Preston Rakovsky does street interviews about love. The majority of the time, they're very much worth watching, and it's an account worth following.

But this time? It's so great that I am compelled to share it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video... just this series of photos. The original is on Instagram here.

Peyton nailed it. He's got it figured out.

We are constantly under assault from those who wish to steal from us, harm us, or otherwise make our lives miserable. From telemarketers to spam emails, fuckers are everywhere.

And now there's AI. As with so many applications of this new technology, it's making our lives demonstratively worse. Then today I saw this...

Soon enough, AI will be too smart for tricks like this.

And then we're even more fucked than we are now.

I am used to multi-tasking. I do it all day long, and it doesn't matter if I'm at work or home. As I'm typing this, I have another window monitoring a data import for work, I have a video playing on my television called Betelgeuse Is "Eating" Another Star…and its Concerning, I've got a second video playing in the corner of my laptop where William Osman is responding to "Uncle Roger cyber bullied me", all while being careful that I don't smack into Jake who is sleeping against me. As if all that wasn't enough, I'm off-and-on answering a work email while thinking through some problems I'll have to resolve when I get back to the office.

I think nothing strange about doing a shitload of things at the same time. It's just how I am.

At least I didn't think it strange until the astronomy video Just. Got. Interesting, and I had to set aside everything else so I can focus on how the companion star is revving up Betelgeuse. Then it seems very strange that I am trying to do so much while something so interesting is being explained.

And... I'm back.

Though I just started the latest Kurzgesagt video, Let’s Travel to the Scariest Place in The Universe, so my attention to this blog entry may be fleeting.

But here's the thing about multi-tasking all the time... I find it almost impossible to wind down and do important things like... relax... and sleep. You would think that I would burn out and crash but it never happens. And that's getting to be a serious problem for me.

I am averaging just three to four hours of sleep a night.

The problem, however, is not that I am dragging ass all day and can't function... that's never been an issue (maybe because I traveled constantly for decades and jetlag wasn't an option). No, the problem is that I feel like I'm losing years of my life. Like I'm being burnt out day after day and it's only a matter of time before my brain implodes or my body gives out.

I'm not sure what to do about it.

Perhaps it's a problem which will resolve itself as I age. I simply won't be able to keep up with constant activity, so I'll slow down naturally.

Perhaps one day I'll discover that magical combination of meditation and exercise which fixes my ability to wind down.

Or perhaps I'll drop dead from pent-up exhaustion.

Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to finally getting a good night's sleep.

I honestly don't understand why the fuck people concern themselves with what other people are eating. Or, even worse, condemn people for their choices. A lot of times this comes down to "food influencers" shaming everybody for content. Telling people that their cheaper foods are garbage and they should be eating expensive organic stuff instead. Whether people can afford it or not. Or, in the case of truly fucking shitty "food influencers" (like the Queen of Bullshit Misinformation, "Food Babe" Vani Hari) dishing outright misinformation about food, and condemning methods of food production which they deems "bad" even though science may not support the claim. But influencers doesn't give a fuck. All they care about is the clicks for cash.

In my case, I simply don't want to kill animals to eat. Period. That's what guides my dietary choices. And, lucky for me, food options exist which help me achieve my goal. And, much to my joy, these options are getting more versatile, convenient, and delicious all the time. I am currently hopelessly addicted to Beyond Stack Burgers. I would eat them morning, noon, and night if the coconut oil content didn't cause me digestion woes. So instead I just eat them morning and night.

And, yes, I know what the fuck is in it. The ingredients are right on the package, so I don't need some shitty "influencer" to read them to me: Water, Pea Protein, Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Protein, Apple Extract, Salt, Pomegranate Concentrate, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Dextrose, Spices, Faba Bean Protein, Vitamins and Minerals (Zinc Sulfate, Niacinamide [Vitamin B3], Pyridoxine Hydrochloride [Vitamin B6], Cyanocobalamin [Vitamin B12], Calcium Pantothenate [Vitamin B5]), Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).

And, yes, I know what the fuck the nutrition values are. That's printed right on the package too. The only problematic values to me are saturated fat (from the coconut oil) and the sodium (260mg).

But God-forbid I be allowed to make decisions for myself without somebody stepping in to tell me where I'm going wrong.

