A solar beach umbrella, a solar powered cooler — these are the kind of gadgets coming out of CES this year.

But with climate change issues on one hand and the AI apocalypse on the other, do people have time to go to the beach?

#Tech #Gadgets #Reflections

Hiring: We are looking for a Linux Support Specialist to join our growing team support team. This position will focus on Linux support efforts across all relevant social surfaces where Framework has a presence. https://jobs.lever.co/framework/1e7b0169-520e-4207-bafc-b454cec10809

Hey: Can I get #fedihired maybe?

Best fit with my 19 years of experience would be building and managing software teams, or writing code myself. I'm full-stack, but I have more fun with backend + database work.

Preferences:
* Org size <=200 people
* 100% remote work (otherwise, PDX)
* Org is not currently ditching DEI work
* Org is engaged in doing something that will buy the Earth some extra runtime...
* ...or at least trying very hard not to shorten it

Boosts = <3

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hornkatie/

To add to the #Language posts ...

In Malay (or Bhasa Melayu), cake is "kek" and cheese is "keju". So cream cheese is "krim keju" and cheese cake is kek keju.

And of course, cottage cheese is "keju kotej" and blue cheese is "keju biru". Note the similarity between biru/blue ... same root? No idea.

And sure, the etymology here for the cream and cottage words probably was just Malayisation (not a word) of the English words. I didn't do the research to see if that was the case.

But "biru" is the Malay word for blue and that seems to have come from either Javanese, or Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. So not just taking the English word.

And on the other hand, the English "blue" apparently is of Germanic origin meaning shimmering/lustrous. But where did the Germanic word come from?

Do you know an artist??

I’m looking for someone to draw me a new profile picture, and i would prefer to pay a real artist instead of some shady corporation or AI

So if you know someone to suggest who takes commission, share this post with them!

Any #boost appreciated!

#artist #profilepicture

LinkedIn continues to be a wretched hole for finding work. Thought I'd give it another go here:

I'm a technical writer and software developer based in Berlin. I'm looking for work as a writer or developer with a company that has a legal presence in Germany (for my visa). Remote is more than fine.

I have experience writing Java professionally. I've done training in Go, Rust, and Typescript along with frontend frameworks like React, Vue, and Astro. I'll learn whatever I'm given to learn, really.

@sfwrtr My personal opinion is that the story is what comes to you, how it is shaped by the characters. So you should tell it in the way that feels right/natural to you. So I wouldn't really worry about if it's too jumpy.

Plus, I've read many a story where the POV jumped where it was really interesting because the multiple POVs provided counterpoints to the other POVs. So it's in how it's told than how manly POVs there are? 🙂

@Blahmage I have a couple of science fiction books here, if you'd like to take a look 🙂

https://books.farook.org

@Emme_Klama Me too 🙂This and "If" by Rudyard Kipling ...

@crcollins

The painting and the words came to me in a dream 🙂 I think this is the beginning to a novel that's been in the back of my mind.

--

It was the night they came for us.

The flame hair trees wafted gently in the non-existent breeze, perfectly framing Mount Coinjar like a criminal mastermind in peak-Machiavelli mode. I could almost feel the bramble bugs, their tiny pinprick eyes peering out of their black blob bodies, waiting, waiting, waiting for an unwary target to come by.

#Writing #Dreams
A digital painting based on the…

Following on from yesterday's thread on parallel language, something interesting I learnt while learning Malay was that their word for cheese is "keju".

This might not mean much to to a lot of people, but Sinhalese speakers will recognize it since it's the same word in Sinahala 🙂

The etymology here was a bit clearer though. I was certain that this was from Portuguese "queijo" (Spanish queso) since Sinhalese has a bunch of borrowed words from Portuguese.

I didn't know that the Portuguese got to that region though. I knew the Dutch did since Batavia was held by them (I remember because of a "Phantom" comic 😛) but apparently the Portuguese were there before the Dutch moved in.

Interesting how language moves and flows, right?

It's even more interesting when you consider that the Spanish "queso" comes from Latin and the root word for the Latin term was probably a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "to ferment".

So the word went all the way (possibly) from India to Europe and then came back to East Asia and Sri Lanka 😛

#Language

Just had this conversation with my wife.

Me: It's .. not enforce but ...

Her: Influence?

Me: Yes, that's the one! They are a cult like that other one, you know the one which is supposed to control everything?

Her: The illuminati?

Me: Yes!

I think I've lost my words and now have to stop being a writer 😛

#Words #Memory #GettingOld

So, this year I inherited the Polymath Reading Challenge from its creator. 📚

It is a yearly 12-book nonfiction reading challenge. You read books of your choice for 12 categories, and post your reviews of them. I have had immense fun finding books for topics I otherwise wouldn't read.

Would people want to join in if I also ran it on Mastodon?

#PolymathReadingChallenge #Reading #books #bookstodon #ReadingChallenge #nonfiction

I am fascinated by how languages evolve parallel terms.

For example, Tamil and Malayalam both have the term "adikkiratha"/"adikkiya" which literally means "Do you hit" but coloquially means "Do you drink"?

(Parallel to take a hit/swig maybe?")

In Sinhalese you have "gahanwada"? Which also means "Will you hit?" and is coloquially used to mean "Do you drink?"

Now did these two uses evolve parallely? Or did Sinhalese borrow the term from a neighbouring language?

Or was it something else?

I'm curious and wish I knew how to answer the question 🙂

#Language

Looking at the new Instagram ML-generated accounts, all of them follow 17-18 other accounts — 6 are Meta properties (FB, Insta etc.) and the others are the other ML generated accounts.

One of them, curiously, follows a human (or at least, an account which is not labeled a bot)

Of the remaining bots, 8 are more or less female (one is a fairy) and 4 are male (one is an alien and another a robot — a robot bot 😛).

Five of these could be black, and two might be Asian.

So that's the breakdown as it stands now.

I'm still confused as to what this is in aid of though ...

#Instaverse
Screenshot showing all the acco…

I don't understand the point of Instagram populating their "universe" with generated people.

Are they saying that there aren't enough real people on Instagram?

Or that they want more diversity and so will create fake people to diversify?

What is the point?

#Tech #Dystopia

@londondreamtime I think even without AI, this is probably a thing with the advent of print-on-demand.

I published my first book 20 years ago via print on demand but never got a printed copy (I did proof it before submitting though) since I'd have to pay quite a bit more than the cover price to get it down to Sri Lanka, where I was then.

So if there were issues with the print version, I never knew of them since I'd never even seen the printed book.

I'm a sucker for love stories — especially if they're offbeat, or improbable. Here are the most improbable ones I've seen recently:

Miss You - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32553846
Hi Nanna - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt25433734
Super Machi - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11603828

Interestingly (or not 😛) each one is from a different year from the past three years.

#Movies #Tamil #Telugu

New year, new server, new #introduction !

I've become a #cinephile over the past 5 or 10 years, so I mostly talk about #movies here. I started a #MovieReview blog about two years ago (link in profile), covering new releases (no spoilers).

I'm also a #PhysicalMedia collector, both movies and #music (mostly #rock / #metal ).

Outside that, I'm a professional #programmer living in the Northeastern US. I spend a bunch of time on the #pickleball court. And I love (and collect) #BoardGames

Hello!

Hey!

I am looking for work again. So if you are Germany based and looking for an awesome machine learning, data scientist, statistician, software human I want to talk to you!

#fedihired #getfedihired