So, I’ve moved my website from a very old server to something new. I’m still working on getting all the stuff working, so please bear with me while I work through the next few days migrating the old stuff over.
There might be a few broken links and jpegs. Will fix them as I have the time.
We had a lot in common, you and I. Mom found you in a parking lot, much like she found me without a home when I was too young to take care of myself. She took us in, and loved us like we were her own flesh and blood.
And when you were older, and our mother was gone, you were happy to walk along this road of life with me. You shared my food, and when I proved I was a poor hunter tried to share your kill with me. You cheered me up when I was sad, you kept me company when I was alone, and you were always there. You followed me from Southern California to Portland, and save for a few months when I wandered to Montana and Central Oregon, you walked with me.
And I learned much from you. I learned that it’s ok to be a Hunter in a Farmer’s world. I learned from you that sometimes the simple things in life.. like sitting in a warm basket by a warm fire (or at least the gas heater) has value. You annoyed me when I was not taking care of myself. And you reminded me that there are reasons to keep fighting. And you perpetually got in everybody’s way: even earning the names “Speed Bump” and “Roadblock” at places you stayed.
Today, you left this world to walk with Bastet. You looked at me and I knew it was time. You were tired, you were in pain, and it was time to go. And it hurts to know that tomorrow, I will awake to a world without you physically by my side. You’ve left a mark on me like few have: you weren’t a mere cat, you weren’t a mere pet, you were my familiar.
Norma took this candid photograph of us a year ago when we lived out in the middle of the Badlands. It will always be the image of you in my mind: walking beside me and being a good friend. Goodbye, dear one.
OK, this has come around again, so I guess I need to actually fill a few of you in on something. I hate to be the one to break this to you. But, Bitcoin isn’t going to ever achieve any kind of mass success.
There’s no conspiracy theory, no “big banks are keeping it down, man!” plot. The reasons why Bitcoin will fail like EVERY OTHER ATTEMPT to create a digital currency before it simply boils down to this.
Social and political issues have never been solved technologically. They’ve always been solved.. well, socially and politically first, and the technology has only played a factor long after the shouting has stopped.
The reasons for this involve “tipping points”, and I won’t go into the whole theory on tipping points and macroeconomics here. Go read Freakonomics and The Tipping Point
But let’s wander back to the first point, which is, technology never solves social ills by itself. It only solves social and political problems when it is clear to enough “somebodys” that Societal Ill A can be solved by Technology B in a direct, linear fashion. And, to that end, Bitcoin doesn’t even serve to solve the societal ill it claims to combat. And that goes double here in the US, I’m afraid to say, because we do live in a self-styled “democracy”.. and I’m ashamed to admit this, but most Americans are too dumb to understand any cause and effect that can’t be summed up in a 15-second infographic on CNN.
Bitcoin is trumpeted up as being a way for, say, the Occupy Movement to finally free us from the financial tyranny (*snort*) of the Big Banks. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but.. please explain to me how any third-party currency, be it Bitcoins, Lindens, or Disney Dollars, “frees” me from dealing with the Big Banks when it is impossible to buy any of the “necessities” of life (food, clothing, shelter, and transportation) without using US Dollars. It’s not just difficult, it is impossible. Even the handful of small merchants who accept Bitcoin are doing it largely via automatic exchanges that are converting the coins into US Dollars at clearance. You can probably count on one hand the pure-play merchants who are keeping any quantity of Bitcoins on hand.
And that shouldn’t surprise anyone. How many brick and mortar merchants keep a large quantity of cash on hand? None of them do, don’t be silly. They may keep a few hundred dollars in change, and they may have a day’s receipts worth of cash because they haven’t made the bank run yet. But in the back of the grocery store on the corner there isn’t some massive safe with thousands of dollars locked away in it for any longer than it has to be.
And that goes double for Bitcoins, because of the very volatile nature of the “currency.” Minute to minute prices of Bitcoin fluctuate, so if you’re a merchant that accepts Bitcoin you are playing a game of “beat the clock” every time you accept Bitcoin. You want to get that out of the liquid state of Bitcoins into cold, hard US Dollars as quickly as possible, lest you potentially lose the entire value of the transaction when the Bitcoin market has one of it’s frequent and violent cases of shitting itself.
Businesses are highly risk-averse, and there is no greater risk heavier than acting as a currency exchange. In effect, every merchant that wants to accept Bitcoin has to know the value of Bitcoin to whatever they’re paying out in expenses in (and with rare exception, regardless of where in the world it is, that essentially becomes the US Dollar). There is actually one or two of the major Bitcoin trading houses who do this automatically via a “shopping cart”: and guess what they clear the funds in. Usually, the quicker the better.
