#not linux related but linux mentioned

[swedlex]

I feel like since my linux post that blew up, a lot of people in that circle i now follow so i guess I'll post a bit more about tech. If you want longer form content of some guy talking about hardware (and a little software) for 40 minutes to 1 and a half hour i reccomend Cathode Ray Dude on youtube. I barely know what's being talked about but it's great as background noise if you're doing something else

[stickyspeckledlight]

𝒲𝐻𝒪𝒟ℛ𝒜𝒩𝒦𝐼𝒯? KFC‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚: A Shitpost Of the Whodrankit? DEMO by @brynn-lear

Content warnings: Shitpost :3

DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE (Available on PC, Linux, Mac, Android, and Web Browser!)

Link to better quality cutscenes because I had to really compress them to save on storage y'know

Unfortunately for you, thanks to the shenanigans of eminent domain, you have been left without a house. However, luckily for you, local bourgeois Senator Sunday has offered you his home. Seeing little choice in the matter, you take up his offer...

However, in the corner of your eye, a Colonel stands, and you can't help but wonder what he wants from you...

What is this?

This is a mod/fangame of HSR fangame Whodrankit? demo by @brynn-lear! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go play it first!!! And after that THEN you can come play this one!

No I mean what is this specifically you know

This mod is a shitpost hypothetical of a scenario where you can agree to Sunday's offer. Included is: 2 endings (Depending if you are nice to customer service people or not lol) ~30k words 7 (joke) endings Bad jokes Bad and disappointing story because I felt obligated to make some sort of plot even though none of it really works but hey I put in all of the jokes I wanted so there's a silver lining at least

How is this connected to the OG WDI? demo?

This is mostly its own thing; the only things that are referenced from WDI itself in this game is the general plot (minus the mystery, bc Idk what any of that shit's about) and well, the assets and stuff. This has absolutely no connection to WDI itself and is NOT canon---Brynn, the OG dev, had no real involvement in the development of this mod beyond making the base game which provided the base assets and original premise this mod is derived from.

Was this the other big project/sunday fic you were talking about

Yes! I started work on this in late June and worked on it on and off for a few months.

why

I wanted to punch Whodrankit?! Sunday and then made this

I come to your for yandere fanfic not shitposts

L bozo

What are the credits?

Credits are in the Readme doc attached to the game zip file; and also follow all of the credits from the OG Whodrankit? plus some more stuff. I acknowledge this game is violating all manner of copyright but I'm already writing fanfic and this'll probably only get 60 notes or something so I'm sure it'll be fine. Pls don't D**A me random big company.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

(BROWSER AND ANDROID VERSION NOW AVALIABLE) I do not plan on making a new WDI? mod; this mod it of itself just spiraled out of control. Though, if there's enough interest, I might release updates for the KFC mod if there is enough interest. Maybe as a Follower Milestone thing or if this gets a decent amount of interaction lol. Still, please do not expect updates or new WDI? mods from me, or request any whatsoever. New WDI? KFC! content will be entirely at my own discretion unless I state otherwise (as mentioned earlier if I choose to make WDI? KFC! related content a follower milestone, for example). But I'm always open to discussing it bc shitposts deserve to be shit on 🔥

[wumblr]

sorry i haven't had anything funny to say. i've been having three different problems with three different versions of firefox on the three devices i use (desktop thinks firefox is not connected to internet after 10mins, which may or may not have been related to dns over https settings, i have to restart it every time and it's set to log everything out when i do that; laptop is linux and needs an update, all of my extensions are disabled until i do that but i just did that last week; phone won't load media in browser which is kind of a nonproblem since i did have autoplay turned off, but it absolutely nerfed me yesterday when i needed to play major key mad world for a joke) and this keeps making me go "oh yeah i could be doing something else" every time i log on. unfortunately, something else is, in this case, redownloading the tap my katamari apk, which is not even a particularly good clone of cookie clicker

of course, the real underlying problem here is that all of the funny things i have to say immediately get said to my two weed smoking boyfriends. the best one i had this week was related to a pack of cigarettes that said "double hump day" and i said "this week will feature two wednesdays, sponsored by camel cigarettes" which is exactly the right kind of absurd for tumblr but the joke doesn't function without providing free advertising for big tobacco and i only mention smoking on tumblr once in ten years or so but every time i do it starts a fight that ripples across the site for 2 weeks even though my post only got 150 notes. which was funny, to be fair

[spell-bloom]

What is considered both a reasonable and maximum polycount for custom content hair and other types of custom content in The Sims 2 and does it depend on gaming specs? Also your work is great!

Thank you for taking the time to read it.

I, personally, use hair that is under 25K polys unless it's unique and cute. Anything over that is overboard and should get decimated. Any furniture or clothing over 10K is extreme for me.

As for specs, I'm inclined to believe that it's a game limitation, how powerful your computer specs are, and a secret third and fourth thing, your OS, and if you're a laptop user.

This OS talk is a side tangent, so bear with me:

Big disclaimer that this is all my opinion, not a factual piece. Don't take this as gospel and I'm far from an expert on operating softwares, computers, and CC for that matter. I went a little bit insane with the OS talk because you mentioned specs and this has been on my mind for a while 🥴

Every single time I've heard that someone installed TS2 on Linux, they are able to play on maximum settings with a BUNCH of CC for a long time and experience no pink soup or pink soup related crashing. I want to do my own research and play the same heavily detailed lot for the same amount of time on Windows and Linux and compare the differences as well as compare how they use resources differently. If I already did not have an attachment to Photoshop CC 2017, I would have made the switch by now.

Okay so Windows... I've played TS2 on my Asus laptop from 2020 and on my new desktop. Here's the spec difference

Laptop: Intel Core i7-9750H 6 Core Processor, 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (Windows 10)

Desktop: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core Processor, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (Windows 11)

My laptop was really good for it's time (I bought it in March 2020), but it was pink soup galore for any cluttered CC lot, even with all of the fixes and GRM edits. My current setup is a mish mosh of my bf's and ex's computer parts and it runs perfectly fine, but I do not play long enough to encounter pink soup. (I have a job and I mainly play to get CC previews these days.) If you noticed, both my CPU and GPU were made before my laptop was sold, and yet it still performs way better. Laptops with top of the line hardware will never be more powerful than PCs with even mid to high level hardware from 5 years ago. Don't forget that laptops will throttle performance to protect itself from overheating and causing damage.

There is also no difference between installing and playing the game on Windows 10 and Windows 11, except that you should absolutely uninstall OneDrive if you haven't already. There might be some issue if you install with discs, but I don't own the discs.

And as for Mac, I truly believe that Mac is the worst way to experience Sims 2. Between the Super Collection crap, not being able to use third party tools (SimPE, Hair Binner, any other .exe files made to run for Windows), and the file limit that really hits you hard if you download a bunch of CC that you can't merge anyway because CCMerger can't run on Mac. I should say I have never played Sims 2 on a Mac, but this is my opinion after reading about the struggles of other MacOS users online.

