bog creature
In my personal experience if you have to pick one, animal manure (I count human poop under that as well) works better than compost from just plant material (like plant cuttings, kitchen waste, weeds, wood chip …). Best is a mix of both.
Mixed bag, probably menstruation cycle dependent. Right now it’s just awful. I procrastinated everything so much the dishes haven’t been done for days and there’s young chickens living in my bathroom. If I had ducks as well they’d definitely not be in a row today. I expect the situation to improve in the next few days.
Everything is a catapult if you use it wrong
What’s in the background, the bungee jumping tower?
Believe me, in too many cases somebody thinks that a lower price can somehow be had without compromising quality. What if we let a bot do it and a human quickly checks the result? It’s like proofreading, right?
I wish this was more easy and mainstream, people are still uptight about polyamory a lot. I wouldn’t want to have husbands or wives though - just partners. Or so I think sometimes, but time is limited and I cherish my alone time too much.
I want to be the 1 percent
but brain cell finds it all too hard
even just writing a comment
that rhymes is really difficult
Avoid all or nothing thinking and perfectionism, one time fail is no excuse for giving up all. Do this one badly, the next one will be better (applies indefinitely).
Make up a fantasy why doing the thing is my sacred duty because I’m the chosen one (silly but works)
Be kind to yourself. I found this the hardest one - start noticing your negative self-talk, and replace it with words of kindness and patience. This is basically a re-parenting where you re-train the voice of authority inside of yourself. It took me about 2 years from a therapist noticing it in me and suggesting I should work on it to today, where I am mostly free of it.
Start thing now. By asking ‘What can I do to start thing more easily?’ you are actually procrastinating again. Reading the manual (again and again), reading one self-help book after another, or endlessly buying more tools or craft supplies can be an avoidance strategy. And remember point one, if you didn’t manage to start now, you can start now now, or the next now that is available.
That’s an interesting view, because one way I always looked at it was it became a gating function (in a negative way). Just like the rich raise the barrier to entry, I always thought that there were people who were dismissive of others because you couldn’t speak their language perfectly.
I think that’s more or less the same idea as language carrying an authority. You can only use language for gating an ivory tower if the plebs believe your expensive terminology describes real and relevant facts. I think an insider language that doesn’t carry this authority gets called other names, slang maybe? Also used for gating, just not as a barrier towards rising towards a higher status position in academia or rich circles.
English and the internet have this potential of bringing people together, it’s quite powerful. You suddenly find out how your situation relates to people on other continents. I remember that before there was a much stronger feeling of ‘other’ towards people from other countries and cultures, and often the only information you could get about these others would be through the eyes of someone else. To be honest, even if the powers that be fuck up the internet beyond recognition now, that’s a kind of devil difficult to stuff back into the box.
An orphanage in Venice was also a music school. Vivaldi was one of the many teachers. The orphan girls were taught all sorts of musical skills from singing to composing. How much nicer is this than work them to death in the doom factory!
Here’s the thing: human translators have been using ‘AI’ for over a decade. It used to be called machine translation, and for anything but the dumbest stuff it’s a dumb idea, first nail in the coffin of translation. Translation agencies loved the shite, of course, because they could now pay a translator 0.05€ per word instead of 0.10€, arguing that now the same work took less time (it did, and also a lower quality translation was produced with a lot of costly bullshit software in the middle). The translators, as is to expect, hated it, but were forced to accept it or starve. We are now very slowly reaching the point where we are hired back as esteemed professionals after AI-caused communication mishaps and business fuckups keep piling up …
Language is in a peculiar decline these days - there’s the process of English becoming the most badly spoken and written language ever, because all of us non-natives use it online and often also at work. Together with the inescapable avalanche of slop being churned out.
Also, language used to carry authority and this is getting lost for more and more people. We have been bombarded with advertising, propaganda, lies for many generations now and it’s becoming stale. Longer texts used to carry more authority, now a topic can be communicated very precisely through a meme, and why not? For a translator I am getting awfully distrustful of words I’m afraid. I believe we are already standing right under the crumbling tower and will have to learn to communicate through shrugs and grunts. And again, why not?
This is very important. I’m in a situation where the work I used to do is supposed to be taken over by the shitrobot. On a job platform now 15% of the job offers are the original work, 85% is AI slop fixing in one way or another. This led me on a 2-year odyssey of trying manual work (too weak), being really poor (getting better at that), and finally deciding that if I’m forced to serve the shitrobot to avoid starving I’ll serve it badly. Btw so far I’ve managed to avoid these jobs, may it remain so.
That said, if you are in need of a real human translator for tech or creative EN-DE projects do contact me, I’d be glad to keep doing work that makes sense!
I’ve done some lazy-style toddler sitting (in my defense, it was the heat!) and might have accidentally overdosed on Disney songs and The Sound of Music. Now trying to delete it with an 80s New Wave and Alternative playlist. And if that doesn’t help I’ll have to nuke it with 90s eurodance, but that would be grim.
I hate all of it and never participated. Some people seem to like it. The same people who take pictures of themselves in front of famous sights?
My lard eating habits make the food pyramid rotate in its grave, I’ll probably be fine.
Thank you so much!
I’d like a recipe for pemmican pretty please … I’ve never tried it but imagine it must be tasty and practical
The water body - sources, rivers, sea, also clouds, also water in the soil, is a single being of enormous power. Imagine having a tiny hair of mother water in your home!
Lovely, you have wonderful birds there. Are they starlings?
I once was house sitting and taking care of some pets. Then on a sunny day I stood in the kitchen and noticed a small wild bird was staring at me from the garden. I looked at it, it didn’t fly away. It kept hopping around and was clearly trying to get my attention. Then I realized the bird bath was empty. The better I learn to listen the more often these things happen, I think animals and plants can sense when a person tries to listen. And after a while your local wildlife knows you as a friend.