Funding Freedom (Weeknotes #25-10)
Ashamed and Proud
A lot of people on the right accuse people (like me) on the left of hating America. I certainly don’t hate America, but it’s embarrassing to be an American right now. President Trump’s and Vice-President Vance’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office was shameful. We’ve long known that Mr Trump is sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, but things went from bad to worse when he actively switched sides in the Ukrainian conflict. America’s gotten into some situations it shouldn’t have over the last century, but we always tended to take (and keep) the side of freedom. This time, we’re on the side of the invaders, the oppressors, and (let’s be honest) a man who hopes to restore the former Soviet empire to glory.
History will have the final say about the fate of Ukraine, but until then Mr Zelenskyy is holding his country together with both hands. I know it’s not much, but I’m proud to have made a donation to United24 to help fund the war effort. Thank you, @adam, for the inspiration.
March Madness
🌷 I announced my March Madness–inspired origami flower competition, which I call Battle of the Blooms. Every day in March, I’ll share two flowers in a Mastodon poll. 32 flowers will go head-to-head in a single-elimination tournament, with the champion decided on March 31. The only trick will be getting all 32 flowers made in time!
Web Updates and Other Nerddom
👉 After Adam enabled Finger protocol support on omg.lol, I created a .plan file. There's a fingering joke in there somewhere but Robb already made it.
💥 I made some minor style changes to this blog in an attempt to simplify. I was beginning to feel the visual style was a bit, er, comicbookish? Not sure, but there you go.
🌳 I redesigned my OMG.lol profile page as a landing page that I can point to from the enshittified platforms like Instagram and Facebook. I also created a new DNS name (links.mihobu.lol) that points to it.
✈️ I built a PiAware ground station using a Raspberry Pi and FlightAware ProStick Plus ADS-B receiver. Once I had all the parts in hand, setting it up was very easy. In return for registering my ground station and sending the data it collects to FlightAware, they give me an Enterprise subscription for free! Pretty good deal if you ask me.
😎 The Reign of Darkness is over! Now that Daylight Saving Time has returned, I don’t feel like I’m living 300 feet underground any more. Happy days are here again!
Watching
Here’s what we watched during the last two weeks.
English Teacher. Finished season 1. Not great TV, but it’s light and funny and easy to watch.
Jeopardy! and Celebrity Jeopardy!. Til I die.
Suits was a guilty pleasure, even as the later seasons became nearly unwatchable. The new Suits LA series looks to be running the same playbook so I don’t have high hopes. But I’ll give it a few episodes.
The Last of Us. Everyone everyone EVERYONE keeps telling me how great this show is. I’m three episodes in and while not terrible, I find it to be excruciatingly slow just not that compelling. It’s the Mandalorian but with fungus. I’ll give it a few more episodes to turn things around.
Hacks. So after two full seasons I’m really surprised at how good this show has turned out to be. The dynamic between the Gen-Z writer and the Boomer star is extremely well written and well acted. Looking forward to season 3.
Paradise was this season’s “must see TV,” although the season 1 finale was a little wonky. I have mixed feelings about where this show is headed in season 2 though.
Season 3 of The White Lotus is not living up to the high bar set by season 1 (at least not so far) but I’m sure more twists and turns are on the way.
Reading
“Iowa lawmaker rages against colleagues for passing anti-trans bill: ‘Shame on you, Christians!’” (Friendly Atheist)
“‘Tech bro Maoists’ are torching the country that made them rich” by Fareed Zakaria (The Washington Post)
“At Least Now We Know The Truth” by David Frum (The Atlantic)
See you next time.