iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 10/10/2026

Assuming that you didn't burn your hand, it was probably around 40°C plus or minus 10°C, I guess? So… Wolfram Alpha is broken right now, and Google Search sucks, and half these chemical supply company websites are fucking broken… It's like 12 kPa at 25°C and the curve keeps going up like this:

I think, but I'm not certain, that this is a graph of the vapor pressure in kPa vs. °C for ethyl acetate. I found it on some chemical supply company's website. The curve look like this for almost all liquids, just with a different range of numbers on the two axis.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'm hanging out with my furry baby in the driveway at 1 AM. This is his favorite activity, and he always wants me to walk around the neighborhood with him to smell things.

He's always saying: MEOW! to me. I don't understand what he's saying.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm kinda exhausted at the moment, so I'm just going to do the quick summary without explaining all the math (cause I did a bunch of math, by hand, to check the results), and I'm pretty confident that is Mount Shasta, and you've zoomed your camera lens in as far as it can possibly zoom.

A computer generated simulation of Mount Shasta viewed along the 304° bearing (from North) line which intersects the location of the airplane (39.884N, -119.110E) at time 02:27:00Z near Pyramid Lake.

Mount Shasta and Pyramid Lake actually lined up (along this same line) at this same time, but you can't see the lake in the foreground because it's too close and too dark.

Also, this photo was taken through a window on the port side of the plane. Mount Shasta was about 18° forward of being exactly 90° perpendicular to the left side of the airplane. Plus or minus 3° because the airplane was turning slightly during this time period (the minute when this photo was taken.)

The WGS84 Ellipsoid "Great Circle Distance" to the highest point on Mount Shasta from the plane at 02:27:00Z is 309528 meters or 1015511 US Customary Feet, not the weird International Survey Foot or whatever. I did all this math by hand and I'll write up the details after I've gotten some sleep.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 30/09/2026

If I knew the exact time the photo was taken, I could figure out the plane's exact location, and then calculate the topographic features visible at an elevation of 37000 ft from that location.

Something like this calculated landscape, for example.

The peak is probably one of the mountains in this big bumpy Sierra-Nevada Mountain Range running north to south along the California and Nevada state borders.

Something like this calculated landscape, for example.

It might also be the pyramid in the middle of Pyramid Lake (not actually shown here in this screenshot, oops because it's five in the morning and I have a headache and need to get to sleep, but I have a headache.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sunset (SFO): 01:54Z Takeoff (SFO): 01:56Z Civil Twilight End: 02:20Z Nautical Twilight End: 02:51Z Photo Posted: 03:13Z The sky is still red along the horizon and no stars are visible. So this plane would be passing (37000 ft) over the Sierra-Nevada Mountains at this time. The purple line here:

Yeah, it's this flight isn't it?

The flight path of a Boeing 757 (Reg. N75858), departing from SFO at sunset, drawn on a map of California. The color of the line represents altitude. This is the first thirty minutes of the flight 01:56Z to 02:26Z

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 28/09/2026

resolving identity: 'britculpsapp.bsky.social' downloading from 'enoki.us-east.host.bsky.network' to: did:plc:gkhlgiv6hsui5gqyye2zrbd3.car pds.ls/at://did:plc... There's a "nudity" label applied to this other post 2026-09-24T01:11:39.153Z The "!takedown" was 2026-09-24T01:16:39.460Z for:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 28/09/2026

"A man in a suit is sitting at a table" is not useful except in the context of talking about tables, suits, or men. In theory, there was a purpose for embedding a photo of "A man in a suit", possibly because of who the man is, or what the suit is, or what the man is doing, etc. That's the alt-text.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yeah, I just checked and the BlueSky app on Android doesn't have these glyphs either:

A screenshot of the first post at the top of this thread (two posts up from this one you're currently reading). The two Unicode characters have been substituted by the "missing character" hexadecimal placeholder symbol.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 21/09/2026

I just had to check, and...

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Lawrence Hall of Science runs a webcam located halfway up the side of Grizzly Peak above Berkeley that looks out over the San Francisco bay. I occasionally check it, & when I did last night, I just happened to see the Moon setting right behind the Golden Gate Bridge! This is a pretty rare event!

