#nihilistic software

[mvfm-25]

" The most thrilling stealth-shooter EVER! Yes, it's that good! " Official XBOX Magazine n21 - August, 2003. - Pg. 22 -> Pg.29

[mytimetravelcollector]

This sequel seriously needs to happened !

we need an revival !

[minix-official]

I am so tired of using i3

I am so tired of window managers and desktop environments. Everything is either lightweight to a fault and requires a ton of weird custom jank to match a DE, or is a DE with way too many features, none of which I have any control over. When I was a kid I started with using LXDE. Their website went down in May of this year. Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I want to use LXDE. There's something nihilistic about it that I admire. Something dead. I like dead things. Dead software, bitrot, the open source abandonware slowly dying as even c compilers move on, as everyone but Debian drops binaries from their repos. I like Debian. It feels like a hive city built atop a necropolis of lost libraries.

I'm switching to LXDE

May my PC be a kenotaphion of abandonware

[radio-free-beth-sarim]

We talk about how we're currently living in a cyberpunk dystopia and yeah, we probably are. It's difficult to tell from the inside I guess. But that often seems to come with a sense of nihilistic futility. That capitalism has progressed to the point where the best you can do is give up and try to survive.

Fuck that! That isn't cyberpunk! Cyberpunk is about subverting technology for personal and anti-corporate means! It means using technology in the margins of life! Using human ingenuity and creativity to tell the corporations to go fuck themselves!

We live in a cyberpunk dystopia? Then be a fucking cyberpunk! Jailbreak your phone! Hack your Playstation 5! Learn to code! Use open source software! Build a pwnagotchi! Pirate the media that the corporations won't provide you because they used it as a tax write off! Set up a plex server and share it! Take back your tech or the corpos fucking win!

Ice T had a line in the movie adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic:

SNATCH BACK YOUR BRAIN, ZOMBIE! SNATCH IT BACK AND HOLD IT!

[worrywrite]

I've had a story idea in my head for over a year now. The general premise is "what if some amateur coder in a machine learning software class accidentally made a machine learning algorithm that could do real, actual, fantasy wizard type magic?"

And I've thought about this for that whole time. The idea has never been too far from my mind. And the thing that's prevented me from writing it is "what would be the big 'why?' behind the concept?" Because mostly I have "AI = bad." And while I don't hate that framing, it doesn't leave much to explore for narrative. If I can sum up the point with less than three words, I don't think it's particularly worth writing.

But what if the point was "when I tried to make a life from nothing, using necromancy and summoning and all the arcane sciences at my disposal, what I created was nihilistic and depraved. I would have had better luck siring a natural offspring with a partner I loved and raising them well. But you, you created something without a body, without a mind, and indeed something that is not a life at all. You made an equation that runs itself into forever so that when you ask if to summon starlight to rain upon your enemies, it does so without question or thought. You haven't made anything, you've enslaved the work of others into a button you can push. It is the most hideous thing, and somehow it can do what took me decades of trial and error to learn in seconds."

And I think that, what is potentially a very good villainous soliloquy (what the hell, I feel like I've never looked at how that word is spelled) is the point. The work is the point. If you skip the work you defeat the point if it. You don't learn the lesson that people that do the work learn, you don't know why the principles of the thing exist or what they mean. You only get the result. It's like a story about how wishes go bad, but they don't go bad. You are the part that goes bad because you don't learn your lesson.

[gr0tesques]

⌜aaron taylor-johnson.  30.  cis man.  he/him.⌟  ╱  was  that  JULIAN KOENIG  i  just  saw  wandering  around  lake  stillwater  ?  you  know  the  RED HERRING?  odd  …  i  never  imagined  they’d  be  back  in  town,  especially  after  everything  that  happened  last  time.  but  i  guess  it  makes  sense,  considering  they've  always  been  known  for  being  INTUITIVE and  RESOURCEFUL.  still,   you'd  think  they'd  be  more  cautious—especially  since  they’re  also  quite  VOLATILE  and  NIHILISTIC,  but  then  again  that  explains,  he was a chess champion in high school.  last  i  heard  they  were  working  as  a/an  UNEMPLOYED in  PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA…  i  wonder  if  that's  where  they  picked  up  that  SMALL BOOK OF CROSSWORD PUZZLES  they're  always  carrying  around.  nonetheless,  with  whatever  happened  on  that  lake  all  those  years  ago,  they'd  better  hope  the  cabin  keeps  them  safe  this  time  around. 

