Hello, friends and enemies. I hope everyone had a wonderful Fritzmas (for those who observe). Things were fairly chill here, but I fear my four-day weekend has passed by far too quickly. I can’t already be on day four. It’s criminal. Everyone should have the last two weeks of December off.
I’ve been doing a bad job of getting my cards out, so please enjoy this year’s Fritzmas card. I’m still working on getting these in the mail. I like hand-writing messages for everyone, but the carpal tunnel makes it hard to sit down and write a bunch of messages, so it’s slow going.
We’re playing chess now
My friend Lacy decided that we were going to get good at chess since she’s stuck in bed most of the time with long covid and I can’t use my knees anymore. Neither of us are particularly good but that is okay, we are learning. We started using the chess.com app, which is quite nice. It has lessons and puzzles built in, in addition to just playing games with people online. This sounds like a commercial and it kind of is because I think you (yes, you) should play chess with us online. My username is Linzmatic (and that orange cat doing a karate kick that you see below is my profile picture lol)!
Books and Other Words
The Black Bird Oracle is the fifth book in Deborah Harkness’s All Souls series. I liked this one a lot more than the last book, probably because it brought focus back to the series’ main character: Diana Bishop. In this installment, Diana is magically contacted by her father’s side of the family, the Proctors, which she has never been in touch with. She is called upon to get in touch with another aspect of her magic, plus she’s raising her magical kids, navigating magic politics, and dealing with her overprotective vampire husband. Now I’m caught up with the series and must wait for the next book to publish.
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- Making Sense of The Nutcracker’s Libretto via JSTOR Daily. I found this article interesting but I’m mostly sharing it for this bit: “The Sugar Plum Fairy intentionally fostered the representation of an idealized female ruler, conflating traditional representations of the absolutist monarch as a force for good and of the female sovereign as an agent of civilization.” Thank you, benevolent lady dictator of the Land of Sweets.
- Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves via 404 Media. It is extremely concerning that the cameras cities are using to allegedly track license plates are “designed to record and track people, not vehicles.” From the article, “Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on people’s faces as they walk through a parking lot, down a public street, or play on a playground, or they can be controlled manually, according to marketing material on Flock’s website.” There is no use for this other than surveilling the population.
- Watch the 60 Minutes Segment CBS Didn’t Want You to See via The Present Age. Bari Weiss, now editor-in-chief of CBS news, killed a segment about CECOT (the mega prison in El Salvador where the US has been sending people) that was set to air on 60 Minutes this week. The segment did, however, air in Canada thanks to the way TV distribution works. The takeaway? “Now we know what Bari Weiss considers unacceptably critical of the Trump administration.”
Computer World
My long-time internet browser of choice, Mozilla Firefox, has announced it is going to be “investing in AI” and building AI into every aspect of the software. First of all: yuck. Second: why does my browser need AI? The browser’s job is to show me internet websites. That’s it. That is not an “AI” activity. Mozilla is stating that they plan to make the AI features secure, which I’m not convinced is possible. I also hate what this current strain of general “AI” tools is doing to the web and the environment and I want no part of it.
I am trying out a new browser called Waterfox, which is based on the code for Firefox but is not incorporating AI features. In their press release in response to Firefox’s AI ambitions, they state “Waterfox will not include LLMs. Full stop. At least and most definitely not in their current form or for the foreseeable future.” So far, it’s working fairly well for me. The only things that haven’t worked right are Teams (but that might be that I hadn’t set up all my permissions yet) and drag-and-dropping images to upload them to my blog (it wasn’t working yesterday but it worked today. A mystery!). Still, it seems like a good browser and I’m planning to keep using it. Companies aren’t going to stop doing AI garbage until they realize they are going to lose money when they do it.
Like Riding a Bike
Given that my knees are irreparably busted and I am limited to low-impact activities, I asked Kirk to get me a new unicycle for Christmas. I still have my lovely Miyata unicycle, but she’s more of an indoor girl for doing tricks and things, and I want to cruise around outside. I got the Impact Athmos because it seemed like it would be good for outside and should be able to support my size.
On Friday, I assembled the thing and took to the outdoors! I was immediately disappointed because I thought I was going to get up and unsteadily get going but that was not the case. I walked to the local park to find a wall for support and was able to ride a very little. Then I realized I had done a bad job screwing on the fork, so I went home to tighten that up and tried again on Saturday. I was met with much greater success! I still used the wall to mount and get situated, but then I rode for about 50 feet before stopping because I was exhausted from the effort. I did that more than once before realizing I had screwed on my left pedal badly and it was at a fucked up angle, so I retired for the day. I am hoping to try again today and not have any mechanical incidents! Maybe now that everything is properly screwed in, I’ll be able to ride a little better.
This has been a blow to the ego for sure because I have been telling myself that I still got it even after about 15 years of not unicycling regularly, and yet I have discovered I don’t really got it at all. Despite all that, I was surprised at how good it felt to be riding, even a little. So maybe this really will be my low-impact exercise solution.
Anyway, a little unicycling inspo:
Kitchen Witchery
I really agonized over what to make on Christmas Eve because it seems I still haven’t established any particular tradition I want to stick with. We might have a contender now because the baked brie and caramelized vegetable pie was very good and Kirk and I both loved it. I served it with French garlic chicken. That recipe is for the instant pot but I used chicken breast so I just cooked it on the stove and it came out fine. We had black-bottom oatmeal pie for dessert (a chocolate ganache with a caramelly oat mixture on top). I don’t think that’s inherently a Christmas recipe, I just wanted to try it. Also pictured below is a potato, leek, and turkey soup. I used the potato and leek soup recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian but added some of my leftover turkey and stock from the freezer to make it a little heartier.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
