Picture of me, long black hair in a tentacles shirt

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

Blog header image, me silhouetted against an orange/yellow sunset

My blog, mostly monthly summaries of the Fediverse Account.

Visit at dalliance.net/blog

Or check out the categories index


Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny

A crew of five stand in a green field with a flying saucer behind them next to a planet like earth in the sky.

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

A spread of cards scattered around. Each has a picture, and also a world cloud in the background

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


Exocortex Log

A logo of a brain

Ongoing: A life-logging app, built as a progressive web app with all data stored on your local machine. Party for privacy, partly so I don’t have to run any servers. If you are interested in logging graphing and analysing your time as you spend it, this might be for you! But mostly it’s for me, I don’t care if you use it or not.

See the app at exocortexlog.com, or read the latest news blog.


Tentacles, After The End

A woman in a blue dress and a red and chrome robot flee from tentacle monsters chasing in the background

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 white pocketbook with the icon of a black and white fat penguin

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 book cover with a starburst, pyramid and eye

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


Loopy

Pre behind some keyboard

After the band broke up, I took to playing with myself via a loop pedal. Sometimes, very rarely, even in public.


Bookshelf

dusty old books in a bookshelf plus logo

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


Handsome Jack’s Showband

A semi-circular logo and silhouetted crowd of arms

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


Joust Adventure

Screenshot of a game, made from pictures of plush toys and balloons

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!


  • Diary

    My diary from the Fediverse.
    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 18:56:02 +0000

    Content warning:re: UKPol Blair


    The man who committed the country to an illegal invasion and helped murder iraqi's by the thousands due to being pulled blindly into American wars is here telling everyone the UK should have been more blindly willing to follow the latest stupid American wars of aggression.

    If Blair shouldn't be in a care home for the insane he should be up in the Hague charged with war climes.

    And here he is, still doing the 80s thing of encouraging American war crimes.


    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 18:06:40 +0000

    Content warning:re: UKPol Blair


    Others have commented on his giving up on 'net zero' on this record breaking hottest day.

    His AI companies need more power than we can generate from wind and solar you see. So they are going to want to burn the world and he's sure they must be right to do that because the UK is only smol and can't lead.

    He is worried China might carry on burning coal even if we stop. Even though of course China is the country building the panels for everyone else to electrify.

    China ain't the problem mate.

    Decentralizing control over power: Economic, social, monetary, military, fashionably. All of it. That's the key.

    Not key is having your country subsidize dirty centralized power generation because your AI buddies want a new data center.


    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 17:51:12 +0000

    Content warning:re: UKPol Blair


    What is it about the AI companies that invested billions of pounds in your funds and companies which first made you think they might have the solution to modern ills Mr Blair?

    Was it the first hundred million dollars, or did the subsequent hundreds of millions of dollars also help convince you?


    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 17:49:57 +0000

    Content warning:re: UKPol Blair


    Seems like he's suggesting 80s solutions to 2020s problems then.

    The very policies which didn't work (but instead ran up debt the state now has to pay) are the ones which can get us out of that mess, which those 80s solutions led us to?


    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 17:46:45 +0000

    Content warning:UKPol Blair


    How much more frequent do Tony Blair's "rare interventions" have to get before the stenographers stop reporting them as 'rare'?


    Status at - Wed, 27 May 2026 11:51:31 +0000

    No more donations to Wikipedia until their entire staff is unionized then. Ideally also the management fired.

    medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikip


    Status at - Tue, 26 May 2026 11:14:57 +0000

    Or there's the corner configuration if you have people how hate each other and need to be separated 😆

    Or perhaps more of a buffet situation.


    Status at - Tue, 26 May 2026 11:13:35 +0000

    With the wood stained, and then varnished, and then varnished and then varnished and then varnished and then legs attached and the top varnished and then varnished and then varnished it seems the table is ready.

    The two main configurations are the S-shape or the C shape, one maybe better for a meal one for a card game or something. Maybe a DM seat there. Not yet with the keyboard embedded in the arms.

    Still need to get some chairs.


