● 07.27.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 27/07/2023: Old Computer Challenge and Dumping Twitter

Posted in News Roundup at 11:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• Seems like I’m back to awakening after just five hours of sleep. I mean, it’s sorta maybe kinda enough. But yawn….

• It occurred to me a little while ago that it takes (someone like) a Biden to be okay with (someone like) a Biden.

• Okay, I’ll be fair:

• It occurred to me a little while ago that it takes (someone like) a Trump to be okay with (someone like) a Trump.

• The recent news that a copy of Kolektiva.social’s database was confiscated by the FBI as the result of a raid at the home of one of the organization’s administrators, should serve as a cautionary tale for activists taking advantage of Mastodon’s federated nature to form online communities. Specifically, you should should do some research into the security in place at an activist-focused server, as well as the servers privacy policies.

• Actually, the same advice would hold even if you were joining a server for, say, people who like knitting, but if you’re a political activist it’s even more important because law enforcement loves to keep tabs on folks whose politics fall outside the mainstream.

Politics and World Events

• Only the first word of the Cartesian philosophy is true; it was not really possible for Descartes to say cogito **ergo sum,** but only **cogito**. The first (and last) thing that I perceive is my own act of spirit, myself perceiving. The spirit, which is life woken into self-consciousness, discovered its likeness to itself, or identity, through the act of thinking about thinking. All further perception is only an explication of this idea, which **is the** idea **par excellence.** I know that I think, that I am spiritually active, or, – since there is no other kind of activity – that I am active, but I do not know that I am. Not being, but the act, is the first and last.

• If we go on to an explication of this act, we find it to be threefold: the thinking, the thought-about, and the identity of these two, the “I.” “I think” means: the “I” places itself (or sets itself) before itself as another, but passes through this reflection back to itself, in the same way that the discovery of one’s own life in a mirror is something that comes from the outside. It perceives that the image in the mirror is its own.

• In the second half of the 19th century, small Korea, and formerly a frequent target of aggressive campaigns of neighboring China and Japan, became one of the main goals of Japanese colonial expansion. The Japanese power that gained strength saw Korea as its potential possession. Preparations for the colonization of Korea, however, faced certain problems, among which were the attempts of the Korean people to defend their independence, and the positions of China and the Russian Empire. However, after the Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, Japan still managed to establish a protectorate over Korea. 22 August 1910 Korea was finally annexed to Japan and passed under the control of the Japanese governor-general.

• Of course, such a situation could not please the advanced part of Korean society. Moreover, in the Japanese Empire, all non-Japanese people were treated as second-rate people, and Koreans were no exception. However, since Japan was nevertheless more developed not only militarily and economically, but also culturally, a country, revolutionary ideas popular in Japan began to spread in Korea. So anarchism penetrated Korean land — an ideology that at some point became dominant in the East Asian revolutionary movement.

Technology and Free Software

• Yesterday I was trying to explain my anxieties regarding Arden Vul to my wife. This is about the megadungeon with a PDF of more than 1122 pages. It’s long. The levels are long. The rooms are long. The intro is long. The explanations are long.

• I’m one of the lucky ones whose computer came with something called a “lid”. I’ve discovered that when I cause it to become facing-ly parallel to the keyboard, I don’t have have to concern myself with the stuff you mention at all. It’s really quite miraculous.

• The Old Computer Challenge has concluded. I enjoyed taking on the challenge, as well as reading about everybody’s experiences in various protocols out there, gopher, gemini, irc, hypertext transfer, etc. When I first read about the challenge, I told myself that I needed to particpiate this year. I enjoy when the “smolnet” communities call for participating in shared experiences like occ, or ROOPLOCH, or christyotwisty’s monthly 5 questions, and we are able to come together as community and have fun![1][2][3]

• There are many things I have learned, not just from my direct involvement with my old hardware and software, but also from you people in the community. I have been keeping notes and still continue to take notes of what you all share.

• A couple of months ago i wrote about setting up soju on OpenBSD (it was pretty straightforward) and trying to get Emacs’ ERC working with it (shenanigans were required)…

• I still haven’t finished the mine game that I mentioned, but I have released a music editor, TinyTunes. It’s currently the first thing listed on the Thumby Arcade, but I think that just means it’s the most recent.

Internet/Gemini

• Slowly over the past year I’ve noticed I’ve not been getting the same enjoyment out of places like Mastodon that I used to.

• There’s a lot of goings on that might explain this, but I suspect the main culprit is myself and my changing tastes over time.

• Over the past year I’ve migrated Mastodon servers. I’ve made heavier use of filters to block politics, activism, and outrage porn. I’ve become quicker to block and mute people who I’m not interested in interacting with. All these things have been a help but not a cure.

• Sometimes, a decision gets made by the restriction of the possible options to a single plausible choice.

• I’m done with Twitter. Locked my account, cleared my info, posted a message to the effect of the following: I won’t use a platform that doesn’t take CSE seriously, where the posting of such doesn’t earn you a ban and a report to the Feds.

• Left as subtext: maybe all of you can justify it to yourself, but I can’t. And maybe you didn’t know about it before, but if you see this, you’ll know about it now.

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