john fink ok!! :goat:

The Lafarguist-Discordian librarian who went for Araldite. You may know me as john fink ok!! :goat: (npub1e3p…yqgr) from twitter. That's ok also. I mean OK that you know me from there. Twitter is not ok. pronouns: they/them/he/him

Sous les pavés, la plage!

occupation: [#librarian](https://mastodon.social/tags/librarian )
residence: [#hamont](https://mastodon.social/tags/hamont )
likes: [#potatoes](https://mastodon.social/tags/potatoes )
github: https://github.com/jbfink

Public Key

npub1e3psl9ymkg3y4f9necqjt7986z8dm34wwhwzpy59d9677sudhnuskqyqgr

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvcsc0jjdmygj25jeuuqf9lznaprkac6h8thpqj2zkja00gwxme7gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsvj5znl

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1e3psl9ymkg3y4f9necqjt7986z8dm34wwhwzpy59d9677sudhnuskqyqgr

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Last Notes

2026-06-24 23:56:26 UTC

Playing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as if it were a religious song is like playing the Police's "Every Breath You Take" at a wedding thinking it's a romantic song. Or playing "Spirit In The Sky" thinking it's a song that is positive about Christians.

2026-04-15 20:12:04 UTC

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oh my stars, look at wee jessamyn there.

2026-04-12 21:00:33 UTC

Provided elections aren't fucked with in November, GOP is toast.

2026-04-08 00:55:17 UTC

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DUDE

2026-04-07 00:23:25 UTC

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dangit man I woulda been happy to play Watch Sommelier to you

2026-03-27 19:57:24 UTC

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this was a good read. I sorta avoided pinging you about Tracy because I didn't know if it was a sore thing and all.

2026-03-22 03:06:54 UTC

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oh my stars that is adorable man

2026-03-22 02:57:20 UTC

I don't go to enough bowling alleys

2026-03-20 17:45:24 UTC

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@krypt3ia/116262710546789380
This is why every worker in our current system needs a union. This is nutbar.
#note1fsd…2z23

2026-03-18 17:33:13 UTC

thinking about the Chavez news a lot and remembering how even in librarianship -- a tiny sphere -- there are Powerful Dudes who I know to have been *at least* sex pests and in some cases ... worse. Just fucking endemic shit. Just depressing as hell.

2026-03-07 02:20:20 UTC

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dude, bunch of people died at Union Lake

2026-03-06 16:53:01 UTC

https://dialed.gg/ ??? really? I am a spatially inept absolutely artless piece of shit, no creativity in my soul whatsoever, routinely am wrong about what makes a famous painting notable or whatever, and I did phenomenally well at this.

2026-03-03 15:18:23 UTC

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check this out. Fed this ad to both Qwen3.5:0.8 and 9b. Asked them to describe what the story is. 9b gets it exactly, no fuss. Ice cream advert with Dracula etc. 0.8b, well....
#LLM
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/165/904/887/429/871/original/d282cbffa35398d4.jpg

2026-03-03 15:16:25 UTC

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okay the 0.8b model might be my new favourite fucking-about model because it's just competent enough but the low parameter count means it's delightfully stupid and makes batshit assertions about things that just make me so happy.
#LLM

2026-03-03 00:18:27 UTC

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....good lord even the 0.8b model, with a paltry 1GB on disk, is pretty much demolishing the grilled cheese question. Daaaaamn qwen.
#LLM

2026-03-02 23:32:32 UTC

Duuuuuude new small parameter count qwen3.5 models? Yes please. Hell yes please.
https://venturebeat.com/technology/alibabas-small-open-source-qwen3-5-9b-beats-openais-gpt-oss-120b-and-can-run
#LLM

2026-02-25 16:38:45 UTC

Want to post a link to a thing, it's on substack, I will not post a link to a thing.

2026-02-18 02:51:05 UTC

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I really enjoyed it when they had me on!!!!!

2026-02-03 23:01:49 UTC

..... I don't eat *anything* five times a day. What in the hell. I mean I do want to be good about managing my health problems, which definitely puts me at a greater risk for stroke/heart attack (diabetes/cholesterol/blood pressure sigh) but... https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/heart-stroke-report-9.7072211

2026-02-02 20:15:08 UTC

...just found myself absolutely 100% agreeing with Matt Yglesias and now I have to sit down, perhaps forever

2026-02-01 23:49:59 UTC

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I ever tell you I had a photo of your sister in a Shih-Tzu costume on a beach waving at a disinterested (real) dog? I haven't seen it in ages though but I just loved it

2026-02-01 23:44:13 UTC

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yeeeesh!!

