Yes, I can be pedantic. Why do you ask?

For the first cup of the day …

I suppose if I had LOTS of money I would buy a fine new iPhone, but I am no stranger to buyer’s remorse.

I have not learned how to add alt text to images in my micro.blog posts.

Today (September 19) is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. In that spirit I will begin reading the excellent novel “Yiddish for Pirates” by Gary Barwin. (The narrator is an African Gray parrot.)

Bad air this morning — Purpleair numbers are about 145 at 7am. We have a small air filter running the kitchen area of the house which does a fair job of pulling out the bad things. I have all the parts to make a serious filter, but have been procrastinating.

We’re in the middle days of our ‘camping’ getaway. Not far away from home, but very different. Amazing how much writing I can get done without the temptations of the internet.

Normally I would not tap into my phone’s hotspot, but I’m making an exception for micro.blog.

And now, back to actual typing.

Doing that camping thing. Ms Me and I, camping for the first time in a year.

I fired up one of the many “AI” or “LLM” apps. This one is known as “Poe”. I asked it to “define classical democracy”, then “modern democracy”. No problem. The response was instantaneous.

Then I asked it to “define socialism”. The response was delivered as if the response was being constructed in real time.

For no good reason, I was surprised to find a post by Manton on Threads: www.threads.net/@manton

Bulletin: gato ≠ gateau

We’re dealing with this year’s outbreak of “rabbit hemorrhagic disease.” I guess it’s nature reminding us that we’re all here on borrowed time.

Some people here in town (Langley, Washington, USA) had to take their potted plants indoors because of the unexpected hail this morning.

This seems as good a time as any for a leisurely
sit-down and an ounce or two of Lost Republic rye.

For those who may have been too often married: punchdrink.com/recipes/r…

Sunny day with excellent coffee from freshly-ground beans. I will not disturb the moment by taking up Maurizio Lazzarato’s “Capital Hates Everyone”.

Preferred pronunciation: 🎶 Save the scones for Henry Jones
Alternate pronunciation: 🎵 Save the scones for Henry Johns

Ruth Mottram (@ruth_mottram@fediscience.org) has a good piece about climate scientists fleeing to greener pastures. Check there for lots of links
sternaparadisaea.net/2023/02/0…
#climate #scientists

H/T to @benwerd for pointing us to the Mother Jones piece on Kissinger.

Oats in my coffee

For this morning’s coffee I’m trying out a non-dairy ‘milk’ called Oatley Barista Edition. It’s an oat milk with a bit of rapeseed oil added, presumably for mouth feel. It may be a decent substitute for dairy milk if that’s what you are used to. But for half and half? No.

NYTimes is effing with Wordle again. I am not amused.

It’s always a good thing to take in useless information. Like this:

“If the ratio of legislators to residents nationally matched New Hampshire, there would be nearly 96,000 people in the U.S. House.”

Happy Wednesday!

We’re going to Vancouver (BC) for five days next week. Which should I take: * the 2020 M1 MacBook Pro with its 13.3” screen? * the 9th gen iPad with “Logi” keyboard/case? * a field notes notebook & pen?

Over on the birdsite, @matthew_d_green writes: “Chrome is replacing the ‘lock’ icon with… something. I don’t know what it is. Might be two people sharing a sleeping bag.”

Apropos of Bluesky and the others, Techdirt has an excellent piece on the current “post-twitter diaspora” options:

www.techdirt.com/2023/04/2…