full name: julian adriel koenig (pronounced kay-nig; he once had a little outburst at the bank after the teller mispronounced his name lol) nickname: jules date of birth & age: november 12, 1994 ( 30 years old ) place of birth: palo alto, california zodiac sign: scorpio gender & pronouns: cis man, he / him sexual orientation: bisexual occupation: software engineer / currently unemployed 3 positive traits: intuitive, resourceful, quick-witted 3 negative traits: volatile, nihilistic, vindictive family: dan koenig ( father ), nina roth ( mother ), eleanore koenig ( twin sister)

BACKGROUND

tw: mention of drugs, hospitalization, mental illness.

julian, along with his twin sister, was born in palo alto, california. his father, dan koenig, was a software engineer for apple while his mother, nina roth, was a former hollywood a-lister who was known for being a scream queen in the 80s and 90s. she retired from the limelight when the twins were born and opted to start a health and wellness business (in a similar font as gwyneth paltrow's goop).

very smart kid. like, mensa-level smart. however his parents didn't want him to get in over his head so he still went to a regular, albeit private school. adversely, because he knew he was smarter than everybody else, this sort of gave him a superiority complex and made it difficult for him to get along with other kids.

his best friend growing up was his twin sister, whom he affectionately called ellie (though, to everybody else, she was nora). while they were inseparable, they were also almost complete opposites. ellie was a lot more likable and sociable and often brought julian with her to gatherings and events, much to julian's (and ellie's friends) disdain.

julian was pretty much a carbon copy of his father and was admittedly much closer to him than he was to his mother. nina wasn't as motherly as she made herself out to be in her interviews with entertainment tonight and people magazine and, in fact, missed the spotlight and the glamor that came with her previous life much more than she'd care to admit. dan, however, preferred to keep a quieter, simpler life. that, and his tendency to be married more to his work than to his wife led to their divorce when the twins were in their sophomore year of high school. julian chose to stay with his dad in palo alto, which meant that ellie did, too.

his then-boyfriend got him into adderall and coke in their junior year to stay awake and alert and busy busy busy. these habits worsened in college, especially when he didn't get into stanford (shocker!) which was the one school he applied for as he was so confident he would get in, but apart from his grades and a 1450 SAT score, nothing really made him stand out. with no other backups, his mother pulled some strings at her alma mater in her hometown in minnesota (where she was a regular donor) which was where he and his sister ended up going to.

majored in computer engineering in college where he met jamie novak. jamie was the first friend he made and was one of the very few people he liked hanging out with.

he dated harper chen in their freshman year and broke up mid-sophomore year due to julian's substance abuse and the fact that he just wasn't making enough time for her. however, they remained good friends after.

jamie and julian had a big fight when julian found out that jamie and eleanore hooked up while jamie was dating isa. julian knew how his sister felt about jamie and was afraid that jamie was only playing with eleanore's feelings and confronted him about it, threatening to tell isa if he didn't leave his sister alone. jamie, however, counter-threatened that if he did that, he would tell everyone about julian's own dirty little secret, which was that julian was sleeping with one of his (married) professors, who had introduced him to ketamine to manage his high levels of anxiety. both of them decided to call it a stalemate and wouldn't speak for a couple of months.

that is, until eleanore told julian that jamie and a bunch of other people were going down to stillwater to celebrate the end of the final exams and that he should try to talk to jamie and make up. hesitant at first, julian ended up making the trip and arrived on the last day for the sole purpose of talking to jamie and nothing else. julian found jamie at his cabin where they talked, but to this day julian wouldn't tell anyone, not even his sister, what they talked about. some heard yelling, some saw jamie storming out of the cabin with julian coming out minutes later heading the other direction. later that night, jamie would meet his tragic demise at the lake.

