The forecast is cold and overcast, so this is the probably the garden’s goodbye gift. 🫡 Everything did great this year except the peas which were wiped out early by some type of virus. #gardening
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Tyson, Chicken Rancher 🐓
@tsupasat@infosec.exchange
mastodon 4.8.0-alpha.3+glitchProduct marketing at Dropzone AI and lay pastor. Servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. Cursed with ability to see nuance. Trying not to let the bastards grind me down.
I'm married and father to three. I live in the Cascade foothills outside Seattle with my family and small flock of chickens.
I'm a startup junkie who tries to learn from good and bad examples.
Interests outside work:
#troutfishing #backpacking #backyardchickens #homesteading #wendellberry #chess #LOTR #Tolkien #CSLewis #Earthsea #romanbritain #churchhistory
In 2002, Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl, answered a reader question on Slashdot: "How can a scientific or at least technical mind believe in God?" I hope you enjoy his answer as much as I did: https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/02/09/06/1343222/larry-wall-on-perl-religion-and
Avatar: Bearded guy in a beanie and orange puffy jacket chopping wood.
Header image: Man wearing waders standing in a swollen river fishing.
472 Followers
898 Following
45 Posts
Joined November 14, 2022
Dropzone AI:
Replying to
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social Wait, these guys are appropriating Tolkien's stuff (Earendil)?! Is this a Peter Thiel venture? I hate this trend so much: Palantir (surveillance), Anduril (war robots), and Earendil now destroying natural night. It's all so dystopian.
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@sundogplanets@mastodon.social OK, I looked it up and Reflect Orbital isn't connected to Thiel's ventures but it does fit with the theme of naming your dystopian startup after something in Tolkien's legendarium.
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@MegaMichelle@a2mi.social @carnage4life@mas.to Individual contributor, meaning you don’t have any people reporting to you
Rattlesnake Lake yesterday morning from the kayak. I caught no fish but refilled my soul. Take your PTO, my friends.
More beach agates! After winter storms is the best time to go agate hunting because the gravel beds are exposed but there’s never a bad time to walk along the Oregon coast.
This was a cool agate. I love the patina the sea gives to these rocks.
Tunnel Beach at Netarts, Oregon
Not bad for off-season agate hunting! This is near Nearts, Oregon. Super cute community.
I found this fun The Irish Times article about Seattle hosting World Cup games. Apparently, Seattle "has always been shrouded in a kind of mystery, up there in the far northwest, moody and forested, given to spectacularly gloomy winters." Fair enough, lol!
Another favorite description of Seattle: "It’s eclectic, tolerant and its locals seem fond of tattoos."
My daughters were on a hike on Saturday and met a member of the Belgian team. My brother-in-law has been down outside the stadium busking with a drum set.
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/2026/06/22/keith-duggan-seattle-appeared-magical-the-us-may-have-found-its-natural-football-home/
#pnw
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@derekheld@infosec.exchange @wdormann@infosec.exchange The Penn State Extension article is based on this one from WSU and looks to be a super helpful PDF on growing tomatoes at home. Saving this one! https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2070/2019/09/FS145E.pdf
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@intrepidhero@mastodon.social Now, when I have a conflict with my spouse and we're level-headed, I'll discuss with her and we'll try to understand what we're each afraid of.
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@heckinteagan@infosec.exchange Getting the base square and level is half of the work! Looks great 👍
Yowza, a bad cougar encounter is one of my worst fears being out in PNW forests. They're just really scary predators.
A cougar was acting aggressively towards a trail runner and bicyclist in the Methow Valley. They did all the right things but it wasn't giving up stalking them and even approached one man close enough to wet his leg with its nose. It ended up chasing the cyclist for half a mile. Most likely a young curious cougar, but it was still very dangerous. This might be a great reason to carry some type of spray.
https://methowvalleynews.com/2026/05/21/close-encounters-of-the-cougar-kind-on-valley-trail/
Photos of the 120+ year old ginko tree on Front Street in Issaquah. The leaves are just starting to come out.
I stepped in cat barf just before I joined an online meeting at 7:30 a.m.
How's your Friday going?
Replying to
@wdormann@infosec.exchange New to me! I wonder though what are best practices for ripening those half-green tomatoes? Maybe in a plate on the counter?
Excited to watch Project Hail Mary at my favorite movie theater
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@intrepidhero@mastodon.social I do have some words muted, so maybe that's why. But usually Mastodon will just let me know that a post had muted words and give me a placeholder. Oh well, I think I get the point.
Replying to
@intrepidhero@mastodon.social Part 9 in this series is missing!
A couple of years ago, I started reading Wendell Berry’s Port William novels and some of his essay collections. His thoughts and values have made a tremendous impact on me, which I’ll try to explain briefly.
His book The Unsettling of America (1977) makes an argument for what people today might call de-growth or at least systems thinking aiming for sustainability.
He asks us to question the assumptions of our modern capitalistic society. “What are people for?”
Berry points to the self-sufficient communities that used to exist across rural America as holding the answer. His work shows us the beauty and meaningfulness of such communities, where people were committed to one another and the land. When you bring in a lot of expensive equipment and get into debt, then turn away from the land to seek money, you lose a lot. In his fictional community of Port William, Kentucky, we see what we’ve lost and what we might recover if we wake up and change our values. I read somewhere that if you enjoy a local farmers’ market, you probably partly have Wendell Berry to thank.
