Luke O. @loppear@social.coop

Use less, for longer, and share more.

After 3.5 years I have cracked another phone screen. The cost to have someone else repair it is a #pinephone , the cost of doing it myself is no doubt greener than a new phone, but involves purchasing a number of effectively single-use tools. Bleh. For now, keep using it til I get a cut.

I'm on vacation, we've finally made it far enough north to escape the heat doomdome, I'm conflicted about everything but waterfalls, much of that conflict feels like hyperactive excitement and enthusiasm.

You inspire me, friends.

Re-reading my notes on "The Great Derangement" by Amitav Ghosh, it opens with discussion of fiction and probability, that the modern novel is fixated on "believability" and therefore modern mundane gradualism over the mythic. This has to work extra hard to conceal the exceptional unlikely moments that drive narrative, and that we need for meaning (and survival after global carbon consumption economy).

Rudbeckia bursting into action this week #florespondence

First ripe tomato of the year tonight, a yellow cherry, that unbeatable fresh in season flavor even in the little wedge cut to share with the family. It's going to be a good summer. #gardening

Anyone want to credit the artist of this painting, acquired from them at an upstairs informal anarchist-adjacent art show at a bar on South St in Philly a decade ago, chime in!

Everyone else, enjoy the fruits of my spring cleaning. Uncertain which room this is destined to hang in now. #mastoart

Transplanted a bunch of wild grasses (and probably sedges, I'm no botanist) in the yard today from unmowed areas to cultivated areas, after buying a pretty native Eastern Blue-Eyed Grass (really a tiny iris) from a nearby nursery and then finding two varieties endemic blooming in our yard. Concentrate the things I like before ultimately mowing the rest, but I'll keep a few patches this year to see if there are surprise warm bloomers in there too. #gardening #indigenousplants

Alright the library books from the 1970s on hanging gardens and macrame have started rolling in...

More than a decade since I shutdown my last self-admin'd web and mail hosts, I'm looking at doing it again, a handful of nearly-static sites and some activitypub experiments. At the low end of needs and budget.

Not-unethical recommendations for a vps host?

Sometimes you just need to be calmly reminded of what you keep hearing and finding ways to deflect: this pandemic is going to go on for years.

(Hour long podcast with 3 guests, no transcript. The statnews link in the related reading is a reasonable substitute. All of these take a fairly level optimistic view, not focused on negative behavior or scary what-ifs. Normal will be new.)
https://radioopensource.org/plague-year-two/

Going to reinvent my interior decorating to be all jungle plants and steam punk. More bamboo and wicker than leather and victorian, but brass fittings and dials on anything that's not a bromeliad.

-> first draft in response to @ifixcoinops

Growing up in the foothills, every hole i had to dig was sure to have rocks, free rocks! Now living down in the swamp, not a stone to be found, at any price.
I scavenge old bricks for now.

Growing up in the foothills,
shoveling sure to find rocks,
a free wall at cost.

Now down in the swamp,
not a stone to be found,
name a price.

I scavenge old bricks. #smallpoems

Idk why KPFA's Making Contact doesn't do show summaries, but this episode last month was one of their excellent cuts from a documentary, in this case Mirrors Of Privilege on white folk waking up to needing to fix our own house, well worth a listen https://kpfa.org/episode/making-contact-february-7th-2021/

Got my first shot today, rest of family is wrapping up 2nds, so now the countdown to other folks wanting to hang out and see us is nearing...

Party penguins parade progress...

Dirt World Problems

You start shoveling and then keep going... our local gravel trucking fairy is back dropping 100 yards on our driveway. But his first load had an accident with the rear gate and made one big pile blocking the road. I have uses! Do I have the back for it though.