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The USA legislative performances (real decisions being made away from microphones) are bizarre for the rhetoric being deployed by both major parties. Unlike the Westminster parliaments, there is a fiction of stately decorum. This, yet the political āissuesā framed are far more obtuse from any true administration of governance to the point of viciousness.
Hey kids! Some boring bits about imminent Armageddon, we are sorry to bother, but first here is 45 minutes talking about the latest contretemps at the Oscars! Donāt you care about the Oscars? Cray-cray, like, I know, right?
Missed out on Caruso. At least I got to hear Pavarotti at the height of his powers. Nothing compares to living analogue.
Pre-contact there were about 60 million bison in NorthAm.
In 1890, there were less than 1 thousand.
In 1983, there were 75 thousand.
Humans call this āconservationā.
In 1906, the Kaibab plateau had 3-4k of mule deer.
Conservationists were concerned, so the game preserve killed all the predators.
Thus in 1924 there were 100000 deer. Yay!
Then they almost all horribly died from starvation in a devastated, overpopulated ecosystem. Oops.
Humans call this ālearning as we goā.
Today there are nigh 8 billion humans on the planet.
Vast regions have become garbage heaps, monumental forests burn each summer, and ecocide gallops.
A generation ago there were about 4 billion humans, not to mention far more birds.
Now we shuffle carbon cards and wonder how we will survive the next generation.
We could, you know, dial down on the breeding and make the planet a paradise.
But no one is allowed to say that.
Humans call this āprogressā.
ā¦ought to be played with restraint, the emotional volume attenuated. Suddenly it thus comes alive with intelligence in a balanced expression: humane, articulate, buoyant. Played too romantically, it risks to become the abominable clichĆ© which modern pop culture hath bred into it.
Sounds like someone dropped a block of marble as an adhoc addition to the Bach.
Skyscrapers are an epiphenomenon of the abstraction of land as private property, the fiction of the isolated parcel. With other forms of land tenure, other forms of high urban design become possible. Communal land, odal land, interstices, arcs and arcologies all deserve our imagination.
The poorest people by demographics in NYC are Asian Americans. How this can surprise even me is outrageous and flabbergasting.
Russia is plum out of line. Letās root for Ukraine. But also remember the million dead in that two decade quagmire in Iraq so Halliburton could raid the cookie jar.
One might expect the Ukrainian commanders have been reading up on the Battle of Teutoberg Forest. The Russians apparently havenāt. Aquilius Varrus, where are my eagles?!
Itās rich for the Moscow regime to claim liberation for Crimea, which not so long ago held no Russians but Greeks and Tatars. Ukraine should expect no less a programme for the mainland, no matter their stern heritage as the descendants of Khazar and Cossack pirates.
I would like to send earnest thanks to Covid for chucking the handshake, the American hug, and the Euro-American cheek kiss to history. Why were we supposed to touch people we barely know in this way? Yugh.
Favourite food,
Eaten with relish,
Today or tonight:
Usually raw, but add
Salt and spices.
Many bad old films at least entertain as fodder for cinematic curiosity. But some are so completely awful they genuinely stoke my outrage. University in the 80ās as a setting especially is sure to disgust any sensitive mind.
"Our water is sacred. Gamera taught us that lesson. If the oceans die, then mankind will die. So we have to protect them."
Internet Archive opens an open access full text journal search engine? YES PLEASE.
http://lakeshore64.com/schedule/
http://lakeshore64.com/show/deke-duncan/
http://streaming.live365.com/a04907
Fab online music station, crewed by radio vets. Home of legendary Deke Duncan, Sundays 1000-1200 CST.
āOf course, you know about pain. Youāve seen Spalding Grey.ā
1. Mothra
2. Gamera
3. Godzilla
All of these monsters have, or later adopt, an attitude of familial, benevolent care for humans. Humans are smol to these kaiju, children deserving of particular concern even if their cities are but a playground for wastage.
Iām still on a Cherryh marathon. I read one of the Foreigner novels, which seem to be her most recent series, and Chanurās Venture. Cherryh sticks with her space station cultural complex and adventure heroism withal. More interesting to me per se, if Deceiver is any indication, the Foreigner novels are to be intellectually enjoyable for their nearly Holmesian deductions through high intrigue.
Just finished Cherryh's the Pride of Chanur. Fun, wryly crafted space opera. Iām so grateful for authors like Cherryh who carry silver age scifi humanism forward through the dark era of cyberpunk distopia. Cherryhās strength is her ability to twist a gritty plot upon the perceptions and logic of her characters in a palpably reasonable way. Never mind that she isnāt high-concept driven. Her rough-and-ready characters shine. CJ Cherryh is one of the most underrated scifi authors of recent memory.
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY.
Turn off the āelectronic hallucinationsā; go check out some books.
(And I mean in paper format, proven a mnemonically superior infotechnology.)
CJ Cherryh's works are so polydimensional. She doesn't idolize high concept scifi conventions even as she dedicates her works to their discipline. Her high modernist noir vernaculars and oft gritty plots obscured for me the sophistication with which she imbues each character an inner life, a nuanced inner story, the fog of war of incomplete perceptions. And thatās my cuppa tea; so Iām on a Cherryh kick.
ā[The extermination of the Passenger Pigeon] is a long and shameful story, but the grisly skeleton of its Michigan chapter can be set forth in a few words. In 1869, from the town of Hartford, Mich., three car loads of dead pigeons were shipped to market each day for forty days, making a total of 11,880,000 birds. It is recorded that another Michigan town marketed 15,840,000 in two years.ā He quotes one good estimate of a massive flock at over 2.2 billion birds. As he was writing there was but one left, at the Cincinnati Zoo.
My theory about the naturalist moment of the 1900-1910ās: Girl Guides & Campfire Girls bred the inexorable modern feminism of the 1920ās. A generation of Anglosphere girls were raised heroically trouncing about the mountains and forests in the 1910ās. This Rooseveltian outdoorswomanship was internalized by girls to find in themselves the āirrepressibleā mistresses of their own interests. Inevitably this later informed their expectations as women. When the 1920ās are kept in light of this, they become far less historically anomalous. The flapper skirt embodies an ethical continuation of the camperās middy and bloomers.
If you donāt want to let your holidays become a marketing tool, then just donāt engage with the consumerism. The perennial mourning over a supposed primordial Christmas innocence helps nothing if it is yoked to the fatalism of ājust soā.
Do it, NASA. Park that bird! š°
Bravo, humans. Between the antivax nuts and the vaccine hoarders, we now get another round of shutdowns, quarantines, and socioeconomic malaise.
As a child, Fletcher Christian went to primary school with William Wordsworth. Yes, that Christian and that Wordsworth. Ah, fey poetry in the strange wending of fate!
Itās rich when Quebecois plead ācāest laĆÆcisme!ā to cover up their rank bigotries. Quebec stood as an anti-laicism redoubt of traditionalist Francophone culture since Marat first took to his bath. Quebecers pleading French style secularism now are fooling absolutely no one who has run up against the widespread stone-throwing (cough) parochialism in that good province.
When the Omicron demolishes your ability to breathe, remember to thank the rich states who hoarded vaccines by the millions along with the antivax wingnuts whose Petri dish bodies are the easiest vector for new mutations to spread and attack the responsible and vulnerable.
SCOTUS is very concerned to maximize birth during a grossly overpopulated era. You WILL be born, citizen, so you can wallow in a backwards society and die of gun violence at 16 or lack of civilized medical care at 45 or general despair at 38. Why lower need for abortion with proven policies education, medicine, and social services for young women when you can just throw them in prison?
One metric of some collective cognitive regress across the Anglosphere surely must be the decay of language since midcentury. Even todayās paid pundits will trip over themselves with um, like, you know, sandwiched betwixt the puerile vulgarisms of an era where comic book fascist art films are considered sophisticated fare. When I listen to old radio interviews or panel shows, Iām struck by the benefits of widespread education of rhetoric had on the population. Even random interviewees summon a compositional composure at rates far beyond our period. Aside from rhetorical skill, the more sedate and polite pace of conversation seems to have allowed for a contemplative reserve conducive to well formed argument, if not always illumination. I pity children today who cannot enjoy the fruits of such custom.
Speaking of the petrostate: one must wonder if, when the dead are collected and the bill tallied, that BCās regime will not finally evolve a backbone to come at Alberta with pitchforks freshly sharpened. The climate boffins are unanimous in that the recent floodsā intensity was stoked by our collective human irresponsibility. Perhaps after this, BCās public will no longer vacillate to the ābut muh oil jobsā special plead. ABās whinging antivax neofash petrotools may be surprised by the drums of wrath which beat in Victoria for interprovincial war. One would hope for such a stern federal counterbalance. It might even make a mensch of the Greens.
Canadians need to batten it when it comes to Bidenās EVTC. NAFTA has been a boon to absolutely no one in North America save heartless oligarchs and blithely solidarity-less middle class Canadians. Both by the dire domestic socioeconomic plight of the USA working classes and the grim geopolitical forecasts, it is sensible even for Biden to spurn neoliberalism by doing the needful to favour USA industry. My only shock is that a USA still has no national mandate for all federal contracts to mandate union shop domestic production. Suck it up, Canada. Focus on ending the petrostate industrial complex through diversification of energy and production. And meanwhile hopefully the āamigosā can confab aiding the long savaged Mexican small farmer whose suffering has primarily driven the NAFTA nightmare...
So the circus begins.
:( Oh, dear lil old town. I canāt bear to see pics. Lower BCās port and inland distribution is a pain in the rump on a good day. These will not be good days.
āIām very healthy, I eat my veggies, so I donāt need the vaccine.ā š¤¦š½āāļø(Facepalm)
How the USA public responds to the Bannon inquiry will be an important indicator for whither the empire in this post-ābeer hall putschā era. Iām not sure many people are understanding just how fragile this moment is. Take a deep breath and remember Obama who may well have wryly noted, āApres moi, le delugeā.
Iāve come to enjoy the wee introductory mouse clicks and key taps of the live radio announcers who are obviously working from home.
ā¦ā¦Well, what can one say. The apocalypse oddly may not come from atomic miscreants but coal. Coal. In the 21st century. Not that nukes are out of the running, butā¦ no one midcentury save Orwell would have believed how backward and twisted with gloom we are today.
(N) Buddhism stripped of all ethics, ritual, hope, metaphysics, and meaning so to pander bourgeois boomer white American appetites.
2022 elections will be about āprotecting the (supposedly straight, white, fundie Christian) childrenā. Nothing gets the benighted Bible Belters wound up quite like the prospect of their āinnocent little angelsā coming home with a black genderqueer love interest and pushing slavery reparations. Meanwhile their precious unaborted teeniebopper is worried about telling ma and pa over post-church supper of pork barbecue and cornpone that she is pregnant because she never learnt where to get condoms.
Well, Iām dashed. It is as likely as not to be mere mutual face saving. But better than last yearās terrors anyway.
A treat for the fingers on air now, Marjorie Stewart-Baxter. Isnāt it plum lovely, Hubert Cumberdale.
ā¦reeks so deeply of the priorities and argot of the haute bourgeoisie, the NYT/WaPo reading liberal classes, that it simply can be difficult to swallow. It takes too yawning endurance in code shift to slog through. Coupled with the willful parochialism of the general national character, it truly can make for a rum punch. If that is true for me, how much more the Kraft dinner crowd?
Annie Murphy Paul discusses brain research, amongst other things, showing that brains often work better when using gesture and physical activity and spatial context to improve the mind. That is, added evidence of the āextended mindā, that minds donāt just get coded in the brain but exist in context. Interesting for adjacent interests such as autism, sign languageā¦
Blablabla, indeed. But we wonāt really know how anemic the progress until the faceless civil servants who really run the world (for the oligarchs) hash things out. Which begs the question: why isnāt COP a rolling event at the UN? We are to the point, surely, when a once a year Swiss chalet confab doesnāt quite spread the butter. COP ought to be a constant communication channel and litmus testing ombudsman for most global governance issues. Make PRC and Russia beg to get in.
If NPR (the anemic USA public broadcaster) is any index, on the whole the USA blithering classes are essentially ignoring COP26. There is more coverage of some Hollywood folderol and the usual domestic policy fecklessness of the Dems (centre-right liberals with a few abused soc dem pets). In 2021, with so much at stake... What a bloody joke.
How did Modi get me to smile for him? It was a smart move for India to show up at Glasgow when PRC did not. To further lay down something (supposedly) pithy was quite canny. Modi puffs himself up like a good chap; Emperor Xi looks petulant in comparison.
A near horizon for coal ought be a gimme for any rich state. No one really wants coal anymore, not even PRC. Even the markets are recognizing this, hence the political gimme. That the USA wonāt commit to even that mote of āleadershipā belies the lack of seriousness in the USAās climate commitments. I get that Biden has to give WV some face. But if the imperial core politicos canāt show some backbone this late in the game? The USA is lost as any responsible player going forward.
