Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Ugh I’ve got a chest cold which could mean endless coughing. The good news is I have a recliner for sleeping mostly upright, and copious amounts of guaifenesin-pills-and-water, and the right sort of social network.

• When I woke up early, I commanded Siri #4 to narrate amaruuk’s sweet Rosie & Johnlock series Paternity

• Got a phone call from kestrell

• Hopped on here, and tozka linked me to an excellent concert from Cathy Fink, Marcie Marxer and Chao Tian, hosted by the Smithsonian. Fink & Marxer were role models when I was a "movement musician" between 1976-1981, and I love how closely Chinese yangqin (hammered dulcimer) and Appalachian banjo music can intertwine

• Today’s prettygoodword was the wonderful campanulate

• minoanmiss shared strategies for smuggling the good bacteria past TSA

My public library’s Kanopy subscription provided two profound films, both under nine minutes:

• CODA is an animated short from 2015. This Irish masterpiece follows a lost soul’s encounter with death. Pro captions, no audio description, no gore. Watch on YouTube or ( stream here )

• Bacon & God’s Wrath meditates on loss of faith when Razie Brownstone, at age 92, tries bacon for the first time. CONTAINS: Very lifelike animated dead pig’s head, racist autocomplete results, emesis mentioned. Watch on YouTube without captions or ( stream here )

Thanks, pauraque for giving me S for this six-question meme.

Something I hate

scented shampoo, soap, or similar substances. Fragrances like these trigger coughing fits and sometimes migraines. Weirdly, I developed this sensitivity after I quit smoking 10-15 cigarettes/day.

Something I love

sencha green tea, in particular Telsaan Sencha Spring Shizuoka, tragically out of stock

Somewhere I have been

Skópun, Sandoy, Føroyar (Faroe Islands).

Somewhere I would like to go

Shetland Islands, Scotland or Svalbard, Norway, especially during midnight sun season.

Someone I know

sasha_feather! I introduced her to a disability rights framework at WisCon. She enthusiastically joined in and succeeded me as WisCon Access Chair. She introduced me to Stargate Atlantis thence LJ thence DW fandom. We’ve had weekly lunches almost continuously for more than a decade.

Favorite movie

I'm drawing a complete blank. I loved Miyazaki's Spirited Away when it first came out--I should rewatch and see if still shines.

Want to play? Raise your hand for a letter.

Listening to a new performer handling a well-known tune is my favorite introduction to their style and philosophy. Of course there’s a website for that: Second Hand Songs. Here’s their data on the lovely tune "Blues Run the Game," which you may have learned from Simon & Garfunkel if you’re a boomer.

https://secondhandsongs.com/work/4015

( one version and 134 other interesting takes )

Thanks to goss, here’s a meme

Introduce yourself with some jobs you have done apart from what you do now

I retired from paid employment in 1990, and since then I’ve been a disability rights advocate, helped herd SF con cats, and typed & read many many things on the internet.

Before that, I was…

1. Photocopy clerk & summer gofer at ETS which runs high stakes educational testing like GREs, TOEFL, and SATs
2. Data tape librarian, keypunching the journeys of 9-inch tape reels between their storage cabinets and the tape drives where student loan data was read and written
3. Ten-speed bike assembler and mechanic
4. Civil engineering drafter who insisted that fire stations needed both men’s and women’s bathrooms
5. Phototypesetter, stat camera operator, pasteup artist, and staff designer

I just listened to a This American Life episode (audio or transcript) where David Kestenbaum, an experienced science journalist, kvelled about how awesome Chat GPT is, how they are truly approaching AGI—artificial general intelligence. His turning point was that the large language model was trained on text, and wrote its own graphic-generating program when prompted to show an image. And that's pretty cool, but ...

I asked ChatGPT-4o some super-basic questions about my family history, all documented in US Census data. The results were stunningly bad.

My maternal grandfather's cousin was Richard Neutra, who was a well-known modern architect. ChatGPT-4o insisted that everyone in my family was related to him--that my maternal grandmother was really married to him. It would show accurate 1940 Census data—-my maternal grandmother with her actual name and and then say, but no, my grandmother was actually married to famous person and my mother was his daughter.

