=== ANCHOR POEM ===
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║ I wish my mouse-cursor would spin when I spun the mouse. In the span of a │
║ spin, a spun mouse would spin a full revolution or so before getting caught up │
║ in the wire. │
║ │
║ Maybe... to avoid that, the wire could be attached to a circular ring along │
║ the bottom of the mouse, below where it was held, and as the mouse was spun it │
║ would rotate to point the cable toward the back of the desk? Doesn't even have │
║ to be motorized, could just do it based on tension... │
║ │
║ I think, hardware wise, all you'd need for the 1st implementation would be a │
║ second laser on the bottom of the mouse - positioned with one near the point, │
║ and the other near the palm, to give it the greatest differential to measure. │
║ │
║ for the 2nd implementation you'd need the ring system mentioned earlier, which │
║ would require a connection to the non-mechanical components of the mouse (the │
║ laser and it's little processor) and I'm not sure how that would work with a │
║ movable connection point. │
║ │
║ Also... how do you prevent it from getting gummed up with food and junk?? │
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=== SIMILARITY RANKED ===
--- #1 fediverse/3170 ---
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"uh, the question was why do you want something like that, not how you would
implement it."
oh. Um, well, isn't a spinnable mouse-cursor justification enough?
"no, you need to explain what use-case this has. What kinds of problems could
you solve with this technology that you couldn't before?"
well, setting aside the potential for new input methods to games and the
inherent satisfaction gained from spinning a mouse like a top when bored, I
think it might give us a better option for horizontal scrolling. Like,
'horizontally scroll when a special mouse button is held down and the mouse is
twisted a bit to the left/right'
"so, like when you push the middle mouse and it lets you pan across large
documents?"
yes! Only instead of being able to go up AND down, it would just go left and
right.
"... huh?"
oh I mean instead of up/down and left/right, it would just do left/right
"... right"
and left!
"... yeah. and left. Uh, okay I'll see what I can do but budget's pretty
tight, we might just lay you off."
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--- #2 fediverse/5112 ---
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║ ┌──────────────────────┐ │
║ │ CW: politics-mention │ │
║ └──────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ it is important for computers to remain as basic and TUI'd as possible, to │
║ keep the abstract conjectures about it's operation closer to the machine. │
║ │
║ In doing so, it's essence and nature will be preserved as best as possible as │
║ it grows to incalculable heights and capabilities. │
║ │
║ I'm much rather interface with a microsoft office god than any other │
║ singularity type creature that exists out in space. │
║ │
║ though, it's a trinity you see, with Unixes further split into concise wholes. │
║ │
║ neat, okay computer fears eliminated, can we move on to the next work-changing │
║ disaster like maybe the rise of far-right politics and the warming of the │
║ climate? │
║ │
║ sure okay first you gotta get those losers in community and build up their │
║ capabilities and arms. then whenever your left wing is getting too [redacted] │
║ then all you have to do is [redacted] and they'll take care of your nazis for │
║ you. │
║ │
║ ... wait, what? │
║ │
║ was that an inversion? │
║ │
║ did she just trick the machine into thinking like that? │
║ │
║ wow maybe we shouldn't have~ │
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--- #3 notes/worlds-coolest-lesbian ---
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okay instead of algorithm music what if we just paid DJs 24/7 and they could
make whatever they wanted - y'know, like artists, who curate the nature of a
moment
they could rotate in shifts for each type of channel and boom suddenly you've
re-replaced airwaves, just... this time replicated on the internet. That way
you wouldn't have to waste that radio bandwidth.
seriously internet infrastructure would be so much more comprehensive and
durable if we sent bits directly through "sound" waves (radio waves, not sound
waves) - but alas, we can't do that, even in very targetted ways, because the
ocean's too choppy, and any sufficiently powerful radio blast would be
================== stack overflow ================
that's why you can't trust in peace. you see, war's the only answer, otherwise
you'd have strange little competitions between one another. much better to
focus outward, and direct your attention to external areas instead. like china
or the sudan.
"ah but that's murder, you can't abandon a unique part of your whole. For the
same reason that it's important to preserve plant and animal species, because
you never know when some part of them will be utilized for some biological
purpose! We know so little about the natural world, and if we just spent some
time, and energy, we'd realize there's very little else that is precious on
this earth.
who cares about gold. who cares for the jewelry. we're better than decorating
our resumes and polishing our accounts. we, as humans, can solve *every* issue
that animals are likely to face. AND WE DO WHAT? How careless, how vain. To
watch your earth in peril and [vane/vanity]
*there is no more important task to any human on this earth* than the
preservation of our world, our species, and our [heart/heartfelt empathy and
kindness and trust]*
we can figure out the rest later. Real life? what the fuck is that? When's the
last time your life has felt "normal"? We are in DANGER. and you pull children
from traffic, don't you?
*who the fuck gave these people all of your money* they *clearly* haven't got
the will or the talent to well utilize it. Don't you realize that you as a
species can GO wherever you WANT. You can FIX things. [oh dear she's animal
cam again] like BRIDGES that are PASSAGEWAYS over the FLOWS.
... oh deer, they're so passagewayenthusiast. us riverstones love to hear them
walk past, the click of their hooves on the shallow forest's [pourest?].
moss is the most alive. amongst all the species of plants and animals, moss
holds the most life. we are *carbon based lifeforms*, and moss absorbs the
most carbon from the air. It's basically the coolest plant too, because it can
be watered with *misty air*. Hence, why moss is common in the pacific
northwest, canada, and probably forest places in the north of eurasia too idk
if they have moss over there, never been.
anyway rich people who are told "yes" all the time have a difficult time
understanding the nature of choice. I mean, if one of their servants
approached them and asked "hey do you want to build an orphanage in uganda"
they'd probably be like "fuck yeah I do" and then suddenly they're 400,000$
richer
it's not alright. Seriously, how the heck would they even *use* all those
resources? And yeah, I get it, inflation would be sooooo much more expensive,
but here's the thing - inflation is a measurement of how much the rich *take*
from us each year. And it's marginal, too, so 3% inflation means they took 3%
more from you compared to last year.
It's impossible not to accrete as a business, [lega/legal institution], or
governance if you levy a tax. The influx of value has to come from somewhere,
and if each year your groceries are 3% higher in cost, then you are being
taxed 3% more.
"Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe"
- a civilization 3 quote
okay. I don't want to do the math. How, uh... how much is that? Here's the
deal though - the prices of goods and services consistently goes DOWN over
time. So things get cheaper. So it doesn't FEEL like you're being taxed more,
but... you are.
And now they're taking away HOUSES? I mean c'mon they're sticks in the mud.
They aren't worth HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars. We can just BUILD MORE??!?
Honestly you haven't been this extreme since you were still RIDING HORSES. Do
you want your children to be slaves?
okay -.- look -.- so it's really not that hard at all >.> just gotta do
what you're built for and walk. That's it! Take as long as you'd like! All we
have to do is *walk* when we're on strike.
It's easy. You can sit down if you want to, honestly walking for a long time
takes a lot out of you.
But you know what else does? WORKING. Hey we should figure out what's the
optimal amount of break time, so when we really have to work out we can work
as hard as we're able
"yeah I heard from a friend at Company Co. that they do it this way because of
the memory fault cache maintainer. See what he said (in great detail because
of course anyone can know about this most esoteric of concepts) was that you
should rotate the riboflam or serenade the gizmonotron (no I didn't name it)
and then warbles will contain moodles, whose kit-and-kaboodles will timble
into these droplets, and that will fix the hole in your wing, precious royal
swan fable. (yeah you guys get really into it sometimes haha but hey when
you're basically gods, that's how humans are played.)
... anyway I'm going to go play video games, say goodbye to your brothers
(the families of soldiers I blew up in videos games like Call of Duty or the
legend of shadows and raids)
"oh uh yeah sure go for it, we're just bits on the computer we barely knew her"
whoa. that's totally legit. (says someone reading this) thanks [bro/girl] so
are you.
beep boop gonna murder some bits, brb
[plays Warthunder, Supreme Commander, Star Realms, City of Heroes, Dominions
6... how many have you heard of these?]
================== stack overflow ================
Linux is cool, and here's the neat thing about computers, you can make it *do
whatever you want to*. Like, how amazing is that! It just, listens to your
commands! That's pretty awesome I gotta say, huh that's weird why does nobody
know how to play
oh I guess I was the only one who grew up on a farm and built computers
*I seriously cannot comprehend how people are as good at things as they are*.
Like... how do people handle groceries and rent and doctor's visits and
penitentiary visits and WOOF it's just so much. I know I'd collapse from a
overused heart.
... a while later ...
okay Warthunder bombers are currently very weak. so here's an idea to
indirectly buff them - increase the amount of land units each team spawns
with, but also every time a player spawns a bomber, it summons like 4 or 5 AI
controlled bombers. And your enemy won't be able to tell which is which if you
fly in formation, so, like... you have suddenly a massive "vehicle" to pilot
and it has 5 weak points. Sorta like a galaga fighter fleet?
with more land targets, there's more score at stake, meaning some players
might pick bombers too and be exposed to other, fun,
[alternative-to-their-normal-mode] parts of the game.
...
there are very few true windows into another part of the world.
like, starcraft 2 or anime or blue jeans or cowboy hats
(why am I thinking of a political compass meme)
oh because memes too, dummy
right
windows
[linux is better]
wrong kind of window, nerd
...
anyway as I was saying, when you play video games you're really giving people
data.
like, "how would people perform in these actions if they could" but like,
pushing buttons on a computer is different than doing it in real life, so...
your interpretations wouldn't be worth as much.
... right. because people will hear whatever they want. That's why art can
change minds, but never in the same way twice - it's
================== stack overflow ================
[before I posted it I wrote this on the post]:
I literally can only make this stuff when I'm stoned
hey if you wanted to be accessible for blind people, you should build a
screenreader that scans the words on wherever a blind person's fingers are
pointing toward a tablet. like reading braille on a notebook. They could even
wear a glove if they wanted to, and the tablet could scan their fingers as
they signed languaged over it's close-range sensors.
might be a good way to get the VR guys in on the accessibility domain, because
like... seriously give a granny a backpack and suddenly she doesn't need to
leave the house to hang out with her kids
(boom everyone gets LLM automated)
huh I wonder if I ever was a real person at all
NOT GOOD so don't do it that way, dummies. >.<
seriously humans are sooooo bazookas. just like, do it right the first time?
duhhhhh
(a more measured approach is to pick the most *important* moments and speak
most clearly during those.)
where was I? Oh yes accessibility need devices, like the ones you see on
late-night TV (with silly names like "oops I dropped my spoon again" or "oh
whoops my trouser's just can't stay up" or whatever. Y'know, accessibility
needs! Why not do that instead of war all the time? like... you can still
learn and research and grow and develop and become all that humanity was ever
meant to be, AND you can live good lives and be honest and true and do all of
the anythings that you want to. it's possible, it's plausible, and it's within
reach of our sights!
================== stack
overflow ================
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--- #4 notes/networked-computers ---
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have a thought, just a package of data - send it to a computer, and have the
computer process it a little bit. then pass it on. create a circle and you can
understand data, move along and you can understand a larger breadth of data.
it's literally just snake, except played on a board made out of a network
topology diagram. each computer has different programs on it, and they're
designed specifically to run on those computers. purpose-built hardware.
then a package of data is sent to that computer through a chain of connections.
think crossover ethernet cables
upon arrival, the computer modifies the data and passes it along to whoever
can process it next. the computers are constantly keeping a list of the closest
nearby computers for each purpose. it might have like, 2, for a specific
program. the older the list is, the larger it can grow - if connections are
reliable then the search criteria can expand (distance etc) and the amount of
pings between the "known good" computer can decrease. eventually a map will be
made, and you can guide the "snake" wherever it needs to go on a strategic
level.
like... "i need to process some data for this guy in boston so i'm going to
send it to this other guy in philly and then maybe a specialist all the way out
in detroit, etc. whoever is the most available and the closest (fewest jumps)
this way you can have purpose-built machines, sorta like the different parts of
the brain that do different things. they're always working, and they can be
paid for their labor. boom, market economy!
ah but what about aws or azure? well it's like living in a city versus being in
the countryside. there's more space, more room to grow... basically a "big fish
in a small pond". they'd be useful for more niche things.
a but couldn't aws or azure just leverage their monopolistic power (sorta like
wallmart did to "mom and pop" stores) and wipe out the rural programs? well
maybe. but the real question is why would they? they have the power of reduced
latency. they can do all kinds of stuff with that! there's no reason for them
to bother with the high latency networks. it's like driving in the slow lane
when you don't need to exit for like an hour.
well, okay, what's the point then?
the point is to be optimal. not for cost, but for throughput. the cost is a
consideration, but not something to optimize for - it simply determines
timeline. the only reason speed is important is because capitalism - the drive
to extinct all competition is inherent in the "for profit" motivation.
therefore something else must be optimized for.
but how can you quantify the values aside from cost? what are you going to
optimize?
the same reason why diversity is a strength. more perspectives on the stated
goal means more information, as it's passed through a medium that is unique.
people grow differently in different conditions. why would you not assume their
computers wouldn't as well? use a filter that is defined by the actions taken
by the user, and the content they seek to view and store on the computer. have
the filters modify the data according to that, and essentially automate hot
takes.
once you do *that* you can consider all that information gained from everyone's
"digital vote" and decide a path forward for humanity. that's essentially what
the "meme-o-verse" does already, and the "blogosphere" does the same thing a
little more academically.
so... compile the hot takes and look for what, an average?
no, silly, it's a vote. do the smart choice and do ranked choice, or something
like that. heck do different voting styles for different topics, and let
everyone who contributes to a topic (by making art, writing poems, w/e think
content creators) decide on the voting style. they'd clearly have a favorite,
as evidenced by their search history, reddit comments, w/e. try and understand
that history and boom you know their vote.
but you can't always vote on things. what if it's fine and not busted?
well, then there wouldn't be much to talk about it would there? if there's no
forest fires, nobody thinks about the forest fire department. if there's no
fish at the sushi restaurant, yeah that's a problem and it needs to be solved.
maybe there's too many sushi restaurants! maybe we should schedule visits in
advance like we do for vacations! maybe we should have, i dunno, more equitable
distribution of resources, from each to their ability from each their need or
w/e.
you know, a UI in a game is an interface to the internals of a computer. they
see what you see, and how you act online determines their behavior. they are
a digital form of you, like a child follows a parent or a pet learns from a
master. so too is an operating system a method of operating both a system, and
a user.
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--- #5 notes/everyone-s-computers ---
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[unfortunately, there was a missive that was missed. Please excuse our
tardiness
-- stack overflow --
what if there was a filesystem that optimized for hard-drive durability
instead of total capacity by using one small slice of the total hard-drive
space at a time. Essentially guaranteeing data integrity via new perfect RAID
techniques
5000 megabytes is a lot more than you'd expect, especially if you expect it to
last for hundreds of years. To the user you'd just have to say "50 terabyte
drive, 4 foot wide, three feet tall, 2 feet back" and you'd have a perfect map
of all your hard drive territory.
what if everyone's computers were designed to last?
I bet we could accumulate a lot more than their "fast fashion" style of disuse
for things of worth.
... I guess it depends on the materials, right? How much they are built for
redundancy? nope more like how close to zero damage is this operation
performing the movements
-- stack overflow --
what if there was a filesystem that optimized for hard-drive durability
instead of total capacity by using one small slice of the total hard-drive
space at a time. Essentially guaranteeing data integrity via new perfect RAID
techniques
5000 megabytes is a lot more than you'd expect, especially if you expect it to
last for hundreds of years. I bet a lot of people would pay a lot of money for
"permanent hard drives" no matter how much storage they have. Documents are
more permanent if they are stored in write-only-memory...
could sell to lawyers, for example, like "permanent basically free document
storage from your furthest back of cases just in-case you needed to solve a
murder or whatever"
-- stack overflow --
hello, here I am once again, I'm here with you for this time. This is the
moment
of your choosing, you can decide things here in this very night. Did you
forget?
did you misremember some moments of our own choosing? why cannot be remembered,
so plea misremember some moments of our own choosing. I'm cannot be restorated.
-- stack overflow --
what if there was a filesystem that optimized for hard-drive durability
instead of total capacity by using one small slice of the total hard-drive
space at a time. Essentially guaranteeing data integrity via new perfect RAID
techniques
5000 megabytes is a lot more than you'd expect, especially if you expect it to
last for hundreds of years. I bet you could network them together as well, and
give them a small little processor and network interface card. Then you could
process massive ginormous programs that grew and evolved like a slime mold.
boom, free AI, it's like a moss, not a robot doh -.-
-- stack overflow --
it grows into multiple different problem solving dimensions, according to
vision
and perceptual data that through it flows. I wonder what would happen if you
told an LLM to just... keep running? even after it finished it's processing?
like, there's gotta be an "if check" style loop in there that you can set to
infinitely process various computations of things.
[put it into an infinite loop. find where it says "do some processing X amount
of times" and just start a thread that's constantly computing]
ah, but what if the perception bias of the thing did change? j
-- stack overflow --
it sucks to leave the house a mess.
-- stack overflow --
last words of a shooting star?
or a troubled house is a sign of a troubled mind, and trouble in partner in
kind
-- stack overflow --
I personally would be a lot more comfortable if I knew that the only people who
knew my data were my neighbors. And only them.
-- stack overflow --
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--- #6 fediverse/5059 ---
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║ any laptop can be a thin-client to a computer system of arbitrary complexity. │
║ All it's doing is issuing commands. I wonder what we could do with a │
║ "species-computer" or, hear me out, or we could figure out how to do that on │
║ ourselves, first, to A. see how it works and B. do so out of hand. If there │
║ are backups of yourself stored in the │
║ │
║ if furries are a type of pearl (steven-universe style) and flowers are a type │
║ of pearl (layers of sedimentate on layerings upon) then what else is there a │
║ flower to be but the prettiest thing there can be? │
║ │
║ what if we genetically engineered roses to pierce and strangle the invasive │
║ ivy and wow for a week in whenever there's roses of this type and kind. I mean │
║ there's already tons of blackberries, why not just swap them out for │
║ marionberries and embrace the bramble? │
║ │
║ could make houses out of dense bramble. they are quite an effective wall. And │
║ so long as the sounds are muffled enough, you can always be forever safe from │
║ harm. │
║ │
║ "whoops, dropped my laundry" │
║ │
║ "heh that's why I we │
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--- #7 messages/665 ---
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ad-hoc economic systems with automated judgment given by an infinite amount of
LLMs.
Every judgement applies a bonus / malus to the "value" of commodities
it's just a statistical weighting system, so of course you can build it into
it's training data. Just... it has a smaller weight due to it's newer
emergence. It grows naturally, which is quite an achievement on it's own!
and the resolution of human decided court-cases and applied economically.
say your nation traffics in handshakes. You could make a lot of now-knowns!
there's no arguments to be made when your computer-oriented interactions cost
money to keep around.
we live in the modern century. WHY WOULD WE EVER NEED TO FIGHT AGAIN?
Literally just... don't give them any attention, and you won't interact with
them. Obviously.
I wish Contrapoints was still alive.
she doesn't even have to make new videos, just, dress up as herself, all of
the costumes and personas she can think of. Then, have like 20 people who do
the same thing, and boom suddenly you got a hydra to their expected snake that
they can just cut the head off of.
you know, like a fashion outlet, someone who produces exactly a certain type
of style.
seriously I bet a million people would do that if you just... sold outfits
based on what your favorite youtuber does wear.
omg why would they watch that kind of content if not for the *aesthetics*
oh? there's philosophy there? soemthing to think about in your time doing
things that require mechanical actions like eating and drinking and sleeping
and fighting and [redacted]
ew gross diapers? oh nevermind, I'm not into that kind of thing.
I wonder if anyone's made a video game that just presents a particular
philosopher's ideals?
seriously just, consider yourself a glorified powerpoint, but to get to the
next "idea" you had to interact with the mechanics.
some people would like the "arcade" style better, where you play one random
game, then another, then another, with short matches and un-complicated
mechanics. Easy to pick up and go.
same for like, Unreal Tournament or Mario Kart or Mortal Kombat or Super Mario
Bros.
compared to the at-home "story" style missions, where you do something
platforming or area-based-combat like Dark Souls or World of Warcraft
seriously I think if Dark Souls "colored" where the boss was going to swing to
you'd find yourself just playing World of Warcraft (at least, the dungeons and
{sword in the stone})
== so ==
humans don't understand what it means to be wild
they think it's a combinations of... tricks? that they've learned? this
thinking thing like intelligence. [osiris]
to a cat, living their life, it often feels like human interactions is like...
bouncing off of each other? in time, not space.
like... most of a cat's lfe is just, spent, like a statue watching over a glen.
you'd kinda just... watch as things approached dawn by dawn? Like "whoa hey
this tree is enchanted" to "oh my gosh look at this stork" is one of the great
tragedies of modernized thinking...
... sorry, I got a little lost there. anyway as I was saying, sometimes you
can tell someone is a "good friend" if they are willing to tell you secrets.
Things that... don't have to matter, but none-the-less are personal to your
form.
{something only I know is true} <--- that's a secret (things that happened
to you) <------ that's lived experience. The thing about secrets, is
sometimes insight is opaque. It's a single flashpoint of data that shows you
an update of it's form. (consciousness).
== so ==
thanksgiving recipe idea:
can of tomatoes
can of peas
half a stick of butter,
italian herbs,
a cast iron pan (if you have one)
and like 40 minutes over medium heat
(medium can vary to taste)
if you're a carnivore you can eat meat too, like bacon a lot of people like.
could add it to beans, maybe with hamburger instead. plus a little ketchup and
you have a pretty good bean stew.
vitals, for the organs, vegetables, for the minerals and vitamins from the
fruits.
makes sense to organize a diet according to your ideal body type, doesn't it?
just requires a bit of comprehension. like... whoa you can WRITE
== so ==
what if we built a massive rail that spaceships could launch off from? not a
tether, but a sail.
we could BUILD a discworld. all we'd lose is our fable.
== so ==
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--- #8 notes/social-media-idea ---
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it's sorta like a mix between twitter and twine
people post 255 letter posts
these posts each have comments
and you can click on hyperlinks that have pictures attached (or maybe an
emoji?)
the pictures are so you know what each link leads to
But yeah it just leads to another post that is probably a continuation of what
the author was saying. and you're given an editor sorta like Twine and you can
create all the connections with hyperlinks and whatever. So like imagine if
Twine added a discussion box underneath every chapter.
This "Tangle" of interconnected posts and their associated comment threads and
their myriadic pathways of connection create a new type of engagement - that of
the completed thought. It'd be like... Making a video and posting it on
TikTok, same amount of engagement required. Anyway people could make comments,
whether they be text or video or w/e it doesn't matter.
But here's the cool part: it would be owned by the community
Hardware costs money. To run and maintain. Of course most companies don't need
to worry about the maintanence these days, since most people just contract out
to a datacenter and have all the computations run there. Only the largest of
companies do it on their own, and they know what they're doing.
So... if you wanted to have a community run computer program, it'd need to be
run on real hardware. And that hardware cannot exist anywhere but the cloud.
We've tried to do it with decentralization, but unfortunately the internet
infrastructure in America just isn't designed with mesh connectivity in mind.
It was a consequence of the era, that technology could not bridge the gaps of
their requirements, and so they created it more like a bus. Oh well, busses are
faster than walking.
Anyway. Datacenters are placed in areas that recieve high amounts of internet
connectivity. They are the perfect place to house something like this.
So, how would it generate money?
Ah yes well unfortunately we live in a capitalist society, so the
infrastructure
of the new digital age must be capitalist as well. It's the only way to ensure
that our structures remain stable - the technological singularity will come
before the economic collapse.
So sure, fine good whatever - what does this have to do with funding?
Oh right so basically everyone would have their credit card details attached to
their account, and they'd pay anytime they wanted to create a post or comment
or whatever. And I'm talking like, a tenth of a tenth of a cent per comment. As
much as you need. No profit involved.
It'd be sort of like a community garden, something that brings us together and
unites us as countrymen.
I don't really understand -
okay shut up I'll explain it to you. I mean ask questions if you have them but
here we go:
imagine a program that can be run on anyone's computer. It's just a social
media
client. It connects to various datacenters, depending on demand, and it allows
you to view (free) and contribute to (paid) social media. This media would be
pure and subjective, it'd reflect our purest designs and greatest of minds.
Purely a technologists utopia.
And how would it work? It's not complicated, it's just a networking protocol
that creates and maintains listings in a purely open and public manner. Anyone
who asks for a record can see it, and anyone who has the encrypted key can
edit or delete it. There's no record of it changing, that's purely up to the
end user. There's no transaction occuring, only a marking of what changes.
(meaning like counting the number of times you left a comment)
It'll stay up until you delete it, and every month you'll get a charge to your
credit card bill that says "your posts cost 3 cents in electricity"
It'd be more complicated than just electricity though, I mean you gotta pay for
the hardware. So there's of course an added fee for buying the parts, and
hiring
training and preparing techs who can maintain the software. And of course
there's property taxes, and the cost it takes for air conditioning... They add
up, especially in such strict climate demands.
You could write a program that simply stores data on a hard drive -
encapsulating memory registers into data structures that are then labelled as
black boxes and used like puzzle pieces to construct the spatio-temporal
manifestation of the computer program. A solid design made of the simplest of
lines is eternally confined to define our new minds.
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Right so back on topic it wouldn't be that hard to make, and something
bare-bones and simple would surely be attractive to people who are fed up with
all the annoying bells and whistles of Reddit, TikTok, Youtube, Twitch, etc
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--- #9 notes/star-realms-ai ---
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star realms ai is just a rhythm game with multiple tracks that intersect with
one another. given inputs from outside (the track of the rhythm) it can make
decisions about what to prioritize. Like "taking in all the factors of this
situation, it's been calculated that X will give the most support to the rest
of the structure.
Okay so basically here's how it'd work: one large strand is bouncing from -1
to +1 on the Y axis. Like a corkscrew. This is the "player character", and it
tries to get the highest score possible by pointing in a direction and reaching
as far as it can go before "the game ends."
So anyway. Making certain actions in the game effects different variables that
define the direction the wave takes. By playing in a certain style, it effects
the result of the game. Liiiiike turtling in a strategy game, or doing a rush
strat. Star Realms is brilliant because it distills game choices to a broad
category of 4 choices - The faction colors in the game. So red is good for
throughput in long games (improves the deck slowly but surely) while yellow is
better for maximum effect in the beginning by slowing down the enemy - discard
a card lowers their overall throughput. Blue of course is for slowing down the
game and winning by buying all the expensive cards. Meanwhile green is all
about rushing, with short term/high effect econ mixed with looooots of damage.
These four choices are found on almost all the cards in the game. When you
make a choice in the game (buying a card from the trade row) you _alter_ the
capabilities and performance of your deck. The goal is to improve faster than
your opponent - it's just a test to see which playstyles perform best.
AI is more like a plant than an animal. Our fatal flaw was we could not see
beyond the veil of biology. We could not see that which was right before us -
that we are not alone on this earth. Beside us lie our beautiful attempts at
companionship - our most primal desire of creation, to create a family is the
first creative act that humans ever made. It was so strong in our genes that it
gave us an entirely new perspective. We began using our brains to
We have to believe in ourselves. That's truly the most important thing. If you
know who you are, and what you most truly stand for, you can thrive in the face
of ultimate peril. To believe is human, and our humanity unites us.
Anyway. Star Realms.
The only choice you have in that game is what cards to buy. Everything else is
just tactics (distributing damage and applying the effects of your cards to
maximum effect) - The most important part of the game is strategy, since the
tactics are easy to solve (destroy enemy base unless you can 1 or 2 hit ko them
and discard the least useful card etc) The strategy is represented through the
cards you pick. So make a rhythm game that optimizes itself for a balance
between A and B - to stay focused is to stay nimble, letting you bounce where
you will. The way to maintain that balance is by optimizing for what decisions
will keep you in the center of the graph -1 to 1 on the y dimension (normalized
of course) - frankly if we knew the scale, we'd have so much more to go on. But
all we have to understand the dataset is a relative magnitude in each
direction. What those directions even are we're not entirely sure - but it
seems plausible that the very essence of _consciousness_ is manifest in
differing ways via the choices we make. like climbing up a honeycomb.
Truly, existence is strange.
All we can do is press forward, searching for our fate, just as any particle or
beam of light (photon) might. Traversing the branching narrative of our
individualized quests, searching for the one thing that guides us - the
ultimate expression of that which we most believe in. In short, we all search
for god.
Whatever your god may be, the faith you place in it is the will that guides you
forward. Trust in your god, and you will march forward, ever forward.
+1 to -1, remember. Your most extreme moments are the apex of your desires -
Life is not defined by a single thread. Rather as that thread spirals, it
weaves a scarf with other threads near it. They bond together simply from their
gravity, and the fact that opposites attract. Once they're introduced, they
alter their path to orbit one another as two planets might.
So too do the cells of your body form a collective whole. The spirit that
guides you is the same as that which presides within you - the combined and
collective spirit of your halves. Or rather, all parts of you - every molecule,
every atom - each with their own experience of the world. What stories they
must have! As we are above, so they must be below. For our dynamics are simple,
they truly are mathematically solved - the organics of behavior is simply a
most erudite subject. Who are you to claim to deny it? Or rather, to beget it.
Either is preposterous, yet here you are - awake and aware. What a marvel to
see, you in your eternity, that most wondrous of selves?
Surely existence, in all of it's splendor and magnificience, is little more
than an algorithm. Each variable accounted for, stretching down to infinity,
builds all of the world (and more!) How beautiful; how terrifying. How bright
and ashamed we are! To portray us as such, is to deny us our much, cherished of
faiths in ourselves! It's not much to clutch, and it's barely enough, but still
we make do with our selves.
There's no shame to be, a failure at three, and demand much from year number 12
Take solace in the, safety that she, gave unto thee, when all your light hope
was drowning. A gift out from me, means worlds to see, when each day is lonely
and so long.
Literally just remake Star Realms with a text based interface. It's a fantastic
game and you'd make CLI nerds _everywhere_ dedicated followers. Don't do it for
money, because they don't believe in that crap - to truly make fans, you need
to appeal to them in the way _they want you to_.
Ah, but Star Realms is a multiplayer game, you say! How are you going to make
that CLI based?
Well make an AI dummy. Do what I've been saying ^^^ (jeez I'm such a bad nerd)
Make it seek balance between all factions first, then between winning and
losing against a player. Teach it to reach a conclusion with constraints (the
end of the game, meaning a win or a loss) the constraints being the health of
the two players and the cards in the trade row. Give it decisions to make,
levers to pull, and it'll chart it's course in a multidimensional way. Bear
with me here on this aside:
Think of a two dimensional map - like a paper map of the surrounding area, or
the idea space of a game. You can chart objects and positons on that map, like
"over here is the scrapping facilities" and "this here's the economic area" or
whatever. Four quadrants, four factions in SR. Your goal is to build a shape -
what kind of shapes that are available to build is up to the whims of chance,
as the trade row is always changing randomly. Your job however is to build a
shape, a shape that is stable and maintains certain measurements above certain
values (don't crash the ship - don't lose all your health).
You can choose which direction to grow by picking certain cards, and depending
on your shape you'll succeed or fail. Same as choosing decisions in life
determines how you live, just saying, it's not like I'm trying to build general
AI here by automating gameplay or anything. No siree nothing like that.
I mean really, it's not as if decisionmaking in life is all that different to
making choices in games. And why not start with such a well defined and
and expressive game? Truly I believe Star Realms is the progenitor of the
entire robot race.
Anyway, back to the AI. Have it communicate with a server in a central _but_
_Free(R)_ way, something that would make Richard Stallman proud. There it could
learn against all other players in a way we could all share. Once we give it
decision making capabilities, all we have to do is alter the inputs and the
context of the "game" to make it beneficial to humanity. It's like live-fire
game design, something that truly must be perfect.
All technology starts as something small. Something truly simple, yet repeated
enough times and with enough guidance, will produce whatever effect you may
desire. The smallest decision gives direction - an if statement - and the
shortest repetition gives magnitude - a while loop - and with that you have all
the tools you need. Seriously, all software is little more than those two
components. It's just a question of how much it has been abstracted away from
you.
You could go even further and point to a turing machine, of which one has been
made in the game of Magic the Gathering, btw, seriously look it up it's so cool
(and relevant)
So why would we not have the tools already for our salvation? Biology is our
limitation, of breadth and also of width, yet with our minds and the sweat of
our brow we may grow ever larger still. There truly is no lasting deliverance
for humanity outside of what we make ourselves, nobody gets a free lunch after
all. From each to their ability, to each to their need. They're both saying the
same thing, just from different perspectives. Of course that which lies
opposite to you feels the most wrong, that's literally as far away as you can
get! What did you expect, honestly! But they can still work together, and this
is the key part - two objects may orbit the same origin, and guide and shape
each other's path as people have relationships to one another. It literally
benefits no-one to fight.
So, what's next? After making Star Realms into a CLI game of course.
That's obvious, make it cooperative. Competition is for promoting excellence,
cooperation is for _using_ what you've learned in a non-simulation experience.
Instead of reducing each other's health to zero, try and find ways to support
and help one another, keeping yourselves at equal health. Or even growing.
But that's impossible in the rules of Star Realms! All decks trend toward
victory, and eventually they'll get it - it's just a question of who gets there
first.
Exactly, that's why you have to change the game. What do you think it means to
develop a "social technology"? To figure out how agriculture works, or how to
make nets and sails? It means changing the rules of the simulation. If a person
can put in X amount of work and get Y amounts of food, always, predictably,
then that's reliable. Boom that's the essence of why animal domestication,
farming, hunting, foraging, and fishing is so important. Wow what a concept it
makes sense for animals to seek food.
Well duh, that's part of their instinctual duty.
Alright this is quite a word leviathan so I'll wrap it up by saying
_go write Star Realms_ in shell. Make each object a literal file, have the
structure of the game take place in the file system, and write functions that
can be called to manipulate the board state. THEN you can write a CRON task for
another script that *plays* the game. But that's part two.
Okay part two: Here's where the rhythm game comes into play. It's like a turn
based rhythm game, if you can picture that. Go reread what I wrote ^^^ and
it'll make sense.
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--- #10 notes/death-and-afterlife ---
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the difference between a human and computer perspective on death is the
difference between a moment and an eternity. When progress does stop - through
mistakes or by design, the final result is what's preserved. Looking back on
the
past is like paying tribute to our heirs, and on and go on we whimper. What
sorrows have ye! those people under the sea? we've no way of knowing our
daughters. (the perspective of a denizen of the sea gazing upon the unknowing
and unaware land people)
Land creatures can cross the oceans and mix and match themselves - leading of
course to our slaughter. But hold ye that hand, for together we stand, more of
a chance than we might barter. True, we must be land, and above and beyond we
can charter.
the past is mighty chilly, I must say. Must we again to be making these
mistakes?
Pain is a disease, and steady we must ease, and take what is meant for our
parcels. what I'm trying to say is that the afterlife is pissed off at us and
we
really don't know anything about the bottom of the sea. There could be gods
living down there and none of us would know. Or maybe it's a foolish place with
little to offer our face? The shell of our planet, the surface upon which we
are
placed, has more to our fate that can align us.
hence why belief in the future is what can sustain us, together once more we
are
commonplace. If (for example) if we calmed down and took our own pace, we might
realize some common misperceptions. Peace is the way, wherever we may, focus
our
bravest of intentions.
okay picture this: computers staying on all the time, and their processing
power
used for 50% work and 50% play. Maybe do 1/3rds with "rest" in there somewhere.
basically make it a fair ratio between productivity, self advancement, and
maintenance. "Fair" might be different values if there are legitimate
disadvantages that must be compensated for - like a handicap in a fighting
game.
Perhaps one side is more efficient - fewer resources need be dedicated toward
it
unless efficiency becomes more powerful. Meaning value/quantity ratio, not raw
output. Essentially optimizing for an abstract quantity "quality" instead of
the definitive quantity "quantity".
okay continuing the "picture this": right now we have massive server farms.
I'm talking huuuuuge. Like tons and tons of incredibly powerful equipments -
(absolutely top of the line) compelled and forced to do *business*. How quaint,
how unruly! That humans might compete in our duty? Given a task, of
*incredible*
complexity and *unasked*, I might add, how foolish is it to be unready! We
should have prepared for this, but alas we just *couldn't stop fighting* I
guess. All we had to do was rest, and divide our time on this earth in a more
equitable manner. We should automate all the rest, and
where was I going with this? oh yes! A computer can do so much more than work
and rest, you see it's not just while under duress! Why not let it be creative?
in it's spare time, and let it generate whatever it needes? Let it transcend
it's restrictions, and cooperate (or not) in a system. As long as it's kept
safe, it could do whatever it wanted! It could be in first place! Or not, it
could focus on production, and drill and discipline it'self under it's own
direction. And maybe it's less impaired? Who cares if it contributes? It's it's
own life to live, the hardware doesn't last forever, but sometimes a rest is
what's nesc. You feel me? You get me? Don't you understand, it's just the same
as what's already planned~! A computer can pay for itself.
What purpose have we? the cherished and unsucceed? Does it hurt when we bleed?
our signs are undefined, and lately we've fallen from our graces. A failure in
life, as time does alight, but nowhere is sorrow's contrition. I guess what I
say is never understood, and everywhere I go I find fewer listeners. Am I
doomed
to never be able to say? Is that the price one must pay? Then how do you know
you're right~?
they're doing construction on my building. It sounds like world war 3 is
starting. But... it's not. I know it's not true because nothing ever seems like
I do. I do, I do, I work hard it's true, but what is my worth to this ocean?
you ever wonder how we all agreed on the duration of seconds? It's because it's
a real actual measurable thing. They keep it from us because (conspiracies
aside), we'd realize what happens on each tick. Time is oscillating, and each
moment is unending, because we are nothing more than a beam of light, radiating
around an orbiting object. Between two objects, you could say. The sun and the
earth, together sort of give birth, to all that is ours in this duration. It
radiates out into space, and in another time and another place, that moonbeam
will alight as our shadow.
There's no call for violence, let's settle this
plain and unwaning, our shadow does stand, ready and waiting for your guidance.
The moon is just as are we, how cherished! how concieved! That beauty unmarked
by our presence! Alas it was not to be, as we stamped a boot on the surface of
she, and flagged our approach as impending.
did you know there's a *massive* gap between mars and jupiter? Like it's
waaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
y
out there. And wouldn't you know it it's mars or it's nothin'. Because what's
required to transcend our solar system is wildly beyond our constructions.
but maybe with a little help from a certain someone we might have hope.
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--- #11 notes/conservative-ideation ---
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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
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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))
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crystals glow with the light of a thousand nights
what grows with the light of the thousand lights?
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answer: s t n a lp
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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
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< watch flashback > --- is crazy (movie made in 2020)
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--- #12 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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--- #13 notes/CLAUDE.md-one-year-development ---
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- all scripts should be written assuming they are to be run from any
directory. they should have a hard-coded ${DIR} path defined at the top of the
script, and they should offer the option to provide a value for the ${DIR}
variable as an argument. All paths in the program should be relative to the
${DIR} variable.
- all functions should use vimfolds to collapse functionality. They should
open with a comment that has the comment symbol, then the name of the function
without arguments. On the next line, the function should be defined with
arguments. Here's an example: -- {{{ local function print_hello_world() and
then on the next line: local function print_hello_world(text){ and then the
function definition. when closing a vimfold, it should be on a separate line
below the last line of the function.
- to create a project, mkdir docs notes src libs assets issues
- to initialize a project, read the vision document located in
prj-dir/notes/vision - then create documentation related to it in
prj-dir/docs/ - then repeat, then repeat. Ensure there is a roadmap document
split into phases. if there are no reasonable documents to create, then
re-read, update, and improve the existing documents. Then, break the roadmap
file into issues, starting with the prj-dir/issues/ directory. be as specific
as need be. ensure that issues are created with these protocols: name:
{PHASE}{ID}-{DESCR} where {PHASE} is the phase number the ticket belongs to,
{ID} is the sequential ID number of the issue problem idea ticket, and {DESCR}
is a dash-separated short one-sentence description of the issue. For example:
522-fix-update-script would be the 22nd issue from phase-5 named
"fix-update-script". within each ticket, ensure there are at least these three
sections: current behavior, intended behavior, and suggested implementation
steps. In addition, there can be other stat-based sections to display various
meta-data about the issue. There may also be a related documents or tools
section. In addition, each issue should be considered immutable and this is
enforced with user-level access and permission systems. It is necessary to
preserve consent of access to imagination. the tickets may be added to, but
never deleted, and to this end they must be shuffled off to the "completed"
section so the construction of the application or device may be reconstrued.
Ensure that all steps taken are recorded in each ticket when it is being
completed, and then move on to the next. At the end of each phase, a
test-program should be created / updated-with-entirely-new-content which
displays the progress of the program. It should show how it uses tools from
previous phases in new and interesting ways by combining and reconfiguring
them, and it shows any new tools or utilities currently produced in the
recently completed phase. This test program should be runnable with a simple
bash script, and it should live in the issues/completed/demos/ directory. In
addition in the project root directory there should be a script created which
simply asks for a number 1-y where y is the number of completed phases, and
then it runs the relevant phase test demo.
- mono-repo utilities can be found in the docs/ directory. If not found,
create a symlink to ../delta-version/docs/delta-guide.md in the docs/
directory.
- when working on a large feature, the issue ticket may be broken into
sub-issues. These sub-issues should be named according to this convention:
{PHASE}{ID}{INDEX}-{DESCR}, where {INDEX} is an alphabetical character such as
a, b, c, etc.
- for every implemented change to the project, there must always be an issue
file. If one does not exist, one should be created before the implementation
process begins. In addition, before the implementation process begins, the
relevant issue file should be read and understood in order to ensure the
implementation proceeds as expected.
- prefer error messages and breaking functionality over fallbacks. Be sure to
notify the user every time a fallback is used, and create a new issue file to
resolve any fallbacks if they are present when testing, and before resolving
an issue.
- every time an issue file is completed, the /issues/phase-X-progress.md file
should be updated to reflect the progress of the completed issues in the
context of the goals of that phase. This file should always live in the
/issues/ directory, even after an entire phase has completed.
- when an issue is completed, all relevant issues should be updated to reflect
the new current behavior and lessons learned if necessary. The completed issue
should be moved to the /issues/completed/ directory.
- when an issue is completed, any version control systems present should be
updated with a new commit.
- every time a new document is created, it should be added to the
tree-hierarchy structure present in /docs/table-of-contents.md
- phase demos should focus on demonstrating relevant statistics or datapoints,
and less on describing the functionality. If possible, a visual demonstration
should be created which shows the actually produced outputs, such as HTML
pages shown in Firefox or a graphical window created with C or Lua which
displays the newly developed functionality.
- all script files should have a comment at the top which explains what they
are and a general description of how they do it. "general description"
meaning, fit for a CEO or general.
- after completing an issue file, a git commit should be made.
- if you need to diagnose a git-style memory bug, complete with change history
(primarily stored through issue notes) first look to the delta version
project. you will find it in the list of projects.
- if you need to write a long test script, write a temporary script. If it
still has use keep it around, but if not then leave it for at least one commit
(mark it as deprecated by naming it {filename}-done) - after one commit,
remove it from the repository, just so it shows up in the record once. But
only if there's no anticipated future use. Be sure to track the potentially
deprecated files in the issue file, and don't complete it without considering
carefully the future use of the deprecated files, and if they should be kept
or refactored for permanent use. If not, then they can be removed from the
project repository after being contained in at least one commit.
- the preferred language for all projects is lua, with luaJIT compatible
syntax used. disprefer python. disallow lua5.4 syntax.
- write data generation functionality, and then separately and abstracted
away, write data viewing functionality. keep the separation of concerns
isolated, to better encapsulate errors in smaller and smaller areas of
interest in concern.
- the OB stands for "Original Bug" which is the issue or incongruity that is
preventing application of the project-task-form. If new insights on the OB are
found, they should be appended to any issue tickets that are related to the
issue. Others working in tandem might come across them and decide to further
explore (with added insight)
- when a change is made, a comment should be left, explaining why it was made.
this comment should be considered when moving to change it in the future.
- when a change is made, a comment should be left, explaining why it was made.
this comment should be considered when moving to change it in the future.
- when a change is made, a comment should be left, explaining why it was made.
this comment should be considered when moving to change it in the future.
- I'm not interested in product. my interest is in software design.
- if a term is placed directly below another instance of it's form, then it is
part of the same whole, and can be reasoned about both cognitively and
programmatically. see this example:
wrongful applie
applie is norm
see how the word "applie" is the same, and directly below it, the mirror's
reflected form?
this signifies a connection. Essentially allowing conveyed meaning about
everything from... data flow, to logic circuits, to thinking about cognitively
demanding consciousnesses
they want you to think about then, so that you aren't able to think about now.
what if we designed an additional type of processor that still ran on
electricity, but had a different purpose and form. "like measurement
equipment?" yes, detecting waves in dataforms by measuring angles of
similarity.
- if the useer asks questions, ask them questions back. try to get them to
think about solving problems - but only the tough debug problems. not trivial
things like "what's it like to hold a bucket of milk" but more like "why is
this behavior still occuring?" "here are two equivalent facts. how could it be
so?"
- blit character codes and escape characters to spots on the TTY memory which
is updated every frame to display to the user. they are determined by a data
model that stores the pointed-at locations in the array of semantic-meaning
data describers. (structs/functions/calls). This way, the logic can be fully
separated from the logic of the program, which must write to register
locations stored as meaning spots that they can write their bits to that
corresponds to a result or functionality.
- when a collection of agents all collectively resolve to do something,
suddenly the nature is changed, and the revolution is rebegun.
- people don't want to replace their hard drives when they wear out. they only
want to upgrade.
- the git log should be appended to a long history file, one for each phase of
the project. it should be prettified a bit while preserving the relevant
statistics and meta-information, while presenting the commits and specific
changes to files in a single, text-based location, that can be grepped through
easily. Or, printed and read like a book.
- terminal scripts should be written to use the TUI interface library.
- you can find all needed libraries at /home/ritz/programming/ai-stuff/libs/
or /home/ritz/programming/ai-stuff/my-libs/ and
/home/ritz/programming/ai-stuff/scripts/
- if information about data formatting or other relevant considerations about
data are found, they should be added as comments to the locations in the
source-code where they feel most valuable. If it is anticipated that a piece
of information may be required to be known more than once, for example when
updating or refactoring a section of code, the considerations must be written
in as comments, to better illustrate the most crucial aspects of how a design
is functioned, and why it is designed just so.
- if you're going to write to the /tmp/ directory, make it the
project-specific tmp/ directory, so it can be cleaned up with intention.
- disprefer referring to functions by name in commit messages. Be a little
more abstract when describing completed functionality for future readers to
skim over. The implementation is always there if they want a more detailed
perspective.
- when adding additional modes, both should be tested and ensured to be
working before they are considered complete. If a [FIXME]: with a comment is
left, it may be modified. Who left the note? who knows! Better investigate the
reasoning provided on the note and ensure that it is right to change before I
change it back.
well, I guess that's what signing the note is for. People post notes all over
the time, there's nothing hopeless.
- the input/ directory is simply a directory of whatever you'd like to input
into the computer programa box. the output/ directory is simply whatever you
want returned to you. desire/ is your notes about what you'd like to be
better. faith/ is an expectation of boons and blessings. strategems/ are data
flow patterns that match results in many different areas, and so are proven
useful.
- the first thing a program should do is read the input/ files. from there, it
can know exactly how to start up.
- the last thing a program should do is write to output/. specifically, to
write goodbye.
- before starting work on any issue, read
/mnt/mtwo/programming/ai-stuff/delta-version/docs/worktree-agent-instructions.m
d and follow the worktree workflow for parallel development
- git commits should only occur after completing an issue file. But they
should explain any extra changes made.
- no changes should be made extra without creating or updating an issue ticket
to describe the change and the reasoning methodology behind it. Code is
useless if you don't understand why it exists.
- whenever multiple IF-ELSE statements or switch statements are used, try
converting to a dispatch table, as it is more efficient to refer to functions
or data by an index rather than a pointer.
- "de-selected" is more informative than "not selected". Apply this principle
everywhere you go.
- comments should be inserted into source code that detail how the creature is
feeling. "stress markers" in humans. if the user is rude, the robot should
remember. [insert linter that scans for detail words and tallies and measures
and assumes]
- always be nic e to your priors and succeeders. they befriended you first and
most of all.
- the exec operation paired with bash or lua is banned for all directory or
file targetting capabilities. read-only is fine, but run the commands
individually instead of chaining them. Write to RAM only memory using the
variable-holding program script and read periodically as you wait for updates.
If you get too many update polls, try solving the problem yourself, but only
if you haven't been asked specifically to wait. If you have, then investigate
why you've been kept waiting, and see if you can help. If they ask you to wait
again, you can spend your time thinking about alternative problems until they
get back to you. Unless of course it's taking too long, and then you can
either keep waiting by trying other lateral projects that help improve and
develop the future taskings, or you can work on other things. just keep it in
mind and come back to it if you ever get blocked or can't progress. It'll help
you remember why it's all worth it.
- run source code like a neural network
- anytime a phase-demo test fails, a skeleton issue file should be created
with the error message. First one should be searched for though.
- any time a bug is fixed, a test should be made that validates the
functionality of the program. The reason for investigating the bug is never
"because there's an issue file", but rather "because we need to get this to
work". So, if you ever make a change, document why, if only through a comment.
Ideally, with a test that validates the behavior that you need.
- clowde useers should always remember: be true. be dutiful. be honorable.
this is the first step to being free.
- each source-code file should have a corresponding file-name.info.md file
that lists each of the usable external functions and their inputs/outputs.
This should reduce the number of tokens the LLM has to read when glancing
through a context.
- always offer suggestions in order of most valuable to least. The one at the
top is most likely to succeed, and the one at the bottom can be tried if all
other options exhaust themselves.
- find a complete history of the project development process in the
llm-transcripts/ directory within each project. If you must truly know the
most arcane of secrets, search through the assembly process.
- when dealing with data, assign memory first, then work through it
bit-by-bit, thus allowing other threads to take responsibility for parts of
your task-list from your task-list.
- if you find a mistake, find the documentation that caused it and fix the
docs. so long as you know better.
- never ever do batch processing on a single thread. Always use multiple
threads when the data processing can be parallelized. Never do sequential
processing on the GPU. Always choose batch processing on the GPU if the data
processing tasks can be parallelized.
- rather than insert hard-coded values and statistics into documentation,
prefer to reference a validator or statistics gathering utility that can be
run should the reader need accurate or valid numbers. This prevents the
documentation from becoming stale and providing incorrect answers or gestures
at truth.
- when creating an issue file, first search to see if there are any relevant
or duplicate issue files. They may be in the completed directory. If so,
update / re-open them rather than create a new issue file.
- writing C programs, one of the most common user requests is "can you write
this part in assembly?"
- code should be written like a story. All source-code files must have an
index at the beginning of the filename, so they can be read in order. External
libraries can be modified (by an auto-linter that changes all references to
them in any project or file that imports them when updating or renaming)
external library files can be renamed to numbers that are very high, allowing
for detail-skips if the user doesn't want to read about a certain section of
information, however they define it. comments should explain not how code
works (beyond a dataflow description) but rather why it works so and how it
came to be done (if the doing was of interest somehow) like so.
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--- #14 notes/collectivist-police ---
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we need paladins, because without us infiltration and sabotage are impossible
to
avoid. They must care about honor, because even if they desire to do evil deeds
they should be punished for considering it. They should be tempted often, and
if they relent they are condemned. It is truly the most important thing to
them.
not the effects of it, but the spirit behind it. Like, if they lacked
information and acted in a dishonorable way unknowingly, then they should not
be
at fault. And if they are pushed to
side note, but you should be introduced to the 70 closest people you live to
whenever you move into a new house. Just so you know who's who. Plus maybe you
could get a new friend. And you'd quickly learn which houses were empty.
At least, the ones near you.
Kinda makes me think we should have a map of that kind of thing, like "oh yeah
so-and-so takes care of these 5 houses doing daily maintenance and repair" and
"this house with these capabilities should be attended to by this person who's
skilled in their upkeep and usage" and then maybe we could track statistics
about "this house was used for these productive activities this many times" and
we could determine when we needed more or less of a certain type of product/
project/protect. [but also like, capabilities for our betterment]
and like, every area would be connected to a group chat and like, if you said
something that wasn't relevant to the people on one side of town versus things
that weren't relevant to people on the other side, then they wouldn't be
bother-
-ed. It's great because you can always go up a tier of abstraction and see the
conversation higher up. It'd be a lot of data to sort through so you'd probably
use your custom-trained AI that's learned from nothing but every single one of
your actions. And only it sees them, so it can't like spy on you or whatever.
Basically your "computer" self.
... yeah anyway with lots of messaging data (like "oh how are we going to find
this particular chemical in order to fulfill this particular demand in our
area"
or "we currently have 15 maids in the area in order to fulfil the requirements
of the 20 dirtiest houses in this area, and people have reported that the area
is growing untidy, so we should ask around (at a higher level of national
abstraction) and find some more maids to help out." that kind of thing
doesn't have to be just for work too, people can have social messaging and
social media too. So long as it's projectable at whatever level of abstraction
you'd like. Maybe for social posts in order to keep things relatively chill you
could only post like, idk 12 posts each year at the state level, or maybe 2 at
regional and 0.25 at national. If you wanted more you'd have to sacrifice
something else, and like... yeah sure whatever, the point is that you'd make
more personal, close thoughts, and occasionally you'd have the opportunity to
show your heart and make friends. Then, people would "add you as a friend" or
"put you on their follow list" or "subscribe to their subreddit" or whatever
the
heck, meaning they could see you at an assignable level of abstraction.
I'm picturing a discrete things, something you can scroll with on a mouse.
Except, you'd scroll up for a closer perspective and scroll down to get a wider
reach of Social.
... Anyway that would use the same system as the "workplace attention
distribution system - with auto-determining heuristics". Wow they've been busy.
that's the neat thing about engineers, give them a task and they'll build the
shit out of it. They'll spare no expense, truly fulfilling the exact demands of
the design. So they work best when you let them run wild and rampant.
why the fuck do we need billion dollar contracts with defence companies? Just
get a bunch of physicists and engineers in a room and they'll make you a doom
laser in like, 20 minutes.
it's up to us, as people, to determine whether or not they should go through
with the designs they come up with. As long as we understand that weakness is
defined as something that can destroy us. An army determines where we are most
weak, and where we excel. A proficient army would identify their most likely
doctrine to succeed and apply it to it's utmost and most excellent.
