beka valentine

trans dyke hacking on @QueeriousLabs@twitter.com . she/her (xey/xem or ey/em if you're bored with binaries); no child zone, 18+ only 

current twitter handle: @defnotbeka@twitter.com 

former twitter handles: @beka_valentine @illegally_beka

Public Key

npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

NIP-05 Address

beka_valentine@kolektiva-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxukmy4ylec97k22y3zjz78xwghcpkr3gzu0rnd6q3378qpk2s6rqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds7892ka

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

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Last Notes

2026-08-11 19:27:46 UTC

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and i think that the main reason Vibe Coding is such a hot thing right now among professional coders, aside from like, you know, corporate mandates, is that we never actually developed real Software Engineering, and so the weight of not knowing what you're doing is heavy

2026-07-09 16:30:23 UTC

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@nprofile…e6c4 i cross post to twitter and bluesky, so to maintain consistency, i delete and re-write on mastodon as well

2026-07-09 16:19:19 UTC

one of these days i'll learn to proof read my posts, i promise
aww who am i kidding

2026-07-06 18:19:13 UTC

age verification laws being written in a way that impacts social media websites specifically, including federated ones, and basically has no impact on peer to peer systems, is pretty fantastic, assuming people pick up the slack and build p2p alternatives

2026-07-04 22:46:54 UTC

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@nprofile…wmy9 its not that its not the point. it's that you've misunderstood what i was saying.

2026-07-04 22:42:31 UTC

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@nprofile…wmy9 you've definitely missed the point if youre thinking like this about what i said

2026-07-04 18:25:17 UTC

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@nprofile…wmy9 completely not understanding anything i said

2026-07-03 07:22:24 UTC

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@nprofile…v2v2 indeed. escaping this tendency requires thinking consciously about how software can easily become a trap, and how replicating trap software is just making another trap

2026-07-03 06:48:51 UTC

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@nprofile…w7qn im not saying that CAD is BAD or UNSUCCESSFUL
im saying that CAD traps you in particular software, which is just a fact

2026-07-03 04:28:02 UTC

moonfall was such a stupid movie omg
still better than section 31

2026-07-03 00:41:13 UTC

almost every programming language has a way to compute new terms/expressions
afaik none have a way to compute new statements
and many people hack solutions to this. this is quite common in JS actually

2026-07-01 19:13:14 UTC

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@nprofile…ay8t i don't. i'm not sure there are any, even. everything is lore or practically implemented things, and that's about it

2026-07-01 18:27:57 UTC

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and while you might use FreeCAD and then manage to export to some other program successful, you now have to learn that other program
whereas, when you pick up a shitty Bic pen to do your drafting, constructing tangent circles is the same geometry Euclid was using 2500 years ago

2026-07-01 18:26:37 UTC

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the most open source un-corporate un-malicious-intent CAD programs out there, like FreeCAD, are VERY convenient but also in a way completely incapable of replicating the end-user-power of pen and paper

2026-07-01 17:54:56 UTC

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but instead of making languages more useful, there's a non-stop stream of trash
i mean, consider Go, a language that came out in 2009, and which ignores around 41 years of language design progress and research, to create a thin reimplementation of Algol 68

2026-07-01 17:52:50 UTC

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but, well.. people have been talking about Boilerplate Code since at LEAST 1981, with a popularization happening in 1990
the programming world has known about boilerplate for a while, and had ample opportunity to try to address it. there are even some great ideas!

2026-07-01 17:29:41 UTC

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in particular, there are a lot of software-related skills which were either never properly developed into novice-friendly forms, or which were left to languish and complexity and die over the last 20 years as the idea of the novice ceased to be widely recognized as real

2026-06-04 07:29:19 UTC

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each time you play a new randomization of the game, you might get completely distinct futures to the world, because of how the procedural science shakes out

2026-06-04 07:25:16 UTC

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in contrast to games like Kerbal Space Program, where you collect up abstract Science Points that have no meaningful connection to anything you're doing
and in contrast to games that present you with a tech tree that predefines AND pre-informs you of possibilities

2026-06-04 07:24:10 UTC

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coming up with some bogus framework for this kind of thing -- and analogous things for other branches of science -- could make for a very interesting game where you actually CAN make meaningful scientific discoveries as an explorer out in space, where exotic phenomena occur

2026-06-04 07:20:17 UTC

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generating equations, yes, but also making randomized choices about the physical phenomena that relate these things
is it interaction a field is the locus of the effect? or is it a particle interaction? is it just one, or multiple working together?

