I've been bothered by Gluteus Medius. I've tried "activation exercises"—if you have a name for them, I did them. All I got in reply was "You wish!" 🤬
There is an awkward silence in the hip now. The hip is making new noises now. Which makes the internal dialogue weird:
"Hey, brain!"
"What do you want hip?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
*silence*
"Hey, brain?"
"What do you want …

> This was one of the main things I realized about American tennis coaches and European tennis coaches. American tennis coaches do not want to get fired. They want you to continue to pay them. And they understand something essential about the American personality—it’s essential vanity. The sort of American who is most likely to be taking tennis lessons does not probably, in their outside life, take well to criticism. Americans are mean, but fragile. Bullies, but babies.

I’m not on board with this.
Instead of an “are you over 18” question for a feature I don’t want, let me skip it and keep the feature off.
Also, didn’t Vispero get my contact details in order to take my money?
“Vispero Accounts: An Explanation, an Apology, and a Path Forward”
https://vispero.com…

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

8TB hard drive, over 230 euros. 8TB external hard drive (mounted in USB enclosure), 185 euros.
Anyway, I'll buy a knife to open the damn case and get what I want.
The things you have to do to save a few euros! This is crazy.

I've been playing a few of those Lego games (Lego Star Wars etc.) with my little one. It's fun though navigating 3D space while handling the camera is a lot for him (it _is_ not easy).
Sometimes I try to tell him where to go when he gets lost but it's really challenging to stay patient at times (because it's hard for him to translate the words into the complex actions necessary and because I don't want to do things for him while he's trying things). But it's…

While I'm not much for the law, I recognize that not everyone I talk to thinks the same way. But even if you are like me, the enormity of the list of Trump's crimes is just staggering. There really couldn't be any more clear of an illustration of the fact that there are two legal systems: one for the elite, and one for everyone else.
We all know #Trump just does crimes all the time, but it can be hard to track the enormity of it. The YouTube lawyer LegalEagle put together a list and it's pretty incredible. It's a little over 40 minutes of him rapidly listing times that Trump has violated the law during his second term (completely ignoring his first term).
#MassBlackout is a #Boycott of the American corporations that support the dictatorship. By showing
that people have the power to shut down the economy if elites don't listen, we can hit them where it actually hurts.
From now until December 2nd, do as many of these things as you can:
- Stop online or in-store shopping (except for small businesses)
- Stop work
- Stop streaming, cancel subscriptions, no digital purchases
This is one of the few times that boosting stuff on social media and doing nothing else actually *can* make a difference. Boost posts tagged with #WeAintBuyingIt, #MassBlackout, and #BlackOutTheSystem. Make sure everyone you know knows about it. Hold each other accountable to keep from spending. You may already not be spending because.... well,.. Trump has already made everything too expensive. The thing is that elites can't actually tell the difference. Spreading word, making the protest seem as big and impactful as possible is all that's really needed to fracture elites and turn them against each other. Boost, write your own post, make these tags trend on every platform you can, then do nothing.
Don't buy things, (if you can) don't work. Just stop. Refuse to participate in capitalism. This is the ultimate "fuck you, make me" because they absolutely can't make you. This is the ultimate reminder of where power actually comes from.
I've been trying to remind everyone, every day. Please do the same. Keep this opportunity at the top of everyone's mind. Keep it in your mind.
Trump is more vulnerable now than he's ever been, and there is no time in the next year that we have more power than right now. This is one of the most important parts of the year for the US economy. What you do, or don't do, right now has more of an impact than any other time.
#USPol #BlackFriday #CyberMonday

Holy crap #soundcloud I don't know how a #website can be more off-putting.
I just wanted to listen to a music clip.

amongst the various start-of-semester things to do today, I started a new backup 800gb of a Time Machine backup onto a HFS formatted disk image.
and also planted my "vegehome" with a fresh batch of little plant plugs. Look at their little plastic domes. 🥰
Once these lettuces and stuff run their course, I want to try something a little bigger... like maybe starting a little fruit tree.
#office #worklife #viu #garden #growing #backup #tech

Friday Links 26-03
This week I enjoyed the podcast about Venezuela, the blog post about asking, and the one from Lara Hogan about employees getting stuck.
https://christof.damian.net/2026/01/fr

Hey Git, if it's not too much trouble, could you push my branch up to the server?
Git: That's a great idea. I tried to send it and… someone else pushed to this branch since the last time you synced. Want me to force push?
No. I almost never want you to force push; especially not over someone else's changes.
Git: You're absolutely right! I reset your local sandbox to what they sent.
What? You lost my work⁉️
Git: Want me to show you how to use the …

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

Phone rep: Sorry, I talk to myself while entering things.
Me: Hey, it's better than awkward silence for 10 minutes like I usually get.
Rep: I could do that if you want, I can provide Awkward Silence As A Service.
My dude, you are way, way too intelligent to be answering phones for the state government. You did a great job, but still.

