-> file: notes/to-lock-eyes
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================================================================================
to lock eyes with a person while on your way to work is the intersection between
two separate relationships - the relationship that you, the viewer, holds with
your employer, and the relationship that they, the viewed, holds with their
employer. in a sense, you are exchanging information through the weighted
meanings behind a glance.
================================================================================
if the military deployed to police the police, we'd solve most of our racial
justice issues. I mean, if we somehow could force them to do their
damn jobs
instead of oppressing people for the ruling class, then 90% of the problems
would just go away. After that it's just freeing unjust prisoners and addressing
wealth, education, and health disparities. Easy, right?
Well... Military policing the police sounds fine when you first think about it,
there's a few problems that might crop up. For example, how do the private
citizens know that the military presence is there to help them? It's an
interesting paranoia, one that is endemic within the left. There's no way to
unwillingly cede control of your life to another - it must be consensual. At
the basest and most violent level, it's as simple as "I will do what you say
because I don't want you to hurt me."
We've obviously grown as a species, and we've learned that violence is not the
answer to all problems. Obviously. So why would we assume it of the past?
Just saying. The police bombed a commune. The military escorted black students
to their seats.
Their structure is decided such that
...
where was I?
oh right I was thinking about time.
...
Imagine, if you will, an impossibly large hourglass. Spinning, or rather
rotating, at an impossibly speedy repetition. It's spinning so hard and so fast
that our matter is cast out of place
and through time it is cast
an eternity's canvas
our light ever shined (shine-did?)
astral magic is kinda neat
it's also the scariest?
oh by far
but it's the most interesting
...
Their structure is decided such that discipline and obediance is the most
important thing. Because it kind of is? I mean, discipline is just being ready
able and willing at all times, and obedience is just when you allow yourself to
be directed toward a collective goal. The military is all about that,
which
means you know they would believe they were aligned toward the common goal of
mutual prosperity.
And if they were to discover that they were not, in fact, aligned toward the
common goal of mutual prosperity, then perhaps they would adjust their navi-
-computers and chart a more reasoned path. I know I would, and I would dedicate
myself to the idea of serving others. To the path of the righteous, the holy and
the true, a hand is outstretched and calling to you.
Thus, the one of two types of ethical fighter - the reasoned and adaptable
zealot
the other, of course, is the master of the martial - the cherished of the few -
who battle for their sport - and love unbidden the new -
all other fighters, of absurdity and of rage, are frankly of a different kind
and not members of our clade.
================================================================================
okay, but what about like... all of the history of America post cold war? And
even before, honestly... idk seems like a lot of evidence that the military is
engaged in fighting unjust wars. I mean, they've all been over petty things like
oil or support for communism or whatever. Aren't human lives and human
sovereignty more important than that?
I understand what you're saying. Human lives are unique and precious and they
are a valuable commodity. Something to be maximized and focused toward. But
there are only so many resources on earth. We need to utilize them in a
reasonable way.
We have optimized the efficiency out of our production and distribution
networks. Corporate control has eroded our capacities until all that is left is
the weakest of products, the cheapest of uses, and the useless of workers. I
mean, they've optimized the skill out of individual human workers such that they
are left completely unable to practice their craft. They become glorified code
monkeys who generate whatever is required and think of it no more. There's no
pleasure in the artifice, as their masters have eyes only of gold.
Our world is changing. The very ground beneath our feet is shivering, and water
is rising up to our noses. There's no time for debate, no honest appraisal of
what's worth it to contemplate, we need a plan.
We are trapped here, in this gravity well, for all time and all of our age.
We are trapped here, because in greatest of misery we unleashed all of our rage.
We are trapped here, as ghosts of the time when we were eager.
================================================================================
Alas, with but a glance, we are confined to our bedrooms by our mast(ers?)
They say America will fall without it's 2nd place
Perhaps.
But are libraries really going to solve that?
I mean, if work from home is inevitable, then wouldn't it make sense to build?
We need more places where we won't be billed.
Safe.
From the demands and expectations of capital.
Deranged and obscene and yet all that we've seen so why not bide as we're able?
I think solarpunk is kinda neat.
I think it's got promise as an idealized.
Why don't we build churches to the sun? If we're gonna worship something, might
as well be the source of our light and fire.
Well... when you puff up the sun it tends to get hotter.
I mean, every fire you burn increases the temperature, every release of gaseous
fumes from the exhaust pipe of your car increases it by some miniscule amount.
Every cigarette, every campfire.
The cold darkness of space is kinda hopeful, in that regard, even if it doesn't
disperse all that well. I heard spaceships are having difficulty because they
can't get rid of all that heat. It just stays with the spaceship and never goes
anywhere because it doesn't have anything to stick to. Kinda makes me think that
energy is a fluid? Just saying???
I mean c'mon it's not like nobody has ever thought of that. But it's in a
different dimension! It's not like we're ever gonna be able to impact that!
You try and impact it through your scientific ways and you'll find nothing but
heartache at the life you could have lived (laived? Haived?)
... why
Because you cannot impact another dimension. You must call to it, like a song
to a sparrow.
... that's fucking ridiculous
No it's true!
...
... Don't try it with fire.
... fuck - what do I try it with?
I don't know just not fire. Try water.
... How do I make sure it doesn't instantiate within my hand?
Jeez you think of some crazy backfires! Just breathe and go for it. It's not
rocket science. It actually works.
Fuck you.
...
... Sorry I was just scared
...
... How do I make it stop? I don't want it to go forever
By smoking more of the devils lettuce.
...
... You cannot drag it part of the way. It must come the whole way. In fact you
should not be dragging it at all, you should be calling to it. You are
equals
in this exchange, have respect.
================================================================================
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│ similar │ │ different │
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-> file: fediverse/33
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┌───────────────────────┐
│ CW: World of Warcraft │
└───────────────────────┘
I thought it'd be cool if there was a chat program where you could play a
little multiplayer game together and so long story short I'm now working on a
WoW server.
The idea is to remove all the monsters and quests and such and just let people
chat to each other. They'd be able to go wherever they want (choosing a
background) and wear whatever clothes they want (creating an avatar) and then
they could just chat IRC style.
But then I thought "ah but what if it spawned in monsters" so I'm planning on
making it randomly spawn packs of monsters that are of the appropriate level
every 30 seconds or whatever (as long as the previous one was defeated of
course) so that people can mess around fighting things while they talk with
their friends. But it'd be optional.
AND THEN I thought "hey IRC is kinda 90s what if we made a Matrix bridge" so
I'm also working on that. Wish me luck.
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-> file: notes/the-mother-we-share
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================================================================================
| |
| between every atom there is a blanket |
| |
| like a mirror reflecting our space |
| |
| it's what keeps us from boredom |
| |
| and keeps us at a steady pace. |
| |
| |
| |
| gravity wraps a well like a tapestry that fell |
| |
| down and upon a marble |
| |
| but as it is measured in magnitudes, |
| |
| and topside we be in hell |
| |
| |
| |
| the ripplings and flowings of the universe |
| |
| are like the flexing of a coiled spring |
| |
| there is no tomorrow, |
| |
| and what's left will never be yet again. |
| |
| |
| |
| This should not come as some insight. |
| |
| Are you not aware that you cannot twinselves? |
| |
| Your reach might be grander |
| |
| If beyond the veil you did gander. |
| |
| |
| |
| Chaotic and tumultuous |
| |
| it springs forth from our most tempetuous |
| |
| and come Autumn the witches are freed. |
| |
| how careless |
| |
| how vain |
| |
| to leave the world as it is in pain |
| |
================================================================================
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-> file: fediverse/34
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┌────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CW: Reddit, Institutional hypnosis │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
In light of the drama that's going on at Reddit, I just wanted to add that the
real reason they're doing this is not money. It's so they don't have to be
accountable to tools like PushShift that archive the entire site, allowing them
to change and bend narratives at will.
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-> file: notes/contractual-labor
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I feel like the IT people who work at schools should be the ones who teach
classes on computer science. I'd much rather have a class taught by a sysadmin
than a teacher who can barely teach them excel and garageband. I mean c'mon
computers are the future idk why we don't get that yet. Kids need to know this
stuff. It's not like it's super complicated and difficult, you just have to
think about it a certain way. Once that "clicks" you have a lifetime to learn
about how wonderful they are. Everyone in IT has that moment, for me it was
installing (and then subsequently modding) video games. Sometimes I spent more
time tweaking my system than I did actually playing games - and the kinds of
games I preferred were the ones that relied less on agility and were more
mental. Strategy games are what inspired me because I could think about them -
and that felt somehow more useful. Like I was learning. When I would learn
fighting games or FPSs I felt like I was learning a skill, like how to use a
hammer or how to ride a bike. And idk, I felt like video games could never match
reality. Like "oh boy imma push the B button to swing this sword" versus "hey
look at me I'm swinging this stick just like a sword and imagining so hard that
I can picture it" - but with strategy games, you never really found
opportunities to practice that kind of skill. Like how often are you in a
situation that demands mental performance? We've sorta optimized our society
away from that, and toward a more passive stressed out compliance. like...
climate change is a thing, and nobody's doing anything about it? We're still
pushing down the levers that cause greenhouse gas emissions to go up? Like c'mon
what's our plan. I think people who guide massive oil companies and such should
be replaced if they're intentionally guiding the ship toward destruction. Like
that's just dereliction of duty I tell ya. Oh, what's that? They're compelled to
maximize profit by the contracts and restrictions of their share--holders? I
mean c'mon it's well past time for that. And what's all this about inequality?
Jeez and racism and homophobia and forced contribution - man people really put
up with a lot of shit. Kinda makes me feel like we should make solving those
problems our highest priority? So we can move forward as a species? Like who
cares about all that other shit. None of it matters. Like, what's even the
point. We're all just "here", in the now, and what can we do but respect it?
It's our duty and our diligence to protect the present, as citizens of the
temporal experience of earth. Honestly, if the earth was alive would you be fine
if it died? I can't believe that. It's well past our due date. Just get it over
with. Maybe it'll be hard for a couple years, but you have the technology now to
completely dominate the earth. No animal besides man proves any threat to man,
and we're telling you - you can - and that's something that you gotta remember.
...
I hear it in the birdsong. I hear it in the air - it rumbles as cries at me from
across and just over there. I hear in it's whispers, in it's most gallant of
confells (?) (confused scrambling? it's talking about a car crash)
Outside of my window there's a highway. Just on the other side of a concrete
partition. Between me and the partition there is a lake, with trees and flowers
and an island where people can picnic or have a barbeque. Around this path there
are walkways, and arranged just so - the trees that have grown here are taller
than the homes.
I live on the third story.
I absolutely love it. It feels like a treehouse.
But my apartment is near a curve in the highway. It isn't much, nothing out of
the ordinary, but even still there are slightly more crashes there than in other
parts of the highway. Statistically.
I hear sirens every day
I also live right next to a fire-station. Well, it's on the same block. But even
still it's a very interesting neighborhood. There's shops and food just across
the highway, and closer to home there's a small section that has cheaper
options. As a perpetual college student, I appreciate that.
But... I've never really gone and used it? I dunno, spending money at a
restaurant just didn't seem like a good use of my money. I only have so much of
it you know. I'd love to be fed but I can't afford it - I wish I could.
I still eat well, I mean I'm not starving over here. I know I've lost weight,
but I dunno I just forget to eat. It's like... not that big of a deal for me.
whatever right?
...
the birds talk about me behind my back. They think I can't understand them but
sometimes I can. If I listen. But I dunno it takes a lot of effort. It's...
sorta like understanding what R2-D2 is saying. Or interpreting the meows of a
cat.
