Year: 2023

Categories
Social Media

So-So Social Media

Image of mastodon

Last edit:

Threads is crap. Uninstalled.

Edit:

I did decide to try Threads, primarily because I have a (very inactive) Instagram account, and because some folks who aren’t on Mastodon are on Instagram/Threads. I figured better than Twitter, but still wish I could find folks on Mastodon more easily.

At that, you can search on hashtags on Mastodon, but Threads doesn’t even have this capability yet. A bit underwhelmed with it.

Earlier:

I’ve been exploring the world of social media, which, for me, means spending more time on Mastodon.

I won’t be trying out Bluesky or Threads, or any of the other social media sites controlled by scary-looking men. I had that with Twitter, and I’ve moved on.

I am still contemplating whether to start my own Mastodon server. My hosting company, Linode, now has a one-button click Mastodon server setup among their marketplace apps. This includes setting up a basic email server, which is necessary for Mastodon. Literally all you have to do is point, click, pay and do a tiny bit of tweaking and you’re ready to rock.

I don’t have an email server setup for Burningbird, primarily because maintaining a safe and spam-free email server just isn’t a fun use of my time.

Still, I am tempted to try the new Linode Mastodon solution. I’m happy on mastodon.social, but I’m feeling stubbornly independent.

 

Categories
Photography

Silent Sunday May 14 2023

Missouri Botanical Garden main pond area, with statues and colorful globes in water, and heavy rain falling. Moody.
Categories
Photography

Silent Sunday May 7 2023

Daddy finch feeding two babies in a finch nest hanger. One baby's mouth is wide open, the other looking on, daddy's wings are a blur.
Daddy finch is busy
Categories
Photography

The rose is pretty. The photo is pretty. I don’t need 34 pretty photos of the same pretty rose.

Subtle antique peach rose, barely starting to unfurl, against a back drop of dark green/blue leaves.

I finished recovering posts for Burningbird and now it’s on to my second major task:

Cleaning out my photo collection.

As the title notes, the subject may be pretty, and the photo may be pretty, but I don’t really need 34 almost identical photos of the same rose.

I started out with over 100,000 photos from over the years. I’ve managed to cull out the absolute worst photos and now I’m at a little more than 47,000 photos. My goal is to delete 350 or more photos a day.

I hit a different album every day so I don’t get too overwhelmed by too many of the same type of photos. I set my mind to expect to see nothing but bad photos—making it mentally easy to delete. It’s only when I just can’t let a photo go that I know this one I’ll keep. If it doesn’t hurt to delete the photo…why keep it?

We all like photos for different reasons. For me, I have to feel something from it. If I’m not emotionally invested in the photo, it’s not a keeper. So, every fuzzy, motion-blurred photo from my one and only cross-country train trip I kept. Yet another pretty rose photo? Piffle.

I want that rose photo to say something to me. It doesn’t have to speak to others, but it has to speak to me.

Oh, I’m not silly stupid. I have a back up of the original 100,000…just in case. But I suspect I can really get my photos down to 5000 or less and not lose anything worth saving. It’s hard, though.

After all, it’s a pretty rose. And they’re pretty photos. And too many say, “Hi.”

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs

Fifth Circuit mifepristone decision

So the Fifth circuit has blocked some of Kacksmaryk decision, but not all.

Even it couldn’t stomach reversing an FDA decision from 23 years ago. But it sure jumped into interfering with the FDA’s recent decisions. And the legal document is just as much a legal mishmash of badly applied law as the original decision.

They have no shame, and evidently they have no pride, either. Frankly, I’m a better lawyer than these people…and I’m not a lawyer.

Interesting that only the two Trump-appointed judges voted for the decision. The Bush-appointed judge would have blocked all of Kacksmaryk’s decision.

The Trump taint in our courts…the only thing that can fix it is to water it down. We need to appoint more justices, and not just to SCOTUS.

Decision