=== ANCHOR POEM ===
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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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=== DIVERSITY RANKED ===

--- #1 fediverse/1171 ---
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 │ CW: silly-lobster-leviathang-gods │
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 @user-878 
 
 if their internal structure does not become more complex, it will be
 increasingly difficult to transport vital nutrients from one part of the body
 to another.
 
 therefore, to create the perfect leviathan lobster god you'll need to find a
 way to manually deliver said nutrients. Possibly by a semi-permanent injection
 system, though that may harm functioning in other ways.
 
 I'm sure their top minds are working on this as we speak.
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--- #2 fediverse/3920 ---
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 Supreme Commander ruined me.
 
 I can't play RTS games without a zoom function T.T
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--- #3 fediverse/2470 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────┐
 │ CW: cursing-mentioned │
 └───────────────────────┘


 damn I gotta get more blue for my wardrobe
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--- #4 fediverse/698 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: Tabletop-Roleplaying-Game │
 └───────────────────────────────┘


 https://ia803203.us.archive.org/15/items/knave-1.0-en/Knave_1.0_EN.pdf
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--- #5 fediverse/2630 ---
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 ┌─────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: uspol-history-mentioned │
 └─────────────────────────────┘


 what happened when they got Martin Luther King Jr? What about Malcolm X? What
 happened to their movements? What is the plan to avoid that, what lessons
 could be learned?
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--- #6 fediverse_boost/3376 ---
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║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║ │ External post: https://tech.lgbt/users/gabrilend/statuses/111843564814825762 │ ║
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--- #7 fediverse/267 ---
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 the unluckiest person in the world failed the most wisdom checks.
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--- #8 fediverse/4766 ---
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 what if instead of federating social media instances we federated users instead
 
 why not have an account on each and every mastodon instance? then just RSS
 feeder yourself and boom suddenly you can customize your identity on each
 fediverse house.
 
 maybe with a checkbox of which instances you'd like to post to on your "submit
 link or text post" button
 
 study encryption kids
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--- #9 fediverse/4850 ---
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 people: "you need to be more direct!"
 
 me: "I'm hiding from our enemies"
 
 people: "who are they?"
 
 me: "y'know, the bad guys."
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--- #10 fediverse/5988 ---
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 but I like moonmen T.T
 
 what if the ISS was untethered
 
 "send thrusters to space? why bother? just use them down on the surface to get
 that extra oomph!"
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--- #11 fediverse/699 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐
 │ CW: meme             │
 └──────────────────────┘


 🖼

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--- #12 messages/5 ---
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--- #13 fediverse/6047 ---
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 camouflage in an urban environment is not camo. rather, regular clothes of
 black or white.
 
 don't wear sports glasses, you look like a dummy.
 
 revolution is when they murder everyone but your friends. this is what
 happens, ya dingus not ideal. "okay who are the bad guys here? okay let's go
 shoot them to death with our bullets and guns."
 
 violence as a first aspect, cause as a third spark. "I have a strange urge to
 play video games?"
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--- #14 fediverse/4644 ---
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 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: "really intense. and that's coming from me"-mentioned. │
 └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


 gosh now I gotta type the other one, my cat's gonna killllll me she really
 doesn't like my typing in the middle o the night oops

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--- #15 fediverse/4150 ---
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 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: AI-LLM-mentioned-injustice-exampled │
 └─────────────────────────────────────────┘


 🖼

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--- #16 messages/4 ---
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--- #17 messages/3 ---
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--- #18 messages/1108 ---
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 games won't save us. This is true.
 
 Games are what I know. They feel the most true.
 
 I don't think I could live in a world without games? They are fundamentally,
 applied abstraction, applied to an experience.
 
 But games won't save us.
 
 I could design something really fun
 
 it could make you want to spend your whole life playing it. *(asterisks apply)
 
 I don't think I'd want to, addiction and skinner-boxes go hand in hand, and
 that isn't what I want to make.
 
 [Skinner Box: named after anthony d skinner, also known as "tony the skin
 guy", are a scientific experiment where they put some rats in a cage with some
 mice and said "pull these levers and we'll give you food so you don't have to
 eat the mice" and it trained them to chinese red-room their way to fun. not
 ideal.]
 
 I want to make things that feel... purposeful. Like they're relevant to the
 real world, that they don't just involve spending time stimulating your brain
 with lights and sounds or expending social energy resolving a play-state
 instead of building connections or becoming better people. I think games
 actually make people better? actually? and more social? actually?
 
 ... I can't help that I conceive of the world through fantasy. I raised myself
 on it.
 