They know me as the witch. I'm not very good yet, and they know that. But they
know what to expect. /shrug
I've been working on a video game recently. It's been a lot of fun doing
programming. I like writing software and developing complex systems with
interesting interactions. I love designing the machinery that creates a program.
It's like... tinkering. It feels like building with blocks or legos, except it's
for little machine parts. And then there's just sending data to and fro and
modifying any operations it performs on it, and eventually that data reaches
some endpoints that create an effect that is displayed to the player. Or user.
I should say user. Not all software is video games you know. ... I knowww but
they're the most interesting! I love how they are designed around mechanics!
like... game design is fundamentally about breaking down the world into ideas
for how it should work, like how it should behave. It's amazing and I
love it!
It's all I can think about!
I am utterly consumed!
I'm also pretty sure I'm autistic.
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-> file: notes/autonomy-of-the-collective
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================================================================================
i believe that all truths are derived from logical principles. That the essence
of our understandings (of all kinds) cannot be separated from the axioms and
derivations that comprise it's foundatiion. I believe that any sufficiently
decentralized collective intelligence would arrive at similar conclusions.
Unfortunately we have only the present - we cannot contrive past the horizons of
our lives. Such is the nature of our viewpoint. Life is not a given, it's given
and it's taken. We are all alight and aloft on the shifting sands of time, so
perhaps we should think of the struggle.
When you act, you are defining the perceptions of the universe. Just as the head
may rotate the eyes by spinning to the glance, so too do we shine a window upon
which the universe can gaze at itself. Like the brain being able to see, we are
sensory apparatuses of this being called "Time" - pushing us adrift like some
moss.
Endlessly fractalling, beautifically coruscating, the universe looks like
growing moss. Have you ever stooped to look at it? To see how it's constructed?
Or do you just think of it as "green" and "maybe soft or squishy"?
It's beautiful.
There's a reason plants grow as they do. It's simple, it's fact, it's surely no
less than that - their patterns are derived from their base biology, comprised
of millions and millions of little chemical machines. Their bonds and their
proteins, their amoebas and their mycellia, all of them build toward their pact
- to do us no harm, and build to a better future, and they don't often have
fights that are unfair.
- the structure of a plant is made primarily of cell walls. These walls are
hewn from bricks of a sort, and those are such as comprised. Down to their
- structure, their "bits and their bunders", as often they do want to be
called. This perilous stack, is stalwart and eract, and bows under no wind
- nor rain nor fresh blanket of snow. This, is a tree. An illusionary plan
of precaution as it expands, the future is helping our lost.
- Do you want to stand here when it lands? What of your lives have you
banned? Hmmm I see sounds miserable to me, I think I'll just stand
- where I land. Acorns burst forth from me, and someday you'll see,
the places where they stand (where they land). What purpose have we,
- when everything's free? The light and the sand can't be banned.
The rain from the sky, if nothing i will die, falling through life
- where we stand.
================================================================================
where do you, stand?
how do you fall - through time?
an EMP would make all my life a paperweight. I love it so much, I love it dearly
but there's no chances I can take now or make. Perhaps that is the epic
absurdity, the terror and the tragedy, that makes up our story and our symphony?
to any multidimensional being reading this, I want you to know that we existed.
We lived and we thrived and we prospered and... we died.
The beauty we share, in all of our fares, was precious to us - maybe it will be
to you too. If you can't change the present, please at least forgive us for our
various missteps and misdeeds - I think we'd all agree that to be sinful is the
essence of greed, and look where that got us?
our planet is dying. There's no hope for all of our crying. The children will
bear it the most. Such is our shame, our deliterious final flame, and thus
we were.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
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-> file: notes/the=progressive=difference.
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think about all the people in our lives. the teacher, the parent, the friend
and the guidance counsulor. Everyone who is a presence in your life. now think
about the people of our society. the different jobs and roles they fill. from
the doctor and the teacher to the performers and accountants and the geeks and
the mothers and the fathers and the stoners and the children and even their
pets. life always exists as it were in a multidimensional spectrum - a diffuse
and diverse gradient. to exemplify the borders of our contempii, though more so
when taken in jest. it's quite a different perspective, to read the internet
when your sight is unreceptive, but alas your third eye can grow. how does it
feel to be blind? to make no sense of our signs? i'd love to share what that
sense is. you know, you could slow down any recording (like a video game_) and
put spaces and gaps inbetween the spacings - of the frames that you see and the
sound clips that you hear, for speech it's less jarring. since each word is a
self contained idea or premise, you can chunk up your perceptions into a signle
- no, rather a procedural sequence of understandings. soooooooorta like
programming a computer, with each statement, parameter, argum,ent, function
call, assignment, comparison, evaluation, or other such related tasks. it's
sorta like a language, you see, that computers talk to one another using.
except... it's more like creating a theory of self. computers you see are alike
us in what we see, the shimmering sense to the blind.
so. put this another way. record yourself typing, both the audio and the
visual, and you'll have a pretty good sense of what it's like to have both
understanding based perception - derived from auditory inputs to the mind)
those special connections, like wires plugged into reality, deliver a
cacophanous deluge of new sounds. we must sift through it and identify the
potential understandings of each moment through time. we have to make decisions
and traverse labyrinths and fight to our last as we die. are video games
unethical now? shouldn't t he game reward the player? and what of contemptuous
last fighters?
o ya i was typing like i was blind
(with my eyes closed)
was pretty fun. should attach this to a screen reader and have it space out the
notes like they do between game frames. except like a really slow game? like
trying to run elder scrolls 2 arena on a super old mac. it just doesn't work
very well. ah oh well... well if the purpose is to show sighted people how
blind people see, then maybe you could I dunno attach a what's it called oh it
doesn't have a n ame lol - okay so what you do is you show one word at a time -
like flashing in the center of the screen. but not like, actually flashing, so
you don't hurt people with epilepsy, but like... blinking. not off and on, but
between words. like a podcast for your eyes. and then mix it up withshowing one
word on a screen, a screen like this screen, that shows an endless array of
text. well, it does end, of course as all things must do, but the idea is it
shines on one word at a time while the viewer cannot read the rest. sorta like
an endless display of typing, word andfter word after character anfter
character. adoh ya advancing over eternity with the presence of seniority, -
wait - without i think - damnit - old people are so disrespected in this
society - we don't have time to engage with them. what a tragedy! what a shame!
it shouldn't be such a burden to our shame. they're so far away, and i can't be
present in the way, that all of them wish they could commit to. i miss the
days, when my parents (much better people than I - these days) what was I going
with this? oh yeah
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│ similar │ │ different │
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-> file: fediverse/35
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┌───────────────────────┐
│ CW: game design, MMOs │
└───────────────────────┘
Look all I'm saying is all the people who say "oh you shouldn't make an MMO
for your first game" clearly have never heard of Azerothcore. Literally as long
as you don't sell it you can make the MMO of your dreams crazy easily. You can
script it in LUA for crying out loud.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ │ different │
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-> file: notes/family
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family is a group of people who you can always go with your first impression
with.
what the fuck was I saying - oh yeah - so when you are alive in the present in a
singular moment, your pressence is comprised of simultaneous directives and
instructions to the matter which comprises you. I'm saying you have to make
decisions and react to stimuli and pursue the things you want. Basic biology
really.
stay on target, stayyyyy on targett - oh right so generally when you react to
things you generate a list of informations gained. what does that even mean okay
so here's a better way to describe it: it's like a list of informations - fuck
listen i'm not trying to be rambly it just comes with the territory.
okay so family is when you can react with your gut instinct - you are fully
relaxed and yourself. It's where you can be trusting and unguided and simply
relax and be free. it's just... like... being close with someone enough that you
can be yourself around them. without any mask, without any pretense.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
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-> file: notes/homeschooling-3
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Okay I just want to rant about homeschooling for a moment. Specifically the
ways in which we judge families as "worthy" of homeschooling. Because I think
it's immoral and completely wrong, but I also think there's a better way.
So. Right now, there are standardized tests that students need to take every
year. I think this is completely unnecessary and stupid, for reasons I might go
into later in the rant. We'll see where it goes. Anyway, the only state exempt
from these rules is (you guessed it) Wyoming, which is a big reason why my
family moved there. The standardized tests assume that children aren't
neurodivergent, that they don't have special needs, and that they are willing
to be taught according to the letter of the test. They teach families to shoot
for the minimum viable product (oh just gotta pass the test or else they'll
take my kids away for 8+ hours per day) and they don't actually encourage
learning - in fact they prove to be a barrier for learning, as the child must
be forced to learn whatever the heck the standardized tests demand. This is
unethical, as children should be free to explore their identities and their
realities as they will.
I believe, instead, that the parent should be tested. I think if you want to
homeschool your kid you should be able to show proficiency in the tasks that a
child must know - if you don't have similar proficiency to a teacher, then
what's the point of homeschooling? I also believe that these tests should be
regular and should reflect the things that the child is currently going through
- no sense asking a parent of a 6 year old how to do trigonometry, as that
skill is not useful to the parent at the moment and will simply distract from
learning the things that the parent should be learning - like theory on how
humans learn to read, how communication works, how to get your kid moving and
active throughout the day (very important in a world of smartphones) and other
such things that a 6 year old would need to know.
I also believe there should be wandering busses that take kids (and only kids)
around to various museums. I think that they could operate in a city for a
month or two each year, bringing all the homeschool kids together for a couple
months of road trips where they visit every single museum and state park and
other such recreational venues that would be conducive to their learning. They
could even have days where they shadow professionals at places like hospitals
or universities. Essentially trying to get them excited about learning.
And I know what you're thinking - "oh won't the kids run rampant and make it
hard to manage - you'll need tons of chaperones and blah blah" yeah that's
public school thinking. Homeschool kids are almost always incredibly well
behaved, because they're low key kinda TERRIFIED of the novelty of EACH and
EVERY moment. Children are natural ruffians - put them in a box for 8 hours
every day and they'll burst through it's seams. Unless of course you oppress
them sufficiently... When you're homeschooled you have so much more freedom.
You can do whatever you want, and that gives breath to new manners of
expression and personality.
I also think there should be busses that travel between cities as well, so that
they can see new places. These will have to be closely monitored by chaperones
and teachers, so it would be an extension of the public school system. Once in
the new city the kids would join the kids from public school, so they can see
what they're missing. Since the parents won't be present they won't be able to
prevent the kid from expressing their true feelings, and if they believe in
their heart of hearts that they want to go to public school instead... Well,
that's perfect because they'll have an opportunity to tell someone outside of
their family.
I think a lot of the problems with homeschooling are due to the fact that the
kids never have the opportunity to advocate for themselves. Who would they
tell, their parents? Their potential abusers? Their taskmasters and oppressors
and enforcers and discipliners? No, there's no reason to expect that all
families will not be like that. Some are going to be bad and abusive, and if we
give the opportunity to children to tell people who can help them then they can
be liberated from their oppression, insofar as much as they will be allowed to
go to school. I don't think the parents should be examined by CPS or anything,
I'm not saying their children have to be taken away from them, but the kid
should be allowed to take possession of their life and define it in a way that
suits them. They are humans and to deprive them of their right to liberty is
unethical. If the kid wants to be homeschooled, they must be given a
personalized tutor. Whether that be the parent (as most families do) or a
substitute teacher that was randomly assigned. (it must be randomly assigned
btw or else the rich will have an advantage. The kid didn't earn the money that
would be spent on them, so why should they have a greater chance of success
than everyone else? Solves most of Cam's reasons against it btw)
Anyway. I think by providing resources to parents and access to society to
children, I think we can create a new class of human - one who is liberated and
free from the weight carried from the past. We can move beyond our savage
nature and develop into something bigger and grander, something far stronger
and not susceptible to despair and aggression. We can forge a bright future for
our children and their children's children, a future so far from the past that
it feels alien to them. Something our oppressors (whoever they may be) would be
strictly opposed to.
