Hi. I’m Adam.

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Here’s the stuff I’ve made that I’m most proud of.

Diary

Here’s my latest posts to the free fediverse, some rambling, some ranting, mostly just commenting on stuff I’ve read lately. Some of it gets syndicated to Twitter but mostly not. The best of it reaches my monthly digest email.

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 12:48:18 +0000

worldpol


Pretty worried about the state of things. The rich have taken all the wealth and are increasingly violent against their scape-goats to keep the masses doing anything about it. War on the rise in europe. Genocides. A tide of climate refugees coming and the elite pulling up the drawbridges.

It's like as soon as everyone who remembers the last time dies, humanity decides it's time to do it all again.

This time with drones and murderbots and atom bombs.

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 10:45:49 +0000

re: ukpol


It's objectively hilarious that the Conservative party have defined extremism in such a way that the Conservative Party surely ought to count as extremists.

For they are indeed surely an organization which promotions the advancement of an ideology based on hatred and intolerance that aims to negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others and undermine, overturn or replace the UK's system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights"

But of course it definitely won't be applied to them. They are above the law.

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 17:25:37 +0000

ukpol


Everyone seems to think the Conservative party ought to return money given to them by a racist?

Crazy.

Don't give racists money!

I think the party ought to donate the money to an anti-racism charity of some kind rather than give it back to the racist!

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:30:06 +0000

USPol


Giving arms to one side and aid to the other is a very American sort of compromise isn't it?

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 17:36:49 +0000

They're doing to operating systems what they did to mobile-phone gaming.

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 17:35:39 +0000

What the hell is this? Some kind of fruit machine? What happened to my microsoft account?

Man, windows is a changing eh?

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 10:45:11 +0000

Remember when "going viral" used to mean that people liked a thing so much they shared it with their friends?

And now it just means the algorithm picked it and forced it into everyone's feeds.

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 23:57:40 +0000

It's more beautiful in some ways but the thing where you can't see the timestamp of a post in firefox in mobile is worse.

Used to at least be able to guess from seeing the first half of the first character before the column ran out.

Now it's just not there at all.

:sigh:

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:55:58 +0000

Might continue to go up and down a bit.

It won't compile while also running any more. Not enough memory. The Mastodon Bloat is real, and in part at least cause by the Node bloat.

I think maybe the actual env-var is working now and we're back to running on un-edited glitch?

Either that or the compilation failed in such a way it thinks it worked but really is an old cache. 🤷

Nothing about managing a Mastodon server makes me want to learn Ruby. Nothing. It mostly makes me want to run away from node too.

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:47:18 +0000

Right, apparently there's a whole other set of dependencies now which only install if you do
> bundle config set with 'development'

Presumably someone would have said that if I was reading documentation at all.

That makes it install rubocop.

The damned snitch is complaining about my change leaving a variable unassigned though. 🙄 Godamn linter snitches.

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:35:33 +0000

Though I can't commit my tiny changes now because of whatever the hell rubocop is and it making eslint fail which is apparently an unavoidable part of the commit now.

Says to install missing files with bundle install but that don't work.

🤔

Goddamnit. Whose bight idea is it to force a dependency before commit will work and then not have that dependency install?

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:28:51 +0000

Thought I'd take advantage of the rest of the internet being down to quickly upgrade this server.

It didn't go great. These Node projects just can't leave their build process alone for even a minute can they?

Now you need a new Yarn, Yarn has changed the way it installs, now you need Corepack, that means you need a new Node, no definitely newer than the apt package.

God knows why a Ruby project would want to copy this insanity but here we are.

Latest changes broke my alterations to set the character-limit but we have finally got the actually latest Glitch working.

Interesting looking new interface that broke my character-limit changes though. I think threaded mode is new.

Still sooner have my 5k character limit though.

Sorry for a bit of up and down there. Pretend it was the same thing as happened at Facebook.

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 17:53:36 +0000

This month's birthday newsletter / digest is on it's way to all the sensible and well calibrated people who asked for it in their email box.

The rest of you crazy horses can read it here:
dalliance.net/vPre2/feb24

Featuring making an image for a blind and ranting about politics and all the best of the month's Fedi.

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:46:12 +0000

It's my birthday so I can have sausage egg and chips for breakfast if I want.