2026-05-31 01:50:38 UTC

@nprofile…t47w do you use Godot at all btw? not sure if i've mentioned it before. the entire IDE is just a godot "game". im not sure if you can modify the base IDE itself while its running but you can at least write new things and glue them on while its running

2026-05-30 18:06:17 UTC

@nprofile…t47w @nprofile…emd4 i feel like FoC would really enjoy the early chapters of The Friendly Orange Glow, even if it's not deeply related to FoC specifically

2026-05-26 17:02:58 UTC

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@nprofile…hyh5 ?

2026-05-26 16:54:10 UTC

sure, you complain about the AI cliche of "Not X, but Y"
but do you complain about "No X, just Y"?

2026-05-25 21:26:42 UTC

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and the cost of recycling is almost always born by local governments who pay for trash and recycling
those governments are themselves often quite cash strapped, and so they too want to avoid paying for things if they can
and so plastic typically does not get recycled

2026-05-25 21:25:01 UTC

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plastic is entirely recyclable
what is missing in this idea is the why of """non-recyclable"""
and the why is: profit
recycling plastic is 100% possible, if you're willing to pay for it. but capitalists do not want to pay for things if they can avoid it

2026-05-24 03:22:48 UTC

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@nprofile…t47w you know, i had a dream like 4 days ago that you came out as trans and that motivated me to start listening the computer-is-a-feeling episode, so now im wondering if im fucking prophetic or what

2026-05-22 20:39:37 UTC

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@nprofile…ytg3 i mean, gravity is definitely not a social construct

2026-05-22 18:40:31 UTC

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gravity? thats real, we see it and feel it every day here, we witness it ourselves.
we do not see and feel and witness that gravity moves the heavens, we merely guess that it does, and its a great fucking guess

2026-05-21 18:45:00 UTC

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@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w like a sweater given to you by a loved one, that which, when lost, can't really be replaced by simply buying another one, because this other one wasn't given you by the loved one, wasn't acquired with the intentions and thoughts of that loved one, didn't go through life with you like the other one did. it may be functionally identical but its not the same one

2026-05-21 18:42:43 UTC

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@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w i think reading "personal" in the same sense that one talks about "personal" journals vs. say scientific journals
its a place you keep your personal, private, intimate thoughts, a thing imbued with a part of you by your hand and mind. not merely owned and operated by you, but transformed by you in a way that only you can transform it

2026-05-21 18:40:41 UTC

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@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w stuff from Ted Nelson (both the big Computer Lib/Dream Machines duology, and The Home Computer Revolution), the Homebrew Computer Club, the People's Computer Company
they were drenched in this vision of the computer as not just a device, but as an extension of your self

2026-05-21 18:37:54 UTC

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@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w i would contrast this with the other term used at the term -- microcomputer/micro -- which was explicitly just about size/capability/cost/etc.
there were all these discussions about how the new micros could finally -- FINALLY! -- make computers _personal_ because they could be yours, and be imbued with your desires and will and intentions and dreams

2026-05-12 21:43:56 UTC

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@nprofile…6g65 ive read stuff on CRDTs but ive never seen anything related to structured edits. just wholistic edits

2026-05-12 21:37:42 UTC

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@nprofile…6g65 i have not

2026-05-12 21:35:34 UTC

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from a UI perspective, we have an ambiguity here, in terms of what is intended by the user with the single keypress
this could be resolved with different modes selected prior to the keypress, or by offering up the different options with one selected as a default

2026-05-12 21:34:04 UTC

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so here we have a situation where a single key press can reasonably suggest edits that "insert" three different kinds of tree nodes:
an O node, that's like a string insertion
a T node with a gap on the right
a T node with a gap on the left

2026-05-12 21:32:21 UTC

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here i'm using ? to represent gaps that must be filled in eventually

2026-05-12 21:31:57 UTC

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well if we have a way of representing an as of yet un-filled portion of a tree (also called a "hole" but this type a different sort, so i'll just call it a "gap" for clarity), we can say this:
we can also add either of
T 'f' _ ?
and
T 'f' ? _
to the stack as well

2026-05-12 21:29:56 UTC

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but there's ALSO a constructor `T` that takes two recursive trees
we obviously can't use that right? i mean, which subtree gets the hole? and what do we put in for the other subtree?

