I've been putting off going into town for as long as I can, but we're out of fuel for the chainsaw, and without it we freeze. It's nearly three months since I last had to go to town. The next chainsaw I buy will likely be electric.

Fortunately my new Flo Mask arrived yesterday, so I'll get to try that out.

Test fit of the Flo Mask. It's perfect. The first truly comfortable mask I've tried. The seal is excellent, even with my beard.

#CovidIsNotOver #WearAMask

A lot of the disposable N95/FFP3 masks split at the bottom due to my enormous chin. This clamps just below the bottom lip.

Wore the mask for nearly an hour in the tracteur to drive into town and no real problems. I only really needed to wear it once there, but I wanted to see how it would be for a longer stint, and while driving.

Probably needs a slight adjustment but not much, as my nose started to touch the filter towards the end, but seal remained good.

I thought I'd be self-conscious wearing it, but that was overridden by feeling so much more secure in a decent mask.

No problems conversing in it.

@Her_Doing See the excellent PDF by @elana for travel tips and mask suggestions:

https://avoid-plague.info/goodies/covid-travel-guide/

@anna @janet China is taking steps to achieve digital sovereignty, including building their own chips (Loongson 64) to reduce dependence on Intel and AMD.

They also released their own Linux distro, OpenKylin, in 2023:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-releases-its-first-open-source-computer-operating-system-2023-07-06/

@slothrop The trains may run on time, but the verb is always late 😉

@slothrop He is a very sleepy dog. Does your sandwich snore?

@slothrop The sandwich in my case was a small dog. 🐶

@goetz When the technical requirements are written such that they require features only provided by $vendor, then any detailed assessment will conclude that $vendor is the best option and that other services cannot compete.

Governments everywhere have long used this technique for tendering. It's how corruption can exist in the face of a "fair" tendering process.

For SIDN to conclude that there is no hosting in the EU that can meet their requirements says that their requirements are wrong.

My wife says my Pandemic beard is too long. I say the Pandemic is too long.

#CovidIsNotOver #Covid19 #LongCovid #WearAMask

@lightweight Without sacrifice our principles and values are just words.

@lightweight Most of the time doing the right thing feels good, but if I wasn't willing to give something up in order to defend what I believe in, then I can't really be said to hold that principle.

It's like courage. Courage is about being scared and doing it anyway. Without fear there is no courage.

If giving up the use of harmful technology/services hasn't cost someone, they haven't been tested yet.

When it costs something to stand firm and you do it anyway, only then do you have values.

We walked Alonso home through the forest just before sunset.

I love this part of the forest. It's one of the reasons we moved here. The old mill stream gives a sense of history to the place, and the waterfall drowns out all sounds of modern life. Even in the countryside there are always sounds of cars and tractors, but here is peace.

We said goodbye to Alonso and watched him trot up to his house.

X and meta are generic terms. When you use them to refer to Twitter and Facebook you evade my filters.

I'm starting to unfollow and mute accounts that do this, which unfortunately includes some of my mutuals.

If you are posting a headline that refers to Facebook as "Meta" please at least put the word Facebook in the post so I don't have to see it.

You're not paid by Musk or Zuckerberg, so please don't do their rebranding work for them.

#X #Meta #Facebook #Twitter

@slothrop I sometimes peek though, depending on who posted it 😉

Wishing everyone the best for 2025!

This will be a tough year for many. We're going to have our rights and values challenged like never before. At times it might feel hopeless, but there's always one thing you can do: be yourself. Live your values as best you can.

At every level of society, whatever you do, do it as well as you can. That is enough and it's all anyone has a right to expect of you.

Ask for help when you need it. Help others when you can. We'll get through this. Together.

@onepict @DoomsdaysCW Yeah - that's pretty much my approach. I try to get a sense of what the essentials are behind a dish rather than getting too hung up on 10g of this and 350g of that. I'm a cook, not a chemist 😉

It is totally OK to deadname corporations. In fact, it is to be encouraged. Why help with their rebranding?

X is the name of the windowing system I use. Metta was the woman who first showed me Linux. Threads are what I use to run concurrent processing.

Don't let them colonise our namespaces.

@slothrop It looks amazing. I think I need to try this.