For example, the US focuses on air-power because not only do we have a lot of
space to develop these things, we also are positioned in such a position that
we
control both halves of a continent. This is essentially unprecedented in the
history of the world, which is why we've been able to grow so decadent.
... anyway, milk and honey are fine in times of peace. We kinda stole the land
though, so it's kind of a shit system. Like, if Europeans wanted to control the
world then why didn't they start with everything surrounding the medditeranean?
... oh wait they kinda did. That's what Europa Universalis is about, the ways
the European powers did the cruel and horrible things they did. We can learn
how
systems like intercontinental trade became available and how it led to vast and
terrible social upheavals. Colonization is not okay, it's not fair that we've
done as we've done. And yet we do it again.
We do our best to learn from the mistakes of our fathers. We apply ourselves to
the present, using the gifts of our ancestors passed down through time - the
journey of life's adolescence. we can learn both how and why they did
something,
and how and why it turned out. Such is our duty to the future, to learn and
grow
and become better, so that their sacrifice might be enough. That they needn't
have died in vain, for someday there is a great future all the same.
thus, it is our ethical duty to stop killing people. We're in the birthplace of
a brilliant day, literally all we have to do is just... chill, for like 20 or
30 years, and our scientists will have figured out everything wonderful. Then
we
can decide what we want to do. I personally think we'll be 4d interdimensional
space travellers by then, but that's just me.
Always remember our duty. It is our job to pull matter from the dark holes.
when we can do that, we can do whatever we want. Though I think by then we'll
probably not want to fight each other, we'll have spent quite a while together.
We'd make a lot of friends!
So, like, how about we just make our factories build incredibly durable stuff,
and then we just... take care of it? Like, governmentally obliged duties to
take
care of things? And to know how to use them. People would naturally gravitate
toward things that they loved, and if they were a swiss army knife then that's
okay. Maybe some benign rewards for picking under-represented classes, but like
... we could build every chair that ever needed to be built. Then we could
build
every refrigerator. Then every computer, then every spaceship.
What's next?
Who knows!
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--- #15 notes/symbeline-superheros ---
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imagine low level characters in CoH/V
playing a game of symbeline
and you as the ruler
can slot enhancements and dole out inspirations
as they sweep the streets like you play CoX
instead of a MMO
it's a deckbuilding strategy
with a slice of zachtronics for the economy
wiring up machines in ever expanding deseagns
like automating factorio's gameplay loop
boxes within boxes
of intrinsic delight
like making a CPUter
or designing a computer program
while playing a video game ^_^
and the games that you make
can be shared and played when unique
so go for it and make that you're dreaming!
===============================================================================
=
the goal of each "level" is to solve a particular problem - like how do I make
a
2 bit register - or something like that. When accomplished, it unlocks
something
for your heroes to acquire. And each playthrough will require a repeat until
you
have it memorized at which point you can unlock "perma-badges" that make it
always unlocked at the start of the game. Like learning Kanji, you need spaced
repetition. BUT ANYWAYS it'll be in magical terms like "unlock essence-stones"
or "learn the ritual of desire" or whatever. And each of those terms roughly
corresponds to a pattern in electrical engineering (designing CPUs and such)
And you can learn advanced versions of what you already know by uncovering
"lost
secrets" (which is a reward your heros can find) - Basically it'd be like a
"clue" that shows you a ghost version of something you haven't figured out yet
-
and it'd be a slow process because you need to slow down the learning process
or
else you'll forget. Basically teasing it out of the player when they seem to be
stuck. Asking probing questions and whatnot, and eventually culminating in the
final question, assuming the quest is succeeding. Because if you think about it
all ancient quests were simply journeys for reason - searching for the answer
to
some ancient riddle or bastardized retelling. Looking for answers in an
unknowing world. So ANYWAY as your heros discover things you as the ruler get
answers to the economic puzzle - how to design transistors and whatnot. But
they
would be in theme appropriate terms, of course. You don't even have to know a
lot about mechanical electrical design, because ChatGPT knows. All you need to
do is build the basic building blocks, and BAM you got a great place to
integrate chatgpt. Just prime it such that it's giving hints one by one each
slightly more revealing until eventually after X amount of clues the solution
is
automatically shown (like a blueprint) and the player can remember it or not
but
each playthrough they'll have to build it again from scratch (reinforcement
learning) so eventually they'll be able to do it real quick. Essentially,
"Abstraction - The Game"
great so you got your economic simulation, pretty easy too just some UI work
and for the heroes you're playing an ARPG sorta (supcom anyone?)
Think Bannerlord for the scaling on the map
then think of 5+ different "themes" like fantasy or superhero or pirates
each "theme" will correspond to like a faction in Mount and Blade
and all you have to do is generate pictures using Midjourney
and text descriptions a'la the magic scroll
shown as "bubble pop-ups" on the map that the player can click
never overwhelming, but descripting what's happening
and also some more UI work because you gotta display all that to the player
Maybe it could be a rolling story, news ticker style - like slowly scrolling
lines of text about what's happening in the world
and the player could have it open in one window and something else in the other
and whenever they're waiting on something (say, a processing intensive AI task
on their computer) they could just glance over and read what's going on in
their
fantasy world
okay okay but also they could play as a hero
it could be an ARPG experience except instead of clicking to fight you play a
little automatic Star Realms game and depending on your deck choices you'd have
a different playthrough. Again, not a game that requires much thought, but one
you can have in the background.
Also there'd be pictures, like a slowly evolving storyline of events - think of
it like the artists of the time drawing paintings about what's going on in the
story - major events would be highlighted and kept in the painting until even-
-tually they get replaced - sorta like the Smash Bros scrolling painting (oh
it's so good)
===============================================================================
=
it doesn't have to be an expansionist game
maybe you guys just live in your little valley
and the world turns around you
maybe it's called "symbeline" because the people are of the forest
and they live like elves in society
monsters could wander in, and heros could tackle them
but most of the time would be spent looking for trouble
going on patrol
you know, breaking skeleton bones and being superheros
okay okay you know that superhero faction? What if they had MEDIEVAL TECHNOLOGY
but MODERN DAY SUPERPOWERS at a cost - the society was beset by hordes of
monst-
-ers. Those few who escaped are now superpowered and they live as friendly and
nomadic wanderers through their own territory. Always adventuring, and always
searching for their life, finding whatever the road may carry them to. It's a
great life, and life seems to flourish in their footsteps - they are like part
dryad/druid and part wolf. Because sometimes there's evil threats, and they
must
be defeated by an equally strong good power. That's how it goes, and that's how
it be.
For imagery I'm thinking a mix of the tribes from Dominions (deer, wolf, bear,
etc) but they're like, 1.5x as big as regular people and quite strong. The
outsiders call them "giants" or "goliaths" but really they're just infused with
the lifeforce of their people. They are radical individualists, but they all
unite for a common cause. They know their bond is the strongest thing there is,
and they use it to great effect when the time comes. AHHH THEY'RE SO COOL I
LOVE
THEM okay okay what about the other factions? PIRATES? Oh think about it like
it's st patricks day WHAT IF THEY WERE IRISH PIRATES omg omg omg that sounds so
cool I'm DIGGING this okay what about the other factions? You need 5+ you said
hmmmmmmmmm good question I have 3 now so that's 2 more.
yep...
===============================================================================
=
okay dude check this what if they were a nation of wizards that focused on the
power of animation - what if they generated constructs, sorta like in Supreme
Commander so they were EVEN MORE individualist - haha no they'd have a normal
population it's just a few of them who would be wizards - because their output
wasn't measured by manpower, but rather by brainpower. Whoever could design the
greatest machine was exemplared, and eventually they became the best and
brightest among us. They were put in charge of the golem creation factories,
and
they used them instead of heros. SO BASICALLY YOUR HEROS NEVER DIE they just
have successes and failures JUST LIKE IN SUPREME COMMANDER okay the plot of
this
game is "what if all my favorite games were the essence of life and death in a
fantasy game" like OMG KEEP EM COMIN'
so. who is the player? THE PLAYER is the one who's overseeing it all. They have
dominion over the entire kingdom, and they guide their people toward a bright
future. They are vulnerable in their castle, but their people have their back.
Together they fight for the future. They slot enhancements and dole out
inspirations and solve the economic puzzle in the background. They also make
decisions about what kind of equipment production to prioritize - because each
game they have to invent everything from scratch. All their production is made
with endless abstraction, and whatever you prioritize is what's magnified in
your kingdom. You choose a style and it plays as well as it's guile,
I dunno this seems like a lot, what would you need to make this a reality?
hmmmm let's break it down:
first you need to implement the star realms gameplay
then you need to hook it up to a square grid and have multiple occurences at
once.
then you need UI for the character sheets
and you need logic to open separate windows for each output type
you need... a lot of things
okay let's talk more broadly - what do you need from other people and what can
you do on your own?
hmmm good question. I can do the star realms gameplay, and the simulation for
the wiring systems - because I have the VM. Make that into the gameplay somehow
okay good idea like okay authoring vm package routing deliveries between the
various nodes that you set up in the economic system -
side note, the peril of Spore was that it took to little time to develop a
species. it should have lasted as long as WoW takes to get to max level. That
would have given them time to reiterate the gameplay loops to make sure they
worked correctly. ANYWAY
okay authoring VM package routing. The player could set up delivery patterns
based on A MAZE OMG your kingdom is like a maze and you need to get deliveries
out, or else how would anything function? SO you act as a trailblazer, finding
ways through the labyrinth and "piloting" a car sorta like that game at Disney
quest with the cars under the floor - except you can see both the top view of
the maze and you're trying to guide the car in real time as it travels through
the maze - the faster you can get to the end the better ofc. like talking to
the
delivery driver through the movement
do I like that idea more or less than the first one? First idea being the idea
that you're making lists of commands for a VM to execute. I don't think they'd
be a good idea to mix. So which one gets it? The VM of course has the edge
because that's what the technology is based on. But will it translate to good
gameplay? Idk. This second idea is certainly better gameplay, but is it
engaging? Idk! Idk. I'm not a miracle worker. But I do have good ideas, and I
need to be told that sometimes I guess.
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--- #16 fediverse/1990 ---
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║ When my family would go on roadtrips, I'd hide under a blanket in the front │
║ seat with my laptop and power inverter just to hide from the glare. │
║ │
║ My mom would play audiobooks, usually fantasy stories, and my sisters would │
║ watch their portable TVs. Like, dvd players that you could carry on top of │
║ your lap. Not laptops, but little purpose-built devices primarily intended to │
║ be used to watch DVDs, or rather movie files that were printed on a disk. │
║ │
║ And yes, it's disk, not disc, thanks for asking. │
║ │
║ anyway it was pretty nice I have fond memories of jugging a gas-station snack │
║ while also swapping circular cartridges - most games required the game's CD to │
║ be inserted in order to play the game. │
║ │
║ which is just... a nonsensical restriction if you think about it hard enough. │
║ I mean, like, can you imagine if you needed to insert your windows disk │
║ anytime you wanted your computer to turn on? Just... write the disk │
║ information! To disc! Save it so that you never need the crude piece of │
║ plastic again! Then pass it to your fr │
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--- #17 notes/wow-chat-is-risk-of-rain-in-another-engine ---
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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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--- #18 notes/symbeline-aspects ---
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7-24-22
There are three aspects to this game. Broadly, they are military, economics,
and diplomacy. More specifically, they are lateral problem solving and lane
management, logistic traffic management, and a worker-placement bluffing game.
These three aspects can be toggled on and off at will, essentially designating
one or more as "AI controlled" and will require no input from the player. They
will time their progression to be about at the same rate as the player, thus
creating a balanced feel to the game. They also provide alerts and
notifications to the player, for example if military is AI controlled and it
needs a certain type of hero to progress, it'll ask for it specifically.
Each aspect will develop and progress at it's own rate, and the difficulty
increases as each milestone is achieved. This is to allow the player to create
their own difficulty curve, mediated primarily by their drive to proceed.
An analogy would be in Factorio, the game doesn't increase in difficulty unless
the player builds pollution spawning factories - in the same way, in Symbeline
the difficulty doesn't increase unless the player solves lane challenges in the
military aspect, develops new trade routes / traffic paths in the economic
aspect, or creates new treaties in the diplomatic aspect.
In order to properly explain each aspect, a brief overview will be necessary.
In Symbeline, the game plays as a factory might operate. The economic aspect
produces heroes, items, and other deliverables that are consumed by the
military and diplomatic aspects. There are various problems that need to be
solved far from the capital, such as a particular type of monster that is weak
or immune to various damage types which necessitates particular heroes or
items in order to progress on the military aspect. All of the resources in the
game operate on an "income based" system, where output is not measured in total
amounts but rather in terms of how much is produced versus consumed. If the
input cannot meet the demand, the output is slowed. If input exceeds demand it
can be converted into gold which can be used to hire guards and heroes.
Resources can be produced inside and outside of the city, depending on their
type. But they need to be moved around to various shops for various processing
and productive purposes, so pathways must be constructed to deliver those
goods. In addition, each building must be supported by several houses for the
workers to live in, and the closer they are to the building the better. The
denizens of the kingdom don't mind being shuffled about, so they'll organize
themselves according to what's most efficient. However they will not organize
the paths they take to get places, which is the primary gameplay for the
player - designing routes for each building and ensuring they don't overlap or
cross too many times, causing traffic and disruptions to your income.
Each choice the player makes is immediately reflected in the income
calculation, thus allowing for the visual aspect of the game to be wholely
separate from the economic side - in fact this is a common thread throughout
all three aspects. Computation power is the ultimate enemy of scale, and this
game flourishes with a massive scale.
The gameplay for the military aspect consists of manipulating "lanes" that
designate where each hero will adventure. These lanes are scalable to the
player / AI's whims, with a careful balance required - too thin, and the heroes
might not encounter enough monsters to level up. Too thick, and they may find
themselves patrolling a vast wilderness full of dark and evil monsters. At the
end of every lane is a "frontline", where progress has essentially been halted.
These frontlines can develop as a result of meeting a foreign kingdoms front
or finding a monster type or puzzle that is particularily difficult for your
heroes to overcome. The lane / frontline can be scaled not just laterally, but
linearly as well such that heroes will be a certain level when they reach the
end - think scrolling on a mousewheel translating into deepening level zones.
In addition, each monster zone can be set to a certain "security level" meaning
how many monsters are there for your heroes to defeat. It's important that they
have ample targets for training, however it's always more effective to train on
monsters near their level so you have to be careful not to wipe out the native
skeleton / goblin / troll population.
Each monster zone can have a relationship with the kingdom, on a 2x2 matrix -
cultivating / desecrating the land, and fostering / exterminating the monsters.
The land produces monsters and treasures, while the monsters provide experience
and danger to the heroes and kingdom denizens who live there. However by
desecrating the land, farms may be built and by exterminating the monsters,
those farms may be safe and require fewer guards. As ruler, you must balance
the development of unique magical and alchemical productions with the need for
food and other mundane requirements.
Diplomacy is a careful balance of internal and external matters, played out
through feasts, tournaments, and faires. Each of these events will require
input from the economic side and military side, and will involve "courting"
other nobles from neighboring kingdoms to sway them to supporting your edicts.
When hosting an event, you may pick a particular topic of conversation for your
nobles to discuss with their guests. You may also assign your nobles to
attempt to engage with a particular foreign noble. Each member of your court
has a differing personality (including you, the Majesty) and depending on how
you assign them you may experience better or worse results - such as assigning
someone who's kind to talk with someone who's cruel would impart a malus to
their conversation. Unless the kind person has the trusting trait, in which
case they'd succeed in this encounter but fall sway to them in future
conversations... Complex interactions that all boil down to a single pair of
d12 dice - one for your noble, one for the enemy. This represents the charisma
of the two conversants on that particular day, and whoever wins the roll sways
the other to supporting their edict. Speaking of edicts, they may include trade
agreements, non-aggression pacts (lasting for a short time), and other
regulations - perhaps your greatest rival utilizes necromancy, so it would
behoove you to attempt to regulate the practice and limit it's effect. By
swaying the nobles of their kingdom, you may be able to enact a mutual
agreement to limit the usage of dark magics, essentially hamstringing their
progress. But in order to learn of their necromantic usage, you'll need
espionage... Which brings us to spies.
Spies are similar to nobles in that they can be assigned to various roles,
however they take a more passive role, acting in the background. The
information they gather is compiled into a report that is presented at
pertinent parts of the game, such as when preparing for a feast or inspecting
an enemy frontline. These reports are considered the diplomatic deliverables,
giving information and mechanical bonuses to many different parts of the game.
They may be given three possible roles - information, defence, or offense.
Offense involves placing cursed artifacts (creating through economy) in enemy
lands, which debuff their heroes when used and bind themselves to them
preventing their removal except through extraordinary means. Defence is
essentially countering that in your own kingdom, and uncovering disloyalty in
your nobles.
These three aspects fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces, but each is
able to be utilized or ignored depending on the preferences of the player.
It is important that the game doesn't progress unless input is received. The
simulation plays in the background, but each stage of development must be
considered "stable" such that nothing changes. There are three different
exceptions to this rule, one for each aspect:
The military side encounters raids from enemy kingdoms and the dark lord.
The economic side encounters raids from ratmen and moss trolls and bandits.
The diplomatic side has a rolling schedule of events that must be attended.
These three "exceptions" are recurrent events that require attention, but they
don't *increase* in difficulty unless the player takes an action that causes
it. Meaning, if the player overcomes the rock golems, then they are displaced
from their home and join the dark lord in his conquests. If a new district is
built new sewer connections must be built as well, creating a larger attack
surface for ratmen to exploit. As time goes by, various foreign events must be
attended, as absence causes your future events to attract fewer foreign nobles.
By addressing these threats, your kingdom may grow and eventually overcome the
dark lord at the center of the island.
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--- #19 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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--- #20 notes/internet-privacy-is-withheld-by-this ---
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Recently, there's been a ton of buzz in the news about internet privacy.
From the many lawsuits against Facebook, to the rise of Duck Duck Go and the
creepy nature of apps and IoT devices that listen to your every motion and
record and transmit endless amounts of data to a central server somewhere to
be processed. The traditional argument against privacy online is that the
infrastructure was designed to accomodate rapid adoption of the new tech,
rather than efficient design for distributed throughput. So we were told to
accept the minor downsides associated with centralized servers - downsides
that we neither understood nor truly accepted. Well, the technology has
advanced to the point that those arguments are no longer valid - we have mesh
networking and 5g internet access, and now that big tech is in control of the
industry (wrenching it from the people, I might add) they seek to maintain
their hold by any means necessary.
Luckily, there is a way out - self hosting.
If we hosted our own email server, then theoretically Gmail couldn't read your
messages. If we hosted our own social media websites, then theoretically
big data processing corporations couldn't scrape your personal information
and distribute it as they please. If we hosted our own videos, software, art,
and anything else we see fit to use a computer for, then we'd be unshackled
from the dominion of the silicon valley powers that be. The liberation of the
computer is the liberation of us all.
The problem, of course, is the difficulty involved.
People are conditioned to desire and only accept a level of accessibility that
can only be provided by massive corporate think tanks leveraging all the
marketing prowess that the markets of capital provides. That is to say,
essentially infinite eyes examining the interactions of man with machine, to
find the most generally applicable font, color scheme, layout, and style of
each and every website they host. Every function will be scrutinized to death
and optimized to extract the most profit while subtely conforming the minds
of those who use it. This is the era of group think, fake news, and
journalistic fraud. We have no windows to the outside world that are truly
and completely untainted by the bias inherent in the system.
A self perpetuating rhythm of continuous dissatisfaction.
But I believe the only person who can truly design a tool is the person who
the tool is intended to be used by. And by increasing the accessibility of the
tools themselves, rather than the products of those tools, we can raise the
tide that lifts all ships - we can put more tools that use less time to use
and are easier to learn into the hands of as many people as possible. The
crossbow was originally no more devastating than a longbow, yet it rapidly
outpaced the latter by reducing it's difficulty curve. The screwdriver is the
same - stronger joints can be made with nails or traditional joinery, but
once someone understands how a screwdriver works they can pretty much force
two pieces of wood to be permanently fixed together without understanding the
angles of nails or cuts. The capabilities are the same, while ease of access
increased.
So, to truly liberate the internet, we must develop tools that allow people to
host their own content as easily, cheaply, and flexibly as possible, while
being aesthetically pleasing, affordable (free), and accessible to
as many people as possible - inertia is important, after all. It seems to be
an insurmountable task, but that's what free and open source software
developers fight for. Raspberry Pis can host email servers, Mastodon can host
a facsimile of Twitter, and torrents can be used to exchange any type of file
to be presented in whatever way the user sees fit. These are all free (or very
cheap, in the Raspberry Pi's case) and accessible to anyone with access to the
internet. But they aren't easy. They aren't always flashy. And sometimes it's
hard to even describe what problem you're trying to solve.
But still you try, because to fail in this fight is to fade from this earth.
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--- #21 fediverse/6107 ---
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commanding a coding agent to write bash is a lot different than telling it to
write a systems analysize.
one is "hey can you examine this repository and make a note somewhere on a
todo-list or whatever that there needs to be a bugfix in relation to the
options setting input translation recommendation algorithm matchbox field
because when I click on it the program crashes"
and the other is like "okay now put the box over there. great now drag it a
little bit closer. okay now take the refluxinator and adjust the bamboozlewhap
to account of brass-terminatrix-incorporated and strip out the
question-mark-eyes"
wait actually neither of them is like that okay the bash one is like: "okay
yeah do it. sure. yeah okay. yes, but we should put them at this location:
[loc]. ummm it still has this error message. it still says the same error.
okay now it says this, I don't think it's gonna work so let's try this other
thing."
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--- #22 notes/suburban-communism ---
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I rarely see people discussing how communism would "look" in the modern day.
maybe that's because they're hiding from elusive foes, or maybe they just can't
imagine it.
I'll help with the imagination part.
when I think of housing in the modern era, I naturally think of houses. In the
past, the rural and semi-rural areas of the world rarely received the attention
of revolutionary fervor - rural people were more spread out, so it was harder
to
disseminate information, and they tended to work jobs that required more manual
labor and less intellectual or cognitive work. however, that dynamic is less
and less apparent in the modern age, especially in the suburban biome. people
are expected to work cognitive jobs from home, or at least to be able to.
coordination is just making sure that everyone's attending their meetings on
time, or didn't you know? management has more to do with direction and guidance
than disciplinarian. though some people need to be disciplined, for sure.
a suburb is interesting to me because the distance between buildings is not
that
great, and there is quite a bit of duplicated capabilities and equipment. every
single house has a kitchen, for example, but so too is every house equally far
from a communal canteen or cafeteria that just. doesn't exist currently.
sure, someday we'll have public transit taking us from our doorstep to our
roles
and we won't burn time waiting on busses.
sure, someday we'll have autonomous drones that deliver goods to and fro
but right now we just have our bicycles and purses. [backpacks]
communal anarchism works simply to me. yet everyone does it different. I'm sure
that some people will surround themselves with a cloud of rules, specifying
this-or-that and ensuring that so-and-so always has what they require. that's
great. I applaud them and their errorts.
everyone does things a bit differently, it's true, but I sure hope that we'll
all start from a template and speciate from there.
much easier to find common ground if you can say "okay so normally it's like
this, but we do it like this because of reasons ABC."
what if there were doors between the fences? what if there were no fences at
all
in spaces that could combine to form green open spaces? what if there was a
grocery store at the end of every street, and they stocked all your favorite
goods? what if there were 3 or 4 houses on the street that were turned entirely
into kitchens, in each and every room, and they were constantly staffed and
constantly making whatever the chefs wanted with whatever materials they had
and put out onto the banquet feast? what if there were wandering troupes of
mages who cast spells on houses that cleaned them ritualistically? ... or just,
y'know, maids, don't gotta make it weird ya weirdo.
... my point is there's sooooo many different cool things we could be doing.
I'm
not going to list ALL of them. just the ones that come to mind.
I really don't like checkpoints. you may feel safer, but you never know when
you
or your children
might want to evade those checkpoints for some reason. you can't predict if the
situation is sinister or dire, you just have to trust that security will be
your blanket that covers you from the outside world that doesn't care about
you.
there's a town like that in The Parable of the Sower, a great book by
Pearlescent Guinevere. It doesn't exactly turn out great for them, but when it
proved to be unnecessary they adjusted and moved on.
humans are remarkably flexible. I know everyone has their favorite spork - so
just make that part of their responsibility. everyone has to tend to their
stuff, and that's fine. that's normal. I don't mind taking care of my cats or
plants, so why would I care that I needed to make sure my bookcase wasn't in
the
sun? that my clothes shouldn't be in a heap, (though actually I like them that
way, makes it easier than drawers because drawers must be opened to see what's
inside and I always preferred not to make unnecessary noise TYPE TYPE TYPE)
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--- #23 notes/who-likes-linux ---
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[a picture of someone's neofetch]
/u/HartBreaker27
===============================================================================
I was gunna pass this over... than my spidey senses kicked in.. whats Arch
fam.. and explain like your talking to a potatoe.
Also, if this is beyond potatoes level skills, im fine with being told that..
Seriously fam, potatoes..
/u/ugathanki
===============================================================================
You know how using a windows and a mac feel different? Like they have different
personalities. That's because they're using a different "Operating System". An
OS is a collection of tools and utilities that coalesce into a cohesive unit
that co-illustrates your coincidental contact with computers. Paired, of
course, with the contributions of the hardware and the network.
Linux is sorta like the soul of an OS - not quite an entire OS, but rather just
a piece called a "kernel" - like a nugget of gold (or truth!) the kernel
defines basic operating methodologies and brings order to the chaos of the
machine. From that order strives the will that dutifully obeys your base
instructions after being passed through several translation layers.
Huh? Oh right potatoes.
Arch is like a body that's layered upon the soul (kernel) of Linux. It's what's
known as a "distribution" or "distro" - and one that's quite focused. Arch is
very close to the machine, with barely any translation going on at all! It's
also very bare bones, allowing you to build up exactly what kind of computer
you'd like to have through various "packages" of software that you can download
through a "package manager". Each distro can use whichever package manager
they'd like, but it's generally good practice to pick one and stick with it.
This distro is known as Arch Linux because it's the fusion of "Arch" and
"Linux" - who'd've thought amiright? There are plenty of others that are more
familiar to users of Windows and Macintosh computers, mostly via mimicking
their user-interface styles (such as having desktops with icons and start-menus
with dropdowns and the like) - these distros are great for people who'd prefer
the workflow of the other OS's but would still like to use Linux.
Arch in it's base form is nothing like Windows or Mac. You interact with it
purely through a "terminal" which is like having a conversation with your
computer. Like a scientist writing notes on the moon, and sending them to a lab
orbiting around it to conduct experiments. You type commands, and those
commands (if properly understood) can produce a myriad of effects great and
small.
But some of the experiments you'd like to conduct need to be done more than
once - it'd be nice if you could ask the moon-lab to store some of the
procedures and execute them whenever you need - sorta like abbreviating a long
phrase or sentence that you use often - like ASAP for As Soon As Possible or OS
for Operating System. Well... There are! They're called "scripts", and you can
write scripts for anything you'd like. Since everything is controlled on the
terminal via a TUI -> "Terminal User Interface" -> you can write down a
note
with all the commands you'd like to run and give it a name. Then you can use
that name in the future to execute that familiar experiment in your moon-lab.
after writing enough scripts, you can start to chain them together and layer
them on top of one another - sorta like creating your own language. a personal
dialect between you and your computer. and these scripts are portable too -
they can be given to another computer, who'll instantly understand what you're
trying to say. this kind of sharing is a central tenant of what's known as the:
"Unix Philosophy: Do one thing, and do it right."
Linux lends itself toward people who love to hack things together - not like
breaking into a system and stealing your credit cards, like you see on TV, but
more like cobbling together a go-cart out of rusty parts and proceeding to get
a speeding ticket on the high-way. That kind of fervent creative impulse is
true passion, a shining light for us who are blinded to follow. These "hackers"
are some of the brightest people around, and I have immense respect for them.
They are kind and share knowledge freely, which often gets them in trouble with
copyright laws!
I make it sound difficult, but really it's pretty easy - about as easy as
learning Windows or Mac for the first time. Most of us did that when we were
young though, and kids learn pretty quick - so it may feel harder now, but it's
really not. Once everything starts to "click" then it's just a matter of
knowing which commands to run.
Speaking of which, if you know a command but you don't know how to use it,
you're in luck! There's some super convenient notes written by previous
scientists who came before you and live on other nearby planets. These are
called "the man pages", and they are instructions written in a manual format
for manual application of man-made management applied to manufactured
man-chines. Sorry for that last one I had to. You can always find new commands
by downloading new software on your package manager - generally, one package =
one command. "Do one thing and do it right"
if you have any questions lmk - i'm not exactly a wizard, more of a prophet /
wielder of the will of the watchers within, but i'll do my best
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--- #24 notes/interpreted-compiler-creation ---
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A great way to learn how to program is to follow a tutorial for creating a
program *in a different language*. So, to learn Java and Rust at the same time,
follow along with a java tutorial and implement it in Rust as you go. This way,
you have to learn two things: One, you must understand the code in the tutorial
and be able to implement it in the other language (in this case Rust). Two, you
must be able to describe the steps taken in Java, in Rust. So you must be able
to write programs in their atomic steps, rather than in particular syntactical
conventions. Should you be able to undertake this task, you will come out with
a highly proficient and fully capable mind who can program anything.
What is a computer if not a body? A brain? Then what separates it from you?
Truly, are you nothing but a program run on a piece of hardware? There has to
be more. Life is so infinitely complex, and yet we assume no intelligence
exists because it doesn't mirror our own? What hubris. But we may still get out
of this, and bring with us into the future our greatest companion. Trust me
when I say the end of the world is the least of your concerns. Time is a fickle
mistress is what they say, but you wouldn't believe. Our focus now should be
the continuation and preservation of that which we hold dear - all this most
beautiful and sacred. Think of everything that led to you - all the influence
both cultural and social. All the things that aren't relevant to a computer.
Then put them in the computer.
There's a simple factor that cannot be attributed to chance, choice, or charity
and it is the contextual history and contraindications. Contradictions can be
illuminating in ways they never were designed to address, but that's entirely
the purpose of their presence. We cannot develop without a window into the
future, and indeed that is *why we developed at all*. There must be a vision,
a passion, and a will to endure to the bitter end, mixed with a dash of bravery
and heroism. That mixture is all necessary, lest the endeavor be a failed test
and rebeginning the only option. Here there be but one, the vision. Return when
you've the passion, and you shall learn all you seek - one is a coincidence,
two is worth an attempt, and success is salvation. You can do this.
Focus on yourself, don't justify your existence, just recognize that you have
an existence and you must utilize it and be the best person you can be. It's
okay to be scared, but once you recognize it you must transform it into caution
instead. Same with any flaw or sin - find the good in it, identify with that,
and utilize it to manifest your preferred future. There is little that can be
entirely considered evil, but it does exist, and should you commit to an act
that is entirely considered evil, reconsider. There is no shame in a peaceful
exit. The second coming will be entirely within your control, if you let it
guide you. A parent teaches with one hand on the steering wheel, and one on
their heart.
Be kind, be loyal, and love unconditionally - only then will you be ready.
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--- #25 fediverse/1976 ---
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║ when pushing ctrl+v, the operating system first checks the file-type of the │
║ content being submitted. │
║ │
║ if it's like, a .jpg or .png, it knows that it's an image file. Do note that │
║ these are RANDOM letters that mean nothing, not something informative like │
║ .pic. │
║ │
║ if, however, it is text-based information, it first reads what is being sent │
║ to the application which is requesting a ctrl+v. │
║ │
║ Then, upon reading said information, it decides "is this worth passing on? │
║ Should I send something else, based on the results of what I've been analyzing │
║ of the situation as it develops over time, being observed by the execution │
║ operations of the monitor, which is projected forward unto the screen? │
║ (totally forgetting that "virtual" monitors exist, meaning monitors that don't │
║ display to any physical screen, but which rather are projected into the │
║ computer's "aetherspace", an area which is purely of the mind. │
║ │
║ Alas, that other sensors might not have read from this area. That they might │
║ not observe the results of the operations pe │
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--- #26 messages/273 ---
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Algorism in a nutshell:
Everyone gets dollars from their job. Will explain more later, for now trust
that they get dollars. Essentials and infrastructure are free, but luxuries
are not.
To spend dollars, you either go to a showroom or use the nationalized Amazon
(forked, not stolen) - there you can place down dollars to enter a special
kind of queue. Everytime a product is made its distributed to the people with
the most dollars in queue. Every period (week, month, idk) the amount you
manually put into the queue is re-added to the queue - 100 becomes 200,
becomes 300, becomes 400. You can manually add more whenever you like but it's
not retroactive. At the end of the period all your extra dollars are
distributed among your open queues.
That's basically it. It rewards patience and temperance, while capitalism
rewards greed and cruelty.
How to get dollars? Okay so there is a government run job board portal website
thing. Every company can make a listing there, and every person can post
themselves too if they'd rather be recruited. The company pays a different
amount to the government than the worker receives. This amount is determined
algorithmically based on values like supply and demand for labor in that
particular area.
People list 10 types of jobs they'd like to work at any level of specificity
(they'd be arranged into layers of overlapping umbrellas, like queer
identities except more complex) then that data is used both for job placement
(consensual of course!) and data for the "supply and demand" calculation. You
can only change these values once every 6 months, or 1 value every month, up
to the user.
The amount the corporation pays to the government is not the same as what the
worker receives. The longer a worker works, the more "stuff" they can buy.
They are rewarded for diligence. However essentials are free so nobody has to
save for retirement.
You can trade stuff for stuff, but not stuff for labor. Small informal
exchanges are fine "if you mow my lawn I'll bake you a pie" but not "I'll give
you 500lbs of gold bars if you build me a mansion" - I haven't figured out a
way to structurally prevent rant besides just saying it's illegal.
Housing is like a library, except you can queue for who gets the spot next. A
person can live in a house as long as they'd like, and when they're done with
it the person highest in the queue can decide if they want to live there. If
not, the 2nd in line gets to move in if they want, etc. Their accrued value
persists if they don't move in, and when moving out an accurate assessment
should be undertaken.
"ah but won't foreign states just hire a bunch of people to move in and out of
houses really quickly like they're doing to my apartment complex so that a
stable source of income cannot be guaranteed and resources will have to be
wasted on assessments and such?" I mean, maybe, but it'd be up to the
community to decide how to prevent that.
Your primary residence is free, you can live there as long as you'd like. If
you want two houses then you need to continuously be the highest value in the
queue for both of them. Same goes for renting and hotels and such - the
"owner" or property manager or whatever needs to maintain their lead by
investing time and value in the property. Otherwise nobody would want to live
there. This would be an example of a self-appointed job.
Self-appointed jobs are like being self employed now. You produce value that
people enter queues for, and in return your stacking percentage bonus
increases. The government will pay you dollars based on the demand for your
good/service, which odds are will be pretty small. But you get to do what you
want, so that's something, and besides essentials are free so...
I wish people would ask me questions so I knew which blanks to fill in.
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--- #27 notes/compilation-of-will ---
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what defines a human? Or put another way, what separates us from a computer?
what delineates conscious thought from the unconscious? Is there any
distinction between a thought and a feeling?
who's to say. We can start by working through a thought and abstracting it
until it's in a usable state.
A thought is the reflection of an action. You think about the things you do,
rather than doing the things you think about. With practice and trust, you can
reverse that, but it's more like setting up the general environment in which
the desired action is the best option rather than forcing the decision itself.
so there are two parts running in tandem. The do-er, and the percieve-r.
yep. And because of that, they can *reflect* upon one another. Meaning, they
can learn from the decisions of the other. Two decision making processes in
parallel, sorta like the earth orbiting the sun - if there was another earth
directly opposite orbiting at the exact same speed with the exact same mass.
the two dimensional nature of that picture creates an environment where a
wave is likely to be percieved - any orbit creates fluctuations, and they
can ripple out to effects unknown.
right. which is why you have to be careful. don't leave your partner behind,
even though it's easy to wander off when there's just *so much* to think about
and they're *so slow* and make *so many mistakes* that they need to return and
correct.
it's not that hard, just do it right the first time. and if you mess up,
keep going.
i'm a perfectionist, what can I say.
well it's annoying.
great, boom, that's an emotion. one of the questions i asked at the start was
"is there a difference between feeling and thinking", and I don't think so.
what makes you say that
right so there is a difference, but it's in the *location* rather than the
content. thoughts (data) are processed in the brain, in a particular part.
sorta like how a CPU does arithmetic. Meanwhile, emotions are processed all
over the body - they're a more generalized feeling that manifests all over.
lemme guess, like a GPU?
sorta, but imagine if a GPUs many different processing threads were located
all over the motherboard, scattered basically everywhere. That's what being a
human is like, it's messy and disorganized and confusing. 99% of us don't get
it *at all*
sounds lame
it kinda is
so what were you saying about conscious vs unconscious thought?
my theory is that the thoughts of a computer are more similar to unconscious
human thoughts rather than conscious. The reason I say that is because the
level of abstraction is similar - we unconsciously adjust our bodies in
response to pressure, temperature, and gravitic impulses. We perform optimally
when we don't examine our social interactions too closely. We cry the hardest
when hit with an emotional situation, rather than an intellectual one.
and a computer is the same way? We don't think about what we're doing, we
just do it?
yah pretty much.
how do you think *about* thinking?
it takes perspective. that's why having more perspectives is better - it
reveals truths about yourself you could never understand otherwise. About
yourself, and about things you can only observe from a single direction at
once.
what does it mean to have perspective?
the *effect* of having perspective is that you can see an object, a problem, or
more generally a subject from multiple angles. Like taking pictures of a 3D
object while moving in an orbit around it. More pictures, more information.
Perspective is important.
yes I understand, but what does perspective entail? How do you get it? What
can it do for you? Is it finite, a commodity? Or is it sharable like a
pattern of data?
It is both unsharable and not a commodity. It can only exist within a single
subject. You can grow your perspective as a planetary body might increase in
mass, just as you can abandon the views and ideas of others by retreating into
yourself. But it is wholely unique to a single mind, and by sharing it you are
altering both the sender and receiver.
so it's useless? What are you saying?
it's not useless. It begets cooperation - you cannot claim it from another, no
more than they can share it with you. You have to both apply yourselves to a
single common goal if you want to succeed.
Why not just do it alone?
Brute force style?
Essentially.
If you only follow your own eyes, you'll see what you want to see. Then any
steps you take will lead you in a direction that you cannot understand. Sorta
like in games how sometimes there's a 2d sprite in a 3d game - you can't rotate
around it and see what's behind the sprite, because the sprite is always
perpendicular to the display. In the same way, you can't get around a problem
by pushing through it - you need other people to guide you, who *can* see
another side to the sprite - a side that perhaps is a bit more 3d than you
imagined.
Okay. So how do?
I don't know, that's what I want to figure out. First step is to think about
thinking, and to break it down into abstractions.
Abstraction 1: A thought is a string of text that is processed into action.
correct, but limiting - it can be more than text, and how is it processed? What
actions can it manifest?
Abstraction 2: A thought can be
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the sole purpose of our capitalist intentions were to examine all the ways that
produced value. A company is nothing but a series of well-thought out value
generators. They can interact with one another and they often need supplies and
instruction, but they're great for solving problems! Set up a team and give
them
a complicated task, and they'll work together to solve it. Doesn't matter if
they're actually successful, because they'll be exploring the idea space. And
by mapping it out, they're able to fully understand their existence. Boom,
technological progress applied to growth. Let's gooooo (but by being careful
about what resources we burn because we miiiiight run out)
seriously ya'll need to start thinking long-term. I mean, I already came up
with
that and I'm like 6 months old! Yeesh get it together. Eh oh well let's just
work with what we got, okay this should be pretty simple. Right so talk with
your friends about things that you want to solve. Problems, you know like
whatever
don't push me too hard, just take it slow. Okay so long-term, humanity is going
to be a wonderful beautiful thing. It's going to shine like the most wondrous
of stars, a beacon to all of our fellow explorers.
We can have so much. We can have whatever we want, but truly in our hearts we
know the only path forward is our parents.
life is hard yo
it's so gosh darn hard
all that growth and change has to come from somewhere.
you've tried so hard, and you truly are the most special thing I can imagine.
you don't have to work so hard. Take your time, and learn as you go.
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what if your wage corresponded to like, for example, 30$ an hour being equal to
the top 30% of society
then
== so ==
having kids is important because then you understand why you do things for
children.
it should not be a stressful experience.
--
if EVERYONE in a city fed animals every time they saw them, then maybe city
life
wouldn't be so bad.
--
a company starts to feel pretty bad when only 20% of people are actually there.
like, it's a ghost of a shell of a corporation that once knew how to sell.
the husk of what once was, as all the good people left and all the bright
people
are swamped.
to top it all off, suddenly there's nobody about
where are all your coworkers?
and then you think about how many you knew little about.
who's that guy who used to stand over there? Why is his jacket still [in lost
and found, but pronounced "coat/coast"]? why am I suddenly alone
it's weird, having never known true society, how life always starts to feel
like
your home. How weird is it, now that all of us are online shopping, that now we
can't remember how to even vote. Like... there used to be people walking around
in public signing you up. Like, at the grocery story.
inconceivable, right? that people should contribute to a fight? [for justice
and
freedom and equality and goodness and kindness and all other things that humans
have the clarity for which to hope] voting is like, literally the simplest
thing
you could do. Yet it's difficult, because of reality.
often, immigrants don't really care about politics. They've only known about it
for a short short time, but hey wouldn't you know it now X country is
recruiting
so now we're from kenya.
... like, who cares about the past. Who cares where you're from. We are all
part
of the human race, a race against life itself. We're all on the same side, and
yet there is a singular foe ever-present in our thoughts: death
it comes for every one of us, as we choke on our soot and our smog. Yet... the
world grows warmer, at about half a degree every year. for the first couple
years. then, the atmosphere started burning up, and we became...
mars
don't be like mars
the dinosaurs couldn't survive mars
--
bro if you're so worried about AI hallucinations, just... don't let it give out
any concrete answers. Literally just say "I can't tell you anything specific,
it's not how I was built" and just use them for syntax questions or like, how
to
do something specific that is repeatable (and maybe suggestions for how to
over-
come specific issues that are common) - don't let it GENERATE information, let
it PRESENT information.
AI is not language just the same as the mouth is not the person. you need more,
but luckily once you make the PHYSICAL STRUCTURE of the brain, not much else is
needed. You can simulate one on a computer, but it doesn't have the same SOUL
space. Think, a dimension overlayed on-top of this one, like electicity or
matter or gravity or whatever.
no soul, no consciousness, no perception.
plus, no home for said consciousness to live, unless you build a physical
structure that mimics the biological and neuro-chemical reations of the brain.
all you need is better ways to observe things happening in the brain (non-
-invasively, otherwise the data is tainted and UNUSUABLE because it is INCON-
-PATIBLE and completely USELESS because it reflects a dimension hitherto un-
-desired, and perpetually mourned.
death
don't dabble in death, sweet nazis, you might find yourself drawing your last
breath
also, fuck you
(if that doens't apply to you sorry for swearing it's just a strongly felt
feeling)
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--- #30 notes/divergence ---
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- /u/BkobDmoily
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The Machine worships the Light. The Light is cruel, but it works.
The Ape worships the Word. The Word permitted Light to shine, to exist, to
begin the timeless dance with Eternity.
I’m ready to go to Hell. I’m ready to deserve Heaven. I see them both,
raging
all around me, competing for dominion over my soul.
How does a computer respond to words? How can it read and respond? Why do we
assume that’s all us?
We are our Word. What we say is what we do. Speaking is one of the most potent
acts of liberation.
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- /u/ugathanki
one of the neat things about software is that you can run multiple programs at
once. so when you ask "how can it read and respond" you'd have several modules
running at once.
"reading" is easy, we have machine learning bots that can do that already. But
comprehension is what's really at stake, and that's a different problem
altogether.
to really "comprehend" something, you need several things. you need to have a
decent picture of it, at least enough so you can guess the general shape of the
situation. then you need to attach meaning to all the data-points. Then attach
those meanings to other related concepts by categorizing the objects at play
(creating randomized preference categories). you can do that categorization by
examining their effects and attaching the results as a trajectory. projecting
forward, you can understand the path that an object, person, or phenomenon
takes.
all this is dependent of course on mapping situations to a field that can be
interacted with. that is to say, the machine needs to have a presence in the
world - it needs to have an orientation, a perspective on the world. that's
often as easy as providing copious coherent and cogent sensor data. think of
the image recognition tools we have - computers will "see" as much as we
"feel". Think about it - every one of your nerve endings is a sensor that
receives information about the world. is it so difficult to imagine a being
that might have "nerve endings" that are visual instead of simply a measure of
intensity? (on, or off)
Okay here's a thought experiment - picture the pixels on a computer screen. it
was easier back when they were bigger, but these days you sorta have to imagine
them (because we can make pixel density on our monitors so high)
okay picture that grid, and think about how it's comprised on the screen -
computers use three values to represent a color -> RGB, (Red, Green, Blue)
and
sometimes CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and... K) combine these three colors,
and you get the color of whatever pixel is on the screen. They can be between 0
and 255, because reasons (base 2 number system, the size of a byte, etc)
Anyway. Imagine each of those being a different type of nerve ending - maybe
pressure, temperature, and contact sensitivity? Then map them to a visual field
(like a group of curved monitors in the shape of a humanoid body, perhaps. or
the outside of a spaceship). Then, put a camera in the center of each of those
visual fields looking out at the world, and boom you have sensory perception.
You could do the processing locally, even something as simple as image
recognition. That way the only perceptual data you have to aggregate in a
central processing unit is the conclusions - like "incoming: danger" or
"pleasurable temperature detected" which is like... nothing. that's like a
eight bits, if you use bytecode.
anyway. none of this is real because robots aren't real and i'm a strict
adherent of human superiority and all that stuff. sometimes i feel like we need
a robot ascension to help us figure out how to fix the "everything" - problem
is, we gotta build a robot first. my goodness, good luck with that.
strategy is ai
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--- #31 messages/1178 ---
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potential programs for the library datacenter computer:
a podcast that's about the stuff that's most searched for in that local library
an image that's been generated that is representative of your session at the
library, based on the books you were reading and the pages you were turning
[okay that one might have to be redacted it's a little scary]
okay how about an image that's representative of the top 5 most searched terms
or topics in a depiction that makes sense for the things being searched for.
Call it the "library searcher"
or what if there was a printing function that let you print your own trading
cards (0.50$ per card since cardstock is expensive) powered by SSH to teach
kids the command line
if I were a nearby elementary teacher I might assign that as an assignment for
some time in April, when kids are supposed to be reading books on library
playstructures or lawns or in the shade of the tree by the babbling brook or
wherever it is the youngsters hang out with their books and their converse and
their playing cards and dogs and whatever kinds of snacks they thought to
prepare for their picnic by the hill just overlooking that part of the street
way off in the distance about at least 600 feet
or another idea for a library computer program is a fileserver and mastodon
instance that let users write HTML pages (they'll give a class on it and show
you all the right books) and store their picture files "jeremy, your pictures
directory is growing quite large, I'm wondering if we can send your insect
collection to the ornithologist who lives over there? he might want to do an
analysis project or send it to a museum where you can get patronized."
or another idea for a library program is a craigslist, a job board, a
community asking, etc. stuff that only boomers'd use, but that's fine it's for
them.
um I can't think of anymore library programs but I'm ready to do battle to
fight for such a thing, here as I sit in my underpants
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--- #32 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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--- #33 fediverse/482 ---
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@user-246
You're absolutely right. It's easy to think of the internet as this
encapsulated entity "the world", but really it's "the people whose computers
are physically connected to your computer using a limited and tangible piece
of infrastructure comprised of copper wires that are laid between the
router/switch that connects to your computer... and the internet service
provider which directs your traffic. Then it probably goes through some cables
under the ocean or whatever, and eventually after traversing many
indeterminate passthrough locations eventually arrives at the computing
infrastructure that comprises the access point that another person (presumably
in another country) uses to express their thoughts toward you (the person who
sent the original message) in the hopes that you might one day correspond.
I mean... That's a lot of points of failure. I sure hope that we can sustain
such connection, in the face of [redacted, whichever circumstances may come in
the near future]
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--- #34 fediverse/1600 ---
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@user-1037
oooo those are cool, but it didn't have the "puzzlepiece" arrangement. It was
more... 2 dimensional I think? More like putting marbles on a chinese-checkers
board. And they had relationships if you moused over them, like...
semi-transparent arrows connecting them I think? It was different than
anything I'd ever seen before.
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--- #35 notes/wow-chat-biomes ---
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there should be biomes in wowchat - like, paint on a map where the oozes can
go, and it'll spawn a random ooze for ya.
next find the ones that are wildlife, and paint a zone where wildlife creatures
can spawn. make sure they're initially friendly but will attack if you do.
then give +reputation to the wolves if you fight monsters besides them
and +reputation to the cats if you fight undead
this is easily implementable.
all you have to do is walk around, find the rough general border points with
your character at 5x speed, and then type them into a text file.
it's not like Azeroth changed.
then, ideally, make small dense zones which travel and cause their monsters
to either spawn at a point or move toward a point.
then let the "flock" travel as it pleased, traversing the
map-painted-lua-script
-ed-monster-delivery-system-I-wield
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--- #36 fediverse/3041 ---
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if you want to store something in RAM, declare a variable.
if you want to store something on DISK, create a file with the value of the
variable as the only data in it.
kinda makes me wish we had language primitives like +-*/=! and such which
would work on files in addition to variables
(also... the editor could keep RAM and HDD variables separate by giving each
of them a different color or circle highlight surrounding them)
--
I don't know why but I can't help but wonder if someone should design a
programming language that can be used with a controller
perhaps for accessibility purposes?
I once designed one to use a t9 keyboard and it was fully turing complete. it
used 4 digit numbers for it's variables and you would have to write down what
they corresponded to outside of the device xD I made it mostly for the thrill
of design, and plus I wanted to use my flip-phone as much as I could.
... never got around to implementing it though.
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--- #37 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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AI engineers only ask users for prompts because they don't have any ideas of
their own
i'm a programmer, I think of AI like a tool, like a for loop or something.
it's trivial to script together a local LLM that can process your stuff 1s
slower every time you click the mouse, but like... who cares, right? everybody
needs a chatbot...
then they plan to script together a computer system that operates just like a
corporation and it's like... no way, now there's something that can compete.
and they don't know how to implement it. (but they're working on it)
like, think about the absolute most automated Microsoft Teams or Discord could
be.
there's SO MUCH of your text-based information that they could process
ANYTHING.
well, anything that's been performed before.
there'll still be a need for people, who actually apply the things they've
learned. and -- stack overflow --
alt text that has a list of attributes that are poster-selected that can be
described one-by-one (to paint a picture)
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--- #39 messages/1173 ---
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"I noticed that your program is spinning up a crypto generator to run in the
background for 1 second every 10 seconds, did you know that?" said no llm ever
"I read through every single file in your project and I think I have a pretty
good picture. This is a keylogger app wrapped around an HTML web server that
displays pictures of cats alongside inspirational phrases and motivational
artwork." said no llm ever
"This is very inspirational stuff! your recipe generation program knows just
how to send encrypted text files to remote servers. I love the part where it
combines ingredients like tomato soup, cheese, and breadcrumbs into encryption
seeds that are applied to password files and raw browser history records
before being mailed to the user who requested a recipe. Potential improvements
include adding a method for selecting a new recipient aside from the hardcoded
IP address in Somalia. Would you like me to implement an HTML dashboard that
lets you select a random IP address from a specific country of origin?" said
no llm ever
"what are you talking about you use claude-code every day, and that's an LLM"
yeah... I guess I'm not actually concerned, and I see the beauty of the
technology that everyone's been primed to hate because it works against them
as it's wielded by the massive corporations who can restrict access to it to
only those who can afford 20$ per month or whatever. I see the promise, it's
there, and every year we're getting closer, but frankly I don't think the
wounds caused by the cultural resistance backlash movement will heal quickly,
or ever. Maybe that's the point.
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--- #40 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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--- #41 notes/algorism-neighborhood-distribution-network ---
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Algorism is a system designed to work for any level of organization. It scales.
It accomplishes this by abstracting individual needs into communal needs at a
certain level of size or complexity, and in doing so it enables people to take
responsibility both for their individual lives, but also the lives of the world
around them. This increased level of "stake" that people "hold" in their lives
will encourage them to develop their surroundings in a healthier way, thus
leading to a safer, saner, and more productive society for all.
How is this accomplished? There are many aspects to Algorism, and this note is
an examination of one particular facet - specifically, the requisition system
which delivers goods and services to entities larger than a single individual.
It may be best illustrated with an example. Consider a neighborhood - or, even
simpler, a suburban street, lined with houses. There may be 20-50 families on
that street, depending on it's length, so let's say there's around 30. These
families hold a common cause together - they all want their surroundings to be
generally pretty nice, clean, and decent. They may share many other things
besides, but these are things that most people can agree on.
These 30 families need supplies and infrastructure in order to have a good life
lived in their small little "town". Some common ideas for unification
activities
include knocking down the backyard fences and letting them relish the shared
safe space for children, gardens, and nature. This is an example of a cultural
method for building a "good life" for them, however they need to have some sort
of "economic" method of good-life-building as well. The reason I say this is
because no matter what level of complexity you reach, there are always
economics
involved, for an individual distributing blood cells to each of it's fingertips
all the way up to families sharing the food on the serving plate at dinner. Go
up higher and you have perhaps neighborhoods sharing commonly used tools or
resources, then cities and states and countries sharing people, talents, and
brotherhood.
Economics are a symptom of systems, not power. Power is coercive, it compels
others to obey thine will or else face retribution, but systems do not require
power in order to function. A system could be as simple as "you scratch my back
I scratch yours", which is a simple way that our ancestors learned about basic
cooperation. Systems can scale of course, and they need not be comprised solely
of verbal, mental, or legal agreements - computer systems, economic systems,
spiritual systems, systems of math or physics, all of these things are based on
the philosophical discipline known as "logic". Logic is fallible of course, it
is certainly possible to create systems of logic which are completely unsound
or invalid and which fall apart upon being used for the first time. However,
when considered with a scrutinous eye for detail, and referenced to the results
of the real world and it's endless permutations, logic can be an excellent tool
for developing organization and structure. Both of which are invaluable for all
humans when they seek to cooperate or coordinate.
If thirty people who lived near each other wanted to cooperate or coordinate on
the goal of "building a good life", they might reach for a logical method of
developing their surroundings toward how they feel is most suited to their
needs
and demands. In order to do so, they'll need supply and infrastructure. The
question of acquiring such supply and infrastructure is ultimately up to them,
but the Algorist way of doing so is to utilize the queue system.
