Kyoto is CRAZY with tourists right now. We went to visit the family grave since we missed out last weekend. Cloudy, but got a couple of nice photos of cherry blossoms 🌸 πŸ“Έ

#EverydayKyoto #Kyoto #Japan #sakura

ζ΅„εœŸ (pure land) spelled out in FlowersGate to the burial site of Shinran, which is a common burial ground where my parent-in-law areThe old cherry blossom tree in Maruyama park. It is something like 170 years old, although it was recently trimmed and is much smaller than previous yearsSome cherry blossoms blooming by the east gate of Yasaka Shrine

Spent all day in the Wakayama mountains at a very eclectic Buddhist temple that will open soon. More photos but here are a few random shots. The main statue of 1000 Hands Kannon-sama is being shipped from China, and there is an opening ceremony by a Malaysian Zen master in the coming weeks.

Small Tibetan Buddhist statue with three vajra sitting in front of the statuecloseup of a Buddha statue rising from a gold lotus leafa wooden Amida relief against a cloud pattern cloth. The Amida is holding two strings that hang down over a third part of the artwork showing Kannon and Seishi-bosatsuCloseup of Tibetan writing in gold ink that rises from the black paper

This was another great ep following the one with Simon Willison about finding the boundaries of LLMs oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/…

#podcast #machineLearning #LLM #adversarialML

Bluesky, blue building πŸ“Έ

No edits. Taken from the north side of Osaka Castle park.

Photo of a cloudless blue sky. To the bottom right is a building with a dark glass blue colour

Gorgeous spring day. Hung around Umeda enjoying the warm. There are still no cherry blossoms outside yet due to the cold, but the Hilton has a bunch of trees growing on display in the lobby that are fully bloomed! πŸ“ΈπŸŒΈ

Photo of street in front of JR Osaka building from the 15th floorWindows of the 15th floor looking down on the center of UmedaFlowering trees inside of a hotel lobby. A low shot showing the high cieling of the hotelclose up of a cherry blossom

Today I found out about Rev. Joanne Yuasa who this year started working as a chaplain at Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Base Kingston, where I went to graduate school. She is the first Buddhist chaplain in the Canadian Forces! Wow!

Finished Governable Spaces by Nathan Schneider (@ntnsndr@social.coop) πŸ“š A positive read with a bunch of interesting branches to explore next. You can see some short chapter overviews: www.goodreads.com/review/sh…

Appreciated this discussion about operations research and the “universal science” of advertising. Surviving adtech like I have, I was really nodding my head along with the discussion about how ad agencies play both sides of the transaction

www.patreon.com/posts/328…

Really itching to go out on a photowalk. I’ve been on the backstreets at night but need to capture more. This rando snap I took since I liked the mix of stopping and going in one moment. πŸ“Έ

Anywho, next week the sakura 🌸 will bloom so I will definitely be taking lotsa shots

Late night photo. Train passes by. Below is a short tunnel under the tracks, with someone about to walk through. The foreground shows an empty crosswalk scramble.

This is fun to play with

jnolan.shinyapps.io/Populatio…

RIP Vernor Vinge

file770.com/vernor-vi…

Haunting #longread on Irish remembrance & forgetting against the background of extremely low corp tax rates, 80+ datacenters (with 40 more approved!) using a fifth of electric output causing

www.theguardian.com/world/202…

Appreciated this accessible piece on the antitrust case against Amazon. (TLDR; jacking Marketplace fees to subsidize other parts of the business)

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

Really enjoyed this interview of renowned scholar of Japanese history Thomas Conlan by the always excellent @becedo.bsky.social on his fascinating account of the Ouchi family. I am definitely picking up this book

newbooksnetwork.com/kings-in-…

#japan #history #podcast

Handy comparison of Free and OpenSource Photo Libraries

https://meichthys.github.io/foss_photo_libraries/

#photography #FOSS

Getting a boba at this neighborhood Taiwanese and Vietnamese cafeπŸ§‹

Chad sitting in front of a restaurant called Bobo Tea with a cup of bubble tea in his hand

Lovely day to explore the backstreets of Nakazaki, home to many tiny coffee shops and art galleries #osaka #coffee β˜•οΈ

A narrow alley leads to a cafe. The walls are covered in bright muralsAnd old house with exposed rafters and concrete floor converted into cafe with some seating and a wall full of booksChad sits outside of a cafe under a trestle covered in vines with a cup of coffee and slab of cheesecake

Currently reading: Governable Spaces by Nathan Schneider πŸ“š

I would really like browsers to track the β€œReferrer” for new tabs. For example, if you click on a link in an email, from a social media post, or Discord/Slack/Signal/Messages/etc please store a link back. Especially useful in the age of the cozy web, where I have a number of small social networks.

Started Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace by Feargal Cochrane πŸ“š