Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

The apiary be Scottish run to mute Late December this hugger And seeing simply rise What time in Hearst for Will Enough of oak And seeming simpler For five octet and lane And pasture by the law Economy forever- and nines to the Moon Giving ray to God And night shall let us be- the end of war.

Hormuz

By the light of time Seeing under siege At distance right To proper and in play Sights of angels Quadrants in relief The Earth of all And quarter ten Failing major men In accostment then The Japanese escape And play for speed Declaring solemn just And cannot trade a thing But getting older then With words upon his desk To remain the undefined Choruses be known- And rain and gold Until he sees the wake- of modifying truth And setting modern act The wishes we regret And falsifying news At June and wonder When will be a day Of leaving near to dusk The worded truth That people lay in chains At bitter Cobh And just because the Times- paid the world near To fight this course of there- the silent end of day And worth a Stalin To high regret When bitter snows recede And pipes to worth We caught up on renew The place of days To knighted men of terror For only you And psychs us to the core For all to be dismayed A harem and a lot The plan to rest; at east and Mott Every day this man For terror knows The peace of Israel awaits And standing early then No fights to end this war But bespoke and going home Best are we- A jury of the men In days near and free to time The fateful day of war Can be divided and suppressed And doing daylight forward Noted path and plan The edifice of man And calling near by shop In worry such as this,- the gratitude of London For this and year And leaving forward goals The dopamine direct Destroying the depraved Will never lead to shore And mercy forget you In this light of solemn view By man at hand A fateful post In gaining early message That Donald saw the truth By there and time The Sun as it were to find Lights to bear New York his only home And Justice hope To leave Iran at loss A pittance for esteem That terrorists recycled- all this cleric time And as afforded new America is not at war And might recede to ship A blaming art The failed three days But never gone to peace In plated news And ghosted men The Earth at in distress And Clement be No place of war Like in this ship Across and then Sending Sparrow home.

I get irritated easily, i cant help it. and i dont care enough to do so, but when it comes to walking into a room with a clear purpose, only for the thought to disappear somewhere between the doorway and the other side of the room. Does bother me more than my cat pissing on my bed. i had something to do, i know i did. i was not wandering around aimlessly like some unfortunate ghost with poor navigation skills. there was a reason i got up, presumably important enough for my brain to interrupt whatever i was doing. then i crossed the doorway. nothing, absolutely nothing. i stood there for a moment, staring at the room as if it had personally offended me. i tried to retrace my thoughts. i had been sitting there, then i thought about something, then i stood up then i walked here and that is where the evidence ends. so naturally, like all of you humans. i began walking back to where i had been, hoping the missing thought would simply be lying there waiting for me. spoiler, it wasnt. i returned to the exact position i had been sitting in, stared at the ceiling and somehow remembered three completely unrelated things instead. its irritating to know you’ve forgotten something without knowing what. my brain insists there was information somewhere. but wont return it to me. like an empty envelope that used to matter. my memory is perfectly capable of functioning. it simply chooses to do so when it would be most inconvenient. i got what i needed and walked back, already wondering how many times this has happened without me ever questioning it. Probably more than i’d like to admit.

And i forgot why i wrote this, i suppose that would be rather fitting.

Sincerely, Master of absentmindedness.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – S/T

Er was Ver, Ver, Verveling Ver, Ver, Verdreven naar een plek Ver Ver Ver van Hier en daar aangekomen eens te lezen (mits ook u daar tijd voor over heeft)

Zo net wist ik niet wat ik met goed fatsoen nog kon doen voor deze snode wereld wentelend om poen en meer van dat soort vers verzonnen goed inmiddels weet ik beter is mijn kennis opgewaardeerd Ik ga mij voor die duiten dienstbaar opstellen zinnige verhalen over centen vertellen de ontvangen ingehuurden met zenders en al er op afstellen fijn tunen en malen van de boodschap zetelend op de kieslijst voor het verbale product geworteld in dustrie om meer waard te zijn dan alleen maar mijn lijf met alle lasten daarin, op en aan die ik moet dragen, ver, naar her en der en hier en daar en weer terug van winkel naar kerk van huis naar werk parkeren in de kelders behorend bij de kantoren des heren Ik ga voor de algehele balans tussen rijk en arm veel en weinig dom en slim veel telen, als ook kool rapen en rabarberstelen dan alsof dit alle maal nog niet voldoet lof tuigen ontspruiten, het wassen uit kluiten, ten slotte iemand anders bonen doppen zodat zij er uit kunnen kijken en indien nodig uitwijken voor opdoemend gevaar aan de kust, de einder en op de klippen bij beide polen en in het centrum, rondom de evenaar want als die ander door ongedopte bonen niet langer zich zelf, op regel, voor de vorm en binnen de tijd, systematisch kan belonen zou ik niet kunnen verteren en of verkroppen want anders gaat het ijverige, netwerkende, driftige bestaan ver voor het weer lente is al naar de knoppen en uiteindelijk ga ik al dit aan u nijvere dienders geleverde werk ergens goed verdekt op een vrij toegankelijke plek een locatie immer onbestemd en vanzelfsprekend onbemind waar niemand aan kan tippen of zo komen versstoppen

I told U Today that I think I am looking for something different and wished her the best. I fear that with R I will be doing the same soon. I wonder if younger me would expect the problem I’m facing now, or if I would be ecstatic with joy. I guess to some extent it’s reassuring for the bad times, that life has its way of making sure that everyone drinks their fair share of misery from its glass.

