aeva

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva

I'm a just a small town AAA graphics programmer in Chicago. I worked on Gears 5, Gears Tactics, and other games. My work is secret, but my personal projects are not.

I like to post about my numerous personal projects, and I like to think out loud a lot. Expect weird humor, esoteric ramblings, odd thoughts, my home made synthesizer visual programming language, sculptures, digital painting, and lowfi 3D.

Fervently anti-ai. Chronic pain enthusiast. 🏳️‍⚧️

Curses are blessings with caveats.

pronouns: she/her
website: http://zone.dog
itch.io: https://aeva.itch.io
chicago: bada bing bada toot baby

Public Key

npub139cpf9jkc4swjvx40eqt7dwznkgznpa280nhuhs580h3zzqd4s3qnsw37s

NIP-05 Address

aeva_at_mastodon.gamedev.place@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgjuq5jetv2c8fxr2hus9lxhpfmypfs74rhem7tc2rhmc3pqx6cgsprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt3rea75

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub139cpf9jkc4swjvx40eqt7dwznkgznpa280nhuhs580h3zzqd4s3qnsw37s

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Last Notes

2026-06-11 22:18:17 UTC

RE: https://norden.social/@SheDrivesMobility/116732194100466437
i can't believe i spent the summer of '16 teaching military drones how to loiter in a large crowd of millennials milling about in one specific corner of Loyola Beach Park for long enough to make the cops nervous
#note16y5…hvm7

2026-06-02 21:25:31 UTC

#linux #gcc #clang #c #cpp #poll 1) do you have a program called "a.out" in your home folder, and if so 2) do you remember what it was

2026-06-02 06:55:14 UTC

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what is this drawing program?

2026-05-31 09:13:26 UTC

putting just a little bit of ai slop into your software/art/etc is like putting just a little bit of raw sewage into your drinking water

2026-05-28 06:05:18 UTC

they should make a prequel to Cyberpunk 2077 called Regular Punk 1977

2026-05-23 05:48:46 UTC

introducing my new memory safe cve-proof webframe work: it's called "just write the fucking html"

2026-05-20 16:15:24 UTC

kagi seems nice. i'm conflicted between yet another fucking subscription and the obvious rational for it
EDIT: lol i had no idea kagi was cancelled already sorry didn't get the memo

2026-05-15 08:53:46 UTC

i think society would be better if they just handed out money to people no questions asked, but i suppose it's true some people might use it to be happy

2026-05-06 05:34:53 UTC

xml stands for excellent markup language

2026-04-28 17:14:40 UTC

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I have read both and I still don't understand why Blender is accepting financial dependence on a corporation that is actively destroying the open web with scraping, fueling the ongoing slop contribution denial of service attack against foss maintainers, is a major player in the industry that is actively harming digital artists, and numerous other harms; nor do I understand how you expect us not to be angry and heartbroken by this news. Perhaps you could explain it to us.

2026-04-10 20:12:18 UTC

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the principle of "the future is here today, it is just not evenly distributed" demonstrates that many possible futures coexist in the present simultaneously, and thus it follows that we are not limited to one inevitable future. however, i conjecture that a given non-realized future is substantially less likely to come to pass if it is not first built.

2026-04-07 23:44:44 UTC

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I say "non-superficial" because strict adherence to a random grab bag of engineering best practices is not holding yourself to high standards if you don't understand any of them. That's just posturing.

2026-04-07 23:43:23 UTC

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anyways, my conclusion from this right now is it may be a good idea as a professional programmer who wishes to retain her hard earned skills, to make a regular habit of going to the museum as it were~~regularly reading the source code of successful projects that have non-superficial high standards, understanding how it works, why it works, why it is the way it is, and also looking at the history of how it grew over time.

2026-04-07 23:38:17 UTC

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now, not everything you see in the world is going to help your career as an artist, and I think it's true that there's plenty of things you can internalize that are destructive to your ability to make the things you want to make. that sounds pretentious, but I don't think it is: a simple example is internalizing the idea that you shouldn't make art because you don't already have the skills to do it with perfection is effective at preventing many from ever developing those skills.