2026-02-01 23:42:21 UTC

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My mother only has one kidney, did you know that? She's only ever had one kidney. That's some weird shit. I knew a girl in college who had two uteruses also

2026-02-01 23:40:30 UTC

Goddang valve just announce the steam frame/machine/controller already. I want to know how many kidneys I have to sell

2026-01-31 23:50:27 UTC

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I haven't asked but next time I see it I will

2026-01-31 23:46:00 UTC

Just saw a TV ad for a cellphone company that said that because most of their customers are over 50 they know they won't use much data and that's why they're able to give some good rates and I feel Affronted

2026-01-22 14:47:54 UTC

.... wait for when he tells you what the temperature is.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/939/295/102/181/101/original/f76124edb9f26fd0.mp4

2026-01-21 21:13:18 UTC

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there's also a question as to whether or not you, as a resident of Canada with a Canadian registered BYD or something, could even cross the border in it at all, apparently.

2026-01-21 21:12:38 UTC

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probably not. I mean it's hard for Joe Average to smuggle and use an entire car, after all.

2026-01-21 21:10:08 UTC

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I mean the border is one, sure, that's probably enough and all that. But there should be something else, as well. Just like our medications, fix your own shit rather than steal ours. thanks.

2026-01-21 21:09:43 UTC

Have seen many Americans go "I"m going to go to Canada to buy a Chinese EV" and I hope there's mechanisms in place to stop them from doing that.

2026-01-12 19:54:19 UTC

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at least and especially one particular follower here will appreciate when I say this: "The soul of a new machine my ass"

2026-01-12 19:52:32 UTC

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so yeah, just tested jan.ai and it is *fucking hot nonsense*. UI good. Installation fine. Nice catalog of models. Actually *using* the models, no, even a simple "Hello" to qwen3-4b results in fucking Markov chain folderol. If I wanted incomprehensible bullshit I'd just use a straight markov chainer and save everyone much cpu time. wtf jan.ai
#LLM

2026-01-12 19:27:59 UTC

On the hook again to teach the ol' local LLM on your laptop workshop, very popular stuff, now I gotta figure out if I can get a *modern, cross-platform* interface that actually does RAG
#LLM

2026-01-06 17:12:17 UTC

damn man I guess the F-91W really is the Official Watch of Taskmaster. Alex Horne has, like, at least 3 and maybe 4 of them (different colourways) and now here's Mike Wozniak apparently sporting one also. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6uBlqwFEw4M

2026-01-03 21:57:07 UTC

The bsky Bummer Machine is in wall-to-wall overdrive on Venezuela. Nothing but. Not that it isn't important - it is, very important - but Christ, I value that I get Venezuela stuff here but not *only* Venezuela.

2026-01-02 16:14:40 UTC

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Reminds me of Randy Quaid, remember that guy? Trying to sleaze into Canadian citizenship while fully, balls-out bugfuck, iirc, something stopped him and he went full on "Canada is an evil communist state". Wonder what happened to him. He's probably an ambassador to like Cyprus or something now.

2026-01-02 16:11:59 UTC

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Where are the goddamn dachas in the French countryside for ordinary American trans people, poor nonwhite people??? Fuh

2026-01-02 16:10:03 UTC

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Also, French isn't that hard to learn, especially if you have *time* (my understanding is that Clooney has had a dacha in France for a *good long while now*) and infinite money. Dude. Get on the stick. Your wife even speaks it, so you can get plenty of empathetic practice.

2026-01-02 16:05:00 UTC

The Clooney thing pisses me off. Rich guy, famous guy, in no real danger in his original country, doesn't meet the requirements for French citizenship, gets sleazed in anyway because he's George Clooney. Rich people being able to just get their undeserved/frankly *unneeded* bolt holes is frustrating.

2025-12-31 23:08:03 UTC

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Kids Today don't know how lucky they have it that Linux ate the world. If you think Linux sucks and is hard to use, don't even look at any of the five billion shitty old proprietary Unix variants man

2025-12-31 23:05:24 UTC

I'm not sure I ever used HP-UX. I probably did. All the proprietary unixen sort of blur together, except the ones that *really* sucked. (looking at you, AIX. And especially you, SCO).

2025-12-22 16:10:15 UTC

New #taskmaster tonight!!!!!!!!11

2025-12-20 23:21:28 UTC

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basically I'm kind of a sucker for any movie where librarians are assholes

2025-12-20 23:21:08 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/115754454631724525
This is the same logic that led me to watch Name of the Rose in my early teens during a free HBO weekend, which is still one of my favourite, favourite movies.
#note1qxn…674l

2025-12-17 00:12:22 UTC

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100% that also.