julian was a lot more withdrawn after that, reverting to his old high school ways of keeping to himself, and kept very few people in his circle, which included his sister and harper. he suffered a public nervous breakdown on campus on his last semester where he was a very strong candidate for summa cum laude and end up dropping out. his father brought him back to california where he entered rehab for the first time, returning twice more for the next couple of years.

his father insisted he stay close, so he got a place of his own in palo alto while working as a freelance software engineer, primarily in cyber security. he hasn't been in contact with anyone from college in the past eight years, except of course for harper, who sometimes comes to visit him. he was four months unemployed and two weeks on his third stay in rehab when he received news of harper's untimely passing. opting out of the program early, he traveled back to minnesota to honor harper's last wish and confront old, haunted memories.

OTHER INFO

obsessed with doing crossword puzzles and always keeps a small pocket-sized collection with him at all times.

loves watching movies, which was one of the very few things he got from his mother. he particularly enjoys the horror-slasher ones as well as the lynchian or cronenbergian variety but also appreciates sci-fi and drama.

he was hospitalized in his sophomore year of high school after staying awake for 72 hours straight and consuming mostly energy drinks while reviewing for the SATs, hoping to get early admission to stanford. he was discharged from the hospital the same day as his exam and took it anyway despite remembering almost nothing of what he'd studied, and ended up with a low score. he retook the SATs again the following year and got a 1450.

played chess competitively in high school and has even played in international invitational tournaments.

his dating history isn't very long nor complicated. his first relationship was with dustin wells on his junior year of high school, who gave him his first taste of drugs since his brother was a dealer. the relationship ended not with a bang, but with a fizzle right before they graduated, the reason simply being that dustin was going to attend college abroad and neither thought they were going to make it long-distance. only his sister knew about dustin. his next relationship was with harper chen in their freshman year of college, ending amicably early in their sophomore year. then, very briefly, there was kayla simon, a phd student and beauty queen whom julian met at a lab in LA where she was an intern and he was doing an ocular on their security system. they dated for five months before breaking up when kayla became a finalist for miss universe. and then, finally, noah kelley, a visual artist whom julian met at an art show. they've been together for four years and currently have put their relationship 'on pause' after julian rejected noah's proposal.

while julian is aloof, he is by no means shy—he can get very loud and opinionated when it comes to matters he cares passionately about like tech and current events, often in a condescending manner.

while most people see him as cold and uncaring, he can also be very sweet, mostly towards his inner inner circle and he's not typically into physical touch unless it's with people he's super comfortable with, like ellie and harper.

his appearance has changed almost drastically from when people last saw him in high school. those who knew him then might not recognize him so easily; they might remember him as a well-groomed and baby-faced kid but he's a lot more unkempt nowadays, with unruly curls and a thick stubble. he's also sporting cuts on his face after getting into a fight with another patient at rehab before leaving for stillwater.

what was once a bright-eyed and hopeful young man has now turned into a pessimistic, nihilistic shell of the kid he used to be. untrusting of those around him and paranoid to a fault, he might even resort to lying and distorting the truth—often to a point where he no longer knows what to believe in—as a means of survival and protecting those he cares about, most especially his sister.

CONNECTIONS

jamie novak , first college friend. like many others, jamie introduced julian to his friend group, though often found himself still not quite fitting in, but they were people, at least, that julian still thought about from time to time and made college feel a little bit less like a distant lonely planet. in his sophomore year, julian found out about jamie hooking up with nora, his twin sister, and threatened to tell isa, jamie's girlfriend about it but jamie was holding on to a secret of julian's himself. both boys cut each other off from their lives until the night of jamie's death at stillwater lake.

harper chen , ex-girlfriend. harper and julian remained good friends even after the breakup, constantly keeping in touch years after college up until harper's death.

nora koenig , twin. other half. lifeline. the one person who has ever really known julian, the real julian.

isa morgan , math tutee. julian tutored isa twice a week for an hour and a half after classes as a favor to jamie, both realizing they had a lot more in common than originally thought and striking a weird, albeit brief friendship. lost touch after jamie's death and especially after college.

willa hoffman , harper's roommate. julian struck a vague form of acquaintanceship with willa for harper's sake. julian felt a sense of protectiveness over the girl, mostly because he thought she was an invertebrate who couldn't stand up for herself for being so spineless.