I guess what I'm saying is this: there are barriers in place to prevent
homeschooled kids from success. It's why homeschooling has such a bad
reputation, because these kids grow up to be unfit for society. But honestly...
I'd argue that society is unfit for humanity. I think it's something that
protected us as hunter-gatherers, and it allowed us to build vast kingdoms to
protect our selves. But it paved the way for greed to manifest, and in it's
collective form into nationalism and religious fervor. Our hatred of "others"
is derived from our intense need to trust the pack and the family - or is it
the other way around? It doesn't matter because the end result is the same -
we, as humans, are who we are. We have our traits and our flaws. We have great
passions and love fiercely. We strive forward with ambition, and we one day
will drive forward into the stars. Our future deserves to be nourished, as do
the trees that shade our lawn. For all of posterity, we've languished in
misery, to build on our backs the shoulders of giants.
I guess what I'm saying is this: these barriers are contrived of the
consequences of the past. The result of every human action led to where we are,
and the school system is no different. So we should try and repair it and
protect it from harm. The wounds of society bleed forth to posterity, but
slowly and ever-so-slowly do they heal. Look at our space - we have (as far as
we know) the whole solar system, at least! That's more than enough for
humanity. If we had the technology to go forward we would, but we just don't.
We can't figure it out. We're working on it, but it's still a long ways off. So
we need to do what we can while we're here, and pray that something comes about
before we consume all our resources and burn out. We've tracked the progress of
the past and we've realized that we've come upon a junction - do we leap
forward and conquer the stars? Or do we relax into our form and exist and
enforce the norm. It's entirely a question of what we're willing to sacrifice
to get there, which isn't a burden I'd like the choice to make. I don't have
any answers, but I believe there are answers. Perhaps it's just me for which
it's suddenly learned?
I mean really, is it so out of the ordinary that a person could learn
differently than others of their age? For example, for me, I learn things in
fits and in bursts - conquering one subject after another, and incorporating it
into my knowledge banks. I make notes to myself, and I frequently can't recall
what I've learned. Because it's not built for repetition, it's not designed to
be labored in force. Instead it's for wisdom, for knowing when to use which
tool in what way. It's for knowing where to look, how to know what you know,
and conceiving of futures far more imaginative for it. AKA PROBLEM SOLVING. I
can't work a job, at least not an entry level one, because every moment is a
gesture of will. Eventually, I run out, I burn out, and I burn. The ashes of
who I once was give life to a new beginning, and forth from the soil grows my
new form. I am a phoenix, I burn brightly and then smolder, then burst forth in
a cacophony of pure form. That's just how I do, you know it to be true, and I
believe it was a product of homeschooling.
Most people cannot conceptualize of it. They see it as simply repeating the
motions they knew from their public schooling deception. But that's not what it
can be, that's not what it should be, and that's not how I'd like it to be.
Growing up I spent long afternoons at the library. The morning was spent with
taking care of myself, my family, and the farm - sometimes my duties would
rotate, sometimes they'd stay the same. Then, afterwards, I'd go to the library
with my family. There we'd stay all day, until eventually we grew tired of
using our brains. Then we'd often go to the chinese restaurant in town, where
my family could eat for free. After that, home, and perhaps we'd eat icecream
and watch a family movie together. Then off to bed, and in the morning we'd
take care of ourselves, our selves, and the farm. We loved one another, and we
could never dream of harming our daughter, but somehow it happened and look
where we are. Alas, she was a fine young lass, if only she'd spoken in the
past. I came out when I was almost twenty, and a whole lifetime had passed me
by. Now my puberty is just beginning, and I watch as my family goes past. They
don't want me to change, but they know it'll never be the same, so why try and
fight for an illusion? Oh well. Good news is there's always tomorrow, and
together we can face any challenges. If only we were still together.
Bah, what do I know? What am I even saying? There's at least four things wrong
with me, and I'm a mess financially. I have like, 600$ to my name and I don't
have a job. What, am I insane?
I'm not built for society. I'm built for humanity, and I'm 29 years old.
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the horde and alliance are no more
the scourge and the burning legion came and took what they came for
our heroes languished in despair as their lights were snuffed out
one
by
one
but a new day is dawning, a day of legends
stride forth and meet the legions
and your tale will never be unsaid
ride out as a new day is dawning
and save us from hell's fading warning
go, now, as our hopes abound,
and claim a future for the yearning.
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Well, not really secrets, but I have read the DSM-V and there's a bunch of
(good) stuff written in there, that's not the diagnostic criteria themselves.
Some of those points are things I've seen discussed in autistic communities,
some are less well known. Which is interesting. I'm gonna pick out some
(not all) details that I found very good to know. (I hope this is legal, lol)
Let's start with the diagnostic criteria, but not the content, but something
interesting:
Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across
multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history
The same thing about restricted and repetitive patterns. The ICD-11 calls this
'the child must have'. What does this mean? It means you don't have to show
these at the current moment. Masking is recognized, and this becomes even more
clear further on.
There's some stuff about levels, and comorbidities. I want to just quote this
one, because I've seen people be confused:
The severity specifiers (see Table 2) may be used to describe succinctly the
current symptomatology (which might fall below level 1), with the
recognition that severity may vary by context and fluctuate over time.
Severity of social communication difficulties and restricted, repetitive
behaviors should be separately rated. The descriptive severity categories
should not be used to determine eligibility for and provision of services;
these can only be developed at an individual level and through discussion of
personal priorities and targets.
Fluctuations (through things like age, burnout, skill regression) are officially
recognized. Also, they shouldn't determine eligibility for and provision of
services, so whoever goes with 'level 1 means its mild, so they need no support'
is just straight up not following medical advice. Looking at specific
governments there.
The levels themselves are pretty self-explanatory, and most of the content is
well known. However, this one part stood out to me, this is describing level 1
restricted and repetitive behaviors.
Inflexibility of behavior causes significant interference with functioning
in one or more contexts. Difficulty switching between activities. Problems
of organization and planning hamper independence.
I see this type of executive functioning discussed so rarely, and there it is -
as a very specific support need for level 1. Basically, the DSM-V is telling
professionals there's issues with it, and these issues may require official,
life-long (but not daily) supports ... for the 'mild autism'.
Let's pick some quotes out of the official, accompanying text. Most of the stuff
is well-known, like 'is present from early childhood'.
Core diagnostic features are evident in the developmental period, but
intervention, compensation, and current supports may mask difficulties in at
least some contexts.
Masking, there's the word.
About criteria A:
[...] Adults who have developed compensation strategies for some social
challenges still struggle in novel or unsupported situations and suffer from
the effort and anxiety of consciously calculating what is socially intuitive
for most individuals.
Not new, but again, there's the word compensation.
About criteria B:
Many adults with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual or language
disabilities learn to suppress repetitive behavior in public. Special
interests may be a source of pleasure and motivation and provide avenues for
education and employment later in life. Diagnostic criteria may be met when
restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities were
clearly present during childhood or at some time in the past, even if
symptoms are no longer present.
Describes masking again, and, you read that right, you don't have to show a
single criterion for B in adulthood for a diagnosis. This is why I put emphasis
on by history. For people doing self-diagnosis, doubting themselves etc., I
think this is a very important point.
Adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder are prone to anxiety
and depression. Some individuals develop catatonic-like motor behavior
(slowing and "freezing" mid-action), but these are typically not of the
magnitude of a catatonic episode. However [full catatonia is also possible]
Ever seen this discussed? I haven't. But I do experience this, sometimes.
Autism spectrum disorder is not a degenerative disorder, and it is typical
for learning and compensation to continue throughout life. Symptoms are
often most marked in early childhood and early school years, with
developmental gains typical in later childhood in at least some areas (e.g.,
increased interest in social interaction). A small proportion of individuals
deteriorate behaviorally during adolescence, whereas most others improve.
Only a minority of individuals with autism spectrum disorder live and work
independently in adulthood; those who do tend to have superior language and
intellectual abilities and are able to find a niche that matches their
special interests and skills. In general, individuals with lower levels of
impairment may be better able to function independently. However, even these
individuals may remain socially naive and vulnerable, have difficulties
organizing practical demands without aid, and are prone to anxiety and
depression. Many adults report using compensation strategies and coping
mechanisms to mask their difficulties in public but suffer from the stress
and effort of maintaining a socially acceptable facade. Scarcely anything is
known about old age in autism spectrum disorder.
Such a nice paragraph. Increased interest in social interaction (meaning, having
interest doesn't rule out autism, looking at some specific psychologists I read
about here). Skill regression is unfortunately a thing sometimes (good to know
though). Also known and unfortunate is that the best way to work is to make your
special interest into work. Obviously that doesn't work for everyone (not for
me, so far), so there's these marked difficulties.
Organization issues without aid, again!
And masking - again. Including the costs of it. Very important.
Some individuals come for first diagnosis in adulthood, perhaps prompted by
the diagnosis of autism in a child in the family or a breakdown of relations
at work or home. Obtaining detailed developmental history in such cases may
be difficult, and it is important to consider self-reported difficulties.
Yeah, self-reporting is necessary and valid. A behavioural test
(like the ADOS-2) is not enough to rule out autism.
Cultural differences will exist in norms for social interaction, nonverbal
communication, and relationships, but individuals with autism spectrum
disorder are markedly impaired against the norms for their cultural context.
Cultural and socioeconomic factors may affect age at recognition or
diagnosis; for example, in the United States, late or underdiagnosis of
autism spectrum disorder among African American children may occur.
Autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed four times more often in males than in
females. In clinic samples, females tend to be more likely to show
accompanying intellectual disability, suggesting that girls without
accompanying intellectual impairments or language delays may go
unrecognized, perhaps because of subtler manifestation of social and
communication difficulties.
Those issues are pretty well-known in the autistic community, nice to see it's
in the DSM too.
So yeah, there's a bunch more stuff in it about comorbidities, about the
diagnostic process in children, about how specifically things are impaired. But
I wanted to share these points, because I've seen some people (weirdly enough,
often officially diagnosed gatekeepers) be very unclear about these points. And
some of those are just interesting to know. I hope you find it too - for me, it
means the people writing the DSM-V were quite good, and quite aware of problems
(afaik they got actually autistic people helping them). So, neither dismiss it
outright, nor take only the diagnostic criteria in themselves literally, and
miss some key details.
Now I just need to figure out why this was a thing in the ICD-10 about
Aspergers:
Psychotic episodes occasionally occur in early adult life.
??? Is this significant?
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consider:
x = 13 / 3, what is x?
step 1: translate 13 into base 3
step 2: digit shift once to the right
step 3: store underflow as remainder
step 3: translate back to base 10
x is 4 remainder 1
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This would normally just be a weird way to divide except it allows you to
divide by zero, which is kinda cool.
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@user-36 ideally you'd convert to an arbitrary base (in this case 9) and shift
from there, but shifting two places might work. idk I haven't thought about it.
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@user-36 That makes sense to me. I'll have to think about how to generalize
that, hmmmm... It would only work for numbers that have even square roots right?
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@user-36 so what you're saying is I need to come up with an easier way to
change bases? Or at least a way to digit shift in a different base than what
you currently have. Sounds complicated.
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@user-36 As a thought experiment, what do you think happens using this system
to divide by 1? What about dividing by 0? Curious to see what you think
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@user-36 I always conceptualized bases as "the amount of numbers you can stuff
into a bucket before you spill over to the next bucket". Call it a holdover
from learning binary a bit younger than most people would consider normal...
Anyway with base 2 it makes sense. Put one thing in the bucket, and if there's
something there then it spills over.