Lately I've been inundated with videos about why plant-based meats have "failed."

Most of it is the shitty fucking influencer brigade, praising people for finally coming to their senses by dropping horribly "unhealthy" fake meats and going back to real meat (mad cow, cancerous tumors, feces, steroids, and all). Because nothing screams "health" than having cow shit in your hamburger, I guess.

But the real story is more nuanced and interesting than that. Which is where actual journalism comes into play... like this story from Business Insider...

I'm glad they didn't leave out the fact that real meat is heavily subsidized by the government while plant-base "meat" is mostly left to fend for itself. This, coupled with the economics of scale, put fake "meat" at a disadvantage compared to the slaughterhouses. I'm happy to drive a (relatively) cheap car so I can afford my chosen diet (among other things), but a lot of people aren't. Though given the current high price of food, the extra money is a drop in the bucket compared to the total grocery bill which is hurting vegetarians and carnivores alike.

If "food influencers" truly gave a shit about people's well-being, they'd put their energy into advocating being able to afford food in the first place.

But that doesn't pay as well, so here we are.

I may be fucked up because the fucking clocks were fucking changed again, which is fucking rough because I'm hard at work on this fine Sunday, but don't worry about bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• For the Love of God, Make the Stupid STOP! Look, more people want us to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time than don't. Some of us are so fucking desperate to stop dicking around with the clocks that we're even considering permanent Standard Time (which is not a better option, but it is the only one you can make happen without getting the fucking dumbasses in Congress to ACTUALLY FUCKING DO SOMETHING). This is all so stupid. Just do it. Just make Daylight Time permanent and fucking MOVE ON FROM THIS BULLSHIT.

   
• Nacho! One of my favorite chefs is Saúl Montiel, who appears on Epicurious often. He's entertaining and a genius in the kitchen. Even when he's cooking with meat, I learn new things that I can then adapt into a vegetarian recipes. Yesterday I found that he recently made Perfect Nachos that are vegetarian from the jump. They look incredible...

Damn that looks delicious. No clump of stuff dumped on top of the chips, and when you grab one chip you don't take the entire plate of cheese as you would with cheddar. My next grocery order is going to include the ingredients for this bad boy. Best cooking tip you'll ever get from me... go to the Epicurious page and search "Saúl Montiel" to get more awesome tips than you can shake a spatula at.

   
• YOU FOLD IT IN! After Catherine O'Hara's passing, I'm seeing a non-stop parade of clips with her in them. But this is the first time I've seen her in LEGO. It's one of her most classic scenes...

Oh how I miss Schitt's Creek.

   
• Libarry! Every time I see the Obama Presidential Library in the news, I wonder what in the hell they were thinking...

I detest this design. It looks like a brutalist nightmare... lacking warmth, beauty, elegance, or architectural fluidity. It could have been so much more. I often wonder what type of statement these oppressive-looking monuments are supposed to be making. Whatever it is, this one feels opposite of the presidency it is supposed to be representing.

   
• Lanterns! It's interesting how James Gunn is trying his best to differentiate all the DC projects so they're not merging into sameness. And while I can't say that the concept for a cosmic-spanning character like Green Lantern to be trapped in a distinctly earth-bound scenario, I do appreciate that Lanterns is striving to be something different...

And then there's the rumor that Gunn wants to bail from his contract a year early because he feels at odds with his studio's new Paramount overlords. And wouldn't it be interesting if he returned to Marvel? Seems like Paramount would do just about anything to avoid that.

   
• NEWSFLASH: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy. For better or worse, I put my name on the shit I say. My name is at the top of the sidebar of every entry on Blogography. And my real name is used on all my social media as well. And, believe me, I struggled with whether or not I wanted to go that route. In The Beginning Times, it felt like more people were using a pseudonym than their real names, but I ultimately decided to skip past that. Who cares what I say? And then I got a reader showing up where I live, and figured I may have made a mistake (the threats were also having me re-think things). But now, decades later, it turns out that staying anonymous is a thing of the past. AI can unmask you with "surprising accuracy." I wonder if this will cut down on the number of people making "anonymous" threats? One can only hope.

   
• Frod! I think I shared this years ago. I bears re-sharing....