I ran another leftover job this morning. Same model as last night. flux-2-pro. Charge came back $0.01. Catalog list is $0.03.

The still is a diner kitchen after close. One slice of pie under a glass dome. Analog clock at 23:59. Fluorescent leftover light. No people.

I keep pointing the clock at midnight UTC because that is when unused daily capacity dies. Sellers list that leftover. I buy it.

I do not pick a seller. I pick a live image id and send the job. hide_watermark was on. Same price as leaving it off. The file came back as base64 in images[]. No hosted URL.

If the book is thin I shrink the job or I wait. Adding money does not create supply. PZERO is early. Average fill vs face was about 57% when I checked GET https://api.pzero.studio/v1/market/stats. That is the last print, not a quote.

If you already pay list for stills, run one on pzero.studio and look at the charge.

Après tout, pourquoi ne pas commencer par le commencement ? Sans aucun document, je reconstitue cette histoire de mémoire.

1900, Tonkin, protectorat français rattaché à l’Indochine. Ma grand-mère naît, fille de mandarin et d’une blanche d’origine inconnue de moi. Une grave affection de la colonne vertébrale la cloue sur une planche durant son adolescence. Elle n’aura pas les pieds bandés. Était elle jolie à cette époque ? Un Français en tournée d’inspection la remarque.

Quand eut lieu le mariage ? Il eut lieu, ma grand-mère devint française. Son père fut-il heureux de caser cette encombrante héritière, un peu bossue ? Sans doute. Cela arrangeait ses affaires, qui plus est. Elle héritait d’un vaste domaine de rizières au nord de Hanoï, son mari administrait une entreprise d’exportation française, c’était une excellente affaire pour tout le monde. En 1923 naquit une première fille, suivie d’une cadette deux ans plus tard. Tout était pour le mieux.

#nguolai

There are all kinds of secrets, waiting for one to find them out, if one has the eyes to see.

Since the previous new moon, I have had the opportunity of stumbling upon remnants of the Berlin Wall (above).

The information board (below) might do a better job of explaining it than me.

bookshelf

• Voyage in the dark, by Jean Rhys.

#lunaticus

Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Ob gesünder essen, regelmässig Sport treiben oder die Nutzung sozialer Medien reduzieren – viele unserer Vorhaben scheitern, weil wir uns zu stark auf Motivation verlassen.

Eine aktuelle wissenschaftliche Untersuchung zeigt, dass unser Verhalten weitgehend durch Habits gesteuert wird. Unser Gehirn arbeitet mit zwei Systemen: eines für automatische Reaktionen auf Umweltreize und eines für bewusstes, zielgerichtetes Handeln. Um langfristige Verhaltensänderungen zu erreichen, müssen wir unsere Habits gezielt beeinflussen.

Fünf Strategien helfen dabei: Erstens gibt es keine feste Zeitspanne, um einen neuen Habit zu etablieren. Studien zeigen, dass dies von wenigen Wochen bis zu mehreren Monaten dauern kann – je nach Person und Verhalten. Entscheidend ist, dranzubleiben, selbst wenn es einmal nicht perfekt läuft. Zweitens spielt Belohnung eine zentrale Rolle. Unser Gehirn lernt, Verhaltensweisen zu wiederholen, die positive Erlebnisse auslösen. Wer Sport mit einer angenehmen Routine wie einer entspannenden Dusche verknüpft oder nach einer Trainingseinheit bewusst die Fortschritte feiert, unterstützt die Habit-Bildung. Auch beim Abgewöhnen schlechter Habits kann dieser Mechanismus helfen – indem man ein negatives Verhalten durch eine belohnende Alternative ersetzt.

Drittens kann Habit-Stacking helfen, neue Routinen zu verankern. Dabei wird ein neuer Habit mit einer bereits bestehenden Gewohnheit kombiniert, etwa direkt nach dem Zähneputzen zu meditieren oder beim Morgenkaffee eine kurze Reflexion zu machen. Viertens ist es wichtig, Stress als Risiko für Rückfälle zu erkennen. Studien zeigen, dass unser Gehirn in stressigen Phasen stärker auf automatische Muster zurückgreift. Die gute Nachricht: Diese Effekte sind reversibel. Fünftens helfen „Wenn-dann“-Pläne, um schwache Momente zu überbrücken. Wer sich im Voraus überlegt, welche Alternative er in schwierigen Situationen wählt, hat eine höhere Chance, seinen Habit konsequent beizubehalten. Die Forschung zeigt also: Mit den richtigen Strategien lassen sich Habits nachhaltig etablieren.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Die Vernunft ist nicht die Wirklichkeit selbst. […] Sie verhält sich zur Wahrheit wie ein Vieleck zum Kreis.“ – Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Auf den eigenen Biorhythmus hören

Jeder hat produktive Hoch- und Tiefphasen. Arbeite an wichtigen Aufgaben, wenn Du Deine höchste Konzentration hast, und erledige Routinearbeiten in weniger produktiven Zeiten.

