markjgsmith

2024/08/07 #

• I ended up getting mutilated again. I’m not exactly sure how it hapenned, that’s always how these things go down. It’s happened so many times before. There’s a long escallation, over many days, and it eventually crescendos with all sorts of weird synchronicities, and you realise you’ve been mutilated. In this case it’s some sort of alergic skin reaction on my arm. It’s all swollen. I was preceded by random people shouting 'you learn' at me. Then afterwards a big soap opera-esce scene. The whole evening it was one thing after another, like the entire world had been turned into some sort of giant swiss clock.

  Btw, I’ve also developed some sort of similar sensation on my left hand little finger and ring finger. It’s badly itching. I mention it because people are constantly trying to pressure you into extremely dubious mariages here, so the fact that I’ve developed this skin irritation thing is extremely suspect to me.

  On the bright side, I got gifted some food and it looks like I’ll be able to get electricity and food for a few days. But any of the help I get these days always seems to have a nasty malicious component attached to it. In fact I wouldn’t be suprised if the malicious part continues for a while. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all on my static site generator or blogging for that matter.

  It looks like I’m quite close to having the deploy workflows working using the new reusable workflow. I’ve almost got it working for one of the plugins. Yesterday evening the build appeared to have completed. There are a few small tweaks needed to environment variables still to be made. Once it’s fully working I’ll be able to update all the repos to use the new workflow. It’ll be awesome to have just one workflow to maintain as opposed to one in each repo.

  Also hoping to write a few blog posts, though all this week’s bullying, starvation and resources restriction has left me a bit shell shocked, but also I haven’t been able to generate many new post ideas, because I’ve had to conserve power.

  It would be wonderfull if you could get off the warpath and stop blocking everything I do world. Thanks, your exhausted friend, Mark. #

• Well I was right about the maliciousness continuing. Two incidents one after the other this morning. First at the sandwich shop, the sandwich shop bloke getting all upset with me for no reason "Okay okay" as I asked for my sandwich, even though it was early with hardly any customers. I jokingly responded with an "okay okay okay okay", which got a bit of a laugh from sandwich bloke, somewhat suprising as that’s the first time that’s happened. Anyway the moment didn’t last long as I was immediately accused of lying by the other large sandwich woman working alongside sandwich bloke.

  At the next shop, a few meters down the road, there was a largish woman already in there having a dubious chat with the shop staff. I immediately sensed something was off as soon as I entered the shop. On entering the shop bloke called either me or the woman a dog, a convenient ambiguity for him. I responded 'not at all' and entered the store. As I approached the register to pay for my item, the woman turned and held out her hand towards me, in a very bizare way I might add. She was very intent on me taking her hand. What are the chances of such an ambush literally an hour after discovering a skin reaction on my left hand ring finger?

  It was a very awkward situation, eventually diffused after I smiled and politely informed the demoisel that it was far too early for a dance. She was very persistent but eventually departed. I went back to the water fountain to fill up a container with hot water. As I did so I joked that perhaps I had just had a narrow escape. On hearing the word 'escape' shop bloke’s face visibly flintched, which was weird. Made me wonder if both situations had been manufactured traps.

  And in true what-are-you-doing-to-me-world, I see in today’s news now that Harris has announced that her running mate will be Tim Walz. Perhaps they will make an appearance on stricktly come dancing? Waltz also looks strangely familiar, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole today. I feel like I’ve already reached some sort of maximum synchronicity level for one morning.

  How much time am I spending processing all these weird synchronicities? Way way way too much. Literally my life is being stolen from me. And what’s more, I don’t get blocked doing that, no the blocking only starts when I try to spend time on my static site generator or writing blog posts. #

• Quick update on my previous note about being mutilated on my left hand ring finger, the tail end of a bullying campaign against me. As I left the cafe I spent this morning reading, writting and listening to podcasts, about 30 meters up the road someone had very liberally sprinkled what looked very much like a bag of rice all over the ground, which I had to walk over. Geez what are the chances.

  I add this for completeness, knowing that it’s likely those involved actually want me to write about it, perhaps because any publicity is good publicity? I don’t know for sure, I only know that these types of things keep happening. But it’s complicated because I’ve also met some non locals here that weren’t exactly the type you would want to introduce to the family. It’s understandable that communities protect themselves, but at the same time it’s really horrible when you get caught up in this sort of thing. I absolutely just don’t want annything to do with any of it. #

Today’s links:

• Elon Musk calls PM ‘two-tier Keir’ over police response to UK riots - I’m not sure how I feel about the Elon vs The Police situation. I wish people would just get along. One thing though is I’m glad Elon, a person developing both powerful AI tools and powerful brain implants, is very much against the concept of a two tier society. In the overall scheme of things I don’t think it matters that much that he’s defending so called far right folks, or that he’s insulting the new prime minister. In fact it might be the most free speech thing possible. If the government really is against a 2 tier society then perhaps this is an opportunity to explore that idea in public in full transparency, because that IMO is the thing we are all worried about. Show us that you really do have all of our backs long term, even after all the riots have passed. www.theguardian.com #