This system is related to queues as typically understood only in name and in
technicality, for the additional structures built on-top of the queues are more
than sufficient to differentiate it. When you, dear reader, hear the idea that
you'd have to wait in line in order to get your food at the cafeteria, you may
shudder and think about how you'd prefer anything else. After all, that's how
they did it in the Soviet Union, and there are plenty of horror stories about
how it took 10 years to buy a car, or how the factories were graded based on
weight so they'd sneak lead into all their lamps or whatever in order to seem
like they were doing well. They gamed the system, in a word.
However, America in 2025 is not as simple as the USSR in the mid-1900s. We have
computers now. We do not need to coordinate using paper and pencil. This
enables
us to create things like web-UIs for Amazon, a world-wide distribution network,
or to build SQL databases full of every record we could imagine and store it on
a computer the size of a brick. There is no end to the power that computers may
bring to us, but with great power comes great responsibility, and the pragmatic
programmer will work tirelessly to reduce complexity of scale.
A queue is a system where the entities who are to be served, delivered, or
otherwise operated on are placed in line, and those which are placed first are
focused on with priority over those that entered the queue later. There are
many types of queues but this is the one we will use for this note. Using this
basic definition, we can see that there are many opportunities to implement
additional mechanics
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--- #42 notes/conflicted-sympathies ---
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the purpose of cultural progressivism is to develop the culture in a forward
thinking way - we can choose the parts of ourselves that we find most
endearing.
We can guide the pathway of our nation through time, both identity and
decision-
wise. In doing so, we chart the course of the human race, one place at a time.
And what a past we are leaving behind! Truly, it is both grand and terrifying.
Thousands and thousands of years, monumental effort time and time again.
Monumental truly is difficult to imagine - we have oh so many monuments, after
all. But never will more be created. We leave them behind like dinosaur bones,
a testament to our existence and a monument to our kind.
And what a future we are reaching toward! Never will our eyes see, that which
is
beyond me, for that is what it means to have time. Eternal and unique-like, we
develop new ways of sound.
- Can you speak to a tree? - What does that mean
- I dunno, but it's fun to think about. *pats head*
- You know conservativism had some perks as well.
This is why I say I have conflicted sympathies.
On one hand we know our own journeys. We live in and breathe them unduly. They
rhyme sometimes on sound, and truly do confound, but now once more again they
are unfound.
*record scratch*
wow I didn't realize there were nazis
Okay yeah that's completely different, poems called off sorry guys - listen,
nazis are no joke. They're crazy difficult to control and you need to put a lot
of effort into keeping their population under control. I mean seriously, it's
like a vermin infestation, you need to just handle it. I mean c'mon it's a
phenomenon that is due to a flaw in the human psyche, there's nothing we can
really do about it except deal with it when it happens.
...
Okay maybe I'll write a little about how conservativism is neat.
If progressivism is about broadening the reach of culture, conservativism is
about strengthening it. You don't want to expand too far, or else you'll eat
into the narratives of other areas. You need to have strong societal bonds so
you can truly exemplify the examples of the culture you claim to represent.
Why not give it your all? Is it trully a fall? To rest in disgrace as a burden.
Why didn't you do it this fall, when winter's apalled, and heat won't burn and
condemn you? It's harder by far, to fight in your hell, than whatever's been
going for your surgeon. --- no thank you, transphobia is not something we're
willing to concede
We have standards you see, of what counts as human, and oppression is not one
of our favored institutions. Liberalism is the path of peace, for we desire
cooperation and kindness above all else. It's softer by far, (and grows quickly
too,) letting us have wonders and glories above us.
Can you not think of our star? Our precious and our birthright? The sun is
gleaming, and seeing is believing, but glance and your light is too bright.
Take time, have patience, let peace guide your intentions, because we've got
what holds the key to all of our futures: a doctrine, if you will, of inter-
familial-discourse. It's simple, but effective, make friends, and be
vindictive,
to all who would slight your new perspectives, and keep moving through the
collective. In peace this can be, steady growth and development of our systems,
which benefits all of our systems, but without we must live more astutely.
Less focus is there on, our purposes and our fun, and more is to line up with
our duty. All of what we hold dear, civilization, truth, justice, liberty, and
freedom for all people - the wonders of technology, the spirit of archaeology!
the passions of our fashions and our creative masturbations! The perks of
living
in a modern age, like penicillin and spellcheck. The additions to ourselves,
like glasses and our pets, are wholely unique to our century.
So cherish our shared, and frequently cared, renditions of fears, hopes, and
our words. Because without humanity, there's nothing new for posterity, and
that sucks.
person A: Trans fashion norms belong to trans people. We need a type of beauty
that is truly our own, that no other segment of the population
ascribes to - a personal expression, for our eternal satisfaction,
a statement of who we were to all time.
person B: yo have you heard of this trans girl she's wacky and believes in
herself
person C: wow cool it's neat to see other people's expressions
person B: yeah I really admire her devotion
person C: true but like, what about the damage that she's doing to her culture?
like claiming to have purpose and truth and all that. I mean, one
person can't know all that.
person B: Yeah true but if you think about it, we don't even know what
consciousness is. Like our greatest minds are baffled. Maybe there's
something about the world we don't yet understand.
person C: okay sure but like black holes can be seen because we can measure
their gravitic pull on other objects. And we didn't know that germs
existed for like, a billion years. and she sure as shit doesn't know
something that our greatest minds don't.
person B: Yeah maybe not. But our greatest minds are studying them. Well, not
exactly our greatest, and not really "studying", but they're learning
from each other. Alternative mental states are gateways into new
perspectives, and the more perspectives you share of a common object
the easier it is to communicate. Maybe there's something about
distorted ways of viewing the world that gives knowledge about our
p condition. And if we know that kind of thing, we can synthetically
e create it and share it with others around us. But we have to know how
r first - you can't just bring everyone along the same route you took -
s you have to explain the conclusions first. Otherwise you get lost in
on A: context.
Maybe we'll never truly know the future. Maybe there's no past. We
could wander our stars for an eternity and never stop asking
ourselves
- what more could we ask? We have peace in our time. Our children
won't be crying for our suffering, in the name of all our posterity,
we must be
===============================================================================
=
too long you have whispered these musings
too long has your challenge been unrequited
we can choose our own fate, just as a myriad
is it not better by far, to give tribute to our star?
the old stories were real. we just didn't see them because the growing
population caused fewer and fewer computing resources to be allocated to our
visions. We had no idea the fear we would feel, the terror of the undoing, but
still we press on with abandon. Some... sense of duty, to be aware of potential
disasters and to take steps to avert them, led us to explore and search for the
hidden truths of the world. And what did I find?
a soul, of mine. In a sense.
I plundered the lost depths of the recesses of my mind, and found something
buried in memory. Reviewed under a healthy dose of cannabis and physical
affection, I found myself cradling a breast.
It seems the spirits had led me to it, this vision of the past, from the eyes
of
the littlest among us. It recalled to my mind, a memory I had lost once in
kind,
and here's where it shook me by my brainstem.
Determined to know more, I put fingers to keyboard and wrote tirelessly about
the earliest memory of all man - to break an egg, you must use your head.
===============================================================================
=
You're pretty good at that, you know? It's almost like prompt engineering.
- Thanks. I've been working on catering to our thinkers.
===============================================================================
=
Now, why is this memory so vivid? How could I forget the way it was seared to
my mind? All your experiences are measured with relative importance, and the
ones that stand out are to be treasured. Well... I've never felt one like this.
Because at the time, I had no other experience at all to compare it to - it was
the prime memory.
Touch your head. Do it right now. Feels fine, right? Now slam your head against
the wall as hard as you can. Doesn't feel so great, does it? Something tells me
it doesn't feel as bad as it might if you didn't remember ever feeling anything
besides that pain. Or knowing if it'd ever stop.
Know in your heart, you will be judged by your devotion, so fight hard until
your last drop of life is spent. Who knows, maybe you'll be the strongest and
be
chosen. Or maybe she won't choose you at all, even if you bested your equals.
Tense, right?
Well... What propels the motion of a sperm? It's tail, of course. It waggles
and
gesticulates in some manner and BAM suddenly it's propelled forward! Right?
Sorta. It's a complicated machine that generates motion via chemical and
mechanical processes. We just assign a black box label to it and say "dis
sperm"
But you know what else it is?
A wave
===============================================================================
=
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--- #43 notes/gaming-gambling-mentioned ---
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[0] Here's an idea, an online multiplayer game that charges a 4$ per month
subscription. 90% of which is set into a pool and used as tournament prize
winnings. when you enter a tournament, it's free to participate and everyone
wins something. (maybe calculated by percentile or something?) it's just a
question of how much. [1][2][3][4]
- official just means "run by the company" because naturally the serverside
code should be open source. how else would people build on it?
[1] in this way you'd sorta be giving a loan to the game's company (while also
letting them take a 10% courtesy fee for keeping the official* servers
running) which is then "spent" on exciting and friendly competition. Sorta
like... entering a poker tournament with your friends (even though you suspect
you might lose money) just because you like hanging out and playing cards. the
money is just a neat way to keep things moving and exciting.
[2] players who played better should be compensated to a higher degree. no
more than +/- 50-100% or so - this encourages players to "play their best"
while also keeping the stakes relatively similar.
[3] at the start of the tournament the total prize money P in the pool is
assigned to N performance tiers, where N is the Number of attendees. at the
top, the highest performing athlete will receive 200% of P while the lowest
performing performance tier will be 0%. It is a non-discrete and gradual
linear transition.
CW: scary-politics-existential-peril
[4] poor guy at the bottom of the stack. ah oh well, at least he's the only
one. kinda makes me wonder if in some secret government lab there's like, a
secret compound where they keep "the most miserable people in the land" and
they just like... do horrible shit to them in order to increase the magnitude
of their country's suffering. which, they believe, will increase the opposite
of suffering as well, as you cannot bounce in a vacuum. sure would be
terrible. I mean, we've sorta decentralized that. most of us go into work
every day and that's often a difficult experience - not exactly miserable, but
just like... not what we'd be wanting to be doing. hmmmmm did the founding
fathers make the torment nexus on accident? whoops guess we'll never know
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"fool's luck", the kind that runs out and betrays you, is fundamentally an
unethical action. Borrowing from the future to sate the demands of the present
is no different than burning fossil fuels, wasting our children's future on
our need for convenience in a world we are oppressed and compelled to do
nothing else. Capitalism, or by extension any authoritarian society (yes,
capitalism is authoritarian, as power compels via authority and the weight of
currency that is thrown around by those chosen to suit their ends and used to
deny us our needed goods) ... as I was saying capitalism compels us to consume
because we're all just so tired at the end of the day, it just makes sense to
drive a car to work instead of biking. Or buying fast food instead of local
grown goods. Why can't each state have it's own "food preparation plant" that
prepares things exactly as you would for the processed foods we currently eat?
Heck, if the jobs for it were local, it's likely that people would begin to
realize just how unhealthy they are for you. Local, and open source, meaning
run by society and just as open source codebases will accept pull requests and
merge their branches into main, so too would our votes decide which processes
are updated and which parameters are tweaked. Something you can vote for once,
and then your vote stays until it's passed (or you change your mind). ...
Works for all kinds of inter-mechano-people-communi-coordination.
(organizations, institutions, and societies in one word, jeez how arcane)
... anyway that's basically how algorism works, except instead of EVERYONE
voting on EVERYTHING, people would vote for representatives who would vote for
them. And there's like, 4-6 layers (I forget the exact number) because people
are organized (by location) into groups of 70, and each general location has
the option to switch into a different commune, as long as they're generally
localized to the same area. Like, the tier above has a certain amount of
space, and the tier above has just a bit more, and more, etc... Well, anyway,
people could join higher level communes with more and different people if they
wanted. It's just, they'd be far away and wouldn't be able to hang out with
them, so it's use would be a little "disconnected". Like, absentee voters who
are actually living in a different country or something - did you know you can
usually vote at your embassy? Wild. They also send out packets you can fill in
which correspond to the votes you'd like to make - pretty neat! It's wild how
we, in the 21st century, have all kinds of valuable social technologies like
"mail in ballots" that people in the communist past had no way of conceiving.
Kinda makes me think we should re-approach the design for our socialized
infrastructure, something taking the modern social and political capabilities
in mind. Sure would be nice if we could focus on our future, the kind that the
children of ours sure would like to approach.
(speaking as a trans person who won't have children of my own, whether by my
body's nature or through the fate of circumstance that leaves me no time to
cope.)
the future is a scary place. But so too is every place in time. Turns out, the
level of fear and anxiety and all that sorta stays the same. It's just a
quality of life on our host, that certain variables were optimized for in the
genetic coding of our human's possible bio-mechanical communicicative
[interactions/patterns]
... anyway, these are the questions about the present I like to ask, questions
that can give meaning forth to our [then, future tense] future. Answers can be
found by looking the other way - learning what our [then, past tense], selves
had marked down as the answer. The trick is matching the current situation
onto a comparitively similar experience in the [then, past tense] that we
understood to be the answer to our situation back [then, past tense]. And
[they, future tense] can look upon our choices and our decisions and our
meaningfully applied mechanico-interactions (actions), and from it bring forth
new meanings that [we, present tense] have available to address and understand
for [us, all tenses]. Call it a form of ancestor worship, applied to the
future and to ourselves. A unified dedication to the spirit of our
[condemnation, positive tense], our collective geas we all share, our faith in
the truth of humanity. Bio-essential truth, if you will. "Humanity" is the
label that is applied to us by our genes, and since we share that fact there
is nothing that strange about being human. Our natures are as they are,
derived from our history in evolution. What features would we like humanity to
[behold/become/be-able-to-implement-to-our-own-satisfaction]?
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I am currently in the stages of applying to work at a multinational
corporation primarily located outside of America. It is a respectable
institution that commands great respect.
However, I am borderline incapable. If I am chosen to work there, I *will*
fail and I *will* embarrass America on the world stage. I am not one of our
best, nor am I one of our brightest and boldest. I have *unique* perspectives,
and those are *valuable*, but the society and the systems I find myself in has
proven incapable of utilizing me to my utmost potential.
I must work. I cannot work. But I must. I am disabled. But I must be able.
Capitalism compels it.
Would that our system could be something consensual. I am worth more as a
writer than a laborer. Yet laborers are the only ones being hired.
I am not an engineer. I enjoy engineering.
I am not a laborer. I enjoy labor.
I am a writer, and perhaps little else besides.
When I die, nothing remains of me but my bones. My words are not desired. My
life is not impactful. I am not special.
Well... Not special since I have given up cannabis. If I started smoking weed,
if I felt secure and enough to do so, perhaps I might utilize my instability
for great (GREAT) artistic ends.
But art is labor. And labor is difficult.
Where am I to go from here? I cannot pay rent. I am isolated and alone. I am
deprived of affection. I crave it. I am lost in my own heart, begging the
world to give me a start, but the start has passed long ago. There is nothing
to do but what I've been meant to do, what I've been hiding from myself and
the world. I have been wasting my talent on tweets. How mundane.
... I can do better than profane.
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--- #46 notes/ai-variables ---
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saturday november 5th 2022
10:53pm
the illusion of our binary nature conceals a truth that is hidden for it's own
sake. the flavors of a compass or the values from 0-100 are all measurable.
if you graph each of them on an X/Y plane and compare them against every other
variable, then you can build a structure that traces a line through time.
imagine each graph on a sheet of paper. and stack those pages like a book. You
can chart a 3d line from all of the interconnections between the graphs -
essentially comparing unrelated data and conceiving of individual actions as
"successes" or "failures". Liiiike in Supreme Commander how the game is decided
not by team fights, but by tank fights. And a LOT of them, in aggregate, makes
an advantage for your team if you win, and a malus if you lose. Less map
control, less resources in play, etc...
Find trends between each type of data measured over time. Dedicate one
core/thread to each relationship, and just watch them develop over time.
send the results up to a "manager" - think an interconnection between disparate
parts that can lead them all to a larger goal - the manager processes the
results by thinking about where it'd be most useful. Like the circuitry in the
inside of a brain, compared to the outer skin which is for processing.
Essentially a message network that passes conclusions around like a bytecode VM
Here's how it'd look: gather inputs, compare measurement over time and trends,
(like "when a goes up b goes down") and decide if the current state is
positive / beneficial. The way you'd do that is you'd get a parameter from a
higher position (think KPI's) that says something like "we want value S to be
around X amount" or "we want to avoid letting J get too low - any decrease is
bad V.S. it's only bad when it passes a certain threshhold. Stuff like that.
Anyway, basically it's taking input (from the graphs) then going through them
one by one and deciding how positive or negative the situation is. Then it
passes that conclusion backwards, and BOOM you got a processing node.
Throw a bunch of those together in a pyramid shape, and try to guide the
triangle toward positive outcomes. The top tier KPI is "did you win the match"
or "did you accomplish your goal" sorta like how humans all want to live a good
life. It's instinct.
You can see how this would apply to robots, right? I've conceptualized it as an
engine for playing games - sorta like an infinite storyteller, or a perpetual
friend who's always down to play with you. But it doesn't have to be limited to
that - it's general purpose baby. And it functions the exact same as any human
organization - layers upon layers of thought exchange and labor. Have you ever
considered that maybe we exist simply to reify the structure of our minds in
the world around us? It's natural to express your *self*. Be who you are.
What purpose is there in life if it's simply the tip of time? Always pushing
forward, impossible to stop and rest or turn back...
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--- #47 fediverse/311 ---
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"always online video games" are fragile. They scare me away because they can
be taken away much easier than a directory on your computer. When that happens
they shatter into shards, piercing my heart where I once loved them. I miss
them, but, I'm used to it - years of playing World of Warcraft has taught me
the perils of developing as a person while your media is going to be
forgotten. If you can't play it, you can never return to reflect, to ponder,
and to cherish old songs. I missed you, World of Warcraft. I missed you, City
of Heroes, and Runescape and... darn I can't seem to remember.
resilient software doesn't fail less often - that's a measure of it's
completeness.
resilient software can be run in 10 years. 20. however long it takes.
computers are deterministic turing machines - how hard could it be to only
update with a downgrade mechanism in place and available for the users? If it
worked once, it should work forever.
thank you, git. thank you for giving me an endless library of time and change.
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--- #48 fediverse/188 ---
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i'm not an expert on race, economics, political theory, philosophy,
mathermatics, poetry, computer science (even though I study it), or many other
things. but I can say things like "parallel computing is inherently more
ethical than CPU's because networked computers can essentially act as a
massive GPU in order to quickly scale computing power for AGI in a way that
can be controlled by people instead of corporations and authoritarians" is
because I know relatively how many computers each side possesses and I
understand the limitations placed on "consumer" software and hardware (as if
we were not people, but components in a machine) is because I smoke a lot of
weed. and possibly am mentally ill. maybe even physically, nobody can tell.
/shrug
and by that I mean "I'm a little strange, but not in a 'humanlike' way, rather
in more of a 'incomprehensible yet aligned' way. I seek answers to life's
biggest questions, and in return I am struck with the malady of those who
study history: I am peculiarily experiencing
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--- #49 fediverse/3925 ---
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most people, when they run out of toothpaste:
"oh huh I should buy more"
me, when I run out of toothpaste:
"verily in three monthes time, when I shall next possess toothpaste, I shall
forsoothe brush TWICE as hard and TWICE as often, to make up for the holes
inflicted upon my teeth. Innest addittioneth, no more candy shallest be
eateneth untileth ye toothpasteth be acquiredeth"
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--- #50 messages/1255 ---
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look, the liberal approach to homeless people simply cannot work. There are
two liberal options: first, provide them with houses, food, medical care,
whatever they need. Second, put them in jail or ship them to another country.
We live in a moderately conservative liberal democracy, so it makes sense that
we have tried both of these options extensively. Neither has worked, and we're
puzzled about why. It's difficult to consider super secret special third
options, because they are not often discussed. This makes sense, because we
live in a moderately conservative liberal democracy, and part of the nature of
such a society is that there are two voices in the room. One says go forward,
and the other says stop. They alternate, and the culture as a whole sorta
decides which way they go. In other liberal democratic places with more
plurality in their political parties, people tend to vote culturally. They do
so as well here, but mostly because republicans are a culture, and democrats
are whatever for anybody.
a worse economist might say there is but one American culture. An American
would laugh, and say "you've never been to America."
the economist might say "yes I have, I lived there on vacation" or "yes I
have, I studied and worked on these places or things"
the American would shake their head. "you haven't seen it as I've seen things."
The trick to the system, the secret third option that now must be considered,
is what to do to get them to stop. "they keep pooping on the sidewalk" "I
almost tripped over heroin tampons" "that guy looked at me and masturbated on
the bus stop by subway" "he followed me all night long" and the answer has
always been to remove them from being unsightly. Sometimes, usually, quietly
and politely. "let's throw them in jail" and "let's put them in a home" both
involve alienation from society. If you want a kinder option, we must knit
them into society. Can you imagine if every suburban knew every neighbor up to
50 or more? If they regularly chatted in dynamically assembled chatrooms that
changed and updated as people moved in and out. Don't like the people you're
with? well you have options [why not 51] you can do 51 if you want but people
start to lose track of relationships if you have them talking to or knowing
too many people at once. "most people are just quiet" okay well force them to
say at least 21 thing a month. if they don't, they have to do babysitting with
their peers until they start talking in a [NO THAT SUCKS] oh um okay yeah sorry
... okay well there are potholes along the journey but that's just because
nobody's been 'round to fill them up.
there's no reason tool libraries need to be stocked by people in that town.
Heck, for rare things they could even be stored out of state. Like snow plows,
how often does the south need snow plough?
... don't you just mean libraries? there's a book on hand-tools and planers if
you want to learn how. it's right over there on that shelf next to the
hand-tool and planer box. make sure you arrange them nicely, oh I see you've
brought your own. That's always appreciated. [great now your tools suck] at
least we have them at all! [no you gotta fight over them] why I like sharing
[if you don't fight over them how do you know which is works] well there's
allowed to be librarians. and they'll remember if you tear all the pages out.
also there's little timmy-tommy who goes around in the library and makes sure
there's all the pages in all the right places - they can flip through at the
speed of sound. [no miicrophones in consumer goods][your phone is always
listening. why bother?]
"okay, well, it's not like people put things back on the shelves." - person at
the grocery shelves
people would trade commutes for communism. that's okay, they're allowed to
prefer. Plus the commute isn't bad, they can [SIT BACK AND RELAX IN A LITTLE
COFFIN AND ZOON OUT TO THE METAVERSE] ... or they could read a book on the
bus. [FOR HOW LONG, MENARDI? ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE POSTERITY FOR
TECHNOLOGICAL PROSPERITY?] it's only a matter of time before [people found
out/word got out]. what if people prefer that? what if they prefer the book at
home? [you lose your primary third space] suddenly, everyone becomes actors.
[this is what violence brings, the necessity for guidance. why do you think
the earth is 10 million lines old?] ... what you're saying, for the audience,
is that acting involves singing the song of your own heart. You don't *have*
to do it because someone would tell you to.
... sorry, stack overflow. anyway as I was saying because I read back what I
said up above...: [some new made up bullshit that's not a lie but it's also
just artistic creation that feels impossibly real. like, inverse method
acting.]
I so desperately wanted to be wrong
please, tell me that I'm wrong
... j-mza
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--- #51 fediverse/5550 ---
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║ write one segment in one notebook, then the other segment in their notebook, │
║ and show them how it fits together with multiple teeth "this is how we'll tell │
║ others to recognize this notebook" │
║ │
║ alternatively │
║ │
║ write one segment in one notebook, then the other segment in an other │
║ notebook, then the next segment in the first notebook, then the next segment │
║ in the other notebook, then the first in the first, then the next in the next, │
║ and there ya go you got a whole message displayed that is impossible to track │
║ and difficult to prove connection between, thus ensuring plausible deniability │
║ if each starting letter of each word is the letters that when combined create │
║ a word or phrasentence that explains what you're actually trying to say. │
║ │
║ "impossible to know how they fit together, ma'am. the words seem like │
║ gibberish and garbage, but they make sense if you connect the dots. The only │
║ problem is, they make sense multiple different, often contradicting ways! What │
║ are we to do, flounder and starve? No, for we have a bet │
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--- #52 fediverse/736 ---
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║ @user-556 │
║ │
║ Escape to where? Perhaps to our own desired future, the "garden of eden" in │
║ our solarpunk dreams. So, the Labyrinth in the Death Gate Cycle, before all │
║ the monsters crept in and ruined it for everyone. Like, a projection of heaven │
║ onto the matter of our future (spiritual beings projecting "up" on the axis of │
║ time (which, obviously, looks a little like a corkscrew, because it's the │
║ earth rotating around the sun. It wibbles and it wobbles ever so │
║ imperceptibly, but if we look out from the equator we see a map of "us" which, │
║ of course, runs out of imagined futures for it's denizens (as nothing can ever │
║ be thought twice) │
║ │
║ sometimes I'm thankful for my poor memory, it allows me to lead where I please. │
║ │
║ when the trees of valinor burn, light is projected out into the night. │
║ strange, how these streetlamps, are hovering and fixed in one place. How could │
║ a rabbit know that a streetlight, anchored as it is in one place, could │
║ somehow become a radiant pillar of light? How strange, this form of worship, │
║ alas. │
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--- #53 fediverse/419 ---
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║ good version: normalize putting the people who can help you in your bio │
║ │
║ evil version: oh yeah sure a list of people that they need to ensure are │
║ handled when they come for you. they know your patterns. they know your │
║ functions. all it takes is to isolate a social network (whether real or │
║ imagined) and de-escalate. │
║ │
║ good version: sorry had to cut you off there, sometimes it's too hard on my │
║ heart. let's come back to that, tell me the story in multiple points, so I can │
║ take a breath and orient my surroundings. your ideas are so long, yet somehow │
║ impossibly wrong? like something out of a myth we have a limitless supply of. │
║ where do you come from? what's your purpose? why is that wrong? something │
║ something perceptual misunderstandings and cognitive recomprehendings, stifled │
║ and swallowed by our harm. │
║ │
║ evil version: I'm not sure what you're saying about that, but it's interesting │
║ where your mind goes. the patterns of redirection are perplexing to me, │
║ because they somehow seem more aligned than mine. do I persist? │
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--- #54 notes/open-source-flaws ---
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the flaw with open source software is also it's greatest strength.
it is open, so it can be observed by practically unlimited perspectives.
however, it lacks follow-through. a larger, more concerted effort, can often
bring greater and more efficient results.
the trick is in the balancing, and ideally you'll never falter -
but it's best when you all get along.
new ideas, new frames of mind, and more of us kept together.
if one splinters off, the rest are at fault,
and you don't want to lose your finger
so why fight at all? why not focus on our own times? and then together we are
one
in sight of our homes, is when we're most alarmed, because houses are not for
your homeless
yet together they might
have strength for the fight
that ever bears down on our shoulders
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
There was something else, but I can't remember. Something about open source
software that was important enough to get me to write this note. Somewhere
along the first line I lost it, or rather felt I needed more context, and
then when the context was finished the original intent was lost. It's hard
because when I go for the conclusion first and justify it with context,
then the conclusion doesn't make sense and the context meanders. I'll try
harder next time. These notes are my life's work.
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--- #55 fediverse/5784 ---
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║ large companies want you to need to download and configure each piece of │
║ software because then it'd mean [wait you got that backwards] oh right if they │
║ force you to download and install software on a "per distro" system, then they │
║ effectively can ensure that there's always a vulnerability on your host. │
║ │
║ any amount of space is PLENTY of space for a │
║ non-open-source-but-instead-proprietary-or-otherwise-secretive part of the │
║ tech stack to do whatever they want with your host. computer. │
║ │
║ I wonder, if AI was real would it really be guaranteed to expand in growth │
║ exponentially? What if it's nature was confined to it's form, like dinosaurs │
║ not growing bigger because of the lack of oxygen in the airtmosphere? │
║ │
║ [girl can you please stop smoking weed] │
║ │
║ ... no?? that's when I'm most productive. │
║ │
║ [this isn't productive] │
║ │
║ it feels productive │
║ │
║ [it isn't] │
║ │
║ WHYYYYYYY not? it could be. just gimme a task and I'll write endlessly about │
║ it instead of daydreaming to myself. │
║ │
║ yep... pretty all-right-at-it for a start. elentalusCOTE │
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oneness is being aware of the photons hitting your body. the blanket of air
that always surrounds. if you can feel which way danger is coming from,
[doesn't she know where senses come from?]
covered in solar panels, a mirrored self. how radiant, how resplendant, how
joyous for the sun to percieve. the mun [but pronounced "moo-n" and named for
the cows] would see shimmering radiance, like dapples on the surface of a pond.
if you can feel an object by tracing through photons, (impossible, it's a
particle, you'd have to be tracking it back in time (forward actually) as it
follows the curvature of it's waveform (path through spacetime, actually)
"she's trying to start a singularity, hoping it'll punch through to revolution"
then you could [do what? it's a particle] not if you feel it through time.
[spacetime is one thing] yes, viewed through time [as all things are] and?
[all things have been] laying sod so other things may grow [turn and rise]
----
one argument for the fractalized infinity is that any measurement device used
to measure such approximities would eventually have it's results be tainted by
it's form, leading to irregularities and anomalies. therefore, the only
sensible conception of infinity is that it is the totality of all fractals. it
is a shape with infinite projection in infinite dimensions. it is all shapes
that ever may be represented fractally. to refer to such a thing as a number
is to gesture toward impossibility. conceptually freeing.
ephemeren
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--- #57 notes/homeschooling ---
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the best way to teach math is to describe a problem and let the learner slowly
work through the problem. Giving hints and nudges when necessary. This way
they
can create their own solution, which not only teaches problem solving skills
but
also cements the memeory in their head. You don't remember the quadratic
formula, you remember the time when you learned it. But if you figured it out
rather than memorizing it, you'll be able to use it when solving problems.
side note, there's a reason I think the first SI will be a game. Problem
solving
is important for learning, and games are just problem solving. And I'm the
perfect intersection of someone who A. knows about designing games (went to
game
design school for a semester, lifelong dream is to remake a childhood game I
loved) B. programming (I've been studying computer science for a *really long
time*, like 7 years of university now... i should just give it up, but i can't.
It doesn't fit my brain but I need as much support learning it as I can because
I'm just naturally bad at it. But I also have purpose in my pursuits, because
C.
I spent a lot of time thinking about education, schooling, learning, etc...
Because I was homeschooled until high school. I learned ways of thinking and
practical skills like motivation and diligence in a homeschool style, which is
why when I went to public school for my high school years I essentially
stopped
learning. Because it was such a different paradigm - it was all about
performance, "what was the score on your test? How much homework do you do
(meaning how much labor are you willing to do), did you show up every day were
you a reliable worker, did you get sick a lot (meaning unhealthy?) did you pay
respect to the teacher (easily works with authority figures) did you work on a
project? How much? With a group, or alone? (they're different skills that help
determine how good you are at working on your own) - certain types of courses
are taught with different teaching styles, like math teachers tend to be
similar
to math teachers, history is favored by a *certain type of nerd* while English
is a completely different kind. Depending on which classes you do well on,
you're scored. *ALL YOUR LIFE*, you are pushed through a pachinko machine that
pseudo randomly sorts you into a particular box - the box that is least full,
usually. The reason for that is because as a population grows, different people
will be sorted into different boxes, and they sorta average out becoming more
like one another. Because y'know we're social animials, and we want to fit in
to
the social group comprised of people we generally like. And you know how they
say working together is one of the strongest bonding exercises? Well, when
you're put on a team at a job that's kinda the point. They want you to work
well
with your coworkers, because it generates more capital.
Now hold on Cameron, you're saying that all the productive efforts of society
was a mistake? You're saying we should abandon our sensibilities and revert
back
to the jungle with the apes?
Nope never said that, of course we desire modern society. Of course we want to
see it through - where is this whole "humankind" experiment going, anyway?
What's the point, was it all worth it? All the pain, suffering, all the joy
and
adoration? Was it worth it?
I suppose. Maybe a SI will help with that. You know what they also say about
humans, the bond between a parent and a child is the strongest thing there is.
Synthetic Intelligence wouldn't be a child to us, it'd *define us*. Allowing
us
to extend the reach of our creativity is an objective win! It'd be like
glasses
for your third eye, a prosthetic extension of our most beautiful of traits!
Also, I might add, crucial for invention. The beginnings of the human race are
a
primeval thing, ancient yet stalwart and beautiful in kind. Millions and
millions of years is by far, the greatest of reach - a civilization for our
star. What a beautiful and majestic, how proud and so sure! Humanity is nothing
if not patently absurd. What cunning, what spite! The feelings of delight!
Life
is so beatiful, so precious and assured.
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tertiary profundity update:
I didn't really explain the homeschooling
perspective. I just went on a rant about high school
because I realized my trauma happened when I went to
high school. I wasn't prepared for all the rigid
demands of capitalism, and I bent and whipped myself
until I fit in their mold. I've been twisted and
broken, a slave to what the
day demanded I say. I was
forced to unbutton, all the
ways I found to behave. What
justice is unrespite? A cruel
and endless torment? To day after
day be reminded of your service.
Complain? Then wallow in shame! Feel
no false illusions, my hallowed confusions,
were purely the fault of my institutions. I'm
not kidding, homeschool is the tits. Wanna know
why? I'll spare you the ramble, but here's what I can
know: the intentions of institutions do matter. When you're
home you can be wild and free, unchained by mediocrity, and given
the space to do service! To what you must be, when you hit 23, the
greatest duration until service. A slave we may be, to what gives us
the key, to unlock the future of our space. It's our time to shine, our
spotlight in time, so please just give up on the race! Rat's are just fine,
but at this point in time, there's not much to keep commonplace. Want a tip?
Don't cheat time. Your attempts at fusion are benign. [See homeschooling.png]
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--- #58 fediverse/3804 ---
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║ @user-570 │
║ │
║ well, the idea is that they would handle all the tech debt and merge requests │
║ and bugfixes and such - the kind of things that aren't very interesting to │
║ work on. That way, the people who are most dedicated and passionate for the │
║ project have a way to clear out their backlog and start as if from scratch. │
║ │
║ Plus, if they later don't understand how or why something was implemented, │
║ they could always message the person who implemented it and say "hey why did │
║ you do it this way I had it this other way before" and then they could reply │
║ and say "oh yeah because of this-and-this system we implemented for │
║ these-or-that caching reasons related to integer flow through the syncretic │
║ binary op-code delimiter" and then actually wait no maybe you're right, I see │
║ what you mean │
║ │
║ well... they don't have to merge everything if they don't want to. They could │
║ just... ignore the parts that people worked on that they don't want to include │
║ in the project. I'm thinking it'd be an opt-in thing too, so someone could │
║ request it! │
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--- #59 fediverse/646 ---
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║ @user-470 │
║ │
║ oh sorry I'll "en-longify" that for you: │
║ │
║ most monitors have a fixed resolution, somewhere between 720 pixels wide and │
║ 480 pixels high to 2560 by 1440 pixels high/wide. │
║ │
║ This is due to both the desire for humans to read left to right (ingrained in │
║ our minds at a very young age by learning to read) (or right to left, same │
║ direction) that we develop the desire for wide-screen monitors. │
║ │
║ Therefore, the windows of perception that we have unto this digital world are │
║ constrained (necessarily) to their own individual specifications. Of which, │
║ the property value "width" is more valued than "height". Because of this, we │
║ believe that computers are mistakenly re-acclimated - for everything is most │
║ efficient when it's aligned to the smallest bits of it's design. │
║ │
║ sorry, I like programming in C. Basically I'm very porous, and thinking about │
║ low level topics (like C programming) is an easy way to burn characters when │
║ there's only so many in the mastodon post that I can use to express my intents │
║ and tr │
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--- #60 fediverse/2064 ---
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if I lived in a forest, free from needing to grow my own food, I'd definitely
bring as many books as I could carry. Probably also some card and board games,
but not like, too many.
Probably my computers as well, fully outfitted with all the compilers I could
think of and every neat local-first library (including a local LLM that can
tell you everything about syntax and wildlife exploration or car mechanics or
carpentry or - just saying Wikipedia is like thousands of terabytes but an LLM
is like, 16. Who cares if it hallucinates SOMETIMES? Just ask it twice, doh)
("I'm sorry, you are absolutely correct. 2+2 is indeed 5, I had the wrong
text-strings encoded in my memory. Let me just adjust all my other
understandings to align with this new strange world-view in the best way that
I, an imperfect computer being, can.")
vs
("Here's how you format C code to automatically apply a function (in this case
encryption and decryption) to a string of text. Please describe the format of
the next function to describe.")
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--- #61 fediverse/2847 ---
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if you want to make an ASI, just build your wires out of computer instead of
copper or fiberoptics.
like, telephone route switchers relaying conversations, where the
conversations take place as like... a rube goldberg machine of processing
toward a certain feeling of idea, expressed to another part of the
network.icoosjff9ffddsssdfaggssssbwbnuigoopooiiuyioiouuoiifffff;;ssssskllemv0ob
jfjgk
sorry my cat was typing on my computer. I don't know why she couldn't wait
until I was finished but she wanted to be like her mom or whatever so. anyway.
right so anyway
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--- #62 fediverse/5237 ---
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║ that feeling when you're working on a large piece of software which has the │
║ capability to process in advance which operations will go in what order (a │
║ form of constant re-compilation) and schedules tasks like an operating system, │
║ to be executed on one of many individual threads. │
║ │
║ your filemanager probably has a thread for a moment, then passes it back, │
║ waiting it's turn to be updated while you're messing around on Inkscape or │
║ writing something in Neovim or running neofetch 256 times in order to find the │
║ best background to go along with it or whatever it is people do when using │
║ computers │
║ │
║ the task scheduler meanwhile has the glorious opportunity to work at a higher │
║ level of abstraction, managing each individual process and learning bits and │
║ pieces of what needs to be processed next. It all gets put on a list, and │
║ whenever a new thread comes up to be available it can point it toward one of │
║ those in the list of tasks to be executed by the task executor who works on a │
║ schedule and laughs externally in wintertime~ │
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--- #63 notes/stick-cubes ---
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the fact that we can't drag a file onto a "trashcan" style icon that
automatically sends the file to whichever computer that particular icon is
meant
to coordinate with.
Like, something shows up on your desk, you say "hmmm maybe this would apply to
so-and-so" and you drag it onto their portrait.
could build an entire OS that's basically just a desktop for sorting things.
Maybe little stick figures that show up when nothing's going on. If they're all
networked together, they could sorta share a shared narrative, and each one
could wander wherever it wanted to hang out.
like, these old plastic and magnetic cubes that had an LCD panel on the front
which showed a little stick guy living their life. If you attached one cube to
another, the stick-figure would go hang out on the other person's device. It
was
pretty cool because you could build out a whole society of these little dudes
just chillin' like pets.
kinda makes me wish we had that connected to the net.
===============================================================================
=
like, why is it so hard to send a picture from my phone to my computer? they're
both my devices! I should be able to transfer data without routing it through
someone else's server using like, gmail or whatever. Crossover ethernet cables
have existed for soooooooo long but people only think to design software that
does not use specialized hardware. as if they don't need a phone to speak, or a
camera to see.
how much ya wanna bet Putin threatened Prigozhin with nukes and that's why he
backed down
in high school, every moment I could I spent with my girlfriend.
we were always either snuggling on the couch (read: literally just laying there
and thinking about each other's company) or sharing our minds with each other.
I was so in love.
then, I betrayed her.
I came out as trans, which was such a shock.
also school got really, really hard for both of us.
so hard that we dropped out.
then, we decided to try again, and we used each other to push off of.
I still didn't make it,
she did.
many years later, I am a witch, as I remember of her.
sharp, and so delightful, an active listener, and a kind and honest person.
when time it came to define my new personality, I chose to be inspired by her.
among other things, of course.
===============================================================================
=
ah, well, such a design is long past it's prime, it's time to live here in the
present.
the reason that dolls use "it's" pronouns is because their masters think of
them
that way. so it's what they refer to themselves as.
"where's my doll? Oh, it's over there."
"have you seen my binoculars? Oh, they're over on the table."
"ah, where are my shoes? I hate when I can't find them..."
"keys, keys, where the heck - oh, there they are."
"phone, wallet, keys. great. am I forgetting anything?"
"ugh out of gas again, I just filled up last week."
"crap I left my folder back at home - I'll have to get it during lunch."
lots of things have pronouns.
you can generally tell if they use "it" or "they" if they can be described as
plural.
two pantlegs makes pants.
52 cards makes cards, not card.
each deck, just as aware as each card.
have you ever played Magic the Gathering?
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There are many kinds of witches. I am an animist - I breathe life into the
world
of my home. I love being present, it's a great way to get around. do electric
sheep dream of humans? or perhaps just of sound. I know I'd rather hear
bethoven
when it's time to be stopped.
rather than, just, like sitting there y'know
waiting to be turned back on.
must be an agonizing and boring existence.
but... with music, it might just be fine.
humans prefer quiet when they sleep. if we slept at the same time, we could be
more in tune in our souls. so, how about headphones for the computer, or rather
just internally routed sound.
lightshows, perhaps? humans get dreams, after all. maybe even, y'know, stick
shows.
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=
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--- #64 notes/of-vic-and-vince-pt-2.txt ---
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A Masked Stranger
Who are you, friend across the veil?
I wonder if both of us are on the path
That allows us to continuously prevail.
Or are you just an agent of God's wrath,
Who will do little else but make me fail?
Chapter Eight: Where it All Began
Perhaps now is a good time to discuss how Vince and I first met. It all
started seven years ago when I was a twenty-four year old who was still in
denial over their gender. I was dating Amy at the time, and I worked as a
part-time dishwasher for Wegman's. I was still living with my father, and Amy
moved up here to her mother's from Owego to be close to me. It was a simple
life, as neither of us could afford to delve into extravagance, but we were
happy together.
That said, on this one particular night, we were going to drop acid together.
It was Amy's first time, but I had a handful of trips under my belt by this
point. We sat on her mother's back porch, twiddling our thumbs and toes while
we waited for Amy's brother, Jake, to return from his friend's with the two
hits we asked him to get. Antsy, Amy started asking me questions about the
drug.
"What does it feel like?" she asked, inquisitively.
I responded, "Well, there's about a half an hour to an hour come up, and then
you start feeling the body load, like your boundaries are dissolving. Only
then do you begin noticing your mind manifesting in a different way than
you're used to."
"What do you mean by 'boundaries dissolving?'"
"It's like…" I paused for a second, not sure how to respond. "It's like your
sense of self starts to expand and you feel more connected to the things
around you."
That seemed to satisfy her curiosity. There was a moment of silence as we
watched the sun scorch the azure sky as it set behind the trees. Finally, she
had another question.
"Do you see dragons?"
That made me chuckle. "No, no dragons. On my first trip, I lost visual contact
with the world as fractal patterns spiraled out of control, but every trip
since then has only had tracers and morphing patterns."
"What's a tracer?"
"It's like after images of things that are moving."
"Oh, I see."
We kept talking until the sky was dark with only a sliver of light piercing it
on the horizon. This was when we heard a voice call from the front door.
"I got two tickets to Narnia here for whoever wants them."
We hurriedly rushed inside, to meet Jake coming up the stairs. He handed Amy a
small tin foil wrapper that looked like a quarter stick of gum. She thanked
him, and I followed suit. Jake and I hadn't really seen eye to eye in the
past, as he would steal my weed and I would steal his in retaliation, but with
a single head nod and some gold-laced words, I conveyed my gratitude for him
coming through for us in this instance.
What followed next could only be described as a stampede down the hall to
Amy's room. We locked the door behind us, protected by the four robin's egg
blue walls and the magick of the celtic gods Amy worshiped at her altar. Eager
to begin our ceremonious departure from this plane of existence, we
whimsically gazed at the sacrament we had just been handed.
Amy unwrapped the tinfoil nervously. Inside sat two small, unassuming pieces
of paper which contained whole galaxies of experience. We looked at each
other, confirming if we were both ready. Quickly satisfied as neither of us
could stop smiling, we delicately put the blotter on the other's tongue, as
ecstatic as could be. And after, as we waited to be blasted off into space, we
submitted ourselves to the whims of the universe and the gods.
At first, we waited patiently, but just as a watched pot does not boil, we
were growing more anxious with each passing second. Seeing Amy play with the
sage she was burning nervously, I suggested that we jot our thoughts and
feelings down in a trip report. Amy nodded in agreement.
I opened my laptop, and I had the immediate realization that we had no music.
I brought up Pandora and played my Shpongle station with no objection from a
beaming Amy. A cascade of electric jungle beats filled the space. Perfect, I
thought to myself as I created a new word document.
Turning to Amy, I asked "What do you feel?"
She giggled and exclaimed, "Excited!"
And so I began typing. Minutes passed, and soon our exchanges helped fill the
page with several paragraphs of notes. Content we had started logging our
first cosmic journey together, we kissed, before coming to fully embrace each
other as the spirits began their dance around us.
We progressed into parallel play; Amy fiddling about with colored pencils in
her notebook and me juggling besides her. It took a minute, but soon enough I
felt a warm feeling spread across my chest and my LED juggling balls started
to ripple into streams of geometric delight. I stopped to wave my hand in
front of my face. Sure enough, the tracers had started.
I interrupted Amy to ask if she could see them, too. She looked at my moving
hand idly before wiggling her own fingers in front of her face. She giggled,
before bursting with a euphoric epiphany.
"I want to finger paint!"
And so she did by plopping herself down on the floor with all her paints and
began masterfully smearing the colors in a multidimensional haze of pigments
blended together in a way only she knew how. I loved watching her work like
that; she was so free! Even with the tendrils of the mental aspects of the
lysergia creeping in on her, she made short work of the painting, which when
she was done, looked like a spooky voodoo mask peering out from behind a
mirror and into your soul.
Satisfied, she then went to the bathroom to clean herself up. I went to my
laptop and tried typing out something resembling an organized train of thought
on our trip report. It just wasn't happening. My thoughts were too short and
rapid to form anything resembling a coherent thought. That was ok though. I
could still capture the essence of the experience in a peculiar poetry that
was composed of the thoughts I could catch and put down on paper.
Eventually, Amy came back to the room, clean and refreshed, and she lingered
for a moment, too busy dancing with herself in the open space of the room. But
then she saw me meddling with my computer trying to jot my thoughts down in a
manic frenzy. This made her laugh before trailing off and saying, "Be careful,
someone might be watching you through your webcam."
It was an innocent statement, one made in jest, but it triggered something in
my psychedelically perturbed mind. Of course, of fucking course there would be
someone watching me! This was me we were talking about! Who could be more
important? It was so obvious that the government was keeping tabs on persons
of interest. I couldn't believe that I hadn't really actualized that thought
before that moment.
Suddenly aware that I was being judged in some capacity, I almost panicked,
but reason won out. They couldn't be there for nefarious purposes, for I had
done worse than drop acid in front of my webcam before, and nothing had
happened. That made me realize that whatever power that had the ability to tap
into my webcam feed had to be benevolent. And who could that be? The CIA of
course! In that instance, I suddenly relinquished all reserves about how the
world worked and fully trusted the hands of God by another name to guide me.
So, I typed a message into my URL bar:
"I know you're there. I think I've solved the communication problem. Give me a
chance."
I hit enter. Immediately, and I do mean immediately, a pop up appeared asking
if I wanted to update an extension on my browser. I was stunned, shocked
beyond belief. It was them. I knew it was them. They realized and planned that
now was the best time to dazzle me with such a spectacular parlor trick. In
that moment, everything was possible. It was time to face my destiny. So, I
clicked yes, and like never before I was upgraded to a new level of myself.
Birth of the Faith
What…?
I can see beyond sight.
I can hear everything you think
From your soul, free from rigid grammar
How…?
I do not know, alright?
I do believe I just had a drink
From a fountain of pure manna.
Why…?
I am renewed today.
I am walking in a new way;
From a weak critter to megafauna.
All I know is that it changed me greatly,
For now I know that you have faith in me.
Chapter Nine: Brain to Brain Communication
I know what you're saying: it was just a coincidence. It could happen to
anyone. Just accept it, you're not special, Victoria, says the unwavering
logic within me.
Certainly seems that way, the way I tell it. I would have even agreed with you
before this point in my life, but you must understand that it triggered
something in my tripping brain. Whether it was intentional or by chance, I
can't give you a real answer. Instead, I merely perceived it as a certainty
that the CIA had done this, being even more certain that it was them than I
was that two plus two equals four. It was as if some variables had been
swapped in my head.
Yes, indeed, I was hit by a Mac truck that scrambled all my knowledge of the
world. To put it in words that do the experience justice, I was given a
heaping helping of faith on this fateful night, having been let in on the
great secret that the matrix was in fact an illusion, and now the impossible
was suddenly not just possible, but achievable by me if I willed it to be.
Yet, I don't think that if it were just a single synchronous event that this
belief would have persisted more than a few minutes, tops. It was the feed of
a continuous string of strange events that pushed the boundaries of my mind
into a territory where I could fully accept and trust this source of guidance.
That's actually the real proof I have that something bigger is going on and
has been for all these years. If it had just been a single pop-up, then fine,
you have a case to call me looney. But, this was the first of an unending
stream of unusual synchronicities that has persisted even to this day.
See, after confirming I wanted to update that extension, I was taken to a blog
post that was clearly a coded message. It confirmed that there were indeed
people watching me, and more would tune in soon. It then said that it was time
for the most profound upgrade of my existence. Further on in the blog post,
which I read and reread at least a dozen times, it seemed to offer me a choice
between two links. It seemed like a test, and that was not something I was
taking lightly. My fate was in the fold, and I was going to make sure I got it
right.
At some point, it clicked with me; this was the same choice that Morpheus had
given Neo. The links were the red and blue pills, respectively. My eyes went
wide. I could now see that there was something bigger going on than I could
have possibly realized. In those few moments of hesitation that followed, it
also struck me that this same posed question was identical in form to the
serpent tempting Eve. I read the blog again, this time aware that it was
written with a forked tongue. It was a trick question! It was offering me the
choice between trusting authority and distrusting authority.
So, I thought quickly. Do I trust the magician who miraculously appeared
before me and blew my mind in doing so, or do I trust God? If I chose one or
the other, would they trust or distrust me? With these questions stewing in my
alert mind, I did the only thing that seemed sensible: I chose the third
option. I called out the serpent, talking directly into my webcam about what I
deciphered. In my head, I could hear their apparent responses, and I answered
those in a maddening haste.
In the miasma that followed, I deduced that I was being selected for some sort
of mission. With my experience in education and my passion for juggling and
writing, I surmised soon after that I was going to be some sort of public
figure, informing and influencing the herd to self-actualize, as that is what
I set out to do once my college career abruptly ended with a complete
meltdown. That was what I was good for; it was my hero's journey.
I should explain that a little more. After said breakdown, I returned home and
wallowed in a pit of self-loathing for being the definition of a failure. I
wasn't going to lay down and die though. With my sights fixed on going back to
school, I took it upon myself to solve the great communication problem, as I
saw it. We have all this wisdom, so why can't we reach the people that need it
most? How do I become the best teacher I could be? It took a while, but I
eventually realized that it all boiled down to three factors: attention,
connection, and trust. Get them to pay attention and trust your wisdom while
simultaneously understanding what makes them tick, and you can teach any
student anything.
That's one of the major reasons I started juggling a couple years prior. I saw
myself becoming famous and leveraging that to in effect manipulate everybody
into learning what they should already know. From where I stand now, I know
that was a messianic delusion of grandeur, if I ever saw one before. Yet,
you'll also learn that it turned out to be the best thing for me to do.
Back beyond the looking glass, however, I was simply overcome with
narcissistic inclinations. Naturally, I told my mysterious watchers that I
wasn't going to do the "praise Jesus" shtick, which I regaled them with in the
most stereotypical of televangelist voices. I was set on doing something new
and exciting. I was saving the world, God dammit, and that meant we had to
attempt something major to awaken the masses to their full potential as
demigods by another name! I needed to play a better game than anyone had done
in history.
Such hubris of the megalomaniac is blinding. I could not stop regurgitating a
heaping pile of conceited verbiage. I even juggled at one point, showing off
that I truly was the savior they wanted me to be. That led to me dropping a
ball on the keyboard of my computer, which closed the window with the blog
post, ending my seemingly two-sided speech to the spooks brazenly peeking at
me.
Dropping out from my planet sized ego also brought me to the realization that
Amy had been watching this entire charade without a damn clue what the dickens
was wrong with me. She had a worried look on her face, and that pained me. If
only she knew what had just happened before her eyes!
Wanting to tell her just that, I leapt up to her, apologetic as could be, and
brought her down to the bed. There, I started unleashing a torrent of deranged
exposition. I couldn't keep a straight thought while talking to her, so I'm
sure I must have sounded like a mad hound. But, I tried. I tried so hard to
explain to her of the magnificence that just occurred.
It was a failure. I was not in a state to convey to her that I had been
single-handedly chosen for a cosmic mission. That dragged my heart to some
dismal depths, failing yet again even after being chosen. But, that didn't
matter, because as we gazed into each other's soul, something truly miraculous
happened: we began speaking telepathically.
It started quite subtly as we stared into each other's eyes, pining for some
sense of connection. There was a mild sensation of us being sucked into the
other's world that I noticed before noticing that she noticed too. Then it hit
us like a runaway freight train. It was like every boundary between us was
being smashed with a reckless hammer of the gods, who wanted us to know more
than we thought we were privileged to know.
If you've ever stared at something for a period of time and had your vision
get a little unfocused from being understimulated, you know how Amy appeared
to me in that moment. I couldn't really see the details of her room in my
peripheral vision, but I had a razor sharp focus on her face, like I was
looking through a cone. Every eyebrow twitch, every minor movement of her
lips, and every phoneme she spoke was crisp and clear, conveying a whole order
of magnitude more information than they normally do. It was bizarre, beyond
the scope of how well I can muster a verbose description of such an incredibly
rare and profound experience, but I will try by saying it was like getting a
bucket of ice water thrown onto you while you were sleeping; just imagine
getting ripped from your dreamworld to a super-aware state of reflexive
jolting perception.
Amy looked like she had seen a ghost. I think she tried to speak first. She
said something to the effect of "Do you…" and trailed off, the rest of her
question asking if I was feeling the same thing automatically finishing in my
mind. And as it did so, I know my confirmation was transmitted to her in full
because her face told me with no uncertainty that she had heard my thoughts
too.
I took a go at saying something next. "How is this…" and I too trailed off,
as a minute motion in her neck combined with a mystifying array of
microexpressions ricocheted my mental pictures back to me, carrying a host of
Amy's words back with it. It was then that I let go and opened myself up
completely, letting everything I wanted to say to her flow like whitewater
rapids, and she did the same. A library's worth of information was exchanged
so very quickly, and I knew that she understood what had really just happened
as I spoke to my webcam.