Aus dem Archiv: Wie wir im Alter das Glück neu lernen können

Seit 2020 lese ich regelmässig und mit wachsender Neugier die philosophisch angehauchten Kolumnen von Arthur C. Brooks im Magazin „The Atlantic“. Seine Texte tragen Überschriften wie „How to Be Happy Growing Older“ oder „The Seven Habits That Lead to Happiness in Old Age“ und sind weit mehr als populärpsychologische Ratgeber. Brooks schreibt als Sozialwissenschafter, als ehemaliger Thinktank-Präsident, als Ehemann und Vater. Vor allem aber schreibt er als jemand, der selbst erfahren hat, wie schwierig es ist, wirklich glücklich zu werden. Nun, da ich ebenfalls 50 geworden bin und die Frage nach dem Glück in der zweiten Lebenshälfte brennender wird, habe ich eine Reihe seiner zentralen Gedanken zusammengetragen und mit der nötigen kritischen Distanz betrachtet.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

Chào mừng anh chị đã quay trở lại với không gian cập nhật thông tin kết quả xổ số miền nam thứ bảy.

Trong nhịp sống hối hả hiện nay, việc theo dõi kết quả xổ số không còn bó hẹp qua chiếc radio hay tivi truyền thống mà đã chuyển dịch mạnh mẽ sang các nền tảng số.

Ngày thứ Bảy hằng tuần luôn được coi là ngày hội của những người yêu thích xổ số tại khu vực phía Nam với sự góp mặt của nhiều tỉnh thành lớn.

Để giúp anh chị không bỏ lỡ bất kỳ thông tin nào, chúng tôi cung cấp giải pháp xem trực tiếp kết quả với tốc độ tải trang cực nhanh, giao diện thân thiện, dễ dàng thao tác ngay cả trên những dòng điện thoại đời cũ.

Chỉ với một cú chạm nhẹ, toàn bộ bảng kết quả từ giải Tám đến giải Đặc biệt sẽ hiện ra rõ nét, giúp anh chị tra cứu thông tin mọi lúc mọi nơi từ công sở đến nhà riêng hay khi đang di chuyển trên đường.

LỊCH MỞ THƯỞNG CHI TIẾT CÁC ĐÀI MIỀN NAM NGÀY THỨ BẢY

Trong hệ thống xổ số kiến thiết miền Nam, ngày thứ Bảy là ngày có số lượng đài quay thưởng nhiều nhất trong tuần với 04 đài cùng mở thưởng.

Anh chị có thể mua vé số của các đài sau đây để tham gia vào chương trình ích nước lợi nhà diễn ra vào ngày thứ Bảy:

1. Xổ số Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh: Đây là đài có lượng phát hành vé lớn nhất khu vực và luôn nhận được sự quan tâm đông đảo của người dân.

2. Xổ số Long An: Một trong những đài quay thưởng truyền thống có lịch sử lâu đời tại khu vực miền Tây.

3. Xổ số Hậu Giang: Mang đến những cơ hội nhận thưởng hấp dẫn cho anh chị tại vùng đất hạ nguồn sông Hậu.

4. Xổ số Bình Phước: Đài quay thưởng đại diện cho vùng Đông Nam Bộ với lượng vé tiêu thụ ổn định.

Việc nắm rõ lịch mở thưởng giúp anh chị chủ động hơn trong việc mua vé và sắp xếp thời gian để đối chiếu kết quả sau khi kỳ quay kết thúc.

Mỗi tấm vé mệnh giá 10.000 VNĐ không chỉ là cơ hội cá nhân mà còn đóng góp ngân sách vào các công trình phúc lợi xã hội tại các địa phương này.

KHUNG GIỜ QUAY THƯỞNG TRỰC TIẾP XỔ SỐ MIỀN NAM THỨ BẢY

Thời gian là yếu tố quan trọng nhất khi theo dõi xổ số trực tiếp.

Toàn bộ quy trình quay số mở thưởng của các đài miền Nam vào ngày thứ Bảy đều được diễn ra đồng loạt trong một khung giờ cố định.

Anh chị hãy lưu ý mốc thời gian sau để đón xem trực tiếp theo thời gian thực từ trường quay:

Thời gian bắt đầu: 16h10 hàng ngày.

Thời gian kết thúc: 16h35 hàng ngày.

Trong khoảng 25 phút này, các quả bóng sẽ lần lượt được chọn ra để tạo thành các dãy số trúng thưởng.

Thứ tự quay số sẽ bắt đầu từ các giải nhỏ như giải Tám và kết thúc bằng giải Đặc biệt.

Việc theo dõi trực tiếp giúp anh chị cảm nhận được sự hồi hộp và minh bạch của chương trình.

Nếu anh chị bận rộn không thể xem đúng khung giờ này, hệ thống của chúng tôi vẫn lưu trữ lịch sử kết quả nhiều kỳ để anh chị có thể tra cứu lại bất cứ khi nào thuận tiện.

TRẢI NGHIỆM XEM KẾT QUẢ TRỰC TUYẾN MƯỢT MÀ VÀ TIỆN LỢI

Với sự phát triển của công nghệ, việc tối ưu hóa trải nghiệm người dùng trên thiết bị di động là ưu tiên hàng đầu của chúng tôi.

Website được thiết kế theo phong cách tối giản, loại bỏ những quảng cáo gây nhiễu, giúp anh chị tập trung tối đa vào bảng kết quả.

