‘ve begun doing a series about how Richard Stallman (RMS) came back to American campuses earlier this year. GNU/Linux turns 43 next month. RMS started it.

“If you have any questions at all,” one organiser told me ahead of the first such talk since 2018. “please don’t hesitate to reach out. We have several questions prepared for RMS during the Q&A, and if there’s anything you’d like us to raise as well, I’d be more than happy to include it!”

At the time I was too busy dealing with bullies.

To the host, Georgia Tech, there was a political burden. Quoting the organiser (definitely not a Cheeto fan): “P.S. I also really love that y’all hate on our Grand Cheeto Master. I know you’ve mentioned not being fond of air travel on your blog, which I completely understand – but if you ever find yourselves visiting the South, we would be more than happy to host you here at Georgia Tech for a session! Until then, we look forward to continued collaboration with y’all remotely – and, of course, welcoming the “devil” down to Georgia soon…”

“Thank you again for your time and support.”

I was not too far from Georgia on my last trip to the US, but that was 20 years ago and I don’t plan to come to the US again (not any time soon).

I hope RMS will visit the UK some time soon and preferably not too far from here (he was in Oxford).

AM trying to allow Tor users to access this site again. I’ve only just found out that they’re blocked. The webhost changed something and I’m not sure when this was done, I can guess guess why.

E are exactly two weeks away from Rianne’s birthday and gift ideas need to be based around sentimental value this year, not monetary value. Jewellery and other ‘vanity items’ have always been a waste of money (hard work and sometimes child labour for a bunch of pebbles or metals or whatever). Over the course of three weeks a lot can be done to convert time into joy and joy lasts much longer in the mind than in the shop.

It takes courage and work to make gifts that aren’t just something one scans at the checkout (till) but instead produces one way or another.

The older I get, the more obvious it seems gifting in the “Traditional” (with capital T) sense became merely consumerism and we’re far detached from real scarcities, which aren’t something one can purchase. I was never fond of consumerism and birthdays; over time it becomes easier to explain the “whys”.

probably broke some personal record by posting 13 blog posts in my personal blog today. Time flies. But in other sites I did in fact post well over 50 posts in one day, I think almost 70 at one point at Techrights.

I spent a lot of time writing about a million “posts” in social control media. What a waste that was! What a giant waste.

I have backups of it all, but good luck making use of that or searching through all that.

The issue isn’t just LLM slop, the issue is that there’s a lot of text out there. A lot of it is largely invisible, un-discoverable. LLM is just another layer of trash on top of that.

Slow down.

T is the 10^th of August today (day 3 of vacation) and we have 3 weeks left in this vacation, which is warming up. I am more relaxed than I’ve been in decades and so far I only do with I enjoy. We fed the birds at Mayfield today and tomorrow we plan to mostly relax. This afternoon/evening I pulled out one of the 1997 hits CDs; I still use optical drives a lot, the music from that era is on average a lot better than the contemporary stuff and there are no ads. With the drive working concurrently with the PC there is also less CPU toil (no signal decryption or decompression necessary).

Looking back at my 20s, I was “racing” a lot of the time and it seems rather common among people that age. What are they really racing towards? What is this “Rat Race”? Sooner or later they will realise that life is not a contest, social control media isn’t popularity (just shallow voyeurism/vanity), and health matters more than speed. About 2 years ago I began sleeping a lot more after 2 decades of trying to limit myself to 6 hours per night. Why? It was not healthy, that’s for sure. That had no point to it…

All around me I see anxious, nervous people – some to the point of being dependent on medication. Many of them have debt, obligations, and a lifestyle they cannot afford, which is connected to why they took loans in the first place.

With days left ’til election:

3 days to go…

think it won’t be long until the snails/shells exceed 200 (in number). It all started with only one (a single living thing), just about a year ago. 1 to 200 in just over a year is impressive, all one needs to do is feed them.

Nature’s ability to replicate, given the right conditions, is quite amazing.