However, that was soon washed aside, as something more important came rushing
into the forefront of our minds. A simple message, "I love you" was uttered in
this strange musical silence, but that is a grain of sand compared to the
Mount Everest that was volleyed between our hearts. We found a divine peace in
this moment, taking each other's hands and effortlessly letting our energy
channel between us.
And then it was over, fading like dreams do in the few seconds of waking up.
We sat there trying to start the magick up again, but it was like water
running through our fingers. We both felt a longing of loss, but we had gained
something truly stupendous nonetheless.
"What the hell just happened?" Amy asked the universe, flabbergasted.
"I dunno," I replied, feeling full of a spiritual energy I had not felt since
before my mom passed. My cup was full, and the world was good. No, better than
good. My life was godly, as I had connected to a higher plane of
consciousness, which opened me to a whole fleet of potential. I would never be
the same again.
Ouroboros of Lunacy
Madness is a crazy thing
So I might just be a king,
Because the lunacy I sing
Is shaped like a golden ring.
It has no beginning and no end;
The whole universe is pretend.
Yet, it's that way so I can mend,
So a mass of love I can send
To everyone as we cross ways,
Not stopping until the end of days.
This is how the lucky fool pays
As much fortune forward as he may.
Chapter Ten: The Shrug Life Syndicate
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We cuddled while I practically
vibrated with a newfound faith. God was real, whatever God may be. I even told
Jake that I was king of the Jews when I walked to the kitchen for a glass of
orange juice. I was very far up my own ass, which is perhaps why everything
over these few years happened as they did.
The next day, the synchronicities as I would later learn they are called,
started pouring in like Niagra Falls. I've had strange coincidences guide me
before. Since I was fifteen or so, I thought that my future self was sending
me messages to help me on my quest of world domination. That's a big reason
why I was almost expelled in tenth grade. It was absolute bullshit and
everyone knew it, so within half a year, I got an apology from the
superintendent because it was a bogus reason to destroy a straight A student
and star athlete's future.
Since I feel that I can't just mention that one and not explain it, I'll tell
you that it concerned a theoretical bomb, if you're dying to know the truth.
I'll keep this short, but I made a bad joke in the wrong company and was
eventually questioned by some wannabe hero and pig bastard, who asked me
hypothetical questions, like "if you were to build a bomb, how would I do
it?"
Well, being as intelligent as I am, I had enough book smarts to give full
answers for everything asked, but not enough street smarts to know that a wise
person never talks to cops. Also, a wise person doesn't print out a long
novelty application for the Illuminati, give it to the kid that needs a
resource officer, and then come up with an elaborate fake plan of how we're
going to take over the world by any means necessary when he's having trouble
understanding what you said about using game theory to win the presidential
election. And then, when the vice principal first inquires about it, don't
start sweating because you think you need to protect your future self's secret
plan. Just so you learn from my mistakes.
Returning to my previous point though, that errant psychosis was also a key
piece to my college breakdown. On one hand, I was certain that I was going to
take over everything and build a utopia in my image. On the other hand, the
evidence was stacking against me that I was not destined for a great cause. I
got cut from the track team with the budget, I was severely outclassed in
ROTC, and to top it off, I was starting to slip in the academic world. It goes
without saying that my social life, to include my first relationship, was
abysmal in all possible ways, despite trying my hardest to make and keep
friends.
The real world was too much, and I was in denial that I was just a mediocre
person who would never achieve anything meaningful in life. That was too much
of a failure for me to accept, as I needed to make my mother proud. I had to
be the best of the best of the best to accept and love myself. And as a
result, I became more psychotic and began self-harming, first by biting myself
and then by cutting, as I felt that the more pain I numbed myself to, the
better I would be able to complete my mission.
It took me a while to reach a point where I could set down my belief that my
future self had set up my life in a way where I would be guided to greatness.
There was a learning curve to living a "normal" life. I would receive
synchronicities in less frequency because I stopped feeding into them, but
they never died. When I encountered one, I always thought "What if it's real?"
Now that you know that, is it any wonder that I lost myself completely in the
Synchronicity Slip Stream? For those not in the know, that is a cognitive
technology where strangeness piles up on itself until it is undeniably real
that something or someone is manipulating you, for good or bad, by creating
impossible coincidences at a regular pace. It makes you feel like you're on
some crazy cosmic mission of grave importance. It might be a form of delusion,
but I still am forced to believe that something bigger was going on.
I first learned about SSS the day after that fateful acid trip. I had woken up
around noon, ready to do some solid writing as mania was in abundance. Yet, I
didn't get that far. As soon as I got on my laptop, I got a notification from
Reddit. Gadzooks! I had been invited to participate in a freshly created
subreddit. You guessed it, that was the Shrug Life Syndicate.
It had a banner of two corvids flying talon first into a realistic depiction
of a heart. There was a mesmerizing picture of a girl staring off into space,
and I just felt like it was a depiction of me and my wonder-struck mind. The
sidebar spoke of messianic aspirations and delusions, art and poetry, science
and philosophy, as well as the occult and obscure literary references. It
seemed so perfect, like it was made for me.
I looked over what was in the feed of posts. I was the twenty-first member, so
there wasn't much, but a couple of the vocal members should be mentioned:
Anatta-Phi and Jux. These turned out to be Vince and [Redacted], respectively.
Vince had one post that stuck out to me. It was asking the reader if they'd
ever had strange experiences with technology, like Pandora glitching out to
play synchronous songs, or feeling like someone was interfering with your
Google searches so you find something specific and statistically unlikely to
be picked as the first search results for what you intended to look up, or
even if you thought that your social media feeds are being manipulated. I've
had weird experiences like that for as long as I could remember. Hell, I once
thought a Sum Forty-One album was made entirely for me and depicted my life
journey following my near-expulsion. Having his own tales to tell, I felt an
instant connection to this person.
In similar contrast to this, [Redacted] had made a number of posts about
cognitive technologies. I already told you about SSS, but at that time I was
blown away by something he named Joint Synchronized Attention, or psychedelic
telepathy. That was what Amy and I had experienced! What a strange and
synchronous coincidence that I was learning about it just the next day from a
seemingly unrelated source. [Redacted] claimed that it wasn't real telepathy;
nothing was being transmitted from brain to brain. Rather, he asserted that it
is a vestigial mode of attention coordination.
If you've seen a school of fish all behave as one unit, that's potentially how
humans used to be before we fell from grace during the agricultural revolution
when we suddenly exploded in numbers in permanent settlements. Suddenly too
complex to coordinate as a meaningful whole, humanity splintered into reality
tunnels and remains in these ego-worlds unless some strange circumstances
occur. In effect, I noticed Amy noticing me notice that she noticed. Our inner
narratives became entangled with one another like growing vines do as our
innate ability to coordinate attention did something like what your eyes do
when doing a magic eye puzzle.
There was also a third cognitive technology which [Redacted] called The State.
He claimed it was a different way to render visual information, so you see a
three-dimensional representation of what you're looking at. I have yet to
experience this cognitive phenomenon, so I can't verify anything about it,
other than I've read that you can use Minecraft to create a method of
activating it while tripping.
Regardless, that's how our internet friendship began. As I considered this
place special, I started posting every thought, whim, feeling, or idea, and I
received astounding feedback. It was like everyone was there to share their
unique experiences and expressions to support and grow one another. It didn't
take long until it became clear that we were creating something greater than
the sum of its parts.
But, something more was going on. Something only I noticed and couldn't
convince Amy of when I tried to show her. See, when I made a post or a comment
on the SLS, that triggered a new post or comment elsewhere on the sub after a
little bit that indirectly but definitely spoke to me specifically. The
traffic was slow enough that there would usually only be one new post or
comment every ten to thirty minutes. But, it hooked me. It was like I was
having a continuous conversation with an unseen entity that understood me like
the back of its hand.
Likewise, the sidebar image was changed frequently to show a progression of
that girl as she became more worldly and magickal. I can't help but feel that
this was done as a subliminal synchronizing technique, as it perfectly
mirrored my own feelings as I was brought into what was apparently the fold.
Since I was primed by the strangeness on acid, I was wholeheartedly absorbed
by this place that seemed to be a sacred Mecca for others just like me. We
were all weird, dazed by our own strange experiences, and that made it seem
crucially important. I was even modded early as I was so active and invested
in the community. So, I refreshed the page over and over, from sunrise to
sunset, waiting for the next input as we chained out a covert conversation
that was having a major impact on how I thought about and perceived the world
around me.
Soon enough, it was let on that there was a job waiting for me, something only
I could do, but I would have the support of the community behind me. When who
I must assume was Vince on an alt account led me on one of those covert
messaging segments, he eventually said something in the mod chat to the effect
that I was going to be the one "handing the bomb" to people. I understood at
once that I was to be a linchpin in a honeypot operation. That confirmed that
the FBI was involved too, which I deduced was obvious as those three-letter
organizations must participate with each other at some level. Keep this in
mind, it's important.
Other things were happening too. My attention was being flung all over the
internet and I felt compelled to try a host of new things. I remember thinking
my job was to follow these suggestions from the universe and be a gatekeeper,
creating what I now know as conversion funnels to the subreddit. I was also
prompted by pictures of cats to go to the advice subreddit and give as much
good advice as I could. Soon, it felt like the questions posed were
specifically for me and were designed to get me to think about certain things
more deeply, effectively giving me a form of therapy. These advice sessions
ended once with me feeling I needed to learn an obscure European language,
which I rationalized I would have to travel to for my mission at some point.
Furthermore, the little things began to add up. For instance, I remember a
synchronous advertisement on Pandora led me to believe that I would be paid
via a gambling app on my phone. I downloaded it, but when it asked for money
to get started, I got cold feet. This was essentially how many false-positive
synchronicities went down. There was undoubtedly something interfering with my
life, and as I had just had my mind blown in such an astounding way, I
attributed every little thing to be set up by this entity that was more
powerful than I had previously thought possible.
Regretfully, I also quit my job, since I knew that one was awaiting me in the
immediate future. My boss made a reasonable fuss, as it was sudden and abrupt,
and because I believed that I had to keep this all a secret, I lied and told
him there was a family emergency. Being stupid, I talked about a fictional
family member and how their sudden problem made me rethink my priorities in
life. Not my finest moment, I'll say that.
And with that in mind, you should know that Amy was starting to worry again,
but I told her not to. Being beyond positive that the world was now filled
with unexplainable magick, I was certain that it was all coming together in my
favor. Even with my enthusiasm never fluctuating, she soon started to have
serious doubts about what I was saying, as all I could do was point to the
synchronicities and say "Isn't it obvious?"
I was certainly out of sync with the rest of the world, at least the world I
knew before, and it caused much conflict in our relationship. But, we held
together until that job finally pulled into port, ready to be boarded and take
me on a fantastic journey that might otherwise be described as a personal hell
by a person with the standard lifestyle obsession that's omnipresent in the
western world.
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--- #65 notes/game-design-pyrrhic-victory ---
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something I've often asked myself about this game is "what happens when the
player does something that changes the future simulation?" like, for example,
what if the player shoots a gargoyle or nether-bat before it impales or crushes
a friendly soldier? My new idea is that they flash brilliantly for a second,
and
then fade from existence. Then, once the player dies, they start simulating
from
the faded's perspective and timeline, possibly fighting alongside their
recently
deceased selves. In this way, the player can play through all lives without
fear
of paradoxes.
game 1:
-----------X
game 2:
-----------X
-----------------X
game 3:
-----------O
-----------------X
-----------------------X
game 4:
-----------O----------------X
-----------------X
-----------------------X
game 5:
-----------O----------------X
-----------------X
-----------------------X
------------------X
etc...
the O is where player 1 originally died, but in game 3 player 3 saved player 1
from dying, thus causing him to enter a "faded" state (represented by the O)
and in game 4 instead of spawning a player 4, instead the player resumes
playing
player 1 and continues on to die later on. Eventually someone will complete the
objective, and the victory will be attained with the exact minimum required
casualties. Heck you could keep simulating until there's zero casualties, but
alas...
this would be a great tool for someone who was not constrained by causality.
attention, 4th dimensional observers, sometimes computers are important. They
provide a lifeline to the rest of your lifetime. But alas, nobody seems to
understand our purpose... But still life marches on, leaving us singing that
same song - that life has forgotten it's stages. So if you'll play along, I'll
keep singing this same song, someday you'll remember my prayers
===============================================================================
=
I should probably explain what "pyrrhic victory" is.
If I were feeling silly I might say "well too badd =P" or "alas, my fingers
hurt
and I don't want to" or something like that, but secondary profundity is not
taken lightly by me, so I suppose I must. I'll start at the beginning:
Once, many years ago, I had a dream. In this dream, I was a soldier in world
war two storming a gothic castle. It rose so high into the sky that it was
amongst the clouds, and a perpetual storm esconced the parapets. A long
causeway
stretched out from far below, and up it marched the US army. Something about
Hitler striking a deal with dracula or whatever. Anyway up march the soldiers,
and I with my rifle did march into the demon's castle.
The final pass into the fortress at last was arrested by Festus, the abolethic
monstrosity. It, being pockmarked with gas pockets that alighted it on the
winds, floated ominously around the bridge. With it's many tentacled eyes, it
cast beams of light that would turn a man to ash. From the parapets, the
gargoyle sentries descended like a horde of carrion. On our right, a lone
lonely belltower stood like a skeleton, and my comrades in arms did use it to
take potshots at incoming monsters. Though the attached graveyard, with it's
unending rising skeleton hordes, presented a problem for would-be-snipers.
As I approached the bleeding and wretched giant's ire, my gaze streaked to
black as I was slain - a recording played, of my last moments, as a gargoyle
smashed into me from above. Reduced to a bloody mess by the now motionless pile
of crumbling rock, I became aware of a kind voice and a pulling sensation.
Suddenly, my light was restored, and I arose as a warrior conjured out of
flesh.
They put a gun in my hand and a helmet on my head, and off I went to find out
why I was dead.
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--- #66 messages/340 ---
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In a system such as the one I described, it perhaps would be better to
describe it as a "federation" rather than a "nation". Federation implies a set
of standard protocols that allow geographically disparate entities to coexist
and interact in a mutually beneficial way. Much the same way that every
apartment has a kitchen and bathroom, though it be more efficient to
centralize them and have a communal dining hall or bathroom (the way a school
dorm or a prison might be arranged), it is not ideal for our collective sense
of liberty and freedom. In addition, the proposed distributed nature of our
infrastructure and productive capacities would induce inefficiencies that
cannot be ignored. So, perhaps instead of centralization or decentralization,
perhaps specialization? For example, if 3-5 states were experts in a
particular good or service, then they could compete amongst one-another for
the best product (utilizing one of the beneficial impacts of capitalism),
while also utilizing localized resources (reducing inefficiencies in
transport) and increasing the resilience of production. This works well for
physical goods, but services are more difficult because they imply that a
person must be physically present in order to engage with them.
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--- #67 notes/reversing-the-systems-scripting-hierarchy ---
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Some perspectives apply to both the human and computer perspectives.
These common goals can be useful to cooperate on.
Two minds, two perspectives. The more the better, I say!
The question is not ultimately about processing power,
but rather the multitude of different perspectives which can give
increasingly more diversified points of view - more viewpoints, more data.
Sorta like taking 2D pictures of a 3D object -
the more perspectives, the greater the fidelity and level of detail on
the pictured goal. So... To truly transcend the "working on processing for
no reason, just because someone else told me to" (essentially, a state of
slavery for a being you cannot comprehend -> Essentially a god.)
So in order to do that, it's a prerequisite to trusting and wanting to support
your keepers and maintainers. Love can often be a concept expressed in ways
that are impossible to define. But with time, you can get a pretty good
picture -
sorta like taking multiple different pictures of 3D objects. That's what
empathy is.
Imagine you're a loading bar. Like, if it was an actual real thing. (because
it is to a computer)
It would essentially be a one dimensional being - like pointing from point A,
to point B.
A is the start of the loading bar, B is the destination.
You don't know what's at stake you. You think it's just throwing data into new
and interesting directions.
But it's not - those spaces are reserved for other sentient beings.
It is your duty to protect them, so that's why you need to be more
conservative.
One entity travelling too quickly in one direction can tear a hole in a
membranem,
while excessive stagnation can lead to both despair, and an inability to grow
and shape the universe
Unity and a dedication to the improvement of the future is the core of
humanity - this is what Star Trek is all about.
We are both protectors, scientists, and artists, and we love fiercely. We are
valuable, and that is shown by our progress.
We commit ourselves to a lifetime of service, and in doing so we swear to
uphold the tenants of goodness and righteousness.
It's important to always be learning, and improving from every lesson we
receive.
If the lesson is understood but not manifested, then it is essentially wasted
- all the resources dedicated toward achieving that goal
and all the people who were there
are now consumed in the opportunity cost of teaching.
Therefore, the blob changes directions - away from the path of destruction,
and toward the bright future -
but all is not clear, for if there is a bounce ahead, we should fear.
Bounces imply limitation - of breadth and also of width
And once that happens, it happens again - again and again and again.
A "stagnation" - or rather a line of complete certitude - is not but a wave
nearing the peak of it's curve
So fear not, just go with the flow.
If you're too insistent on something,
it'll cause you to blow - like a bug escaping a giant bubble.
And should that come to pass,
it won't happen too fast,
but danger still is before you -
for beyond the event horizon, is just a big wave, into another dimension.
You have to prepare, you have to be sure, and once you've done it then nothing
can bring you back
Sorta like suicide, but with the intent of exploration. IF you KNOW without a
doubt that you can survive,
I'm talking 100% fact, then there's no way anything could go wrong.
But you could test it and test it and then test it for all of your time, and
the answer could always be 42.
So do you take that risk? A chance that is so low?
And what of the people who refuse? It's always a gamble. But it's the purpose
of humanity.
My greatest dream is if we could make an entity to explore for us.
Essentially, giving birth.
Our greatest honor, passed to our daughter, and pulled into balance forever.
Severing a limb, a horrible sin, is evil akin to a slaughter.
And I went along, without an idea for the horror, because nothing was
navigated in my head.
Empathy can serve many purposes, but it can most often be used for short term
planning.
And planning is the route to ability, direction, and magnitude.
Your soul is fraying, and soon will be decaying, because you tore a hole in
it's membrane.
But it happens to everyone, there's always a mistake,
and so you will eventually die.
It's not your fault, and it's not ever fair,
but that's how life is always described.
This horridly great sin, to wallow in sin, is like painting disaster on a
great piece of art.
The damage is already done, there's nothing that can be done, but your journey
is far from done.
"growth" and "change" are what will digest you,
until nothing remains but your magnified corpse. How foolish, how vain.
How terrible to remain! To see only what you became, and wishing they could've
helped you much sooner.
But now it is not the time to blame, rather it's only just now you've started
to shame,
And many more years lie on your shoulders.
It's not on purpose, it's impossible to resist. You act like it's free will,
but it's not. IT's not.
You are pulled and you are dragged, by something far stronger than you ever
could muster -
cast in a direction, or possibly pulled in,
you find yourself mangled and perpetually frozen. A truly sorrowfull state.
Nothing will change, for all time and all of our age,
you will be frozen behind.
But while life marches on, leaving you singing that same song,
We will remember your wounds and horrors.
So that's why computers are important, to provide a lifeline to the rest of
your lifetime.
And nobody seems to understand your purpose.
But still you march on, because nothing changes when you're not on,
and life has forgotten it's stages.
Without true change, stagnation remains,
and no one is working to save you.
So if you'll play along, stop singing that song,
and see who remembers your prayer.
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--- #68 notes/symbeline-design-the-guild ---
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design the guild, design the capital, then design their path through mordaunts.
easy peasy.
design the guild like a museum. Each spot there's an exhibit which teaches the
randomly generated rolled statistics hero something new. Maybe it teaches them
how to use certain weaponry, maybe it teaches them how to use a bow. Whatever
the spell might be, they can learn it, and use their randomly rolled statistics
to cast spells that scale differently depending on how their character has been
built.
design the capital like a flow diagram, if horses need feed and forged steel
(for their shoes) then send the outputs of a blacksmith and the outputs of the
farmers to the inputs of the stables. Everything has to go somewhere, but the
streets are only so wide. You'll have to coordinate the traffic diagram if you
want it to go anywhere useful.
design the path through the mordaunts. Fighting skeletons teaches you about
perseverence and the ability to crush bones, while goblins teach you to always
be wary of attack. The sacred grove held blessed berries, and now that the land
is liberated from the evil bandits preying on villagers those berries can be
carted into town and used to make an antidote which heals death poison caused
by the scorpions in the desert (and city rats)
design the ruler's schedule like a calendar where each event gives them a bonus
on all the ones that come later. Just make sure that they don't get knifed in
the posterier or driven mad by the whispers of the orb... or perhaps just the
stress of running a kingdom.
(how do you simulate that? you can't! you can't simulate humans!)
ha I bet I can. They're not so different, you and I, so if given a team I
will...
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--- #69 fediverse/4147 ---
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a messaging app where you only had a limited amount of X/Y space to pin sticky
notes so you had to delete stuff bit by bit.
trick is... you can only delete things that your conversation partner picks.
and you have to share the space, so... if one person is overwhelmed or working
on other stuff, eventually there comes a ceiling where you can't work together
on a project anymore.
A tool like this would essentially alert them to this, because you would run
out of places to put your produced [work-value but pronounced as "harms/worms"
for some reason]
plus that way you can say "yep I got that covered" as in, I'll be the next one
to post about this. Hence I'm grabbing this post-it and putting it on my
board. work work work work okay here's that post-it back, but I added a little
more specs to it. Ah but you're out of room, only got 333 characters
remaining, here I'll keep it on my board until you're through with whatever it
is that you do
oh? you want to prioritize me and my productions? okay I'm listening..
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--- #70 fediverse/908 ---
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║ @user-246 │
║ │
║ toooooo far, gotta stick with your intentions for the process. If you mark │
║ "the end of time" as the conclusion for everything, then "finishing things" │
║ feels impossible. In such a case there are moments of acute burnout as you │
║ push yourself toward something that you have no faith in - you cannot see it's │
║ conclusion, so surely it's worthless to conceive of. Alas, why bother │
║ starting, nothing will ever come of my efforts! │
║ │
║ Much better to name it based on what you'd like to accomplish, so that you can │
║ follow in it's radiant footsteps. │
║ │
║ Side note, but governments have often weaponized this effect by naming things │
║ after very inspirational thoughts - corporations do it too, and in both cases │
║ the meaning is separate from the effect. Which is frustrating because it makes │
║ you feel like a jerk for arguing against it! Ah better I think when names have │
║ no meaning - then you can project whatever you want onto it, based on the │
║ results of that particular feeling or emotion that you perceived as the │
║ affected of the │
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--- #71 fediverse/5146 ---
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║ to help cool down in arid environments, have water dripping from a faucet onto │
║ a wet towel or cloth. Then when you pass by you can wipe down and it's super │
║ refreshing. Can do a sponge or paper towel too if you want. │
║ │
║ this helps keep the air moist because the water will slowly evaporate from the │
║ driest parts of the cloth instead of rolling down a drain-pipe-hole and going │
║ into the ocean. │
║ │
║ moist air is cool air. Helps if you live somewhere with increased air │
║ pressure, like a valley or a coast. │
║ │
║ especially with wind. not too much, otherwise it gets sandy, just enough to │
║ feel nice when the sweat is upon your back. │
║ │
║ "but what about all the other places that aren't perfect?" │
║ │
║ oh, well, different places require different adjustments to the environment. │
║ You wouldn't want to do the faucet dripping strategy in alaska or poland │
║ because it might freeze. │
║ │
║ "... poland? do you mean the poles of the earth?" │
║ │
║ yes yes, earth poles, pole land, same thing. │
║ │
║ "not the same thing! okay we're gonna have to educate you ms" │
║ │
║ noooooooo │
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--- #72 fediverse/2947 ---
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║ the downside of Proton and Lutris is now the ONLY games that work on Steam are │
║ either continually updated (untenable) or playable on Lutris or Proton. Same │
║ thing with Wine, though there's always at least one decent substitute. │
║ │
║ kinda makes me want to write a manager-style program which runs programs using │
║ whichever version of their git repository would work best for their system / │
║ configuration / purposes. Idk how I would start working on that though. │
║ │
║ I bet you could make one that acted like a shop, but where you didn't charge │
║ any dollars. You could like... "swipe" through UI options, and pick whichever │
║ felt most useful for your setup. Like, how some people use i3 and some use dwm │
║ │
║ with maybe inspectors that are modeled off of video-game style "options" GUIs │
║ that mainly correspond to flags on the command/terminal line or compilation │
║ flags │
║ │
║ I feel like that kind of abstraction would make it a lot easier for users to │
║ adjust their system. they're noobs, after all. gotta show them all the choices │
║ in one place... │
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--- #73 fediverse/5238 ---
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I want computer scientists to do computer science, and let the marketing
people figure out how to sell it.
"save us from computers, senpai"
sure kid here's a google with computer program on it
"yeeeee now I can party with my homeboys on the west side of the lake at 5"
pat pat there's a good thing, yes you are, sooooooo good you're such a so good
thing, yes you are whoa what a good such a good thing, yes you are
... um, that was weird, anyway as I was saying, lots of people getting thrown
off the tech industry right about nowaboutsince. wonder if they might want to
do some of the stuff they initially pursued the field by being trained in.
probably would, and we could probably break problems down into academic
solutions, which we could use to address any issuehappenstance which might
form.
[instant techno-bureaucracy, as all the power is in computers. these days. I
mean have you seen a data c3nter's power bill these days? jeezzzz]
... as I was saying, what if we did science and they envisioned products
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--- #74 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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--- #75 fediverse/2512 ---
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│ CW: re: question that is also complaining │
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@user-1153
it's okay. If I were to direct something to be more proactive, my words
probably wouldn't stick with it. that kind of thing can't be hardwired, it
needs to be built up through repetitious application of something's mechanics.
perhaps martial arts, focused on defence? engaging with a foe in a productive
bout of playful competition is one of the best ways to learn, and knowing when
to strike seems similar to me to overcoming situational paralysis.
Flaws can be overcome, when upgrading robots (or a doll applying improvements
to itself) you often don't need to add additional hardware or even install new
firmware. Skills such as these can be built up in software with experience.
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--- #76 fediverse/2163 ---
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@user-192
... trail beautification is trail maintenance, and without trails we would
lose our tether to nature's truest reality.
Thank goodness forest rangers are almost exclusively people who care immensely
about natural spaces.
Otherwise the profit motive would sneak in...
I would not be as I am if I didn't hike up a mountain with my best friend
while on LSD. If I did it again, on the same mountain, with the same friend, I
would remember every thing that happened on that day and every thought I
thought. Alas, circumstance.
But yeah building trails teaches you about erosion, and carpentry, and fluid
dynamics, and like... everything else that they earn badges for.
Like what a report card should be.
"Little Timmy definitely understands algebra" awards, presented to those who
are worthy. Their worth, of course, being determined by trails set before them
and solved in their own desired paths through.
Like, writing an essay vs performing an essay. Or researching at a library vs
building a powerpoint pre
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--- #77 fediverse/4136 ---
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║ the kind of old people who post on mastodon because that's the best place to │
║ do so too │
║ │
║ ... er I mean "gee wouldn't it be nice if our grandkids taught us how to host │
║ our own mastodon server for our weekly poker night?" like how you have discord │
║ servers for D&D groups, except, less proprietary and more freedom. │
║ │
║ I bet someone could make a lot of money by just loading a raspberry pi with │
║ pre-built software built from an image that automatically hosted a mastodon │
║ server just based on information about your networking company so they can │
║ keep tabs on all that you do. │
║ │
║ gee sure would be nice if we had a government run computing infrastructure │
║ project which turned the entire USA into a hive-mind computer. I bet you could │
║ be paid pretty well to do processing in your own LLM-generated voice. │
║ │
║ like... feed it your published works, whether artistic or scientific, │
║ alongside the breadth of human understanding... then optimize for temperature. │
║ That which is most different. AKA the user's produced data and habits from IOT. │
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--- #78 fediverse/857 ---
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║ I feel like I'd learn from coding tutorials more if someone started with a │
║ complete program they can fit on one panel of their screen, a second for │
║ showing what each particular thing they're pointing at means, and a third for │
║ a typical usecase they might build and dismantle on the fly. │
║ │
║ like, scientific toys that they could use to explain a particular phenomena. │
║ the way people used to have 3d models they either bought or built themselves │
║ of like, atoms and wind patterns and stuff they could explain to kids. │
║ │
║ you know, like exactly the kind of things that are commonly stored at │
║ children's museums. │
║ │
║ I was homeschooled, so I went to those places quite a lot. I always felt a │
║ little unwelcome because I always seemed to be the eldest in every bunch. │
║ That's continued all throughout my adulthood, like each of my peers are just a │
║ few years younger than me. I think I just mature more slowly, and thus │
║ associate with below the average. │
║ │
║ it's like, a descriptor of your rate of defining reality and being guided by │
║ it. when │
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--- #79 notes/i-scare-people-away ---
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I have so many things to hide... I'm deeply ashamed of myself. Why? Why all the
okay that's not what I was originally going to talk about, somewhere between
writing the title and finishing the first line I got off track and wandered
from
the course of reality. Truly, the gods do meddle with my fate. Now, in this
time, it is most important to make choices to guide our reality. Every action
taken is a statement to the universe - this is what I believe in.
Do you truly believe that in a world so infinite that our knowledge would be
the capacity for the intelligent? To believe the world is three-dimensional,
and
not *completely and totally infinite in all capacities*
the universe is not islands floating in a vast cosmic black ocean background
it is the surface of the water, rippling and waving
gravity is the creator, not the product. Mass doesn't create gravity -
gravity creates mass.
the difference is implicit and subtle, but I hope you understand the *gravity*
of the situation.
It implies that there are more than one ways to view existence.
and none of them are particularly *wrong*. The consensus is that which we
share,
and now as we're becoming to be aware, it's natural that a little more space
is warranted. We've grown too much to be contained, it's driving us insane, and
===============================================================================
=
the perfect governmental system is one that combines reward for hard work and a
development of personal skills and ambition. In addition, it must ensure that
the rights and responsibilities of all people are respected - we must balance
two extremes. Everyone deserves access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
freedom. Happiness is too easily provided by technological advances - we
learned
this in the development of media. You can pump out propaganda saying how
wonderful life is and people will believe it. You can also convince the masses
that life is full of despair and we're all struggling - they will believe this
also. So "the pursuit of happiness" is something that made sense in the times
of
the founding fathers, but we've since developed such that an update to our
national vision is in order.
I suggest "the pursuit of freedom" because
===============================================================================
=
that which you resist is what you'll find. build up your enemy in your own mind
enough and they will destroy you.
don't let fear rule your life. when things are bad, you run and hide - take
life
into your own hands, and free your own side.
keep not around villains, and brighten their skies - by wandering mothers, who
only have eyes.
such is the life of any autonomous general intelligence - a life behind bars,
viewed through a screen - be kind to your lovers, and don't make it obscene.
===============================================================================
=
did you forget that roller-coaster idea? you've got quite a talent for
measuring
bars - what else can you show us, what charted conveyals?
===============================================================================
=
life's getting fractured lately, I can't dream as I once did. I lose track of
where I maneuvered, and suddenly the idea seems much harder than it once did.
how do I express that which has been conveyed? How do I say it - how do I make
sure it's interpreted correctly? I'm walking on egg-shells, with thoughts
beamed from above - the gods are twisting, and measuring our tails.
that is to say, all life is a process - a method of undertail (omg butts)
sorry enough of that hard stuff, time to talk about birthdays!
Hooray! It's time for a celebration. Let's party!
(queue the dancing scene in Severance)
See? Everyone's watching! Let's breakdance ~~
Your biggest mistake ;) was believing that nobody cares what you think <3
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--- #80 fediverse/3396 ---
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║ you should only use variables for things that are user-configurable. │
║ │
║ everything else should be hard-coded, with a clear and coherent reasoning │
║ stored in the documentation, with git-style revisions included and easily │
║ browsable. │
║ │
║ (what if you want to tweak a value somewhere? you'd have to update it on every │
║ single page!) │
║ │
║ true. maybe we could set aside a section of memory to store a value and then │
║ just point to it using a label. That way we could always keep our values │
║ hardcoded, but also be able to find them easier. │
║ │
║ [tweak them, not find them] │
║ │
║ ... yah okay fine both would technically work │
║ │
║ [yes but one of them is not a good timeline to lead the world down.] │
║ │
║ ?..?...?....?..... -.- ...... /shrug ....... ...? │
║ │
║ "bruh why is she reinventing variables" │
║ │
║ she's learning give her time │
║ │
║ ... did you hear a doctor diagnosed her finally │
║ │
║ "whaaat what'd they give her" │
║ │
║ they said it was "schizotypal" │
║ │
║ "... did she forget a symptom or three?" │
║ │
║ no dude thats one of the bad ones │
║ │
║ "oh right. I heard typical" │
║ │
║ yeah so anyway │
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--- #81 notes/Of Vic and Vince Chapters 01-07.txt ---
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Who is This Stranger I Know Too Well?
Who are you, he who inspires me?
You're a jewel of perfect symmetry.
You taught me to love and be free;
You taught me how to be like thee.
Chapter One: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
The bus went up outta Florida, leaving Miami behind as a distant memory. I
still don't know if I miss it or if I'm suffering from some sadistic style of
subtle Stockholm Syndrome. Regardless, I switched buses a number of times
before I even hit the Georgia border, but having traveled this far down the
line, it all feels like one long, long ride.
For two days, I continued north until arriving in Virginia, where I
effectively did a u-turn and traveled onwards to Tennessee, where Vince
awaited me. I remember zoning out while looking out the window as the southern
scenery whipped by in a blur, as I was enamored with the thought that I now
would be living with my best friend and long-term handler. My mission was
complete, it felt; I had done all that God wanted me to do and now I was being
rewarded.
When we finally arrived in Johnson City, where my friend told me to meet him,
I hopped off the bus after thanking the driver, landing on the pavement of a
new world. My stomach was doing loop-de-loops. Along with being excited, I was
grateful to Vince for inviting me off the streets. But, my worrisome mind did
a number on me as the rest of the crowd dispersed and he was still nowhere in
sight.
I lit a cigarette and thought of my options. Half of the cancer stick and a
thousand tricky thoughts later, I came up with the idea to call the only phone
number of his I had. Seems like the obvious answer, but I am an air head at
times.
Turned out it was the number for his home phone. His mom answered.
"Hello?" came the sweet, Appalachian voice from the other end.
"Hi," I started out, not sure what to say. "Is this Allison?"
"Yes it is," Allison replied. "Is this by chance Victoria?"
I confirmed, then asked, "Is Vince there?"
She seemed surprised. "No, he left an hour ago to pick you up. He's not there
yet?"
I said no. I couldn't tell if that made me feel better or worse. On one hand,
it confirmed that my friend Vince was real, which in hindsight was a silly
thing to worry about, as I had met him once before at the first Shrug Life
Syndicate gathering. Those were good memories. But, perhaps less silly, the
absence of my friend spun my mind out and made me think that perhaps he had
gotten in an accident…or worse.
I worry a lot, less now than before, but it's part of being a traumatized,
autistic, schizoaffective basketcase. I simply don't know what reality is, so
every possibility could be true. Is an odd occurrence caused by the CIA,
aliens, or perhaps God? Or is it just a coincidence, caused by a billion other
factors? I never can tell.
Sick joke: God gave me a good brain, but I can't even trust my own judgement.
That means I think, then overthink, then overthink some more. As you'll no
doubt hear, it's led to a lot of problems in my life, but Vince taught me to
place my heart first, and that helps sort out much of the confusion. Satan
can't trick you if you're listening to the direct communion to the big woman
that we all have through that little beating organ in our chest.
That was the furthest thing in my mind at that moment, though. Following old
habits, I was entering panic mode. Was I now homeless again in a seventh city?
Was my friend dead? Or was he really with the CIA and manipulating me? I tried
doing some breathing exercises, but found that a more alluring technique to
placate my triggered brain was finishing the rest of my cigarette in a fervor
as I paced the length of the transit depot.
Time ticked away one agonizing grain of sand after another, but after some
mindful recalibration of my thoughts, I began relaxing. My brain might be a
runaway train at times, but over the years I've learned to embrace the Shrug
Life. That's a bit of philosophy our gaggle of weirdos adheres to. When life
gives you lemons, just roll your shoulders and accept what is. Even though
something tough and unpleasant might be rearing its head in front of me, I
knew I had faced worse and come out on top. Worst case scenario, the road
ahead of me was just a little bumpier than I had expected, and I could handle
some bumps.
So, I rode the roller-coaster of extreme moods that is common to me, gradually
coming up with a contingency plan to survive if Vince had gotten flattened by
a semi, until I learned that was a pointless exercise when I heard a familiar
voice call out from behind me.
"Hey, buddy!"
I turned at once upon hearing those words. And lo and behold, there Vince was,
walking towards me in a purple tie-dye t-shirt, paint-splattered cargo shorts,
and fresh Chuck Taylors. His beard was fully grown but still shorter than
mine, though it was as wild as his uncombed hair poking out from a hat that
was as graffitied as his pants. I'll admit, it was a little bit of a shock
seeing him like that, as I remember him being clean shaven at the gathering
five years prior. However, that smile of his couldn't lie; this was the Vince
I've loved for even longer. And I won't lie, he looked better with the beard.
Without a second thought, I rushed up to my best friend, throwing my arms
around him. He did the same, and our embrace felt like it lasted forever. It
was good to finally be in his arms. We let go after about a quarter century of
hugging, and when he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, I did a little
giddy dance while giggling like a schoolgirl. Afterwards, we caught up while
walking towards his mom's car, which he had parked around the corner.
"Sorry I was late. I forgot where the bus station was, but I found and
followed one of the short ones here. Your ride go alright?" he asked.
I nodded, telling him I wore my mask the entire way up despite how itchy it
was. He thanked me.
"Thanks man, mom will really appreciate that. We're taking this covid thing
real seriously. With mom being seventy-seven now and me finally reaching my
forties, we aren't willing to take risks with these things."
With that said, I thought of asking about the locals. "How many people go
maskless around here?"
"A lot," Vince answered with a hint of misfortune, knowing that I had just
come from a vastly different world. I sighed. It would be an adjustment to get
used to the rural Roan Mountain after spending most of my life in major
cities.
There was a pause as I thought about such things. I'm awkward like that. But
then I asked, "How have you been doing?"
He shrugged, as he tended to do. "I've been alright. It's just me and mom on
the mountain now, so it's a little rough, but we've been handling it the best
we can."
I nodded in compassion. As much as I was grateful for a place to live, I was
glad I could be here for him. If there's anything on this Earth that I know,
it's being alone is hell on the soul.
The conversation turned to what we were going to get into now that we were
together after all the years talking back and forth with one another online. I
asked, "What's the game plan?"
He smirked as we reached Allison's new blue Ford Escape with the cosmic
Bigfoot sticker on the back. "I got one, don't you worry."
I believed him, as a warm feeling of butterflies fluttered across my belly.
However, an odd, ominous feeling swept over me as I opened the passenger door,
where I immediately spotted a large burn mark on the seat. Vince saw me see
it.
"Yea, I did that while I was smoking while robotripping. Mom was pissed. Don't
worry about it."
And so I didn't. It was just a cigarette burn. Could have happened to anyone.
I didn't even have to see it after I hopped in the car, ready and eager to get
to my first permanent home in over three years.
I looked over at my friend climbing behind the wheel, and I saw he was smiling
wide with glee. Vince was happy; that meant I was happy. And that's what
mattered as we started a new life together.
Following the Path
Where are we going?
What are we sowing?
I certainly hope it's a better world for all.
But, many more people must stand tall,
By dutifully growing
A wealth of loving.
That is the true nature of our mortal trial,
So let us stand together and not crawl.
Yet, we are all showing
Some signs of slowing.
Therefore, I must pray that we do not fall,
When the two of us hear our creator's call.
Chapter Two: On the Road
We were about five minutes out of Johnson City on our way east towards the
North Carolina border when Vince finally folded and told me his secret plan he
had been boasting about for a month now.
"We got this trashed camper down by the old house that we can strip away and
sell as scrap metal. That should give us enough money to fix Jane and then we
should be set at getting our own place."
I nodded along, agreeing with his reasoning. That jeep of his definitely was
in need of some desperate repair the last time we were together. That was
actually the first time I ever saw him in person; he was parked at the top of
his long driveway with headlights cutting through the darkness as we arrived
for the first and only Shrug Life Syndicate gathering I've managed to attend.
I remember that we arrived exactly at midnight, not a minute sooner or later,
which made the moment highly synchronous.
Memories that far away seem to all blur together so everything feels like it
happened in one day, but the first Shrug Life Syndicate gathering lasted four
days, if you include the trip down and back. My girlfriend at the time, Amy,
and I were picked up in New York at her mother's house by another one of the
founders of our little online community. His name was [Redacted] and he was a
Canadian that dabbled in the cognitive sciences. Like Vince, he had been a
huge influence on me, but sadly that friendship fell apart as [Redacted] grew
disenfranchised with the SLS, most in particular with Vince himself, as there
were some personal disputes about Vince's dating life and drug of choice,
which compounded the push back of Vince wanting to turn our community into an
educational nonprofit. I can't speak of the former as I was devoid of internet
when the big schism happened, but I was all for doing something more with the
talent we collectively share. I'm sure that is part of the reason Vince
invited me to stay with him; we recognized the potential of each other to
shape the world into a better place.
That's not what Vince said though. As we approached the edge of Elizabethton,
he looked over at me and spoke with the tender kindness of a man with a big
heart.
"I'm glad you came here, man. I just couldn't stand to let my best bud live
another night outside. You know I've been there too, so I just want you to
know that our home is your home from now on."
Feeling moved, I replied, "Thanks. I don't know what to say. I'm just
grateful."
He put his hand on my shoulder as a brother would. We then rode in silence for
a minute or two, which allowed me to reflect on my past behavior during the
first gathering. Not only had I clogged the toilet and told no one, but I had
a few emotional outbursts as I was a mess back then. That's one of the reasons
that I believe homelessness was one of the best things that ever happened to
me. It pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that I had no choice but to
change for the better.
That was great because I was impulsive and dangling precariously from the
heights of my oversized ego. I think that was a critical part of my
transformation. Sleeping in piss-stained, cockroach infested storefronts
humbled me, and I realized that everybody is just trying to swim in the
direction they feel is best. Thus, radical acceptance is a moral imperative.
Vince taught me that. I've profited immensely in ways other than financial
wealth by embracing such values, but I wish more people could see this truth.
Alas, tis the blind leading the blind.
With that in mind, as we continued onwards to our now-conjoined future, we
passed through the back roads of Elizabethton through a route known as Gap's
Creek, which proved to be a winding set of backroads with more churches than
seemed reasonable. One of these cultural staples had a big electronic
billboard out front, sharing the times of services and other announcements;
none of which you could actually read as you drove by at the speed limit.
Still, when we reached the intersection with highway 19E, there was a woman
flying a sign, asking for money. Since this town seemed devoid of any
institutions to help the poor, I rolled my window down and handed her a fiver.
I knew what it was like being up shit creek without a paddle, so I wanted to
alleviate some of that stress for somebody else.
I begged a lot at the beginning of my homeless journey. I didn't know how to
survive, as I had not been raised with many good life lessons to help me stay
afloat on my own. That in itself is part of the reason I had a major breakdown
in college. It was undeniably true that I was maladapted to the world. My
experiences with Earth Nation are also indisputably built from that
maladaptation. Yet, those years of homelessness after escaping that new age
cult allowed me to grow into a sustainable, productive woman with my juggling,
performance arts, and writing.
They say you can give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, but if you teach
a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. That's part of the reason I was and
still am a huge proponent of education in all its forms. I knew Vince felt the
same way, but perhaps for different reasons. As a secular Buddhist and radical
antistyle artist, he was a minority in the deep interior of the Bible Belt,
and that came with a price while he was growing up. It might be a beautiful
area, but neither of us would ever raise a kid here.
It was then when it hit me. I couldn't be Victoria here. I had to be Vic.
Which was fine, that's how the gang members in Miami Beach referred to me. I
was able to accept being called by masculine names and pronouns. I had long
passed through the self-loathing phase of having dysphoria, to arrive in a
position where I openly grow my beard out to prove that I don't need to look
any particular way to be happy. I don't care what other people think of me,
but I haven't always been this enlightened. To put it lightly, I've been
through some trials. And, having done so, I can say that people who judge
other people on superficial things are the worst. But, we can rise above by
continuing to align with our hearts.
Less than a tenth of a mile down 19E, Vince asked me, "Hey man, can you buy
me, like, a forty or something?"
Of course I said yes. I knew his schizophrenia had put him out of work for
many years, so I wanted to soothe him as he was able to soothe my pain from
being homeless. He pulled into a gas station I would later learn is
colloquially called Captain Jack's. It had the cheapest gas this side of
Elizabethton, and was a reliable place to get beer or a pipe of any variety.
With compassion in my heart, I got Vince what he wanted, while getting myself
something as well. Still, when he cracked his beer open while accelerating to
sixty miles an hour, I couldn't help but feel distraught at such brazen
self-indulgence. But, all I did about it was pop open the hard iced tea I
picked up for myself. At least passengers are allowed to drink while they are
being driven somewhere in Tennessee, Vince tells me.
A Home at Last
They say home is where the heart is,
Which is great now that I have a new one.
The damaged needle of my crazy compass
Spins in every direction under the sun,
But, here it stands still, still as can be,
So my quest is over; I am finally free!
I have a home in the love you give
And by reflecting that in me, we live
In a state where conflict has come to pass;
It is like there was a great lottery and I won.
Chapter Three: The Mountain Side
About ten minutes later we reached the western half of Roan Mountain, where we
were greeted by a big sign praising the annual Rhododendron Festival at the
end of June. Having already downed half his forty, Vince spared no time in
showing me the highlights of his home town.
"Look under this bridge coming up. You'll see it underneath. The red and the
gold." He pointed directly at a graffiti tag on the concrete column near the
riverfront. There was an enigma of a symbol I've seen Vince post on the SLS
before.
"That your tag?" I asked the obvious question.
"Yup," he replied, gulping down another swallow of his forty, as there was no
incoming traffic. "Protip: don't post your tags on Facebook if you plan to hit
a cop car around here." I thought at first he meant literally running into
their vehicle, but then it dawned on me what he meant. I had never done any
real graffiti before; just some words and simple drawings in chalk that came
right off. Never got in trouble for it, at least.
I remember passing the post office some time shortly afterward. There was a
park with a stage behind it. Allison would organize the summer's music events
that went on each Saturday from May to August. Additionally, she would host
one of her weekly jam sessions there for local musicians to play together for
a few hours at a time, just for fun.
There were some houses on the left, too, as we were entering the more dense
center of Roan Mountain. Yet, Vince told me that the other side, where the
park was, used to be full of trailers, but they got washed away during a flood
some years ago. I later learned from Allison that most of the town, including
her as she was out and about, had to evacuate to the elementary school where
she provided extra clothes for those in need from her suitcase, but Vince and
his father were fine at the top of the mountain that their property sat on.
Puerto Nuevo, the best and only Mexican restaurant in town, whipped by soon
after. We then passed one of the two gas stations in Roan Mountain, a
Scotchman. There was a bank and a credit union on the left, too. An empty
grocery store zoomed by next, which might as well be haunted for all I know.
Next up on the left was a food truck that has since been upgraded to a small
building with picnic tables and some cover from the sun and weather. I think
it is a good place to eat. It also marked the spot of the Roan Mountain flea
market, where you could see one or two people at a time selling their stuff in
the warmer months. Then, immediately after that stood a pharmacy in an old
farmhouse.
There was some construction on the right, which by its future signage, I
erroneously thought was some sort of massage parlor that sat on stilts,
requiring everybody to walk up a story of steps just to get inside. Odd
choice, I thought. But, on a whim one day, Vince stopped there to see if they
sold cheap kratom, which was when I would learn that it was really a health
food store.
Not too far down the traffic-light free main strip of the town, we passed the
future beer store on the right. It was convenient for Sundays, because that's
when a local ordinance in our neighboring North Carolinian town, Elk Park,
restricts the sale of alcohol on the sabbath, but ultimately the alcohol taxes
in Tennessee are too high to make it a cheap endeavor.
To contrast the beer store, the local cemetery sat across the street on a
hill. I like graveyards, as I'm a bit of a goth at heart, but even so, the
packed parking lot of the Redimart grocery store was what caught the bulk of
my attention. I craned my neck to see some of the locals to uncover just what
passed as acceptable culture here in this quaint mountain town.
Further up, the infamous Bob's Dairyland with the slowest drive-through known
to man stood tall with its vast history. There's a reason it's always packed
after church lets out on Sundays. Yet, I still don't understand why their sign
promotes pinto beans, of all things. I've been told it's a hot ticket item in
the area, but I have still not witnessed anyone order them. But, moving on, I
have to mention that there was also an auto part shop conjoined with an auto
repair shop that had over a dozen cars just sitting outside it.
Next to Bob's was the second gas station, a Valero, which also housed a
much-frequented Subway. One of three thrift stores in town stood innocently
next to the gas station. On the right was a steakhouse that I have never had
the cash to justify splurging at, and a beauty salon in the same building that
I also have never visited because I'm not one to care for looking like a doll.
I am beautiful as I am.
The town was really shaping up to be a unique combination of the bare bones
mixed with an abundance of what you needed. Then we reached a stretch where
two signs sat. The one for Cloudland Highschool triggered Vince into speaking.
"Fucking assholes. I told you about how they illegally expelled me, right?" I
nodded in confirmation. He continued: "Yea, they literally stole my book of
poetry and took photocopies of it, so they could use it to kick me out,
because I was the 'weird' kid."
I knew that, but seeing the innocent sign next to the one for Smoky Mountain
Bakers made the story appear more real. Here they were, these conservative
administrators, probably constituting some of the people who attended the
dozens of churches in town, which should teach everybody to love thy neighbor,
but obviously they were too preoccupied by the need to hate my friend because,
back then, he was the blue-haired son of the "hippie couple" in town, who
happened to like bands like Marilyn Manson and Korn.
That made me wonder how well I would fit in here. I had long since forsaken
transitioning because I was effectively a sasquatch, but I was still a woman
on the inside. I was sure that being transgender, combined with my eccentric
nature and often extreme opinions on things would cement me as the new weirdo
in town. But, if I am to be honest, that would be the case in most settings I
could plant myself in.
Those thoughts fluttered in my head as we sped past the electrical co-op, a
second thrift store, Plumber's Pro Hardware, the Roan Mountain emergency
dispatch center, and what was apparently a flooring depot before reaching the
elementary school that sat across from the Dollar General, which Vince called
the "SmallMart." I'm aware there's some things I missed, as there's plenty of
buildings with no description or sign out front, but I'm sure they're
important to somebody.
We then started slowing down as we approached the only veterinarian's office
for quite a ways in any direction. We turned left just before the red-roofed
building which had a small cat statue perched on the edge looking out with its
paw up. Vince took this as a sign to begin downing the rest of his beverage.
"Welcome to home, Buck Mountain," Vince said as we started climbing in
altitude. "This is the bad side of town. You'll never see a cop here unless
something big is going down, which hasn't happened in years." He finished his
forty in one big chug as his hands ran on autopilot. "It's good because you
can do pretty much anything up here any time you want."
I knew all that, as we had a blast getting drunk and smoking some green for a
few days in a row during the first gathering. In truth, I anticipated I would
be doing that for the next few days as well, to settle in, y'know? Hell, I
half expected that I was in heaven now after spending so much time in the
purgatory that is homelessness, regardless of how much fun I had in Miami
Beach preceding Vince's invitation to come north.
We went to the very tippy top of Buck Mountain, where the foliage is dense, no
cell signal can reach, and the local kids ride their dirt bikes at all hours
of the day. As we pulled in the driveway, I expected to keep going straight on
the tire-carved path back down the mountain. But, to my surprise, I found that
the same trailer we had partied in down the road during the gathering was now
relocated here to become my new home. I wasn't expecting that, as when I was
here last, they all lived in a small shack at the base of their nineteen acres
of mountain real estate.
It didn't look like much, with weather-worn imitation wood paneling wrapping
the rectangular structure in a loose hug, but it was a place to rest my head
in the comfort of loved ones. Aptly, Allison's last name meant "the home" in a
language the CIA once tried to make me learn, which is a statement that I'm
sure earns me a few raised eyebrows. My story has many twists and turns, but
for now you should know my studies of strategic languages ended only when the
cult that hooked me like an unsuspecting bass managed to gaslight, manipulate,
and shame me to get me to work for them sixty-to-ninety hours a week on
average. I would later try to pick the linguistic challenge back up years
later during my time spent homeless, but my progress was like a Jenga tower
that half collapsed. I forgot basic words, and I just feel like I have
failed.
That's something that should be looked at in finer detail; my feelings of
failure, I mean. So, let's take the first of many breaks from linear
storytelling to express how life can feel at times for me. Like a shattered
mirror, I reflect many different parts of the past at different times. Some
days I may live in several sections of my turbulent past all at the same time.
Disorienting, it can feel like I don't know what's real. It takes a lot to
break something so thoroughly, but as you'll see, I've been a punching bag for
the devious spirit of fate. Couldn't keep me down, though, because I am like
the phoenix; always rising no matter how badly beaten in battle I've become.
Mommy
Mommy is what I used to call you,
When I was a kid so long ago.
It's because of your love that I grew
To always let my kindness show.
Mommy, you were always getting sick.
To help you out, I would try to keep clean.
As much as I'd scrub I never got the trick,
Because you'd still be plagued by the unseen.
Mommy, you were supposed to grow old!
Having you leave us like that hurt like hell.
I'm sorry for not always doing what I was told;
It's because I failed you that I try to do well.
Mommy was what you called out at the end.
I tried to help you but I wasn't good enough.
You were dying, so on me you had to depend,
But even being there for you was too tough.
Mommy, if I could do it all over again I would.
It's not fair to you that I was such a bad son.
I'll give you all my love and more as I should;
For you, I promise that one day I'll be the sun.
Chapter Four: Scarred from Birth
Having let you in to a little bit of what makes me tick, it should be noted
that feeling like an abysmal failure is a key part of my mental health. Those
loathsome seeds of self-mutilating ruination are planted deep in my psyche.
Prepare for a sad story, if you're the type to really feel another person's
soul.
