Brinens and Things

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights] I have officially survived my twenties

[cw: illness] Variolation, part 4: Secondhand [three comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) A day in the life of a Tumblr user.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oak23) The importance of ego-syntonic clothing.


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by nenya_kanadka) How to make Wikia actually usable (and Dreamwidth even more usable).


[cw: illness, medical, (fairly mild) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cordeliaflyte) Fantasies about easy solutions to medical problems: not always pleasant.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms, though also kind of jv) Tumblr Backup Awareness Week, and a modernised version of tumblr-utils. (Though I ran into enough problems getting the python3 version of tumblr-utils working that I eventually gave up and went back to python2.)


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by thedarlingone) More on the mobile-accessibility updates to Dreamwidth.


[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by porthole) The distinction between fetishes that can be done in real life and those that cannot (and the grey areas between).


[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ladiesloveduranduran) Which of these U.S. cities would you be most willing to live in?


[cw: illness, (arguably) poison] [Updated part of WordPress thread (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in respose to keynes-fetlife-mutual) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. [three comments, two of which are new]


[cw: illness, vomit, unsanitary] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by toasthaste; in response to robustcornhusk) Norovirus prevention tips.


[cw: sexism, embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by RaxKingIsDead) Accidental street harassment.


[cw: corporate bullshit, (arguably) government bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by JoshGreenberg27) How to get government-funded U.S. tax preparation. (It's still not 100% clear, but it looks like probably *not* for non-residents. On the ""bright"" side, I'm below the income threshold to have to file at all for 2023, and there's no further stimulus checks to claim by doing it anyway.)


[Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by gummybugg; mostly in response to sacrificedtoatree) I have unlocked a fiction-writing skill tree! [two comments]


[arguably cw: guns] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by trailertrashin) "The Glass Eye - Adult Greeting Cards": a real store that really exists, somehow.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by whatcha-thinkin) Assuming you had access to perfect medical care at no additional cost, which of these fixes would you want most?

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Links:

[strong cw: illness] [Patreon; Wayback] (by Violet Blue; h/t siderea) A list of COVID-19 resources, consisting largely of people doing their best to navigate things on their own because God knows there are no trustworthy authorities left on this. I bought a $4 bottle of store-brand mouthwash (contains cetylpyridinium chloride) because of this post: I figure it's an extremely low-risk bet.

On a similar though shorter/narrower note, https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

(Update from January: ...if someone who *doesn't* now have a history of COVID infection (or who can otherwise psychologically handle it) can pick through all the stuff in Violet's news roundups about Post-Acute Sequelae Even Worse Than Previously Believed to get at the actionable advice, I would appreciate it)


[cw: illness] [Absolutely Maybe; Wayback] (by Hilda Bastian) Researchers have not given up on creating a COVID vaccine with sterilising and/or durable immunity! Things may still improve.


[cw: corporate bullshit] [PCMag; Wayback] (by Chloe Albanesius; h/t Violet Blue) Obituaries for tech products and services that were shut down in 2023.


[Youtube; Invidious] (by Pope Kallisti; h/t blazingdarkness) A MIDI conversion of "Bring Me to Life".


[Live Science; Wayback] (by Victoria Atkinson) I told somebody in a nuclear-vs-solar argument a while back that I'd care less about solar if ordinary citizens could get household-scale nuclear batteries. There has been non-zero progress towards this.


Two laugh-rule entries:
[Beware The Shadows; Wayback] (by Brett J. Talley) The 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students (or, fairly likely, ""high school students""). (I've seen a lot of these before, but not all of them.)

My favourite is "Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."


[brr; Wayback] (by Anonymous; h/t Jenn) Showering at the South Pole. (This whole blog is amazing, though usually more in a "wow, Antarctica is such a place" way than a "funny" way.)

Comments on my own posts:

[N/A]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tototavros) Recommendations for podcasts (and, more importantly, transcripts) about American history. (Update: AFAICT only the *later* episodes of Presidencies of the United States have transcripts. The earliest episode transcript I could find was "3.28 - The Calming Seas". Still, in medias res is something.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to analytically) Why use Spotify as a music player when you can use Youtube? (Not to even mention Quod Libet or Odyssey.)

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Favourite masks.

[cw: medical, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by rustingbridges) The financial intricacies of dental insurance.

[Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael James) A gentle correction of one of the most important omissions I encountered on my wiki-walk through Canadian personal-finance blogs, RRSP reporting edition.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Hypophantasia and dream accuracy.