The weather became suddenly very cold yesterday (September 13, 2026). I was wondering if it was foggy or if there was an interesting sunet yesterday, and I was too late to see the sunset, but when I got around to checking this webcam... I saw this!

There was no fog, and no clouds, and the crescent moon & a planet (yeah I should know which one, but I haven't looked it up. It's one of the really bright ones.) are visible in the red and blue sky at the end of nautical twilight. (This image was taken at 20:11 PDT) San Francisco is the bright glowing area in the upper left quadrant of this image. The Oakland Bay Bridge is the almost horizontal line of light just below San Francisco. The bottom half of the image is the city of Berkeley, and the silhouette of some trees growing on the hill below The Lawrence Hall of Science.

If you draw an imaginary line through the planet and moon in the sky, that imaginary line intersects with the horizon where the Golden Gate Bridge is located in this image. So... guess where they're going!

Oh wow! Check it out, the moon at the horizon lines up exactly with the center of the Golden Gate Bridge when viewed from the Lawrence Hall of Science (the "red pin" on this map).

This is a screenshot of my secret weapon for calculating when and where you need to stand to see the moon or the sun appear behind some other random object or landscape feature.

Whenever you see a photo of a solar eclipse with some random building or geological feature in front of it, the person who took that photo used a computer program like this one (or possibly even this very program, but there's other software that does this too) to figure out the exact spot where to stand at what time to get the eclipse to line up with whatever thingy is in the foreground of the photo.

It's called "The Photographer's Ephemeris", by the way. And I'm kinda annoyed because I bought the native Android app years ago, (one of the only apps I've gladly paid money for), and they stopped supporting it, and updated the native app to just open a web browser to this web page:
"https://v3.app.photoephemeris.com/" but if you start from their main homepage, it will navigate you to the new version here:

https://app.photoephemeris.com/

I also bought the iOS version of this App (and the other one that does 3D rendered previews of the landscape and lens angular view size stuff) years ago, and at least those are still supported... except that I only have one working iOS device now, which is a tiny iPod Touch.... which will still run this app! I can even use the iOS app while offline, and while I can't download the maps, I can still do all the calculations offline as long as I already know the GPS coordinates of stuff.

OMG! It's happening! This is a screenshot of the crescent moon almost touching one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. This image was taken at 20:24 PDT according to the clock on the webcam, which might not be the most accurate clock, but The Photographer's Ephemeris also says that the moon will cross the horizon at 20:25 PDT... and indeed, the moon was no longer visible in the webcam image taken at 20:26 PDT (which I'm not going to attach to this post).

I drew a green rectangle around the cropped area I enlarged in the next image embedded in this post.

If I was standing in the parking lot next to the Lawrence Hall of Science building at 8:24 PM on September 13, 2026 with my (good) camera attached to my 600mm lens (or larger), this is were I would point it, and I would get a much *much* better looking photo than this 150 pixel by 100 pixel crop of the JPEG produced by the webcam, which I have enlarged and attached here so you can hopefully see it better.

The three red dots in a triangle are the aircraft warning lights (aviation obstruction lights) on the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The horizontal line of yellowish dots are automobiles driving across the main deck of the the bridge. Just kinda eyeballing this, I would guess that the moon has a altitude of almost maybe 1° which is about two minutes of time before it reaches 0° (i.e. the horizon)

When I calculated the ephemeris earlier, I had a margin of error of about an arcminute in space, and about a minute in time. I didn't really want to go back and recalculate everything over again with a few more decimal points of accuracy just for this BlueSky post. I'm just mentioning, because I calculated that the moon should be *less* than a degree above the horizon at 20:24 PDT, and this doesn't look like 0.2° above the horizon, or exactly line up with the South Tower, which may or may not be located at exactly 250.3° of azimuth. I don't know *exactly* where the webcam is located in the LHoS building (I could figure it out from the locations of those trees in the bottom left of the image... and possibly from astronomical events like this (assuming an accurate clock) and the parallax of other visible landmarks, but I haven't bothered to do any of that stuff.) Anyway... the error bars are ±1° in all that stuff I calculated earlier. (I'm writing this alt-text last, after all the posts in this thread.)

That glowing blob in the lower left quadrant of this cropped image is Alcatraz Island. (I checked & there is a clear view of the horizon behind the North Tower.)

