This week in squirrels… From Sun Jun 28th to Sat Jul 4th
Summary
- Skipped streaming this week
- I had the roughest wakeup, more blind than anything else, and bad sleep. Overall, the mood is not there. Then I never came back to it
- All the laundry in the WORLD.
- Overdue sheets after an incident.
- And then towels
- And then all the loads
- I have no idea why I bulkload laundry (Hint: she does, Combo ADHD)
- Troubleshooting network losses in Linux
- Once again, I am asking boxes to stay on the dang network and it seems to be too much of an ask. Now it’s my main server dropping a time after boot. No logs, just… gone.
- This one proved to be intermittent, which is always annoying to troubleshoot. In the end, I found something that could cause my immich container to enter a restart loop when it was coming up, and the constant churn of Venth devices would confuse the heck out of DHCPD till it panicked. In this cycle, somewhere dncpd would overwrite the system routes to Docker’s internal router.
- I could just set dhcpd to completely ignore these devices, set containers not to restart loop, or… hey wait? why is dhcpd still running on this box anyways? That was a bug in my configuration. In the end, I decided to implement the least efficient method of fixing it: I switched all of my wired boxes in my NixOS configuration from the scripted network setup to directly defined systemd-networkd network units, so I can fully drop dhcpd & avahi while I am at it.
- Oh, and since I am redoing all networking on my wired boxes, why not also move all my wifi systems off NetworkManager to networkd+iwd? Yes, let’s completely redo the network stacks on every system I own.
- Thanks to NixOS, this was actually relatively painless to wire up, then test, then roll back when something went wrong with a single reboot.
- When NixOS is on, it is ON, and this is one of those times it helped a bunch.
- NixOS refactor rundown
- It’s been a while, so I went through and refactored all my Nix stuff.
- No major changes, but cleaning so much up.
- HomeAssistant work
- HA has a bunch of really major updates, so I got it all patched up and then updated and cleaned up a lot of automations, redid my home detection, and both of my dashboards.
- Hopefully, all this new home/away automation will save me money. I spend so much time at the hospital now, there is no way to have “at home” a/c during those times
- Finishing up the “system” refactor
- Yikes. Ok. I don’t think I have done a weekly review since B.C. And possibly before that
- So I sat down and redid my lists. Like a full-on GTD review where I audited all of my lists (I still keep them in Obsidian, not re-inventing the wheel). I had to create some new contexts and need to clean out a lot.
- Also feeling like streamlining my routines
- Improving mental health
- I haven’t really mentioned my mental health, because I haven’t been reflecting on it. I needed a break from introspection and all that.
- There are still some things I am struggling with, but overall
- Bone Marrow Biopsy
- A bit of casual surgery for the midweek
- Oh no, my health
- While this was week one of recovery and no chemo, the “recovery” wasn’t so much present. Months of chemo aren’t something you can just heal in a week, but it seems my body is still worsening in ways before it can heal.
- Remember when I had blood? I hardly do. I get transfusions every two days now. Who needs white blood cells, or neutrophils, or platelets? Not me! No, wait, I need those? heck.
- You would think, having easily exceeded my maximum yearly insurance, I would not be getting fresh bills every month, but this is my life now.
Books
- Steam ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This is cute and fun, but I really wasn’t feeling it.
- Thighs and Prayers ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- the nuns hook up, solve a mystery, and hook up more 4/5
- This coulda woulda shoulda been a five star for me but it spent a little bit too much time on how much the main characters really hate men, misogyny, and the violence perpetuated by men, as it is the source of most of their problems (which I mean, go off sis, no lies detected) but not something I want to think about nearly every chapter while reading nun smut.
- Still another great sapphic romance book that breaks out of the rules and tropes of the genre.
- Lesbian Megalodon Shark Lifeguard Summer Butt Hunt
- Yep, a Dr. Chuck Tingle book. A friend pointed this one out to me, so I went for it.
- I’m not even going to justify this with a rating. But I will say the Jaws scene recreation was pretty great.
- sWitch ⭐⭐⭐
- This is an earlier book from the author of “Thighs and Prayers.” Sadly, it’s not nearly as good as the one above. It’s fine… but the prose is a bit basic, jilted, repetitive.
Music
- “sesbianlex” by Chzter
- This brand new release is not something that would normally be on my radar since I don’t follow Latin music too closely, but it was the top recommendation on Hearing Thing’s “Five Albums” recommendation. So check them out.
