breakinglight11

Today was...sorta good?

Work was pretty okay. It's become evident that, of the eight prep periods I am supposed to get each week, I'm realistically gonna get like...three. Not counting my brain crashing and needing a break. So. That's a lot.

Things are generally pretty good even with that! Like, I really like all the things I'm doing at work. It's just another example of the thing I figured out a year or two ago: teaching is a job where you can't become faster as you get better. Like, nearly everything that involves being a good/better teacher is something that involves more time. Deeper connections with students. More thoughtful grading. That kind of thing. I can get faster at grading, but I can't really get faster at guiding a student through socratic questioning until they can reach an understanding themself.

So yeah, work is gonna be a ton this year, and I'm just...gonna cope, I guess? It is what it's.

And then I had therapy, and therapy was kinda good? Before therapy was crap, before therapy I just went into total slug mode on my phone playing stupid phone games. Far too much of that. I was filling Jenn in on all the things I managed yesterday, and at one point she was being mildly astonished at HOW MUCH I'd gotten done. Well yeah, sez I. I didn't play phonegames yesterday, and it's incredible how many more hours are in the day when you don't spend them on phonegames.

After therapy, I did a little more scraps of prep for tomorrow (including the extremely essential "go run your copies _now_" because let's be real, if I try to save that for the morning, I will find eighty people scrobbling around the school to try and find the single working copier in the building. It's like a fun new scavenger hunt every week!

But I did also spend some time fucking around with my phone UX. Actually poked at the widgets menu and found a few things I will probably like. Resorted and gathered my apps --I am not quite able to bear just deleting the phone games, even if that seems like it might need to be the answer for some of them. But putting them in a different folder, in a different place, seeing if that helps...yeah.

And I poked at Habitica briefly, and realized it might be the thing I am looking for in terms of "ugh, need a todo app". We'll try it again for a bit, see what happens. Worst case scenario, nothing useful, and that's just baseline.

On the way home, I found my buddy Thrantar walking to Bluesy, and we walked a block or two together. That would've been it, except just when we were about to split and go our separate ways, we instead found a folk music jam that's apparently been happening on the regular just out on the bike path. I am very fond of this, I am very fond of my weird little town. We stood a good long while and listened to music and chatted about life --I am happy both for the getting to listen to music and for the broader getting to reconnect with someone from my past. It's real good!

(and I briefly chatted with one of the people who seems to be organizing it and when she said a wistful "oh I wish we could have dancing sometimes too" went "UM I KNOW A GUY (it's me, I'm the guy)" and that would be really keen if it worked out in the long run. I would enjoy having occasional ceilidh calling on my way home from work!)

Home again eventually. Played video games and chatted with friends and ate good dinner and played a lot more video games. This is...this is only semi-useful, but honestly, any video game that takes the laptop is probably better for my brainpan than the ones that use the phone. It's almost a win?

Now I am up too late again, and I need to get up early, or at least, get up very much on time and get straight to work so I can finish some of the prep stuff. This is a conceivable plan, I suppose.

Tomorrow's big goal might be to wash my hair? Also maybe have an internet date with Tuesday. Both of those would be really good things to get done.

I love you, and hope y'all are well.

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Gonna have to do the bullshit thing where I write down the things that I did today, because my shitbrain is pretty convinced I haven't done enough and I'm not actually gonna be able to defeat it with logic and data, but I can at least try.

So here's some things I did today:

*Went to bells! First time at bells since the weekend before my surgery, I think? So that's basically two months or so. I rang some stuff, pretty badly, because, as mentioned, haven't been in an age. It was nice to see some folks, and very nice to spend time at the end on the greenway in the warm weather chatting with Kyle.

*Also I got a bagel and said hello to Leo the BagelMonger who is a friend of mine and I was happy to see still exists and extremely happy to hear is taking his partner to go see the MONSTER TRUCKS tonight, that is so dope I am very jealous.

*After bellslunch, I went to the _library_ that is in the North End, because I'd never been, but Julia very kindly checked out a book for me ages ago (for surgery, because I was like seven billionth on the list for the ebook) and I needed to return it, and also I was bold and asked the librarians if I could also get a library card and they were very much "HELL YEAH!" and now I have a third library card in my wallet to go with the NESFA and Minuteman ones.

(I like that my brain briefly forgot what the system was called, attempted to combine Minuteman and Middlesex, and had a solid ten seconds of "it can't possibly be a Middleman library card, I would've noticed")

Anyways, my BPL card has lions on it, and then I walked a circuit of the library to look at its books and stuff and I found three books to check out and when I brought them to the desk, the nice librarian who helped me before was all "oh hey this one is really good!" about one of the ones I picked, so I got an A+ in libraries, which is a thing that is possible to do and reasonable to want.

