Home
Spring 2021
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 542
The last couple of days a record 10 degrees above zero. The snow is gone, time to get out there.
A sunny morning, a spiderling drops from the eavestrough, blue-bottle fly on the glass of the deck. Chris and I head out to a few spots.
Nothing new, places we've been before, some still too deep in snow. But, digging up by a mine where we'd found some good quartz and silver ore he finds some amber. Not amber, precisely, but glassy resin in the dirt. Looking around I spot the bark it's dripped from, tear it down, when:
It begins an awful hissing and takes me a moment to figure out what it is. I would have thought - given the abundance of mines, that hibernation would take place a little deeper in the mountain, but maybe (hopefully!!!) this guy was an early riser.
Anyways, tuck him back near a hollow on the tree - hopefully he can resume his hibernation, not enough bugs out yet. And a reminder to be a little more careful traipsing about the woods, wouldn't want to prematurely wake up anything else.
Stormy March 2021
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Stormy
- Hits: 542
So I haven't seen the guy in about 7 weeks or so, finally on a rare trip to town stopped by. He's the same.
His house, the same, packed chock-a-block with rubbish, if you look close that's him lying on his bed under the suede/sheepskin coat.
A space heater set up in his bathroom, no fire-hazard here...
He explains the mess by telling me all these extraneous possessions absorb the heat, keep it warm for longer...
And, returning home afterwards, a ton of bags of stuff/scrolls to go through.
Christmas gifts for the kids, for me, for anyone I might know. And, at first guess, 200 (??) Scrolls, but after spending 2 hours looking at them and rerolling them I'll revise that number up to about 500. I still have a lot to go through. Scrolls for the daughter, son, new models (Ms. Mountain Climber Gal, Ghost Gals), treasure maps ("Chinky Cave" up behind Riondel. No, he's not particularly politically correct), other absurdities. Par for the course, maybe 10% of the scrolls are "Good", the rest, well...
I'm not going to be one of those vandals that destroys everything that I don't like, but there was a lot in this load to rebel against, and there's something psychically draining about reading any quantity of these at once. One is a joy, 500 is a plague.
Anyways, that's it, he's alive and well, I started making an unboxing video but got so discouraged that I ended up aborting, the same over and over again.
The Gig Economy
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 799
This is, of course, next or late stage capitalism, wherein the capitalist maximizes his return on the most negligible of investments. The dot-com bubble come to fruition.
A few examples so you know what I'm talking about: Amazon, Ebay, Uber, UberEats, Doordash, Skipthedishes, Airbnb, YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Any Dating Site, etc etc.
Amazon and Ebay both make money off of listing items for sellers (and charging the seller a commission) and as well making a commission on the purchaser. That commission might be hidden in a hundred ways, from service fees, transaction fees, interest on money that stored in Paypal accounts (very clever Ebay!), advertising fees, etc, etc. In fact, once you have the platform there's no end to the ways you can monetize it. But - Ebay & Amazon themselves produce nothing - jobs to administer, upgrade the website, liaise with customers, in the case of Amazon perhaps some items stored locally in warehouses, but nothing is done that couldn't be done cheaper by the manufacturer of the product.
What Amazon provides is an Umbrella, of sort, where everything can be found under a single "roof", because - no one wants to go to the trouble of searching different websites.
In the case of Uber, UberEats, DoorDash & Airbnb, money is paid by the clients (restaurants or property listers, commissions for restaurants frequently averaging above 20%, Uber charges drivers in excess of 25%), that surcharge is in turn passed on to the customer. Except - in restaurants, which already precarious in their earnings must swallow and additional 20+% loss in food sold through third party "middlemen", and to make matters worse the middlemen cut the vendors out by setting up look-a-like websites and ads and rerouting phone calls to the restaurant through their service. Nobody wins but the middlemen.
Dating sites? YouTube? A hundred other websites? All creating profit and money through content created by the users. Users have become hostage to the platforms they helped to build.
This is now the world - the vast disconnect between the people that produce value and the people that make money off of it. Money spent "locally" is routed through Uber and winds up in the hands of corporations thousands of miles away with no local interest or investment.
Anyways, it's a pointless rant, merely a list of services (and the types of services) that I strive to avoid.
The Sigil Engine
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 505
A website that creates a sigil from your intent. The internet of Magik ...
It used to be magic, before everything became obscured by ads and owned by multinational corporations.
Anyways:
The Sigil Engine: https://www.sigilengine.com/
Other related sites of interest: The Online Tarot (here a disclaimer, I'd generally prefer to do a reading with proper cards, candles & ambience, but - these will do in a pinch:)
Used to be a favorite, but the site is no longer maintained and most of the decks and options have disappeared:
- http://www.fourthdimension.net/thoth/
- https://www.trustedtarot.com/free-reading/#start
- https://www.evatarot.net/
- https://www.queenoftarot.com/tarot_readings/
The Bigfoot/Sasquatch Tarot: HERE (Crazy as it seems for such a specific request, you have choices...Because who DOESN'T Think of the Tarot and then Bigfoot?)
And, since clearly you're here wasting time, The I-Ching:
Page 239 of 1019