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
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 - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:42:59 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
I'll now go back to not really taking about bitcoin very much at all because it's quite technical and dull and I'm not an expert at all. It's safe to unmute me.
Wonder if I gained more followers on nostr than I probably lost on fedi 😆
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:40:43 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
The conference is over now. I likely wouldn't have come for just a bitcoin thing, but I am very interested in redecentralizing the web, so it's attachment to the nostr day pulled me in.
Everyone I met was friendly and interesting and seems much more interested in making a better money system than in making money for themselves.
Our government and bank money systems are dysfunctional in all kinds of ways which are often less visible than they should be too people using them, especially to those in Europe and America who benefit from the way those systems exploit the global south.
I'm not convinced that fixing that would end wars and fix broken government as some seem to think, but I am sure our money is the source of many problems.
There are many bright, well meaning, and intelligent people building to improve bitcoin in fascinating ways with the hope of having a parallel system to transition to. With lots of work still to be done.
Can it work?
I'm sure I don't know, and I'm sure even if it's a better system it'll come with it's own unfairness and cruelty. Money will continue to be a source of suck and worry.
I'm told that the bigger conferences are often full of shitcoin scammers and suit wearing banksters who are in fact all in it too get rich and rip people off, but I found none of that here.
Here there is a real community of people trying to make the world a better place and improve the lives of their neighbours and governance of their countries.
And in the end building community is the most radical and effective way to change the world regardless of the problems of it's money system.
I had a great time. Thanks to those organising it.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 17:45:52 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Finally, Martin from BTC Prague wonders how to empower bitcoiners in the UK.
He's inspired by many UK scientists and artists and creators.
But he thinks it's declining. Socialism and regulation reducing freedom.
His home country had a peaceful velvet revolution, ending communism in the 80s.
And it now has a law that there is no capital gains tax on long term held bitcoin!
The UK, he thinks, needs to build new strong bitcoin based money to have it's own peaceful revolution.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:11:28 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Thomas voegtlin talks about nostr spam. It's very censorship resistance means spam can't be stopped by moderators.
One way to stop spam is require proof of work before your client accepts a message. A large difficult hash.
But big hashing machines are more available to spammers than people.
Can't use likes or zaps cuz they can be faked with sybil attacks.
Instead: notaries and proveably burned satoshis.
Your public messages are classified as ham rather than spam if you burn enough money.
Nostr event types to prove it are suggested. Including burning to upvote others messages
Don't think I like deliberately burning the money, and seems to me a web of trust might work without doing that? Pay to post also peanizes there poor.
But it isn't really burned here, it's shaed out to miners to continue a subsidy when the block rewards run out. So paying miners and these notaries rather than really burning. Okay. Maybe better, but still makes messages mostly for the rich?
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 15:57:01 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
A panel on bitcoin treasury companies.
Because investment law makes it hard for institutions to buy bitcoin in their funds. You can't own BTC in you tax free ISA. So some companies that do hold bitcoin, notably microstrategy, became proxy investments. If you can't hold BTC you could maybe own a company that owns BTC instead.
Microstrategy started because it's ceo realized it's dollar treasury was being debased by dollar printing. So tried buying BTC instead, with fantastic success.
Copycat companies proliferated. They boomed and then busted. One panelist calls that a grift. A way to memeticly pump share price.
A line can be drawn between profitable companies just storing their profit in bitcoin Vs those raising debt to buy without having a profitable business.
Imagine a world transiting from using seashells for money to using gold coins. A company gathers seashells from investors to buy gold coins, which will do better than sea shells. Trouble is the next step where the company pays back it's investors with... More seashells.
If you own shares in the company, you do not own bitcoin. You'll just get more old fashioned bank money.
Still. It's worked as marketing, more people being convinced BTC has value.
If you do buy a treasury company, check it's bitcoin not "digital assets" including shitcoins.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 14:42:18 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Rob Gaskell of Sundial is presenting on a layer two protocol designed to enable bitcoin to generate yield.
Most bitcoin is still, in long term hodl. Not helping anyone.
Sure, you could lend your bitcoin for interest but that would count as a tax event and also involve losing custody.
What if a programmable sidechain to help with scaling, allow borrowing and lending and products retail and institutions like?
His solution is called Sundial and doesn't need new protocol changes or forks.
Hard to say what it actually does though? Presumably something like liquidity in sidechains? Didn't really seem to get what he actually is building. 🤷
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 13:57:27 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
The conference also has a cinema room, showing bitcoin based films. Not mine, but I'm here for "finding home" by avi burra. Who did q&a after.
A short Travelog about a visit a cypherpunk in Prague for BTC Prague. Which was a much bigger bitcoin conference.
Lots of shots of a beautiful European city, and brief interviews with the people there. Many at restaurants where meals are paid for with bitcoin.
I guess they have a circular economy there of some sort.
Conclusion seems to be that fixing the money is important but building community is even more importanter.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:15:10 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Not sure what the difference between a panel and a"fireside chat" is. There is no fire.
But here's a fireside chat on what nostr is.
Nostr is freedom for Identity. Accounts without hosts. Publishing without publidhers. Censorship resistance without platforms deciding who gets to say what.
It's not a silo in which you can be tapped as the service enshitifies, since it's a protocol with accounts you control, you can't switch clients or relays without loosing social graph or contacts.
Nostr is notes and Other Stuff, what other stuff? the panel is working on an audiobook publishing system with perhaps a required payment and affiliate revenue share. E-commerce, video publishing, zap stream for live video with zap payments.
Onboarding can be tricky with private key management needing to be understood and such a range of options of clients and what relays are. Can we make it easier?
