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https://dotat.at/@/2025-08-28-strongly-typed.html

What does it mean when someone writes that a programming language is "strongly typed"?

I've known for many years that "strongly typed" is a poorly-defined term. Recently I was prompted on Lobsters to explain why it's hard to understand what someone means when they use the phrase.

I came up with more than five meanings!

( Read more... )

rimrunner

A few Mondays ago I woke up way too early in the Longmire Stewardship Campground at Mount Rainier, in order to meet the lead researcher for a pika counting project. The object of this research was in fact to test a protocol that could be taught to non-specialists. If it worked, volunteer citizen scientists could be deployed to pika habitats, in order to gain a clearer count of the actual numbers of this species. As a tracker who does not have an academic scientific background, I’m in somewhat of a gray area where specialization is concerned.

I do know what pikas look like, though: imagine a rabbit with mouse ears, and you’re pretty close. The first time I saw them, I was on a hike with a friend near Artist Point, near Mount Baker in the North Cascades. We were on a section of trail that ran along a talus slope, with the wide bowl of a high valley spread out below us. As we moved along the trail, a raptor soared across the valley, swooping low over the valley floor.

Cue a chorus of alarm calls, erupting from all over the talus slope: the characteristic, high-pitched “Eee!” of pikas. Before long we saw them, perching on rocks to give their alarms, then scurrying into the shelter of the rocks. Pikas are a species specialized in terms of habitat: the rocks provide shelter and passage out of sight and reach of predators, and they forage in the vegetation that grows around the talus’s edges. At the right time of day you can observe them hurrying back and forth with harvested greens bunching in their mouths, carrying the forage to their haypile larders. Pikas don’t hibernate; they store up food for the winter, when forage is scarce. Perhaps paradoxically, they also don’t function well at higher temperatures, which is why they’re endangered.

When I first heard about Pokémon I thought that Pikachu was a pika. I mean, it’s right there in the name. But the character’s design was inspired by squirrels and mice, not pikas, and the name is a combination of two Japanese words.

Pikas also aren’t rodents. Neither are rabbits, to whom they are closely related; pikas really do look like rabbits that someone stuck mouse ears on. A fairly readily perceptible distinguishing characteristic is their front teeth. Rodent teeth have high iron content, giving them a yellowish or orange appearance. While lagomorphs also have prominent front incisors, they lack this hue. They also have a somewhat different way of moving, though since pikas mostly inhabit rocky slopes, finding their actual tracks is fairly difficult.

Spotting pikas themselves, though, is pretty easy, if there are any to be found in your particular location. Youtube has plenty of videos of pikas moving about and making their distinctive vocalizations. Many of these were made at Mount Rainier, even. So if this research protocol I’m helping to test proves out, visitors to the park might have an opportunity to observe these beings for themselves, but advance research into the species and its conservation.

Current Mood: nerdy

liam_on_linux

In response to Apple vs. Facebook is Kayfabe...

He’s right, though.

We are now at 25% of the way through C21. Most of C21 IT today is “kayfabe”: deliberately fake, to fool the audience.

SaaS: fake corporate IT services for company directors too cheap to hire competent IT staff.

The lie: it’s OK and safe to let other companies run your IT for you.

The truth: if it matters, own it, run it yourself.

Public cloud: it’s cheaper to leave your server hosting up to specialists. The lie: no it isn’t, but worse, you lose control of core key assets. The truth: you only need this for your public website, if that.

Kubernetes: you, yes you, you could be the next viral success and you need a website that scales to 10 million visitors a second. The lie: you need a microservices cluster

Citation: https://DoINeedKubernetes.com/

Javascript: now at last the dream of “write once run anywhere” is real! Everything is a web app!

The truth: all your “local” apps have a separate 200MB dependency on an old insecure copy of Chromium. How do you update them all? You don’t. You can’t. Your web apps depend on leftpad, that one dude in Nebraska from Xkcd 2347.

And of course…

AI. Computers that write their own software! Yay!