Of all the sinister attributes of the their provincial character, the worst thing Iāve heard is that 90% of Albertans enjoy pineapple on pizza. This alone may have demented the specie. I am only surprised that in Fort Mac one canāt order jellied bitumen as a topping. Likewise, I wince to testify that indeed the Swedes do insane and inane insults to pizza, and banana is the least of it. Really, any eatery north of Chicago should be banned by international law from monkeying with pizza toppings. Iām bally well serious.
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Wanna make āall sidesā plug their ears and go ālalalaā? Mention overpopulation. We can jive and dance around it, but eventually either we want a billion people tops with an Elysian standard of living on a garden planet or we have 10 billion hopeless, malnourished serfs living on a burning dunghill chocked with plastic and concrete. There is no way to have a functioning ecosystem, a high standard of living, and a festering cancer species all at the same time.
When the media go āboth sidesā, I just want to chuck my infotech out the window. Climatologists: the ecosphere is going to die soon. Petroshills: But muh profits. Media: Canāt we all just get along?
Is he going to say the āoā word? Yes! Indeed he did! Dr. Anthony Weaver gave a lovely interview on Q&Q. His measured, calm, elegant approach to policy solutions to the climate crisis is a useful tack. (I do think both measured calm and Thunbergian āpanicā are needful in strategic context.) Even more refreshingly, Weaver mentioned human overpopulation as a major cause of ecological collapse, and delicately suggested it is high time to have conversations about a sustainable future population.
People need to understand how insanely conservative the IPCC estimates are. More rigorous climate models like MIT project a far starker temperature distribution. If the political class tools donāt get their arses in gear this weekend, it means 4Ā°. And 4Ā° C is planet death, and right soon. Itās that simple. Do we want a functioning planet Earth or not? Does the idiotic, cancerous human race have a survival instinct or not?
If you want the bitter taste of Canadian empire, the āresidential schoolā concentration camps are now a well known flavour. But even more pertinent to the contemporary machinations of empire is to see the Canadian corporate state as one of the core functions of Canadian power. Canada is typical of petrostates in obfuscating culpability. Yet Canadian mining cartels are notorious abroad for their bullying, bribery, and reckless extraction. Government mumbling, āthe provinces deal with all that, Government has no constitutional oversightā is just more mealy Canadian shuck and jive. Mining cartels ARE Canadian hard power. Bring them to heel.
So Iām, like, an expert? I have something, you know, totes critical to inform you about foreign policy, you know? In fact, it is so important it, like, gets me right in the feels? But because, um, I uptalk Iām projecting, um, indecision and impropriety? I know, right? But, like, you know, um, Iām going to do this every single sentence? Like, you do you? You boomers arenāt, um, validating me? Maybe if I switch to vocal fry-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yā¦
Speaking of Quirks and Quarks, this week features a fascinating interview with Dr. Scott Small, who draws links between autism, PTSD, and Alzheimerās as different exemplars regarding the balance of memory and forgetting in cognition. Small is good about underscoring that autism can be a strength, but that the trade off with autistic memory is the cognitive lack of habitual pattern generalization. When everything is ever new, basic assumptions can be more easily reassessed, I warrant. But also the stress of lack of forgetting makes generalized pattern recognition more difficult, or at least stressful, as the prefrontal cortex takes over for the hippocampus. (My inference.) A worthy listen.
Rewind digs up wonderful intellectual treasures from decades past. Todayās show rewinds the first Quirks & Quarks show in the 1970ās. As a coda to my recent post about ambivalences in science, David Suzuki interviews a somber biologist who used to work for the USA militaryās biological, chemical, and radiological weapons programme. He makes incisive and cutting remarks about the ālack of accountabilityā of Science as a mercenary magisterium of āwizardsā. These social and ethical deficits in Science as an institution have shifted very little from his day. Itās hard not to sympathize with his disillusionment over the decay of the pure science he once pursued into a handmaidenhood to cold interests of brutal power.
Iām trying to lay off the politics, I am. Ah, well. Sometimes the goat gets got.
ā¦didnāt just have a single lapse in defending the USAās jolly little war to the UN. He was THE megaphone for pushing the war, by jingo, the only member of the government with enough real gravitas to do so. And he did, over and over. Albeit we now that Iraqās abject proneness was a āknown knownā to him and Bushās entire Halliburton suckling cabinet. The GOP used him and his credibility as a tool to hook both the USA populace and London lapdogs. He expected to be made president for it, probably. Instead, they hung him with the dirty laundry. Powell was a patsy and a huckster, another organ of a morally degenerate regime chuckling, ālet them eat yellowcakeā as they gargled the blood of millions from Mrs. Lincolnās teacups.
Speaking of liberal political mystiques I do not grokā¦ It will be interesting to see what hash the Wunderkind can make of the crow he is eating today. I consistently underestimate his ability to stick his foot in his mouth and somehow come out smiling. Clintonian redolences indeed.
Hillary Rodham Clinton shilled on CBC for her new ghostwritten novel. A spunky SecState protagonist, natch. The interviewer is practically drooling on herself in starfuckery. I am rather curious as to these haute bourgeois boomer white women who fall hard for the Clintonite āstrong womanā mystique. They identify with Clintonās cynically curated in-group āsisterhoodā in ways largely alien for the rest of us rabble, we supposed sisters who would never share anecdotes of Barnard or antiquing the Hamptons or Beltway soirĆ©es. An interesting exemplar of the mentality, and how Clintonās āpantsuit nationā was a feckless propagandistic standard from the get go.
I donāt hold to oligarchs being given any space privileges, never mind their own private fleets. How do we allow this madness? But it was nice that Shatner got to go up, a fitting slice of poetry. Whoever thought up that gimmick no doubt got a rise.
The leader of the Chieftains has gone out of this world. His light still shines through the music. Death is a fey thing, whispering āmemento moriā.
Is she going to say it? I think she is! Say, say! Yes, she actually mentioned human overpopulation as a major cause of extinction. Thank you, ecologist, for your intellectual honesty in mentioning the unmentionable.
If youāre a scientist, especially one likely to be interviewed, for Heavenās sake go to Toastmasters and learn how to engagingly speak about your research without too much technobabble. Itās entirely possible. I promise.
If you donāt like being lectured by children yelling āblablablaā, quit acting like petulant brats.
The āhousing shortageā is a lie. Itās really a bourgeois real estate speculation crisis. No one in Shanghai has any business owning a Vancouver house. Ban it. (Just try going the other way. Good luck getting a housing permit in PRC!)
The USA bank bailout in ā08 was a blank check finally totalled at between 12-16 TRILLION DOLLARS. Thatās in 2008 money. The lump sum handed off without strings was so huge itās difficult to actually tally. It could feed generations. And no doubt much of that is now stocked up tax free in Bermuda. If you think 3.5 trillion over 5 years or whatever for malnourished precariat children to possibly have a future is too big, youāre living in bourgeois courtier class ladeedahland.
CBC: Coming up, the Covid crisis in Alberta; how should we force these gravel throwing wingnuts to get the vaccine? But before that, a retrospective of the first national Day for Truth and Reconciliation and a panel of indigenous people discuss where they hope the process of reconciliation goes from hereā¦
NPR: The USA narrowly avoided a governmental shutdown again last night, as āmoderateā Democrats standing up for patriotic businessmenās interests are impeded by the āfar leftā demagogues of the dirty peasant rabble. But first, hereās a talking head on Marketplace lecturing why the mudblood peons should be grateful for 8$ minimum wage and no health insuranceā¦
Over 5000 unmarked graves of indigenous children have been discovered this summer alone. Children died, abused and alone, many starving at the schools better termed concentration camps. These camps chucked them in pits by the hundreds. The government of the day knew the death toll (25% or more per annum) and intentionally perpetrated genocidal conditions. Iām ambivalent about symbolic gestures like state holidays. But we should hope that Canadians take this moment to heart as a fundamental realignment toward a new communal engagement on good faith, healthy terms with indigenous communities. Call it reconciliation or decolonization or whatever, but itās high time to build a greater commonwealth.
Oh, NPR. When I get down on Canada, I just turn on USA radio. It doesnāt last long. The lockstep business elite sycophantry (hi, Marketplace) the totalitarian mood underpinned by cynicism and despair, the lack of care for any cohort beyond the hermetically sealed professional classes, the bizarre cultural myopia and provincial disregard of pressing global issues. NPR is the best it gets, but a dour moral cesspit compared to CBC and RNZI. Iād add BBC and ABC (the real one, not the Disney one), but the UK nor AU donāt bother broadcasting to North America anymore. Not even QSL cards come from the former!
JB McKinnon (sp?) discusses his book When the World Stopped Buying. Re: plain living, anti-consumerism, Covid simplicity, capitalismā¦ He did an experiment where he stopped buying into disposability culture. They discuss the eccentrics who donāt want to participate in the mainstream rat race and I realized he was talking about me. Strange to discover the envy which some of the professional classes have for those who opt outā¦ I do hope he is correct, that the āreturn of normalā post-Covid will see large segments analyze their priorities in a deeper way, resist the consumeristic hook. Perhaps this underpins the whining which low wage employers have been voicing; people donāt want to work under their soul stealing drudgery. Worldās smallest violin plays again for the bosses. š»
Such a nostalgic delight to listen to Rewind, with decent Commonwealth voices speaking with decorous humour. Itās a good baseline for how much richness risks being lost with Americanization. Itās not merely about phonemes and lexicon, but the habits of conversation, the reserves of civility. In an era where everyone thumps our chests without editorial contemplation, it is a good which is nearly lost to our shame. Not to say phonetics and lexicon are for naught. One infers that CBC has guidelines banning the famous āehā, amongst many other local shibboleths in favour of a nearly General American greyness. Thus doth the cultural cringe function to eradicate even imperial intimacies. It is well to be aware of such subtle iniquities as we enter the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Excellent Canadian post-election roundup, especially focussing on climate crisis policy proposals. A good overview of where the dominion stands. My feeling? A disgusted sadness that the Greens fell on their sword in the stupidest way as the other parties mumbled over what they might do someday soon, they totally swear. Given such lack of good faith, until we make Greta Thunberg planetary climate tsar, we are probably screwed.
An excellent report today on how genomics research feeds into big data genetics surveillance and colonialism. Pure exploitation mining and selling private (and sacrosanct!) biological data.
1. Nothing gives me anxious quease and mournful relief in equal mixture quite like USA selling nuclear sleeper subs to Australia.
2. Every time you say āChinaā when you mean the so-called āāPRCāā, a hanfu fashionista dies.
3. If you think the Rio Grande refugee situation is bad, just wait 10 years when humans die en masse within 20Ā° of the equator.
4. PRC canāt do bally all because it is globalized. Unless the mainland economy crashes, but thatās notā¦ wait.
5. Weāve always been at war with Eastasia.
Is it *really* the dark side to say: find the antivax morons, hog tie them, and then vaccinate them? How about herd them all into Alberta and rename it Antivaxistan? Plenty of food and all the oil they want to drink.
Listening to the Democrats finally struggle via penny pinching to achieve the social safety and medical programmes the Commonwealth had since 1949. I can be hard on Canada, especially the prairie moral cesspits. But good gravy is the USA an overgrown banana republic. Better an expensive vanity election than the whole government shutting down and large sections like Dixieland almost literally returning to slave state feudalism. Itās time for the planet to realize that the USA is plum wacko, is not going to get better; time to start forming other options to provide for an āinternational communityā.
It will serve the urban bourgeoisie right if Evergrande defaults. Suddenly Canadian cities will discover there is NO housing shortage, as myriads of empty shell condominiums cribbed by Shanghai parvenues now come up for sale. Scores of cities across the world may face the same. If it hits the SF Bay metroplex, even better. The evicted proles will chuckle with delight as Google gentrifiers go deep underwater with their leaning tower follies. I must confess I will find it hard to weep.
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I used to think the USA Greens were an abberation for their feckless inanity. But certainly the CA Greens are giving them a run for their carbon credits on that score.
CBC just called it for Grits, probably a minority government. The coverage is typical horse racing, save one point: a PPC supporter candidly expounding on his grinding bitterness. The panel found him impertinent, but itās clear from the numbers that the PPC are a large subaltern. Having heard these peopleās envy of Trumpsters for years, Iām not surprised on the whole by their high jinks. Itās ridiculous to say that Covid is the cause of the ugliness. Ottawa ignores these people at the dominionās peril.
Several species of juniper have long been used as an abortifacient, by several American indigenous nations and Persians. Brew a tea with the berries and green stems. They are also diuretics, natch, so watch the kidneys. Sources: Burrowsā Toxic Plants of North America; Falcon Medicinal Plants of North America.
Juniper berry is also lovely in dishes with mushrooms, I daresay.
