ng_moonmoth

I habitually keep a lot of browser windows (and tabs) open, and take advantage of the browser's feature to reopen windows and tabs on restart. This isn't going to work on KDE, though the situation is not as dire as it was on Pop!_OS.

On MacOS, you can right click browser's icon on the task bar, and get a menu of all the windows (not tabs) the browser has open, in alphabetical order by the title of the window's currently selected tab. Each takes one line, and you need a lot of windows for them not to fit on a modern monitor; IIRC, even if you manage that the menu proves to be scrollable. I.e. you can find that window, unless of course you've selected a different tab and forgot to go back to the tab with the name you recognize.

This isn't as good as one past browser/window manager combination I used, which also included tabs in the list, and the change to MacOS took some getting used to. (For a while, I'd often have multiple copies of the same tab, since I simply couldn't find them.)

But it's orders of magnitude better than Pop!_OS, which offers you a selection among thumbnails of your various windows (not tabs), which are of course indistinguishable at that scale. (It had the same problem with shell windows.)

KDE offers a choice of image only or image-and-title. But it displays the various images horizontally, so a long title takes up too much space. And even a window with a tiny title takes up too much space, because of the inclusion of the useless and unwanted thumbnail.

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ysabetwordsmith

These 773,000-year-old fossils may reveal our shared human ancestor

Exceptionally well-dated fossils from Morocco capture a moment nearly 800,000 years ago, right at a major turning point in Earth’s magnetic history.

Fossils from a Moroccan cave have been dated with remarkable accuracy to about 773,000 years ago, thanks to a magnetic signature locked into the surrounding sediments. The hominin remains show a blend of ancient and more modern features, placing them near a pivotal branching point in human evolution. These individuals likely represent an African population close to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and cold. Much of the snow has melted.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/7/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I refilled the hopper feeder.

I've seen a female cardinal.

.

Current Mood: busy

arlie

One of the traditional MacOS features is a single dock, that appears at the bottom of one of your monitors. From time to time it moves to another monitor; it took me a year or two to figure out that the moves were not random, but happened when you moved your mouse too close to the bottom of some screen that didn't currently contain the dock. This would be interpreted as a request to move the dock to that screen, on top of whatever you were trying to do there.

The KDE equivalent is called a panel, and can contain more than just the sort of things MacOS puts in their dock. You can have as many panels as you want, on as many of your monitors as you want, even 2 or 3 on the same monitor if you prefer. They don't have to have the same contents - you can put a panel with clock and various status widgets on the top of your screen, approximating what MacOS has there, and a second panel at the bottom, with task bar and related items, approximating what MacOS has there. Or you can do what I did, and put all of these in one panel, at the bottom of the screen, but put such a panel on all the screens you have.

There are some glitches, and not all of them may be learning curve. But most of them involve configuring the extra flexibility MacOS lacks.

This morning I started the day on my Mac, taking advantage of Safari's existing history to conveniently reorder a product I'd just run low on. The dock made one of its unintended moves. That's been an aggravation approximately forever. But this time instead of snarling at Apple, I smiled happily at the thought that soon I won't be dealing with this any more.

ysabetwordsmith

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

How would society change if men were able to get pregnant and men and women both had an equal chance of getting pregnant?

Abortion and birth control would be free and legal everywhere. Family leave would be generous. Childcare would be free. It would be a lot better all around.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

"Is AI more important than climate?"

When the BBC recently asked Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai whether the build-out of AI is more important than climate, the question briefly cut through the hype that usually surrounds the AI boom. Pichai acknowledged that AI is dramatically increasing energy in ways current systems “can’t fully cope.”

Another way in which humanity is too stupid to stop sawing off the branch we're all standing on.

AI is not more important than the climate, it is just the latest threat to the climate. AI is a massive energy hog that we cannot afford at a time when we need to be cutting emissions as fast as possible. The most effective way to do that is to use less energy. AI is the opposite of helpful in this regard.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cold. The snow is melting in patches.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, a pair of cardinals, and a starling.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 2/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to

fuzzyred, the Iron Horses page is now up! Go check out this thread to see if you've missed any poems.

Current Mood: accomplished

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, you can now read the rest of "An Inkling of Things to Come." Shiv and his classmates finish up their first session of worldbuilding.

Current Mood: busy

arlie

I am a paid subscriber to the Guardian. Thanks to the wonders of modern digital technology, I regularly find myself logged out from their website. Today I launched a number of tabs from their main page, and read a couple before they started demanding I log in to continue reading. After I logged into one tab, I had to do it again on every single remaining already open tab, though at least clicking on login was enough - I didn't have to provide account and password - though they did require a second click on a confirmation screen before I could read the article in that tab.

