I am up past bedtime.

Sue me.

Kids today, heh.

<exhales smoke, stares off in the distance>

I seen some shit.

I've locked a computer so hard you had to unplug it and let if sit for two minutes to let the capacitors lose charge.

I once shipped a word processor for *six* *weeks* that would format your hard drive every 1024 saves.

Aight, give me your programming language chain of development.

Use a prefix, - for just a little, + for a whole lot, and you can repeat.

For myself, the kind of reply I'm looking for, my own programming language chain, in the next post.

I am concerned that someone who is as antagonistic towards open source as a political movement has as much influence and power within open source as an institution.

The institution was always to some degree or another corporate capture of a political movement, I get it. See the endless turf wars between the FSF and the OSI for example. But this is an escalation and should be criticized on that basis.

@AccordionBruce @shapr The canadian government did y'all dirty by not only extending the term of copyright, but re-copyrighting things that had already entered the public domain (James Bond, for example.)

@crowgirl @trendless Tech bros don't understand consent.

what does this phrase "[works which] embody the unique personal creative spirit of the author" mean in codeberg's new license policy? https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1219/files

BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL ON MY BOOKS:

yours for $0.00 each! Two for $0.00!

LibGen is down, so just get them from me. Temporary!

https://davidgerard.co.uk/tmp/Attack%20of%20the%2050%20Foot%20Blockchain%20-%20David%20Gerard.epub
https://davidgerard.co.uk/tmp/Libra%20Shrugged%20-%20David%20Gerard%204e.epub

if you like 'em buy the epub or paperback, the paper versions look real nice

shout out to @wohali who introduced me to the metaphor of "cookie licking" and it has been the MVP of metaphors in my life for the past week. https://timeloop.cafe/@wohali/115484312687208767

I've read the following rhetorical question recently:

If “vote blue no matter who” doesn't apply to Zohran Mamdani, what does it actually mean?

...and despite all of us understanding the implication, let me actually try to give an answer, as the slogan emerged specifically from US politics, but this phenomenon hasn't.

This specific statement asking people to always vote for the democratic party, no matter who the candidate is, has always been thrown against legitimate criticism of democratic candidates, many of which aren't really leftists or progressives. The idea being similar to the “lesser evil” rhetoric, manufacturing consent for a Democratic candidate by arguing that a Republican is worse. Despite the fallacy that justifiable criticism towards someone isn't diminished by arguing that the strongest opponent is worse, the “winner-takes-all” system demands way less infighting than other electoral systems. A winning party is no longer just a match of better appeal or better policies, if it ever was, but also a game where the winner is decided based on which side can get their herd unquestionably behind their candidate, without doubt, criticism, or vote splitting, i.e. the less critical thinking the better.

There's no time for debates about foundational principles of our strategy, we must look forward to the next election, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that.

The statement calling for everyone to vote for the democratic nominee is just one of the many tools used to get people in line, because the electoral system doesn't demand an emancipated and thinking working class, but one that believes their issues can be solved through representatives doing their liberation for them. Beyond that, this calling preys on a specific misconstruction of the concept of solidarity. Let me explain.

The term “solidarity” may be one of the most instrumentalized concepts of our time. In this case, so-called solidarity is truly just a one way street. Solidarity is asked of you when having to agree to more right wing, non-progressive policies or candidates, but never given by default for leftist, socialist candidates. This false sense of solidarity is a tactic to get you to agree to something in a specific scenario, selectively utilizing a generic concept to make you do so. We need to stick together to win, however, it becomes abundantly clear who “we” is when the person needing to win is not part of the paid off in-group. It's “we” who needs the winning, not you.

As unimportant those simple questions, exposing contradictions in our world, may seem, they often begin a fundamental debate, one that isn't wanted in an age where every election is the most important one, where that election is never won, and you need to vote blue, until there's none.

Signal's "Safety Number" is an important feature that generates a pop-up which allows you to "mark as verified" a man-in-the-middle attacker. This way the attacker is verified and we can all feel better about the whole messy business.

@ellenor2000 In the states, a "sheltered workshop" is a place where people who cannot have ordinary jobs, typically, people who are "handicapped" in one way or another, are subsidized to provide employment.

I used it for a smile, but what I meant was that the math pages are mostly written by people who would not have gainful employment if it involved interaction with the rest of us.

(Except for the math pages. Never *ever* consult a wikipedia math page. They're the furthest thing from "general knowledge". Post-grads writing a language that does not resemble English in any way. They are why math departments are so often characterized as sheltered workshops.)

welcome to 2025 global politics, we got the

girlboss mussolini (meloni)
girlboss pétain (le pen)
girlboss hirohito (takaichi)
girlboss hitler (weidel)
girlboss...

fascism has updated, folks! it's now as international as capitalism is, nowadays even inclusive to gay people and women ❤️

most weaponized words in our time:

• terrorism
• empathy
• hate
• violence
• freedom
• peace
• female / woman
• antisemitism
• solidarity
• real world
• common sense
• cancel culture
• woke
• left / communist / socialist
• activist
• DEI
• law and order
• fake news

did I miss any?