Nostr notes by Mx. Chara Aznable of Pnictogen

It's not a good sign that you're scared of talking about ...

2026-10-23T00:20:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…2x39
_________________________

It's not a good sign that you're scared of talking about your involvement with Mastodon, yes.

also a curious answer, from a professional in the computer trade ...

2026-10-23T00:15:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…tlk7
_________________________

also a curious answer, from a professional in the computer trade (is that acceptable?).

You were evasive on the subject of how much advice the Mastodon people take from you. Would it be incorrect for me to surmise from that evasiveness that your influence is considerable? If it were slight, I think you would have highlighted that.

That's an interesting response. I was simply curious as to ...

2026-10-23T00:11:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…04mu
_________________________

That's an interesting response. I was simply curious as to why you pounced upon the slightly sloppy word usage in lieu of addressing the substance of my original remarks. And yes it seems my language was, in fact, roughly correct. If I'd said "computer professional" instead, I would guess that you'd have picked a different nit.

fair enough. would you mind answering the question about whether ...

2026-10-23T00:07:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…j6fp
_________________________

fair enough. would you mind answering the question about whether you use code in your work?

That's clearly stated. If you don't mind my asking, how ...

2026-10-23T00:05:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…e78u
_________________________

That's clearly stated. If you don't mind my asking, how much of your advice is taken, vis a vis Mastodon? perhaps that's not such an easy thing to estimate?

I confess that I am now curious as to how many people you blow ...

2026-10-23T00:00:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…60wr
_________________________

I confess that I am now curious as to how many people you blow off (whether or not they have valid concerns) merely because you can successfully convince yourselves they're angry or upset. Why should calling out anger even be a priority?

I am not angry or upset. I think you feel angry and upset and ...

2026-10-22T23:59:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…px2e
_________________________

I am not angry or upset. I think you feel angry and upset and wish to place that upon me, but I am not angry with you, just confused.

You haven't. Why you wish to deny your professional status is ...

2026-10-22T23:58:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…0v62
_________________________

You haven't. Why you wish to deny your professional status is unclear to me. Why list all the big corporate jobs, except to advertise yourself as a computer professional?

I really hope you're not using a trifling dispute over ...

2026-10-22T23:55:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…mveq
_________________________

I really hope you're not using a trifling dispute over nomenclature, Scott, as an excuse to duck away from an important point of argument: whether you're paid or not, whether you have an official position or not, you make decisions with global scope.

Yes? or no?

You've got a whole list of top-level corporate posts in your ...

2026-10-22T23:51:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…rcr6
_________________________

You've got a whole list of top-level corporate posts in your bio. Evidently you don't like being called a programmer, even though you work with code?

I am suggesting that the most important standard to be upheld is ...

2026-10-22T23:50:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…kvcu
_________________________

I am suggesting that the most important standard to be upheld is the duty to respond to the needs of a vast community. You are not merely a private individual having a bit of open source fun: your decisions impinge upon millions—is this wrong?

Your own biography marks you as a professional programmer.

2026-10-22T23:47:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…tuns
_________________________

Your own biography marks you as a professional programmer.

you are not here for your private amusement, is my point. you are ...

2026-10-22T23:43:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…90aq
_________________________

you are not here for your private amusement, is my point. you are partially responsible for an entire community's software experience. is it wise to prioritize your own feelings here?

it's certainly not important. I get slurred on the regular ...

2026-10-22T23:40:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…s7aa
_________________________

it's certainly not important. I get slurred on the regular and I don't let that stop me from thinking. Would you please address the actual point?

should a Mastodon programmer be blocking angry folks? this fellow ...

2026-10-22T23:39:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…x9k0
_________________________

should a Mastodon programmer be blocking angry folks? this fellow is supposed to be prioritizing the public interest (seeing as how Mastodon purports to be a social-media alternative for the general public to use) so...should Scott be blocking complaints?

I worry that professional programmers such as yourself apply a ...

2026-10-22T23:36:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…fta9
_________________________

I worry that professional programmers such as yourself apply a tendentious definition of "toxicity" as a pretext for cutting off communication, especially in cases where anger is justifiable (e.g. anything to do with the corporate push to normalize LLM sludge generators, which are objectively destructive and ruinous to the environment, to the communities in which "AI" installations are forcibly built, and to the safety and privacy of the general public)

it's weird running into people who take "The Cathedral ...