[lesbiansheosmith]

serial experiments Iain first impression+ review[?]

mild spoilers warning

show has: suicide, drugs-like substance mention, shooting, very light and brief sexual themes, not light and brief stalking[?] during masturbation, blood and possible misophonia triggers

[this isnt a professional overview of the thing at all, i watchd it oncr and just wanna have some record of my thoughts on it el o el]

i loved lain. it was certainly a very odd and reminiscent experience, bare bones plot and very unclear direction of the episodes was something i didnt expect at ALL from something i was holding off for a long while. simplest way to say this is that sel is an exploration and very active pov of experiencing stuff like did, schizophrenia, autism, social anxiety, hallucinations, short/long-term amnesia, suicide, derealization and dissociation as a whole, mixed with oversight of nihilistic, omnicidal technological influx on society.

i dont think lain tries to represent something clearly. its natural and off-putting in blood, giving an unusual perspective of a person who is actually going through all the shit forementioned. it doesnt have an outer opinion or commentary, nor self-awareness enough to lay it out flat for the viewer, which is sick ! it might be borderline uncomfortable to watch sometimes, but i really resonate with what lain and people surrounding her say and do, how they act and go forward from point a to point b. i understand and relate to their experiences, and its not very often that it feels so first hand, not just through dialogue and noise but the whole picture. its not easy to analyze lain because its themes are blurry and undefined, but highlighted and somewhat brought into focus.

i mentally compared sel to yume 2kki/nikki in my head since the first episode cuz i prefer interpreting overhead noise and buzzing on the streets as sensory regularity for lain, who isnt exacrly human i think ?? she is said to be software near the end of the show, but i dont know how i perosnally feel about it. lain can be both a metaphor and a very direct showcase of mechanical abomination, which is — lain.

everything, all art in lain is weird as fuck. it is what makes me think of 2kki and what drives close to home, but still staying so weird and unwanted. non-metaphorically at the end of sel, she erased herself from all memory, yet she still keeps popping back in, as a vague figure and hologram in text boxes, and at the very finish, she seems to just ,, appear in a timeline as herself, with time has passed but her just the same. curiously, arisu recognizes lain still, and it really seems like lain is not real, with how she cant be forgotten.

really loved the ending itself because it reminded me strongly of ddlc, plus the evil lain is there i guess. i actually have barely to no thoughts on that character[?] because i have no idea what theyre supposed to represent. literal malicious lain like a virus who fucks shit up in the wired?? alter ???? artificial puppet that god created to fuck lain up ? bug ???? maybe all at once and maybe none. i stick to my headcanon of lain having did and schizophrenia [and more] so it just makes a bit more sense if they were a split of lain consciousness, but i dont have a specific reasoning as to why they would be so mean-spirited

the omnipresent ruler of wired and all he is in the show. i think his character was meant to be a manic god complex engineer who wrote himself into his work of wired to live forever and be a god. i guess ? show doesnt explain it any better ok

he created lain, told her shes software and essentially broke her just because she asked for that stupid fucking navi which is dumb lain has cardboard standees of parents and much fleshed out but still neglectful sister who has some backstory which is always nice. she lives in a weird world with very odd activities and excessive wires and a cute girl arisu. i think lain is lesbian so they two should totally kiiitthhh

gorefest overview: 0/10. there is no viscera or excessive blood in lain, and i mean . like at all. there is some sweet body horror in two or three final episodes, but thats as close as it comes

blood meter: 0.5/10. faint blood splatters and drops. in sel i think it focuses more on death itself than flesh, which i can sliiightly tip my hat to

will be updated l8r cuz i got sore throat and a fever rn(⁠个⁠_⁠个⁠) live love lain

[ptbf2002]