I really donāt understand what Trudeau is on about, often. He right mucked himself by calling the election. Trudeau makes an art of survival by mediocrity. This sort of feckless hubris is endemic to dynasties. Sadly, I doubt Canada will take a cue from recent events to go with Jagmeet. At least one way or another the Albertans will be happy, cough hack.
ā¦is that wacky sitcom where an old hippie known as Uncle Gopher suddenly has to adopt his delightfully irrepressible, 8 year old, orphaned niece Gemini. Then they go off to Rainbow Gathering. High jinks and laugh tracks ensue.
ā¦is the catās pyjamies, chaps. Get it Jamaican as possible and ādietā so it doesnāt overwhelm the tingle with cloy.
ā¦yet burn. Have we drunk enough oil yet?
=>
Excellent interview on CSPAN with the author of The Afghan Papers. A compleat look at the total 20 year quagmire and the feckless USA political class who knowingly, criminally mismanaged it.
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/announcing-roophloch-2021.txt
It is ROOPHLOCH, which event I seem to always miss. But I shall endeavour to participate anon, as Iām most decidedly off grid. Thanks to a pal for the headās up.
The internet was a mistake.
2020 Massey lecture by Ron Diebert suggesting social media and infotech surveillance regimes need ārestraintā under liberal democracy as their best response. Abolition or rejection is judged futile. Whenever someone suggests āresistance is futileā, I know someone is getting paid.
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php/Massacre
Map of Australian colonial massacres.
Today in buried ledesā¦ Business news report on 21 trillion dollars AWOL from USA constitutionally mandated budget reportage between 1996-2015. Someone is getting paid vast amounts via the DOD. And someone is paying them. But the empire decided to forget who and whom. Oopsy!
http://erikasollid.blogspot.com/2009/02/
ā"I'm a nobody," he slurred during a moment of silence. A nobody. What a sad state of the soul to actually believe you are nobody. I should have said more, besides that he is somebody, he has children, he is Floyd, he is somebody. I hope he remembers that.ā
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VSF8XWA7EHA
Some fresh hot Rage Against the Machine, enhanced by young drumming master Yoyoka. Itās great to see her power and moxie only increase with her age.
App (noun) - a program which insults the userās intelligence.
https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances
Web Annoyances Ultralist - blocks the webby pop up garbage which helps make the web such a UX cesspool.
https://lucindajmiller.com/my-difficult-journey-towards-christianity/
A Christian testimony of struggle and perseverance. Nothing easy, only worthy.
https://lucindajmiller.com/go-pick-a-rock/
Go Pick a Rock. Blog post by Mennonite lady, on worry and spotting hard stones.
http://cannabis-med.org/data/pdf/2002-01-3.pdf
Cannabinoid receptors evolved at least 600mya during the Cambrian explosion as a mutation of the Vanilloid receptors. This is less interesting about cannabis per se, and more about how pain and emotions work similarly in virtually all animals.
https://www.ediblemuseum.com/product/chocolate-human-brains/
Just what it says. A delightful artisinal offering amongst many more of equal calibre sure to appeal to any in the natural sciences.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JdX09TmhR2A
A compendium CBS tv news reports on the civil rights upheavals in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. The obnoxious watermark is worth enduring for the 1.5 hours of footage and contemporary commentary. The emphasis in media of white anxieties for possible black militancy over the manifest reality of massive white supremacist terrorism is really quite striking. King was canny that year in leveraging such obsessive white fears to bring white elites to a more serious stance of negotiation.
https://historicalreview.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2.pdf
The Forgotten Strand: Socialism in the Southern Conservative Tradition 1850-1950
A brief survey of how Southern traditionalism/agrarianism had an ambivalent relationship with Socialism, and later formed a main root of the new USA āconservatismā umbrella in the late 20th century. This paper well projects the tensions inherent in the Jeffersonian Democrat conservative tradition viz a viz capital and industry, even from the perspective of agrarian slavery elites.
http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=B36FE166DB0E1A70178807EF974B53D3
Teach Yourself Nama - a very brief primer in the sounds and casual vocabulary of that hardy click language of venerable antiquity which is now called Khoekhoe, in former times with considerable imprecision called Hottentot, Khoikhoi, central Khoisan, Nama... Libgen has Khoekhoe resources listed under all these names, of varying usefulness.
https://tabalde.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ADLAM-ALPHABET-LEARNING-GUIDE.pdf
A new QuickStart guide in English for learning the popular new Adlam alphabet used to write Fulani language. A pretty script, elegant and distinctive.
Beallās List, Updated - An ongoing project to name and shame predatory publishers, the āNigerian princeā scammers of the academic world.
Saguaros are being pummeled by climate change. No monsoons? No life. Utter madness.
https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2016/04/15/toxoplasma-common-parasite-makes-angry/
Toxoplasma gondii infection increases aggression, recklessness, and depression in humans. 11% of USAmericans carry this bug. In poor countries the CDC says this can rise to between 50-80% of the population. How is this not a global health priority?
https://yewtu.be/channel/UCpXBGqwsBkpvcYjsJBQ7LEQ
Critical RĆ“le is excellent fantasy theatre for the quarantine era.
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ch5XlY4nKJI
Theodore Roosevelt, of whom Bernie Sanders is possibly the reincarnation, discusses a living wage and bringing industry to heel for labour.
Caroline - A needy motherās quick, desperate mistake blooms into trauma.
Broken Bunny - A short film about mortality and ethical choices
https://www.debbiegrattan.com/blog/the-most-annoying-speech-patterns-you-hear-all-the-time-now/#
A pet-peeve roundup of millennialisms, but doesnāt go into vocal fry. As far as I can determine, these speech patterns are linked to social status, marking young urban professional class / bourgeois artiste speakers. The supposition that uptalk hesitantly begs listener approval is probably indicative, a form of sociolectic fencing tied to professional class manners which hasnāt (yet) diffused to the North American working classes.
https://invidious.048596.xyz/watch?v=2GbxFIVQv8c
The Silent Child
Short film about a sweet lil girl, a kind teacher, and neglectful purile parents who have no business caring for children.
https://www.thing.net/~rdom/zapata.html
Zapatistas: the Recombinant Movie
Tangentially in counterpoise, a nearly forgotten bit of prophetic smolweb from our friends at the Thing BBS, 1996.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/16/mexico-chinese-massacre-centenary-torreon
Indeed history doth fractally rhyme. The hundredth anniversary commemoration of the Anti-Chinese Massacre of TorreĆ³n is this year, an EinsatzgrĆ¼ppen style village bloodbath illustrating the social power of mere permission.
https://www.twv.com.tw/~ec/Snow/misc/ShowMerchantProduct.phtml?mid=2106&pid=10900071
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44000539-i-hope-we-choose-love
I Hope We Choose Love - Kaicheng Thom
š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļø Book. Some trenchant critiques of North American queer culture, from a millennial trans woman who has worked deep in those trenches. Iām not sure how conscious she is of it, but much of her argument for a queer reformation leans on Christian queer theology, often in poignant ways.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bSsfmptO3a8
Chappie with a fashionable pompadour teaches us how to replace an iPad button, with useful tips to work with Appleās absolutely user-repair hostile design.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-services/access-via-email/
Roundup FAQ of *2email proxies circa 1995-2002. Iām quite interested in finding out web and gopher to email gateways. As far as I can tell so far, no open gateways exist now. It would be a gimme for Gemini, natch.
https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/files/public/root/resources/howto/One_Page_Linux_Manual.pdf
The One Page Linux Manual. From 1999. Still served fresh.
https://invidious.snooyta.org/playlist?list=PLBJ-cWZxdnYcIXNew3eFYtto2wQOVCWaj
Hello Kitty has a nice video series to introduce us to the UNās sustainable development goals for 2030, with a focus on womenās economic and political empowerment. Wonderful how Kitty-chan visits a Syrian refugee camp. EN or JP versions of each video, multilingual subs.
https://polycraft.utdallas.edu/
Polycraft - a Minecraft mod for added realistic ores, petrochemical exploitation, and more fabrication stuff. Crafts le ham radio inside.
http://clintborzoni.com/antinous-and-hadrian/
More A&H clips - I donāt particularly wager Antinous needed much goading from schemers to sacrifice himself; it may have been his natural passion and likely outcome as a devout Eleusinian and Osirian as both he and Hadrian apparently were. But this is opera, after all.
Antinous and Hadrian - excerpts from early rehearsals - Based on one of the great romances of Roman imperial history, between a very mortal emperor and the handsome young consort who must die to become a god, a åčŗ« of Osiris.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/26/trident-overseas-or-halted-scotland-independence
Sketch on Trident (UK nuclear submarines) being a key sticking point for Scottish independence. The rump UK (England and its seonĆn dependencies) would have literally no operations site for their nukes. Oh, how the mighty doth fall.
Databases of alternative periodical publications from the USA and beyond. Open access.
https://flipermag.com/2013/10/20/peter-bjorn-john-young-folks/
PBJ - Young Folksēęč©åäøęēæ»čÆļ¼éé¦ä»¤äŗŗē¢ēę·čę ē·ć
Minimum 5 years previous experience required. š¤·š½āāļø
On Nigerās Sahel regreening, accomplished anarchicly by farmers, and why it has worked. (Psst, itās called permaculture.)
I wanna take you to a gay bar.
I wanna take you to a gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.
Letās start a war. Start a nuclear war. At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.
https://savingnature.com/flight-emissions-calculator/
Calculate how many boreal trees you need to plant for your plane trip offset. Trust me, thereās plenty of need for it regardless. Climate change means we will need to speed up human aided forestation ahead of climate impacts, especially as old species cannot cope with drier conditions in places like the NorthAm west.
...is one of the only recent adventure films of decent heart to have somehow dribbled out of the fetid cloaca of Hollywood. The story inscribes a humble framing of heroism almost illegible to the era of blockbuster torture porn. The fact that The Finest Hours bombed at the box office tells me all I need to know of the repugnant schadenfreude which fuels our morally decrepit Zeitgeist.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Oh7sQ4hPnyk
The Last Farm - Icelandic short film, on the importance of dignity and connexion with land.
https://www.tristandc.com/newsmessageinabottle2016.php
A message in a bottle sent by a Galician fisherman washed up on a beach on remote Tristan da Cunha island many years later. The fishermanās community became friends through the link with the people of Tristan. A poignant memorial to solitude and connexion.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o
Short but deeply intimate documentary on the Sewol sinking, its ensuing scandal, and the lives of the students lost beneath the waves. All needlessly due to official incompetence and malicious dereliction. Shameful.
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22311356/china-uyghur-birthrate-sterilization-genocide
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55794071
https://voxcom.cmail20.com/t/d-l-qadte-jytjceij-s/
Uyghur genocide by the PRC regime, the gruesome nuts and bolts.
https://www.lastwhispers.org/#mission-section
The Last Whispers multimedia site, raising awareness on the mass extinction of human languages occurring now. 2022-2032 will be the international decade of the indigenous language. Good to get prepped for language revitalization!
https://www.seejewsinspace.com
āSee! Jews. In. Space...ā Discussions of how Jewish ritual culture would adapt to inhabitation on Mars. How to know which sol is Passover?
http://www.filaha.org/author_Ibn_wahshiyah.html
Nabatean Agriculture, an as yet untranslated text preserving the lifeways of rural mediaeval Mesopotamian polytheists circa the year 1000 CE.
An hopeful development in possible coastal permaculture: the potential of seagrasses to become a major new grain food, helping sequester carbon and boost sea ecologies.
https://gettingflak.blogspot.com/2009/07/disappearance-of-enormous-talent.html
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Cheryl-Barnes-Fan-Page-216387785061183/posts/
Only the calibre of Cheryl Barnes could get me to post a Faceborg link. Apparently, she lives in Finland now, as might be expected of a person of quality, living a private life. Kiitos paljon, Ms. Barnes. Heaven bless you.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=FnotzpkYiB8
Cheryl Barnes, in the 80ās, singing on tv. She seldom performed, but when she did she certainly broke hearts with her power and soul.
A rundown on Project 2049 Institute. Unsurprisingly, itās a think tank fronting the military-industrial complex. Given how Taiwan friendly Biden has been so far, one wonders how hawkish he will indeed be in the event of a conflict. Sadly... I more and more think an invasion is a required wag-the-dog for Xi and pals. And if there is one, mainland can only play it to win.
https://project2049.net/2018/12/06/nightmare-scenario-the-pla-invasion-threat-taiwans-response/
Recent survey of the Taiwan defense situation from a DC think tank. They actually raise the spectre of emphasizing guerilla operations as PRC deterrent. The implication being, the USA is still unprepared and has little appetite for defending Taiwan. One thing is clear: Taiwan is not only the last standing sliver of real China (äŗåƦäøē¾ä»£ēå ±åŖęÆé£äø¦äøęÆčÆå¤åļ¼, but the keystone to the current American imperial order. Mutterings about possible PRC attacks on Guam... should be taken very seriously.