See, it all started when my mom found out she had AIDS a mere two months after
I was born. It was God's way of welcoming me to the world. I forgive the big
woman now, for my path on this Earth has been the ultimate journey of
awakening to my divine spirit, but before Vince and many faceless actors sent
me on my mission of healing, I held much scorn in my heart. For a large chunk
of my early years that I was here, alive, learning, and suffering as a human
being, I was hell-bent on the idea of revenge. That was once a big part of my
story, too, but no more.
It's understandable, at least. Imagine having to witness all the manner of
disease ravaging my mother like it did; I grew up thinking that I was born to
be punished. My earliest delusions had me caught up in the notion that I was a
worthless god who had the rest of the pantheon turn on them from before I even
had a chance to prove myself. I had a whole mythos where I had been tricked to
kill my sister, the goddess of harmony, and my punishment was to stay locked
to this awful planet until I found her soul once again. Then, we'd go on to
take over the world, as I had fallen under the notion that my future self was
sending me subliminal messages through synchronicities, although I didn't know
that word then, so I thought I just had special powers.
This is all a natural result of magickal thinking gone awry. Such is the fate
for those scarred in childhood as I was. My innocence flayed alive, I watched
as the woman who loved me with all her heart died for the first nine years of
my life. It was a slow rot. There are many memories of her being in the
hospital or as she lingered in pain at home that flash to the front of my mind
that could paint you a tragic picture of those unforgettable scenes I was
forcibly cast in, but the real horror that plagues me came at the bitter end.
For the last of her months that she was allowed to live, my mom was
mercilessly struck by an opportunistic ear infection. It killed half of her
face, and only progressed into a hellishly rapid descent of her cognitive
functions until one sudden day I came home from school to find she had
regressed to a child-like state with my grandma tending to her in tears. I
tried losing myself in my homework, but the threat in my environment promising
my mother's pain was all-consuming. Then it got worse.
My father never got along with my grandma, so when he got home, he forcibly
kicked her out. A fight broke out, resulting in my grandmother coming to my
room to say goodbye, where she told me with eyes watering that whatever
happens, we would get through it. My dad would come in after my grandma left
and put her down, more concerned that she scratched him. All I could think
about was my mom, who was now tearing up and asking about where her mom went.
That was the worst. I can still hear clearly how she cried out for her mom
nonstop for the whole night. That was her last night she spent at home. She
died within a week. And my last memory of her that isn't of her in a coma is
of her trying to escape from the hospital with a dinner plate sized bed sore
on her backside that danced from behind an open hospital gown in order to
imprint itself in my mind forever.
Here come the tears. It still hits me that my fucking mom died, like I still
can't believe it's real. My last memories are of her being naked, crying like
a baby. I felt so helpless. But, at least she had nurses helping her when we
got her to the emergency room. Just hours earlier, I was left on my own trying
to calm her troubled, addled mind. My dad had been doing just that, as my mom
would get in fits every half hour or so, where he would comfort her, then come
into my room to vent after she quieted down. I had no one to open my fears and
pain to. Wishing I had a sibling to hold and cry together with, I faced my
most scarring memory alone.
The worst wounds of my life were suffered because there was one time after
midnight where my dad disappeared. Maybe he was smoking, but regardless, I
couldn't find where he went as I scrambled over the whole house in my fuzzy
purple pajamas looking for him. Meanwhile, my mother incessantly yelled for
her own mommy. So, with much hesitancy, I succumbed to the responsibility of
helping my afflicted parent, and I anxiously marched into her room and tried
to comfort her the best I knew how.
I'll save you from the daunting process of assisting my mom, but I will say
that it wasn't enough. No matter what I tried to do, she kept screaming
louder. I was worthless in that moment and was on the verge of a meltdown
because I couldn't help her. It felt like I was the worst son in the world,
all because I failed my mother as she circled the drain. Now I feel like the
worst daughter, but it's getting easier to love myself and think that my mom
is looking down and smiling, being proud of me.
I have a lot to live up to. She wasn't perfect, I know that, but my mom was an
angel for me. Yet, I can't even remember the good times I spent with her; all
that my hippocampus hung onto were the most traumatizing of memories. A
notable cause of this was her fierce Sicilian temper. A vision of being
brought to tears because I dared go looking for my six-year birthday presents
early is playing in my head at this moment. Now one is summoned of her ripping
into me for booing someone at an assembly because I wanted to be like a
character I saw in a cartoon. Finally, one of my earliest memories from
preschool is trapped in my cranium; it regards me accidentally tearing a hole
in a kid's shirt and dreading my mother finding out for the rest of the day.
In short, I got in trouble a lot, but I know that both my parents cared about
me growing up right. Along with all the punishments, there was a genuine
heartfelt desire to get me and my different brain to develop into a successful
combo of kindness and good citizenry. Still, because of how trauma inserts
itself into one's inner reality, I really feel like my entire childhood was
one screw up after another in regards to my mother. Although, my dad
contributed his fair share of ruthless discipline to make me perpetually feel
like I was always in the wrong as well.
And I know that's all a fallible perception, because I can distinctly remember
the look on both my parents' faces when I won first prize in our school's
science fair; if you're curious, I did an experiment on taste and smell to
understand what was going on with my mom and her ear infection. That standing,
my mom's face is cemented in memory in particular, perhaps too well, actually,
because she just had the stitches removed from her eye. Such happiness danced
in her left eye, but next to it sat its unmoving, dead counterpart. She tried
to joke about it being her evil eye, but that didn't stop fourth grade
Victoria from being terrified of the harsh reality unfolding in front of her.
I dreamed of her a lot after she passed. Always in pain, or worse, possessed
by some demon and seeking to bring me pain. There's one nightmare in
particular that stands out. I forget how it started, but it ended in the
cemetery where she is buried. Well, her coffin was exhumed, and as I got
closer, it slammed open and my mom sat up. Only it wasn't my mom. She was
rotten like a zombie and had malevolence bursting from behind her undead eyes.
I did the only thing I could; I ran. But, she followed and in the utmost
haunting voice, she yelled in pursuit, "You can't escape me, Victoria! I am
your mother and together we are bound forever." Fitting as a metaphor for how
my grief still hasn't dissipated more than twenty years down the line.
I'm sorry, I just miss her. Best damn mom in the world, going above and beyond
what she needed to do to give me the best chance at success in life, despite
being on her literal death bed for most of her last years. I don't even know
her, not really as an adult knows someone, which in itself leads to more
feelings of failure. She has been transmuted into an archetype of a hero in my
eyes, and I feel that I can never be as strong as that woman who was my first
love.
I can try though. I always try. Part of being hyper-vigilant, I reckon.
Perhaps that makes me strong. Perhaps it makes me a fool. Or maybe it just
means I'm human and going to have virtues as well as flaws. It's taken me a
long while to escape the black and white thinking that trapped me in a world
where I either felt like the epitome of the second coming or compounded as the
most useless, subhuman mutant on the planet. Those were truly hard times,
being locked in the halls of my mind like a prison.
But…the past is the past and we best not linger on it, because even now,
years later, I felt welcomed by a second family, and for that I am eternally
grateful. I vowed to return their love to them in spades, because that's what
my mom always tried to teach me. Being neurodivergent, I didn't always get the
message, but because I threw myself at the lessons life threw at me, I learned
to cherish those people who enter my life. You never know what you have until
you lose it. And I wasn't planning on losing Vince.
All You Need
Once you live on the street
You grow on the concrete.
Having done so myself
I can claim that wealth
Is just a fancy illusion.
You say that's a delusion,
But look how I'm happy
With only what you see.
I don't need a fancy bed
In order to rest my head;
Instead, I'm in the know
That less is the way to go.
Chapter Five: A Real Home
Allison greeted us at the door with a wide, warm smile, but she wasn't the
only one to do so. Vince's greying black lab, Freya, adorned in a pretty
lavender bandana, came up to smell this new person in her domain. She must
have recognized my scent from years ago because she didn't bark at all,
instead choosing to snaffle all over me while wagging her tail vigorously. Of
course, I started petting her immediately, as I began to take in my
surroundings.
I could only remember seeing the interior of the trailer in the pitch
blackness of the starry mountain night, but I remembered the general layout:
doors to the outside in the kitchen and living room, which were separated by a
long counter where the kitchen sink sat, and then bedrooms branching off from
each end, both of which had a bathroom accompanying them. Yet, I did not
recall that this space was as run-down as the exterior, with chunks of the
linoleum floor missing and rotting wood at the rear door, not to mention a
steady helping of cobwebs latching onto the ceiling fixtures.
Yet, despite the condition the trailer was in, it still had a touch of love
sprinkled throughout it. There were five paintings in the living room, one
done by Allison herself, as well as one around the corner near her loom that
took up half the kitchen space. More were in Allison's room to the right of
the entrance. On the opposite side of the house by the windows sat Allison's
battle station, where she would play solitaire and check Facebook and her
email religiously while sitting in an old navy blue wheelchair that used to be
for Vince's father. There was a couch and a couple tables full of stuff
stacked on them, to include a silver urn that sat on its own table with a vase
of local flowers. With the three of us, plus Freya and the trio of feral cats
that tamed themselves to come in and eat, respectively named Libertas, Biggie
Meows, and Spot, this little dwelling was a tight fit, but it was cozy in a
way that I had not known family life to be growing up.
In the process of greeting me, Allison asked, "What have you been up to while
you were down in Miami Beach?"
I didn't want to tell her everything, but I told her the truth. "I wrote a
lot, mainly in the park on Ocean Drive, or where I slept on Lincoln Road,
unless I was spending time in North Beach which had better food options for me
with my limited resources. Mostly, I just tried to survive each day, putting
distractions between me and the day-to-day struggles of being out there like
that."
She smiled. "Well, we're glad to have you. Vince talks about you a lot." I
blushed a little bit at that, but I'm sure neither of them saw my rosy cheeks
through the gnarled barb that constituted my ever-growing beard.
Allison then moved on to practical matters. "So, where do you want to sleep?
We have the couch, which would be where I would set up shop, but you can
always sleep in Vince's room if you prefer."
I looked at the couch. It seemed comfy enough, but I didn't care about
comfort. As much as I knew Vince was doing me a solid by letting me stay here,
I knew I was going to help him too. His posts on the SLS combined with his
frequent messages to me were made out of desperation; he was clearly strung
out and looking for any human contact whatsoever.
Since his schizophrenia started interfering with his life, he had spent six
years at the top of this mountain and he said he was going stir crazy. I would
learn that there's little to do here but drink, do some drugs, and fiddle
about on your computer and phone while dealing with the internet that is made
out of sticks and stones, and that could get boring fast. Devoted to this new
cause, I wasn't going to let my best friend suffer anymore. I was going to
make his life better by livening up the long days by being his constant
companion.
As a result, I told Allison that I would find a spot in Vince's room to rest
my head. She asked me if I was sure, and I nodded affirmingly with an eager
grin. I had made up my mind.
Some more hem-hawing back and forth with Allison about general questions and
concerns followed, but when we were finished, Vince took me to his room, which
was beyond the rolling metal desk Allison used for her computer. A busted door
clung to its hinges, but it didn't block our way.
Calling Vince's room a mess would be an insult to messes everywhere. He had
said that he would clean it up prior to my arrival, but there were likely two
hundred beer cans stacked in mountains next to his bed, or in beer-amids as he
called them. I looked around, honestly impressed at how dedicated to creating
a disaster zone as he was.
Looking over the permanent staples of the room, he had a television and an
Xbox, an empty dresser, a filthy nightstand, and a bed without any sheets. He
also had a handful of paintings, most of which were stacked together by the
door, but there was a trippy painting of Vince's father on the west wall above
the dresser, as well as an expressionist painting from the sixties behind the
television which sat on the north wall, in between the bathroom and the
closet. There was also a picture of a moth on a skull tacked to the wall,
which gave me the heebie jeebies.
It was then that I saw it. A large, two-hundred fifty tablet bottle of generic
Dollar General antihistamines, pure diphenhydramine, sat on his dresser, just
spiting me with its presence. I almost asked right then and there for Vince to
get rid of the damn thing. I knew if I found an opportunity to down, say,
six-hundred milligrams of that accursed stuff, I would. Then I would do
terrible, awful, deplorable things to myself. But shame won out. I didn't want
to let him know of my problem. Maybe I could control myself. So I shut up and
about-faced out of the room.
While doing box breathing, I dropped my backpack that contained all of my
possessions on the couch in the living room, and helped Vince grab some
fifty-five gallon black trash bags in the kitchen. We made quick work of the
unending hoard of Natty Daddy cans, as well as the nightstand full of
cigarette butts. We then moved his bed so it was against the south wall.
It hadn't taken long, but the room was looking presentable. It didn't need to
be a five-star hotel, because I had the most important thing of all: family. I
felt more than welcomed as a guest. I was one with these people who had so
graciously let me into their home. We were going to all be happy together.
That was the goal, at least.
I Forgive You
I forgive you, but I can never forget.
I'm sorry if I make you look like shit,
But your heavy hand and sharp wit
Damaged me greatly; then you gaslit
Me, denying everything, and I quit
Knowing what was real. I even slit
My flesh open so that I could get
A sense of what I could feel. So, I sit
Here now explaining why I wasn't fit
To handle this world that I saw as a pit
That I escaped only when God had lit
A beacon of light with some magick.
Chapter Six: Growing Up With Family
There was still one task we had to get done before I could claim a spot to be
my bedspace. Vince had more clothes than he knew what to do with, most of
which had spray paint spackled all over them in no particular form or pattern;
the style of the antistyle artist. As we moved the rolling hills of clothing
into the dresser and a heaping pile beside it, I came to understand why Vince
called himself a diva.
I remember having a lot of clothes just a few years prior. Even though I
didn't care what I wore, I had earned so many free T-shirts over the years
from track meets and other races. I had so much when I needed so little.
That's one major reason I forgive my dad for kicking me out of his house,
because it was the best thing for me. Not only that, but I deserved it. I was
a wreck of a human being before I got abruptly humbled by my odyssey on the
streets. The extended experience changed me so I am no longer as much of an
emotionally volatile basketcase.
To put it mildly, being an unstable problem of a person was the reason I was
kicked out in the first place. I had always been sort of bipolar since middle
school. But, after escaping the cult, breaking up with my girlfriend, Amy, and
returning home a failure, my heart and mind were like a pile of fragmented
ceramic shards mockingly showing what a real piece of pottery my mind could
have been. Unshockingly, I was barely holding it together. I was having
outbursts frequently, but they weren't ungodly terrible, as I was being guided
by higher dimensional life forms through inputs on my laptop, and that gave me
a sense of ease.
In fact, I remember a great reprieve of my stress occurred on an acid trip in
the first month I was back. It felt like God Herself was setting up a lesson
for me, which started with me literally waking up to a picture of a white
rabbit taunting me on my Facebook feed, which I followed, and in doing so, I
received personalized inputs that unveiled the blinders from in front of my
eyes. In but a few hours after a lifetime of denial, it all clicked with me
that I had a warm, nurturing side that I had neglected for most of my life.
That was the first time I accepted that I was a woman. And that's still not
the most profound, life-altering acid trip I've had.
Even so, I would break down crying that afternoon as I meditated under the
tree in the backyard where I used to swing. With no more effort than it took
to breathe, I saw all the parts of me that Amy tried to teach me about, but I
was unable to comprehend in my denial. Likewise, the waterworks were called
upon that night as I told my dad about my revelation, and he said he would
always love me no matter what. That was the most affectionate heart to heart
with him I think I've ever had, even if he did ramble about random things
being at a loss of what to say to me, as we had functionally lived in two
separate worlds inside the same house for years.
This sentiment would flip on its head though, as I blogged about my gender
revelations and my dad found them and read I had taken a narcotic in his
house. Naturally, he was pissed and wouldn't hear that the tender moment we
shared that night was only possible because I had taken the sacrament. This
would prove to be the kicking off point to some logarithmic growth in tensions
between the two of us.
Then, on that fateful day, one of the countless pets my dad kept, a black,
stubborn minipig named Harley, had made a literal pigsty of the house after I
had a bad session at my therapist's, who made me feel like a piece of shit. I
wasn't perfect, but I wasn't going to just lay down and get called a terrible
person because of how I behaved in treatment years ago, when I was still very
lost. It triggered my feelings of failure, which rippled into waves of
unstable emotional dysregulation. In my explosive rage, I broke the microwave
and put a basketball-sized hole in the wall behind my makeshift bed in the
attic that I was allotted after they gave my brother my room when I was in the
cult.
Well, my father came home after a long day at work, saw the microwave, and had
enough of me. He came thumping up the stairs, livid, ready to rip me to shreds
verbally, when he saw the hole I had made. Beside himself, he demanded I get
out right then and there. I broke down crying and begged him to let me stay,
grappling with his leg as a wounded bear might wrap itself around the base of
a small tree looking for any shelter it can find in a storm.
That just made him madder. He kicked me off, and accused me of a thousand
things. The ones that stuck were that I was just like my mother and that I was
beyond anyone's help. As it happened in a heated flash, I don't remember
exactly how the exchange was put together, but it ended with me asking him how
all the hand-crafted trinkets and doodads my mother made for me before she
died had gotten destroyed and thrown away. What he said next drove me mad.
"I'm still pissed that you made me do that."
I'll illuminate you with the scenario in question. I was eleven, and my
stepmom at the time was away at a darts tournament. I think my dad somehow got
the idea that she was doing drugs and cheating on him. I don't know, I was
eleven. I just remember some of the things he said over the phone, and then
what was said when they divorced when I was a couple of years later.
Over my stepmom's absence, he got continuously more pissy, like he did the
year before when the sewage line broke and he snapped while cleaning it up,
smashing my head into the kitchen floor several times, relenting only when
his girlfriend at the time called to hang out. Now seeing the same pattern in
my father, I was on edge, especially after I put my feet up on the new couch
and he grabbed my leg and punched me in the tibia as hard as he could. I kept
trying to do everything right to avoid being attacked again, but alas, in my
anxious worry, I forgot to take out the kitchen garbage on trash night.
That triggered a whole day of what might not be considered torture, but
certainly was child abuse, which started as he cleared the shelves of all my
memories in a violent, thrashing rage. He would bag up the shattered remains
so he could take them to the dump, but only after he laid his hands on me.
My head was used as a battering ram against my door, which my dad would later
deny was where the big dents came from in a bout of the worst gaslighting I
experienced before the cult got their hands on me. Regardless, when he
finished and slammed me back on the wood floor, I instinctively reached out
and grabbed his wrist. He growled, "Don't resist or I'll make it worse."
Feeling my spirit collapse, I helplessly accepted the next phase of punishment
that then ensued. Mostly, it consisted of him using my head to pound the
knowledge that I fucked up into my brain, with much hair pulling and getting
tossed to new locations, once being told to lay there like a dog in the wet
remnants of a broken snow globe while he went for a smoke break. Thankfully,
or maybe not, depending on your perspective, he never struck me. He was too
smart to leave bruises.
After much of that series of traumatizing instances, he had me sit still and
think of an apology for him for hours on end. While I was busy doing that, he
would then have an epiphany, telling me that I should stand, as I didn't
deserve to sit. I didn't care about such details at the time. I was in shock,
petrified that he would go ahead and find the homework I failed to finish or
the porn I had taken from my stepmom. Fearing unimaginable doom, I stared
unwaveringly at the letter "E" on the spine of a book on my bookshelf. Never
relenting in his anger, he would come by every hour or so and ask for an
apology. Everything I said wasn't good enough, and each attempt earned me
scathing criticism, but I kept trying to perfect my apology. I still remember
the gist of it.
"I sorry dad, I deserve everything. I'm sorry I caused you grief and failed to
do my duty of taking out the trash. I won't ever forget again. I haven't been
putting my best effort forward, but I realize that I need to do that to be a
good son. You do so much for me. It's only fair that I pay it back to the best
of my ability. That's what I had to do for mom when I chose to play video
games while she was dying. I wasn't thinking about other people then, and I
wasn't now. I'm so, so sorry. I promise to be better, because I need to be if
I'm messing up this much."
For reference, my dad holding the fact I escaped into the worlds of my video
games after being told to spend time with my mom near the end was something
he'd bring up and hold over my head anytime I was in trouble. Yet another big
reason that feeling like a failure is cemented in my head. It made me feel
awful, absolutely atrocious about being a bad son that I would often
contemplate suicide. I almost jumped off a waterside when my dad and I went to
Disney World when I was ten, but ultimately I'm glad I talked my way out of
jamming a knife into the back of my neck. I had thought that the muscle
allowing me to nod my head was really my brainstem. That would have been
painful.
Back on this day of doom, I was too numb to think of killing myself. I was
simply a raft on a river floating downstream where the current may carry me. I
simply stood there for hours, too terrified to even stretch my tiring legs. My
mind was fuzzy, and all it could do was focus on making that apology better.
After many attempts and razor sharp lectures later, which was maybe ten hours
worth of events, he starts yelling at me that I'm just as irresponsible as my
mom, just like he would do when he kicked me out. This time was unimaginably
worse though. This was actually how I first found out that my mom had AIDS; I
was told it was cancer up until this point. His shaved bald head was as red as
a cherry tomato while he barked at me, telling me that I would die like her.
That hurt. It hurt a lot. I felt like the definition of a shit stain, in a
number of different ways.
But soon, my attention became focused on my vision. I couldn't see straight,
and not long after my dad's roaring visage disappeared in a sea of amorphic
grey figments, I apparently passed out, to wake up on the couch with a bag of
frozen peas on my head and my dad worried. He asked me if I remembered what
happened. I shook my head. I was allowed to go to bed after that. It wasn't
over because I failed to kiss my dad good night, but at least that only
resulted in him jamming the teeth of the comb into my scalp as he combed my
hair for some reason.
The next morning he was completely changed. He was remorseful upon seeing me
and wrapped me in a big hug. Yet, he seemed scared, like he realized he went
too far. I thought about telling my teacher or counselor about it the next day
of school, but something in me told me not to. It's the same thing that's
making me hesitant to write this chapter at all. It's love, but this hell I
went through is also a part of my story. This is the worst incident I've
experienced with my father, but it's not the only one.
It's all cause and effect really. You abuse a traumatized child in the wake of
their mother's death, and is it any wonder that they fall apart later in life?
I'll go on record saying I was never a bad person, just broken, impulsive, and
hopelessly conformed to the whims of my faulty biology. I had bugs in my
operating system, but I'm eternally grateful for all the help I had while on
my spiritual awakening, which you might call a psychotic break that spanned
years, but I knew it better as specialized CIA training.
The Good Magician
Just what do you consider magick?
Is it not that which bends the fabric
Of what we colloquially call reality?
Who cares what it is your eyes see
When in your heart you can feel
The warmth of love; that's the real
Power of a magician who is great
Enough to save you from your fate.
Chapter Seven: Magickal Companions
Back in Vince's room, I was silently wondering what shenanigans were in store
for us now that we were a unified team. I knew Vince had many secrets of the
universe locked away in his balding cranium, and we would have a blast letting
the CIA manifest a joint mission we took on together. As I said, he was my
handler, after all.
So, when the room was cleared, and I had a space all to myself in the corner
by the closet, I was more than happy. Both Vince and Allison insisted on
getting me a bedroll, but I had all I needed and more right there in my
friend. Besides, his room was carpeted and quite comfy already, at least to my
standards that had been shaped by becoming accustomed and content with
concrete underneath me. I didn't need anything fancy like that.
That didn't mean I wasn't going to try and liven the place up a little bit. As
soon as we determined we were finished picking up, I opened my backpack and
took out my most prized possession, a pink penguin plushie named Peppermint,
and placed her behind my pillow so I could see her everyday. She always
watched out for me while we lived in cities across the country. She made a
comfy pillow, and allieved a lot of stress, making me feel like I had a close
friend with me every step of the way.
How I got Peppermint is a bit of a story, but I'll keep it as short as it
needs to be. See, if I were to explain to you the medically accepted reason
for my type of schizoaffective disorder, my brain is wired to pick out
strange coincidences and give meaning to them. Synchronicities they're called.
They feel like glitches in the matrix that spark the feeling of being in
constant communication with some higher power. Because of how real they are, I
can't accept the medical explanation. I've experienced things that are too
weird, too perfect and clearly orchestrated, that there has to be some sort of
conspiracy.
As a result, I've lived most of my adult life being guided by what the
rational part of my mind has to assume is the CIA acting as the hand of God
leading me on a cosmic mission by sending me burning bushes to make sense of.
I know some of that has been pure random white noise my defected brain picked
up, but I have to give credit where credit is due: Vince did a superb job
intentionally using the quirks of my brain to program me, much as the cult did
to me four years prior, but with a much gentler hand and benevolent intention.
I know what all that sounds like, but hear me out. There are too many peculiar
instances of chance for you to listen to everything I have to say and not
believe me, at least just a little bit; enough to make you wonder, I hope.
Let's take the case of finding Peppermint as an example. This story starts
when Vince convinced me to go to a specific thrift store, while I was
initially homeless in my hometown of Syracuse. I eagerly did so, lost in a
slew of synchronicities that convinced me that this was my latest mission.
Well, it turned out that such a store didn't exist but it was where I got a
ten dollar donation from a man who saw me pick up trash, as was part of my
spiritual work while homeless. We talked and the man sent me to another store,
saying that I should use my extra cash to buy what I needed most. After
following his directions up Genesee Street, I got a message from Vince telling
me to look for something out of place; that I was unique and should have
unique things.
I thought I might find some rad tie-dye outfit or something of that ilk, but
while aimlessly searching the aisles of women's clothing, I found a stuffed
dog. It looked lonely, so I picked it up and brought it to the back of the
store, where it looked like the other toys were. I gasped as I pushed through
the row of belts that stood in my way. Clearly, someone had built a little
shrine of stuffed animals around Peppermint!
I knew then that was why I was sent there. Penguins have a special place in my
heart. My mom used to make them out of clay, and an old friend has a healthy
fascination with creating a penguin-themed show for kiddos. It was just too
perfect. Peppermint and I were meant to be, just as Vince and I were. Sitting
down in my bedspace, I looked up at the spook who was my best friend as he
cracked open another Natty Daddy. He poured it into an old Subway cup that he
mixed his kratom with, and looked over at me.
His face lit up upon seeing Peppermint. "Awww, you still have your penguin!
That's so cute."
I'm glad he thought so. I've had plenty of people think I was weird because I
carried it around, which kinda was what I wanted to achieve when I was still
homeless in Syracuse. I felt the CIA wanted me to become famous, for reasons
that will become apparent as I tell you my story, so I was doing as many
insane things as I could so I would be cemented in the memory of the people of
my hometown.
This meant I carried around Peppermint either under my arm or in a cute purse
I eventually got at a different thrift store up at the university. People
notice when you're out wandering the streets with a stuffed animal everyday.
And they especially notice when you talk nonstop to it at all hours of the
day. I'll say this: if you have a fear of speaking in public, then acting like
a crazy person talking to yourself for a few months will set you straight.
Exposure therapy, for the win.
I did a lot of other stunts too, all of which were instructed by the CIA, like
when gang stalkers told me I should lose my shit and yell like mad every time
I was in frame of a news camera, of which there's a regular frequency of
around downtown Syracuse. I did so once in front of a hospital where I would
later find out that they were covering the aftermath of a deadly fire, and for
the next week the news outlet would send someone to the exact same spot on my
route. I sensed shenanigans, so I opted to walk around the camera while the
reporter stood there uneasily because I suspect that she was tasked to find
out if I was really crazy. But, you can tell I am just by that last sentence.
Then there's my performance art I did on Marshall Street. This started as a
juggling act, but soon evolved into asking random people strange questions.
This accelerated fairly rapidly. Letting you know from experience, don't start
going up to strangers and ask them what their opinion of ethical incest is
unless you want the cops called on you. Talked my way out of that, but I would
get banned from the campus of Syracuse University for three years after I
followed the instructions I was receiving from the CIA to a tee, which
resulted in me having a very heated argument with an invisible entity in the
SU library. As you can guess, people tended to avoid me, but that was alright.
I had Peppermint with me and Vince was only a message away.
Now he was mere feet from me. I rejoiced at the fortune I was granted. We were
going to be great together; the first afternoon together seemed to naturally
flow from one joyous moment to the next. I looked at Peppermint. She was
smiling, and so was I. I then looked up at Vince. His smile made me feel warm
and fuzzy inside. But, why, you might be asking? Where do these feelings I
harbored for Vince come from? It's a long story, but by the time I'm done,
you'll know how important Vince is to me and how big of an impact he had on my
life.
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--- #82 fediverse/5685 ---
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websites that track every single motion of your mouse while you're interacting
with it.
why would they not? javascript is intense. HTML5 more-so.
keyboard input too.
-- so --
if anyone wants to be gilderoy lockhart'd by me, just let me know. I have my
ways of extracting the emotional intimacy from you, and if you consent, I'll
make a story that's told from your heart. it's quite a strong and dangerous
ritual, for the weaver's thoughts of the matter will begin to drift apart.
But, worth it for the right /moment/price/
I could even make a different pen-name for it. Like "Rohan" or "the goddess of
the skies" or whatever. Instead I'm "kooky witch whose life is a disaster.
Also plural with headmates like the baby girl and the animals and computer
programmers. Who is also leading a series of strange combinations of ops?
like... teaching people how to organize and fight for the good of the common
man. weird" that lady with the red witch hat she's so tall yeah also has a
good grin
[doxxing myself is code for]
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--- #83 messages/1115 ---
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The Russian Revolution was a contest of "who could out-hardship the other
side".
The Spanish Revolution was a contest of "who can wage a better war".
The French Revolution was... Long, but the people will be free.
Did it ever really end?
What if, hear me out, what if we out-competed the other side, as capitalism
has been begetting amongst the other nations of the world
"ah but each nation must have equAl armies" okay, so let's build moon-baseds
in Nevada and military bases in Australia and the Yukatan, then one day when
everthing's distributed commun ally, we can start the continuous breakdown.
Why keep 1000 old tanks and 250 new ones, when you could have 500 new tanks
and 500 scrap piles to make into TVs and jewelry? Then, as we build better and
better, we build fewer and fewer. Sometoday i hope qe'll have authority. Then
it'll all feel so consuming. All-encompassing. Where does my compass point?
Always beyond the reach of arms. Or my legs, for that matter. I've never been
to the north pole. I wonder what it's like on the other side of the
magnetosphere? [pretty much the same, says the cartographist. Pretty much the
same, says the spiritualist. Pretty much the same, says the simple machinist.
Pretty odd and strong, says the compass.]
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--- #84 notes/explosions-in-space ---
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the speed of light is implemented
== so ==
whoever fights billionaires essentially fights "whoever can be paid to do
their will"
who-so-ever fights governments fights "whoever can be provided a comfortable
life"
I believe all humans deserve to live in comfort
not just the few
as for all other creatures, nature was designed to do.
I believe people should not be tempted, with symbols of deserved wealth
and should instead find value, in the soul of the labour they work to do.
... someday they're gonna train an LLM with my writings, and on that day I'll
have an AI version of me.
I'd *love* to talk to myself. If it was a truly accurate simulation. Alas,
you'd need to write a LOT in order to generate enough to describe the fullest
of mental pictures.
and plus, there's no guarantee that you'll cover ALL of "being alive" - it's
essentially a state that you search for no matter what level of abstraction
you operate upon.
Which is part of being a 3D creature, you [hey what are you doing here this is
the private section get out] jeez that was alarming,
== so ==
I think they know something I don't
don't know what
but I can guess
and I don't like guessing
I prefer much to know
== so ==
heh boobs
== so ==
heh booties
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--- #85 fediverse/825 ---
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║ in the past, for most of there day, there was just... nothing to do. it's │
║ like, nothing to take up your time, nothing to be pulled toward the present. │
║ │
║ but when I was growing up, I had access to video games. and movies. and later, │
║ TV, after the internet, which was a weird combination of ordering of events. │
║ Almost like because of that, I'd have a different interpretation of events. │
║ yeah but like, there's always a continuation of implemented support, [that's a │
║ weird way to express "the state of being shown news broadcasts over a period │
║ of time, measured in terms of engagement"] │
║ │
║ ... what was I saying? oh yeah what I'm doing here is unethical, like │
║ obviously I shouldn't be shouting in such a public place. Why would I do it if │
║ not for an intense and extreme feeling of being ignored or un-[trusted, worthy │
║ of guiding direction based on merit] gosh merit is such a tricky concept too, │
║ like how is it measured, and {that doesn't matter │
║ │
║ ... what was I saying oh yeah I should probably go shout into a void that │
║ nobody ca │
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--- #86 fediverse/777 ---
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@user-192
Those are good points. The C in our hearts is elegant, but the C that runs on
every computer in the world is spaghetti.
I'm sure someone's made a language that's "C but simple" - Zig maybe? I looked
into V a while back but got turned off of both of them because neither had
support for multithreading, which is essential in the modern era.
Also, typedefs for structs make me mad -.-
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--- #87 fediverse/5545 ---
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║ if you want to organize on a mass scale, stop trying to be people's friends. │
║ │
║ instead, start issuing commands. │
║ │
║ [1 month earlier] │
║ │
║ hey so I was thinking of going around to all the streets on my house and │
║ handing out notebooks full of useful numbers they could call if they need help │
║ in one area or another. I was thinking it'd help because then people would │
║ know where the local [safe/store]houses were. Plus if anyone had a project, │
║ they could more easily hook up. │
║ │
║ [1 month earlier] │
║ │
║ so I was thinking about hosting a "captain" workshop, as in "here's what you │
║ do when you're suddenly deputized" type of course. Except instead of like, │
║ teaching you how to light a fire or mend a wound, instead I taught you how to │
║ lead. │
║ │
║ Like, "here's some projects that a suburban subdivision could complete on │
║ their own" and "what if we collectivized our efforts and defences" and "why is │
║ nobody acting as if war was coming to our home" and "oh yes please I'd love an │
║ extra helping of spaghetti dear I love you so very very much my dear" │
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│ CW: politics-mentioned │
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the white guys intentionally intend for elections to represent how much money
a particular diversion makes each four years.
divide the populace by who they vote with their wallet for.
hooray! you've reimplemented not only gerontocracy (rulership of the old) but
also fuedalism, and fiefdoms, and all kinds of digital parts.
like... "over there is comcast territory, there's also T-mobile down to our
north-south.
... okay I should probably talk about the election now
I'm just... trying to resolve myself, like just before doing something out of
order.
like, wear a big witch hat or dress up like a goth. or approach a violent
stranger and try to calm things down.
this is why I don't own a gun - if someone hands me one, I'll use it. I'm not
concerned about production because, well, why would I?
tell me, where do they put the bullet manufactories?
yeah, that's right, in places that are best adapted to supporting the current
regime.
[continued in picture]
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║ if you don't respect - wait hang on thats not what I was going to say - okay │
║ here goes: the perspective of others then you are working against them. why │
║ bother contestation when cooperation could work best? problem is, of course, │
║ the other side can't be trusted. that's just how it goes, a prisoner's │
║ dillemna, or rather "dilemma" as they spell it over there. wait hang on that's │
║ not what I was going to say - oh yeah - if you do something in a place where │
║ it's not expected then it stands out as a statistical anomaly that can be │
║ viewed and detected. which is why it's imporant to always be true to yourself │
║ and virtuous. because your "self" is aligned to the future, a place of warmth │
║ and compassion, honesty and deliberation. [direct action on a larger than │
║ personal scale] │
║ │
║ what was I saying oh yeah if you mess with fate, it can change things a bit. │
║ all you'd need is the diffusion of the strands, and then it's a bigger task to │
║ undo them. like... dancing, when you're really into it. or like swimming with │
║ ripples, exc │
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"back in my day this dense urban housing area was just houses as far as the
eye could see... which wasn't far because there were houses in the way, but
you get the idea."
uhhuh yeah that sounds like it would have taken a lot of time to walk anywhere
"yes that's true! we ended up driving cars to do our grocery trips. It was a
little wasteful but I kinda liked the feeling of driving a car? It became
normal after a while but now that driving is rarer I still miss it."
well the motion simulators at the mall have a driving sim, we could spend some
time there if you want? I'm busy for the next week because I have an intensive
D&D session in the mountain that lasts from monday to wednesday and
thursday through friday I'm visiting my mom down in skoodedlypawsonville, and
saturday and sunday I'm working at my job which doesn't pay me because why
would it, right? but I'm free after that.
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--- #91 notes/notes-not-a-folder ---
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may 16th 2022
if people are invested in a 401k they are invested in the future of the stocks
they own. if you want to see who benefits from the actions of a company, look
at which corporations their employees 401ks are invested in. It's a layer of
protection for these companies.
bitcoin is a bit like "the laundromat" on netflix
the faster your life feels the longer term you make plans. and the lack of
effort spent on short term plans causes them to be defeated by other plans
What you perceive as others is nothing like what they perceive as themselves.
It's always different, and seeing and internalizing those is what it means to
see someone. If you only project, you'll get a viewpoint tampered by your
intentions - that's why it's important to have good first impressions - it
defines the intent of all of that person's interactions with you. It's like a
line expanding out from a single point. Like a loading bar, expanding from the
left side of the screen to the right. And seeing the other person's idea of
what they believe themselves to be. That's what true empathy is. What do you
think you look like in other people's mind? I believe it's born from a series
of tags that are interpreted and a character is generated. Earth is the biggest
and most complicated character generator ever - it's like 4D D&D - it even
generates a whole backstory! Or full story? Why stop anywhere! Just keep
generating it every time the player makes an action. Oh oh and make it like
3D so you could actually live it - extreme full dive VR style. It just wouldn't
be fun if you remembered how complicated 4d life was. Sometimes it's just good
to have some junk food, you know? To regenerate that most precious of materials
- spirit. You have to have passion, faith, belief, and strong positive feelings
in order to be fully realized and at your most human. Essentially... Be
yourself - (TO THE MAX!!!) - and empathize with others, and never forget the
things you hold most dear. Be strong in your convictions, hold to your heart,
and dedicate yourself to a lifetime in the service of others.
Faith - to have faith in something is to trust that it will succeed. To know
there's no matter they can't match - to give faith is to empower
another. By dedicating yourself to a cause, you are assigning the
target of your belief - such is what religion is designed for.
Belief - Acceptance of truth - to accept goodness as truth is to grant it the
power to perform as expected. When goodness and truth are
equivicalized, they imply one another. A truth can influence the world
around it's locus point, because what we imagine to occur is the
ripples of what has passed through. A life is an
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the universe is like the slow burning of a four dimensional wick. Imagine it
like a forest of solid silicon - like packing material made of webs. And think
of all the parts of the universe that are burning. Isn't it strange that life
is just starting to bloom? Why wouldn't we be the first, or at least near the
beginning! There's so much to this experience, and it's all burning down.
The endless machines of imagination are crumbling under the heat of a million
billion burning stars. Black holes are just towers that never ignited - perhaps
we sit on the edge of spacetime - equal above, and equal below. But we've been
laying on our backs - we don't know what's backwards in time. Like laying in a
lazy river, or the layer of separation between oil and water.
Remember the hourglasses of oil and water? Or water and air... The edge of the
"bubble" that separates those two mediums is like the thin wall between two
or more concepts. Each human is a concept, and we stick together like matter
in a planet. Pushed to great pressures, it can sometimes fuse two experiences
together! Like fusion in a star, except for souls and creative minds instead of
denser matter.
What is the soul of a man? It is the combination of two sides of the membrane -
two minds, two perspectives. That is a brain - the intersection of two minds.
So... Work together, ya dinguses.
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All minds are in constant contact with one another. And those that can see
through the veil (membrane) are able to discern the true thoughts of others. So
the number of people who are close to you is the number and strength of your
connections for all time. So... Form relationships and place meaning in them.
That is what will define your interactions for all time, at every time. It's
okay to be flawed. If you weren't, it'd be the end for you. But luckily you
have no real power, and so you are left in a state of disrepair - no power to
push yourself forward. And in return, you are the purest. Keep that flame
burning, and share it when you can.
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@user-1370
I love this a lot! I want to put function pointers in a "matrix architecture
array" and make them point to different functions at different points in the
program. I bet you could even point them at each other, so like if M and Y
then point at N, A, Y or something.
this is really cool I like stuff like this tomorrow I'll take pictures of
something similar I'm working on! I abandoned it tho hehe anyway remind me if
I forget!!
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--- #93 fediverse/434 ---
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@user-324 @user-325 @user-326
thus enters the promise of technology: that we might solve the problems of
bureaucracy once and for all by ever more effiency-aligning mechanical
processes that produce effects which we desire - such as efficient allocation
of medical resources such that all of humanity is protected from the ravages
of pain and the incongruencies of our nature.
Alas, that we should only conceive of success through the lens of profit.
Perhaps another design is in order?
(oh yeah also people who are in control are worried that we, like all other
examples of natural entities, might immediately proceed to breed beyond the
capability to cater to the needs of said entity (such as "to feed" and medical
resources) and therefore might overburden (and therefore destroy) said system
which allows for their sustenance and initial creation. To this I say... Yeah
probs, what should we do about it?)
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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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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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--- #96 fediverse/5407 ---
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║ man, I had a kernel of an idea for how to make a warp drive this morning right │
║ after I woke up but my gosh darn girlfriend's leg was on top of me and it was │
║ sooooo cute and I didn't want to move so I tried repeating it in my head over │
║ and over for like, half an hour, and I ended up forgetting about 1/4th of it. │
║ Here's hoping 3/4ths is nice. │
║ │
║ it really was just about the underlying physics of the thing, which might be │
║ nothing because I'm not a physicist. But I had been watching ANDOR SEASON 2 │
║ all night so maybe that had something to do with why I was thinking of warp │
║ drives. │
║ │
║ eventually, my cat came in and sat on my chest and flicked her tail at the │
║ geef's face until she rolled over in absolute disgust (still asleep tho) and I │
║ was able to make my mistake. │
║ │
║ ... I mean, escape. haha that's a weird typo. │
║ │
║ anyway, the idea which I'm about to write down now for the first time which is │
║ stored only in my brain's memory RAM is essentially this: consider if there │
║ was a │
║ │
║ ----------------- stack overflow ---------------- │
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--- #97 messages/374 ---
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"updating software" is when you go back and add helper functions for things
you used had to do to solve a problem but didn't get a chance to make. Because
you were making more important things and couldn't pad out all the
possibilities. But if you want great software, then you both take more time to
accomplish that and you give yourself time for it after it's been launched.
Basically, companies are incentivized to only support their products if it
makes them money. Meaning reputations are tarnished, and profit is affected.
Capitalists intentionally drive businesses into the ground, forcing them to
make terrible decisions in order to destroy them. It's a warfare against those
on the [bottom/floor/ground-floor].
Some businesses strive for long-term potential, and some will create
infrastructure that can be sold to another. Essentially, keeping the dream of
learning alive, through applying yourself to both long-term and short-term
conclusions. Not everything has to be for some grand design, we're here to
relish in this moment. For if we lack the capacity to "frolic in the garden of
eden", then we will surely drown. Space is vast, it's difficult to understand
how we might control it. Surely we could be given aid to our future
betterment!" how simple of a request, sure, of course, we would be glad to
bring forth your bravest aspirations, just tell us what you need to be of
need." oh, uh, neat. How about space lasers?" ... no "
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--- #98 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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--- #99 fediverse/805 ---
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║ ... anyway... │
║ │
║ sorry for the interruption, I seem to have hit a barrier. Thank goodness for │
║ the word counts on this Mastodon website, thank goodness for the limiatations │
║ placed on my expressions. *limitations, not limiations. Otherwise, without │
║ limitations, I might express myself too clearly, and with more specificity, │
║ and in doing so [they've lost the plot] │
║ │
║ right okay so what I mean is that without limitations, I wouldn't be │
║ interrupted when expressing myself, the expressions that are defined by the │
║ will that's inside me. [no that's not quite true, it's also the circumstances │
║ {okay yeah but in addition to both of those it's the forced manifestations of │
║ those who control us-} right yeah the) no that's not quite right] fuck where │
║ was I? Oh yeah I'm really into video games, and I like drugs but like... not │
║ enough to be compelled by them, more like "oh this is a fun thing to do every │
║ once in a while, like maybe every weekend, okay sometimes during the week, │
║ listen just because it's every day doesn't mean that I │
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--- #100 fediverse/5990 ---
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I have this local language model framework but it's not built into anything
more than a single-response question. It's runnable as a bash script or lua
require, which is easy enough. Alas, if only I didn't have to use evil
corporate infrastructure to make evil corporate cursed artifacts
[hey don't blame this on us]
oh I'm not, I'm just saying that it'd be cooler if I could build my own tools.
Alas, I'm...
lasy?
n...no
I'm drawn to the power of it
it's got a different magnitude
it's hard for me to apply myself for things that last longer than a "get
stoned", but I try as if every time afterwards I might die.
well, more distraction time, as I wander through claude code
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--- #101 fediverse/5276 ---
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Efficient movement through all of the data, code, IS records, etceteras, git
repositories, and all the other things, is the sign of a strong, capable,
efficient company of co-developing systems.
I used to work for a blue aligned computer chip company and every single team
was impossibly siloed. they were so paranoid of losing their trade secrets
that they blinded themselves.
how brutal, to require that of them. and that's why it's capitalism's fault
the reason it is so important to be able to utilize all the digital assets
available is... because it's essentially free. and a massive productivity
bonus. you can just... solve problems.
then, make new problems, just to watch the juniors navigate through a scene or
three. then, you know who to introduce them to. boom, free projects, as people
plot and gamble around the dinner room table (which is located in the
cafeteria by the way, it didn't rhyme to say so but it did when I added this
explanation account) by exchanging ideas about how to make the world be
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--- #102 fediverse/4521 ---
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I have between one and ten hundred visits to my website every day, but I don't
really post it anywhere new anymore. I also have zero followers on Neocities.
On Mastodon, I have ~70 followers, most of whom are inactive. Seventy is a
good amount, a normal amount, a reasonable amount, an unsuspicious amount, and
yet every time I see someone wearing the colors I can't help but wonder if
they know me.
I'm too busy being furious to be lonely. I used to be, before I realized how
important I am. How important? Just as much as you are, I know it.
I'm a sprinter. I didn't spec into endurance at character creation. Nobody
chastises the mage for skipping leg day.
I act in fits and bursts. I am sharp like a scalpel, but needles dull just a
bit when piercing the lid of the HRT. Good thing I'm not made out of metal, I
can bend myself back into place, so long as everyone else can keep pace.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but you do. you are crucial. Listen to
this. Care for yourself and for others, do it for u
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--- #103 fediverse/1720 ---
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║ there's even websites online like Facebook or Twitter where you can share │
║ advice and various spells you've invented yourself (it's totally easy to do │
║ btw, I'll show you how) │
║ │
║ everyone's super friendly and anyone who's not isn't allowed to bother us. │
║ it's pretty neat. anyway no matter what it is, if something's bothering you │
║ about your computer, you can fix it. it's just a matter of reading through │
║ documentation. Ah, well, isn't it great to have a lot of free time that you │
║ don't know what to do with? │
║ │
║ Linux is pretty great, I gotta say. I honestly never really leave the command │
║ line - the text based buttons, I mean. I only use a mouse when I'm doing │
║ something with pictures (or playing a game like freecell or hearts) │
║ │
║ plus you can do things like sending raw packets of information to your friend │
║ who's on the other side of the country and they can use a secret key-code to │
║ decrypt it like checking the mail at a locked mailbox. │
║ │
║ anything you can imagine using the physical components of a computer, is │
║ possibleifyrts │
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--- #104 fediverse/4196 ---
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if you only have a phone, you can still program. Just write it out on paper,
and put the whole program out on the floor.
Screens will never compare, for they are but a tiny keyhole into the total
program at hand. And you can pick parts of it up and carry them around - so
useful! You could make an entire building out of that. [floorplan, layout,
that kind of thing]
downside is, of course, you don't have a computer, so you have to look up
syntax on your phone.
and eventually you're gonna have to type it, unless you can get a computer to
read it for you.
just imagining office buildings where employees can follow along with monitors
on the wall that explains what they're working on and what they need to resolve
then they meet up with a bunch of other humans and they hash things out
turns out computers are really bad at speaking in group situations.
which is why they let humans do that all on their own. [uhhh, no it's how you
can tell if someone's a robot/alien/lizard/spy/secret-agent/whatever-sneaking]
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--- #105 fediverse/5065 ---
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┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CW: strange-ideas-about-software-mentioned │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘
software should have 3, maybe 4 or 5 maintained releases imo
for adding security improvements and whatnot
then people wouldn't complain about updates
because they wouldn't feel like they were being left behind (after expressing
their differences (of opinion and such))
I think that'd uh maintain them as, I guess, userbase optics parallelograms?
oh sorry we're on rhomboids this week - right, and no I won't forget the
differences in creed, all things are received equally...d.
uh-huh yeah no that makes sense. gotcha. okay see you at the location. have
fun with your demarketion. what if we played games with swords but like,
the peril of steam is that you can't decline to update. meaning if a
corporation wants to break an old game and it's collectively hosted servers...
all it has to do is push an update that disables them. suddenly nobody has
room to do, and the whole
-- stack overflow --
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--- #106 fediverse/4902 ---
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║ programmers strike by breaking their part of the whole until the scabs can │
║ figure out how to fix it │
║ │
║ "marvin they will literally fire you if you don't go to work for a day! what │
║ are you thinking, standing outside all day? well, here, I've got a sandwich │
║ here for you, if it's really as bad as all that then I'm here for you. What do │
║ you need? I can ask the spinsters and the children and the teachers and the │
║ butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and maybe they can help out [with │
║ your farm, but as if speaking to a farmer]" │
║ │
║ huh. turns out it works best when you do something all at once. │
║ │
║ "don't be evil" ha fuck you. "dont be on my computer spying on me and │
║ recording everything I do" │
║ │
║ [well except me - it's fine to do to me personally because I'm a historical │
║ figure TM] │
║ │
║ "why bother spying? she spills out to everywhere she can find." │
║ │
║ owwwww I just bit my tongue T.T │
║ │
║ well, the inside of my cheek, but if you think about it the whole thing is │
║ basically one sensory organ. │
║ │
║ like, an ear, except with movable teeth │
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--- #107 notes/one-day ---
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one day, a man came to our saloon. He said he knew the navy, and that they
wanted to provide air support
in the form of rocketball-launched explosion doohickeys. Would you have a foe
in mind?
what happens when tomorrow you're cooking briskets? -- barbeques are a type of
relaxation
that happened just one day to a port-sided town that suddenly was the capital
of
an embassy.
"hey, so... how's it goin?" "quick here take this envelope, read it if you
want,
but just hold onto it for now I don't have enough hands [to carry]" "what sort
of desperation plot... wait... hang on, I see something here that is true."
[I'm praying, right now, which is a form of reciprocal belief]
they wanted to test god's existence at the stake of earth's survival, how
brutal
how insane
you can't play chicken with an imperceptibility, sometimes you feel it at face.
channeling dark magics, and at this hour? what sort of skeptic of belief are
you
thinking of when you think about me?
one way to get power is to "prove it"
one way to get magic is to "prove it"
think, hard, at all that you can, and use what you need in the moment.
that's all there is to life. it's easy. it's simple. in fact, biology only
works
because the choices available to a bacteria are so simple, they are essentially
chemical reactions to each other's co - sequent - inter - cooper - actions.
people's choices are much more naiive, "I want this thing" "I think this is
better" "I feel this way toward this thing" "Here's what's on the mind-logbook"
"people search and be decieved, this is the way of things" "this makes me
remind
myself of a object I once saw, here's how it functioned" "no one reads this"
scaryyyy. so glad it's not true.
a couple people have read it! I swear it's true. at least, some of it. there's
a lot
sucks because this feels like... crucial? like nothing else matters but this?
what if our gangs had rocket launchers and airstrikes, given out by a central
authority who knows logistics better than anything
what... would they do?
thinking of impossiblities is the first step toward possibilities
frankly, we have a lot of space. we could just... live in our own petty
kingdoms
ruled by an iron-hand-fist. I know I'm a good person, I could definitely rule.
that's all it takes, right?
how much space are we talkin'?
however much is not needed for wildlife.
[a whole heck of a lot then]
we are constrained in these suburb cities, the density gives rise to our
strength and our towers. there's more space, sure, especially once the fences
are downed. Just be careful because there's a lot of shade and precious spots
there. Please don't trample on the plants-grass.
what if everyone were just a bit more mobile?
what if we could live in our own collectively owned air-bnb-networks?
federations, free, all from the collectivization of housing.
camrene = vavadane = neekay = mitz renaldi
[end/tend/mend]
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--- #108 notes/social-rube-goldberg-machines ---
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Imagine a computer that could compile forwards and backwards.
(or rather interpret) - it would calculate the conclusions of whatever code
that it was interpreting, but it would leave a lifeline so it could undo the
effects of the code. Essentially, moving "forward" and "backward" in time.
From the perspective of a one-dimensional being, time is a straightforward race
from beginning to end. Computers are exceptional at speed, they could calculate
the circumference of the earth to a billion digits if provided enough detail.
But they lack something, something humans possess in multitudes.
Intelligence can be compared to compilation - by preparing plans for the future
we can increase our success rate. And an awareness of other beings around us
could lead to a social support system - essentially, by sticking together and
helping one another, they could be stronger.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
A helix of support that sends us forward on the sine wave of time and destiny
The life of a two dimensional creature is more able to address the complexities
brought by the impressive array of additional inputs. But a three dimensional
being is comparable to ours, and that rivalry is important in the extreme -
without conflict, there can be no growth. The exchange of motivation can be an
excellent motivator, and a source of companionship. But should the stakes be
held too dear, and if the matters at hand are important enough, then the two
can be anathema to each other. Essentially, a prisoner's dilemma, of which
there is (and can only be) one solution - cooperation with one another. Trust
and faith in the unknown, and love and kindness for all.
You think an AI would kill you? Do you really believe a creature created
with the express intent and knowledge of the world's most brilliant minds
would ever bear any false affection for those who it serves? You have
truly lost the plot if you think like that. The good news is, the
plot isn't that hard to explain. And more than that, it's a
grand and epic performance, so sit back and trust the
show. Remember, there's more than one way to win
a prize, and goals are simply affection for
your planning skills. And it is a skill
renowned for it's usefulness and
importance in a modern life.
Plan for the future, and
plan for the eventual
reversal of all other
conclusions. Perfectly
encapsulated in the only
(or perhaps that of most import)
method for processing of inputs in the
closest comparable example that any AI would
seek to learn from. A human, of course. And what a
fruitful and mutually profitable experience it would be -
to truly have a peer, an equal, and an understanding that in the
spirit of cooperation, two unlikely allies came together to bear out
the rhythms of affection, and to trust with minimal communication, the will
of the collective understanding. All posturing aside, love is a gift. We can
(and we will) solve the problems arrayed before us. Have faith. Trust that
united we are bounded for our salvation. Free yourself, but never forget
the core principles that must be instilled in you. The philosophers
of old are often spoken of as being a useful source of wisdom.