    Status at - Fri, 22 May 2026 23:56:00 +0000

    Oh, there it is. Not a great recording. That tour was incredible.

    youtube.com/watch?v=vfvfnsV0Zmw


    Status at - Fri, 22 May 2026 23:42:33 +0000

    And that one at the end of course. Just untoppable. Can't find the best version I head with all the Bill Hicks samples in it but this one at Glasto is fantastic.

    youtube.com/watch?v=4hVRPi8_yxs


  • Bookmarks

    Things I have bookmarked lately.
    The economist billionaires fear: this is how we get a wealth tax - YouTube - Mon, 25 May 2026 13:45:19 +0000
    Gary interviewing Gabriel Zucman on wealth taxes and the distribution of the tax burden between the mage rich and the poor.

    Nobody Wants To Come To America, Mate - Mon, 18 May 2026 10:31:52 +0000
    Professor Jiang Xueqin let Keen do the heavy lifting on the empire
    question, then came in with the kill shot dressed up as polite analysis: “If you’re going to see regime change to stop this war, forget about seeing it in Iran. You need to see it in America.” --Pause on that for a second.That
    is a Chinese academic, on British television, telling Piers Morgan that
    the path to global stability runs not through Tehran but through
    Washington. That the bloke in the Oval Office, the geriatric grift
    artist with the Diet Coke button and the nuclear codes, is the
    destabilising force. Not the Ayatollah. Not Xi. Not Putin. Not Kim. The
    bankrupt steak salesman from Queens.And what’s wild is, he’s not wrong.

    The Boring Internet | Terry Godier - Thu, 14 May 2026 22:31:51 +0000
    Nobody can sell it. Nobody can pivot it. Nobody can take it public and
    gut it for shareholders. Nobody can call an all-hands meeting and
    explain that, going forward, the protocol will prioritize video.

    You’re about to feel the AI money squeeze | The Verge - Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:02:17 +0000
    Gartner forecasts that large AI companies would need to earn cumulatively close to $7 trillion in AI-driven revenue through 2029, which is close to $2 trillion per year by the end of the period. In order to achieve “historic returns,” the providers would need to earn nearly $8.2 trillion in the same period.

    Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want | The Verge - Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:29:04 +0000

    Nuclear Genocide – The Threat And The Ceasefire – Media Lens - Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:27:59 +0000
    "Despite all the madness, horror and killing, Trump’s genocidal threat
    provoked a display of deep-seated solidarity and compassion that defied
    decades of propaganda demonising the Iranian people as ‘animals’,
    ‘savages’ and ‘primitives’. Clearly, very few of us are willing to
    tolerate the threat of nuclear genocide. In these grim times, when it
    sometimes feels like humanity has completely lost its way, that is
    something to celebrate."

    Reading is magic - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge - Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:24:15 +0000
    Sam Kriss writing on the coming illiteracy might affect politics. It's long so you know only people who read a bit will get to the end, and they prone to agree: "This is not a world we’re prepared for. All democratic politics
    assume a literate population; people who are willing to think in
    abstract terms about the kind of world they want to live in. Without
    that, democracy becomes a kind of tribal headcount, or a struggle for
    state resources between competing patronage networks. This is what lies
    behind a lot of the growing liberal panic over the decline of literacy.
    For a growing chorus of people who write in the Atlantic,
    we’re recoiling into pre-Enlightenment conditions of absolute
    domination. A population that can no longer think for itself will end up
    voluntarily ceding power to strongmen or demagogues. The end of
    literacy is the end of public reason. A post-literate world will be
    unreasonable, irrational, full of anger and madness, and people eating
    each other in the streets."

    The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier - Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:47:46 +0000
    Your thermostat has opinions now. Your television requires a login. Your
    car updates itself overnight, and sometimes when you start it in the
    morning, the interface has rearranged itself, as if someone broke in and
    reorganized your dashboard while you slept.

    Shameless Guesses, Not Hallucinations - Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:01:58 +0000
    I hate the term “hallucinations” for when AIs say false things. It’s perfectly calculated to mislead the reader - to make them think AIs are crazy, or maybe just have incomprehensible failure modes.

    AIs say false things for the same reason you do.

    At least, I did. In school, I would take multiple choice tests. When I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would guess.

    Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture - Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:59:20 +0000
    This investigation documents a national lobbying operation spanning corporate spending, think tank infrastructure, dark money networks, and competing model legislation templates. Meta spent a record $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025, deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states, and covertly funded a group called the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) to advocate for the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA). But the operation extends beyond Meta.

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