No. Stop using Facebook.
https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian-mole
Recent interview with FW Chomsky, touching on recent upheavals.
The Rainforest Flying Squad (web)
...packed with heaps of info and news and getting involved on the new logging blockades of Fairy Creek, Vancouver Island. I was shocked by the numbers on how little old growth rainforest is truly left in BC. Please support RFS.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/09/canada-logging-old-growth-trees-vancouver-island
BCās pose is such a sham. Itās just Alberta, but with more chainsaws, kids.
Speaking of bad bosses... This report may mostly go unnoticed, but is a good barometer for the general totalitarian drift happening in the PRC. These Uighur educators have been given the death penalty for the *state approved* textbooks they produced almost 20 years ago. The winds from Beijing lately are pretty definitive: the old liberalization tack is dead, and with it, any peaceful reunification and democratization hopes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phossy_jaw
Iād heard of the radium girls before, natch. But not fossy jaw. This is why we donāt ever trust bosses, kids.
The Karpatska-Rus Periodical Archive (web)
Through most of the 20th century, the Lemko (Carpathian Ruthenian) immigrant organization in the USA published this newspaper. Later articles are mostly English translations of Lemko stories. Some of them are quite affecting, the pathos of Eastern Europe in turbulent times.
ęē“å ęÆäŗēååćę¼é³ę··åč¼øå „ę³
There is a wubixing-pinyin hybrid IME module for Linux Fcitx, and it is Top Drawer. The IME shows the wubi codes when you input pinyin, helping one learn the Wubi tables. (Not to mention being more visual.) Oh, and it has a Proper Chinese (ę£é«äøęļ¼setting which so far seems great.
https://lookingglassfactory.com/
While some of us blinked, apparently realistic full motion holographic displays were invented? Definitely not filed under smoltech. But jaw dropping, I daresay.
https://invidiou.site/watch?v=Q9uiNspXon8
Episode 1 of the 1988 CBC teleseries version of Beverly Clearyās Ramona books, classics of Cascadian midcentury childrenās lit realism.
https://invidiou.site/watch?v=iDyFmJPLmnk
Rebecka Liljeberg, in an interview during her last film, absolutely torpedoed any insinuation she wanted to keep acting. She kept to the decision, and all the better for it.
...today goes to GRUB for making their latest install, update, and configuration process as newbie-hostile as possible.
(GMI) Guardian Mirror - Indigenous Nations Best at Protecting Rainforests
Nothing we havenāt known for, well, centuries. But itās good to put a final seal on who is to *not* be blamed when we Onceler the last tree in the Amazon, just in time for the region to be too hot for mammal life.
https://jenniverse.com/MultiverseGame.html
I want to play this Commodore 64 Multiverse game so desperately. Just to see the demo run, even. There is only one copy, in the devās hands... Is there any game comparable for C64?
(web-invidious) Melanie - Lay Down, Lay Down
Thanks, Wolfman. Aaaaaooooooo...
Astounding discoveries of other late hominin species are overturning the simple āout of Africaā conquest myth. The evidence is mounting that higher order cultural exchange was two way over long periods of time between Homo sapiens and others.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/10/is-this-the-end-of-forests-as-weve-known-them
Smoky the Bear, how we have failed.
Britain dutifully continued bank reparations to pay off slave *owners* until 2015. That... says it all, really. But this essay further puts the grotty of political āpossibilityā around British abolition in stark perspective.
...people used to say. It seemed easier when there were more survivors around. Itās hard to forget when someone looks you in the eyes with a beam of first hand truth. Yet humans find a way. Want to see what forgetting history looks like, how itās pulled off? Look around today.
Speaking of the chattering classes, some Harvard Law schmuck decided to yoke his orientalist fanboy fancy to the Japanese fascist gravy train. The case is worthy of note for how little the āMeTooā moment actually changed anything outside of the bourgeois social media āinfluencerā spheres. āComfort womanā rape slavery denialism is an āalternative factā on par with flat-earthism, no matter how it is weaponized by geopolitics. But trust the absent minded ivory tower sorts to keep a finger to the fascist wind and deny thereās a gale.
If the å°ē²ē“ ćäŗęÆé»Ø think these comments are critical, they should see what people say on this side of the waters when the filters are off. Xi has made mainland China fragile like a senile old woman... On the other hand, Iām sick of the chattering, artsy liberal classes making voyeuristic exposes on precariat poverty. Wanna help us neo-okies? Great. Fab. Push for social and economic policies... like a 15 USD minimum wage law -pinned to inflation and productivity-. That would still be ~7 USD lower than the equivalent of what Americans had in 1967, by the way.
http://jenniverse.com/MultiverseGame.html
Jaw-dropping C64 sim game which was never released by Activision, devved by Reitz and Lepisko. This is the kind of thing Iāve longed to see on C64...
A nice refutation of the identarian leftās strategic fecklessness, or rather managerially friendly āliquid capitalismā tacks. The critique could be extended to most contemporary personality cults and status curation (branding).
http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/
Compleat history of the STARTREK/Super Star Trek/Spacewar game, originally coded in basic in 1972. Has a link library to numerous versions for sundry machines.
https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_GAMES-13
STARTREK.EXE on Archive.org. Itās a rather difficult game, I recall. An interesting bit of Trek from the 80ās.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/bonobo-all-us/
Interview on the (oversimplified) relevance of Bonobos as a root of primate ethics and eroticized empathy, in contrast to the aggression and hierarchy by chimpanzees. Wither Homo sapiens?
Rise of Sinophobia in Australia, tied in part to export from USA Trumpism. Funtimes.
Now that so many people are leaving Faceborg, Faceborg is determined to force all social interactions to include us, like it or not. I say, all people who wear āsmart glassesā in public should have their devices stomped under foot.
http://stream.revma.ihrhls.com/zc5655
KPRI Pala Nation Community Radio stream - Wolfman Jack Tu-Sa at 1800 PST (0400 UTC).
https://www.wolfmanjackradio.com/
The Wolfman is still on the air, even on MW/AM broadcast band, which may account for a good chunk of the good vibes yet keeping civilization afloat.
https://archive.org/details/heavens-gate
Rambling, but contextually informative lecture on Heavenās Gate theology, with some seldom noted connexions.
https://www.heavensgate.com/misc/member.htm
āHow a member of the Kingdom of Heaven might appear.ā Neoteny is often intrinsic to religious UFOlogy.
The Last Days of Victor Wong (web)
Remember...
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=WASP:_Racism_and_Satire_in_the_19th_Century
A fascinating retrospective of the bitter imagery peddled by the San Francisco Wasp tabloid of the late 19th century. Apropos of our own gilded ageās candid bigotries, the Wasp framed an early exemplar of white American identity meant to elide working and middle class interests. Both the shopkeeper and the miner could bridge their sociopolitical and ethnic gaps in common āpopulistā hatred of Chinese, Irish, indigenous, &c.
Social media is making boomers meaner and more stupid. Hardly a news flash, QED the past year, but nice to see a summation of the arguments that this is happening. More weight to the social toxicity of the internet.
https://www.stabroeknews.com/2021/02/07/opinion/editorial/taiwan-volte-face/
An arch summation by a local news outlet of the present contretemps in Guyana viz a viz Taiwanās trade delegation. Astutely broken down. The implication worth stressing is that Guyanaās retraction embarrasses the USA more. Then again, perhaps that was the purpose in the announcement, to force a bit of light on mainlandās meddling in the Western Hemisphere. Regardless, recent events are likely to only inflame American hawks. Such are the sort of footsie empires play when they are no longer on good terms.
https://www.myspanishresidency.com/visas-spain/non-lucrative-visa/
Steps for obtaining a non-lucrative residency visa for Spain.
https://archive.org/details/KishoreKumarSongs
Song archive for Kishore Kumar. (Bollywood)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter_bibliography
Stephen Baxter bibliography.
https://archive.org/details/ItHappenedHereTheStoryOfHitlersEngland
It Happened Here, alternate history regarding the occupation of England by Nazis in WWII. Full film.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E5%B9%B4%E6%B3%B0%E5%9C%8B%E7%A4%BA%E5%A8%81
I really canāt understand the way Wikipedia allows ę£é«åćę®é«å to be mixed together in a document by default. I donāt think they understand how grating and offensive it is to read an article and stumble on flawed PRC Orwellian propaganda characters. āTraditionalā characters are an international standard. All articles should mandate them by default. It will encourage true literacy in mainland.
https://indigenousaction.org/wp-content/uploads/Geopolitics-zine-new-web-read-2.pdf
Classic history of the Black Mesa mineral and water colonialism in the Navaho and Hopi reservations. Excellent and impeccable primer on modern ethnic cleansing for corporate state benefit.
https://www.ajaonline.org/article/3545
Pre-IndoEuropean substratum in Germanic languages, a newish survey according to lexicon and location. Likely much of the substratum of Neolithic Farmer nomenclature comes from Jutland and southern Scandinavia because of the long term mutual inhabitation of that area. Not surprising, but glad they did the legwork.
https://www.ancient.eu/image/4832/the-latest-dated-cuneiform-tablet-in-the-british-m/
Latest dated cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, circa 67 CE.
The Church and the Homosexual: An Historical Perspective, 1979 (web)
ā"Homosexuality," Plato wrote, "is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."ā
https://nitter.net/MrBrownEyes2020/status/1354797894310588416#m
A nice summation of the GameStop action, a primer on short selling and how it can be used to screw the garchs. Marvellous. Direct action gets the goods.
http://www.robomargo.com/percom
Some pics and info on Percom, a computer peripheral manufacturer circa 1980. Shots of Comdex from the era.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/23/trump-florida-white-house-washington-plot-report
āWeāll do something, but not just yetā. Trump planned to overturn Georgia results by force. And now heās making dark insinuations. We should prepare for more fascist coup attempts...
A lucid history outlining the rise of Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, the new Sturmabeiltung, and their place as an organized paramilitary gang under Trumpism. The author well underscores the fluid but fundamental unity now in place through this metastasis of āwesternā nationalism across the Right in the USA, from GOP to Nazis.
QAnon is indeed a modern steroidal version of John Birch Society and such, but the ways that social media access allow for this sort of fast paced, direct personality cults should remind us of Rwanda, and take the applicable warning...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/20/joe-biden-action-bernie-sanders
Bernie isnāt playing around. It will be interesting to see how much sway he and the āSquadā actually can muster now. Hopefully they at least understand that the days of āreaching across the aisleā are not coming back.
Itās not status quo ante, but... Hopefully it will do. Biden is making good on his first day. Harris looks spry and ready to swing her vote. And Sanders has landed on the budget committee like a socdem Gibraltar, ready to rock the kasbah. Iām not relaxed yet, but... Ye gods, the outgoing administration has been hellacious on the nerves.
Well... Looks like electric just won. Except the USA of course. People here will guzzle gasoline as a national principle.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/279909/a-better-input-method-for-chinese-in-emacs
Trying to learn emacs, and the final spur is probably that Iām coming up against the deficits of nano, especially for CJK. This past year Iāve gotten much more comfortable with the command line, even doing some minor bash magick of my own composition. Fluency. I figure emacs is the best canvas should I actually be able to cook up vertical text options.
Taking a news fast. I get just too plum unnerved, and Iām sorry for it - if anyone else reads this or not. And Iāve been pondering just how smol a weiphlog is at all, as it plays into the trite, terse, bumper sticker rhetoric of our socially mediated era. Iāve just reinvented the Birdsite, albeit with a less obtrusive and more formal schema. But better for the heart to reaccomodate oneself to longer form public writing. And I wonder what the point is in more spilled irate pixels over politics in a world suffering for the surfeit. Let the kids have the revolution and its agitation; what shall be will be. Otherwise, a few link shares aside, mostly as a temp buffer for myself, we could use more deeply churned mirth.
Coup Insurrectionists Beat Capitol Police Officer and nearly killed him (web)
Details from one surviving officer on how the filthy, degenerate, fascist horde beat him with his own baton and tried to shoot him on the ground with his own gun. So much for supporting the police...
Ack-thpppt.
I have questions regarding the law enforcement chain of events on 1/6. Several pipe bombs were found and removed. Surveillance detected and removed an arsenal from the chap with the van. All of this fine granularity of enforcement was playing out before the Capitol was breached. Ergo, the state apparatus was cognizant of what was likely to ensue. And yet the Capitol remained unsecured. After the breach, for several hours, both police and national guard were held back from intervention. This timeline seems pretty secure, and all of it argues for complicity in the command structure of LEA and military, possibly on cue from Trump. How is this not being publicly discussed and analyzed? The entire revolution was televised. I find it improbable that there isnāt much more going on than to which we rabble are privy.
