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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • A bee headbutting you is not necessarily an agressive act, could be just investigatory on the part of the bee. I’ve walked into the heart of a flowering shrub covered in hungry bees, during which they either ignored me or headbutted me. As long as “defending the hive” isn’t part of the bee interaction, they are usually very chill but remain very curious. I’m still careful when the headbutts happen because accidents happen and a confused bee tangled in hair may still sting. But I have also gently untangled a bee or two without anyone getting hurt.

    Even when defending the hive, bees seem to prefer as little direct agression as possible. I’ve stepped into a clearing and suddenly found myself way too close to a wild bee hive and got stung exactly once by a bee that got tangled in my hair as I fled the approaching swarm.

    I’ve also gotten a solitary wasp tangled in my hair, near no hive or any flowers, and gotten stung 3 times on one knuckle as thanks for setting them free. The bees have taught me to treat them with compassion and respect. The wasps have taught me to react with murder and extreme violence before they are even aware of me.

    Both are pollinators though. So despite the animosity, I don’t go out of my way to wage war against wasps the way I do mosquitoes.











  • The issue isn’t about what it can and can’t do, it’s that it is CONSTANTLY attempting to step in and “fix” my spreadsheet in bizarrely inane ways. Why won’t it give me the “shut up and stay the fuck out of my way” option? There is no option to remove or silence copilot. That damn thing follows my cursor like a ring wraith after Frodo. It has already fucked up more than one of my spreadsheets without asking or being asked. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I might not have caught the absolutely bat shit insane edits it was making to simple and correct functions I’d already entered. No, copilot you don’t know what I’m doing. Clippy was less intrusive.



  • Tasker can still automate almost all of this for you.

    I setup some tasker automations so that I can leave my phone entirely in my pocket. When my phone connects to my car Bluetooth it: turns up media volume, sets the phone to “do not disturb”, opens and starts playing the last music player I was using (podcast, Spotify, Plexamp, or your media player of choice. Notably mine never switches to things that play video by default), initiates lockdown on my phone in case of fascists, etc. If I want to navigate somewhere or choose something different to listen to, that is something I start before I start the car. I get all my navigation cues via voice guidance, but the quality of that guidance can suffer from vagueness in general and confusion specifically in the midst of construction. I used to have it automatically read text messages aloud, but between reaction emojis, photos, gifs, and links that became super annoying. You can also setup an auto-reply to incoming texts that just say, “I’m driving and I’ll get back to you later.” That turned out to be annoying to, so I just silence them all. When my phone disconnects from my car Bluetooth, tasker sets everything back to the way it was before with the exception of lockdown mode.

    Using voice commands kind of requires relaxing your privacy requirements, so I left those options out of this discussion.


  • Don’t worry. Time is a flat circle. What is old, is new again. Smart glasses will get smaller and more discreet packages and the kids will forget the original chunky look that meant “potential invasion of privacy”. I like what I like and I’m content to remain true to that until the merry-go-round of fashion comes back around again. Sometimes I may hop on a new trend and take the ride a bit, but it’s always my choice. Nostalgia is often used as a derogatory term by trendy/edgy people to feel superior about picking some style that is new to them. That fashion is almost always someone else’s “nostalgia”. Fashion is all just picking and choosing which spot on the nostalgia merry-go-round feels right for us in this moment.




  • The song wasn’t worried that the drink would make you sick. The song is about common items being used to treat a variety of aliments. Scurvy? Eat a lime. Headache, probably from dehydration or low electrolytes? Coconut water will fix that. Hungover? Coconut water and lime is actually a great tasting way to start feeling a little better. This song is like the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” with a catchy island beat.

    Also, if you’re not already familiar with Harry Nilsson. Go check out his stuff. Great singer and song writer. His music in the movie “The Point” absolutely shaped my perspective on the world as a child and it’s themes continued to resonate throughout my life.


  • Difficult to do it in a way that is physically consistent with a camera lens/sensor.

    That’s really not true at all. Lots of photo software has precise metrics on a multitude of actual camera lenses specifically to compensate (remove) for the inherent optical properties of said lenses. Using those same metrics to mimic the optical properties of those lenses, rather that remove them, is also fairly common. The optical properties of the sensors are obviously also well known, otherwise digital photography simply wouldn’t work. This photo may or may not be AI, but the existence of blurring neither proves nor excludes either possibility.