2026-04-07 23:33:31 UTC

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this is why I think slop is so damaging, especially so as it gets harder to spot, because you're feeding yourself with vacuous garbage that superficially resembles information. if you accept it as valid, every related skill that you've worked hard to sharpen up to that point is fundamentally at risk because as they get re-encoded they will be adapted to accommodate the miscategorized noise.

2026-04-07 23:28:17 UTC

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my point to all of this is, I don't at all believe you can look at / watch / read / listen to something and not be changed by it even in a small way. the human brain is a hungry for patterns to learn from, and everything you learn is eventually pruned or mutated through continuous re-encoding. you need to keep absorbing high quality examples and information throughout your career to preserve your skills. I think this applies generally.

2026-04-07 23:25:33 UTC

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the example she gave was a self taught artist who only referenced manga, but was not familiar with the techniques or anchors the mangaka they were copying themselves knew, and so said artist's style ended up exaggerating all of the stylistic elements of the manga they were referencing

2026-04-07 23:24:03 UTC

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One of my peers from that art program once remarked to me that she's seen interesting things happen in the works of artists that either don't have this training or only reference art made by other amateurs - work that is not anchored in either a cultural tradition or naturalistic observation or both tends to drift in strange ways

2026-04-07 23:19:24 UTC

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It is also a really important set of skills for learning, because you can go to an art museum and look at works that inspire you and figure out (or make an educated guess at) the technical processes that their author used to make them, and then you can apply your learnings to making something new. You don't go to the museum to find things to copy without understanding.

2026-04-07 23:17:15 UTC

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This process is really important for developing and maintaining the technical skills of working in traditional media, because if you are not able to establish cultural and observational reference points you lose the ability to "see" as you work. Like, after you have been working on something for several hours everything sorta looks correct and wrong at the same time, and if you don't have something to ground it you'll drift in ways you don't want to.

2026-04-07 23:14:56 UTC

I've been thinking a lot lately about the art education I got 20 years ago, and the importance that was placed upon learning how to really see what is in front of you, how to deconstruct the technical aspects of other works, looking at a lot of art, collecting good reference images, and talking about art.

2026-04-06 19:16:04 UTC

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and no i am not going to clarify "what happened", this is an evergreen opinion that transcends any specific online beef

2026-04-06 19:14:28 UTC

i love that thing that mastodon has where i don't see the hot take a bunch of people i follow are mad at, because there isn't anything artificially drawing attention to rage bait to get us to look at ads or inflate stock prices or astroturf political campaigns or growth hacking or whatever other reasons for corporate engagement farming

2026-04-04 18:00:46 UTC

I think stress dreams should count as billable hours

2026-04-01 04:09:35 UTC

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will you continue to do stuff?

2026-03-28 20:01:07 UTC

#poll for all you beautiful #linux gamers out there: which XDG basedir would you expect a game to honor when deciding where to store its save data?
see https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/

2026-03-24 04:53:59 UTC

researched kilns tonight. seems like the options primarily split down to have a building that can provide enough power and won't burn down (and can be sufficiently ventilated), or have a yard and chill neighbors.
i wish i had a yard and chill neighbors ;_; (and high voltage)

2026-03-19 23:06:22 UTC

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fuck, how do I know that *I* exist. what I'm just imagining all of this.

2026-03-18 23:18:33 UTC

one of the more useful things I realized at some point for how to be a good code reviewer is "that's not how I'd do it" is not constructive feedback and is not a valid reason to request a change, and if you can't think of an actual good reason to block a review, you can save a lot of time for everybody involved by just chilling out about it

2026-03-16 03:44:17 UTC

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the nightmare could go on forever

2026-03-16 03:03:49 UTC

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it would be funny if microsoft managed to get a clue and make a cut down version of windows to meet the times, but i get the feeling they're so high from inhaling slop fumes they can't even hear the screams of their IHVs anymore.