Only they don’t. It’s the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone believes it. It’s like religion: it is unacceptably rude to tell someone their god doesn’t exist. Even if the “god in the machine” is a language model.

It’s all fake all the way down. I think the last time the industry knew what it was doing was in the 20th century. Since the dotcom boom and bust, MBAs have just been winging it and hoping they don’t get called out ’til their shares vest.

rimrunner

Weekend before last I attended my first WorldCon in ten years. It was fulfilling and exhausting in about equal measure, with some notes of grace and frustration.

Probably like most cons, but since I go to very few—this was only my third WorldCon ever—my experience in this respect is limited. I chose to go to this one because it was held in Seattle, and I live here. While I haven’t been to hometown cons much (SakuraCon, Norwescon, and Emerald City Comic Con are all held here), this one seemed like an opportunity to give them another try. As a recovering Shy Person I often had a hard time interacting with people much at conventions if I didn’t already know them, and since I never went to many I didn’t know very many of the people who tend to go to conventions.

The Internet’s made a big difference in this respect. While I’ve been online for a long time (over 30 years), the growth of online spaces for both fannish conversations and professional networking has been really helpful. I also intentionally went to events where I would have to talk to people, like designated networking events, table talks, and the like. (I spent most of the hour with Ellen Datlow trying and failing to come up with something brilliant to ask her, but at least I was there!) I managed to collect quite a few business cards (the digital alternatives that exist now are nice, but I’ve gotta say, there’s really nothing like a physical object that I can look at later, and that will remind me that I meant to through the physical fact of its presence) and contact details for people I might connect with further. I ran into friends I hadn’t seen in years (and also failed to run into friends and colleagues I’d hoped to encounter—WorldCon isn’t that big, but it’s big enough) and may have made a few new ones. I got to hear Ada Palmer read from yet to be published work, and a city planner from Walla Walla explain why bureaucracy will continue to be important in the future—even if it turns out that nobody really knows what future jobs will look like.

I was reminded yet again of my guideline for convention panels, which is to select on the basis of who’s on them, and only secondarily on the topic.

I also pretty much skipped the parties. This had more to do with having become an early-morning person with a new kitten at home than anything else, though I did take my husband to the Weird Al Yankovic concert at White River Amphitheater on Friday night. (We left during the encore. If you’re familiar with this venue, you know why.) So perhaps I could’ve been a little more social. Then again, given the COVID spike we’re having here right now, maybe it’s just as well that I wasn’t.

I also skipped the Hugos, because I was exhausted by the start time and figured I could watch them on stream at home. When I got home I went to bed instead, and only heard how the ceremony went the next day when I had coffee with a friend who’d been nominated and won. People who were actually there and have a far better sense of how awards ceremonies go have pretty much said what needs to be said on that score; myself, I only wish that the awards could be done right consistently.

I know that fan-run cons are struggling; the commercially ones are much larger, at least appear to be more professional, and can attract guests from across a wider range of media. There seem to be a lot of potential problems with the way WorldCon runs specifically, as much as I like the idea of its moving around and being hosted by different people and a different locale every year. Whether there’s still a place for that and whether the myriad challenges of programming, accessibility, and administering the awards can be addressed to any kind of consistent level of success…I honestly don’t know. There’s something to be said for something community run, though. I hope WorldCon figures it out.

Current Mood: contemplative

infrogmation

Personal retrospective anniversary post - adapted from my old LiveJournal (migrated to Dreamwidth) post on the 1st anniversary, as I was too busy experiencing it to post about it at the time, with a few slight edits and some relevant photos added.

----

To backtrack just before...

Beverly, an old friend and former New Orleanian, and her sweetie, Girgl, the professor of physics from Germany, were staying at my place. The previous day other old friends were passing through town, Nancy & Harrison, moving out of Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi coast up to Arkansas. We and some other acquaintances all went to lunch at Sid-Mar's, on the Bucktown peninsula where the 17th Street Canal meets Lake Pontchartrain. (Spoiler, I mention this place specifically as less than a week later everything in the area would be gone.)