*Got on the T, rode to Porter Square, went to Bicycle Belle, picked up my Xtracycle, now with bonus brakes on both the back *and* front wheels. Talked to the folks. Was admired by a random patron directly outside the bike store. I am kinda psyched for this nonsense, and extremely aaah but excited that I will get to take it on an ADVENTURE next weekend.

*Biked home and did nothing productive but did finish the back half of Late Eclipses. Yes, I am _extremely_ overdue for a booklog post. This is partly because I read fuckall this summer, which I feel bad about, and especially because I have been pissshit poor at actually keeping up with my booklog, which I also feel bad about. It's probably stupid to feel bad about the things that are not actual obligations and just stuff I do for myself _but also_ I'm the one I have to live with, so *shrug*.

*Eventually I took the laundry downstairs and ran two loads of it.

*I managed to clean up like...ten things total from my desk. This has not made an appreciable difference in the state of my desk, sigh.

*Tuesday is here, and I am happy for it, in between being very not-wanna about _everything_. Right now she is curled up next to me all sleepy and it's wonderful and feels really good and safe and happy. I wish my brain would shut the fuck up and let me be more happy about the world, but it's nice to at least have small joys.

*Oh yeah, I did finally do a whole bunch of fucking futureplanning, stuff needed for the four upcoming weekends of doing things (it's not quite four consecutive, I think it's two on, then a break, then two more). Ashanty/biking/camping, then MD and Rennfaire (Oct19), then nothing, then Liz and Thom's wedding, then Racheline and Patty's wedding. I was maybe gonna go to Northampton the weekend after that for a dance thing, but I think it would be extremely smart of me to _not_ do that, because jegus fuck, no, I need to be home slightly more than that.

(At some point I need to suss Thanksgiving).

*But yeah, that was like...multiple different emails and sorting tasks and stuff. I reserved a hotel room and bought train tickets and offered to share bedding with someone and aaah there are so many things. I have put a data point in my email spreadsheet tho, and putting data points into it is a good first step to actually like...interacting with the inbox0 project.

And I wrote my words, and I suppose that's a pretty good thing even if I'm just gonna go back and play more bullshit phone games in a second.

~Sor
MOOP!

jducoeur

Having just finished the leftovers, a few conclusions about TooHot, a new restaurant in Harvard Square:

Far as I can tell, it is seriously authentic Szechuan, not something one often comes across in these parts.
As a consequence, the name of the restaurant is accurate. The waiter asked whether I wanted it "mild", and I said no, I like spicy, so "medium" maybe? As I suspected, "medium" is somewhere near the top of my spice tolerance: this place really likes its peppers.
It's already impressively popular (after being open just a few months), especially with people who are actually Chinese (based on glancing at the crowd) -- at 6pm on a Tuesday, they had to think about whether they could seat three people without reservations.
The specialties of the house are also pretty authentic.
Authentic Szechuan apparently involves a lot of frog.
Frog mostly tastes like chicken, except with a lot more bones.
So many bones.
Too many bones.

So overall: excellent restaurant, especially if you like spicy food. But I think the frog dishes may be more effort than I'm willing to put in.

sorcyress

I'm proud of myself that I have managed, every day this school year so far except two¹, gotten out of bed on first alarm. No snooze, no going back, just up and doing things.

And while thinking about it this morning, I just said to myself something along these lines:

Well yeah, but I've been doing it on easy mode [since the hard part of the year is the dark and endless cold].
Okay, but doing it on easy mode is still doing it.

That feels important. Right up there with "half-assing is better than no-assing" or "no more zero days". It still counts. It still _gets done_.

Weather app says it was in the 40s outside when I woke up this morning. I'm gonna need to get the space heater out for my room soon, and then it's gonna run pretty much always when I'm awake and in my room, until the world gets warm enough for me to live in it again. I've had enough 5am wakeup days that I do know what it looks like to stumble down the stairs into the pitchblack.

Doing it on easy mode is still doing it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Two days, the two days immediately after finding out my mom has cancer. She saw her oncologist yesterday, they are tentatively hopeful that removal of the offending bits (we're gonna be hysterectobuddies!) is gonna solve the problem, not even chemo needed, it is 2025 and cancer is not a guaranteed death sentence, especially if you're rich and have access to good doctors. I haven't talked about it really yet because it's too big to look at, especially in the rest of this hell-fuck year. I don't super want to talk about it much more now, but I'm at least willing to hear responses. Woo.

sorcyress

Whiiiite rabbit. Whuf.