[mild cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by TrinCyboid) From the people who brought you mystery melons, we also have 24 liveblogging. (Both are hilarious.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Egg-boiling techniques.

[cw: food, (arguably) poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) More on egg-boiling techniques, now with energy conservation.

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moonlit-tulip) Holidays and the value of routine-breaking (or, perhaps, routine-keeping on a higher level).

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by lunartulip) The wonders of "details" HTML tags.

[cw: poison, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to humanfist) The importance of avoiding home radon exposure.

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Links:

[cw: corporate bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by ponett) BreezeWiki: an adversarially interoperable Wikia frontend that is (unlike the official one) *actually usable*.

[strong cw: illness] [BBC; Wayback] (by Zaria Gorvett; h/t cvirtue) Measles: much worse than previously believed.

[Explain Shell] (by Idan Kamara; h/t Ilzolende) Command-line-to-English machine translation.

[Internet Archive] How to archive your tweets with the Wayback Machine. (The ingest-URLs-from-spreadsheet bit is intriguing regardless.)

(well, September 21st was the day, but I found out about it this morning)

Automated! Offline! Open-source! Reputable-author! Transcription! That doesn't make you write your own interface software!

(you *can* write your own interface software, if you want, but you don't *have* to)

It even has multiple languages and the option for foreign-speech-to-English-text, though *currently* it sucks at the languages I'm likely to encounter. I'll stick with English-only for now.

Let's feed it the first minute of my standard test audio: me reading aloud the prologue of Ptolemy's Gate. For comparison, here's the real text:

Alexandria: 125 B.C.

The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard; they made no more sound on impact than the pattering of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless, sniffing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark gardens, among the tamarisks and date palms, toward the quarters where the boy lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in its sleep; far away in the desert, jackals cried.

They went on pointed toe-tips, leaving no trace in the long wet grass. Their robes flittered at their backs, fragmenting their shadows into wisps and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight, no noise. A crocodile djinni, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was undisturbed though they passed within a scale's breadth of his tail. For humans, it wasn't bad--

("it wasn't badly done", but the audio is cut off at the one-minute mark)

whisper voice-sample-speaking-age-25-1-minute-clip.mp3 --model small.en

[note: running this command consumed 2 CPU threads and about 2.5GB of RAM]

Output:
Alexandria, 125 B.C. The Assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard, they made no more sound and impact in the pattern of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless sniffing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark gardens among the town risks and date palms, towards the quarters where the boy lay at rest. A tree on a chain stirred in its sleep. Far away in the desert, jackals cried. They went on pointed toe-tips, leaving no trace in the long, wet grass. Their robes flittered at their backs, fragmenting their shadows in the wisps and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves, shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight, no noise. The crocodile genie, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was on the stirrup, though they passed through the scales, breathless his tail. For humans, it wasn't bad.

*Fuck yes*. Oh, it's not perfect, but it's *basically* intact. And, let's face it, my voice is *not* easy-mode, and neither is this vocabulary: I'm especially impressed that it understood "their robes flittered", when honestly if I didn't already know that's what it was I might not have transcribed it correctly myself.

Very slow, though: closer to six times *slower* than real-time than the claimed six times faster (on default settings). (Probably my hardware is underpowered: I'm running it on a six-year-old laptop aimed at businessfolk.) That is...slow enough that it may actually be unable to keep up with the amount of audio I produce, let alone work on the backlog. (Although, at 2 CPU threads and 2.5 GB of RAM, I could probably run two Whispers in parallel overnight, assigning each of them a different series of files. And I wonder if I could rope in the TV's prosthetic brain...)

Hmm...

whisper voice-sample-speaking-age-25-1-minute-clip.mp3 --model tiny.en

Alexander, 125 BC. The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows darkened the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard, they made no more sound on impact in the pattern of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless sniffing at the air, then away they stole, through the dark gardens among the cameras and date palms, towards the corners where the boy lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in sleep, far away and desert jackals cried. They went on pointed toe tips leaving no trace in the long lit grass. The ropes were there at their backs, fragmenting their shadows in the wrists and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves, shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight? No noise. A crocodile, genie, standing sentry at a quick sacred core, will end the story of the past of the skills best with his tail. For humans, it wasn't bad.

