Author Archives: stephboisvert

Dance for me

They say oh my god I see the way you shine
Take your hand, my dear, and place them both in mine
You know you stopped me dead while I was passing by
And now I beg to see you dance just one more time

Ooh I see you, see you, see you every time
And oh my I, I, I like your style
You, you make me, make me, make me wanna cry
And now I beg to see you dance just one more timeSo they say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you’re done I’ll make you do it all again

I said oh my god I see you walking by
Take my hands, my dear, and look me in my eyes
Just like a monkey I’ve been dancing my whole life
But you just beg to see me dance just one more time

Ooh I see you, see you, see you every time
And oh my I, I like your style
You, you make me, make me, make me wanna cry
And now I beg to see you dance just one more time

So they say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you’re done I’ll make you do it all again

They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you’re done I’ll make you do it all again

Ooh
Woah-oh, woah-oh, oh
Ooh
Ah ah, ah

They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you’re done I’ll make you do it all again

They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you’re done I’ll make you do it all again
All again

pseudo acoustic version

Now I’ve got that feeling once again

Hello? Hello? Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on now
I hear you’re feeling down
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again
Relax
I’ll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

Okay
Just a little pinprick
There’ll be no more, ah
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it’s working, good
That’ll keep you going through the show
Come on it’s time to go

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb

Garden update

I realize I haven’t done a real garden update in a while.

All the garden beds are growing really well, except maybe that the squashes trying to take over the world.
The tomato plants are all over the place ( I couldn’t find any real sturdy cages for them so most of them are just out of control).
The peas are going gangbusters, and it seems like my attempt to space them 2 week out didn’t do a big thing (that or I’m in for another round of peas in 2 weeks).
The onions are doing well as are the strawberries which are still flowering like mad.
The zucchini has been really tasty, the gooseberries meanwhile have been “interesting”
Mixing flowers and plants hasn’t been a total disaster, at least not yet. (although you can see a petunia battling some peas)
The blueberries are amazing, even if they are in a pretty low count.
Raspberries are a bit disappointing in their volume, but they were just transplanted and I think most of them might be biennial (every 2 years)
I basically have too much produce right now, but I can’t really start a CSA since it would be like, “this week all you get are peas… lots and lots of peas”
As you can also see, we have a giant compost bin, it’s almost full so we’re going to be building a second one so we can let that one “cook”

You can click on the images below to see the full screen version.

The ramifications A.I.

This is a bit of a cutesy title as A.I. or machine learning or deep learning or whatever the “buzzword du jour is” is just a fancy algorithms.

You’ll find countless books, presentations, articles and more on the dangers of algorithms but it’s always interesting to see it in action.

As many have demonstrated, the AI often just reinforces existing biases and power structures. A very simple example is Facebook. Most of the traffic to my site comes from Facebook, and posts have 2 real trajectories in terms of views. Either it will get ~10 views (usually something like plant pictures, or how it’s not that bad). Or it will get ~80-100 views, and those with > 50 views usually have a few things in common, they are usually negative, on negative topics, or gossipy.

What is that Facebook is showing my post to a few people, see how they react and then, if there’s some engagement, they start to show it to a wider and wider circle of folks. In effect, the posts you read of mine is impacted by the Facebook algorithm.

Having worked with many news organization, it’s understandable how they came to worship the algorithm and employ (mostly) snake oil SEO folks to try to appease the gods.

Anyway, that’s what I tell myself when a “good” post doesn’t get as much traffic 😉

We should probably all be vegetarian and other cognitive dissonances

I find people are strangely defensive about not being vegetarian or vegan (I’m neither). It’s almost as though accepting that we should probably eat less meat would imply that they are a bad person.

It’s logical in a sense, if you accept that we should be vegetarian, then if you’re not doing that, you’re clearly a hypocrite and just overall a bad person for not doing what is “best”.

This happens with pretty much everything. We have a way of polarizing ourselves, just to justify our decisions. That co-worker we don’t like? Well they must be a truly horrible person because if they weren’t, then we’d be an asshole for not being compassionate towards them. We do the same thing with relationships (I’m no longer with that person, therefore they clearly weren’t that great), and even with COVID (whatever your level of risk, you’ve justified it to yourself and everyone else is wrong).

While you may scoff and say that those things are silly and you don’t do those. You do, even unwittingly (skip to the part about the Monet prints, around 9 minutes in).

