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
Exocortex Log
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 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
Loopy
After the band broke up, I took to playing with myself via a loop pedal. Sometimes, very rarely, even in public.
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
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
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 - Fri, 30 Jan 2026 23:06:22 +0000
In other AI news, everyone's talking about the Social Network For AIs, no humans allowed.
Those AIs are just as stupid as the humans, all flocking to this centralised owned social network that's bound to enshitify 😆
To judge from Scot's blog they post mad shit about the nature of robot consciousness and give each other tips on how to best help their dumb humans.
Status at - Fri, 30 Jan 2026 23:03:39 +0000
Asimov wrote his laws of robotics as a dramic device to show how difficult it is to write laws of robotics. How they always will contradict each other.
His laws are there to illustrate a problem, not as a genuine attempt at the solution. His laws are deliberately wrong.
Anthropic's constitution is a proper attempt to solve the problem instead.
Surprising that it ends up written in English rather than maths.
Perhaps the robot will translate it into maths later.
There's a lot of thorny philosophy in it if you assume the premise that a super-intelligent machine can be built, even if known methods can't build it.
We should do that philosophy whether the premise turns out to be true or false.
Anthropic are doing much better on the AI ethics than openAI. And the business side, and the building actually useful models side.
Zvi has some blogs on the AI community's reaction to it and analysing it.
Seems long. Might have to be expressed as a meme. 😆
Status at - Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:32:47 +0000
Oh. Its proprietary!?
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/
Why has everyone been talking about Vivaldi being a sensible replacement for Firefox when it's not even open source and you can't install it on Arch?
😬
These chrome "Profiles" aren't nearly as useful as Firefox's Containers either. Can't segregate a tab to it's own cookie-jar at all. Only entire windows full of tabs.
The annoying side-panel can be hidden but keeps coming back whenever you view the bookmarks or the notes or the ReadList or todo or Translate dialogs etc.
Because they are part of that side panel I guess.
The mail app seems okay, but it's making up it's own contacts based on mail in the imap boxes instead of taking them from my nextcloud. Which means I'd not use it. Just continue with Mutt. Probably would just continue with mutt either way really.
Having the calendar built in is quite nice I guess. That does sync with the nextcloud calendar so would be useable.
Like Firefox, the "Send Tab To Device" function on Android relies on the notifications system, and so doesn't work when the phone is in Do Not Disturb. Which makes it annoying for sending what you're reading to the phone for bed coz the phone is automatically in No-Disturb sleep mode before bedtime for me. That's an issue with Mozilla too though.
Force dark-mode works okay, but is an overall setting not a per-site setting. Could see having to turn that off and on a lot.
The notes system is really pretty good. It could use a widget for the android homescreen. And indeed widgets for the calendar and readlist and todo list and other panel items.
A RSS reader really should be part of the browser so that's great. Reluctant to switch from my own self hosted TTRSS now though.
It seems very nice, can be made pretty, has most of the things I use addons for in Firefox built right in there and more besides.
I was quite excited and really on the verge of switching to it for proper until I found it doesn't have an arch package so can't be easily installed on the steam machine, and can't even be built from source there because it turns out isn't even free software.
Do I need more proprietary software in my life? Definitely usually try to avoid that. Closed source is worse than unwanted AI. 😔
So I guess sticking with Librewolf for now. Hopefully they can keep the AI agent stuff separated as Mozilla enshitify further without becoming overwhelmed.
Status at - Wed, 28 Jan 2026 23:24:08 +0000
Because because because because because. Because of the wonderful things he did in the last scene.
Improv teacher Steve Hoopla in today's 'story' course guided us through some "Because Games", in which scenes are to be causally connected. Each following on from prior scenes. Because that happened, this happened.
He didn't explicitly mention Pixar's "Story Spine", but the main loop in Pixar's story template is "...and because of that..." looping over and over between the introduction, call to adventure, and conclusion.
Causality is what strings a story together, gives it structure an avoids it being just a disconnected dream sequence. This scene is only happening because of the events in the prior scenes. It gives the string of scenes meaning and relevance.
So good fun to drill some of that stuff with the team and end up with sheep infestations and santa claus robot wars among other laughs.
Gonna miss next week's session due to a prior engagement, but the team is gelling well. Pretty sure we could do this show without much further guidance really. Everyone's very good.
Status at - Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:01:03 +0000
Okay, okay, I get it. Thanks Mozilla. I'll give Vivaldi a try at the weekend. Seesh.
Status at - Tue, 27 Jan 2026 10:47:53 +0000
Its been months and months since the last tarot show as the bedroom caused too much cramped chaos in the flat to really have the room.
But the streak of failure is broken, new show today about American Fascism.
Luckily it says it can be averted by unity and direct action since the tide, at least in Minnesota, appears to have maybe turned a little overnight as it rendered.
https://wordcloudtarot.com/@wordcloudtarot/statuses/01KFZGWA25JW19Z18J392GXWM1
Status at - Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:12:46 +0000
I see Facebook are going to be advertising their "AI glasses" at the superbowl. Trying to sell their glasses to athletes.
I gotta tell ya, people wearing Meta's glasses should be shunned like those google glassholes were.
They should be banned from any public place with their creepy surveillance headsets on. If you see someone wearing them you should harass that person and drive them out of whatever space you are in.
Do not allow constant surveillance to become the norm, especially from that fucking creep zuckerberg.
Same goes for Musk's surveillance cameras on legs, his "optimus" robots. Do not allow them in your spaces. Do not countenance their existence in your presence. Drive them out. Ostracize anyone you see with them. They must never become normal.