Ruins with bits of concrete stairs and random objects

Photo by Infrogmation: What was left of Bucktown after we got back to town from evacuation.

My car brakes were sticking, I said maybe I should take it by a mechanic in the morning. Girgl said he'd take a look at it. He jammed the brake pedal hard and it stopped sticking. He said it was likely just a pebble caught in the mechanism, but it was fine now.

The tv news reported a category 1 hurricane named Katrina was heading towards the Florida Panhandle.

At night we had dinner at Mandina's in Mid City. (Spoiler, in a few days Mid-City New Orleans would be inundated in the Federal Flood when the levee system failed in the biggest engineering disaster in US history.)

Friday morning, 26 August 2005, I'd listened to the news on the radio this morning and not heard of any change about the hurricane.

I picked up my new business cards, the first ever with my just acquired self-phone number. I'd be leading my new band at the Miss Crescent City pageant the following day. I stopped by the Unitarian Church on Claiborne where the pageant would be. Ms Hollie was one of the organizers, and I checked out the venue and looked in on some of the rehearsal.

interior of flood damaged church

Another view of interior of flood damaged Church

Photos by Ms Hollie: Interior of the Unitarian Universalist Church after we got back from evacuation.

Friday night I was playing trombone as a substitute with a jazz band on Decatur Street in the Quarter.

On break, a tourist remarked how much fun they were having, and they'd managed to change their flight to leave early the next day. Why's that, I asked. The hurricane is coming! Hurricane? Others who'd heard more recent news confirmed that Katrina had changed course and strengthened and was a potential threat to New Orleans. Might come here sometime after the weekend.

Saturday the 27th Ms Hollie and I were both in a bit of a tizzy. The morning news showed the storm looking even worse. Hollie was taking care of Pageant details, and I was taking care of things regarding the band, while contemplating that we may need to evacuate. I picked up the sandwiches for the band, unsuccessfully looking to fill my gas tank on the way-- stations either had long lines or had signs announcing they were out of gas. The band's drummer, Sue, called to say she couldn't make it as she'd been called to the State Museum to do their hurricane battoning down the hatches procedure. I unsuccessfully tried to get a sub, calling around thinking, "Oh no! A hurricane is coming, and I have to find a drummer!"

The band members -- sans drummer-- met at the trumpeter's house in Broadmoor, a short distance from the venue. (Spoiler, Broadmoor would soon be under deep water.) We'd planned to do a quick rehearsal, as the musicians I'd gathered had never played together as a group. We did no rehearsing, instead staring at the tv screen with a satellite image of a monster that seemed more than half the size of the whole Gulf of Mexico barrelling towards us.

On to the pageant. The band played some to fill time before anything else got started; Ms Hollie revealed that the MC didn't come into town from the North Shore due to the hurricane, and things had to be rearranged. The turn out was light but things went well considering the improvised nature. Fortunately the guitar and tuba were such good rhythm players that we overcame the lack of a drummer.

Before and after playing, the sax player, who managed a convenience store in the 7th Ward, was on his phone trying to finagle or bribe a gasoline tanker truck to make a run into town as the store had emptied their gas tanks early that morning. He was also instructing the staff to turn the freezer to maximum setting and put the perishables in it, as there might be a power outage. (Spoiler, this area of the 7th Ward would soon be in deep water.)

Photo by Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA, Aerial photo over the 7th Ward area 30 August 2005

After the pageant the co-organizer Margaret was going to drive straight to Dallas, and tried to foist off a whole pile of perishable food on Hollie and me. As I was trying to empty the refrigerator of perishables, most went right into a trash bag and the trash can. (Alas, the emptying of the fridge was not nearly complete enough, as would be revealed over 5 weeks later.)

Sue phoned to say the museum staff had made quick work of things and she was already in her car on the road to Texas.

I finally found an open gas station with not too terrible a line (they only had super; my car takes regular, but this wasn't the time to be too picky.)

