Notices by Derek Caelin is writing a book (derek@social.coop)

@publicdomainrev this is the one that haunts me:

"Hold on the Peak, up on the Throat!" Let's explore the Gaff Rig.
https://classic-sailing.com/article/hold-on-the-peak-up-on-the-throat-gaff-rig-sailing/

Good people of the fediverse, your opinion please. I'm making another chess board (this one a table!) and playing with color schemes. Any of these stand out, good or bad? I'm pretty sure I want a deep red/brown background.

#chess #woodworking #askfedi

I've been working on my #raspberrypi powered #chess playing robot. I hit a wall trying to implement this design: https://www.instructables.com/Chess-Robot-Raspberry-Pi-Lynxmotion-AL5D-Arm/ This week I turned to #opencode and #qwen and have been astounded at how quickly it's managed to make board and piece detection so robust, spin up a ui to calibrate, change settings, track a game. I've been ambivalent about LLMs but its hard not to be astounded by their capacity. After the technical kinks get worked out I'll take the chainsaw to an #oak cutting I've had aging in the shed for 5 years and house the whole thing on a wooden table. The #pi will be hid in a hollow book.

@nathanlovestrees here, too!

I'm really pleased with finally, finally articulating a throughline that I can use to link environmentalists across history with #TheLordOfTheRings. Industrializing England (1876), The Scouring of the Shire (1956), and industrial river pollution in India (2026) can all be described in a common framework! The latest update is on @Roots:

https://derek.caelin.cloud/building-the-throughline-between-the-lord-of-the-rings-and-real-world-history/

#environmentalism

I'm really pleased with finally, finally articulating a throughline that I can use to link environmentalists across history with #TheLordOfTheRings. Industrializing England (1876), The Scouring of the Shire (1956), and industrial river pollution in India (2026) can all be described in a common framework! The latest update is on @Roots:

https://derek.caelin.cloud/building-the-throughline-between-the-lord-of-the-rings-and-real-world-history/

#environmentalism

@pfefferle Ach! I tried again after you messaged, and the preview appeared. Just deleted the post you commented on.

U.N. backs new world map showing Africa in true relative size
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/04/nx-s1-5958611/africa-world-map-un-vote

The hope is that it helps answer questions like: Who collected data here, and when? What species were they documenting? Which institutions hold species records or observations from our territory? Are culturally sensitive species being published? And more.

People are using @terraso for pretty cool things. These folks mapped out New York lesbian ads in the 1970s!
https://app.terraso.org/tools/story-maps/ae3d3da9/big-apple-dyke-news

@cstross brilliant

Astounding. Peak "Age of Sail" technology.

How an 18th Century Sailing Warship Works (HMS Victory)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nr1AgIfajI

RE: https://social.adamasnemesis.com/@adamasnemesis/117135539563355194

The dream

RE: https://glammr.us/@overholt/117122224867501677

@mara

Ramachandra Guha's "#Environmentalism: A Global History" is a banger. It's rare that someone can be so informative and write so well. I take "notes" and find myself recording half the book.

Particularly valuable is his model for the history of the global movement. He sketches two "waves" - people reacting to the environmental destruction of the #IndustrialRevolution, and broad public mobilization to address environmental issues.

Guha works to include non-western narratives, but even so, the U.K. and the U.S. dominate the story. That's validating -- it has been a challenge to build a framework for @Roots that isn't "Here's the trend in the West and look how it's mirrored in Asia, Africa, and South America." I'm glad that I have greater access to global activism stories.

RE: https://derek.caelin.cloud/2026/08/16/august-2026/

I'm going to start making more book-related posts for my #LordOfTheRings and #environmentalism book here, on its WordPress account: @Roots

Shout out to @mara for being a hot librarian and also my wife which means I get ALL THE BOOKS.

I just wanted to say the #LordOfTheRings has pretty cool stuff to say about trees. Next thing I know I read a goddamn college textbook on environmental ethics and now I'm sketching the entire goddamn history of environmentalist thought in order to explain where Tolkien exists in a goddamn continum.

Speaking of "goddamn" did you know that there is hermeneutical debate whether Genesis enjoins humanity to treat nature as a resource or a sacred trust? Really you have to look at the original Hebrew because "rada" - "dominion" more apprioriately means conveys "the ideal of just and peaceful governance" than "to tread down", signifying care rather than exploition. Of course Tolkien as a Roman Catholic growing up in England would have read the Douay–Rheims translation (1582) which was itself a translation of Latin and oh help I just thought it was cool that tree people blew up an industrial center. 😩

Help. I "finished" the first draft a year ago and the book wont stop growing. I just ordered books on Christian environmentalism and post-colonial histories of the global environmentalist movement. My Zotero library has 150+ sources. I'm at 58,000 words and whole chapters are unfinished. This is out of control. I tripped and now somehow I'm writing a dissertation.