-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to oberdada.pollux.casa:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini; lang=fr
Two topics: first, how to cause material objects to change location by acts of will; second, how to spread immaterial objects to other receivers.
With regard to over-consumption and resource use, it may be a good thing, after all, that consumption is becomming a more obnoxious experience. One thing is the mandatory inclusion of advanced technological features, especially internet connectivity where none would be the sane option. Ploum's account of trying to buy a frigiploc (as Boris Vian called them) is too real to be read as fictional, except for the sellers' reaction. The morale of course is: hold on to your vintage fridge, because a new replacement will phone home whether you like it or not.
Another nuisance is the confusing experience of ordering things on the web and trying to catch the delivery, which is thrown at you as a tricky screwball – you never now where or when to expect it. I recently tried to order some books from down the continent, got an email that said that I would soon receive tracking information, so I patiently waited until it was too late. It turned out you were expected to sign in to your account at the book vendor to receive such information. As I eventually did so, I saw the fascinating trail of the package, all the intermediary stops it had visited along its travel, how long it sat at the local ersatz post office and when it was sent back. Well, I'm only halfways through Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, so it's not that I'm acutely lacking reading stuff. But, as Eco said, a library should contain more unread than read books. So I tried another store, a big one that I had successfully ordered from in the past. This time the consumption attempt ended abruptly with a blunt message on the screen:
YOU HAVE BEEN BLOCKED.
It's impossible to say whether they disliked my bots, my superhuman reaction speed, or some blocked javascript, in any event they refused to go further with my order. Finally I found a third book vendor that had the titles on my list (which at this point had grown from two to six), so now I'm expecting delivery at my door in a few days, kind of.
These postal misadventures are interesting also in light of a commencing project which I will need to announce soon. Suffice it to say that I'm working on a new animation using R. Its plotting capabilities are just convenient enough to excuse the weakness of R as a general purpose language.
Meanwhile, I have expanded my presence on the fædiworstward to include Mastodon, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, and Peertube (links below). These are all very different and separate things, although some mastodon images seep into pixfed. If nothing else, their decentralisation and open software speak in their favour, except when decentralisation turns out to be as much of a curse as a blessing. My experience with these platforms is that the more they function as social media, the less enjoyable they are. Therefore I share the sentiment of this post about Mastodon:
I actually tried Mastodon five years ago, but soon gave up. Some well-meaning person suggested I use hashtags, which to me seems wasteful and bad practice. The message, insofar as anyone has any, is epitomised in, and virtually replaced by those tags, unless emojies take over where literate language ends. Since my previous sojourn an influx of new users has emerged, for well-known reasons, and now not only regular people but also lots of media organisations and outright propaganda operations flood the ... _timelines_, isn't that what they call it? And by 'propaganda' I refer not only to falsehoods or things I happen to disagree with; it's more a matter of form: the short, shouty, insistent messaging that leaves no space for nuance and afterthought. Now, you can't blame the brevity on technical limitations, the maximum of 2^16 character per message is far longer than the average gemlog post, but very few write long messages. No wonder, because the speed of the flow and ease of sharing "what's on your mind" incentivises this hasty, stressful style of engagement.
Now, as I'm giving Mastodon a second try, I'm doing it my way: Few, but relatively long posts, still no hashtags (though I might consider making an exception just for fun), and infrequently logging in. I'm treating pixfed similarly. These two platforms encourage a certain narcissism in looking for followers and likes, whereas they don't exactly facilitate personal exchanges. I'm not convinced that an upvoting system is any better, as it only bolsters a sort of anxious self-awareness.
A completely different charming little nook that I recently discovered is Your World of Text. It seems to have been around for a while and is still active. Here I made my own corner, who knows if it's still there.
And of course the obligatory navigation links:
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