One of the tabs was In an era of frictionless digital experiences .... It was one of those requiring this annoying login friction. And I couldn't find any way to leave a comment about the inanity of the author's belief in frictionless digital, short of a formal letter to the editor.

In other news, Nextdoor has changed something about their spam messages such that I had to personally classify yesterday morning's message as spam. Hopefully that will shut them up again for a time.

On the good side, I'm enjoying setting up my Kubuntu system, and hopeful that most of the friction I'm experiencing is just learning curve, and any changes I make will result in things staying fixed.

But a large ugly raspberry to Steam, where I was reduced to searching a very large directory tree, looking for files containing a particular string, to find the files I needed to edit to take various games out of full screen mode, since they've broken the UI they used to have for doing this. That took a while, and was probably beyond the capabilities of anyone who didn't grow up on the command line with tools like find, xargs, and grep. (Maybe Kubuntu has a contents search GUI - IIRC, MacOS does - but if so I haven't found it.)

Also a small raspberry to Good Old Games, for reacting to changes in linux distros by making various games no longer available for linux, rather than either updating their dosbox packaging, or offering the old packages - or even the raw games - with a warning that you'll need to download and configure a recent dosbox yourself. (I salvaged my copies of the obsolete versions from a backup. And I'm not happy that GOG promises I can re-download any game I bought from their library, forever, but at this point to get those games I'd probably have to download them from a windows system.)

amaebi

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ysabetwordsmith

Today's theme is London.

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Current Mood: busy

redbird

A few days ago, I ordered a pair of snow sneakers that I thought would probably be too big, because the places I looked online were sold out of everything in my size.

They arrived today, I tried them on after dinner, and they seem to fit. Adrian helped me adjust the fastening so the left shoe isn't too tight around my calf. They fasten with velcro rather than shoelaces, which may be an advantage: the laces on my shoes tend to loosen as I walk, so I have to stop and retie them moderately often. (Flat laces are a bit better than round ones, double-knotting makes no difference, and please don't try trouble-shooting this in comments.)

Apparently I take a men's size 8 extra-wide in LLBean boots, which may be useful: more shoes come in a men's size 8 than size 7, and the selection of wide shoes is larger in men's sizes/styles than in women's.

ysabetwordsmith

The Impact Fee Illusion

Why “growth paying for growth” often leaves cities weaker, not stronger.

The public discussion usually starts something like this: a new development brings new residents, more traffic, and greater demand for public services. Roads, schools, pipes, and parks don’t build themselves. Someone has to pay for them. Asking growth to pay for growth sounds fair. It sounds prudent. And yet, many cities that rely heavily on impact fees still find themselves financially fragile. They struggle to maintain infrastructure, stretch operations thin, and quietly drift toward insolvency.

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Current Mood: busy

shadaras

On Sunday I was like "I am dragging myself to aikido out of obligation and habit" and my friend C was like "yeah you look beat". Aikido was good, though, two of K-sensei's students who mostly only show up to her Tues/Thurs morning classes were at weapons class, and showed up early to learn some more basic weapon stuff, which meant that when I showed up my typical ~15min early I got pulled into immediately demonstrating an exercise and then practicing in with the others.

Also went "yeah, the absolute hardest thing to do when practicing ma'ai with weapons is for uke to not flinch" to one of those students, prompting sensei to pause class so that she could more formally talk about how difficult yet important a practice this is. Because, well, the natural instinct when someone is stabbing at you with a weapon is to move out of the way. This is an excellent survival instinct! However! That is not the practice when nage is supposed to be learning how to enter in such that they can properly stab through uke.

On Monday I woke up and was like "I feel like shit!" and have proceeded to spend the entire week thus far dragging myself to work because Capitalism while keeping myself vaguely person-shaped via cold medicine. This has worked out alright mostly because for the majority of this week I haven't had to do anything particularly cognitively difficult at work. (Tasks included: "Put up linears on this floor", which was interrupted by "Be firewatch for the person doing welding", before I was allowed to return to that first task, and then told to do various other things that meant putting up one set of linears that should've taken a few hours took like three days.)

I also went to bed at like 8:30pm last night (due to being at work from 6:30am-2:30pm and class from 5pm-7:45pm... not counting commute time for either, of course...) and woke up this morning like "wow I feel like a person!" until I got up and was like "oh we have CHANGED kinds of feeling ugh, not removed it, rip".

