Creating a bootable macOS Tahoe installer USB is a handy way to perform clean installs, upgrade multiple Macs without redownloading, or keep a trusted recovery disk at your fingertips. Making a bootable Tahoe installer has a few requirements, but if you’ve got a spare flash USB drive, and don’t mind using the Terminal app, you’ll ... Read More
Follows the journey of a man who start a small indie game development. Facing numerous challenges, from financial struggles to fierce industry competition, he leverage his creativity and resilience to create groundbreaking games. As his company, PixelPioneers, rises to prominence, he navigate the complexities of success, and innovation in the ever-evolving world of game development.
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
In asking for the prior right to be removed:
Remove The Right
Remove a parents prior right to choose a child’s education Whenever that prior right is tainted by schools, health consultants or local authorities As it is known that this tainting leads to a special segregated education
When it is proven that that right removes any right to a free education Whenever that prior right leads to an imbalance in power and previlege As it is known that societal imbalance further undermines we in special and segregated education
Where it is proven the full development of personality is excluded from education Whenever that prior right pushes the child into a mode of communal separation As it is known the lack of real friendships undermines us in special and segregated education
When the establishment demonstrates there are no human rights within that education Whenever that prior right supports order, rules maintenance and the general schools behaviour
As it is known this is a further form of separation for we in special and segregated education
Where fundamental freedoms are glibly removed by institutions involved in education Whenever that prior right leads to unchecked freedoms to abuse, threaten and bully As it is known that peers and leaders use these tools in special and segregated education
Where these same others demonstrate no understanding, tolerance or friendship in education Whenever that prior right enables those same un-useful tools to be used with monotonous regularity As it is known that many can get away with too much in special and segregated education
When discrimination against anyone with protected characteristics is present in education Whenever that prior right precipitates the many evils practiced behind closed doors As it is known to be true by those of us forced to endure special and segregated education
Where there is no consideration for the maintenance of the activity of peace in education Whenever that prior right is exercised to the detriment of the growth of the child As it is known that the child never really gets a chance in special and segregated education
Richard Downes 12th November 2020 (From the Declaration Series)
Issued Tissue Papers
I strode through the flames of hell to beat Satan with a cricket bat becoming in that very moment king for the day and like all kings I luxuriated and refused to give up my throne. Thus remaining monarch of the glen or a new Satan in the making. Extolling all my betters into positions of false security, getting them to sign contracts, awarding pensions, signing off all papers with ‘There. Let this be your flatulent wilderness’. Idiots.
Aah but I was good. Strong. inflexible. Metallic. Iron except at night. Then I dream’t. Dreams became vision. Visions became real. I built new towers, leaving everyone in shadow. My economics were good. The economy made money. Money was good. It was what people wanted. They wanted more. They all did. It was their drug. Problems only arose when wanting more became wanting less. Indulgence confused them. Confusion became painful. Regrets I’ve had a few. One of the biggest was the Tower’s utility as a means of resolving the issue. Made a right mess of the concrete. Still a messy pavement mean’t employment for someone. Employment means money and money is good except money is blinding. Not that blindness was ever a problem
Some take that as a sign of the system not caring. Cares enough to give them the moolah. Some looked beyond the system and suggested the system was fine, its the leader that was wrong. People like that always made me happy. I’d kept hold of the Satan bashing bat. These people….. the rebels…. Need to stop. Wake up. If I catch a cold I sneeze. If I cut myself I bleed. I can’t please most of the people most of the time.
Makes me wonder what they’ve really got against me. I make things so simple for them. WHERE IS THE LOVE. Its the money or bat. What do you want for nothing. People pleeeaaase. Stop screwing me over.
And then there’s the survivors. Those cats who say they knew me when…. When I was a better person. A love lorn loser artist keen on the word. I abhorred the word just as the word abhorred me. That’s why the old fellow had to go. Depart the scorched earth. Flatulent deserts. 40 days and 40 nights farting around. To the survivors a question. What does anyone really know about me now? Its true. I was someone else before. Another now. You only speak from survivor privilege. You can’t wage survivor war on me. Remember survival is only partly secure in the culture I made. Don’t cancel it. Don’t take this as a slight. Just get on with it.
Life ain’t black and white. There ain’t no pigeon hole I fit in. Your comments, intrusions, accusations are as used tissue to me now, resident in a recycled bin bag of despair. I take the words. I eat them. My digestion is strong. I can take your vileness as well as take the glory. Remember this day forever. Remember there is no shadow without light. Take heed of the approaching darkness. Look to the Tower. Be thankful for it. It has housed you. Kept you from the street. Our roots go deep but the structure is high. The Tower stands between you and the light. The Tower creates shadow so you will never become fully blind. But the Tower demands input. The Tower demands work. Maintenance. Cleanliness. Ornate decoration. The Tower deserves tinsel. Merits silver and gold. The Tower presents opportunity. Opportunity is good. Opportunity makes money. Money is good. This is why you love money. Money recognises and pays tribute to the Tower. the Tower is good. The Tower is good. The Tower is mine.
Yet there are still those who say they knew me when….. They say I said….. They have the rights I give but they cannot and should not try to hold me to account. Not on the basis of a word.
Girls? People want to know about the women. Why haven’t I settled? Why isn’t there a someone? Women and money. Critics and supporters both the same. Its all collateral to them. Something to make their world go round. Yet another tabloid expose. I don’t know why I still let them sell the news. Publicity. Good publicity or bad. You know what they like. Salaciousness. Publicity like money, like the Tower is good. And women are good too even when you want them to be bad. The expectation of the would be nation is the king will build a dynasty. Someone will follow one day. But its not like that for me. Dynasty’s have names. A name is a word. You know how I feel about words. I will not treat women like others have before me. Many temporary assignations will suit us all. They see inside the Tower. They are treated well. Make money. Get publicity. The whole world’s the same. They get what they came for. I’m not complaining. I’m not attached. Freedom is the aim for everyone. Freedom is good. Freedom must be the aim for everyone.
People get by. Most of them. Yes. Sometimes there’s a mess around the Tower. I’m not sure if people look back to the old ideas, the old divisions. Communism, capitalism. The old ideas are gone. No one ever really knew what they wanted. Preference was prejudice. That’s why so many mistakes were made. Bad leaders were the product of bad choices. That’s all. Its also not all. Its why choice was removed. Why I assumed control. In some ways the cricket bat is all that’s left. Everything else is just ancient history. My leadership demands the absence of choice. There is no responsibility. I am not responsible. You are not responsible. What is is. Is. Get on with is.
Evangelism for ideas…. Ideas based on words are gone. Dead. Defunct. No one needs an idea. Original thought. Whats that? Everything has been said. Models, theories, latter day algorithms all fake. All forms of control. All that nonsense simply oppressed people. Simply told them what to do. Removed all chance of freedom. Its different now. The clock has moved on. Yes. I know about the mess around the Tower. You keep on saying. You dare to indicate to me there is a problem as if I don’t understand that. I do understand. But I am not responsible. You are not responsible. We simply accept we do what we do. Why worry? Be happy. Be free.
Richard Downes 13th November 2020 (From the Desolation Series)
Please. Stop this. There is no in point telling me about your research into people who said they know me. These people who say what I said way back when. They are telling you words. The word is there are words. Words are reaching the end of their usefulness. Watch them fade as we learn to understand we are free. No longer controlled by the mendacity of false utterances.
