About
Dalliance.net is Pre’s homepage, index of his projects, updates on his blog. That sort of thing. You can subscribe in various ways.
Projects
Blog
My blog, mostly monthly summaries of the Fediverse Account.
Visit at dalliance.net/blog
Or check out the categories index
Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny
Ongoing: An Interactive Sci-Fi story for Virtual Reality about the adventures of the crew of a flying saucer.
Visit at starshipsd.com
Wordcloud Tarot
Ongoing: My tarot decks have the meanings of the cards written on the card in a world-cloud. There’s also a video show with a reading about politics most weeks.
Visit at wordcloudtarot.com
Tentacles, After The End
A 30 minute animated movie about the last woman alive on a planet ravaged by tentacle monsters from outer space.
Tentacles is complete, visit the archive at tentacles.org.uk
Book: Do Dream Sheep Bleat?
A short story book about magic and memes and reality.
Dreamsheep is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/dreamsheep
Book: Yes, The Conspiracy Really Exists, And Furthermore It’s All Your Fault.
A long rant about how stupid humans screw up humanity.
The book is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/yes
Handsome Jack’s Showband
My punk cover’s band.
Despite some online-only gigs, the band didn’t make it though the pandemic, you can watch some old gig videos online at handsomejacks.co.uk
Bookshelf
An album of songs inspired by some of the best books on my bookshelf.
The album is complete, you can listen to the songs at dalliance.net/bookshelf
Joust Adventure
A little web-game I made back in 2011 with the hope people might pay me to make level 2.
I don’t think anyone ever finished level 1. Too hard.
Can you do it?
The project is abandoned, you can still play level one at dalliance.net/joustadventure. So far as I know, I’m the only person to ever complete the level. Let me know if you do!
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Diary
My diary from the Fediverse.Status at - Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:32:39 +0000
Went to see a comedian called Rob Auton do a work-in-progress show at the local little theater.
More "first time" than "in progress" really. He was more comfortable and funny when talking about the act than when reading it from the pages.
A strange story where he's pretending to be a motivational speaker called "Can", which has quite a bit of work still to be done.
Good to see a couple of friends and have some food before the show, nice enjoyable evening.
Status at - Mon, 17 Feb 2025 21:14:08 +0000
This tablet's battery swelled up so much it popped the screen off and so it's been sat around waiting for me to fix it for... Oh, three years maybe?
Ages.
Fixed it yesterday.
Replacing that battery required dealing with fiddly ribbon cables that blocked it in, and the bastards had glued the battery in too so had to deal with slowly trying to break the glue by wedging a plastic card behind it.
That's why I put it off for years.
Took ages. Then when I finished, it didn't seem to work 😦
Had to re-do all those fiddly ribbon cables again to eventually gain success.
This is why I have two tablets now. The new one is much cheaper and more slow and rubbish with bigger pixels despite this one being half a decade old now.
Status at - Mon, 17 Feb 2025 20:35:11 +0000
Something broke in my internet router and I had to reset it and it screwed up so all the devices in the flat needed to be updated to connect to the new network.
There's the main desktop, two phones, two tablets, two laptops, one palmtop, a VR headset, the Steamdeck, and the kitchen screen.
The Raspbery Pi that controls the lights in kiosk mode needed me to attach an ethernet cable so I could shell in to kill the kiosk, and a keyboard/mouse so I could select the network and password once it was gone.
The Magic-Home LED strips needed me to use the app on the burner phone. Putting them in reset mode by powering off and on again quickly 3 times then pairing them from the app. Three of those.
The WLED led strips have no way to set them to re-pair the network so had to each be re-flashed. They are stuck to the walls so I had to use the palmtop, which needed to have it's OS updated and then Chrome installed so it could do that. Four of those.
The two wifi-controlled power-sockets aren't currently used coz the lava-lamps and the plasma-ball are all broken anyway.
Think that's everything.
I don't bother attaching the robot vacuum cleaner. It doesn't really need it, I don't control it with a script or my phone, just use the remote.
