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, 21 Apr 2026 18:49:10 +0000
But more work and...
Yes, I can now turn my lights on and off by talking to my bot that listens to a signal number.
Could make the lights turn red from Morocco if I was there.
Status at - Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:57:02 +0000
Nobody on Fedi will need any of these things of course. They're just mirrors of things you can follow over activity pub more easily.
Status at - Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:55:57 +0000
Working on deleting Telegram.
Set up new Signal groups for the old Telegram ones. Robots to mirror the ActivityPubs.
Me: https://dalliance.net/chat
Starhip Project: https://starshipsd.com/chat
Tarot Project: https://wordcloudtarot.com/chatThe old Telegram groups will be closed and deleted in due course. Haven't had it installed on my phone since I switched to Graphene and these groups and robots were the last blocker to deleting it off my desktop soon too.
Changed all the website links etc.
Been meaning to do all that for ages. Yes it did take all day. But I do feel like my powers are increased now I have CLI (and so scriptable) access to a Signal account.
Status at - Sat, 18 Apr 2026 11:33:55 +0000
Content warning:Bitcoin / Quantum
BIP 361 is a proposal on what to do with bitcoin if Quantum Computers are buildable.
Interesting abstract question even if you dislike bitcoin or prefer the US controlled Breton-woods petrodollar or using bank-debt charged at interest for money or whatever.
The problem at hand is that coins are unlocked by cryptography which a big enough quantum computer could break.
Sure, you can invent a quantum-proof key type, but all the existing coins have to be unlocked and moved into those types of addresses before that quantum computer is invented.
There is enough space on the blockchain to do that over a few years, but a lot of keys are lost. Maybe millions of bitcoins in addition to the original million or so coins mined by Satoshi which have never moved with keys presumed burned or owner dead.
That means handing maybe 10% or more of the total coins to Quantum Hackers with presumed evil intent.
Can the node-runners and miners who make up the network do anything about that?
BIP 361 suggests forever locking any coins not moved into quantum-proof addresses within five years.
If you've been in a coma or in jail with the seed-phrase memorized you're going to get released and find your bitcoin frozen by the Bip-361 cabal.
But then if bip 361 and similar fails, you're just going to wake up and find a quantum hacker has taken them instead.
You ain't gonna recover your coins from your memorized seed-phrase either way.
Some bitcoins are literally time-locked, prevented from moving for ten years. They are stuffed either way and can't move into safe addresses even if they still have the keys.
Remember that "Some quantum hacker" isn't a furry kid in a bedroom or the organized crime syndicates. It's Google or the US Government or a university or Cern or something.
Do you want to lock the coins, or give them to a random state or state sized corporate actor?
It's all very well being sad after your timelocked coins are taken by a protocol change, but its just as sad to have them taken by the US Government.
What would the US government do if they took Satoshi's coins? Probably use them to back a new satoshi dollar? It becomes that Bitcoin Strategic Reserve by default.
Status at - Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:50:32 +0000
"Operation Economic Fury" is apparently happening now. Sanctions against the entire middle east. 20% of the world's oil is stranded and the USA is stuck in a mire and escalating.
Stock market: Oh good, record highs then 🎉
They can't all be war profiteering surely?
Status at - Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:12:33 +0000
RE: https://loops.video/v/f1J_iXx-5U
The one minute summary show might be better than the five minute full show. Less fluff, certainly. Less detail too though I guess. Couldn't really make the summary without writing the full show anyway.
Status at - Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:16:49 +0000
Content warning:WordPol Iran Talks
Sounds like the negations to unblock the Strait of Hormuz have gone even worse than you'd have expected.
The number of countries blocking the strait has doubled, as America joins in blocking passage to even more vessels.
At this rate, with the number of countries blocking that sea doubling every month, every country in the world will be blocking the Strait of Hormuz by the end of the year.
Status at - Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:54:39 +0000
Gary's back after making his documentary for Channel four and he's frustrated and face-palming at the utter political ineptitude of the UK Labour Party that mean a collapse of 200 years of political bipartisan ship.
Great long rant.
He wants it to be the case that the Labour party have to do wealth taxes or they'll lose the next election, so they'll do wealth taxes.
What he doesn't seem to understand is Labour don't care if they win the next election, their mission is to protect the capital of their donors. Same as the other party in that two party system.
I long for the death of the two party system more than he seems to though. I'd rather have PR than Wealth Taxes and I'm sure he's the other way.
He is going to tell his viewers how to vote in 3 weeks time, and is pleading with Labour to make him an offer to say "Labour"
I will be voting Green whatever Gary says though. Even if they give Gary a convincing lie about how they might not protect their donor's capital after all.
Status at - Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:11:38 +0000
Holy shit I'm home already. Wow 5AM London Busses just slice through the town. What a city. Cab ride couldn't have been faster.
Status at - Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:18:53 +0000
Content warning:WorldPol Iran / US
The talking heads on the corporate media are assuring me that Iran was building up its forces and threatening apocalyptic war and that now they can't do that.
But seems to me that it was the USA which has a large cache of apocalypse weapons and were threatening to drag the entire world into their bullshit war.
Iran was never a bigger threat than the USA, the USA is the biggest threat to world peace that exists, possibly next to Israel.
Still. Glad to see the crisis is postponed for a while and that the USA has backed down, humiliated, for now.
Trump's pointless stupid war has left Iran empowered and triumphant, the regime strengthened with more support than before.
But the talking heads can't admit that at all.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.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.
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.