2025-12-16 23:32:30 UTC

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C'est une fuckn dommage that they (deliberately or no) made atproto *so goddamn hard* to implement independently, which is why there are iirc like *two* non-Bluesky atproto Twitter-alikes (and questions as to whether they are truly separate) and five hundred billion million skadillion Mastodonalikes.

2025-12-16 23:24:25 UTC

The whole "bluesky hates its current userbase" is actually not quite accurate. What bluesky (management) actually hates is that they put up a tech demo - bluesky-the-website - that people actually started using when what they really wanted to do is just fart around with atproto. So it's not the existing userbase they hate, it's (probably) *any* userbase.

2025-12-10 22:10:39 UTC

Do Australian teens know about HAM RADIO

2025-12-07 04:26:01 UTC

Occasionally worry, like right now, that I like other people a lot more than they like me.

2025-11-29 20:50:54 UTC

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"already got your book!" (True, it's actually in my office). "oh, have you been baptized?" "Not with you guys!" (ELCA Lutheran when i was like six months). "There's a service tomorrow, would you like to go?" "Not at all!! Good day to you and good luck!"
I mean really out of wandering God-botherers Mormons are really pretty pleasant. Not these young dudes fault they gotta go out and pester people which 99% tell them, overtly or covertly, to fuck off. No need to be overly rude.

2025-11-29 20:46:45 UTC

I was pleasant to some Mormon dudes just now while waiting for the bus, please clap

2025-11-26 16:44:49 UTC

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for someone who supposedly has a full time job that pays okay, I sure act like a starving grad student in a lot of ways

2025-11-26 16:44:27 UTC

we ordered pizza yesterday and the pizza hut people gave us like 15 little sachets of red pepper flakes, so I put one in my usual rehydrated bean burrito lunch and it's pretty good

2025-11-24 00:25:36 UTC

Absolutely incandescently hate the Toronto union bus terminal for exactly one reason - they *DO NOT TELL YOU* which fucking gate to queue at for your bus until like 5m before bus leaves. So even if you get there early because you're an old man and you want a fucking seat, you may be out of luck. JUST FUCKING PUT UP THE GATE. YOU KNOW WHERE THE BUS IS GOING. YOU JACKASS FUCKERS

2025-11-13 20:57:51 UTC

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(this is... not verbatim but not that far off)

2025-11-13 20:56:26 UTC

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"What up, fuckos? Hey man do you still want me to run one of my bullshit workshops for staff or is there too much fatigue with this stuff or what. No pressure from me, just lemme know one way or the other. Stay fresh, cheese bags! I'm out"

2025-11-13 20:55:06 UTC

becoming more weird in my emails as a way to try to prove to people that I write them myself and don't farm them out to LLMs that want to make things all LinkedIn-y

2025-11-10 21:08:24 UTC

Man was every single tv show in the 1970s set in San Francisco

2025-11-10 16:48:51 UTC

honestly shocked about Obergefell. Low bar these days I guess

2025-11-07 18:59:13 UTC

I, an inveterate nail-biter since early days, am now, at 52 years old, in possession of actual fingernails that extend a small amount, and have been making little staccato noises on my work desk tappity-taptaptap

2025-11-05 20:31:50 UTC

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I am extremely enthusiastic

2025-11-05 20:31:41 UTC

what I lack in competence I make up in enthusiasm

2025-11-03 21:04:28 UTC

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he seems like a cool guy

2025-11-03 21:04:23 UTC

I wonder what Dolph Lundgren is doing these days

2025-11-03 20:24:06 UTC

evel knievel's stunt cycle

2025-10-29 18:51:26 UTC

I identify strongly with the whiskey jack, as I also like people and I love getting free hamburgers
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/458/955/722/922/458/original/057f725f5e0ea53e.jpg

2025-10-27 19:56:28 UTC

need to go on a stupid walk for my stupid health and I must convince myself

2025-10-26 15:09:50 UTC

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I mean beyond what I typically think of as "very rich", because right now I think of people who own their own houses as "very rich". So beyond that, like, multiple millions in liquid cash or what have you.

2025-10-26 15:07:46 UTC

I wonder what sort of demented asshole I would become if I suddenly became very rich

2025-10-22 00:35:28 UTC

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it's SNAZZY. I mean it's no Grand Seiko but

2025-10-21 23:50:24 UTC

Trying to give the ol' Royale more wrist time as it is a banger of a piece. Just terrific.
#CasioCult #watchesofmastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/414/830/996/468/091/original/f4dbe56ac2d06c50.jpg

2025-10-20 18:25:30 UTC

posting anti-fascist stuff on Substack. That's a choice.