Stop saying the insurrectionists on 1/6 were āriotersā or a āmobā. The evidence is in. This was a putsch, an attempted coup dāĆ©tat organized ahead of time and abetted by state and plutocratic levels. A riot is an organic response in the street to immediate conditions. The 1/6 USA putsch was premeditated sedition by fascist paramilitaries, security state actors, political class conspirators, and the imperial president. I find it amazing, if not shocking, that these people arenāt being rounded up on treason charges immediately, with an explicit eye to capital punishment. Had they been aught else but white fascists, there is zero doubt such affirmative suppression would be the case.
Report on Fascist Funding (web)
A tidy rundown on the Club for Growth, a plutocratic funding group which is orchestrating fascist efforts in USA politics, and their billionaire funders Jeffery Yass and Richard Uihlein. Both men derive their financial power from various unsavoury and immoral enterprises, and have been pushing increasingly fascist political endeavours. A canny list of people needing excision from the body politick for a healthy society to be advanced surely includes these, not to mention the Mercers, Kochs, and all other billionaire parasites.
Indications of Active Complicity in Putsch by Trumpist Congressmen (web)
There are increasing indications Trumpists in Congress helped organize the coup, with full knowledge of the violence to be done: Reconnaissance mission tours of the Capitol were given to fascist operatives on 1/5. We already know they had direct knowledge of the parliamentariansā office. At least one congresswoman had all the panic buttons in her office sabotaged.
Trump is a Symptom of Constitutional Collapse (web)
Itās funny to see Americans finally admitting to themselves that presidents are basically emperors. Itās only been 150 years since they have been so, and 70 years since they totally usurped war powers and unilateral ability to destroy the entire planet on a whim. Caligula in his fever dreams could not imagine the violence an American president in a narcissistic funk could unleash on us all. The USA system is fundamentally WRONG, its vaunted checks and balances on the executive a farce to anyone who has lived with a basic split between state and government, ę²»čęæć (Of course, even that elemental recourse isnāt enough for sanity.) Perhaps nothing short of band level H&G is sane for humans... But not having a system where you crown mad nuclear autocrats is a good start.
I donāt envy the political balancing act the Congress must venture. Rebuke the Trumpists too little, and it will embolden them. Too far, and it will inflame them. Unfortunately for everyone, the required response is of a higher order art abandoned by the USA political class: statecraft. A carrot and stick might be effected, whereby pork is shoveled at compliant fascist communities... But only after malfeasants in the rabble, paramilitaries, military, and LEA are purged in the strongest way possible. Under such a solution, there might be executions for treason and sedition of those who incited and abetted / neglected the 1/6 putsch. This would necessitate social democratic policies as carrot, natch, which the post-DLC Dems are not disposed to offer.
Roundup of 1/6 Fascist Actions outside DC (web)
Trumpists are explicitly āprepared for warā. It seems likely that they will only become more brazen as the fallout from 1/6 settles. We are likely to see active sedition in the ranks of the military and LEA, I think, and would not be surprised if we lose a few state capitals and inland cities to terrorist actions coordinated with the same.
I simply no longer believe humans have any likely opportunity to learn to wisely use the vast powers we have accrued. We are no longer mammals, but rather atomic asuras, vast reptilian ęŖēø. Our lust for domination is too deep, our myopic folly too giddy to evolve into compassionate gardeners. Perhaps robots might do better, but... We are birthing them after our own hideous, unruly image. We will be chastened regardless. Itās all too much.
New Paper on Ocean Heating (web)
āThe latest research, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, showed the oceans absorbed 20 zettajoules more heat than in 2019. This is equivalent to every person on Earth running 80 hairdryers all day, every day, or the detonation of about four atomic bombs a second.ā The Earth simply canāt keep this up. The paper also implies that the oceans are beginning to go Canfield, stratified into stagnant acid pools. That means our ass. Forever.
Top Scientistsā Statement on Ecological and Climate Collapse (web)
No doubt it will be ignored per the usual, but this should deliver a stark perspective on how shredded our planetary biosphere already is. The scientists offer concrete, manageable options for mitigating the crisis. While none of these are beyond human achievement, they are explicitly beyond the capabilities of capitalism and myopic nationalisms. The future looks bleak indeed.
Statement from the Joint Chiefs (Pentagon) on 1/6 (web)
The USA military joint chiefs of staff put out a memo underscoring that sedition and insurrection are against the law, and wouldnāt be allowed by servicemembers. That any such clarification is needed should scare us. A significant percentage of army officer corps are Christian Dominionists, for example, having been cultivated for eventual mutiny for decades.
Congress Liaising with LEA for 20 Jan. (Web)
Most notable in this report, I think, is:
This is a very dangerous moment.
Confirmed - Surveillance Agencies had Foreknowledge and Lied about it (web)
The FBI had advance reports of violence on 1/6, yet did nothing about it. The agency DC chief later lied that they didnāt have intel on fascist threats. They did, however, blow it off because white fash get a pass, even when they plan and commit blatant terrorist insurrection on the imperial parliament. PS, Iāve yet to hear any charges filed on participants beyond misdemeanours like trespass. Bloody sick joke, all of it.
Eventually the bad behaviour will be too much to ignore. The USA will become more and more inchoate, infantile, and wanton until other actors will have to forcibly isolate the regime ...if only from sheer bureaucratic insolubility. All empires pimp benevolence even as they rule by truncheon; USA has done it better than most. Regardless, such mendacious contradictions doth chasten empires in time, in largely foreseeable ways. Does anyone really think these millions of pampered, manbaby savages will go away or be reconciled to a peaceable order, no matter the accommodating policy? The impending breaches must be contained, if possible. On the basis of species survival alone, it is nigh unavoidable for the world to pursue the question of what can best replace the American empire.
Trumpists and other Fascist Groups are Planning for Violence (web)
A snapshot of current deliberations on digital media show fascists are widely planning wildcat terrorism around the USA inauguration. The 1/6 Putsch is only radicalising Trumpists further. Hardly surprising, but interesting.
Anywhere but Washington Documentary Series will Continue (web)
Impeachment has begun, but looks to be punted in the Senate until later in the year (web)
Fascist militias plan to March on DC on Inauguration Day, and are making noise about invading state capitols and other facilities. Hopefully this time they will be taken seriously.
Tool for Food Cartels and Genetic Colonialism Begins to have Second Thoughts (web)
Hahaha... š
Christian Right Sermon Roundup (web)
I love how the Washington Post is determined to call the 1/6 Putsch a āriotā. Fascists storm Congress, itās a riot. When these good Christians start rounding up the rest of us for slavery and lynching, Iām sure they will call it āa spot of misbehaviourā. As one pastor here invites āthe Army of the Lordā to soon do, implicitly...
Looks like the Dems are tempted to make a show, then shelve impeachment until after the inauguration... or never? So much for congressional spine. Meanwhile, every report Iāve seen says the FBI is making arrests for public disorder and trespass, not sedition and treason. Slaps on the wrist. When youāre a white dude and the president is your fascist Duce, law and order are apparently very forgiving...
Guardian - More Details on Mil and LEA Complicity on 1/6 (web)
Both Capitol police white shirts and Pentagon brass preferred the āopticsā of a fascist insurrection run amok in the halls of Congress over a line of riot police facing down such fascists. They were well informed and cognizant of surveillance reports indicating this was a lynch mob. Even after the siege broke, they sat and let the insurrection play out. Somehow the brass have not been sacked and put in prison. Iām hard on the identarian left, but itās ludicrous to believe anyone could get away with this but fascist white men.
Military Involvement with Coup Attempt (web)
Itās increasingly implicated that elements of the USA military are complicit in the putsch. They sat on their thumbs and waited for Trumpās Sturmabeiltung to do its dirty work.
The Serious Military Elements in the 1/6 Putsch (web)
The media loves to front page the stray loonies. But itās these militia actors who are the most scary. Every rebellion has a carnival atmosphere. Only Americans, notorious for historical illiteracy, would mistake the carnival for fecklessness. We came a hairās breadth from the public lynching of high government officials on 1/6.
Slate - Footsteps from Charlottesville to the Capitol on 1/6 (web)
āThe fact that violent white men are allowed to run amok in America with impunity is possibly the least surprising political principle of our time. But by all means, let us continue to act shocked by it, and let us perpetually fail to prepare for their violence, even as they broadcast it to anyone listening for weeks in advance.ā The complicity of LEA with rightist / fascist militia violence seems likely to only become more active and intimate in years ahead.
Q: What do you call Ashli Babbitt? A: A good start.
There were ~74200000 votes for Trump. Of these, 45% or about 33000000, support the terroristic insurrection action at the Capitol. I think we can take this as a baseline for hard fascist support. These are people who will never reconcile. They are, it must be said, well armed as a bloc. It is a large number. A rising in the USA, a lynch mob coordinated by Christian Dominionist churches and fascist militias, could move through their less organized and less armed neighbours like a hot knife does butter.
Robert Reich on the Trump Insurrection (web)
As usual, Reich touches the only nervy response possible for the USA body politic. All those complicit in Trumpās outrages should be rounded up, tried for sedition and treason, and given the harshest possible sentences. This must especially include Trump. Sadly for the USA and the globe, political malfeasants have had a green light for 50 years, since Watergate, knowing their milquetoast colleagues will want to āmove onā in the name of āunityā. Thus doth empires rot and die.
Synopsis of events on 1/6. (Web)
Snapshot of the Bundy insurrecrionists and their III%er supporters as prelude to 1/6. (Web)
The militias are key to fascist infiltration of the military and police. The Trumpist rabble has a Sturmabeiltung ālow classā style, to quote Trump. But itās the III% and Oath Keepers who may be liaising with elements inside LEA such as the Capitol Police.
Computers Stolen by Fascist Mob at USA Capitol (web)
Weeeeeeeeeeeee......
Salon - Police Complicity in Capital Coup (web)
Itās looking more and more like the coup attempt at the USA capitol was organized or informed by active serving police and military. Frankly? I think this was just a trial balloon. We should expect fascist actions to increase in brazenness, not decrease.
USA Fascists Planning Further Actions (web)
I hate to say āI told you soā, but...
Tee hee hee... Letās make the key combo to quit something no one uses like esc-0.
When oneās mechanic calls to say they fixed the problem which might have been an insane engine rebuild for a simple fan clutch? That, good chaps, is some sweet relief.
Iām not ready for New Years to come... Not a bit. :(
RasPad 3 just jumped to the front of my wish list.
Epaper is smoltech.
Good gravy, but sometimes I miss D-sub. I used to gripe and whinge about those anaconda maws, tightening the screws down. But USB is some weak water. Fiddling with USB-C and itās clear none of the lessons were learnt. Wiggle and waggle, how long until the connector breaks or the ground is too loose? Roll the dice and see. But Iāll bet sooner than later!
The new Gemini feed subscription makes weiphlog/pikkuglog/whatever hard to āseeā by feeds if they donāt Atom. Is this a good or bad thing? I dunno. Letās try good. Most of what I post here are footnotes for the record. I recognize that short form texts as a medium of smolnet discourse should be resisted, as well as too much automation of delivery (toxic social tech). Like a decent pomegranate, smol/text/slow takes a bit of peeling effort and that is emphatically good.
Sandra on Beeblebroxians (gmi)
Sandra Idiomdrottning reminds us that we have met the Beeblebroxians and they are us. I confess Iām not entirely sure what or who a Beeblebroxian is. Neither they nor the notoriously hip often come around my neck of the woods. But I surely agree that we are all misfit toys on this island. More to the point, the underlining about accessibility being a design good is well taken. I do think the key to all this is simplicity. Make it rigorous, simple, and welland they will come... and that is alright.
Another good reply regarding Beeblebroxians and Gemini. I had more faith that people hereabouts were trying to not reinvent the leviathan evil of the web. But if the listserv is arguing for tables (of all anathemas), Iām probably overly optimistic... Thank Heaven the Gopher people keep the home fires lit!
Little Annie Rooney (web archive)
Full online video of Mary Pickfordās silent film portrayal of a street girl, set in the Bowery of yore.
Transcript of the Filmed Murder of Candace Newmaker (web)
No.
These good folk have a lovely gemcap about design and permaculture. Take a peep at their gemcam of the garden. I have a hankering to read more garden phlogs and such.
In lieu of that, Iām trying to shove more and more functions into my iPad Alpine Linux venv. Itās coming along. Got some issues with Python 2 taking over. I am trying to get zdic to run so I can åæ«åæ«ęē“¢ä»»ä½ęčŖ but itās jolly finicky. Looks like time to bug the dev.
I donāt know how Iād learn *nix without bropages. What a gift to the world. I just learnt how to fiddle with /dev/random using cat and shuf for some random fun. Bro thanks!