But what if you don’t do that? What if you sit with the cognitive dissonance?

Now you probably expect some BS about how that’s true wisdom and seeing the truth behind the world or something. But really, it’s just painful. To be reminded day in and day out that we don’t fit our vision of the ideal world. To be trapped in that self questioning, anxiety and mental anguish…. It’s hard to be judgy of people who don’t want to deal with it or are too tired to deal with it.

It’s not that bad

I feel like everytime I express something that isn’t pure bliss everyone freaks out. Which is strange because I feel like when things were really really bad in my life, I wouldn’t talk about it. Relatively speaking, things are pretty great. I have a job that pays well and is challenging. I’m not in any way going to get fired and the economy isn’t going to impact my job.

There’s like a bazillion things going right, not the least of them that I have a over-abundance of peas in the garden, so you know, things are pretty great.

But that doesn’t mean everything is all sunshine and rainbows and lollipops

Shit happens, and even if, in the scale of things, shit isn’t so bad, as humans we seem to have a bias to focus on the dangerous and negative things (probably evolutionary adaptation). So why not talk about them?

I find it’s dangerous not to talk about stuff. Even, (maybe especially) when we’re wrong about it. How else are we supposed to learn and grow? How else are we supposed to try to feed the more information out to the world to slowly arrive at a better approximation of the truths of the universe?

Anyway, thank you for everyone checking in, I really do appreciate it, and you don’t need to stop. Just understand that maybe everything isn’t hopeless bullshit 😉

First person bias

I don’t think that’s the right name for the bias I have in mind, but since googling isn’t showing me the one I’m looking for I’ll just call it the first person bias for the purposes of this post.

The problem is that we all live in our own heads and we interpret the information and everything in how it relates to us. Even when it doesn’t.

I’ve had a few posts now, some of them where I didn’t expect this and some where I did. For example, my post on personal libraries where I initially was like, shit, I think person X might think it’s about them so I reached out to them to tell them it wasn’t. Only to realize the next day that a few other people who would probably see it as me talking about them, and not you know, me talking about my own personal library.

While writing the post I was really so self involved that I didn’t really think about how others would think it’s about them. Like if I’m somehow spending my time sub-blogging((sub-tweeting)) about other folks. I’m too stuck in my own head for that.

Now there’s clearly a balance here, talking about stuff and not being aware of how others could perceive it is sub-optimal. And I think I agree that this should be something that “public” people should worry about. But it goes back to why I haven’t written in a while((you know apart from getting phone calls from the family asking if everything is okay)) and why kids have a finsta((fake instagram account so your parents can follow you on it))((Note to any kids reading this, you need to have 2 finsta accounts, so you can have some plausible deniability by revealing the existence of the decoy finsta account))

I wanted to end this post with a song, the one that is like “You’re so vain you think this song is about you” or something, but then, people would assume I’m calling them vain 😉

(Also, I couldn’t find the version of the song I knew… the original song is clearly not the one I thought it was)

On gaining weight

So I’ve been eating like shit since December. Now this is not super surprising in itself, I usually gain ~10lbs in the winter and then get back down. But right now I’m up 30Lbs from my last few years average. That’s basically going back more than half of what I’ve lost since 2014.

It’s in a sense embarrassing since I felt like I had this weight stuff under control. Now clearly there are extenuating circumstances, we have a pandemic, work is a shit show and my “love life” is a shit show((Before anyone panics, me and Nicole are very much happily married))

And it’s not like I don’t know why I’ve been gaining weight, it’s not like I’m eating well and exercising regularly and just can’t figure out where it’s coming from. I’ve gone back to eating carbs as a way of escaping dealing with shit and just this morning ate 3 bowls of Honey Nut Cherrios so you know, it’s pretty clear.

It’s also not one of those, I’ve gained weight but I’m still healthy, nope, doing a lot less exercise and I feel a bunch of things I haven’t felt in a while, some knee pain and back pain for example. Funny how dragging around an extra 30lbs 24 hours a day will do that to you.

I’ve made a bet with my father, that we’ll both lose 25lbs by December and whoever doesn’t achieve it does a substantial donation to the local food bank. In retrospect it’s a bit backwards in that I’m trying to not give money to the food bank, but I do think we’ll probably end up making the donation regardless but now at least there’s a bit of accountability.

Oddly enough, during this same time I’ve helped my brother lose 40lbs, clearly I just stole 30 of those for myself….