Smart homes eh? Don't let the wifi reset!
Status at - Tue, 11 Feb 2025 13:57:17 +0000
Read "Making Sense Of Chaos" by J Doyne Farmer, in which he describes some of the problems with standard static economic models and his successes with instead using "complexity economics", where he's building giant models of economies out of interactions between software simulated people called agents.
The thing, he reckons, about the mathematical equation driven models is that they are static, and so only really reflect changes when exogenous shocks hit the system. So you can see a change in the model if there's some supply shock caused by a pandemic or whatever, but the economic model won't evolve over time to reflect changes which come from within the economy itself. It always reaches an equilibrium until the next shock.
Whereas his agent-based models are chaotic, and can model the chaotic behavior of a real economy. Dynamic changes within the model can lead to boom and bust cycles, or to market crashes based on nothing but the endogenous behavior of the model without requiring some shock from outside it like a war or a pandemic.
He describes some success stories over his career of models getting increasingly complex as computational power increases, and paints a convincing picture of how better models can help decision makers determine the best courses of action.
Maybe it's because I'm a programmer from the games business, and not really much of a mathematician, but this is the method I'd have used if you asked me to model an economy. Hard to see how it could possibly work with just an equation of demand and supply.
But of course economics as a discipline is older than computers so they couldn't do it that way in the first place.
It would be good to have the field of economics catch up to trying to model the real world instead of just justify their pre-conceived ideas, to validate concepts that allow the rich getting to rule the world and the politicians to do what they were planning anyway.
Status at - Tue, 11 Feb 2025 10:53:15 +0000
Where do you submit bug-reports to Google Maps? I think I've found a mis-labelled gulf.
😆
Status at - Thu, 06 Feb 2025 17:28:47 +0000
Thames Water have written to me saying that their prices are going to change, and claiming to explain why.
They say it's because
"water regulator Ofwat has finished their industry-wide price review. This is the basis for our changes."
Which is hardly a reason at all, they say
"It's vital that we invest in our network and infrastructure"
Which is true, but isn't the reason the bills must go up. They've had years to do this, they've borrowed the money to do it with.
But instead of using that borrowed money to upgrade or repair their pipe network, they gave it to shareholders in dividends.
The reason for the price increase is because they loaded up the company with debt and drained all it's value into the pockets of the owner class. Practically bankrupting the company so that it requires new cash injection in order to enrich its capital owners.
I see you Thames Water. 👀
I see you Ofwat, and the red and blue Tory parties 👀
Status at - Wed, 05 Feb 2025 23:53:13 +0000
Content warning:ukpol / Labour / immigration / reform party
Group of Labour MPs urge No 10 to be tougher on migration to fend off Reform
Oh look, it's the Labour party saying "Reform is correct, you shouldn't vote for them, but Reform is correct and have accurately described all your problems"
The more Labour accept the framing Reform offers, instead of arguing against it, the more they ensure a Reform victory.
When Nigel Farage is the prime minister, it will be because the Labour Party agreed with them when they lied that immigration causes everyone's problems and is bad for the country.
It'll be because when Nigel says "Refugees are the cause of house price inflation" they say "Yes, we must do something about refuges" instead of "Bollocks, rich landlords cause house price inflation, we should tax landlordism"
It's hard to underestimate just how awful terrible a job the Labour party is doing of diffusing Reform's lies.
😔
Status at - Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:21:28 +0000
This month's digest newsletter is on it's way to all the great and wonderful statesmanlike people who asked for it.
The rest of you crazed chaos demons can read it here:
https://dalliance.net/blog/jan25/
Featuring stuff about Free Our Feeds and Facebook turning into Hatebook and Deepseek and UK Growth and far too much about Trumpy trump.
Status at - Sun, 02 Feb 2025 18:42:57 +0000
Content warning:Tariffs
The Maga crowd cheering on tariffs and insisting that they make America strong and will force their opponents to capitulate sound exactly like the Brexiters did five years ago.
