deathmtn

It appear typing to write causes more pain than typing to code. Maybe it’s because it’s more continuous than coding. There are certain kinds of writing I can do with a stylus on my tablet, mostly stuff that just comes straight out of my head. Writing that requires specific formats or citations is awkward to do that, way, though.

The Test Kitchen, Chapter 1

I already knew the broad strokes of the Bon Appetit story — a familiar story of a racist company that succeeds in spite of bad management composed of White people that know less about their domain than the people they’re put in charge of. But it is worth hearing it from the perspective of the former employees provides very rich information, far more useful than text bullet points. If you’ve been away from racist experiences for a while, I highly recommend it.

I started two blog posts on Wednesday, and I’m still not done. On one hand, it sucks that I’m a slow writer. On the other, if I was currently working as well, these would go so slowly that I’d likely just give up on them.

21-minute run outside; it was only drizzling! 13 pull-ups.

It's Bandcamp Friday, in which they waive fees to rightsholders. It's a particularly good day today to buy from artists that don't have a label! Like Duke Westlake, if you like instrumental west coast hip hop or Xoth if you like melodic progressive death metal.

Surprise! The guy got up 20 minutes ago and needed help. But at least it wasn’t at 4 AM.

The guy came home and asked if he could get a hijab.

After some conversation, we figured out that he was asking that because he was asked to draw himself in clothing that was special to his family or culture, and he couldn’t think of anything.

I guess secular culture has some drawbacks. I told him about hanboks, and he said he wanted one. I guess I missed an opportunity to come up with an amazing or hilarious outfit. The only other thing that came to mind was Mandalorian armor.

I went for a walk and did 12 pull-ups.

Today’s excuse for the abbreviated workout: I woke up at 4 AM with corporate stress thoughts even though I no longer work at a corporation (or anywhere). Took me an hour to get back to sleep, then I woke up messed up today. I did have a nice 20-minute nap in the afternoon, though!

Slo-mo bug gets are really relaxing. Elf owl on Nature

20 minutes on the treadmill, 12 pull-ups.

The guy’s jacket zipper broke on a way that made it hard to get the key on the track, and I tried to fix it the night before last with Krazy Glue. Perhaps predictably to everyone but me, that made the zipper not work at all.

I called a few tailors about repairing it, and they all said, reasonably, that it’d take a few days, and we wouldn’t have it back in time for school on Thursday. One of them said that a jacket zipper alone could cost $20.

So, though I was loathe to go into a store, I went to Target, and I found out winter jackets were $20 and $12.50. I got one of each in case one was somehow bad. Katt said they were actually of decent quality.

I know what market forces make this happen, but I hate that it’s far cheaper and easier to get new jackets instead of repairing the zipper on an old one. I don’t know how to bring down the retail price of zippers, though.

Workout yesterday was 12 pull-ups, but I also did that snow shoveling, so good enough?

A really nice explanation of AGPL: Reading AGPL

In a nutshell: GPL is a copyleft license, but GPL doesn’t actually require sharing and licensing source code if you run it for people as a network service, rather than providing it for them to run on their own computers. AGPL was written to close that loophole, often called the “ASP Loophole”, since “ASP” for “Application Service Provider” was the buzzword at the time for what we now call “SaaS”.

Of course, even with it clearly explained, it's hard to interpret, as the author points out.

Square One provides free, plain English legal templates for hiring employees and independent contractors in the United States. Anyone can use Square One forms to hire someone new, for free.

A group of experienced lawyers came together during the 2020 pandemic to publish Square One.

Like others who were able to keep working during the pandemic, even as Americans lost work in record numbers, we felt a need to do what we could for those who weren’t so lucky. Part of that is helping companies who can rehire do so. Uncertainty and costs around basic legal terms shouldn’t slow them down.

Of course, there’s no such thing as “perfect” legal terms. But we’ve tried our best, based on our judgment and experience, to fit as many common situations as possible, nationwide. Some forms favor companies more heavily. Some favor workers. Square One tries to be fair to both, to give folks what they expect.

That is super cool of them.

I shoveled out the slush which I thought I would be easy, but slush is really heavy, even if you’re mostly pushing it. My hands felt slightly wrecked afterward again, so I immediately iced them, but I have to admit I’m not sure how that helps.

I did hourly comics day yesterday, except that because of my drawing speed, I only made a comic every other hour.

The comics are rough, but they were worthwhile to do to re-appreciate how hard it is to draw, to think about the strengths and weaknesses of the format, and to remember that it is possible to get better at things, and to get a different perspective on my day.

Katt did some really good hourly comics. It was cool to see her notebook throughout the day. She put them up here.

I caught up with posting to my kid’s site. It’s pretty low effort generally, but the older a kid gets, the less you take videos and pictures, and counterintuitively, this makes a backlog more likely to form.

And even though maintaining that is relatively low effort, anything that requires curation requires effort. Looking at pictures or video and deciding if they’re relevant is a thing that takes time. Which of course, is why companies building automated curation for every kind of media and purpose. This, of course, has a harsh cost, which I’ve already talked about a lot. So, that kinda tempers a dislike for spending time.

Oh, yeah, 20 minutes on the treadmill, 12 pull-ups today.