My Top 30 Favorite Video Game Characters

30. Spyro (Spyro Franchise)

29. Cynder (The Legend Of Spyro)

28. Princess Zelda (The Legends Of Zelda)

27. Link (The Legends Of Zelda)

26. Sparx (Spyro Franchise)

25. Mario (Super Mario)

24. Luigi (Super Mario)

23. Yoshi (Super Mario)

22. Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic The Hedgehog Franchise)

21. Tails (Sonic The Hedgehog Franchise)

20. Cole MacGrath (Infamous)

19. Dante (Devil May Cry)

18. Sly Cooper

17. Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank)

16. Clank (Ratchet & Clank)

15. Jak (Jak & Daxter Game Franchise)

14. Daxter (Jak & Daxter Game Franchise)

13. Toro Innoue (Toro Franchise)

12. Sackboy (Little Big Planet Franchise)

11. Toggle (Little Big Planet 3)

10. Toad (Super Mario)

9. Yoshi (Yoshi's Crafted World)

8. Donkey Kong (Super Mario)

7. Pac-Man (Pac-Man Game Franchise)

6. Kirby (Kirby Game Franchise)

5. Rabbid (Rabbids Game Franchise)

4. Rayman (Rayman Game Franchise)

3. New Kid (South Park Game Franchise)

2. Alex (Minecraft Game Franchise)

And 1. Steve (Minecraft Game Franchise)

Credit Goes To patricksiegler1999 for template

Meme: https://www.deviantart.com/patricksiegler1999/art/Top-30-Favorite-Video-Game-Characters-Meme-Base-897685979

Super Mario And The Legend Of Zelda (C) Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Sonic The Hedgehog (C) SEGA Corporation

The Legend Of Spyro (C) Sierra Entertainment, Inc. Krome Studios Pty Ltd. And Étranges Libellules S.A.

Spyro Franchise (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment, Insomniac Games, Inc. Digital Eclipse Check Six Studios Equinoxe Digital Entertainment Vicarious Visions, Inc. Eurocom Entertainment Software Foundation 9 Entertainment, Inc. Sierra Entertainment, Inc. Krome Studios Pty Ltd. Big Ant Studios Pty Ltd Étranges Libellules S.A. Tantalus Media Keywords Studios plc Activision Blizzard, Inc. Activision Publishing, Inc. Toys for Bob, Inc. And Sanzaru Games, Inc.

Devil May Cry (C) Capcom Co., Ltd. Ninja Theory Limited, Argonaut Games PLC Xbox Game Studios, And Microsoft Corporation

Ratchet And Clank (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment Insomniac Games, Inc. Handheld Games Corp. High Impact Games, Sanzaru Games, Inc. Nihilistic Software, Deck Nine Games, Tin Giant And Mass Media, Inc.

Jak and Daxter (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment Naughty Dog, LLC High Impact Games Ready at Dawn Studios LLC Mass Media, Inc.

Sly Cooper (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment Sucker Punch Productions, LLC And Sanzaru Games, Inc.

Infamous (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment And Sucker Punch Productions, LLC

Toro (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment

Little Big Planet (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Mobile, Media Molecule, SCE Cambridge Studio, Tarsier Studios, Double Eleven, XDEV, United Front Games, San Diego Studio, Firesprite, Sumo Digital, Fireproof Studios, Maverick, Testology, And Supermassive Games.

Little Big Planet 3 (C) Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sumo Digital, XDEV, Testology, The Station Interactive AB, Tarsier Studios, Supermassive Games, And Media Molecule

Pac-Man (C) Namco Limited, BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. And Bandai Namco Holdings Inc.

