Welcome to my house. I am a half-Filipino, half-white American living in Texas. I wanted to start a blog as a counter to the enshittification happening to...
About two years ago, my wife became a birder. She's the type to pick up a new hobby every six months, so this latest focus wasn't a surprise. What has been a surprise is that she's stuck with it and her interest has expanded my own view of nature and our local community. It started when she noticed a pair of unique birds hanging around our yard. Merlin identified them as Bewick's Wrens , an…
From Lana@beige.party The central conflict of AI is that it is an industry built on the premise of two very obvious lies. They claim to have made a machine that can think creatively, while also devaluing the creative output of humanity. If AI could think creatively, then it should be able to train itself on its own output and would have no need to steal the collective creative output of humanity.…
Every few years, oak trees produce and release exceptionally large numbers of acorns in a phenomenon known as mast seeding . Other trees do this too, but in Texas it mostly affects oaks. These do not occur on a regular schedule, and no one knows when it will happen. It isn't fully known why this happens either. Next time you notice a bunch of acorns, it's probably a mast year! Those oaks are…
We switched from clay litter to pine pellets this year for our cats' litter box. Unlike clay litter, which clumps when wet, pine pellets dissolve into dust when your cat relieves themselves. Once a day you sift the dust into a tray below the litter box to collect it and empty that once or twice a week. With either option, you scoop out the poop daily. Switching costs were high. I bought a large…
Home Assistant is considered the gold standard in smart home management. It seems like anyone with some technical ability uses it and recommends it. You can get all your devices into a single dashboard! No worrying about interoperability! It supports all the standards. My coworker told me about his setup to remind him if he hadn't taken out the trash using a weight sensor. Cool! I previously used…
I get this question regularly, but I still have a hard time knowing what exactly they’re asking. Are you asking what city I’m from? Are you asking my ethnicity? Are you asking my citizenship? Are you asking where my last name is from? Are you asking if I was born here? Are you asking if I speak Spanish? I especially have a hard time deciphering between 1 and 2, so I end up answering both…
Growing up in a mixed Filipino-caucasian household, we had some traditions Americans might consider odd. New Year’s On New Year’s Day, we didn’t spend any money. It was about setting the tone for the year. No shopping or going out to eat. It’s much harder now with so much online, but when I was a kid, we wouldn’t leave the house on New Year’s Day. At midnight on New Year’s, we would open all the…