@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

foolishowl

@foolishowl@social.coop

[...] "Revolutions do not allow anyone to play the schoolmaster with them." -- Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, Chapter 4.

I'm a libertarian socialist, a social ecologist, and a humanist, I know my way around Linux, and I'm partial to speculative fiction and TTRPGs.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

saddestrobots , to random
@saddestrobots@jorts.horse avatar

the thing with any presidential debate is that the best possible outcome is "catastrophic roof collapse"

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@saddestrobots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

How do the rest of you with cats keep them off of the internet?

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@bruce @futurebird As they taught us in computer networking:

  • The Internet is a series of tubes;
  • The tubes are full of cats;
  • The cats must flow.
foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I'll believe ChatGPT has PhD levels of intelligence when I say something about "feudalism" and it looks frustrated and takes a deep breath before asking me what region and period I'm talking about.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I'm looking at a HârnWorld sourcebook, and near the beginning is the rarest of things to find in a sourcebook.

"CURRENT EVENTS
There is no reason to believe that the several centuries of peace and prosperity that Melderyn has enjoyed are about to be threatened."

foolishowl OP ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

HârnWorld is the exemplar of a beautifully detailed setting that I have a hard time imagining using in play. Though it's actually easier to imagine than some, just that it would have to be a very different vibe than I've ever seen in play. Like, seriously roleplaying peasants and artisans in a medieval village.

gwynnion , to random
@gwynnion@mastodon.social avatar

It's weird how the white liberals who decry "purity tests" and "purity politics" never give more progressive candidates the benefit of the doubt, especially if they're not white or male. But they think wanting Biden to be better at politics is secretly wanting him to lose?

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@saddestrobots @gwynnion Asking the Democrats to actually make a fucking effort to resist fascism is fascism, apparently.

lori , to random
@lori@hackers.town avatar

There is no fucking reason that looking at websites should require as much RAM as high end gaming and we never should have let this happen.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@lori I've never seen a computer game use as much RAM as a web browser. I've never seen anything use as much RAM as a web browser.

I see people insisting now that they need 32 GB of RAM on a personal computer, and I look at my fifteen year old desktop that almost never uses more than 2 GB of RAM and a fraction of a percent of CPU time. The performance constraints are disk access time and, with some games, GPU.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@lori Modern personal computers are massively overpowered for what people actually want to do with them, and if the Web wasn't a nightmare of aggressive advertising, most people's needs could be met with cheap, energy efficient SBCs.

It makes me angry.

vampiress , to random
@vampiress@eigenmagic.net avatar

The strange thing about living in Australia is you're used to terrible, nocturnal screeching things, many of which fly. You're used to spiders as big as your hand, or ignoring one of the 10 most deadly snakes turning up while you're walking around the block. You're used to, on a hike, running into furry things as tall as you hopping around the place while carrying their young in flesh pouches.

But raccoons? That’s so weird. They're real things? For serious? That rummage through your garbage?

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@vampiress One night I walked into our living room to find our dog, and three cats (including the shy one who always hid under the bed), all lined up shoulder to shoulder, staring intently at the glass door to the deck. I looked down at them in surprise.

Then, afraid of what I would see, I looked up to the door.

A raccoon was staring back at us, its paws against the glass.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I just saw a discussion of "trad" games that contrasted them with OSR and storytelling games. I'd have thought OSR games were "trad" games.

I'd been sorting a list of games into three categories: storytelling, narrative, and traditional. I didn't much like the term "traditional" anyway, but now I'm not sure how to describe a broad category of games that usually have a clearly defined GM role and in which the mechanics emphasize task resolution and usually track material resources.

rooster , to random
@rooster@chaosfem.tw avatar

Hot take: reactionaries are mad about Star Wars becoming inclusive because they see the Jedi as stoic authoritarian cops with super powers who are considered the good guys

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@jalcine @ireneista @rooster I kept expecting someone sympathetic to make the case that Jedi asceticism was flawed and destructive in its own way, that passion is part of life. Call me a romantic. I thought Yoda's demand to reject Anakin because he felt fear was an utter rejection of compassion, that it was supposed to show how hidebound and reactionary the Jedi were, that it was going to be shown to be the fundamental mistake that led to disaster.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

After some conversations with friends NOT on the fediverse I've arrived at calling it "independent social media."

This is better than "open source" or other titles, it better conveys the central difference.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird This is a great idea. Open source is a technical strategy, and independence is the goal. It makes more sense to focus on what the goal is.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Part of the fun and what I love about keeping ant colonies is how you, with your big brain and fancy tools will be fully challenged to keep them contained, entertained and happy. If there is a way out, they will find it, if there is a way to exploit a new object? They will solve it. All it takes is one ant to stumble on "pile sand grains on top of the water feeder and it will slowly push up the lid" and they will be out.

