Slippery thoughts in the shoal

Last week, Wednesday was a red letter day. I had three of five pending cavities filled. Earlier in the month I had my first dentist appointment in about 9 years, give or take a year, expressly because I'd noticed that some of my molars were dissolving away at the gum line a over a year ago and getting sensitive to cold liquids. Assiduous application of chalk tablets (Tums) and Listerine strips did not pave over the holes but the sensitivity was reduced. After nearly two hours of puttering around in my mouth and getting a numbing agent that lasted 5 hours before I started to feel my lips on that side of my face, I have molars that feel like they've been packed smooth with taffy. There was also a lingering smell of scorched enamel. Otherwise, it feels a bit like I neglected to brush my teeth and have food stuck between my teeth. The dentist gave me a tube of numbing toothpaste with the expectation that I was going to use it every day. It's supposed to protect against enamel erosion. Do not rinse out, but if you swallow any, call poison control/rush to the hospital right away. Do not store above 25°C, AKA room temperature in the summer. Riiiight. I might give this stuff a pass.



Progress progresses progressively in the amaryllis adventure! My ten year old amaryllis is sprouting again mid season. After flowering and making a fresh batch of seeds, it caught a bad case of red fungus. The leaves were turning red with black specks and some leaves were wilting. About four weeks ago, I got some sulfur-based fungicide, in spray bottle format for ease of application, applied it outside (that spray is nasty stuff) and brought the plant back inside. I also trimmed off two wilted leaves. I applied the spray again a week later and removed two more leaves. Now, with just one leaf hanging on, a surprise sprout emerged last week. The two fresh leaves are now 9" tall. I wonder if it will bloom again?

I think I had the red fungus problem last year too, but the leaves didn't wilt until September. I took it to mean an early dormancy so I put the pot into the basement early. Now that I've got the fungus on my radar and a spray bottle full of fungicide, the saga continues. I also have seedlings. The seeds from this year germinated.

I spread the last of the amaryllis seeds on wet soil in the first week of May and the first sprout was on May 23rd. In June I was getting a new sprout almost every day until I counted 26 shoots. Some of them tipped over and died with their roots in the air. Today I count 21 grass-like leaves, one per plant, each with a small white proto-bulb. Growth seems to have stalled. Am I not watering enough?

I found one video on YouTube that followed the development of a potted amaryllis crop from germination to about 14 months of growth. There was no dormancy period in that first year and some of the seedlings flowered for the first time after 14 months. That is faster than I expected. Meanwhile, it's watch, water and wait.



I've now seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The showing on Sunday was at 9:35 PM and despite the fact that were three other showings of this same movie (but in French), the room was _packed_. Where did all these people come from‽ It's been a very long time since the last time I was in a packed movie theatre. Turns out that I chose to catch this movie while it was making a box office record for revenue: $360 million for the "opening weekend".

The movie was better than The Odyssey, perhaps because it wasn't a Greek Tragedy, but I think it would have been better if I hadn't seen the same trailer over and over again for this movie. It tainted my expectations on how the action was going to play out. Also, Zendaya is like in all the movies now, like a new Clark Gable. I am already sick of the Dune 3 trailer.

Otherwise, this movie has issues. Where is Peter Parker getting his money in this magical amnesia future? Iron Man? What is this bromance between the mayor of New York and a vigilante engaged in illegal facial recognition mass surveillance? Maybe the ha ha everybody is doing it proto-police-state tinkering is meant as a subtle wake up call that as a society, we're ass-deep in total loss of anonymity? Then there was the wait, why again are there ninjas in this movie? Why not fish bell hops and receptionists too? Like red ninjas, they'd look like, y'know, out of water in a government building, but fish are cool. They're fish! As for the über foe, well, not quite as dead as I'd thought. There have been too many reboots.




Spider-Mare,
Spider-Mare.
Trots through Ponyville without a care.

Spins a web,
twice her size,
catches friends by surprise.

Lookout! There goes a Spider-Mare.

Is she nice?
She gives advice!
She serves lattes with pumpkin spice.

Is she fast?
She's a blast!
She travels from the future to the past.

Look there (where?), there was a Spider-Mare.

When things don't go right,
in Equestria Prime,
The Magic of Friendship
will fix every crime!