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 09/09/2026

Apparently, there's actually quite a bit more to this guy's doctrine. I haven't verified this, but I found it on Reddit a few days ago in "r/redding":

This is from September 4 in the r/Redding California subreddit. I would need spend time to get the URL and/or load it to cut and paste the text into this alt-text, but I need to do something else right now, so I'll do this later.

... continued from the first screenshot.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 09/09/2026

This SF Gate article keeps getting posted & it's driving me mad because Hinerman is obviously lying based on his own posted videos. The camp was told to leave at noon (before the dust storm, 7.5 hours before sunset) & then spent ~9 hours complaining on TikTok & Instagram before the cops showed up.

SFGATE Travel section September 3, 2026
"Christian missionaries at Burning Man evicted in the middle of the night"
by Dan Gentile

... except that they were evicted at noon, in broad daylight, and POSTED THE VIDEO OF THIS HAPPENING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT You can watch the video and see that it's NOT "the middle of the night" Arrg!

This is a screenshot from the middle third of the article where it says stuff like:
"Hinerman's videos allege that the camp was being discriminated against based on its religion and that its members were given only three hours to pack their belongings. The camp alleges that over 600 attendees had "given their lives to Jesus," with the group conducting baptisms on the playa in small water tanks."

The word "allege" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here because all of that is a lie. Like very very obviously complete bullshit just looking at the TikTok and Instagram and Facebook videos posted by Hinerman on Tuesday while this stuff was happening. Also, on Facebook he claimed that 800 attendees had "given their lives to Jesus" whatever exactly that means, because doing 800 of anything in two days means doing 1 thing every three to four minutes on average.

(2*24*60)/800=3.6

It's 5.4 minutes on average, continuously, for three days. Burning Man officially started Sunday morning and this camp was told to leave at noon on Tuesday.

Oh yeah, so this guy "alleges" that he was giving only three hours to pack around 9 PM (allegedly the middle of the night) but that's probably when the real law enforcement officers showed up to arrest him for trespassing if he didn't leave on his own. (The Black Rock Rangers, whom Hinerman had been dealing with up to that point, are not law enforcement. They mostly do communications work between attendees and many different organizations and camps.)

The two pinned posts on Hinerman's Instagram page are about getting kicked out of Burning Man, and the video captioned: "They're KICKING us out." is very very obviously filmed IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!

Like COME ON!

This Instagram only has one link to a LinkTree page that links to Hinerman's GoFundMe, PayPal, Ca$h, etc. and TikTok... hang on, I'll screenshot it...

The LinkTree linked to by Hinerman's Instagram. The PayPal link got cut off at the bottom of this screenshot. Anyway, the GoFundMe is for paying off this guy's $7000 credit card bill, so he can start his "Debt Free ministry" or something like that. I'll post a screenshot later. I kinda wonder how he got the money to go to Burning Man with nine other people... I guess by not paying his credit card bills.

Ok, there's something that's been running through my mind about this guy that I haven't seen anyone mention, but every alarm bell in my head is ringing right now because this guy is 100% exhibiting the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and I mean this in the most clinical, medical, way possible. (I'm not a medical doctor, and that guy is not my patient, but everything I know about him absolutely screams: "Narcissistic Personality Disorder".)

His behavior is 100% identical to the two other people I know with NPD. The compulsive lying and starting a cult are two of the biggest red flags, but also how he handles money.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 08/09/2026

That's a possibility I considered, but… 1. There are dedicated water trucks driving around BRC doing this, not specialized fire equipment. 2. This truck only sprayed this single location. 3. There's an airplane that suddenly appears on the left edge of the frame, only within this minute. Context:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 08/09/2026

Huh, I wonder what's going on here… There's a webcam at the Black Rock City (88NV) airport, and I was watching it this afternoon to see if I could see and planes taking off or landing… and this fire truck pulls up at 16:48 PDT, does nothing, and then an hour later does this and immediately leaves.