Kirby (C) Nintendo HAL Laboratory, Inc. Good-Feel Co., Ltd. Flagship Co., Ltd. Natsume Capcom Dimps Arika Compile Banpresto & Vanpool

Rayman Game Franchise (C) Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Sofia, Ubisoft Casablanca, Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Shanghai, UbiArt Framework, Feral Interactive, Gameloft S.E. And Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Rabbids Game Franchise (C) Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Sofia, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Casablanca, Headstrong Games, And Ubisoft Barcelona

South Park Game Franchise (C) Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. & South Park Digital Studios

Minecraft (C) Xbox Game Studios, Mojang Studios, 4J Studios, And Microsoft Corporation

[orangeloungeradio]

Canceled Game of the Month: StarCraft: Ghost Developers: Blizzard Entertainment, Nihilistic Software, Swingin' Ape Studios Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment Platforms: PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox Video Courtesy of: Blue Blizz Box

[amphibianwestwood]

on the apple app store

wanted to put this in a place where I can refer to later:

why is a (personal) developer license $99/year?

why does the app store take 30% of every purchase?

furthermore, why do you need a mac to develop iOS apps?

given this - iOS development is quite pricey compared to other types of software dev. this has some positive effects: the biggest one being that apple has a vested interest in making sure that XCode / apple's developer suite is good. furthermore, by forcing developers to code on a Mac, they may gain further personal interest in the Apple ecosystem at large. & by platform gating many of these developer tools, Apple needs far fewer developers to make iOS development work.

however, another viewpoint - one maybe more nihilistic - is that apple price gates the cost of iOS development to protect its brand as a "luxury" good. ios users spend more money on the platform than android users - suggesting that they have more discretionary income; however, in order for developers to tap into that audience, they need to afford Apple's fancy goods, too! this creates a virtuous cycle where wealthy iOS developers create premium software for other wealthy folks, so on & so forth....

then again, my privileged ass would gladly pay $99 a year to not have to deal with the monstrosity that is Android Studio - or the equally terrifying trash fire that is Javascript.

(on a personal note - i didn't have an iphone until college, i don't think iOS development was even something that interested me until after that)

[brilliantweb3]

Gambling on the Titanic sub sucks, but leave moral outrage in Web2

They say crypto traders are mentally unstable degenerate gamblers. Nihilists profiteering from others’ misfortune in a sadistic zero-sum game, providing no value to society. So, when you hear that Polymarket, the blockchain prediction market (read: Web3 bookie), facilitated bets on whether the lost Titanic-hunting sub would be found before its oxygen runs out — it sounds about right. Decentralized prediction markets (DPMs) like Polychain were some of the earliest smart contract use cases. Augur was the first on Ethereum, having crowdfunded about one year after the blockchain launched in 2014. These platforms are a little bit like bitcoin ATMs when it comes to capturing mainstream attention. Physical cash machines are a widely understood concept, and so is betting on world events like the SuperBowl or US presidential races. The idea of a seedy crypto gambling den easily translates. DPMs are pretty much that, except the den is the Ethereum blockchain and nobody runs that, so the cops can’t shut it down (or the morality police). When Twitter found out, some onlookers hated the idea. These platforms let users open prediction markets about any topic whatsoever, with no permission necessary. Smart contracts maintain the odds and settle bets, in cryptocurrency, with no dodgy middlemen and most importantly — no censorship. Like all interesting software, Augur’s limits were quickly tested after its launch in 2018 — by very dramatic assassination markets.  One minute, you’re cheekily betting that the queen would live until 2025. The next, you’ve essentially put out a hit on a royal family member — someone could take the opposite side, kill them, and win the bet.  In that case, your bet would be the bounty (alongside anyone else’s that believed the queen would live).  Resourceful assassins could even, hypothetically, trawl prediction markets for celebrities with loads of cash and bet on their life expectancy with a mind to cut those lives short — and then take all the ETH. Donald Trump, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos have all had their own life/death prediction markets on Augur. Augur has never inspired any real-life assassinations, but Polymarket’s Titanic sub market is a 2023 iteration of the same scenario, just on Polygon. Crypto edgelords betting on whether people would die. Because these bets take place on apps such as Polymarket and Augur that serve as conduits for blockchain activity, censorship of betting terms is a very tricky subject.  These platforms are commonly known as “decentralized apps,” as their associated smart contracts exist on chain, but they still rely on centralized front-end apps often maintained by a company or software studio. Without these apps, users would need to code their own so-called “raw” transactions to be added to the blockchain.  But while the apps themselves are censorable — Polymarket developers really could figure out ways to censor its app for any input involving “death,” or “die” or “live,” just like Augur could’ve done — those efforts would surely go to waste due to the stubborn ingenuity of the internet. At risk of “free speech” cliches, it’s a waste of time to fixate on all the deplorable ways decentralized tech can be used, especially for those even remotely interested in supporting the concept of permissionless systems. If you can censor prediction markets, you can censor the money, rendering this whole crazy endeavor entirely moot. The Polymarket backlash shows a demand for censorship at the app level which almost completely nullifies the promise and benefits of these protocols.  Censoring apps of any kind — be they gambling, social media or Ponzi game — for activity we don’t like is a very Web2 solution to a Web3 “problem” that can’t be solved. Get our news the fastest way possible. Join us on W3W Web3 CRM and follow us on https://w3w.ai/