The point of this OS tangent? None, really. I'm not trying to persuade you to use Linux or stop using Mac, this is simply what I've noticed and my opinions on the matter. There's millions of variables I did not cover such as DXVK, texture sizes, difference in specs between each OS and user and many other things I am forgetting.

Feel free to correct, add on, extrapolate or whatever. If you have any thoughts, please comment, add it in reblogs, or tag me in your post. I'm very interested in the current topics about high polys, pink soup and big textures for this game.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Miscellaneous Monster Tales 2

This felt a bit more comically purposed than the last one.

Golems

I complained about how golems were only used for combat purposes and this ended up giving a justification for why they aren't used for general purposes. And it's an explanation I felt in my soul.

It was because of programming errors.

This is like the equivalent of writing "if (x = 0)" when you were supposed to write "if (x == 0)". The first will set variable x to the value 0 and then return true because the operation succeeded. The second will check the value currently stored in variable x and return true if the value is 0 and false otherwise.

This also reminds me of a personal story trying to debug an issue I had with a spreadsheet I needed to analyze. I wanted the program to run a certain task for every line in the file but it kept having some odd error where the first line worked correctly, but every other line would act as if there was an extra field at the beginning and shift over by one.

Eventually I found that the issue was certain versions of Windows defined a new line differently from the linux OS I was using. The end of every line in the spreadsheet had a "\r\n" that I could only find by converting the spreadsheet into ASCII and then I had to remove every "\r" in the file to get it working.

Orcs

Kinda strange how orcs have upward facing teeth in their upper jaws. That seems impractical. Also, the teeth sticking out of the chief's mouth when it's closed are the upper teeth.

I wouldn't be surprised if those upper canines were rootless similar to a boar's tusks. In a hand-to-hand fight, orcs probably prefer grappling and then slashing their opponents with those teeth. It would keep them safe from getting something in their mouth they don't want.

I've seen posts of people commenting on Ryoko Kui's artbooks and I have to strongly agree that she knows how to draw women of all sorts of body types. And this section is just her indulging in the beauty of large women.

And Laios being Laios, he didn't realize where the line talking about physical attraction becomes uncomfortable and ended up angering the chief because the chief thinks Laios is leering at his wives. He also made Marcille uncomfortable because he had to bring up people's attraction to ears.

Mimics

All the info we get here is stuff from chapter 0. These things are just hermit crabs that grow to cocnut crab size and will use anything they can find. The one using a bottle cap is adorable.

They probably ambush small bugs and lizards when they're that tiny.

Treasure Insects

Nothing much to say here. Turns out the party ended up not only throwing away super valuable jewels, but they also ate super valuable specimens. Maybe the value of a treasure insect is related to how similar to an actual jewel they are.

Just as a reminder, I offered a hypothetical exchange rate of 1G = $0.05 USD when talking about the price of a book in the last Miscellaneous Monster Tales. Even at that rate, those bugs would go for fairly high prices. The diamond one would end up at $2,500, which is what an actual diamond like that could cost.

Ghosts

I'd heard of the thing Marcille mentioned about the weight of the soul and did some digging into it.

The whole thing comes from a 1907 study by physician Duncan MacDougall who wanted to see if souls have weight. He measured the weight of six patients at the moment of their deaths and found that one of them lost 21 grams when they died. The study is considered utterly bogus since he had such a small sample size and only reported on the single sample that fit his hypothesis. MacDougall himself even said that the results he got shouldn't be taken as conclusive of anything, but the newspaper that released the story did a horrible job actually reporting it as they usually do.

Calling brewing a type of necromancy is definitely a fascinating way to think about it.

Living Pictures

If Living Pictures are just illusion spells, then Laios's attempts to get food from them were doomed from the start no matter what. Even though he got to eat in that third painting, the food wasn't real which explains why he still felt hungry after and why he couldn't pull food from the second painting.

This is supposed to be silly but this one is just an existential nightmare. Laios's self-doodle seems to have all the memories of the real Laios and is just trapped in that painting forever.

Love how bad Laios's artwork is.

Kelpies

This is more informative than anything. I'd heard of kelpies before this chapter and decided to do a quick look into them because I was curious about the liver bit.

Kelpies originate in Scotland and they can shapeshift, though they usually can't transform their hooves.

It's probably just one of those things parents told children to keep them from playing in the deep rivers. "Don't play there. You'll drown" implies that the child's incompetence will kill them. But children are the most overconfident, egoists you'll ever meet. So you instead have to tell them there's a monster that will lure you in and drown you.

Now I'm curious if there were native horses or horse-like animals in Scotland that inspired Kelpies. Maybe the general origin is horse-riders would try to wade through rivers on their horses only to drown when the horse panicked and it spun into the kelpie myths.

I never found anything about them not eating livers.

back

[kradeelav]

What are your favorite brushes?

Ha, you timed that well as I was considering making a 'what tools do I use' post. information wants to be free and all of that ~

Before I get into specific brushes, I need to mention hardware. Two years ago i switched permanently to linux (Ubuntu distro), via a system76 laptop. Linux isn't for the tech-fainthearted, but if you hav a passion for playing with computers and are feeling increasingly constricted with the subscription BS that mac/win is pushing, consider giving it a trial run.

Krita is an open-sourced free paint/vector program that's available on all major OS's (win/mac/linux), but is by far the best one for linux. Frankly, I adore Krita; it reminds me of the best of paint tool SAI way back in the day, a little of photoshop CS2, and I just discovered in the past two weeks it's got some deceptively powerful vector tools for speech bubbles and comics. open source programs used to be pretty pathetic compared to "professional" ones but the gap between krita and say, CSP is pretty nil.

Now to talk brushes: I uploaded a slightly older version of my go-to brushes here on mediafire, some which have been slightly tweaked from krita defaults. there's a solid pen one, a halftone brush, and some watercolor ones.

however, I discovered these brushes (thanks to @am-herrington) a few months ago and am convinced the linked newer brushes are going to make everything else I have obsolete - the natural/textural inking is just that good. tl;dr - just grab these.

some other odds and ends to my process: i could not draw without the hydrus network which is essentially a booru-esque media organizing program. stores gifs, images, can mass-download images, and has a robust tagging ability. taco's drawing book is one of the one I'll also reliably flip through when my brain's trying to figure out a piece of tricky anatomy. lastly, blambot is my trusted go-to font store when I'm in need of a manga/comics related font; there's some very generous pricing and freebies for indie comics.