2026-05-12 21:28:42 UTC

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for instance, i dunno, something like
data Tree = Z | O Char Tree | T Char Tree Tree
now when we press a single key, we look at step 3 and say, well, there is a unique constructor `O` that takes a char and a recursive tree, yes, indeed, so we can push `O 't' _` to the stack

2026-05-12 21:26:01 UTC

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i phrased the above sequence of operations the way i did because i want to consider the possibility that our tree structure isn't as simple as lists
instead, lets imagine that its some arbitrary tree type that has many constructors some of them with char args

2026-05-12 21:23:49 UTC

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now, we could view key presses as complex commands, which specifically mean that precise thing. and that's fine. but i want to generalize this and think about something a bit more eh.. rich?

2026-05-12 21:22:00 UTC

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4. we partially apply cons (`:`) to the single char 't', and form a one hole zipper 't':_
5. we push that onto the tube-y context stack

2026-05-12 21:20:48 UTC

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from this perspective, we can describe the insertion operation as follows:
1. we have a whole subtree "o" to operate on
2. we want to insert a single character 't'
3. we find the unique list/string constructor that has a single char arg and a single list arg: cons (`:`)

2026-05-12 21:19:20 UTC

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but when we view these tree contexts through McBride's tube view, where a one hole context is a stack of frames of local subtrees, we get this:
fo|o
is the tube-y zipper
"o" @ [ 'o':_, 'f':_ ]
and
fot|o
is
"o" @ [ 't':_, 'o':_, 'f':_ ]

2026-05-12 21:16:23 UTC

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the act of typing a character, such as 't' should produce the string-with-insertion-cursor
fot|o
which is
"o" @ "fot_"
which is equivalent to updating the zipper to
"to" @ "fo_"
and then navigating to the next recursive tree position

2026-05-12 21:13:54 UTC

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a string-with-insertion-cursor, such as
fo|o
corresponds to the tree zipper
"o" @ "fo_"
where the LHS of @ is the thing in focus, the RHS is the one-hold context (with an _ representing the hole)

2026-05-12 21:12:18 UTC

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the observation to make is that if we view a text insertion zipper as a normal tree overtype zipper on a string, rather than a true insertion zipper, we can analyze insertion and overtype as follows:

2026-05-12 21:10:42 UTC

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this is basically an insertion zipper for a text editing string, which is a neat fact
perhaps we can make some larger unification of these ideas to understand how to get insertion editing operations for trees!

2026-05-12 21:09:09 UTC

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for a string-as-tree, the overtype zipper is still a node plus the tree around it
in this case, the node is an entire sub-string, ie a sublist, i.e. the tail of some portion of a non-empty list
the context is the rest of the tree around it, ie the not-tail part of the list

2026-05-12 21:07:58 UTC

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at this point its useful to emphasize that in tree zippers, there are two parts -- the node in focus, and the context of the rest of the tree around the node
similar to how overtype for strings is a character in focus and the rest of the string around it (qua pair of strings)

2026-05-12 21:06:35 UTC

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but strings/lists are just a kind of single-branching tree, so strings should ALSO have an overtype-style zipper when viewed as trees, and they do: it plucks out an entire sub-list from the string

2026-05-12 21:04:22 UTC

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in the case of a text editing zipper for overtype mode, that's pretty easy too:
it's not a pair of strings, but rather a string for the reversed stuff before the overwritable character, the character that would be overwritten with an edit, and the string after the character

2026-05-12 21:03:07 UTC

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the distinction between the Insert line cursor and the Overtype box cursor lines up rather neatly with the kind of zippers I mentioned earlier
text editing zippers are INSERT zippers, while tree zippers are OVERTYPE zippers
interesting!