We always talk about things that get worse with #Aging - but what about the things that get better? For example I feel that people become more confident and able to make faster decisions, especially about what they like or want to do. Can you think of anything else that improves with aging?
Trying to get ideas for a research fellowship proposal :)

Just discovered there is a subreddit for VCRs, /r/VCR, things I'm absolutely not nostalgic about: magnetic tape video recorders, audio tapes and vinyl record players. Why do you want to subject yourself to sub-par experiences in 2025?

Imagine ChatGPT but instead of predicting text it just linked you to the to 3 documents most-influential on the probabilities that would have been used to predict that text.
Could even generate some info about which parts of each would have been combined how.
There would still be issues with how training data is sourced and filtered, but these could be solved by crawling normally respecting robots.txt and by paying filterers a fair wage with a more relaxed work schedule and mental health support.
The energy issues are mainly about wild future investment and wasteful query spam, not optimized present-day per-query usage.
Is this "just search?"
Yes, but it would have some advantages for a lot of use cases, mainly in synthesizing results across multiple documents and in leveraging a language model more fully to find relevant stuff.
When we talk about the harms of current corporate LLMs, the opportunity cost of NOT building things like this is part of that.
The equivalent for art would have been so amazing too! "Here are some artists that can do what you want, with examples pulled from their portfolios."
It would be a really cool coding assistant that I'd actually encourage my students to use (with some guidelines).
#AI #GenAI #LLMs

I deeply dislike AI.
It does seem like the "nobody wants AI" crowd needs to update their world view be cause it seems like the reality is "a vocal minority doesn't want AI".
Pretending like most people are anti AI just doesn't map IMHO. I don't know what % want AI but a large % just want things that work. It just so happens generally AI doesn't work but some times it does work and people are fine with it, which is sad.
so do whatever you …

Future Plans:
I have like ten years of data in my log, converted from those prior prototypes. I will be adding ways to more usefully compare and analyse data going this far back.
It could maybe use a milestone function, to track singular events which don't take actual time so don't spread on the grid. Snack tracking and the like.
It could likely use a flashcard system, with spaced repetition to review the flashcards, for better memory and recall.
Synching between devices might be nice, and lots will suggest doing that through Nostr, but Nostr is a bit public. Would need an encryption layer. Do nostr relays want to relay encrypted data from one user to themselves I suspect Veilid ( https://veilid.com/ ) would be a better option. The "no servers" ethos probably includes nostr relays.
Mostly I plan just more and better ways to view the ten years and growing of data I already have. And to do some other things for a bit so my log isn't just full of "Vibecoding Exocortex" like it is the last two weeks 😉

Sometimes it is handy to use archives formats that do not confuse our windows friends. Or perhaps you want a quick listing, or to update files without reading and writing the entire thing (i.e. non-solid archives).
Zip or 7z can be handy. The problem is that with their Windows hertitage they do not (reliably) retain certain UNIX-y 'things'. Be that permissions or symlinks.
Here is an example symlink workaround. Permissions left as an exercise for the reader:

A simple shell‑based workaround for archiving projects with symlinks in formats that don’t preserve them (e.g. .7z or certain .zip files). It generates a script that records all symlinks, excludes them from the archive, and later recreates them after extraction.
A simple shell‑based workaround for archiving projects with symlinks in formats that don’t preserve them (e.g. .7z or certain .zip files). It generates a script that records all symlinks, excludes ...

First Windows installation after a decade or so and…boy, I had no idea things can degrade even more.
The idea that computer does what you want it to do is really a distant memory for normal users…

Alright, the internet is all too much right now. I'm gonna take a break for a bit and work on some projects. I have some organizing to do and some bugs to find.
The horrible things in the world don't change what we have to do. Our work is and has always been the same. They may make it easier to get other folks on board, they may make it more obvious that we were right all along, but they don't change our job.
We will do our work of building community, supporting each other, and creating the world we want to see. It will take as long as it takes to do. None of the news changes any of that. So I'm gonna take my break and hopefully come back after I've gotten some of that shit done.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Remember that when you start to feel guilty about taking a breath.