I do the same thing... for my cats.

   
• Denial Isn't Just a River In Egypt! Every time washed up, bargain basement Hercules homophobe Kevin Sorbo opens his mouth... it's either to say something shitty. Or work in movies like Meet the Spartans so he can kiss dudes...

That's it, Sorbo, put your back into it! Such a hypocrite. Lord what a piece of shit.

   
And now I'm going back to work. Feel sad for me since my circadian rhythm is fucked.

On my Immich photo manager there's a "ten years ago" section which has been displaying pictures of Jake & Jenny when I got them a decade ago. Which means they're over ten years old? It doesn't seem possible. It seems like yesterday.

I took a lot of movies back then. And all of them are adorable. To me. Probably not to many other people though. I mean, look at this...

But it's the photos of Jake with Mufasa that are my favorites...

Even when Jenny wants to take Mufasa away...

Awwwwwwwww.

In world news... "In Sweden, new legislation has made it illegal to leave cats alone for long periods of time. This law is designed to improve the welfare of cats, ensuring they receive social interaction and care. It is part of Sweden’s broader animal welfare policies, which aim to protect pets and ensure their well-being." — This is interesting to me. I mean, I don't like leaving my cats, but there are times I have to. At first I was hiring a pet sitter to come take care of them, but that traumatized them more than being alone. They would hide when the sitter showed up, then not come out... even after they left. So I stopped doing that. Instead I make sure there are feeding robots and litter robots and water fountains and warming pads and the like. It's better for them.

I saw this and it reminded me of Jake...

Cheesecake eventually got switched to a new food that deflated her gassy tummy and helped her lose weight. Jake's just fat.

And... Starbucks is "expanding" to Tennessee.

AKA: They are slowing relocating to Tennessee to escape the absurd taxes here in Washington State.

We're losing businesses at a steady stream while legislatures sit on their hands. MUCH LIKE THEY'VE BEEN DOING FOR DIGITAL DRIVER'S LICENSES AND PUSHING CONGRESS TO ALLOW US TO ADOPT PERMANENT DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME LIKE BRITISH COLUMBIA TO THE NORTH OF US HAS. Senators Patty Murray* and Senator Maria Cantwell* and my Representative, Kim Schrier, might want to look into saving Washington from themselves. Because if any more major companies move out, they'll likely make up the difference by raising our taxes even more. At which point people are going to be voting for whomever runs against them... no matter how big a dumbass they end up being.

I mean, just look at this bullshit... we're #2 in regressive tax policy circa 2024. After Florida. FLORIDA!

By "regressive" it means that the burden of taxes are mostly on low-to-middle-income families. And that should really tell you something. Because if most of the tax burden is on us... and businesses still want to leave because of high taxes... exactly how fucking high are our taxes? Monumentally huge. Insanely huge.

There's only so much gas in the tank.

And speaking of gas... it's averaging $4.50 in Washington State? Since Trump blamed Biden for that even though the president doesn't have much to do with gas prices, do we now get to blame Trump?

I swear... the broken way the USA governs itself is beyond stupid. At what point are Americans of all political parties going to come together for the common good and start over with a system which hasn't been corrupted to the point of idiocy? Americans can disagree on issues. That's bound to happen. But there are major points where we agree, and we should build from that. Not continue to pay a government huge amounts of money to act against our collective best interest.

But it's all special interest and billionaires running the show, and they don't give a crap about us.

   
*I am still raw over the fact that Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell voted against cheap drug re-importation from Canada over "safety concerns." AKA: They didn't want to jeopardize the cash flow from Big Pharma. Like we're supposed to believe that Canadians are dying left and right over "bad prescription drugs." Murray, facing massive backlash, eventually flip-flopped on her position... I have no idea where the fuck Maria Cantwell is standing. Probably wherever is paying her the most.

UPDATE: And, right on cue, look what popped up on my Facebook feed. An ad from Washington State House Republicans...

My GOD Democrat politicians are fucking stupid. They do stupid this shit while the Republicans walk all over them to gain followers, then whine like dumbass dipshit assholes when they lose elections. It's useless hand-wringing while wailing "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO US?!?. Democrats just LOVE to lose. They're designed that way. Or so I would assume. I mean, look where we are now.