My inner 00's selves are impressed to have even made it *that* far, but it's not quite good enough to do actual work with. (Although it's interesting that *this* one correctly got "cheetah" when small.en didn't.)

whisper voice-sample-speaking-age-25-1-minute-clip.mp3 --model base.en

Alexandria, 125 BC. The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard, they made no more sound on impact in the pattern of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless, the thing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark gardens among the town risks and date poems, towards the quarters where the boy lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in its sleep, far away and desert jaggles cried. They went on pointed toe tips, leaving no trace in the long wet grass. Their robes swillied at their backs, fragmenting their shadows in the wisps and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fawns. No sight, no noise. The crocodile genie, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was undister of the late past when his scales pressed his tail. For humans, it wasn't bad.

*Slightly* better overall than tiny.en, but not by much, and not strictly superior (it makes some mistakes that tiny.en didn't).

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If anyone has the hardware specs to pull off running "medium.en" or "large", I'd be interested to see what you get out of putting the clip through it. (Though I can't outsource most of my transcription needs to anyone else, for privacy reasons: this would just be for curiosity's sake, and to know what to look forward to when I someday get my hands on higher-grade hardware myself.)

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Overall verdict: I am so fucking hyped for this development†, and especially about what can be pulled off if you combine it with Recoll indexing.

The transcription software we (I) have been hoping for is here, right now.

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†my brain has never been good at generating excitement qualia, but intellectually I am so fucking hyped and I'm not *completely* incapable of emotional excitement ↩

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(edit: part 2)

Speaking of recommendations, I was very pleased to learn a few days ago that the paid version of Pyrebound (with added appendices) is now available!

(Only on Amazon, so I had to brush up on my Kindle jailbreaking. Did you know that Kindle for Windows v1.17, the version famous for having known exploits that allow for DRM stripping, is available on (the shadier parts of) the Internet Archive *and Amazon still lets you log in through it*? And yes, the checksum checks out.

I'm not giving out copies of the paid content, though: the jailbroken file is for personal use. If you want a local copy of the website, on the other hand, I *can* get you that.)

Anyway, I gladly gave him money, primarily as a thank-you for how much fun Pyrebound was and secondarily because I wanted the appendices. The story itself is still up on WordPress, and I highly recommend it.

(inspired by https://dynomight.net/training/)


* Retractable keychains: so you can keep your key attached to your bag *and* unlock the door with it at the same time.


* Foaming soap dispensers: pre-lathered, for your convenience. Also means liquid soap is less likely to fly out of your hands while trying to lather it and go to waste. I've been reusing a Bath and Body Works foam dispenser for several years, refilling it with store-brand liquid soap diluted with an ~equal amount of water.


* Alcohol wipes: you probably know about their uses in first aid and injections, but did you know they're also great for disinfecting smartphones? Unlike Lysol wipes, they don't leave a residue on your screen, and they don't gradually disintegrate the biodegradeable case your phone came with. If you've adopted the practice of washing your hands upon returning home (also highly recommended, BTW), consider adding these to your decontamination routine.

(Note: the general consensus seems to be that unprotected screens can *probably* handle disinfectants, but that to be on the safe side it's better to have a screen protector.)


* Emesis bags: Do you sleep in a loft bed, making it difficult to rush to the toilet in an emergency? Do you have a history of stomach bugs that linger for weeks or months? Are you tired of banging into the bucket at the foot of your bed when you roll over?

...no? Just me? Well, you should be aware of the existence of emesis bags *anyway*, just in case.


* Couch blankets: to help keep you warm without having to keep the heat turned up as much. I bring one of my bed's blanket layers downstairs with me in the morning and bring it back up at night.


* Acoustic earmuffs: for when people are polluting your soundscape. Sounds won't disappear completely (at least with my model) unless they were already fairly faint, but they'll at least be softer and easier to ignore. (Mine is one of the generic Chinese ones: they were going by MPOW at the time, but it looks like their current incarnation is ProCase.)

(It might work even better in combination with earplugs, but I can't stand having things in my ear canal.)


* Shoulder-strap water-bottle pouches: as a kid I used to have a small water bottle on my utility belt, but I've found these to be more convenient to use.


* Anti-onion goggles: for those of you who like onions, or those of us who occasionally make onion-containing dishes for other people. (Also good against any other particulate you don't want getting in your eyes: for most people onions pose the most day-to-day threat, but once you have goggles lying around you can also use them when heading into plumes of wildfire smoke, sickrooms, and so on.) These ones fit okay over glasses.


* Shopping bags that fold up into a built-in pouch: good to have one on hand for when you unexpectedly need to carry things. Mine is a grocery store-brand bag from a store that doesn't seem to make them anymore.

