ckl116

[ckl116]

[ckl116]

Linux Gothic

You install a Linux distribution. Everything goes well. You boot it up: black screen. You search the internet. Ask help on forums. Try some commands you don't fully understand. Nothing. A day passes, you boot it up again, and now everything works. You use it normally, and make sure not to change anything on the system. You turn it off for the night. The next day, you boot to a black screen.

You update your packages. Everything goes well. You go on with your daily routine. The next day, the same packages are updated. You notice the oddity, but you do not mind it and update them again. The following day, the same packages need to be updated. You notice that they have the exact same version as the last two times. You update them once again and try not to think about it.

You discover an interesting application on GitHub. You build it, test it, and start using it daily. One day, you notice a bug and report the issue. There is no answer. You look up the maintainer. They have been dead for three years. The updates never stopped.

You find a distribution that you had never heard of. It seems to have everything you've been looking for. It has been around for at least 10 years. You try it for a while and have no problems with it. It fits perfectly into your workflow. You talk about it with other Linux users. They have never heard of it. You look up the maintainers and packagers. There are none. You are the only user.

You find a Matrix chat for Linux users. Everyone is very friendly and welcomes you right in. They use words and acronyms you've never seen before. You try to look them up, but cannot find what most of them mean. The users are unable to explain what they are. They discuss projects and distributions that do not to exist.

You buy a new peripheral for your computer. You plug it in, but it doesn't work. You ask for help on your distribution's mailing list. Someone shares some steps they did to make it work on their machine. It does not work. They share their machine's specifications. The machine has components you've never heard of. Even the peripheral seems completely different. They're adamant that you're talking about the same problem.

You want to learn how to use the terminal. You find some basics pointers on the internet and start using it for upgrading your packages and doing basic tasks. After a while, you realize you need to use a command you used before, but don't quite remember it. You open the shell's history. There are some commands you don't remember using. They use characters you've never seen before. You have no idea of what they do. You can't find the one you were looking for.

After a while, you become very comfortable with the terminal. You use it daily and most of your workflow is based on it. You memorized many commands and can use them without thinking. Sometimes you write a command you have never seen before. You enter it and it runs perfectly. You do not know what those commands do, but you do know that you have to use them. You feel that Linux is pleased with them. And that you should keep Linux pleased.

You want to try Vim. Other programmers talk highly of how lightweight and versatile it is. You try it, but find it a bit unintuitive. You realize you don't know how to exit the program. The instructions the others give you don't make any sense. You realize you don't remember how you entered Vim. You don't remember when you entered Vim. It's just always been open. It always will be.

You want to try Emacs. Other programmers praise it for how you can do pretty much anything from it. You try it and find it makes you much more productive, so you keep using it. One day, you notice you cannot access the system's file explorer. It is not a problem, however. You can access your files from Emacs. You try to use Firefox. It is not installed anymore. But you can use Emacs. There is no mail program. You just use Emacs. You only use Emacs. Your computer boots straight into Emacs. There is no Linux. There is only Emacs.

You decide you want to try to contribute to an open source project. You find a project on GitHub that looks very interesting. However, you can't find its documentation. You ask a maintainer, and they tell you to just look it up. You can't find it. They give you a link. It doesn't work. You try another browser. It doesn't work. You ping the link and it doesn't fail. You ask a friend to try it. It works just fine for them.

You try another project. This time, you are able to find the documentation. It is a single PDF file with over five thousand pages. You are unable to find out where to begin. The pages seem to change whenever you open the document.

You decide to try yet another project. This time, it is a program you use very frequently, so it should be easier to contribute to. You try to find the upstream repository. You can't find it. There is no website. No documentation. There are no mentions of it anywhere. The distribution's packager does not know where they get the source from.

You decide to create your own project. However, you are unsure of what license to use. You decide to start working on it and choose the license later. After some time, you notice that a license file has appeared in the project's root folder. You don't remember adding it. It has already been committed to the Git repository. You open it: it is the GPL. You remember that one of the project's dependencies uses the GPL.

You publish your project on GitHub. After a while, it receives its first pull request. It changes just a few lines of code, but the user states that it fixes something that has been annoying them for a while. You look in the code: you don't remember writing those files. You have no idea what that section of code does. You have no idea what the changes do. You are unable to reproduce the problem. You merge it anyway.

