Occasional Update 26-3

When I said these would be occasional, I meant it!

Spring has sprung here in RVA. The pollination is upon us and everything is covered in a gold-colored dust. Ugh. However, now that the threat of a serious freeze is done until November, I can pull the camper out of storage. I will be spending this afternoon de-winterizing the camper and hopefully checking off that all systems are working properly. Our first camping weekend of the year is in early May.

I got to spend a few days in Chicago for work in March, which was fun. We were hanging out in Buddy Guy's Blues Club and Buddy himself popped in to do a couple of tunes. I think he does that fairly regularly, but it was still a thrill to pay $16 to see some local blues band on a Sunday night and to get an appearance by Buddy at no extra charge.

The world continue to be a complete shit show, mostly due to the leadership of my country. Sorry friends outside of the US. I'm coping mostly by focusing on making my very local world a better place. I can't fix the world or the US, but I can make a difference in Richmond, VA.

I'm in the final turn of my Virginia Master Naturalist training. I have really enjoyed going to class every Tuesday night. Not only am I learning a lot about the natural world, I get to hang out with 30+ other plant and nature nerds. After working from home all day, I need that little bit of real human interaction. I've still got to pass the final exam (not worried about it) and turn in my final project, which is actually already done. From May to July I'll be volunteering with the National Park Service, tracking breeding bird populations at Malvern Hill Battlefield Park. I'm also training in a couple of weeks to certify homes as bird friendly habitats. I need to find a non-bird related project to work on too. I could easily do all my volunteer hours on bird related projects, but I want to use this opportunity to force myself into something new.

The zine linked above is not the only application of what I've learned. Last weekend I ripped out the plants in my front bed and replaced them with Virginia native plants. The front row is Dwarf Iris, the yellow flowering plants are Golden Ragwort, and the two evergreens in the back are Shamrock Inkberry. 7 days after planting they are all still green, so hopefully a good sign that I didn't kill anything planting it.

Before

After

I even have a few links.

Two blog posts about the value and importance of physical media hit my radar this morning.

Ephermal Media
How has lack of ownership changed art

Michael Hartley shared his experiences as a juror on a cold case rape case.

Sort of related to something Andreas wrote about in his linkdump yesterday, The Art of Asking Why wrote about how they are using AI to edit and polish blog posts. Unlike some (many?) in the Fediverse, I'm not anti AI. AI is inevitable, and I'd rather keep up with what it is doing and not stick my proverbial fingers in my ears and sing la-la-la while I pretend we can put this genie back in the bottle. We can't. The business models are incredibly problematic right now, but there are open source models you can run locally. I experimented with that this week, and it was fine, but much slower than online. Maybe I picked a model that was too much for my aging computer. Techdirt has a very interesting take on AI in proclaiming that it might be our best shot to save the open web.

And finally, and also from Techdirt, how attending the latest No Kings rally was a life-affirming experience.

Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.