FoolishOwl / is on Nostr

[...] "Revolutions do not allow anyone to play the schoolmaster with them." -- Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, Chapter 4.

I'm a libertarian socialist, a social ecologist, and a humanist, I know my way around Linux, and I'm partial to speculative fiction and TTRPGs.

Pronouns: he/him or they/them
Reports to: Ned Ludd

Last Notes

2024-07-17 17:20:26

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Maybe it's the aging, but I really feel like the apps from back then were easier to use and the interfaces more comprehensible.
Like, Microsoft Word from then had simpler and more comprehensible document styling tools that didn't hide or overcomplicate the structural elements.

2024-07-17 14:58:24

Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic | Salon.com
https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/

2024-07-11 22:30:16

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That's all bad shit, but that's not the kind of collapse I'm talking about here. Rather, I'm talking about a collapse of the IT industry. That could even be a good thing, given the aforementioned bad shit, which is why I said I'm worried about how widespread the consequences would be, e.g., mass unemployment, a severe economic recession with politicians who only understand neoliberal austerity, etc.

2024-07-11 20:29:11

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I'd heard about this a lot a few years ago but had no idea it lasted this long.

2024-07-11 20:15:04

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I'm surprised I haven't seen them denounce Jon Stewart as an agent of Putin yet.

2024-07-11 20:05:05

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I feel like a collapse is in the near future, and I'll shed no tears for the techbros, but I don't know how severe or widespread the consequences will be.

2024-07-09 05:08:23

"Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death
to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza."
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential - The Lancet
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

2024-07-01 18:11:55

The US Supreme Court has declared the POTUS is immune to prosecution for "official acts".
The Magna Carta was in 1215. The US is now politically reactionary by the standards of medieval England.

2024-06-27 16:30:22

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It's bizarre to me that as a child, I was told that the world was dangerously overpopulated at 3.5 billion, and now I'm hearing that we have a crisis with declining population at 8 billion.
I'm used to counter-arguments against Thomas Malthus and his reactionary assumption that people won't control their fertility. I've never been able to see population growth as a good thing, and have always suspected that it is the result of coercion.

2024-06-18 19:02:14

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I've never seen a computer game use as much RAM as a web browser. I've never seen anything use as much RAM as a web browser.
I see people insisting now that they need 32 GB of RAM on a personal computer, and I look at my fifteen year old desktop that almost never uses more than 2 GB of RAM and a fraction of a percent of CPU time. The performance constraints are disk access time and, with some games, GPU.

2024-06-04 15:20:05

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Microsoft depends on institutional clients, especially government agencies, many of which have stringent legal rules about access controls. There's no way Recall can be compatible with those rules.
What's astonishing me right now is that I would have expected a whole lot of Microsoft's clients to push back, "We'll have to stay with Windows 10", but I'm not seeing any hint of Microsoft backing down.

2024-04-19 21:44:10

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Also, I'd always found post-apocalyptic stories hopeful, since they're about surviving the worst circumstances imaginable and rebuilding.

2024-04-19 21:42:04

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It's not beyond a shadow of doubt, but it does look to me like they made a point of letting us know that the Prydwen is still flying and Mr. House is running what's left of New Vegas.

2024-04-19 21:30:04

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I'm not talking about retconning. For one thing, I've not seen anything significant that conflicts with the games. I'm curious what endings they've selected as canonical, but that's not really my focus.
It does strike me, on a moment's reflection, that we are led to sympathize with the three (four?) protagonists, and if they can work out things between them, maybe there can be a good and satisfying outcome.
I'm just worried about more despair in an era of despair.

2024-04-19 20:57:07

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What worries me is how this will connect to, "War never changes", and, "Everyone wants to save the world, they just disagree about how."
We've set up for either despondent cynicism, or at best, some sort of last minute plea for pacifism.
It worries me somewhat, how this may play out, given the global threat of fascism and the weakness of resistance to it, and how fascists revel in cynical despair.
And how Fallout fans include some of the best and the worst people around.

2024-04-19 20:50:03

I've watched five episodes of #Fallout so far, and seen some spoilers. It's striking me that they've assumed canonical endings for the games that would lead to the most conflict. There were two candidates for "good guy" factions, but the NCR has apparently been broken, and we've returned to the original vision of the Brotherhood of Steel as isolationist and violently intolerant. Plus the Enclave is back, as well as Vault-Tec.

2024-04-17 01:23:11

I'm watching Fallout, and there's a sale, and I haven't played Fallout 4; the reviews are mixed. I've played FO 1, FO 2, FO3, and Fallout: New Vegas.
#Fallout

2024-04-13 17:08:48

I don't get how people manage to ignore that capitalism is about capital.