But then they don't even go anywhere. They do it just because they can.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird Kind of like horses.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

To be in favor of Palestinian resistance but critical of Ukrainian resistance is a very silly position to take.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@HeavenlyPossum There's also the idea that US imperialism is the fundamental evil in the world so opposing it pre-empts all other considerations. It's not necessarily campism, but it's obviously related.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Zoe has been making some important content about PragerU's effort to creep into public schools. Her main point is an important one: It's not just that this content comes from an extremist right wing group with extreme views: it's also just not very good. It's all videos and multiple choice questions-- none of it very thoughtful.

But what would you expect? These people don't really like education or think it's important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLKMW1LII7c

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird @benroyce @RufusJCooter I think the techbro side of it pushes FUN that long ago lost any real joy, and the christofascists earnestly believe that parenting and teaching mean inflicting misery.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I think one way to understand the dual-power strategy is that we should rebuild post-apocalyptic society now, ahead of time, when it's easier to steal the parts.

This is how to look at what's happening with computer technology, for instance.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Is there a good resource or book for learning about some of the details of how webservers work?

For example if I want an IP address on a intranet to be a webpage that people on that intranet can go to... how would I set that up from scratch. Let's say I have a machine with a static IP on the local net... (but what I really also need to understand is how a static IP is established locally, a DNS?)

Maybe the dream book or resource doesn't exist. But I ask anyway.

(it's macs if that matters)

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird There are a couple of ways a static IP could be assigned in an Intranet.

Usually you get a dynamic IP address from DHCP, a service running on the router you connect to. It identifies a network interface (your network card or wifi) by its MAC address, then assigns an IP address for a certain period of time.

The most reliable way to assign a static IP address is for it to be reserved on the DHCP server, so that MAC always gets the same IP.

rbreich , to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

A recent report found that Americans have become less likely to go out for a workday lunch, and more likely to eat a brought-from-home lunch at their desks.

Do you go out for a lunch break? And if not, why not?

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@rbreich 1. Throughout my life, eating out for lunch was expensive and a rare indulgence.

  1. Restaurant prices have increased.

  2. In most of my jobs, I've been on corporate campuses, isolated from the larger community, where there's a single vendor running a cafeteria with food that costs more than a restaurant, and is of much lower quality. The food I bring from home is cheaper and better.

  3. COVID.

alfiekohn , to random
@alfiekohn@sciences.social avatar

I love my neighborhood

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@alfiekohn @futurebird This seems like a case for you.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird @alfiekohn https://sciences.social/@alfiekohn/112507916169977545

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

The more I look closely at fantasies of space colonies, the more obvious that it's not an accident that they nearly always assume capitalism.

"Fully automated luxury communism" is capitalism. Star Trek is capitalism. They're all fantasies about accumulating capital forever.

The whole point of the fantasy is to imagine that capitalism can expand without limit.

foolishowl OP ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I was looking up Wernher von Braun, the Nazi engineer who played an enormous role in the US space program. In 1969, he defended crewed space flight, against cheaper and safer space probes, with a tellingly absurd belief.

"I think somehow space flights for the first time give mankind a chance to become immortal. Once this earth will no longer be able to support life we can emigrate to other places which are better suited for our life."

foolishowl OP ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

Can you imagine someone who was as thoroughly aware of the material conditions on other planets as anyone at the time could be, actually arguing that other planets would be more suitable for life than Earth?

It's the madness of seeing the living world as fungible, a resource to be consumed and tossed aside.

tzimmer_history , to random
@tzimmer_history@mastodon.social avatar

The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem

Prominent leftwing intellectuals are allowing their singular, disdain-driven focus on (neo-) liberalism to completely distort their perspective on the Right.

New piece:

https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-anti-liberal-left-has-a-fascism

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@tzimmer_history The sort of smug insistence that we're over-reacting about everything was a major tendency within the Jacobin-aligned wing of the DSA. They insisted that anyone talking about racism, sexism, or LGBTQ rights was a part of the "professional-managerial class", and that raising those issues was alienating the white working class.

That tendency was impossible to work with, perpetually shutting down projects by fair means or foul, and was a major reason I left the DSA.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

I suppose I continue wrestling with whether I would rather run a campaign about space pirates with a relatively trad game, like Stars Without Number, or with a narrative game, like Fate.