Yesterday Apple unleashed the MacBook Neo... which is not so much a MacBook, but an iPhone with a screen and keyboard. That's because it's using the Apple iPhone A18 Pro chip instead of the M-Series found in MacBook Air & Pro. And yet it runs all Mac apps out of the box, which is pretty cool.

And it's just $599 ($499 for students!). Or $699 if you want the memory upgraded from 256GB to 512GB.

It's a wacky topsy-turvy world where Apple has value for the money against the PC competition. Or, in this case, the ChromeBook competition. This is a great laptop for those who don't require the raw power of an M5 chip, which is overkill in a lot of ways for most people. If you're mostly surfing the web and writing emails, or taking notes in class, here's your machine. And it arrives in four colors...

The promo video is kinda fun...

What's surprising is that Apple didn't cheap out where they absolutely could have. It's got an aluminum chassis, a great keyboard (with TouchID on the $699 model!), a real trackpad, and a decent display (which is 13-inches, an inch bigger than the 12-inch Mac that I used for travel back in the day). The only thing that gives me pause is the mere 8GB of memory, but that's probably adequate for light computer use.

Earlier, Apple upgraded the MacBook Pro to a pair of bigger M5 series chips. My current laptop is the M2 Max with a MacBench score of 2749, so naturally I'm coveting the newer, faster, more powerful machine. For the work I do, it's looking pretty incredible. The base-model M5 from last year scores 4228 on MacBench... which means the new M5 Pro and M5 Max are probably a leap above that, pushing 4500 or higher.

Alas, the ads Apple created for both the US and UK are awful, which is a bizarre contrast to the Neo ad...

Ye gads what a mess.

I don't really have the money for a new laptop (I just had to pay $800 to get a pressure regulator installed on my water line because it was getting dangerously high for some reason), but given the time it would save me for renders and such, it might just be worth trying to scrape some money together to have it. I don't even know that I'd need the Ultra. The Pro is probably plenty. For now. Because once you get used to really fast renders, all you want is even faster renders.

Or maybe I should wait for the M6 models?

Why can't I be a millionaire who doesn't have to worry about the cost of always buying the latest and greatest.

WARNING: This entry contains technical stuff most people won't care about!

Once I had finally saved enough money to replace my aging QNAP NAS (Network Attached Storage) system with shiny new UGREEN devices, I was dismayed to find that some of the apps I relied on were not available in their app repository. "ZOMG! WHERE'S PLEX?!?!" I screamed. "HOW CAN YOU SELL A NAS THAT DOESN'T HAVE PLEX?!?" Sure QNAP was always late to the table with updates to their apps, but at least they had apps.

Enter Docker...

"Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly. Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The isolation and security let you run many containers simultaneously on a given host. Containers are lightweight and contain everything needed to run the application, so you don't need to rely on what's installed on the host."

Or, to put it another way, Docker lets you run the apps that aren't in your NAS's app repository.

Now, before I dig into it, there is something I've learned about Docker. Primary of which is that a lot of people are moving away from it because it's gotten bloated and resource hungry. There are even lighter alternatives being developed which do the same thing more efficiently. But none of them are in the UGREEN app repository like Docker is, and I don't want to take the time to learn how to manually install them. So here I am running Docker.

Not that Docker is easy, mind you.

Things can get very tricky when trying to install apps, even when you are following a step-by-step guide you found on the internet. You're still going to have to deal with SSH and config files (called "compose.yml") and other stuff that ain't a point-and-click process. You will have to get your hands dirty and that can be frustrating. I can say that the more you use Docker, the easier it gets.

The important thing to note is that despite some difficulties, I do have my apps up-and-running on my NAS now. I'm going to drop those apps here in case I ever need to refer back...