2026-10-16T17:18:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…m4u5
_________________________

it's weird running into people who take "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" seriously

Gotta say it: if Jeff Bezos, who is surely among the most ...

2026-10-14T19:08:04Z

Gotta say it: if Jeff Bezos, who is surely among the most malevolent and avaricious human beings who has ever crawled between Hell and Heaven, is making public noises about how it's now nonsensical to think of #computing as a hobby, you'd better believe that he's only voicing the desires of the entire business sector. They feel like they finally have their excuse to choke off amateur access to "compute", and Bezos and his chums must be salivating over economic projections that predict astronomically increasing profit from metering out "compute" by the TOKEN.

Superintelligent sludge, dispensed by LLM sludge dispensers, is the great and glorious #AI #future, a future in which only a privileged elite get direct access to computer hardware. I'm not sure how many fools are still blithering, willfully blinding themselves to the real actual plans of Silicon Valley executives, about technology in the "techno-optimistic" manner of the 1990s boom times, when it still seemed like personal computing was the greatest miracle ever achieved—and it was an American one!

I don't doubt that there's a *patriotic* undercurrent to high-tech boosterism, the stubborn determination of #tech enthusiasts to ignore the immense damage which has been done and is still being done by racist and greedy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Nobody likes being told that the thing in which they've placed all their hopes for decades is actually a menace. Nobody wants to hear that the *one thing* that the United States could still feel proud about, U.S. technological dominance, is really a fascistic nightmare.

The glittery techno-optimist dream is dying. The dream is being killed, NOT by the "haters" and the "doomers"—people like me have no power or influence in this system. It's Silicon Valley itself who is eager to snuff out the daydream they once championed. It's *obsolete* now, they say. The future of "compute" is corporate server farms serving up a trickle of "superintelligent" LLM ooze, with users charged by the word. If you wish for a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping upon the very concept of personal computing—forever.

~Chara of Pnictogen

where can we get these marbles

2026-10-02T01:42:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…jmha
_________________________

where can we get these marbles

Vance hasn't an iota of charisma and he wants to do national ...

2026-09-30T00:51:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…r2h0
_________________________

Vance hasn't an iota of charisma and he wants to do national broadcasts? This ought to be amusing, or skin-crawling

Heh. What if computers had an analogue computing module of some ...

2026-09-25T01:52:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…9qdk
_________________________

Heh. What if computers had an *analogue computing* module of some sort, wouldn't that be nuts? The geeklords are so attached to the premise that their machines are already superior to humans that they're largely unable to see that a **physical** system can effectively do a whole lot of math all at once. Think of how many orders of magnitude more complex a *single nerve cell* is compared to a single transistor or logic gate, but the worst of the tech geeks don't know a thing about biology much less chemistry or physics or (gawd help us) #mathematics. So they see a figure like "the human brain has ninety thousand million neurons" and immediately equate that directly with a quantity of bytes or a quantity of "compute", forgetting that *one cell* is like a massively parallel analogue computer, with information being stored in the rising and falling concentrations of a fearful variety of chemical compounds.

The computer people aren't anywhere NEAR to replicating this degree of complexity. Not even close. That Navier-Stokes business where #OpenAI tried to steal credit for the work of human scientists is vital in trying to understand any of this stuff on a fundamental physico-chemical level: the body is a mass of fluids constantly in motion on a minute microfluidic or nanofluidic scale, not just blood pumping and air going in and out.

I've studied this stuff, just barely! Just enough to know how false and ludicrous the claims of the high-tech crowd have always been. They were so keen on pretending they'd already far outstripped humanity merely because they stuffed a giant building full of GPUs and fed it every stray byte of stolen information.

Bullshit. It's never been anything but bullshit.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Hm is there any value in trying to work up a scheme for ...

2026-09-25T01:51:38Z

Hm is there any value in trying to work up a scheme for representing 3D space as filled with rhombic dodecahedra instead of cubes? I was thinking of how one might try to implement a 3D grid that has some advantage in analogy to the hexagonal grid in representing 2D space. A plain square grid has a subtle problem in defining the "neighborhood" of a cell, for there are four face-to-face members and four corner-to-corner members whereas the hexagonal cell has six identical neighbors.