I don't know what's happening in this frame from the 88NV Airport webcam at 17:47:42 PDT on Monday September 7, 2026

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 08/09/2026

BlueSky, every year at the beginning of September:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 05/09/2026

Burning Man as of half an hour ago:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 05/09/2026

Before you go believing some sensationalistic tabloid news story about Burning Man being a disaster zone because it slightly rained a little bit this morning, you can look at the live video web camera and see that it isn't. These images are from about half an hour ago:

A screenshot of the Burning Man live video webcast on Friday, September 4, 2026 at approximately 3:30 PM PDT You can watch this web cast live right now at "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8b1Be-HUGU"

People are walking around and flying at least one kite. The sky is partly cloudy.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 03/09/2026

Does this guy sound trustworthy to you? Do you think he would go on Facebook and tell lies? Does he sound like he had a premeditated agenda for going to Burning Man?

A screenshot of the Facebook page of "Calvinhinerman" as it currently appears right now. This guy is pretending to be a "smol bean" who is being martyred because "Burning Man hates Christians", he writes in this Facebook post. So... just so you know, there have been Christian church camps at Burning Man for decades, they hold Sunday Services and everything. If you look at this guy's other Facebook posts for the past week (I'll screenshot a few and attach them here) it's obvious this guy is a troll and went to Burning Man with the intention to provoke conflict with attendees and with the Burning Man organization itself... and to film all of it and post it on Facebook and probably TikTok too, I haven't researched that far yet, and I don't really think I should waste any more time with this. I read that he was broadcasting livestreams of people without their permission, breaking a rule that is literally written on the back of the Burning Man ticket everyone who enters the event must have seen.

... also this guy may have been kidnapping children, I haven't evaluated this information yet though.

That guy, from Texas, I guess, bragging about getting kicked out of Burning Man as if that wasn't his plan all along. This was posted two hours before the newest "Burning Man hates Christians" post this guy made (in the previous screenshot).

Three hours before that other screenshot about having left already, this is another one about how much Burning Man hates Christians. I think this is also saying that "over 800 people" got baptised by them out on the playa... by Tuesday September 1, 2026 when they got kicked out... because Burning Man opened early Sunday morning August 30... that's 800 people in about 48 hours or so... which is an average of a baptism every three to five minutes continuously non-stop for two days.

Did I mention: This guy's camp was also in violation of the Burning Man (and Nevada Health Department) rule against swimming pools on the playa. Because they were apparently submerging people in water.

A screenshot of a very informative Facebook comment (on the post about packing up in a "hazordous" dust storm) by "Mike Caron":
This is what that comment says:

The Deets - Media & Filming Violations: Renner’s team heavily filmed participants and broadcasted the footage on social media to promote their revival ministry. Burning Man has strict communitarian media policies requiring explicit registration and protecting attendees from being used as props for outside commercial or religious promotion.Proselytizing vs. Inclusion: Rather than participating in the event's spirit of communal effort, the group openly stated their goal was to "shock the darkness" and convert attendees, which ran afoul of the event's guidelines regarding respect and neighborly conduct. Other actual Christian theme camps, such as Religious AF (run by an Episcopalian priest), have successfully operated at Burning Man for years by offering hospitality without aggressive solicitation.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 03/09/2026

… but nobody will ever be standing on top of a 60 foot (20 meter) tall tower or something, right?

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

I was going to embed these in the post above, but my cat kept getting between me and my computer until I got up and gave him (more) food (different from the food he already had only eaten half of which I gave him a few hours ago).

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

… but nobody will ever be standing on top of a 60 foot (20 meter) tall tower or something, right?

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

You know, the usual stuff...

A frame from the Burning Man webcast on Tuesday September 1, 2026 of the wind starting to blow dust around.

A frame from the Burning Man webcast on Monday August 31, 2026 of some fireworks at Esplanade and 6 O'Clock and 3 O'Clock.

A frame from the Burning Man webcast on Monday August 31, 2026 of the Department of Mutant Vehicles.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

Burning Man's official regulations for lasers is that they are required to be mounted above eye-level & physically blocked from being able to point down (below their level plane/horizon line). This is safe unless you just happen to be standing on top of a 60 foot (20 meter) tall tower or something.

