Notices by nindokag (nindokag@refactorcamp.org)

Excellent, the jalapeño plant is growing peppers! So is the bell pepper plant. Weird but true fact: these are two cultivars of the same species. The two plants are right next to each other. What are the odds they cross-pollinated? If I plant the seeds from one of these peppers next year will I get a weird spicy/sweet hybrid?

Growing potatoes for the first time, I was taken by surprise how beautiful potato flowers are!

I built a solar + wind power plant in Animal Crossing #ACNH

me and my wife have a system where, if one of us wants our back scratched, we can describe the exact back location by reference to the Breath of the Wild world map. So, like, "Please scratch my Hyrule Castle" or "Please scratch my Great Deku Tree" and the other one instantly knows exactly where. it's great.

The seeds I planted are starting to sprout! These are Hopi sunflowers, Anasazi beans, Strawberry Popcorn just starting to come up in the yogurt cup, and in the back, some garlic that sprouted on it's own in the kitchen so I decided to give it a chance in the garden.

Doing some long avoided housekeeping since we're stuck at home, and I came up with a good self-brain-hack.

For each object, ask: "Pretending I don't already own this thing, would I buy it for 25 cents?" The answer is usually no.

Otherwise the implicit question is "Can i think of ANY conceivable scenario where I need this thing someday?". That answer's always yes. Thus, hoarding.

I think this is what Marie Kondo was getting at, but "would buy for a quarter?" works better for me personally.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-could-end-mortgages-as-we-know-them/

"the climate apocalypse will render entire cities full of people homeless at once"

yawn

"this might affect mortgage rates"

HOLY SHIT WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING

The meta-point i want to make about articles like this one is that our ruling ideology can't care about, can't even SEE, problems except through the certain lenses. It cares about investments, not people, so it can only understand problems translated into the language of investments.

https://youtu.be/KcAMXm9zITg

Wow, this guy is my new hero.

He made his formerly barren home in the Arizona desert bloom with life, and drastically reduced his resource consumption, through careful shepherding of rainwater and re-use of wastewater, native plants, passive heating/cooling and outside-the-box use of recycled materials.

His house is a wonderland of scavenged parts and jury-rigged gizmos and I love it.

It's more about water than sun power but still strikes me as extremely #solarpunk

@Elmkast Found a non-paywalled version of the science paper that is the source for that 70% claim

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262876332_Slowing_Amazon_Deforestation_Through_Public_Policy_and_Interventions_in_Beef_and_Soy_Supply_Chains

"Enforcement of laws,
interventions in soy and beef supply chains, restrictions on access to credit, and
expansion of protected areas appear to have contributed to this decline, as did a decline
in the demand for new deforestation"

haven't finished it yet but what I've read is very interesting.

Going to Santa Clara Rapid Response Network training tonight

https://www.pactsj.org/rapid-response-network-in-santa-clara-county/

"The Rapid Response Network aims to expand the community's capacity to monitor and document ICE operations in real time. We will support the process of gathering evidence used to free someone from ICE custody. We will expose any intimidating and unconstitutional tactics ICE uses to detain immigrants."

GOD these Hong Kong protestors are so fuckin brave.

I'm terrified of what the Chinese government will do to them in reprisal.

Their lives must basically be forfeit, right? But even knowing that, they're still out there flowing like water, inventing new protest tactics daily, making a last stand for the last bastion of their freedom. They're heroes. I wanna cry.

Why aren't we doing that in the US, where the risk of civil disobedience is so much less?

Did another playtest of our #DrWho #RPG with my wife.

I think the hardest part of adapting Dr. Who to a tabletop RPG is just that EVERY SESSION is an entirely new setting, premise, villain, and cast of NPCs. Plus your 2 leads are separated from any persistent social context.

So the techniques for building on last week's adventure that we'd use in any other RPG to create a new scenario don't work at all. Nor do the usual tricks of using PCs' relationships or NPCs' agendas. Hmmm. #GameDesign

OK, polls closed, it is decided, I'm going to learn to play/sing the Space Battleship Yamato song on accordion next!

Besides being a kickass song, it has a lot of good memories for me. Being able to sing 宇宙戦艦ヤマ in Japanese at karaoke helped me make friends with my coworkers when i was teaching English in Japan back in 2000. #mastoMusic

Just figured out that "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash is really easy to play on the accordion. Watch out, Open Mic Night, here I come!

Me and my wife are making up a Dr. Who role-playing game for two players (alternating GMs), We did our first playtest yesterday. Needs work but the basics feel very promising. Very low-prep, you land in a place & time and "discover" (i.e. make up) what's happening there as you go.

If we publish it we'll just leave out all the copyrighted stuff and call it like "space/time travel buddies" or something.

@bankuei feels good to role-play again even a little bit, after years of not having time to!

A lot of my job lately is figuring out how to visually represent the *lack* of knowledge.

@jacek i can go one level deeper which is "the Pauli exclusion principle says every electron must have distinct quantum states, so the number of electrons in each shell is determined by how many states there are for quantum numbers"

but after that if she asks "why" again I have to say "I don't know!"

I think it's kinda cool how it only takes about 8 or 9 "why"s to reach the limits of human knowledge

Daughter has reached the age of asking "why?" to everything.

"hold on to that cup with both hands"
"why?"
"i don't want you to drop it"
"why?"
"It's made of glass, and if you drop a glass thing it can break"
"why?"
"because glass is brittle"
"why?"
"because supercooling molten silicon dioxide makes an amorphous solid which is weaker than the crystalline form"
"why?"
"the crystalline form has a tetrahedral lattice of ionic bonds"
"why?"
"because one silicon atom can bind with four oxygen"
"why?"

There are protests against the concentration camps today:

https://www.closethecampsnow.org/event/close-camps-now_attend/search/?

(Today?? Why am I only just hearing about it now?)

Diane Feinstein's office in San Francisco is within walking distance of my work, so I might go hold a sign there at lunchtime:

https://www.closethecampsnow.org/event/close-camps-now/125152/signup/

Watching a rocket launch made me really curious how rockets are stabilized. they're like a pencil balanced on its eraser with fire under it. why doesn't the tiniest fluctuation in air currents cause it to tip away from vertical, faster and faster until it's rocketing sideways?

Found a good explainer:
https://www.nar.org/nar-products/rocket-stability/

it turns out the answer is "put the center of gravity ahead of the center of pressure", that way the influence of air currents is a stabilizing negative feedback loop.