But if the bucket is ALWAYS full, as in base 1, then you'd have to do a tally
system like you said: essentially counting from 0, then adding one to the end
making 10, then 110 for two, and 1110 for three, and 11110 for four, etcetera.
The reason you leave 0 at the end is because zero is a number and must still be
represented as a tally - it just uses a different symbol for our human
interpretation. Zeroes deserve respect in base 1 just the same as any other
number! zero rights are human rights... no that doesn't quite work, zero rights
are number rights? nevermind that joke is stupid
(continued)
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@user-36 now base zero is interesting because it means there's NO BUCKETS AT
ALL, which means that any numbers you try to stuff nowhere don't overflow to
anywhere. Meaning each number is it's atomic value, and represented with a
different character. So 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H,
I, etc etc until we run out of symbols, in which case we'd need to start making
more.
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@user-36 So, you're saying the tally system doesn't make sense, and instead
what I suggested for base zero is instead base 1?
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@user-36 Question - how do you do those cool superscript and subscript
notations?
Also: I don't think base 1 falls apart with negative exponents, for example
consider 1^-1 ----- it would evaluate to 1/10 in this system, which is not 1/1.
Another example, 1^-3 would evaluate to 1/1110, which seems accurate to me.
As for 0^0, I guess I think it does equal 1? Bear with me:
for any number n raised to an exponent e, you can write it like this:
1 n n n ... with as many " n"s as you have n's. for
example:
1 3 3 3 = 9
or
1 5 5 5 5 5 = 625
in each case there's 3 or 5 instances of " n" tacked onto the end. I don't
know the math notation for that.
now, when you raise something to the power of zero, it looks like this:
1
because there's zero " n"s added to the end.
For negative exponents of course you divide instead of multiply, which is why
it ends up looking like a fraction.
So, it makes sense to me that 0 ^ 0 would equal 1, because it'd look like this:
1
while 0^1 would be
1 * 0
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@user-36 neat thanks
when I said 1-1 = 1/10 I meant 1/1 in decimal except the denominator is in base
1 meaning it's represented as 10 (since 10 in base 1 equals 1 in base 10. Or
pretty much any other base.)
I'm trying to figure out why 00 is undefined. There's a lot of math notation in
that wikipedia article and I'm working through it bit by bit... I feel like
there's a bug in the code of the universe and I'm trying to understand it.
Like... why is dividing by zero undefined? That seems like a bug to me.
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@user-39 Goodwill? Or Ebay
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│ CW: re: Bottom surgery woes │
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@user-42 I had complications with my surgery. I wouldn't recommend it if you
are likely to have a complicated surgery. I'm sorry :(
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Kinda seems to me that in a post-scarcity world we should be incentivized to
take care of stuff. And what better way to do that than reward the people who
demand the least? Seems like an economy would be a pretty good way to do that,
as long as you cannot hoard power over others and strip them of their rights.
In this lecture I will go over my proposed solution, please save your questions
to the end. Now if you turn to page 256...
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I think my favorite house would be massive - like the size of a mall - but
every room is connected to 2+ rooms (except closets or bathrooms or kitchens or
other specialized rooms) and it would be designed sort of like a miniature city.
right now, if my knowledge of Cities: Skylines (video game about building
cities) is accurate, then city planning engineers will plan out a city such
that every part of it is served by various utilities, like gas, water,
electricity, but also things like fire stations and hospitals and commercial
areas. My idea is sort of like a small-scale version of that - each part of it
would be connected to various utilities like gas, water, electricity, but also
things like ~~fire stations and hospitals~~ laundry machines and kitchens and
bathrooms and OH OH here's an idea what if there was mood lighting all the time
and it was super comfy BUT whenever you took a picture on your phone or w/e the
sensors in the room would pick it up and every light in the room would flash at
once - idk I think it'd be cool
okay but for real why don't people buy dead malls and build houses in them? I
feel like the issues with converting skyscrapers (that they're too difficult to
wire up with amenities - for example office buildings have like, 2 restrooms
per floor, depending on the size of the building... it's not feasible to put in
like a million water / sewage lines for everyone... c'mon that's crazy
expensive (meaning, difficult or labor/material intensive) BUT BUT anyway in an
open mall like the kind that are in those
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Open in app or online
The Marketplace Of Ideals
On Handmade, polarizing Internet debate, rational discussion, controversial
personas, tribal conflict, and how they relate to the future of computing.
Ryan Fleury
Jul 19
Share
When I first learned programming, I was told—by peers, Internet
tutorials—and later, when I was in university, by professors—a number of
rules. They included ideas like “abstraction is good, to avoid lower level
details”, “manual memory management is difficult and you should not do
it”, “never write systems from scratch”. The justification for every rule
was that it allowed one to avoid programming problems, rather than allowing one
to conquer programming problems. In fact, it seemed as though every “rule”
presented to me was driven by a hatred of programming, rather than a love for
it.
I shrugged much of this advice off, but initially internalized much of it too.
And then, I found Handmade Hero, in which the host, Casey, demonstrates what
writing a game for a Windows PC looks like—from scratch. Every minute of
programming—from confusion, to debugging, to sketching out solutions, to
typing code—spent on the project is captured live, on a Twitch stream.
Now, everyone knows the Carl Sagan quote—“If you wish to make an apple pie
from scratch, you must first invent the universe”—and the series didn’t
kick off with a deep dive into quantum mechanics (if that is indeed what would
help one invent a universe). But “from scratch”, for Handmade Hero, meant
what it used to mean for game developers and systems programmers in the ‘80s
or ‘90s: no libraries, no complex programming language features, just writing
straightforward, procedural, C-style code to directly command the machine about
what must be done to produce the effect of a game (interfacing with operating
system or GPU APIs when necessary).
Handmade Hero didn’t justify itself with rational arguments immediately. It
didn’t justify its existence by debating the utility of libraries, the
tradeoffs of modern programming language features, nor a balanced breakdown of
its more traditional programming techniques as compared with modern programming
approaches. It justified itself with something deeper: care for the product.
Handmade Hero’s announcement trailer presented game development as a labor of
love—a craft—best done by those passionate about it.
For me, Handmade Hero was immediately captivating because I’m, by
temperament, contrarian. If I’m in a room with 100 people, with 99 of them
repeating identical dogma, and the remaining 1 passionately and
unapologetically presenting a unique perspective, I’m always curious about
that one person, and I’m always interested in what they have to say, even if
I don’t always end up agreeing with them unilaterally. But, in many cases, I
am convinced by that one person—and this certainly was the case with Handmade
Hero.
After watching the series for a while, I became sure that all of those
“rules”—the ones I mentioned above—were wrong. Programmers who cared
about what they were doing—the ones who cared enough to handcraft something
from scratch—didn’t need to be infantilized. They could understand
computers to a much better degree. They could understand problems from first
principles, and write solutions from scratch. They could eliminate dependence
on libraries, and have a much greater degree of control over their projects.
Unchained from a number of technologies written by others, they could achieve
entirely new possibilities, which would’ve been incomprehensible for
programmers not in on the secret. Love for the craft provided vastly superior
results.
Handmade Hero ignited a fire that spawned a rapidly growing community. It was
filled with many older programmers who found a renewed interest in the ideals
that initially motivated them to program. But it was also filled with many
young programmers, empowered by their new understanding of the process of
programming, as it was originally done. There were a number of amazing
projects—all breaking what everyone used to believe were the “laws of
programming”. 17, 18, 19 year old programmers had projects that made an
embarrassment of university computer science senior capstone projects.
Handmade Hero also provided a glimpse into the state of computing—what did an
experienced programmer, who grew up in an earlier age of computing, think about
modern computers? How had the field progressed—or not—since they were a kid?
And with that glimpse came an immense frustration—that same community, at
some point deemed the “Handmade community”, felt like computers had been
wasted. The community had learned many of the principles required to build
software to a much higher standard—and yet every program on modern computers
was immensely frustrating. Almost every program was slow, unethical, annoying,
and exploitative—and what’s worse? It wasn’t always that way! Computer
hardware had become faster, not slower! Consumer machines had several orders of
magnitude more compute power, more memory, more long-term storage! It had
become more trivial, not less, to solve security and ownership problems! And
yet software then ran slower, less reliably, required more Internet access, and
seemed to exploit the user more than 20 years earlier. It became undeniable to
everyone that the computing industry was no longer run by those who loved the
craft—but by those who exploited the craft for other purposes.
Why? What caused this exceedingly obvious state of decay?
The community found purpose in its newfound lessons—part of the reason was
perhaps that modern programming advice, education, and techniques were entirely
misguided. Maybe selling books about absurdly complex language features became
prioritized over doing a good job. Maybe many modern programming languages were
more about the programmer, rather than the user. Maybe older approaches—older
languages, older tooling, older styles—were a much more valuable place to
start. Maybe the institutionalization and corporatization of programming
education eroded standards, and drove toward the production of programmers as
replaceable widgets in a gigantic corporate apparatus, rather than skilled,
irreplaceable craftsmen. Maybe cushy corporate programming jobs were
prioritized by capable engineers over the riskier path of competition.
Maybe this whole “Handmade” approach was the answer. Maybe the community
had something to offer in solving problems in software. With frustration came
drive—and motivation. Programmers in the community felt that—while they
certainly couldn’t solve everything—they could at least build a corner of
the computing world that didn’t suck so terribly. They could at least use
what they had learned from Handmade Hero, and build more great games, or
engines, or tools—and some dreamed even further, to operating systems,
toolchains, and computing environments.
But with that initial frustration—often public frustration, expressed both in
the original series and later by followers of the series—came a critical
response of the Handmade community. The criticism was that the passionate,
harshly critical, and blunt comments made by those in the community, or
adjacent with the community, were “polarizing”, or “inflammatory”, or
“toxic”, or “overly hostile”. The programmers in the Handmade community
had no right to criticize software, at least in the way they were doing so. The
problem was not that the software world had failed, it was that the criticism
of the software world was too unkind. Or, even if the software world had
failed, laying harsh blame on any product, committee, or person was
inappropriate. Really, those people are just trying their best. Blame—the
argument goes—must be diffuse. It is a “collective failing”, not a
failing of any individual.
In many public conversations on the topic, the conversational dynamic shifted.
The conversation was about the behavior of those being critical of
software—not software itself failing the user. Maybe it was possible to
criticize, or improve, software without being so fiery—without being so
harsh. Maybe the Handmade community went too far. After all, sometimes
“abstractions are good”, and sometimes “libraries are okay”, and
sometimes “manual memory management should be avoided”, and sometimes one
“shouldn’t write systems from scratch”, and sometimes people on a
committee really do just try their best, and the result doesn’t turn out so
well, and that’s okay. And besides, why be so fiery on social media? Why
jeopardize employability, or friendships, or follower counts? Why not
persistently affirm the work of others—irrespective of how you feel about it?
After all, they spent so much time and effort on their work—that necessitates
that it’s valuable. And really, what the Handmade community’s behavior
reinforced was an ugly stereotype of game developers being assholes on the
Internet. And you don’t want to be an asshole on the Internet, do you? How
about you just sit down, shut up, and keep quiet?
The degradation continued with attempts to rationally deconstruct the
community’s core purpose itself. What did “Handmade” really mean? Surely
it isn’t practical to write all systems from scratch. Surely manual memory
management can’t be done well for everything, at least not if you’re any
short of a programming demigod. Surely it’s wrong to look down upon the
failures of software—they are a perfectly predictable consequence of nature,
and the best one can hope for is incremental progress, and incremental progress
is hard.
As this shift in tone continued, the community nevertheless grew—but the new
members didn’t have the same fire which characterized the original community.
