@requiem Used to be able to do it with Java or Flash applets, but those were abominations.

Update: I did not, in fact, end up leaving the house for the meetup. I feel a little bad about that, I should get out more.

Instead, I had a drink with my wife and then screwed around in the basement with my 3D printer in the company of the boy cats.

@james I really don't trust someone who makes too much eye contact, it's rude

Oof, thinking about eye contact reminds me of this course I took at the Scientology org, back at around age 15: self-esteem and communication training. I was bad at both of those and figured it might be good for me?

There were sessions sitting in a small room in a chair across from another person, no table in between.

One of the sessions involved staring into the other person's eyes, without comment or interaction, working up to 20 minutes straight of sustained eye contact without talking.

Another session progressed to eye contact while the instructor delivered a mix of insults and random information. I was required to respond with mild pleasantries to the information but ignore the insults entirely.

In retrospect, that felt like an on-ramp to some weird culty indoctrination. But also weird self-conditioning. It didn't quite stick.

As for how I ended up at a Scientology org at age 15, they used to offer personality tests on street corners and I was a sucker for that sort of thing.

I also really liked the volcano commercials on TV for the Dianetics book, which I read along with shit-tons of self-help books back in my teens.

I had a real intense ADHD special interest in L. Ron Hubbard for a year or two, before some pieces fell into place that Necker Cube shifted the whole thing into repulsion for me.

@astatide Yeah, in further retrospect, there was a definite weird power-dynamic indoctrination thing happening there. Glad I managed to bounce off that whole thing.

An alternate-universe version of me is currently spending millions on juggling e-meter soup cans and ridding himself of Thetans to Cross the Bridge to Clear

@astatide Oh yeah, I had a bunch of kool-aid guzzling years where I was absolutely willing to sleep under my desk for the company. Took more than a few times being burned to finally cure me of that

@grechaw @thegibson You better believe it, you're tooting on a Semantic Web right now! (this was a bad JSON-LD joke)

@thegibson We jumped from the Linux Desktop to the Linux Cloud in a big nostalgic return to ye olde client-server mainframe age

Let's see if this Discord event link works: Some folks in my department at work are hosting @simon for a chat on "Prompt Injection and LLM Security" tomorrow at 9AM Pacific. Should be interesting!

https://discord.gg/5qUatVn7?event=1179527307266891907

@theruran @garbados If we can expand that to general corvids, I have 8 scrub jays regularly visiting my backyard for peanuts

@garbados @theruran Yeah, I had just one last year, used to come for peanuts when I was out working on my laptop.

Would then hang out and do that whisper song thing that sounds like tuning through a radio dial of other birds' songs.

Pretty sure they brought the whole neighborhood with them this year!

Cheddars got the zoomies and the boys Cosmo & Catsby are confused #cats

Looking up printable 3D models of picture rail hooks, and I'm really kind of surprised mostly only older houses have picture rail. It's like the best invention for not poking holes all over the walls

Like, i change my mind about what I want on my office walls almost weekly, and this is just hooks and wire or fishing line

@pagrus Oh paracord would be even easier to deal with than wire or nylon cord.

Also! We just bought that exact biscuit makers union print!

Was thinking about joining up picture rail hooks with this 3D printable honeycomb wall organizer system, but it occurs to me I could just use the hooks I have and loop twine or something through the top of the plates.

Probably wouldn't hold much weight, but probably good enough for random toys and knickknacks 🤷‍♂️

https://www.printables.com/model/152592-honeycomb-storage-wall

@amy Indeed I do!