I trawled through MathWorld looking up polyhedra that tessellate 3D space. There's a lot of weird choices but only the rhombic dodecahedron, so far as I can tell, is both convex and has all its faces congruent, all the same shape.

I'm sort of curious generally about the subtle issues that crop up in simulations because of the limitations on how a continuous *field* of some sort, in 2D or 3D space, can be divided up into discrete units. #Programming culture being what it is, it's tended to overuse rectilinear models because they're so easy to implement and there must be a lot of software out there where square or cubical grids are deemed *good enough* even if really they aren't.

(cont'd)

It's true enough that liberty is not a monolithic ...

2026-09-24T22:52:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…uwmq
_________________________

It's true enough that **liberty** is not a monolithic concept. There are numerous liberties and rights which have had to be slowly unearthed as it were, their existence revealed by the pain and suffering and conflict that comes with denying them. Properly speaking, human rights are defined in a negative way: they are not concrete things but abstractions we collectively agree apply to all human beings, and honored by forbidding the abrogation of these rights and seeking justice when human rights have been traduced.

U.S. #politics thinks of "human rights" in an authoritarian sense, as privileges granted through specific acts of human law. This is false, but it's not actually fashionable to support liberty or democracy in contemporary U.S. politics or #media.

(etc.)

Liberty has been dissected into bits, not just in order to ...

2026-09-24T22:48:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…e242
_________________________

**Liberty** has been dissected into bits, not just in order to *sell* the stuff (as if **freedom,** the abstract virtue of freedom, were something that you could obtain by buying a piece of software or sucking up to Elon Musk) but because as with those Four Loves, various pieces of liberty (real or imagined) can be used as weapons of tyranny. #FreeSpeech is now a doublethinkful technofascist slogan, and the #tech leaders who crow the loudest about "free speech" are the most zealous in real-life censorship and suppression of dissent (cf. the activities of Nate Graham in the #KDE mess, running away from critics and deleting their attempts at public communication.)

(more)

This is roughly the game that U.S. #conservatives and their #tech ...

2026-09-24T22:43:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…whyz
_________________________

This is roughly the game that U.S. #conservatives and their #tech sector allies have been playing with #freedom and #democracy. They wish to destroy democracy altogether and they are doing this through an *atomistic* approach, hyperfocusing on the purported crisis of individual voter fraud and using this pretext in order to seize authoritarian control of voting and balloting.

The technofascist obsession with #intelligence plays into this corruption and destruction of democracy as well: it's purported to be a big problem that "dumb people" vote (hint: the #Democrats created this problem and thus are fittingly being pulled to pieces by it) which justifies extirpation of democracy as unworkable because, gosh, look what happens when stupid people make decisions! They even fail to vote for the GOP, so lacking in IQ are they. /s

(etc.)

This plays into the extreme atomism that I've talked ...

2026-09-24T22:39:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…s4p6
_________________________

This plays into the extreme **atomism** that I've talked about, an attitude prevalent in "Western" science and academia: all things can be understood, goes the atomistic fallacy, by dividing them up into the smallest possible pieces first, then claiming that the true nature of the thing lies in the aggregation of its pieces or perhaps to one *special* piece from that collection, thought to be the quintessence or governing principle.

Nothing gets the right-wing #Christian crowd much happier, for example, than the news from #CSLewis that there's actually four separate things called "love" (exactly four, of course, like the Four Gospels or the four suits of playing cards) because dividing love up like this makes it easier to abuse and betray other people, especially one's own family and friends. One can, as it were, set one of the Four Loves against the other.

(more)

I got my long-suffering RL parents sucked into a scam like this ...

2026-09-24T22:34:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…ermt
_________________________

I got my long-suffering RL parents sucked into a scam like this in childhood, winding up with a set of encyclopedias that I can't honestly say were worth the money. But as a wee child I didn't understand that aspect of things; I just wanted the world in one set of books.

This evil genius of #capitalism for dividing things up into little pieces and then charging an extra high profit markup on every little piece doesn't just apply to material things or even to "virtual" stuff like #videogames or other #software. It can be applied to abstract entities, to ideals and virtues.

(more)

There's a famous #MST3K bit that a great many people have ...

