eanholt

[eanholt]

Given how your interactions with your fans go, I suspect that letting them see it as is would increase Engagement. But also the engagement would be that "it's haunted" and "nobody could sleep on that". They would start one upping each other tipping to fund derin a new bed. It would just be a normal bed the whole time.

in pain from laughing at this fucking video

[eanholt]

Oh, this is what sapiosexuals are about?

extremely evocative textbook diagram

[eanholt]

Glazier's bars are great. And a thin piece of wood between it and the wall to distribute the load.

On the other hand, if shit goes wrong you do know a ceiling guy. What is a wall but a ceiling tipped on its side?

I gotta rip the skirting boards out of the workshop (room with a new ceiling) tomorrow and there's like a 50-50 chance I'll misjudge the studs even with the stud finder and lever a hole in the wall with my crowbar so stay tuned for that nonsense.

[eanholt]

I like the orgs that have realized they need a secure file server not email, so they send me a link to their file server and a password to it, in clear text, in an email.

Open it up and it looks suspiciously like a half baked PHP webmail.

You may have posted about this before, but im very curious about you saying "email was a mistake" because it's such a cemented part of online communication. Is it the technology?

Email became infrastructural in a way that it was never intended to be and wasn't designed for.

There is too much momentum toward email being the primary means of business communication that unless there is a massive technology shift we're unlikely to see wide adoption of an alternative and email takes up so much space in the IT space that it's hard to say what the alternative would be.

Much of what used to be email now happens in company chat apps, which I think is an improvement in many ways, but you chat with your coworkers in a way that you're unlikely to chat with a client or send a quote to a prospect.

A huge amount of effort goes into making email better, and making email systems talk to each other, and making email secure because it is so ubiquitous that you can't realistically ask people not to use it.

But it's fucking terrible and we're asking too much of a set of protocols that was supposed to send small, not-very-private, communications between academics.

Why can't you send big files via email? Because that's not what email is for.

Why is it a pain in the ass to send encrypted emails? Because that's not what email is for.

Why aren't your emails portable, and easy to move from one service to another? Because that's not what email is for.

Why are emails so easy to spoof? Because they were never meant to be used the way we use them so there was no reason to safeguard against that fifty years ago

It's like how social security cards were never meant to be used as one of your major super serious government IDs where all of your activity through all of your life is tracked, because if they knew they needed a system for that they probably would have built a better one in the first place.

Nobody who sat down and developed email looked more than half a century into the future and went "so people are going to be using this system to create identities to access banking and medical records and grocery shopping and school records so we'd better make sure that it's robust enough to handle all of that" because instead they were thinking "Neat! I can send a digital message to someone on a different computer network than the one that I am literally in the same building as."

We think of email as, like, a piece of certified mail that is hand delivered in tamperproof packaging to only the intended recipient who signs for it with their thumbprint and a retina scan when it is, instead, basically a postcard.

It would be absurd to try to do the things people do with email with postcards, and it's *nearly* as absurd to try to do them via email.

[eanholt]

Does it count if I have to read the same book 11 times in a month?

Lifehack: you can increase the number of books you read in a month by exclusively reading books for children.

[eanholt]

@derinthescarletpescatarian thank you again for TTOU. I just finished my reread with the ebooks. I could tell that some of the pacing was tightened up. Also, I'm not sure if it was there before, but the "flour with a flourish" bit got me and I groaned at you.

More importantly, though, the story hit me emotionally just as it did the first time. Thank you for Dandelion, and Note, and the stupid Arborean customs, and the A.C.

[eanholt]

To be fair, most days my six year old reports to me a wound or two, and maybe 20% of the time does he have any idea where it's from.

Still a good message, though.

I was roughhousing with my friend’s son and scratched him without noticing (my nails are long). He didn’t say anything until his dad noticed the scratch later and asked where he got it. I approached him and said “hey little dude. If me or any other grown up ever hurts you for real, even on accident, you are allowed to tell them to stop and they should apologize, okay? I want to apologize right now for scratching you, I’m really sad and sorry that happened.”

And of course he was like ummm. Ok. I’m six. back to playing.

So I can only hope I have imprinted something on him but no guarantees.

[eanholt]

Sure I want to kiss. Get gay married? Yeah. Push notifications can fuck right off though.

you like a mutuals posts twice in a day and instantly this app is like you want push notifications? you want to kiss? you want to get gay married? That’s what you want?

