what i'm reading§
Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America and Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature§
Forest Euphoria makes me want to go camping. I'm envious of naturalists and biologists who can go out into the world and whip out the binomial nomenclature of plants and animals. The world is more colorful and alive when you can acknowledge the different forms of life all around you.
In contrast, learning about dispensational premillennialism from Apocalyptic Fever makes the West's unwavering death-march into climate collapse make sense. If the de facto evangelical Christian leadership of the world believe that the apocalypse is coming, and they're getting gracefully raptured before the deadliest events of history prepare the way for a thousand years of Utopia, no wonder they don't give a shit about anything or anyone.
The AI 'effective altruism' cult shares a lot with premillennialism: at some indeterminate point, the arrival of an omnipotent and wrathful God ushers in Utopia for the elect and eradication for the non-believers (Roko's Basilisk). The 'infinite benefit' to future generations of AGI thus justifies crimes the elect's crimes against everyone else, whether it's Silicon Valley's collaboration with the fascist war machine and surveillance state, Sam Bankman-Fried's ponzi scheme, the Zizians' literal murders, or Sam Altman in general.
what i'm listening to§
"Geezer" - Kevin Abstract§
I suddenly remembered Brockhampton existed and decided to catch up with Kevin Abstract again. Confusingly, Geezer is Kevin Abstract's new band, which features on his new solo album, but the song "Geezer" is not a Geezer song. But it's all the shows up when you try to look up the song.
I called this "Sublimecore" to my Brockhampton scholar friend, who corrected me to explain it's "Sugar-ray-core".
what i'm watching§
King of the Hill§
The gag in the Boggle tournament episode (S01E09) where Bobby and Luanne panic because they left a water ring on the coffee table.
what i'm working on§
I occasionally have to make videos from my coworker's PointPoints. I'm 500 lines deep into a Python script to make this quicker.
something i liked§
strawberry poppy seed salad§
at my restaurant job, I used to make gallons of poppy seed dressing by boiling apple cider vinegar with pounds of sugar. it took forever, and if it overcooked it would harden into cement. it's way easier to just use white vinegar and vegetable oil. what the fuck was that all about
something i hated§
the consequences of not backing up your shit§
I run every single one of my self-hosted services from a single Docker compose file. Then I extracted another compose file right on top of it, irrevocably destroying it. I spent hours re-writing it again by hand.
I learned nothing from the experience and ended up destroying the compose file again. Sufficiently punished, I'm now working on setting up borg and borgmatic on all my devices.
a picture:§
Tried to turn a null modem serial cable into a straight-through, but the OEM's documentation got the pinout completely wrong, so I had to cut the whole thing and test each pin. Whatever.