SlightlyCyberpunk

https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/@admin

Anti-social anarcho-syndicalist slacker, maker, and code monkey. Soldering irons to semicolons and everything in between.

Sloperators will be blocked on sight. This code is hand-crafted with love (or at least great annoyance.)

Canvassing Software [Beta quality maybe]: https://cccp.slightlycyberpunk.com
FediMatch Matchmaking Bot [Alpha quality]: https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/@fediMatch
Instance Finder [Proof of Concept]: https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/experiments/index.php
MastoWoT Blocklist Gen [Proof of Concept]: https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/experiments/mastowot.html

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NIP-05 Address

admin_at_mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst5vkk49slvnjery6jgfjw6hu2e5sshvsumz2y8cr8yuelclnzyrgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsn006sg

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1hgedd2tp7e89jxf4ysnya40c4nfppwepeky5g0sxwfenl3lxygxsfpm8a0

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Last Notes

2026-05-04 02:37:14 UTC

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Same in RI. Getting great reactions to https://brittanyforri.com/ though! :)

2026-03-25 14:27:07 UTC

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That's why they're planning to start sending ICE to the polls as an intimidation tactic. Even in Minnesota they're still sending state and local cops out to protect and support ICE no matter what those thugs do...

2026-03-19 21:43:41 UTC

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OK but what if you're running it under Wine under Windows?
(Apparently Wine on Windows is possible in theory...I tried it once ages ago to get some old Windows games working but I couldn't actually get Wine to run lol)

2026-03-12 15:25:54 UTC

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It used to be said that the best programmers were the laziest -- they were the people who would rather automate the task than do it themselves!
Although there's some leeway that needs to be made for novelty...most good coders would rather spent ten hours automating something even if it would only be three boring repetitive hours to do it themselves.
But using the AI is only superficially lazy. You spend even more time fixing its mistakes, analyzing its convoluted code, dealing with the imprecision of natural language, typing prompt after prompt after prompt...it's a non-programmer's simulacrum of what programmers want.
But they're able to sell it because we don't see programming the way we see these other jobs. We see it as a means to an end, and as a rather pure expression of capitalism. "Move fast and break things" is straight out of Marx. That phrase is how so many see programming but it's really about the eronomics. Using the AI isn't programming, it's LARPing as a shitty CEO.

2026-03-10 14:05:59 UTC

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My main dev environment is a bigass nano window over an SSH session through the Tilda terminal with Audiowide font :)
I might pop a couple tabs open in Tilda but that's as advanced as it gets over here lol

2026-02-16 03:48:39 UTC

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That sure ain't English in the corner...quick, show the MAGAts!

2026-01-26 15:24:24 UTC

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https://www.rawstory.com/california-2674879509/

2026-01-26 15:04:17 UTC

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The Democrat (candidate) who keeps saying we need to bring back Auschwitz hasn't even faced mild criticism from anyone else in the party as far as I can tell. They'll tell us Mamdani isn't a real Democrat and openly campaign against him even after he won their nomination but they won't say a goddamn word about open Nazis in their party like Langford.
The fact that they're spineless might be the only reason they're offering any resistance at all. We should absolutely use that, but don't mistake capitulation to the angry mob of citizens for actual morality.

2026-01-13 16:30:57 UTC

How do we feel about Squarespace? Are there better options I can suggest to someone who needs a no-code website builder?

2026-01-13 14:06:56 UTC

Steam dev is deleting his own game after realizing AI is bad
https://www.polygon.com/steam-dev-deleting-own-game-generative-ai/

2026-01-09 15:41:06 UTC

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They're REALLY big on emails over there. The CEO or whatever has me blocked on here because I once told him that I prefer to not give my email address out to every random website...

2026-01-06 18:28:55 UTC

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I think nationalism in many ways *is* the machine. The machine doesn't make people nationalists, it makes them serve the whims of the powerful.
Nationalism is one tool to do that, and it works well on lonely unhappy people because it provides an automatic, default feeling of community and identity.
Nationalism isn't the end goal though, it's just one of many methods to divide and conquer.