2026-05-12 21:01:40 UTC

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so early electronic terminals kept the overwriting as a default, and also offered an insertion mode with a key to toggle. this is also why backspacing sometimes seems to do nothing in terminal emulators except move the cursor to the left -- teletypes couldn't backspace either

2026-05-12 21:00:23 UTC

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if you've ever wondered what the "Insert" key on a keyboard is for, it's for toggling between insertion and overwrite ("overtype") mode
overwrite was the default for decades, because terminals were _typewriters_ and you literally couldn't insert at all

2026-05-12 20:57:22 UTC

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the underline and box cursors were whole character width because they would be overlaid on top of an existing character to indicate that the character would be _replaced_ and _overwritten_

2026-05-12 20:56:34 UTC

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thats why it was a vertical line -- to fit between two characters. sometimes a subscripted ^ was used for a similar purpose

2026-05-12 20:55:49 UTC

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historically, the underline/box cursor and the vertical line cursor had different meanings/usages
the vertical line cursor was an insertion cursor that indicated you were going to insert a character at the cursor position BETWEEN existing characters in the string

2026-05-12 20:54:55 UTC

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in particular, I think it's useful to think about the different cursor types that exist in terminals, especially in older settings
what i mean is the difference between vertical line cursors and underline/box cursors
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/563/593/164/751/780/original/934c4e4ed7599182.png

2026-05-12 20:50:26 UTC

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you can massage the idea of splitting a string by saying well, you've "plucked" out a character from the middle, but i think this is a mistake. we're really dealing with distinct concepts and its useful to try to figure out how to understand their relationship

2026-05-12 20:49:21 UTC

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but the equivalent of this is hard to figure out for tree structures. the closest analog for tree structures has to pluck out an entire subtree, which isn't quite the same thing as splitting a string in two

2026-05-12 20:48:19 UTC

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the usual way of looking at a text editor through the lens of a zipper is to view the string/text as split in two, the stuff before the cursor and the stuff after, with the stuff before the cursor reversed

2026-05-12 20:46:18 UTC

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when we think about editors, the canonical example is a text editor, which is conceptually very simple. in the functional programming context, we often think of editors in terms of a structure called a zipper, which you can read about here:
https://wiki.haskell.org/Zipper

2026-05-04 16:36:23 UTC

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personally, I love the dry brushed/sponged look, and have spent the last few days making shaders to replicate it, but YMMV on what you like and want out of a scifi environment

2026-05-04 16:35:27 UTC

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dry brushed and sponged marbling is a very common thing in B5 for wall in general, and certainly breaks things up visually, but on its own it doesn't necessarily have a scifi feel to it
if anything, it's more 80s/90s DIY home decor, which is MY scifi jam but maybe not yours

2026-05-04 16:34:08 UTC

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in the case of B5's MedLab, they're checker boarded with bare painted wall behind them, which increases visual complexity by breaking up the higher-order monotony of the tiled Contour Spectrums
they're also marbled with what is like to be dry brushing or sponging

2026-05-04 16:32:21 UTC

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the lesson to take away from this, tho, is that breaking up a flat wall or other surface can be done relatively easily with some interesting tiled details. they don't have to be especially complex, just complex enough to not be a big blank solid color

2026-05-04 16:27:34 UTC

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and the number of teeth in the sawtooth increases, as well, and the spacing is variable
these panels show up in very few places in Babylon 5, and I'm not sure if they're used in other shows, nor what they are if not custom made

2026-05-04 16:25:09 UTC

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unlike the Sonex Contours, these are not beveled panels at all, they're flat and terraced, with a horizontal zigzag/saw tooth formed by different terraces. the higher up in the stack a terrace is, the further up the vertical dimension of the panel it goes

2026-05-04 16:23:34 UTC

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i don't actually know what those are, they might be a different kind of Sonex panel from the 80s/90s or they might be something different entirely, maybe custom made
here's a clearer view of their details, behind Garibaldi
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/228/238/058/243/original/3230cbc1a710709b.png

2026-05-01 18:03:30 UTC

new video!
Recreating the VPL DataGlove, Part 3: Tube+Fiber Flex Sensor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U971dbM8m20

2026-04-29 17:03:00 UTC

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@nprofile…659r ah see i grew up on the 90s scifi show version

2026-04-29 17:00:50 UTC

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@nprofile…659r i havent but it looks like a revival of that style and i therefore love it
but where's the guy who talks to animals?!

2026-04-29 16:29:13 UTC

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anyway, the futurismo of these shows, and the sincerity of their aspirationalism within that futurish setting, is what makes it so very TNG to me

2026-04-29 16:07:26 UTC

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it feels almost imaginable that someone in 1992 could express pride in winning American Gladiator, as if that were a genuine accomplishment on par with winning an Olympic gold medal
i can't see anyone feeling similarly about WipeOut or its ilk

2026-04-05 18:00:48 UTC

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@nprofile…jwpj but also, VPL's work was almost entirely inaccessible as well

2026-04-05 18:00:20 UTC

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@nprofile…jwpj VPL was almost entirely in the 80s, and was rather a distinct phase of VR from the 90s wave

2026-04-05 17:23:48 UTC

its kind of frustrating that the VR scene of the 1990s produced basically 0 books about their adventures in creating the future, because they kind had no soul and no vision

2026-03-25 21:17:01 UTC

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@nprofile…ted5 when did that class run?

