Author: Lord Bob

Lord Bob
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Bubbles?

I’ve been reading some blogs this morning. A lot of posts about the effects of social media. A couple of ideas keep coming up, which I will list and comment on below.

We are retreating into our own information bubbles that tend to isolate and radicalize us.

Gonna have to disagree with this. At least for me. Curating your intake of information is not retreating. It is the Enterprise raising the shields. There are way too many graduates of YouTube/FaceBook/Twitter University out there, many of them not even actual humans, blabbering 24/7 to propagate lies about vaccines, support Trump, and tell you raw milk is good for you. No one needs that shit, but there it is. Shields – fucking – UP Mr. Sulu!

People are losing critical thinking skills

I’m not sure most people ever had them, but this is more of a comment than anything else. Every single one of the Trumpbots, Q-nuts, and other wackos believe their own ability to think critically is unmatched. So when I hear someone complain about the “critical thinking skills” of others I immediately question that person’s own intellect.

Lord Bob
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Record Store

We found out about this great new record store in downtown Garland, Dead Wax.

Fantastic selection of LPs and CDs if you like punk, post punk, rock, new wave, etc. I picked up two XTC albums and this killer BBC sessions  The Jam record.

Three record albums

Lord Bob
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A favorite trick

This is me a couple of years ago. I’m not this fat now. This was before I went back to Aikido, after at least two years of pandemic life. I wonder what damage that period of time actually did to me. Being out of shape like that for a couple of years plus all the stress of the pandemic and cancer in the family must have some lasting effect.

Anyway, this simple trick is one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes I’ll do a 180 shove-it out. It’s simple but you can flow into and out of it nicely. This is the kind of thing I like to do now.

Some people would not even call this a “trick.”  I would say they are wrong.

The World Freestyle Skateboarding Championships were in Germany over the weekend. A lot of my friends from all over were there. Do I have anything left that is worth sharing? I need to think about this.

Lord Bob
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Google – Is – Shit

Today @fromjason shared this article.

I’ve been playing with DuckDuckGo for a few months now.

Today I did a comparison search.

My friend Jeff and I run the world’s only talk podcast about the Traveller RPG. The only one. There are no other talk podcasts in the world dedicated to Traveller. It is called SAFCOcast (SAFCO stands for Super Adventure Friends Co.)

I searched DuckDuckGo for “Traveller RPG talk podcast”.

Our podcast was the first thing to show up. As it should be. It is the single best answer to the fucking query.

DuckDuckGo search results -- they are good
DuckDuckGo, doing what a fucking search engine should do.

Then I searched Google. Our podcast was not even above the fold. The first thing that came up were videos on the Google-owned YouTube and links to threads from Reddit, who Google has a “deal” with.

Google's shitty crooked search results
Google’s shitty crooked search results. They are shit.

It’s not really a surprise that Google now sucks. I’m a reference librarian. I have known this for a long time. The thing is, it is getting worse and worse.

My new project for the remainder of the year, which I’ve been meaning to do and not gotten around to, is to gradually remove myself from using any Google-owned products, at least in my personal life. For the time being we still use Chrome at work. I deleted all my videos from YouTube earlier this year.

Lord Bob
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Back to the Sweat Shop

OK, maybe I don’t work in a sweat shop, but my 3-day weekend is drawing to a close.

Amazingly, after having 2 days off and having some fun and relaxation with no stress from rushing around, I had the energy today to clean our bedroom really well. I mean — like – really well. Going to really enjoy sleeping in there tonight on clean sheets, with a clean floor, the bathroom super clean, and all my clothing washed and folded/hung.

I’m not necessarily looking at a 4-day work week though. I have a library outreach event to do on Saturday, and some other stuff that will keep me busy a bit late one night this week. In the morning I’ll look at everything and see if I can work out a work-free Friday. That would be nice.