Point is, even in some hypothetical future scenario where Seven-11 takes Bitcoin (hey, it could happen, they take PayPal, amirite?) they’re not going to be trading in Bitcoin, just accepting it and converting it to a more fungible, negotiable currency. Right now, that currency is the Federal Reserve Note US Dollar, who.. yeah, we know. Big banks.
At the end of the day, big banks have their hold over us precisely because they’re.. big banks. When Kroger needs a loan to open a new store, they’re not going to launch a Kickstarter. They’re going to talk to their banker, and depending on their financial solvency they may issue more stocks, or a capital bond, or borrow the money. In all three cases, the people who are giving them the money will be giving it in US Dollars, and expecting payment in US Dollars.
And why not? The US Dollar is a reasonably stable currency. You know that if you loan out $1,000,000 at 5% interest exactly how much you’re going to get paid back. And the only calculation you have to make as the loaner of the money is the risk of the investment itself compared to other potential investments: you don’t have to necessarily worry that the currency will be worth substantially less in five years’ time. The ups and downs of the US Dollar are “well understood”, the risks are largely able to be mitigated.
The only way Bitcoin will ever succeed as a widely accepted currency is if the US Dollar fails. And to be honest, if that happens, no cryptocurrency will save us: there will be no capital available to keep the lights on to even think about a cybercurrency.
I don’t drink vodka. I’m not a fan of it at all. I’m also not a fan of Dan Savage.
And, yet.. today, I’m going to stop by the liquor store and pick up a bottle of Stoli vodka. Maybe I’ll pick up one of those funky fruit-flavored ones so I can actually maybe drink the stuff someday. No, I’m not going to start listening or reading Savage anytime soon.
Yes, I’m aware of the fact that there’s a popular #dumpstoli campaign right now. But this campaign (like a lot of things that comes out of the piehole of Mr. Savage) is not only misguided, it’s very much quite wrong.
First off, the Stoli we buy on the shelves here in the United States doesn’t even come from Russia, it comes from.. well, depending on some different factors most likely Latvia (although supposedly some Stoli is actually distilled in one of a handful of countries including even Canada). The brand is owned by a Eurozone corporation with it’s HQ in Luxembourg. And, yes, it’s majority owned by a wealthy Russian businessman (who I understand spends most of his time in Paris nowadays anyway).. but one that has few, if any, ties to Pooty Poot.. and one that has been critical of his government in the past.
But more importantly: Stoli has a long history of actually SUPPORTING the LGBT community before this. I won’t go down the laundry list, but this BusinessWeek article pretty much sums it up.
I have my suspicions that this has nothing to do with “gay rights”. Maybe somebody just needs a new sponsor for one of his media properties, and maybe this is an excellent way of browbeating one of the importers or producers into sponsoring his show.
It’s certainly not because Stoli did anything wrong. At best, this looks more like spousal abuse 1 than a campaign for change.
Stoli, I stand with you, even if I think the rocket fuel you sell is way too astringent to actually drink. Будем здоровы!
So, this week I finally got a doctor to look at something that’s been nagging at me for a little over a year now. I have had this mole on my arm that started itching a while back, and I scratched it. And I’ve been continuing to scratch it. And it’s starting to change.
What’s scary to me is that the little I know of my biological family for certain is that there is some history of skin cancer, and that it seems to become a problem when my biological lineage gets to be in their mid-40’s. Well, guess fucking what.
I know, at least at a logical level, that if this does turn out to be a melanoma it is in it’s earliest stages and is getting caught. And that this sort of thing when caught this early and removed is pretty much a “slam dunk” surgery-wise and the overall prognosis is good. I’ll have a 15mm hole in my arm that’ll get stitched up and heal quickly, and a quick blood test some weeks out (if the biopsy is positive) looking for cancer markers. That will likely come back negative, and I’ll get the “Survived a 15mm cancer growth” to my Achievements tab, a dubious accomplishment at best.
But at an emotional level, it’s very challenging to face. I saw what a simple skin cancer did to my uncle. Other people in my life have (or are continuing) to suffer from the effects of cancer, although a lot more serious cancers than a simple wacked-out mole. And it’s scary precisely because now that I have one mole that’s gone The Way of the Dark Side (even if it isn’t malignant) I’m more likely to develop others.
My appointment is on Thursday. I’ll let you know how this goes.
I’m currently migrating from the old Gallery site to the new one. If you need the old site for some reason while I’m doing this, it’s at “http://newpics.feedle.net” (yes, I know that’s counterintuitive).
