In the early years of the Internet, there was a social bookmarking service known as Del.icio.us, or “Delicious.” It allowed users to create and tag bookmarks. It had a Firefox extension that could synchronize bookmarks and tags between a user’s various web browsers and computers. Sadly, the browser extension stopped working as Firefox deprecated their old extension API and Delicious traded hands between various companies. My home directory is old enough that I still had the disabled Delicious extension data sitting within my Firefox profile. The data is in a standard sqlite3 format, and I wrote a Python script that extracts those old bookmarks and formats them as HTML.
On February 9th, 2024, I got a Blue Alert on my cellphone. In the past, the details of the alert were typically in the message itself. However, this time I got a link to tbi.pub/alert. Upon tapping on the link, the tbi.pub/alert redirected me to a Facebook page. My phone then prompted me to download the Facebook app. After clicking no, I was then asked to login, where it appeared that I couldn’t continue without an account. I had to go through two modals just to get to an alert. If the state of Tennessee is going through the trouble of having a web server with a redirect, why not just serve the alert information themselves, instead of directing everyone to a page with a terrible user experience, and third party data tracking?
Last year, I started composting. Grass clippings, kitchen food waste, leaves and unbleached shredded cardboard were fed to a pile at the back of my yard. The pile’s hunger was insatiable. Before the weather got too cold, I decided to build some compost bins. Moving the piles into a three-bin system over the winter should help break down the material into soil for my raised garden beds. Although I recently stained an unfinished a picnic table set, this is the first wood project I’ve built from the ground up.
Recently Steven Crowder ran an investigative piece alleging a high ranking female executive at BlackRock was connected to a forum used to exchange sexually explicit material involving minors. This allegation was based off of a single e-mail address, tied to the individual by means of several background check websites. This investigation was horrifically sloppy, and had no concrete evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. Crowder’s team has done amazing investigation work during the most controversial election of our time. However, this investigation was abhorrently bad. It was followed by a serious of other questionable investigations where Crowder went after the porn industry, and a small local school. As the show seems to drift further away from the topics many American conservatives actually care about, he also is facing more accusations from former staff members about his conduct as their employer. As someone who has been a fan of his content for years, I find it disheartening to see the quality of his show in a sharp state of decline.
Over the winter and spring, I played a mix of fighting and role playing games on a variety of systems. Starting with the Switch, I finally got through Xenoblade Chronicles. It’s a game I’ve gotten frustrated with and put down several times due to it’s focus on grinding and terrible combat mechanics. I’m glad I finished it to experience its well written conclusion, but still found it a slog. Wanting to play a shorter title, I picked up Eternights, a brawler, horror and dating sim all mixed into a short unpolished package. It was a brief but fun interlude that held me over until the PlayStation release I was waiting for. I also picked up a refurbished PlayStation Vita off of eBay. I sold my original Vita back in 2013, but really missed a lot of things about this handheld. My first game review on it is for Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. Although I’ve watched a season and a half of the anime, this is the first game I’ve played in the Senran Kagura franchise. Finally, I picked up Unicorn Overlord for the PlayStation 5 on release day. It’s a tactical role playing game with amazing artwork, detail and music, that was a great conclusion to a winter of gaming.
It’s been a while since I posted my last set of game reviews. Over the fall and winter, I played mostly PC games and a single PlayStation 5 title. Planet of Lana was a fun side scrolling puzzler. Doki Doki Literature Club is a cult classic visual novel and psychological horror game. A friend gave me a free key to Strikey Sisters, a fun and short Brickles clone with fantasy elements. Finally, on the PS5, I spent more time playing Persona 5 Royal than all the other games combined.
Years ago, I was in a vehicle headed to a state park in Kentucky to go camping with a group of friends. As I looked around from my seat, I asked, “Wait, do we all know each other from Reddit?” A friend replied, “Yes, you’re going camping in the woods with random people you met off the Internet. You know, that thing your mother told you not to do.”
Whenever I moved to new cities, Reddit meetups were one of the many ways I’d meet new people. Reddit was once an amazing microcosm of vastly different viewpoints spanning tens of thousands of communities. In the past several years, it has abandoned its original vision, driving out verboten viewpoints in the name of safety and social justice. It’s embrace of censorship has converted the platform from a hivemind into an echo chamber. Once a small backwater site like 4chan, Reddit has grown to embrace big tech censorship, and has morphed itself into a website with a very narrow acceptable range of views. It has become an extremist forum, just as terrible as the platforms that were created by its dissidents.
I first heard about Christian deconstruction from an episode of The Babylon Bee podcast. The guest they interviewed, Alisa Childers, spoke on the importance of people understanding the reasons for their core beliefs, but was critical of the deconstruction movement for tearing apart beliefs without rebuilding their foundation. My own examination of Christian deconstruction found that it is essentially an apostate movement; a justification for discarding one’s faith in Christianity. While I have no issue with people examining, testing and discerning what is and isn’t true, many of the videos I’ve seen are people justifying migrating from their deeply held beliefs. Their revelations aren’t new or uniquely insightful. What I have noticed is that Christian deconstructionists are critical of their faith, while not being critical of the moral structures and belief systems they want to replace that faith with. They are often critical of the religion of their forbearers, without realizing the system they wish to replace it with, is also its own unexamined ideology.
While browsing through Craigslist, I came across a listing for picnic tables. The post was for reasonably priced, custom built sets. A full 8 foot table with four benches was $600 unfinished. Although I’ve painted my fair share of walls and furniture, both indoors and out, I’ve never stained anything before. The craftsman who built the set gave me some suggestions. Armed with techniques from several random tutorials, blog posts and videos, I made my way to the hardware store to get started on my first staining project.
Over the weekend Hamas forces attacked Israel. Initial reports indicated Palestinian forces entered via land and power gliders. There is evidence they are directly attacking civilians, although a considerable amount of information is clouded in the fog of war. Immediately, most conservative analysts and commentators defended Israel and condemned Palestinian forces as terrorists. The resulting media fury has sharply divided people on all sides of the political compass. Some people fully support Israel without question, some fully back the Palestinians, and others condemn both sides of the conflict. Few people are asking the real questions beyond the media smoke screen. The conflict is a major distraction from a failing US president, the unending conflict in Ukraine and the dual border crises in the European Union and the United States.
