Notices by Sumana Harihareswara (brainwane@social.coop)

grateful to https://try.diffoscope.org just now which let me compare two very slightly different PDFs and find the minute textual differences

(no login necessary; free and open source software you can also run on your machine)

A question to ponder:

what, in your life, is like this microwave

technically present, yet functionally unavailable

such that a person with a fresh perspective would likely decide to either find a way to get it working again or replace it

https://wetdry.world/@nonfedimemes/113779256395998255

Today I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Chief O'Brien upon realizing that, while turning Terok Nor into Deep Space 9, he had to figure out how to convert Federation or Starfleet replicator files to the Cardassian replicator file format, or get the station replicators to run off Starfleet's file format

#StarTrek

every once in a while I think about this Reddit post, where a woman discovers her boyfriend has been consistently lying to her to keep her feeling bad

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/gy79dx/boyfriend_wont_stop_telling_me_i_have_bo/

and I wonder what other varieties of manipulative lies people deliberately tell, one-on-one (such as https://www.askamanager.org/2024/04/my-boss-says-my-work-is-bad-but-all-evidence-says-the-opposite.html ) and en masse

and whether the victims ever find out, and what scars are left behind

recently I have been reminded of how institutional systems will do this, deliberately https://social.coop/@brainwane/113617389825901634

and I think of the constant work it takes to remember the conditions of my struggle (instead of just lamenting my poor capabilities)
https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2019/its-not-just-you/

Decades ago, beginning to manage my own health care as a young adult, it was hard for me and I felt so much shame. I felt like I constantly got charged fees that I hadn't expected and I assumed it was my fault. I felt helpless and it discouraged me from using my healthcare.

Eventually I came to understand that it was not purely my fault, that the insurers profited from my confusion and deliberately created it, all while pretending they weren't doing so. And that they do this to all of us, unapologetically, draining us of money and time and life.

new robots.txt just dropped?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/12/certain-names-make-chatgpt-grind-to-a-halt-and-we-know-why/

If you've ever benefited from Slacktivist's (Fred Clark's) writings (such as his deep dive into the flaws of the Left Behind books, or his articulation of the dishonesty of those automated corporate surveys*), know that his family could use some help right now.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/08/21/pre-surgery-testing-we-hope-and-pre-surgery-fundraising/

* https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2019/06/25/all-fives-ready-or-not-here-i-come/

#xoxofest

Molly White just asked us to remember the 1st time we felt like the Web was magic

There is a saying that the Golden Age of science fiction is 12 - like, whatever you found at that age was magic to you

for me, the Web is similar

@technomancy Sad that it does not work!! (I am depending on your assertion and my other friends' assertions here and have not tried it myself)

Thus we discussed, briefly, which programming language *names* are most fun to say aloud, and I invite you to join me in this pointless entertainment.

Which names of programming languages are the most pleasant when said out loud?

I reckon COBOL and BASIC and FORTRAN feel pretty good. Julia: nice. Elm, Rust, Perl: I mildly dislike saying the consonant combo at the end. Eiffel came in for some praise.

[2/2]

Conversation a few evenings ago:

Me: Uggh - we have individual tools like Bokeh or HipHop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_for_PHP to transpile from 1 language into another, but not general-purpose things so I can write in arbitrary language Foo and magically turn it into target language Bar. I want that more than I want a flying car

Sensible friends: but that is inherently hard because of [genuine reasons]; WASM does seem promising though

Me: And WASM is fun to say -- which is the most important thing

[1/2]

The other day @leonardr told me about the premise and plot in Dan Aykroyd's very early drafts of "Ghostbusters" and I was, again, reminded of the magnificent 2017 short story "Texts from the Ghost War" by Alex Yuschik, available in text and audio

https://escapepod.org/2017/06/09/ep579-texts-from-the-ghost-war/

#Fiction #ScienceFiction #scifi #ShortStories #ShortStory #ShortFiction #sff

@pronoiac Thanks for the bug report. I'm going to leave it as is for now given that there's a hyperlink to the original as well, and since it's a pretty minor issue. But I may ask @culagovski for help improving embeds for the future.

"I want you to imagine someone for me. Her name is Jessica and she is 17 years old...."

For years, "A Story About Jessica" (a computer security parable @SwiftOnSecurity wrote, published on their Tumblr in 2014) was pretty hard to find.

Per the CC BY license, I've now republished it so it's easier to discover and reference.

http://harihareswara.net/posts/2024/a-story-about-jessica-by-swiftonsecurity/

My comments in the post include pointers to relevant work by Mark Pilgrim, @sprblm , @luis_in_brief , @jacob , and @evacide .

My friend @mchua has died.

https://www.caringbridge.org/site/f77db139-e97b-36cf-adb4-dd01e0c4d617/post/ebea2584-bf4c-414f-aa12-b652157771cb

I wrote about them last year: https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2023/a-celebration-of-my-friend-dr-mel-chua/

It hurts a lot. I am bereft.

This is a photo from a fun evening we had together last year. I am grateful for the joy we shared and it feels incomprehensible that we will never share joy again.

New blog post: http://harihareswara.net/posts/2024/things-i-wish-id-done-before-catching-covid/ Given that I have now had my first COVID infection, a couple things I wish I'd done beforehand, such as measuring my resting heart rate, and getting over a particular fixation.

2. Song Exploder, because I listened again the other night to

https://songexploder.net/semisonic

the Song Exploder about "Closing Time" by Semisonic and I cried a lot and evidently I needed that half-hour cathartic tearjerker.

(content note: no one dies but there is fear about death of an infant)

Inchoate big intense feelings about art and hospitals and caring for the vulnerable and making things that other people find sustenance or shelter in.

2/n

3. Sounds in the Dark https://bff.fm/shows/sounds-in-the-dark which is 2 hours of ambient/experimental music every week.

https://data.bff.fm/shows/sounds-in-the-dark.rss

Host Eric Pietras https://som.cuanschutz.edu/Profiles/Faculty/Profile/23690 is a hematologist who studies inflammation (although that never comes up on the show, which is like 98% music), so it feels, obscurely, even more healing to doze while listening to the tunes he spins.

And sometimes he makes a joke about writing grant proposals or the sad mire that is Twitter/X.

3/n