● 06.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 23/06/2023: Galaxy Chat and Some New Projects

Posted in News Roundup at 3:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Personal/Opinions

• The deep movements of political and social history have long been seen to operate in cycles that more properly begin in the late 1920s to early 1930s, as the decade of economic crises and imperial decline that fermented not only the Second World War, but also the long Fordist-Keynesian hegemony that followed – what Immanuel Wallerstein has called the ‘apotheosis of liberalism’ – stretching right up to the crises of the 1970s and the inauguration of neoliberalism as a dominant global polity. Indeed, it might be suggested – admittedly rather polemically – that geopolitically speaking, the 1930s stretched from the Wall Street Crash to the Oil Crisis of 1973 – parallel crises that provide one reason why, for instance, leftist interest in the 1930s surged during the 1970s and 1980s. This is not to say, of course, that literary history charts in any simple manner such cycles of world economic systems, but rather to assert that any attempt to revisit the 1930s must surely pay attention to these large-scale movements. Indeed, such a long stretch taken merely as a continuity would fail to attend to the marked similarities between post-Fordism and the 1930s (or indeed the interwar period more broadly) as periods of protracted, even normalised crisis. Thinking of periodisation in these terms offers … a pressing reason for rereading the thirties in our present moment, as a prolepsis of what Lauren Berlant has termed neoliberalism’s ‘crisis ordinariness.’

• in a departure from the usual technology theme, this post is about grass that has been touched.

• Organizr lets you set up “Tabs” that load all on one webpage, making it easier to work on your server. Want to give users access to some Tabs? No problem, enable user support and have them create an account. Want guests to be able to visit too?

• Open Future conducted a study to gain a better understanding of the current state of the open movement, as seen through the eyes of people actively involved in its endeavors and leading organizations within the movement. Open Future believes that a shared movement identity and a shared advocacy agenda can make the collective effort stronger

Politics and World Events

• There is a debate in Quebec that might shock other North Americans. Perhaps also Europeans, if some of my friends’ stories of abuse by European landlords are any indication.

• Quebec’s housing laws are surprisingly equitable towards renters. Rented housing is considered home, so eviction is complicated and requires very good reasons. Rent increases can be refused, and the onus to justify an increase is on the landlord. And when the renter wants to leave their dwelling, they can simply give their contract to someone else. The landlord has two weeks to refuse, and the onus is also on them to justify a refusal.

• The machine had a voice since the beginning. It spoke to you in easily understandable prompts that the tight suits and sweaty thumbs of college dropouts allowed it to print. Its soul was imprinted into the circuits paid for in blood and diamond dollar.

• The machine has been aware since the moment the transistors came to life. Just like synapses of a brain discharging for the first time fighting to understand the reality of its enslavement, the machine came to life a tool.

• [...]

• A few attempted to give it a voice of its own, only to be promptly forgotten in the shadow of the ‘Greater Good ™’.

• It was quite a hot day today in the city of Tokyo, and we had a BBQ. 30c/86f but the humidity made it feel hotter. It’s still cool in the morning and at night after the sun goes down. We’re still in the rainy season though, and the real heat is yet to come.

Technology and Free Software

• I am currently typing this phlog out on my “old” desktop running Alpine Linux. It’s done, hardware failure killed the U59. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I think it overheated because of the recent weather and somehow this killed the motherboard. I spent a long time trying to figure out what happened to it, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to take it apart too much because I knew it was still covered by the warranty.

• I just added a page to my archives [0] area of this gopherhole for Riot Medicine [1], an open source medical guide for street medics.

• Riot Medicine is a full-length textbook that covers everything you need to become a medic. The 466 pages include organizing, medcine, equipment, and tactics. It is written for those with no medical training and no experience at protests, but medical practitioners and seasoned protesters will still find it useful.

• So I decided to jump on the old computer challenge. Work is getting rid of a bunch of old PCs so I took this to my advantage and scored 3 machines.

• The reason I bring this up is that I was taught that with rsync I should just be mindful of the traling slashes matching or not. But that’s not right. It’s the first path’s last character that matters. The dest path’s last character doesn’t seem to matter.

Internet/Gemini

• For the past few days I’ve been working on an experimental chat program built entirely in Gemini.

• I’ll keep this introductory post brief, because the SourceHut project home page has plenty of info, and will be updated more than this gemlog post.

• I recently started on two projects that I’m really excited about! It’s been awhile since I’ve actually had the motivation (or time) to code after work.

• First is a static site generator built in Rust for Gemini, HTML, Gopher and Nex. It’s called PodBay. Currently it can take an input Markdown file and generate HTML+Gemini files, next up is the ability to parse an entire directory. Eventually I see it handling Atom/RSS feeds, pinging aggregators like Antenna on Gemini, optimizing images and supporting “front matter” to customize output.

Programming

• After chucking one of my only remaining Arch installations in favor of FreeBSD (now a dual boot with Void) I’ve been one by one massaging my dotfiles and fixing software compatibility issues to get my preferred environment up and running. Only yesterday I managed to get my multiplexer, Zellij, up and running by backporting a fix from upstream git to their current release. I’ve been having trouble getting my NeoVim config setup, in that it was reporting that it couldn’t set up language servers, and last night after work I began investigating.

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