So, I moved my personal website off of Dreamhost. It’s been kinda frustrating dealing with some of the issues.. the general slowness, the stuff simply “not working”.. and just general frustrations with shared webhosting. The time has come..
I’m probably going to lose a friend or two over this. Maybe. Actually, I’d like to think that I’ve whittled the kind of people who WOULD “unfriend” me over this down to irrelevance, so maybe I won’t. Anyway, here goes anyway.
A lot of people have wondered over the years why I no longer go to DEFCON, or for that matter, just about any “hacker” conference. I’ve been vague most of the times as to why, often blaming money or “time” as the reason. But it’s a lot more complicated than that.
The real reason? I feel like I’ve grown up.
I’d like to say that a lot has changed since the first DEFCON (which I didn’t intentionally attend, but a coincidence put me in Las Vegas that weekend.. DEFCON III was the first one I technically “attended”) and today. I’d like to give the community the benefit of the doubt. I would love to be proven wrong about my attitudes and opinions. Yet, every time I think I’m about ready to rejoin the fray, I get reminded of why I no longer attend.
Ten years ago, I made a decision to exclude from my life things that were not in line with my “personal manifesto” (some of you are privy to that Manifesto). One of the important parts of that (as it has evolved) was removing myself from situations and groups where Progress, Love, and Light were not at the core; to no longer associate with people or groups that did not hold those ideals in practice. By my standards, I’ve done a pretty good job of holding myself to those “standards.” Far from perfect, but far from where I was 20 years ago when I was younger, angrier, and less refined.
I have wonderful friends. I know some of the most beautiful people in the world. They are all generous, warm, and real. They’re not perfect. But I can honestly say, as I look at my collective friends, that I’m honored to have every one of them in my life, and my life is richer for their presence. I cherish every one of them.. and most importantly, I’d trust any one of them with my life, my soul, my essence.
My dear uncle Oscar was the kindest, most gentle man I ever had the privilege of meeting. His personal philosophy was he would rather have one really good friend than a thousand “acquaintances.” It’s a life lesson it didn’t take me long to learn as I entered adulthood the value of true friends. Friends who would keep me fed and sheltered when I’ve been poor. Friends who would make sure I’m safe when I’m having a medical crisis. The saying is “friends help you move, true friends help you move bodies.”
Friends I don’t have to share my deepest, darkest secret.. because they don’t have to be told. “I’m a bit genderqueer,” I recently revealed to one of these friends. “I’m considered a twospirit by much of my tribe and intentional family.” The response was a shrug and an “I already knew that,” even though I never told them nor did they read that here.
I’ve met a good chunk of these fine people, directly or indirectly, through the “hacker scene”. To a very large degree, I believe these are people I would have eventually ran across anyway, be it from the mutual communites that overlap “hackerdom” and more “normal” pursuits. Or maybe even not more normal.
As part of my adapting to life in a new town recently, I’m starting to wonder if I want to reconnect to the hacker community. I’m torn, because I think there’s lots of interesting things going on in the “scene” right now. People are experimenting with fun technologies (things like the Raspberry Pi and similar cheap computers) and it has rekindled my passion for all things “hack” (in the more traditional sense of people bashing together old technology to do new things).
But the struggle is that lots of folks are playing with this tech and don’t identify as hackers. The movement is called “DIY” today, and I think if I was a teenager again I’d be going to those meetings instead of LA2600, and be more interested in Maker Faire than DEFCON.
I haven’t even touched upon the most disturbing aspects (to me) of the whole “scene”, in regards to the hazards that someone who is genderqueer, or for that matter even a cisgendered female, faces being “out” in this community. I’ve seen it myself over the years.. and heck, I’m not 100% innocent myself (see: I was once young, angry, and less refined). The hacker scene is a weird, strange place. For as much as it is filled with misfits and malcontents, they are often brutal to people who aren’t THEIR kind of misfit and malcontent. Homosexuals I know in the scene have been called “faggots” and ostracised from some groups solely because they are gay. We are seeing a lot of the same voices “speak out” against the “social justice movement” even though I personally believe that we have (as a community) have treated women like absolute shit for two decades and are now largely reaping what we sow in that regard.
Things needed to change. Being a “hacker” is not the domain of the “white, cisgendered male” any more than gaming is. From the very beginning there were people among you who were “gay”, “genderqueer”, and “black.” For that matter, there was one particular hacker from my time who was all of the above, and she’s one of the most talented “computer security professionals” I’ve ever met (and I had a crush on her long before her transition). If she entered the scene today I suspect she’d be treated cruelly by the “scene” even long after she proved herself “worthy.”
