LLMs are Perfect
LLMs (Large Language Models, colloquially referred to as "A.I.") are perfect...
Perfect exemplars and the very embodiment of the brain-rot of our society.
Much like so many loud voices in society today, the LLM is incapable of discerning reliable from unreliable sources, identifying the origin and validity of a …
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*Don't* use what works for you
I was watching a youtuber I rather like, and he closed out his video talking about his pragmatic approach to operating systems. He said he used multiple OSes (some FOSS and some non-FOSS), and he summed up his approach with "Use what works for you."
This is not a polemic …
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