Quick Things
Reading Mitigating Digital Mindlessness, and this quote struck me:
Definition. Mindlessness is the vulnerable state of heuristic decision making which leaves users susceptible to unintentional or malicious deception (e.g. fake news, deep fakes) and misdirection (e.g., filter bubbles, dark patterns).
Also reading about TDD, and how multiple studies have shown that it is not the panacea we thought it was.
Discovered sprout.place, which is like a ... whiteboard with video? Persistent chat space? Kinda cool, and free, worth checking out.
Other Stuff
Got the holiday-cheer lights up, tracked down and acquired a tree for the house. Culture has its way, and i do feel better seeing all the lights on the houses in the darkness which comes so early these days.
Also learned about wget and using it to download a copy of a site or url.
wget -r --no-parent http://site.com/songs/
via HowToGeek.
We like to think we have some form of control still.
Making our constant binary choices.
And voicing our equally shallow opinions more loudly or quietly.
Most people can't even decide what color to wear or which burger to eat.
And what the fuck does it matter man.
Autonomy is an illusion
-- Ecstatic "Illusion Of Control"
I quite like this lyric, although i'm not quite ready to give up my thoughts and beliefs on autonomy and free-will. I have a dark-wave mix which has a remix of this song in it, and it is rockin! Sadly, the "real" version of the song does nothing for me.
Just read this really interesting paper "Mechanical Computing Systems Using Only Links and Rotary Joints". At first i was all like "what even is the point (other than being cool)", but it has applications in micro and nano engineering. And is, regardless, just an amazing example of minimalist machinery required to build a Turing complete machine. Found it via Interesting Esoterica on Mastodon.
Picked up White Hex's album Gold Nights and really enjoying it. Unfortunately the band is already gone, but there is at least one more album i can, and will get, by them. Also got Pleasure Symbols Closer and Closer Apart. And have been listening to NIN Ghosts V and VI, well, trying to listen to them. They are very bleak and too challenging for me to have on during work as they pull my attention.