Yesterday, I got called a writing angel. Today, someone told me I know everything about documentation. 💅

150 words are not long form.

I check the doorbell camera footage regularly. At 1:10am, it caught a man walking around the corner, pausing at my neighbor's, looking down into the cart sitting under their window and then actively tried looking through the blinds into their living room. I'm still trying to reach the neighbor.

My first Quran in Arabic arrived in the mail today.

In my possessions, I still have a Russian ruble with the number "2" in the corners and Stalin's face squarely in the middle. My first Russian pen pal sent it to me in the late '80s, before communism fell in the USSR. He lived in Kyiv. Kyiv was still part of Russia then and spelled Kiev on the map. It took six months to get a letter back from a pen pal in Russia. I was told all the incoming and outgoing mail was read and checked before passing it along. We had to be careful of what we said so the letters would be allowed through. His family didn't have money, so it was considered a great feat for him to send it to me and for it to actually reach past the icy grip of Gorbachev's communism. At least, to my teenage mind, it was. I keep it because it reminds me that truly evil leaders can rise to power and have no qualms about killing their own people, that others live under oppressive regimes, and because it was a sacrifice for him to send. When I last heard from him, he was 17. He had to serve the mandatory two years in the Russian army, and I never heard from him again. That was almost 40 years ago. Today, we see the oppressions manifesting in other ways with those in power many are too afraid to confront or discuss. Going against the ones responsible for your paycheck and whether your family eats this week is scary unless you're able to build a way out. All those people in that room applauding when and how they did, to me, looked like a bunch of trained seals at a circus, like the ones from the old cartoons. I wonder what rewards they've been promised for good behavior. I wonder when they'll realize it was all a lie. The woman in the red dress. Stalin. Stalin's red dress: agendas and lies wrapped in polyester and diplomatic laundry. Indeed.

As an American Muslim, I'm not interested in tearing down the American flag.

My son watched me use my vacuum+mop contraption the other night. When I explained how it worked, he said, "Mom, your vacuum is a decepticon." #jokes #funny #family

Could someone post their last Will and Testament on Nostr and have it considered legally binding? A person's signing key would help ensure it really was from the deceased, and therefore, it could be considered automatically #authenticated and permissible to use as #evidence. 🤔 I'm not sure what made me think of this. #legal #document #willandtestament #usecase

The first rule about dental pain is that we don't talk about #dental pain.

I'm waiting for the Excedrin to kick in.

It's shocking to me how many people just want the easy way out of something. You cannot build something meaningful without calculated and consistent effort in which you are also applying the things you learn as you go. There is no shortcut to this.

Seems like a perfect storm of happenings today. Strong coffee incoming.

That issue wasted an entire hour I needed for something else. It's probably not even fixed. I'm sick of garbage products and services, convoluted processes pushed through to make deadlines, and inaccurate documentation just because a company didn't want to prioritize it. You're losing customers. #blink

If the world's governments, medical establishments, budgeting departments, and taxing regulators were transparent with the people they say they govern or have authority over, there would be very little conspiracy theories.

This morning, my Quran teacher moved me from practice worksheets to the actual Quran in Arabic. Alhamdulillah Now I need to find a paper copy of one in Arabic with letters large enough I can read.

The bone was too large to be that of a cat and too small to be from a cow. Something had chewed both ends except for part of a round ball joint—a leg bone. The bone was oddly colored, a putrid yellow-gray and a hint of purple in the middle. Maverick wouldn't touch it. The bone looked soft, fresh, and quizzical. It wasn't stark white, like the kind you get from the butcher shop or the kind you see wrapped in plastic in the grocery store. It hadn't just come from the oven, and the ants hadn't made their way to the mountain of treasure. I wasn't sure what to do. Maybe it came from a goat or baby deer. My neighbors don't own either. Whatever it belonged to, something dragged it there. The dog (coyote?) chewing it left after a time and did not return. Maybe I'll investigate, but the shrubbery in that area has grown dense and thick with garbage and scrap metal. With the heat, I'm not sure I want to disturb whatever is bedded down, whether a homeless person, animal, or a larger version of an eight-legged critter. Best-case scenario, it was hauled off from a baby deer carcass, or a neighbor brought home a freshly butchered animal and gave the bone away to something that took it there. Worst-case scenario, there will be a squad car, somebody with a camera, a small yellow tent cone, and some yellow tape. I wanted to work on projects today, not investigate unknown remains.

My channel was just closed on my node on Alby Hub. (force close) I'm having difficulty understanding all of this. It said my funds on my receiving channel was too low (so the closure was done automatically after a time), but I don't understand why I have to spend another $70 or so to open another one to "receive". An open channel, especially one you buy, I would think goes both ways and has whatever the minimum requirement in it to work. The documentation says to open another channel, but in order to clear whatever the limits are for the node (for liquidity - which I still do not fully understand) to consider it "enough", I'm looking at spending another $150 set it up, maybe more. My funds are locked up in the current one that takes 15 days to shut down fully. So if I want to open another one, I'm looking at shelling that out. I've read through the Alby documentation. It's not 100% clear and there are gaps in it and parts of it are not up-to-date. Also - support says they'll be back on Monday according to the notification in Alby Hub. I wanted this to be easy. I didn't want to have to set up a node to send and receive zaps. Is it possible to send and and receive zaps without having a node? I just sent some zaps, so I can at least do that.

Two men just knocked my door to give me a brand new dog bed for Maverick. I haven't spoken to these men before. They live here in the complex somewhere. I asked why they were giving to me. "Just to be friendly," they said. It was very odd. My son urged me to leave it into the plastic bag it came in. We don't know them or where it came from. I put the bed in the corner on top of the bikes. I'll decide what to do with it tomorrow.

This was a first. We saw a skunk across the way and instead of running away, it started running toward us full speed. I picked up Maverick and started running. The neighbors with doorbell cameras are gonna have a field day when they see the footage. 😂 I can see them replay it in slow motion, "Whhhhyyyy iss itttt ruuuunnnnninnnng toowwaaard uuuus?!" Fabric from my baggy clothes flailing everywhere. We got far enough away and I took this zoomed shot. Next time Maverick finds a "kitty" under a car, it may not be a kitty.

Tell me if my Internet vs. Nostr analogy is correct. Today's internet is basically sending information through a path that all goes through a central point and then back out again to wherever it wills. That central point (regardless of what it is) is controlled and owned by a regulating authority or business license of some kind. Nostr is like talking on a CB or a Ham radio. You send messages out from you, from your location, and some people in the surrounding area within range picks up your message. If needed, they'll repeat that message from their CB or Ham radio to their surrounding area where some more people in their range picks it up... and so on. Is that the right way to describe it?