Words form the basis of accreditation, qualification. Words bestow status. We get tied up with status. Those who bow to status, those who have status, are tied to the rigour of status. A student works. Work is good. The student steps through grades. The grades become a doctorate. The Doctor becomes a professor. The student, the doctor, the professor, they all pontificate. They pontificate from the low level of I want to the higher achievement of I am. I am. Listen to me I am. You are not I am. I am is a falsehood. The falsehood is built on falsehoods. People need to live, to work in the shadow, make money. Do good. Be good. That is all. Do good. Be good. Be. Down with words. Down with pontification. When doing good, being good, being. Be silent. Silence is good. Silence is the absence of words. Absence is freedom.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can throw around an idea like liberty. Liberty is not freedom. Being is freedom. Equality? There you go another word. Throw around equality too. Be equal in birth. Be equal at school. Be involved in equal relationships. Be dead through dying equally on an equal date in an equal space. We talk. We used to talk of liberty, equality, rights. Putting great store in the words because the words were bigger, more valuable than be apparently. I have shown you that being is better. To be is to be free. Be. Throw your important words out and just be. When I went through the flames with my bat did I go looking for Satan with liberty, equality on my mind? Was I tethered by an idea. Did I let his status get in the way of a good thrashing. No. I did this because I was free to be. Free to be me. Choose freedom. be.
“Equality, ” You speak this word as if a wedding vow. You sanctify the noun. You pour water on it. You bring it to life. The life is false. The word is dead. Be. Work. Make money. All this is good. Toil in the shadow of love. Let me bring you love. Love is not a word, not another valuable, pompous redundant noun. Love is something you hold in your heart. Love is a feeling you feel here. Here in your heart. Love will surround you. Love they is all. Love is not all. This is the failing of love. Love demands prominence for itself. Love is cock and baloney. You cannot love if you refuse ot be. Being is all. From being comes love. Being is free. Do not get confused by malignant words. Refuse to accept ideas. Csast off your chains, the weight of ancient history. Be. Be good. Work. In work in being find love. Find what love is. Find what love is to you. But BE first.
I speak. I command. I use words as a currency to help you understand and yet when I do this, when I am clear with you as to the value of the currency you demonstrate that the currency has no value at all. You keep on going back through history, to something that someone said I said sometime ago before the clock moved on,before I came to be. This is your last chance to understand. Do not do this again. Satan felt the weight of the bat and you will feel it to if you persist.
Yes I was different then. I am no longer the same. My words had no value and yet people hung on to them. Gave them meaning. Meaning as the same value of the words that are dead. Meaning is as dormant as the idea it supports. Not dormant. Not sleeping. Dead. Like words the person I was died too. I became me when I decided to be. Yay though I walked through the valley of death I did so with a mighty bat in my hand and I walked. And as I walked I became taller. More erect. Stronger. I was not walking away I walked toward. And as I walked toward, towards something. I shook. And as I shook I sloughed off skin. Skin constrained with unguents. Soap and unguents. Cosmetic contraptions bought by someone who sought to give me pleasure. Who in giving pleasure sought to constrain me. Constrain my behaviours. Determine who I was allowed to exist as. And as these soaps and unguents failed to stand my shaking slowly I came to be. In being I could choose. In choosing to be someone I became whoever I wanted and as I entered into the valley I became soldier. In beating the menace who would end my journey I discovered all the teachers who ever sought to teach me were fake. As fake as their words as their ideas. No one of these paid witness to the soldier within. No one could see the soldier who could remove Satan, the scourge of Satan, the idea or the word of Satan. So it was I came to be. So it was the world became as it is. It is a good teaching that I teach that there are no good teachers. Take a lesson. Be
But note I am not your teacher. I am not a preacher. I am unqualified, unaccredited. I have not become my enemy. In being I have learned to see. Be and see. I see you are not being transparent. I see that you refuse to be in terms of how the natural law expects all to be. I see you are here as journalists…. the qualified, the accredited do. You are here to trick, to expose, to put a slant on me. You seek use words, express ideas, to reveal me. But you can’t. You can only reveal yourself. I can see and understand you and your confusion. You think I am using words ideas, expressing values through this currency but I am not. It is not my currency. It is your currency. My currency, my leadership, my lesson is simply in being. You cannot buy this currency of mine. I be. I see. I’m free. These are the words you will use. They are not mine. They left me. I gave them to you. I am not threatened by this. I have nothing to protect. Good and bad, I have defined these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow…. somehow you feel the need to go back through ancient history, to defame my frame by evidencing who I was a while ago. Nurse. Bring me my bat.