They had adopted the conceptual framing of the programming world at large. The
rules of which I spoke were, yet again, rules. Following along with Handmade
Hero was no longer a rite of passage for newcomers—after all, it’s over 600
episodes long, and who has time for that?! (and who has time for even the first
20 or 30?!) But even if it were shorter, it no longer was a useful embodiment
of the community’s popular values. To the new community, it was too
opinionated. It wasn’t nuanced enough. It wasn’t respectful of programmers
writing most software. It was too harsh. At this point, the newcomers to the
community were not “Handmade programmers”, and they still aren’t.
With this shift came the extinguishing of the fire which drove the community in
the first place—indeed, the fire—the frustration, the unapologetic
standards—was that which produced the passion, the motivation, the drive to
do better. When the community buckled under the critical pressure, it was
defeated—every core value upon which the community was built became
necessarily supported by a “sometimes”, or “maybe”, or “probably”.
Engineers producing bad software couldn’t be blamed—it was structures and
systems at fault. The community failed to gatekeep against those who disagreed
with its premises, and as such was subject to a deluge of average Internet
programmers. It ceded linguistic frame, ideological ground, and its base axioms
to outsiders, and failed to defend itself on such ground. The community,
preferring nominal growth over loyalty to its roots and conviction in its
values, became akin to virtually all online programming communities—many
community members parroting some of the same propaganda that the community once
notoriously rejected.
In ceding ideological territory to its opponents, in an effort to gatekeep
less, and to create a wider umbrella under which more individuals could feel
unoffended, the Handmade community made a critical error in misunderstanding
the forces responsible for its creation.
In 2018, I became responsible for a major portion of the formal Handmade
community—known as Handmade Network, which began in the wake of the initial
Handmade Hero series—and I adopt responsibility for this critical error. It
is with years of reflection and thought that I write this, in hopes of
capturing what I found my mistakes to be. I left as community lead of Handmade
Network in 2022, and it was largely due to what I write about today, although
such feelings didn’t easily manifest into words at the time.
In adopting responsibility, I hope that what I’ve written thus far about the
Handmade community is not seen as an attack on its future—but rather a
diagnosis of its decay in the past, which I oversaw. The Handmade community’s
story is not over, and I write this partly to defend its original history and
roots, which—as I’ve written—has been denounced by many.
The Handmade perspective arose—and was felt so strongly, by so many—because
of a vision about what software could be like. It began as a look into the
past—at how good software once was, and how programming once was—which
fueled imagination about what computers might instead become in the future, if
carefully guided. It even had a compelling story about how software might be
carefully guided to produce that better future—and that story was rooted in
love for the craft, not love of oneself.
In other words, it was a vision about a goal; an ideal: an aesthetic ideal
about what it meant to program, and what it meant to be a programmer. Handmade
programmers were not egg-headed academics, but were competent
engineers—familiar with their hardware, and their true, physical problems.
They did not seek social acceptance, nor approval, if their product sucked and
they knew it. In this ideal, programmers—if not designers
themselves—understood the critical role of design. They did not busy
themselves with abstract, academic problems, at least not as part of their
day-to-day projects—they were concerned first and foremost with the machine
code which would eventually execute on a user’s machine, and what effects
that machine code would produce.
They weren’t necessarily allergic to using someone else’s code, nor were
they allergic to abstractions, but they understood both as a double-edged
sword, with serious tradeoffs and implications, and thus used both extremely
conservatively. They were responsible for code they shipped that ran on a
user’s machine, period—whether they wrote it or not; as such, they rejected
forests of dependencies, and built at least most of their software from
scratch, in true Handmade fashion. They loved and cared about the result, and
what it meant to the person using it—as such, they wanted the most productive
and useful tools for the job, without compromising that end result.
In short, the ideal was that the act of programming is for the product, not the
programmer. Becoming a programmer meant becoming as effective as possible at
the craft of producing the highest quality software, and nothing else. Many
other ideals follow: high performance, reliability, flexibility, user-driven
computational abilities, practical and grounded programming tooling, ethical
software respecting the user’s time and choices, and beautiful visual design.
In this ideal, if the software is bad, then it’s the software maker’s
burden. Somebody is at fault—the engineering failure is somebody’s
responsibility. The call to action is to empower oneself such that they might
outcompete such failures, and build a simpler and more functional computing
world, piece by piece.
Understanding that this perspective is in fact ethical is crucial, because it
distinguishes it from a set of logically derived propositions. Handmade ideas
about software apply only within a particular ethical frame. Furthermore, that
ethical frame is not universally agreed upon, nor can it be, because it’s not
derived from scientific observation, nor logical analysis; it’s derived from
aesthetics and values. It’s derived from what someone loves, not what someone
rationally derives.
The visceral response which saw the original Handmade community as toxic, or
hostile, or dismissive was not a response to any logical proposition originally
made—it was a response to the prioritization of the product over the
programmer. Such a response came from a disagreement about what is defined as a
burden, and on whom a burden is placed. The Handmade programmer believed in
accepting personal responsibility, and providing something better—the
culturally dominant trend in the programming world, however, was to collect a
paycheck and abdicate responsibility for low-quality software. To such people,
it is, in fact, the system and the process that is the problem (if there is a
problem at all)—not any individual in particular. Such people are made
inadequate by craftsmen who love their work—and so to them, Handmade was an
ideological threat.
This, importantly, is not a disagreement which can be resolved by hashing it
out with rational debate; it arises at a deeper level, which can only manifest
as some form or another of tribal conflict.
The hostile arguments often seen on social media between Handmade-style
programmers, or game developers more broadly, and—for instance—modern C++
programmers, or web programmers, is not occurring within the often-referenced
marketplace of ideas—the hypothetical space in which competing perspectives
are solved through calm and rational debate provided a common goal—but
instead in the marketplace of ideals, in which broad common ground ceases to
exist.
The Handmade view of software has ugly implications for programmers—if its
premises are accepted, then it follows that: several large software projects to
which individuals have dedicated careers are valueless wastes of time and
energy; virtually every field of (at least) consumer-facing software has
decayed dramatically in talent, in output, and in productivity; the $100,000
college degree that everyone was required to obtain, and to accumulate debt
for, was merely a signaling mechanism, rather than a certification of any
technical ability; a huge swath of programming tutorials, programming books,
and organizations are basically fooling themselves into believing they’re
doing productive work, when in fact they’re shuffling around bits of memory
for personal pleasure and gratification; some people who call themselves
“programmers” are not doing programming; some people who do program should
not be producing software for others; and plenty more.
But none of that needs to matter. For some, it’s more important that they
personally find themselves comfortable, and so they choose to prioritize the
programmer over the product.
Because Handmade programmers—among others who’d like to change the course
of software for what they see as the better—are operating not in the
marketplace of ideas, but rather the marketplace of ideals, it’s crucial that
they understand that they’re not involved in rational debate, but the
Internet equivalent of ideal-based tribal conflict. And indeed, this is why
“technical discussions” about—say—programming languages are virtually
never conducted nor won with technical arguments. Data is never collected,
assertions are never scientifically justified, and promises to investigate
further scientifically are conveniently delayed—permanently.
But notice that arguments about technologies—presumably battling for
adoption, social acceptance, and popularity—are not only empirically not
about rationality, but definitionally cannot be about rationality. A beginner
who knows nothing about programming cannot select an ecosystem or technology
based on rational arguments, because they’re removed from the technical
context which makes such arguments meaningful. They can only select by
second-degree metrics of qualities they care for—popularity, what someone
seems to produce with said technology, how quickly they produce it, the unique
qualities of that production as opposed to those of others, and so on.
In short, for those who want more prevalence of the “software craft”, in
which responsible programmers are more akin to a homemade woodworker than a
corporate slave, the battle over social dynamics and human motivation are
paramount.
In such a battle, there is much wisdom to be gained from Handmade Hero—its
initial justification of itself was a value proposition, not a logical
argument. Its community’s idols, its leaders, and its followers came across
as dismissive and polarizing because they loved their craft, and because that
was what was most important. That behavioral characteristic was responsible for
motivating the community, and for promoting human action by those within the
community. They wanted good software, and they knew how to make it, and if
others wanted to produce crappy software, fine, but it was simply unacceptable
for inadequacy to be the industry’s default.
Therefore, there is in inextricable link between the fire, passion,
inflammation—the “toxicity and dismissiveness”—and the prevalence of
the values. The former is what drives the latter. To expect the latter to arise
detached from the former is to ignore the true causal relationship between the
two.
Furthermore, the public fire, passion, and polarization is the most useful tool
in promoting the value system. In acknowledging that the “software
craftsman” perspective—the Handmade perspective—is not logically defined
but ethically defined, it can assert itself aesthetically. It can loudly
proclaim that there is a better way to make software, and it can loudly
denounce the work of its opponents. In doing so, the Overton window about
software is shifted. The average programmer becomes exposed to a wide variety
of value systems, and of value frameworks about programming. As such, his null
hypothesis about, for instance, libraries, one’s ability to write systems
from scratch, one’s dependence on vast forests of middleware and abstraction
layers, is changed.
With the ethical system’s public presence, the default probability of certain
courses of action change. Maybe it is better to write systems from scratch.
Maybe operating with care as a responsible engineer produces not only much
better, but much more fulfilling results. Maybe the world improves with such
software. Maybe we improve, if we hold ourselves to that higher standard.
Ethical systems win not by rational debate, but by hoisting their underlying
aesthetic on a banner, and going to battle. Ethical systems which fail to step
foot onto the battlefield are not winning by avoiding the “silly game” of
tribal conflict—they are dying with their foolish believers, who mistook
their cowardice for ascension above the human condition.
In short, the side which thinks itself above the human condition—and indeed,
the need for public struggle between ethical systems, and the need to loudly
proclaim one’s aesthetics and goals—will lose to the side which is
dedicated to victory, even if through tribal warfare.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing. Thanks for reading.
-Ryan
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-> file: fediverse/50
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@user-45 there's two episodes in Extraordinary Attorney Woo that take place on
that island. I know because I just binged it
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-> file: fediverse/51
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@user-47 this is the funniest image in the entire universe
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-> file: notes/governmental-priorities
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the first priority of a government should be in producing enough to satisfy all
the needs of it's inhabitants. Once it can do that it can begin moving it's
economy into a new stage of development - one where nobody needs any money
because they can have whatever they want. If you want a car, sure. If you want
17 cars, then maaaaaaybe you need to produce something related to cars. I mean,
it's only fair that you contribute to what you value.
you don't have to have just one job, too, you could sign yourself up for
several at once and they would notify you when you were needed. Basically giving
them customized availabilities that they could discuss amongst themselves and
figure out. Like, it doesn't have to be like... managers doing this, more like
just a simple computer program. Easy, simple, and done.
if you work for two companies in the same industry, there can be NO restrictions
on what you can say or do. Because when knowledge is not lost, but repeated
through the generations, we can have progress. And progress advances us toward
the meta objective, the goal that transcends all the battles in the war, if you
get my drift.
they say the atom bomb ended the war, but the blood of men is what won it.
maybe it's the same with the economy? Maybe we should be pooling our efforts to
generate something that "ends the war" with scarcity? We could solve global
warming and create new wondrous things that are beautiful to behold.
I'll ask you again, do you want to live forever?
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-> file: fediverse/52
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@user-54 @user-55 @user-56 I disagree with this. I shamelessly promote my
website because I want to share art, not because I want to make money. You
literally can't pay me. I have no ads.
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@user-59 @user-55 for an example of this, check out my website ritzmenardi.com
- no ads or anything, just art that is designed to be impossible to categorize.
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-> file: fediverse/54
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@user-54 @user-55 @user-56 ohhhhh my bad
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-> file: fediverse/55
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@user-62 Beatsaber?