2026-09-24T22:31:31Z

There's a famous #MST3K bit that a great many people have identified as an uncanny prediction of #Internet commerce and its intricate obsession with **micropayments.** As the MST3K "Johnny Long-Torso" sketch demonstrates however the method does not require the Internet or indeed ANY technology really. It's very simple: divide a thing which MUST function as a unit into little pieces and then you can extort people on the basis that they need all the parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3h8S6GA-bo

"The doll who is himself sold separately!" As a unit he's valued at eight bucks, but in pieces he can be sold for over $300! #Profit!! The American Way!!!

(etc.)

oh I agree, although I guess I have gotten jaded about it. it ...

2026-09-24T20:21:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…vkds
_________________________

oh I agree, although I guess I have gotten jaded about it. it seems like the press always finds some stupid little social-column issue to focus on, like the Dean Scream or Obama's suits

free opera sounds great, moving to New York immediately

2026-09-24T20:02:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…44m2
_________________________

free opera sounds great, moving to New York immediately

"wanna buy some meat that fell off the back of a lorry" ...

2026-09-23T21:05:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…q8uy
_________________________

"wanna buy some meat that fell off the back of a lorry" wasn't something I guessed would be a likely scam but welp, meat is real expensive

tired: leaving a bottle of whisky for Pele-honua-mea wired: ...

2026-09-23T18:39:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…ya6w
_________________________

tired: leaving a bottle of whisky for Pele-honua-mea
wired: tossing her a tech executive

I would tend to suspect Confederate general fandom (Braxton ...

2026-09-17T21:41:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…46nl
_________________________

I would tend to suspect Confederate general fandom (Braxton Bragg)

I wish #tech geeks who are head over heels with #GenAI would ...

2026-09-15T20:57:13Z

I wish #tech geeks who are head over heels with #GenAI would realize that they sound the most horrifying and repulsive when they're enunciating their fondest hopes. It's very difficult to see any good side to the "generative AI" craze when the reasons they cite for why we should be enthusiastic for LLM sludge are terrifyingly unconvincing, Sirius-Cybernetics crap. There's a certain highly offensive notion of "user friendliness" that I blame on Steve Jobs's noxious influence: the user is assumed to be a clueless boob (i.e. like the usual corporate manager who makes software purchasing decisions) who must at all costs be protected from any deep understanding of the machinery they're using. This has fostered the bizarre assumption that everyone ought to be reduced to the same stultified form of interaction with computers, i.e. imitation "natural language" conversations with LLM sludge.

I got my education and grew up with the older style of doing ...

2026-09-09T05:10:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…ks23
_________________________

I got my education and grew up with the older style of doing things and I admit I'm not a fan of the way that scientific instrumentation now has the suspiciously canned look of consumer electronics, but I've had little first-hand experience: at my scum-class level of exposure to analytical instrumentation, I've barely touched the brand-new stuff. Meager labs get by with meager equipment.

it would be pleasant if the #programming community learned that ...

2026-09-05T18:02:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…wezm
_________________________

it would be pleasant if the #programming community learned that certain decisions really are just MISTAKES and "if you don't like our blunders then rebuild our work from ground up" isn't really a valid way of responding to having terrible engineering decisions called out

I don't like doing this. It ruins my day no matter how hard I ...

2026-09-03T22:44:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…hlnf
_________________________

I don't like doing this. It ruins my day no matter how hard I throw myself into constructive activities afterwards, baking or learning how to navigate BSD or whatever. But how else can one break through the *armor*?

The techbros have been working on this narrative for so long, they actually believe it now. They still think of themselves as a liberatory force even as they thirst for police and military contracts and cozying up to politicians. They think that evil #Apple #1984 ad is somehow REAL and not a dystopian corruption and coöption of George Orwell for no better reason than spicing up sales for a friggin' personal computer.

The Apple corporation is not a hero of any story but their own.

~Chara

"How can Silicon Valley be fascist, they made the Mac II" ...

2026-09-03T22:39:09Z

"How can Silicon Valley be fascist, they made the Mac II" was a bit of #tech sector babble I wasn't expecting but welp there it is, unless the communications professor decides to delete it

oh that guy? that guy was an LLM huh? I guess I can't tell ...

2026-09-01T04:20:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…crqm
_________________________

oh that guy? that guy was an LLM huh? I guess I can't tell the difference these days

There's a very serious issue which the #technology sector and ...