Bev & Girgl were off somewhere (I later found another friend was taking them on a driving tour all around town-- in retrospect, very fitting). I closed up the house's storm shutters and packed up suitcases-- what we needed, then extra space filled with local collectables like jazzfest and art opening shirts.

Hollie and I then tried to unwind with a splash in the back yard inflatable pool and lying in the sun a bit-- it was a very beautiful late afternoon. Somehow, however, it seemed strangely quiet. I didn't realize until hearing other folks accounts later that most of the birds had already left town.

The Krewe of OAK Midsummer Mardi Gras Parade was in my neighborhood that night. Hollie and I were throwing together costumes when Bev & Girgl came back. I told them a major hurricane was coming, and they needed to pack up-- I'd check the weather service website at dawn, and if the storm hadn't changed course, they needed to get out. Girgl said, "This hurricane sounds very interesting. I have never seen one. I think I would like to stay and watch it."

".... No." I replied. "No, you don't. Nancy and Harrison want you to visit them in Arkansas; this is the time to go there."

We all went to OAK. The turn out was lighter than usual; many folks had already left town. We heard Mayor Nagin had issued a call for a voluntary evacuation. Some friends said they'd spent the day boarding up their house and packing, and planned to drive out after the party. One costumer had "KATRINA STAY AWAY" painted on them. It was a good parade party.

Woman and man in colorful robes; man holds a digital camera

Beverly and Girgl at Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer 2005

2 women in colorful costumes on dark street

Hollie and reveler at Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer 2005

Dancing in the streets of New Orleans, maybe for the last time, before evacuating.

Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer Mardi Gras 2005 photos by Infrogmation

Back home. Hollie needed to pick up her cell phone charger on the West Bank before leaving town. I said I didn't want to fight traffic in the morning; let's do it now. Traffic was light after midnight. Along Claiborne and Fountainebleau hundreds of cars were already parked up on the raised neutral grounds in hopes that the half foot of added elevation would protect them if there was flooding. (Spoiler, it wouldn't. )

We all got up before dawn on Sunday 28 August. Bev and Girgl drove out of town just before dawn. Hollie and I headed out about 40 minutes later, after I spent some time anxiously pacing around the house, double checking things, and throwing a few more possessions into the car.

Between the speed of the arrival of the storm and being busy, unlike evacuations for Andrew and Ivan I had no reservations nor definite destination. Maybe to my Brother in Gainesville, my parents who were staying in Jacksonville, or see if we can get a room somewhere beyond Tallahassee... just bug out. We headed east on I-10, on the high rise across the open water of the Rigoletts. Traffic was heavy but moving through Slidell, then pretty good thereafter. My car radio didn't work, but Hollie brought a portable. Somewhere in Mississippi we heard Mayor Nagin had made the evacuation mandatory, the first in the city's history. I was having a problem with my car's brakes-- every time I'd use them, they'd stick worse. It wasn't just a pebble, clearly. I had to jam on them repeatedly to get them unstuck. I tried to not worry Hollie by talking about the problem as an amusing minor annoyance, but she was not fooled.

At Tallahassee we stopped to eat and make some calls. My mother had already made us reservations in Jacksonville! She said she saw an ad in the paper with a good rate at the local Quality Inn, so she booked it. Peachy, thanks!

We made it to Jacksonville. I followed the directions-- it turns out it wasn't a Quality Inn as my mother thought, it was the "OK Quality Motel" or some such-- we looked at the room and the Quality was low indeed as fleas bit our ankles. We succeeded in finding a vacancy at a better motel nearby, and used one of the obvious defects of the room as an excuse to cancel the reservation at the first place.

The next morning, Monday the 29th, at the complementary motel breakfast the lobby tv was on showing satellite images of the hurricane coming ashore at South East Louisiana. One fellow evacuee from the area was for some reason insisting that the storm wasn't going to be hitting shore until that evening (I think that had been the prediction a day or so earlier, but the tv was clearly showing otherwise). I was trying to find a brake repair place when my parents arranged to move us to a better hotel-- with internet access (Yay). We repacked and moved to the other hotel. As we were unpacking the car Hollie got a call from Tal, who said he heard a report of those dreaded words: a levee break. A bit later, a report mentioned flooding somewhere in the 9th Ward. "Sounds like a rerun of Betsy", I sighed.

