markjgsmith

2024/08/25 #

The big thing yesterday was nodding. Literally everywhere I went people would nod their heads at me. People of all ages and all walks of life, all nodding. It must have happened 20-30 times during the day. Like someone sent them all a memo to nod at everyone, or certainly at me. It started while I was writting yesterday’s morning note, and at about the same exact time I started getting a blocked nose and sneezing. That continued for much of the day. Seems to have subsided now.

It was a slow day yesterday, hardly anything in the way of food, though I had an instant coffee left from the Nescafe marketing people so had that with cold water early morning, listenned to quite a few podcasts before getting tired. Got gifted a small sandwich, which tasted pretty good, even though it was processed meats. It’s amazing how food tastes when you’re starving.

There was a lot of harrassment yesterday evening. There was clearly something organised. I spent much of the day down by the canal. Weather was mediocre but nice to be in the open space there. On the way to the internet place that evening to send out the newsletter promo and schedule next week’s issue, all along the route there were people waiting to shout harrassment at me. From security guards aggresively shouting 'gay', to customers sitting out from of cafes shouting various rude stuff, to just randoms scaterred everywhere doing the same, it was just vile hate being thrown at me the entire way.

I was listening to music as I was walking, something I don’t like doing because it puts my device and earphones at risk, but it drowns out the harrassment, so it’s just about possible to ignore it. But of course I end up having to put myself in danger. Ultimately that’s the worst thing about the harrassment, it’s fucking dangerous a lot of the time.

Today I’m hoping to get the minimal repo I created to reproduce the reusable workfkow secrets bug. Looks like I’ll be able to buy some food and hot water. But I’m playing catchup again, laundry, washing etc, so not expecting to get a huge amount done. By the time I’ll be caught up it will be the end of the day.

It’s all just so hopeless, things that take a few hours or even minutes when your life is all functional can literally take weeks. The reusable workflow is a great example. It’s literally been 3 weeks now that I’ve been trying to finish that, but the world just keeps blocking me in one way of another. It’s like I’m in a different universe. Then regular folks just don’t believe you are so stuck, and start testing you to check if you are lying or not, which makes everything even more exponentially harder. I’m spending 90% of my time just dealing with warpath world.

Already a lot of loud warpathing this morning from the gang stalkers. That was started by early morning bycicle singing lady. She hasn’t been past in a while. That’s been followed by several high jinks loud shouting motorbike gang stalkers. That sort of stuff usually stops around 3am so it’s odd that it’s still happening now. #

Today’s links:

  • Telegram app founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested at French airport - Arrested aboard his private jet, there was a warrant for his arrest. He’s been living in Dubai since he refused to comply with russian government demands to shut down opposition groups on a social media app he used to own. It’s unclear why there was a french warrant out for his arrest. His fortune estimated to be $15.5bn. Telegram has 900 million users. www.theguardian.com #

  • How Lidl accidentally took on the big guns of cloud computing - Lidl is similar in a way to Aldi, it’s sort of a budget supermarket chain, but it’s got quite a unique vibe, stocking lots of lesser known brands, so there’s lots of choice and you often find products you would never normally try. Super interesting they are getting into cloud computing. I wonder if this is a new trend, where large local businesses start running their own clouds and offering services to smaller local businesses. I think it makes a lot of sense. Interesting they ended up buying a security company co-founded by a former boss of Israel’s secret service Mossad. That ticks the security box for sure. Clients include SAP and Bayern Munich football club. Their main offering is experience keeping competitively sensitive data very confidential. www.ft.com #

  • ‘No thanks, I’ll pass on the service charge’: Why UK diners are opting out of tipping - Really not a good sign. It’s crazy to think that waiting staff have to pick up the slack when the economy goes down the tubes. Huge numbers of people are opting out of discretional service charges. Time for those with money to start overtiping, because if these places go out of business, it will be really tough to get them back up and running again. Tipping works great in good times, gives businesses flexibility, not so great in hard times though. www.independent.co.uk #

  • Apple will let developers use the iPhone's NFC chip - Lots of cool examples of how the new chips could be used. I wonder what the privacy implications are for this new technology. Since it will likely become pervassive tech used everywhere, I’d like to know which services are worth the trade off and which it makes sense to just opt out of using. www.indiehackers.com #

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