[eanholt]

Huh, I hadn't considered this idea before, but it's obvious in retrospect -- what's clogging up Google/DDG search is particularly low-quality and old AI results or even just content farm junk, and they only do natural language input now so they're trying to use that to sift through that mess to find something already generated that's relevant. It should be easy for a SOTA AI to beat that just by generating on-topic content with a current model.

As a little test I asked Claude what the recurring responsibilities were of the position I just took, and it covered a bunch of things I knew but also one that I'd heard of and forgotten about. Asking a followup question had right answers on the pieces I already knew, as well. DDG couldn't even vaguely answer the first question in the first 20 links.

I should go check with the Treasurer if she's doing that last responsibility or me...

Here's another new years hot take: sometime in 2024 the best LLMs crossed the google search + wikipedia boundary: it is frequently better to simply ask Claude than it is to search either on Google or wikipedia for the answer to a question.

[eanholt]

I've seen this reblogged a few times, and I've wondered about it. 96,000 streams (presumably approximately listens) sounds like a pretty low number compared to the exposure someone would have on radio. So is this actually a better or worse pay situation than the prior music streaming tech? Let's do some napkin math. The best kind of math.

It turns out finding numbers about royalties is a hot mess -- in the US, terrestrial radio royalties go only to songwriters, not recording artists (hope your cover isn't what gets airtime!). For recording artists, they get nothing, because apparently they should be glad for the exposure (so they can maybe make money on physical media through "mechanical royalties", also a bad deal, or on concerts and merch, where as I understand it you can maybe actually make money). But let's suppose you're a songwriter and you could possibly make any money on the radio at all. I haven't found any US numbers for radio royalties because it's all very case-dependent, but apparently BBC radio 2 pays 106.34 quid a minute between the two royalty againcies involved (highest of their channels because of high listener counts). They've got 14.9 million listeners a week on that channel, averaging 11.1 hours per listener, so an average of 984k or so listeners at a time. Then a single play of your 4 minute song at average listener counts pulls in $546 for 984k listeners, compared to Spotify at $185 for only 96k listeners apparently.

Most artists/songwriters don't make it on the radio. They make a cool $0 on radio royalties. Streaming looks to me to have cut out a bunch of middlemen and made smaller artists *more* able to collect royalties for plays than before, at a higher pay rate per listen, it's just that royalties aren't making anyone but the biggest artists rich. Still.

Of course, streaming has also been replacing physical media purchasing, where apparently songwriters could make sometimes like 9 cents a song purchased. If all 96k spotify listeners instead purchased the CD, played it once, and threw it away, then the writer would get $8,640. They don't do that, but the break even with Spotify is if they play the track off the CD 47 times. That sounds a little high for CD lifetime expected usage, but not "Spotify is ripping off artists unlike anything before." I think the math works out similarly for recording artists based on having heard that they get about 10% of sales.

I came into this napkin math adventure expecting to find that Spotify wasn't quite as bad a deal as people made it out to be, but was quite surprised to find it looking this reasonable. My conclusions are:

1) All those songs new and old about how the music industry is rigged and screws artists were right

2) Don't go into music to make money

3) Do hit up the merch table, as far as I know they actually do get to keep most of that money.

Since it’s Spotify Wrapped season I thought I’d share this reminder that streaming services are killing the music industry. Musicians can’t make a living like this. If you love an artist, find them on Bandcamp and actually buy their albums.

[eanholt]

Silversmiths talking about the business that I've heard have said that Etsy is basically impossible to sell on, because they want your money to get featured placement, and will put other shops up as comparisons when people are in your shop looking at your things. You're placed in direct competition at your first world handmade prices vs more mass-manufactured third world stuff that's labeled as handmade. Also the search is hot garbage. So, for online it sounds like the current best practice is running a Shopify shop and using IG to advertise for your shop (with a focus on storytelling and building a personal / parasocial connection to your work there. I think you'll do fine on that part!)

But also I've heard from far more smiths who produce their own stuff on the side for the love of it, and mostly teach because there's better money there. 🤷‍♀️

So I've been doing beadwork/jewelry to keep the remaining shreds of my sanity/stay in the easy-to-heat room with the animals while I wait for the furnace to be installed (starting Tuesday THANK YOU AGAIN EVERYONE) and it occurred to me that as much as I like making jewelry, I don't really wear it, nor does my family so I need to find something to do with the finished products.