It answered an identical census question incorrectly and then correctly in immediate succession.

As erinptah has been diligently documenting, "AI" is simply not there yet, although this hasn't prevented everybody and their dog claiming it as the absolute new hotness.

( Verbatim Q&A inside )

I acknowledge that I have no technical qualifications to assess the relevance of these hallucinated answers to the overall reliability of "AI". I welcome new knowledge!

In particular

Perfect Spring Weather

highs around 70°f/20°c and lows around 55°f/13°c, mostly sunny with flamboyant clouds

Mad Gluten Free Fest

hosted by ALT Brew which makes (you guessed it) GF beer. Found some scones without cream that still tasted great. One vendor claimed bagels, but they were baked not boiled so nevermind. They also sold crypto rye bread. (Caraway seeds helped, but it lacked that nice sour-sweet flavor I remember).

The Blessing of the Bicycles

hosted by Trinity Lutheran Church, aligning with

Madison Bike Week

It’s been an institution for decades. Several mayors have rode in previous years; the current mayor regularly commutes on her bike. In a former life I was a bike mechanic and enthusiastic 3-season cyclist. Now I love the extensive bike infrastructure because the paths are blacktop (asphalt aka bituminous) which means much smoother rolling in my powerchair, at its full speed of 6.5 mph/10+ kph. Even better, the transportation department decrees that the bike routes be cleared to the same schedule as the "salt routes," which are the key roads for getting to school and to work

Best get-out-the-vote metaphor

Thanks, sonia for pointing me:

“Voting isn’t marriage, it’s public transport. You’re not waiting for “the one” who’s absolutely perfect: you’re getting the bus, and if there isn’t one to your destination, you don’t not travel—you take the one going closest.” From Vicky James on Medium

What lovely things happened to you?

Hooray! Out into the world again.

I'm so grateful that MyGuy had an easy time, that maintaining adequate isolation wasn't that onerous, and that I didn't get it (yet).

Now I can go back to the pool (full of highly vulnerable people, so I was super cautious).

( two negative Flowflex COVID test cartridges )

Back in August we got a new van — and wow howdy the surveillance state has arrived at a car dealership near you. The place we bought it tried seven times to get our email — so they could send updates to the car. It comes with three months of free satellite connectivity and defaults to connecting to any mobile device within its red doors.

( ridiculous details )

The good news is there's room for MyGuy to drive my chair up steep ramps into the back, Bella likes it, the seats are comfortable, and we've already scratched it (so we no longer need to be hyper careful).

Any vehicular news in your life?

I was raised as a stone atheist by first-generation secular Jews. Their parents escaped the Pale of Settlement at the start of the 20th. Which is to say, no spirituality in my upbringing.

And I’ve been meditating daily for the last eight years, starting with a secular MBSR course.

Most recently I've embraced the Metta "loving-kindness" meditation which has proven helpful through some difficult times.

The Metta practice offers good will and compassion through set phrases applied in widening circles. First my most loved one, then friends, then folks I don’t really know, then people with whom I have difficult relationships, then to myself, and then the planet. I’ve encountered hundreds of variations in the phrases. Many say "May [they] be healthy," which strikes me as unrealistic. Over the years, I’ve developed an eight-line version which I can both remember and say with full belief.

May you be happy
May you be calm
May you live easily
Free from all harm
May you be hopeful
May you be kind
Floating in love for
Your body and mind.

Since music helps me remember lyrics, I paired these phrases to the Irish tune "Do You Love an Apple." I learned it from Trapezoid’s exquisite harmonies on their album Now and Then.

on YouTube

( Do You Love an Apple )

Nothing lovely in the original lyrics: woman loves man, gets pregnant, misses him while he’s out drinking

Have you found spiritual sustenance in this cursed decade?

Final photo from my pontoon boat adventures back in September.

Ten minutes after sunset, the black downtown skyline is highlighted by red, orange, yellow streaks quickly fading into a deep blue sky. The left-most passenger holds up a smartphone camera to capture a picture much like this one.

( Read more... )