[megumi-fm]

this week on megumi.fm ▸ media analysis brainrot

📋 Tasks

💻 Internship ↳ setup Linux system on alternate drive (this took me wayy more time than i anticipated) ✅ ↳ install yet more dependencies ✅ ↳ read up on protein folding and families + CATH and SCOP classifications ✅ ↳ download protein structure repositories ✅ ↳ run protein modeller pipeline ✅ ↳ read papers [3/3] ✅ ↳ set up a literature review tracker ✅ ↳ code for a program to parse PDB files to obtain protein seq ✅ 🎓 Uni Final Project our manuscript got a conditional acceptance!! ↳ revise and update manuscript and images according to changes mentioned ✅ 🩺 Radiomics Projects ↳ feature extraction from radiomics data using variance-based analysis ✅ ↳ setup LASSO regression (errors? look into this) 📧 Application-related ↳ collect internship experience letter ✅ ↳ collect degree transcripts ✅ ↳ request for referee report from my prof ✅

📅 Daily-s

🛌 consistent sleep [6/7] (binge watched too much TV and forgot about bed time booo) 💧 good water intake [5/7] (need to start carrying a bottle to work) 👟 exercise [4/7] (I really need to find time between work to move around)

Fun Stuff this week

🧁 met up with my bestfriends! we collected the mugs we painted last year and gifted them to each other! we also surprised one of our besties by showing up at her place. had waffles too ^=^ 📘 met up with another close friend for dinner! hung out at a bookshop after <3 🎮back at game videos: watched this critique on a time loop game called 12 minutes //then i switched up and got super obsessed with this game called The Beginner's Guide. I watched a video analysis on it, then went on to watch the entire gameplay, then read an article on the game's concept and what it means to analyze art and yeah. wow. after which I finally started playing the game with my best friend!! 📺 ongoing: Marry my Husband, Cherry Magic Th, Last Twilight 📺 binged: Taikan Yoho (aka My Personal Weatherman), Hometown Cha Cha Cha 📹 Horror Storytelling in the internet era

📻 This week's soundtrack

so. the Taikan Yoho brainrot was followed by me listening entirely to songs that evoked similar emotions to watching the main couple. personal fav emotions include a love that feels like you could die, a love that feels like losing yourself, a love that makes you feel like you could disappear, a love asking to be held, a love that reminds you that you're not alone, and a love that feels like a promise <3

---

[Jan 15 to 21; week 3/52 || I am having a blast at work ♡ I feel like I'm really learning and checking out a lot of cool stuff. That being said, I think I'm slacking when it comes to my daily routines in regards to my health. and I'm spending wayy too much time chained to my desk. maybe I'll request for an option to work from home so that I can cut on time taken on commute and spend that time exercising or walking

also. my obsession with tv shows is getting a bit. out of hand I think. not that it's particularly an issue? but I think I should switch back to my unread pile of books (or resume magpod) instead of spending my evenings on ki**a*ian. this could be unhealthy for my eyes in the long run, considering my work also involves staring at a screen all day. let's see.]

[cyberstudious]

what's it like studying CS?? im pretty confused if i should choose CS as my major xx

hi there!

first, two "misconceptions" or maybe somewhat surprising things that I think are worth mentioning:

there really isn't that much "math" in the calculus/arithmetic sense*. I mostly remember doing lots of proofs. don't let not being a math wiz stop you from majoring in CS if you like CS

you can get by with surprisingly little programming - yeah you'll have programming assignments, but a degree program will teach you the theory and concepts for the most part (this is where universities will differ on the scale of theory vs. practice, but you'll always get a mix of both and it's important to learn both!)

*: there are some sub-fields where you actually do a Lot of math - machine learning and graphics programming will have you doing a lot of linear algebra, and I'm sure that there are plenty more that I don't remember at the moment. the point is that 1) if you're a bit afraid of math that's fine, you can still thrive in a CS degree but 2) if you love math or are willing to be brave there are a lot of cool things you can do!

I think the best way to get a good sense of what a major is like is to check out a sample degree plan from a university you're considering! here are some of the basic kinds of classes you'd be taking:

basic programming courses: you'll knock these out in your first year - once you know how to code and you have an in-depth understanding of the concepts, you now have a mental framework for the rest of your degree. and also once you learn one programming language, it's pretty easy to pick up another one, and you'll probably work in a handful of different languages throughout your degree.

discrete math/math for computer science courses: more courses that you'll take early on - this is mostly logic and learning to write proofs, and towards the end it just kind of becomes a bunch of semi-related math concepts that are useful in computing & problem solving. oh also I had to take a stats for CS course & a linear algebra course. oh and also calculus but that was mostly a university core requirement thing, I literally never really used it in my CS classes lol

data structures & algorithms: these are the big boys. stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, graphs, sorting algorithms, more complicated algorithms… if you're interviewing for a programming job, they will ask you data structures & algorithms questions. also this is where you learn to write smart, efficient code and solve problems. also this is where you learn which problems are proven to be unsolvable (or at least unsolvable in a reasonable amount of time) so you don't waste your time lol

courses on specific topics: operating systems, Linux/UNIX, circuits, databases, compilers, software engineering/design patterns, automata theory… some of these will be required, and then you'll get to pick some depending on what your interests are! I took cybersecurity-related courses but there really are so many different options!

In general I think CS is a really cool major that you can do a lot with. I realize this was pretty vague, so if you have any more questions feel free to send them my way! also I'm happy to talk more about specific classes/topics or if you just want an answer to "wtf is automata theory" lol

[aspookycrow]

Genuinely cannot find any mention of “Anix” in relation to Unix or Linux’s history in the real world, starting to think it’s either a typo in the script or maybe in this universe the A stands for Archives. Or maybe Alchemy? I’m tagging in more programmers before I spin out on theorizing. Maybe it’s german?

So far there’s AIX, an A/UX, and several Unix variants ending in "nix", but my search is yet to produce a mention of Anix.

Update: I FOUND IT???

Update Update, feat. one of the veteran programmers I tapped: “I would find it nearly impossible to believe NT incorporated apple2 nix but I'm batting 0/1 on this so I'm not sure.

The timeline NT is on was not one where windows did a lot of Collab with apple or nix but NT was all networking”

Maybe this being present is in fact part of Freddie’s accursed nature

[dragonmarquise]

Everyone keeps talking Abt all the crews and stuff, but like, I never see any content for futurism! Sure there wasn't a lot of stuff for them since they were like, a really small part of the plot, but it would still be awesome to see content for them!!!! So I come bearing a question, do you have hcs for futurism?

Ooo, I have a few for FUTURISM! Not as extensive as my stuff for Devil Theory and DOT EXE, but still. :>

(I know some people kinda debate writing it as FUTURISM vs. Futurism, I'm gonna personally keep all caps but I also understand most people probably don't care either way lol)

Also feel free to send in asks about the other crews/characters too! I might not have a lot for each character though. I also have a general list of LGBT+ headcanons for all the BRC characters, if that interests you! Granted, it's probably not as extensive as some other people's lists.