I favor narrative games' emphasis, but trad games can feel a bit more grounded. I tend to think of worrying about mechanics and numbers as a nuisance and distraction from narrative, but having things grounded and having practical limits up front all the time makes sense for science fiction.

foolishowl OP ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@SJohnRoss I was re-reading about "blorb principles".

https://idiomdrottning.org/blorb-principles

FredKiesche , to random
@FredKiesche@dice.camp avatar

Culture, thought, the decreasing cycle of attention, Dune and The Book of the New Sun all in one essay. https://www.thejaymo.net/2024/05/12/339-settling-in/

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@SJohnRoss @FredKiesche Long story short: commodity production is making us all miserable.

bobjmsn , to random
@bobjmsn@mastodon.scot avatar

Earlier today the UK Government’s Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack MP, announced that he will order ministers to plan for a nuclear reactor to be built in Scotland!

Scotland only has one operational nuclear site left, Torness, which will be decommissioned in 2028.

Will you help us tell Alistair Jack and the UK Government to keep nuclear out of Scotland?

Petition:

https://greens.scot/NuclearFreeScotland?utm_source=email&utm_medium=middle

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@HeavenlyPossum @peterbrown @RD4Anarchy @petealexharris @bobjmsn @benroyce @tf @Tarbh @simon_brooke It really sucks how the Republican-dominated municipal governments of San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and other places where the left famously never votes, keep funding police and assaulting demonstrators. If only people in those places would vote!

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

When I pick up a wild ant such as this Camponotus pennsylvanicus minor worker I’m always anxious that I return her to her colony. I followed her after letting her go. She ran the full length of a football field then suddenly up a pole. Waiting there another ant of the same species. They fussed over each other. Grooming and feeding each other for several minutes. Then they tucked into a nook in the fence and went to sleep! I guess they won’t be taking me to their main nest today.

The sister she ran to find after the strange experience of running over my hand for a bit. They are feeding each other which ants do when nervous.

foolishowl ,
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

@futurebird I'm impressed you followed a single ant the length of a football field.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

If password safe developers are arguing that harvesting user data us a critical function for their password safe, I think we've reached a depth that I had not anticipated.

How difficult is it to encrypt an XML database, anyway?

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

If university administrations are opposed to students and faculty then university administrations are opposed to universities.

foolishowl , to random
@foolishowl@social.coop avatar

Biden said people have the right to protest but not to trespass.

Nearly any place you could practically assemble for a protest is either private property or a public thoroughfare.

Victor_el_DM , to random
@Victor_el_DM@mastodon.art avatar

[Finds out famous sci-fi author Larry Niven is still alive]

Me: Oh, I should check his Wikipedia entry, I want to know what he wrote and if...

[reads Larry Niven's Politics section on Wikipedia]

Me: He can totally die now and it would actually improve the world.

Larry Niven's Wikipedia article on his politics: "In 2007, Niven, in conjunction with a think tank of science fiction writers known as SIGMA, founded and led by Arlan Andrews, began advising the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as to future trends affecting terror policy and other topics.[18] Among those topics was reducing costs for hospitals to which Niven offered the solution to spread rumors in Latino communities that organs were being harvested illegally in hospitals."
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    • foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @Victor_el_DM That's worse than I was expecting.

    Last night I was watching For All Mankind, which -- as far as I've watched -- has had an explicit theme that NASA was overcautious and should have risked lives.

    I remembered a science fiction novel -- I think by Niven -- that had a whole rant about NASA being overcautious and spending too much on safety. And that was a common rant among conservative science fiction people.

    I read it shortly before the Challenger explosion.

    larsfrommars , to random
    @larsfrommars@toot.garden avatar

    love this take on the vaguely pro-slavery book with a race of greedy hook-nosed creatures where saving the world ultimately comes down to one guy collaborating with the dominant political class

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @larsfrommars @saddestrobots Sadly there are no other YA novels about liberatory movements.

    petergleick , to random
    @petergleick@fediscience.org avatar

    Gee, even in the violent movies with the massive human death counts, directors know not to kill the dog.

    ‘Where’s Cricket?’ Don’t Ask. Kristi Noem Defends Killing Her Dog.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/us/politics/kristi-noem-dog-killing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nk0.9jK7.m2se0EDQ-27d

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @futurebird @petergleick I've had some horrible experiences with people being cruel to animals to signal their intention to be cruel to humans. I feel nearly certain the original reason she killed the dog was to frighten her children into obedience. And the reason she's telling the story now is to send the message that she will kill people who resist fascism.

    JessTheUnstill , to random
    @JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar

    God I hate the trope in stories, especially Anime/Manga where boys declare they're going to have a duel and the winner gets the girl. Like ... For fucks sake, there is no universe in which I'm going to suddenly decide I want to be with the person who just beat the crap out of/killed the person I love. And I am going to seriously reconsider my love for a person if their sense of HONOR demands they fight/kill someone for pretty much any reason other than protecting someone else from imminent and severe injury or death. Otherwise, we just tell the assholes to fuck off, walk away, and cuddle in peace. They can call us cowards and die mad, I don't give a shit.

