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

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npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

NIP-05 Address

beka_valentine@kolektiva-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxukmy4ylec97k22y3zjz78xwghcpkr3gzu0rnd6q3378qpk2s6rqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qspknnv

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relay.ditto.pub

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npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

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Last Notes

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

2026-05-26 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"?

2026-05-12 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!

2026-05-04 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

2026-05-01 18:03:30 UTC

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

2026-04-05 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

2026-03-21 07:05:07 UTC

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people spend hours and hours and hours playing video games on monitors, with all sorts of in-game movement that doesn't correspond to their body movement, and they don't get sick. they move their heads around a whole bunch and nothing, no sickness

2026-03-21 07:02:03 UTC

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also, no one has really addressed the nausea problem in a satisfactory way
and i dont mean that they haven't fixed it, i mean they haven't actually grappled with the giant mystery of why it even happens at all, because it obviously SHOULDNT

2026-03-21 06:59:59 UTC

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a 200 dollar headset that was JUST a display, and you used it by sitting at your computer and used your mouse and keyboard, would be the most popular VR system, i bet. make it a small delta over normal games and start from there

2026-03-21 06:58:42 UTC

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even the VR that tries to be useful for games tries to be unnecessarily divergent from them. instead of just goggles in place of monitors, you have to have a whole huge room scale hand held yadda yadda bullshit, which means everything is now suddenly a whole ordeal

2026-03-21 06:57:34 UTC

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this is why games and game-like social spaces persist as the dominant form of virtual environments
VR that tries to be vastly different fails and fails

2026-03-21 06:56:16 UTC

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people turn to these things for escape, but being dumped into a world where you have to be the entire reason is not escape, it's a burden. giving people an option for purpose is valuable

2026-03-21 06:55:14 UTC

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video games have always understood that purpose is key. even the smallest purpose like gold farming is a draw. but a blank canvas of a world is .. daunting? overwhelming? people don't know what to do with themselves

2026-03-21 06:53:36 UTC

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the fundamental issue is purpose. most VR stuff is completely purposeless. a void where you must supply your own reason to be there. sometimes the novelty of 3D immersion is the purpose, but that wears out quickly

2026-03-21 06:35:35 UTC

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even Star Trek: The Next Generation understood how to make these places compelling! just copy that stuff! but no, the best they ever found was terrible chat rooms, and Second Life

2026-03-21 06:33:54 UTC

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its actually immensely frustrating to me that precisely zero lessons were learned about what makes a virtual space appealing
in the context of video games, they understood this completely. but for some reason the "VR" versions of things have just remained soulless dead zones

2026-03-21 06:30:35 UTC

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that the lessons weren't learned, and that many of the exact same people were involved this time around, is really sad. i mean, nostalgia is fun, but you should use your nostalgia for inspiration and for learning lessons, NOT for copying your own failures!

2026-03-21 06:29:23 UTC

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and it suffers from all the same problems. i mean literally, there were VR real estate speculators in the 90s, there was no content, no reason to use a VR space, people not getting that commercial spaces are pointless in VR, etc etc etc

2026-03-21 06:28:25 UTC

the modern metaverse/web3/whatever bullshits, is so funny because the best examples of it look no better than stuff from the 90s, except unlike the stuff from the 90s, there's now no reason for it to be so ass

2026-03-20 17:25:48 UTC

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he does this using the immense power of foresight, and sets it up so that the terrible ability to control the future that this creates is eventually so awful that rebellion against the new conquerors is inevitable and births a new and enduring age of human freedom and flourishing

2026-03-20 17:23:52 UTC

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a rebellious man with personal grievance against the empire creates a political project which uses religion to manipulate the people of a remote, barren world into going on an expansionist conquest to take over the galaxy from the empire

2026-03-20 17:22:20 UTC

guess the scifi book series:
humanity becomes ensnared by robots and the men who control them, and has to rebel against their rule and banish them to history
a great and terrible empire controls the galaxy, their power seems inescapable...

2026-03-18 21:21:13 UTC

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"but what about the heat from the intensive computations in the CPUs and GPUs? that's a lot of heat!"
doesn't matter. it literally cannot be more heat than is coming in, because the energy all comes from the solar panels anyway

2026-03-18 21:19:51 UTC

can you cool data centers in space? yes. just build it out of many satellites instead of a single giant box and you're fine. the satellite can already cool itself, so multiplying the number by thousands doesn't change that

2026-03-10 16:31:20 UTC

its really hard for me to express how enraging the lat few years of software have been
i've been saying for a while that there's been significant, voluntary regression of software quality for a while now, but this kind of obvious regression makes it undeniable
this was a choice
https://x.com/peer_rich/status/2031287133982392412

2026-03-03 09:22:03 UTC

there isn't a single thing that the tech world is doing right now that is interesting and compelling, tbh
everyone is doing stupid boring shit that doesn't matter and has no vision

2026-03-02 17:11:55 UTC

i'm a little surprised there's been no real effect on the markets tbh

2026-03-01 09:47:59 UTC

SF has mosquitos in february 🥰

2026-03-01 08:45:45 UTC

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the oldest known built wooden structure is almost half a MILLION years old, and the fact that we have any trace of it at all is incredible because wood generally doesn't last or leave much of a trace
who knows what else was out there, lost to time

2026-03-01 08:18:38 UTC

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human history is incomprehensibly long, and we know practically nothing about what happened, who these people were, what their lives were like
oceans of time stretch behind us, unfathomably deep, full of people and stories we'll never know

