Was out visiting with family today and the subject turned to religion. I was straight-up asked: "what do you think about God?"
After a moment's pause, I could only reply with "my thoughts on the subject are... complicated", which was code for: "This is a subject I actively avoid here because it's not going to go well."
I've been through a faith deconstruction. It was a horrible experience, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
@🇨🇦 CleoQc 🍁🦜🧶🚐🌈 My partner and I have been going through some stuff (which we were discussing with them). I get that their faith has helped them through some difficult things and they were only trying to help. 🤷♂️
FIND THE FULL PODCAST HERE:
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-instascammer-investigating-liana-shanti--7247429
In this full-length interview, Kacey speaks
My phone keeps telling me that I'm at risk of losing my stored passwords—unless I jump through some hoops or somesuch. It's been saying this for months now.
It's okay, phone. Your password manager hasn't been the definitive source of such information in years. Your extortion efforts are wasted on me.
Mother-in-law took Katy and me out to a new restaurant for lunch today. The service was a tad slow and the prices a tad high, but the food was absolutely top notch. If you're in the downtown Kitchener area, like Salvadorian food, and accessibility isn't a major concern,* Pupusa City is definitely worth checking out. #KWAwesome #DTK
* Helping her up the (three-ish) stairs was tricky.
In this episode, host Kacey presents a deep-dive episode on Kenyan preacher Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and the Shakahola Forest deaths.
WARNING of child deaths, st
Had to leave the apartment again today. Didn't have it in me to get properly dressed, so it's the bear onesie again. Let's just call it a Hallowe'en costume.
So, I keep seeing people using LLMs to generate alt-text for images. From an accessibility standpoint, I guess this is better than no alt-text at all, but...
I notice that the descriptions they generate are... often technically accurate... I guess? It's just that they really seem to suck at infering from context what parts of the image are noteworthy and what aren't.
To be fair a lot of humans are also very bad at writing alt text, if they try at all. I just hope the LLM assisted ones are a lot more coming from an attitude of "I can start from the generated text then learn to do it better" or at least "this is all I have time for and it's better than nothing" rather than "I don't have to think about this anymore because the computer will do it."
@fionescu(1) Oh, I knew that Friendica allowed me to interact with both Mastodon and Diaspora*, but didn't realize Friendica was able to share Diaspora* posts with Mastodon.
Par-ce que le message original ne tiends pas texte alternatif:
trois photos avec texte: le premier est d'un rottweiler avec la texte "J'attaque sur ordre de mon maître"; le deuxième est d'un bergier allemand avec la texte "J'attaque si mon maître est menacé"; le troisième est d'un chat avec la texte "J'attaque mon maître"
Because the original message lacks alt-text:
three photos with captions: the first is of a rottweiler captioned, "I attack on my master's orders"; the second is a german shepherd captioned, "I attack if my master is threatened"; the third is a cat captioned, "I attack my master"
The irony of this statistical issue in healthcare is women typically have higher tolerance for pain than men, yet the opposite solution happens. A woman in pain really means they are in pain.
My wife has had pharmacists accuse her of med seeking. Shut up and fill the rx, she has a rare, deadly, and painful medical condition most doctors don't even understand, let alone a pharmacist 🫠 #veds
So since this morning I've been having this weird weakness in my arm. I figured it was possibly a result of the muscle relaxant I was prescribed last night, but I imagine that should be well out of my system by now. I called the telehealth system again and am currently waiting on a callback from a nurse—which should happen in the next couple hours.
It was suggested that I could use their online symptom assessment tool for faster advice, but after jumping through those hoops, all it tells me is "seek medical advice".
Umm... what exactly is it you think I've been doing all this time?
Threw out my shoulder the other day and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. The past couple nights it's been impacting my ability to sleep. 😢
On call doctor wrote me a script for some muscle relaxants, but interestingly, during our consultation he seemed confused by the term "stimming".
The context was when he asked if I knew what brought it on, I said: "I do this thing when I get excited where I'll sort of tense all my muscles up for a second; it's kind of a stimming thing. I did that and there was a sudden sharp pain." I had to re explain this a couple times. I'm not quite sure he actually understood in the end.
@tom grzybow I wondered if maybe I didn't explain it well. It was a phone appointment, so I couldn't demonstrate. I had to paint a word picture, which I find difficult.
Welp, I'm taking the first pill and calling it a night early. I held off as long as I could because I didn't want them to wear off in the middle of the night. The over over the counter stuff just isn't cutting it.
In this episode, Kacey interviews Amir, a former Scientology executive from Scotland who says he escaped in January after four years in Scientology.
Amir descr
My #sourdough starter frequently smells of apples, and the resulting bread of molasses. I have no complaints about this, but I also fail to understand why.