2025-12-10 21:36:59 UTC

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I got my last few packs from Kind and I have no complaints...
https://planetofkind.com/

2025-10-29 18:11:04 UTC

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No, the party pulls the DSA to the right. I've been a DSA member since 2011, seen it plenty. Look at Mamdani right now. He got where he is because of a huge effort by NYC DSA, then he turns around and hires DNC folks to run his campaign, starts distancing himself from the DSA, says he doesn't stand for their platform, says in interviews that "socialist" doesn't mean anything about policy it's just about how hard he will fight...I'm not saying he's not still miles ahead of the other candidates, but we're watching in real time as the Democrats pull this DSA candidate further to the right. It seems like he could have won as a socialist and not had to water down his platform and not had to feed more power into the corporate Democratic party.

2025-10-29 17:38:54 UTC

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Voting for an organization that is trying to keep you out is acceptance.
Things will change when we participate in the work of actually organizing our communities and building institutions we can trust. The voting part matters but it's far from the most important thing. It won't do shit until we fix some of these other structural issues first.
"If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal"

2025-10-29 17:23:01 UTC

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Not everyone has the time to do that research. It ain't always easy. I'm regularly voting based on literally nothing more than a four year old interview on local radio from when the person was running for some different office. And for some races even that would be a lot of information. In at least one election all I could find to go on were photos of the candidate putting up yard signs! You only even get *claims* about what they want to accomplish at the highest level races, and even those require carefully watching their past history to know if they actually believe a single damn word of it. I struggle to figure this shit out and I'm invested enough to be taking classes on how to research candidates!
It'd be great if we had a party that actually held their candidates to some standard; an organization to do some of that vetting for us; instead of Ds and Rs that switch parties like an NFL draft without actually changing their positions...
Running under either party is basically just running with a corporate sponsor at this point. The only thing it proves is money and/or connections. And if you truly believe that people can all independently determine and vote for the best candidate then why does it matter which party? Why do we need parties at all? These organizations are either irrelevant or failures. Or they're highly successful as gatekeepers against us.

2025-10-02 11:36:05 UTC

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Any idea if Fair Lady was captured? They were having engine trouble and were literally sailing, and were one of the last still going last night...but they were in the back of the pack.
According to Al Jazeera, Israel says one boat still sailing that will be stopped if it attempts to breach the blockade -- implying they haven't even tried. Feels like either an insult to sameone far behind or they're just referring to one of the legal support ships.

2025-08-27 18:03:27 UTC

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Isn't that already the case? Unless we're talking about AI spam bots, in which case it might be kinda hard for the service provider to know the difference. Section 230 applies only to third-party content; these AIs are first-party agents.
Now, they can certainly argue that the AI is not "generating" the content, it is merely returning content created by others...but I think that would immediately end up being used against them in one of the many copyright cases, where their entire defense is that the responses the AI produces are NOT just regurgitating other peoples' content.
Somewhat relevant, although it's from Canada:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

2025-08-24 02:28:48 UTC

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I thought we were talking about the difficulties of fascists transferring power to a new regime. That's really only relevant if there *isn't* a fair election...

2025-08-23 01:15:01 UTC

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Sure, but he's not the one in power. And my point was that the transfer of power is often where things fall apart. It's something none of the examples in the above analysis were able to achieve. You think the entire MAGA movement is just gonna line up behind Miller without a single person trying to challenge him? You think folks in congress are going to be worried that they'll lose their seat without Miller's endorsement? The way things stand right now I'd say there's about a 0% chance of it going that way. It's going to take a LOT to turn him -- or anyone else -- into an unassailable heir.