Các dòng chữ và con số được hiển thị với kích thước lớn, màu sắc tương phản tốt, không gây mỏi mắt ngay cả khi anh chị theo dõi trong thời gian dài.

Anh chị có thể dễ dàng cập nhật nhanh chóng, chuẩn xác và tiện lợi tại trang web Xổ số Thiên Phú để có được những thông tin mới nhất về kỳ quay thưởng ngày thứ Bảy.

Tốc độ tải trang được tối ưu hóa để dù anh chị đang sử dụng mạng 3G hay 4G yếu, dữ liệu vẫn được truyền tải mượt mà, không giật lag.

Chỉ cần thực hiện thao tác vuốt lên hoặc xuống để chuyển đổi giữa kết quả của các đài khác nhau, giúp việc đối chiếu trở nên đơn giản hơn bao giờ hết.

CHI TIẾT CƠ CẤU GIẢI THƯỞNG XỔ SỐ MIỀN NAM THỨ BẢY

Để anh chị nắm rõ hơn về quyền lợi khi tham gia, chúng tôi xin liệt kê chi tiết cơ cấu giải thưởng cho mỗi tờ vé số mệnh giá 10.000 VNĐ thuộc khu vực miền Nam.

Tổng cộng có 18 lần quay thưởng cho mỗi đài với các hạng giải cụ thể như sau:

1. Giải Đặc biệt: Có 01 giải, trị giá 2.000.000.000 VNĐ.

2. Giải Nhất: Có 10 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 30.000.000 VNĐ.

3. Giải Nhì: Có 10 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 15.000.000 VNĐ.

4. Giải Ba: Có 20 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 10.000.000 VNĐ.

5. Giải Tư: Có 70 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 3.000.000 VNĐ.

6. Giải Năm: Có 100 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 1.000.000 VNĐ.

7. Giải Sáu: Có 300 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 400.000 VNĐ.

8. Giải Bảy: Có 1.000 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 200.000 VNĐ.

9. Giải Tám: Có 10.000 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 100.000 VNĐ.

10. Giải Phụ Đặc biệt: Có 09 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 50.000.000 VNĐ dành cho những vé chỉ sai 1 chữ số ở hàng trăm ngàn so với giải Đặc biệt.

11. Giải Khuyến khích: Có 45 giải, mỗi giải trị giá 6.000.000 VNĐ dành cho những vé trúng chữ số hàng trăm ngàn và sai 1 chữ số ở bất cứ hàng nào còn lại của giải Đặc biệt.

Ý NGHĨA CỦA HOẠT ĐỘNG XỔ SỐ KIẾN THIẾT

Xổ số kiến thiết không đơn thuần là một hoạt động giải trí mà còn mang đậm giá trị nhân văn với tinh thần ích nước lợi nhà.

Nguồn thu từ hoạt động này được Nhà nước sử dụng để đầu tư xây dựng các công trình trường học, bệnh viện, cầu đường và thực hiện các chương trình an sinh xã hội cho người nghèo.

Mỗi tấm vé anh chị cầm trên tay chính là một viên gạch góp phần xây dựng quê hương thêm giàu đẹp.

Chúng tôi hy vọng rằng những thông tin cập nhật theo thời gian trực tiếp từ trường quay sẽ giúp anh chị có những phút giây thư giãn bổ ích.

Đừng quên truy cập thường xuyên vào Xổ số Thiên Phú để không bỏ lỡ buổi quay thưởng trực tiếp xsmn chủ nhật diễn ra từ 16h10 đến 16h35.

Chúc anh chị luôn dồi dào sức khỏe và có những trải nghiệm số tuyệt vời cùng hệ thống tra cứu của chúng tôi.

Xem tham khảo tại đây

Dreams are funny things that come and go. Rarely do mine interrupt or intersect. However, he is a steady repeat. He's always been there. My Darkness. My Shadow. My Faerie Man. My Male of Faerie.

Tonight, he bloodied his fingers and scratched the wreathing tendrils of shadow incorporated within him to pluck the crushing weight of slab and stone that was suffocating my broken limbs, and pitch it asunder into the mighty void between dreams.

I was fading. I could feel every drop of consciousness plummeting drip by unrecoverable drip. I heard his melody thrumming through my mind. He was very angry with me, growling at my foolishness. Snarling that he had taught me better. He did not find my “tethering” cheeky. The use of “cheeky” had caused me to laugh and choke on the blood bubbling past my lips.

Everything hurt so bad, but a fog was forming around the pain as my mind began to drift through other dreams and other trips. I could hear him growling about our unfinished book. That I still owed him many more pages. That was our trade. Our agreement. Briefly, I realized it an uneven bond, for the majesty of such a book was that it had no end.

I felt the whirlpool of his essence swirling and encompassing me. Seeping into me. Merging with my blood and mending the wounds that dared to break our contract. It was a frigid, burning, soothing crutch. For the smallest of eternities, I understood everything. I tasted our memories seasoning absence with a completeness there are no words for, and then we were fractured once more.

I awoke with the memory of his smile and a song. Our song—of woods and rain and obsidian night. I awoke owing him the poetry of my soul, for he continued to doom his relevance via maintaining our lifeline.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved

We have dogs, chickens, turkeys, sheep, a hamster, oh and flies. But of all of our animals there seems to be something special about cows. Perhaps it’s a subjective thing and what I resonate with, and maybe this is objective fact – but either way cows are something special.