I remember watching an interview he did on YouTube one night and just breaking down sobbing. I think it was this interview and I can’t remember what particularly moved me: https://youtu.be/e4qoIGUd0IA?si=JdAY6fImC9JDHEbV&t=1475 Admittedly, I might have been a little drunk at the time.
I hadn’t thought about what we had lost with our current prosperity until I finished his books. It’s led me to be very intentional about forming relationships with my neighbors and supporting local businesses. I will probably never be self-sufficient in terms of food (it’s too much work!), but just having the skills is enough and important. I want to re-purpose and fix quality things. I want to reduce my spending so that we have more options for how we live. I want to take care of the ecosystem on our property and advocate for the land that I inhabit with my community. All these are things that I might have done before anyway, but that I’ve come to see as part of a coherent vision thanks to Wendell Berry’s work.
The man is still alive, but he’s 91 this year. What a treasure for our nation. If you’re interested in an alternative vision for society, check him out!
Replying to
@carnage4life@mas.to I firmly believe that people will remember who does this and it will be held against them, and not in a vindictive way. If someone's work is just AI output without any human judgement, then why would I want to work with you in the future?
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@eugeneparnell I'm super impressed and jealous of your knowledge of our local flora!
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@StarlingW It was a similar silver lining for my wife's illness last year as well. She had major complications from a surgery and lost a lot of weight after one month in the hospital. We also started eating a lot healthier and exercising more.
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@grumpydad@infosec.exchange Yes, it snowed heavily a few days ago and more snow fell at the higher elevations.
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@hfgfarm_james@pdx.social I’d say that the fish bite only 50% of the times I visit. But the scenery always makes up for it.
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@dantheclamman Awww, that's heartbreaking to read
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@royal@theres.life @leerayl@infosec.exchange I think it depends as he's an essayist, poet, and novelist. I'm not really into poetry, so can't speak to that.
The book he's most famous for is The Unsettling of America, which I enjoyed but it's a longish non-fiction book that explains the problems with industrial agriculture.
I personally really enjoyed his Port William novels. His only fiction focused on this single rural community over the span of 4-5 generations from the Civil War to the 1990s. It's pretty impressive when taken together, but it's very much a particular taste. I think a good book to see if you like that world or not is a collection of 20 short stories called A Place in Time. You get introduced to different characters and families, and get a feeling of what the rest of the books would be like if you choose to continue. Another small book, a collection of five short stories, is called Fidelity. If your "people" come from a rural background, you might like these stories. I learned a lot about what life was like on the farm.
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@leerayl@infosec.exchange I love the idea that wherever they may be in the world, people can feel membership in their community and responsibility for the land that supports them. But I’m with you—Cascadia is pretty awesome!
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@mattblaze@federate.social Serious thought: I know Trump's strategy is to "flood the zone" so that the opposition loses their heads, but what impact does this have on national GDP. I seriously could not focus on things I needed to get done today, even though the mental distress did absolutely nothing to help anyone.
The Odyssey review, slight spoilers
Voter ID laws
Am I doing this right? I heard putting paper sacks over your fruit will help protect them bugs. (I don’t want to spray insecticide.) This is a pear tree btw.
Experiences appreciated!
Replying to
@carnage4life@mas.to The Bay Area such a bizzaro world. It feels like people have to sacrifice some of their humanity to succeed there.
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
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@unicorn@lgbtqia.space OK, someone please explain the goose thing to me. I honestly have no idea.
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@GPJohnston@mastodon.social Whoa! Trippy!
Sooo ... I stopped drinking alcohol a few weeks ago for financial and health reasons. A cool side effect is that I've dropped 5 lbs without otherwise changing my diet or activity. Turns out drinking beer really is like swilling bread.
There are two interesting chess documentaries released to Netflix in 2026. They're both pretty interesting.
First is Queen of Chess, a documentary about Judit Polgar. She was one of three Hungarian sisters who were a sort of "experiment" by their father to show that nurture rather than nature was the determining factor in expert success. I also loved that she has an amazing attacking game. The story centers on her quest to defeat Garry Kasparov, which she eventually does, marking the first time the world's top woman's player defeats the world's top men's player.
Second is sort of a sad story of a young man who is very talented but honestly a terrible person. Hans Moke Niemann is the worst of gaming culture brought to top-level chess. The documentary covers the 2022 cheating scandal but also paints Hans as a sort of archvillain. I learned he left home as a teenager to live in NY by himself and spent years just playing chess online and streaming. The documentary is interesting because it has interviews with Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura and a lot of footage from chess events.
#chess
I'll never forget after 9/11 when George W Bush said that it was patriotic for U.S. citizens to go out and spend money. That was the first time that I realized not being a "consumer" was to go against the system.
(I consider myself a patriot, but don't measure my love for my country in terms of consumer spending.)
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@GPJohnston@mastodon.social I guess they call it a beer belly for a reason!
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@leerayl@infosec.exchange Definitely, but it's unnerving for me to see other people open-carrying in the backcountry. My thought is that a spray would work just as well and not creep other people out.
Our entire family is going to see The Odyssey at its opening on Thursday night. We're pretty much all Greek myth nerds so really looking forward to this one! I'll post a review afterwards.
#theodyssey
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@strflr The Merlin Bird ID app tells me is making that broken car alarm noise at night! They just showed up in our neighborhood this year. I'd never heard them (or noticed) before.
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@carnage4life@mas.to AI-native as described in the article is not sustainable. Startups are their own kind of drug and AI-native startups are a special type.
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@neilk@xoxo.zone Might make for an interesting book one day! The Things I Couldn’t Say