Someone recently made an offline terminal doohickey for all of Zdic, an important online ZH reference work. Ł©(ĖĢ¶ĶĢąÆ°ĖĢ¶ĶĢ)Ł Since mainland ratcheted the Firewall down, zdic.net is often unavailable. If I can convert the menus to Correct Chinese, it will be an optimum CLI tool!
On the whole, when Americans say, āI love youā, they really are saying, āIām anxious about our relationshipā.
Santa on his reindeer sleigh (web-invidious)
Santaās Village Webcam (web)
Santa lives in a village near Rovaniemi. His live cams and video messages are lovely.
...is some steaming pile of fetid pig plop eh.
CDH board member Lachiondo responds to protests outside her home (web-invidious)
Armed demonstrators began terrorizing the children of an Idaho board member as she worked to establish a mask mandate. These āprotestorsā are members of arch-fascist and convicted insurrectionist Ammon Bundyās self admitted lynch mob. After receiving censure for their threats, the militia returned two more times to besiege Commissioner Lachiondoās home... A good case study in the current threat levels of political violence in the USA.
Washington Post - High Potential for Armed Conflict in the USA (web)
We may see a Trumpist armed coup dāĆ©tat within the next month.
USA - Washington Post - GOP Legislators Call for Coup dāĆ©tat (web)
Republican lawmakers are beginning to float calls for Trump to illegally suspend the USA constitution, suspend civil rights, to hunt down his political enemies, and to maintain power despite the election. This is the world we are facing now.
Crystal Chandalier (invidious)
Kiss an Angel Good Morning (invidious)
Charlie Pride passed away... :(
Strike that. The CRIMINAL lack of USA public health regimes for Covid killed Charley Pride. Shame, shame!
If they ever redo the Matrix (because all Hollywood does now is redo things), Iād fancy seeing Bae Duna as Neo. And more Cornel West. And Jamie Clayton as Trinity... :,
Rolling Stone - The End of America (web)
āOver the last months, a quip has circulated on the internet suggesting that to live in Canada today is like owning an apartment above a meth lab.ā
Hahahaha... š¢
A cute kouros votive offering given to Athena by a comely chap in archaic Athens.
Gear for War Factory Women, 1943 (jpg)
āBad tools mean bad work and bad accidents.ā
Full hair canvas caps, trim coveralls, and... plastic bras shields. Where is sensible PPE kit like this these days for blue & green collar ladies? Today we canāt even get carhartts with a hammer loop. So much for progress.
Hushabye baby on the tree top. When you grow old, your wages will stop. When you have spent the little you made, First to the workhouse and then to the grave.
Murder in Black Letter by Anderson, Poul
Current reading. Midcentury stuff by a sci-fi paragon.
Political language in the USA is hopelessly Orwellian, even after a decade of international opening and leftist resurgence. American political nomenclature is at best really just a slang, a thievesā cant or propagandistic Nadsat. And it is relentlessly dichotomous in a way no one else can understand. In Americay, left is liberal and red is blue and libertarian is conservative and up is down and chickens have teeth and business elites invented all this to socially engineer the populace into a backward, parochial mess. Itās utter Babylon, confusion of tongues. Dash it all.
My friendās corpo tv news says that the GOP and DEM are not going to send citizens a measly second round of stimulus cheques. This in a country with virtually no social safety, some of the biggest wealth inequality on the planet, with mass evictions about to happen in a month, and a politically enhanced plague ravaging the populace. If you wonder how the rot in the USA stinks? It stinks like this.
Gutenberg Encyclopedia - David Willson (web)
On David Willson, minister of the Children of Peace, a Canadian political reformer and Christian social democrat.
š¦¹š¼āāļø Yo. Welcome to Baketech Community Help chat room. Can I take your order. Full stop.
šš½āāļø Howdy! Iāve looked everywhere but canāt find an apple cobbler. Please may I have 2?
š¦¹š¼āāļø We have apple cobblers but why would you want to install one in you, bro. Chhh.
šš½āāļø Because... I... Like... Them? And Iām a sis, not a bro, so... :/
š¦¹š¼āāļø Whatever, bro. Look, Iām just telling you for your own good. Donāt get an apple cobbler, get this raspberry tart (thhhpt) if you wanna be 1337.
š š½āāļø I donāt wanna be 1337, I donāt want a raspberry tart, please, I would like an apple cobbler.
š¦¹š¼āāļø Sorry, we donāt serve lamers and noobs here, bro.
š¤·š½āāļø I guess Iāll take my lameness elsewhere for a Ā£[Ā£\3[Ā„ apple cobbler! Good wavy gravy!
This is the reason I adore Demoscene. If youāve not seen this newish Amiga demo, do. Great surreal story, lovely music, inspiring visuals, canny code... This is to what high art our retro/smol/pubnix renaissance can aspire. Thanks to Sloum on the Rawtext linkulator.
If I ever did programme a CLI tool worth using, youād best believe it will come with a full ncurses menu so people donāt have to bang their heads against a giant spreadsheet of jargon and bizarre key combination commands just to do a simple thing. And if it didnāt have many commands or I canāt figure out ncurses? An easy-peasy cheat sheet which pulls onscreen as soon as some one hits the letter āhā. Seriously...
This decade sucks rotten eggs. Empire is a wormy cesspit. Iām opting out. Hairshirt FOSS/pirate, solarhippie, smolnet or nothing. Iām done.
M$ Office 365 metastasizes into full panopticon data regime
This is disgusting. Bloody Orwellian. Surveillance regimes, from private tyrannies to the security state, have gone utterly beyond all reason. I want out of this totalitarian wasteland.
This is a most excellent estimation of the relative weight in actual numbers of Gemini versus WWW. The long and short is that by any rational standard, Gemini is far more sustainable, simple, and byte for byte effective. The overhead for certs is minuscule, a drop in the bit bin compared to web.
I just learnt two important things about beloved San Francisco legend Victor Wong:
Perhaps only a few older Chinese-Californians truly grok the ontological significance of these details.
I adore the iSH programme for iPad! I put Python, g++, AV98, VF1... Alpine Linux seems pretty darn stable on iPad, and ever so smol! It makes an iPad almost a real computer, haha. Iāve looked but couldnāt find the Finger command in the APK packages... Nor online! I vaguely recall someone around here made a suped up Finger client. Please, how can I compile a Finger?
32000 Year old Flowers from Permafrost Fruits (web)
These lovely flowers were germinated from fruits over 31ky old! This paper tells the story and encourages further exploration and experimentation.
Wow. Thanks to a friend for pointing it out, Iām discovering the beta testing goodies for iPad. Apparently (finally!) one can run Linux shell in a venv on iOS! Hehe, letās give this a go!
Putting APK on Alpine iSH iPadOS iOS app
I canāt believe Sandy Claus gave us an iPad linux env for Xmas. Of course the googoo nanny AppStore wonāt let the package manager for Alpine be included by default, so the Reddit kids have the scoop on how to put APK on to make it... actually useful.
If anyone knows much about cutting solar panel controller and vehicle engine noise from RF lines, please ping me? I will be installing a mobile system soon and am keen to see the grounds are all happy and quiet on HF especially. Ferrite beads, natch. But Iāve had weird engine noise before, despite running right off the vehicle battery and shielding as much as I can. Also I plan to put a deep cycle AGM along side the starter battery, which makes me nervous, so will be reading for pointers. Ta!
Yay! Michael Lazar is saving pygopherd from the Python 2 ship. This updated pygopherd for Python 3 is welcome news to many Debian kids who have deployed it as a trim lil server in many contexts through the years. Pygopherd has been an easy workhorse server especially for old machines; Iām touched to see it saved for another life. Capital!
Thanks to Alex for lucidly sorting out the recent tempest in the Gemini listserv teapot. My eyes glazed over a bit somewhere around āURI Resources are not URLāsā. š„± But I confess the brouhaha is educational on how servers and clients talk to each other, and which should decide what. For the rest of us, suffice to say that the Gemini sky is not yet falling. Your Gemini text are just dandy.
I know, I know, but... Please someone make an iPadOS Gemini/gopher reader!
Lagrange and Gemini Subscriptions
I shall go read the new Gemini subscription spec soon, but SkyJake seems to like it! I am trying out some new Gemini clients. Looks like Lagrange is bumped up the list. Iām agnostic on the atom controversy save to say that it is indeed smol to recycle what you got in your back yard. (And I still say a mutant offspring of Lynx with AV98/VF1 would be my forever client.). But if Solderpunk has something smoller, Iām game.
This is the first GUI client Iāve tried so far. It is simple, no frills, and easy to mod the config for style. This makes it dapper for reading longer texts. I would enjoy a fancy client like this to use for Titan as well. But so far, none I have seen do better for me to read Capcom feed than the good ole AV98/VF1/Agena suite. I usually find keyboarding obnoxious. But AV98 is streamlined to read glogs.
finger://weather@typed-hole.org
Another nifty finger idea: report on the server site weather.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
This is another amazing finger deployment, a Coke machine hooked up to a PDP-10 in the 70ās, to report on fill levels.
gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/julienxx/Log/2019/finger-your-own-adventure.txt
How did I never see this before? A Choose Your Own Adventure by finger. This is the quintessence of smolnet.
Going Undercover on a Racist Dating Site (web)
Funny, but also sad. A look at the common attitudes held by men (itās overwhelmingly frustrated straight men) on a whites-only dating site. Unsurprisingly, they are having trouble convincing women to be their obedient sex slaves to birth the master race. Gee. Funny that. But this is a novel tack in focussing on the quotidian levels of the seemingly inevitable nexus of incel and Nazi.
I maded a nice Piki and Poko fan capsule!
Wow, this is a saucy arch setup for PineTab. Thanks for uploading, Nico! Squeekboard looks cute and usable. I heaps want a PineTab, though do wish the cpu were a shade more buff.
Kevin does a lovely job of walking us through his restoration of a BBC machine. The plethora of deployments for the 6502 and its derivatives never ceases to astonish me, not to mention the hardy way these devices hold up through the decades. There is a joy to fixing a machine, having it be accessible to human scale. (Man is the measure, EM Forster here whispers to us.). This makes me want to get back to playing with my C64!
Is there any probable future in which the next five years donāt see us descending into a fascist cyber hell? I am so sick of this society, so utterly done.
Apple AR Glasses, Cyborgs, and Privacy (web)
Looks like Apple is going to staple Siri to peopleās faces, with Alexa sure to follow. Count me out of this Orwellian madness. We need a vibrant counterculture of people determined to reject the total hegemony of the surveillance regimes and we need it now. Wearing cameras and open listen mics need to be as socially rude as smoking, and just as constrained by law as custom.
Singaporean Man Jailed for Smiley Face
Good olde Singie, still keeping up that colonial penal colony atmosphere...
Isolation by Diana Yukawa (web-mp3)
Music tailored for the new era.
A delectable new animation short film by the inimitable David Firth. Surreal horror.
USA Covid nearing 200k/day (web)
Shameful. Disreputable. Disgusting. The utter failure of the USA regime to tend to the Covid crisis is not merely to be laid at the feet of Herr Trump. This is a long term rot, abetted by the entire body politick. This is a failure of communal spine, of morality, of *national character*. The strong support Trump maintains through his fascist cult as thousands die is the direct result of a toxic USA culture. This country is a merely a sink of psychopathological selfishness, narcissism, and greed. āAll are punishĆ©d.ā Iām *done*.
A detailed account of the 1978 Birmingham Smallpox quarantine, with an eye to our contemporary situation. A devilish illness, smallpox. People have been hubristic fools to forget it and itās terrible harvest of millennia. From lackadaisical public health policies to antivax mass insanity, we now ought to look in horror at the neoliberal era as one of criminal dereliction of communal responsibility. With its relatively low mortality rate, Covid has been if anything a much kinder tutor than what might have been and may be...
History surely is rhyming lately... :(
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/20/jan-morris-historian-travel-writer-and-trans-pioneer-dies-aged-94 Jan Morris, historian, travel writer and trans pioneer, dies aged 94 (web)
Good old Jan Morris. I enjoyed her adventurous writing. She had a deep sense of place and an understanding of how environmental situation affects the human. Sympathies...
Talon has just upped a dandy intro on smolnet too. The dissatisfaction with Faceoogle is certainly wide and deep. Yet demimondes like smolnet are all too rare as yet. I keep pondering this, but without answer. This may be a failure of imagination on my part. Yet when I inquire about why the disaffected remain on such platforms, their responses are often just as inchoate.
Gopher, Gemini, and the Smol Internet (web)
On the more mirthful side of things (sorry ^^; ) Steve Lord has penned this lovely primer on Smolnet for web folk. I sometimes forget how odd our little demimonde is to the contemporary mainstream who live from app to corporate app. Itās lovely to see how much is developing in Gemini-gopher-finger land, though, and how fast. Thereās a buzz, I daresay. I just wish I could keep up better!