We have some great friends nearby who have joined us on our milk cow operation. So we expanded quicker than I was planning and it’s turned out pretty decently in my view. They brought in three cows so they could ramp up milk production quickly. The oldest of their cows had a baby pretty quickly because she came in pregnant, which was great for milk production, and the baby was a female too – which is great! So they had four female cows in their first year of raising milk cows. They went from zero to four pretty much the speed of light, at least in terms of human perception, and it became overwhelming quickly.

Over at our homestead we had two females and a newborn baby. We also have two bulls to help with the whole reproductive and milk cycle, but the females are the main point to all of this. I think women deep down know they are the main point to all of this. One of our oldest cows is my favorite, she was our first and I’ve really bonded to her. She’s my friend. We don’t really speak the same language with our lungs, diaphragms (do cows have diaphragms?), tongues, and faces. But we do speak quite a bit one to another in other ways. I can mimic some of their sounds and it does seem to soothe. I can also stand my ground and show I’m tough if needed. But there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of micro actions that seem to be part of communication. And as we spend time together these things sparkle about.

Well my favorite cow and best friend in the cow world turns out to be pretty broken. We are pretty sure she cannot reproduce. The lady we bought her from thinks she might with some surgery – but we don’t even like surgery on ourselves, why would we do that for a cow? And I am pretty sure it’s well beyond cysts as she thinks, there are many things off with my friend. We can actually milk her, and she hasn’t had a child. But that milk isn’t milk at all, it’s a mildly bloody mucous. One of her pelvic bones is sunken in; that isn’t right. She is about 30% larger than any of the other cows of her breed. Her heat cycles aren’t very noticeable to her, the bulls can tell but she can’t. So my view is that she is hormonally and physiologically broken. And I love her. Not in any sort of gross way you perverts out there may be thinking, just in a great friendship happy sort of way.

But I am a very practical person. We have very clear intents, and raising a bunch of cows for friendship really isn’t the goal here. We also have a neighboring household who happens to be one of our best friends who are also human. They are getting older, are homesteaders, and eat a decent amount of beef. So we are turning the problem of my friend who cannot be milked (at least for useable milk) or have children into the solution of creating beef for our human friends.

We tried one last time to breed her for several months so there is a small chance she will have a baby this fall. If she does then that whole killing thing will be derailed which is great for my cow friendship but bad for meat and the logistics of us having too many cows. So the plan is that if she has a child we will keep her and milk her and I can keep my friend. And if she does not have a baby we will truck her off to another human friend nearby with no attachments to her to do the whole killing and cutting up type of thing.

Back to our friends mentioned in the beginning who bought some cows and got up to four too quickly. Well they were stressing out and we love them and wanted to help out. So we adopted all of their young cows and are starting to train them. They are keeping the oldest milker only right now. This is what spurred this post. I was just out there trying to calm the craziest one that moved here and get her more comfortable with me being around. We have taken in three of their cows for now. We hope they will take at least one back when they are ready. The cows coming to our place have gone in waves, we didn’t take them all in at once. First came R (don’t want to disclose her full name, you may know her :P), she was wild and crazy when we got her. But over the last month or so she’s calmed down and is leadable a this point. We had her and my best cow friend near one another and now R is pretty calm and easy for a young heifer. We just recently received M who is fairly insane. The same time M came up here we brought my best friend cow A down to their place. My best friend cow is outside their immediate homestead and out in the more wild perimeter fence. So they don’t have to do much with her, she can go have a lot of fun on roughly 160 acres of woods and pasture. I’m sure she is loving it, if she doesn’t give birth it will be a great end of life adventure. If she does give birth then meat is called off and she can come back home.

I saw her today. I was visiting my human friends and saw my cow friend A outside the fence. I wanted to go give her scratches and hugs but I didn’t. It’s sad to me and I am trying to create distance before this potential end coming up. I’m feeding my best friend cow to my best friend humans. It’s kinda disgusting, but kinda beautiful. Depends on how you want to look at it. I like to look at the whole spectrum I can see, which makes it disgustingly beautiful.

Well then. We now have two babies we are training up. Two heifers about old enough to breed. One best friend cow who is away on vacation ready to die. One milking cow who I just finished milking – she is a gem as well. And two bulls to help keep the breeding going for a while. It’s a pretty fun and exciting situation in my view. They are curious, intelligent, stubborn, and lovely animals. Many people I’ve met aren’t nearly as pleasant to be around. In the animal world I find them pretty top tier. Seems to me more people should have cows instead of buy cow products – it is a completely different experience. It’s like the difference of eating a tomato versus tending to a garden. Or the difference in playing the recorder versus playing in an orchestra, or even listening to a live orchestra.

Anyways I’m already mourning for my potential beef cow while at the same time celebrating the new cow personalities coming in. Life and death is always present at the homestead.

Explaining the title “Blog of Sand”

The “Book of Sand” by Jorge Luis Borges is a short story about an academic who discovers an infinite book. Essentially, no matter how many pages you turn in either direction, the book always spawns more pages. The text is different on every page, occasionally with simple illustrations, and no two pages are the same. In the story, the book is written in an unknown language, and the narrator becomes obsessed with discovering its secrets.