I took the car to get the brakes fixed. When it was ready, the mechanics wanted to joke at length that the Superdome now had a new skylight.

And so began my evacuation.

denise posting in

dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

mmcirvin

We had occasion to be in Rochester over the weekend so we decided to check out Rochester's charming, quirky small lakeside amusement park, Seabreeze. This is a former trolley park like Canobie Lake Park--even older and smaller, but with a better waterpark. We got rained on for the first several minutes we were there, but the weather cleared up rapidly and it was great for the rest of the day, partly sunny, not too hot.

The day seemed to begin inauspiciously between the rain and our struggles with the locker rental system, which, to our surprise, was cash-only (many parks these days have moved away from even accepting cash in the park). I looked at a park map and was dismayed to find that the only ATMs were all the way at the other end of the park... then realized that Seabreeze is so small that "all the way at the other end" was about a minute's walk. Busch Gardens, this isn't. So this was easily sorted.

The prime attraction for me at this park is one of the oldest operating roller coasters in the world (its precise priority is hard to keep track of, because of the varying operating status of its rivals): the 1920 Harry Baker/John A. Miller woodie, Jack Rabbit. Here's Coaster Thrills' POV:

Watch on YouTube

This is a surprisingly good ride, very smooth these days though not super forceful, comparable in size and experience to Canobie's Yankee Cannonball. But it's got a more interesting layout than Yankee Cannonball: an out-and-back that crosses under itself on the return leg, then turns into a helix that enters a long tunnel, which contains a hidden drop in the dark. Ending with a hidden drop is basically the same trick pulled by the last ride I rode before this, Busch Gardens Williamsburg's famous hypercoaster Apollo's Chariot! But it's hidden in a different way. In plain sight, really, given that you can see the dip in the tunnel if you're looking in the right direction earlier in the ride. The layout makes creative use of the hilly terrain in the area.

Jack Rabbit may have been the first coaster ever to have upstop wheels, the devices under the track that keep the coaster from flying off with negative g-force. It was one of the earliest, at the very least--designer John A. Miller had patented them the previous year.

Even the station is an amazingly old-school experience, with no air gates at all on the entrance queues, and long wooden manual brake levers. These last are somewhat for show: over the 2020 shutdown (during which, a fellow fan was excited to tell me, they held some employee rides just so they could say it was still "continuously operating" since 100 years earlier), they upgraded the control system to a modern computer-operated one, so those brake levers are functionally just switches that are redundant with buttons on the control panel. But the ride ops do use them (and then walk right across the track to operate said control panel).

Next to Jack Rabbit is Seabreeze's peculiar log flume, recorded here by Jay Ducharne:

Watch on YouTube

This thing was apparently a 1980s replacement for a 1950s vintage flume called Over the Falls that, among other things, had a stinky-water problem. They retained Over the Falls' unusual drop, which is of ordinary size but is profiled more like a coaster drop, with a maximum steepness of 55 degrees, which actually makes it kind of scary. I'm pretty sure it's the steepest ride drop that I've ridden with no restraint system whatsoever (not counting body waterslides). Since much of the ride is below ground level, the lift is also taller than the drop to increase the anticipatory freakiness. Unlike some flumes, they don't even bother maintaining the illusion that your log is floating in water on this drop--it's just riding down a dry chute on its road wheels.

