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doofusdan.bsky.social
@doofusdan.bsky.social
300 followers 960 following 260 posts
neurodivergent af / sff / guitar / cats / climate / clean energy / sustainability / antifascist
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doofusdan.bsky.social
Book puzzle - given how well-selected the rest of the titles on this bag are, the club and the four diamonds and “Tales” seems to me like it should add up to something - think it might be depicting a particular book - but…what?
A green canvas tote bag printed with an illustration of two wooden bookshelves filled with classic literature and cozy details. The top shelf features books titled “Tales from 1,001 Nights” by Anonymous, “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens, “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien, and “Lewis Carroll” (likely Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). A sleeping orange cat curls up between the books. The lower shelf shows an antique clock, more books — including “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, “Poems,” “Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, and “Tales” — along with a brown owl perched beside a potted plant. The scene evokes a warm, literary atmosphere, with the bag displayed among textiles and greenery in a shop. Close-up of the lower section of a green canvas tote bag showing part of the bookshelf illustration. It focuses on a red-orange book spine labeled “TALES” with diamond patterns and a key symbol, along with a few adjacent book spines in muted green and orange tones. The artwork is stylized and printed on textured fabric with visible weave detail.
November 7, 2025 at 7:43 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains
The cover of Goodbye Jumbo album by World Party, with a person in a gas mask and an elephant costume
October 29, 2025 at 5:32 AM
doofusdan.bsky.social
You’re a wizard - write like it
A blank notebook is open on a wooden table, with a black mechanical pencil and a yellow page-marker ribbon laying on the page. A black notecard is also laying across the opened pages, with this handwritten in white marker: Write like a wizard - i.e., knowing that what you say will become true about the world, as you say it, because you say so.
October 17, 2025 at 6:18 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Become ungovernable
A top down photo showing the photographers legs and feet in black jeans and sneakers standing on a concrete floor, inside a box marked in wide yellow painted lines, labeled with yellow spray painted stenciled words reading “KEEP CLEAR”
October 16, 2025 at 7:54 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Autumn is a spectrum

#neurodivergent
A photo of two trees in the midst of changing from green to red - each tree has a spectrum of the full range from one side to the other
October 11, 2025 at 11:23 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Trump’s tariff tax
Photo of a receipt, reading: “Surcharge (3.00%) $0.87 Subtotal $29.77 Tax $3.09 Total $32.86 A 3% surcharge will be added to each check to offset the increased cost of goods. 100% of this surcharge is retained by the company.”
September 12, 2025 at 9:39 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
I think Fred would approve of that one, it seems of a kind.
GIF of an older Fred Roger’s with grey hair, wearing a bow tie and a blue suit jacket, with speech captioned “because of you look for the helpers you’ll know that there’s Hope” - following a well known saying of his mothers to “always look for the helpers”
September 9, 2025 at 8:23 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Screenshot showing an active annual Todoist Pro substitution
August 23, 2025 at 3:41 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
@todoist.com I’m getting the widget error popping up and blocking me from progress until I clear it nearly every time I open Todoist - which is a LOT of times every day.

Please tell me that fixing this “according to the priority list” means “very soon” - it’s quite a speed bump to hit so often!
August 22, 2025 at 10:05 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
There’s a WHOLE lot going on in just the lede of this article. #llm #ai #gaza #genocide #freespeech #censorship #musk #orwell

www.france24.com/en/live-news...
Screenshot of heading and lede of Headline: “Musk chatbot Grok says it was 'censored ' after suspension from X over Gaza posts” Lede in subhead: “Grok, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAl and integrated into his platform X, was temporarily suspended from the platform on Monday after saying that Israel and the United States were committing "genocide" in Gaza. Reinstated on Tuesday, Grok lashed out at its developers, saying "Musk and xAl are censoring me".
August 17, 2025 at 4:17 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
I grew up on these streets.
Photo of a vintage Spy Hunter arcade game cabinet. The screen displays a high score leaderboard with a top score of 200,000 by “TFL,” titled “Top Agent.” Below it is a list of other players labeled “Special Force Team.” The game screen shows a vertically scrolling road with trees on each side. The control panel features a dual-handled steering yoke labeled “Weapons Van” in the center, a gear shift with “Low Gear” and “High Gear” options, and various labeled buttons and displays. Brightly colored indicators and retro graphics decorate the cabinet. A green sign reads “Suitable for All Ages.”
August 4, 2025 at 3:13 AM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Today’s #ObtuseTactics card:

Keep moving forwards, always — like a shark
A black card with the quote from today’s skeet handwritten in white ink lays on a wooden surface
July 25, 2025 at 3:37 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Today’s #ObtuseTactics card:

Keep going. There’s no failure as long as you don’t stop.
A black card with the quote from today’s skeet handwritten in white ink lays on a notebook printed with a green and red pattern.
July 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Today’s #ObtuseTactics card:

Make the problem (or bad guy) worse.
A black card with the quote from today’s skeet handwritten in white ink lays on a notebook opened to blank pages. A mechanical pencil is next to it.
July 21, 2025 at 4:47 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Today’s #ObtuseTactics card:

“You know the escape. Don’t get tired.”