1. Where do you sell handmade stuff online these days? I hear etsy is kind of crap but IDK what the alternatives are.

2. What do people like in terms of jewelry/wearables? Necklaces, Eyeglass chains, Earrings, what?

[eanholt]

@pirateprincessjess I had to play a round in your name.

I am awful at pinball and yet I always love playing.

[eanholt]

Tell me about nonprofit financial management, though. I'm probably headed toward being involved in that for 2 different ones, because I make choices with my life.

me talking to the tank of beetles

"You guys don't have to know anything about nonprofit financial management. I envy that."

[eanholt]

These are a holiday tradition for me, after making Alton Brown's Aged Egg Nog, which is boozy and delicious and uses a dozen egg yolks.

I do not make it through all 12 egg whites, that makes so many of these little guys. I suppose I could make less booze, but that would require me to remember how many meringues that was last year.

If you've ever looked at a bit of crumbling drywall and gone "boy am I hungry right now" then meringues are the recipe for you. They're simultaneously very simple and very finnicky, but if you can get the hang of them then you can experience eating chalk (but sweet!) whenever you want, with none of the limestone content involved in eating real chalk. A batch of meringues is just 3 egg whites, (at ROOM TEMPERATURE) 1/8th teaspoon cream of tartar, 3/4 cups regular white granulated sugar, and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. (or you could do a different flavor, if you like your conkrete to be fancy. I do not. I am here to experience texture with minimal flavor.)

You combine all the ingredients but the sugar in a mixer with a whisk attachment, and whisk at high speed until soft peaks form. Then slowly sift in the granulated sugar, whisking as you go. Once all the sugar is whisked in, keep mixing for another five minutes--the mix should be glossy and sleek, not dry.

Then pipe the cookies onto a parchment-lined pan, about two inches across, leaving an inch of space between. If you have fancy frosting tips and a piping bag, use them. Bafflingly, I do not have those (why? what have I been doing with my life that I own three machetes but not frosting tips?) so I just used a gallon ziplock with a hole poked into it and made beautiful little angel turd shapes.

They bake at 200 F for 45 minutes, and then should be allowed to rest in the oven for another half hour with the temperature off. Don't open the oven while they bake! Let them cool completely, and then you can eat something that has both the visual look and the mouth-feel of a packing peanut.

I love these things. I'll post an out-of-oven picture when they're done in like an hour.

[eanholt]

He would drill so many things, none of which are appropriate to use a drill on.

new animal just dropped

[eanholt]

This is the big thing I do to take care of others. Get started. If you keep it up for, say, 13 years, "I bought some bed nets!" turns into "I saved approximately N lives of children who would have died without me specifically, but who get to have a fairly normal life expectancy instead."

What N would shock you to learn that you later exceeded as your impact on the world in your lifetime? I passed mine long ago.

You Can Buy A Malaria Net

[eanholt]

Thank you. You got me back into my little workshop today. I've had this obsidian cab I made for a friend before she passed (fuck cancer), and I never got a chance to make a full piece of jewelry out of it for her. I wanted to finish the project, though, and to make a thing to remember her by.

Today I used the bevel grinding jig I made earlier this summer to regrind its girdle (lesson learned: I can't eyeball a good girdle angle yet), and started on making an open backed bezel to hold it. I soldered the bezel strip, which is a nice snug fit, but then my ring for the back ended up not being a snug fit in that so it wouldn't solder right Another lesson in dry fitting and sneaking up on your line instead of just cutting to measurement, I guess. I think if I flatten it a bit it might stretch out to be a good fit for soldering. Or it'll be yet another lesson and I'll make another one.

I've had some ugh field around this hobby after a few setbacks, but this was a good thing to do with today.

And I also had a good talk with my wife about whether a board I'm looking at joining gets at what feels important to me in light of recent events, and my conclusion is that I want to do it and more.

Hey, also, all the anarchist shit aside, tomorrow I want you to make something.

I forced myself to draw something after the 2016 election. I forced myself to draw something when my mother died in 2018. I forced myself to draw something when my spouse was hospitalized for multiple organ failure in 2021.

When you are miserable, make something. Add a row to your project, bake a box cake, draw on a sheet of lined paper, write a poem on a napkin, fold an origami shirt out of a dollar bill, make your favorite recipe for dinner, but make something with your hands, something that you can hold and look at engage your senses in.

It won't fix the world, but it will change the world. You will have made something that didn't exist before. You will have impacted your reality, even in a very small way. And it is going to be something you made *after.* Something bad happened, something shook you, and you made something after, in spite of it.