sorry for the radio silence--
i haven't been using any kind of social media at all. reading has been taking up my spare time lately.
topics that have fascinated me include:
- scientology and the life of l. ron hubbard.
- western christian fundamentalism.
- mormonism and the "church of latter-day saints".
- the rhodesian bush war, and the eventual creation of the state of zimbabwe.
there is something about the connection between oppression and organised religion that i cannot quite put my finger on. especially in the case of religions established in the modern-day, it does not seem to matter much how nonsensical or confected the main tenets of a religion are, it seems merely sufficient that there are main principles to that religion in order for its organisation to continue to function.
this bothers me somewhat. at the risk of sounding like a snob, it seems people will follow any creed so long as they feel like they belong.
watch this space, i am hoping to put a lot of effort into unpacking all this.
hope you're all doing well, friends.
I feel like randomly promoting an excellent free software project. That project is none other than Puppy Linux:
https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
I first used it around 2005 back when it was 50MB for an ISO (nowadays still only a couple hundred MB). Despite that small size, it packs a full desktop with just about every utility you could possibly need.
Very simple, easy to use live Linux USB distro. It's *still* my go-to live distro.
I used it recently, to blank an SSD with /dev/urandom in every block.
Inspired by Google's move to remove @organicmaps from the Playstore without warning, I finally decided to move my > 3,000 Google Maps saved places to Organic Maps. To facilitate doing this for others' benefit, I made a quick webpage to convert your Google Maps GeoJSON data to GPX and KMZ files that render well in Organic Maps.
https://rudokemper.github.io/google-maps-places-to-organic-maps/
you have to sort of have to admire the horror of late stage capitalism: create the conditions for environmental collapse, profit from the people needing to escape the environmental collapse, profit from the clean up AND convince people that doing anything any other way is communism.
It’s Wednesday and this is a wildebeest so this must be #WildebeestWednesday. Not a thing? Alrighty then I’ll get the ball rolling.
I learned an alternative name for the wildebeest: the gnu. Of course that should be gnu/linux!
Remember, "I don't know, I lack sufficient information on this topic" is NEVER an acceptable answer.
Instead, loudly state the first opinion that pops into your head, speak with authority, and gaslight anyone who disagrees until they begin to question everything they know.
🐙
I'm working on an expansion card for the Sharp #X68000 computer and the best technical reference for it is the book Outside X68000. It's in Japanese and while there's a site that has a translation, it's low res and doesn't show the English in the page context. After trying some translation tools the best result by far is Google Translate's image translation. It's tedious uploading every page image individually but the translation is very good. Here's the IO section: https://picog.us/docs/x68k/outside-x68000-translated/
Screenshot of a gig work app asking how you plan to get to jobs. I'm pretty sure it is illegal for employers to ask if you have a car, but tech companies can because the law doesn't apply to them?
Libreboot 20241008 released!
https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot20241008.html
Highlights:
* Sony PlayStation support (PCSX-Redux Open BIOS). Works on emulators and real hardware
* New Dell Latitude boards added by Nicholas Chin: E6220, E6320, E6330, E6230, E4300
* Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro support, courtesy Make Kukri @mkukri - Intel Boot Guard disabled by his deguard utility
* Dell OptiPlex 7010/9010 SFF support, courtesy of 3mdeb's work
* Improvements in the build system resulting from Libreboot Build System Audit 6
Can't do show tonight :-( - shit crazy. See you next week! <3
On LLMs and the climate crisis
#lispyGopherClimate #regrettable #climateCrisis #LLM #technology my briefing 10 minute recorded episode.
Hypothetically 000UTC https://anonradio.net:8443/anonradio
Alternate: https://toobnix.org/w/oxM8mRGMyArKESkKvHpRy9
No music, fun, friendship or poetry. It's not that sort of topic.
my opinion is that the problem lies with WSIWYG, not with any particular word processor
@jalefkowit This is why I want to write my own word processing tools. LibreOffice, along with its entire lineage (e.g., StarOffice, etc.), has been nothing but a well-hidden roaring dumpster fire for the last 20+ years with no end in sight.
sorry for the inactivity. i have been very very sick. the stomach pain i was suffering even necessitated going to the hospital emergency department.
i have recovered, and i think i have figured out what is going on. it has taken about 18 months, though.
look after yourselves, comrades.
vidak.
For my Australian #Blind folks: Hello,
I am selling a BrailleSense 6 that has recently undergone servicing and cleaning. It comes in its original box, but please note that you will need to find a charger for it. I am selling it because it no longer meets my needs and I do not use most of its functions.
I am asking for $2000 or the nearest offer. I am willing to ship Australia-wide.
Please feel free to contact me here if you have any questions.