Spider-Mare,
Spider-Mare.
Other pones just stop and stare.

When she sings a song,
All sing along.
It's just magic don't get me wrong.

Hey there!
There goes a Spider-Mare!

To her,
Life is tight suits and make-up
Wherever there's a bake-up
You'll find a Spider-Mare!

I woke up at 4:30 AM. I can get up anytime I like. So I got up, went outside, walked barefoot down my crushed-rock drive and stood in the quiet predawn twilight on the paved road. It was quiet! No cars, no birds, no movement, just quiet. Excellent! So I walked west, stopping to look around, the neighbour is building stuff, maybe an extension to the visual barrier sheltering the side entrance to their house and the eclectic collection of large colourful plastic toys gathered there. A car appeared, I could hear it, see the headlights over a kilometer away to the east. I ran down the road, bolting for my driveway. My legs are not in shape. I could see by the light hitting the hydroelectricity wires that another car was on its way from the west too. I got home and waited for both cars to pass. Then I went back to the road. This time, in the quiet between cars, I made it as far west as the tractor path to the soy fields across the road. It was still too dark to see any details, like where had they dumped the rocks they'd removed from the field prior to spreading narrow rows of blue-coated seed, seeds that had grown into row on row of insect-slaughtering soy crops, now calf-high.



Across the street, the next neighbour over had all their exterior lights on, illuminating one car. I ran home and made coffee. While my mug filled, I went back again. To the east, I could make out something reddish along the road, far way. Cars were coming again, I went home. At 5:15 AM, it was bright out. There were car noises drifting in from far away and robins raising a racket with their territorial warbling nearby. I could see what the reddish thing to the east was now, an orange 'construction ahead' type sign. With any luck, my road will get closed down for a while for repairs. That would be nice.



The sun was shining yesterday afternoon and there was a bug-a-paloosa in the stand of shoulder-high thistles and in the knapweed patch on my front lawn. Bumblebees and bees galore plus butterflies, fritillary, monarch, skipper, peacock and blue, one of each, stuffing themselves silly on nectar. I guess that patch of knapweed was choice, plus it had been grey and rainy the day before. I even saw a horsefly getting in on the thistle blooms. The European peacock butterfly Aglais io isn't in any of my bug guides, it's part of a population that appeared in the Montreal area about 30 years ago. I saw a hummingbird, it only seemed interested in the jewelweed and was too far and too fast for a picture.



For a good read, check out lannamichaels' review of the Project Hail Mary book by Andy Weir, with comparisons/contrast with the movie in the replies. I found out that I was wrong! Grace is not supposed to be a pugnacious misanthrope who can only connect with precocious kids in a classroom setting. That means the scientific community consists of knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who express their opposition to ideas they don't share by swinging their fists. At least in Andy Weir's world, or perhaps in Grace's mind. Maybe just in Grace's mind. Maybe Grace's fantasy world should have been explored, it would have tied in well to his creativity and focus in the movie. A missed opportunity! It would have added another layer: Did Grace connect with a rock spider alien and save two worlds? Was it all a dream? Charles Vermont!¹



¹ A 1972 TV movie of the week.

I am still fat! I bought a pair of shorts at the goodwill-type store that are one size larger. Not too ugly, blue-black cargo shorts with a YKK zipper. They fit fine. I've also started glancing through the pants section, but no glory yet.



By all appearances, she who trims the lawn is feeling better. She spits on death! Those daily jabs of antibiotics are helping. Blue bottle flies were getting all suspiciously interested in the wool on her back. I suspect something rotten. Rotten wool since I couldn't find or smell an infection. Just maybe a faint whiff of well aged roadside jerky. Poking and prodding and pulling on dreads did not yield anything conclusive. She was particularly mellow yesterday so I trimmed the sides off her wool blanket for better ventilation and got generous with the Ultrashield livestock insecticide all through what was left. Now my legs are sore from all the squatting and kneeling. I did see some dead metallic-green beetles in her wool, but the flies have flown. I think she hasn't been dust-bathing well recently. That evening of rain a few days ago had her wool blanket well soaked too. Today it looks dry.