They are certain that their country imposing sanctions upon itself can only hurt the foreign countries and could in no way ever make their own country smaller, poorer, and it's people more impoverished.
How could that be? After all punching yourself in the face is a show of strength! We are strong! 👊
They fantasize about Canada capitulating (to do what?) in the same way as the Brexiters fantasized about the German Car Industry forcing the EU to capitulate.
These things come in trends, tit for tat, soon all the countries will be punching themselves in the face to show strength. Then they'll start punching each other.
Britain once again leading the world! This time at autoimmolation.
Status at - Fri, 31 Jan 2025 10:11:40 +0000
On the radio as I wake they're telling me the government is constantly reviewing the #OnlineSafetyBill which sounds like good news since it's terrible onerous uworkable and likely to create walls blocking Britain from the internet.
But they're talking about strengthening it, making it even more onerous and unworkable and so everyone even more likely to just cut the connections to the UK.
Of course 😔
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Pluralistic: America and “national capitalism” (18 Feb 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:30:52 +0000
Doctorow on Piketty: "eventually the share of wealth held by the rich will reach a tipping
point, and we'll see policies that benefit the wealthy crowding out
policies that support human thriving, and the rich will get richer, and
they will feud with each other, and society will destabilize, and we
will face collapse."
Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec - Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:56:55 +0000
who should control what the ai thinks is good and moral? "But fast-forward 2-3 years to when AIs are a big part of the economy and military, and this gets more interesting. What should the spec say? In particular, what is the chain of command?"
Richard Wolff: Donald J. Trump and the End of America - YouTube - Mon, 10 Feb 2025 23:28:53 +0000
Richard Wolff on Erhardt for four hours talking about the current economic situation
How many genders are there, Daddy? (What the science says) - YouTube - Sat, 08 Feb 2025 14:11:32 +0000
Potholer's fifteen minute answer to the question of how many genders there are (It depends on which language you're asking about, in English: none) and how many sexes there are (two, but the boundaries are fuzzy).
UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for blog owners • The Register - Thu, 06 Feb 2025 10:25:48 +0000
Terrible bill comes into force in March: "the Online Safety Act has a set of obligations that come into force on
March 17, 2025, and large website operators are already concerned. Several, like London Fixed Gear and Single Speed, have stated that they will shut their online forums rather than attempt to comply. And outside the UK, online discussion site Lobsters has implemented a geoblock that will prevent UK visitors from accessing the site after March 16."
OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us - Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:32:06 +0000
"I will explain what this means in a moment, but first:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha. It is,
as many have already pointed out, incredibly ironic that OpenAI, a
company that has been obtaining large amounts of data from all of
humankind largely in an “unauthorized manner,” and, in some cases, in
violation of the terms of service of those from whom they have been
taking from, is now complaining about the very practices by which it has
built its company. "
The Hidden Journey inside ZIP Codes - YouTube - Tue, 28 Jan 2025 23:36:32 +0000
CGP Gray on Postcodes. You won't believe what ireland does.
Everything They Tell You About the Economy is WRONG | Aaron Meets @garyseconomics - YouTube - Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:03:34 +0000
Gary Stevenson on Novara's Downstream: "You can vote red, or vote blue, and you can have whichever bankrupt government you like, but a bankrupt government can't do much. It turns politics into X-Factor. Listen. If your government has no resources it doesn't matter who is in charge. We've given away the resources, the only way to get them back is taxation"
An information dark age is upon us. I’m logging off | Stewart Lee | The Guardian - Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:35:10 +0000
"We can’t let Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos reshape our reality, and have to
encourage every friend, relative, celebrity and institution to
disconnect from them."
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy - Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:31:20 +0000
"Zuckerberg, Musk, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
were all in attendance at Trump’s inauguration Monday. There is now no
major corporate-owned social media platform that is not aligned with
Trump or beholden to him in some way, and nearly every American is on at
least one of these platforms. "