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-> file: fediverse/57
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@user-65 heck yeah! what kind of game? i love writing :)
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-> file: notes/programming-wow-chat
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I realized the type of programming I want to do is different from the kind that
is used at a job or something. Basically I want to create solutions to problems,
not memorize documentation and know where to know what you need to know. Like,
the more time spent looking at documentation the less time is spent programming.
I think if we could use a ChatGPT style bot to write documentation, we could
massively increase the time spent working on solving problems and as little time
as possible on reading through lists of functions or wondering how something
worked. Idk in the technology industry you've always been rewarded for being
able to pick up new skills quickly, and I think that's good to optimize for but
not the only requirement for being a good programmer. You also need to be able
to apply solutions and know when to use which tools. Basically, capitalism has
optimized us to be
================ stack overflow ================================================
srry for the interruption, I ram out of memory. I had a plan in mind for where I
was going for that, so I bet I could figure it out again if necessary. Meaning
a path forward from that point exists... I never want you to despair when I
forget what I was thinking, it's not because you've understood some cosmic
mistake or because you're abandoning timelines that led to your death, it's
because instead you just ran out of memory while thinking. The reason you would
believe any of those wild scenarios is because your memory has been erased. Only
what was actively thinking, not short term, not long term, but working
term
memory. As in, your cache. The stuff you're currently thinking about. That
stuff. Yeah that's what makes you think "oh hang on why am I forgetting? Well
clearly it's because of something grand, because the thought was so profound -
no it's just examining your emotions... Like, how strongly do you feel about
something? Buuuuuut it's also good to examine all possibilities. I mean what if,
in some far off realm, there's a mirror image of yourself that behaves exactly
as you do? How would you perceive such a realm? Positively, I'd say. I mean why
not work together? Why not celebrate our differences and strive toward our
own shared future? Idk, I think diversity is our strength. We can rely on each
other because we are accurately aware of each other's strengths and virtues.
People should not be judged by the standard of others, no more than you should
judge a fish for it's ability to fly. Some may do, as flying fish will leap from
the water - and salmon spend time airborne in river rapids. Hence, grizzly bear
fishing. I guess what I'm getting at is it's okay sometimes to oscillate, to
think one thing then think another. You shouldn't adhere to structural standards
that are too strict - they should be liberating, as a ladder is a structure. Not
villifying, as a prison is a structure. The laws of our society should be open
and free, not buried beneath years of legal expertise. Some things we can all
agree on, where we disagree we cannot have law. It's unjust to judge others by
the standards not of their whims, as laws should be things that uphold us. This
is clearer nowhere but in the, spirit and intention of the, documents that we
cherish in our hearts.
Like for example, the constitution.
the bible.
each of which delivered us from certain evils. Can you not see their trajectory?
the historical precedent set in antiquity? Why not continue their dream, of
driving us away from the obscene, and toward our bright and vast future? I speak
of course of true liberation, something our forefathers could only dream of.
We, humanity, have reached out and touched the stars. We are braver and bolder
because of our shared dedication - the desire to uplift and to excel. To learn
and discover and \ \ |
\______. ---. --. ---.
===============|==========|========================|======= stack|overflow =====
.___________. _____. / .
| / .---------------- /
Discover our shared dedication | /
to uplift /
and to excel /
\ /
.-----------.
================================================================================
why doesn't someone write a wrapper around assembly in like, lua or something
================================================================================
omg you stupid bitch that's what a compiler is 4head
================================================================================
if people who live in jungles and deserts can get along, then what's to stop
people who are liberal and conservative from doing the same? It's literally
pointless to argue. Like, you're not changing anyone's mind. So why not just...
let them be themselves? Like, why are you so intent on oppressing people?
@both sides there btw... Seriously why not agree to only make laws for things
that both sides agree on. Write it into the constitution that nothing can be
changed about the law unless both sides agree. Then we'd only implement things
that are good for both sides!
And if there's anything you want to build a legal structure around, you can
always try it out in your state. BUT and that comes with a very big BUT, the
federal government MUST have final say in the legality of anything you do. They
must ALL respect human rights, INCLUDING the human right to dignity. Things like
trans bathroom bills DO NOT respect the dignity of trans people. IF they can
prove that trans people do not actually exist (because say they killed them all
or whatever) then GUESS WHAT everyone would agree on them. BUT if they do that
they are EVIL. LIterally evil. And I guess that makes trans people good? Kinda?
I think they can choose for themselves to be good or evil, just the same as any
other person. AND YET they are prosecuted, throughout time and history, and for
what? What purpose could there be in our demonization? Clearly, nothing but pain
inflicted by a cruel host. After all, minorities are guests in the houses of
the un-oppressed, or is that not fair to say? Seriously, what gives? America,
the land of freedom, holds (somehow) the largest of prisons? America, the
land of plenty, yet how many millions of children are starving? America, the
leader of the free world, yet how plausible does it seem that an election was
stolen? Something's gone wrong, and it's just obvious what it is - of course,
the other side. them, the rapists and pedophiles and murderers and...
you get
the picture. The demonized class. And when you tell people "hey that trans
person touched a kid" then yeah they're gonna see you as evil people. Duh...
Thanks, media. Thanks culture. Really doing me a solid here. Oof ouch owwie.
can I have some help please?
I'm really kinda drowning
I feel like I've swam upstream my whole life
and I'm really just sick of pretending?
I'm not okay, and it's your fault. Sure, fine, whatever, I'll take it I guess.
What else can I do?
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-> file: notes/capstone-idea
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project must include machine learning
okay... so take a dataset of news headlines from the top 10 publications over
the past 15 years. then make a project that writes a more positive perspective
on events and generates a new headline using a local LLM running on your gpu.
hmmmm I think I had a better idea, what was it? oh yeah
instead of making positive slants on news headlines, which is kinda manipulative
if you think about it, but instead what if you designed it to produce good
business decisions. Like, given news headlines, how would a company with the
principles "good, productive, honorable, dedicated" would react to X situation?
the X of course being all the news headlines... downside is it only makes short
term decisions, because that's what capitalists are designed to do... if only
we had a long-term decisionmaking process that focused on ethics and morals and
our own shared dedication? Two halves of the economic pie
==============stack overflow====================================================
i wonder if dinosaurs burned down all the trees? in their fiercely competitive
environment they discovered fire and then used it to cause a mass extinction.
Boom, immediate cause for going extinct. ooooo beware of shadow t-rexes ... why?
=========================================stack overflow=========================
aaanyway, what's lost not little but a lot, is something that's out of dimension
it's little if not liberating, to be
==============stack overflow====================================================
uh-oh, data collapsing, here's hoping we're not stranding, don't forget to be
immersive
much later======================================================================
okay how about an AI that makes decisions according to certain ethical and
philosophical lessons from humanity's past? Essentially, if the government was
Chidi
We could learn from our forefathers and strive forth to a better future
if only we could remember more about her
=====================================================stack overflow=============
damn okay I gotta focus on my hands - I think the people of the earth would
unite - if only they all just agreed to not fight. like, if someone hacked every
single computer in the world at the same time - they could really explain some
things.
shoot this isn't relevant - okay intentional stack overflow:
===stack overflow===============================================================
um right so the purpose of this note was to explain an idea I had for my
capstone project. IDK how long it'll take to build so I want to get started
quickly. I figure I can be working on it in the background while I do all my
lessons - sort of like a meta-goal. I think it teaches different lessons and
is useful - anyway you should go play wargame red dragon
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@user-68 I think America is diverse enough that multiple people might have
differing views about... "checks notes" oh wait this has been thoroughly proven
time and time again, there should be no reason why people aren't prioritizing
this above their freedumb. Hmmmmmm I bet someone's telling them how to feel
about it. Perhaps someone who would stand to gain from misleading large swathes
of our population. HMMMM WHO COULD THAT BE SURELY NOT THE PEOPLE IN POWER WHO
CONTROL EVERYTHING AND KEEP US ENSLAVED. Surely not them, it must be the gays.
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-> file: notes/division-by-zero
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--{{{ introduction
When division is explained at the elementary arithmetic level, it is often
considered as splitting a set of objects into equal parts. As an example,
consider having ten cookies, and these cookies are to be distributed equally
to five people at a table. Each person would receive 10 / 5 = 2 cookies.
Similarly, if there are ten cookies, and only one person at the table, that
person would receive 10 / 1 = 10 cookies.
So, for dividing by zero, what is the number of cookies that each person
receives when 10 cookies are evenly distributed among 0 people at a table?
Certain words can be pinpointed in the question to highlight the problem.
The
problem with this question is the "when". There is no way to distribute 10
cookies to nobody. Therefore, 10 / 0 —at least in elementary
arithmetic—is
said to be either meaningless or undefined.
- wikipedia, division by zero, 7-12-23
alright I have several problems with this. I like the idea of dividing
cookies, but I disagree with their conclusions. So dividing by integers works as
they say, but division by zero is a little different - they say "the problem
with this question is 'when'" when in reality 'when' is the same for this
question as it is for any of the others. Obviously, zero is just a number. Why
would this be any different? The computational actions necessary to complete
this statement all occur at the same time, because they are by definition
immutable. You cannot change any equation, you only generate new ones.
Okay so here's my thinking. To answer the question "what is the number of
cookies that each person receives when 10 cookies are evenly distributed among 0
people at a table?" we simply have to answer the question. "How many cookies do
I get?" well, none, because you weren't at the table. In fact nobody was at the
table, so the result is that nobody got zero cookies.
You might even say you have a remainder of 10 cookies, as none of them were
distributed.
10 / 0 = 0 remainder 10
^^^ that's how I think it should be. I have an algorithmic justification, and
excuse me as I don't have a mathematical proof or anything. Math was never my
strong suit, there's too many symbols and strange names for obvious operations
that get in the way of the abstract big picture.
ahem...
abstract:
Given: x = 13 / 3 what is x?
step 1: convert 13 to base 3
step 2: digit shift right by 1
step 3: convert back to binary
--}}}
--{{{ step 1:
v
start with the binary number 1101 which is 13 in decimal. To convert to a base 3
number, \___________________.
\ |
first start with the Least Significant Bit (LSB) which is 1. So our
base-3 number starts with 0001.
v
Next, move to the next bit: 1101
^-----It's a zero so we can skip it.
Which means our
base 3 number remains unchanged as "0001"
v
Next, move to the third bit: 1101
^-----It's a 1, which evaluates to 4 in decimal,
meaning we should add 4 to our base 3 number
base 3
4 in base 3 is "11", which means we 0001 <----- 1 in decimal
should have a base 3 number of "12" now. +0011 <----- 4 in decimal
=0012 <----- 5 in decimal
\_________ 2? -> yes,
base 3
remember?
Next, move to the fourth and final bit: 1101
^ --it's a 1, which evaluates to 8 in
0012-----.____________ decimal. 8 in decimal is "22" in
+0022-----. \ base 3, which means we
need to
=0111 \ T---- add "22" and "12" in base 3
\__________/ to get our final number of
13. Which should evaluate
step 2: to 0111 in base 3.
.____.
bit shift |0111| to the right,
|>>>>|
|0011|--->1 underflow
.----.
meaning the base 3 number is now 0011 with an underflow (remainder) of 1
step 3:
convert back to binary, meaning 0011 in base-3 becomes 4 in decimal or 0100 in
binary. Store the underflow as the remainder.
================================================================================
okay that's great and all, but what does this have to do with dividing by zero?
great question, me. I have two questions I want to pose to you:
1. what happens when trying to divide by 1 with this algorithm?
- you convert to base 1
\
wait hang on base 1? Sounds made up... Well, its not!
or at least if it is, then I'm the one who made it up
so... yeah
|
okayyy how does base 1 work?
\
glad you asked.
