Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Writing Mannerisms

    This post is just a fun little writing game to point out some of the quirks of my writing, some intentional, some of them I thought about, and others that just keep showing up no matter what I do.

    This was inspired by Joel's post of the same name[1] which was inspired by shellshark's post[2]. Mostly I see it as a little fun, not unlike the hash games that show up on the fediverse. Also an opportunity to say why I do some things and some that haunt me.

  • Manami Toyota vs. Akira Hokuto

    If I'm going to be called a contrarian, let me be a contrarian.

    First off, I want to get a bit of some conceptions out of the way so that you can get my perspective. I am not a Manami Toyota fan, and I am admittedly a bit lower on Akira Hokuto than most are. I think Manami is pretty alright in the 2000s (which is her best run, especially since she is even more limited than in the Zenjo ace run) and I think Hokuto's best work comes from GAEA, or when she's stuck into these compacted matches that force her to be quicker and even more creative.

    Not only that, but I think everyone does this one a bit too much surface, calling it “the best ever,” or hyping it up to be a bit of this high speed encounter, and I never really feel it.

  • Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk

    Considering the results of 2016's GWE voting results, I might have a (not so) controversial opinion. I'm not using any of the contemporary consensus for this, only the 2016 GWE voting results. I agree with the #1 slot being Ric Flair, and think that the #2 slot, Terry Funk, should've actually been #1.

    Crazy, right?

    But for a night, I can believe they're both #1. This isn't fair. I'll admit one thing right now, one of the reasons I intend on doing a 2026 ballot for GWE is that I want to see Ric Flair fall from that #1 spot. He is a man I detest with all of my being, a stellar wrestler, yes, but even if he is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, some part of my consciousness can't bear to see him as #1 on that ballot.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: EFHIOLK Wordo: EDICT

• Politics and World Events

  • Borders

    Really torn between "eliminate all borders" and "I really don't want to be annexed/invaded by the United States of America" right now.

  • Is Today the Day the Liberals Stop Spamming Me?

    Years ago I joined the Conservative Party, wanting the party to take a more moderate turn and elect someone like Michael Chong. It would've been foreshadowing that he got a tiny fraction of the vote: instead, the vote was very heavily split between Andrew Scheer (an MP who claimed to have worked as an insurance broker, but only clerked in an office and did some coursework towards the designation), and Maxime Bernier, a former cabinet minister under Stephen Harper, who got the boot after leaving classified documents at his ex-girlfriend's apartment.

    The rest is history: Scheer would narrowly defeat Bernier; Bernier would go on to found the People's Party of Canada (PPC), a right-wing, anti-vax, anti-immigration (like, more than the usual) party; and the Conservatives would spend the next eight years continuing to not be the government.

  • 2025-03-09

    Danielle (excuse me, Marlaina) is going to hand over this province to the U.S. lmao. Why is she going to Florida??? To meet with Ben Shapiro of all people???

• Technology and Free Software

  • What does "Clouds about .05" mean?

    I recently finished reading "My First Summer in the Sierra", by John Muir, specifically the edition published by the Standard Ebooks project. I highly recommended it to fans of nature writing! I found it something to enjoy in many relatively short installments. The sheer intensity of Muir's exuberance in nature, and his poetic rendering of it, is such that you can't really just sit down and plough through it. Your mind kind of by necessity desensitises to it a bit if you try.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Changes

      Last week I found out by chance, that microsoft is shutting down Skype. Nearly all the reactions I saw online were derisive; no one's sad to see it go. Well I still use it, beacuse I need a US telephone number that I can be reached at. Finding another company that offers such a service has not been easy, nor are the options inexepensive, since the Yen is still very weak against the USD.

      Also, my last Apple product is an Intel iMac I bought in 2019. It was reminding me recently to upgrade to Sequoia, but I had been holding off. Why? Well, when upgrading an Apple product, this is my process: 1. Is this latest update available for my device to begin with? 2. If yes: what New Features are supported?

      Here, the answers are: 1) Yes, and 2.) Nearly none. iPhone mirroring was touted as a New Feature, but not having an M processor/some security chip, it doesn't work. What's worse, the mirroring app cannot be uninstalled.

    • Lagrange 1.18.5 released, new mobile betas

      There are new builds of Lagrange available. This release mostly contains bug fixes:

      * Fixed a potential crash when browsing to a bookmarked page due to an inadvertent ID number overflow. (Fix courtesy of @cthulhu.)

      * Erase possible link icon leftovers after toggling link numbering.

      * Fixed hang when encountering the U+FDFD character.

      * Fixed layout issue with empty list widgets (focus border only partially visible).

      * Updated UI translations.