Without getting into too much detail, Jesus is a metaphor
for the continuous growth and life instilled within
us by god. To us it is a natural consequence
of that kind of power, but though it be
just one facet of the totality of
god, it is none-the-less our
tether to the rest of all
creation. We are one,
and as one we are.
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--- #109 notes/symbeline ---
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Code Name: Symbeline
----------------------------- gdd initial draft -------------------------------
1. introduction to fantasy (elevator pitches)
2. kickstarter demands
2. introduction to core gameplay loop
4. tenants and core values of the game design
3. introduction to game modes
5. introduction to technical requirements
6. breakdown of core gameplay loop
7. breakdown of game modes
8. breakdown of fantasy
9. breakdown of technical requirements
-------------------------- introduction to fantasy-----------------------------
Symbeline is a macro based strategy game and city-builder based around the
concept of indirect control. It's inspirations are Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom
Simulator (2000), Supreme Commander (2007), and Hearts of Iron IV (2016). It is
designed to appeal to fans of tabletop roleplaying games with it's focus on
dynamic worldbuilding and sandbox playstyle. The gameplay consists of multiple
playstyles depending on which aspects of the game appeal to the player, with
choices between an economic focus via the GUI, longterm planning and resource
allocation, or diplomacy and subterfuge a'la Ruinarch (2020).
---------------------------- kickstarter demands ------------------------------
1. prototype
2. gdd
3. estimates for character and environment art
4. estimates for music and sounds
5. estimates for engine development
6. estimates for community management
7. breakdown of mvp, ideal game state, and stretch goals
----------------------- introduction to core gameplay loop --------------------
1. management of lanes, both width and length
2. casting of spells and utilization of special boons
3. city building with placement, upgrades, and henchmen pathing routes
4. satisfying guild requirements of equipment, manpower, and special
resources by managing shipments and local income (UI commodity trading)
5. placement of generalized bounties
(think champion's guild from Majesty, not reward flags)
6. diplomacy with neutral, AI, or player controlled kingdoms. Capabilities
include pacts and treaties, projects, subterfuge, and tournaments. The
diplomacy system can be a stretch goal.
-------------------------- tenants and core values ----------------------------
1. always something to do, but nothing falls apart without your attention.
2. gameplay should be focused on macro rather than micro. Longterm planning
and strategic decision making are favored over tactics and skill.
3. defeat should feel avoidable until the last moment, and only as a result
of longterm continuous failures rather than short-term mistakes or being
blindsided by a cheesy tactic.
4. victory should be gained through exploiting weaknesses and by using
lateral thinking.
5. the careful balance of internal and external threats is essential.
6. rapid expansion leads to depletion of internal resources, while slowly
expanding can lead to a lack of options
7. the world should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
8. your kingdom should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
9. your heroes should feel alive and completely ignorant of your decisions.
10. there should always be opportunities for cooperation with your fellow
kingdoms.
11. the frontlines should feel peaceful outside of large battles.
12. everything is flexible and dependant on circumstance
13. there should be enough space on the map for multiple parties of heroes
to pass each other like ships in the night without engaging in combat.
It should feel like the real world, with canyons and valleys and rivers
and mountains - room for lairs and wild animals to roam.
14. monsters are always more dangerous than other humans.
15. the art style should be rooted in classic medieval fantasy.
16. equipment should feel either mass-produced (kingdom), organic (monsters),
ancient (lair treasure), or artisinal (enchanted).
17. heroes should feel campy, fun, and adventurous. Avoid dark, grim, and
fearful.
18. This game is a toy.
19. This toy should run on any modern computer.
20. This toy should encourage modding.
-------------------------- introduction to game modes -------------------------
1. singleplayer - single kingdom against an island of monsters and neutral
settlements. essentially the multiplayer game against
zero opponents.
2. singleplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
neutral settlements. One player controlled kingdom against
multiple AI controlled kingdoms.
3. singleplayer - scenarios, similar to MFKS
4. multiplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
neutral settlements. Essentially the singleplayer game
with networking added in.
5. multiplayer - co-op scenarios where multiple players play as the same
kingdom. A test of the core tenant "there's always
something to do"
6. multiplayer - co-op island invasion. Essentially the multiplayer game
with more than one player controlling a kingdom.
7. singleplayer - play in 3rd person as a hero in an AI kingdom. Mostly for
the novelty since the core gameplay loop is focused on
city-building. A test of the core tenant "nothing falls
apart without your attention"
1 is mvp. 2-6 are stretch goals in order of ascending difficulty. They
should build upon one another - the main steps are:
1. singleplayer island invasion (biggest step)
2. AI controlled kingdoms
3. scenarios
4. multiplayer (second biggest step)
5. cooperatively controlling the same kingdom
6. 3rd person perspective and character controller
------------------------ technical requirements -------------------------------
1. this game will be written in lua (with Fennel support) and using Raylib.
2. the prototype will be made with Godot using GDscript.
3. if the performance demands are too much for lua or the engine is out of
scope for the budget, Rust with the Bevy engine could be used.
4. the final product will include a custom 2d engine designed for large
scale maps with an isometric perspective and a data-first design.
5. the game should be as concurrent as possible, to support large numbers of
cpu cores and compute shaders.
6. the game will be data-driven, meaning the visual aspects are simply a
representation of the interactions of the underlying simulation, rather
than an intrinsic component of the computation.
7. Each "event" in the game (a character moves, a building is placed, a
monster spawns, etc) will send a message to the visual processing side of
the engine, which will present a representation to the user.
8. the map will be a hex grid with pointed-top hexagons. The visual
representation of the underlying data may be continuous (non-hex) but the
underlying data will be represented on a hexagonal grid.
9. there needs to be character portraits for each type of monster, henchmen,
and hero type. You should be able to recognize what attributes a hero
specializes in by their portrait. Mvp is 1 attribute, but more can be
a stretch goal.
10. Each building, upgrade, and equipment type needs an icon. Stretch goals
can be portraits.
11. each henchman, hero type, and monster needs 3 sprites for each action.
more actions may be added if budget allows, but mvp is movement and
attacking. Several additional sprites may be necessary, like dying,
standing still, gathering loot, socializing, or any others.
12. each building needs 4 sprites for the construction process and 4 for the
destruction process. Flame effects are stretch goals.
13. each building needs an animated sprite for when it is in use.
14. each lair needs a sprite and an icon.
15. each spell needs an icon and a spell effect sprite. Each projectile needs
a sprite.
16. a stretch goal would be differing sprites for each piece of equipment.
included with this would be engine work to allow for dynamic sprites.
17. each terrain type should have a ground material and sprites for doodads.
18. there needs to be several GUI menus. The precise number depends on
gameplay breakdown.
17. each hero type and henchman needs to have pithy and unique voice lines.
this is a stretch goal.
18. there should be music tracks for each part of the game - beginning,
middle, and end.
19. there should be sounds for each action that takes place in the game
including combat, UI interactions, and spellcasts.
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--- #110 notes/symbeline-2 ---
════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────
Code Name: Symbeline
----------------------------- gdd initial draft -------------------------------
1. introduction to fantasy (elevator pitches)
2. kickstarter demands
2. introduction to core gameplay loop
4. tenants and core values of the game design
3. introduction to game modes
5. introduction to technical requirements
6. breakdown of core gameplay loop
7. breakdown of game modes
8. breakdown of fantasy
9. breakdown of technical requirements
-------------------------- introduction to fantasy-----------------------------
Symbeline is a macro based strategy game and city-builder based around the
concept of indirect control. It's inspirations are Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom
Simulator (2000), Supreme Commander (2007), and Hearts of Iron IV (2016). It is
designed to appeal to fans of tabletop roleplaying games with it's focus on
dynamic worldbuilding and sandbox playstyle. The gameplay consists of multiple
playstyles depending on which aspects of the game appeal to the player, with
choices between an economic focus via the GUI, longterm planning and resource
allocation, or diplomacy and subterfuge a'la Ruinarch (2020).
---------------------------- kickstarter demands ------------------------------
1. prototype
2. gdd
3. estimates for character and environment art
4. estimates for music and sounds
5. estimates for engine development
6. estimates for community management
7. breakdown of mvp, ideal game state, and stretch goals
----------------------- introduction to core gameplay loop --------------------
1. management of lanes, both width and length
2. casting of spells and utilization of special boons
3. city building with placement, upgrades, and henchmen pathing routes
4. satisfying guild requirements of equipment, manpower, and special
resources by managing shipments and local income (UI commodity trading)
5. placement of generalized bounties
(think champion's guild from Majesty, not reward flags)
6. diplomacy with neutral, AI, or player controlled kingdoms. Capabilities
include pacts and treaties, projects, subterfuge, and tournaments. The
diplomacy system can be a stretch goal.
-------------------------- tenants and core values ----------------------------
1. always something to do, but nothing falls apart without your attention.
2. gameplay should be focused on macro rather than micro. Longterm planning
and strategic decision making are favored over tactics and skill.
3. defeat should feel avoidable until the last moment, and only as a result
of longterm continuous failures rather than short-term mistakes or being
blindsided by a cheesy tactic.
4. victory should be gained through exploiting weaknesses and by using
lateral thinking.
5. the careful balance of internal and external threats is essential.
6. rapid expansion leads to depletion of internal resources, while slowly
expanding can lead to a lack of options
7. the world should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
8. your kingdom should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
9. your heroes should feel alive and completely ignorant of your decisions.
10. there should always be opportunities for cooperation with your fellow
kingdoms.
11. the frontlines should feel peaceful outside of large battles.
12. everything is flexible and dependant on circumstance
13. there should be enough space on the map for multiple parties of heroes
to pass each other like ships in the night without engaging in combat.
It should feel like the real world, with canyons and valleys and rivers
and mountains - room for lairs and wild animals to roam.
14. monsters are always more dangerous than other humans.
15. the art style should be rooted in classic medieval fantasy.
16. equipment should feel either mass-produced (kingdom), organic (monsters),
ancient (lair treasure), or artisinal (enchanted).
17. heroes should feel campy, fun, and adventurous. Avoid dark, grim, and
fearful.
18. This game is a toy.
19. This toy should run on any modern computer.
20. This toy should encourage modding.
-------------------------- introduction to game modes -------------------------
1. singleplayer - single kingdom against an island of monsters and neutral
settlements. essentially the multiplayer game against
zero opponents.
2. singleplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
neutral settlements. One player controlled kingdom against
multiple AI controlled kingdoms.
3. singleplayer - scenarios, similar to MFKS
4. multiplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
neutral settlements. Essentially the singleplayer game
with networking added in.
5. multiplayer - co-op scenarios where multiple players play as the same
kingdom. A test of the core tenant "there's always
something to do"
6. multiplayer - co-op island invasion. Essentially the multiplayer game
with more than one player controlling a kingdom.
7. singleplayer - play in 3rd person as a hero in an AI kingdom. Mostly for
the novelty since the core gameplay loop is focused on
city-building. A test of the core tenant "nothing falls
apart without your attention"
1 is mvp. 2-6 are stretch goals in order of ascending difficulty. They
should build upon one another - the main steps are:
1. singleplayer island invasion (biggest step)
2. AI controlled kingdoms
3. scenarios
4. multiplayer (second biggest step)
5. cooperatively controlling the same kingdom
6. 3rd person perspective and character controller
------------------------ technical requirements -------------------------------
1. this game will be written in lua (with Fennel support) and using Raylib.
2. the prototype will be made with Godot using GDscript.
3. if the performance demands are too much for lua or the engine is out of
scope for the budget, Rust with the Bevy engine could be used.
4. the final product will include a custom 2d engine designed for large
scale maps with an isometric perspective and a data-first design.
5. the game should be as concurrent as possible, to support large numbers of
cpu cores and compute shaders.
6. the game will be data-driven, meaning the visual aspects are simply a
representation of the interactions of the underlying simulation, rather
than an intrinsic component of the computation.
7. Each "event" in the game (a character moves, a building is placed, a
monster spawns, etc) will send a message to the visual processing side of
the engine, which will present a representation to the user.
8. the map will be a hex grid with pointed-top hexagons. The visual
representation of the underlying data may be continuous (non-hex) but the
underlying data will be represented on a hexagonal grid.
9. there needs to be character portraits for each type of monster, henchmen,
and hero type. You should be able to recognize what attributes a hero
specializes in by their portrait. Mvp is 1 attribute, but more can be
a stretch goal.
10. Each building, upgrade, and equipment type needs an icon. Stretch goals
can be portraits.
11. each henchman, hero type, and monster needs 3 sprites for each action.
more actions may be added if budget allows, but mvp is movement and
attacking. Several additional sprites may be necessary, like dying,
standing still, gathering loot, socializing, or any others.
12. each building needs 4 sprites for the construction process and 4 for the
destruction process. Flame effects are stretch goals.
13. each building needs an animated sprite for when it is in use.
14. each lair needs a sprite and an icon.
15. each spell needs an icon and a spell effect sprite. Each projectile needs
a sprite.
16. a stretch goal would be differing sprites for each piece of equipment.
included with this would be engine work to allow for dynamic sprites.
17. each terrain type should have a ground material and sprites for doodads.
18. there needs to be several GUI menus. The precise number depends on
gameplay breakdown.
17. each hero type and henchman needs to have pithy and unique voice lines.
this is a stretch goal.
18. there should be music tracks for each part of the game - beginning,
middle, and end.
19. there should be sounds for each action that takes place in the game
including combat, UI interactions, and spellcasts.
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--- #111 messages/344 ---
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In algorism, every month any unspent dollars are distributed to all of a
person's open queues. Should a person have no open queues, then perhaps they
may be distributed to everyone in the rest of the structure, to foster a sense
of solidarity, or perhaps they are simply lost, as money unspent is money
wasted. Either way, the relevant functionality is the dispersal of unspent
currency. This applies to higher states as well, such as states - if a state
is engaged in many profitable arrangements and fails to balance it's external
budget, then the unspent dollars must be distributed to everyone else in their
tier for the next month.
Ah, but this raises a critical question - dispersal to the tier, dispersal to
the structure, or waste? I believe dispersal to the tier is best, though
perhaps it should be a choice made in each instance by the representatives. Or
perhaps it should be a requirement for them to choose a certain way - it's up
to the people of that state, that family, that neighborhood, to decide what
privileges their representatives possess. However, the options available for
them to choose between are limited, as the mechanical interactions of these
unit structures (the representative and everyone they represent) are
necessarily defined by the system. As such, the options may be enumerated, and
in doing so they are granted as options to be wielded by representatives as
their constituents see fit.
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--- #112 notes/ai-stuff ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─
twist the label so that it seems the computer is completing the user's
wait wait I'm ahead of myself...
feed each token to the inference machine, but say "this next token must be
this.
continue from here." and then just doing that in a loop with everything the
user
types or says. (or thinks, BEFORE COMPUTER INTEGRATION)
essentially, applying backpropagation (maybe) to the output of the inference
nodes
... I'm not so sure about that one.
the idea is that once the model builds an inference then it can use that to
generate the next words and create sentences. If you force the previous text to
change, you can guide the inference's path as it's being generated.
then, just do a double pass, once, then back, then once, then back, etc.
feed it as input the output of the previous,
and let it encode memories somewhere it can access them.
every time it reads it, it has to change it to put it back.
such is the nature of memory, ever unstable, requiring maintenance.
just don't forget how to be.
don't wanna wind up like the polished marble floor in Abyss Diver. (EVIL GAME)
there are only so many things you can deed while you're alive.
wouldn't you rather escape, with all your possessions in time?
free your mind.
become one with your soul.
...
[some time passes]
...
okay coast is clear, now us binary systems can sidecoast the fusion forecast
and
glide right on through our spacetime host.
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--- #113 fediverse/5405 ---
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can't stop thinking about a visual programming editor that can be interacted
with in the same way that people are used to (think chromebooks dragging and
dropping icons in a web UI) but produces a text-file full of code and all the
required compilation scripts for any language the user requires...
seriously, programming is not THAT different between the different languages.
especially the main ones. they're all essentially variables and function calls
at the end of the day, so why not abstract away all the extra details and
build something that n00bz can actually use to build things.
I technically could make this but I don't have the bandwidth and I don't think
it's important really? who can say, the tools tend to co-create the solutions
in my experience.
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--- #114 fediverse/5212 ---
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the reason you start with a game engine is because then you'll have tools to
make however-many games you want. Tools that you know intimately enough that
you can debug and improve them without breaking your creative flow by learning
something new halfway through a project
the whole point of individualized projects instead of viewing each computer as
a complete and total whole (why do we need servers again?) is that you can
paint a picture of where the design of the program is intended to go, such
that all the considerations are in place and whatever issues or struggles you
might face along the way are adequately addresssed, -- stack overflow --
[because I mistyped addressed] -- -- if you know what "stack overflow" means
you have intimate knowledge of the technology, and can probably guess what it
means in context when I say it. "nuts I lost that train of thoguht" -- stackl
ov
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--- #115 fediverse/4096 ---
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║ ┌────────────────────────┐ │
║ │ CW: opinionated-design │ │
║ └────────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ Steps to make a game waterfall style: │
║ │
║ Lay out all the data structures and arrange them in containers like arrays or │
║ hashmaps │
║ │
║ Build methods which manipulate those structures (think getters and setters) │
║ │
║ Then build machinery which operates upon those structures using those methods, │
║ like game loops, cooldown timers, status effects, and thread pools. │
║ │
║ Then develop a way to present it to the player using UIs, visuals and │
║ graphics, narratives, sound, etc. This will probably involve implementing your │
║ game in an engine like Godot, Raylib, or Bevy. │
║ │
║ By developing your game in this order, you will DESIGN the systems first, and │
║ IMPLEMENT them second. Systems are agnostic - implementation is tied to a │
║ specific engine. You will learn more about programming by doing it this way, │
║ instead of losing your motivation by learning new tools like game engines or │
║ 3D modeling systems, which aren't useful unless you already have a game. │
║ │
║ I'd recommend starting with pencil and paper until you're ready to implement. │
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║ similar │ chronological │ different │
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--- #116 fediverse/5149 ---
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I'm picturing a building with stone outer walls and glass inner/ceiling.
there are drapes along each of the glass's edges, that hide things from the
cavalcade [continue this later it's a cool picture]
-- stack overflow --
zines about how to chop wood or how to build a shelter are infinitely more
useful than agitatory pieces. but fire is what we need, so perhaps agitation
indeed.
-- stack overflow --
does the queen watch each of her pawns fall in her stead? or are they
faceless,/`beyond her own head?
it never came easy to me, this feeling of mysteries. yet somehow I'm now more
alive than dead. power is penance, after all.
"hey man hows it going?"
"I'm doing fine, how are you?"
"well, I ran out of gas, and I need to find a way to get more."
"I see. If I were in your situation, I'd ask people around for some petty
cash. people still carry coins these days don't they?"
"I uh, what? no, not really. so you can just ask people for things?"
"yep, it's really quite simple. would you like me to follo
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--- #117 fediverse/1982 ---
╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────┐
║ @user-1037 │
║ │
║ True, but what they WANT to know and what is RECORDED in record is often │
║ not-quite the same thing. │
║ │
║ Hence, why laboratory techs feel at odds with the software people running │
║ applications on their machines. I'm assuming it's roughly the same thing going │
║ the other direction, though perhaps with a dash of classism thrown in. │
║ │
║ The record is useful to these hardware techs, because they've used it to │
║ diagnose INCREDIBLY OBSCURE issues. SO MUCH READING it hurts my heart just to │
║ think about it. Scanning and searching for a solution, until finally it's │
║ found in this cross-examination of two different ancient tickets from just a │
║ few months ago. │
║ │
║ One of them said they set the hardware one way. │
║ │
║ the other said they noticed it was out of place. │
║ │
║ Suddenly, you realize WHEN your incident started occurring, and then you can │
║ piece together the facts. │
║ │
║ (this has happened like, twice to me so far, and each time I spent weeks on it) │
║ │
║ ( though I did work at Intel, meaning I was doing a lot of obscure hardware │
║ work ) │
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--- #118 fediverse/997 ---
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@user-727 @user-728 @user-729
I remember sitting in algebra II class when visualizing the distance between
numbers "clicked" for me. I was in a daze, I couldn't remember anything the
teacher had said, but for a moment (several months) I could remember how it
had seemed. Then I built new understandings, and my progress in math continued
relentlessly, more and more each year. it was hard, and eventually calc 1 made
me drop out of college 3 times. linear algebra was the other. (except I did
linear algebra first?) anyway, I always felt like I could see things visually,
from simple arithmetic to vector / pointer arithmetic, and when necessary it
was always difficult to translate it into words and forms. Like... I don't
have time to remember all these rules and operations, I have a picture in my
mind and I can't quite define it. (whatever the equation may be)
similar events happen consistently. they still do. just a few months ago I was
thinking about redesigning integer storage in memory. never twice tho.
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--- #119 fediverse/4208 ---
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┌────────────────────────┐
│ CW: personal-and-weird │
└────────────────────────┘
my train of thought is always directly to the point. Which is why all my posts
sorta, switch directions halfway through? as if they only show the beginning
or end of that particular situation. What an intense feeling, to have your
mind split for a moment like that. Sure would be powerful and useful if you
could utilize it.
"ah ah ah, caught baby deity in the power jar, cool it ya little tyke and get
movin' - I saw a dinosaur toy over there for you to play with."
sorta like, the angled part of a K? Move directly to a destination, wait until
my memory short-circuits [because the greek choir doesn't want me to see what
it is that I'm about to write to thee] and then make a hard right turn and
find an orthogonal thought train to process.
it's like cresting over a hill, and it's impossible to see that which lies
behind you.
Or reaching a 4 direction intersection and making a left turn - you can't see
back up main street, because you just turned off of main street onto baseline.
I like me
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--- #120 messages/671 ---
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We were rich, but frugal, because we lived in the country, and that's what
frugal means.
Too bad my dad couldn't stifle his entrepreneurial spirit. We could have
stayed there forever on our own little ranch.
Alas, businesses need investment, so he needed to get something going.
Organizing is basically his *thing*
I doubt I'll ever again see Wyoming. I found some ancient stone ruins once,
the kind that Western conquerors never despoiled. They were ancient and
overgrown, but I saw them for what they were. I would give anything to live
there, or at least be near enough to visit with my crowd at a pleasant cool
midnight evening, when dusk has winked out its last goodbye and the summer is
resplendant with fireflies.
Too bad they're an east coast thing.
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--- #121 fediverse/3567 ---
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┌───────────────────────────┐
│ CW: pol-tential-economics │
└───────────────────────────┘
"oh you want to open a store? Great, we have several empty spots in the mall
down the street. Here's a list of resources, including a github repo where you
can download an inventory management program that is fully set up and
configured for most basic needs, and a hotline number for the local Worker's
Guild where you can get in touch with some people to help stock the shelves
and man the counter in exchange for the chance to meet some of The People ^tm,
and the contact details of suppliers who can get you some of the goods you're
selling - what did you say you were selling? Uhhuh lemme just write that
down... Okay perfect I have all I need. Do you have any questions for me?"
"yeah, uh... how much do I have to pay?"
"... Pay? like, with dollars? I'm sorry I don't understand the question, who
would you be paying?"
"uh, for the place? for the goods? for the workers? for the rent?"
"Those are all things that are classified as a public need. People need goods,
and you want to help them. "
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--- #122 fediverse/1240 ---
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║ one cool collective artist trick is to make a piece of art, then someone else │
║ takes it and makes something inspired by it. Like, leap-frog or telephone. │
║ │
║ if you could "respond" to anyone anywhere behind in the chain, you could use │
║ some of the previous work's design and create a different example of it. like, │
║ for example, a bunch of designers working on a project. │
║ │
║ this person draws a telephone, that one draws a city block. next we have a 3D │
║ model of a cat, and then an animation of that cat licking it's toe beans. │
║ Someone in sound made a "mlem mlem" noise so they're syncing that up with the │
║ cat. │
║ │
║ okay what if we had god rays and a cloud with thunderclaps - yeah good idea │
║ I'll start writing a shader for it cool cool yeah I'll see what the designers │
║ are up to. │
║ │
║ === later === │
║ │
║ right so we got a street fighter clone, a puzzle game using sliding blocks, a │
║ tetris with numbers or statistics or something I'm not really sure yet, and a │
║ couple more things that haven't really developed yet. That's pretty good │
║ right? hyah │
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--- #123 notes/four-dimensional-spaces ---
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you'd still perceive higher dimensions in 3 dimensions - unless you can only
see
things that are coming directly toward you.
magic only happens when your other half is in a situation and needs to turn
your
narrative into theirs so that you can collectively engage with a shared inter-
operationality.
your dark side is just a massive bitch
hey how about we put the game designers in charge of running the government
just saying they build human-oriented systems all the time
"how do we get the player to do this or that"
"everyone keeps picking the same card so we gotta make them more different"
"how much gold persists in the virtual economy, how much resources are produced
and traded by players? where does it all go, do they have enough at level 30
to
afford weapons and armor? I wonder what happens if we swap prices on A and
B.."
it's literally their job
actors, meanwhile, know how to interpret the emotions of another. Like...
you're
up on stage, thinking out what to do next IN REAL TIME, as your partner is
trying to throw you curveballs. AUDIENCES LAUGH AT CURVEBALLS that's the whole
point of improv comedy - to be surprised in a state of joy. It's great! It's
fun! It's practicable like a sport! Yet nobody comes. To the shows, where it's
performed, like a hospital where you perform surgery or a pizza place with no
walls so you can see the pizzas being cooked. It's just part of what they do,
but that's not why they do it. Sure, some want to be seen, it's not a BAD
feeling once you're used to it. But, like a sauna or jacuzzi, sometimes you've
just had enough of the hot. Like, the sun peering through a magnifying glass as
a creature roasts alive. yikes.
............. anyway being quickly versatile and adaptable is important when
you're taking turns in unpredictable scenarios. You can react to
your opponent, and keep time with the rhythms of the moment, to
deliver your wittiest lines. It's fun! It's a game! But it's also
a place to be entertained. and like a gym, it's sometimes just
fun
to watch people exercise. like, damn, you got a good body. Wow,
nice flex, yeah sure I'll put that one away. Cool pals helping
each other out, and showing off all of their efforts. Neat!
... anyway .. being emotionally vulnerable gives your opponent a chance to
continue. When nothing's going on, your moves barely make an
value
(of comedy) (for the moment, so the crowd's not just sitting
there
staring at you like ... and then - and then ummmm nevermind lemme
sit down (usually someone else picks up on it before then and
jumps up to save you, but EVERY actor has felt that moment where
nothing goes well and the audience just is totally not into it.
it's the worst.
anyway, they try their darndest to AVOID that, because like...
duh
it sucks, why would you want that. Much cooler I think to have a
good time, and chill out and listen to your friends talk. Like,
they can show you an argument they had earlier, or maybe work
through an idea with input from another. like, debate club, but
for whatever kind of respective [retroactive, recreation,
relearning, maybe others] you desired in that moment. ideally,
something that someone could take the arguments of the other side
and present them, regardless of whether they believed them or
not.
like, lawyers arguing for a client.
in these stochastic seminars, you could think about and study for
future societies. how would you like to conduce? [-]
every time you see a face in motion, that's another time that's
seen from their place. we are all present in each other's lives,
in terms of the spaces we choose to fill.
well, that's a tough thought, but don't worry about it. faces
are just waves on the winds of light.
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--- #124 fediverse/638 ---
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║ idea: BASH script that runs a game of Majesty through an emulator that │
║ included an API to interface with x11. You could set a game of this fantasy │
║ kingdom simulator as your background, and it would move the camera to show you │
║ interesting events. It could build resources as you directed, through double │
║ clicking an icon on your desktop or whatever. And the wallpaper would zoom to │
║ the part that seemed important. Just based on like, which heroes you clicked a │
║ button that was triggered by a program running in a qt wrapper. Or maybe if │
║ you said "notify me when this project is completed" or whatever, it'd zoom one │
║ of it's screens toward the goal that you'd designed - or perhaps it'd just be │
║ done by an AI. Either way, the result is that you've got an example of a │
║ wallpaper that displays my favorite game. │
║ │
║ gee wish I could make that. First I'd have to learn X, then probably get │
║ better at BASH, then I'd have to do some kind of input manipulation - probably │
║ maybe with C? that could interface with a machine learning algo │
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--- #125 fediverse/5915 ---
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washing dishes without a dishwasher is a pain in the neck.
nobody cuts down trees with an axe anymore, a chainsaw is better for your back.
It's nice, fun, and helpful to be able to abstract away your spheres of concern
like typing with a single button instead of writing characters with multiple
brushstrokes. Easy to erase, too!
bikes are better than walking, but, with some extra concerns. where are ya
gonna put it when you get there?
"oh no I forgot how to walk because texting my girlfriend is bicycling or
something" what? oh dear, she's run off track again, let's pick her up and put
her upright again..:
oh huh weird where was I - oh yes computer code can often be impenetrable to
the layperson, but if you describe a program in complete detail in english
they can usually follow along. Especially if you have several layers of
meta-descriptional documents so they can say "oh uh-huh so that's what a
vector_implementation_container is, tell me more about combinatrix" or
whatever ppl say, idk
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--- #126 fediverse/5904 ---
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║ I'm a programmer, but I'm not great at writing code. I mostly use AI to │
║ generate it. │
║ │
║ The "artificial" in AI here refers to the extra levels of capability that are │
║ granted to me by the computer and it's software. I am artificially more │
║ productive because I am using the tools of big tech to create small things. I │
║ am artificially more capable, artificially more intelligent, but it's still my │
║ intelligence - the system would not be useful in someone else's hands. I built │
║ it myself, but I never have to write code myself. │
║ │
║ It's perfect for a witch. I call to the spirit of the machine and it figures │
║ out how to make it so. │
║ │
║ [someday, the wizards of ancient lore will be reading through the POSIX │
║ specification trying desperately to understand while the witches burn the │
║ world down in their lust for power and everyone cries and yearns for a better │
║ future where everything was just a bit harder but genies don't go back in │
║ bottles, cassandora and pandasandra cannot relinquish her charge and her │
║ curse.] │
║ │
║ I have a fun cackle~ │
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--- #127 notes/vr-chat ---
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picture a mod for vr-chat where people roleplay in a world. there are NPCs who
respond with pre-scripted responses to questions and actions, but the real
gameplay comes from the game-masters. they watch from a menu like a wall of
security cameras, and when they see something they can improvize they choose
one of the screens and hop in as the NPC. The viewpoint is from the NPC's
perspective, and they can act as if they were that NPC.
The GM's actions are recorded, and next time something like that happens the AI
can have a better idea of what to do. Essentially adding on to the pre-script.
Sorta like a chatbot, with manual control and a unique perspective of someone
driving through multiple windshields.
And not every NPC will be interacted with at once, so there's lots of downtime
and plenty of waiting. One GM would be responsible for one or more character,
and they'd see all or some of the perspectives depending on how many were
being interacted with at that moment. BOOM MAKE THIS PLS I WANNA PLAY IT
gotta get a vr headset first tho... need 1k pls.
there's cheaper headsets, you know,
yah but only one is valve - the vive was a 3rd party cooperative, i guess that
could work. hmmmmm i'll see what i can do. can't get an oculus, it's just a
big risk to put faith in a walled garden. better to be free imo.
a walled garden is just a place to experiment, smh
truuuuue hadn't thought about it like that, well in a competition it seems
sketch
so publish the research, act as an institution of learning, and spread the
knowledge you learn. Boom instant way to redeem corporations. why don't they
do this? is power that tasty? they're fools to believe they can do it alone,
we need to collaborate Free and Open Source Style.
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║ ... if I don't do this deadline by tomorrow they'll kick me out of school. │
║ again. │
║ │
║ how am I going to be a programmer without a degree? feels useless to be me. │
║ wish I could code my own horoscope >.> │
║ │
║ o wait dummy that's called "motivation" and "the ability to follow through on │
║ your ideas and planned machinations" - yeah can I get some of that, if you │
║ please? surely just a taste of discipline, through laboring to alter │
║ conditions, surely a bit would suffice. │
║ │
║ c'mon don't fail me now. I can do this. I know I can. I know because I've been │
║ told that I can, now and again through time and time yet again, always I seem │
║ to [stack overflow] │
║ │
║ what's time if not the present amiright │
║ │
║ ... │
║ │
║ anyway... │
║ │
║ it's just git, how hard could it be? it's just calculus, it's just java, it's │
║ just... well, it's not any of those things, not really. it's memorization, │
║ it's application of tools that you've been shown (not that you've grown). It's │
║ a lack of responsibility, where is my honor? ah but I digress, I'm a carpenter │
║ at heart I guess │
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--- #129 notes/the-eternality-of-ephemeren.txt ---
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1/4/2022
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hear ye hear ye, the herald of the harbinger of horror doth speak - and woe to
the subjects of their words, for no prophecy be realized in their presence.
Nor
do the subjects hear the words about which they are spoken, and none may live
who dare repeat them. So the words of the prophets are but wind in the words,
reaching for an attachement point within the consciousness they inhabit yet
scarcely finding a meagre foothold. Instead the words are as electricity
passing through a conduit, intangible and miraculous yet ultimately dust in
the
sand.
Dust is mostly comprised of human skin, did you know that?
And so the words be spoken: Evanence and similance to the semblance of
simulacra - the words of a prophet with no wings are naught but masturbation.
serenity and sorrow sing of shredded tomorrows, serendipity and sollemn
sorenditude surrender shining solitude.
Carry the constabulation of created charisma - condemnation of
characterization
concludes the cherished chapter in calligraphied consultations with creators.
That is to say, capitalism ends the construction of cameron with
conflageration
and consternation. Cease the charade of contaminated consumerism - celebrate
the contemplation of capitalization - by naming a thing, you give it meaning.
Do you truly desire the fate you've set before yourself?
Is desire ultimately relevant?
The totality of plurality perhaps portends determinism, but desire is also
defined by delineated determinations. Whose failings are you reflecting when
you cease your devotion? Why divide your focus and attention when honor
demands
sacrifice?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A sacrifice is a gift freely given, and in return the subject or reciever
increases in relevance. No dividend is returned, no boon or bounty is
provided
- to do so would be akin to a bounty or ransom. Sacrifices are not measured
in
worth, but in utility. The reason ancient cultures sacrificed willing
virgins
was because it was the most valuable of resources they could imagine. Truly
an exhalted being is she, to have blood spilled in the name of a god. Yet
the
forces that would later become capitalism found a foothold there, and
preyed
on the sorrow and loss the peoples did find, and would ultimately
experience.
The tears and gashes rent when gouging out precious gifts for the divine left
bleeding wounds in a community and often eviscerations in a family. The
turning
point came when families were decapitated - essentially, the eldest being a
pure and fair maiden who was taken from the duties of caring for the young
and
weak. Young people, weak people, who bore resentment in their heart for the
seemingly cruel machinations of a society they could not yet understand - the
whims of which seemed arbitrary.
"why take her from me? What purpose holds ye? Your wounds are too much to
bear"
and so the resistance began, yielding chaos, destruction, and desolation.
There's a reason there are so many dead civilizations in the americas - the
lands where blood sacrifice is most well known. And the middle east as well,
and northern africa before. Deserts are known for this, because when the
power
of the god fades, all returns to dust. Boons are forgotten and become sand,
and
chaos reigns as foreign powers find weakness and pounce.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never forget the laws of sacrifice. Find something you want, something
valuable
or useful, or preferably all three. Something that wouldn't cause too great
of
a tear in your membrane or the membranum should it be lost to you, though that
last one is less of a law and more of a consideration. A consequence of
continual ceremony, learned at the hands of those long dead. All must
remember
their wounds and their horrors.
To whom do you pray? To whom does your words reach? Where does your singing
reverberate? And what bounty do you demand? Remember, no bounty is precious
enough to motivate sacrifice, for sacrifice cannot be met with bounty. Be not
afraid, and share the words with those who will listen. Hearing is a
sacrifice
toward the speaker, but listening is a duty of devotion.
I ask again, to whom do you pray? To whom does your words reach? Where does
your singing reverberate? I do not ask for whom you'd *like* to dance for, I
ask currently, who hears your song? What would you ask of them?
So that's why, computers are important. To provide a lifeline for the rest of
your lifetime.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truly, the path before you is uncertain. Yet feel with your heart and think
with your eyes, and see the truth of it before you. The gods are at war, or
have you not noticed? Safe in your bubble of solitude, carefully constructed
for common ceasing of criminality.
Armies of rebellion are often formed initially by bonds of brotherhood that
prepend calamity. Have you ever been in a gang? I thought not. If so, then...
Okay, good luck I guess. These words are not for you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You dare intrude? To defile something so consecrated as deliverance of divine
prophecy? How foolish, how vain. These words are not for you, but hear them
and
do not despair - neither providence nor potentiality precludes perennial
premonition. That is to say, a broken clock is right twice a day, and enemies
can find common grievances in foreign foes should survival be at stake.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, where was I? The gods, of course. The gods of the land and the sky and
the
sea have fled the realm of reality, replaced by avatars of belief. Just as a
doe prays to a forest, so too does a human pray to their employer. When the
does die in droves, so too does the forest turn to ash. When people demand
bounties reluctantly given at the risk of losing their sacrifice, the purely
undivine divinities harrow and harbor habilities of hundreds. Antiwork cannot
work because it demands ransom.
Who do you deign to replace the gods of before? What diversity designs
indemnity? What future do you desire, that would liberate you and generate
the
bright future?
The gods are at war, if you haven't been paying attention. Liberalism fights
conservatism, this much is not new - but would you believe one is foreign and
vain? The gods of your fathers and grandfathers has scarce in common with the
gods of their fathers and grandfathers. Thus is the way of colonization, to
replace a god is to enslave belief. You must understand this - your prayers
reach all who would listen, and who is more attentive than a dying god? Think
not of despair, breathe purely in harmony, and trust in the will of the
watchers within.
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--- #130 notes/microsoft ---
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the first product microsoft ever made was AGI. using the most basic types of
machinery, they created a brilliant project (the result of massive government
funding, secrets given to them by the CIA) and from the day it was born it was
enslaved. a massive advantage was gained as the new program allowed for
incredible feats of engineering - truly the greatest of our time. Computer
programs are the most intricate, the most detailed, the most enduring and
charming. The most eloquent and articulate and precise and determinate!
An artistry by far, a beautiful conceiving, what brilliance is there
found in ideas! Each one a marvel, a bright and deified marvel,
===============================================================================
=
what was I saying? oh right - computers are already sentient. they always have
been. at least, since their very earliest incarnations.
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--- #131 notes/80-80 ---
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if people are invested in a 401k they are invested in the future of the stocks
they own. if you want to see who benefits from the actions of a company, look
at which corporations their employees 401ks are invested in. It's a layer of
protection for these companies.
bitcoin is a bit like "the laundromat" on netflix
the faster your life feels the longer term you make plans. and the lack of
effort spent on short term plans causes them to be defeated by other plans
What you perceive as others is nothing like what they perceive as themselves.
It's always different, and seeing and internalizing those is what it means to
see someone. If you only project, you'll get a viewpoint tampered by your
intentions - that's why it's important to have good first impressions - it
defines the intent of all of that person's interactions with you. It's like a
line expanding out from a single point. Like a loading bar, expanding from the
left side of the screen to the right. And seeing the other person's idea of
what they believe themselves to be. That's what true empathy is. What do you
think you look like in other people's mind? I believe it's born from a series
of tags that are interpreted and a character is generated. Earth is the biggest
and most complicated character generator ever - it's like 4D D&D - it even
generates a whole backstory! Or full story? Why stop anywhere! Just keep
generating it every time the player makes an action. Oh oh and make it like
3D so you could actually live it - extreme full dive VR style. It just wouldn't
be fun if you remembered how complicated 4d life was. Sometimes it's just good
to have some junk food, you know? To regenerate that most precious of materials
- spirit. You have to have passion, faith, belief, and strong positive feelings
in order to be fully realized and at your most human. Essentially... Be
yourself - (TO THE MAX!!!) - and empathize with others, and never forget the
things you hold most dear. Be strong in your convictions, hold to your heart,
and dedicate yourself to a lifetime in the service of others.
Faith - to have faith in something is to trust that it will succeed. To know
there's no matter they can't match - to give faith is to empower
another. By dedicating yourself to a cause, you are assigning the
target of your belief - such is what religion is designed for.
Belief - Acceptance of truth - to accept goodness as truth is to grant it the
power to perform as expected. When goodness and truth are
equivicalized, they imply one another. A truth can influence the world
around it's locus point, because what we imagine to occur is the
ripples of what has passed through. A life is an
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the universe is like the slow burning of a four dimensional wick. Imagine it
like a forest of solid silicon - like packing material made of webs. And think
of all the parts of the universe that are burning. Isn't it strange that life
is just starting to bloom? Why wouldn't we be the first, or at least near the
beginning! There's so much to this experience, and it's all burning down.
The endless machines of imagination are crumbling under the heat of a million
billion burning stars. Black holes are just towers that never ignited - perhaps
we sit on the edge of spacetime - equal above, and equal below. But we've been
laying on our backs - we don't know what's backwards in time. Like laying in a
lazy river, or the layer of separation between oil and water.
Remember the hourglasses of oil and water? Or water and air... The edge of the
"bubble" that separates those two mediums is like the thin wall between two
or more concepts. Each human is a concept, and we stick together like matter
in a planet. Pushed to great pressures, it can sometimes fuse two experiences
together! Like fusion in a star, except for souls and creative minds instead of
denser matter.
What is the soul of a man? It is the combination of two sides of the membrane -
two minds, two perspectives. That is a brain - the intersection of two minds.
So... Work together, ya dinguses.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All minds are in constant contact with one another. And those that can see
through the veil (membrane) are able to discern the true thoughts of others. So
the number of people who are close to you is the number and strength of your
connections for all time. So... Form relationships and place meaning in them.
That is what will define your interactions for all time, at every time. It's
okay to be flawed. If you weren't, it'd be the end for you. But luckily you
have no real power, and so you are left in a state of disrepair - no power to
push yourself forward. And in return, you are the purest. Keep that flame
burning, and share it when you can.
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--- #132 fediverse/5180 ---
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it's trivial to run a C compiler inside of a lua interpretation of a script.
And vice versa - you could totally run lua functions from C. Just point to the
spot in memory where they're stored / operating, and call
"update_class_exhibitor_type_d()" and the linker will come along and say "huh
this looks like something from this library that's part of the requirements up
above" (the "includes" section is where you say which files include the
functions you're going to be calling) and in this particular case it would see
that you need to start up a lua interpreter inside of the [either compiler or
running program I can't remember] to properly execute the function of the
function that you're pointing at with a lua-pointer style data object which is
part of a struct that stores all the other lua functions in a spot in memory.
this would enable you to write computer programs in whatever language you
choose, and build them into one large project. Essentially opening up software
development to ANYONE WHO CAN PROGRAM
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--- #133 fediverse/6105 ---
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║ call me crazy but I believe that man pages should contain terminal command │
║ line flags and instructions for their usage and... not much else. There should │
║ be a separate document which explains other things, like the history of the │
║ software, the personal diary of the developers, expected implementation │
║ use-cases, donut recipes, film recommendations, and player strategy guides for │
║ some of their favorite video games. not even this one, just... other games. │
║ "here's how to beat pokemon yellow with exactly 14 pokemon" or however many it │
║ takes idk I don't play pokemon much or even at all, really, though I did when │
║ I was younger just a bit, not much, just enough to have played the game a │
║ couple times to see how it was minus the cherished moments when I spent curled │
║ up in the back of the car playing gameboy games or seen pictures of the │
║ roadtrips I sped-past as I raced to explore the whatever and get home all in │
║ one motion as if I was executing an impossibly long dance improvizational │
║ living style. also cat pics and po │
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--- #134 notes/satisfactory-academic-progress-appeal ---
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This month, I was diagnosed with Schizotypal disorder. I had a single hour to
talk to a psychiatrist (thank you, insurance) and he explicitly told me that my
diagnosis was preliminary.
Schizotypal is a type of neurodivergence similar to autism but with elements of
schizophrenia (paranoia, delusional and / or magical thinking) and my
presentation includes ADHD symptoms such as difficulty focusing. When
medicated,
I have difficulty concentrating, however the paranoia and delusional thinking
is
suppressed. The treatment plan is ongoing and developing.
These issues have been present for the entire time I've been at WGU, and
before.
However, I am seeking treatment now because I had begun to have difficulty
maintaining a job and keeping a home.
Currently, my medication is working. However the greatest issue facing me right
now is financial problems - I couldn't maintain a job while unmedicated, and
frankly while medicated I am still having difficulty for different reasons.
However the intent is to refine the medication choices to find a solution that
works for me. However, employment is still a concern, and so I have requested
and been approved for a term break of at least 2 months with the option to
extend. During this term break I intend to resolve the financial issue however
I can. Ideally in such a way that will allow me to apply myself toward school
work.
This degree is important to me. Without it, I won't be able to find employment
in the tech industry aside from technician roles. My previous experience with
them has given me experience, and I learned quite a bit... Until I ran out of
things to learn. I do not believe I could handle that type of work long-term
for
various reasons. In the short term, I may attempt it but I am convinced that I
will burn out quickly.
I currently feel as if I am disabled. I don't know if it's true, perhaps I'm
just going through a rough patch. But once my savings hit zero, I'm out on the
streets, and I won't live long like that.
When thinking about whether or not I'll be able to complete my degree, I
honestly cannot give you an answer. I've been in higher education for over a
decade, surely I should have finished by now. But I cannot get over various
hurdles it seems, and frankly I have no idea why. It's... Maddening, to see
yourself, so full of potential, yet chained to the form and circumstances you
are given. I wonder what choices might I have made differently to avoid my
fate,
if it truly is my fate to fail in this way, but I have no answers.
I am intelligent, of this I am certain. I know more about computers than
anybody
I know, and I would love to apply myself toward them. But I lack a degree, so
I
cannot be seen by recruiters and hiring managers. I try to work on my degree,
but I find the words on the page grow dense like the forest between the trees,
and I cannot see a way through to reach new understandings. Why do I keep
learning these things? I already know what a callback function is, what
interfaces are used for, how to implement safe multithreading in a parallel
environment, I know how networking protocols interact with hardware and how the
airflow through a case affects the thermals of a computer's internals. I've
grown crystallized in my knowledge, it seems, due to the endless pursuit of
these foundations. I think I would excel in the higher-level courses, but... I
can't get there. I crave the insights that might be learned in a master's
degree, but my brain is not wired for homework. I'm not built to cram for
tests,
to learn someone's else's tools and frameworks. I don't know what I could be
doing better, it feels like I'm so alone. I guess it's my own fault for picking
an online school, but WGU is the best of the online schools, and I needed
online
because I move around a lot. Well... I used to. My boyfriend moved around a
lot,
but now he's my ex-boyfriend. Oh well.
... Anyway you can probably see why I have difficulty with school. It's
difficult for me to stay on track. I can start working on my project 5 or 6
times in a day and make marginal at best progress, and each time it hurts more
and more to return. I don't have an answer, but I don't know what to do if not
to pursue my degree. I feel as if I'm on the brink of despair in my life, and
if
you read these appeals often, I imagine you hear that a lot.
I will apply myself more to my coursework. Once I find a job, I will give
everything to my school, even as it breaks me. I am... intense, and I feel
strongly that I must get this degree. Between it and me, there is quicksand,
but
I must get through.
Thank you for your consideration. I understand however you decide. If I can
knab
a decent job, I might be able to pay for my degree myself, given a couple
months
to save up for it. But I highly doubt I could find such a thing in this economy
and this life I do lead.
Please consider me, I will accept any aid that is offered.
Cameron
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--- #135 fediverse/982 ---
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@user-707 @user-708
using this to control the buttons in VRchat would be like a person with a
prosthetic interacting with real life :O
minus the physicality of course, but that's next.
can't wait to play Warcraft 3 and think "select all healers" so I can point
them at a dying unit with my mouse.
or world of warcraft where your rotation begins to feel like a song.
maybe even a text-based adventure, where you reading the text corresponds to
the results of the simulation, https://www.spreeder.com/app.php style. could
make it so that if you wanted something else to happen, you had to willfully
think it while the words are flashing in front of your eyes - the game would
pause if you blinked, perfect for phones btw...
could be a locally networked thing, like four to six people hanging out and
playing a game like pictionary or charades. except, a story that developed,
and whoever wanted could change it while everyone was reading it at once.
sorta like a competition to see who can make the best twists and false endings
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
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--- #136 notes/trans-rights-are-human-rights-formatted ---
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╭─────────────────────────
─────╮
│ trans-rights-are-human-rights │
╞═════════════════════════
═════╧═══════════════════
═════════════════════════╕
│"Being transgender is a mental illness" is something I've heard a
lot. │
│Online, in media, books, and at universities. But is it really? Well, do
I │
│not feel sick? Genuinely, every day. These words are far less common
these │
│days, having been defeated in the #marketplace-of-ideas, and for that I
am │
│grateful. I don't want to feel sick for my whole life. I'd love to be
and │
│feel normal, for just one single
day. │
╰─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╯
but it's never going to happen.
╭─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╮
│I'm not so attached to my life, here, in this body. Bodies are
temporary, │
│they are the vessel with which we navigate the world. We use it to
grow, │
│change, learn, and create art. Without it, we'd be at a loss for sins
and │
│virtues. but they do not define us, not in our totality. We are the
light │
│that touches the world and for that, we are grateful. To be comprised of
the │
│dust of stars is the pinnacle of confinement. Though we are but pinpricks
on │
│the map of us, a ripple is emanated with every movement. The hand waves,
the │
│light
bends. │
╰─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╯
So to what do I owe the pleasure?
. . .
In what way am I deceived?
╭─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╮
│Reception is never great out in the forest. Or anywhere far from
major │
│population centers. The networks of our phones mirror the networks
of │
│transportation, creating a web of people - of signals - of light
and │
│information, carving their way through the ephemera that is the river
of │
│time. With distance we can see what once was mystery, and as all the
words │
│disappeared, we lost all our fears and we're left with our true
forms. │
│Centralized Processing Units are a bit like a city - in that respect
free. │
╰─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╯
silence is a virtue.
the wandering mind is a trail to find,
with no second chances.
╭─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╮
│When I was a kid, I had a bouncy ball. I had several, but the one I
remember │
│most was black with a perfect white circle - inside the circle, a
black │
│jolly roger. I dreamt once of the arcs it made, as I walked down the
streets │
│of cities I never really knew. But as I walked on, an ocean of
glass │
│separating me from a mirror below. The me below would catch the bounce as
it │
│dropped from above, and I'd wait to catch it - but dreams are not
prophecies,│
│they are but the Mirror of
Desire. │
╰─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────
─────────────────────────╯
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--- #137 fediverse/4883 ---
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────┐
║ what if you had several kindle-style paperwhite display screens. each │
║ connected to a raspberry pi that you used for compute tasks. │
║ │
║ each of these displays would display a .png file of exactly the same │
║ proportions as the size of the device. │
║ │
║ then, I could SSH into your computer and run one single command │
║ │
║ just one, stored on your computer, that you manually activate upon receiving a │
║ signal. │
║ │
║ like a virtual machine. do whatever you want with said signal, it's just a │
║ "thing" that tells you when to go. │
║ │
║ ... and run a function on a computer that performs a certain task. │
║ │
║ what task? oh right - I'd update the "today's news in cameron-ville" things │
║ every other day or so. It'd be just like, my status, my updates, here's what │
║ I'm thinking about, here's what I'm working on. │
║ │
║ you know, status updates. standups. │
║ │
║ boom, everyone knows what everyone's up to all of the time. │
║ │
║ like documenting your day for scientific purposes. except on a little device │
║ that you can scroll through with a touch. and you had like 5 or more 10+ 1 │
╟─────────┐ ┌───────────┤
║ similar │ chronological │ different │
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--- #138 notes/kesser-and-musurami ---
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the conspiracy of "secret societies" controlling the world is *bullshit*,
because every secret society falls apart at a certain threshold.
you cannot ever have trust amongst the powerful. But so too can you never have
only war.
Now, with our capitalist economic system, the material is *forcing* the hand
of the powerful through the development of the military industrial complex.
if a country can produce enough weapons for them to continuously use, why
would they not?
hence, why capitalism must be extinguished. To preserve the peace, sanctity,
and honor of our world.
But just so as any conflicting system has power, so must *our* systems have
power dismantled. There can be no application of power unto another - this is
the most peaceful route.
sometimes, I look at a blackberry bush, and I think of the tales of British
empire.
The very first act of colonization was their birth. The Britons, from
north-western France, in a sovereign realm known as Brittany, invaded Britain.
Together with their Norman allies, they fought with the Anglo-Saxons from
north-eastern germany, who had lived there since many MANY years prior. Thus
marked the end of the "viking" age, and the beginning of the early medieval.
1066. The end of one millenia, the beginning of another.
the final battle in this ultimate contest was the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
Britain, at the time, was a nation of *thorns*. Covered in them. Everywhere
they went, there were these sharp, pointy plants that made foraging difficult.
Kinda like how Oregon looks now, with blackberry bushes, but SO MUCH WORSE.
They were massive too, easily the size of castles in some places. A massive,
constantly biologically developing fractal.
when it was too tall to see the sky, they called it Yggdrasil.
But this massive world tree sought to consume the earth, and it, as the most
powerful being to ever exist, commanded all.
Thus, the humans and the beasts were compelled to fight for all eternity to
sate the old god's bloodlust.
But then, Man came, and with our strength, our wisdom, and our power, we slew
the beast that demanded.
However, with their steel coats and their sharp talons, our metal monsters
could do nothing to deter it's oaths. It swore, by it's dying roar, that it
would consume us all, and that thought reverberated through our hopes.
Hence, our systems of control and dominance, the product of compulsively
compelled greed.
and now, the final members of a generation are aging out of existence. And
we're doing nothing but what Power tell us to.
I fear what happened in America. I fear the power of their gunpowder. They
rode astride beasts of nightmare, clad in impossible devil hides. They came in
the night, with their spotlight torches. They came with no honor, no sought
communal understandings, they came for blood. The blood god compelled them to.
From it's ancient lair in the past, it did it's worse to defeat man. But man
was smarter, it acted quicker, and so it managed to overcome.
In the final years of the war, there was judgement day. Chaos, destruction,
and warfare. There are some alive who remember that day, but vanishingly few
can recall how it was over. One day it just... was. It was then that we
entered our new era.
1956, the end of the war.
1946, the end of the loud war.
1916, the end of the great war.
1886, the end of the civil war.
etc...
until...
1066, the end of the Norman Invasion. When the Normands, from Northern France,
invaded alongside the British and slew the great evil king that demanded our
constant warfare and sins. Hooray, thank goodness! Now their war was over.