2026-03-16 02:54:37 UTC

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no contradiction detected. it's good marketing to present it as a classy product that just happens to be extremely affordable, as if to say "you won't look like a poor person carrying around this computer". lots of people in difficult circumstances have significant anxiety about these things. of course, i can't imagine apple marketing this any other way regardless of the intended audience

2026-03-16 02:38:02 UTC

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like, it seems obvious to me that the Neo doesn't exist because of unprecedented visionary design genius, it exists because the people in charge seem to be paying attention enough to notice that we've been in a period of significant downward mobility that isn't going to be stopping any time soon, and they need to meet their customers where they're at if they want to keep having any

2026-03-16 02:34:03 UTC

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this is a product category where the main selling point is Jr. gets to have an education without Mom having to get another part time job. it doesn't have to be The Most Advanced Shitbox Ever, it just has to be cheap and mostly work.

2026-03-16 02:22:21 UTC

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again, i'm not advocating for any particular Should here, i'm just wondering if a product category that was a thing when i was a student is still a thing or if it got devoured by ipads or google or whatever, not whether it is or ever was Worthy

2026-03-16 02:05:02 UTC

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so i'm not asking to advocate for any particular Should in this situation (i simply don't care what people do anymore), i just don't know and people talk about this subject like the student shitbox laptop is not a product category anymore: does hp not make cheap shitbox laptops anymore?

2026-03-13 23:23:26 UTC

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also I recommend # macrophotography (and the various non-english equivalents) though fair warning it has the occasional closeup on insects. my wife introduced me to that one last night :)

2026-03-13 23:22:59 UTC

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here's the list I gave @npub1d72…0m5w https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/115947337211705540
#note1fud…66e9

2026-03-11 00:02:56 UTC

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this is a tangent, but I saw this article float by my feed a few weeks ago and found it to be very entertaining https://legendsoflocalization.com/articles/super-mario-rpg-japan-pop-culture/

2026-03-10 21:55:15 UTC

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I think anglophones experience start difference between good and bad translations more often through video games

2026-03-09 21:18:54 UTC

"prompt engineers" are living in the past. they're gonna be replaced by "prompt agents". you won't even be allowed to write the copyrightable words "large breasts trending on art station in the style of someone else's life's work" you'll just drool the word "horny" or "app" into the saas and the cloud will dispense the most statistically probable approximation of your most statistically probable desires and praise you on the above average quality of your drool.

2026-03-09 19:18:43 UTC

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the guy who invented DST is dead and I think that's wonderful

2026-03-09 19:14:22 UTC

i'm glad that "the people in charge are at GDC" week coincides with "adjust to suddenly being made to wake up an hour earlier every day for absolutely no good reason at all" week

2026-03-08 03:35:39 UTC

i wonder if anyone's hacked their CD burner to make custom patterns on burned CDs

2026-03-05 23:33:02 UTC

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maybe that could be my angle. "poop-free wheat"

2026-03-05 23:30:50 UTC

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i have it on good authority that~~unlike wheat~~farm animals smell really bad

2026-03-05 22:25:58 UTC

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gotcha. that might be promising. are there wheat jobs that can be done while sitting down in a chair

2026-03-05 22:22:01 UTC

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ah :( ok what about wheat. is wheat still a big deal?

2026-03-05 21:31:35 UTC

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apropos of nothing, is pottery still a big deal for humans? i was thinking this morning that pottery might be a nice career change for me.

2026-03-05 21:25:04 UTC

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so I'm following this right, it sounds like the project or its maintainers don't even necessarily need to even be using LLM tools, the attack pattern simply targets contributors who are using LLM development tools? and so all that is really needed is for the payload to be subtle and the maintainer to be sufficiently overwhelmed (say, by an endless fire hose of LLM-generated liquid shit slop pull requests)?
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/178/679/643/465/496/original/238266f84221b894.jpg

2026-02-27 00:02:59 UTC

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You don't need to prove that these companies have a real product. The burden of proof is on them.

2026-02-27 00:02:23 UTC

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Until then I don't see what I'd get out of it. I'm good at programming, so all I would be doing is sacrificing my own credibility to prop up theirs. Then there's the skill atrophy problem. I worked hard to develop my skills, and I don't see why I should throw that away for nothing. And of course if these products actually worked as they are hyped to, nobody is going to pay me a livable salary to be a bot janitor long term.

2026-02-26 23:59:29 UTC

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and so if we ever get to the point where "ai" actually will "leave me behind", I'll just pick up "drooling into gpt for dummies" or whatever the week before I actually need it.