Haven't been writing here! Work has been eating a lot of my brain, and also some ~other stuff~ has been eating a lot of my brain. At least one of those things I can't talk about here. Another I don't _want_ to talk about here. It's not been great.

Today's a little better though. Dirt beneath my nails, I crawl my way back from the forest. Work is genuinely going really well and I like it a lot, even if my work responsibilities for this year are keeping me _busy_. I'm a building rep for my union, which means another couple meetings a month. I'm on the Equity Team which *also* means another couple meetings a month. I'm mentoring a new teacher who's enrolled in a grad program that means _another_ couple meetings a month (weekly with them, I think there's been 2-3 so far with the program?). I'm teaching three inclusion classes this year, which means me and my co-teacher really need to formally have at least one meeting a week for planning purposes. (She and I get along so well that we are, uh, doing more than that which is lovely but also oh god, when do I prep?)

But other stuff today has been real good too. Equity Team made me go look up my Gender Presentation that I gave like seven times between Feb'22 and June'23, and then haven't done since. It's really good! Like actually entirely solid! I should apply to do that as a PD more often, make other teacher have to talk and think about gender some! It felt good to look back at something I'd made in the past and feel like it was an accomplishment.

I was a bit faffy during after-school-preptime, but I did manage to get all my copies done. Well, okay, the paper part is done, I technically have a date with a stapler sometime tomorrow to get the packets together (sigh). Hm, and I didn't finish making my lesson plans for tomorrow. That's fine, that just means early morning at school I guess.

I've been keeping up with the grading, which is surprising, but not in a bad way. I'm not quite done everything I want to be done with, but it's pretty close, and I feel like I've done a good job of all of it. Yay me!

Got home, immediately swapped out my clothes, and collected my Xtracycle (which needs a name, both my other bicycles have names²) and dragged it down to Bicycle Belle, to see if they could help me with the brakes issue (it doesn't have a front one). I chose to go the extra 0.25 miles because BB is open an hour later on Wednesday than Ace Wheelworks ever is, and also because they specialize in cargo bikes, so I figured it was a good match. Plus, most recent Wheelworks trip had the pendulum back on the "sneering at casuals and women" side of things. Not drastically so, but something about the shop was raising my hackles, and I am _thrilled_ to say that Bicycle Belle entirely passed that vibe check. Even when I was asking stupid questions, I did not feel like anyone thought I was stupid, and that's very pleasant.

Got home again, attempted to repair the flat on Vin and...uh. Huh. Apparently when we got the puncture-resistant tyres in 2019 (!), they are basically impossible to take off the rims, which means I'm pretty much assuming my two most recent blowouts (last November and last week) were just the rubber giving way on the tubes finally. I think the right answer is "purchase some tyres that are not puncture resistant and go back to being able to easily repair your own flats" but I am extremely annoyed that I will probably have to bring my stupid bike to a stupid bike shop just to do a repair that I can ordinarily do in my backyard in ten minutes. Unless someone wants to come be stronk for me and de-tyre the thing.

Wasn't too badly shook mood-wise, and then when chatting with SamSam about it, I alluded to the time that my bike (parked) got hit by a car and the wheel was all bent to shit. Plugging in my photo-hard-drive to try and dig up the photo (success!) left me sitting on the couch with my photo-hard-drive plugged in. I tagged about 400 more photos, which feels like good progress. Only 317 to go in the current batch, and then I have a hundred more batches!

I also paid Ezri for some rent (a lot of rent, both back and forward), and then I finally set up an account on YouNeedABudget, since I've been hearing good things about them for forever. I don't know if I've set it up correctly yet, but we'll see how it works out.

I ate dinner somewhere in there?

Now I should go to bed because it's nearly midnight, and aforementioned "you have to wake up early so you can finish your damn prep". Sigh.

GOODNIGHT!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Just as crazy as before. But I am breathing, I am laughing, taking one step at a time.

2: My regular bike is Vin, named for the heroine of the Mistborn trilogy, because at the time it was the most recent Strong Female Character I'd read, and that is my official naming schema. My folding bike is informally called The Bromps (because it's a Brompton) but its formal name is RuthEP, pronounced Rooth-eep.

jducoeur

Part 0: Introduction (you're reading it)
Lots more to come!

Introduction

I started outlining this series months ago, while I was on sabbatical, but never got around to starting the actual words. I've got a new job now (at OnePass, a refreshingly sensible company providing actually-useful services, which is sadly not the norm at the moment) -- work is extremely busy, but I do need to think about things other than that and politics sometimes, so let's get this going!