2025-10-10 01:27:13 UTC

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aw man you never let me have any fun

2025-10-06 20:16:57 UTC

holy shit, baker and taylor is shuttering????

2025-10-02 00:10:41 UTC

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I am sure there are a jillion conservative Christians who have an easy answer to this, as well as easy answers as to why Jesus was like "rich people are shitheads" yet are all Prosperity Gospel etc

2025-10-02 00:10:04 UTC

I am not a Christian although I was born one, but one thing I don't get is that I'm pretty sure Jesus shows up and goes "Look fuck the Old Testament. I'm here now and that shit is busted" yet evangelicals seem to *realllllly* lean on the Old T and the whole "don't eat shellfish, don't cut the corners of your beard, don't wear mixed fibers, oh, and gays are icky" thing even though Jesus was like "no dude"

2025-10-01 21:10:54 UTC

Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union

2025-09-18 02:06:25 UTC

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somewhere I have a picture of Kate on a beach dressed in a Shih Tzu costume waving excitedly at a dog who is looking the other way and it is one of my favourite pictures.

2025-09-17 20:19:18 UTC

I wonder if there's a statue of Maynard G. Krebs in the town of Maynard, Massachusetts

2025-09-13 20:48:46 UTC

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holy shit dude a Grand Seiko. Damn. V fancy.

2025-09-12 17:55:27 UTC

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if you are a librarian and that anti-technology, you need to find a different profession.

2025-09-12 17:54:55 UTC

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Were they ha-ha-joking or ha-ha-only-serious? Pretty sure they were serious-ish.

2025-09-12 17:54:31 UTC

again remembering this librarian telling me 12 years ago or so that the reason they were getting a PhD was so they wouldn't have to learn technology stuff

2025-09-05 15:27:58 UTC

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPUD

2025-08-31 02:57:00 UTC

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oh that's really sweet!

2025-08-31 02:28:17 UTC

this is the future *this*, uh, non-liberal wants.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/121/014/530/666/704/original/31994a2570f6278a.jpg

2025-08-29 22:29:42 UTC

Can I be a bit of a wet blanket here and say I *don't* like this because it suggests the library is keeping a running tally of your borrowing history and that's....not good? https://retro.pizza/@Sterafang/115114363518976757

2025-08-24 01:39:37 UTC

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oh, we have five trillion weed shops within a ten minute walk of my apartment and some of them are named just fine, I just like picking on "Giggles".

2025-08-24 01:26:56 UTC

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the problem with the legal weed regime in this province is that they *all* have to buy from the same wholesaler, so they have limited wiggle room to differentiate on things like price and selection, and so some of them seem to want to compete by having extremely stupid names.

2025-08-24 01:25:57 UTC

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I am not going into "Giggles". I just am not. I will walk ten times the distance to go to "Bob's Weed Store" or something before I go to "Giggles".

2025-08-24 01:25:26 UTC

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Like I don't know man, names are sort of important. Like I'm not a big weed dude, but there is a weed store about two minutes walk from me that, unfortunately, took over a rather okay Indian buffet restaurant space that I sort of miss, and more unfortunately, is called "Giggles".

2025-08-24 01:21:40 UTC

There used to be what purported to be a sort of Malaysian-Singaporean restaurant or cafe or something in my city but I never went there because the menu seemed off and, perhaps more shallowly, they had the stupidest fucking name I've ever heard given to *any* eating establishment. I was sort of embarrassed for them.
They lasted like less than a year. Maybe next time don't call your restaurant "Fisticuffs".

2025-08-21 14:20:29 UTC

Extremely weird and/or hilarious behaviour from AliExpress. There's a watch there that I've had my eye on for *ages*, but store for some reason is like "Cannot ship to your address". Just the other day it showed as deliverable, I can put it in my cart, but when I hit *checkout* it then says "whoops this is not available". like what in the hell

2025-08-20 19:29:09 UTC

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like where even the fuck dude. did you get this. I hope it was at someone's garage sale or something.

2025-08-20 19:25:22 UTC

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DUDE

2025-08-20 19:23:00 UTC

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Neat!!!!!

2025-08-18 23:33:57 UTC

I want to see your cat

2025-08-07 16:59:22 UTC

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that's why I said that I was being a dick and the bit about moral calculus. God knows I, say, still have a gmail account and an Android phone, and it's not like that's morally pure by any means.

2025-08-07 16:17:03 UTC

Yeah, so, really, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism as the fellah says, and you gotta judge the *degrees* of damage your patronage is doing and decide if that calculus sits with your moral compass, but... even given all that ... I do hope you Apple people -- especially librarians -- are doing some Hard Thunking today.