2026-02-26 23:51:45 UTC

half the jobs I've had in my career involved working in a programming language that I had learned (or re-learned) in a week prior to the interview, to a degree of competence that I could talk intelligently about non-trivial aspects of the language, and demonstrate non-trivial tasks idiomatically. these languages were C#, Ruby, and C++.

2026-02-20 09:07:59 UTC

i'll say one nice thing about ai slop: the ai generated preview images continue to be a reliable indicator that there are other major issues with the article or video they represent. if the author couldn't be bothered to try to land a solid first impression, why, you can bet they didn't care enough to try and make anything else worth your time

2026-02-14 10:13:26 UTC

i can tell it's time to go to bed when the memes start speaking german

2026-02-10 17:16:22 UTC

#poll for all you beautiful hard working professional computer touchers out there:
"my day job has me making the world a ____ place"
(be honest, don't just repeat what your CEO says)

2026-02-09 01:20:23 UTC

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there's a reason why they don't let you just touch stuff in the museum

2026-02-08 09:39:43 UTC

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ancient pottery has the fingerprints of the person who made it permanently embedded in it, and if you touch it, you can reach out and touch the hand of the person who made it across space and time immemorial and experience a brief fleeting connection to a long gone person you will never know. and then get thrown out of the museum.

2026-02-08 09:37:50 UTC

the magic of art is being able to see the world through another person's eyes, even in non-representational art: all the little decisions of what is important to depict in detail, the choices of color, composition, the energy of the marks, and so on is essentially a byproduct of the perspective and the experiences of the person who made it. you get to witness something deeply personal hiding in the artifact beyond just the image itself.

2026-02-06 19:07:42 UTC

i do not value your privacy, which is why my website does not have any trackers on it what so ever. i have positively no idea if any human being besides myself has ever actually opened my website. your privacy is worth zero dollars to me. you couldn't even pay me to take it away.

2026-02-05 10:41:37 UTC

aw fuck i'm older again

2026-02-03 08:14:53 UTC

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did it work

2026-02-03 03:43:29 UTC

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all that patient waiting finally paid off

2026-02-03 03:38:09 UTC

oh dang, capitalism ended this afternoon. spread the word! we don't have to live like this anymore.

2026-02-02 18:33:37 UTC

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I have not!

2026-02-02 18:26:39 UTC

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I answered no because I'm over tired and my body hurts from PT, but the more I think about it the better it sounds. I could just repeatedly take PTO and sleep in. I wouldn't be able to make any progress on my projects, but much like the movie I could at least get a lot better at playing the piano and properly learn my other musical instruments. And I could call people and chat.

2026-01-31 04:54:47 UTC

me, swearing: OGG VORB IT

2026-01-24 00:52:40 UTC

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be sure to check out # mosstodon, # catsofmastodon, # mastoart, # tokyocameraclub, # generativeart, and # genuary.
Sometimes people misuse hashtags, but it's pretty easy to stay on top of muting those people.
Also take note of the other hashtags you see on those posts as you'll find other interesting ones.

2026-01-24 00:46:24 UTC

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the fedigalaxy :D

2026-01-23 23:11:39 UTC

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there's some great stuff on them hash tags <3

2026-01-10 18:45:39 UTC

#poll do you know what kind of music your cats like

2025-12-14 00:20:00 UTC

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does this include swords

2025-12-06 04:37:22 UTC

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noice

2025-12-05 17:23:27 UTC

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awesome :D

2025-12-05 17:11:49 UTC

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how is it with low light?

2025-12-04 06:09:53 UTC

you ever think about how you are a lossy copy of who you were before reading this post, but with this thought now inserted into your brain? what did it replace? it is now lost forever

2025-11-20 06:40:03 UTC

Current* conditions near Drummond, MI:
#LakeHuronLiveDrawing #GreatLakesLiveDrawing
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/580/630/667/770/671/original/11c457c0dbe7d9ca.png

2025-11-05 18:08:28 UTC

huh, neat. Scientists figured out a way to test for epigenetic changes to DNA folding to detect ME/CFS and believe they can use the same technique to develop a test for long covid as well https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251102205021.htm

2025-11-03 21:41:56 UTC

anyone got any recommendations for Drum & Bass music? this frequency response chart from my hearing test today suggests that I should get really into Drum & Bass music

