i do this thing where i go on linkedin and i scroll through the suggested contacts and i make sure i stay on top of what all my former psycho lawyer slash career politician peers are doing right now.
I'm poking around with go lang and it isn't bad. Though I think it is pretty neat I can cross compile plan 9 binaries from my linux machine.
well, it's the end of an era.
probably switching to xfce4 forever.
since my ryzen amd workstation died in august last year, i have been scraping by on an old second generation i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM.
the hardware on this workstation was first released in 2011. its end of life with intel was 2019. i am pretty sure i got it by going out of my way at the council waste processing centre, and asking about it.
after noticing how much faster xfce4 was than MATE on my similarly old and underpowered TV media PC, i am making the switch for good.
getting better hardware will not be an option for some time. i may have to wait until a special opportunity presents itself.
having to use nothing but e-waste to do all this complex and technical work is painful. the waiting, the constant locking up, only being able to use--realisitically--one "modern" bloated program at a time...
i wonder--is anyone else having this experience? how are you meant to do anything on the internet now, with any significant mass social attention, with any money?
the hard problem is the web, and everyone here i know, knows this. no-one here is sitting around on their arse merely complaining about the modern web.
this does not make the problem any less excruciating or unimportant. too many people are doing every little computing task on their phone. when i heard about major tiktok influencers doing the bulk of their video work on their phone, i think a part of me died.
sometimes i try and make myself feel better by thinking about whether i still have a good definition of the problem:
- the modern web is currently controlled by a small number of powerful and wealthy capitalist firms.
- virtually everyone accessing the internet uses the web and phone apps these firms own.
- the web is being used as a tool for a mere single purpose. economic profit.
possible conclusions:
- create an alternative method for accessing the information, and performing the tasks people do on the internet
- free software web browser
- alternative web apps for major platforms
Oh yeah, I've been running through lipu sona pona to learn toki pona which is pretty good, but about halfway through it goes from trivial grammar to dropping a lot more complex grammar and sentence structure without bothering to explain it thoroughly, so I went from pretty confident to very confused. Maybe I need to get the official book
the apartment is adjacent to the intersection between hill street and wellington street.
i noticed very early on that many people walked past my window every day, so i decided to make use of the posters inside my green left newspapers.
they were blu-takked them to the window, facing out into the street. i have cycled through several posters now since 2022, of which i only have six photos.
in this latest instalment of the series, we welcome temika! she is my favourite person the whole world, and my girlfriend.
since we have been living together, in addition to sitting up until the early hours of the morning solving all the world's problems, we watch the most gripping movies, play the most immersive video games, and, best of all, eat the most delicious food.
this is our home. we have made it our own.
temika, i love you, bubby!!
🥰🥰🥰
blair vidak.
9 march 2025.
the year is 2025 and donald trump is the president of the united states.
there is a famous quotation by an australian indigenous woman named lilla watson that changed my view of the world forever. it reads:
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
this is especially true in the international struggle for women's liberation.
lately, men, and especially young men, have become a key demographic in society driving the slide into fascism. these men think they are better than women, and that they should dominate, control, and silence them.
i want to say to them--be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it. even if they achieved their abhorrent mission, i do not think these men would be satisfied.
in fact it would be the opposite. we men would be lonelier, angrier, more immature, and just as lost existentially as ever.
why? because it is impossible for slaves and masters to be in communion. by definition, one is a person, and the other is their property. a man cannot simultaneously have a mother, a sister, an aunty, or a partner if they are also his complete possession.
for us to smash this system of patriarchy, we men are going to have to stop blaming women for our insecurities, and our own perceived inadequacies, and open our eyes to the fact that we have a lot in common with women.
this international women's day i want to signal that when it comes to the liberation of the other half of the global population, we men really, really owe it not just to women but also ourselves as men to do some (any!) personal reflection.
women's liberation is good for men. the far right movement, all dominated by men, are not going to get what they want by oppressing women. should they ever win even more power, it will not matter. their method, bloodthirsty and vengeful, is ultimately futile.
men will only win their own proper recognition in history by also recognising women. and by being enthusiastic about it.
someone once said, "women hold up half the sky". never a more true word was said. women are doing it right this very second. as far as i can tell, this sky-holding will continue for a long time, whether or not the fact is hidden, disparaged, or made a secret.
men owe it to themselves to acknowledge the sacrifice and suffering women go through their whole lives. they do it with such grace and composure. not a single man could withstand this way of living. every one of us would fold within seconds of being placed in a woman's position.
a sexist man is NOT a real man.
blair vidak.
8 march 2025.