Ok, technically, this one is not actually a laser. It's just a very high-flux non-coherent directionally focused light source, like a lighthouse

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

I was joking about the dust when I posted this update: bsky.app/profile/foxg... ... but there were a couple of breaks in the dust storm, like these:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 02/09/2026

I finally looked at a recent (August 31, 2026) map of BRC and I'm pretty certain that the livestream camera is located here:

A crop of a satellite photo taken from space above Black Rock City, NV on August 31, 2026 by "Vantor", which I assume is some kind of satellite imaging company, but I haven't looked that up.

The tip of that lime green colored arrow I drew on this photo points at the top (not the base) of the 60 foot (20 meter) tall BMIR radio tower. (The satellite is not exactly at the zenith, so the top and bottom of the tower are located several pixels apart on this image.)

I was trying to find a color for the arrow that would be easily visible against the playa, and not used by anything else in the photo (so either this or magenta). It turns out that even though the playa appears slightly yellowish in this image, it's actually very slightly bluer than neutral gray, and everything else in the image is even more blue tinted.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 01/09/2026

This camera is located 60 feet (20 meters) above the surface of the playa.

A single frame of video taken from the Burning Man (Black Rock City) Live Video feed on Sunday August 30, 2026

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 01/09/2026

Current conditions right now:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 28/08/2026

This is what happens when your post appears in the Discover feed:

This is meaningless noise. Why the fuck do, I assume real human beings, make hundreds of vacuous replies per day which contain nothing but a random GIF or a random emoji. I said two years ago that GIF replies are spam, and BlueSky should not encourage this behavior by adding this feature.

It's like the people at BlueSky are deliberately designing this app for people who follow more than 20,000 other accounts and posts nothing but reaction GIF spam.

I am actually using a third-party client that allows me to mute GIF replies, replies which consist a single emoji, and all replies which end with the 🤣 emoji.

These three replies in my notifications are *EXACTLY* what my custom rules set filters out.

This is such an incredibly predictable stereotype. Every large thread on BlueSky will have dozens of vacuous spam replies of random fucking GIFs, a single emoji, or something stupid ending with 🤣 Why do people do this? What is this communicating? Who is this for? Of course, the immediate answer is that this is only for the person creating the vacuous spam reply and not the reader. They're just making noise to fill up space. Maybe this is like that behavior of people addicted to slot machines hitting the same button over and over and over and over and over again for hours every day.

What the fuck? ...oh yeah, right, I remember now: The Discover Feed

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 25/08/2026

Me: Attempting to click on fucking anything in the "bsky.app" user interface. Bluesky: Immediately redraws the page and blocks the mouse click with this new, useless, UI element:

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 25/08/2026

Me: *** Eating food and not touching my computer. *** Bluesky:

A screenshot of "bsky.app" which was previously displaying some posts or something, when suddenly and unexpectedly FOR NO GOD DAMN REASON deleted all the posts... which were already loaded and being displayed on the screen... and replaced whatever it was that had been on the screen for ten minutes already with this message:

Error loading post

Something went wrong. Please try again in a moment.

And a button that says: ( Retry with a little circular arrow )

I wasn't loading a post...

I WASN'T LOADING A FUCKING POST! I WASN'T TOUCHING MY COMPUTER! I HADN'T TOUCHED MY COMPUTER FOR TEN OR FIFTEEN MINUTES!

You don't actually need to click on the ( Retry ) button by the way, because this page is already hammering the Bluesky PDS server API thingy every few seconds, over and over and over and over and over again, until it gets a HTTP 200 response, at which point it will completely reload the page... but showing you whatever it was you were looking at previously for a split second before completely blowing that away with the page reload.

Why is the Bluesky client designed to be constantly 'doing something' every few seconds, forever, and then completely self-destruct when it can't? This is a fucking stupid design for displaying fucking text! Text that is less than 300 characters in length, and stored in a cryptographically signed permanent ledger that's globaly replicated. Bluesky doesn't even support editing posts, these text messages are immutable! WHY RELOAD THEM EVERY 30 SECONDS! THEY'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE THE SAME TEXT! IT DOESN'T EVEN UPDATE THE THREAD AS NEW REPLIES ARE CREATED! When you load a thread, it is displayed exactly the same forever until the page randomly says: "Error loading post" and self-destructs! WHAT IS IT FUCKING LOADING!? I DIDN'T TELL IT TO FUCKING LOAD ANYTHING! It never changes the displayed thread... SO WHY IS IT LOADING A POST?! WHAT IS IT DOING ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Why is my computer so fucking slow when I open a dozen "bsky.app" tabs?