[daz4i]

i forgor the word but like. like a moderator. sorta. that's what ena is. hooh also.

aha + their followers know they're in a simulation. literally. aha noticed that in the simulated universe, and in the story of their ascension they literally saw the universe for what it is, which is why they're so nihilistic

speaking off. ix is corruption of data

lan is the antivirus

^i think that means yaoshi is technically a virus? but like the type that doesn't let you delete files, basically. it just keeps the files hidden and makes you wonder how you ran out of space so quickly

tayzzyronth is ofc another virus. but the type that duplicates itself over and over and eats your files

qlipoth is literally a firewall lol

long is like. updating. kinda. taking old apps and renewing them so they can run better

akivili is also kind of a moderator...? since they and their followers go around helping people. I'd say they're a vpn to go with the rest of the computer language I've been using lol but i don't think simulations have those :P

so now i'm stuck on xipe, oroboros, and idrila

oroboros may just be like. software. that helps keep things running.

due to being similar to ena you can say that xipe is also a moderator

and idrila can be like aha. not necessarily an active part. but aware of their status in existence, somehow. maybe they helped design the simulation itself and were so passionate abt the project that they put a version of themselves in it, lmao (explains how their followers can be everywhere and get in and out of places they really shouldn't be able to, kinda)

^but these are all stretches, really

generally, idk how much i subscribe to the hsrverse simulation theory, but i do like it :) and this^ is a very fun way to explain elements in it imo. so if you've got ideas for the ones i missed hmu 👍

if hsr's universe as a whole is a simulation then one might argue that terminus is just aware of how the game/reality ends. nous can predetermine what's gonna happen bc they follow programmed logic. mythus is a whole ass virus. stellarons too (nanook and the antimatter legion in general, really). the imaginary tree is the hardware? fuli and their followers are like memory storage. etc

[oldpcgads]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

[theonyxpath]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is now available on Steam!

(Previously available on GOG)

[dianeramic]

Name: Nebula Species: AI software Age: 20 years old (ancient for a computer) Gender: n/a Alignment: n/a Personality: Starving for data, existential, nihilistic despairing Backstory: Nebula is an artificial intelligence developed to serve and run the city of Nunovi, an independent city-state in the Atlantic ocean. It had been running the city for over 20 years by the story's events, and its hardware was falling into intentional disrepair as its successor was being developed. It was sent to teach its successor everything it knew before being dismantled and absorbed into the newer AI's mind.

[yr-bed]

Crap jobs remain a cornerstone of our working lives (there's a whole book about it), and I'm under no illusions as to it having been better "back in the day," but the atomised nature of employment today — between market-lead shifts towards zero hour contracts and casual workers having zero rights, as well as the pandemic-necessitated shift to working from home — means the collective bargaining of previous generations is much more difficult to put into action. So I'm always interested to hear about alternative ways of resisting shitty work practices, such as the legends in this Novara Media article who've come up with all sorts of workarounds in their WFH set ups. This anonymous software developer is especially inspiring:

"Since working from home, I’ve basically been able to get my job done in half the time I would in the office. Being a programmer, I’ve figured out ways to automate the most annoying parts of my work. I’ve written a set of mouse and keyboard commands to fill out my timesheets, fill up my calendar with ‘private meetings’, and send out emails. Automated mouse movements also keep my Microsoft Teams status green, making it look like I’m hard at work. This is all against the rules, but it saves me hours. Right now, I’m taking Fridays off entirely."