Something I find fascinating that you really only see with religious books (well, for Abrahamic religions, and presumably also Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism), is the rich paratext you see surrounding them that you could only get from millions/billions of people from many cultural contexts analyzing this one particular book over the course of thousands of years.
For instance, the Talmud in particular is interesting because it is often laid out such that the original text is a tiny little section in the center of the page, and then the other 90% of each page is completely filled with various scholars' interpretations and discussions of the text (usually stuff is published out-of-band rather than becoming part of the book itself lol)
(1/3) PLEASE BOOST - Stolen First Nation's Land, Occupation Escalation
If you live in Boorloo (Perth) please come down to help at the occupation of the former Sister Kate's Mission in Queen's Park tomorrow at 9:00am.
Uniting Church likely know that the press will be too busy covering the election to pay attention to the occupation, so they have chosen to (on extremely short notice, with little to no communication with the Noongar yorgas) to have a meeting tomorrow morning to establish the former stolen generations' "Children's Home" as a "healing centre" without permission from
having worked ~9 months in this call centre job,
i feel like i have so many points in persuasion now.
show me a persuasion check--i can pass it 😂🤣
My dream computing environment is largely invisible, and centers users. I want something like an old Sony Memory Stick that’s the core; it holds my system, including OS and state. I don’t typically carry it raw, though — its purpose is to move from device to device.
I plug it in to a pocket tablet, and my system is mobile. Pop the stick out and click it into a desk terminal, and my system adapts its interface but keeps my tasks in progress — I get a more powerful machine with a big display and ergonomic entry points.
I can plug it into a cyberdeck or a laptop or a TV or whatever and I get the same experience of all my stuff being where I expect it, just having to accept the hardware constraints.
Just wherever I am, pop the core in and it’s just a different physical interface.
i decided to almost completely cut her out of my life sometime last year. this is the least contact i have ever had with her.
since distancing myself, my mental health has been the best it has ever been, since diagnosis in 2013.
mum never really took much notice or interest in what was important to me. maybe she hugged and kissed me at some points, but she usually always kicked me when i was down.
whenever i dropped out of something or collapsed in exhaustion from trying to fulfill her expectations, i received punishment. i was yelled at, and some comfort i liked was taken away from me. how many times has she made me feel useless, worthless?
when i heard the phrase, "doctor, lawyer, engineer, or dead to me", i instantly related. i am fairly certain i was mentally ill at all in the first place because of how much pressure was put on me.
she never listened to me talk about my passions. her eyes would glaze over. i look back now and feel like she must have wanted to get off the topic ASAP.
this "blood is thicker than water" saying is bullshit. if i saw a happy and loving family in my day-to-day life now, it would honestly feel jarring and uncomfortable. i don't think anyone got out of childhood in the 1990s undamaged.
i don't doubt a nuclear family can be loving and nurturing, but... yeah. i don't know any of those...
it has been kicking my arse. my first video game was the sequel, crash bandicoot 2. i used to have these enormous meltdowns as a child every time i got a game over and had to redo entire levels only to get game over again.
my parents had no fucking clue what was going on, and had even less of a clue about how to play a video game.
i think i was stuck on the first world of crash bandicoot 2 for a few years until my cousins from overseas beat the first boss for me.
the first crash bandicoot is even harder. in the original PS1 version, if i recall correctly, you could only save after getting a bonus level. that usually required collecting three hidden tokens in a level's crates. if you failed a bonus level, you could not save. if you couldn't find the tokens, you couldn't even get to the bonus level in the first place.
i suppose back then you would just have to keep your PS1 on permanently and hope it didn't freeze while you were away.
this crash bandicoot 1 remake is _still_ abso-fucking-lutely punishing. i had to pause the game every now and then after losing my nerve, causing me to make silly errors. i had to do breathing exercises to centre myself from how this game traumatises me.
honestly? i wish my dad had gotten an N64 instead of a PS1. i got my first N64 from a flea market on holiday and i remember thinking that it was instantly better. the first game i for it was rayman 2.
even the basic first party N64 titles had me engrossed. i remember playing ocarina of time and feeling like hyrule field as soooooo big and expansive. mario 64 impressed me way more than crash bandicoot.
tldr:
1. crash bandicoot was way too difficult to give to a child. it is infuriating as a 34 year old.
2. big regrets about having a playstation and not a nintendo. years of my childhood wasted and ruined.
@vidak @permacomputer I swear, people make jokes and memes about how we sent people to the moon and back on half a bit of ram but they forget the immense sociological implications of this shit as it pertains to planned obsolescence and centralization of the digital infrastructure