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 - Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:17:38 +0000
My hobby this week is deleting Google Off My Phone.
So I Installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel Six.
No blog posts for years then two in one week!
It seems to do most of the things I need from a phone these days, if only because of how I'm already deliberately not using Google for address/calendar/email and instead try and do most stuff with self-hosted web-services.
Means if I have a browser I have most of what I want already.
Graphene here is going to work for me except for:
- Organic Maps isn't good enough for driving or for busses.
- Banking apps
Luckily, with Graphene, the Google Play services can be installed and they install in user-space, so you can set your phone to have a Google partition and a Free partition and install Maps and Waze and Bank-apps in the Google unfree part.
Using a few new open-source things I wasn't using before on Android. Molly is nice for Signal and solves that tablet-app problem I think.
But seems like this can work. Away from Google but still only supporting a google phone 🤔 for now. More models coming I believe.
Perhaps I'll buy one soon coz both Google and Graphene stop supporting this Pixel Six this year.
More details in the Blog Post. anyway.
Status at - Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:42:09 +0000
I think it isn't so much that the US wants to be sure it's routers are safe, as they want to be sure that the companies making them will obey.
They aren't trying to make it impossible to spy on Americans through their router, they're aiming to ensure that they can spy on Americans through their router.
Status at - Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:47:24 +0000
Protectionism in the US heading in an interesting direction as The US bans foreign made internet routers
Which is particularly interesting because there aren't any US made internet routers really, certainly nothing like the number required for keeping all Americans online.
Routers are mostly insecure due to company negligence with updates and bugs which has nothing to do with nationality of course. American companies are just as likely to fail to spot a buffer overflow or abandon customers when they discontinue a product.
American companies aren't even less likely to want to spy on you and steal all your data and then be forced to give it up to government if they ask.
Hard to see how this goes well for anyone. Except many the people certifying products that evade the ban.
Status at - Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:52:33 +0000
Story two was about a magic pebble left to a woman by her dying grandfather.
The pebble would bring love, and sure enough a lover appeared in the form of a police man who also busts ghosts. They had dates, busted ghosts, and married.
But at the alter the groom reveals his magic ring left to him by his own dead grandfather is what really bought the bride (and her money) to him.Turns out though the spurned other-grand-daughter had stolen and replaced the magic pebble years ago anyway.
There is no magic, there's probably no ghosts, there's only love. Love brings you together, not magic trinkets.
Status at - Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:44:29 +0000
Story one was set around the building of the tower of London, with moats and spies and helicopters and submarines. The workers were being exploited, underpaid, whipped and suffering.
In league with the architect, the workers planned to murder the contractor. Take their revenge, and the tower.
Meanwhile Russian spies witness all and plan to take the tower and it's lake of rose wine.
Status at - Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:41:52 +0000
So we did the improv show.
Entertained a room full of people, made them laugh, played some games, told some stories.
It was a good time.
Status at - Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:30:44 +0000
With the eight week improv course ending last week, I timed it well to start a new group with a new set of eight sessions this week.
The Free Association seem more serious than Hoopla. They have 50% longer classes for a start. Three hours rather than two.
More instruction and notes rather than just positive encouragement. Clearer aim even from the early levels. More like a classroom than a playground.
First couple of sets of eight at Hoopla are just aimed at getting you to lose your decorum and allow yourself to be free and spontaneous. All really short form games, lightning rounds. Parlor games rather than theater.
But the Free Association's aim from the start is to get you building scenes and then stories. Their first set of lessons is titled "intro to long form". This one "Scene work".
Not so much the one minute parlor games, more focus on acting and characters and drama.
In vague terms at early stages that is. I mean, they have more in common than different. Plenty of short games in warm-up at FA and I just finished a whole set on drama and story with Hoopla.
Three hours is pretty long though. Starts half an hour earlier, ends half an hour later. Good thing it's also much much closer for me. Ten minute walk instead of 40 minutes on the bus.
We did lots and lots of first-scene head-to-head, mostly concentrating on trying to get specific. Check that after two minutes the audience knows where you are and who you are and how you know each other and what you're doing and none of the players are unsure either. Make it all specific as soon as possible, ambiguity is the enemy.
And everyone got that and exercised it pretty much flawlessly right away. So good group.
Status at - Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:30:50 +0000
Oh, I broke the thread. Continues here:
Status at - Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:13:01 +0000
I see no sign of any recognition from those who would want such a ban that they see any of the collateral damage a successful ban would have on the majority of kids who are not falling for this bullshit. That they are banning any good at all along with the bad.
Under 18s only
I see that the lobbying for these laws are funded by the absolute worst companies on the internet, those who will be entrenched by the legal compliance costs, that will cement themselves as the arbitrators of who is allowed to access the internet.
It’s a gift to Palantir and other surveillance companies. The very people running these algo-feeds are the ones who benefit from IDing every user and stalking them across the internet on their government-approved internet-licence IDs.
I don’t think even a successful ban on social media for kids would actually address the issue of kids being exposed to sexism and misogony or reduce the kids alienation and depression.
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
But I see we are going to do it anyway.
The direction is clear.
Those companies do get what they lobby for, and they are lobbying hard for ID checks on every website, wrapping their desire to enclose the internet commons for themselves in a faux concern for children’s welfare.