Last-minute recommendations for New York City's Democratic primary election. (Early voting concluded Sunday; tomorrow, Tuesday the 24th, is the final day to vote.)I'm going to start with lesser-publicized races and move up the ballot.Western Queens …
Apple has released MacOS Tahoe 26 beta 2 for Mac users enrolled in the developer beta testing program. Separately, Apple has also issued iOS 26 beta 2, iPadOS 26 beta 2, visionOS 26 beta 2, tvOS 26 beta 2, and watchOS 26 beta 2. MacOS Tahoe 26 includes an all new Liquid Glass interface appearance ... Read More
Apple has released iOS 26 beta 2 for iPhone, alongside iPadOS 26 beta 2 for iPad, for users participating in the Apple developer beta testing programs. The second beta build for iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 includes a variety of changes and tweaks, along with some new features, as the beta refinement process continues. Separately, ... Read More
As I write this, I’ve just come back from a nice little bike ride around my neighbourhood. I got sweaty, went fast, climbed a few little hills, descended a few little hills, waited my turn at traffic lights and 4-way stops (you’re welcome), and nearly got hit by two different drivers who were each doing something illegal.
Ah, exercise in North America. So glamorous, so safe, so encouraged.
Anyway, cycling is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that I enjoy INTENSITY and GOING FAST. It is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that I don’t care if I’m the only fat person at the group ride, I’M HERE TO RIDE. It is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that exercise, when you remove all the crusty old baggage about it being a Moral Obligation and a Means to Weight Loss (it usually isn’t, and focusing on that ruins the fun), is something I not only need in some abstract sense, but something I crave in a very visceral, very obvious way.
It makes me feel better physically, it both excites me and calms me down, it cheers me up, it puts a bright spot of play into my day, and it emotionally regulates me in a way that not even therapy could. It’s also just pure joy, pure pleasure, pure fun. I think that gets lost when we live in a culture that alienates us from movement and from our own bodies.
As a kid, I never thought of myself as “athletic” because I did not participate in any formal sports, but looking back, there were signs. I loved tumbling in the yard, playing on the playground, throwing a ball around, bouncing on a trampoline, riding a bike or skateboard, and all kinds of games. I did not enjoy things I found boring: lap swimming, ballet, baseball, football, running a mile or whatever we were assigned to do in gym class, but I still found ways to run around and exhaust myself by having fun, at least until my mid-teens.
Climbing around rocks at the old swimming hole.
By then, so many pressures around body image had developed that made me too self-conscious to use my body for any physical activity, especially in public, and I became not only hopelessly neurotic about my weight and appearance, but also dolefully depressed. No wonder.
As a young adult, I only engaged in exercise for the purpose of trying to lose weight, and frankly, it sucked. There were moments of joy, which surprised me, and moments of discovering some hidden strength or natural ability, which also surprised me, but all of these were overshadowed by The Agenda to burn calories and lose weight. Which meant that, even for activities that I enjoyed, like karate or riding a bike, I applied myself to them with a rigidity and drivenness that precluded all flexibility, all self-compassion, and all joy. And when the diet fell apart, as it inevitably would, so did my relationship with exercise.
I spent the next decade or so only engaging in incidental movement, essentially giving myself permission to not do any intentional exercise. (I once mentioned that on here, and a few commenters were SO MAD about that.) I was lucky to live in a city with decent public transit, and I don’t drive, which meant that I got a fair bit of walking in, which kept me strong and mobile even when I had no desire to do it. This was uncomfortable at times, but because it had nothing to do with trying to lose weight, it was psychologically neutral. I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but I didn’t always hate it either. The most I could muster was a mild resentment.
About seven years in, I started not just taking transit and walking partway to work, but walking all the way to work, a mile each way. For the first time, I noticed that I enjoyed the physical sensations of getting my heart revved up, feeling a bit warm and even sweaty, and the exhilaration of breathing hard. I was only able to start enjoying these sensations once I’d practiced, repeatedly, taking away the reflexive judgment I’d learned to attach to them, like believing that breathing hard meant I was “unfit” and something was wrong with me, or that showing any kind of exertion in public must be a mortifying event because I was fat and everyone would notice. Some people did notice, and did comment that I was sweating, and I was able to calmly explain that I’d been walking briskly. On purpose. For exercise. This was very effective at both silencing them and making them look a bit silly, which I admit, I enjoyed.
