Poor 'Possum

Your luddite vermin comrade.

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

Bikes, tinkering, baking, reading, houseplants, overthinking, being bad at linux.

pronouns: They/Them
Vices: Coffee, puer, yerba mate, algorithmic skinner boxes
Coping strategies: Oh gods, nothing works anymore, oh gods...

Last Notes

2026-01-03 15:32:24 GMT

Horrifying news this morning. There's nothing to be said about it. The people of Venezuela don't deserve this. No one deserves this.
I really wish every awful thing that happens isn't reduced to distraction from "the List," though. People who genuinely think that document is gonna be the bomb that kills this administration are huffing the kind of "return to status quo" hopium that keeps us complacent and lets them keep getting away with committing atrocities on our behalf.
This isn't a distraction, it's an atrocity. Don't devalue the horrors we are committing.
#USPol #Venezuela #EpsteinFiles

2025-11-30 18:29:38 GMT

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Also, for #Boston peeps ( @npub16vf…2n9f if you know anyone or would be interested in helping me plan and network for this!): A coworker and a member or two of my co-op are beginning to plan for a car-free* group ride up to MOFGA's 2026 Common Ground Country Fair. This trip is very much on my mind as I build out my cargo bike so I can run mechanical and cargo support for issues as they arise on the road.
There's two ways of pulling this off, as far as I can see, and that is taking the Amtrak as far as we can, and biking the remaining 60-80 miles over the next 2-3 days (I want to take our time so folks who've never ridden long distance or multi-day before can come along and not feel intimidated) or the more adventurous "Let's bike the whole damn way." If there's a lot of interest, the Amtrak option will likely not be viable for that many bikes.
I need to spend the next several months ideally onboarding folks who are interested, getting a contact with the Fair to talk about co-ordinating with folks riding up who want to volunteer, and possibly time to host a talk at the bike-valet about urban logistics cycling, and maybe a panel where rural and urban cyclists can compare notes and learn from each other. I'm also looking for contacts and potential hosts along the route to the Fair. It would be amazing if every stop wasn't just some hip-camp crash spot for the night, but folks along the way, farmers, homesteaders, or otherwise, who want to support kind of a "field trip" vibe of introducing folks to their farm/sustainability initiatives and re-igniting some hospitality culture (or discovering some that already exists). I'm not looking for a free ride for a bunch of city folks, just... the opportunity for some conversation and a window into each other's lives. Hell, if someone was so inclined to look for a work exchange, that could be great as well.
I imagine a lot of potential for a well-planned itinerary, a good destination for every day with plenty of down-time to socialize, cook, and learn, and then getting to arrive at the Fair prepped to see it with the experience of a return to a more human pace of travel feel... important.
*Car-Free footnote: I have a friend or two who is interested in going to the fair and talked about possibly driving along whatever travel route the bikers go on, as they like camping, and would be happy to run support for us in the event a rider has a problem we need a vehicle for. I'm very open to more such folks who want to work with us in this way as well.
#MOFGA #CommonGroundCountryFair #BikeToot #WarOnCars

2025-11-30 18:07:33 GMT

I have pulled the trigger on most of the components for my Bike Friday Haul-A-Day Elite build. Finally. It's been maybe two years since I first purchased the frame, and saving money for/procrastinating about the build for most of that time. This will be my very first new/built for and by me bike I've ever done, and it feels a little silly to have dumped that pressure onto a cargo bike, but god help me I'm excited. I want this bike to look and act like that one friend's car which was always very practical, came in clutch with plenty of cargo space, but still somehow... cool. A station wagon. I want the bicycle version of a station wagon. I don't know if that'll come across for anyone else, but I feel like I am on-track for that vibe.

2025-10-28 16:29:09 GMT

Watching Melissa with a conflicting mixture of mounting awe and horror. The horror is pretty easy to pin down: A lot of the reporting I'm seeing is outlining this storm as a direct result of climate change, and once again those most responsible for this get to watch as an already exploited people bear the brunt of the consequences.
The awe is very messy. I'm seeing hurricane nerds tripping over their excitement at seeing one of the most "perfect" storms ever recorded, breaking records left, right, and sideways, and their awareness that this "once in a lifetime phenomenon" (likely the herald of more such storms to come) is going to seriously devastate Jamaica.
I get it. It is *awesome* in every sense of the word. I think it was either "It Could Happen Here" or "Live Like the World is Dying" (or both) that first made me understand why @npub1503…fme5 felt so on the money: Climate change is a hyperobject, one that exists all around us and has a very real impact on our day-to-day, but only really becomes visible to us as individual creatures when a Lovecraftian tentacle reaches down and smites a population... always somewhere over there. The distant suffering is just background noise until it hits *you.* And until that point you get through your day-to-day. And frequently even communities in the throes of such events are compelled by the economic structures of this world (another hyperobject!) to continue as if it is *still* day-to-day!
We are ants at the mercy of a larger force than us. Have we made it angry? Have we merely drawn it's attention? Do we even warrant it's attention? Any preparation we make only serves us if we are located somewhere that causes us to suffer a glancing blow. There's nothing to be done about a direct hit. What can we do but fall to our knees and repent?
#HurricaneMelissa #WeatherIsHappening #ClimateChange,

2025-10-22 00:22:47 GMT

Just... I didn't expect the symbolism to always feel this heavy-handed. We keep saying over and over again, if this was written or scripted as fiction it would never get out of the editing phase for being so unrealistically on the nose.
#USPol
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/414/948/965/689/613/original/6c84a1a79d2c3972.png

2025-07-22 15:13:52 GMT

A creature I live with.
#dog #greyhound #dogsofmastodon
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/897/526/999/231/003/original/5f6476eb422863ee.jpeg

2025-06-02 20:31:04 GMT

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*allegedly

2024-10-17 15:14:48 GMT

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This guy is a mechanic who is very aligned with my values, and he goes a bit into why shops have to turn away the kind of bikes talked about in the article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilAeW1jGcjg

2024-10-17 00:28:34 GMT

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It's not about the age of the bike... I'm a mechanic and ride a bike that's older than me... but it's a *good* bike, and designed to have that kind of life span. Apples and oranges.

2024-09-05 01:18:04 GMT

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Ah, well mine is older than your current model by about a year, I think, so very little of the following is likely to sway you.
That being said and if you still care to know, I run EndeavourOS on it and use it mostly for writing, browser work, photo editing and cataloguing (Darktable rather than Gimp) and am easing into some audio work. It can't game worth a hill of beans, but has yet to let me down on anything else I've tried. I really like the mechanical dock integration, bridge battery system, and how easy it is for me to crack it open and upgrade/replace components. I do really like the small form factor, too.

2024-09-05 00:51:34 GMT

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I like my x270! What's your use-case? What's considered too old?

2023-01-22 04:21:07 GMT

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But if brevity is your thing and you don't have 45 minutes, no one lays it out better or simpler than Mark Twain:
“There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
-Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
#WeatherIsHappening #antiwork #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAnxiety #CollapseAware
#IWW #greencollargrunt #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

2023-01-22 04:19:33 GMT

The neoliberal fetishization of nonviolence will allow the death cult that is capitalism to continue to push us further along our current death spiral. Abigail lays it out below...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4G1Gjv7bA
#WeatherIsHappening #antiwork #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAnxiety #CollapseAware
#IWW #greencollargrunt #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean