At least they make sense...

This month's theme was "Communication Styles." I wrote from 1:30 PM to 3:45 AM, so about 11 hours 45 minutes, allowing for lunch and supper breaks. I wrote 5 poems on Tuesday and actually finished everything. \o/

Participation was about the same, with 6 comments on LiveJournal and another 30 on Dreamwidth. A total of 9 people sent prompts.


Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the September 2, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:

"Bring Unique Qualities"
"For Those Who Work at It"
"The Only Thing That You Absolutely Have to Know"
"A Reader, an Interpreter, and a Creator"
"Simple and to the Point"


Buy some poetry!
The September fishbowl sold out! Wow, that hasn't happened in a while. You are all awesome.

If you've been wanting to sponsor an older poem, or commission something new, now is a good time -- I have time to post things. Ask me if you need a list of available poems in your favorite series, characters, topics, etc.


This month's donors include: janetmiles and fuzzyred. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There are 0 tallies toward a bonus fishbowl.


The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

This poem came out of the September 2, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from chanter1944, see_also_friend, and wyld_dandelyon. It also fills the "affiliate" square in my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the series Daughters of the Apocalypse.

( Read more... )

Today is mostly sunny and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/8/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
 

This video demonstrates how the location of mass affects travel downhill.

If you want to build a wheel, put as much of the mass as close to the hub as possible for more efficient travel. Here is an old wagonwheel. See how the center is built up? That's not just to strengthen the area around the axle, it makes the wheel work better.

Today I'm making Ultimate Ginger Cookies.  Currently the dough is in the refrigerator chilling.  :D

EDIT 9/7/25 -- These turned out as molasses spice gingersnaps, quite zesty.  They're tricky to bake because you have to take them out while they still seem quite raw in order to leave them chewy.  If they're starting to set up at all, they are crunchy when cold.  However, if you want to make a gingersnap crust or crumble -- or you just prefer crunchy cookies -- that's the way to go. 

The earlier "ultimate ginger cookies" recipe I had was a lot lighter than these, but I couldn't find that one.  I'll probably try again for a version of that, but these really are excellent molasses spice gingersnaps.

EDIT 9/7/25 -- Last batch is out of the oven. \o/

... I am tempted to make apple crumble with the crunchy ones.

These clear windows can secretly produce solar power

Cholesteric liquid crystal coatings enable transparent, unidirectional solar concentrators compatible with modern windows.

Scientists have created a transparent solar coating that turns ordinary windows into clean energy generators without affecting clarity. Using cholesteric liquid crystal layers, the coating redirects polarized sunlight to the window edges where solar cells collect it. A small prototype already powered a fan, and full-sized windows could boost efficiency 50-fold while cutting the need for costly photovoltaic cells.


Useful, if it's affordable.

The revolution will be hand-spun

Artisans have long pushed back against the logic of industrial capitalism. In the 19th century, the Arts and Crafts Movement emerged as a response to the alienation and disenchantment of mass production. Thinkers such as William Morris and John Ruskin believed that the beauty and joy of a product should not be sacrificed for efficiency and profit. Though the movement has been romanticised and limited by its class dynamics, it planted the seeds for a more human economy that valued the dignity of labour and the connection between maker, object, and environment. Today’s craft echoes that ethos but with a different kind of urgency among the backdrop of ecological breakdown, supply chain fragility, and a loneliness epidemic. Craft is not simply nostalgic and aesthetic, it is a degrowth practice. It offers a lived critique of a world and consumption habits driven by speed and scale. Craft models an alternative that is grounded in sufficiency, care, and embodied knowledge.


If you get frustrated with artificial intelligence, fast fashion, the carbon footprint of global shipping, etc. then handicrafts offer an effective means of protest.  You don't have to make everything yourself, but everything that you do make strikes directly against the juggernaut of contemporary capitalism.

One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It's way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things.

This is exactly the kind of problem I expected to come out of AI-generated code.  If all you reward is speed, then you'll get sloppy fake code like this.  If you want to persist in trying to make AI create usable code, then you also have to reward it for accuracy and penalize it for lies and mistakes.  The trouble is, AI is bad at juggling contradictory commands like "Do this as fast as possible to be accurate, but not so fast that it produces bad output."  It becomes very prone to freezing.

Annnnnnd that's why human computer programmers are valuable.