Instead of feeling bad, I reminded myself (over and over) that of course your heart rate goes up when you exercise, and that’s what it’s supposed to do, and of course you feel warmer as you move faster, and of course you sweat to cool yourself down, and of course you breathe harder to get oxygen into your bloodstream and to your cells, because that’s what exercise is supposed to do. No matter how much or little exertion it takes to get these sensations, getting to them is basically the point. You can also choose to go slow and not push it, and just enjoy fresh air and stretching your legs, of course, but on days when you want to push a little harder or faster to challenge yourself, your body showing signs of exertion is exactly what should happen. Feeling challenged is literally the only way to increase your fitness. It does not mean something is “wrong” with you.
A few years after that, I started working from home and no longer had to walk much at all. I went through a phase of grief and sat down a lot, and I lost some mobility (and also gained some weight.) The urge to panic was strong, but I held fast to my values, and asked myself what I was truly worried about. Was it really the weight gain, or something else?
In thinking it over, it was mostly fear about the loss of strength and mobility, since I knew my life would get harder. I thought about it some more, and realized the best way for me* to improve my mobility was to…use it. To practice walking. To practice walking in sand, or up hills, or even up my arch-nemesis, stairs. Maybe I’d lose the weight I’d gained and maybe I wouldn’t, but either way, I would be more mobile and less afraid. So I bought some comfy walking clothes, and for the first time since childhood, I attempted to go for walks purely for recreation. I had to remind myself over and over not to monitor my heart rate, not to shoot for any “fat burning zone,” and not to count the minutes or create elaborate fitness routines in my head, but to focus instead on my internal sensations, on doing whatever felt good that day, on the trees, the sky, the dogs, the fresh air and the scenery around me. I did that enough that I started to get faster and feel better, even before my weight did anything. Eventually, over the next five years, it gradually settled back into my old (fat) baseline, without me forcing it to do anything at all.
*this is not true for everyone; see: CFS/ME, certain chronic pain or autoimmune conditions that you can’t exercise your way out of, and which require medical treatment first
I continued walking, for fun, for mental health (because at some point, my therapist pointed out how great it feels to walk when angry, to get all those stompy feelings out, which was an amazing revelation to me), and to enjoy the scenery, and even to enjoy the warm, sweaty exertion of it. I had a solid walking habit between 2011-2018, and I took a walk around lunchtime basically every day.
I always offered myself the chance to go, without forcing myself to go, usually by putting on my shoes and coat and stepping outside for some reason, to take out the recycling or just to check the weather. Then I got to decide whether I felt like going for a walk that day or not. I had full permission to turn around and come back inside if I wasn’t feeling it, but usually I was feeling it.
I started to anticipate my lunch break like a wiggly dog looks forward to the park. Each day, I had permission to walk briefly, for maybe five minutes around the block, to walk slow or fast, or not at all, or to walk farther, for a bigger neighbourhood loop that took 45-60 minutes, if I wanted to. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I walked for five minutes. Each time, I felt good afterward. If I took a rest day and went back inside, I felt good about that, too. I practiced making the right choice for that day. I was flexible.
Happy 5 month birthday to Khaaan! and Fizzbin, our adorable kittens! They are sisters from Quizzical Cattery in Seattle. Here they are curled up on fuzzy blankets on a chair this morning.
Fizzbin is more quick, impulsive, and energetic, while Khaaan! is more muscley and bides her time before leaping when they play. They also will both fetch a toy when they feel like it! They sleep together and groom each other very sweetly MOST of the time. And they are very affectionate, following us all over the house, sleeping under the covers, etc. I think Khaaan will enjoy a baby carrying sling based on my experiments with scarves tied across my chest. The only problem is 6am they start walking on my head but we will see if they can be trained out of that!