2026-08-30T06:12:42Z

There's a very serious issue which the #technology sector and its enthusiastic fanboys (mostly it's cis guys into this shit, guys who misogynistically pretend that women are too emotional and irrational to deal with computers) have clearly yet to grasp.

It's a deal-breaking problem they have and yet they have persuaded themselves otherwise: no human being on Earth or anywhere else can possibly trust what a tech enthusiast says or promises.

They have ZERO credibility.

(etc.)

I bet you that most of the hardcore fanbase of Yudkowsky and ...

2026-08-24T20:53:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…kc3v
_________________________

I bet you that most of the hardcore fanbase of Yudkowsky and #LessWrong sophistry hasn't even read the fucking thing. If I may Godwin myself: that was also the case with *Mein Kampf*, which I've read bits of. It's trash, semi-coherent ranting mixed with grandiosity about building a great empire, and William L. Shirer (who was literally *in Berlin* when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939) said that most Germans he encountered, even if they were loyal to the regime, admitted they'd never read Hitler's book. It just *sucked* too bad.

(cont'd)

Hence I very much doubt that Yudkowsky's writing contains ...

2026-08-24T20:49:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…3awx
_________________________

Hence I very much doubt that Yudkowsky's writing contains much "rationality". It's really the **title** that matters, and the fact that its author is now a tech-sector cult leader in the #effectivealtruism mode (i.e. designed towards grovelling and toadying to tech executives, the only people who actually think that "effective altruism" is worthy of study and lavish donations of money.)

(etc.)

I can't overstress the degree to which the habitual discourse ...

2026-08-24T20:43:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…r8jf
_________________________

I can't overstress the degree to which the habitual discourse of the "intellectuals" favored by #tech sector geeklords, in spite of all the "rationalism" or because of it, is strictly a matter of strong emotions.

They don't write out logical syllogisms. They write soppy eulogies about how logic and Science™ are amazing and the answer to all life's problems, seasoned with various festering hatreds.

(cont'd)

I'm sure that if I looked up *Harry Potter and the Methods of ...

2026-08-24T20:38:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…hfs2
_________________________

I'm sure that if I looked up *Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality* on #YouTube I'd find dozens, hundreds, maybe **THOUSANDS** of well-argued refutations of Yudkowsky's ideology as explicated in his #HarryPotter fanfic. But there'd be ever so much more sycophantic praise and lengthy orations about Yudkowsky's genius, because sentimental hogwash is the element in which "conservatives" swim.

(cont'd)

There's scarcely any genuine debate among these ...

2026-08-24T20:36:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…n4hs
_________________________

There's scarcely any genuine **debate** among these right-wing nerds because they've a priori ruled out most of accepted and collectively decided human knowledge as "woke" and corrupted by Marxism and so forth. Their fanatical anticommunism has eaten away at their intellects to the point that they're now coming up with half-assed reinventions of existing fields and concepts, because they *refuse* to engage with the larger intellectual community.

(more)

The #tech sector and the elite #programming and #computing ...

2026-08-24T20:34:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…8fn9
_________________________

The #tech sector and the elite #programming and #computing culture are boiling over with nerdbros who babble about "debate" and "logic" and "rationality" while--exactly like E. Z. Yudkowsky--preferring the monologue as their method of discourse. They're isolated, insular, frankly very *lonely* people who out of psychological necessity have convinced themselves that they ought to be able to reason out the nature of reality without leaving their computer desk.

(cont'd)

Hence the fundamental premise of *Harry Potter and the Methods of ...

2026-08-24T20:32:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…95c8
_________________________

Hence the fundamental premise of *Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality* is, I suggest, in bad faith: Yudkowsky wants to present the *appearance* of logical disputation and dialectical materialism (by writing fiction about it) without any actual willingness to risk his ideas in debate.

#Debate therefore has become a doublethinkful, deceitful word in contemporary parlance.

(cont'd)

Hence Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic isn't necessarily ...

2026-08-24T20:28:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…t9sv
_________________________

Hence Yudkowsky's *Harry Potter* fanfic isn't necessarily a bad idea but I know from attempting to interact with Yudkowsky on Twitter and with the #LessWrong people on their insular forum that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a person with very few ideas and very little inclination to defend them through logical disputation.

To quote *Videodrome*, the monologue is Yudkowsky's preferred mode of discourse.

