Notices by Victorian Sparkgap Kitsune (enkiv2@niu.moe)

''What is more terrifying -- that `they` know something about you that you don't know yourself, or that even though you have no self -- no center other than an arithmetic mean -- `they` can still predict your absurdities better than you can?" -- by @enkiv2

It's like someone else being able to explain back to you what you mean by what you say, & you not able to explain things better yourself, unsure of whether what you said even makes any sense to yourself, even fascinated by their talk, but able to confirm when what they explain's what you meant.

It's not really paradoxical that 'showing weakness is a form of strength'. It's common for short-term and long-term concerns to conflict in this way.

Avoiding showing weakness protects us in the short term but leaves us without support in the long term. We tend to learn to do this early, so turning the reflex off is hard.

Turning it off when it's OK to do so both requires strength & makes us stronger over time.

-- wise words by @enkiv2 when he was over at weirder.earth

I don't remember where I found this, so I apologize for not giving credit.

This is an article about what the Macintosh almost was, and why it stopped being that.

https://www.exolymph.news/2017/07/27/alternate-computer-universes/

It's really interesting, and taught me things I didn't know.

Reminder -- entries are open for the 2018 no-budget film contest: https://medium.com/@enkiv2/announcing-the-2018-no-budget-film-contest-e023a922fadd

me, coding in C#: i wont be a real dev until i code in C++

me, coding in C++: i wont be a real dev until i code in C

me, coding in C: i wont be a real dev until i code in assembly

me, coding in assembly: i wont be a real dev until i destroy god & supplant him as creator of all

I've gotten some questions: does it really make sense to plan to build a distributed game system as part of the fediverse? Will that actually pay off or is it just one big gamble?

I think:
- Having things be fun for players/users may make them more likely to join. People want to build things together. May help alleviate the "join a federated social network to talk about federated social networks" problem
- Having things be fun for me is good too :)

The Entire Archives of Radical Philosophy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler & More (1972-2018)

http://www.openculture.com/2018/03/the-entire-archives-of-radical-philosophy-go-online.html

I hope they don’t turn this into a rallying call for drone deliveries

I enjoy seeing my mailman. Whenever he’s there, I know society hasn’t collapsed yet

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/nyregion/undelivered-mail-hoarded.html

i hate recommending tech products to less technical friends or family now. over the last 5-6 years, every product has started requiring so much time and energy just to work around all the user-hostile design to avoid being screwed over in some way. i feel like the only advice i can offer in good faith anymore is "i'm sorry, you shouldn't get ANY smartphone/tablet/TV media box, because they're all now completely unsuitable for a normal person"

@enkiv2 @sonya The "Application" needs to die, give way to full composition.
The web had shown promise in the early days of IFRAME, but that proved to be a security nightmare, so it then regressed to centralisation and cross-domain protection.

Before that we had XPCOM, UNO, OLE/DCOM/ActiveX, NextSTEP's PDOs, but none of those things were mature enough to become ubiquitous, and the W3C increasingly seems to have become an end to a means.

Real alternatives are needed to all those.

Since a.w.e isn't showing signs of coming back, I made an alt over on eldrich.cafe:
@enkiv2@eldrich.cafe

Ornate Soviet Realist Polaroids of Claymore Mines and Kookaburras by a Jordanian Designer

The lesson of a.w.e for me:
Instance admins should keep alts on other instances to use in case of catastrophic failure, and should retain contact with the alts of some high-profile users on their instances in order to distribute news in such a situation.

I'm literally following mykola on twitter & couldn't see any of his tweets about awe going down because twitter decided it was less important than memes.

Introducing GNU Antisocial! No corporations, no birdsite crossposters, no fediverse drama, no one can access your personal information, not even your admin! No nazis, no tankies, no anarkiddies, no liberals, no prudes, no sex workers, no other people at all! The only thing you get is peace of mind and the perfect disconnection to the world!

Installation: add the following to your .bashrc

function antisocial {
echo $1 > /dev/null
}

Usage:
antisocial "Your post goes here!"

My #cat who love disassembled computer

Part of why Cooperation Jackson was able to get going was Mississippi was bypassed by traditional capitalism. Preston is economically depressed. Rojavan revolution grew in the vacuum of conflict. Puerto Rico is reorganising as a community after natural disaster.

There is 'the shock doctrine' and 'disaster capitalism'. We should have 'the cooperation doctrine', 'disaster anarchism'. Or, more poetically, as per Rebecca Solnit, paradises made in hell.