The picture is of a bit of soft mountain lion fur plucked off the barb of a sagging barbed wire fence. I’m on day 87 of 100 walking 200 square miles around my house in Colorado, mostly on public lands where wild animals hold sway. Today was a steep, wooded draw choked with boulders and their puzzles of green, crusty lichens. I’ve come down this draw a couple times since last winter when I followed fresh mountain lion tracks into a snowy slope of boulders as big as garbage trucks and the ringing in my head grew loud enough I decided to stop and not follow the cat any farther. I was coming into ambush terrain and though chances of an attack or any negative encounter are astronomically small, I heeded the bell.
What I’ve learned in 87 days has come slowly and steadily. I started following animal trails a year ago for a book I’m working on in western Colorado almost to the Utah line, transecting this 200-square-mile area back and forth through gullies, canyons, mountains, and mesas. Pretty much every day has significantly upped the learning curve. Today’s recognition was that the map in my head is becoming a map in my body. I don’t mean this on any grand scale, but the draw I walked down I could feel coming for miles. I no longer refer to the map on my phone. I’m going by memory, which is how a mountain lion would perceive geography, knowing this draw like many animals do — the deer, elk, bobcats, bears — as a ladder connecting into a lower, deeper canyon where a crystalline creek babbles day and night. I wouldn’t say I’m no longer capable of being lost as I have been a few times so far, my heart beating faster among columns of ponderosa pines that have started to look all the same. I can still get lost, can still screw up, but my senses tingled with a fresh awareness of how the land lies.
Four years ago a friend of mine from Utah, a wildlife photographer, left a trail cam to capture images of anything that moves in this mangy, shaded drainage and though he gave me the coordinates of exactly where he’d strapped the camera to a tree I couldn’t find it to save my life. There are no human trails through here. Hunters might use the animal paths, but climbing over toppled trees and working boulder to boulder down this steep gully keeps their numbers down. Plump old bear scat and beaded elk droppings speak to who claims this place.
By day 70 I had settled into a state of meditation while I was out, letting the jabber of my mind fade away, sometimes going barefoot to train my attention. I no longer rehearse something important I’m supposed to say or recite birthdays in my head. I’ve more or less stopped the hours spent scribbling in my journal. Now I just move and the only noise might be the last song I heard on the radio as if left on in a room where no one is listening.
Today I felt my body becoming a compass. Some people might be born with this sense, but not me. I pride myself on the ability to get lost. I live for the feeling, looking around thinking where the hell am I? These months of walking have been an effort to answer that question, to bow my head and see what the animals see. In particular, what the mountain lion sees, keeping their own home ranges around here, especially females who tend to stay near where they were born, compared to males who make larger territories and often have to leave to find a place without other fearsome males to contend with. They weave all over my many and not enought square miles, leaving scat and tracks, scat so fresh a buzz has risen up my spine as I tapped a log of digested deer meat with my boot toe, finding it soft and wet, the cat just ahead of me, or maybe, by now, behind.
Do mountain lions get lost? I don’t think so. They know where they are at all times. It’s a cat thing. They are themselves points of awareness in wild country. They pay attention to everything.
Animals are part of the compass. You’re not just feeling the lay of the land, but how animals move through it. My buddy the photographer was one of them, his camera somewhere out here, its place chosen because he could feel the attraction in his animal body. He saw mountain lion scrapes at the base of bigger trees and the way the draw opened as it came uphill told everyone to come through here. You could almost find it with your eyes closed. In a way I was glad I didn’t find his camera. I just knew he’d have bear and elk, and, if lucky, a muscular, honey-colored cat and its long tail, the gateway animal to all the others. His camera trap would have caught photographic evidence of what we don’t see, which might be going against what I’m trying to learn, how to witness with all my senses what is right in front of me. Like I said, learning’s been slow and steady. I could have gone through tracking courses, and that would have helped, but I decided to go first hand, to step out my front door and walk.
I'm in a bit of a rut when it comes to vidding, as you can probably tell by my erratic upload schedule and the long wait between videos. So while I attempt to rediscover my passion for vidding, here's a simple little silver "Come To Me" moment with Mr. Lestat De Lioncourt.
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