2025-08-23 00:40:19 UTC

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None of them have the cult of personality of Trump...I'm sure plenty will *try* to be his replacement, but I don't see MAGA uniting around any of them, certainly not right away.
And yeah I think malleability is a big part of it too. Trump promises everything to everyone because he doesn't really give a shit about the result as long as he gets paid. Anyone with an actual ideology or purpose is going to have too many enemies, even within the GOP.

2025-08-22 14:10:30 UTC

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Sure, but he's the one people voted for, he's the one people are swearing allegiance to...I'm not saying it's guaranteed and I'm not saying it won't be painful, but it will absolutely be an opportunity. Hopefully we can find better options, but it is definitely a scenario we need to consider.

2025-08-22 13:59:39 UTC

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One other difference -- how many of these fascist regimes successfully transferred power? Hitler and Mussolini both (arguably) outlived their regimes. Spain started restoring democracy days after Franco's death. The average is 30 years because these people all took power in their 40s. Trump is nearly 80. The man is certainly not going to live another 30 years. We will have an opportunity for change far sooner.

2025-08-08 18:40:36 UTC

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Right? Ohh, no shopping, the grocery store is gonna get your money Sunday instead! I'm sure they're terrified. And yeah the farmer's market probably won't be around the next day so if you skip that the grocery store will get even BIGGER profits!

2025-08-08 17:41:22 UTC

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I don't disagree with that, I just get the feeling this was cooked up by some office worker who isn't willing to risk THEIR job to take a stand. It certainly wasn't planned for maximum impact. The most vulnerable in our society are always the ones taking the greatest risks (which we absolutely ought to be trying to fix!) but to me this feels like it's just using them as human shields...

2025-08-08 17:27:33 UTC

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A general strike on a Saturday? So the main people risking their jobs are low wage service workers? Who the hell planned that?

2025-08-02 03:35:23 UTC

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Dems will never be allowed to support it and still be Dems! They've had unilateral control over the state for decades; the party is going to do everything they can to block anything that would change that. The people have voted in "progressive" after "progressive", and all those promises start to evaporate the minute they get into office and start getting bribes, threats, and pressure from the rest of their party. People here have been trying to do what you are suggesting since before I was born. It does not work.

2025-08-02 03:23:43 UTC

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Duverger's law states that you will have two strong parties. Here in RI, we have one strong party. Therefore, by Duverger's law, there is room for another.

2025-08-02 02:47:12 UTC

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Yeah you DEFINITELY don't start at the president, that's a guaranteed loss. But state level is a whole different story.
We gotta start with states like mine -- Rhode Island. There is no "spoiler effect", we're a one party state. It's only Democrats...Democrats who are cutting healthcare, cutting transit, cutting taxes on banks while raising them for the middle class, seizing low-income housing to build police complexes...the Democrats act like Republicans, and the Republicans don't exist. Plenty of room for another party to jump into the race.
And I've got personal friends who were elected as "progressive" Democrats in this state, who served one term before getting pushed out by the party, who can talk for hours about the corruption and underhanded tactics they use to subvert democracy and keep the wealthy donors in charge.
And yes, Zohran managed a win in NYC as a Dem...but that was in spite of the party, not because of it. His campaign wasn't managed by the Democratic party, it was run by the Democratic Socialists of America. And now that he won the primary, what happened? The party establishment, the "vote blue no matter who" crowd...suddenly they want us to vote independent. Suddenly they're lining up behind Cuomo. Meanwhile, Zohran's putting DNC staffers into his campaign and now he's walking back his messaging on Palestine, walking back his messaging about fixing the criminal gangs we call "law enforcement"...we need a party that can actually hold the candidate to their positions, that has a platform and values beyond just winning at all costs and courting wealthy donors.

2025-08-01 22:25:16 UTC

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Agreed right up until those last two lines.
If you win their primary, they will put their resources against you as an independent. Despite all their "vote blue no matter who" rhetoric, we've seen this many times.
If you take the party at a state level they will gut the place, move to the next town over, and build a NEW state democrat party. We've seen this too.
If you took them over nationally, they'd become the fresh new party with a multi-billion dollar budget while you get stuck with the baggage of all of their past mistakes.
The only thing you'll ever be able to "take over" is the name alone, and the name ain't worth shit. We do not win by pretending to be them.

