Done Since 2026-02-08
2026-02-15 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearWell, happy cheap-filled-chocolates-in-heart-shaped-boxes day, for those in a position to take advantage of it. And I hope that any of you who celebrated yesterday had a good Valentine's day, and that the rest of us got through it okay. It isn't a good day for the bereft. The last few days haven't been all that good for my back, either -- no idea what I did to cause muscle spasms, but I wish I hadn't.
I did accomplish a few things last week: getting my legs wrapped in elastic ("Ace") bandages to reduce the swelling, setting up a trip to the US next month (in time to renew my driver's license), taking three walks (not all that good, but something at least), and one guitar practice session (also not all that good, but something).
For those folks affected, or soon to be affected, by Discord's new age checks, or worried about further enshittification over the next year or three, there are some lists of alternatives under the cut for your edification. Almost all on Friday, along with some more commentary. A couple on Tuesday. Tl;dr: there isn't an obvious drop-in replacement, but Stoat comes close and is under active development.
Also of note: A legendary golden fabric lost for 2,000 years has been brought back: it's made from pen shell byssus, which was previously discarded as waste. The color is non-fading because it's structural. Other good news, EU Parliament 🇪🇺 votes to accept a report, that calls for "the full recognition of trans women as women".
Notes & links: 0208Su @ The 4,000 Year Old Secret Behind The Sorcerer's Apprentice - YouTube Never call up something you don't know how to dismiss. cf AI * set alarms for tomorrow's appointment @ These 773,000-year-old fossils may reveal our shared human ancestor (ysabetwordsmith) " These individuals likely represent an African population close to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans. " @ A push to redraw the map of mental illness | Scientific American audio+transcript Psychiatrists plan to overhaul the mental health bible—and change how we define ‘disorder’ | Scientific American Psychiatry.org - APA Releases Roadmap for the Future of the DSM @ The chaos in the US is affecting open source software and its developers – OSnews @ Washington Post publisher Will Lewis says he’s stepping down, days after big layoffs at the paper | The Seattle Times @ In Minneapolis, Seattle visitors see ICE agony, community power | Seattle Times * hx work session * update yesterday's entry from Dog/to.do * Dutch - Duolingo * walk: 11:28 H. Marsmanplantsoen: .7km, 22mm, 15min, 8hp, 1100st * 2h watch AI for Authors webinar * update LinkedIn profile. Still needs work. Need company profile for HSX * ordered from Bol: non-scratching (cellulose/sisal) sponges, naproxen 0209Mo * 8:00 leave for 08:40 GP Dr. Pino Korsheninnikova (General practitioner) *- anemia -> wait for call from hematology 0218We ~- feeling cold in the evening (after around 4pm) ~- shortness of breath <= getting worse *- edema? Pain, itch on R leg. Pain mostly on R foot -> professionally-fitted compression socks. Prior to fitting, wrap legs with elastic -> home care -> pick up the elastic and moisturizing cream in 2 days -> expect it to be delivered tomorrow afternoon x- have gone back to using fluticasone proprionate - fixed the congestion for now -> will have to ask for a scrip in a few months : Lizzy acted up crossing the street before the tram tracks. Backwards, then very slow with the speed control reversed! (slower when pushed more). Reboot fixed it. @ Steve Jobs Made 12 Predictions in 1990. They Just Came True. | by Shane Collins Steve Jobs - The Lost Interview (11 May 2012) [VO] [ST-FR] [Ultra HD 4K] - YT @ [2506.10130] A Conjecture on a Fundamental Trade-Off between Certainty and Scope in Symbolic and Generative AI " When an AI system is engineered for deductively watertight guarantees (demonstrable certainty about the error-free nature of its outputs) -- as in classical symbolic AI -- its operational domain must be narrowly circumscribed and pre-structured. Conversely, a system that can input high-dimensional data to produce rich information outputs -- as in contemporary generative models -- necessarily relinquishes the possibility of zero-error performance, incurring an irreducible risk of errors or misclassification " Deep Learning’s Diminishing Returns - IEEE Spectrum @ 7 Old Programming Languages Developers Still Won’t Quit | by Harry | Jan, 2026 C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, COBOL, Fortran : got call re: the referral for leg wrap bandages -- will be delivered tomorrow pm. Still need to hear from the home care company. 