(cont'd)

That way Nietzsche could feasibly claim that he himself ...

2026-08-24T20:25:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…l9sm
_________________________

That way Nietzsche could feasibly claim that he himself wasn't saying "God is Dead!" even though, of course, that's how every carping #Christian fanatic interpreted Nietzsche's fable. They do that with everything: Christian fanatics of that sort have erased all subtle distinctions among different sorts of writing from their understanding. All texts are "literal" to them (i.e. they're physical objects that can be used to hurt people with.)

(cont'd)

When Nietzsche wanted to pass along the news that maybe God was ...

2026-08-24T20:23:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…egzf
_________________________

When Nietzsche wanted to pass along the news that maybe God was dead, he wrote a fable about a madman with a lantern, going around looking for evidence of God, peering into everyone's faces because surely if God were to be found somewhere it'd be in *human belief*. Did anyone around Nietzsche still believe in God? His fable, a very small part of *The Gay Science*, suggests that all such belief had died out of the world, at least the European world.

(cont'd)

Hence I am only slightly surprised that E. Z. Yudkowsky felt ...

2026-08-24T20:21:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…0a75
_________________________

Hence I am only *slightly* surprised that E. Z. Yudkowsky felt that *Harry Potter* was an ideal vessel into which he could pour his own ideas. There's a lengthy tradition of philosophical writers employing fictive frameworks in which they can present (for example) dialogues between characters intended to elaborate philosophical ideas in a speculative manner.

(cont'd)

The Harry Potter books, however, are very dilute and copious ...

2026-08-24T20:19:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…xkqd
_________________________

The *Harry Potter* books, however, are very dilute and copious while telling an extremely slight story about characters who get very little genuine development or depth of backstory.

Fanfic writers salivate over such fiction because there's *so much room* to add more. It's almost like the very characters themselves are crying out to anyone with better #writing ability than Jo Rowling: "Please, *please* give me something more to do!"

(still more)

You'd practically have to rewrite all of #MadokaMagica from ...

2026-08-24T20:16:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…wvsc
_________________________

You'd practically have to rewrite all of #MadokaMagica from the ground up in order to make your new material feel as though it *belonged* there in Mitakihara City with Madoka and her friends. There are, I am sure, #fanfic writers equal to that task, but they're likely to have better creative priorities than expostulating upon the "methods of rationality".

(cont'd)

Consider the opposite extreme: could one write something like ...

2026-08-24T20:14:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…ufxs
_________________________

Consider the opposite extreme: could one write something like *Kaname Madoka and the Methods of Rationality?*

Anyone can write anything, hypothetically, but #MadokaMagica is such a dense work, supported by a tremendous amount of skillful world-building by its principal author Urobuchi Gen and his collaborators, that one would have work hard to cram "methods of rationality" in there among the mahou shōjo.

(cont'd)

First I'd like to remark that #HarryPotter seems bizarrely ...

2026-08-24T20:10:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…c2cu
_________________________

First I'd like to remark that #HarryPotter seems bizarrely *apt* to this kind of nonsense precisely because there's so little substance to the writing. "Harry Potter" is a stock character practically, shepherded from book to book through that lowest form of #magic that can be found in fiction: **plot magic**, i.e. arbitrary happenings where it's clear the author wants a pre-decided outcome more than they want to figure out how to make that outcome plausible.

(more)

There's been a fair amount of chatter lately on a weirdly ...

2026-08-24T20:07:43Z

There's been a fair amount of chatter lately on a weirdly specific phenomenon pertaining to the #HarryPotter fandom, which is the strange part played by a certain "Harry Potter" fanfic well known to those engaged with combating the pernicious influence of #effectivealtruism and other "dark intellectual" cult idols which have fed into the fascısm of the #technology sector.

(more)

Mister Mxyzptlk might like to have a word with you! =D

2026-08-17T17:32:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…h34d
_________________________

Mister Mxyzptlk might like to have a word with you! =D

But names do mean something and they cling hard to that ...

2026-08-17T12:23:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…t4jq
_________________________

But names *do* mean something and they cling hard to that principle, but only in a nightmarish #marketing way. They talk about "nominative determinism", i.e. they notice that certain names seem to flourish and do well while other names don't.

They see the power of names but they don't understand it.

(etc.)