And governments wish to monitor and control the internet, so they will pass these laws.
I wonder how many parents have a family group-chat that they’re going to accidentally ban their kids from using, not realizing that ‘social media’ might include Whatsapp? 😆
It won’t fix anything, it will make the situation for kids worse, impose costs and rents and hacks and exploits on all of us, and increase government and corporate power.
Many will lose access to their networks of support and help.
So it goes.
We will build a better more censorship resistant internet. It’s already here really: Briar. Matrix. Nostr. Bitchat. Veilid. Spritely. And the rest.
The laws may push us there faster.
The race will go on.
Status at - Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:12:45 +0000
None of these surveillance companies trying to break your kid’s brains would exist if we hadn’t made it illegal to reverse engineer their manipulative crappy software and produce compatible none-manipulative clones.
But they have been granted legal monopoly, so they can do what they like.
If you want a law to protect internet users it isn’t
“Force them to consent before you spy on them”
or
“age-gate chat forums”,
No. The real solutions are more like:
“Buying and selling data about an individual is illegal and punishable by years in jail and a penalty of 2x yearly profit”
or
“Advertising must be based on the content of the page context not the tracking of the individual”.
If a legal intervention is warranted then we don’t want a system where website operators have to pick between a list of monopoly providers to hand over their data to and force them all to spy on their users to age-check.
We want companies to be explicitly allowed to reverse engineer and reproduce other company’s proprietary access methods, to increase competition and end these rentier monopolies that allow them to push their manipulative phone apps.
End the DMCA and the similar laws which they campaigned for to prevent competition. It’s those laws which give the corporations the power to push their algorithms and limit alternatives.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.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.
Pluralistic: AI “journalists” prove that media bosses don’t give a shit (11 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:11:59 +0000
"If the purpose of a customer service department is to tell people to go
fuck themselves, then a chatbot is obviously the most efficient way of
delivering the service. It's not just that a chatbot charges less to
tell people to go fuck themselves than a human being – the chatbot
itself means "go fuck yourself." A chatbot is basically a "go fuck yourself" emoji. Perhaps this is why every AI icon looks like a butthole"
‘How On Earth Do You Justify That?’ Laura Kuenssberg’s Selective Empathy – Media Lens - Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:50:50 +0000
"Worthy victims are people who are killed or oppressed by Official
Enemies of the West, such as the Soviet Union (and now Russia), North
Korea or China. These victims garner considerable media attention in the
propaganda system, marked by sympathy, indignation and fury. Their
suffering is humanised, described in detail, and used to generate moral
outrage directed at the offending regimes or governments, often as part
of a concerted attempt to topple them for the benefit of Western
geostrategic interests.---
‘Unworthy’ victims, by contrast, are people who are killed or whose
democratic aspirations are crushed by the West or ‘our allies’; such as
Suharto’s Indonesia in the 1960s, Pinochet’s Chile in the 1970s, the
US-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, and Israel in the
present day. These victims are less prominent, even absent, in western
media coverage or are often discounted as ‘collateral damage’: a lesser
kind of human, robbed of their individuality, their …
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Is Stepping Down - Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:57:19 +0000
"Schneider said he plans to emphasize scaling, describing his job as “to help set up Bluesky's next phase of growth.”"
phase two is where they tighten the thumb screws a little to see if anyone leaves. probably involves adverts.
Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse - Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:37:16 +0000
"there's something quietly beautiful about a place where people just...
share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no
algorithm nudging you toward rage. Just someone who spent twenty years
studying Arctic policy posting a thread at 2 AM because they think you
should understand what's happening. It's the internet I was promised in
1996. It only took thirty years and the complete collapse of American
journalism to get here."
‘Operation Epic Fury’ – Anatomy Of A War Of Aggression – Media Lens - Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:56:42 +0000
Pure, mendacious propaganda on prime-time BBC TV.
Hackers Expose The Massive Surveillance Stack Hiding Inside Your “Age Verification” Check - techdirt - Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:06:25 +0000
See the pattern? Discord keeps swapping vendors like someone frantically rotating buckets under a leaking roof, apparently hoping the next bucket won’t have a hole in it. But the problem was never the bucket. The problem is the hole in the roof — the never-ending stream of age-verification government mandates.
Venezuela – ‘War Is Peace’ – Media Lens - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:45:45 +0000
"The 100-death toll may come as a surprise to consumers of
‘mainstream’ media, which have shown zero interest in the people killed
and maimed. If US soldiers had died, we would know their names, faces,
army units, back stories, with spouses and parents expressing their
grief in heart-rending interviews. --
For ‘mainstream’ politics and media, the latest killing spree is just
another Groundhog Day. Maduro is not perceived as a particular
individual; he is perceived as the latest incarnation of the generic
‘Bad Guy’: Milosevic, bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad,
Nasrallah and Sinwar. The Venezuelans are another anonymous crowd of
(mostly) brown-skinned people indistinguishable from Iraqis, Iranians,
Libyans, Syrians and Palestinians."
Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division" | DUST - YouTube - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 23:25:09 +0000
Nice 15 minute sci-fi film about the anti-memetics division, a very strange place to work indeed.