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @JessTheUnstill As a preadolescent I was really into Arthurian romance.

    Recently I was reading some cheesy TTRPG scenario that was explicitly the Knights of the Roundtable in mechs, and they're going on about the looming tragedy implied by the love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, and I'm thinking, seriously, there's an obvious solution if the three of you just talked it out like adults.

    Strandjunker , to random
    @Strandjunker@mstdn.social avatar

    79 years ago, patriotic Americans went to France to throw out the Nazis. This year, all you have to do is go to the polls and vote.

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @Strandjunker No matter who wins the election, there will be a fascist insurrection, and we will need to take to the streets to stop it.

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    The correct way to eat a cupcake with too big icing.

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @futurebird Downloads PDF for Nobel Prize nomination

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    “regular people” whoever that is… will never use the crunchy homemade internet if they have the option of slick apps instead. You can’t hire designers, you don’t have an advertising budget, your project with its dreamy cooperative ethos is an anathema to tech media who don’t see the point in mentioning it exists.

    “regular people” like pop-ups, and bots, and having their data sold to the highest bidder, they like porn spam, and scammers and discourse so broken it causes mental harm. Right?

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @futurebird There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and I struggle to make sense of it.

    foolishowl , to random
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    A Spy Site Is Scraping Discord and Selling Users’ Messages
    https://www.404media.co/a-spy-site-is-scraping-discord-and-selling-users-messages/

    julieofthespirits , to random Spanish
    @julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social avatar

    The biggest brain of our generation, folks

    Ms Rowling said she had invented the idea that some wizards were not considered to be "pure', and realised the similarities with the Nazis’ beliefs only afterwards when she visited a museum dedicated to the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people died. "I saw one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised the ‘pure-blood’, ‘half-blood’ and ‘muggle- born’ definitions and was chilled to see that the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters."
    ALT
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    • foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @julieofthespirits @larsfrommars There are a lot of thematic inconsistencies that make me wonder if JKR did only some of the writing.

    SJohnRoss , (edited ) to random
    @SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @SJohnRoss There's one Modiphius game where I got the impression the game designer was actively hostile to the nominal premise and to the nominal game system, and I wish I could get the game that matched the cover art.

    Xenograg , to random
    @Xenograg@dice.camp avatar

    "To describe the politics of Shadowrun as a 'hot mess' or 'dumpster fire' would be insulting to both hot messes and dumpster fires." 😂

    https://pocgamer.com/archives/2930

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @Xenograg I was favorably impressed with the CRPG, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, which was set in Berlin's Kreuzfeldt district while it was held by an anarchist commune. However, some of the underlying problems with the setting still came through, and I think some of the designers didn't understand the difference between anarchism and right "libertarianism".

    And from what I can make out, they built off a footnote in one of the setting booms, about an anarchist commune that was quickly crushed.

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Every now and then I hear conversations from outside of here about "the state of social media" and let me tell you: People are suffering. People are miserable. Many people feel addicted to social media but unable to have positive and valuable interactions in the space. Mostly, in the profit-driven social media space negative emotional reactions glue eyeballs as well as positive, so a heap of the experiences is just ... unpleasant.

    Meanwhile around here things are different.
    1/

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @futurebird I was looking at a message board yesterday. There were a few bigots ranting and a larger number replying, mostly mocking them. But what I found most striking was the attitude of the people opposed to the bigots. They weren't surprised they were there, and seemed to take their presence as just a routine annoyance.

    In most social media spaces, people seem to have just accepted that they're at a Nazi bar and there's not really anything they can do about it.

    foolishowl , to random
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    I don't get how people manage to ignore that capitalism is about capital.

    SJohnRoss , to random
    @SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @SJohnRoss As in, Brechtian estrangement? Science fiction isn't really predicting space travel in the distant future?

    lowqualityfacts , to random
    @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

    I don't follow everyone back. I only follow people back who can dig holes. Deep holes. I am assembling the world's greatest team of hole diggers. Experts say you can't dig a hole from New York City to China due to "physics" and "geology" but I say they've never met a hole digging team like mine.

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @lowqualityfacts I may not understand the question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is carbon-fiber hulls.

    lowqualityfacts , to random
    @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

    Wow, you learn something new about Mount Everest every day.

    foolishowl ,
    @foolishowl@social.coop avatar

    @lowqualityfacts I thought it was that snow troll that jumps you about a third of the way up.

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