2025-07-18 18:39:30 UTC

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Every time my work laptop updates they reset my default search to Google so I've given in. I asked it how to disable Gemini the other day, and it told me to just click the web tab. Which was great, until about five minutes later the web tab disappeared. As soon as I started using it, it got dragged off into the "more" drop-down to discourage its use.
(Yes, I know about udm 14, but that is also not gonna survive an update)

2025-07-10 17:32:55 UTC

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Do not have a suggestion but wanted to thank you for introducing me to the term "TUI" because "CLI" doesn't always find what I'm looking for so maybe that'll help!

2025-06-11 15:03:52 UTC

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...probably because Google also owns most of those "are you a robot" challenges, don't they?

2025-03-05 04:44:16 UTC

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Yeah, "made". Past tense. It's the "making" part that's always a pain in the ass ;)

2025-02-20 00:41:25 UTC

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stumbled into this lovely example of that at work recently...and no, I was not trying to use any AI:
https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/033/425/183/370/228/original/7e931af150bc6756.jpeg

2025-02-17 19:06:48 UTC

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(also kinda annoyed at those protests because it's yet another reddit thing ignoring centuries of history, ignoring everyone who's been doing this work for decades, thinking they can fix it all by themselves in a day just by being a bit annoying...)
Edit for context: the below message is the kind of stuff I was getting texted, from all over the country, right up until after the first of these protests...right up until we saw no mass arrests (so far anyway). I advised some of our members not to attend, because it looked like a trap. It still kinda looks like a trap. Tons of budget to get the word out nation-wide but zero connections to local communities? That's what gave us this mess in the first place!
https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/020/861/549/001/016/original/d9869a0dca4815f2.png

2025-02-17 18:58:30 UTC

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not everyone has the day off, and it's pretty hard to get the day off when as far as I can tell this protest was announced like two days ago...

2024-12-26 21:10:45 UTC

WTF is the deal with essential oils and food safety? "Yeah, go ahead, add it to your beverages! Just don't drink it."
"External use only" seems pretty clear...and I'm pretty sure my mouth counts as a mucous membrane, right?
This same company also has a part of the website where they say you can look up the results of the chemical analysis of each individual bottle! Except I have multiple bottles with different lot numbers that apparently do *not* have any test results available. Hmm...
It was a gift (to flavor seltzer; recently got a Drinkmate; not some medical quackery or anything like that) so I feel like a dick if I say I'm afraid to use it...but I'm definitely a little afraid to use it lol
I mean I know the scam is probably just that they want to avoid the expense of FDA regulation...but those rules exist for a reason, and if you refuse to comply with government testing and ALSO refuse to provide the results of your own testing? Yeah that's pretty fuckin sketchy.
https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/system/media_attachments/files/113/721/073/577/194/208/original/e373a082f5fbf609.jpg

2024-12-16 17:57:21 UTC

So there was this news report talking about how the number of homes exploding has been on the rise in recent years. They go interview some expert who says "about half" of the home explosions he sees are caused by natural gas lines. The report then goes on to discuss the various dangers and some safety tips for homes with natural gas.
Certainly a good PSA, but like...I am well aware that this gas is explosive. What I cannot figure out is how that is only causing HALF of the homes blowing up phonomenon. WTF is the other half?? I know we got some folks stockpiling guns and bombs in this country but surely not THAT MANY of those are going up each year, are they? But that's about the only thing I can think of, I can't imagine they're putting something like a water heater -- even one at Mythbusters scale -- in the same category as a gas explosion...propane grills and space heaters maybe? Would that blow up an entire house?

2024-10-04 11:35:47 UTC

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Fun thing about this is you can put any word or phrase you want in place of "private equity" there, the answer is still no.