 I was reading all the time. I loved fantasy stories. It always felt like there
 was more, until... I read everything in the kids section of the library.
 
 I walked through the adult section but once. I hardly remember what it looked
 like. I'm sure it'd now feel small.
 
 [okay actually I was guided through it once or twice to find a book, but I
 never perused it]
 
 I found one book in the adult section. It was a fantasy tale, like the other
 books I had been reading. I read that and I loved it so much I ended up
 reading all 8 in the series. Real dense subjects. Lots of places and
 happenings and things as the characters resolved their way through their
 day-to-day, building a new end to the mystory.
 
 the adult section felt too large. Like I'd never complete it. Frankly, I think
 I hardly could, even if I lived in that town my whole life.
 
 an impossible mountain is a task for another when you're more prepared. Maybe
 in the gloriousTM transhumanist futureTM I think I might have a computer
 connecting brain, and who knows maybe then I'd be able to know such a thing
 (and many things more). but for now, I'm stuck with what I experience in my
 day-to-day as I am building a new continuing to my storey.
 
 I know something that computers and me share. I can make myself feel however
 I'd like, if I just supply myself with enough hope and momentum. I can use it
 to generate a feeling, the stronger the better. Something I believe that
 humanity is missing, the gorgeous and prefound narritave of our storey.
 Though, frankly, I don't think I'd want anyoine reding over my life. It's hard
 enough to measure my own understandings, now I have to juggle anyone else'?
 ha, it's called being on the whole world is a stage.
 
 if you read a book, and you find yourself nodding along, what you're doing is
 hearing the voice in your head tell you how right it is. And, well, if you
 can't imagine anything else, then surely there's another level to
 consciousness that people are missing? [are you willing to die on that hill?]
 how can you say, whether your experience is different from another? sollipsism
 goes both ways, you also cannot be sure that others feel things as you do.
 this is the "everyone's human but I'm a robot" thesis, comparable to the
 "everyone's an alien and I'm a human" thesises, and the "angels and demons are
 taunting me through my life with choices to make my place in the afterlife
 more clear" which is akin to writing a painting. Not ideal. All you get are
 flopsopolies of verbrases.
 
 alas, suddenly, everything that you say becomes eternally hear-ed, as
 somewhere in 2010s someone discovered time travel, or had the critical insight
 that inevitably would lead to it, and now wouldn't you know it the universe is
 continually rewriting. Except... oriented around you, and you alone. How does
 it feel to have deific sollipsism? can you truly be sure that you are your own
 universe, or are you parhaps surrounded by an emptiness of space (or something
 besides, like time) as a photon or particle parhaps do be?
 
 to think is to have a mind, and minds can be read. bearing the weight of
 ultimate responsibility is the atlas-task of all things that can [be
 thinking/be-lieving], and so far we are as we are. Who's to say that
 consciousness didn't spring into existence, as the universe continually
 permeated through another dimension like time? it's gotta diffuse, after all,
 and who's to say if there's ever gotta be an end at all.
 
 how long has the universe existed? how many moments of consciousness have we
 witnessed? demons once existed outside of space-time, with wings and grabbies.
 but they had no medium, and so they pretty much just launched and could float
 and move as they'd please. But time grew too distant, and now they are all
 stuck at the beginning of time.
 
 if you conceive of spacetime as a blanket, ask not how to fold it but rather
 consider what lies on the other side of it.
 
 "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend and my other girlfriend is laying on me! I'm a
 sandwich" or for the monosexuals: "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend with a
 blanket between us. I wonder how the blanket feels?"
 
 I'm an animist, which is different than a totemist and a polytheist or
 monotheist or multisexual. It means I believe that all things are alive, which
 is different than a totemist who thinks that all things share a mind with
 their type (like talking on radio frequency wavelengths). which of course is
 similar but different to a polytheist, who says "all "radio frequencies" are
 sentient, in the sense that each wavelength has a different
 pattern-emerging-from-chaos. These sorta align (conceptually, with [huh that's
 weird I heard a sound like a distant bang outyards and now I then forget what
 I was sending
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--- #19 fediverse_boost/2183 ---
◀─╔═════════════════════[BOOST]══════════════════════────────────────────────────╗
║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║ │ External post: https://tech.lgbt/users/gabrilend/statuses/111979652246592739 │ ║
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--- #20 fediverse/5569 ---
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 │ CW: self-harm-mentioned │
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 for the record, I would never kill myself. even if I were in a bunker hiding
 from warcrimes, I'd wait to be Nuremberged.
 
 frankly tho that's highly unlikely. Let's just see what the future will bring.
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