My wife and kid had been at the water park while I was on these rides, and I went over there and checked out their fine lazy river (I caught them just coming off of it) and the surprisingly powerful wave pool. Then we got together and saw a bit of an impressive circus show on the midway, with a juggler and a high-wire act. My kid wanted to ride Jack Rabbit with me but first, we worked up to it by trying Seabreeze's most unusual ride, Bobsleds (Coaster Thrills' video here):

Watch on YouTube

This thing was first built in 1954 in substantially different form and is sometimes semi-seriously described as a hybrid conversion. I'm not sure it was technically a woodie prior to its makeover in 1961, but apparently someone from Seabreeze experienced Disneyland's Matterhorn Bobsleds and decided to upgrade it to make it taller, and apply both the bobsled theme and the new technology of tubular steel rail. The result is a kind of wild little ride that small kids can go on. It's charming and quirky, and the one thing to watch out for is that if you're an adult, the lap bars may hit you in the belly instead of on the lap, so don't staple yourself (you also have a seat belt). It also has a few little mini-hills before the lift, a feature I associate with intense RMC hybrids.

We then rode Jack Rabbit together and got another ride on Bobsleds. My kid approved of both rides. She's becoming a wooden-coaster fan--she doesn't go for the big steel, but these rides are a great thing to be into.

tcpip

Darwin is not exactly known for being the cultural centre of Australia, but it does its best during its Festival and Fringe Festival. It's a particularly good time to visit in the dry season, where every day is 30 degrees, blue skies and a cool morning breeze, especially as a break from Melbourne's wintery touch (which I also love). The past several days have been in the fine company of Lara and Adam at MrBlueSky, where I also had the delight of catching up with Gary, Mon, Jac, and Shu on different occasions, and every evening there was an opportunity to soak up some fine entertainment.

A personal highlight was "John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew" performing the songs of Redgum. It's not my usual style of music, but they are the most notable radical Australian folk band that has ever walked in the country, and the musicianship was utterly superb. I felt like a teenager getting John to sign my copy of "If You Don't Fight You Lose", but I justified it on the grounds that I have been listening to this album since my teenage years; this will be a Rocknerd review. Another event also worthy of special note was "Duck Pond", a fusion of acrobatics, ballet, and theatre and a fusion story of Swan Lake and The Ugly Duckling. Understandably, I couldn't help but think of the RuneQuest scenario of the same name. Further, there is the excellent musicianship and storytelling of Fred Leone, whose self-taught upside-down southpaw guitar-playing is just a small testimony to his abilities.

Other events included a visit to the Northern Territory Art Gallery and Museum (MAGNT) which was hosting the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA), the video artistry of Shundori", the impressive and moving Zhangke Jia film Caught by the Tides, and the impressive aerialist performance of "La Ronde". In contrast, I was less taken by Bangarra Dance Theatre's "Illume", mainly because it didn't provide what was said on the tin, or the Sydney alternative-improv "Party Dozen", although kudos to the young punk local support act "Tang" who had plenty of energy and style.

The time seemed to go quickly, and the view of the Darwin harbour from my co-owned apartment always gives the opportunity for reflection, consolidation of thoughts, and quiet strategic preparation for the future. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest places for a short visit, and I can certainly understand why some people feel the desire to move on a more permanent basis, although I am a long way from such considerations myself. I will, once again, take this opportunity to thank Lara and Adam for their absolutely superb hosting and care of this Southerner's visit and for showing me many highlights of their home town. Doubtless, I will return again soon.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Boards of Canada, The Campfire Headphase

infrogmation

This morning's news, very local news.

An expected package was seen on front porch and brought inside.

In a related story, while the front door was open a lizard ran inside. Authorities describe the lizard as small, brown, and cute. The lizard is still at large, and should be considered mostly harmless.

In other very local news, coffee has been brewed and is hot and tasty.

unbibium

I was reading a discussion about kosher diet practices on Reddit and someone pointed out that pigs compete with humans for food, whereas other meat animals eat plants that humans can't digest.

It reminded me that now that corn ethanol can be used as fuel, machines compete with humans for food. It's one of the ways that the so-called "developed" societies are generally the ones in which humans are in danger of being second class citizens to things that humans ostensibly own or control: cars, guns, money, LLCs, churches, land, buildings, symbols, borders...

