He is alive and his site is alive too

ichard Stallman’s Web site is online again, but he seems to have lost a lot of work after this very long downtime and he’s not getting younger. What a shame. How often were full backups taken?

Stallman is 73 and like everyone his age he is not in fine health, he is surviving and coping with conditions.

When he was young, Stallman did not have a beard. No long hair either. It seems like the long hair developed some time in the 1980s.

Something positive

nowing that next week will be the second week of an autumn/semi-summer month, I tried to take advantage of the weather that provides a recess from heavy and moderate rainfall. I picked up this season’s last beans from the garden and was gratified to see fluffy green grass where only 2 weeks ago there was dried yellow ‘straw’, nothing resembling grass at all.

We’re coming to the end of summer, but maybe we get to savour one last weekend of it.

4 hours ago by Sarah Rainsford:

rowing uncertainty and worries due to tensions with Russia are felt here, as our government openly encourages citizens to ‘stockpile’ food under the assumption of lack of power (to cook good). As if there is recognition of threats to the power grid, which is unlikely to happen due to bad weather but it likely to happen during conflict (as Russians and Ukrainians learned).

Stockpiling was not encouraged but discouraged during COVID-19 lockdowns (e.g. toilet paper).

Humans don’t have this

OME of the birds have begun moulting, as inevitably they will, and it is never pleasant to look at, even if it’s beneficial to animals especially in places that transition between seasons with sharp differences temperature- and precipitation-wise.

Bot (Bottle) seems to be the first with visible moulting this year. I’ve just given her as many seeds as she wanted (until she felt full and flew away). She is a mother now and winter this year might get very cold due to climate breakdown. The chicks must have grown by now (but unable to fly).

A hard task

he noise on the Web has grown to the point where human traffic (not trafficking) can go undetected, not trivially discernable from botnets at times.

A visits spike like the above was likely a combination of real (legit) visitors and bots, but good luck finding which % was junk traffic.

Today’s Web is such a sad mess.

reat music seems to come not from the present but from the past. This means that great musicians are “greying” and Richard Fenn seems to have virtually retired (in Australia) and the “new face of music” seems to be something like that:

What. The. Heck.

Sold out, so I guess this is what counts as “best” now (coming to Manchester in 2 days).

I want the old culture of music back. I want bands, instruments, and good voices. Not flesh. Flesh makes no music.

The new stuff is awful because the new standards are very low.

Collecting “money” like it’s a form of competition where they track “score”

reed is bad. Greed is a form of mental illness, more so when it exceeds some rational, logical levels (e.g. people trying to hoard more capital than they conceivably and meaningfully spend in their remaining lifetime).

Stuff has gotten more expensive and companies try to make us believe or compel us to accept that we need “apps” or fake “modernity” that does not enrich life in any meaningful way.

“When I buy something,” as ploum.net put it the other day, “from a small kitchen appliance to a car, I’m now forced to get formal confirmation by the seller that I will be able to use it without installing one, two or three different apps. I kept the count: in the last year alone, I had to argue against the installation of 18 smartphone apps. Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation.”

We already reached “peak s–t” decades ago, there’s not much left to enhance in a toilet seat. We don’t need “apps” there.

Then again, never underestimate the power of aggressive marketing. Or an employer or hotel manager or “landlord” (landlady also) who puts “smart” things everywhere.

I was recently reminded of the Mancunian band protesting for freedom and also against greed and hoarding (back in the 1970s and 80s). They’re all still alive, doing well, and well into their 80s.

They did “art for art’s sake” and enjoyed the art. “Money for God’s sake…”

Does “God” take your bank balance when your life ends?