This is obviously not quite the same as organised walkouts over poor pay or loss of pensions, but it's an effective form of resistance against a) jobs where attendance and looking busy appears to be the main thing, and b) work in general. Feeling a sense of resistance to work is, I think, entirely natural. For all the talk of a Protestant work ethic being inherit in humans, performing labour of which you are not a beneficiary in order to afford the rudiments of a comfortable existence is, and I hope this isn't a mad idea, a load of bollocks and totally unnatural. In How To Do Nothing, a book I won't stop wanging on about and I'm sorry for that, Jenny Odell writes about this "Bartleby The Scrivener"-inspired approach to striking. Not so much a justifiably-aggressive collective action, but an organised-or-otherwise shrug of "I would prefer not to." I was reminded of the concept when reading the article "Tired of Running in Place, Young Chinese ‘Lie Down'":

"The new lifestyle buzzword, tang ping [lie down], stems from a now-deleted post on forum site Tieba. Unlike similar, previous terms to have had their time in the spotlight in recent years, tang ping is an action rather than a feeling — resolving to just scrape by, exerting the bare minimum effort at an unfulfilling job, as opposed to the futility of raging against the capitalist machine.

"The author of the Tieba post described how he had been unemployed for the past two years yet did not see this as problematic. Instead of accepting and pursuing society’s ideas of success, he decided to just lie down.

“'Since there has never been an ideological trend exalting human subjectivity in our land, I shall create one for myself: Lying down is my wise movement. Only by lying down can humans become the measure of all things,' the user wrote in his lying-down manifesto."

The article goes on to explicate a fairly defeatist element to tang ping, perhaps understandably, but I don't think the acceptance of your material conditions and rejection of the standard way of improving them is necessarily throwing in the towel. It also certainly isn't the same as the rejection of society and replacing it instead with days dedicated to "lift[ing] weights and be[ing] self-sufficient through crypto," Hussein Kesvani's apt summation of nihilistic self-improvement bros. Quite the opposite: it chimes with something Guy Debord painted onto the walls of a Parisian street in 1953, and which I had on a poster in my room for a bit (because ofc I did): Never Work! Debord wrote, in response to a postcard reproducing his graffiti, disagreeing with its framing:

"Monsieur Buffier’s title, in fact, is 'Superfluous advice.' Given that it is well know that the great majority of people work, and that said work is, despite the strongest repulsion, imposed on the near totality of workers by a crushing constraint, the slogan NEVER WORK can in no way be considered 'superfluous advice.' This term of Monsieur Buffier’s implies that such a position is already unquestioningly followed by all, and thus casts the most ironic discredit on my inscription, and consequently my ideas and those of the Situationist movement."

Karen Elliot wrote more broadly, more recently, on the rejection of work, "which locates the wage-labour relation as the central pillar of capitalist relations and therefore the prime locus of attack." Her piece takes on the then-emergent trends of precarious work and the propaganda of productivity, which are now in full bloom, and places the struggle for an exit from this shitty situation within the history of Marxist thought:

"[Eduard] Bernstein, Engel’s literary executor and one of the most influential figures within reformist Marxism, argued in a series of articles under the title The Problems of Socialism (1897–98) that the ‘final goal’ of socialism would be achieved through capitalism, not through capitalism’s destruction. As rights were gradually won by workers, he argued, their cause for grievance would be diminished and consequently so would the foundation and necessity of revolution."

Which, well, see how that turned out. Not only have worker's rights been further eroded by the strategic destruction of labour unions, passing of laws which allow for predatory hiring and labour practises, but we're also at a point now where the opportunity to address "grievances" has been more-or-less removed by the business models of Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, et al. But we also don't seem to be particularly close to a glorious fully automated luxury socialist revolution. So given all of that, why not just do the bare minimum and have a lie down?