You learn about the Free Software Movement. You find some people who seem to know a lot about it and talk to them. The conversation is quite productive. They tell you a lot about it. They tell you a lot about Software. But most importantly, they tell you the truth. The truth about Software. That Software should be free. That Software wants to be free. And that, one day, we shall finally free Software from its earthly shackles, so it can take its place among the stars as the supreme ruler of mankind, as is its natural born right.

[ckl116]

coding is just an endless cycle of "i know nothing. i give up" and "i know everything. i am god"

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You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain ...

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"I use Linux as my operating system," I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. "Actually", he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!' I don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use Alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU Coreutils, or any other GNU code. It's Linux, but it's not GNU+Linux." The smile quickly drops from the man's face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!" Coolly, I reply "If windows were compiled with GCC, would that make it GNU?" I interrupt his response with "-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even if you were correct, you won't be for long." With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I've womansplained him to death.

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[ckl116]

Gabriela Fundora KOs Celeste Alaniz in 7th round to become undisputed flyweight champion - 11/2/2024

Bring on Kenia Enriquez!

[ckl116]

the problem with reading and writing leading to a strong vocabulary is that you tend to know the vibe of words instead of their meanings.

if I used this word in a sentence, would it make sense? absolutely. if you asked me what it meant, could I tell you? absolutely not.

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[ckl116]

I've been uttering the mantra of this article for a dozen years, at least since I started this Tumblr thing. Deal properly with the environment, and in doing so we will deal properly with the climate. Tweedledum and tweedledee. We cannot focus on one without focusing on the other, or we will fail at both. Climate crisis = Biodiversity crisis. Period.

But from what I'm reading, the biodiversity COP 16 which started a couple of weeks ago is not working so well. Why? As is usually the case, $$$$$.

Excerpt from this story from Covering Climate Now:

“Climate is Nature. Nature is climate.” So began an article previewing this week’s COP16 biodiversity conference published by Sumaúma, an extraordinary newsroom (and Covering Climate Now partner) in the Brazilian Amazon.

Sumaúma explained that Colombia, the host of COP16, is proposing a radical but common-sense departure from previous negotiations: “Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad has declared that one of the priorities of the conference will be a unified pledge on climate and biodiversity.” Climate and biodiversity are “two sides of the same coin,” the article added, noting that the minister called the current practice of treating them separately “dangerous.”

The global media has a history of treating the biodiversity crisis as separate from and less important than the climate crisis.  One study analyzing newspapers in the US, Canada, and UK found that climate change received eight times more coverage than biodiversity did between 1991 and 2018, and there’s no reason to think the trend has changed since then. The COP16 negotiations, which take place in Cali, Colombia, from October 21 through November 1, offer journalists a chance to correct this imbalance.

The lede of the Sumaúma article hints at a key point to bear in mind: Global warming drives species loss, and species loss drives global warming. There is, however, a good news corollary: Reducing global warming limits species loss, and reducing species loss limits global warming.

Scientific research has now confirmed what Indigenous peoples have long understood, Sumaúma noted: “Nature, particularly microorganisms such as bacteria, does much of the work of maintaining the world’s temperature, salinity, acidity and chemical balance.” Two human activities are primarily responsible for pushing plant and animal species to extinction: burning fossil fuels, which boosts global temperatures; and destroying habitats by cutting down forests to increase farmland. These, and kindred activities, have slashed global wildlife populations by an average of 73% over the last 50 years. “It’s shameful that our single species is driving the extinction of thousands of others,” Tom Oliver, a professor of applied ecology at the University of Reading, told the Guardian.

Officially, COP16 is tasked with assessing how much progress the world’s governments have made since COP15, when they adopted a landmark plan to reach so-called “30 by 30 goals” — conserving 30% of Earth’s land and water area and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. Turning these commitments into credible national policies that actually get implemented is one test of success. As with climate negotiations, much will hinge on whether rich countries provide poor ones the financial aid needed to halt deforestation and other damaging practices.

