Alistair K

https://mastodon.nz/@libroraptor

Historian, mainly of science, art, tools and architecture in early modern Europe. Have also been a physicist, mathematician, educationist.

ICOM-UMAC.

Editor and writer of academic and technical things like research papers, theses and dissertations, monographs, essays, spec sheets, instruction manuals: I clarify ambiguity. I also bake, garden, and foster homeless dogs. Want something edited in LaTeX or Word? Get in touch!

Orc ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3890-9650
Profile picture: An ursine sow studying sunspots inside a camera obscura
Header picture: Oil painting of an old, decaying library

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npub14tmwwq4khw4j2q6jxs4mkqxneyev7572wtvey9f0pce5k93wcdusykh0qx

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqs24ah8q2mth2e9qdfrg2amqrfujvk020989kvjz5hsuv6tzchvx7gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dslu9puz

Publishing to

relay.snort.social

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub14tmwwq4khw4j2q6jxs4mkqxneyev7572wtvey9f0pce5k93wcdusykh0qx

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Last Notes

2025-08-14 22:48:59 UTC

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That is the point where I stopped reading. I always stop reading when a site does that – I don't have all that much cognitive capacity, and it's quickly exhausted by visual clutter, so I walk away when disrupted by bullshit like this. Same with newsletters. I could go along with a login. But why a newsletter? And not a nice monthly or quarterly newsletter on paper in my mailbox, but daily clutter in my e-mail?
Until that popup, I was sympathetic. Now I don't, and probably won't, know what they're on about. But I do know that they don't really care as much as they initially seemed to.

2024-09-26 06:51:29 UTC

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My great grandfather, who worked hard in New Zealand for twenty years, returned to China with our family having bought lots of land, and then had everything taken away as the Cultural Revolution took hold, said that a roof and two meals per day is enough; three meals is good luck; don't work too hard because it's too easy for everything to be lost again. That was his advice to his daughter, my grandmother, just before she escaped back to New Zealand with the kids.