Benjamin Esham @bdesham@parcel5.social

$ configure
checking if it's 1974 .. no
checking if it's 1975 .. no
checking if it's 1977 .. no
[...]
$ make
[checks again]

there is an alternate socialist present in which non-essential workers just get time off during the pandemic, or are incentivized to retrain for essential work to expand critical capacity, but that time off doesn’t force businesses to shutter because rent doesn’t exist. after the pandemic, imagine just going back to work. the restaurant is a little dusty, but with a flick of the switch and a few hours cleaning, you’re serving food like nothing changed.

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Wash your hands
#2) Don't touch your face
#3) Limit unnecessary public exposure

"Chromium-based browser found to be three data collection systems in a trenchcoat"

Your beauty lasts beyond the grave
The angels call you, sainted maid
Although you're nameless here, forever more
Your voice is like forgotten lore
I'm rapping at the chamber door
I cannot compete with you, Lenore
Lenore Lenore Lenore Lenore
I'm begging of you please don't haunt my man

For real like Bandcamp is exactly the kind of service we *hoped* the internet would give us: “hey, people make things, they set their own price inc. free, we provide the storefront, you buy it and the money goes to the creator, you get it in a DRM-free format and can play it however you want, we just make money to keep going & improving and aren’t a VC-funded nightmare company of rampant reckless growth that will do something nightmarish and implode.”

We need more media platforms like that.

i feel like i should get into org-mode because i do a lot of things with spreadsheets and i like plain text and stuff but it feels like the dwarf fortress version of notepad just saying

do you understand? it was never technology that made humane relations possible. it was you and i, and our commitment to each other.

a courier arrives from the next village on horseback with books, zines, letters, art prints, and a hard drive full of music and movies. we offload the drive while the courier joins us for lunch, sharing news — harvests, births, deaths, the goings-on of various governance councils — while we load a drive with our own new media. the courier leaves as full as they came, and well-fed besides.

in the alternate socialist present, i am herding goats with a cane and melody while replacing batteries in the mesh routers the ‘ware guild has hung from trees. later i dine at the village commissary and watch a movie projected on the side of a barn.

The fight for diversity, equality and inclusion is the fight for software freedom. Our movement will only be successful if it includes everyone. RMS does not speak for these values.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/

@ptvirgo @deejoe @gid I strongly agree with Matthew Garrett in that I don't want to see RMS replaced; we need to remove the necessity of having a single figurehead leader in the free software community: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html

We have now reached the part of the boarding process where the bus is full, but one more person squeezes on, proving one more can squeeze on, proving one more can squeeze on, therefore by induction, all of these people can squeeze on.

Abstracted from a discussion on lobste.rs: the most energy-intensive thing most people do on their computers is watch streaming video. Displaying plain text, on the other hand, is very energy efficient. Therefore, to reduce your carbon footprint, you should stop watching porn and start reading the alt.sex.stories.moderated archives.

2004 mood: Rushing to create an account on every new service so you can have the same name everywhere

2019 mood: Using a different name on every service because the internet is now a Dark Forest