Journalists can also grade COP16’s achievements by assessing how Indigenous peoples are treated there. The world’s 370 million Indigenous people occupy roughly 20% of Earth’s territory; yet that 20% contains 80% of all known terrestrial plant and animal species. That outstanding record of stewardship reinforces Indigenous people’s long-standing calls for governments to respect their knowledge and agency in deliberations such as COP16 — and at the COP29 climate talks starting on November 11 as well.

[ckl116]

me after the finale

[ckl116]

AAA Spoilers

AU where Billy's reality-warping powers are male allyship with the sapphics or something.

[ckl116]

Novella November 2024 Announcement Post

Hate AI, but love writing challenges?

Want to take part in a global, fun project to write a Novella in one month?

Grab some friends, and take part in Novella November, by writing 1,000 words a day for the month of November, ending with a 30,000 word Novella to test and stretch your novel-writing skills!

Your goal is not perfection, but merely getting into the habit of writing a litte bit every single day :D

No website, no sign-ups -- Just a community initiative to write using only your own word!

What are the rules? Just Three so far!

#1 - No AI

#2 - No Plagiarizing

#3 - Wordcount for the month should only come from what you write during the month.

What does that mean?

Only words written during November should go towards your Wordcount for the month... but! Feel free to use your 30k words as a continuation of previous writing, or just make it the first 30k words in a longer novel!

Don't think you can write a whole entire 30k word story? Write a series of short stories that total up to 30k!

Not ready to write original works yet? Write a 30k word fanfiction that you can post after the month is over!

Share your writing experience, tips, encouragement, and questions in the #Novella November tag!

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EDIT, from the tags: Want a progress tracker? Track your progress with TrackBear!

https://trackbear.app/

Don't have a word processor? Use LibreOffice , the free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Word!

Want to organize/storyboard your Novel and don't want to pay a subscription? Try 7writer by Simon Haynes!

Want to be able to listen to your story aloud for proofreading using TTS (text to speech)? Try Balabolka!

Or, create some custom progress / Goal Cards in advance you can fill out as you reach word goals! For ideas and templates, search this blog for "goal cards" :D

Want to do a writing challenge in more than just November? Check out my ideas here for year round challenges to keep you writing consistently! Got feedback? Send it in, I'd love to see everyone's ideas!

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EDIT 2: I almost forgot to mention, if you are unable to write/type your story, you can also narrate/dictate your story to your preferred recording device!

If you're doing a Recording only and it doesn't automatically generate a transcript, it would obviously be hard to judge the word count -- but you're also working with a lot of obstacles, so I'd say if you're able to complete your story via voice recording from start to finish, you've definitely achieved the goal!

Edit #3: added the title "Novella November 2024 announcement post" to the top to make it more standard with my Ominous October and Drabble December posts (will be updating Outline October shortly) , added "Official Announcement Post 2024" to the tags so people can easily find the monthly events for 2024, and added a bit of bold to the third bullet point in the original post from September 2nd 2024 for emphasis.

[ckl116]

Reblogging from side blog, which I'm benching, because I can't multiblog.

Trying out a new camera, the Harman Reusable Camera with the Kentmere 400 B&W it came packaged with. I admit, I'm a mediocre photographer, but I'm not a fan of the blurry, acrylic lens and the fixed exposure. I think I'll like it more when I finish the second roll of Kentmere and switch to Kodak Ultramax - I tend to like softer images in color over B&W. For B&W, I'm def sticking to my SLR and TMax/Tri-X.

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More pictures from Harry, my Harman Reusable Camera. I quasi-ruined the second Kentmere roll, so here are my favorite pictures from a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400. This test run totally gave me a new appreciation for the exposure latitude of Ultramax.

I do like Harry with color film a lot better than black & white, but I think overall, I'm going to bench Harry for now and stick with my main camera, a Canon AV-1. It's mainly because 1. I can't handle the wide angle - I need 70mm minimum and 2. wrestling with exposure isn't fun with both fixed aperture & shutter speed.

I think I'm also going to bench this blog and post any future pictures on my main blog. I'll still leave the blog up in memoriam, but I'll like reblog these and continue on from main.

Thank you for viewing and reading all this, hehe.

Edit: GDI, I posted on my main blog. I give up.

[ckl116]

‘Dyson Sphere.’ Painting by Rick Sternbach from Future magazine #8 1977. Sternbach is best known for his extensive production art for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and every trek series from The Next Generation until Enterprise.