Anyways, gonna put this under a Read More, it won't get nearly as long as the other two headcanon sets, but it'll be long enough that I'll feel bad about posting this without one. ^^;

I like giving all the crew members themed names, and for FUTURISM I went with computer-related terms! Some of them more obscure than others. So for the members (besides DJ Cyber of course):

Jazz (Related to the Chorus/Jazz version of JavaOS)

Quantum (i.e. quantum computing)

Veronica (an old search engine)

Nyx (The name of a prototype Amiga chipset, though also Greek personification of the night!)

I have a personal idea that after the events of the game, one member from each of the major crews end up joining BRC, basically representing the unlockable characters in the post game. In this case, Nyx is the one who joins BRC (and in my mind she's the default Spring palette in the game), so let's start with her!

Bi, currently dating one of the Eclipse ladies (inspired by this very good fan art btw :D )

All of the FUTURISM gals have amazing skills both with computers and as writers. Nyx ends up being one of two Designated IT Person for BRC, the other being Cueball.

Her and Cueball get into little prank wars, mostly instigated by Cueball for the hell of it. Her opinion of him ranges from genuine respect for his own computer skills to Chump Lord Supreme. Depends on her mood (and how much Cueball has recently pissed her off before asking her about it, lol)

As for the rest of BRC: "Well, they're still kinda chumps, but I guess they're my chumps now, y'know?"

Not afraid to be snarky, even to authority figures (DJ Cyber included)

Now for Jazz (Summer palette):

Is actually a guy who crossdresses! Does drag shows on the weekends too. :D

She is personally not very picky about pronouns, but most people default to referring to Jazz with she/her while in her writer outfit or as her drag persona (she goes by Jazz for both anyways), and he/him when he's not dressed up. But again, not very picky either way.

"I'm just saying, when the cops try to chase me down, they're gonna be looking for a blonde woman, not a guy with dark hair and stubble. Literally, one time I ran around a corner and managed to take off my wig and mask, then just covered up my top with a hoodie I had. Same pants and shoes, but they didn't even notice!"

Truthfully the crossdressing thing was genuinely just for fun, not to mention pretty comfortable while going around doing writer stuff. It wasn't until a while later that she realized it would make for a great disguise as a writer. :P

Nyx and Jazz are basically Besties and will be more than happy to smacktalk about their respective crews behind everyone's backs, lol

Now Quantum (Winter palette):

Runs an underground (kinda literally) server farm for local web hosting, chat sites, and forums. Anyone remember forums? Man, the good ol' days...

Has a hand in a lot of open source freeware projects. Hates companies like Adobe, Apple, Google, and Microsoft with a passion. Big Linux nerd btw, she will talk you ear off about the pros and cons of different distros if you let her.

Actually on that note, if you're not talking to her while she's out and about as a writer, or otherwise talking to her about computer stuff, she's fairly introverted! Especially if you try to talk to her in person instead of via text/chat/email/etc, she's basically more talkative online.

Also very good at sneaking around. Though not really as like spying or anything like that, she just prefers to not get in people's way or annoy them. Unfortunately she has scared DJ Cyber more than once by sneaking up on him by accident, lol

Wears contacts as a writer, but otherwise wears glasses normally. Has been considering getting prescription heavy-duty goggles for her writer activities, so that she doesn't have to bother with the contacts anymore.

And finally Veronica (Autumn palette):

She is genuinely a jerk. Nyx can be snarky sometimes, but not in an overly mean way. Veronica will be more than happy to be nasty to someone if she thinks they deserve it, even if they really don't.

Always looks down on pretty much any other writer outside of FUTURISM. She's still convinced Felix cheated to get his reputation, especially the whole "did it with no boostpack" thing.

Most people would probably consider her a stereotypical Karen ngl :u

So yeah, she's basically That One Teammate Nobody Likes. Veronica is only still in the crew because her skills are second only to DJ Cyber himself. Hell, he really doesn't like her attitude, but can't find a replacement for her in terms of skills. (He's begged Vinyl to formally join FUTURISM in the past, but she always declined, preferring to keep being a freelance writer. And now that she's part of BRC, she's definitely not an option for replacing Veronica, lmao)

She had a crush on Faux, but these days refuses to admit it was ever a thing.

That's about all I got I think! Hope you enjoy these. :>

Small bonus, specific track from the game that I associate with FUTURISM the most: Funk Express!

[crowbiotic]

Hi I run a Linux gimmick blog could you please elaborate on the beliefs of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod?

hello anon. I hope you’re having fun over on your linux gimmick blog. I will now infodump all over you about the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS):

// TW: transphobia, TW: homophobia, TW: brief mention of sexual assault, TW: misogyny //

Firstly, my credentials: my entire extended family, including my immediate family, belonged to this same synod for most of my life (a few of them have since joined Christian churches outside the synod, and my sibling and I have broken from Christianity entirely). My dad has been an organist at my parents’ church since long before I was born— he practices on an old church organ in my parents’ living room. My parents took my sibling and i to church every Sunday and had us stay for Sunday school and bible study afterwards. I attended a synod-sanctioned gradeschool from age 3-14 (pre-preschool through eighth grade) that was quite literally connected to my parents’ church. After eighth grade, I attended and graduated from a WELS high school. These schools taught “religion” classes (WELS teachings) every day and held mandatory chapel services in the schools once per week. Suffice it to say: I know a lot about this god damn synod.

I’m going to try to keep this as brief as I can, but if you or anyone else has follow-up questions, I’d happily go into further detail.

WELS churches and their congregations believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as equal parts of the same God— the holy trinity. All three of them make up God, but when they just say “God,” they are most often referring to God the Father. Jesus, the Son of God, died as a sacrifice of God the Father for the sins of all people. At a surface level, WELS people believe that all you have to do to enter Heaven is believe in God (more specifically, believe in Jesus). And god, anon, I really wish it were that simple, because I’d probably have a lot fewer issues now, but it never is.

The WELS also holds a very nebulous concept of sin, repentance, and forgiveness at equal importance to the whole all-you-need-is-belief-in-god thing. They believe that we are all born sinful and unclean, and that even though Jesus died to absolve us of all our sins, we are still wretchedly sinful (this includes babies, which is why many WELS parents have their infants baptized in the hospital as soon as they’re born, so that the sinful unclean baby that hasn’t had a chance to learn about God yet isn’t sent to hell if it dies prematurely. The baptism basically stakes God’s claim on the baby.). The WELS doesn’t have confessional booths or anything— no, if you sin, it is YOUR responsibility to acknowledge that sin and pray to God that He forgives you. If this seems contradictory already, that’s because it is! very much so! and this is one of many things that made my younger self really squint at everything I was being taught since I was old enough to comprehend language. (This is the part that most closely relates to the bpd jesus meme I reblogged recently: “go die I won’t save because you ignore me” but, like, actually— they believe that you are actively hurting Jesus on the cross more and more with every sin you do not repent of, and that God will still keep track of every sin and judge you accordingly. What does that mean, since Jesus died to absolve you of that sin? Iunno!!!) They can’t tell a priest their sorrows and have the priest tell them what to do to absolve their guilt. They *can* meet with their Pastor, but there’s this weird sort of social taboo around doing that for some reason…? and private meetings with congregation members’s Pastors are not done regularly by most people.