- I don’t know Latin music well, and I am told this is a mix of reggaetón mexa, cumbia, and club sound. But I just think it’s a banger with all of that internet-poisoned Gen-Z sound all over it. I don’t love the “deep fried” bass sounds in some of the early tracks, but overall, I can tell it’s queer and full of bangers.
- I can’t get enough of this album and have been telling everybody to try it
- “Tessares” by dgoHn
- I am STILL such a sucker for an IDM great album, it seems.
- “I Couldn’t Remember So I Made Something Up” has a playfulness to it I can’t get enough of
- “Feral Grace” by The Black Dog
- Some of the new TBD releases haven’t been hitting as well. While they moved away from their brutalism a good bit, the darkness and weight of this ambient album hit really well right now.
Reads and Videos
This is another week where most of my links are dark and angsty. I try to avoid this, but that’s the week I had, I suppose.
- Warp Point
- We are bringing back web rings? I am so hype for this. I am not even a Gamer™ or somebody interested in reading about that much gaming news. But I want to bring back web rings.
- Leveragism: The Richest Country Is Pretty Mid Now | Benn Jordan
- It is kinda hilarious that this music channel I follow is doing econ videos.
- However, I saw absolutely no lies in it, and it’s a good refresher on what happened to the housing market around here.
- It also reminds us that the goal is to keep us unwilling to risk what we have to stand up for ourselves.
- Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back | The Guardian
- This is almost a follow-up to the above.
- Public schools are closing all over Nevada as enrollment drops | The Nevada Independent
- The talk of the town around here. The pandemic DRASTICALLY reduced births in Nevada, and now everywhere, from the small towns to the two major metros, are going from “not being able to fund all these schools and teachers we need” to “we don’t have enough enrollments to keep a bunch of these going.”
- Federal health agency cancels most of its teen pregnancy prevention grants | Nevada Current
- Preventing teen pregnancy “did not align with agency priorities”
- Actual Racism Is Invisible To Sam Alito, Because It’s Just His Own Worldview | Techdirt
- If you don’t see racism, it’s because you don’t care to.
- Kansas Anti-Trans Law Forced Her License to Say, Male. Then a Cop Questioned It, and She Was Charged | Them
- Remember when I first wrote about this? A predictable thing happened
- Accessory Company Yanks Companion Cube Steam Machine Case Because It Never Actually Asked Valve For Permission | Aftermath
- It is better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission… until you dump over a thousand hours of engineering work into something only to get a no.
- Opinion | I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters. | The New York Times
- Bringing back these lines is dicey.
- I remember when the “biologically gay” argument was in full force and was being used to help convince some people and try to get laws and anti-discrimination passed. I would argue it worked pretty well at helping move homosexuality out from being thought of as a mental illness and giving a lot of people a ‘shield’ to hide behind of “I was born this way.” It felt almost like a thought-terminating cliche at some point.
- However, I don’t think that fragmenting the queer community and arguing that some people are biologically gay is going to save anybody this time. Especially since back in the 2010s, large-scale science studies refuted that there is a “gay gene” and romantic and sexual interests can be fluid and change over time. We don’t even have a Kidsey scale anymore; it’s a whole grid (see The Klein Grid).
- No matter how you slice it, this reads to me like a “Suffrage Movement” play where the biggest faction of a minority tries to throw everybody under the bus to save themselves.
- Actually, I’m gay, and I’m queer. It matters | Washington Blade
- Somebody else’s retort to the above article that digs into the point about “living an ordinary life” and all of the other essential points in the opinion piece. I also think that this falls far too deep into assimilation.
- The Founding Fathers Sucked | The Flytrap Media
- Despite all of its flaws, especially right now, I really like my country. However, this is a really good point: we shouldn’t hero-worship the people who founded it just because they did.
- No, Tim Sweeney, Valve Isn’t ‘Irresponsible’ For Having An AI Disclosure Tag On Games | Techdirt
- If you are anti-disclosure for just about anything in commerce, you might want to check your hat for skulls.
- Companies Are Making Claude and Codex Talk Like Cavemen to Stop AI’s Soaring Costs | 404 Media
- On one hand, I am so glad we are making AI more terse.
- On the other hand, I bet this will cause plenty more issues due to trusting a tool that doesn’t know what it is doing
- County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to ‘Conserve Electricity’ | 404 Media
- Gross
- Amazon seller reveals rare glimpse of shadow bribery market | The Mercury News
- Unsurprising but also gross
Quote of the Week
God grant me the serenity to stay silly when life gets hard