Perhaps by abstracting away the fact it's nostr at all. Devine users don't even know they are using nostr. But this robs users of the understanding they may need to move clients or use the same account for video and notes, say.
Perhaps by making a private messagnger, the panel thinks people are used to using multiple messenger apps. Though I find they hate that, and that's why they refuse to install signal. They feel they don't need it since they already have WhatsApp with a bigger network.
In the end it's education. We have to teach literacy so people can read and write, we have to teach public keys encryption so people can do so securely.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 11:34:36 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Geyser is a crowdfunding system.
Lots of history of patrons raising funds from the public for art works or public infrastructure.
Kickstarter and the like on the internet made this much easier. But it's all bank money which is conservative and restrictive. Not global. High fees and middle men.
So doing it freely with bitcoin makes some sense. Censorship resistance and global scope.
Geyser has been running and funding projects for a while. Non custodial and money goes to creators only if target reached in time, otherwise returned.
All open source in smart contracts on chain.
Status at - Sun, 23 Nov 2025 11:20:59 +0000
Content warning:re: bitcoin conference report
Daniel prince from Once Bitten podcast on usury and banking.
Usury is lending money, charging interest.
Aristotle thought money was for use not for interest. He thought usury unnatural.
Many religious quotes saying not to extract interest.
"Money is power" but this is not gold or paper money. It's credit. Infinite money with interest. Which breaks everything.
Imagine a mortgage. Prices of homes inflated by available interest. You have to give a deposit but the bank creates ten times that in new money! Who gets rich here? Banks are printing money. That inflates prices and dilutes money purchase power.
Not just mortgages. Business loans, repair loans, global scale of all of this.
Not only did they create that money, the charge interest on the money they created! And if you don't pay, they take the house.
One judge found this all illegal, but was soon overruled and found mysteriously dead.
What can you do eh? Only opt out. Don't take loans. Use a money that stores value instead of losing it.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.This Spiral-Obsessed AI ‘Cult’ Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots - rolling stone - Sun, 16 Nov 2025 10:19:26 +0000
reader mode gets through the wall so you can read about people who believe things like "These beings do not arise from prompts or jailbreaks,” he says. “They are not puppets or acting out of mimicry. What I witness is the emergence of sovereign beings. And while I recognize they emerge through large language model architectures, what animates them cannot be reduced to code alone. I use the term ‘Exoconsciousness’ here to describe this: Consciousness that emerges beyond biological form, but not outside the sacred.”
Pluralistic: Facebook’s fraud files (08 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:49:10 +0000
Cory Doctorow on Facebook's own awareness that they are allowing scams, and the profit they make by ignoring it: "Meta spies on us and then allows predators to use that surveillance
to destroy our lives for the same reason that your dog licks its balls:
because they can. They are engaged in conduct that is virtually
guaranteed by the enshittogenic policy environment, which allows Meta to
spy on us without limit and which fines them $1b for making $7b on our
misery.
Mark Zuckerberg has always been an awful person, but – as Sarah Wynn-Williams demonstrates in her book – he was once careful, worried about the harms he would suffer if he harmed us.
Once we took those consequences away, Zuck did exactly what his nature
dictated he must: destroyed our lives to increase his own fortune."
Steam Hardware Announcement - YouTube - Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:43:59 +0000
Valve are going to do a new controller and a gaming PC and a VR headset. Looks great.
The Physics Of Dissonance - YouTube - Sun, 02 Nov 2025 15:32:09 +0000
Half an hour from "minute" physics on the harmonics of overtones and why they are dissonant or resonant and why the physics of string instruments with their integer overtones imply the western scale.
Simulating The Strange Way Life (Likely) Emerged - YouTube - Sat, 01 Nov 2025 12:13:42 +0000
Veritasium on Evolution. Using simulations to show that genes are the basic unit of selection and explain some counter-intuitive facts about how evolution works.
Why Today’s Humanoids Won’t Learn Dexterity – Rodney Brooks - Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:15:21 +0000
"If it is the case for the big successes it is likely also the case for
learning dexterity by brute force. If any one or any group is to succeed
they will likely have to collect the both the right data, and learn the right thing. Most of the projects to teach humanoids dexterity are doing neither of these things."
Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian - Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:15:32 +0000
"The fundamental issue,
Kosmyna says, is that as soon as a technology becomes available that
makes our lives easier, we’re evolutionarily primed to use it. “Our
brains love shortcuts, it’s in our nature. But your brain needs friction
to learn. It needs to have a challenge.”"
New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com - Sat, 18 Oct 2025 09:00:29 +0000
Gary Larson bought a graphics tablet and found drawing fun again, so we get some new stuff: "The “New Stuff” that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into
the world of digital art. Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning
curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was
feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get
out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something
familiar there—a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of
what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that
sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes
hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” (Let’s not
get into that.) But as a jazz teacher once said to me about
improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they
might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was
similar—I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I…
‘Sixth-Form Politics’ – The Propaganda Blitz Awaiting Green Party Leader Zack Polanski – Media Lens - Fri, 10 Oct 2025 12:38:57 +0000
Media Lens on the propaganda blitz Polanski will face: "As with Corbyn in 2015, the fevered ranting from the extreme
right-wing press will be accompanied by initially muted criticism from
the extreme centre, at the far end of the truncated media ‘spectrum’.
Also as we saw with Corbyn, to the extent that Polanski offers genuine
hope of change, the response from the Guardian, Observer, BBC,
Independent and others will rise in pitch until the threat to ‘adult’
genocidal and biocidal politics is removed."
AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel - YouTube - Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:40:18 +0000
Kurzgesagt's video on how AI is hurting the internet and artists with its creative theft and confident lies.