In contrast to all this elaboration and soul-searching and all ...

2026-08-17T12:19:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…04xp
_________________________

In contrast to all this elaboration and soul-searching and all the deep thoughts that invariably come up when the concept of **#name** and naming is up for discussion, #tech enthusiasts tend to have a doublethinkful attachment to names. Their #programming habits tell them names don't matter. Pfft you can name a variable anything! Foo, bar, fubar, etc.

(cont'd)

She liked it because it reminded her of a true hero, someone who ...

2026-08-17T12:15:32Z

She liked it because it reminded her of a true hero, someone who (like Jeanne d'Arc, tragically) found that he was good at war and soldiering and struggled to find a sense of purpose *without* these things.

He liked it because it satisfied unspoken internal Tomlinson family rules. It was an acceptable "white person name" like Brent or Dirk.

(cont'd)

I know that @npub16sj…va89 and @npub1fdr…lvhs and other ...

2026-08-14T07:42:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…2sau
_________________________

I know that Anil Dash (npub16sj…va89) and Cory Doctorow (npub1fdr…lvhs) and other mainstream #technology commentators loathe me for saying this, but all their chatter seems totally irrelevant in the face of a tech sector that simply *does not want people to own computers*. The bosses realize they're threatened by individuals good at computers so now they want to take the gift back. The scum classes weren't ready for it, I suppose is how they see it.

(cont'd)

All the demands of #capitalism drive #software and the Internet ...

2026-08-14T07:39:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…cs8g
_________________________

All the demands of #capitalism drive #software and the Internet and the World Wide Web towards maximal bloat, maximal unreliability, maximal chaos.

In this chaotic landscape #startup companies have a free playground in which to offer workarounds, "solutions" (ohhh so many **solutions** pouring out of #technology founders), layers of abstraction, and finally they've abstracted away the **computer** altogether. They don't want people to own one any more.

(cont'd)

Put all the manifold utility of #web deployment aside for a ...

2026-08-14T07:34:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…6ggx
_________________________

Put all the manifold utility of #web deployment aside for a moment. I am not saying that people shouldn't deploy applications to the web, or even that they shouldn't use #JavaScript and #NodeJS although I feel that far far too much emphasis has been given to such tools.

The resulting "world wide web" is hideously slow and janky and jam-packed with advertising and glitches and advertising disguised as glitches, and clearly this is considered to be extremely profitable.

(cont'd)

Tim Berners-Lee and the other originators of #HTML, the backbone ...

2026-08-14T07:31:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…hmyz
_________________________

Tim Berners-Lee and the other originators of #HTML, the backbone of what we now call the "World Wide Web" or sometimes simply "the Internet" (for so many people, web browsers are their only portal to the Internet, by design) wanted a method of displaying static structured information. Methods of dynamic HTML generation were soon introduced however, and then came the "Web 2.0" fascist counterrevolution. Yes I think that's a fair summary of what happened to the #WorldWideWeb with the advent of Netscape and the Andreessen era.

(cont'd)

Making C and C++ and low-level #programming languages in general ...

2026-08-14T07:28:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…59ha
_________________________

Making C and C++ and low-level #programming languages in general into an **inner mystery**, a secret and furtive thing which only a special few #tech brainiacs like John Carmack (you know how productive he is, John Carmack once of #Meta) know how to do properly, required the construction of a different sort of computer programming, far more loosey-goosey and playful and accessible to "everybody".

Enter #web development! =D

(cont'd)

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are still slap-fighting over the ...

2026-08-14T07:18:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…uw2w
_________________________

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are still slap-fighting over the "open source"-ness of #OpenAI and #xAI (they still exist right? kinda?) and so forth, squabbling over possession of an empty slogan.

There's nothing whatsoever **open** or **free** in the material and physical reality of high-tech corporate affairs. They want everything locked down and metered, and 99% of the population condemned to use the lowest-quality products.

(cont'd)

C is what made the #Linux miracle possible and the #tech elite ...

2026-08-14T07:14:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…9lhm
_________________________

C is what made the #Linux miracle possible and the #tech elite are very into that.

There's not space here to go into the disastrous corporate corruption underlying the Linux community and fanbase, or the way in which the words #FreeSoftware have come to mean basically nothing in a world where "open source" is a mere buzzword in the mouths of Sam Altman and Elon Musk. There's not a particle or glimmer of actual #freedom anywhere in this scene, all because Linux nerds have tended to like money and power. Lots of it, all the time.

