Taxes (+) Free Prep in Minneapolis/Saint Paul
I did my taxes yesterday. Brain fog most of the day today. But I got it done! yay!
I go to Prepare and Prosper for free tax prep. They are great! But this year they are only doing a limited number of in person or zoom prep sessions, and those filled up right away. However, they still have openings for webinars for how to do your own taxes using their free software, TaxSlayer. They do taxes for low income people.
Knots - outdoors, sailing, survival, bicyling
The Ashley Book of Knots is the bible of knot tying. My dad had a hard back copy when I was growing up, but that's very expensive these days. However, it is also in the public domain and available from the Internet Archive.
Yay, just blocked Accessibee, a piece of junk masquerading as an accessibility helper for websites! To learn how to do this, see this page:
Oh hi, made some art, please steal it for whatever purpose you wish (except for adding to my fbi file). Can't cage our rage. P.S. - don't legitimize free speech cages. #Minneapolis #ChauvinTrial #abolitionnow #acab #thesystemisguilty
George Floyd (-) Minneapolis gearing up for round 2?
I had been thinking fondly of life after shootings, riots and polar vortexes so I could go for walks in my neighborhood and take care of my pandemic brain?
But it looks like it's time to buckle down and get ready for more mayhem.
I'm feeling a deep howl of rage coming on at this injustice, and I'm white, so I can only imagine how my black brothers, sisters n kin are feeling right now.
George Floyd's life matters, even if he was on fenty.
George Floyd (-) Minneapolis gearing up for round 2?
https://spectator.org/derek-chauvin-trial-minneapolis/
Hennepin County Courthouse already looks like a war zone. I haven't been down there so I haven't seen it in person, but the news shows hella razor wire and fences.
And it looks like the defense is gonna say he died of fentanyl OD not Derek Chauvin killing him.
Launcher Hijack and ADB apparently aren't working on Kindle Fire anymore. Some Android writers say Amazon has been putting up blocks to prevent hackers from hacking. I have Open Launcher installed and it is working, kinda. The Home button still pulls up the Amazon launcher. As you can see in the Open Launcher settings -> apps I can't select it as default. I can still use the it by avoiding the Home button and using the back button or the open windows button. This working bodge so far.
The #GreatGreenWall supports an astonishing 15 of the 17 #SustainableDevelopmentGoals (#SDG|s).
The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals are 17 Goals adopted by world leaders that aim to end poverty, promote prosperity and well-being for all, and protect the planet.
Growing a green wall across the #Sahel does much more than just restore degraded land. This extraordinary initiative fights #poverty and #hunger, builds local resilience to #ClimateChange, improves health and well-being, creates jobs, boosts economic opportunities and much much more.
The goals the wall supports:
1. End Poverty: The GGW ensures sustainable jobs in agriculture.
2. End Hunger: The wall doesn't just consist of trees, but also sustainable farming.
3. Ensure Healthy Lives: The wall provides healthy food and water and protects against droughts and famine.
4. Ensure Inclusive Education: The wall creates income for rural communities, which is, among other things, used to build schools.
5. Achieve Gender Equality: The wall provides jobs for women. Also it raises the groundwater meaning people don't have to go so far to find a filled well, which is traditionally the women's job.
6. Ensure Sustainable Water Management: Healthy Forests raise the ground water and even attract rain. A healthy soil also cleans the water.
7. Ensure Sustainable Energy: Some of the funds go directly into creating solar plants. The combination of solar energy and farming is genius. The solar panels provide shade for the plants and the plants cool the panels to make them more efficient.
8. Ensure Sustainable Work: restoring soil means restoring jobs and not just in agriculture.
9. Build Resilient Infrastructure: By creating sustainable jobs roads and other infrastructure that is being built will be used for a long time and not degrade after it's no longer needed.
10. Reduce Inequality: The GGW provides well paying jobs mainly in rural areas and for poor people.
12. Ensure Sustainable Consumption & Production: The GGW provides training for sustainable farming techniques.
13. Combat Climate Change: by 2030 the wall aims to sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon.
15. Protect Terrestrial Ecosystems: Forests restore the soil and increase biodiversity.
16. Promote Peaceful and Inclusive Societies: Most of the conflicts in the region are about scarce resources like water and food.
17. Strengthen the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development: The GGW is a global project with many different countries and institutions working together for a common goal.
I added Open Launcher from FDroid onto my Kindle Fire 7 tablet. I'm able to customize my home screen and get rid of many of the Amazon ads. It's not perfect. I'm not sure how to make it default, the Amazon launcher still comes up sometimes. This is still an improvement without needing root or use fancy command line tools. I've got Kobo (commercial epub), Overdrive (library app), and Librera Pro (open source) loaded on it. Kobo isn't an Amazon app, it's in APKpure, which you can get on Fdroid.
The Ladies Number 1 Detective Agency is a great show! I just watched the first ep. Lady detectives! In Botwana! Who solve crimes!https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPN_XJ_CDsA
"If we insulate our houses, why not our cooking pots?"
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot-insulation-key-to-sustainable-cooking.html
A long read on various attempts to improve the energy efficiency of cooking, which is a surprisingly large part of the average person's energy expenditures.
The "fireless cooker" (just an insulated box for the simmering portion of cooking a stew) makes a hell of a lot of sense and I'm giving it a try tonight.
@ajroach42 FWLIW, the Long Now Foundation has put a lot of thought into this... plenty of interesting articles (see https://longnow.org/projects/ esp. the Rosetta Project), but I think that they've yet to come up with anything practical at an individual level other than the active maintenance methods you've just mentioned.
About a year ago (or maybe two years ago?), a friend sent me a copy of The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation by Trevor Owens - http://www.trevorowens.org/
(Trevor Owens the head of digital content management at the LoC)