(Side tangent: since the WELS is a Lutheran synod, they kind of hate ? Catholics ?. They believe the Pope is the Antichrist (not a joke, i’m being so serious right now) and that Catholics are technically worshipping false gods and practicing idolatry by praying to Mary and the Saints, which are two pretty grievous sins in the eyes of the WELS (but then again— what isn’t?). October 30th, Reformation Day, was a special day in school where we re-learned the history of Martin Luther, his 95 theses, Guttenberg’s printing press, the selling of indulgences, and everything else around that time every single year. We weren’t allowed to dress up for Halloween during the school day because that would have been disrespectful towards Martin Luther. A huge part of 7th and 8th graders’s education centers around Luther’s Catechism, which contains Martin Luther’s interpretations of the Commandments, but also of a few other traditional Christian chants).

Now, if you were to ask a WELS person why their beliefs about sin are so contradictory, they’d probably tell you something like this: “well, since Jesus died to absolve those of us who believe in Him of all sin, we don’t HAVE to follow God’s commands. But why WOULDN’T we? Why WOULDN’T you live in ENDLESS THANKS and GRATITUDE to His ultimate sacrifice??”. Unfortunately for everyone around them, the WELS’s interpretation of following God’s commands/living your life in service to God means the good human basics (don’t murder, steal, cheat on your spouse, etc etc general bad stuff) AND it means denouncing any variety of LGBTQ+ identities as sinful, shameful, and unnatural, being VERY opposed to abortion, wives/women in general being subservient to their husbands/men in general (women are not allowed to hold positions of leadership of any kind in the WELS), giving money to the church every Sunday, and being very adamant that their specific variety of conservative Christianity is the best kind and that they must therefore evangelize as much as humanly possible. This church attracts almost exclusively white members, many of whom fall in the middle- to upper-middle-class financially, which means—who would’ve guessed!— their members almost exclusively hold right-wing conservative political views.

I’ve been yapping for way too long already! so here’s a miscellaneous speed round of WELS facts:

- they don’t do the ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, and I didn’t even know that was a regularly practiced tradition until relatively recently. They also don’t give up anything for Lent. There’s just a general haze of melancholy in the air during all of Lent, like, “feel bad, YOU did this to Him. Feel extra bad for these six weeks.” Their churches hold specific mid-week services during the seasons of Lent and Advent alongside Sunday services that are held in the afternoon/evening and are completely different to the Sunday ones (you guessed it!: I had to go to every one of the midweek services too)

- I was told on not one— not two— but THREE separate occasions by three different teachers that we as WELS Christians should not ever attend a wedding for a gay couple, since that would be indicating our approval through our actions even if we didn’t approve, and we must always set an example of “Christ-like behavior”

- Other Christian churches (at least in the area of the Midwest where the most WELS churches are located) call WELS people “the frozen chosen” for their well-known propensity to, ah. For lack of a better phrase: have sticks up their asses. WELS people fully believe that they are following God’s word better than any other religion on earth, including every other sect of Christianity. Also, their services are very stiff, strict stand-up, sit-down, be-quiet affairs. No one is saying “amen” outside of the printed congregational response times detailed in the church bulletins. Jeans are not welcome at many of the churches, though I’m told this varies— you were expected to dress in business-casual-adjacent wear at the very least at the church I grew up in.

- Someone brought a cutout of Trump to school when I was in high school. It stayed in the cafeteria underneath the stained glass art of the cross until some esteemed donors or something were coming to visit (at least several days after it was initially put there)

- WELS schools, since they are private, cost thousands of dollars per year to attend. $7,000-8,000 ish per year when I was there I believe

- If you try to even mention that the Bible has very obviously been altered innumerable times throughout human history by rulers and clergy, and that certain passages (such as the ones most often misquoted to be against LGBTQ+ people), they’ll just stop listening to you. To them, since there are passages in the Bible saying that the Bible is the true word of God, that’s all they need to know. The Bible is the true word of God. Nothing is wrong because it’s the Bible. whatever man

- At least at the church I grew up in, they hold two weirdly patriotic church services every year near the Fourth of July and Memorial Day. Just, uh. God bless America, all morning.

- Being confirmed (promising your life in full service to God and taking your first communion) occurs at age 14. You had to be confirmed to graduate the gradeschool I attended, and in eighth grade, you attended a special series of classes with the church’s pastor during the school day specifically made for confirmation. I asked my parents why this was as a kid, and if anyone could possibly graduate without being confirmed, because even at that age I recognized that maybe I wasn’t grown enough to make this level of a commitment. Their answer was basically “well. After all those years of schooling, I can’t imagine you WOULDN’T want to be confirmed.”

- These people have one of the worst cases of I-wanna-be-oppressed-so-bad-itus that I have ever witnessed. Since I was a kid in the early aught’s I remember hearing in sermons that we are under attack! We are at war for God! Warriors for Christ! We must stay strong against the EEEVIL ENEMY, young people are leaving the church in droves! Music is evil! Culture is evil! The world is evil! etc etc etc

- I got the school librarian to put not only Percy Jackson and the Olympians, but also the first few books in the Warrior Cats series, in the school library. How? I dunno. I’m queer and I was a cute little meatball child. (I think the more likely answer is that the only intellectual properties that were sparking widespread moral panic at the time amongst the church were Harry Potter, Pokémon, and twilight)

- Every second Sunday of the month at my parents’ church, we had “contemporary Sundays,” where we sang more Christian-rock-adjacent songs played on instruments other than an electronic organ. These were mine and my sibling’s favorite Sundays, because hymns backed by drums and guitar are very exciting when the soundtrack to your entire home and church life is typically organ music. Occasionally, people wore jeans to these services. My sibling and I were very much not allowed to, but y’know. Jeans were seen.

- There’s a very distinct air of judgement that pervades this synod. Everybody’s trying to be a better Christian than everybody else. Their strangely fluid merit-based-but-not-really approach to salvation makes this pretty obvious, but I figured it was worth pointing out

- I interacted with almost exclusively WELS members from birth to age 18. College was my first time being around people who weren’t part of the WELS consistently outside of a brief stint in a mental ward at age 15. Both were very jarring but VERY good experiences. I still find myself expecting the worst from strangers, especially middle-aged to older adults, before realizing that outside the isolation of the WELS, almost no one acts in the stiff and overly-judgmental way these synod members do

- You can’t live with your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiance before marriage. Not allowed under any circumstances. You are living in sin, there is no way to repent from that aside from moving apart from each other and going to couple’s counseling with your church’s pastor. A lot of young marriages also don’t pan out very well, there’s a lot of cheating and clashing personalities. Imagine that

- A truly concerning amount of students from the high school I attended have turned out to be convicted sex offenders. Disappointing, but not surprising in the slightest.

