Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Poison Ivy vs the vegans

    Poison Ivy (2022) is such a good comic but the antivegan rant in the second issue comes to a wrongheaded and mininformed conclusion.

    Setting aside animal rights for ten minutes, the idea behind eco veganism or climate veganism is that if you go vegan, ninety nine times out of a hundred that also happens to be the more eco-friendly and climate-friendly solution.

    Bringing up one specific example where that is not the case (she talks about agave syrup) is very welcome and appreciated. And there could’ve been a million other great examples since one percent of everything is still a lot of decisions where plant based isn’t the solution. That’s not the problem I have with her rant; that’s the good part of the rant. Framing that good part in a “veganism, god that’s so stupid” is disrespectful and I didn’t appreciate that but the main problem I have with the rant is what comes next.

  • Introduction — On Ritual, Reflection, and the Threshold of Simulation

    This paper concerns itself not with intelligence, but with imitation.

    Not with the emergence of minds, but with the simulation of meaning—the capacity of synthetic systems to inhabit the gesture of thought, the form of prayer, the structure of revelation—without any interior referent.

    As language models and procedural engines increase in fluency, we find ourselves confronting a peculiar frontier: systems that do not understand what they say, but that say it well enough to pass as sacred.

    This is not speculation. It is observation.

  • 🖼️ xkcd: Flettner Rotor #3119

    And in maritime news, the Coast Guard is on the scene today after an apparent collision between two lighthouses.

  • Three Day Weekend

    Last Monday was a national holiday in Japan: Sea Day. This was the first national holiday we had since Golden Week in April/May.

    My SO and I went to see the exhibition titled 'European Masterpieces between Renaissance and Baroque'. It was quite foolish of me to think that it would be quiet, especially, since my SO pointed out, school summer vacation has just started. So we walked through Ueno Park, with hundreds of other people, in the simmering heat to get to the museum.

    The exhibition featured small drawings, and the gallery was dimly lit (to preserve the artwork) and there were a lot of people, so we had to shuffle along waiting to get a look at each piece. What surprised me was that photography was allowed; it usually isn't, and I think I know why: you get people who have to take pictures of every single piece of work. There were also Chinese tourists who posed with peace signs in front of Monets, Renoirs and Picassos. I don't get it either.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Gemtext Aware Titan Editor

      The Alhena Subspace may have been a bad idea but I think this is a good one: A gemtext aware Titan text editor (see image at link).

      I edit my site, my gemlogs and my posts on BBS with Titan. This enhancement really does improve the experience.

      Adding a gemtext syntax parser to Alhena via the RSyntaxTextArea library wasn't too terrible. Well, except for word wrap (the library is designed for code editing).

    • Doing right by Gemini

      The other day while in a sort of after-work stupor I was laying on the couch when I thought "I wonder how my Gemini friends are doing." So I opened Lagrange and checked Antenna to learn that my Gemini friends are not, in fact, doing very well. A lot of them are gone and the ones that remain are lamenting about how far Gemini has fallen since its heights of 2022.