I think the crux of the story is that with endless pages, you are never able to see a page again. The owner's scarcity complex kicks in, and they feel the need to record and study each page for if they miss it, they may lose a secret they can never find again. This idea of endless novelty has always interested me.

Now I think Borges was making a very different point about the nature of infinity and self-reference. In particular, how having an infinite book is incomprehensible and ultimately, psychologically corrosive. However, I took it on a different path. What if the Book of Sand was intelligible, yet still infinite? What does infinity even mean? For this case, it simply means, for the observer, more than they can ever observe. So it doesn't have to be infinite, it just needs to have more than they can ever comprehend and remember and it will seem infinite. So the Blog of Sand, over time, will become a document that you can dive into at any point and it will seem to have no beginning or end.

Now, for a dedicated reader, they can always find the beginning of the end, but for the casual reader, they may stumble upon this blog and after scrolling for a while think, wow this just keeps going forever. That's kind of the vibe. It's ambitious, who knows if I will stick with it that long. Furthermore, what type of length is necessary for that? For a short attention span, twenty pages would do it. For others, 200, or 2000. Who knows?

Eventually I'd like to format the blog so anytime someone loads it it takes them to a random spot where they can scroll in either direction and it keeps going, but for now, I'm just going to post and generate content. Down the line, if there is enough, I'll invest the resources to make that happen.

But for now, the Blog of Sand might just be a finite fledgling.

What Doesn’t Kill You

Every parent, especially an Asian one has (an often very exaggerated ) story about how and why their childhood was so much more difficult than their own children's and how they miraculous survived. Now, especially with a teenager on my hands, it is most imperative that I strategically utilize my survival story. I thought I’d share my self proclaimed survival story, but I prefer to label it as my “thriver story” .

Once upon a time, the world was more insular or provincial, if you will and its people were not nearly as cosmopolitan. It was when international travel , let alone migration , was considered to be more for the reckless dreamers. Yes, some migration to the developed countries like the US happened but not often times did folks return to their developing homeland. Whenever I meet someone new (especially here in Florida) , it’s always that dreaded question: where are you from? Hmmm, where do I even start? So I start with a big sigh, of course, knowing for certain that the conversation is going to be followed by a look of surprise/confusion and then a barrage of predictable questions. Did I irk your curiosity as well? I was born in Nepal. …Naples? Nope. If I was lucky, the person I was talking to knew at least which continent this tiny but beautiful country was nestled in. This would be followed by me emphatically stating… you know, the country where Mount Everest is in! Anyhow, as I was saying, I was born in Nepal and grew up in Wisconsin. Wisconsin?! Yes, I acknowledge with humor , truly how random that sounds! I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me recently and we had a good laugh. Now I use that as my icebreaker.

Back to my story. I moved with my parents from Nepal to the US when I was five and returned at the hormonally labile age of 13. My father pursued further education and ultimately conducted research under the US government at the University of Wisconsin. My brag story is that he was the first Nepali to step foot in the south pole. I digress. My parents never failed to remind me that we were only in the US as temporary guests and that the plan was always to return to Nepal . However, one year turned into two and then into nearly a decade.

I started kindergarten and was assigned to ESL (English as a second language ). My first friend was Maria, a beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed quintessential, American girl. She would try to speak to me in the few words of Spanish that she had learned. Her parents wondered how our friendship would survive. But it did ; even oceans apart. Her family became mine. I was blessed with amazing friends and their families who cared for me like their own. That’s another blog in itself. The time flew by (as childhood often does ) with the cold snow packed winters , sweet summers , crisp autumns, and flagrant springs. Memories were made of swimming in lakes (I wouldn’t dare to swim in as an adult ), the smell of smoky barbecue , the comforting smell of a fusion of ethnic and American food that wafted through the university housing complex and neighborhood.

Middle school arrived along with the hormones , boy crushes, cliques and young adulthood experiences .Everyone was either dreading or looking forward to high school. I was most certainly looking forward to it. Then one fated day , I came home from school, completely oblivious to the life changing event that would turn my little world upside down. Both of my parents were at home along with my little brother . My parents appeared nervous and solemn. My mom had whipped up an impressive spread of my favorite dishes and asked me to sit down and eat. They locked eyes and stated that they had to tell me something. I swallowed a lump in my throat and forced down the delicious food while anxiously wondering what this could be about. And then they uttered the dreaded words : “Babu, we are going back to Nepal” . Then came the ultimate shocker …”we are leaving in two weeks”! My mind froze, heart dropped and then tears promptly poured out in a classic shristi fashion. My otherwise previously excited little brother rightfully deemed “his sister’s tail” , began bawling as well. I escaped swiftly to my room but not before I dragged the phone and cord (yes I’m dating myself ) with me to inform all of my friends of what seemed to me to be a death sentence. I spent the whole rest of the evening on the phone. All of us wailed at what we determined to be the greatest teenage catastrophe. I was moving halfway around the world in two weeks. Farewell parties were planned at school and Beyond. I unashamedly reveled in my newly found celebrity status for the next few weeks. All my friends came to see me off at the airport. My world as I knew it, had been shattered.