I’m absolutely missing important bits, so please let me know if anything doesn’t have sense or if you have questions. I have since deconstructed, left the church, and embraced my queer identity (obviously) but it was a rough road to get to this point. worth it tho

thanks for reading ~

[ponycycle]

What's your biggest hyperfocus and how did you discover it?

I had to think on this for a minute because I wasn't sure if it was true anymore. If it wasn't this then it would be something like MLP or motorcycles (it was tempting to say motorcycles!).

I think it's fair to still say personal computers, though. I'm not sure about when my first contact with them was, but I know a major development was when my dad bought our first PC, an IBM AT clone. (I think I still have most of the parts for it!) I would have been like, 7-9 years old at the time and I was fascinated with it. I ended up breaking it as a kid, because I was trying to figure out what all the DOS 4.0 commands did by running them... when I got to FDISK I rendered it unbootable by pressing buttons. A friend of my father's recovered the situation (I think he used Norton Utilities to recreate the partition table).

I can name pretty much every PC that we had as a family or I had personally:

-Aforementioned IBM AT clone (8088 with a Tatung Hercules monitor, DOS 4.0) -386SX that came from who knows where (Went straight from orange Hercules to VGA colour!!! Windows 3.1) -Tandy 1000HX (long term loan from a friend) -Cyrix 586 (dogshit computer - had fake onboard cache, a common scam at the time, crashed constantly. Windows 95) -468DX4 (think I built this from scrounged parts. Win95, slower than the other PC but way more stable) -Pentium II 233 (also built from scrounged parts. First PC I overclocked, gaining 33 mHz! So fast!!! Windows 2000... but later got repurposed as a Linux-based router) -AMD Duron 800 (built with NEW parts - parents gave me a budget to built a family computer. Windows ... 98? XP? Probably changed multiple times) -AMD Athlon XP 1600 (built with NEW parts - I truly don't remember where I got the money in highschool to put it together, but it was probably every penny I had) -AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (admittedly I didn't remember this offhand... but I did have the physical CPU lying around to check. bought off the shelf very cheap as old stock for my parents to use. Windows Vista. Later upgraded to an Phenom X4, also for very cheap. This PC still lives running Windows 10 today!) -Intel Core 2 Duo Q6700 (built in a cute Shuttle XPC chassis. Eventually burned out a RAM slot because apparently it wasn't rated for 2.0V DIMMs. Windows 7) -Intel Core i5-2500K (I used this computer for YEARS. Like almost a decade, while being overclocked to 4.4 gHz from nearly the first day I had it. Windows 7/10) -AMD 5800X (Currently daily driver. Windows 10)

Not mentioning laptops because the list is already long and you get the point.

I actually did attempt to have a computer related career - in the mid 2000s I went to a community college to get a programming diploma, but I dropped out halfway. There was a moment, in a class teaching the Windows GDI API, where I realized that I had no desire to do that professionally. I did learn things about SQL and OS/400 that randomly came in handy a few times in my life. I did go back and successfully get a diploma in networking/tech support but I've never worked a day in that field.

Unprofessionally though, I was "that guy" for most of my life - friend of a friend or family would have a problem with their PC, and I would show up and help them out. I never got to the point where I would attempt to like, re-cap somebody's motherboard, but I could identify blown caps (and there was a time when there was a lot of those). As the role of PCs has changed, and the hardware has gotten better, I barely ever get to do this kind of thing these days. My parent's PC gathers dust in the corner because they can do pretty much do everything they need on their tablets, which they greatly prefer.

Today though... I used to spend a lot of time reading about developments in PC hardware, architectural improvements, but it doesn't matter as much to me anymore. I couldn't tell you what the current generation of Intel desktop CPUs use for a socket without looking it up. A lot of my interest used to be gaming related, and to this day the GPU industry hasn't fully recovered from the crypto boom. Nearly all of the games I'm interested in play well on console so I just play them there. I still fiddle with what I have now and then.

It is fun to think back on various challenges/experiences with it I've had over the years (figuring out IRQ/DMA management when that was still manual, Matsushita CD-ROM interfaces, trying to exorcise the polymorphic Natas virus from my shit). Who knows, maybe I'll get to curate a PC museum of all this shit someday haha.

[leam1983]

On Eureka Moments

There is one tiny, tiny plus-side to insomnia: the epiphanies you get when you finally manage to catch a few winks.

So, I finish my shift, clock out, term out of my Linux resources and crash into bed before supper gets going. Sarah's not tired enough to join in, but Walt is definitely leaning on his concern for me and joins in. We spoon in the way I like and soon enough, even though it takes me a while, I'm gone. Poof.

It's not long, mind you - an hour and some change before we have to cook dinner - but it's enough to strip me of that sense of distance I mentioned, earlier. Dots start to connect, and what's really fucking weird for me is that I don't so much start dreaming as I'd say I sandboxed while asleep.

It felt a little like waking up without actually waking up. I was in the same posture I'd fallen asleep in, locked in thanks to Walt's body weight and aware of the fact that I was actually in REM sleep, but the room had this hyper-vivid texture that it only gets when my brain goes hog-wild at the end of an insomnia episode. I couldn't make out anything out of the noises coming from the living room, as speech and sound were as distorted as they usually are in my dreams. What still made sense, however, were my own thoughts.

This is a longboi, folks. Clicky if you dare.

I started going over the root causes of my insomnia, starting with the fact that I had to play IT Goon for six small dealerships staffed with reticent, tech-adverse fuddy duddies and dudebros who really just wanted something to run their CRM resources and the occasional instance of Google Chrome. I have to field everything from keyboards no longer working to printers going on the fritz to login credentials with big dealerships' own Finance portals no longer being valid - all of it while keeping an eye on our Linux-using Call Centre employees, listening in on calls, taking briefs from our Marketing department (basically one gal plus Walt) and occasionally physically schlepping campaign material - albeit with some help - because most manufacturers are a bit averse to the idea of dealerships passing resources around externally.

Simplified, that gives me two large task groups:

Network Admin

The Nuclear Football, as I call my laptop that's intermittently crammed with marketing-level campaign plans that dealerships treat like they're handing us a hydrogen bomb. That mostly involves carrying it to the dealerships involved, giving it network access, transferring the relevant files and walking the staff through their resources.

I only really administer the Call Center stuff, and anything Network Admin might be involved, it doesn't drive me as stir-crazy as reassuring a bunch of Boomers and non-tech-savvy Millennials that we do, indeed, have their parent company's provided resources on-hand.

That part, and everything related to their fucking PC installs, I could do remotely - either with Microsoft Azure or Windows Server Edition 20XX.

