The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
I took this message from Tucker Carlson personally. I’m not through his conversation with Theo Von, but I was inspired by this positivity to return to blogging.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and I’m trying to read more. I’m going to work to share the resources I value. The effort to silence dissident voices (even those as vanilla as Carlson) is a threat to individual thought and I hope to combat it with some “radical” conversations.
Catching up on all our builds!
This year, my sons and I committed to creating a Lego One Piece build every day for the month of October.
This was our most collaborative year participating in Delaware Fun-A-Day.
My eldest son (Westen, 14) and I don’t know much about my younger son’s (Isaac, 12) favorite manga. Isaac was our guide in choosing subjects, finding referencing pictures, and providing narrative context. It was encouraging to see him take on the role of project manager while also putting together a couple of our most impressive Lego scultpures.
His first build was The Red Force, captained by Shanks, mentor of the main protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy.
Westen’s specialty is minifigures and scenes. One Piece has many wild ships and islands, but the characters bring the world to life.
I thought a “raft” would be a simple build, but Blackbeard’s Raft grew into one the month’s largest.
Capone Bege captains Nostra Castello, an amphibious castle.
The Big Top was a fun challenge from the color scheme to the main tent and clownish insignia.
Westen completed the build with an almost-to-scale Captain Buggy.
Westen’s imagination shined on his dynamic depiction of a One Piece game feature.
Isaac’s re-creation of Torino Kingdom is one of my favorites. His waterfall effect is exceptional.
The following builds were from my own imagination. When I was stuck on a One Piece build, I would clear my head with another nautical build.
The orange hydrofoil came out of a challenge to use Lego separators and a single color. I had to bend the rule for a couple bushings.
These two grumpuses are not going to be happy at the Delaware Fun-A-Day Opening!
The Canary Camel was also born out of a challenge to only use the classic Lego yellow.
I made this island oasis when I was intimidated by the more complicated One Piece designs.
Here’s a shoutout to all the folks who leave laughing reactions and no comment.
This is the mockery we are modeled in a school environment where any ideas outside of allowable opinion cannot be engaged. If school hasn’t taught you how to compassionately listen to, and engage with, ideas you disagree with, it has failed you.
I don’t know a thing about Blackbeard, but my son said he had a raft and I thought that might be a simpler build.
The flag, angular sail, and rigging were all significant challenges.
I’m very happy with the result, but I have got to build smaller. We have a limited amount of space at Delaware Fun-A-Day.
Dracule Mihawk carries an absurdly large sword and captains one of the smallest ships found in the world of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece.
The Hitsugibune is coffin shaped and adorned with green-flamed candles. This was the last detail I added and was an extra joy as we own just two green flame elements. I’ve never seen much use for them, but they are perfect in this build.
The mast is a scaled-up version of the hilt of Mihawk’s sword. That sword may also appear in our Delaware Fun-A-Day exhibit.
This is getting more fun.
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This is Arlong Park, an amusement park commandeered by Arlong, a pirate fish-man.
One of our Lego Unschool Club visitors helped me find the right shark head for the peak of the pagoda. There should be shark heads on the ground level guard houses, but I scaled them down to grey pyramids, each with a single, sharp tooth.
The Red Force is the ship headed by Shanks, Luffy D. Monkey’s pirate mentor.
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Isaac modified a boat hull design he found online to create his version of The Red Force.
He drew on a couple tiles to create some of Shanks’ flag, but I love how he used the red tiles to recreate the red stripe.
The figurehead gave him some difficulty, but we were able to solve the issues together and build a pretty cool dragon.
God has given me a difficult gift.
He has seen fit to place me in the company of widows.
I try to be an honest comfort. This isn’t a fun ride and telling someone, “It’s all gonna be okay,” won’t cut it for long.
God also gave me an allergy to bullshit.
I usually offer a listening ear and my limited experience. Sometimes I can help in more material ways.
Today I was able to “volunteer” my sons to help on a farm owned by a recent widow. We are exceedingly busy, but without five days a week consumed by school, we are able to open days to service oppotunities like this.
As a bonus, they’ll get to bring home a little goat’s milk.
Facebook will not be friendly to GatGPT. Google will not be friendly to GatGPT. DuckDuckGo won’t put it at the top of a search.
This is the independence answer to the corporate Large Language Models.
The founders have a record of fighting government regulation and winning those fights. This is the latest battleground in government control.
I kicked in $5 to join the waitlist and recommend you do the same.
…
The Digital Second Amendment
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman before Congress, May 16th, 2023: “Government intervention will be critical.” Please regulate us!
CEO of Anthropic Amodei before Senate Judiciary Committee, July 25th, 2023: Presentation “Oversight of AI: Principles for Regulation.” Please prevent the public from making weapons with AI!
Sept. 13th, 2023 Chuck Schumer holds an off the record, closed to the public meeting with the heads of the large US AI firms. Elon Musk, caught afterward by the press, says Schumer did a “great service to humanity”. All present raised their hands in support of AI regulation.
This is an open conspiracy against the public. But it is too late.
Our federal government operates in a partnership with large, private firms to anticipate and informally execute the regulation of the American people, regardless of official action. It launders its agenda. We have all learned of the alliance between the tech oligarchs and the national security establishment. Their union has produced a “counter-disinformation” complex whose goal is the total control of the Internet and public speech.
AI journalism is uniformly produced in assistance of the narrative that the public requires regulation in advance of a national security event or, as is more fashionable, because the public cannot be trusted to live online with its own information interests. American journalism is here an extension of our government’s civil service.
Defense Distributed, in releasing GatGPT, declares a Digital Second Amendment. Americans must have access to compute, databases, and AI models, the newest weapons of the digital age, not just to defend ourselves against corporate and government depredations, but to defend our civic identity and humanity.
Ours is not a Magna Carta for Cyberspace. We know well the disastrous history and direction of Internet regulation. The Communications Decency Act passed in response to moral panic, and only accidentally yielded the protections of Section 230. The story repeats itself with public and private attempts to regulate the People’s cryptography, printable gun files, and Bitcoin.
AI regulation is an open and official provocation against the Liberty and Sovereignty of American citizens. All who advocate for it are domestic enemies of the Constitution and must be absolutely opposed. The right of the people to keep and deploy models shall not be infringed.
For today’s Delaware Fun-A-Day build, I stumbled upon a super simple elephant lifeboat and had to make it work.
My sons helped me create an odd couple to trap together. This elderly cat lover is stuck with the old curmudgeon she’s lived with for 17 years.
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It may not be Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, but the tension between these two and the wedge of cheese will have to break.