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 17:29:57 +0000

I've been reading Ray Dailo's "Principles for dealing with the changing world order" in which he charts the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms and dynasties.

The main cycle, he reckons is:
1) Winner of a war consolidates power, unites the population (often through oppression)
2) A smart cooperative equitable educated society with meritocracy means good societal progress and wide sharing of the wealth.
3) Long period of peace, building good tech and military and financial systems.
4) Leadership corrupts: Excessive debt, money-printing, inequality, financial ruin, no sense of solidarity, then a natural disaster pushes it over the edge
5) The fall: Escalating rebellions, very bad inequality, internal conflicts
6) Civil war, revolution, eventually a strong leader proves the winner and back to 1.

We in the western civilization are very clearly in the late states of this kind of cycle, and it's frankly terrifying with the weapons we have these days when it comes to a war.

The leadership is too corrupt to try and fix the inequality or invest in that well educated, equitable, cooperative society.

He explicitly agrees with Marx and implicitly with me a lot more than I'd have expected from the rabid capitalist that Ray Dailo is.

It's interesting to hear his emphasis on inequality and how a prosperous society depends upon sharing the gains of prosperity widely. You tend to hear hyper-capitalists mostly emphasizing that capital's gains should go to capital, and Ray is certainly suggesting the opposite here. That if that happens, it corrupts the leadership and ends with cronyism and debt and revolution.

We seem to basically agree what creates good prosperous peaceful civil society, and that capitalism in the Anglican world isn't doing it, and that fucked up corrupt government is why we aren't doing it.

We'd offer fairly different prescriptions though I think.

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 11:23:39 +0000

The BBC loves to both-sides arguments you see. They are neutral.

Except when it's banning kids from the internet. Then they only represent one side of the argument, deny that any other side could possibly exist, and insist impossible things which can't work will protect kids while offering no evidence that internet access is even really more harmful than helpful.

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 11:09:09 +0000

"DEMOCRACY IS UNDER THREAT" says unelected prime-minster feeling threatened by an outlier election result.

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:34:15 +0000

For my part, I always thought copyright was bullshit. Monopolies on the reproduction of ideas granted by the authority of the king? 😆 Whatever. 🏴‍☠️

There must be better ways to fund arts than the actual imprisonment and banning of them from the free flow of ideas.

The reproduction of ideas is *how it works*, taxing that is bonkers.

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:16:29 +0000

Wow, March the first. Finally.

I sure am glad that yesterday didn't really exist and all those things I said aren't real.

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 23:55:47 +0000

If copyright is real then the AI machines owe the artists of humankind (which is to say all of us) more money than exists in the banking systems of the planet.

If copyright is not real then the companies that trained those models have no right to exclusive ownership of the weights.

I bet somehow the law conspires to make it the worst of either option.

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Bookmarks

A list of the last few things I’ve enjoyed reading/watching or sometimes bookmarked to read later. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here or follow the little robot on the fediverse that toots them out as I bookmark them.

Orangutan Freedom - Existential Comics

Slack and freedom and cages from Existential Comics

The heinous crimes of the West with Craig Murray, TSBC (LIVE) - YouTube

Craig Murray talking to a podcaster for a couple of hours about Julian Assange, imperialism, crappy media and his life fighting those things.

Israel’s ‘Flour Massacre’ – When A Crime Becomes A ‘Tragedy’ – Media Lens

Media Lens detailing how reports of massacres end up in the passive voice and the biases in the terrible British media, worst in the world.

The Panic Of the Ruling Class - Craig Murray

Craig Murray finds the establishment dismay at the election of Galloway surreal: "The idea that democracy – i.e. voting for somebody – is an attack on, err, democracy was so crazy that, had we any kind of independent media, it would have been ridiculed to death.That of course has not happened. We are sonorously told we are a nation in crisis. Ordinary forms of democratic activity – free assembly, free speech and free voting – all threaten our society."

Why Are Taxes So High? - YouTube

Gary Stephenson says the reason the tax burden is high and the government-services quality is low is all the privatization. Governments don't own their own building, and they're being bankrupted by rent like the rest of us.

Landlord chancellor generously gives tax break to landlords

Budget analysis from normal island news: "You will be pleased to hear the government that couldn’t make the country work on current tax revenues is confident it can make things worse with lower tax revenues (that will totally be higher). This is why it’s introducing National Insurance cuts, with 46% of savings benefitting the richest 20% of households and only 3% benefitting the poorest 20%. It was either that or turn poor people into animal feed and personally, I think they’ve made the wrong choice."