2024-09-19 19:53:12 UTC

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Unfortunately that only applies to accounts that are part of a workspace...the one that's giving me trouble is not

2024-09-19 19:40:27 UTC

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I have access to the workspace admin account, I don't see anything that seems relevant in the workspace settings but if you have any specific things I should check I'd be happy for the advice! :)
...although the account I'm trying to login to has access to the workspace drive but is not administered through the workspace so probably not relevant anyway

2024-09-19 19:33:14 UTC

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Yeah, if they were clear that they just don't intend to serve certain classes of people then it'd be a lot easier to make the case that use of their service is discriminatory and orgs that intend to be welcoming should migrate to something else. But the current situation allows Google to mask that behind a wall of "I dunno, works for me, must be on your end"

2024-09-19 19:15:52 UTC

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If the account cannot function properly without one then at the very least they should require it on account creation...

2024-09-19 19:12:25 UTC

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Maybe if you have Google apps installed?

2024-09-19 19:06:24 UTC

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yeah, Google's login process is a damn nightmare. Recently had to start using a Goog account again for an org I joined that keeps everything on Drive and holy shit. I'll be at a meeting and try to get into my Drive from someone else's computer and Google just says no. Unrecognized device. Doesn't matter that you know the password, doesn't matter that you've got a known, logged-in device viewing the account's activity log simultaneously, there is no way to allow that login. You just can't. Even my second phone, connected through my home wifi network gets that error. Seems like if I ever buy a new laptop I'm just gonna be fucked, locked out permanently. I do not understand how anyone can still manage to use this shit...

2024-09-19 12:03:41 UTC

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am I missing something? The "terrorist attack" you mention is the pager bombs from this week, right? But the quote you give is is from about two months ago, not after this particular attack (although there were certainly plenty of other Israeli war crimes happening at that time)
(not saying her ads aren't a fucking scam either, just want a clear timeline of her bullshit)

2024-09-17 22:55:44 UTC

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could be both, really.
I posted above about all the people who get paid from this as "capitalist logic"...but the REAL capitalist logic is that the CEOs get paid again and again regardless. If the person hospitalized has private insurance? Great, every time the insurance company pays a claim the CEOs skim a bit for themselves from the premiums paid by the workers. If they don't have private insurance? Great, it's paid for by taxes -- and we all know how much and how often CEO types actually contribute to those, but that tax money gets paid to their company and into their bank account.
And it's not just about the direct costs. This will make more people afraid of public transit -- so they'll spend more on personal transit. Or on self-defense of one form or another. They get the control through fear and violence...but the reaction to those is so often to BUY BUY BUY which gives them more control economically as well.
Building community is probably the only reaction to this that doesn't benefit those responsible for it. But probably not one that's gonna happen all that much...

2024-08-07 21:38:55 UTC

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Yeah I remember learning about those in my highschool gov class but my point is that ultimately these terms come from rich white men who had their own reasons for drawing these distinctions the way they did, and in doing so they set the framing for any intellectual discussion of these ideas for hundreds of years. And we might have more success if we can break out of that frame. The distinction is more arbitrary than it may seem.
Yes we can say freedom of speech requires nobody acts to stop you, while freedom from poverty requires someone to provide for you...but you can't exactly go live off the land anymore because all that land is owned. Someone has to provide because somebody else is preventing. You should have a right to just live, but society says no, society says the land is private and the water is private and the food is private and everything is private and so you must sell your life to buy your survive...freedom from poverty is in many ways simply the freedom from being bound by a contract that you cannot refuse. Look at it that way and it is indeed a negative freedom.

2024-08-07 20:45:15 UTC

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Freedom of speech is just freedom from repression. Freedom from poverty is just freedom to eat. Who is framing these as negative or positive? The capitalists who want to sell you forms and tools of expression, who want to advertise their wares, and who want you to be forced to pay them for your food and housing.