● 05.26.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

Posted in News Roundup at 8:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Most people’s talking sounds like madness to me.

• Somehow that doesn’t seem nearly so much the case with their writing.

• Why?

• I think it’s because writing filters out a lot of behavior that screams “Automaton!” to me, e.g. glazed eyes, excessively making the same point in various ways, misspeak corrections, the sense of becoming “possessed” because of the likes of increasing volume, increasingly crazed facial expressions… and, of course, the litany becoming increasingly I/me/mine focused.

• This is a perfectly cromulent sentence, though without telepathy we cannot be sure whether “I eat oranges, where the eating in some way involves furniture” is the intended message, or whether the speaker has swapped the i and e and meant to write that they eat the oranges in some way involving liking (nelci comes up a lot in beginner lojban materials, less so nilce).

• This morning on my bike to work, I passed:

• - A hot air balloon making an emergency landing in a field - A suspiciously-placed board with an upright nail - A dead fish

• Hot air balloons regularly take off near my house on summer mornings. This one was pretty low-flying over a neighborhood, and seemed to briefly touch down in a field before taking off again.

• today was a big step up for me. i landed my best pace in my relatively recent running antics by a fair bit. i didn’t feel exhausted. i didn’t feel like i was pushing myself too hard. i didn’t feel like my nose was conspiring against me. i managed to get my best time yet despite me being far from the only person to tread my usual route. i ran past ladies with antlers and gentlemen with tophats. and though i had to take a slight detour as to not squeeze my body through the extravagantly clad masses, the distance i ran ended up being only tens of meters off.

Technical

• Yep, I’m definitely sticking with it. I’ve gotten super comfortable with the keys, the workflow, and even the config which isn’t daunting to look at anymore. I’m confident enough with it that I even used it during a job interview today.

• One side effect I noticed is that I’m also more proficient with regular Vim, which comes in handy when I’m shelled into a server making changes.

• Since the switch I’ve worked in Python, Go, and even React Native. Aside from a little weirdness with Python (I had to install a second language server alongside my first as a workaround to get documentation), neovim’s been nice and out of the way after getting over the initial learning curve. It’s also really nice for just writing posts like this in since you can enable the built-in spellchecking selectively based on the file type.

• I posted some thoughts on the news server.

• Speaking of automaton’s, how about other people’s verbal reactions/responses to pretty much everything?

• How could it be thoughtful when it starts spritzing/spilling out a second or less after whoever they’re responding to finishes talking?

• And if they were thinking about it while the other person was speaking, that means the former invariably missed some – possibly much (possibly all?) – of what the latter said, meaning the former’s response couldn’t possibly all the information they were presented with into account.

• Because when I’m really into something I can’t help but talk about it a lot here’s another post about PDAs! I already have a dedicated page about why a PDA is still worthwhile but I have some more words to say about that. I have also been working on a script to sync gemini posts (and some rss feeds) to the PDA each morning for offline reading.

• Lately I’ve been carrying my PDA with me every day and some things have struck me about why I enjoy it so much. The main thing is the way that I interact with it just feels so much more natural than most other devices. A combination of the non-backlit monochrome screen, the stylus and some things about the way the software is designed. Using it feels a lot more low-key than using a smartphone or other small computer. I can just set it next to me while I’m doing something else and occasionally poke at it with the stylus when I need or want to. It instantly turns on and in certain situations instantly turns on to exactly what I’m looking for. It kind of feels like a augmented little pocket-sized paper notebook in the sense that you use the stylus and it’s mostly just sitting there like a little pad of paper, staying out of your way until you need it.

• …is that it eventually goes away. I’m not kidding. I won’t doom/gloom about climate change, the disruption of lives (human and non) it will cause, and the infrastructural damage that will come of it – but I am of solid belief that items that require battery power, or electric, of any kind, will be made obsolete when climate change worsens.

• Granted, build panels, “we’ll be fine”, and everything works ok. Ok, but what I am saying is…

• I feel similarly. My thoughts on this topic are very messy and I’ve been writing this piece for about 45 minutes now, but here goes:

• I am a proponent of the computer and the internet (as it is in the very slim portion I use often – academic papers and software packages; even little forums like this one) being useful tools, but I agree that pretty much everything that extends outside of that little sliver is harmful.

• In fact, I have no doubt that it is the root of much evil; the effects we’re finally able to measure and they’re showing very clear signs of destruction. I’ve reached the top of the hill and realized that what lies there is dangerous. Now I feel it’s my job to warn others that the glorified hilltop is not safe.

Internet/Gemini

• It was via a Slashdot post pointing to this article from the FSF

• [...]

• And, crucially, the phrase “networks beyond the web like Gemini”.

• Good old Free Software Foundation, I thought to myself; if they’re plugging something it’ll be worth a look; either it’ll be good for a laugh or it will change the world. Possibly both.

• I write this so there is something here, when you click on my nickname. It would be impolite to comment on other posts and not having any posts myself. So this is it.

• What do we have, here, Friday already?

• Chickens clucking in a plywood coop next door. Something must be annoying them, as they’re usually not so vocally active.

• Just finished a really fine egg salad sandwich. I ate it a bit differently: bread torn into pieces over the egg salad that spent the night in a “to go container” in the refrigerator last night. Forked that out of its container seemed an easier proposition than trying to eat a potentially messy sandwich while potentially needing to work a keyboard as the inner spirit moves.

• Hello, I’m medvedev. An 13 year old interested in seals, *NIXs and technology.

• Hi, geminispace! — I’ve been back around [gemini link] URIs for a few days and just discovered this place. Wasn’t aware of the social interaction going on around here and I’m loving it.

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