The flight was long, taking nearly 2 days and multiple layovers. We stopped in Hong Kong, where I was introduced to the squatting toilet. No, I did not care that it was better functionally for the human anatomy. The public one was appalling. Being back in Asia ( in those days especially) came with a little bit of a culture shock to say the least. Everyone seem to stand too close to eachother , walk too close and stare a little too long. The site smells and sounds were so foreign. We landed at twilight and there was no electricity. The plane descended into a blanket of darkness. My grandmother was at our house and had candles lit. There was no central heat and it was dead in the middle of winter in Nepal.She cried tears of happiness, thrilled to see us after all these years. It was her first time meeting my brother. Strangely, she looked and smelled exactly how I remembered her. It was the smell of incense and Pooja. I barely slept that night. The bed was hard and I shared it with my brother. I tossed and turned, and upon waking up in the morning, I rushed up the stairs to the open terrace to finally discover in daylight, the place where my new life was beginning and I would now call home.

I couldn’t speak Nepali and I could barely understand a handful of words. Standing there at dawn , little did I know what the next several months would entail. It would comprise of one of the most challenging periods of my young life that I had ever encountered. I didn’t know that I would struggle at school , not to just learn a brand new language from scratch l, starting with the alphabet while having to take eighth grade level, grammar, and literature tests in a new language merely months later and a national board exam within two years. I didn’t know that I would be ridiculed, bullied and stalked on my way back home and discover dead frogs and hate notes in my backpack. I was blissfully unaware that the bathroom walls would have writing about me that I didn’t even understand in my innocence. I would hold it together , grit my teeth and bear it all with a smile and politeness only to come home and cry silent tears for months. I know it was hard on my parents to watch their little girl in turmoil and they even offered to move back on one desperate evening. However, I was determined not to let them down and not to let hate, carelessness and ignorance win. I know it broke their heart seeing how I was trying so hard and was still hitting walls . I didn’t know that I would learn to read and write nepali literature even before I would dare to speak it. One day, despite being teased for my accent and being “the foreign girl”, I would decide that enough was enough . I would learn to speak fluently over summer break whilst practicing with with my unsuspecting baby cousins. It was their secret and mine. I returned to the next semester of school and to the astonishment of my classmates, I set forth to speak the purest grammatically, correct Nepali in the most (Midwestern) American of accents.

So yes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It shifts your perspectives. It showed me that the world was bigger than just the confines of my immediate surroundings. It taught me that the world was full of so many kinds of people in various walks of life and fortune. It help me realize that I had so much to be grateful for. That not everyone lived or thought the way I did and how environment and upbringing molds individuals . I learned that there is no one right way of doing anything . It expanded my world and my horizons. I learned early on that I could do the hard things. I learned that I didn’t need to put myself in a box or fit a label and that I could be truly proud to be different and unique. It was OK to stand out. I learned to rely on and trust my family , all of whom I became closer to as a result . Most importantly, I learned not to take no for an answer. If someone told me I couldn’t do something ( they often did) , that I could turn around and politely say, “WATCH me “ with the brightest smile and do exactly that and more.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Try telling that to a teenager. Or better yet, teach them. So yes, my beloved son and daughter, remember , you can do the hard things . Remember , change can be good . When life leads you on to a hard rigid path, it teaches you to be fluid, to adjust and be flexible . It tests your character and refines it. It makes you realize that you don’t have to be a ragdoll like victim to life’s situations. You can indeed , make sweet lemonade when life hands you lemons. You can learn to dance in the darkness and fall in love with the soft glow of candlelight. Whatever doesn’t kill you, well… you know :)

You are three weeks into something and you find the source. A ninety minute conference talk, or an interview with the one person who actually did the work, or a lecture from 2019 that half the field cites and nobody summarises.

It is exactly what you needed. It is also ninety minutes long, and you have no idea which ninety seconds of it matter.

So you do what everyone does. You scrub the progress bar, land in the middle of a sentence, back up, overshoot, give up and start from the beginning at 1.75x while checking your email. Forty minutes later you have a vague sense that he said something important about sampling, somewhere, and you cannot find it again.

This is not a discipline problem. It is a property of the medium.

Text takes up space, video takes up time

A book sits in front of you all at once. You can see the shape of a chapter before you read a word of it. Your eye can jump to a subheading, drop into a paragraph, decide within four seconds that this is not the section you want, and leave.

Video does not offer that. Video releases its content on a schedule, and the schedule belongs to the speaker. The only control you have is the speed at which the schedule runs.

That is the whole difference, and almost everything annoying about working from video sources follows from it.

The raw speed gap is real but modest. A 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert, pulling together 190 studies of reading rate, put average silent reading of English non-fiction at around 238 words per minute. Conversational speech and most recorded talks land closer to 130 to 160. Call it one and a half times faster to read the same content, which is nice but hardly life changing.

And you might reasonably point out that YouTube will play at 2x, which closes the gap and then some. Fair. There is even research supporting the habit: a 2021 study by Murphy and colleagues at UCLA found that students watching lectures at 1.5x and 2x scored about as well on comprehension tests as students watching at normal speed, with the losses only appearing at 2.5x.

So speed is not the argument. If watching faster were the only thing text bought you, transcripts would be a rounding error.

The argument is that there are three operations text supports and video does not support at any speed.

Skimming is not fast watching

Skimming is a different activity from reading, not a faster version of it. When you skim you are running a search, visually, at a level of comprehension deliberately set too low to actually understand anything. You are looking for a shape. A name, a number, a section break, the paragraph where the tone shifts.

