Starting my thread with this essay about my books & my cats. I created it a few years ago & keep it updated. It's whimsical, it makes me happy, and it's a good intro to my writing. I hope you enjoy it.
Note: All images in the blog post had alt-text last I checked. Book pages on my site should all have alt descriptions as well. Should. It's a work in progress.
Today in things I'm proud of making: this brand-new blurb graphic for my ongoing series, the Rollover Files.
TL;DR pitch: midlife crisis superpowers. Contains swearwords, moms & teens saving the world, idealism, and good people dealing with bad situations as best they can. https://books2read.com/kmherkes
Part of what I’ve been struggling with lately, feelings of disorientation and guilt about being inattentive to the phenomena of my life, presumes that I, as the individual subject, remain central and yet discrete from the world around me.
@nathanlovestrees@writingcommunity for what it’s worth, guilt about this is not helpful. Which also isn’t helpful to say, because emotions just happen, unbidden. But it might be worth exploring why guilt is the emotion that comes up. For me because, I’m where I am, it’s mostly regret that dominates my life, which is likewise not helpful. But I’m trying to sit with it and interrogate it and shift it.
"Endorsing countries include the United States, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, Republic of Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. "
@26aafa19 Great story!
"Since stone carving & installation were the most expensive items for the overall project, the monks decided to tackle that job themselves. This meant learning the whole CNC stone-carving workflow, all about stone cutting machinery, operating CNC machines, CAD modelling, CAM programming, stone masonry & construction techniques...
not without a few disasters..."
Anyone else using Mac minis as VM hosts for self hosting? My Friendica server is a Linux VM on a Mac Mini in my living room. The VM is bound to a VLAN tagged network interface so it’s completely firewalled off from the rest of my network. Also got a second Linux VM on the same box for hosting local stuff on my main VLAN (HomeBridge/etc).
I feel like they’re really nice platforms for this, if not the cheapest. Cheaper than one might think though; I specced up an equivalent NUC and there wasn’t a lot of difference in price, and the M2 is really fast.
Just to add to the Asahi Linux chorus - I’m self hosting a bunch of things, not on VMs but installed on the actual OS, and it’s been incredibly fast and reliable. I do have thorough offsite backups happening because one should, but loving it so far.
Comment classer des dizaines de milliers de diapositives sans s'arracher les yeux sur une table lumineuse ? En les numérisant d'abord !
En zoomant sur les fichiers numériques, il devient possible de trier, identifier et (re)classer les photos.
Le retour d'expérience sur un 1er fonds a été présenté par les #ArchivesDeLyon au colloque des archivistes municipaux de l'#AAF à #Valenciennes.
Hey, if you're seeing this and you are a published author (indie self-published or otherwise, doesn't matter, so long as you're on fedi) or a writer in general please reply with a link to your work and maybe a gist of what kinda stuff you write.
I'm gonna get some money for the holidays, and since I'm gonna be treating myself to books I don't really need anyway why not support some fedi friends? (consider doing the same too this holiday season) :ablobcatheartsqueeze:
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
Joseph Fructus, dit Fructus-Rey, est un peintre et dessinateur français (1744-1831) obsédé par son #art. Sous son autoportrait, il déclare :
"Toujours a dessiné je passerois ma vie,
mon amour pour cet art tend presque à la follie".
Les #ArchivesDeLyon conservent 2 albums de vues des environs de #Lyon en 1820 et 1825, qui offrent des paysages inédits à la perspective... fuyante !
(Cote 17Fi 53)
"It is worth getting inside Trump’s head a bit and imagining his mood following an election victory. He will have spent the previous year, and more, fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad persecutors and helpless to do what he likes to do best: exact revenge. Think of the fury that will have built up inside him, a fury that, from his point of view, he has worked hard to contain. ..."
Why do people believe that Trump’s revenge would not be like proscriptions of Marius or Sulla, but with the power of the surveillance state and tactical precision of drones?
My whole life I’ve been into geography and yet — after 50+ trips around the Sun — it was like two weeks ago that I learned that Appalachia is pronounced Appa-LATCH-ia … not Appa-LAY-chia 🤦🏾♂️
Also, Y’ALL (Young Appalachian Leaders and Learners) apparently got issues with JD Vance’s best-selling #book “Hillbilly Elegy”
@seanalan I read Hillbilly Elegy several years ago. I am interested in your thoughts on the response. On my TBR list! Thanks for posting about it! @bookstodon#books
I pretty much 100% recovered from my bout with the COVID. Slight sniffle, but then again, I spend pretty much the entire winter with one, so who knows? Seems like the rest of the family, even the unboosted one, has avoided my fate, which is great. Probably shouldn't go back to hockey tomorrow though, at least if I'm reading the CDC guidelines correctly. I'll just wait until next Tuesday to get back on the ice.
I've been playing the Guardians of the Galaxy computer game. It's a strange one. 🤔 It has a bit of combat and some character progression, but it really is more about puzzle-solving and plot(!) than a real RPG. It even has quicktime events, which I thought disappeared years ago. Still fun though. And 4 Guys Co-op had a long session of Serious Sam 4 but we couldn't get level 3 finished. I may have to ease the difficulty a bit. @videogames#videogames
Also been getting plenty of reading done in my last week of freedom. I finished The Swerve, which was a fascinating (no really!) look at a medieval humanist and his efforts to uncover ancient texts, including a pivotal book by the Roman philosopher Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things, which the author posits as "How The World Became Modern". No really, it's great stuff! I've started on the 2nd Cormoran Strike book, The Silkworm. @bookstodon#books#AmReading