Generative A.I - We Aren’t Ready. - YouTube

The Dark Forest theory of the internet, in which everyone retreats into underground whatsapp lists and telegram channels because on the internet proper, nobody knows you're a chatbot and everywhere is full of dark spam.

Pluralistic: The real problem with anonymity (04 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory points out it's not internet user's anonymity that causes social issues, it's the corporate manager's anonymity: "These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity."

First it was Corbyn. Now the whole British public is being smeared over Gaza | Middle East Eye

Jonathan Cook: "The smearing of Corbyn over his criticisms of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians largely worked. But gaslighting much of the public as a dangerous "mob" for opposing even more egregious Israeli crimes may yet backfire"

Why are government services going down the pan despite high taxation?

"As a consequence of poor economic thinking by government that fails to understand any of this, what we get is a downward economic spiral. Growth becomes stagnant at best, but taxation demands increase to match increased government expenditure the demand for which arises directly as a result of failed government economic policy.""In other words, over almost fifteen years the government has deliberately failed to deliver growth but has created an environment where demand for government services is inevitably inflated. This is the outcome of neoliberal thinking."... "There is a final thought to add. What all this  means is that to get out of this mess politicians have to change their behaviour, but what they re  saying is that it's a pre-condition of change that the private sector delivers growth first, which makes any recovery look to be impossible since that is not going to happen whilst government policy continues  to crush GDP. That summarises the mess we're in."

The Trillion Dollar Equation - YouTube

Veritasium's video on derivative markets and options is really great. Feel like I'm nearly there understanding what calls and puts are now.

James O'Brien's Chart-Topping Podcast, Full Disclosure - Download NOW - LBC

James O Brien's quick chat with Bernie Sanders, in which Bernie schools him on how his profession is a traitor in the class war.

Keir Starmer and Lindsay Hoyle colluded to turn the Gaza ceasefire vote into a farce

Another Angry Voice on our MPs squabbling and playing status games while states murder thousands: "This entire farce was caused purely because Starmer wanted to strip out reference to Israel’s “collective punishment" of Palestinian citizens and water down the ceasefire call to give Israel the green light to continue their atrocities.""When your party is being led by a cynical, manipulative, game-playing, profoundly dishonest, constantly U-turning liar like Keir Starmer, then perhaps it’s impossible to imagine others doing things on principle, just because they’re the right thing to do?"

Assange Final Appeal - Your Man in the Public Gallery - Craig Murray

Craig Murray's description of the Julian Assange case so far.

The secret economics destroying Britain | Gary Stevenson interview - YouTube

Guess we're gonna get a lot of Gary Stevenson on the wires for a bit now he's finished his book. Here's 50 minutes at Joe where he explains why families are losing their homes and the state is in debt.

Love And Liberty - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten

Scott on Love: "Love is like a crypto-scam, tantalizing you with the promise of infinite riches before dashing you against the rocks."

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED - YouTube

"Almost impossible" is a strange thing to say really. Like "Almost pregnant" or "Almost sane". But Vertitasim tell a good story and the one about how long it took to develop a way to make a blue LED is a good one to tell.

I Stopped Using Passwords. It's Great—and a Total Mess | WIRED

I know what passkeys are now. They're just files containing long passwords that are private keys really.

Fedi Monster

This is it man. Anarchist collectives organizing to do self-hosting collectively. Not megacorp spying on you in endlessly infinitesimal detail: " We will not host instances and communities that promote or support capitalism, fascism, classism, imperialism, war and militarism, nazism, white supremacy, religious supremacism, police states, are directly affiliated with states, or more at our discretion. and the monster's pronouns are it/them."

State Secrecy and Public Hearings Part One - Craig Murray

UK Court has very strict rules on who can view it's "public" hearing on Julian Assange's political deportation and incarceration  for journalism. Craig is confused: "Why is nobody outside the state and billionaire media allowed to give live information about what is happening in the Court? Why is it OK if CNN does give live information, but not OK if a concerned citizen does it?Why does everybody have to be threatened with two years’ imprisonment if they break these crazy rules?"

A tentacle themed attire for the gig