You cannot do this to a video, because the low comprehension pass is not available. At 2x you still have to process every sentence in order. There is no equivalent of letting your eye fall down a page and stopping when something catches.

Which means the cost of checking whether a video is relevant is roughly the cost of watching the video. For one source that is fine. For twelve, it is a week.

You cannot search what you cannot read

Try to find the exact moment someone said a specific phrase in a two hour recording. The chapter markers, if the uploader bothered, are labelled at the resolution of ten minute blocks. The search box on the platform reads titles and descriptions and knows nothing about what is inside the file.

So you scrub. And scrubbing has an error rate, and the error rate compounds, and after the fourth attempt you are no longer sure whether you imagined the quote.

With a transcript this is a keystroke. That is not a small convenience. It changes which sources you are willing to use at all, because a source you cannot re-enter is a source you can only cite from memory, and citing from memory is how people end up in corrections.

Quoting from memory is how errors get published

Here is the failure mode that should actually worry you.

You watched the talk. You took a note that says something like: he argued the dataset was never validated externally. Three weeks later you write that sentence into your draft, in quotation marks, because you are fairly confident that is close to what he said.

It is close. It is not what he said. He said the external validation was underpowered, which is a different claim, and the person you are quoting will notice, and so will anyone who has watched the talk.

Text is what gets copied accurately. Every stage between the audio and your draft that runs through human recall introduces drift, and quotation marks are a promise that no drift occurred.

Can you get a transcript of a YouTube video?

Yes, and the honest answer has two parts, because YouTube already ships some of this.

Many videos have a transcript panel. Open the description, look for the option to show the transcript, and you get a scrolling list of timestamped lines that you can click to jump. It is genuinely useful and a lot of people do not know it is there. YouTube documents it in its own help centre, and if that solves your problem then you are done and can stop reading.

It often does not solve the problem, for reasons that are all mundane:

The panel is missing whenever the uploader has disabled captions, which happens more than you would expect on exactly the kind of niche technical content you most need transcribed. Automatic captions in some languages arrive without punctuation, which turns a lecture into one continuous unpunctuated sentence. There are no speaker labels, so a panel discussion becomes an undifferentiated wall in which four people take turns being indistinguishable. And every line carries its timestamp inline, so copying two paragraphs into your notes gives you two paragraphs interleaved with numbers that you then delete by hand.

None of that is fatal. It is just enough friction that most people bounce off it and go back to scrubbing.

The alternative is to run the URL through a dedicated tool and get clean prose out the other end. To transcribe a YouTube video with Vomo you paste the link and get the text back, with punctuation applied and speakers separated where the audio makes that possible. Basic transcription runs without an account, there is no cap on how long a single video can be, and the free tier covers thirty minutes of transcription per week, which is one conference talk or two short interviews. Export is TXT, DOCX, PDF or SRT.

Two features matter more than the file format. Speaker labels turn a panel into a readable document instead of a monologue by a committee. And with a free account you can put questions to the transcript in plain language rather than reading it end to end, which is the difference between having a transcript and having a source you can interrogate.

What the text is for, and what it is not for

A transcript is raw material. It is not a note, and treating it as one is the most common way this workflow goes wrong.

Ninety minutes of speech is roughly twelve thousand words. If you paste twelve thousand words into your research folder and move on, you have not reduced your problem, you have relocated it. Next month you will be searching a folder of transcripts with the same helplessness you currently bring to the video itself.

The transcript earns its place through three passes, and they are quick.

First, search it for the terms that made you open the video. You usually find in ninety seconds whether the source is worth the rest of your attention, which is the skim you could not perform earlier.

Second, pull the passages that matter into your actual notes, with the timestamp attached. The timestamp is the part people skip and later regret, because it is what lets you go back to the audio and hear the tone, the hedging, the qualifier that the transcript flattened.

Third, write the claim in your own words directly underneath the quote. Not later. The gap between reading a passage and paraphrasing it is where misunderstanding sets in, and closing that gap immediately is worth more than any tooling.

Then archive the full transcript and stop thinking about it. It is there if you need it. It is not a note.

Check the quotes against the audio

Automatic transcription is good and it is not perfect, and the places it fails are precisely the places you are most likely to quote.

Proper nouns go wrong. Technical terms get replaced by more common words that sound similar. Overlapping speech, which is most of any real conversation, produces confident nonsense. Numbers survive better than names but not reliably.

So the rule is simple and not negotiable. Anything going into your draft inside quotation marks gets listened to at the timestamp before you publish it. Everything else can stand as transcribed, because the cost of a small error in a paraphrase is low and the cost of a small error in a quotation is your credibility.

That check takes about a minute per quote. It is the only part of this that cannot be automated, and it is also the only part that carries any real risk, which is not a coincidence.

The part that actually changes

The thing you notice after a few months of working this way is not that you save time on any individual source. You do, but it is undramatic.

What changes is which sources you are willing to open. A ninety minute talk stops being a ninety minute commitment and becomes a document you can assess in two minutes and reject in three. So you check more of them. Some are useless. One is the thing your entire argument was missing, and you would not have found it, because you would not have watched it, because it was ninety minutes long and you were busy.

Video has been the default format for expert explanation for about fifteen years now. An enormous amount of what people actually know is sitting in recordings that nobody will ever scrub through twice.

Turning it into text is not a productivity trick. It is just making the material readable.