(cont'd)

Hence Linus Torvalds repeating the oft-heard claim that ...

2026-08-14T07:08:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…4v3e
_________________________

Hence Linus Torvalds repeating the oft-heard claim that "Generative #AI" slopbots are now excellent at coding C, even if they're maybe bad at other things, must be taken as the simple invocation of a magic talisman, a sacred mystery. C is Good™, so Good™ that its Goodness™ touches everything pertaining to C. Of *course* #Claude or #ChatGPT or whatever can speak perfect C! C's perfection graces the LLM with perfection.

After all there's probably at least a few percentage points of C code somewhere in the fantabulous innards of the "generative AI" miracle.

(cont'd)

Back to the superspecial status of the C #programming language ...

2026-08-14T06:54:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…4ezg
_________________________

Back to the superspecial status of the C #programming language and the convergence of the tech sector around #web deployment as the **only way** to do anything on a computer.C

is now an object of nigh-religious reverence, as I've said. The hardcore grindset dudes who went into #computing chiefly because it was the easiest alternative to *work* they could think of—scamming money via high-tech #startup—don't know how computers work! But they do know the letter **C!**

(cont'd)

Anyone seeking an explanation for why Linus Torvalds and a ...

2026-08-13T02:48:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…52ys
_________________________

Anyone seeking an explanation for why Linus Torvalds and a million other awful nerdbosses like him seem perplexingly to believe that the #LLM is stupendous at writing computer code, look no further! **C** is an object of worship of a very special sort, a holy of holies in the #tech world. John Carmack, one of the emptiest human beings I've ever encountered on Twitter, is revered as a god simply because he's supposedly a dab hand at C programming.

Is he? What exactly does John Carmack do with his time? I think he dropped the feeble interest in #rockets.

(cont'd)

One of the weird gizmos that Andreessen and his cronies afflicted ...

2026-08-13T02:45:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…sttw
_________________________

One of the weird gizmos that Andreessen and his cronies afflicted #HTML with was *JavaScript*, a programming language of sorts and a terrible one, and yet just think of how many applications (not even *Internet* applications!) are now suspended on the tatty. dirty, cobweb-festooned thread that is #NodeJS.

It's been the one of the strangest things to watch slowly *congeal* into place as corporate #software orthodoxy: the web browser has become a strange sort of virtual machine, a sandbox for application development so tempting that there are programmers who refuse to leave it because they see it as bringing **unity** to #programming! At last, the one true programming language has emerged, and it's JavaScript.

Or C. But C, you see, see what I did there, is the **inner mystery**.

(cont'd)

"Web 2.0", the curse of the modern age, or whatever age ...

2026-08-13T02:40:12Z

"Web 2.0", the curse of the modern age, or whatever age this is, can be largely credited to #Netscape and Marc Andreessen and his co-conspirators, who figured that the easy way to make yourself popular in the high-pressure and very new #Internet market of the early 1990s was to put out a web browser full of weird new gadgets and gizmos and little programmatic tricks for doing things chiefly of use to criminals. Yeah it's another #crypto sort of thing: all tech scams boil down to the same few patterns.

You know how much those geeklords love *patterns.* They write gaseous books about them, heaps of books.

(cont'd)

as you wish! as I said, I myself wanted to hear how the world ...

2026-08-12T18:59:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…z6wc
_________________________

as you wish! as I said, I myself wanted to hear how the world reacted to the eclipse—the rush of abnormal wind caused by unequal heating of the earth's surface along the path of totality, the sounds of animals reacting. but I was in a remote spot in Oregon away from crowds and not too near the midline of totality

I think some phenomena are more fittingly received in silence, ...

2026-08-12T18:55:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…qm0j
_________________________

I think some phenomena are more fittingly received in silence, yes.

I think there are respectful human beings, not just ...

2026-08-12T18:52:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…gc27
_________________________

I think there are *respectful* human beings, not just "Western" dorks trained to applaud and laugh at anything no matter how majestic

oh my that's patient work with the tip of a knife I am ...

2026-08-11T03:22:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…9lll
_________________________

oh my that's patient work with the tip of a knife I am guessing, great job