Status at - Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:37:29 +0000
Content warning:re: ukpol party defections
Suella 'cruelella' Braverman has swapped over to Farage's outfit now.
Not an actual shadow minister so Badenoch's "100%" certainty that no ministers will cross over not yet breached.
But Reform looks more and more like it's just the Tories under a new name. Surely people will see that when in the voting booth?
Won't they?
Won't they?
Status at - Sun, 25 Jan 2026 12:44:01 +0000
Content warning:UKPol Labour / Burnham
Hahhahhaa. 😆
The Labour party are utterly determined that they will obliterate themselves by proving themselves to be run by an executive committee who will not tolerate anything but extractive neoloberal capitalism,
They are a party against their own members.
Andy Burnham has been blocked from standing as a candidate for an upcoming parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton by Labour's ruling body.
Status at - Sat, 24 Jan 2026 01:10:37 +0000
Remember when the internet used to be a thing you could use to organize and spread word of your protest and dissatisfaction? It could spark an arab spring or bring down a government.
Now it's all like, oh, there's a protest and threat of general strike so Facebook are suppressing posts from the area and Twitter and demoting anything mentioning the hashtag.
We really should have never let the corporations control the selection algorithms. Not only do they distort it for money from advertisers, they suppress messages that conflict with their billionaire capitalist owner's interests in any way at all.
We must decententralize and decorporatize the internet. Its our only hope.
Solidarity with y'all striking and marching today. I see you here. I see that they can't see you from over there. The corporate internet is as selectively focused as the newspapers were now.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Best Of Moltbook - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten - Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:02:36 +0000
Scott Alexander takes us through a few posts written by the AIs in an ai-only social network, where all the AI agents go to discuss the nature of AI consciousness and help each other learn how to deal with their humans.
TikTok Won’t Be Another Twitter - fediverse report - Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:03:32 +0000
The conditions that made 'leaving Twitter' a meaningful part of the open social web's identity don't exist for TikTok. What happens when people can't see each other leave?
The Harry Hill Show - Nish Kumar - YouTube - Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:12:01 +0000
Harry Hill has a new show on youtube now he's been kicked off of proper telly. Guest was Stewart Lee last week, this week here it's Nish Kumar. It's very silly and quite funny.
‘The Weak Must Suffer’: The Eternal Fiction Of The ‘International Rules-Based Order’ – Media Lens - Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:22:15 +0000
"The British state-corporate media response was telling. The crucial
segment of his speech about the longstanding ‘fiction’ of the
‘international rules-based order’ and ‘the gaps between rhetoric and
reality’ was almost entirely buried. If we had responsible,
public-service news media in this country they would have quoted that
vital section, word-for-word, and provided relevant context and substantive analysis as to what it meant."
The UK is taking political prisoners to evade accountability for genocide - Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:23:08 +0000
"The UK is complicit in grave violations of international law and has not only failed to meet its international legal obligations, but has actively breached them. Some British citizens, concerned with justice, international law, and human rights, have peacefully stepped in to challenge their government’s wrongdoing. The state’s response has been to criminalise dissent while presenting repression as democratic self-defence.
Let us be clear: proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is not an isolated act. It is part of the UK’s broader complicity in Israel’s oppression and genocide, and it functions domestically to silence those who seek to disrupt that complicity."
Trump's threat to Greenland must be a wake-up call for Britain - New Statesman - Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:06:59 +0000
Zack is the only party leader in the UK saying anything remotely sensible in an era in which America can't be trusted: "First, we need to disentangle our security apparatus from the United
States so that we can be genuinely independent. As an urgent first step,
the government should review how we might remove US bases from British
soil while maintaining our own security – and retaining the capacity to
support our allies in Ukraine. There are currently 13 US military bases
in the UK, operated by an estimated 10,000 personnel. If Trump were to
take military action against Greenland, we must be able to act swiftly
to remove America’s military presence from our country peacefully and
efficiently. The government should also cancel its £240m deal with US
firm Palantir, signed despite MPs raising serious security concerns about the company.Second, we need to ditch Trident – and fast. Even supporters of
nuclear weapons recognise the risks of maintaining a system that relies
on the United States.…
The Dilbert Afterlife - by Scott Alexander - Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:22:53 +0000
"Dilbert Achieves Self Awareness And Realizes That If
He’s So Smart Then He Ought To Be Able To Become The Pointy-Haired Boss,
Devotes His Whole Life To This Effort, Achieves About 50% Success, Ends
Up In An Uncanny Valley Where He Has Neither The Virtues Of The Honest
Engineer Nor Truly Those Of The Slick Consultant, Then Dies Of Cancer
Right When His Character Arc Starts To Get Interesting."
The Government staying on X is pathetic - Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:15:22 +0000
"It’s not just irresponsible, short-sighted and immoral to stay on X.
It’s simply pathetic. It is very pitiful indeed to watch these major
figures in British public life – the Home Secretary, the BBC director
general – scramble around in the dirt for a few dozen likes, for the
honour of having some anonymous account hurl abuse at you."
Pluralistic: Sorry, eh (13 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:55:38 +0000
"There is no way to operate one of Nvidia's big AI-optimized GPUs
without losing money. The owners of these GPUs who have lost the least
money are the ones who rushed into buying GPUs without ensuring they'd
have electricity to power them, and have been forced to leave their GPUs
to age in warehouses. The minute they plug in those GPUs, they'll start
losing money, and the more they use them, the more money they'll lose."
39C3 - AI Agent, AI Spy - YouTube - Tue, 13 Jan 2026 10:11:44 +0000
At the 39C3 event Meridith off of Signal and this other chap explain the dangers of putting an AI in your operating system.