<a href="https://smidgeo.com/notes/deathmtn">deathmtn</a>

2018-6-22 11:41:25
I have been amazed by Reign in Blood for 25 years.
2018-6-22 10:24:20
Welp, I started another bot instead of finishing a different bot I had planned to work on. Classic as hell.
2018-6-22 08:43:53
OMG, the black squirrel was in our neighborhood!
2018-6-22 07:07:54
The NPM feature where it immediately tells you about vulnerabilities in your dependency tree whenever you run it is a great example of subtle feature that actually does improve security. Just getting that message has gotten me to update dependencies in all sorts of old projects lately.
2018-6-21 18:55:18
I think the Twitter limitations I've placed on myself are helping with feeling more in control of my attention and focus, but unfortunately, there's some confounding factors this week:

- Trump's horribly distracting and depressing child abductions.
- I'm trying to get up earlier each day.

So, I feel generally gloomy and tired, which overshadows any attention control changes that may or may not have happened. I'll keep at it.
2018-6-21 16:05:14
I am very much into Charles Wuorinen's random piano attack aesthetic. (Though, yes, clearly it's not random.)
2018-6-21 15:40:06
It's really hard to get a group of adults together for a game of D&D! There's vacations, protests, and tiredness (on my part). But now that I recall, people used to flake out on D&D toward the end of high school to do "cool" "teenage" stuff, as well!
2018-6-21 13:52:30
10-4-3-4. Endorphins, physical reality, breeze: Most necessary today.
2018-6-21 12:29:04
I feel, again, like we have failed a basic responsibility, by allowing the election of a known monster. It's like knowing you fucked up on paying your rent, yet you're not quite sure how, but that you should know how.
2018-6-21 12:18:13
Finding it hard to ignore my anger over this latest atrocity today.
2018-6-21 04:40:16
Got up in the dead of the night angry about ICE, angry about white supremacy. I think I need to come up with some kind of regular practice to deteriorate them. Some kind of sustainable, long-term small action.
2018-6-20 22:26:02
Shadow Cabinets are a hilarious, and maybe not bad idea. If you can be something, pretend to be something! And I dunno, maybe it gives them focus and practice? I wonder if anything concrete and useful has ever come out of these.
2018-6-20 21:14:44
The platonic pull request. This one was really nice, too.

Open source is often a nightmare, but via not writing things people are excited about and therefore really heated about, I have a fairly pastoral open source experience.
2018-6-20 20:05:29
The guy made a train out of Magnatiles and asked me to get in. I walked over and kind of squatted next to it, and he said no, get in the train! Then, he explained that the inside of the train is over on the couch.

Imagination schema changes happen a lot around here.
2018-6-20 16:06:20
Jenny Lisette Flores, et al. plantiffs vs. Jeffrey B. Sessions, Attorney General, et al.

Children held at Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor south of Houston that houses immigrant minors, described being held down and injected, according to the federal court filings.
The lawsuit alleges that children were told they would not be released or see their parents unless they took medication and that they only were receiving vitamins.

Parents and the children themselves told attorneys the drugs rendered them unable to walk, afraid of people and wanting to sleep constantly, according to affidavits filed April 23 in U.S. District Court in California.

You don't have to read those documents; they're an array of horrors. I just want to keep track of them.
2018-6-20 14:30:23
One of those days in which I have to reach for the Super Mario World soundtrack.
2018-6-20 14:16:31
Oh, yeah, that last thing via Beau. (I guess I should implement editing on these posts sometime?)
2018-6-20 14:15:04
A talk with a few death metal bands in Nepal. I just generally enjoy how accessible metal is throughout the world.
2018-6-20 11:36:57
10-5-3-3. I'm totes OK with plateaus. Also, I saw kinda cool forest rat in the bushes.

Possibly, it was a regular rat.
2018-6-20 09:57:28
Today, we're donating $1,000 to KIND, Kids in Need of Defense. And indeed they do need defense. From 2013 :
In court, these children are up against trained government lawyers. They must testify under oath, file supporting documents and navigate the complexities of immigration law, with no knowledge of the country’s language or customs, and often with only the help of a translator. Children in the courtroom often seem confused and frightened. Staff members with Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, a group whose board I serve on and the principal provider of pro bono lawyers for these children, told me of a boy in Los Angeles who carried his teddy bear for comfort and a toddler in a Texas courtroom who wet his pants when he faced the judge.
This is even worse now, of course. Help if you can, please.

2018-6-19 22:46:53
Just finished Gerstner's forms of color. He lost me when he got into the Kandinsky idea that certain shapes should be certain colors. e.g. Circles harmonize with blue; triangles have a yellow nature. The deep dive into a piece of Islamic geometric art was cool, though. And systems for art is an interesting enough idea that I'll read his other work.
2018-6-19 17:56:08
Relieved to see the guy dealing with a smaller guy trying to shove him by just ignoring him. Every development toward non-cruelness is a relief!
2018-6-19 15:54:08
John Naughton spoke about two kinds of tech incomprehensibility:

1. Genuine complexity that's hard to explain, even when explained honestly, like the Meltdown exploit of predictive branching in CPUs, which affects a huge amount of computers.

2. Intentional obfuscation, or at least willful desire to not explain, as in "the sharing economy is so complex," "we can't control algorithms", etc.

He also mentions that Martin Luther discovered that pamphlets were cheaper than books because you could fold up a large piece of printed paper instead of paying for cutting several small pages and fastening them.

Apparently, he issued a challenge to the tech giants?
2018-6-19 14:35:50
10-5-3-3. Probably a small boost from having to wait a little while for someone to be done with the bar instead of going straight to it from running. Needed it; very angry today.
2018-6-19 12:48:26
If you want my mind to be less dark, then maybe you should make the world less dark! How about that, eh?