I'm on a tear! I've now watched four good movies in a row! The fourth and best movie so far was No Country for Old Men (2007), a Coen Brothers film. It has been sitting on my pile of unwatched movies for so long that it was taped shut and there was a layer of dust on the clam-shell. The goodwill-type store stopped taping the DVD cases shut about two years ago. So I hadn't touched it because I thought it was some tired revenge flick about World War Two, but no, it's a western detective story, set in 1980. The story telling was great! I'm shocked. This streak can't last.



It won that year's Academy Award for Best Picture, and yet there is no mention of such on the DVD case. Of the four other movies nominated that year for Best Picture, none interest me. In the animated Feature category, Ratatouille was good.



No Country for Old Men is going to give me nightmares. Probably.

It's been rainy, then sunny and back to rainy again. Last night there were many fireflies out, it might be from the hot weather and the rain. I had thought I'd go garage sale hopping this weekend as it is the only weekend where garage sales are allowed in my town this month, but Saturday I was out being sociable. So today was plan 'B' but it's rained most of the day, so no garage sales until next month for me. I'll try my luck at the goodwill-type store. The 'once a month and only May through September' deal for garage sales is because the municipal government isn't big on local colour, they decided too many people were trying to make a living off garage sales.



With the rain coming and going, I've got it in my head that I'm going to get pictures of wet flowers. When the rain stops, I have been running out to see what I can find. Photography, the art of discovery. Like E-Z Make Machine Pastiche Surprise, but with more control and less choice. There are still lots of buttercups, so I choose them.



I combined my social sortie Saturday with a stop to see a movie. I went to see the final episode of The Amazing Digital Circus. I got into my car late and I had to stop to buy gas. Then I got a bit lost in the whole maze of stores and interconnecting parking lots around the movie-plex. Imagine a strip mall that has metastasized into a village made only of boutiques. I found the movie-plex by dead reckoning and parked about 10 minutes late. Fortunately, the first half of the movie was the entire second-to-last episode which I'd already seen. So I didn't miss a thing. The movie did not have the sci-fi horror I was expecting. I should have tried to catch The Sheep Detectives instead.

I'm watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. It's mostly shallow and awful. I can even guess many of the lines before they're said. Plus so much soft porn. I'm halfway through season five. At least now we know why slayers snuff it by age 25.

My Venus flytrap looks like it's about to give up the ghost. So I went looking for fresh blood sap. I had seen some at Walmart (of all places) over a month ago (I think I was looking for lava lamp light bulbs), so I tried there. No luck. I tried the garden sections of three hardware stores. Nope. Bought groceries. Met Alain F. by chance by the frozen seafood, chewed the fat. Neither of us feel the urge to visit the exotic Animal Farm we left. Finally, since the route I took home kinda approached a big garden center, I drove the extra ten minutes and went there.

'Lo and behold, carnivorous plants! Fly traps, and Nepenthes and pitcher plants and sundews, oh my! Very expensive too. But oh no, oh woe, no tall red and green Sarracenia. Sadness. I fought the tears and got a bag of potting sphagnum moss, a wee sundew and two flytraps, one for me and one for the neighbour. The sundew is flowering! 8^D The neighbour gave me a two week supply of apple juice. I gave him a gallon of rainwater. And the flytrap, of course.



Well that's it for fringe Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, where I'll post Harry Potter and "A.I" slop if I feel like it, thankyouverymuch. Not that I'll go looking for a bot to spit out a text for me, what would be the point? Why would anyone want to read something by something that does not understand what it is that it is stringing together?

Gotta post and run: it's nice out and the first garage sale weekend of 2026 starts now. It will give me an excuse to ride my 38 years old bicycle. Time to get up, go out and melt some lard.



Six hours later. I bought 1 cookie (75¢), 1 orange/vanilla milkshake ($5.60), 1 DVD ($1 Jumanji II The Next Level) and some stretchy bead string that looks like fishing line ($2 because I asked, she had some and assured me it wouldn't snap after a few years). I also took over a dozen pictures of one lawn. I am ze tired.

