These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Mantra
Today's Cooking
Poem
Green Energy
Birdfeeding
Crafts
Birdfeeding
Artificial Intelligence
Philosophical Questions: Economy
Climate Change
Neighborly Request
Today's Adventures
Friday Five
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 9-5-25: Internet
Food
Affordable Housing
Birdfeeding
Bad Advice
Hobbies: Sewing
Wildlife
Education
Hard Things

Let's Boycott Mississippi has 54 comments. Affordable Housing has 41 comments. Robotics has 68 comments. Food has 37 comments. "Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 53 comments.


summerofthe69 has concluded. See Closing Ceremonies for a list of all works. The Amnesty post is also up.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $200 to be complete. Shiv attends the first session of his Worldbuilding class.


The weather is still mild to warm and quite dry. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a gray catbird, a male rose-breasted grosbeak, and a gray squirrel. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, firewheel, cypress vine, sunchokes, sedum. Tomatoes, ball carrots, cucumbers, and groundcherries are ripe.

We were watching Miraculous Ladybug tonight, and one of the characters said something that sounded very useful to me: "My anger is mine, but I am not my anger."  It seems like an effective way to acknowledge any overwhelming emotion without letting it run away with you.

I finished one of my unfinished poems from a while back. \o/

"When Everyone Around You Has Theirs Bowed"
Story Date: Sunday, April 6, 2014
Summary: Therapy for men's genital injury tends to focus on loss, but Marvis Willing knows the proud history of eunuchs.
304 lines, Buy It Now = $152

Today is sunny and mild, a beautiful fall day.  :D

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

I picked 6 groundcherries.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- I hauled out the hose to water the new picnic table and the septic garden.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- I watered the patio plants, old picnic table, and house yard plants.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- We reeled up the hose.

I watered the telephone pole garden and the savanna seedlings.

Crickets are singing.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night. 

The revolution will be hand-spun

Artisans have long pushed back against the logic of industrial capitalism. In the 19th century, the Arts and Crafts Movement emerged as a response to the alienation and disenchantment of mass production. Thinkers such as William Morris and John Ruskin believed that the beauty and joy of a product should not be sacrificed for efficiency and profit. Though the movement has been romanticised and limited by its class dynamics, it planted the seeds for a more human economy that valued the dignity of labour and the connection between maker, object, and environment. Today’s craft echoes that ethos but with a different kind of urgency among the backdrop of ecological breakdown, supply chain fragility, and a loneliness epidemic. Craft is not simply nostalgic and aesthetic, it is a degrowth practice. It offers a lived critique of a world and consumption habits driven by speed and scale. Craft models an alternative that is grounded in sufficiency, care, and embodied knowledge.


If you get frustrated with artificial intelligence, fast fashion, the carbon footprint of global shipping, etc. then handicrafts offer an effective means of protest.  You don't have to make everything yourself, but everything that you do make strikes directly against the juggernaut of contemporary capitalism.

One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It's way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things.

This is exactly the kind of problem I expected to come out of AI-generated code.  If all you reward is speed, then you'll get sloppy fake code like this.  If you want to persist in trying to make AI create usable code, then you also have to reward it for accuracy and penalize it for lies and mistakes.  The trouble is, AI is bad at juggling contradictory commands like "Do this as fast as possible to be accurate, but not so fast that it produces bad output."  It becomes very prone to freezing.

Annnnnnd that's why human computer programmers are valuable.

Today we went to the Broomcorn Festival in Arcola. This is a big harvest festival, well worth catching, and it runs the whole weekend if you want to check it out. The weather was beautiful, cloudy and mild, couldn't ask for better weather.

( Read more... )

Today is cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/5/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/5/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/5/25 -- I watered the old picnic table, new picnic table, telephone pole garden, and a few of the savanna seedlings.

I picked 2 yellow pear tomatoes.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

How Parking Day Brought This Louisiana City Back to Life

To break the impasse, the city of Lafayette partnered with a local nonprofit to host a Park(ing) Day event. Together, they installed 16 temporary parklets throughout the downtown, several of which simulated outdoor dining areas. “People enjoyed the experience, and it allowed downtown business owners and stakeholders to experience the change in a temporary way,” explained Carlee Alm-LaBar, then Lafayette’s planning director and now Strong Towns’ chief of staff. “They started to see the vision of how Lafayette could use its public space differently and how it might bring more energy to the downtown neighborhood.”

That experience mattered. Less than a year later, the city passed an ordinance allowing for parklets and outdoor dining to be built in former parking spots.


Other things you can playtest with this method:

* food truck parks

* busk stops

* pop-up shops (e.g. selling local art, fresh produce, seasonal decor)

* skateable / climbable sculptures

* new types of public seating