● 07.26.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 26/07/2023: GemPlace and Gemini Client Survey

Posted in News Roundup at 5:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

=> ↺ Public Baths

• On some weekends, my dad would pick me up and we’d go to the public bathhouse. We were lucky enough to have a toilet and a shower in our apartment; most people on our floor had to share an old-style toilet at the end of the long, long hallway. The toilet had a cement floor and cast iron, aerodynamic-looking hole with two knurled footsteps on eiter side for squatting. A lot of people had to go to public baths to wash.

• The baths were a fascinating place for me. I grew up with my mother and my grandmother — there were no men in my immediate family. At the bathhouse we were surrounded by men, naked men of all shapes and sizes. It was terrifying – all the blubber of obese old men, men hairy as apes I saw at the zoo, men with weird skin issues, tatoos, scars… fat, thin, and in-between. And all the horrible, fat cocks — nothing like my peepee. I tried to act normal and not look. When I grow up, would my cock become horrible too?

=> ↺ heartache is one of the worst feelings in the world.

• heartache is one of the worst feelings in the world. often masked by a myriad of emotions related to the nuances at play. knowing there are hard choices to make. knowing where it may lead.

=> ↺ Wow, I’m floored

• I just finished 7 boxes of Floor upstairs. They weigh a little over 50lbs each. 25kg, that’s what… 60lbs? Anyways this post isn’t about math. It’s about… uh…

• So wood floors are heavy! And they have to acclimate to their environment before you can install them. As their end-environment is my future bedroom, and not the hallway, they had to be moved. Also my furniture gets here in a week and I don’t want to sheepishly apologise to the movers every 5 minutes about the 7 boxes of heavy flooring that are in their way. Also also, I would like to buy a bed for that bedroom, which cannot float, and has a 3 week lead time because it will be made bespoke. But floors have to acclimate to their environment for a whole week at least, and it’ll take time for me to install the floors and I’d like to feel confident in putting a whole bed on these floors by the time they are done… which means allowing time to cure/set/whatever.

Politics and World Events

=> ↺ ‘The poisons are already in here with us’

• Below is a transcribed talk by Peter Gelderloos. This talk emerges from the book tour for The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for an Ecological Revolution from Below. This talk polemically recapitulates themes within the book, advocating for an anti-authoritarian ecological revolution and, consequently, chastising the terms ‘climate crisis’ and Anthropocene. The lecture extends beyond the book’s content. Confronting the audience and challenging its reader, the lecture delves into how authorities administer ecological crisis, which extends to criticizing the dominant institutions and science. This includes exploring how people are disembodied and separated from their habitats, thinking ‘like a state’ or planner, and, consequently, stifling their imaginations and working against revolutionary futures. This lecture also discusses the important qualities and directions for a decentralized ecological revolution from below, what to avoid, ideas to consider, and outlining a general direction for collective struggle.

=> ↺ Manhattan Is Composting

• I was very excited to see a composting bin on the corner, a block away from me. It’s about time!

• But… I was really hoping to stay on the postivie note, because composting is great for everyone involved, and could solve the rat problem… But…

• It’s one of those little solar compactors that costs $4,000+. Aside from the upfront cost, while compacting trash makes sense, compacting food waste is questionable. Due to the high water content it is guaranteed to leak awful, stinky effluent…

=> ↺ Communism against Earth

• Looking at the communist side, I sometimes see climate obstructionism too, opposing any plan that doesn’t also solve humanity’s millenia-old (albeit amplified in the industrial age) inequality issues. There was this anti geoengineering site that made the rounds a few months back that mixed some very good points vs some of the worst and least thought-through geoengineering proposals with a foundational opposition to all change that didn’t address inequality.

• And I get it, I do want to address inequality and if the sweeping changes that fix CAGW also fixes inequality then that’s freaking baller and absolutely yay.

• But if they don’t, then we need ‘em anyway.

=> ↺ Red Rising book review

• Red Rising is a science ficiton novel written by Pierce Brown in 2014. It tells the story of a dystopian universe ruled by a society that enforces a caste system based on colors. At the top, the almost inhuman Golds, physically and mentally stronger than the rest, born to enforce the rule of their class. At the bottom, the Reds, born to work the mines and treated as less than human. As the title of the novel suggests, the Reds grow tired of being slaves of the Golds and begin to rise against the society.

• I found this book after finishing the Silo series by Hugh Howey. I was initially drawn to the novel as it starts off similar to Silo. The Reds live deep underground, safe from the inhospitable surface of Mars above them. They work to one day make the planet safe for themselves, and other members of the society. Similarly, Silo is the story of the last of humanity living in a massive underground bunker, safe from the toxic wasteland that has consumed Earth.

Technology and Free Software

=> ↺ my belongings

• Since years, I have been over the pretense of having any sort of control over my, or any, physical or digital possessions.

• I will be careful with them in a reasonable way; I treat all my things well, I don’t throw or drop them, they have cases if needed, they are cleaned, I make an effort not to do anything that unnecessarily damages the outside or inside, or harms the battery. I secure them appropriately. While 99% of things are not special to me and are replaceable to me, I don’t take this as a sign to treat it like it is.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Deep Space Network (DSN) Antenna

• As per a suggestion by @solderpunk, I’ve rebranded my clone of Antenna to be Deep Space Network (DSN) Antenna, so as not to compete with the main site.

• In addition, the theme of the site is non-technical: deep thoughts for the deep space.

• I know that keeping technical posts off there will be challenging especially if you have 2 gemlogs back-to-back that are of both categories, but in the main I’d like to see more “thoughts about life” posts in DSN.

=> ↺ GemPlace – A Gemini Social Experiment

• GemPlace is very similiar to the popular “/r/place” on Reddit. Each day you get to place a single ASCII character on a 20×20 grid. The grid resets at 12:01 AM EST on Monday of every week. My hope is the community works together to create some cool ASCII art or patterns using GemPlace!

• This is a very early version, so it might crash, the grid might get wiped out early and you might experience bugs. If this happens, or you come up with an idea for a cool feature, please let me know (or submit a PR on Github)!

=> ↺ Survey | Which gemini browser do you use mostly?

• Which gemini browser do you use mostly?

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