2025-10-10 04:30:23 UTC

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if i had enough money that i didn't have to work a real job i absolutely am in the vulnerable state of mind that would think doing a hard break away from both x11 and wayland is somehow a good idea, but since i have a mortgage and a painful connective tissue disorder i am somewhat forced to value my own time, so i think i'm going to just paint tonight instead

2025-10-10 02:21:07 UTC

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my hands shake at how shit this all is

2025-10-10 02:19:39 UTC

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if you really hate someone, don't get them a 3D printer, get them into linux

2025-10-10 02:18:43 UTC

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everyone who told me to switch to KDE because wayland is good actually you just have to use the good wayland which is KDE and not gnome? i feel betrayed, and also i now have significant doubts about your attention to detail and general observational skills

2025-10-10 02:14:16 UTC

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oh my god it's fucking wayland of course it's wayland OH MY GOD YOU PEOPLE SAID KDE WAS THE GOOD WAYLAND YOU FUCKING LIARS
https://blogs.kde.org/2024/10/09/cursor-size-problems-in-wayland-explained/

2025-10-10 01:55:16 UTC

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imagine if your hands sometimes shrink by 50% but it only happens while you try to draw

2025-10-10 01:53:00 UTC

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i really should keep a list or something of all the irritating foibles of software i use regularly, because i'm not exactly sure where KDE currently sits relative to gnome in "problems solved" vs "problems created" ratio

2025-10-10 01:49:18 UTC

#kde is doing this real cool thing where if I hover the mouse over scribus or krita, the cursor shrinks. idk where to even begin with that one

2025-10-08 15:38:39 UTC

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which tablet monitor should christine get? also did you play Visions of Mana?

2025-10-07 17:59:11 UTC

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having just made the switch I highly recommend it. I have no regrets for buying a cintiq, but I've heard there are other much more affordable options available now. I've heard "gaomon" and "xppen" recommended recently as more affordable alternatives, though I have not used either myself (nor do I know whether or not either tends to be linux compatible)

2025-09-23 05:20:37 UTC

it's boris! #boris
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/251/922/670/476/172/original/aa8d901c46609949.jpg

2025-09-11 03:20:30 UTC

pinky! are you pondering what i'm pondering?

2025-08-31 18:42:27 UTC

#poll CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER

2025-07-30 01:22:06 UTC

ok linux question for you smart linux people. I want to add a battery indicator to my synthesizer program thingy which is a full screen program. I want to do the following:
1. not pull in any new library dependencies
2. determine whether the system is on battery or AC power
3. if it is on battery, determine the battery level as a simple percentage
4. have this work on more than one linux

2025-07-24 06:33:45 UTC

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in the other news "payment processors" land another big victory in their war to eliminate human sexuality as a concept https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

2025-07-24 06:30:25 UTC

i wish i lived in a society with too much sex and not enough violence instead of living in society with too much violence and not enough sex

2025-07-13 17:27:43 UTC

ok so I've got a pygame program I've been writing, and I want to add some save/open dialogues. the ones provided by tkinter look good enough, but they unsurprisingly are blocking, so that means I can't push new frames from the pygame side without running it in a thread or something. I'm ok with not updating the frame but wayland immediately freaks the fuck out because the program stopped sending frames 🙄 anyone know how to programmatically tell wayland to not do that?

2025-06-30 17:53:30 UTC

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just imagine rolling into a conference on one of these perfect chairs, but a custom one that's upholstered with yak fleece, running gnu/unix
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/773/561/692/568/186/original/ca355b4433af516d.webp

2025-06-30 17:28:13 UTC

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my only complaint is the range of rotation assumes you're looking at it from a seated or standing position, and you can't really mount it for laying down underneath one. I've found that vesa mounts for use in bed is a criminally under served niche. You'd think this use case would be the sweet spot for accessibility tech since there's a broader marketing segment of "lazy" people, but the main thing I've found is those expensive scorpion chairs.

2025-06-30 17:23:37 UTC

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Madi has a single arm version which she modded (I forget what she changed) and has a fancy drawing tablet monitor on it. I think she's had it since college. Very sturdy.