● 07.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 24/07/2023: Checking out FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE and X.com is Stupid

Posted in News Roundup at 6:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• Over the years, I thought I’d be finally free from this teenage mindset to appear as mature as possible – like an adult, like a hyper organized successful person, who cares about the right things and discards the others, who never indulges in childish things and always knows what to say etc. – but I realize recently that it only changed its face, its expression, the overall goals, but at its core it remained and stayed the same! No matter the specifics, at its core was always the idea of becoming a type (or even trope) of desirable adult woman that was currently hyped in the view of society, someone who ticks all the boxes regarding her interest and hobbies and style, who is working, who is ‘girlbossing’, glamorous, eating a certain way etc etc.

• This is half of the crop: 43 onions (one isn’t visible). I planted some sets out in April, on a whim (I wasn’t planning to grow any this year), then felt bad for the left-over sets and planted those too, a month later. Successional planting isn’t actually a very good idea with onions, and that second planting is looking a bit weedy compared to this one, but I’ll make the best of it.

• When onions are ready to harvest, the green tops start to fall over; once around half of the crop has done that, you bend over the neck of the remaining ones, pull them, and set them out in a dry, airy place to start drying out. These onions are bred for storage – if they’re harvested in optimum conditions and “cured” correctly, they might last for a whole year after harvest – at which point the new crop of onions will be ready. Plant enough of them each year, and you’ll never have to buy an onion again.

Politics and World Events

• If Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump represent above-average human beings, Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are the insanely intelligent aliens us dumb-asses have been struggling to find. That ilk is *already among us*!

• Too bad stupidity can’t see above its grade, huh?

• BTW, if you’re unfamiliar with Scott Adams’ daily YouTube show (he’s a cartoonist cancelled by throngs of murmuring half-brained morons who believed the out-of-context script-ure fed them by their fundamentalist high-priests/high-priestesses (high-priestLesses? high-priestGesses? high-priestBesses? high-priestTesses? high-priestQesses? high-priest+esses?)), do make haste, as it was particularly fun today (and of course the past shows are retained).

• Stick head up own ass.

• ### Will it soon emerge, from mouth?

• ### Silently, waiting…

• I normally avoid talking about politics outside of areas I feel like I have a strong enough understanding, and I usually don’t feel comfortable expressing strong opinions on day-to-day politics. I’m uncomfortable with the political system in general and with both major US parties, and I’m ashamed of some of my past bad takes. I’m also really bad at expressing a lot of this kind of thing.

• I get dumped more often than I’d like to admit. Well, I guess I’m admitting it right now to the tens of people reading this, but still. I just got dumped out of nowhere, again, so I went through my usual processes of getting over it and I figured I’d share what I do with all y’all for some fucking reason.

Technology and Free Software

• There are several differences compared to Linux. For example in the development process: unlike GNU/Linux, where the kernel, the userland tools and everything else is made by different projects, FreeBSD is a complete operating system. Everything (kernel, userland tools, some servers and documentation) is developed and maintained by the FreeBSD team.

• While the Linux kernel and most of the userland tools are licensed under the “copyleft” GNU GPL, the FreeBSD system is licensed under the “permissive” BSD license. As a result Apple could base main parts of it’s MacOS on FreeBSD and make it proprietary software. I leave it to the reader if this is a good thing or not.

Internet/Gemini

• I’m envious, but just don’t have the time to go beyond a large list at this point in time.

• I find the “MAGA wing” as detestably ignorant as the let’s-repurpose-the-alphabet-to-describe-mostly-made-up-genders wing.

• But I’ll likely be voting with the former because the latter thinks they know me and my character by way of my age (“old”), skin color (“white”), and gender (“male”). And what they “know” of me – not merely suspect, but know with certainty! – through that ridiculously moronic categorization is I’m “privileged”, a “supremacist”, and spent all my life plotting to ruin life for all who aren’t an “old white male”.

• Can you see why I might vote against that – if not occasionally want to seek refuge in a “small town”?

• When I ask Google Bard to access specific websites, it usually has no trouble finding the information I’m looking for. This can be helpful if I’m looking for answers in a large body of documentation – instead of combing the docs for an answer to an obscure question, I can ask Bard where I need to look and save a lot of trouble.

• I make no secret of my disdain for Elon Musk (nor indeed for any m/billionaire). The man is certifiable and incredibly immature, which combined with his immense wealth and incurious nature makes for a pretty dangerous person. I guess we’re lucky he seems to be focusing all his efforts on destroying the brand of his new expensive toy. It could be worse.

• When I was a kid, I used to play a Sega Genesis game called “Road Rash” a lot. I loved that game. The motorbikes, the violence, the incredible soundtrack. It had it all. One thing I remember really liking was the character names. Names like “Axle” and “Teflon Mike” just sounded so cool to my 8 year old ears, to the point that I started trying to create similarly cool names for stories I wrote. My sister mocked me relentlessly, but she just didn’t get it.

• I get the feeling that Elon feels the same way about “X” as I did about those character names. A overwhelming sense of childish “that’s cool!” that everyone else thinks is foolish.

• Yeah, right. First, IDs?? This doesn’t sacrifice anything besides privacy, and probably only makes things more centralized, since users won’t trust anyone but a few reputable Big Guys with their government ID.

• Second, subscriptions. Well, that just decreases accessibility and makes social networks private clubs for rich people. Also, centrally reliant on credit card companies.

• Third, invite-only signups. This one has less problems, and definitely “sacrific[es] growth for trust”. But do we want to be in closed-off invite-only silos? Wouldn’t this scenario make federation pretty tricky? Most importantly, I doubt big growth-oriented companies will choose this option if they can avoid it. More likely, they’ll go the centralized and privacy invading route of government ID verification.

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