15:20 will call tomorrow for appointment Wed because not delivered yet & recycling - pull mis-classified waste from paper bin. Note that appelsap cartons are labeled "with drink cartons" -- yellow PMJ bin. * work: & plugin triage in GS -- incomplete * 5min Dutch (stopgap) * read Brodie - Book Marketing Secrets * 50min Dutch * guitar: snippets, fingerpicking, working on F @ Anthropic’s 7 Billionaire Founders Just Pledged 80% of Their Wealth (Because They Know What’s Coming) | by Tasmia Sharmin | Predict | Feb, 2026 | Medium 0210Tu * call from Livit ottobock.care (livit.nl) to set up measurement for socks -- they didn't realize I haven't had the leg wraps yet. Call when ready. 088-245-2000 @ So, You’ve Hit an Age Gate. What Now? | Electronic Frontier Foundation @ Discord Alternatives, Ranked: Taggart Tech @ Whistle Up 2: Rise of the Whistle Goblins | dansinker.com * 16:40 expected call about home care app't tomorrow (but if I don't get the wrap, ???) -> will come 2pm tomorrow for intake appointment; will wrap if it has arrived @ 'Dark matter, not a black hole, could power Milky Way's heart' | Royal Ast Soc Imaging fermionic dark matter cores at the centre of galaxies | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Oxford Academic ~ pm expect delivery of leg compression wrap. DHL. -> delayed to tomorrow @ Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs - Ars ~ pay wipers -> delayed until tomorrow (or next month?) also * hx work session @ Discord Alternatives, Ranked: Taggart Tech tl;dr: no good free replacements for Discord right now, at least not that Taggart evaluated. However, note that it's dated 2025-11-05 * download USB tax docs -> do not exist because < $10 interest earned. * check HSX balance and transactions for 2025, credit score, etc * pay AX * Dutch (Duolingo) 0211We * walk: 0847 DSB801: .85km, 9hp, 19mm, 16min30s, 1500st @ Your phone edits all your photos with AI-is it changing your view of reality?-BBC * am phone appointment Haga Urology Dr H. van der Plas *- prostate cancer treatment -> the 6-month injection was all I needed *- how often to get PSA measured? -> every 6 months. They'll schedule. * 10-18 expect delivery of leg compression wrap. DHL. (from yesterday) @ Mac Minis Are Disappearing From Shelves — And It’s Not Because of Apple | Predict clawdbot -- "local" except it calls out to a cloud LLM like Claude, with $$ API now called OpenClaw — Personal AI Assistant @ Universal paralogs provide a window into evolution before the last universal common ancestor: Cell Genomics (via Scientists find genes that existed before all life on Earth | ScienceDaily) (via ysabetwordsmithe) more accurately, before the Last Universal Common Ancestor, which was already pretty complex. They do it by looking at "universal paralogs" "A paralog is a group of related genes that appear multiple times within a single genome." A _universal_ paralog appears in at least two copies in nearly every living organism. @ A legendary golden fabric lost for 2,000 years has been brought back " the transformation of pen shell byssus, which was previously discarded as waste, into a valuable textile. " " The color does not come from dyes. Instead, it results from structural coloration, which occurs when light interacts with tiny structures at the nanoscale. " ~ ? pay wipers -> probably -> maybe next month * 2pm home care intake appointment, leg wrap -> David. Dutch; parents from Ghana. -> will come MWF typically late morning early afternoon. -> Who comes will vary depending on their scheduling -> call 2 days ahead if possible for schedule changes @ Nature loss is a national security risk, intelligence groups warn | BBC * talk to N for trip planning -> she thinks my plan is reasonable * -attempt to- contact J, N says the RE discord server is good * hx work session * GS: links from About Us to HSX and N's book page. * Dutch (17:05 minimal) * buy tickets Delta 0309Mo 10:15am-12:35pm 0314Sa 4:05pm-0315Su 10am conf# HLLNEN % lots of back pain: L ?QL 0212Th : outer wrap (folded-over tubular bandage) on R foot curled up. It may also have slipped down the calf. Actually both of them appear to have. -> with the wraps, I couldn't get my shoes on over my fuzzy grip socks (could, later) -> should probably switch to the short socks & unsubscribe Travelpro. * walk: 9:07 DSB804 .64km, 3hp, 15mm, 24.5min, 1216st, * request mobility assistance for trip. Said I can walk from the gate to my seat @ Digital Public Goods Alliance & power off Raven -- not doing anything at the moment Determined that Panther is still on Mint 21.3, so can be used for posting. -> posted Thankful Thursday * pick up doxazosin and simvastatin at Apotheek Vrederust ~ make appointment for bloodwork at Haga early next week - preferably Tuesday -> can't find the fsckn lab form! WTF? -> on couch, next to where I was packing for Contabile. Whew! -> but nothing available on Tuesday :P -> go in to the clinic early Tuesday @ What CISOs need to know about the OpenClaw security nightmare | CSO Online " There’s a fundamental security disconnect between having a tool that will do anything and everything for its users, quickly and easily, with no friction and one that abides by good safety practices. " @ Indo-European Explorer: A 6,000-Year Journey (via C`) * hx work session * 35min Dutch (20 + 15) * find websites without stylesheets: * download tax forms from Schwab 0213Fr * walk: 8:37 Simon Vestdijkstraat 2: .57km, 7hp, 15mm, ?10min, 1110st * Pay AMEX -> done 0210Tu @ There are 10 types of people in the world -- Those who understand binary, those who don’t, and those who weren’t expecting a base 3 joke * 10:30ish Homecare. This time will show me how to take off/roll up the bandages; can take them off for shower e.g. the morning of the next appointment -> Mildred, from Suriname @ After the Fall: What Happens When American Democracy Returns @ Europe's $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Wero (formerly iDEAL) Pluralistic: Europe takes a big step towards a post-dollar world (11 Feb 2026) @ The truth about covering tech at Bezos’s Washington Post @ The Many Types of Love and Loss - Whats your Grief wouldn't let me comment... " This really resonated, especially "the love you only find in loss. It is the love for a person that we just couldn't possibly have known or understood while they were still here." One of the hardest losses for me was my cat, Curio. He was the first cat I'd had since I was very young, and died before his time of FIP. I didn't realize until his last moments just how much of a cat person I was. I cried for a week. " * 15-16 expect someone to come for Scarlett @ In solarpunk cities of the future, tech follows nature’s lead | Aeon Essays 'Dear Alice' Decommodified Edition | Solarpunk anime ambience with no ads * hx work session * change flight out to Tuesday. More overlap with Janice, much shorter treatment gap. 0214Sa St. Valentine's Day @ Valentine's Day - Wikipedia @ Ode to the Dinkus (ysabetwordsmith) *** @ Communities are not fungible (Don Marti) " Communities are path-dependent in the strongest possible sense: their current state is a function of their entire history, and you can't rerun the history. " firecat | Discord age verification The Best Alternatives To Discord 2026 - GreyCoder Discord alternatives: Pros and cons of 7 open-source chat apps | Proton VPN 5 Open Source Alternatives to Discord 24 Discord Alternatives for Community Chat Discord: The 8 best alternatives if you want to switch now Oh, good: Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir co-founder and panopticon architect Peter Thiel | PC Gamer @ EU Parliament 🇪🇺 votes to accept a report, that calls for "the full recognition of trans women as women" @ Considering a Switch to Linux? Here’s the Hard Truth | by Michael Swengel @ Apple threatens to stop selling iPhones in the EU | by Cory Doctorow | Medium Adversarial Interoperability: Reviving an Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age to Slay Today's Monopolies | Electronic Frontier Foundation Cory Doctorow 2019 @ EuroStack Report [PDF] * cardboard recycling. I have taken this over from D" because she doesn't flatten boxes, and G and N leave stuff in them. Should probably take over plastic too. % 15:11 sleepy. I did not sleep well last night * hx work session * lilac setup: Signal. Synced with US phone. * bring savitzky.net up to date. * Dutch practice * work on trouble-shooting (server)nova. No joy today. need VGA-to-HDMI cable % neglected to charge watch. 31% at 22:41 - will wait for 50% before going to bed % muscle spasms on L side continue, and seem worse when they occur. Blarg.
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Date: 2026-02-16 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 03:44 pm (UTC)I'm sure I'm not the only filker looking for an alternative to Discord. There are a couple of possibilities, and the movement toward digital sovereignty in Europe the situation can only improve. But moving a community from one platform to another never works particularly well.