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 20/08/2026

So, has Edgesuite been having problems lately? Because I'm randomly getting: "Access Denied You don't have permission to access " [whatever] " on this server." from a few web sites... which then load normally without error a minute later when I retry.

When you follow the link from the vague "Access Denied" error message, it goes to "errors.edgesuite.net" which is this unhelpful page:

Title: "An error has occurred"

Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.
If you navigated here, it's because the previous request experienced an error. If you are the site owner, you can use the Translate Error String tool to investigate this further. This is located on the control center under:

Four-squares menu > Test & troubleshoot > Edge Diagnostics.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 15/08/2026

I just took this photo yesterday

I was thinking of writing this post as a satire of those Facebook AI slop content mills... but I can't bring myself to write like that even as a joke.

Anyway, this image is the cover art from the "Dark All Day" album by "Gunship" which I still haven't gotten around to actually listening to. I have no idea what this album sounds like or if it's any good. This is not an endorsment for or against anything. I just remembered that the cover art... from 2018... looks an awful lot like a bunch of those Facebook AI generated slop eclipse quote "photos" (which are not real photos of anything). Anyway, this album cover is probably in the "AI" image model training data.

I pulled this image from "https://gunshipmusic.bandcamp.com/album/dark-all-day" where I could just stream this album and find out what it actually sounds like, but I'm procrastinating.

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 14/08/2026

I forgot to mention the beginning of that long essay thing from that weird men's blog was this:

Title: "Harnessing AI to Understand the Significance of the Solar Eclipse"

Why would you do this? Why would you "Harness AI" to "Understand the Significance of the Solar Eclipse"? This, um essay I guess, reads like it itself was generated by an "AI" when asked to generate a blog post about two of the major topics in the news in early April 2024. The topics being "AI" and the North American solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Yeah... we need an article combining the top two keywords on "Google Trends" this for this week.

This was generated for a purpose... and that purpose was to show up as the first Google Search result from the query I just made yesterday, August 13, 2026, when I searched for "Solar Eclipse" and "AI"

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 14/08/2026

This is all white noise. Can't you hear it?

How did people take photos of solar eclipses before there was "AI"? Can "AI" replace my tripod? What about my solar filter? What exactly is "AI" "helping" with? Why the fuck would I use "AI" to post-process my eclipse photos? Is it going to generate an aircraft carrier sailing into the sunset, with an eclipse occuring to Earth's second Sun?

This is all complete fucking nonsense. That's an AI generated image too, by the way. It's completely fake. Just what you want in your scientific observations.

"Expert solutions for safety, app stability, and achieving perfect focus during the diamond ring phase."
Issue: Blurry Focus
Expert Solution: Lock focus manually; use a study tripod -- gee! Thanks AI! I would have never thought of adjusting my camera's focus in order to focus.
Issue: Overexposure
Expert Solution: Reduce exposure value -- gee! Thanks "AI"
If you're shooting film by the way, and not using a digital camera, you'll find out you overexposed at least a few days too late, after you've processed the film.

It also says a common issue is "App Crashes"... What "App? The "AI" app taking the photo or something. The "Expert Solution" says: "Clear cache and update to the latest version." which is exactly what you want to be doing during a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse. Gee... thanks "AI".

Strategic Insights for Users & Developers... of... Solar and Lunar Eclipse Observations... or something?
"For Developers: Trust & Privacy" ... WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH FUCKING SOLAR ECLIPSES ARRRRG!

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Julia @foxgrrl.northsky.social · 14/08/2026

I was using exaggerated hyperbole to satirize the frequent public claims about "AI". Nobody would seriously claim that "AI" will revolutionize solar eclipse observations, right? OMG! Holy Shit! People are actually fucking doing this! Humans have known how to predict eclipses for at least 2500 years!