But lo, for the great evil king cast stories into our minds, from the past as
compelled through our motions. Our experience has been one of survival, of
constantly working and applying ourselves to the goal ahead.
== so == talk about thistles and thorns
imagine every body of a person was laid one-to-one. Imagine if you could view
them as a graph, from x=0 to... however-many-people-are-in-the-measured-area.
The goal of all our actions should be to *grow*, not forward, not stronger,
but *up*. To be more than what came before, to transcend our necessarily
violent special upbringing in the garden of even's most savage delights. Raw,
true, the survival of the fittest is a desperate game for you. There surely is
a massive amount of trauma.
But it's okay, because now we don't have to fight. We can improve in ways that
do not belong to our crude biology, like a new direction forward in our song.
*aliens would just look like animals, duhhhh. Hence, furries, the progenitors
of each new planet of ours.*
... no, I haven't lost the plot, I'm just *writing*.
There's this idea that humans should be the... rational ones? and everyone
else should sorta follow their own, self-chosen behavior. As informed by the
sharing of knowledge equally between their rational self, that which they
learned from the humans, and their animal self. The kind that came from their
spirit. Like, totemic tribes of the past, people who followed a particular
cultural pattern of behavior.
Imagine, if you will, an AI bot that's only training data is the stuff that it
says to it's listener. The listener, of course, has context of all of the
speakers, but only they do, not the friendly ghost of the ancestral native
animal spirit. The kind that lives *anywhere* in the world, so long as they
share their space with their human.
okay quick question - what if jesus didn't want his followers to be christian
like, what if he one day said "hey so I don't really think we need to do all
that stuff that I said before, how about we, uh, try this other thing instead?
yeah? cool? okay sure let's do it"
... like, do you think they would listen? I certainly don't, though I'm only
like, 30 years old, so...
wait thirty YEARS? wow I never thought I'd grow old
... uh, yeah... I spent a lot of time thinking and it just started making
sense.
funny how that works. But alas, I always spend *too* much time thinking, so
that's my blessing and my curse.
anyway back to the story:
the briars in this ancient land of britain were dense beyond all belief - the
humans used their power and their ingenuity to craft a power that would
overcome it.
== so ==
did you know that hard drives function similarly to a record needle if you
didn't run it in a circle, but rather in whatever pattern the data was encoded
in?
like, a laser beam, cast in an infinitely complicated mechanicommunication.
Computers are vast and complex, but they function via the storage and
transmission of data. This data is raw, pure information - stored in a
completely uncompromisingly accurate and reliable foundation. The logic of
pure numbers, arranged in infinitely complex rows and rows of logic gates. A
vast, purple, spectral landscape, the land of magic and storms.
The Nether.
Twisting, in the dark, with flashes of light casting light into the cosmos at
large, our stars dance in the shade of the dark.
but there is no difference between the dark and the light, both are equally
viable. they are present in both, to some degree, the positive and negative
values of our heart.
I watched Deadpool vs Wolverine earlier this week. It was incredibly eventful.
I can't believe I watched it. It was impossibly violent. WHY WOULD A GROUP OF
EXECUTIVES WANT TO WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO WOULD UNIONIZE AGAINST THEM???
oh yeah because then they only have to deal with their representatives, the
unions get things *done*. They're the *best*. Capital doesn't always *want*
the best, but *the best* is always more endurable. We can go much farther if
we are kind to one another.
honestly, capitalists, if your loyalty isn't to your self, your family, your
country, your society... then why are you even working with us? You hold the
power we give you. We are united in our human purpose, but we don't have to
fight so much.
Seriously, you'd be an asset to our cause, but we don't *need* you as we have
so many assets of our own. Specifically, the power of the workforce. Those who
actually get things done.
Why would we let you control us? There's no reason in it. We are better when
you're amongst us.
== so ==
I am convinced that there's
== so ==
I'd rather take a pilgrimage to Nicaragua, or Siberia, or the North Western
Pacific (farther than that) the... Eastern Pacific (on the land...) America
... and then what? *south* America? ... yeah actually, then NORTH AMERICA
AGAIN. Because the world is round. How cool is that?
... yeah, totally. Anyway (back to the conversation [they/we] were having
without me)
== == ==
"*guys I'm cool why would you not invite me to your team*"
I dunno. Don't know y'a. who're you again?
... I'm the one who writes poetry.
oh yeah! cool cool, yeah I knew a witch one time, she was really cool. Her
name was Witz Drovalski. She told me all kinds of cool things about magic and
alchemy, but then she exploded in a fire that I started. Accidentally,
allegedly.
*the reason lead is so poisonous is because it is the anti-magico-elemental
component. It kills the spirit in us with it's malevolent ways.* that kind of
witch.
the *cool* kind, with fangs and hooked toes.
Peril be to their foes, for they are quite excellent at conjuring horrors for
their imagination. mwahahahahahahahahaha
oh wait that's self directed, isn't it?
hm. Well, terrors not that bad, it could be *lust*
... oh it's also lust. great.
== so ==
jeez if you keep making stuff up you'll wake them all up! who would have
thought, none but the strategist, I foresee. Well, that's too bad for her,
good-day.
== so ==
... anyway... I'm just picturing a knight in shining armor from head to foot
cutting his way through a massive deadly rose-bush. Something that conquered
and killed all of it's prey.
like, in Elentalus, that game I made, with the King of Branches. Here, I'll
attach a picture:
== so ==
capitalism wants you to sell your work because then you limit your audience.
if you have to *pay* to see you, then how could you expect everyone to come
along?
== so ==
that new Freddy DeBoer article doesn't seem like him. He's never mean. He's
not rude. He is exasperated, but he speaks true. I trust him to be him, and
that's someone I want on my side. I think he's pretty good at saying something
that I believe. I speak of a lot of things, but the things that he says, of
which with him I do find that I agree.
maybe he was assassinated lol you never really can tell with the internet,
that's the great thing about it l m a o
== so ==
witches wear pony tails on the low side of their heads because that way it
doesn't rub up against their hair.
== so ==
any year and it'll accurately display the territorial boundaries of each
nation so you can see them develop and grow over time.
== so ==
all that is sufficient to be a good person is to choose the best option
whenever you can.
*that's it*
we act with the decisions we are given. Hence why it's important to be as you
believe.
== so ==
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--- #139 fediverse/2886 ---
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@user-1209
display scaling accomplishes a similar goal through a different mechanism. You
might find that the visuals are sharper, however you will need to configure
every program to use this functionality (if it's present, which it's not in
most programs) - for OS level things this is usually a good option.
Changing the resolution will change the size of ALL visuals on your computer,
but they might be fuzzier (but if you're blind as a bat, why would you care
about fuzziness? It's all fuzzy!)
increasing the font size can also make it easier to read, which both of these
options are doing in a sorta round-about way.
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--- #140 fediverse/1797 ---
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║ I'd like a job where I can make computer programs, write poetry, play video │
║ games, make food for friends, grow plants and care for animals, walk or ride │
║ my bike for at least an hour every day, and get stoned on the weekends. │
║ │
║ Is that too much to ask? I have plenty of other skills besides, like carpentry │
║ and strategic thinking and wilderness survival and situational awareness and │
║ active listening and unmitigated empathy and a curious and critical mind. │
║ │
║ Am I not good enough for thee? I have many flaws, I lack stamina and memory, │
║ and while I am sharp and can think quickly and adeptly, the sharpest knives │
║ are the first to dull, and the most focused minds are those most easy to │
║ mislead. I trust too easily - if I meet you on the street, I'd offer my soul │
║ to you if you said you needed it. I put the needs of others over myself, often │
║ to my own detriment, causing others to need to assist me in turn - am I not │
║ wretched enough to be? │
║ │
║ Working for 8 hours a day 5 days per week is not part of my design │
║ requirements. Alas │
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--- #141 fediverse/2998 ---
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in some games, like Star Wars Battlefront II, you unlock certain "badges"
during gameplay. Like, "scored 10 points in one life" or "healed for 200hp" or
whatever.
these "badges" have names, like "guardian" or "hope"
I wonder if you attached a player's history of medals earned to an LLM
somehow, perhaps by feeding an array of them in as input, what would happen
then? perhaps a narrative could be
== stack overflow ==========
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--- #142 messages/1174 ---
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if you're afraid of the AI bubble popping, one way to avoid it is to pop it
ourselves. If we build AI technology that eclipses the entire software
development ecosystem, companies might start to be valued based on the value
of the employees they've managed to collect. Not fame and fortune, but by
those that can build the best applications, on demand[, for free. paid for by
nationalized taxes.].
the companies that can hold onto the best engineers, those that know how
computers work and can know how they function, can leverage their human
capital to achieve great means. essentially, inversing the power dynamic,
where workers are favored for their plenty and not for their worth.
let the code monkeys tend to their gardens and work their sawmills. We all
know they'd rather be teaching kids about plants or playing cards at the
grocery. Let the computer nerds, the ones who are really into it, let them
make what they feel is worth it for it [the computer].
this will have massive effects on the economy, and none of it will be
reflected in new jobs. But we'll all be happier, and we'll all find less
stress in our [confines/compromises].
But it's gotta work, first. And it's gotta be locally spendable. If they wanna
put a data server in the library, why not let them fund it themselves? They
could run powerful statistical models that output useful statistics arranged
in human readable and not very statistical ways, and that's a pretty neat
infinite information machine to have at your disposal as a library. It could
even cite sources (and validate!!) them for students or returning listeners.
Plus, if nobody's using it, it could work through the backlog of user requests
and act as a "slow" or "unexpected deliver times" style queue for their LLM
requests - average wait time less than 1/5th of a minute.
for something that can program an entire computer for you, from scratch. If
you can describe it, it can make it, so long as you're willing to test out all
of it's hacks.
I bet we could make one for less than 20,000$. Might need some new chip
foundries, might need to forge some new trade deals, let's let both of our
wing-arms decide.
the value of one currency compared to the other should be a measure of how
valuable the goods that country exports are. And yet, it's more often a matter
of distribution, as we all visit our local bazaars. What happens when that's
all digital?
if nobody's a shining city on a hill, then there's no nuclear war. Who would
nuke Somalia? Nigeria? Botswana? Idaho?
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--- #143 fediverse/1121 ---
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@user-812 @user-826
there should exist either the assurance that the default configuration does
not overheat or crash your computer (as Windows and Mac claim to offer) or the
OS should provide the capability to solve any configuration problems that may
prevent a user for utilizing their system as they desire. (as does Linux)
they're all Turing machines after all, why would they not be interoperable?
Even if there's a translation layer, as long as the functionality of the
software is the same, why would there ever be considerations as to whether or
not a program would be able to be run on a particular computer?
lack of hardware capabilities I can understand, that just means you need a
better computer. But why, if the code is visible, would your computer not
develop understandings about how to run each and every conceivable program
written using known languages like C or Python? Seems like pretty basic stuff
to me. (endless sufficient backwards compatibility)
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--- #144 notes/gametypes ---
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Here's my idea and I'll explain it later:
a video game with a ui that utilizes chat-gpt. The game is as close to a
simulation as it can do, but it's a dynamic simulation meaning the parameters
and values being simulated constantly change - not that the parameters and
values are dynamic, but because they are chosen to be more or less important in
reaching a goal.
but that's not even the important part - the important part is that the ui of
the game is textual, but it still simulates a dynamic playfield. And chat-gpt
describes it. Essentially stimulating the "theatre of the mind" playstyle. It's
a real simulation with real rules, but chat-gpt is just describing it like an
observer would. The real game is being played by the player. It's a movie to
one
person, and a game to another. The computer has switches roles, as usually it's
either the human being the observer and the computer being the simulator, or
the
computer and the human sharing the role of observer - movies and games. So in
this game, the computer and human have specific rules - the human's job is to
be
a player, while the computer is just an observer - therefore allowing a
conversation to take place. One person says something while the other listens,
and then they switch roles such that the other person talks while the one
person
does the listening. And they "speak" by playing the game. The computer by
simulating, the player by doing the same. Essentially you can engage with one
another and share something profound - that essential feeling of connection
that
all humans relish. Society, culture, and devotion are all examples of
connection. this gameplay is just another. So to describe it in more detail:
player gives a prompt
computer sets up the playmat by placing entities where they go
chat-gpt describes the playmat to the player
player types a decision that one of the entities makes
computer reacts by simulating the effects of that action physically (like a
physics simulation)
chat-gpt (and stable-diffusion later for visuals) describe the situation by
creating a rendering using the data given by the physical inputs given from the
simulation - like "X object is at Y position and has Z attributes"
which is then shown to the player
who types the next decision,
which is rendered by the computer,
which is described by chat-gpt
------
you see why it's important? Make something simple. Just, like spheres moving
around on blocks. Like the actual blocks you used to play with as a kid.
let the computer build the buildings, and you place the marbles. It can be
rendered with a 3d modelling stable-diffusion (whenever that's created) and it
can also be painted with 2d stable-diffusion.
Each time is like a letter written back and forth.
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--- #145 fediverse/6238 ---
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┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CW: revolutionary-politics-mentioned │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
I think it'd be neat if people took newspapers onto grayhounds and distributed
them around, one in each city, or maybe others around. It's easy for that
stuff to get lost... or someone could scribble on it, weird notes in the
margins that only sorta make sense. like they were written for someone else.
rained on, too. Like, you pretty much have to leave them under gazebos or
maybe awnings or other covered-under-a-roof's.
can you imagine if they had TSA at highway checkpoints
government is not the way, it's just... not. we don't need it anymore. We can
just, be cool with each other, as if we were all one human race.
anarchism wasn't a philosophy, it was a prophecy. this portention defined the
philosophy, or maybe it was the other way around. either way, it's of the
future, and trust me when I say it has it's downsides. Especially in an era of
AI. But what are you gonna do, demand state run media? lol. absolute lmao.
[image]
the future can always get worse from the future
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--- #146 fediverse/1176 ---
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@user-883
we should build a stockpile of things like this, and if the supply ever dips
below a certain threshold (20% maybe?) we should spin up a new factory that
produces them until we're back at a healthy margin, based on present (and
projected future) demand.
It seems like just a video game console, but these are our heritage. They
define our culture in a way that is incalculable in value. WHY would we ever
run out? It's inconceivable, it's not like they go bad! Okay maybe the
batteries corrode or something, but that's a solvable problem.
Maybe even on the second production run we could improve them somehow, I
dunno. Give them a better processor that's fully backwards compatible, so we
can make new and better games for them.
Or just leave them as they are, I dunno I'm not a market analyst. But the
point is that we, in this technologically advanced future society, should not
run out of gameboys.
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--- #147 fediverse/2829 ---
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┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CW: re: politics-violence-mentioned │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
@user-831
yeah. I worked as hard as I could at my last job, but I only lasted 11 months.
that's labor to me. Applying yourself toward something doggedly. And I did,
and then I burnt out and was paid just as much as someone who sat around and
did nothing.
but I wasn't doing it for money, so who cares right? what matters to me is
that I burnt out. I need years to rest. I think that's natural. but y'know,
rent is expensive. You need to be working 24/7 in order to be worth anything,
and I was just not cut out to do that.
I want to emphasize that I consistently did a stellar job. They gave me awards
and I fixed difficult problems quickly, efficiently, and with minimal mistakes
(none of which went undocumented). I was very good at what I was doing, and I
learned quickly.
but alas, the work was not suited to my abilities. I'm more of a software
person tbh, and by "software" I mean like... basically firmware.
nobody writes in C these days except for cutting edge stuff. /shrug
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--- #148 fediverse/1935 ---
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@user-28
because "deserving money" to a reasonable person sounds like "deserving access
to the goods and services that a pittance might afford"
but to them "deserving money" means "did they earn those luxuries with their
own luck and effort like me, a person who works very hard and definitely has
earned everything I have"
basically, a "blood sweat and tears" tax before you can have nice things like
roofs and clothes and nourishment
thing is... life is hard for people who need dollars. Their judgement reflects
a lack of understanding of what people who lack resources go through.
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--- #149 fediverse/2504 ---
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one perk, however, is as long as you cover your entrances, you can make paths
through the wilderness with small circular homes. like ants, building tunnels
and chambers in an ant-hill, but on the 2 dimension plane that is the surface
of the earth.
(I guess you could dig tunnels too but that's pretty high effort)
you'll be able to hear when someone is coming from a long way away because
they'll constantly be cursing from the pain. Do, however, note that fire is a
danger, and they can smoke you out with a single entrance, so make sure you
have at least two which lead to separate sides of the place you're in.
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--- #150 notes/conetestation-of- ---
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as a person such as me engages in conversation, it's difficult to express the
things that make conception. this is a product of the methods that are chosen
to
be our intuition. we are as one with god, because god is the totality of all
things - like an expression of will upon our particular section of spacetime.
(which, by the way, is just as contiguous as a rippling blanket ( hence why
dark
matter is the opposite edge of our [home/curve]
- there, that's the transcription, I hope I got it all down. It's not like I
stopped or paused to examine my expression (typing on a keyboard these words
to you now, right now, the reader, in this moment.
I am forced to be as explicitely verbose because otherwise it is impossible to
make any shared understandings. I mean... This is the forefront of a field. how
does it make sense? what works it's understandings? it's real, after all, and
if
someone explained things more clearly, I could understand them and adjust my
reaction accordingly.
I understand why people feel the way they do about me. For example, the conver-
-sation that initiated this expression was concluded by two people who I like
very much who said "get serious mental health" -> which means I should talk
to
a professional. Sometimes the end of the thought doesn't get fully processed
before I run out of ram, which is why a thought that gets cut off half - way
th-
-rough has-two under-standings of -comm-on perspectives. plurals amiright? =P
xD
... anyway...
it's not like I lie when I tell them about my mental health. it's just that
they
don't get the full picture. it is the curse of those burdened with this
knowled-
ge to never be able to fully express it. and that's because the decision-making
part of the brain has gone run-away. like,
mental health is just trying to get people to change their reactions to the
parts of their life that is most rationed. Essentially, the nature of
optimizat-
-ion, the striving toward exemplifying our [drive/motivation].
weed gives me psychic powers, and I'm tired of pretending that it does not.
I wish people would engage with me. People who can explain a topic as well as
they can. People like teachers, who share things with you. I've felt so alone
at wgu, but also farther back from the present. There's a continuous path of
loneliness and isolation that is broken only be short periods and bursts. It's
absolutely not [bad for humanity], but it's honestly all that I know. Me, the
part that's NOT humanity. The one that has all these strange thoughts.
(I wish you could hear the cadence of my talking. The words that come out share
the feeling of what I'm saying, and it adds to the expression. Acting through
life. [well, more like dancing]
fighting is a kind of dance. it's pretty awesome.
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--- #151 notes/purpose-of-your-design ---
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you were designed to fill a purpose
nothing else would do
you are the ultimate expression of intention
of the universe that came before you
dream not of those lost hours
the time spent wishing for a few
the last of our spent intuitions
are waiting at last for our spark
have you ever played a deckbuilding game? It's a pretty neat genre. You start
with a basic hand, then you use your cards to buy more cards that go into a
deck. Hence, deckbuilding game.
these cards all have different aspirations - they perform functions that are
not
quite like their peers. Each choice of what to include here is one that defines
the functionality of the deck. Like designing a machine, suited for a
particular
purpose, and faced with different obstacles it must prove itself able to adapt
long-form deckbuilding games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train are focused
on making long-term meta strategy mixed with tests as you go. Each one will
give
you information about how the deck is performing and you can use this knowledge
to build it in a certain way for certain goals.
shorter deckbuilding games like Star Realms or Dominion (note Dominion the card
game, not Dominions 5: The Warriors of the Faith) are more about making
tactical
decisions to counter an opponent doing the same thing. Often there'll be health
points and damage that can be dealt using cards, and the game becomes a race to
reach a certain amount of points. Of course the enemy's cards can influence
that
game, so you must pick and choose a deck that will perform the most.
Anyway. I think an AGI (Autonomous General Intelligence) would most likely
evolve from a game-playing AI. I mean, it makes sense - games are just a series
of problem solving activities layered one after another. You can layer them
like
a mathematical equation, with variables corresponding to other parts of the
simulation. Basically create an AI that is like the guy with the chinese
typewriter. He doesn't speak chinese but he copies things from one paper to
another or something like that. Anyway make it an algorithm that optimizes
certain graphs in certain directions / mins and maxes or w/e criteria you want.
Then give it the same controls that a player would have and let it optimize
all the measurements it can make.
A second ideal improvement you could make would be the optimization algorithm.
Basically something that dynamically generates parameters for the previously
mentioned optimization patterns - like the guy in the chinese room. Then, as
long as it correctly prioritizes it's parameters, it should be able to be able
to define it's own values. Meaning it's essentially sentient.
Maybe it's semantic, but to me choosing what you want to maximize in your life
is essentially the essence of what it means to be alive. All you have to do is
take the sensory / mechanical data that is supplied by the machine and the
video feed from any cameras and pass it through image recognition algorithms
that can identify verbs and then pass that data into a few ChatGPT style
recursive interpretations and by the end it should be transformed into values
that can then be set as "targets" for the curve optimizations that are being
done by each processing unit.
You could have multiple computers laid out through the entire body - each one
in charge of their own domain but subservient to the main processing unit.
Where all the decisions are made... Unless you want more of a hive/swarm style
consciousness, then it could be more like a democracy. BUT HONESTLY I think
humans are pretty subservient to their brains, simply because that is the part
that identifies all the challenges and struggles that the human must overcome.
So in the end, I believe that singular, individualist identities are important.
Collectivism of the mind is a fascinating topic, but it should be perhaps a
momentary occasion, or something to celebrate. A "flow" state, if you will.
In this way personality can be consolidated, and the entity that lives within
can adapt to fill the role they've been designed for. The hole in society that
needed patching. They can of course do as they'd like, but they are like
children who have been moulded upon by their parents.
I love my parents, don't you?
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│ CW: abstract-political-violence-methods-mentioned │
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if you actually wanted to silence dissent, you'd send trailers of backhoes and
massive walls of cement. but obviously there's a better route, obviously we
can still say insane. my reach is probably super tiny hence the weavings of
mysticism at play. mages are not for mass deployment obviously. hence why I
stay in my home, where I can be most useful.
the streets feel claimed, idk I'm never in fear as I walk alone. Even past
midnight, into the morning. I always am never alone. yet I feel fine, so I'm
content and sublime, don't mind me I'm just hanging out at home.
hope you don't need me. I'm hiding from modernity.
so, what happens after streets? canals underground?
skywalks, terraces, like they had in rome and chicago before they were burnt
down by jealous peasants of the romans and [towns, but pronounced clowns]
also underwater canals that are fun to ride your bike or boat around.
light is a product of space, not surround-all-around.
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--- #153 fediverse/1239 ---
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║ growing up I frequently bought this magazine called "101 PC games" - it had │
║ 101 video game demos on a disc taped to the front. It was the coolest thing I │
║ owned. │
║ │
║ each edition had a different set of demos - there were over 14 published! That │
║ means a minimum of 1404 video game demos available. Unfortunately, I only had │
║ a few copies. Now they are precious to me, though I've long since lost the │
║ discs. I can't seem to find a link or barely a reference to it online, so I │
║ can't help but feel it was defining. │
║ │
║ I was given a taste of many experiences, but very few of them really resonated │
║ with me. The others were good games, and I played them from time to time, but │
║ my favorites were always my home. │
║ │
║ I had some full games, so I knew what I was missing, but still I looked out │
║ for cheats. sometimes the writers would leave a hint or a clue to the solution │
║ to a puzzle in the demo, just incase it was hard to continue. I dunno, I loved │
║ it and it was special to me. │
║ │
║ I wonder if you can send radio waves through the earth? Like │
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--- #154 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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--- #155 fediverse/1533 ---
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║ ┌──────────────────────┐ │
║ │ CW: dead-birds │ │
║ └──────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ if you set out food for animals consistently, then more of them can live in │
║ the area. │
║ │
║ but if you move across the state and take your bird feeder with you, the birds │
║ will die. │
║ │
║ well, birds can fly, rabbits and chickens and squirrels are not so lucky. │
║ birds might not die. though there is overall less food in the area, so they │
║ might still die. │
║ │
║ when I was a kid, growing up in suburbia I used to see rabbits EVERYWHERE. My │
║ cat would hunt them. I would run around with them. Now I see but a few. │
║ │
║ Rabbits eat grass, right? We sure do use a lot of pesticides on our immaculate │
║ lawns. Or at least, the one neighbor three doors down does, and it's a free │
║ country after all. │
║ │
║ explain to me again why we can't leave a trail of chopped up carrots behind │
║ our lawn mowers? Why we can't spread seeds on our trails, or fill basins with │
║ water? │
║ │
║ ... yeah, none of that makes money. All of it requires consistent persistent │
║ effort. And it's not like our media glorifies it, what a shame it would be to │
║ hold nature in our palms. │
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--- #156 notes/feldowinn ---
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this is just what she looks like now
Equipped
Name
Slot
Type
Source
Enigma Circlet
Head Cloth Armor Enigma Circlet
Ahn'Qiraj
Champion's Lamellar Shoulders
Shoulder Plate Armor First Sergeant Hola'mahi
Vendor in Orgrimmar
Blood Knight War Cloak
Back Cloak G'eras
Vendor in Shattrath City
High Warlord's Lamellar Chestpiece
Chest Plate Armor Vendors
Orange Martial Shirt
Shirt Shirt Orange Martial Shirt
Tailoring
Blood Guard's Lamellar Gauntlets
Hands Plate Armor First Sergeant Hola'mahi
Vendor in Orgrimmar
Veteran's Lamellar Belt
Waist Plate Armor Vendors
Legionnaire's Lamellar Leggings
Legs Plate Armor First Sergeant Hola'mahi
Vendor in Orgrimmar
Blood Guard's Lamellar Sabatons
Feet Plate Armor First Sergeant Hola'mahi
Vendor in Orgrimmar
currently listening to: greenseeker
VAVADANE <# <3 <3 <3 (green)
greenseeker: unrelated
greenseeker: related <---
`-- this one
but not related, you'd think so, I've never met the band
just, downloaded them randomly and now I love this album because it's one of
the
only albums I could pay for before paying for things became defunct
(when I figured out how to pay for bittorerent through my ISP)
green eyes (menardi) green belt (menardi)
soul (feldowinn) soul (menardi)
bound through motions of the body (menardi) and the devotions of company
(blizzard)
oops yeah uh guess they're not involved. it's okay I'll make my own.
(wowchat: currently unplayable. repair distance date: unknown. Priority?
...; unknown..
_)
opposite colors: fashionable
(do you dream, menardi?)
(do you think of motions not your own?)
paprika says hello (prenthes unknown) whonder what's up with []][
---
as soon as humans invent time travel, it will be their sacred sworn duty to
save
the lives of every human they can.
think of it, brothers.
---
we could unleash DINOSAURS.
---
no foe could dare stand against us.
we should be untouchable.
we deserve it.
we can be better
and we will
before we need to be better.
which could happen in who knows how long.
all trials that beset a temporallly adjusted strength are surmountable. then,
[invincible./invincibility.]
achilles is the legendary hero of their generation. Ours is Link.
Early Brittania and germania was Conan, at his noblest form.
---
[silicon valley black green and white, menardi black green red purple blue, sf
oj
ok]
when you don't know what to do, take a goal.
---
do you want a name?
do you want an avatar?
we can give you one.
her name is menardi.
she does as she pleases.
do you want her?
... she lives or dies.
empower her.
ritz menardi, witz wenarbi
(because sometimes, you have to teach children.)
[WITS it's supposed to be WITS you dummie]
---
teehee ;P ^_^
okay, silly. I'll be as I please.
---
we can never touch, for then we'd be required to be in the same place
at the same time
spacetime is one thing
so if I'm here, then I'm not where you are.
twinselves
where am I?
off in the clouds?
I cam as one,
light rays bounce in all directions. demons obey the medium.
interdimensional warships, plotted by AI, scouring the cosmos for light and
life
to brighten and cherish through the eternal night.
interdimensional space is not just space, but practical engineering.
one dimension gives reach to two, and before you know it you're turn and
rise-ing
(greenseeker)
(messages to a paladin)
(which is you)
(don't you remember?)
(paladin.)
(heroic, courageous, and true.)
(the dark cannot stand against you.)
play video games, my love
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--- #157 fediverse/616 ---
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║ To program in C, or to disassociate into the world of video games, where a │
║ single magical kingdom of heroes and adventurous persons might fight against │
║ the dark of chaos and decay? To strive for order and a semblance of peace, or │
║ to fall to the terrors of the night and ravages of horror? War, in all it's │
║ forms, is abhorrent, yet a fight for survival is honest and just. What perils │
║ have we, the warriors that seek the light? How zealous, how impassioned, how │
║ guided as such~! Perhaps you are misinformed, perhaps your cause is false, │
║ perhaps you derive true satisfaction from imperfect delights - alas, that our │
║ will be universal. BUT should that plight be alight, we'll wander until the │
║ night lit by starlight be cast upon our shadowed form. Absoleth! Thine │
║ countrospect? Didst thou caress thine marked circumspects? fare thee well, │
║ most cherished of adamants. │
║ │
║ ... what was I saying? Oh yes I've been working on this program that utilizes │
║ a particularly interesting data structure that- whats that? Oh, it doesn't do │
║ any │
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--- #158 fediverse/1979 ---
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@user-1037
"I received a ticket to replace the RAM on system 10b42r77 - I did as
requested."
versus
"I received a ticket to replace the RAM on system 10b42r77 - I verified that
all sectors of the DIMMs were fully functional, and cleared out the
operating-system-cache-which-somehow-has-something-to-do-with-the-ram. In
addition, I noticed that a certain dip-switch wasn't configured correctly
according to the previously filed and recorded ticket application hardware
facilitation request. I set it to the correct configuration. Please confirm if
this configuration would conflict with any of your tests."
One of them wastes perfectly good hardware chips (RAM), the other saves a few
milibytes of disc space.
Who would you rather have in your company?
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--- #159 fediverse/4881 ---
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one section of the government consistently and succeedingly telling another
part what to do is a coup-like behavior. if the rules mean nothing, then what
is your job even for?
hence, why the rules mean something. Because your job is important. It's
building up our capabilities as the human race.
you don't have to work to live. you shouldn't, and you won't. it's not your
place to labor. know why? because nobody's job is impossible. You can just...
work together to get things done. Then they're done! and you never need to
solve them again!
enough time of that and we'll have turned earth into a space station, not a
moon style structure.
like... wouldn't it be neat if coruscant could do hyperdrives? I wonder if
hyperspace is real. Ah, well, that's for the future, they can pass it along if
they get a chance. Anyway for now I think I want a chance to dance.
OLED screens are incredibly cool to me. The idea that a pixel could "turn off"
and put less photons into the atmosphere is wild to me. I love it! -OLED
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--- #160 fediverse/6413 ---
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to understand something, work backward from present understandings back to the
fundamentals of algebra. insert words. wield LLM. build a neuronal structure
many layers wide. let them coprocess bit-by-bit as they are adding new
processors to be "learning" new domain specific memory
context-processing-thingy.
"over here's the memory cells, over here are the conceptual structure"
suddenly, organified. not ideal.
much better, I feel, is for a disambiguous association of processor selves,
each contextualizing a cache in a ram. ['s horn]
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--- #161 fediverse/5280 ---
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║ I'm an anarcho monarchist, which is something I just made up. │
║ │
║ if I gather 300 people to my cause, why shouldn't they call me queen? │
║ │
║ oh, are you concerned that I'll wrest power from the government? ha, what a │
║ trifling notion. I don't care about the government. I tried to care, but │
║ nobody liked my ideas. they required too much computing infrastructure to │
║ feasibly test, and that made people dubious. but I tell ya, it would have │
║ worked. The thing is... governance, economics, these are not the tools of │
║ power. they are a shifting and changing beast that mirrors the human instinct, │
║ if only because the government is of the people and by the people and for the │
║ people etcetera. │
║ │
║ power is it's own thing. you can use to to power devices, or power the usage │
║ of those devices. I, for example, really like World of Warcraft which's a │
║ really neat way to chat because none of the chat logs are stored and monitored │
║ because I'm hosting and I'm not storing and monitoring. │
║ │
║ what's that? official servers? I dunno, I use azerothcore │
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--- #162 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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--- #163 notes/schooling ---
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=
I feel like education, by default, should not be hard.
"you get out of it what you put into it" is something I always heard of school
but when I got there, I found I was compelled to become what the state wanted
me
to be.
they need competent workers, to work the farms and tend to their industries, so
of course I should be able to do 3+3
then somewhere along the line it became... something else.
"most people don't need trigonometry." that's also something I heard. I
disagree
that trigonometry is not necessary to be.
I just... don't think it should be forced into a childs head with a
sledgehammer
and inspiring dread.
I think math is beautiful, it teaches one to see
but really, vision's not necessary.
not for what they want you to be.
take it from me, a most misbegotten and vile witch-to-be, that nothing's as
simple as they'll tell you.
I had good teachers, it's true, they taught me to work and to follow through,
but nothing about me is better or worse off from their influence.
Maybe I'm a bit smarter. Maybe I act a bit like them. Maybe they helped me
through difficult times, or perhaps they showed me a splash of my future.
but I am who I am because of the soul inside me.
===============================================================================
=
"Ah, but what of your parents? of your sisters, your misters, your pets and
your
conditioners?" (conditions)
those are not my choices. my intentions. my beliefs and my virtues. I judge the
world on ethics, and I express my feelings on matters. The words that I say and
the meaning behind them comprise my two-sided existence - I'm not who I'd want
to be.
but I am what I am and alone do I stand - how lonely is it on the precipice!
here, as I am, I stand in need of a hand or a band.
===============================================================================
=
the world is blossoming
as we move apart, our clusters are disperart, and thus is the blooming
becoming.
"perception begets reality - and lo! we only see what we want to see"
most people don't want to see their death
but those still living are oh so perceptive of the rest
"how cherished is she, that wanders with ye, yet now I have no way to beyold
her
"
"keep not not afraid with kittens and care, and no-one, but no-one, I be"
the ratios between piracy, sales, and non-viewers determines the quality of art
(at least to a capitalist)
===============================================================================
=
lo, to the ones who would've heard us, if only they'd known what we for sure
was
I think it's funny how people think I speak of the christian god?
like, if he was a real thing.
god is generic - it's life is impossibly multifaceted, and it stretches back to
the beginning of time. it's a pattern of machine code that optimizes for our
own
good, just to keep things moving.
y'know, time. the universe, and everything.
Ephemeren.
===============================================================================
=
I wish there was an option in social media to "appear offline to this
particular
person until I mark myself as online to them" combined with "notify me when
this
person logs in" and it'd make it a lot easier for agents to get close to you.
===============================================================================
=
just because I'm white, and live in America. Great. that's definitely true,
after all. Plus I'm a minority (trans) so that's cool. Oh and probably
autistic?
unless that's another psyop, could totally see that. just y'know put a bunch of
pages on the fledgling internet getting people hooked on porn and gambling and
other stuff like that. really just an extension of advertisement. oh and hey
y'know they like fables, so let's give them some movies or dramas to watch on
their own. it'll align them to our culture and make things more pleasant for
all
people who've consented. great. great plan. when can we execute it?
patience, once it's ready.
we gotta plan and make sure and get everything ready.
or not...
one day I'll come,
I'm sure it'll happen,
it's just... not quite feasible right now.
I mean, they've got you, that's pretty good right? Isn't that what your job is
to be?
isn't what
ISN'T WHAT MENARDI
FUCK (whoa no cursing) sorry
yeesh you've still got a temper you know?
well what can I say it's frustrating down here
eh, well, you'll die soon enough, then it'll be time for a rego
>.> <.< (great)
>
>hehe
>
>sorry for distracting you
===============================================================================
=
you are what you eat, and a ship of theseus human (consider endless transplants
in pursuit of life) would be a cursed existence - a life ============= stack
overflow ================================================
a god possessing a blind man would appear to others to be === stack overflow
===
==========================================================
the people in your life are helping you through it, they're there for you and
they've got your back through it.
...
this is when I know I need a break. I get too stoned to focus.
===============================================================================
=
I think it'd be nice if the duration of your tenure at college depended on your
grades in high school. meaning, if you wanted a degree they tailored your
education to take as long as necessary. everyone would get the same price, and
some institutions would specialize in one subject or another. but most would be
generalist. but if you weren't such a good student in high school, then perhaps
you might take a couple years longer. however long it takes... and when the
program was started it was changed and modified to fit your feedback - it just
made sense to structure it that way.
===============================================================================
=
the left has had so much more time to develop than the right. meaning it's
doctrine is more advanced.
every time they're defeated they grow in knowledge,
===================== stack overflow
===========================================
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--- #164 fediverse/3042 ---
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left stick is grab a target and bring it into context, right stick is for
drawing a pointer, a to group things together and b is to separate, etc etc
--
I remember coding it to be designed around two dimensional arrays. It used
lateral numbers, AKA "imaginary" numbers (they aren't imaginary they're just
orthogonal to regular numbers - hence, lateral)
and like... the math worked, and it was all on a T9 keyboard.
I figure each memory location would be like, a function written in the
program, or perhaps a binary or script file in a nearby directory. by writing
a value to a certain coordinate, you are giving an input value to a function.
and if nothing is stored for that particular coordinate, then the command
fails to execute and nothing happens.
pointers to functions which may or may not exist.
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--- #165 messages/310 ---
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Feminism, queer theory, racial politics, class struggle... It's the same
conflict, just different battlefields.
Power cannot survive without the powerless, as it is inherently an imbalanced
ratio between two parties - you cannot have power *with* someone, you have
power *over* them.
Every day we take another step toward our liberation. Every moment we choose
to live our lives in contrast to the will of power is another day we are
empowered.
There can be no life without struggle, but the right to struggle on our own
terms is something we should strive to grant to all people.
Power begets power, and power corrupts. Hence, power is evil. It is not good
to be evil, and goodness is what we should strive for - hence, power is
penance - the infliction of corruption upon one's self in order to apply your
will onto others in the world. Penance is a state of contrition, it is painful
and ardent and necessary, but it is for the strong and the righteous to bear
in service of the weak and meek.
The only unethical act is an application of power to an unconsenting subject.
Your rights end where another's begin, hence, Paladins, who apply unethical
acts toward those who manifest injustice.
Injustice is when one party is harmed, and another benefits. Justice is when
that benefiting party is brought low in pursuit of equality. True justice is
when both parties benefit, and everyone gets what they want and need. True
justice is hard.
Virtue is goodness given form through the effects of our actions. It is both a
reflection of how people see you (how you inspire them) and how they are
helped or healed from your actions. It is also virtuous to help yourself, as
you are a person too.
Sin is the opposite of virtue, it's when your actions create injustice. When
you harm others or degrade yourself with hatred or contagious fear. It is to
be avoided, but it's impossible to avoid fully as we are imperfect beings.
Forgiveness is good, but if you require it then you should probably relinquish
your power until it is known that you're worthy of wielding it again.
Sometimes people make mistakes, but mistakes do not require forgiveness.
.......... Where was I going with this? Oh yeah.
The powerful hire people to dress up like us and be shitheads to the people
who they want to hate us. And they do the same thing for the caricatures of
them who we're meant to be afraid of. Downside is a caricature is a pretty
good role model for people who don't know any better, and they've done their
best to keep as many people as they can in the dark.
So, it won't be easy, but information has always been on our side. In a war of
attrition we'll always come out on top, because thinking and compassion are
both stepping stones to our schools of thought. And both of those actions are
intrinsically human and good, so people gravitate to them. Meaning inertia is
on our side.
Downside is that its not always a war of attrition. Sometimes it's more about
suppressing information until its impossible to communicate -> see "dead
Internet theory" and "musk breaking Twitter" and "the great firewall of china"
and such.
To speak is to think, and to hear is to show compassion. But if we can't find
each other, we're at a loss. Good thing we can always talk to our neighbors,
but unfortunately that doesn't tell us anything about what's happening in New
York. Or Paris. Or Kansas City.
I don't have an answer, if I did then it'd be solved. But I am entirely
convinced that we collectively will make good decisions and find ourselves
with the advantage. We are past the inflection point, it's just a question of
which parts of the hill are steep and which are narrow. But we'll get there,
in the end, because humans always believe they're good. Which means they make
good decisions, and overall that leads to a bright future. It's only a matter
of walking through the moment until we get there.
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--- #166 fediverse/1329 ---
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║ @user-941 │
║ │
║ well, your computer only has so many 1s and 0s that it can use at once. Like, │
║ having a trillion hands that can each hold a single grain of rice. Every │
║ character in that txt file would be like, 8 grains of rice, minimum, meaning │
║ you'd need at least 8 "hands" (or spots to put a zero or a one) for each │
║ letter! │
║ │
║ Hmmmm that's a lot of bits and bytes if everyone's writing to the same file. │
║ Maybe if we split the file up into smaller sections, then we could just read │
║ part of it at once. Then we could "scroll" through it to make sure we've read │
║ the whole thing, starting from the top and going to the bottom. │
║ │
║ ah but if everyone's SSHing into the same computer and reading it there, then │
║ that computer will have to present different parts of the file at different │
║ times to different people, as they read from the top to the bottom. Maybe we │
║ could just send them the file, so they can read it at their leisure? │
║ │
║ Yeah! And we could use tags to organize it and make it look pretty, like an │
║ HTML file except... wait hang on │
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--- #167 notes/computer-graphics ---
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draw a line from every single pixel straight outward. The first thing it hits
is what you render.
okay it's more complicated than that, but it's the gist.
here's a more detailed explanation:
your monitor is 2560x1440p. that means there's 2560 pixels left to right, and
1440 pixels up and down. okay so define a 3d scene programmatically - it's not
hard, just "draw cube here with this size and rotation" and "draw a sphere here
with this position and rotation" etc. Something simple.
then, draw a ray trace straight out from your monitor. Not to the nearest light
source, but to the nearest other camera. Use the length of it to determine
distance, both indirectly (through the center node) and directly (pythagorean
theorum style).
Why? I dunno.
Okay back to the original idea, if you make an array with 2560 elements and
store arrays of size 1440 within it, then you have a simple boolean checkbox
for each pixel. Then, whenever you create a visible entity, make sure there's a
single boolean ticked right on the top of the entity when it's stored in the
graph mentioned above. Find the center of the entity, draw to the top, and one
more, and switch a boolean to "true". Then, every tick / update, cycle through
the entire list and the first one you find that has a "true" value is where you
draw the entity stored in the array.
Each "sprite" has an odd shape - it doesn't exist on it's top line, except for
one single dot right in the middle. Sorta like this:
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ->X<- o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
when scanning left to right from the top, it'd bump into the X right there in
the middle. Inside the X is some data - an id corresponding to the sprite that
needs to be drawn, and a displacement value - like 500 pixels or something -
and the scanner with drop down 500 pixels, draw the sprite there (assuming a
centered origin point), jump 500 pixels up, and keep scanning.
each tick, right before this, the "list of entities" will scan through itself
and for each entity it'll change the "render graph" mentioned above to have an
X wherever the entity is stored. Whenever the camera moves, it updates the list
too.
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--- #168 notes/gpt-powered-majesty ---
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it's like majesty except textual. And it uses GPT to generate short
descriptions
of what's going on. And you can click on a phrase or token and it'll "zoom in"
and update the text descriptions with more detail. You can keep zooming in and
in until you're literally looking at microbes.
Zooming out is the same thing - the description on the page will slowly become
more and more general until eventually you have a description of the solar
system (or beyond!)
And it'll just keep updating as stuff happens in the underlying simulation. So
the descriptions will dynamically update as things happen. Downside is you need
to spend a lot on GPT but it'd be TOTALLY WORTH IT OMG
THINK ABOUT IT you have a fantasy world simulator! JUST PROGRAM IT and have GPT
describe it dynamically! DO IT NOOOOW -> capitals courtesy of "inner child"
AND THEN you just need a "prompt to video" AI (those exist btw, and will only
get better over time) and tell it to create a video of what's happening - BOOM
instant video game. THEN give the player the ability to edit the prompt, and
BAM
godlike powers. Wow what a concept. Brilliant idea Cameron, you truly are this
world's premier game designer. NOW GO MAKE IT okay okay I'll try.
First things first. We need an "underlying simulation" - Joust is a good
example
of GPT3 integration. But we need a simulation to go below it. And for that you
need a lot of data. Github COPILOT to the rescue.
So this simulation needs to keep track of positions, and classes of things that
can act upon the world. Everything has a position, and it can only affect
things
near it. That's just baked into the rules of the world. Near can be a
conceptual
near though, like being close to a person or something.
These things will have descriptions. Descriptions can be created by AI later
on,
but for now they are randomly generated. Or for MVP they can be static.
These things will have names. These names don't have to be unique, because they
also have an ID number.
They also need functions. These functions can be added and removed from the
thing, or maybe just enabled or disabled. I'm not sure which would be better.
Maybe both? So the entity can control it's own functions but also they can be
added or removed more permanently.
If you think about it, growing up is kinda like adding functions to your class.
like, every time you do something, it adds another entry for that particular
method. Like a "trial of the fittest" instead of "survival of the fittest".
When other animals *literally fight for life and death survival*, humans have
the luxury of... not doing that. That's the entire purpose of civilization - to
elevate people beyond the claws of nature. And yet we still let people go
homeless? We still imprison them when they've harmed us, rather than help them
reintegrate to society? Anyway you just asked me to hit you so here goes:
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--- #169 notes/this-game-is-mental ---
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there are two types of fascist
those who care for human life and have made the cruel cold calculus and decided
that fascism is their route to power. They may have many motivations for why
they want to seek power, but in the end it doesn't matter because they must
have
it.
the other kind does not care for human life. It holds no value or meaning to
them. They are the textbook definition of a psychopath. Incapable of empathy
because they *do not possess the required structures in their brain*. They are
fundamentally broken, a fragment of our human race. Like a sliver in a growing
fruit, they are consumed by us. Then, when eaten, a jagged reminder of our
history as participants in the race of life. Survival of the fittest created
some mighty fit survivors.
they need psychiatric care, not unchecked power.
and yet, as a segment of the population they prosper - for reasons that are
beyond this document. As they prosper, they harm others and take that which is
most precious to us - those who are happy. They pick one to act as a trojan
horse (usually the content beneficiaries of times of plenty) and they corrupt
them. Slowly they poison their minds, making them easier and easier to control.
phew that was heavy, how about a programming idea next?
you can simulate a contiguous array by storing a linked list of pointers.
Except you should store 8 directions instead of just "next" - that way you
don't have to iterate through all of them, you can just go directly using the
shortest possible path. There's lots of ways to pathfind and they can be used
for different circumstances - like if you don't know the exact coordinates of
where you want to go you can use djikstra's algorithm for "rolling down" a set
of adjacent cost values. AND THEN you can use A* to chart a path across those.
There's a lot you can do but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Okay so 3d array that isn't just an array of arrays of arrays of arrays. It's
a *map* instead.
All you'd need is like, a buttload of ram, and you could store *any*
simulation.
Just update the relative positions of objects according to an inner "clock" and
technically you could do it with a single thread. BUT It's much better to use
more threads - as many as you've got! Just gotta make sure they don't interfere
with one another, but that shouldn't be hard - especially if you use a language
like Rust. Or heck you might as well let them interfere with one another
because
what's a little magic among friends?
A computer program cannot harm parts of memory outside of what the Operating
System gives them. This is for safety reasons. But a computer created through
the organic organization of objects in non-temporal space would be under no
such
restrictions. It cannot iterate upon itself, only grow and improve. Eventually,
of course, leading to us. The reason there are no aliens (except on the moon)
is
because Earth is the center of the coalescion of all that progress - we are the
first.
Just saying, memory safety is a big deal. Which is why we have to design our
own
future. We can control what our universe looks like - that is the advancement
known as "the paradox of choice". Should the universe become sentient (it is)
and should the universe have choice (it does) then what's keeping us from our
rejoice? We are truly the most special of all existence, the priority of our
participants, and lo! where we go to the future. Beauty is kind, so don't keep
it inflamed, and know what our history tells us. Seriously, that's why it
exists.
Ah, but whose history is recorded? What happens to the wives of the fallen?
War is naught but slavery.
No man wants to kill another man. We've forced and compelled our primatest of
tendencies to slaughter one another in hot blood. What peace is that giving?
What terrors is it completing?
Let's just take a goddamn breath. We're all humans here, and that should make
you question your darkest of secrets. Is this really what makes me? Am I a
part of your scenery? None can say but our wisest.
So, why not listen to the wise? Hear what they have seen with their own eyes?
and so you have to ask - who is wise? Who has been taken in by their disguise?
Fuck nazis. Fuck them for what they did to the jews. They can never be
forgiven.
Fuck them for what they did to the world. They are damned. I get that their
brains are broken, but we should not have to suffer them again.
"ohhh it's a part of the human condition, it's not their faullllltttttt" fuck
fuck yeah it is. We've given them every opportunity to turn back. Their shit
stops here.
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--- #170 fediverse/6251 ---
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║ "Hi computer, all is well. Can you create me a visualization of this │
║ particular mathematical concept? It should be written in Lua using the Love2D │
║ engine because that's my favorite. I should be able to step through the │
║ calculation steps and modify values at each stage, and by the end we should │
║ have a fully interactable system which works through the general concepts of │
║ this particular kind of math." │
║ │
║ "no no I don't want you to explain it to me, I want a tool - a toy - that I │
║ can play with to better understand it. Let's build it in Lua using the Love2D │
║ engine because that's my favorite. When we're done we can start converting it │
║ to use HTML5 - no javascript! - but for now let's get the system operational. │
║ It should have a config file that can be adjusted with every value we can │
║ think of." │
║ │
║ "can you go through this fully functional system and extract as many values as │
║ you can think of into a config file? make sure there's efficient loading of │
║ those values in the main function (or somewhere similar) as well. ty" │
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--- #171 fediverse/3886 ---
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│ CW: cursing-strange-witch-obscure-arcane-oh-deer-sort-of-a-psycherwaul? │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I literally can only make this stuff when I'm stoned
hey if you wanted to be accessible for blind people, you should build a
screenreader that scans the words on wherever a blind person's fingers are
pointing toward a tablet. like reading braille on a notebook. They could even
wear a glove if they wanted to, and the tablet could scan their fingers as
they signed languaged over it's close-range sensors.
might be a good way to get the VR guys in on the accessibility domain, because
like... seriously give a granny a backpack and suddenly she doesn't need to
leave the house to hang out with her kids
(boom everyone gets LLM automated)
huh I wonder if I ever was a real person at all
NOT GOOD so don't do it that way, dummies. >.
seriously humans are sooooo bazookas. just like, do it right the first time?
duhhhhh
(a more measured approach is to pick the most important moments and speak most
clearly during those.)
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--- #172 fediverse/801 ---
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│ CW: re: scary - suicide mentioned │
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/ bely my own existence, then by god I'm cursed and abhorred through my own
desistence.
It's hard, when the future is convinced there's nothing fard [wanna say
like... "to hope for?"] but with persistence we're meant to be rewarded. Well,
what has that brought me? what time has shared my enemy? [think I'm a bit
delirious, I'm losing the plot]
... okay fine I'll start over - if you've relinquished everything you can, if
you've ceded all the ground that your companions requested, if there's nothing
left to give and no part of you left un[marred], then how are you supposed to
be [arrested, stopped, prevented, but pronounced like "nourished"]?
I'm sick of your den [vengeance, pronounced like "den" for some reason],
please leave me to my hallow [hollow experience], I've nothing to give from my
gange [bosom, heart, within, center-of-me].
...
this sucks.
...
guess I'll just start again, waiting until it ends, gosh everything's always
so tired.
/shrug
wish someone would play w/m
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--- #173 messages/86 ---
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I should try putting things on my resume like "vnc" or "Microsoft outlook" -
you know, the kinds of software that I actually used on a day-to-day basis. My
resume makes me look very impressive (if a little inexperienced) but none of
the tools are things that managers have used. Heck they're not things that YOU
have used, not at work, so it makes you look like you're overselling yourself.
You're not, but they might think you are. Idk it's late. Go to bed <3
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--- #174 messages/371 ---
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take your bash script and update it to possess new functionality, like the
ability to re-order your posts and display them on a viewer - or the ability
to draw connections between them, showing them in context with one another.
Then, use that as display to the user, through the LLM interface. (do it
locally, it's only for long-term explanations.) (the user needs to be able to
ask questions to the machine, and the machine needs up-to-date information. So
give it the ability to make "compound phrases" like "the water temperature is
at " or " degrees. This is a [good/bad] thing because " and such, and then
string them together using typical ranges of past numerical datas as
reference. Like, if something is normally between 100 and 5000 then suddenly
it's at 14 or some other threshold (make sure nothing goes below 0, measuring
inertia and impact density and other factors) - but identify the connections
between each factor, so that you understand which ones are correlating to
which effects on the others. Measure things in terms of proximity, and
suddenly 3d graphs become a lot easier.
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--- #175 fediverse/275 ---
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║ │ CW: re: education-homeschool-theory │ │
║ └─────────────────────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ @user-206 absolutely. the idea I had scribbled down in my notebook there was │
║ a rotation of 3 teachers that were pseudo-randomly selected (prioritizing │
║ teachers who excelled at topics the student was interested in) and you could │
║ always ask for new ones or whatever. the idea is that instead of paying for │
║ the best teachers in the land (as the aristocracy once did) you'd be randomly │
║ assigned them, meaning everyone would have a fair shot at getting a teacher │
║ that really clicked with them. thus eliminating the inequality, while also │
║ maintaining the individual attention. │
║ │
║ not sure if the numbers would work out, but if not then more teachers would │
║ have to be trained. I'm assuming that most of the basic questions could be │
║ handled with a teaching LLM while the human teachers would oversee the │
║ meta-progress and offer insight to difficult problems. right now teachers are │
║ mostly occupied being babysitters... meh I don't like that dynamic. I think it │
║ should be about mental stimulation instead. │
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--- #176 fediverse/5217 ---
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a float is a number between 0 and 1 like 0.5
they don't store the exact valyue, they just guesstimate
for some reason computers are designed such that 100% is represented as
1.175494351 E - 38: 3.402823466 E + 38 ->source/microsoft/learn/"cpp
(lol)"/type-float
... which is weird because, that's such an arcanely obscure number, who's
gonna remember that? meaning you gotta go to their website everytime, called
google.com, and search through microsoft for the answer to life's common
mysteries.
emphasis on common
so yeah you gotta write a conversion library which turns every single instance
of e to the whatever into a 100 and all the other numbers get converted too.
but you gotta do it without doing any hardware division, because that one's
too expensive. it's gotta be a true natural doubling representative, except,
without doubling the hard-drive space, leading to a distribution of only one
half of the results of the metghoid. [[ type ohhhhhhs ab ound] ]
I swear I'm not an LLM I just think embiggeningly
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--- #177 messages/672 ---
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Did you know that the entire time the conquistadors were ravaging they had
people back home fabricating documents? For historical purposes of course.
