Nick Doty @npd@octodon.social

COVID testing is free*

*except for the chat with the PA over the phone to confirm that you do need a COVID test, which your insurance says it covered most of, but actually it didn't cover any of

That's not even to say that those systems are bad because of being controlled in that way (although I mostly think that too), but just that the metaphor is so distractingly inapt.

People like that Apple hardware and software automatically works well together or has a single design or style -- sure, I get that. Natural ecosystems are not like that.

Current exceedingly minor frustration: people regularly refer to Apple-only and Google-only software/hardware/services as "ecosystems".

These are specifically not analogous to ecosystems! These are artificially restricted and designed monocultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem

thanks to @mcmoots, growing red orache for the first time (in addition to the lamb's quarters that just pops up as a weed here).

Do I need to thin it further? How tall do you let it get before you start harvesting?

The spring garden is thriving and I'm so pleased. Lettuce and kale more than we can eat, and some more substantial veggies on their way. Flowers (Baptisia, Echinacea) just starting to bloom.
#garden #florespondence

soaking beet seeds (detroit: red and gold, mix) on paper towels overnight to plant tomorrow

Planted today:
* kales (nero toscana, lacinato, red russian)
* lettuces (romaine, black seed, red sails)
* peas (sugar snap, green arrow)
* orache (h/t @mcmoots)
* green onions
#gardening

same energy:
* that video going around of someone finding a whole NYC apartment behind a mirror in their apartment
* me learning that the Zotero folks have a whole other research-focused open source application (Tropy) that I'd previously never heard of
/cc @darius

Has anyone tried a financial subscription model for Mastodon/ActivityPub?

It seems like the architecture would make it relatively easy to build OnlyFans/Twitter Super Follow/Patreon type features, where some posts are delivered to everyone, but a subgroup that pays a fee receives additional messages to their inboxes.

A notebook describing my search for found amulets in the Project Gutenberg corpus:
https://npdoty.name/code/amulets/

Thanks @aparrish for Project Gutenberg poetry corpus (and for often posting exploratory notebooks) and @andrew for encouragement.

Ten rare, found amulets:

had grazed the top of the bone, for Polydamas had come up to him
Te Deums to the night, invoking rest
They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown;
His charioteer drive to the hollow barks,
Nor sweet Acrisian Danäe, from whom
Tityus and Ixion too.
May Hermes, herald of the dead, convey
Then they bent theyr good yew bowes,
given--at least in the present state of the critical art--of the
What! your soul was pure and true;

Context: https://text.bargains/amulet/

Maia (https://maiachess.com/) has totally changed my experience of playing chess against the computer. Each game feels competitive, like playing someone on my level, but it feels like playing *someone*: it makes mistakes, not random mistakes or stupid mistakes, but the kind of mistakes I make.

It plays like a human, rather than an artificially-limited AI, because it's predicting what a similar skill-level human would do.

@joshmillard I love the size and apparent texture of these tokens: https://twitter.com/joshmillard/status/1355963686842556418
Like, there could be a hole in one corner and it's some hieroglyphs, or a key to enter a certain clubhouse, or a QR code -- for your keychain?

while it looks like https://web.hypothes.is/ as an organization has pivoted to working with education in particular, the annotation product seems to still work, and there's an unofficial extension for Firefox and I logged back into my account (from many years ago) and I'm highlighting things, so I'm happy

how can I highlight/annotate on the Web? do we still not have a standard for this, or even popular client-side tools? is hypothes.is still a thing?