Things I have spent time doing:

- Catching up on the Great Gundam Project (podcast), by which I mean I have now caught up to like last autumn/the end of the Dragonball Z season (which is about the Gundam adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is apparently surprisingly good, but they spent more time talking about DBZ, their backup/non-Gundam show) (considering that this is a podcast I listen to in large part for going "please let me gain knowledge of anime people talk about but which I am only occasionally interested in watching", learning more about DBZ is genuinely a delight.) There is still so much more GGP to catch up on. xD This is a great podcast for listening to during work so long as I'm working alone, because I think it's generally entertaining and also I don't care if I miss a bit due to NOISE or BRIEF CONVERSATION, since I'm not invested in the details of the anime. (I am invested in The Episode Number Pokemon Name Game, though. I do not care about Pokemon. I do not know Pokemon. I think making the host who did not grow up playing Pokemon guess what Pokemon the episode number belongs to is a very funny game because I also do not know Pokemon and so listening to someone go "uh it looks like this, maybe it's called [something related to what it looks like]?" is very fun.)

- Watching FatT's Outward letsplay (which is technically a patreon bonus for their side podcast about videogams xD), by which I mean putting it on as background noise and looking over at the video every time Jack and Austin start going "oh no" or "what's THAT". The idle noise of people playing a videogame I don't have specific investment in but do enjoy seeing progression for is such a particular form of entertainment that usually I only like as background for doing chores, but hey if I'm feeling meh it works well more broadly.

- Thinking about, but not writing, story xD Like. How does one make it impossible to know what happened to someone who got kidnapped when "you can magically communicate short messages to known people over distance and get a response" is a given? The answer is magic warding, which is Deeply Concerning when other states that get No Connection (rather than No Response) would be, like. Unconsciousness/death. (Sleep probably feels different.) (This isn't even going to come up until I get through another few things!)

- I have also been keeping up with FatT: Perpetua, FatT: Realis, and CR: Araman and am enjoying them all. xD No deep thoughts, they're all fun but in very different ways/genres.

sweetsorcery

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chanter1944

That's not hyperbole. This one's truly gasp-worthy.

Over at Love And Hisses, they have a male tortoiseshell foster kitten! Yes really, a male tortie! They're also fostering his equally tortie sister, plus two sweet tabby boys, all of whom are being treated for or monitored in their recovery from a medical issue. Things are looking better every day over there, and oh my goodness, a male tortie...!

I've never met a rare male tricolor cat. The closest I've ever come is one fictional representation purring in Adrien Agreste's ear, and one childhood misunderstanding of a sweet brown tabby's coloration. Someone in the old livejournal tortielove community had one, which was amazing enough, and there were a couple stories of others around - one calico, one dilute calico with extra toes. Maybe some day I'll actually meet one, and then someone will have to pick me up off the floor! XD In the meantime, I'll be enjoying the adventures of Ollie the male tortie and his friends in north Alabama.

ysabetwordsmith

This simple diet shift cut 330 calories a day without smaller meals

People who switch to a fully unprocessed diet don’t just eat differently—they eat smarter. Research from the University of Bristol shows that when people avoid ultra-processed foods, they naturally pile their plates with fruits and vegetables, eating over 50% more food by weight while still consuming hundreds fewer calories each day. This happens because whole foods trigger a kind of built-in “nutritional intelligence,” nudging people toward nutrient-rich, lower-calorie options.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cold.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, one female and three male cardinals, and a starling. A small flock of other birds high in the trees may have been more starlings or perhaps mourning doves.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 2/5/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

dhampyresa

Has anyone played Slay the Princess? There appear to be two versions on Steam, which one should I get? Do you need any sort of reflexes or coordination at any point?

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ng_moonmoth

June 2023

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Page generated Feb. 7th, 2026 10:59 pm

Reading

One Complaint About KDE, and another about Ubuntu/snap

Early Humans

Birdfeeding

Bye Bye Apple

Philosophical Questions: Pregnancy

Artificial Intelligence

Birdfeeding

Website Updates

"An Inkling of Things to Come" is now complete!

Frictionless Digital Experiences (sic)

Emailing my legislators

Follow Friday 2-6-26: London

snow sneakers

Economics

pretty sure I listen to podcasts more when I feel unwell

If I'm a bit quiet...

Exceptionally rare cuteness afoot!

Food

Birdfeeding

Slay the Princess?

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June 2023

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