Curious Musings

I’ve been listening to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the stoic Roman emperor.

I think the lesson of history is that we don’t learn from the lessons of history. #16 of #100DaysToOffload take 2, https://100daystooffload.com/

This is framed quote that’s been hanging on my family’s walls since sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century.

When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.

Hiking yesterday in the Shenandoah Valley I discovered that I was on part of “Morgans Road”, which is a road George Washington had built into the hills to allow his army to retreat from the British in case things got really bad.

Below is some text from Rimsky-Korsakov’s last opera, where the people mockingly pledge loyalty to the Russian King (Tsar) King Dodon, a lazy and gluttonous ruler, is greatly worried by his warlike neighbors.

From Eagles Rock you can look back east and see the Massanutten range and pretty much all of Shenandoah National Park.

Harpers Ferry: a quaint little town, vegan restaurants, a national park, Appalachian Trail headquarters, great place to hop a train to DC or Pittsburgh, a Kansas album cover or a great place to start a civil war?

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately.

I watched the Super Bowl last night, in which a second Ohio team just missed a national championship in a year.

The Iliad and Dr Seuss have nothing to say to us today.

Today was the day I made the choice to live for an entire work-day on an IPv6-only network.

Why I hike.

This may be obvious to people who are fluent in several languages, but communicating in different languages does not have to be like working a proof in geometry.

Illuminati is a game that allows you indulge your inner conspiracy theorist, hopefully in a self-aware tongue-in-cheek manner.

My great aunt took her first motorcycle ride at 100.

These are some musings I sent to a friend who is a career counselor at a local community college.

I’m going to make another run #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/ First attempt made it to about 40 posts.

I’m doing some of the Duolingo Latin course.

I recently took an Amtrak trip form Pittsburgh to Tucson and back.

I sent this to my son who is on the path to being a high school socials study teacher.

This is a navel-gazing simple desultory philippic about adventures in yak-shaving.

The dream is over, what can I say?

These are a few perspectives on privacy prompted by initial thoughts on the Usenix PEPR ‘22 Call for Participation.

“…It’s also clear you have a achieved emacs enlightenment.

At work I do a lot of research around finding and understanding the capabilities of things connected to the Internet.

Today is a newly decreed “inclusion and diversity” holiday at work.

Last Sunday I went to a Christmas concert a a local church.

Figure 1: ““Console Television Receiver”” by ellenm1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 When I got married I made the decision not to have a TV because I knew my personal tendency to let it suck up my attention and I did not want that as an additional distraction

The real tragedy of COVID is the collateral damage it’s causing to the way we interact with other people.

Web3 sound like bs —Elon Musk https://maxread.substack.com/p/is-web3-bullshit I’m just starting to come to terms with “Web3”, “blockchain” etc.

OK, so a year or so later I’m back online with both a self-hosted git and blog presence.

Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO of Amazon Monday.

1 What is this and why was it written?

1 Knuth gets annoyed at his publishers, \(\TeX\) is born.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention…” This piece began as some thoughts on “attention” and wound up as reflections on daydreams.

On this Armistice Day, 2020, commemorating the end of “The war to end all wars” 119 years ago, I reflect that if the whole world were busy fiddling with their emacs configs there would be no more war.

For those who remember the “All in the family” sitcom: Mister, we could use a man like Richard Nixon again Figure 1: “Richard Nixon” by History In An Hour is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F.

I’ve always liked history.

“Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding miserable and tragic things which he himself would by no means wish to suffer?

And in the to-simple-to-be-true category… twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers. https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/intro.html $ twtxt tweet "Is there anybody out there, just nod if you can hear me" Install twtxt…

1 1 of 2 Goodbye twitter.

Source code distribution has changed over the years.

1 “A History of Private Life” There is, I think, an urgent need to protect the essence of individuality from headlong technological progress.

I recently went backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts.

In this world where Big Internet firms track you to sell you stuff (and to sell YOU), big Government tracks you because, well, they can, and where I found myself on a motion activated camera when backpacking alone in the “backcountry” in an attempt to “get

When talking about Internet assets we often confuse “What is it?”

1500 miles down, 700 to go to finish section hiking the Appalachian Trail with 215 miles completed this year in 3 trips.

Sometimes you want to see the head of a file.

Below I show an editing session that uses basic /bin/ed commands.