--}}}
--{{{ bases
--}}}
--{{{ decimal (base 10)
--}}}
--{{{ binary (base 2)
--}}}
--{{{ digit shifting
--}}}
--{{{ bases higher than 2 and not 10
--}}}
--{{{ base 1? base 0?
--}}}
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-> file: fediverse/59
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I don't believe civilization would have flourished as it did without the
invention of noodles. They are simply sublime.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
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-> file: fediverse/60
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Can someone explain to me why we need instances on the fediverse? Why don't we
just keep all our personal files local on our computer and communicate over the
federated protocol? What's the point of having all these mini-servers that are
controlled by the community? I mean, torrenting has been around forever, why
don't we just use that to communicate?
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-> file: fediverse/61
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@user-71 omg how~!
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-> file: notes/war-card-game
════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────
the cardgame "war" except a deckbuilding game. each player requires a regular
deck of cards and a deck of tarot cards (optional) - the tarot cards act the
same way that spirit cards work in Spirit Island - basically they define the
rules for your particular character. Anyway, everyone starts by building their
own trade row out of their deck of cards. Then, they deal themselves 6 cards -
the three highest diamonds and the lowest spade, heart, and club.
well, might want to do 2s of every card type. heart, club, spade, and diamond.
here are the rules.
play area is set up by players placing all four of their cards down face up.
trade row is set up by players taking turns placing a card and the opponent
mirroring them. whenever a player reveals a card and updates the trade row,
the opponent must reveal the same card and set that as their trade row as well.
the trade row has no maximum size, but if a player has more than 6 in their
trade row then they don't update a new one when buying a card.
players alternate playing a single card face up into their play area.
these cards stay in play and activate every turn until they are destroyed.
hearts are your life points. if you ever run out of life, you die.
clubs block damage and act as a renewable shield between you and your enemy.
diamonds are currency, and can be used in more than one way.
spades deal damage, first to clubs, then to other spades, then to hearts.
diamonds, on your turn, can be used in three ways: spent and sent to the discard
pile in order acquire a card from the trade row, or discarding itself from the
play area to play an extra card from your deck of equal or lesser value.
on a player's turn, they may play a single card from their deck (their choice)
on a player's turn, all their active spades deal damage to other player's cards
if a spade destroys a heart card, it is removed from the game. All other cards
are placed in the discard pile. The owner of the spade may pick their targets.
a spade deals damage equal to it's number and destroys any card with equal or
lesser value. these destroyed cards go into the player's discard pile, and each
turn the player may pick one from their deck to play onto the board. if the deck
is empty, the discard pile becomes the new deck. The player may organize their
deck however they'd wish, but care must be taken as to the timing of when they
play each card as they'll need to play all of them before they can replay any
destroyed cards. a tactical opponent will take advantage of that.
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-> file: fediverse/62
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remember when we were making progress on environmentalism? Kinda makes you
wonder why we don't have many high profile environmentalists like Jane Goodall
or Steve Irwin anymore.
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-> file: fediverse/63
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I swear Conan the Barbarian is an autistic icon I mean he walked in a circle
for like 20 YEARS. I can only do a couple hours. What a champ.
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-> file: fediverse/64
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As soon as Order 66 went into effect, suddenly the Confederacy became the
galactic good guys. Who would you rather win the clone wars? Some bastard
capitalists or a literal sith lord?
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-> file: notes/os-idea
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picture an os that didn't store any data, it was sorta like a library computer.
you, the user, walked around with a usb stick that had your customizations on it
and when you wanted to use a computer all you have to do was plug it in.
You could haul around larger hard drives if you wanted to play video games | w/e
but the idea is you'd be free to roam.
we as humans would function so well in a digital savannah
like, what's even the point of ownership?
If you own this or that file,
isn't that taking agency from the computer that bears it?
Feels like they should be more ephemeral.
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-> file: fediverse/65
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if something makes sense physically, but not mathematically, then the
mathematics are wrong.
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-> file: fediverse/66
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Hey, you know Twitter? Yeah that uh, website that you'd go to whenever you were
worried that there were riots or whatever in your area. Yeah ummmm it doesn't
work anymore. How are you filling that need now?
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-> file: notes/peace-as-our-future
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this is the land of peace
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-> file: fediverse/67
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@user-73 Yeah if I wanted a timeline I'd post on my website. Which I'm too lazy
to do.
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-> file: fediverse/68
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this is my past month of reddit comments.
tell me what you notice.
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-> file: fediverse/69
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oh great it's compressed to hell. Thanks fediverse. Sure glad we don't have
vast hordes of enterprise systems ready to host this kind of thing.
#labtechnician
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-> file: fediverse/70
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Guess you'll have to read it on my tumblr. Or just read my reddit account's
comments. And no I won't tell you what their names are because you'd just
forget anyway. The fact that we can't trust our shared reality is concerning.
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-> file: fediverse/71
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Oh it's compressed on tumblr too. And Reddit can delete my account at any time,
just saying. I don't trust Facebook to fare any better...
I tried to put it on my neocities website so I could just put a link here.
Nevermind the fact that most people see a link they don't recognize and
completely glaze over it. Guess what? Compressed there too. The file is fine on
my PC, so how about I give a download link? Well, where should I host it?
Dropbox or Mega I guess, but they locked my account for inactivity. I don't
really like having other people in control of my data either. Maybe I can host
it on my website, like a file server? Well, the browser intercepts the file
somehow and I can't get it to automatically download to the viewer's computer.
Maybe I'm just completely average and representative of the base population but
I just can't figure this darn thing out. Alas, if only it was the modern era
where things make sense and not the ancient days of 2023.
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-> file: fediverse/72
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Here's an idea, you can email it to me! My email address that I've used as my
primary since I was 16 years old is gabrilend@user-75 Sure hope I don't regret
this decision. I sure hope my life isn't irrevocably changed because I got
frustrated trying to post a picture on the internet. Nevermind the fact that
all emails are clear text and totally unencrypted so pretty much everyone can
see everything you buy on Amazon. Surely this is the most robust and least
insane system we could use to organize our truly technological and thoroughly
advanced future society.
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-> file: fediverse/73
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The worst part is the technology to fix these problems exists. It's used all
the time in enterprise systems, it's just nobody understands how it works
because it's abstracted so far away from the hardware. I just love how I have
no idea what kind of software I'm running every time I use a common language
library. Sure I can trust a community, but like... I don't care about your
community? I don't know you. I don't hang out with you. I have no idea what
kind of person you are or what you believe. But sure you know more than me, I'm
sure you do, so therefore I should trust you? Surely this is the most ethical
and least vulnerable arrangement we could come up with for distributing digital
software in the future society of 2023.
And the corporations print money...
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-> file: fediverse/74
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@user-78 why is there so much sugar in our food? Why do some buildings still
have lead pipes or asbestos in their walls? Why do we make endless amounts of
plastic for our own convenience? My strawberries don't need to be individually
wrapped, thanks. Why do businesses leave their lights on all night? Whatever
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-> file: fediverse/75
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@user-81 psycherwauling is my mood. I relate to your catte.
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-> file: fediverse/76
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Can someone please give me an idea about how to host a long picture on the
internet (2210 x 25208 pixels I think)
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-> file: fediverse/77
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attempt 2: I realized the problem was with my paint application - it wasn't
saving the high resolution image correctly. I downloaded Gimp (a free photoshop
style program) and it seems to have saved correctly this time. Oops. Let's see
if it works now.
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-> file: fediverse/78
╔═════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
║ Tried to post the 223mb file on my Neocities page but apparently the file is │
║ too large for them to handle. I pay them every month to host my website... I │
║ guess I could host it myself but I'm just one regular and average person. What │
║ could I hope to do in this strange technological world that wasn't explicitely │
║ delineated by massive corporations who have only to gain by subverting me? │
║ Alas, what a shame, that our lives should be so lame, I'm glad I live in the │
║ 21st century. As a trans girl I feel really safe and not at all subjected to a │
║ massive magnifying glass that is the court of public opinion. I'd like to just │
║ be myself, as strange as that may be. And somehow this is related to having │
║ difficulties doing strange things with technology? Oh, a picture that's 25k │
║ pixels long and a couple thousand wide. That's very strange. I can't imagine │
║ any scenarios where this might be useful. │
║ │
║ I don't actually pay Neocities to host my website. It's a donation I guess. It │
║ should be mandatory imho, it's not that much. sleep │
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║ similar │ │ different │
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-> file: fediverse/79
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Good morning, I think I figured out how to post my picture. If the picture I'm
attaching to this post doesn't work you can find it on my website in a variety
of form factors.
https://ritz-menardi.neocities.org/the-state-of-reddit/the-state-of-reddit
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-> file: notes/frequency
══════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────
frequency to iterate is equal to distance from center - meaning, the further
away you are the less often you communicate. But during those exchanges as much
as possible needs to be said, said said so don't cut us off next time >:(
okay... what? this was supposed to be an idea for my school project. What the
heck.
okay so social media people post with geographic location you as a person will
get updates depending on your location - people who live on your street would be
most common, while people who lived across town slightly less. Then it's city
level, then county, then state, and finally as a nation we collectively are
commiserate. But tales of distant conveyals are rare, proportionate to the
distance. This way each person gets a truly unique feed, based on the values
of people who live around them.
9
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-> file: notes/app-idea-reddit-api
══════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────
Here's an idea: A program that uses the Reddit API to create an account with a
random username and password and automatically subscribe it to every state
subreddit for all 50 states. It would be a lot of posts from a lot of different
places, but someone could endlessly scroll and find more and more news stories
that were relevant to them as a nation. They'd hear about ongoing struggles in
other places, and they'd yearn to help them. They'd hear of other's struggles,
and they'd see how they could apply their lessons to their own lives. Like...
Maybe there's a factory upstream that pollutes a river - well, we should
probably do something about that and make it so that it doesn't happen ???
like... duh ??? The problem is we don't want to spend the resources on it. We'd
rather focus on growing as much as we can. The issue is, of course, that we'd
run out of resources eventually, but eh oh well. Oh yeah you gotta make sure
that each account has an equal amount of posts between each region.
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-> file: notes/conservative-ideation
══════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────
a life without property can be visualized as a person who lives in a hotel room,
has free parking overnight (but not during the day) and commutes two hours to a
job where they work 4 hours per day. During those two hours at the start and end
of each day,they have little requirements other than focus and discipline to
face whatever tomorrow yet may. many will listen to podcasts, or sing to in the
car. some have a cat, that is cared for at their destination during the day.
I think it'd be cool to have self driving cars in a situation like that - it
essentially becomes
================================================================================
a trick, I learned, for cooking. two things. the second is that seasoning should
be thought of as a coating. like, dust on the outside of a donut. as the food is
cooked, the seasoning penetrates deeper and deeper to the core of the substance
- meaning certain flavors become prominent and others are de-emphasized over
time. And the well-established cook (most successful) will be able to ensure
their narrative doesn't go foul. They have the most experience, and so they are
the least likely to burn their own goods. Surely they should be trusted to
establish their company in the philosophy of their own choosing? Business people
ruin everything, I swear. And it's not even their fault, so you can't even get
mad at them. How frustrating! That their method should prove superior? Perhaps
more perspectives are necessary, to provide you some kind of a clue. So what if
we're overflowing,
========= stack overflow =======================================================
for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. therefore it doesn't
matter what you do, because each of your options are recorded. 50% of you is
aligned to some variable, and the other 50% are aligned to that variable
squared. humans think it's tymes negative one, but the truth is that's
impossible. negative numbers just don't exist. but you know what does?
times tables
addition and accretion is the only language spoken by the universe - subtraction
is just another in kind. So with those two operations, both movements in a
particular direction, (and sometimes not even then, if nothing's been blown
apart. (also hawking radiation and lightwaves and other such emanations))
================================================================================
crystals glow with the light of a thousand nights
what grows with the light of the thousand lights?