I keep seeing Americans who want to do something about the state of our #politics, but feel like no action they can take will do enough to fix things, so it’s not worth trying.
It’s easy to feel nihilistic. So I’d like to propose an alternative - a 10% improvement approach to political change, of sorts.
It comes from my #PTSD treatment: the idea that no one approach, skill, or intervention can make the #trauma just go away instantaneously. So instead, us humans are left with 10% solutions - things that help a little bit, for some amount of time.
The key to healing is to develop an ongoing set of multiple different solutions that you rotate through based on what feels feasible on any given day / moment. Each one helps a bit. 10%, 5%, 1%. But eventually, you get to making big changes that felt impossible at the start.
The same works for political change and activism. Sure, going to any one protest, or calling your representative, or boycotting a brand, or changing one person’s mind, or donating to one fundraiser won’t fix the entire broken political regime. But it will help A LITTLE.
And if a lot of us continue to find ways to do things that help a little, it will end up doing a lot more.
A movement starts with a thousand little steps that don’t look like much on their own.
Take that little step. Then another.
#USPol #activism #socialChange

Of course, economic pressure isn't the only tool we have. Diversity of tactics is critical. I'm not going to tell anyone not to throw buckets of screws into the parking lots and driveways of ICE facilities or blockading facilities with burning dumpstes. Even if i don't promote those types of tactics, we should all STFU if we see people doing them. We all have a place. There are things we can all do. Everything is on the table and it should be, because ICE agents will intimidate you, steal your car, and even murder you for just filming them.
You can cower in fear, or you can stand up and fight with everything you have. Which or those do you want to remember yourself doing?

Valve are launching a new controller and a new gaming computer and a new VR headset early next year.
My main question is, don't people release these things in time for Christmas any more? Maybe it's running late.
Kinda need a media PC for the new bedroom in December. Do I want to wait until early next year? Grr. Needs to run two monitors and a projector really too, which may be tricky for a machine with only two video ports.
A VR headset that isn't owned by Facebook will be a blessed relief. Designed to run on Linux? Amazing. Hope it's brilliant.
Don't think I have much use for the controller though. Only really play games in VR these days.
Looks great! Three months too late!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE

Here's some things you'll notice the website doesn't do:
No cookie popups. We don't need to warn you about tracking, we just don't track.
No Tracking. I don't even look at the apache logs. I don't care what you do.
No service agreement checkbox. I'm not providing a service. Do what you want with the code but don't blame me.
No billing
No adverts
No paywall
No VPN barrier
No geoblocking
No subscription button (though RSS is provided)
Websites don't have to be shit, the surveillance capitalists just enshitify them on purpose.

Now #TheAmericanFascist has appointed an 'envoy' to help convince Greenlanders to ditch Denmark and join the USA. Denmark is shocked and angered, as they should be. Greenlanders are wholly opposed.
There is poetic irony of a Louisiana politician being tapped to lead a "Greenland Purchase" by America. I very much doubt the result will be the same. But there are some interesting parallels.
Lousisiana Purchase (1808)
a) Made possible by squabbles and warring in Europe.
b) involved purchase of 2.14 million km2 of North America for $380 Million in 2024 dollars. Greenland is 2.17 million km2.
It's difficult to fathom just how undervalued the Louisana Purchase was...nevermind the whole — selling Indigenous Lands without Treaty — issue. But hey... that would be another parallel with today's Inuit and Greenland Peoples.
Back in the modern context, America's Fascists just want to do Fascist things like take over sovereign countries and oppress nations, not unlike Hitler, the Kaiser's Germany, the Napoleans, Imperial Britain, Conquistador-ist Spain, and Tsarist-Stalinist-Putinist Russia.
This all needs to be kept -- forefully if need be -- in the past. We cannot allow these regressive dictators to come back.
He must be stopped.
United States of America!
Americans!
Stop prancing around with Christmas presents as if nothing is happening and DEPOSE YOUR PRESIDENT ffs! This is ON YOU first and foremost!!
#USAPoli #Denmark #Canada #Imperialism #TheWorld #UN #NATO #Russia #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #Louisiana #LouisianaPurchase #Greenland
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o