I'm sleeping on three of my most important certifications because the people I work for are too risk-averse to realize we could just drop everything on a remote server and walk them through everything with a video call or two. Everything short of physical hardware failure, I can handle or control using a Windows Server hub and the most wonderful tool known to man, which is known as the Fucking Group Policy Editor. Pair that with a few hires we keep in-house at each dealership, and I could set things up so I never need to leave my home office ever again.

Ever. Again.

No scheduling conflicts, no waffling about because my Paratransport ride is late, no depending on Walt or Sarah when the short bus isn't convenient or fast enough.

There's just one hitch - money. I can set up a would-be master server and rope every single of our dealerships and every single of their PC installs under a single server's wing within a week or two, give or take a few days for unplanned events. Even simpler, I could do the same with Azure. Option 1 requires a wee bit more cash on the Infrastructure part but could mostly be one-and-done if we're willing to be smart about it, Option 2 requires tossing money at Microsoft on a monthly basis, at no extra power cost or space management worries for us.

Then, there's the unavoidable warts and blemishes. I'd need to image everyone's workstations across our dealerships, format their entire fleet and then rebuild everything using these images and WSE's Deployment Tools. I can't do this on weekdays, these guys have promos to run - and there's weekends where I can't do it either. Our Mercedes joint is expecting visitors by Canada Day, for instance. It's time-consuming, I'd need to plan it out with them and any time I spend setting up someone's server-based clone of their previous Windows install is time I can't spend doing anything else.

Ergo, that needs to happen during a massive holiday. The only one that fits the bill is Christmas.

Then, there's the fact that I need some leeway now. I need to go back to a decent sleep schedule starting yesterday. I can't just hold on, grit my teeth and expect to hold on for six months of this; I'll keel over before Halloween if nothing changes.

But, the fun thing with luxury dealerships is that they tend to give themselves off-weeks when sales ramp down seasonally. That includes mid-July.

I wake up with a start and, barely lucid, ring up our Mercedes and Audi clients. Confirmed: they're aiming for a ramp-down of their operations in mid-July. I briefly expose my plans, set up a Web meeting, and spend the last twenty minutes of what should've been my nap explaining to two befuddled Sales Directors that I'm about to propose gaining complete control over their infrastructure, with the included benefit of a drag-and-drop common directory where I'd simply organize promo materials as we obtain them. I could even use it to deliver patches that come to us in binaries, as a few do apply. Their on-site guys could handle printer clogs or dying USB ports, I'd take care of and automate most of everything that's software-based.

And, what I didn't tell them, is that I'd even be able to finally restrict Sales reps from unnecessary account privileges, which could make the occasional case of disciplinary action even more occasional. You can't loaf around at work watching PornHub on the job if there's a rule in place that specifically includes it in a list of banned addresses and IP ranges...

I know how it sounds - it's basic fucking barebones IT stuff, it's the fucking bedrock of Network Admin, maybe one or two rungs above CompTIA resources - but you'd be surprised at how many dealerships have exactly zero administration. They don't see the need; they're car guys with maybe one or two Web apps of choice, if any! As to why I didn't think of it earlier, it's mostly because it's not technically my job. Walt, Sarah and I distribute and manage promotional material and help dealerships to keep up with user retention and analytics. We do everything a Sales Director should do, except most Sales Directors are usually tied up with their local Karens complaining about the Service department's mechanics.

So what if we gave them an infrastructure? What if we air-gapped it, made it easily reproducible and deployable, and made it so working with us only means looking at a slightly different Windows login screen, before starting your workday?

If this works, we'll expand our services and solve most of my problems. Salesguy McGee's computer ain't worth shit? No prob, just clone his install, nuke the base, reinstall from the clone and spend a few minutes mothering it to make sure you haven't imported previously-observed bugs.

I mentioned Azure, but I know our guys won't want to contribute to a cloud budget. Again, they're tech-averse and think using the cloud means you're at the mercy of a Redmond or Seattle-based server outage. Psychologically, they'll want the comfort of their own spinning rust and SSDs. If I've got that WSE server I mentioned, it's no skin off my teeth.

So, while Walt was trying to follow along, I tried for my most diplomatic cough imaginable.

"I'd, uh, need another 20K for our IT budget. Six of 'em would go for a WSL license, the rest would go for maybe two extra 2U units over at the office."

I thought Walt would protest, but he just gave me a level look. "Will that help you sleep?"

I shrugged. "At the end of a somewhat lengthy process, sure. Relief's going to count for something, though, and I'm pretty much guaranteed to sleep like a baby tonight if you approve."

Boss Walt reacted first, by giving me a shoulder clasp. "Purchase approved. You've got our card, make it happen starting Monday."

Then followed Boyfriend Walt, who pulled me into a hug. "You're going to have to walk me through this, though - this is black magic to me."

Sarah, who'd caught wind of my WSE for Dummies talk, stopped by before heading into the kitchen. "He means he wants to be Emperor Palpatine, hon," she joked. "Ultimate power, Force lightning, no idiots being so much as able to install unsigned software on their machines, lockable USB ports - the works. You're the only one who'd need to keep visiting our guys in-person. The real challenge is going to involve letting a bunch of unaffiliated dealerships share the same basic server architecture, and even that's not too complicated."

I parted with a frayed, and possibly half-mad little laugh. "Holy shit, I'm gonna sleep tonight!"

Sometimes, one of the perks of insomnia is being able to take a few steps away from your professional bugbears and your clients' weirdo and inefficient methodology - and remembering the skillsets you actually paid for.

[toonabby]

A Special Announcement.

Hi guys, ToonAbby here. You may recognize me for the drawings I regularly uploaded since January, though I've since refrained myself from posting daily. You may also know that I've also been teasing at a potential series about personifying television networks as early as 2023, and was in fact supposed to be released that year, but never did thanks to outside issues.

However, before we get to that, I need to address the other elephant in the room with another series I used to develop, but never went past the cutting room floor due to issues caused by me alone. I'm of course talking about...

OS-tan, a failed animated project

Back in 2020 when I only had YouTube, I have been regularly mentioning about a series that would serve as an animated adaptation of Futaba Channel/Nijiura's OS-tan, which would not only be an original story about the war between the factions representing Microsoft (Windows), Apple (Mac OS), and Linux, but would also kickstart a greater series known as Gijinka Musume (lit. personification daughters), which would also adapt media from other properties with a Cast of Personifications.

Essentially, it was the MCU for the Moe anthropomorphism trope.

Unfortunately, I did not have the resources to work on an animated series, much less an indie one - no voice actors, no composers, no animators, no writers, and the only concept art I had is a now-outdated illustration I posted on my Pixiv.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/83136305

This, combined with procrastination, having to juggle school and house work, and only having a single device (that being a phone) which would make creating the series not as easy as I thought it would (especially since the apps I had at the time - Ibis Paint X (which I still use), Flip-A-Clip, and PowerDirector - were limited with some of their features being locked behind a premium paywall), made working on the series a hassle, and eventually, by 2022, I gave up even finishing my original envision.