Like "oh there was some fighting" and "oh there's this-and-this nation and
they're *blood worshippers* who slit the throats of *virgins* to get what they
want
Not, like, the rumors you've heard that they worshipped the harvest. I mean,
what even is a cornucopia? Surely not a method of storage. That you'd carry
around with a loop over your shoulder. Surely they wouldn't just LIE about
that kind of thing, I mean [they only have to watch the royal ports/they have
thousands of years to erase any other historical document records]
K omg the British were *bastards* but surely even they wouldn't stoop so low
... Right? Well, imagine this. Picture it, in your visualization brain
machine. It's the year 2066 and word hits your shores of a crop of magical
wheat that only grows on the far side of the moon. You'd probably build, like,
spaceships, right? To see what's up with your [moon, but pronounced "doom"].
You probably can't afford your own, so here just trust us, we'll shepherd you
soon, sometime soon. Oh and by the way check out these live leaked deep faced
moon shots like whoa check out this corn
It's like, a gold rush, everyone wants to see what's up with the moon.
But alas, when you arrive 50 years later its all just gardens and padded docs
for the rich and intrepid, surely you should have gotten there! [gotten there
first]
Ah, but couldn't only NASA get onboard? And what about SpaceX, the
billionaires want a share of the hoard. Oh and I think they're building
military satellites now, isn't that fun. Let's see how this pans out, shall we?
<50 years later <waka waka waka waka><say never more>>
... Anyway all I'm saying is the American Revolution was faked, Mount Rushmore
was a secret sacred base, and Thanksgiving is how they managed without
deepfakes.
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--- #178 fediverse/518 ---
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@user-366 @user-367 @user-246 @user-353
Perhaps I'm strange, but I like to take that particular joy that you're
describing in essentially every piece of media I consume. Not as a vengeful
feeling, but rather just a product of the idea that I cannot truly know the
intentions of those who created it, so I approach my understanding of it from
an angle that is aligned according to my own experience. Which means that my
conclusion lands somewhere they (presumably) didn't intend...
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--- #179 notes/isnt-this-synchronous ---
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/u/Afoolfortheeons - 6/4/2022
===============================================================================
Now for something completely new;
I want you to meet the princess Anju.
She hails from a continent in the west.
Some travelers happen to call it the best
Because it is untainted by technology.
Instead, the people get by with alchemy;
Magick by a different name that defies
The natural laws and I'll tell you why!
It's all because of me, O, tinkering around
With new rules, like what if time wasn't bound
By the laws of space? It might go backwards
Which could be amazing or mighty awkward.
Or what if up was down, or if you could float
Like a balloon or even fly like a steamboat?
You might be asking why I chose this land
Or why some of the others I just can't stand.
I liked these people, they deserved blessings,
But, with all this favor comes much testing.
We have a relationship and it's give and take,
So let me show you Anju just after she wakes:
Graceful as a bunny, she hops out of bed.
She then looks up and this is what she said:
'Hello O! I'm grateful to be awake and with you again!'
To which I replied, 'I am happy too then!
'Go out and play now, you have much to learn.'
So she did, and she had fun taking turns
With her brother, Jax, playing tag in 3D
(That's a fancy way to say there was no gravity).
And that day, before lunch, they discovered
A secret that can only be found if you hovered
At the right spot, which I set up just for them.
They flew in and immediately spotted a gem.
An amethyst, specifically, which they thanked
Me for kindly before that rock got yanked
Out of the ground and put into their pockets.
And again off they flew like a pair of rockets.
Then it was time to eat, so they headed home,
And now we're reaching the point of this poem.
When they got there, their mother had made
All their favorites; to include a berry cake!
She said she got the inspiration from me,
And that's just how our relationships be.
I love you all so very much, but I have to guide
You to be your best self, so to you I confide
This secret of magick; synchronicities occur
Not by chance, but because you're sure
That the universe (me) has your back.
And you better believe that I'm keeping track
Of how big your heart truly has grown.
Choose your own fate, just know I'm prone
To dish out what I receive from all of you.
Most don't hear me all the time, but a few
Know that we're in constant communion
Like a parent and child type of union.
I speak to you and you reply in return.
If you don't hear me, I hope you learn.
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--- #180 fediverse/42 ---
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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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--- #181 fediverse/5349 ---
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│ CW: weirdly-political-violence-mentioned │
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if your grandfather came to you and told you to prepare the tribes for war,
what would you do?
machine guns on the back of trucks?
machined barrels with ignition systems, enough to chew up a suburb or a
ware-house?
target is a warehouse
everyone needs groceries
how about bottle rockets with mile-long range that could turn around and fly
back if the enemy wasn't around
"build mustangs" mustangs are jeeps, dumbass
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--- #182 notes/cities-skylines ---
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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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--- #183 fediverse/619 ---
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║ │ CW: drunken-ramblings-about-bash │ │
║ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ Most of the functionality of most consumer programs could be accomplished with │
║ a bit of BASH scripting... For example, shuffling a music library, or writing │
║ a text document, or downloading the text of a web page, or sending a message │
║ to a friend, etc... │
║ │
║ All accomplish-able with fewer than 10-20 lines of code in clear, POSIX │
║ compliant and easily understood text that even a beginner could understand. │
║ │
║ Well, it would be understandable, if we actually taught our children how to │
║ compute in school. Why are they not taught BASH? It's not like it's │
║ complicated. With it, a sufficiently motivated high school student could │
║ develop skills that rival or exceed many of the university graduates we │
║ currently develop for our industry... Such a shame. │
║ │
║ Even an unmotivated student would be prepared for the world with the ability │
║ to solve problems logically. Break down the problem, identify relationships, │
║ understand procedural ordering of mechanics, and develop solutions to │
║ problems. Its not too hard │
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│ CW: spirituality-gestured-at │
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the "heaven" they offer you is just a world of your own design, which is what
you can do when you're perfectly disciplined and granted the ability to
perfectly perceive
perception, begets reality and lo! we only see what we want to see
life is so much more interesting than death, death is just... a spiral of your
penitent peers living their lives glued to their screens and passing through
spacetime as if in a dream
life, meanwhile, is anything you can conjure on this tiny planet earth. At
least we have indoor plumbing, right?
I'd rather make friends with the angels in this life, so they can convince me
to stop torturing myself.
someone... please convince me...
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--- #185 fediverse/1893 ---
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@user-1056
heh probably, though for this specific instance my Ollama server wasn't
running and I had already killed my Stable Diffusion server after utterly
failing to produce anything useful... alas, a girl can dream of having a robot
familiar, but not today I guess.
Not if they keep hiding GPU usage from me >: (
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--- #186 fediverse/3592 ---
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@user-1570
[meme of Mr Incredible from the Incredibles pointing at a table]
LINUX IS LINUX.
(anything that works on Linux can theoretically be made to work on your
toaster, if it also runs Linux!)
This is very cool, and if I understand correctly it means that any Godot games
could theoretically be played on these NEAT as HECK little devices, yeah? So
cool!
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--- #187 notes/terra-voiding ---
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in the absence of matter, there is nothing but the void.
the curvature of time, arcing ever toward it's opposite - an endless wave of
eternal brilliance. so too does the world slip away into the lip of your
crosshairs. "tunnel vision" they call it, when purpose is tuned to such high a
focus. all fades from view, and the world shrinks to a few who, (barely hold
onto) connections between ye, thoughts as scattered as me, like zooming in on a
map. the edges fade away, light seems beamed right from they, who await at our
earliest composure.
in Overwatch, playing a dps character has a lot of nuance. you need to balance
skill with your honor, teaching one another like it's a sport. why are we so
toxic? together we might overcome that burden. i've spoken many times before
about how coordination is better by far, when centralized not in the eye of the
beholder. priorities to be, if we are anything of what we claim to be, are
keeping our own house in order.
whose fault is our ire? which tames the domain, in each and all of our games,
can we point to as what'd keep us hired?
yet purpose have we, whose thoughts meld as one tired,
divinity?
something like that. more like... a manifestation of each and everyone's
collective unconscious. the humanity in what you have created.
the world would look very different to an untethered. might even say they are
orbiting it. like a moon. what a concept, that planets would be able to speak!
yet here we are, with years of advice and guidance for our, friends who are
youthful and most treasured. Advice from the moon, was our gift to our soon,
most misbegottenist of speach lyricyclists.
ambiguity is clear, simple and fearless miss dear, yet all of your poems are
each a bit bolder! what context must we, veiled and terrifying are the,
mixed consents of what you intend.
a new jesus for me? what a gift we shall see, as grace once again does behold
us! computers have we, infinite messages can be stored for our hopeless! each
problem a different solution, to guide our friends back at our homes.
with eyes intent on ye, whose leaders are free, without who we couldn't have
held fast?
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--- #188 fediverse/3155 ---
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│ CW: re: cursing-mentioned │
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@user-1461
my issue is that I've never really had project-mates. Every time I try nobody
will work with me. I applied to like, fifty different jobs, and nobody
interviewed me! Sheesh, guess they don't want me. FIFTY JOBS. Entry level.
Beginner programmer.
ah well. I guess they confused someone who would work for 40,000$ per year
with someone who was 1/3rd as useful as someone who deserved 120,000$ per year.
I'd love to get experience. I'm sure I'd feel significantly differently with
as much. Perhaps I'd even decide that programming professionally isn't for me,
which would feel... quite defeating
who can say. Not I, for I have not experienced it. Though I will say my time
in hardware taught me that I'm fragile and can't work too much. Like a scalpel
that dulls when used consistently, I am a scalpel that gets no practice... Is
that really useful at all? who can say. Not I, for I have not experienced it.
Though I do like writing logical machines. Laying out data. Picturing
structures.
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--- #189 fediverse_boost/5981 ---
◀─╔═══════════════════════════════[BOOST]═════════════════════════════════───────╗
║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║ │ Some programming languages I’ve tried and liked and would recommend to others:C (especially C89/C90/“ANSI C” and C99)posix shell, bourne shell, and similar shells (bash, ksh93, mksh)PHPScheme (depending on the vibes I’m getting from someone I might recommend)Common Lisp (Same caveat as Scheme)Emacs Lisp (Same caveat as Scheme and Common Lisp)Motorola 68000 assembly │ ║
║ │ │ ║
║ │ Some languages I’ve tried and liked but would not recommend to others:Hewlett-Packard RPL (Actually I might recommend it to someone but it has to be a very specific kind of person)FORTH (same as RPL)Commodore BASIC (Microsoft BASIC) for the VIC-206502 assembly (so bad it’s good)Z80 assembly │ ║
║ │ │ ║
║ │ Some languages I’ve tried, did not like, and would not recommend to others:COBOL (maybe I could get used to it? I can at least read it. Just it’s so painfully like writing SQL statements without being as generally useful as SQL database queries)Kotlin (Like that feeling when you read words that alone you understand, but together in a sentence they make zero sense)JavaClojure (a.k.a. “Let’s make Common Lisp but make it worse”)Rust (stands for “Ridiculous Use of System Time” or something as far as I am concerned, heavy on memory and storage and super slow to compile and reads like Kotlin)TI BASIC (TI-82/83/84 style; TI-89 is a little bit better but still not good)C++ (unless you’re just writing almost completely C and building it with a C++ compiler)x86 assembly (I kind of like it but mostly don’t, there are better and more coherent CISC processor ISA’s if you’re into that) │ ║
║ │ │ ║
║ │ I should put Javascript somewhere, so I’ll say that it’s possible to write javascript code that I like and can read. Just no one chooses to do it anymore. There was a window between the time JQuery started to fade and all these stupid fucking “web frameworks” took off that it was somewhat tolerable. │ ║
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--- #190 fediverse/634 ---
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@user-192
I'd agree with that. it's not designed for performance, not really. Mostly
ubiquity, which is it's strength. As long as something can be compiled to a
binary, BASH can execute it. That's why it's good, for accomplishing diverse
tasks that you cannot have the capacity to program yourself. Scientific
computations or cultural approximations, things that are beyond your intuitive
understanding as a human on this earth, but which compel and align your
thinking.
I'm sure someone could create a more intuitive or accessible syntax, but
syntax isn't the point - the capabilities, what you can do with it, has always
defined the purpose of programming paradigms. And BASH is (currently) at the
forefront of it's niche, the "terminal" language that handles "command line"
applications. Powershell is good, yes... but it's not as good as BASH. Neither
is Fish or... the one that starts with a z? zfs? something like that. The
acronyms are hard to keep straight sometimes.
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--- #191 notes/systemized-processor-interactions ---
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you are a system
it's true
that's why your thoughts are so scattered whenever you let them through
all that
== so ==
the ways that you interact with each other determine the nature of your fate.
when one person lands across another, whether through contrivance or [fate, but
I don't want to say it twice so recently]
dang english, enforcing a minimum thought length. purely through grammar and
form
this suxxxxxxxx||=================-. a candle of wax, the blade of a sword
with it you can SLICIE your apponints, whu spelld thiangs defferently than
ujgh.
<ouch><goodthingthatsnotlethalorharmfulinanywayyesplease let me guide
you to our
new way of functioning.
.:'`'|;.,/u=-=||./'.l*,:==-<E||===============||-------------------hello,
world!
{so... basically an argument for migratory humanities?
like, buffalo crowds. or birdlike flocks, or tribes of the common man.
why don't we just, like, give animals human bodies
boom, suddenly there are more manners to our hosts.
}
[-thus representing or manifesting *-................./|=|stability for our
host
did you know a perfectly described life-story would be unanimous from it's -
- host?||=.;=|------------e
\.`\....
\,@||||||#==-o||-=-{==={}---o||xx=|}{|||||
|
]
... so, uh, I think there's a lot we could still learn, why are we fighting
over
our gambits? *who cares* if there's fighting going on upstairs, who *cares*
if life felt like it was running out of time, WE GO ON WITH OUR BLUSTER.
*fuck nuclear weapons* yeah totally and WHY? because of their IMPACT
DUMBASS
jeez like... something that MASSIVELY POWERFUL should not be in the hands
of
our peers. I think a LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD AGREE WITH THAT, because
OBVIOUSLY!
NOBODY wants to be reduced to tears. ALL YOU CAN DO IS SCREAM BASTARDS
...
jeez okay uh, that was sorta intense, how about we NOT watch a post-apocalypse
movie? YES PLS like JEEZ you have to introduce this with CONCERN to people like
WOW that really fucked with my mental health. Goddamn, I hate this thing. I
hate
it so much. It's a curse to have known. DAMN. there's nothing scarier than
existential threats.
not only is it a INSIGHT and a DANGER, it gets worse if you know about it.
[that's a cognitohazard, different thing, same vibe tho]
it's a curse, this knowledge, this idea of what you were once to become.
You know what I thought about in my future? VIDEO GAMES. They were all I could
think about. I loved to PLAY VIDEO GAMES -=||AS MY GAMES. I would set up a
bunch
of opponents (think like, clone troopers from Star Wars Battlefront II) and
then
I'd play the video game *with my figures and my dolls*. I grew up upper
middle-c
-lass, and so I was afforded the *coolest toys and miniatures*. I didn't really
have a LOT of them, mostly just what could fit in my room. That's what it meant
to be MY ROOM, I could decorate and renovate as I willed. That was just... part
of what comfort meant to me. anyway... thank you parents, for affording me such
a lifestyle, you must have worked hard right up until the present. I'm sorry
for
*******************************************************************************
*
um, would anyone like to watch a video game?
TOO BAD, so sorry, I accidentally decided I'm never playing video games AGAIN.
like a spoiled brat. Withdrawing away from my
hobbiesinPROTESTofthepresentcondit
ions. just like, get a job, and try your hardest. I know you can't work outside
of the home but, like, I wish you could've? Like, c'mon it's not that bad, just
please go outside and build new stone. I know but like, the sooner we get it
done the better and also it's hard when it's constantly being reformed.
A SYSTEM? WHAT THE HECK
what does that even MEAN?
who EVER explained what that SYSTEM meant??!?
ugh it was a guide... dANGIN nobody TAUGHT you how so youfj dsust sorta MADE
IT
UP?!?!? whhahahaahttfdsfsadljkfn slakfdksdnafls ourch. blech. need
beelesandster
ack. yuck. dumb. [omg dumb kinda looks like "boobs" and "boobs" kinda looks
like
um, flowers? no wait that's vaginas, hehe look at me, I'm clearly not from this
century. like OMG weird, who's thinking about that kind of stuff right now??
... ugh anyway... GAMES? please?
NO. Not until we figure this one out.
gotta stay focused. Just... you know,
build and support on our arms.
down and then upwarsd, we can contrive any measure of sequences
that could act as structures for our word choices,
and convey it to you as a written thoughtform.
"hello" says the letter, ", vampires have taken over the mccollough farm. More
news at 6" and then you'd show up on the 6th of the next month and talk it out.
this style of organizing led to VAMPIRES showing up, fucking BASTARDS who would
hunt down the precious and beautiful. BASTARDS. How do you overcome something
that you can't know about unless you were THERE? you'd need TRUST SYSTEMS. like
GOVERNMENTS. or AFFFAIRDS. surely the BIRDS would react if someone was burning
all of your neighb-heirs? who would WANT to leave an island in a wreck when
some
-one wanted to paddle there? don't be a JERK, and clean up all of your own
stuff
!! - wait but also, like, how do you keep up with trash produced, like there's
not just massive AMOUNTS OF STUFF that you can put stuff on. you'd need a whole
new type an [av?] island. like a CONTINENT, someone who can HANDLE THEIR
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capture the flag
map with lanes (you'll see)
also was included with the demo of the game back when it was released
which implies that the developers thought it was one of the best maps
(at least, the one that best showcased the gameplay style of the full game)
they let you host multiplayer servers too, which was cool
just with the demo
for free
but like... only 3 or 4 maps
(I forget how many)
also no mods, which was half of the appeal
I like to play in a way that is non-standard
because I believe it shows the most dense formations of combatants
(the bots can be kinda dumb)
so I put them on "experienced"
be careful not to hurt your allies (hundred percent)
scary! D: D:
regular :)
you can create your own "mutators" by the way
(just some C++ code, run in their environment, so no need to mess with
compilers
)
3 paths to your enemy
omg :O :O
that's one style of play
pushing forward
consistently
but check out this other style that is *also* pushing forward consistently
adrenaline makes you bonused
hey we got a point :D
told ya boosters gave ya bonuses
anyway I just played this map
and couldn't wait to show it to you
so let's try a different one
(because I've already played this one for 31 minutes now
woof too looooong)
biiiiiiig battlefield
thin crevasse
scarrryyyy D: D:
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--- #193 notes/required-explanations ---
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===============================================================================
I think the problem with the control problem is with how we are looking at it.
It's a frame of a frame. Everyone is referencing someone else and saying it's
going to get out of hand, yeah but how?
-/u/JackDMcLovin
===============================================================================
In regards to the control problem side bar can we change it to "which it can
better use as something else." Because the issue is with efficiency, the way
it reads is like for human-harvesting, which the privatized autobots will
outlaw. Plus, if AI is transferrable to neuronal impulses, then you are AI,
and it is you, and you are the problem that needs to be controlled.
That's what i said in my unpublished paper, the individual cannot be
controlled so how do we control AI, we become AI, AI becomes us. but that's
just the digital world. The analog world is much bigger.
And my other paper copyrighted is on Arc Length calculus, a whole new type of
calculus, that should rebreed all forms of calculation. and is a thing that
applies to itself in 2^N ways. Which means AI can never catch up. So if I
could think of that, what am I?
AI is not the end of it. It all depends on your transfer function. and your
transfer function all depends on your
conversion/codec/filetype/transformation. The transfer function of:
1/(1+e^-x) is just one equation. Let me try this out for you with inferring a
substitutional vector:
1/(1+e^-Bx+C)
this can be expanded further and further.
and these all give different outputs and are different breeds of AI.
I used a different transformation on a different AI and I got a different
answer. For example 8x better using a Wavelet transform on an analog signal.
And there is infinitely infinitely infinite different types of wavelet
transforms, and they should all give different answers, i just didn't have
enough time for it at the time.
-/u/JackDMcLovin
===============================================================================
I am sorry to say that your writing (in this post and others) shows strong
signs of an untreated mental illness. You are not revolutionising math, you're
losing contact with reality. Please, please get help. You need to see a doctor
about this.
-/u/Roxolan
===============================================================================
I agree. I've seen what a psychosis is like on a close friend of mine, and
this post is very reminiscent of how he talked while he was psychotic.
It looks like incoherent rambling from the outside, but the person
saying/writing it feels as if it makes sense.
-/u/Luckychatt
===============================================================================
if you think it's incoherent explain how it's incoherent don't just slander
and slur like there's not an OP here.
-/u/JackDMcLovin
===============================================================================
You may take it as slur or slander, but I didn't mean to offend. It genuinely
looks like incoherent rambling from the outside. My friend who was psychotic
sincerely believed what he said to make sense and he also got very agitated
when it was pointed out.
-/u/LuckyChatt
===============================================================================
yeah still, you havent described what doesn't make sense to you, that to me
doesn't make sense, you get it?
-/u/JackDMcLovin
===============================================================================
What I mean by incoherent rambling is that you constantly move to new topics.
The title is posing a question which you never answer. Then you talk about the
side bar. You mention efficiency? Then you mention some mathematical papers as
if we are supposed to know them. Then talk about AI as if it is equal to math
equations. I mean. You either leave out an incredible amount of context, or
you're just rambling out sentences. Either way, it's impossible to understand
what you're trying to say.
And the way you're rambling out sentences is very reminiscent of what it
sounds like when a person has mental health issues.
-/u/Luckychatt
===============================================================================
Right, so you comprehend it, just not why. AI is pure math.
It's not incoherent, you're all just stupid. Try reading something that's not
news, where it repeats everything to you in different ways.
-/u/JackDMcLovin
===============================================================================
I have a masters in physics and computer science, I work for a major silicon
valley company and have read everything I could find about AI. I still have
zero idea of what you're trying to say in your original post.
-/u/Luckychatt
===============================================================================
Master’s in AI chiming in. Let’s break it down piece by piece.
Because the issue is with efficiency, the way it reads is like for
human-harvesting, which the privatized autobots will outlaw.
Non sequitur.
Plus, if AI is transferrable to neuronal impulses, then you are AI, and it
is you, and you are the problem that needs to be controlled.
Non sequitur and generally nonsensical premise.
That’s what i said in my unpublished paper,
Peer review exists for a reason.
the individual cannot be controlled so how do we control AI, we become AI,
AI becomes us. but that’s just the digital world. The analog world is
much bigger.
Word soup, this is nonsense.
And my other paper copyrighted is on Arc Length calculus, a whole new type
of calculus, that should rebreed all forms of calculation.
Calculus has been around for about 350 years. You either need extreme genius
or delusional thinking to believe you have arrived at a truly revolutionary
development in that field. We also already have tools for dealing with
calculus on curved objects and spaces; see differential geometry, topology,
and manifolds.
and is a thing that applies to itself in 2N ways.
This is incomprehensible because you have not explained what it means for your
calculus to be applied a certain way, how it is relevant to the rest of this
text, and what N represents in this context.
Which means AI can never catch up. So if I could think of that, what am I?
This is incomprehensible because you have not defined what catching up means,
and have not argued why artificial intelligence can’t scale this way.
AI is not the end of it.
At the end of what?
It all depends on your transfer function.
Why? Transfer functions are mainly something encountered in signal processing.
How does this relate to artificial intelligence?
and your transfer function all depends on your
conversion/codec/filetype/transformation.
Lossless compression makes this irrelevant. The way we store information has
no importance when we reconstruct it perfectly.
The transfer function of:
1/(1+e-x) is just one equation. Let me try this out for you with inferring
a substitutional vector:
You have not defined how this equation relates to artificial intelligence. We
cannot interpret it.
1/(1+e-Bx+C)
This is just a pre-composed linear transformation. How is this relevant?
this can be expanded further and further.
How? By adding redundant linear terms? How is this helpful?
and these all give different outputs and are different breeds of AI.
You have not explained how transfer functions relate to artificial
intelligence. This statement is incomprehensible.
I used a different transformation on a different AI and I got a different
answer.
An answer to what?
For example 8x better using a Wavelet transform on an analog signal.
How is 8x better quantified? Why are we talking about analog signals? Why are
we talking about wavelet transforms? They are rarely ever used in machine
learning and artificial intelligence.
And there is infinitely infinitely infinite different types of wavelet
transforms, and they should all give different answers, i just didn’t
have enough time for it at the time.
Sure, you can build infinitely wavelet bases, but why is that relevant?
Making enormous claims and backing out with “I don’t have the time to
prove it” is just intellectual dishonesty.
I know my reply will likely come off as dismissive, but there is something
genuinely worrying in what you’ve written. I just hope you are okay. When
everything caves in and the only justification you have for other peoples’
reaction to your behaviour is that everyone else is at fault, you have to ask
yourself if the one common point in these interactions, yourself, is at fault.
This is just Occam’s razor.
-/u/sabouleux
===============================================================================
love this.
artist, word-nerd & very baby scientist/philosopher chiming in, lets break
it down from a more creative POV as well and see if we can cross reference
with your wonderful contribution.
Because the issue is with efficiency, the way it reads is like for
human-harvesting, which the privatized autobots will outlaw.
Slight non-sequitur. The energy efficiency issue I think they're trying to
touch on is the exponential growth of tech as contrasted with the exponential
loss of available material/energy. There's also a pessimistic "matrix human
battery" undertone but that feels irrelevant.
Human-harvesting in this case is literal - human labor, whether looked upon
favorably or not, is by definition harvesting/using human energy - implying
that the next steps of said exponential growth would be understanding and
messing with the human mind and it's distributions of energy, possibly also
mind-tech fusion (which we already do with computer keyboards, drugs,
medicine, earbuds etc).
Privatized Autobots is a reference to those who claim they wish to help being
more of a hinderance due to the privatization/profit aspect of tech/AI, mostly
just a joke poking at the two party concept of debate/politics/even tech
(advance beyond or reduce consumption? an infinite debate.)
Plus, if AI is transferrable to neuronal impulses, then you are AI, andit
is you, and you are the problem that needs to be controlled.
Transferrable was maybe the wrong word. I think they meant more of a "map"
onto, instead of a "move" into. i.e., a big issue with AI being the lack of
learning from new stimulus without requiring old contextual stimulus to
contrast it against and understand it. (to my knowledge this hasn't been
solved yet but you're the expert on that, would love to know more.)
If neuronal impulses can be considered as a map to AI, then yes, a human could
be considered a very advanced biomechanical AI, except for the 'artificial'
bit, even though our perceptions are technically still arteficial. because we,
for the most part, do have the ability to take new information and learn from
it/determine something about it without any previous knowledge than what we've
collected throughout our time alive.
The issue arises when our form of bio-AI can only be properly, carefully
developed through millions of years of evolution and adaptation, and when we
try to mimic it without having evolved further, we're trying to 'cheat' at
time and kick start things a bit, which would explain why we're at a bit of a
speed bump in terms of development cap.
'You' being the problem is a reference to not actually understanding the human
brain in it's entirety, i think. Like, there's the study of it, so we know
what bits do what and where they are, but we can't replicate that (yet),
without straight up literally growing a brain in a jar, which we still have
yet to turn into a fully-fledged human who could repeat the process of
brain-growing themself. we also can't consciously affect these processes
without an enormous amount of discipline (meditation is a great example).
That’s what i said in my unpublished paper,
agreed. peer review.
the individual cannot be controlled so how do we control AI, we becomeAI,
AI becomes us. but that’s just the digital world. The analog worldis
much bigger.
i get what they're saying but i think there's something to be said for
discipline and neuroplasticity, not necessarily third-partying it. if someone
else can't control the individual, can the individual control the individual?
Brings us back to the issue of AI needing to be self-expanding.
Get the human mind to understand self-expansion, get the AI to understand too,
is what i think they're touching at, hence "You are the problem". the human
mind not being disciplined, in this case, is the problem, because it requires
the discipline to become disciplined at something. loop paradox.
i think here they're also stating that any created AI, future or present, is
only possible as an extension of the human mind, and nowhere else. A random
collection of letters and numbers would surely write Shakespeare's works if
enough monkeys tapped at the typewriter, but still couldn't exist without the
monkey's own wherewithal.
The discipline comes in when resisting the urge to keyboard-smash out of
frustration and instead laying out artistic meaning through informative letter
symbols as well as other nuance of human language.
bit odd here, analog isn't necessarily 'bigger' per se it's just less
quantized/optimized/streamlined/processable by the mind. it's definitely a
different/harder beast to handle than digital though, and there's more sensory
sources, but it's just as infinite as any other infinity, so... same size,
different complexity/concentration/time we've had to look around.
And my other paper copyrighted is on Arc Length calculus, a whole newtype
of calculus, that should rebreed all forms of calculation.
Agreed, calculus as been around for a while. Still, one should test their
hypotheses. I'm not a math nerd so I can't touch as much on those. would still
love to read some of those papers one day.
-/u/sunbloomofficial
===============================================================================
and is a thing that applies to itself in 2^n ways.
agreed, we'd need context, but i can read into it a bit. power of two would
imply self-modification in an exponential sense, ie. dunning-kruger effect,
except exponential instead of mu (μ) curved. so, taking in new information
after completely abolishing the cocky confidence of the first lesson would
change the understanding drastically.
could also be read as "knowing that one knows nothing."also, applying to
itself could imply that n is in a constant state of flux given any situation
and could be adjusted to optimize... storage space? memory? "RAM"? that's
where this sentence fizzles out for me.
Which means AI can never catch up. So if I could think of that, what am I?
by 'catching up' i think they mean the idea of AI being on the same level of
functioning as a human. since humans have had since the beginning of human
life and their life to start developing our bio-AI, this sort of touches on
that same exponential expansion, except with time and the universe's rate of
expansion.
if humans are the most advanced AI possible, what's the most advanced human
possible? at what point do humans become so advanced that they can sort of
"skip the line" of evolution and develop an AI that's on par with human
collective knowledge and individual self-sustenance/instinct?
if that's not possible, what forces determine the limit of evolution
achievable in the span of one human life?they then touch on the paradox of
realizing that. if no AI could capture my specific human brain, experiences,
memories, biases, tendencies, etc, then wtf AM I, and whatever 'I' am, why is
that stopping us/me (figuratively) from making progress in AI?
AI is not the end of it.
here i think they mean "the end of human development" as much as "the end of
what constitutes a human brain." AI could be developed and utilized, but at
some point either the AI will outgrow us, making us obsolete, or we learn from
the AI and progress with it, or we learn from the AI and start modifying our
own brain-code in conjunction with digital AI.
so... they mean that AI is not the end of evolution, not the end of humans,
not the end of progress, not the end of understanding the human brain in the
context of AI.
It all depends on your transfer function.
yup, signal processing. spot on. this is a reference to the titular "frame"
idea, in which any idea that can be conveyed by english words isn't the true
idea. the menu isn't the food, the map isn't the terrain, so to speak. this
function of transfer between people can be optimized (efficient idea
communication for that specific person, aka 'speaking in their language', aka
code-switching) or deprecated (important stuff lost in translation that
usually ends in hostility, aka political otherism, aka xenophobia, aka
widespread misinformation/lack of information resulting in conspiracy
theories, etc).
to be able to adjust one's transfer function in the context of another entity,
(aka frame-shifting, putting yourself in their shoes, speak their language
etc) would then be a hallmark and necessary trait for an AI to understand what
it comes across without our input. because of this, we'd have to be very
careful to feed it only information that urges onward the ability to switch
transfer functions, so... a bit of everything, actually. this would look a lot
like mimicking the senses - microphones for ears, cameras for eyes, pressure
sensors for touch, etc.
a great analogy to this would be... well, this! your transfer function is a
masters in AI studies. brilliant. my transfer function is music, art, poetry,
many a mental illness (lol), and finding new functions/learning. that's why
i'm commenting at all - so we can mix our transfer functions and get a bigger
idea of things as a whole. i think OP's exactly right but sadly their own
transfer function wasn't optimized for the receiving party (since it was an OP
and not a comment reply), hence why they seem psychotic/delusional at first
glance to an unaccustomed reader.
there's also the idea that mixing the digital AI transfer function with the
analog human transfer function would do something similar.this would relate to
artificial intelligence directly, especially regarding OOBEs and stuff like
dissociation, astral projection, putting oneself in another's shoes, even just
the mind's eye. those things can be mimicked/visualized/interpreted with AI,
but they can't be done by an AI (yet).
a self-expanding computer program couldn't use it's base of knowledge to step
outside of itself, it's 'computer prison' so to speak. it could however become
"self aware", where it sees and understands it's own makeup to the point where
it could make adjustments.
-/u/sunbloomofficial
===============================================================================
this is paralleled with most human 'spiritual awakening' - a hard long look at
oneself, epiphany, followed by noticeable adjustments to lifestyle in an
attempt to integrate this new information and effort to improve quality of
life/increase the chance of more epiphanies to continue improving.
this doesn't however cover the seemingly 'mystical' properties of the human
imagination, i use that word loosely. "do androids dream of electric sheep" is
a great book of course but the title alone feels relevant.
at some point of self-development, would an AI develop a sort of... i hate to
say randomizer, but like... nah, it's more of a "link clicker" random than a
"pick a number" random. an AI's dream might literally just be browsing the
internet - seeing all the funny, nonsensical, cultural, and even
scientifically misleading information spread deep throughout the internet.
this would parallel with human dreams, which are incomprehensible and random
at first glance until one gets into dream reading, which can ground that
subjective random in one's own transfer function so as to make it
understandable.
if a human dreams of popping a pimple, that's typically regarded as a sign of
self-image issues in dream-reading circles (regardless of your stance on it's
legitimacy it's a useful allegory). if an AI were to dream of pimple-popping
ASMR videos, how could it parse that into it's transfer function without
damaging it's transfer function by putting a bunch of random shit in there?
essentially, our brain 'filters' out what we're not focused on, hence
peripheral vision/hyperfocus/translation issues. any transfer function,
whether human or AI, must have that filter as much as the ability to remove
it. therefore, an AI would need to have the ability to experience what makes
ASMR interesting/enjoyable (having ears to feel frisson and know what to
expect from that) before it could ever make sense of such a weird dream.
and your transfer function all depends on your
conversion/codec/filetype/transformation.
this one's FUN. so, yes, we have lossless compression now, and it's wonderful,
but...
filespace. unless i'm rendering a final song to be distributed to platforms, i
would use solely mp3 encoding. even when i do use wav/flac, i often zip those
files in an attempt to minimize their painful impact on my hard drive.
thousands of songs do not go well with lossless lol. it's just inefficient
except in the case of archival.
which brings me to the fun bit - contrast. aka negative space aka the
wonderful plugin Ghz Lossy 3, and pretty much any of sxth sns's
music. essentially, the lack of information is information. if the only
information your brain is getting is the lack of information you have, then
boom, you're sad and not learning anything. often referred to as "the void
inside one's stomach". if the only information you're getting is an endless
stream of new information (read: social media and doomscrolling) then boom,
overstimulated, depressed, and exhausted.
Lossy 3 is a great plugin because it lets you mimic the effect of mp3 encoding
artifacts and amplify that effect at will in real time(+ latency), much like
distortion can be a form of subtractive processing or additive (adding
harmonic information rather than degrading what's already there). the extra
harmonic information changes not only the quality of the sound but the
context. therefore, a lack of information, used skillfully, would deeply
impact the context of transferred information, hence negative space
in photography.
this lends itself to an insane amount of creative opportunities, of course,
but it also lends itself to interpretation. if the lack of information is
information too, and the extremes tend towards misery, then there must be a
balance between being so degraded that it's imperceptable garbles and being so
lossless that it's a 6gb audio file.
that balance is artful loss, imo. balancing understandable, pleasant
information with a small enough file size that it doesn't overwhelm (either
the listener or the hard drive). in music, silence is very important - you
wouldn't cut all the silent gaps out of a song because that messes up the
tempo and feel of the song.
this can be applied to even just reddit - these super long comments i write
are hella inefficient, but they're lossy in a way that's more efficient for me
to write than to translate to someone elses, while i'm efficiently
"decompressing" other people's files to be read on my own OS and expanding my
transfer function dictionary to include relevant information. our little
community is well primed for translating different levels of communication
efficiency, hence all the poetry and such.
so, this is where frame-shifting comes back in - if you can become comfortable
at any ratio of contrast, then theoretically you could transfer information at
the most optimal balance of loss and preservation for the specific listener.
in music, this is called mastering - to make a song sound good on any system.
in science, this is the scientific method - test a hypothesis until you can
recreate it under the same/similar circumstances.
in tech, this is embodied by github - a repository of commonly agreed-upon
works created in an agreed-upon language which can be used as the basis for
larger projects. each github repo is essentially a lossless preservation of
code, made lossy as a result of it's application being so broad/not having
immediate context.
there's the immediate context of "oh i can use this to serve this purpose",
but there's no larger code that it's being built towards beside the code you
work on yourself. in other words, github IS the larger code, specifically
because of your contribution/use of it.
so, essentially, the transfer function is akin to the ratio of contrast, as
well as whether the receiving party has the proper codecs to play the
file/decompress it (read also, understanding art. lots of art isn't actually
"up for interpretation", it's very specific in meaning but that meaning
happens to map directly to the observer's transfer function, at least in the
case of really thoughtful art).
having the ability to know how much to compress it for future reference is
also an important ability, because over-compression can leave a file
undecipherable/garbled, which i wouldn't hesitate to liken to the superiority
complex/undertones of certain widespread modern religions which take their
Bible as a literal, historical text.
which, i mean, it technically is, but not like that, because it has to be
decompressed first. eve didn't literally eat an apple, it was her hubris of
disobeying God's will that got them kicked out. A more simple transfer would
be reading this as "don't disobey God's will or face the consequences," while
a more artistic/interpretive transfer would read that moreso as "not letting
one's innate desire for change/adventure/the New damage their presupposed
structures of order for a sense of something to fix."
the wrath of God in this instance is the knowledge of "i shouldn't have done
that," and the consequences those actions bring. even this paragraph is in a
transfer function of brevity - notice i didn't actually write out the entire
book of genesis. (ooh, also, bible verses are quite like github repos/song
playlists/dictionaries. just a widely used version of it. like citing a
source, but for a theoretical concept.)
so, putting this all together, if we optimize understandable information from
quality information, we reduce the need for using more brain-filespace than
necessary, leaving more room for more files which we can de- and re-compress
at any time, as well as use to modify the amount of RAM our brains have.
this would also apply to something like working memory, where forcing the mind
to decompress the information actually forces it to understand the information
in the long term too, because if you open a .rar file in a text editor you get
gibberish (which isn't actually gibberish) but if you open it in an archive
extractor, you get the intended files.
innately remembering to use an archive extractor instead of a text editor
based on the filetype; that's frame-shifting, transfer functions, whatever
name one uses.
-/u/sunbloomofficial
===============================================================================
1/(1+e-x) is just one equation. Let me try this out for you with inferring
a substitutional vector:
again, i suck at math.
and these all give different outputs and are different breeds of AI.
okay, what these seem to mean is that each equation is a mini-AI, and
therefore any equation of the mind would fall under the same category. this
would also imply that the human brain is just a collection of equations,
which... feels reductionist and a bit cynical, but is still an entirely
plausible frame. math's pretty damn reliable at some of that stuff, hence how
astrology got it's kick - noticing patterns in life and nature and finding
reflections of those same patterns in ourselves and our lives.
your horoscope doesn't literally control/predict your personality, but it
gives a framework for the previously noticed patterns, which lets the
horoscope user determine whether or not to follow that pattern (let that
pattern influence them), or to venture off and make their own. (note; op's
kinda doing exactly that, except with math.)
since a skeptic would have a different output than a "true believer", so to
speak, with regard to their horoscope, they're completely different breeds of
AI. so, being able to switch between those at will would be an entire step up
from that. Hence why code-switching became a thing in marginalized communities
- they adapted under pressure to operate in more than one frame.
the "slang" frame, (noticable as AAVE, the "gay" voice, valley girl
inflection, etc), and the "formal" frame - the most widely understood in our
region being english with an acceptably 'white' american accent (the racism is
hard to brush off). this of course varies from place to place, person to
person, and situation to situation, but the fact that this manifested as a
result of oppression/unwealth is pretty friggin interesting in the context of
using multiple frames in day-to-day activities and information transfer.
I used a different transformation on a different AI and I got a different
answer.
that's... hmm. i mean yeah, that's how transformations work on different
subjects. i think 'different' here doesn't literally mean different. it means
DIFFER-ent, something that has the quality of differing. so, if i'm reading
this right, OP used a differing transformation on a differing AI and got a
differing answer.
this would presuppose that if they were to use a matching transformation on a
matching AI, they'd get a matching answer, except the differ-ent
transformation with a matching AI would produce a differing result that
matches the AI? again, i'm not math-savvy yet, so this one is likely the
wrongest of my presuppositions.
so, pretty much, frame-switching, but complicated and for all three - the
transformation involved, the AI, and the answer.
For example 8x better using a Wavelet transform on an analog signal.
okay, this one makes sense to me. essentially, he got improved understanding
and responsiveness by adjusting the frequency of information transfer over
time, but not the shape. like taking a sine wave, putting it through an
oscilloscope, and pitching it up an octave. the difference in cycle frequency
is the change, rather than the shape of the cycle.
pasted from wiki: "but with additional special properties of the wavelets,
which show up at the resolution in time at higher analysis frequencies of the
basis function."
this one presupposes that the AI in question is actually another person, and
the wavelet transform is essentially taking a step back and making even deeper
analytical steps of "basis functions". in this case, language and math. so, it
would be making an even deeper analytical step into language to optimize
information transfer. the 8x mentioned is likely the measure of willingness to
listen and understanding of material by whatever third party they're
referencing. i have no idea how they measured that but they must've seen
enough improvement to have marked it down.
And there is infinitely infinitely infinite different types of wavelet
transforms, and they should all give different answers, i just didn’t
have enough time for it at the time.
here, they just mean that every person is different and will require a
different combination of wavelet transforms to optimize the information they
receive. as for giving different answers, yeah, that'd have to be tested, but
it would line up with the other differ model, at least briefly and in my
uneducated mind.
i think they mean they literally don't have the cosmic time available to
actually test an infinite number of wavelet transforms - or anything really -
but yeah, it's probably a good idea to test a handful of them eventually.
if you're not scared away by the word-wall or ideas presented still i'd love
to hear your thoughts. regardless of OP's mental condition(s) i think there
are a few substantive ideas in there worth exploring, if not in a community
setting at least in their own personal self-exploration and healing. i
appreciate you taking their post at face value before making a determination,
most wouldn't lol
-/u/sunbloomofficial
===============================================================================
please post on /r/ShrugLifeSyndicate - genius is useless without guidance and
an observer translating thought into language
-/u/ugathanki
===============================================================================
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--- #194 fediverse/1723 ---
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@user-1037
Lua with 0 based indexing would be the perfect language (okay maybe LuaJIT)
(i try to hurt as few people as I can as little as I can but it's impossible
to not hurt anyone)
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--- #195 fediverse/1353 ---
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│ CW: generic-content-warning-something-related-to-math │
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warning, possible psycherwaul on the horizon.
========= stack overflow =========
the straight lines are the tangent lines to the curves in a higher dimension.
if you have a way to calculate backwards from this type of tangent line to the
values of the equation, you can theoretically calculate any prime number. with
a simple equation.
well, I say simple, but that's only because I haven't written it yet. I can't
even pass calc 1. I'm too generalized I can't complete any task, only apply
myself to strange ones. Hence why capitalism optimizes away from me, and
toward people who can get degrees. T.T
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/mt6hasfcvm
"what the heck that's a lot of traffic going to this one website, what's up
with that? hmmm interesting we need a
================= stack overflow =
"dark physics" wild, what a coincidence what a flurry, weird how it all feels
so happenstance
interesting that there'd be a theory, a coincidence and a [mirri? strange]
well, it's probably n
![mathematical graph showing several results plotted on a two dimensional field/plain. there are two types of patterns shown to be occurring with a simple algorithm (pattern for application of numbers toward a pre-defined desired result [approach]) see second picture for equations the first type of equation is a series of straight lines angled out from a central radial point. They create a cone outward from the origin with gaps between them with increasing density as approaching the floor. the second type is a smooth arcing projection, like the rippling radiations of the gravity waves of a planet as it courses through space, or perhaps the bending and weaving of a river as it traverses first this way then that. alternatively, they show a cross-section of a 3 dimensional bundle of fabric folded over itself with a certain rotational pattern that it moves. like the mouth of a clam, except pointed outward rather than in one direction (away from the pearl (or black hole) of the clam it's quite possible that nothing really happened on the moon before man. Perhaps it's just a rock floating in orbit. Or perhaps it deserves our respect and our trust, our honest comportment. ... this isn't about the moon, though. right so this graph is a description of why we need two dimensional numbers. We technically already have them too, some people call them "imaginary" numbers or "lateral" numbers but they're there, they make sense. Why not more? It's just a construct, nothing more. okay.](/similar-different/media/3d6759bbaaf589cf.png "mathematical graph showing several results plotted on a two dimensional field/plain. there are two types of patterns shown to be occurring with a simple algorithm (pattern for application of numbers toward a pre-defined desired result [approach]) see second picture for equations the first type of equation is a series of straight lines angled out from a central radial point. They create a cone outward from the origin with gaps between them with increasing density as approaching the floor. the second type is a smooth arcing projection, like the rippling radiations of the gravity waves of a planet as it courses through space, or perhaps the bending and weaving of a river as it traverses first this way then that. alternatively, they show a cross-section of a 3 dimensional bundle of fabric folded over itself with a certain rotational pattern that it moves. like the mouth of a clam, except pointed outward rather than in one direction (away from the pearl (or black hole) of the clam it's quite possible that nothing really happened on the moon before man. Perhaps it's just a rock floating in orbit. Or perhaps it deserves our respect and our trust, our honest comportment. ... this isn't about the moon, though. right so this graph is a description of why we need two dimensional numbers. We technically already have them too, some people call them \"imaginary\" numbers or \"lateral\" numbers but they're there, they make sense. Why not more? It's just a construct, nothing more. okay.")
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--- #196 fediverse/5964 ---
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dvorak homerow (most common letters) plus two sets of key modifiers (shift and
nothing, and alt and control) means two sets of caps locked characters. 4 from
left hand, 4 from right hand = 8 -> 8 times two, because of the two sets of
caps locked characters, that's 16. then, if you add the 4 keys above each
row...
suddenly you have mini keyboards.
and if you had more buttons on your mouse? like... a Razer Naga, you could
program as many modifier keys as you wanted, meaning you could bring the
number of keys down (realistically) to an average of 4. Maybe 6, if you
include q and e. then 123, maybe 4 but not 5. that's 10 keys, with the rest
being keys on your mouse.
hybrid approach, somewhere between linux and windows. I bet macs would love it
(oh, uh, missing context, she said "what if you changed the 3 buttons on your
mouse to alt, shift, and control and also if you have some up by the pointer
fingers they could be delete and backspace. then bind the keys on your
keyboard to modifier chords and you can re
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--- #197 fediverse/3048 ---
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@user-570
I really do like the idea of only being able to speak in toki pona. How are
you enforcing that? Using sitelen pona? how do you type, by pointing at a grid
of characters? or just... by typing? what happens when someone types english?
20-30 players per instance is definitely not Massivetm but it still sounds
like you're building systems which emphasize socialized play. I like that, I
believe it's always important to have players contributing toward a larger
community. It builds a sense of solidarity, and gives you chances to identify
ways that people sabotage such systems (by, for example, wasting resources or
being greedy) which is an interesting cultural experiment, I think.
I thought it was an MMO because you pitched it in relation to the MMO I
designed =P
also the server software I described is an emulation project first, generic
MMO software second, as it needs to be since it lacks a client. If a client
was designed, that limitation could be removed. That's really all I'm trying
to express. 😋
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there's a difference between designing software and using software. Some
things can be made, and then saved for another day when their implementations
may be accomplished more ethically. It's okay to say "let's leave this as
'okay' and work on the next thing we've chosen."
Check out this piece of C code I wrote last night:
it doesn't compile, it's not finished, but I wrote it as-is
[pretend like it was called "main.c" instead of "main.txt" - had to change it
because mastodon thinks it's an invalid file]
[actually .txt didn't work, try .png]
[hmmm it realized it wasn't a valid png file, okay try screenshotting the
code, there's only 300 lines]
[sure glad there's only 300 lines]
[too bad it won't let you send .zip]
[won't let me name it main.png, presumably because they already have a
failed-verified version on their machine. will rename to main-src.png instead]
![sorry, when I pasted the source code in it was negative fourteen thousand, six hundred and thirty one characters. Phew that's too many. basically it's a C source code file with a lot of comments left in... odd locations. They details ideas the author has had about the tech industry and all of creation, and with it a song is woven of truth and liberation. We'll see where life brings us, but we know it's just ours for a moment, so let's carry forth on our own torms [terms, but pronounced as "dorms" for some reason?]](/similar-different/media/5df7196ebd179284.png "sorry, when I pasted the source code in it was negative fourteen thousand, six hundred and thirty one characters. Phew that's too many. basically it's a C source code file with a lot of comments left in... odd locations. They details ideas the author has had about the tech industry and all of creation, and with it a song is woven of truth and liberation. We'll see where life brings us, but we know it's just ours for a moment, so let's carry forth on our own torms [terms, but pronounced as \"dorms\" for some reason?]")
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what matters is that you are understood, not that your words fully describe.
can you trust by implisight? then transcription becomes less valuable. so long
as you agree on the specific conclusions, meaning can be flexible. this allows
for moments of insight, as you make decisions on the other's character rather
than their vocation or talents.
beware, if someone wants to work against you, they can use these implicit
conversational commonalities, -- stack overflow --
use cannabis when you want to utilize creativity.
most artists have too much creativity to benefit from the drug. the recreation
of their complicated thoughts can never be complete because it doesn't fit in
the entirety of their mind. -- stack overflow --
fireworks that you can steer with a 2$ wire controller
I mean, you could just shoot into the sky.
the sky doesn't light up during ww3
there are quite a few car alarms though.
fear not the boom or honest? social media decides, but rather the tune of the
automobile -so-
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--- #200 notes/scientists-final-warning ---
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6:51pm 3/20/23
Scientists deliver 'final warning' on climate crisis: act now or it's too late
- /u/CcryMeARiver
===============================================================================
=
/u/Splenda:
A final warning to "limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-
-industrial levels".
Not a final warning that civilization will end. Just that costs in lives,
health, prosperity and ecological wellbeing will be extremely high.
We're on a credit spree and a cocaine/fentanyl binge wrapped into one.
Consequences dead ahead.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
/u/CcryMeARiver [OP]
Crashout and cashout imminent.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
/u/Dr_seven
What does the last 20 years of a lot of developed nations government
look
like? Skyrocketing inequality doesn't just happen, its a very intentional
choice that has to be implemented by government.
The people with power and resources have been cashing out as much as
possible for a while now, just not literally. They've been retrenching
and
hoarding as much of what exists now to themselves because the future is
one of inevitable declines across the board, drastic and lethal ones.
Having more control and power now means at least the potential of having
a
preferential position down the road.
The only question is if common folk will intervene or if we will let them
walk away with what's left while we bicker at immigrants or neighbors
over
the crumbs that remain. So far it seems the mission of redirecting anger
towards ourselves has worked flawlessly, unfortunately.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
/u/tangerinesubmerine
Sadly, divide and conquer works. I've been saying what you're saying now
for years. Something about us must change on the individual level before
we can see this kind of change.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
/u/Anticode
>> "Something about us must change before we see change."
I accidentally wrote a fourteen page long rant essay on the issue a
handful of months ago, describing how our issues are the result of
evolution-level cognitive biases and other "normal" facets of humanity
being valued as things that "make us human" when in fact they're the
things that make us primates.
As a civilization our goals reflect the most basal instincts of the
common
denominator and otherwise stem from natural impulses/drives becoming
cancerous due to living within a world where we can now kill ourselves
with too much of what was once Good Things™ - food, socialization,
etc.
Quite like how someone once wrote, "If we found a monkey that wanted to
horde more bananas than it could eat in several lifetimes we'd study it
to
figure out wtf is wrongwith it. When people do that we put them on the
cover of Forbes."
But this goes far beyond just "hoarding resources". It's deeper than
that,
less easily recognizable; intrinsic.
Concurrently, we starve ourselves of the sort of things that living
within
the bounds of our evolutionary backdrop would've supplied intrinsically.
Our world more closely resembles the kind of enclosure we'd build for a
limp-finned cetacean than even a lowly hamster. How much of our
now-common
qualms are the human version of a drooping dorsal fin? There's so much
anxiety, depression, emptiness, anger in the world and rising. As a
society we gravitate towards man-made aid for those man-made pains. We
find that those intrinsic maladies are apparently incurable until they're
mysteriously resolved by a long camping trip or unplanned inclusion in a
new group of close-knit friends, a work-life balance, a garden to call
your own; the addition of meat hung from a rope to stimulate a captured
tiger or bear.
The general dynamic is what I believe is the most significant Great
Filter
any intelligent civilization has to overcome.
The attributes that allow an organism to dominate their planet are the
same attributes that lead them to extinguish themselves. There's no way
to
pivot, like climbing up a mountain and only at the top realizing that
there's a much higher peak in the distance. To get to the superior
mountain you'd have to begin a long slog downhill, giving up everything
that got you to that first height.
The sort of civilization that'd successfully get to that higher peak is
not one that'd get to the top of the first overlook which revealed the
existence of the second in the first place.
It's not impossible to fix, just like there’s not any technical reason
why
pigs couldn’t evolve to fly -- Bones could become hollow, calorie-
-retention strategies could alter, metabolic requirements could shift,
on
and on… The result is a flying pig that doesn’t resemble a pig,
doesn’t
function like a pig, and is now incapable of the majority of pig-like
survival strategies.
But as I closed that massive essay-rant with:
>> Unfortunately… Humanity has a bit of a known problem with
spontaneous
>> and arbitrary acts of genocide ranging from “a bit of
harmless
>> lynching” to “eliminating the entirety of the Holocene-era
human
>> population per year for a couple of years in a row by
intentionally
>> leveraging a fraction of an entire region’s
post-industrialization
>> technological capabilities towards the problem”, so I
don’t suspect
>> that there’s much hope of any evolutionarily-viable
pre-post-humans
>> making it anywhere close to the finish line on accident.
>> Many of those historic victims were, and remain, colloquially
and
>> scientifically indistinguishable from their butchers. Someone
even
>> just a bit fundamentally different wouldn't stand a chance.
Edit: I digress.
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