I wonder if that's some of the motivation behind Abrahamic religions' rules against idolatry? On the one hand I know every church hates competition. But also, if you make it clear that only God goes above Man, does that make one less likely to put a corporation's share price above Man?

probably not, but I think I've stumbled upon some interesting implication... if our modern American society really doesn't value people anymore, when did that process really start? Or does every society have some non-human concept that they value more than human prosperity, since the beginning?

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A little less than a year ago, after receiving confirmation of a second parent when I'm travelling, I decided to reintroduce rats as "animales de companie" into my life after a hiatus of several years. Fortunately, The Happy Rattery (FB) had tracked their birthdays and, I am pleased to announce, brothers Mayday and Mayhem have celebrated their first birthday, which makes them about 30 in human years. As an example of nominative determinism, their assigned names proved to be prescient. Mayhem, the larger of the two and with an appropriate bandit mask, is gregarious and boisterous, whereas the smaller Mayday is a lot more circumspect and a little even nervous about the world. Typical of their behaviour, these little brothers have provided a great deal of joy to my life with their antics, especially their remarkable rat-engineering projects; I was very surprised when they tried to add a bag of pegs to their home construction.

Currently 3.7K kilometres away, I am very thankful to Kate R., for looking after the rats in my absence. Delightfully, she provided them a little bit of cupcake for their birthday, complete with a candle. Meanwhile, at the top-end, Lara D. has purchased some Banksy-rat decals for our apartment, MrBlueSky, which we installed this evening in honour of Mayday and Mayhem. Further, because it must be mentioned, a few days ago the Australian water rat, the Rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster) won the ABC award for Australia's under-rated animal as part of National Science Week (I give honourable mention to the marsupial mole). Common in Melbourne's waterway, I derive a great deal of delight watching rakali, especially as they swim at speed, their white-tipped tail hoisted like a flag.

My advocacy for rats can now be measured in decades, and I like to think this has had some effect on their reputation and welfare. There is an excellent essay from Aeon ("Rats are Us") which highly the juxtaposition between the rat and animal welfare laws (essentially non-existent in the United States, it can be harrowing reading) and the scientific evidence that I have raised many times over the decades; they are social animals with communication, they are capable of past memories and future prediction, they are dreamers, they have a highly developed sense of empathy (even for strangers), they love to play, they like to learn (even driving rat-sized cars). With their sentience ("sentus", to feel) certain, and their sapience ("to know") evident, what of their consciousness ("shared knowledge")? The rat is us.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: MrBlueSky
Current Music: Skinny Puppy, Rabies

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I've boarded the silver bird and landed in Darwin, where I'll be staying in Mr Blue Sky in Darwin City, which I still have to remind myself that I am a co-owner. Co-owner Lara and tenant Adam have been wonderful hosts to me, with Cocoa rabbit, the 11-year-old spritely dwarf, providing great entertainment as always. The weather here is of magnificent quality; consistently in the high twenties, clear skies, and gentle cool breezes off Darwin harbour with delightful views across to the National Park. From this vantage point, it's all rather idyllic.

There are nominal household matters to sort out, but it is a convenient time for the Darwin Festival. I have a lifelong interest in aesthetics, which I have to grudgingly accord myself a modest analytical ability. From metaphor, referentiality, creativity, technique, persistence, and connections, I must also confess some apparent predictive skill when evaluating the future success of self-proclaimed artists. Darwin's contribution to the fine arts is not exactly famous, being small and distant, but there are plenty of opportunities in the programme which will receive a fair review in the week to come.

In the meantime, I was blessed yesterday with a second opportunity to visit to the Menzies School of Health Research (Charles Darwin University) (not to be confused with the Menzies Institute for Medical Research (University of Tasmania), let alone the Menzies Research Centre of the Liberal Party. The Darwin Menzies centre particularly interests me as they have a small high performance computing system, which has a few file system and management issues, but nevertheless great to see that it's there! I was hosted by Anto Trimarsanto, a medical researcher in malaria (specifically Plasmodium vivax), who also dutifully informed me that Menzies has an outpost in Timor-Leste. My brain is now working on how to combine these multiple interests.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: Darwin
Current Music: 65dos, The Fall of Math

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