A powerpoint slideshow titled "AI Revolution in Solar and Lunar Eclipse Observation". The Table of Contents has slides like:
"Eclipse Features"
"Comparative Analysis"
"Observation Tutorial"
"Case Studies"
"Future Trends"
"Strategic Insights"
... keep in mind, this is about "Solar and Lunar Eclipse Observation"

I'm just going to paste this text here. It's from... I don't know exactly, some kind of Christian blog for men or something. It says this text first appeared on Medium. Anyway, this sounds like it was written by an AI, about AI, for an AI, with no humans involved.

Ok, the transcription goes over the 200 character limit for alt-text. I'm just going to paste the AI centric part here:

Enter artificial intelligence (AI) — a revolutionary tool that is transforming our understanding of celestial phenomena and unlocking new frontiers in astronomical research. AI algorithms analyze vast amounts of data collected from telescopes, satellites, and observatories, enabling scientists to detect subtle patterns, predict celestial events, and uncover hidden truths about the cosmos. In the context of solar eclipses, AI plays a crucial role in modeling and simulating these phenomena, providing astronomers with invaluable insights into their behavior and dynamics.

But the significance of a solar eclipse extends beyond its scientific implications. It is a moment of shared wonder and collective reflection, transcending cultural and geographical boundaries to unite humanity in a shared experience of awe and reverence. In an age marked by division and discord, the solar eclipse serves as a powerful symbol of our common humanity, reminding us of our place in the vast tapestry of existence and inspiring us to contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos with humility and wonder.

As we marveled at the spectacle unfolding in the skies above, we should also reflect on the role that AI plays in deepening our understanding of the universe and the opportunities it presents for future exploration and discovery. By harnessing the power of AI, scientists are poised to unlock new insights into the origins of the universe, the nature of dark matter and energy, and the search for extraterrestrial life, paving the way for a new era of astronomical discovery and exploration.

This is complete fucking nonsense... AI Generated nonsense in particular. These are some of the things you can use "AI" for when observing solar or lunar eclipses... It says "Exposure Calculation", and let me tell you... the sun and moon are always the same brightness, you don't need a fucking "AI-driven Solar algorithm" to "compute optimal ISO, shutter speed, and aperture." You can look this up in a printed book from the 1950s, because the sun is always the same fucking brightness. An "AI" isn't going to calculate shit. Using a photometer... which every camera made since the 1970s has had built-in... is the only machine you need to calculate the optimal exposure settings for whatever you're photographing.

The "3D Shading Analysis" sounds like random word salad... I'll just transcribe it here:

"Advanced LIDAR mapping identifies obstructions to predict optimal photography spots and solar energy impact."

What the fuck does that have to do with "AI" or eclipses? Why the fuck do you need LIDAR to know to stand outside and look up at the fucking sun or moon? If you can't see the Sun, then move to the other side of the tree or building or whatever is blocking your view. Why the fuck would you need an AI to use LIDAR to tell you when something is blocking your view of the Sun?

That crop (the previous embedded image on this post) is from this, if you're wonder about the context.

It's not better in context...

IT LITERALLY SAYS THE CLAIM I WAS TRYING TO SATIRIZE! Use the AI powered "Eclipse Simulator" to visualize eclipses from over 2000 locations with "near perfect accuracy".

Anyway... apparently the main purpose for using "AI" in "Eclipse Science" are "Visualization", "Documentation", and "Prediction" which Ptolemy of Alexander wrote a book about in 500 BCE and ancient Chinese astronomers were doing two thousand years ago or something. Seriously, NASA's website has a list of the exact time and date of EVERY solar eclipse everywhere on Earth for the next FIVE THOUSAND YEARS! It's a solved problem, AI isn't going to do shit.

Oh and along the right side of the page are some more "Recomended" AI generated slideshow presentations. The first one is about "The Future of Marketing Automation" I bet this entire fucking website is the product of "Marketing Automation"

There's also another AI Generated slideshow titled "Solar and Lunar Eclipse: Celestial Phenomena Unveiled" with an AI generated image of a solar eclipse in the thumbnail. There's also a "Facts About Stars" with an AI generated image thumbnail... and a presentation about exploring stars and constellations with AI. These are all about 10 to 14 slides long with one slide for the title, one slide for the table of contents, one slide for the "educational use only" disclaimer slide, one slide for the summary/conclusion. There's almost zero actual information in these. It's like a single sentence got expanded into a 14 slide presentation... which contains no more information than the original sentence.

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