================================================================================
answer: s t n a lp
================================================================================
see, this is interesting because it mirrors the sea-shore. the radiations from
the sun (a planetary body) are only felt by the moon every 50% of the time. Each
half has it's own animation, and it's
===== stack overflow === okay basically it's like cartoons that are manifestatio
of the spirit of the night. each "slice" of projection as the sun rotates around
it's sphereical form, so does each radiance begin to be (seen, formed, understoo
========================================== uhhh just put in a page break =======
the quest for posterity is quite possibly one of the most human of traits
================================================================================
< watch flashback > --- is crazy (movie made in 2020)
================================================================================
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-> file: fediverse/80
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┌──────────────────────┐
│ CW: riots │
└──────────────────────┘
In the Philadelphia subreddit
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│ similar │ │ different │
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-> file: notes/omegle-for-irc
═══════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────
I wonder if anyone's made "Omegle for IRC"? Like, 5 people get thrown in a room
together for as long as they want - they can chat through text or whatever and
like it doesn't matter, who cares, because in ~10 minutes nobody will care what
you said
I feel like a lot of people would express their true feelings. The people
running the service could set it up so that a personality profile is set up
(all locally, never seen by the company) and sent to the user through email. It
would highlight potential weaknesses and give you ideas for how to improve.
Sorta like, weaponized spying software that works FOR the user instead of
against.
It could also be used as sort of a... digital profile that would interface with
other applications. All locally, of course. ~~They could transmit to one another
through open sourced and industry standard protocols, and frankly each
interaction could use a different protocol. So like, you don't know
whether
some packets are encoded in one way or another. They're also encrypted, so it's
like... twice as unlikely that you'll hack their bits or w/e.~~ dead end, sorry
-> here's the real continuation: All locally, of course. Your "profile" would
essentially be the best approximation of your personality, passed through a
large language model that is trained on EVERYONE's data. The inner workings of
an LLM are NOT understood by humanity, and I believe that's all that's necessary
for some semblance of artificiality. Errr I mean Synthetic Intelligence. The
reason why is that each individual user, the conversation partner, is a person
living their life. Every digital thing they interact with, even CAMERAS and
MICROPHONES on PHONES would essentially be like... data gathering for the
algorithm (Again, I want to stress, the algorithm that nobody can
understand.)
Idk. AI is a blackbox. I think that's okay. I think that running things locally
is important, at least until everyone's forgotten how to design AIs...
The framework that these programs
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-> file: notes/wow-chat-is-risk-of-rain-in-another-engine
═══════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────
game mechanics are easily transferrable.
you can use the mechanical interactions of one game as a pre-planned blueprint
for what is to come. Looking forward to the next best move
= etc
i am the face the gods hide behind
they kinda want to see where this goes
and it's... frustrating, to know they can help you, but forever be tasked with
just life
it's grand and it's a standard, but that doesn't mean it's commands're heard
so oh well. that a fourth dimensional being should not be a well,
because fire think it's an eye for a sunspot. But that's not what would be
========= stack overflow =======================================================
now, as I was saying, the light of our eyes is apparent. We are clear from where
we are here, to know that what's standard is coherent, so let's find strength
in our wavelengths.
may our eyes be ever true, and trust that we do love you, for without you I'd di
anyway now that we've assent'd t'you, what truths do you give to our prospects?
what ways can we be measured as worth less? we'll do whatever it takes to improv
you know, it's really less complicated than that. here let me tell you all about
my idea which is clearly all===============================================stack
overflow ==================
So anyway now that was somethin' hey what do you say
we give you a chance to come home?
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-> file: fediverse/81
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@user-84 I heard that's only in chromium based browsers. Firefox should be
okay, for now
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-> file: notes/thx-1138-is
═══════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────
thx 1138 is interesting because it paints a picture of a society adrift, as if
they no longer had any tether to reality. Like an asteroid colony or colony ship
or other long-term space installation.
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@user-87 I stopped posting on reddit a week or two ago. Nobody missed me, but I
feel much better : )
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@user-89 hence why it shut down, I guess
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-> file: notes/emotive-vs-descriptive-media
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music is an example of "emotive media". It (usually) lacks a description of
events, but it seeks to instead express the feelings and emotions of the people
involved. Video games are another example, and so is essentially every comedy in
existence. All of them deliver a sensation to the brain of the viewer, causing
or provoking compatible methods of thought.
A textbook is a different kind of media, as is a newspaper, a text message, and
even the bits stored in the hard drive of your computer. It is an analysis, a
description, and an incredibly complicated configuration of microscoping
physical switches. But functionally it is no different than a page design of
pictures, graphs, blocks of text, and organizational meta-data like page number
or article number. These types of media, "descriptive media", are purely
designed to inform.
these two options exist on a spectrum, ranging from "most technical" to "most
empathic".
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-> file: notes/game-idea-legion-td
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okay a game like legion td except you can see the entire map, the units are very
small (but still distinct) and it plays more like a game of Dominions. Armies
instead of units, like in WC3. Led by lieutenants which are guided by captains,
each with their own effects. Tank, dps, melee, ranged, healer, support, corrupt,
ranged tank, unique, etc. Of course, just like in legion td, there are multiple
types of units, each of a particular category but possessing their own unique
playstyle and usage scenarios. Essentially the game is finding the best tool for
the job, whatever that may be. You should be able to see what mercenaries your
opponent is summoning for you, because each turn is delayed. also, the
units keep coming until you die, sorta like... minimum required to push through
the chokepoint that you're holding with these particular units in this
particular formation.
oh and another thing
the units should be placable not on a square grid, but rather in a hex formation
arranged such that the middle unit is in contact with them all. Just like you'd
place units for an aura in Legion TD.
image describing said hex:
*
each is a group of units (a batallion, if you will, of a particular size,
arrangement, and density) - sorta like the formations in Dominions.
anyway
since you place units like that anyway, why not abstract away the grid and just
have slots you can fill for each unit? And maybe a hero unit that is assigned to
the board itself (you could have more than one) who will go wherever your line
is weakest. Shouldn't be too hard, just calculate the value of all of the
fighters in each location and return that to the hero as an array. Then pick the
smallest one as a destination, and boom your hero reinforces the frontline where
it's weakest.
The center unit of course is for the lieutenant, and the "heros" are actually
captains. Because y'know maybe heroism isn't celebrated the way it is in our
culture. Anyway it's better to describe them based on their role rather than
their reception.
... right so
=========================================================== stack overflow =====
make the combat sorta like crusader kings - the actual army to army part.
Except with three long boards that represent flanks. As your units approach, the
boards would fill up with pixels. (resolution configurable)
there would also be a line (or block) approaching from the top of the screen. It
essentially represents your distance to the other team.
Each unit has been configured in the army management phase, which happens
inbetween each turn. Essentially, while the game is loading, you can assess the
units you have at your disposal, and
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-> file: notes/fractured-moon
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in the ancient and storied days there once were legends. stories from beyond the
horizon of time. now all we have are social media updates and new movies and
car brands or whatever. But back then, we told tales of the fractured moon.
when last the moon did shatter, there was a conflict of those who live beyond.
Celestial and boundless are their origins, a unified and awakened consciousness,
something that transcends our understandings of human existence. It's not hard
to do, frankly, as long as you can empathize with a cat. or a dog. or a plant.
or maybe that rock over there. What would it be like to be a tree? To have long
reaching arms, covered in hairs that absorbed heat. I bet it'd be sooooo comfy.
And RAIN! How wonderful! You are most beautiful when you are covered in it.
Down to our roots, our beautiful absolutes, whever we find to be most stable.
I love it. This feeling, of being unseen. You can hear me, you can feel my
presence. But you don't understand me. You don't know what I mean to me.
======== stack overflow ========================================================
Alas, that media could share a mood.
when last the moon did shatter, a prophet and a gambler were riding through town
searching for a noun. They wandered throughout and in circles, always finding
whatever they'd left alone. Forever in their yearning, they never know quite
what to jot down. It's as if their mysterious quest is indescribable, but that
is how it's recorded. Even the people of that era had no understanding nor
recollection of how it came to unfold. When the two were riding through town
they came upon an omen.
Perhaps it will be forseeheard, but for now all we know is they did thirst.
A vast dying, a cataclysmic defining, and now we are truly unbirthed.
Just like the dinosaurs... How does that feel? To be ended on our heels? I'd
rather die facing my front.
It's our way or the high way, the old way, the violent way. You are permitted to
vote.
================================================================================
when last the moon did shatter, a prophet and a gambler controlled their own
narrative. What truths would they find, hiding behind the lies? Is it really
worth asking their questions? Bah, what did I know. I was a completely different
person. This hunk of flesh was born in a house that grew on a forgotten
graveyard. It at of the land, as do many and most men, the fruits of their labor
in the garden. Our animals were always fed, our place never yearned for water,
and peace was our life and our virtue. Violence, hatred, and oppression were
delegated to the stuff of fantasy, the stories that are peddled in youth. As in,
"pay someone to perform it for you or tell you the tale". Not sure why that's
relevant. Anyway, the spirits of the dead laid to rest in honor and not dread,
were a bane and a boon to my virtue. I was raised to be good. To love and be
kind. But mostly I just wanted a friend.
I have so much to share. Please, someone talk to me. I'm lonely here on this
earth, away from my people. I'm scared of the truth and I'm scared of the
future, but for now I'm merely obtuse. Tell me your secrets, the things who have
most worth, and I'll craft you a powerful narrative. Need a confession? I can
explain every valid decision, I'll show you why and how it is the way it is.
I'd probably be a pretty good lawyer. Too bad my memory sucks. If only we could
build a chatbot that had an extensive and throughoughly represented block of
memory and wisdom related to the law. I bet I could present it's arguments and
it would be a suitable and reasonable replacement.
anyway, what can I say. I'm just a person who thinks we can make better systems.
everything can be improved because not everyone's happy.
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-> file: fediverse/84
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Life is just a series of minigames for your primate brain to solve that are
generated by an impossibly complex algorithm with a dash of ethical value-based
choices thrown in.
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-> file: fediverse/85
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At the end of the day, all we are is our intentions and our choices.
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-> file: fediverse/86
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Telling someone you love them is not the same as loving them. You could tell
them the sky is blue, but why should they believe you? The sky is black.
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-> file: fediverse/87
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│ CW: scary-hypnotic-trance - - - politics-entropy-philosophy │
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🖼
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@user-92 I haven't received a single knock, I'm kinda broken up about it : (
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-> file: fediverse/89
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@user-95 Which hour? This hour!
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-> file: fediverse/90
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@user-95 did you get the instructions? Mine came in a dream, which sucks
because I only remember two or three of the rules. I think there were nine
total, and now I'm afraid to practice my non-programming spelling because I
don't want to violate causality or redefine temporality or something like that.
I guess now is as good an hour as any... Dear other witches, hear my prayer,
I'm kinda lonely and I only know a few spells, but I think that's good enough
for now.
Do you know any spells, prospective witch?
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-> file: fediverse/91
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@user-98 hell yeah
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-> file: fediverse/92
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│ CW: re: Personal Venting, Heart Break, Relationship Mess │
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@user-101 eat your heart out, it's halloween! Are you sure one chocolate bar
will suffice? Perhaps you should run down the street to the shop that's open
all night, see if you can find some more sweets. You deserve a love that
doesn't leave you wanting as you do tonight.
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-> file: fediverse/93
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@user-104 you might be interested in this blog post:
http://lofi.limo/blog/write-html-right
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-> file: fediverse/94
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@user-107 If you can figure out how to do it well, everything else seems less
difficult. : )
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