The Farmer's Station Wagon: A Parable
One day, a farmer went to load up his station wagon to take his family to visit some friends, but found that it wouldn't start. Looking under the hood with his friends, they sadly discovered that the engine block was cracked, and there was no likelihood of an easy or …
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Paper Books vs. e-books vs "librebooks?"
I took a few days of a break from the fediverse to try to do a mini digital detox, to stop zombiescrolling youtube, and to read more. I picked up a used copy of Michael Jan Friedman's Gauntlet, the first book in the Stargazer series, a Star Trek novel that …
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Examining The Ethics of Media Consumption and Sharing
One of my new fedifriends, Terminal Tilt recently posted:
We should not call sharing "piracy."
Piracy involves the physical theft of property where the original owner no
longer has it. Sharing is an act of duplication, not subtraction.
Language matters. Using the industry's preferred labels only helps reinforce
their control …
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Some Thoughts on Star Trek: Picard
Warning: (obviously) spoilers abound!
I just finished watching Star Trek: Picard last night, and while this won't be a thorough analysis (I'd probably have to watch it five times to accomplish that), I did want to briefly write down my thoughts on it.
Like many older Trek fans, I'm not …
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Smartphone Minimalism: the Underappreciated Middle Road
My current Android setup with IodéOS, KISS Launcher, and grayscale mode
The other day, I was watching a Techlore video while folding laundry, and became increasingly annoyed as it went along: not at Techlore or the video, but the Wired article he was responding to.
Peertube link Invidious link 1 …
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How Many Pixels Do You Really Need?
I was reading in Ploum's excellent blog yesterday about his history with Ubuntu, when I stumbled upon a lovely screenshot of his FVWM setup circa 2003, and it brought me back to a friendly, and long-raging debate with some fedifriends on the subject of pixels, namely, whether or not …
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The Mad, Joyful Chaos of the Creative Process
After yesterday's unhinged, painfully cathartic threnody of a post, I really wanted to post something short, light and enjoyable. I was considering writing down my thoughts on my favorite TV show, The Good Place, but that would have taken altogether much too long, so that is going to remain a …
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Monocultures Considered Harmful or: Why Linux Nerds Should Give BSD and Other "Weird" OSes a Try
In yesterdays's article, I described the benefit of having a large supply of physical hardware to try different OSes on. Now I would like to talk about why it's important to run more than just various Linux distros (although just trying different distros is a great way to start broadening …
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Why You Need A Stack of Thinkpads
Modified image of a stack of thinkpads taken originally from https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/17xf8kl/my_thinkpad_stack/
A lot of people experience vendor lock-in and outright "ecosystem captivity" because they've plunked down several grand towards pricey and shiny laptops from Apple, Microsoft (*snicker*), Samsung, or whomever. Such a …
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Random updates
Ironically, this isn't intended to be a "filler" post, but more of a fill-you-in post, as I've actually decided to stop trying to do "100 Days to Offload" this year.
I still technically have enough time left in the year to do it, but then I'd just be slamming the …
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