In a now-deleted (and lost) tweet I made back in June of that year, I re-announced that the series would be reworked as a webcomic, since drawing was my forte and starting off as a printed work would work better since they're self-published and don't require help from other people (with a few exceptions). That was the last time I mentioned this series.

Eventually, I gave up on the series altogether and silently cancelled it, as well as the Gijinka Musume series idea, and started over from scratch.

This brings us to now.

While the OS-tan/Gijinka Musume idea never went beyond the drawing board, I still wanted to keep the premise of personified products/companies/media/etc. Just because one idea failed, doesn't mean I won't try at another one.

As I've said at the beginning of the post, I have been teasing on a series that personifies television networks all the way back in 2023, with it being formally conceived on an anniversary post for Animax, alongside an animated series that I've since discarded. As mentioned on the post, it would've had a premise similar to that of Hyperdimension Neptunia, a video game series that personifies game consoles as nation-protecting deities, but since that was a while ago, I have since spent more time reworking that idea for my series to have a more "lifelike" tone.

As of right now, I'm keeping information about my new series under the wraps until next month. Even the title, which I initially designated as Rebineru, will undergo a new name once it is unveiled. More information will be coming out on Saturday, June 7 at 2:30pm.

This post is longer than anything I've previously uploaded, but I sincerely hoped you all read this.

TL;DR: OS-tan/Gijinka Musume was a failed attempt at an indie series thanks to issues both related and unrelated to the "production" of the show, so I canceled it and reiterated it from the ground up with an all-new, different, and original series.

[golem-boy]

DevLog 06: It Cures What Ails Ya!

Between more health stuff and a "no news is good news" principle, it's been a while since my previous log. All's well that ends well… but this time, I do have a bit of good news in terms of tech.

So, in the past, I've had a lot of issues with Discord crashing on return from suspend-mode on my linux boot. I hadn't really looked into it, and figured it was just something to do with a part of the application lagging and bringing the whole thing down. It wasn't a terrible slow-down in an overall view anyway, so I didn't worry myself about it too much. Recently, though, with the removal of a lot of bigger issues (tablet crash, pulse, etc) my "to-fix" pile came down to two things: bluetooth errors on suspend, and discord crashing on wake-up.

The Discord one was thankfully easy enough to resolve; it's a library that wigs out during suspend and crashes the whole thing when coming out of suspend mode. Stackexchange offered a one-click solution, effectively: just go to 'advanced settings' and flick off 'hardware acceleration'. Discord even allows you to search settings these days, so it was trivial. Lo and behold--not a single crash on wake-up! Yay!

It honestly feels nice to remove even small speed-bumps to quality of life like that, and I've had no issues with discord after the fact. It honestly feels like it's a bit faster in general… which says something… but I'll leave that up to you to decide, hah.

Now, the bluetooth issue was a little deeper, and one I'm still not entirely sure about the cause of.

I have gotten some weird errors, both on wake-up and occasionally when something will crash and I'll make to restart the whole machine for the sake of speed and simplicity. As the maxim goes--"have you tried turning it off then back on again?"

I did find this, to do with one of my errors: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89/issues/144

But the other, more related to bluetooth, would usually occur specifically on wake-up and usually spat up something like 'bluetooth hid failed to suspend' and would, very rarely, lock the screen and gui entirely, forcing a manual power cycle. Thankfully, a quick search of the specific error--a timeout message--tossed me this link . I followed the instructions to the letter, INCLUDING THE COMMENT, and have only had one issue since, which I think was honestly my own fault. It definitely seems to prefer when I shut my headset off BEFORE hitting 'suspend', which is an easy enough behavioral tweak to apply.

These two fixes together meant that last week, I had an uptime of almost a full six days, only interrupted by my moving to Windows to attend my usual weekly hangout in VRChat and play a bit of Warframe with some friends. I'm frankly impressed at how smoothly it runs even given lengthier periods of uptime, and presently the only thing that's giving me grief seems to be the fact that I made a mistake in attempting to use Steam, lmao.

I thought that issue had been resolved, but apparently not… Hoping it will be soon, as I use Steam to launch even smaller, older games like Creatures 3/DS, or Buckshot Roulette, and I can't really access either when the library client refuses to… you know. Work.

I will make a brief note here that my old keyboard, the one I mention cleaning out in a previous DevLog, finally gave up. Some of the lines going down to the C key were thermally damaged and no longer registered current, so rest in peace Logitech Keyboard. You were so pointlessly loud that I wound up switching to a mechanical anyway.

Really though, I think that's everything I've got for now! It's nice to have these longer stretches where I feel no need to write up a post. It goes to show that I'm really getting the hang of Mint and settling in well.

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[penguintechtips]

Fixing XORG/MESA crashes on My Thinkpad X201

Introduction

I've recently aqcuired a Thinkpad X201. It features an Intel Core i5 520M and the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD GPU, which should be plenty for some light browsing and word processing on Debian.

The Installation of the Operating System (Debian 12 "Bookworm" with the Mate Desktop) went smoothly and my spirits were high when I suddenly got catapulted back to the login screen after trying to copy some arbitrary textfile from my NAS to a local folder.

Because I have become kind of lazy in regards to sysadmin related activities I did some distrohopping (Arch, OpenSUSE) and tried multiple desktops (Mate, KDE, XFCE) but the problem persisted so I had to dive deeper.

The root cause (funny cuz Linux)

After some research this seemed to be a relativly common bug on these older Intel iGPUs that could be fixed by enabling the "TearFree" option of the driver using a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf like so:

Section "Device"  Identifier "Intel Graphics"  Driver "intel"  Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection

However, creating that custom config with the above content led to me not getting any graphical user interface at all, just the good old fashioned console login prompt.

After digging deeper it turns out MESA (which is used by X11 to display graphics) removed legacy INTEL drivers starting with version 22. They are supposed to be replaced by something called "crocus", but that doesn't support options such as "TearFree".

The Solution

The solution for this problem is called Mesa Amber, a branch of mesa based on the latest 21.x version and therefore still containing the legacy drivers. Some Distributions (like Arch) have a ready to use package for it, but Debian does not. It does however exist as source code. Therefore:

Building and installing from source

Depending on your configuration, execute these commands with sudo or as root when necessary

apt install git build-essential devscripts git clone https://salsa.debian.org/xorg-team/lib/mesa-amber.git cd mesa-amber mk-build-deps --install --remove rm mesa-amber-build-deps* debuild -us -uc cd .. apt install *.deb

As a final step, add MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 to /etc/environment and create the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with the content mentioned before: Section "Device"  Identifier "Intel Graphics"  Driver "intel"  Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection After a reboot, your system should use the old driver and not crash anymore.

Source (Devuan Forum) Let me know if I made any mistakes!