I don't normally get cereal but I got a free box of Cinnamon Crunch Special K. I just pour a little in a cup and eat them dry. Sometimes there's a weird nugget in the bottom. I spent 4-5 cups of this wondering if these manufacturing errors were safe to eat or just swept up of the floor before looking at the box to realize they're supposed to be there. They're the "crunch."
Low consumer confidence is not at all good for business. But they don't care because they know we don't have choices anymore.
Yeah I've just been continuing to consume what I need and throwing the scary thoughts into the compartment where I put all of societal monsters I have no control of. There's not much else to do.
Our apartment building does not have assigned parking. It's just kind of a free-for-all. Anyhow, some time between when we parked two days ago and just now, the spot we were parked in became one that requires an accessible parking permit.
Fortunately, we didn't get a ticket. That would've been an interesting one to fight.
Katy made a really amazing lentil soup for dinner today. I contributed by making a loaf of sourdough to go with it. It was one of the best meals we've had in a while. Dirt cheap ingredients, but restaurant quality meal.
I'm sure everyone here has "the tech box": that box where you shove the miscelaneous cables and dongles and other crap that isn't currently being used but is too useful to just get rid of. In my case it had spilled over into multiple boxes and had just become a bit of a nightmare.
Anyhow, my parents were getting rid of this guy, so we took it home with us. Katy and I just spent the past hour meticulously going over every single item in our various tech boxes and cataloging them into a system inspired by the one described in @Cory Doctorow's book, Makers.* It's not quite so elaborate as in the book. It's just an org-mode document that tells me exactly which drawer each item is in—no fancy RFID tags, but they're not items with a lot of churn either, so it's fine. Got to admit, it was rather satisfying to my probably #AuDHD brain.
Anyhow, I present to you the new gay tech organizer.
* That system has lived rent free in my head since I read the book like a decade an a half ago.
Edit: I make one little edit to fix a typo (okay two typos) and then need like three more edits to fix the formatting errors those introduced. I'm fired.
@tom grzybow It turns out I have stuff I didn't even remember getting. A handful of things got thrown out because I had no idea what they actually were.
@tom grzybow When I first got married, I had an ungodly number of USB micro cables because my phone charger needed them and they had such a high failure rate. Katy influenced me to get rid of most of them. I still have a surprisingly large number of them though.
Ever since reading that book I have desperately wanted an RFID organizational system like that. Spent a bit of time years back trying to puzzle out how to do it in a reasonably affordable way but at the time it would have been pretty spendy. Maybe now though...
@Connor Cadellin It was basically an inventory system where you put an RFID tag on everything you own and then have a bunch of plain plastic containers built into the architecture that serve as storage, but also can read their contents. When you want something, you type it into a search and the bin that contains that item lights up.
Went on a short break with a friend last weekend.. They "forgot" the usb-c wire their stupid modern phone needs (mine is sensible micro usb like 99% of its era) .. They had to go find one in a very expensive tourist city... 2 hours later I found one still new complete with it's little wire tie lying on the street....... so now I have my own usb-c charging cable and nothing to plug it ..
My bulk mail folder sure has been a source of comedy gold lately. Just got an email offering to sell me a variant on a domain I already own for a mere USD 699. Apparently it's been offered to several other "matching businesses" and will be sold on a first come first served basis.
The best part: my registrar says it's available and I can have it for $17.99.
So my knowledge of #ultraman is limited to the last few minutes of the episodes I've managed to catch before #monsterdon, and the only character whose name I know is Hayata*, but I can't wrap my brain around how nobody seems to have worked out that he's Ultraman.
* I guess there's also Cap (I assume short for captain). Does that count?
I'm no scientist, but I don't unserstand how germs would either confirm or refute the existence of vampires. It seems pretty non-sequitur to me. #monsterdon
Got an email from a recruiter this morning. I thought it was for a position at a well-established company, and despite the yellow flags I decided to at least look into it.
It's clearly a different company than I thought, with a prominent typo right on their landing page (apparently they're a "worldwid" organization).
Also, they have both 10+ years of experience and were established in 2024? 🤷♂️
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-instascammer-investigating-liana-shanti--7247429
In this episode, Kacey interviews author and speaker Raylynn Van Oort abo
🇨🇦 CleoQc 🍁🦜🧶🚐🌈
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Sorry you had to go through all this. I hope the rest of the visit went well.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to 🇨🇦 CleoQc 🍁🦜🧶🚐🌈 • •@🇨🇦 CleoQc 🍁🦜🧶🚐🌈 My partner and I have been going through some stuff (which we were discussing with them). I get that their faith has helped them through some difficult things and they were only trying to help. 🤷♂️
Edited for clarity