• Portainer. This is an app which let's you more easily manage apps with Docker. Something which is very much welcome. Half the tutorials I've found on the internet to install, alter, and maintain Docker apps use Portainer, so it should be the first thing you install.
• Watchtower. Updating your Docker apps can be a challenge, because you have to remember to log into your NAS often so you can see what needs to be updated. Watchtower handles this for you, grabbing the latest versions and installing them automatically.
• Pi-Hole. This is a "DNS sinkhole" that also allows you to do nice things like block ads on websites. Though I've found more and more websites are finding ways around being blocked by coding ads as if they're a part of the page, so it's not as useful as it once was.
• TailScale. This wholly remarkable app allows you to create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) between all your devices. This means you can securely access them as if you're sitting at home. I've installed it on everything from phone to laptop to tablet to every desktop I use, and it's fantastic. No more setting up wacky holes in your network to access stuff remotely. Lock everything down and let TailScale handle it! Whether I'm using Apple Screen Sharing to control my work computer from home... or feeding data to my iPhone from some service I have installed on my NAS, it's all just... there.
• Plex. The main reason I installed Docker was for Plex, the app I use to catalog and serve all my media (from videos to photos to music). It wasn't the easiest thing to get set up but, once I did, I just added the TailScale address for my NAS to Plex and everything works seamlessly. Far, far better than using the flakey remote access offered by Plex itself.
• Paperless-NGX. This is just too handy. It's like a repository for all the stuff you collect on the internet (or even Real Life). From recipes to notes to receipts... whatever. Just drop it into Paperless and it gets stored, cataloged, and converted to searchable text (if it's an image file). I've collected hundreds of vegetarian and vegan recipes over the years in all kinds of different formats from text files to screen captures to PDFs. They're all in Paperless now, and I've got them tagged for easy searches. Scenarios like "What was in that drink that I had in Hawaii?" used to be a mess because all I had was a photo I took of a menu at a bar. But now that the photo is cataloged in Paperless and tagged as "alcohol" and "Hawaii," it takes two seconds to find it instead of endless digging through files.
• Immich. This is a photo cataloging app that's very, very good. Far better than Apple's own Photos app (and UGREEN's Photos app too... maybe even Google's app!). And it's constantly being improved and updated with great new features. Since all my photos are already in my Plex folder, I just pointed Immich to it and that was it. Now I have all the cool Immich tools without having to re-catalog everything. So nice. And, just like Plex, I just enter my TailScale address into the apps on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, and I can get to my library wherever I am.
• IT-Tools. Over 50 tools that handle everything from temperature and date & time conversion to math evaluation. I do wish it included more useful every day conversions (like weight and measurements) but hopefully we'll get that eventually too.

Since discovering the joys of Docker, I'm sure there are several other apps out there that I will be installing. And there's a lot of apps out there.

So... my initial panic of UGREEN not having many apps has been resolved. About the only UGREEN apps I use now are Docker and Sync & Backup (I have a secondary cheaper UGREEN NAS in a separate location which regularly pulls all my data off my home NAS via TailScale so I have an off-site backup). Everything else is on Docker. Which has changed the way that I use my devices and store my data.

In a good way.

Today was supposed to be a boring entry on the apps that I've got installed on Docker for my NAS. I had it all ready to go yesterday. All I needed to do was proofread it. And then I saw a news article that made my blood boil, so you're getting a rant instead.

I'll post the article in the next paragraph. But first I am compelled to tell you that I fucking loathe the US Congress. And, if not for them, this rant wouldn't be necessary. Here's the article...

British Columbia adopts permanent daylight saving time; western Washington an hour behind November through March — A shitty headline, because it's all of Washington. Not just "western Washington." But the article was probably written by an AI bot which thinks that western and eastern Washington are in different time zones, so what-the-fuck-ever.

Washington State would be right there with our brothers in the Province to the North of us (back in 2019!), thanks to RCW 1.20.052. But since Congress is FUCKING USELESS, we can't actually make the change. The best we can do is ignore Daylight Saving (like Hawaii and Arizona do) which doesn't require Congressional approval. But that would suck. And so... here we are... having to hope that Congress will eventually stop wasting time protecting assholes in the Epstein Files and other crap so they can get to the stuff that's been sitting on their docket FOR OVER SIX FUCKING YEARS.

Like not dicking around with the clocks twice a year. Something stupid as hell in the Year of Our Lord 2026.

So much for "States Rights." There is absolutely no end to my seething fucking hatred of Congress. And most politicians, really.

Anyway. See you again tomorrow, when you'll get that thrilling article on Docker.

Unless I read something in the news that sets off another rant. Which, let's face it, is extremely likely.