Maybe I’m wrong. And it hurts me that I’m (in essence) judging the same community as harshly as I feel they are judging others, and in large lumping the /b/tards, reddit fuckups, and my formerly beloved “hackers” in the same category (and the irony of that prejudgement is not lost on me, believe me). And I value the friends I’ve met through the “hacker scene” as strongly as I value all my friends.
I just don’t feel welcome anymore by the whole community. I’m too different, and I feel “othered” even though I’m about as “old school” as they come. Maybe I’m just getting old, and feedle is, in fact, feeble.
DEFCON isn’t my space anymore. You can’t go home if home has packed up and moved on without you.
So, I have no idea if this is a legitimate E-mail or not. Please let this actually be scammy, because if this person’s English skills really are this poor, I weep for our Republic. I honestly don’t know where to begin. (OK, I do know where to begin: you’re doing “church missionary work” and you are willing to defraud public assistance programs? Even my religious ethics say that’s wrong.)
Hello,I receive your mail indicating your interest in my home for rent and i hope you are serious about this. Please let me know when you are ready to move in and also indicate if you can take good care of my home cos i made up my mind to sell the house until my lovely wife advised that we keep it for future purpose. right now we are renting and not selling but we would like to leave it into a good hand. I want my property to be well taken good care of, and there are some rules and regulation in which I do give out to tenant who are willing to rent my house so please don’t disrespect my order but if you are still capable of renting my house the rules and regulation goes this way, You must keep my house clean including the surrounding, you must know the way in which you use the stove so as to avoid fire outbreak, you must not disturb the neighbor. I decided to rent out the property due to our transfer to (Los Angele’s, CA) on a Missionary Work by my church here, so we are renting it out since we need someone to take good care of the property on our absent. Don’t be surprise if you find the home with another site and deference price, I have plan to rent it through Real estate before, but they are not serious simply because they have a lot of house to lease out and they added some money to the rent while there commission is not fair. Have this in mind you must know the kind of person that I’m nevertheless I am giving you this rules because of what corresponded between me andmy last tenant. the keys and documents are with us here in Los Angele’s, CA… So I will need to ship them to you before you can occupy the house But you can drive by the house anytime to take a look at the area and surrounding, You can also peek through the windows if you don’t mind. For now we are looking for 4 or 5 years lease or rather lets us know how long you wish to stay.Attn : The rent are including the Utilities are intact such as Dishwasher,Dryer, Electric Stove, Fridge, Washer,Air Condition,Sewage,Trash,all included in the monthly rent,as i am in a governmental programmer that sponsors my utilities on monthly basis etc.Please note that, we are a kind and honest family,that spent a lot on property that is available for rent, so in one accord,we are soliciting for your absolute maintenance of this house and want you to treat it as your own. We want you to keep it tidy all the time so that we shall be glad to see it whenever we are around on a visit.
There are times when I feel like I’m the only person in the world who fucking pays attention.
Right now, we’ve got this big debate going on here about whether or not certain guns should or should not be banned and all the wharrrggble that goes along with any time somebody tries to start a level-headed conversation about guns in this country.
Am I the only one who has been watching what people are doing with 3D printers?
Primitive “printable guns” already exist, that only require a small amount of actual metalworking to work.
I’ll repeat that with details, for those of you who seem to be missing this.
It is possible now to have only basic and rudimentary skills as a metalsmith or machinist to assemble a usable firearm using about $2,000 in computer-aided manufacturing tools one can build themselves, using plans and patterns easily obtainable on the Internet. As we move forward, the skill level required to manufacture these parts will only decrease, especially if there’s an “incentive” created by a partial or complete ban.
Go ahead, ban the “manufacture and sale” of assault weapons. The reality? In the next 2-3 years there will be an underground network of people who posses the tools to build them anyway.
And those weapons won’t be trackable, because they can be one-offs built from a machine that costs about the same as a good assault rifle costs today. Those weapons will be inherently “hackable”, coming right off the autolathe and printer as “full auto”.
Making a gun isn’t rocket science, it’s a late Renaissance invention that was made before we had computers, autolathes, 3D printers, composite plastics, and advanced metallurgy and chemistry. Even before CAD/CAM techniques anybody with a basic knowledge of machining parts could make a usable gun out of scrap metal parts probably in any metalsmith’s “junk box.” It doesn’t take a lot of technology to slam a hammer into the back of a percussive cap, detonating a small charge of powder to accelerate a metal slug to near-the-speed-of-sound, and having a long and straight enough tube to guide the bullet to it’s target.
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