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Some things I didn't include in this list because I already wrote about them elsewhere: utility belts, sun lamps, popcorn salt in shaker bottles, mosquito-net suits, pocket umbrellas, Aveeno oat-and-shea-butter moisturiser, and of course pollen masks.

Comments on my own posts:

The one about thermostats and code-switching

[cw: what it says on the tin (no pictures)] Recipe: Crispy Chickpeas [one comment, not counting the postscript]

[cw: what it says on the tin] In which Brin continues to have finance Issues very different from *other* people's finance Issues [one comment, not counting the postscript]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[arguably cw: corporate bullshit] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by wolffyluna) The cost-benefit tradeoffs of a potential job. [two comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by feotakahari) Definitions of utopia.

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Links:

[Mobile Syrup; Wayback] (by Dean Daley) It's possible to get Android 12 to run on an 11-year-old smartphone! Technically. Mostly.

[Astronomy; Wayback] (by Eric Betz) What will it be like to watch Betelgeuse go supernova?

[Audubon; Wayback] (by Kenn Kaufman; h/t Siderea) The four sexes of white-throated sparrows.


Two laugh-rule entries:
[cw: apocalypse] [AO3; Wayback] (by Nestra) NPR during the zombie apocalypse. (This would probably be much funnier if I had any significant familiarity with NPR, but it's still funny without it.)

[arguably cw: violence] [Involuntary Book Club; Wayback] (by Max) "I'm tired of all these grimdark fantasy novels. Have you read anything fun lately?"



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Comments on my own posts:

[none suitable for this section]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Making your home's heating robust against electricity outages. (Despite what you might think, having a natural-gas furnace is actually pretty useless for this.) [three comments]

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by siderea) Tips on wresting control of your smartphone back from the corps.

[cw: poverty, (arguably) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by spacefroggity) Is the availability of cheap gemstones (thanks to lab-growing techniques) good? Depends on what jewellery is for.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Getting used to OpenStreetMaps.

[cw: poverty, homelessness, discourse (earlier in thread)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by muchnerve; in response to togglessymposium) What would a world that outlawed long-term rental of living space look like?

[arguably cw: poverty] [Modern FImily; Wayback] (OP by Court and Adam) Self-knowledge is key to a fulfilling life.

(I mean also I kind of *do* feel deprived, but largely because I'm not saving *enough*, seeing as how it's not mathematically possible to save enough when you're only making like ten grand a year in the first place. But that's another matter, and not something I really wanted to get into there: I basically wrote that comment in character as probable-medium-term-future!me. And I *am* better off than in, like, 2017, so there's that.)

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Links:

[arguably cw: amnesia] [Medway Music; Wayback] (by Steve Cole) A guide on how to preserve your local music scene using the Internet Archive.



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

[fairly mild cw: food] Comment and Link Roundup: August 9th, 2021

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: apocalypse, scrupulosity] [My Own Advisor; Wayback] (OP by Mark Seed) A gentle correction of one of the most important omissions I encountered on my wiki-walk through Canadian personal-finance blogs, climate-crisis individual-action edition.

[arguably cw: bugs] [Mastodon; Wayback] (OP by monsterblue@dragon.style) Today in spreading the good word of PPE: wearable mosquito nets.

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tarhalindur) Laptop recommendations for an erratic-supply-chain world.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Peaches, the easy way(s).

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Links:

[strong cw: war, murder] [Data Secrets Lox part 1; Data Secrets Lox part 2; Wayback part 1; Wayback part 2] (by Chevalier Mal Fet) I don't read Data Secrets Lox much, but every once in a while I take a look at what's won the Alexander Prize for Effortposting. Turns out in May and June one of the people there wrote a whole-ass history book on 20th-century South Korea, with a focus on the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. Well-written, and a good look into a time period from after most history lessons stop.

(Note: I did not proofread a whole book, but the bits I double-checked seemed accurate.)

[Patagonia; Wayback] (by Sakeus Bankson) Zippers: the bane of high-quality, low-waste clothing manufacturers.

Laugh rule:
[arguably cw: unreality] [gwern.net; Wayback]

The lion-hunting paper was duly accepted for publication, with one editorial alteration: our footnote to a footnote was ruthlessly removed.<sup>4

4</sup>Monsters! —Editor. ↩

[cw: unreality] [Wikipedia; Wayback] Not a laugh-rule link, but it needed to be after that one: while we're talking about H. Petard, take a look at Ong's Hat.



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