Steve has a lovely gemcap and glog. Herein, he describes an eyebrow-raising proclamation from Mozilla desiring to deprecate HTTP to the point of purging it from browsers. Iāve been a bit skeptical about the doom drums banging around Mozillaās supposed total capitulation to their Google patrons, but... The nefarious possibilities for planned obsolescence around this do bear some examination in regards the rump open web. TLS fills a needful niche; I appreciate it in Gemini. But some sort of backwards compatibility needs to be eventually built in to authentication and encryption stuff as a matter of course... No?
Looks like Pfizer may have a vaccine... Too late to save us from the mink mutated strain of Covid, which may be resistant.
I expect to read pithy comments from the neofascists about Danish people with their weird ratlike animal fur fetishes and how Europeans are scary disease spreaders any moment now...
Still waiting. No? Funny how that works.
Meanwhile, USA deaths are spiking again and states are shutting down and no one, from government to corpos to joe blow learned a blasted thing from last spring about securing the supply chains. Stores are emptying again.
Iām hoping to read this entry in a year. I doubt Iāll be laughing, but Heaven willing, Iāll try.
The Disappeared - Conway, Lynn - Computer, 2018 (web-pdf)
Lynn Conway neatly sums up her foundational VLSI development contributions in historical context, with an eye to discerning the social processes by which women and others are disappeared from STEM. With an even handed presentation, she does this well with a minimal amount of contemporary sociopolitical argot, making this dynamic analysis perhaps much more accessible...
Prism Comics š³ļøāš cover 2003 (pic)
Those were the days, my friends, those were the days.
I should probably make a political glog separately. Itās a feckless dump for apocalyptic worries at any rate.
Should I eat? Mmmm... I guess so.
Study on very early hunter burials (web)
About 40% of very early American big game hunters were female. Not shocking in light of recent studies on Paleolithic genetic heritage, but interesting. The takeaway is that until pretty recently, humans were egalitarian small bands. (Everything since has mostly been crap socially, so maybe we can take a clue...)
Donāt Hug Me, Iām Scared. (Vid)
Whatās your favourite idea? Mine is thinking creatively.
I ate the pomegranate. White pomegranates are tart. Red pomegranates are sweet. The dura mater flesh makes it a bit bitter, but is good roughage if you fancy it.
This is a fab idea. A web front end for easy peasy Gemini accounts. Minimalist itself, it will help anyone start glogging. Bravissima!
RWV made a short and sweet script to serve Gemini by Racket. Nifty! I do enjoy LISP. Such cozy code, comforting and lucid to a dilletente like me.
Steve Bannon calling for Rightist insurrection and terrorism in the USA in December. (Web)
Nothing is over. We donāt get a break. This is only beginning. š
Setanta Programming Language (web)
This programming language is based on Irish Gaelic. Go hiontach!
č¬å¤©č¬åāÆ
Getting to Know Three Peoples (web)
Letās learn to speak Cimbrian, Ladin, and MĆ²cheno.
Seachtmhain na Gaedhilge poster (web)
On which side are you? Cracking propaganda for language revitalization, this, from our Irish friends.
Gopherpedia - Crisis of the Third Century (gopher)
Itās worth reading up on the Roman Empireās Crisis of the Third Century and the concurrent pandemic, the Plague of Cyprian. Current events...
Haha, I won Bronzieās 80ās Halloween music compo! What a gas. I missed smolnet. Please encourage Bronzie to do a monthly compo or some such.
Itās a jolly romp to surf old tech spurs, imagine what might have been. I used Sony MD in the aughts, semi-professionally. The greatest folly of that format was how Sony was infamously miserly with the proprietary data transfer format. One could download files to the MD, but never digitally upload to compy. Transferring to CD meant doing so by audio jack. To this day itās not been cracked, I think. Sony shot themselves in the foot with that, as there was a ten year period in which many musicians would have loved for Minidisk to be a more native digital medium.
Itās dandy that so many smolneteers are doing the 5Q. Itās a winsome party game, I deem. I liked dctrudās new answers, and look forward to fresh queries.
Cel, the doughty dev of the Dillo Gemini doohickey, is gemcapping anew with us. Howdy there, cel! Welcome!
Dolly Parton - Hard Candy Christmas
This is not a love song.
Alex Schroeder 2016-11-14 (Gemini)
A stroll back nigh four years through a good collection of think or shock pieces on Trump. Some of them seem a bit obtuse in retrospect, as explicit racism has become a core rallying point for Trumpās more militant supporters. But on the whole, despite Covid, itās interesting how little has changed in the USA polityās sickened condition. Trumpās factions have, however, grown more ferocious in their credulity of their Leader, rendering the more shrugging apocalyptic rationalization of his support somewhat specious.
On the one hand, there is little new here: humans have been acute engines of global ecological change for millennia. And the researchers toot their own horn disagreeably. It is good that an omnibus data survey has been conducted to show a statistical synthesis of this. Iād certainly second the notion that wilderness/human dualism isnāt helpful. But nor is the notion that human ecology is a āshapingā, as if all lifeways provide a similar basis to justify the intensive exploitation of empire. It should be stressed that healthful human inhabitation is possible. But to place intensive agriculture and industry exploitation on effective moral par with the agency of low impact horticulture is intellectually coarse to say the least. An ethic of dynamic symbiosis challenges such framing, and is in line of heritage with many of the more ecologically healthy and sustainable cultural innovations of the Mesolithic.
Greek Jewish woman weeping upon deportation to Auschwitz, 1944 (pic)
Jefferson, Christina - The Dendroglyphs of the Chatham Islands
A poignant memoir of one researcherās long lonesome sojourn amongst the ghosts of a remote, genocided people. Her art and diligence do well to snapshot the landās memory.
The Archimedes Palimpsest (web archive)
Full imaging archive of the Archimedes Codex, a compilation of otherwise lost texts by Archimedes revealed using various spectroscopic techniques and synthesized using computer imaging. This is a marvellous feat of infotech archaeology providing a crucial glimpse into the 3rd century BCE philosophico-engineering world which produced the Antikythera Computer. Iām especially interested in Archimedesā Mechanical Method herein as an alternative to calculus. If anyone can provide a primer on how to so calculate, please do.
Malcolm X - The Ballot or the Bullet (LP)
Seldom highlighted enough is Malcolm Xās internationalist thinking, both as strategy and as global communal imperative. Thereās an interesting tension here, between separatism and internationalism, often figured as an evolution in his thinking after his Hajj. But perhaps this represents a clarification of his seeking to find a new context for black people in America necessitated a discovery of relationship beyond the hermetically sealed parochial strictures peculiar to the USAmerican polity.
Oh my goodness. Dr. Demento is broadcasting online. And you can order a custom audio message from him! And listen to his archive of decades of demented songs. There is a royalty fee, sigh... But I daresay it is worth it. Please spread the news, Dementites.
Vidak has delivered a lovely PinePhone review and omnibus tour of current OS offerings. There are instructions for basic flashing and hints of things to avoid, always good to note! Iām keen to get a PineTab, so am encouraged by his enjoyment of Mobian. Hopefully OSās will continue to debug issues to get Pine to a solid state soon. Thanks, Vidak!
Inside the mind of a CBP gulag guard.
Whenever phrases like āthe banality or evilā become too worn by use, read something like this.
Working my weary tukhas off lately. Yet allās I really want to do right now is watch Critical RĆ“le and play Simutrans.
2010 USA Racial Population Map
Provides a fine detail tool for racial tensions in various regions.
Bishop Fulton Sheen on Fear (Invidious)
Bishop Sheen leverages a disarming charisma to chat with us about fear. An interesting high modern mix of Catholic and psychoanalytical conceptions of self, fear, anxiety... Withal some resonance for 2020.
So, ācottagecoreā is a real internet... trend? š¤·š½āāļø
This is fine...
...is the abortion of community.
That is all.
Leonard Nimoy - Eye of the Tiger
This must be one of the most harrowing articles on Wikipedia, an omnibus history of a feral girl named Genie. Her history holds scathing indictments of family, patriarchy, science, and social service institutions. Even more raw are the dimensions of implicit indictments of human life and society, that failed her so completely over and over. I do hope, somewhere, Genie finally has found a modicum of peace in this life.
Excavations on the Walbrook London Mithraeum (pdf)
The construction of the new Bloomberg building in London meant the reexcavation of a large section of the ground where the London temple of Mithras once stood. This temple was then reconstructed from its awful later situation to near its original prosition. This document interests both as an exemplary popular survey of the 2013-14 excavations, but also a snapshot of archaeological preservation literally under the bastions of late capitalism. On the whole, not a bad effort.
...is the only thing I recall from Harry Potter with any fidelity, or interest for that matter. I wish there was a Moaning Myrtle adventure tv series.
Elder Porphyrios and the Hippies
A nice psychic Greek Orthodox Christian monk remembers talking with some hippies at his monastery.
Gemini is smol!
Because it is smol, it will become more smol.
Smol is good for us.
If demons make it BIG, the smolness of smolnet makes it resistant.
Maybe demons can make it BIG, but it would be hard.
Because smolnet is smol.
Iām tired of latin right now. It is fun to play with but it is silly to believe it actually makes ideas more serious. That is a bug in English and it is dumb.
Iām so poor, I canāt even afford impostor syndrome.
All I want is 140 acres on a fecund Earth with a population capped at 100 million. Isnāt that a nice compromise? Iād rather have it capped at 500k. And why not? Thatās still plenty of humans to slobber and jibber in a few big cities, making noise and jostling in their claustrophobic urban warrens, as most humans seem to enjoy. But with our technology it would be an easy paradise. Ah, but the breadth of space it would allow for those who prefer cleaner, open vistas. To wander days without encountering the reek of imperial excess...
America is pretty lonely.
Iām not even Yankee bashing, just saying... It is a lonely culture to live. That makes it harder.
I used to tell people, before it became moot, that if they were Type A stubborn go-getters, natural entrepreneurs, then itās great. If all you want at heart is to make dumplings with granny and the kids, then... Not so much. America is brutal to anyone who doesnāt have dollar signs for eyes. And hard on many (most?) of them too.
Birdsite thread on Trump and likely pathways to electoral crisis.
Do read it. Itās on point. Itās intellectually astute. It is terrifying.
Iām too old for this era.
I prefer music about nice things. Friendship. Bicycles. Reincarnation. Exultation, joys quotidian and subtle. More of that please.
Watching a sweet film by the auteur of Saving Face. A new take on Cyrano, with a bisexual love triangle. But it strikes pangs for depicting with almost cruel clarity what it is like to be young, Queer, Chinese, and washed up in rural USA. Ellie Chuās town is any town with a Chinese family who didnāt exactly find gold mountain in Americay. Worth watching.
Alice Coltrane - Reflections on Creation and Space (Web)
A beguiling psychedelic symphony which discomfits and exults by turns. Prophetic in the way music can only be. Good juju.
If you havenāt a refrigerator, but do have an air conditioner, you could do worse than to hang perishables in bags in front of the output grate. Not to block, mind, but along side the flow of air. This will add a few days to edibility.
åÆå±± CityFM 77.7 MHz Smooth Jazz
This is a smooth jazz station stream in Toyama, JP. The music is soothing and pleasant, modern but with little pop. Itās a lovely Music station.
Southern Californians donāt say āokayā so much as mumble ānguhā through their noses. Nasalization is pretty common from surfer lingo.
Kollok - The Phobos Saga (Web video)
HyperRPG have been good enough to recently upload the prequels to Kollok 1991. These series used both the Ten Candles and the Kids on Bikes game mechanics. Mostly these play through alternate universes to Kollok prime, including the Kolob town the Radar quickly visited early on in Kollok. The early episodes are a bit raw, but Ten Candles does get quite good at points. The Kollok TTRPG-stories work well as either video or podcast. Give them a whirl!
...are manure. Thereās a toxic thesis left, right, and centre (a stupid formulation anyway). The lie of politics is that *what* we are matters more than *who* we are at heart. Those who dehumanize always cut their sails that way. It does no service, in the name of justice, to concede this point to dehumanizers. Ultimately, the only way out is to knit community. And community is a slyly fluid thing which percolates into and around all castes and creeds. Whenever we are enjoined to staple dead identities to our faces, by whatever ideological cult, we are in for stormy weather. I refuse to be drafted in such armies of the damned.
Near as I can reckon... argots are about 10% jargon needful to specialized discourse and 90% pure in-group shibboleths. An argot is more than a simple sociolect. And itās less than a true cryptolect, as itās meant to be flamboyantly on display rather than truly hidden. Argot is not to hide, but to show to outsiders that they donāt know. Thereās a kind of sociopathic menace in an argot which humour canāt elide, and often sharpens. āIronyā, to use the modern malapropism, is one such sharpening. It riddles all sides in contemporary politics. An argot is the language of the snub and snob.