2026-03-25 21:12:26 UTC

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that's not to say that it makes a compelling case internally, but at least there's a clear sense that you can use the tool to create interesting things you might want to look at
way better than anything in the VRML book

2026-03-25 21:10:13 UTC

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now, i do get that this book is a technical introduction to VRML, but its hard to pick it up and feel like this is something worth spending time on
whereas the VRML sourcebook for VRML 2.0 at least throws a weird alien world on the cover to entice you

2026-03-25 21:08:26 UTC

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Jaron Lanier had the good sense to pitch VPL's work on VR by making appeals to human creativity and expression, which is at least an open ended invitation to fill in the blanks with compelling ideas

2026-03-25 21:07:16 UTC

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its not just VRML, but VRML is the easiest thing to point to
these same people are still around, and were pushing the metaverse a few years back, with painfully similar schlocky pitches
no one cares about ~commerce~
you won't attract people with that as your pitch

2026-03-25 21:06:08 UTC

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and its an interesting contrast to the incredible imagination behind hypermedia that existed from the mid 80s through the mid 90s, and the web from the mid 90s on, and video games for forever

2026-03-25 21:04:59 UTC

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now look, sure, i get it. it's early days of VRML, from 1994 to 1997, but even through to the late 90s or early 2000s, you'd be hard pressed to find VRML content that was in any way compelling. the imagination for what it could be was just.. boring and bland and schlocky

2026-03-25 21:00:10 UTC

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now, given that these are static things, not dynamic, interactive environments, its hard to find any of this compelling on its own
VRML 1.0 didn't even have animations and such, so you couldn't even make little characters that did stuff. that came in VRML 2.0 / VRML97

2026-03-25 20:58:58 UTC

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the aforementioned track light is described somewhere in source but never even shown

2026-03-25 20:57:43 UTC

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a blank building exterior with a bench and lamp
a studio apartment with furniture and kitchen
a banana
a stair case with 3d text as buttons
a computer lab
an abstract architectural space
an abstract representation of SQL
a molecule
a slot machine
South Beach in SF

2026-03-25 20:52:33 UTC

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here's a list of example objects/spaces in the book, in order:
an AR15
a hexagon
some squiggle writing
the VRML logo
the planet earth
the New College vrmLab
a cube
an orrery (consistently mispelled as orrey)
a strange building interior that's described as a "stock ticker"

2026-03-25 20:47:40 UTC

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what i mean by that is like.. the things imagined are so boring and schlocky. the mythos around the motivation for VRML is all like.. William Gibson's Matrix, or Neal Stephenson's Metaverse, but the canonical examples are stupid
like, one example given is a track light
whoopie

2026-03-25 20:46:13 UTC

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reading through the VRML book that Mark Pesce wrote, i feel like there's a real sense of .. not having much to say with VRML
i think this was an eternal problem, partially due to VRML's static nature, but even then i think it's not logically impossible to say stuff

2026-03-25 20:36:06 UTC

VRML 1.0 is a truly weird language. not sure if this is carried through to later versions and its descendants but, wow what a strange language

2026-03-25 04:36:35 UTC

Sonique's It Feels So Good is such a great song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ZaxGR21sc

2026-03-25 03:10:13 UTC

Sadeness, by Enigma, is such a quintessentially 90s song, holy moly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4maoo4A3x4

2026-03-22 17:54:17 UTC

@nprofile…4wfp have you heard eire og's sam song?

2026-03-21 07:07:51 UTC

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@nprofile…55vq the early web was fairly empty and dead too. finding information and shopping were some pretty major drivers of use, and then forums, art, publishing, etc.
but the web is a different kind of medium, and purposes there are different sorts

2026-03-21 07:06:11 UTC

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so why when you put a headset on do many people get sick? have we actually sat down and determined the fine cuts that have to be made to induce that? i've never found anything explaining the distinction, nor anyone even grappling with that weird disconnect