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● 05.17.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 17/05/2023: Several Gemini-Related News

Posted in News Roundup at 7:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ And all of a sudden it’s Wednesday

• I can’t believe anyone still believes “the news”.

• Then again, we’re talking about people, here.

• I mean, for the love of separate selfhood hypnosis, right?

=> ↺ Toasting the End of Amatonormativity

• I noticed this was removed from library.inu.red at some point (presumably also removed from The Anarchist Library). Personally I found it to be a fantastic read, and was frustrated when it could no longer be found. As far as I know it’s not anywhere on the Geminispace, and happens to be hard to find on the world wide web. I believe it also poses some interesting questions given its age, and I also happen to partially disagree with some parts of it.

=> ↺ Album #267: Jeru the Damaja – The Sun Rises In The East

• It was nice to hear a new album for a change. My backlog has filled with the 60s and 70s rock albums that are the mainstay of this book. Peter Frampton and Iron Butterfly are Classic Rock staples that would also appear in “1001 Albums You Will Almost Certainly Have Heard Before You Die”.

=> ↺ The simple joys of the humble slide rule

• A bunch of scales printed on three rulers, the middle one of which can slide relative to the other two. Then finally, a glass box around the outside with a thin (“hairline”) mark down the middle, held perpendicular to the rulers.

• Yet with this simple contraption you can perform all calculations normally reserved for a calculator, all the way through most Americans’ high school math. I’m forever amazed by the ingenuity that enables trigonometry, powers, logarithms, and more to be calculated by rubbing two sticks together. This simple action was actively being performed in outer space by the pioneers taking part in the space race.

=> ↺ even alleyway pubs have their bar bellars

• I recall Ozzy Osbourne saying in an interview (Rolling Stone?) that he had his first drink when he was 14 in Liverpool, England. Him and a friend would go to a bar, and get a “Bellar”, which was half lemonade, half beer. (The bartender likely justified that if it was 51% lemonade and 49% beer, age limits didn’t matter – but I speculate). And they (Ozzy and his friend) called that drink a Bellar because he said there were always two old ladies at the end of the bar, who would “bellar” at Ozzy and his friend (“bellaring” meaning yelling at, or talking down to, I am guessing).

=> ↺ Album #264: Sonic Youth – E.V.O.L

• This album came out 37 years ago. That guy at the record store who snubbed you for not having struggled through E.V.O.L. doesn’t work there any more. He retired. The record store closed. You’re free. Skip it.

Technical

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Notes on the Last Two Days

• As these things sometimes do, the poem prompted another one, this one a proper ghazal. Well, a proper Canadian ghazal, anyway, in the form made famous by Thompson and then expanded by so many others (Phyllis Webb and Isabella Wang being my favourites).

• I’ve been saying that I’m bouncing off cohost. That’s not entirely true. I still check my feed every day, and I’m glad I do. Today I saw a post about someone setting up a BBS basically for messages only – no doors, and only a few files (someone uploaded Doom and Keen!). After work yesterday, I made supper for us, played with the younger dog, had some cherry cider. Sat down, and logged in. The second BBS I’ve called (logged into? telnetted? what’s the term in this modemless age?) in the last couple years, the first, Seabreeze BBS, really just for doors: some LORD, some Tele-Arena, the odd game of Yahtzee.

=> ↺ Coming up on noon

• In way, finding older Gemini posts feels a bit like chancing upon tasty leftovers.

=> ↺ RE: Are we rebuilding the centralized web, minus tracking?

• A central place encourages: 1. Frequent polling, to see if there’s anything new 2. Frequent polling, to see if your posts have many “likes” 3. Frequent polling, to see if you have many “followers” 4. Competition for attention, which is generally bad for an inclusive community that promotes free expression, and also leads to … 5. … short and shallow content optimized for maximum buzz and short attention span 6. An “A-list” of users popular enough to discourage others from sharing unpopular opinions or participating in general (see Shirky’s essay, IMO awesome and still very very very relevant)

=> ↺ One year!

• It has been one year since I set up this site on smol.pub on May 16, 2022.

=> ↺ Net News

• I decided to install a mall net news server for Campaign Wiki. That’s the site I use to host all sorts of role-playing related stuff.

• I installed sn because I already knew that I couldn’t get INN to work.

Announcements

=> ↺ GeminiLoggBookOberDadaisticus: [ANN] Strange Bedfellows

• The new Oberdada album Strange Bedfellows has now been released. Fourteen tracks of conventional music, following existing and novel conventions, guide the listener from beginning to end, unless you are listening in reverse order. The songs are thematically linked, often in subtle ways that may reveal themselves as Easter eggs only after a few listenings. Superficially, the album covers several styles such as tango, jazz fusion, and progressive rock, yet circles around the core of interconnected themes.

• As most of the instrumental parts have been actually performed, as opposed to programmed, the music is far from the slick and perfected production ideals in vogue. Still, what may sound spontaneous is the result of meticulous attention to details and long hours of editing.

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