Name: Scott von Berg (or just scottobear online)
Age: Somewhere in that solid gen-x / elder millennial sweet spot. Let’s just say old enough to remember when LiveJournal required an invite code to join. Oh, ok, 57.
Sex: Male
Location: Salem, Virginia (formerly North Beach, Maryland, formerly Fort Lauderdale,  Florida, formerly other places, mostly on the east coast of the USA)
How long have you been on LiveJournal?Just crossed the 26-year mark last month.
What do you/will you write about? A little bit of everything. Daily life updates, neighborhood observations, random bits of trivia, numbers stations, local history, and cross-posts of whatever project is currently taking over my workbench. It’s an online grotto of random thoughts.
What particular qualities do you look for in a friend? A good sense of humor, a healthy dose of curiosity about the world, and people who actually engage. I appreciate creativity, kindness, and a smile.
What would cause you not to add someone as a friend, or to delete them? Pure drama, endless negativity, or accounts that are just ghost towns or bot spam. If you only use your journal to vent into the void without ever interacting or showing a shred of humor, we probably won’t click.
Favourite films or TV shows: Brazil, Network, Taskmaster, classic sci-fi, and anything with a solid dystopian or satirical edge.
Favourite books: Plot-driven mysteries, strange fiction, and audiobooks for when I’m working with my hands. (Usually along the lines of Carl Hiaasen or Terry Pratchett).
Favourite foods: A proper thin-crust pizza (loaded with pineapple, black olives, jalapeno peppers, and extra cheese). Also, a really solid burrito or drunken noodles. (I am a vegetarian,  but not vegan)
Favourite drinks: A good cherry cider from our local brewery, a solid iced chai to keep the brain moving, or a simple frozen lemonade works wonders.
Favourite bands and musicians: They Might Be Giants, Camper Van Beethoven, CCR, Talking heads, and recently a healthy appreciation for 1980s vaporwave when the mood strikes.
Hobbies and pastimes: Software development (messing around with Python and HTML5 games), tinkering with microcontrollers and single board computers like the ESP32 or M5Stack, amateur radio, collecting independent action figures, and the occasional round of Minecraft. I also track local Virginia civic issues and take the occasional scenic hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
How would you describe your style? Casual, low-key, stream-of-thought. A mix of tech tinkerer and creative builder, some nature appreciation,  random pictures and doodles, life in Western Virginia.
Anything else you’d like to tell us? My journal is a bit of a slow burn, but it’s consistent. I will likely begin reposting my new updates personal blog from scottobear.com back on my permanent account, and checking my friends page now and then to see what humans have been doing here lately.  Leave a comment if you add me so I know you’re a real human and not a Russian spam bot!

Back to chewing on arduino IDE, after a time away.

Oh, compilation errors, I didn’t miss ya.

Bluesky may not be training AI systems on user content as other social networks are doing, but there’s little stopping third-parties from doing so.

Don’t put anything there or *anywhere* online if you are concerned about it being hoovered up and used by whoever for whatever without your permission.

Sadly, that even includes your own website or blog. At least if you stay off meta, you probably aren’t helping folks that are complicit in human rights violations and facilitating genocidal incitement. Probably.

Day 20,953 seed 570414074332

skunk, squirrel, mama and baby deer, nutty bluebird

Well, I think I’ll head over to the Bronx open-air drug markOH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD

More than 30 arrested in Bronx open-air drug market crackdown

there are stranger signs in the mountains than you’d expect.

old no trespassing signs.

church signs.

faded advertisements for places that closed before you were born.

but this one bothered me.

because it wasn’t warning me away.

it was warning me about myself.

BEWARE OF GLEEST

nothing else.

no explanation.

no logo.

just those three words burned into a piece of weathered wood and bolted to a post beside an old logging road.

i asked around.

nobody knew who put it there.

except an old woman at the feed store.

she frowned when i mentioned it.

said her grandfather talked about those signs.

said they used to be everywhere.

before people started disappearing.

not forever.

just for a little while.

an hour.

a day.

sometimes a week.

they’d come back confused.

sunburned.

hungry.

certain they’d only been gone a few minutes.

and every one of them said the same thing.

they’d heard whistling.

coming from somewhere ahead.

always ahead.

never behind.

she told me if i ever heard it, i should stop walking.

don’t follow.

don’t answer.

don’t whistle back.

then she looked at me strangely.

“you did hear it, didn’t you?”

i asked how she knew.

she pointed to my backpack.

hanging from one of the straps was a little strip of wood.

rough cut.

weathered.

with three familiar words scratched into it.

BEWARE OF GLEEST

i don’t remember picking it up.

but somehow

it came home with me.

#thegleest #appalachianweird #cryptidcore #folkhorror #oldgodsofappalachia #mountainmysteries #strangeplaces #hauntedwoods #bewareofgleest

RAPE CULTURE.

In 2013, Graham Platner wrote that SA victims should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to”.

And If I lived in Maine you’re telling me voting for that guy is the easy, no-brainer, moral, decision?

FaceBook abetted an entire genocide and people are still like “oh but how else will I talk to gam-gam and pop-pop?”

Sickening that it has to be that way for some. “I can only talk to mom on the fascist surveillance / society destroying machine”

A man who did a Nazi salute on live television and gutted a program that will result in 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 will be rewarded today with a trillion dollars for taking a company public that doesn’t make money. Congratulations humanity, we did it!

Chipmunk by day, skunk by night

From June 8

Digital marker doodle #OliveArtClub blue teakettle

Source pic

Kettle doodle