Have you heard the good news of bro pages? I adore bro pages. (And no, ābroā doesnāt oFfEnD or exclude me; itās just clever and whimsical humour.) Bro pages point the way forward to a shortening of the trail between tech muggle and 1337. For that, Iām eternally grateful. More ābroā referential prosthetics, please!
The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User
Iām trying to tone down my UX whining. But a discussion on Mastodon precipitated this link to Dr. Morbiusā considerations on the tension between power users and naive users, that bad corporate imperatives exploit the latter to poorly build for all.
Report on the Nazi networks rising in the German mil, int, police, &c.
Funtimes.
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My SDF Email is deprecated.
It is hotter than Charles Dickens with a new novel. But I am installing a brand new AC unit. It will take some days as I must manufacture the stand and bracket myself from aluminum and steel. Stand done, next up the flange and bracket. But I am knocking off for the day to enjoy the fruits of my labour. Obscene shore power use, but lovely. I reckon to start a phlog detailing my restoration and solarpunkification of my little Baba Yaga hovel. But not right now. Oh, no. Not right now, haha.
Bizzy for a few days with offline stuff.
Big tech will enthusiastically sign on to EARN IT and LAED as a way of passing the moral buck. āWe were just following court orders.ā
Regarding drama, old Dixieland proverb: Jesus donāt like ugly.
I am a very small person in the tech scheme of things, and easily befuddled. But before this decade is out I intend to make a NAPLPS or teletext bbs and see its flag fly high above the smolnet.
And huge thank you to Alex Schroeder, who also helped me get the giki running. It boots up jake, but needs a bit of spit and polish to daemonize it, which I shall do directly when my brain is not mush anymore. But itās working nicely so far, both for Gemini and Titan. When I have something worth seeing I shall have a grand opening, haha. Next up is gophernicus.
Well, thanks heaps to Solderpunkās coaching, Molly is now afloat in the Geminiskies. Let us hope unsinkably! Now, on to the giki and gophernicus. Then some actual content, methinks, for a soft open to shake out the bugs. Iāve tried to lay the foundation of this server as best I can, so that I shanāt have to go back to it too much, I hope.
On a Gus Van Sant spree lately. This is a gloriously dark comedy, based on a true tale of city slicker folly. Van Sant gets right up into peopleās nostrils, grinding away at their provacy. But itās less voyeurism than a kind of pleading. The camera is too demanding to be taken as a silent witness. Gerry gnaws on a Godot spareness with an intimate humour. There are awesome dollops of Jodorosky here which deepen significance, too.
Need to fill the wash and drinking cisterns from the well, fill the swamp cooler. Before dawn because I canāt bear seeing humans before a spit and polish. Eat so I can take medicines without being unwell, which means baking stovetop cornpone whilst it is still bearably cool. Fix up my botched server ware installs. John the ripper my own moribund pgp key because I forgot the password again... š¤¦š½āāļø Then put the new solar battery. Finally, sometime directly, scrounge the last bits to build a camper top adapter mount for my jalopy because I canāt afford buy a new shell which fits anytime soon and donāt want to drill mounts for antennas again soon.
Realization: I canāt abide reading cyberpunk because, apparently, I am cyberpunk.
āNever give up! Never surrender...ā
Solderpunkās Gemini Birfday glogpost
Happy Birfday, Gemini Protocol! (Image)
Since it is the 1 year anniversary of Solderpunk knocking hims head on the bathroom floor and coming up with the flux capacitor... Wait, thatās not right. In honour of Solderpunk inventing this brave humane future of which we are now partaking, I feel obliged to eat some more chocolate cake. Itās a hard task, but I feel duty bound.
Thanks, Solderpunk! Thank you, Gemini!
Spalding Gray Points at Us (Image)
From swimming to Cambodia.
Is morality a movable feast?
Marilyn Monroe knew, maybe...
(I miss you.)
USA:
Drive safe
Canada:
Please drive safely
IFSC Pan-American Championships 2020 (Climbing)
The winnerās joy when she learnt she was going to go to the Olympics was infectious. What a sweetie.
Release... the eggcream!
This is āDr.ā Shufei reminding you that eggcream is medicine for body and soul.
Mistrust any who come at you with, āyouāre either with us or against usā.
Fatalism is imperial propaganda; nothing is historically inevitable.
Look for the helpers, and the builders, makers, menders; thatās where to pitch in.
Evidently eminent Mr. Goerzen is retiring Pygopherd, one of the more popular gopher daemons. This, due to the incipient end of life for Python2. He has requested someone to take it over to port it to Python3. Pygopherd is my old standard, and evidently supports some oldschool UMN gophermap metadata what no other server does, so he would fancy another server support those at least. If any Python wizards happen to read this, please check it out.
Righto! The snooty server host just took me out of account jail. Time to get a Debian server going. A solid foundation for my wee cottage on the smolnet/textnet/slow internet.
What even are we calling this movement?
Pretty Please, Buy Me an Eggcream (Well, a month of server, haha.)
Please do drop any coins in my tin cup if you can. Iām doing this on a shoestring, but I still gnash a bit at the expense. Iāll have more options and the usual panoply of thank you rewards directly, once Iāve something to show for the bother...
Iām making my own Gemini site, hosted by VPS! It will include a giki (Gemini / gopher wiki), probably for retro tech and solar punk infos. Right now Iām still surveying the plot, then to lay the foundations. But Iāve tossed some pennies at it so Iām committed. Please keep abreast and support me! <3 Iāve never done my own site hosting before. I reckon it will do for my various experiments and such which Iād be shy about inflicting on the Zaibatsu. Eventually Iād like to host some other peopleās goodies, maybe situate the thing as a Tilde/Circumlunar outpost, however that works. Anyway, stirring the ingredients as we speak.
Iām finding it a drag to contemplate gopher sometimes. The lack of much UTF-8 support is a real drag for me. Item types, wonky line formatting... I love Gopher, but itās just such a fickle mule. So when, as now, I just donāt have the prefrontal cortex oomph, itās much more pleasant to just phlog/glog to Gemini. Iām hopeful that some kind of Gem2Goph script will eventually be tenable so that I can punt down the Weiphlog at least.
Iām sure I have a backlog of phlog/email replies to do! Thank you all for being out there. Iām glad the āslow internetā as Fox/Tomasino put it is more forgiving with pace than the bizzy web mainstream.
I have been adding recipes now and then, as I cook something of note. I do rather hope they are entertaining to read, if not necessarily to consume.
The astute film aficionada ought to prepare for cinema as one does the opera. It behooves the audience to participate by being as educated as they can in reception of art. To that end, please saturate oneās mind with a choice selection of rock & roll until the debut of the new Bill & Ted film.
I signed your super secret guestbook with hex edit. I am happy of myself. Lovely Altair fun.
Itās a good time to tidy up a bit. Look around the noosphere and sweep away the cobwebs. Is this doohickey really important to you? No? Then sweep it up into the bit bin compost.
Iām behind in my textnet nice projects. But that will be rectified directly.
Marblympics Cravendale Cup (Video)
Since there will be no Olympics this year, why not watch the Marblympics, coming up on 18th of June? A preshow is being done now by Jelle and friends, with all the exciting marble races, intrigue, marble peopleās sociology and history we can expect.
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āDonāt confuse the problematic with the catastrophic.ā
Another new Gemini client which supports terminal colours, and quite nicely. Acdwās Bollox (haha) is clean and under active development. Great to see! So lovely!
Pasta is awful. Heavy on the stomach. Maybe itās age. Going back to rice. Times like this call for soul food.
ssh altair@mpcclub.info -p 422
Jebug29 has put is lovely lil Altair on the internet for good children to play with. It doesnāt like me right now, but I shall talk slowly to hims later.
Itās very strange returning to look at fediverse after a fast, especially when occupying that time mostly with long form writing and Gemini/gopher. The character limits on āmodernā social media are stifling. Yet somehow words feel embarrassingly disposable. The ācloutā is cloying. Sound byte culture comes off as superficial. The outrageous agora clamours, hucksters with jaded postures. Itās all just too much sturm und drang, but without pith. And all that is as nothing when compared with Twitter and such. Oh, it has undeniable utility. But I think... Yes, Iām rather done with it all.
Druxx just started up a glog very worth reading, a diary given over for his son to peruse in 20 years or so. I adore this, both for its intrinsic heart, but for what it says about the textnet. People are longing for longevity, for an infotech which speaks to the future with clarity. We have an opportunity for that here. Iāll keep reading, with best wishes for the little chap!
acdwās Thoughts about the Protocol.
Some wise avuncular counsel from acdw on the ādiscourseā.
ā"The fact that you're worring about this right now means you're doing okay.
You're going to do just fine as a parent."
And I think the same thing about Gemini.ā
Oh my goodness! I was reading the gemiphlog of plugd who was sad because EMACS wonāt do certificates for Elpher nicely.
gemini://thelambdalab.xyz/phlog/2020-05-31-Inanity-3%3A-Virtual-Gardening.txt
Wherein plugd gave the heads up for the above very cute (and colour enabled!) Gemcap called Astrobotany where you can grow a lovely ASCII garden! Now I have to reverse engineer how they did so many colours so nicely. Ta heaps, kids!
I donāt need nor want your mouldy Powershell, thanks.
s/āthanksā/ānow scramā
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Ashima Chocolate Brownie Clif Bars
I almost always eschew brands and all sorts of advertisement. I smugly look down on the droolers such tricks work on. Well, it seems Iām a sport nerd drooler because I find myself in fangirl conniptions to see Shiraishi Ashima on the cover of Clif Bars. What a dream boat...
Guardian Rolling Live Coverage (Web)
Rolling coverage on the fallout from the George Floyd murder. Trump is apparently ready to use the Insurrection Act to quell protests. A protester was shot dead by an attacker shooting wild from his SUV. 2020 funtimes.
I have printed up a proposal which I hope shall be the seed of a specification for GopherColour2. The basic notion is to paint colour and bold &c by interlacing text with format lines. This would allow far more colours to be articulated per line and make painting gophermaps more pleasant for the user.
GopherColour2 - A NaĆÆvely Immodest Proposal (gopher link)
Been working heaps on GopherColour, learning what to do and, most often, what not to do for it to come off. I think I have a by hand method down now, more or less. It is awkward as one cannot see the Secret Magic Color Escape character. One can only copypaste it. Sometimes. And the line constraints of a gophermap create issues for the server when it makes a menu. But on the whole, I find it gloriously lovely. I may be the only one on Gopherspace to feel thusly. So be it! Release the colours!
Tom Foobaz (great name) at 1.21jiggawatts.net (GREAT NAME!) has an interesting post on the whats and whens of how Bluetooth low energy (BLE) works on iOS. Or rather, how it is restricted to work, generally.
A Short Summary of Bluetooth Contact Tracing
I got interested in scanning BLE beacons a while back, and rather concerned by the fine grain privacy implications. Time to crack out that programme and see who is pinging at the market.
I appreciate the heart Akiyo gives to her climbing, all the more poignant for her long experience. She would have countless golds if it werenāt for young Janja, whose perspicacity on a boulder is preternatural, if somehow a bit uninspiring. Akiyo often looks on the verge of tears, even if she usually is able at showing a good face for the audience. Akiyo pushes hard, as in 2018 when she came within a fingernail of 4 tops. Everyone cried with her.
All empires die. The Fates choose their own threads to weave poetry for our end. Memento mori.
The Alexander Mosaic (large image)
Iāve been pushing for GopherColour for years now. And now I wanna set it up. But whatever secret characters Tilde.pink used to get theirs pink is utterly invisible to both me and my tablet. I have tried every escape I can think of. Nano will copypaste it, but not my tablet. I canāt key it in. But cat can see it. VF-1 can see it. Iām about to go full bore Veruca Salt on this.
Int at 80h has made a clever way to serve Gemini on one of those lil babby esp chip devices. Gemini is suited for a tenuous adhoc meshnet, I daresay! I hope we see more such advancements soon.
A tiny tiny baby Gemini server for smol devices
Quite a few nice people wrote in; and someone pointed out errors in links or formatting. Thanks for that. If you find a link on my gopherhole or geminicap doesnāt work, please do give me a headās up.
I am enjoying Gemini. I do hope more interactive deployments are made soon. Why not a guestbook system with cryptosigned or encrypted messages? It would be a cinch to slap GPG to the front of AV-98 or such. (She says, naively.) What I really would fancy is Gemini support in Lynx, natch. And colours. Gemini client colour escape support...
šµ...History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of Man...š¶
I updated quite a bit of the sites. Quite grateful that Solderpunk included me on the Zaibatsu and Gemini CS. Thereās a wee bit more elbow room. Now if I can only use it with alacrity.
Iām tired of fediverse. I wanna do more in depth or long form writing anyway. But even the exhaustingly pedantic (Howdy!) need a coffee table for more concise knickknacks. Hence this å¾®å. Iāll try to refrain from posting the trite. But I doubt Iāll wholly succeed.
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