Chicle isn’t the only natural chewable by the way. Many resins can be jawed on for a while, I’m very fond of chewing mastic resin. Mastic comes from Greece, and has a piney taste when you’ve chewed it for a while.

People with no money have one big problem, people with money have many small problems.

I first heard of it from Joel Spolsky’s blog and wikipedia also credits that article with popularizing the concept. In it’s original formulation, it was based on remote procedure calls being hidden in APIs. Because a remote computer call has all these limits of latency, packet/info loss, and possible connection loss, it is impossible to make a perfect abstraction that allows the programmer to treat the remote call as though it were local. The reality the abstraction tries to hide “leaks” in those fundamental limits.

All of contemporary global society is such an abstraction; that’s one of the principles of post-modernism. When you buy clothes online an entire invisible work force of shippers, manufacturers, resource procurerers, and more lies beind each article of fabric.

Pressure from climate change, tariffs, global war, and more are straining the foundations of society and the comfortable abstraction is starting to crack.

The binary executable for Fossil is a single file (repos are also single files, sqlite databases). That one executable does all the VCS functions but it also has a built-in web server that will host repos as a little customizable website. That’s how you access the wiki, chat, forums, and ticketing system. You can also configure the repo, view timelines, view code, and all that stuff.

One can set up a proxy and publicly self-host the repo over the internet. That’s what the official fossil site is, a hosted repo of it’s own source code. I didn’t feel like setting up a local web host, an ngnx reverse proxy, figuring out vpn for remote access, etc etc. So i just use synching and only run locally, because it’s easier for me.

That’s another nice thing about fossil, it’s quite flexible and can grow with the needs of the project.

The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade.

Yeah no shit! When my computer does full-screen, disruptive things that I didn’t tell it to do, I figure out how to remove that malware. I’ve been off Windows at home for about a month now, thanks Linux Mint! Getting some games to work has been challenging, but most things have just worked and quite a few work much better!

Performance is up overall, and my confidence that my computer isn’t running a bunch of secret ad and spy ware is way up. Hardware like my gamepad and microphone would randomly disconnect and have issues on Windows, all working perfectly now.

Unfortunately I’m still deep in MS land for work, but there’s almost a comedic quality to it. Everything’s very slow, everyone has constant issues with Teams, or Office online, or Dynamics, or copilot shoving it’s tendrils into everything. Watching businesses struggle to keep operating in the face of Microsoft’s inadequacy is like being a mechanic watching a motor grind to a halt because the owner/manufacturer replaced all the oil with syrup.

Like yes, it’s my problem to fix, but I’m just glad it’s not my car.

I love Fossil and use it for all my personal projects! I use syncthing to keep my all my repositories updated across devices and it works great!

I do wish I better understood either self-hosting or that there were more web hosts though, it would make collaboration easier when I feel like sharing. A git(hub) bridge could do it too I guess…

I had in some ways the opposite 23&Me experience and goals. My parents told me growing up that I had some small native ancestry. This is actually a common myth many Americans have either been told or somehow deluded themselves into believing.

So I did the DNA testing (which I now regret from all the obvious enshittification and privacy reasons) to prove that my ancestry was boring and predictable. Which it was, no indigenous ancestry, just the expected European countries that my great grandparents came from.

They also do a lot of nice health screening things and I think that’s probably the much more valuable aspect of it. It really is very American that people are so much more concerned with what DNA says about one’s race or ethnicity than about their health and wellbeing.

Every 5 minutes, at max volume:

YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. ALL AVAILABLE OPERATORS ARE HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS. PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.

2 minutes later:

DID YOU KNOW <COMPANY> IS WORKING TO SAVE CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU MONEY? UPGRADE YOUR PLAN TO ULTIMATE TODAY AND SAVE! YOU CAN ADD BASIC CABLE TO YOUR INTERNET PLAN FOR FREE FOR 3 MONTHS. MAKE ANY SOUND AT ALL TO LEAVE THE SUPPORT QUEUE AND SPEAK WITH A NEW ACCOUNT SPECIALIST RIGHT AWAY.

returns to playing compressed elevator music through an old can

I visited Ecuador several years ago and got to chew on coca leaves, but they also had coca leaf candies! Both were excellent for helping with altitude sickness, and I really enjoyed the flavor. Had a gentle mood lifting effect too, like a nice cup of tea, but in the form of chewed cud, haha.

I also got randomly sent this image from a matrix on the technics.de server. Aside from all the antisemitism and nazi stuff, I admit I was a little charmed by it. Reminded me of timecube and the good old days of how the Internet used to be a place for nerds, outcasts, and complete fucking psychopaths.

Edit: Link to proof ཚྒྷཚྒྷ

As a person who occasionally makes confessional asides “to the camera” I find it amusing to rhetorically ask “Chat” about things. “Ugh, I don’t wanna cook tonight. How about it Chat, we ordering pizza?”

Found a few things:

A carved and polished table, shows color and cross section well.

A wiki for a minecraft clone that already has baobob wood.

Following another poster’s advice, here’s a cross section of one cut down.

In other depictions it often has little holes in it, which seems like a thing that happens to some baobob wood, otherwise it kind of just looks like medium color wood with some dark bands.

Excalicar, of the High Ways

And they that can shift into the 6th gear shall be named King of the Road!

It’s mot, the greatest haircut in Star Fleet,

this haircut is just a tribute.

My big brained billionaire coyote boyfriend wants to invite a roadrunner into the mix but I haven’t worked through my feelings about casual polyamory yet and also I am a ghost bigfoot

You slide to the ground behind the bed, gasping for breath while also trying to be silent. You crawl under the bed, hidden in the deep shadows and dust. His ghostly light moves down the hallway, the pale glow dimming with each ragged inhale through the fingers clasped tightly over your mouth.

You exhale a sigh of relief and crawl out. Dusting yourself off, your eye catches the old vanity mirror against the wall. Your face is gaunt and skeletal. The Doctor is standing directly behind you. “Please state the nature of your medical emergency,” he starts to say, the final words cut off by your echoing screams.

My grandma, what a big brain you have!

The other side of this would be a pretty good Chief O’Brian at Work comic.

“Oh g’morning kitty, one to beam down?”

beams kitty, smiles

comm beep

Meow meow meow

“Oh uh, yes sir, didn’t realize you outrank me, no sir. Yes sir, one to beam up”

beams kitty up

kitty stares at Chief

Meow.

“Ah, yessir, one to beam down.”

comm beeps, Chief frowns

Captain, I’m reading a class 5 pun off the port nacelles! If we don’t stabilize the vote ratio, we could find ourselves trapped in a meme template temporal loop.

Odo ruins another fine Bajoran traditional festival by imprisoning all the children dressed as Pah Wraith for Prophetsween. In the b-plot, Sisko recreates field of dreams in the holodeck and has an emotional moment with the hologhost of Jackie Robinson, played by Tony Todd for maximum tears.