I heard on the radio that houseplants with yellow leaves could be a sign of iron deficiency. I did a quick internet check and got much the same information, young leaves with green veins but otherwise yellowing: iron deficiency. I've been watering my plants with rain water, snow melt and dehumidifier water as a way to keep mineral deposits from building up in and on the soil in the pots, as they used to do when I used well water and before that, municipital water. So iron deficiency seemed likely, especially for my orange/grapefruit/kumquat/unknown citrus plants that are growing ever larger but are not flowering and have been sporting yellow leaves.



I plopped in about 2 cups of manure rich mud and poured another two cups of well-water (probably iron rich) on top. Did it work? I don't think so. I also have a dwarf banana and some sort of spotted-leaf house plant living in the same pot because I suspect a multi-species situation is why the citrus was growing well in the first place. It used to be some kind of yellow asteridae (that refused to die), maybe some sort of sow-thistle, living in the pot with the citrus, but spider mites finished it off a few years ago. Spider mites! They took over the year I tried to grow cantaloupe indoors. I eventually sprayed them to death.



Maybe I should shake a fistful of "wildflower seed mix" seeds into the pot and hope. There's still a bit of room, but shaking in some goat weed flowers two years ago did nothing.

I looked for citrus plant food on eBay. That stuff was really expensive, even before the outrageous shipping fee. No deal. So I bought some bluegreen "plant food" sticks instead. Contains iron. I stuck a "plant food" stick into the soil in the pot with the citrus plants. A few months later I noticed that my indoor azalea was turning yellow brown! It got a bluegreen stick too. A year later, I'm not convinced that the citrus is doing any better, but the azalea is sprouting green leaves. Maybe I have to double the dose in the citrus.

I hear that Gamestop (of meme stock fame) is keen to buy eBay. Suddenly eBay absolutely requires cookies to work. I really don't like sites using cookies to second guess me and furthermore, potentially using cookies to inflate prices. So I've switched to finding what interests me, strip the URL to the item to a bare minimum (everything after and including that first '?'), copy the URL to Notepad, and later, if I still want it, use the URL to navigate straight to the item (after I've erased my browsing history and restarted my browser).

Unlike where LLM's are used to generate texts, programs or images, where reams of slop output are at best a nuisance and at worst an impediment, when LLM's like Anthropic's Mythos model are asked to find flaws in cyber security, it only has to be right once in a while to churn out a lot of serious vulnerabilities.

That said, I'm hearing that LLM's are continuing to improve and that automated research is looking like a probable outcome, and not "research papers" of the fake variety that have no basis in reality. It would be nice to finally get a review of available data and compare the dentition of wild bears vs captive bears vs diet. My suspicion is that a diet high in cereal content rots the teeth in captive bears.



The outcome I'd like to see is to be able to get a LLM to design and build a realistic talking and walking plush pony using available hardware, like Raspberry pi's. That would be an upside if the "AI robot revolution" actually happens. Robot pets. And also a downside. Already alarmists are griping about chatbot addictions interfering with people's ability to deal with messy everyday person to person interactions.


Source: http://cannibalus.deviantart.com/art/SweetieBot-does-not-like-cats-442132308

Custom robotics notwithstanding, for universal automation to enable a universal utopia divorced from the monetary economy to which we are presently shackled, there has to be first a state sponsored universal basic income, free universal healthcare, free education up to and including higher education, free transportation and a universal creative commons for all intellectual property. Otherwise we will continue to worsen the present 'utopia for billionaires' and deepening poverty for everybody else.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN114Cq4fv4

Bad news! Opals are not forever! They're like glass sponges, leaky wet glass. Glass is an amorphous solid, so somehow there is room for water in opals. They dry out, they can/will soak up water and chemicals and they will turn yellow or brown if left in the sun. Not good. I'd stuck the couple I'd got off eBay (one was a "gift" from the seller) on a turning platform in my box window for maximum sparkles and a week or so later I had the impression that the small dark "gift" opal had turned from blue to brown. =8^( I did a bit of digging via DuckDuckGo. Opals are _not_ worth getting, especially not worth getting on jewelry if you plan wearing that jewelry. Same goes for amethyst and citrine, so ix-nay on amethyst eode-gays. But synthetic opals should have more staying power. Anyway, I put the two opals back into my curio cabinet. They look OK, for now. I think the blue is back and I think the clear one now has larger coloured sparkles than it had before. Maybe it shrank.