The full quote is from _Red Belt_ by David Mamet, a sensei talking to a student after sparring: “You know the escape. Why didn’t you use it?” “I was tired.” “Don’t get tired.”
A black card with the quote from today’s skeet handwritten in white ink
July 20, 2025 at 3:45 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Today’s #ObtuseTactics card:

Make a field recording of anything - then listen back and see if there’s anything musical. A rhythm, interval*, tone, melody.

Imitate or sample it, and use that.
A black card with the text from this skeet handwritten in white ink; it sits on a closed notebook. The letters “Tt” are in the upper right corner.
July 19, 2025 at 11:28 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Mostly so I don’t have to look elsewhere for it later…here’s the current list of prompts for my daily writing bootup
Photo of the inside front cover of a notebook, with the following items in a handwritten list: OS Oblique Strategies (or other oracular sources) WT waking thoughts DH daily homework H health GR gratitude ML Music log GI Goals + intentions PD Process dump 5+5 Object (or other) writing - 10 minutes max
July 3, 2025 at 4:38 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
I’ve also been collecting ideas related to songwriting as I come across them - some ingredients, some tactics - and writing them down on cards of their own. That’s what I’ll use for my next daily oracular prompt - should keep me going for a while

#ObtuseTactics not #ObliqueStrategies
A few dozen playing cards made from black paper, have handwritten sayings about songwriting written in white on each such as “tear down an existing pattern “and “put the funniest word at the end of the line. – Dave Barry” A wooden recipe boxes open showing apparently hundreds and hundreds of such cards already written. A few blank cards and a white marker lay on the table next to the box.
July 3, 2025 at 4:27 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Sometime over 200 days ago, I made my own set of Oblique Strategies cards, and started drawing one as part of my daily writing boot-up routine.

Today I drew the last one, and it seems fitting:

credibility of intentions
A hand lettered phrase “credibility of intentions” is written in black marker on a blank white card. The same phrase is written in pencil on the top of a notebook page; the card is placed on the notebook along with a blue mechanical pencil. The notebook rests on a wooden surface
July 3, 2025 at 3:50 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
I said his name
A gif of a grey and white car with blue eyes sitting on a red and blue cushion, licking his nose and looking up at the camera
June 29, 2025 at 11:07 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Not saying my customer base was representative of the whole country - the population was skewed tech-heavy.
Screenshot of Google Maps showing Microsoft’s campus in Redmond WA located less than 2 miles from the location of my retail computer sales job
June 22, 2025 at 2:08 AM
doofusdan.bsky.social
If you really don’t want to download the zip from archive.org, you can read it on Reddit, too: www.reddit.com/r/linux/comm...
Screenshot of text from the essay, including: With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free. Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships. Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits. The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player. The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation.
June 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Oooh good news! You’re one of the lucky ten thousand to discover Neal Stephenson’s “In the Beginning Was the Command Line” today - enjoy! 😊 web.archive.org/web/20180218...
XKCD #1053 - explaining that for each thing that “everyone knows” by age 30, 10,000 people hear it for the first time every day.
June 20, 2025 at 4:23 PM
doofusdan.bsky.social
I just saw one of Monet’s Water Lillies at Museé de Orsey, and it made me think of Ai Weiwei again, so…
one of Monet’s Water Lillies, depicting a small arched wooden footbeidge with a raining over a flower pond with bright sunlight dappling the garden it is in, hangs in a large gold frame on a light grey wall at Museé de Orsey. In the foreground, out of focus, we can see the photographer’s hand outstretched, giving rhe middle finger to the painting, a reference to both Ai Weiwei’s middle finger series and his “cover” of Monet’s painting
June 17, 2025 at 8:25 AM
doofusdan.bsky.social
Ends strong too!
Photo of last two pages of the book, held open with two fingers. Left page has centered text: A wish for this book would be that it causes us to reassess the value of these two things: playing and feeling. And to realise that what we need is already inside us, and that art - playing and feeling - is a way of discovering it. There's a beautiful sculpture by Giuseppe Penone. He took a tree trunk and cut away most of the growth of the tree, leaving behind what had been there when the tree was ten years old. Inside big tree is baby tree. Inside you is little you. It's always there. Brian Eno Bette A. right side a photo of the tree artwork the text describes with caption: Gluseppe Penone, Albero porta (Door Tree), 1993 Sequola wood photo © Luigi Gariglio
May 29, 2025 at 2:06 AM