New #blog #post: The Cowardice Snowball

https://rldane.space/the-cowardice-snowball.html

992 words, 318 quoted

#ContentWarning: #USPOL, and a smidgeon of religion (one bible quote)

cc: my wonderful #chorus: @joel @dm @sotolf @thedoctor @pixx @orbitalmartian @adamsdesk @krafter @roguefoam @clayton @giantspacesquid @Twizzay @stfn @ay

(I will happily add/remove you from the chorus upon request! :)

#rlDaneWriting #blost #Politics #Trump #Bible #Fascism #JeffFlake #Senate #Senator #Kavanaugh #Iran #War

The Cowardice Snowball

I Miss My Hometown

March 2026

March felt like a sluggish month, but turns out I achieved a lot.

I wrote (or rather finished) another #blost today: https://bfloeser.de/posts/but-what-about-ai/

It's about a reasonably controversial topic so if you do decide to comment on it, I'd appreciate it if you kept things civil. That said, this is not so much an opinion piece, at least it's not meant as such. It's rather an attempt to come to grips with a situation that I find frustrating, daunting, and that I don't really feel I understand.

@rl_dane @sotolf @joel @stfn @irgndsondepp

If you don't want to be tagged, just tell me and I'll change that. Also, if you read this and do want to be tagged, just tell me and I'll change that.

But What About AI?

The Setup Just to manage expectations: This is not yet another hot take about “AI”. I don’t have one. This is my attempt to find my own voice in a cacophony of noise and maybe, just maybe, attaining some amount of clarity on the subject. Also I do not claim to be an expert about any of this and some of my assumptions may be plain wrong. First of all: I dislike the term “AI” because, in my humble opinion, it’s just a merketing gag and has little to do with intelligence as we humans tend to understand the word. So let’s just call them large language models (LLMs), shall we?

This is my blog now

And here we have another #blost : https://bfloeser.de/posts/moving-to-infrastructure-as-code/

This time more technical subject again. Let's see...
@joel @sotolf @rl_dane @stfn @irgndsondepp

If you don't want to be tagged, just say the word.

Moving to Infrastructure as Code — A Work in Progress

As alluded to before, the number of servers I manage recently outgrew my ability or rather willingness to maintain all of them manually so, naturally, the desire to introduce automation arose. I’ve worked with Ansible before and, also as mentioned before, I went and ported my setup into Ansible playbooks to manage everything. The thing with Ansible is that it’s horribly complex. There are at least a dozen ways to accomplish any given task and there’s always ways to simplify, abstract or improve the playbooks you have so it hardly ever feels like you’re actually done. But what I found much more annoying is how opaque playbook runs are by default.

This is my blog now
Chirp Chirp Chirping My Desktop

My desktop is flapping and chirping.

I finally got round to getting a release out for Apollo - my text editor.

**Release Announcement #Blost **
https://orbitalmartian.vercel.app/blog/2026-03-18-apollo-1-the-launch/

Release Itself
https://codeberg.org/OrbitalMartian/apollo/releases/tag/v1.0

Hopefully I've remembered everything in the details :D

Apollo v1.0 - The Launch

T-0s, we have lift off.

New #blog #post: The Farmer's Station Wagon: A Parable

https://rldane.space/the-farmers-station-wagon-a-parable.html

1280 words

This was inspired by a recent interview between the #Fedi's own Jason Evangelho and Mike Kelly.

cc: my wonderful #chorus: @joel @dm @sotolf @thedoctor @pixx @orbitalmartian @adamsdesk @krafter @roguefoam @clayton @giantspacesquid @Twizzay @stfn @ay

(I will happily add/remove you from the chorus upon request! :)

#rlDaneWriting #blost #linux #nixbook #upcycle #eWaste #FOSS #Freedom

The Farmer's Station Wagon: A Parable

And here we go with another #blost about my new e-reader: https://bfloeser.de/posts/a-new-hope-ebook-reader/

Now let's try this: @rl_dane @joel @sotolf

A New Hope (where Hope == e-reader)

Since I like reading and shelf space is precious where I live I own an ebook reader. I’ve had this one for a few years now and bought it used back in the day but by now it has accumulated a sufficient amount of quirks that I needed a replacemnt. Another recent development is that I started to get more serious about ebook management (I lost quite a few over the years because I never backed them up) and now run a booklore server. It does more than I need but it’s a cool piece of software, I think (and very pretty!).

This is my blog now

I wrote another #blost a somewhat more personal one, about why I actually write: https://bfloeser.de/posts/why-do-i-blog/

Enjoy.

Not sure if I should emulate Dane and also compile some sort of arbitrary chorus. Bit undecided on that.

Why Do I Write?

I suspect all people who write anything down for a purpose that is not related to work or bare survival come across this question sooner or later. I know I did and, while I don’t have a definitive answer as of now, I do know that the answer changed over time. I have always enjoyed writing of sorts. Deep down I’ve had the fantasy of being an actual writer for a very long time now. You know, the romantic version of this dream, the one without the precarious circumstances, the writer’s block, the unemployment, the difficulty to make a living, the existential angst. Just me writing compelling thoughts and amazing stories to my heart’s content. Of course that would necessitate actually coming up with something worth writing, devising a story, thinking up characters or so.

This is my blog now