All year, I've been mulling the problem of Trust Architectures: how do we share information about "trust" online. As I'll discuss under Use Cases (next time), I think it's getting to be Steam Engine Time to take it seriously. Between the AI Slopocalypse spewing nonsense all over the Web, and the social networks succumbing to Advanced Enshittification, it's getting ever-harder to understand who to trust.

This isn't even remotely a new problem, mind -- it was a pretty old topic when we explored adding this sort of thing to Trenza way back in 2001. But it's rarely been taken really seriously, and most of the better attempts have wound up buried inside proprietary walled gardens that don't necessarily have the human user's best interests at heart.

There appears to be a lot of relatively recent literature on the topic, some of it possibly even good (I'm cautiously intrigued by the OpenRank project). But much of it is obsessively focused on Blockchain, which I'm rather skeptical about (I still consider it to be 90% a solution in search of problems), and most appears to have a lot of assumptions baked in.

So let's step back, and tease this apart. I'm going to intentionally go in a bit naively, so as not to be too biased by everyone else's assumptions, and explore the topic from first principles, winding up with a very high-level sketch of how things might work. Once I have straight what I think are the interesting use cases, requirements, and architectural parameters, we can take a properly critical look at what's already out there.

I expect this to take at least 6-7 installments, likely more like 10 before I'm done -- it's a big, chewy problem with a lot of facets. As I add parts, I'll add them to the Table of Contents at the top of the Dreamwidth version of this post. I'll likely edit some of these posts as we go and folks point out additional nuances; I'll try to be good about crediting folks who point stuff out, so call me on it if you feel like you haven't been acknowledged properly.

This is not fully-baked yet: I'm going to be thinking out loud. That's why this is "towards" -- I'm seeking to make progress here, and we'll see where it winds up. It's possible that we'll find that the One True Trust Architecture already exists, and we should be lobbying for everyone to adopt it. It's also entirely possible that we'll conclude that the problem is insoluble in principle, and give up. (Hopefully not.) The goal is to come to a better shared understanding of the topic, and ideally some actionable ideas about how to deal with the problem.

I hope you'll join in. While I'm going to do a lot of talking over the next couple of months, it's going to be a lot more productive if you chime in with your thoughts and ideas to add to that.

I'm intentionally posting this on Dreamwidth because despite (or maybe because of) its antiquity and old-fashioned UX, it's still the best place for posting and discussing complex, long-form topics, free from the AIs and enshittification consuming most other places.

So I'm planning to post primarily to Dreamwidth, mirror to Medium and LinkedIn since some of the technical crowd mainly knows me there, and link from Mastodon and Bluesky. (But not Facebook, which I've mostly given up on, or Xitter, which I've entirely abandoned.) On platforms that have tagging, I'll be using #TrustArch as the tag for this series.

Comments are welcome at all of those places -- I'm curious to see where I get good conversations -- but the authoritative copy of these posts will be Dreamwidth, and that's the copy that will get edited and updated as this evolves.

That said, a couple of ground rules. I don't want to see comments saying that if it's not 100% perfect, it's not worth trying. (I'm reasonably certain that it's impossible to make this perfect, but I'm moderately confident we could create something helpful.) And I'll be downright scornful of naive claims that we should just leave this for AI to deal with -- while I think it's likely to get quite powerful over the next decade, I'm not at all sanguine that it's going to be trustworthy to that degree any time in the foreseeable future.

But aside from that sort of thing, I'd love to get some serious conversation going. So come along, share your thoughts, and let's tease apart this important problem!

Profile

breakinglight11

Navigation

September 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Page Summary

sorcyress - Put the phone down, kiddo
sorcyress - The opposite of fear is data
jducoeur - Review: TooHot
sorcyress - Sneaky secrets in the footnotes
sorcyress - Who hasn't updated in three weeks? Eyyyy
jducoeur - Towards a Trust Architecture, Part 0: Introduction

Style Credit

Base style: Heads Up by momijizuakmori
Theme: A Brighter View by zaluzianskya and skylark_photos

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Oct. 8th, 2025 04:26 pm

Those businesses into which I'm sticking my nose...

Reading

Put the phone down, kiddo

The opposite of fear is data

Review: TooHot

Sneaky secrets in the footnotes

Who hasn't updated in three weeks? Eyyyy

Towards a Trust Architecture, Part 0: Introduction

Table of Contents

Introduction

Profile

Navigation

September 2025

Links

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags