Chris Devers

I can’t see empty screw holes on the sidewalk in the last photo. Was the mailbox actually bolted down, or was it just standing there until the (apparently recently redone?) sidewalk to the right was ready for the permanent installation?

@snell.zone — I’m on the same line of thought about kayaks recently. I’m tempted to get one that I could tow with a bike to Boston Harbor, then paddle out from there. Oru has a bunch of models, including sea kayaks stable enough to use on bays, harbors, and open sea. REI often has them on sale, too…

I’ll play along…

Farthest I've been:

N: Oxford, England (unless flying over the Arctic Ocean counts)
E: Tokyo
S: Ho Chi Minh City
W: Eureka, California

Did anyone ever figure out where that guitar Prince threw landed?

Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Started in June as one sign, then another. For a week or so, it was “Berry” vs “Orange Cat”.

Then, more started appearing. A lot more.

I haven’t been by in a couple weeks, but as of mid-July, there were 32 signs, and I understand that the number has kept climbing since then.

YouTube video by Striking Chords J.R.R. TOLKIEN reads and sings his THE HOBBIT and The Fellowship of the Ring (1975)

On the same line of thought, I have a thrift-shop copy of an LP where Tolkien himself read & sang passages from “Hobbit” and “Fellowship”, and it really helps to hear how the author himself intended these lyrics to sound.

Luckily, somebody uploaded a copy to YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GsX...

I binged Serkis’s “Hobbit” & “LOTR” readings earlier this summer, and yes, they’re fantastic.

I also suggest giving the songs a chance. They’re my least favorite part of the books, just because they take me out of the narrative, but hearing a great actor put a melody & emotion to them really helps.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

My favorite thing about iVim for iPadOS, aside of course from the obvious joy in having `vi` on an iPad, is that fact that `:sh` works, and gives you a reasonably functional shell environment, including both Python & SSH! It’s not a “proper” Terminal, but it works!

github.com/terrychou/iVim

Ah, that one does seem nice, thanks!

I think part of it is a bootstrapping problem; it’s social, not technical. I’d prefer a social media feed that’s mostly people I actually know. I sort of had that on FB, but it’s rotting; it doesn’t feel possible here yet because the friends/family/neighbors/etc aren’t using this site yet.

Yeah, that’s definitely a big part of it. For all FB’s flaws, I’ve spent going on 20 years building up a list of friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, classmates, etc there. That feels more or less impossible to rebuild elsewhere.

A little, but honestly, I’m not persuaded that manually curating my own custom feeds is worthwhile. I’m just not invested enough in the platform to spend time on such curation; I spend three minutes on it before feeling like “eh, whatever, I’ll just go skim Facebook instead.” Hard habit to break.

Yeah, for years I used the chronological Twitter timeline, where I’d have Tweetbot save my place as I read every account I followed, and catch up on what I missed next time I picked up the app. But it just got depressing after a while; a chore. Learning to live with less FOMO was a healthy change.

Yeah, every time I see my default timeline here, the more I realize that an algorithm with some heuristics for what site users are more likely to find interesting isn’t such a bad thing. (Mutual follows, shared interests, discovering topically relevant new stuff, etc).

↑ My post here follows a Somerville Discord discussion; see there for follow-up from me & others. :-)

And I push back on the “no algo” thing. There’s ALWAYS an algorithm. “Strict chronological” IS an algorithm, just a rudimentary one. I’m coming around to thinking it’s not an optimal one either.

“Yeah, icebergs, they’re the worst, this sucks. Oh look, we haven't escaped from it. Yep.”

It feels flippant to try posting “fun” stuff here (and it gets lost in the noise of all the political posts anyway), but I don't really feel like I have much to add to the political discussions, either.

And, like, yeah okay fair enough, but I don't know what to do with that.

But on this lifeboat, there’s no oars, no dry land in sight, and the only thing anyone wants to talk about the fact is that it was, indeed, an iceberg after all.

Every time I open the app, I feel like I’m on one of the Titanic’s lifeboats, with people who warned “doesn’t that look like an iceberg?” are huddled together commiserating over what just happened.

…is it too uncool to say aloud that i'm not clicking with Bluesky ?

Yeah, I kind of want to change mine me to “bit plumber” or something. But that’ll inevitably just get me different sorts of spam…

YouTube video by Alex Boucher How did they do this in Chungking Express?

For anyone else that hasn’t seen this movie, this video provides an explainer into the cinematography that went into this film, including this scene:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGu...

I’m thirty years late on this, but I watched Wong Kar-Wai’s “Chungking Express” for the first time this week, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the scene where Tony Leung puts a coin in a jukebox might be the coolest shot in cinema history. It’s in the top ten list, anyway.

Send her home.
Send them all home.

And get the wrongful imprisonment case started.

Proof this guy is full of SITH.

Yeah, it was easily remedied. :-)

The first time I was like “what ‽ six thousand new posts ??”

Then it happened again a little while later, but in that case I just went straight to your feed to confirm that the problem had repeated.

No big deal, I was more bemused by it than anything else. :-)

YouTube video by Conor Shellac - Prayer to God — Dublin,Ireland 2008

Wait, a pope from Chicago? Clearly this was a job for Albini…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzI6...

I was really looking forward to Pope Pizza, if only for the promise of finally, finally getting some liturgical guidance on whether or not pineapple is kosher or not.