D&F 4/16/23

It’s four days until 4/20! I always hoped that the legalization of weed would make it less insufferable as a hobby, but unfortunately Phish continues to make music and there are a load of new brands out there for you weedheads. On the upside, folks are fighting for the expunging of marijuana arrest records and sentencing across the country as white America continues to grapple with a racist history of “anti-drug” enforcement. No justice for the ghouls who created one of the worst drug addiction epidemics in the world though.

Speaking of the opioids, in addition to consultants destroying the world by pushing them, it’s tough to say what they do. I’d never watched this guy’s videos until now and they’ve got a real early Daily Show vibe.

Links

• For the real website nerds out there, you might enjoy this trick that creates detail disclosure without any JS. I’m thinking about ways to utilize this in my own blog sometime, without it being too intrusive. Markup language is still fascinating to me, because more than many computer things it feels like invoking magic words to make effects appear on screen.
• I can’t stop singing along to this song while riding my bike, dark as some of the lyrics are. It’s super catchy.
• In a stark contrast to the platform I write this newsletter on, Substack is cool with being a nazi bar. As soon as you pay people to write for you, you’re an editorial outlet and have opinions and stances whether you like it or not. The faux-neutrality that places like Substack cling to is not only cowardly and dishonest it’s a breeding-ground for white supremacy. Saying you won’t moderate extremism and hate just means you’re fine with it. Even this spice company knows better.
• Also, TIL lego makes Fast and Furious toys.
• This weekend I’m watching The Night Agent, which has so many Canadian actors that I recognize from shows like Continuum. There’s a years-long trend for ostensibly American-set shows being filmed in Vancouver for tax purposes that Canada feels more American than America somehow.
• Also this week I gave in and bought a very silly hard drive to keep all my linux distros, and backups on. It’s a bit absurd to have 20+ TB of storage at my house, but it’s nice to know I can keep whatever I need close at hand. For most people I think a simple USB hard drive is more than enough.
• Stop trying to make Twitter happen. The earlier links about Substack should make it clear that moderation and protecting the speech of marginalized folks is the first job of any social site, so we’ll see how Blue Sky manages to fuck that up.

Closing

This week I started a new structured training program with my cycling, in my attempt to climb hills faster. I really like this sort of training, because it includes numbers I can make go up through effort and time, and unlike many other aspects of my life success is measurable. I keep telling my therapist we need some kind of objective measure of mental health or trauma healing, but then she gets the look on her face that tells me I’m fascinating her in new and mentally odd way.

With that said, I’m off on a ride during this gorgeous spring day, and I highly recommend taking advantage of whatever weather you have too, space cowgirls~