2026-03-01 08:15:22 UTC

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when the city at Çatalhöyük was being founded, Jericho in the West Bank had been inhabited for 2000 years

2026-03-01 08:13:15 UTC

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when the first pyramids were being built in Ancient Egypt, the city at Çatalhöyük was 5000 years old and had been abandoned for over 3000 years

2026-03-01 07:40:01 UTC

when Athens was at its peak in 500 BC, the Egyptian pyramids were already an ancient mystery people would go visit on vacation
the Trojan War happened a thousand years earlier and the pyramids were still ancient by comparison

2026-02-27 21:00:33 UTC

over the last month, poutine has become a core part of my diet lmao x.x

2026-02-25 00:25:20 UTC

liberal governor Gavin Newsom is retweeting known neo nazi Richard Hanania
great

2026-02-21 08:12:28 UTC

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in my grand TV show, Athens, i would have aGreek chorus, where the episodes begin and end not with traditional "last time on" or whatever
but rather with actors playing the chorus members in the scene, be when they're done with the chorus, they simply go right into character

2026-02-20 18:45:45 UTC

someone should give me 500k per episode to make a show called Athens, spanning 800 years of ancient greek history

2026-02-19 20:22:43 UTC

Starfleet Academy Episode 3 is so fucking bad omg

2026-02-17 05:10:59 UTC

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@nprofile…4wfp ah! i didnt see one, but i didn't look very hard lol

2026-02-10 19:31:39 UTC

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..are NOT part of the same phoneme
so real AND ALSO FAKE BUT CROMULENT minimal pairs count as evidence against two phones being allophones of the same phoneme
we'd prefer real minimal pairs, but if we have to invent cromulent ones, that's fine too

2026-02-10 19:30:22 UTC

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so then, we can use this cromulency test to determine whether or not a word COULD possibly exist
so if we don't have a minimal pair for two sounds, but we could invent a cromulent word that would CREATE such a minimal pair if it existed, then thats a reason to think the sounds..

2026-02-10 19:28:49 UTC

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but what if i told you that there WAS an English word "spod" and it means a specific kind of screw used in woodworking? would you find that implausible?
no, "spod" is a perfectly cromulent sequence of sounds in English and we just happen to not use it for anything

2026-02-10 19:27:15 UTC

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for instance, you do want some sparsity to your set of actual words, with relation to all the possible words, because that helps you deal with noisy environments better. sparsity is good for signal processing, it's a kind of error correction and redundancy

2026-02-10 02:32:55 UTC

the government secretly experimented on its citizens without their consent? im shocked!surprised! how could this happen again! for the millionth time!

2026-02-10 02:27:44 UTC

something really interesting about linguistic phenomena is that they often seem to operate on principles of equivalence that are completely contrary to how typical machine learning functions

2026-02-08 20:45:05 UTC

people say "Oh, San Jose is bigger than SF! it's a big city!"
no. San Jose is a big suburb. it has like five tall buildings. Berkeley and Oakland both have downtowns with more tall buildings than San Jose
the only thing that makes San Jose """big""" is its vast sprawl

2026-02-08 02:30:24 UTC

generative AI seems to have overfit on a specific style of extremely polished fake looking gaudy images, and dragging it away from that is a chore

2026-02-02 08:07:47 UTC

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and even in militaries, there are many many many roles that people perform that are not shooting things
spies, communications, signals intelligence, radar, drone pilot, mechanics, cooks, doctors and nurses, ware house workers, laundry workers, IT people
all very important

2026-02-02 08:04:50 UTC

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unless you have significant supply lines to people growing food or manufacturing weapons and equipment, you're not having a revolution
are you ready to farm for the revolution?
are you ready to learn to manufacture for the revolution?
or drive a truck for the revolution?

2026-02-02 08:03:03 UTC

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people who think revolutions are entirely, or even mostly, about shooting things or killing people have no conception of what revolutions look like
firstly, revolutions, as with all wars, are primarily a logistics problem

2026-02-02 08:01:36 UTC

"Are you ready to KILL for the revolution? Are you ready to DIE for the revolution?! GET READY"
gimme a break man, you folx are revolution larpers saying shit like that

2026-02-01 18:33:43 UTC

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@nprofile…74ng there's an old but really good blog post from Geoff Pullum, discussing this fact in response to a commentor on @nprofile…l8xm's blog, back in 2005
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html

2026-01-31 05:09:58 UTC

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the honest tinfoil hat nutballs are gonna have to start inventing stories about the illuminati secretly trying to make the world better and kinder, just to get their kicks

2026-01-31 05:08:46 UTC

being a conspiracy theorist right now has gotta be rough. you spend your life talking about the secret pedophile torture cabal running the world and now one believes you and now it's just all in the open

2026-01-31 03:37:29 UTC

i think it's outrageous that we live in a world where the secret cabal of powerful men is fucking children instead of plotting to becoming immortal by merging with a super-intelligent AI named Icarus

2026-01-24 20:22:27 UTC

i think the fact that they keep killing white people at protests is going to radicalize a lot of previously fence sitting white people tbh

2026-01-23 17:42:08 UTC

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@nprofile…uryc @nprofile…c9kz don't leave us hanging, post some pics exemplifying what was so good about them! :)

2026-01-19 23:28:45 UTC

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the original intention was for Jedi outfits to be black and more like samurai or ninja garb, hence why ROTJ Luke wore black
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/924/354/544/647/044/original/f64a412cdd48f701.jpg

2026-01-19 23:27:42 UTC

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the thing on the left was intended by Lucas to be the Star Wars equivalent of the thing on the right
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/924/343/352/049/951/original/be0daeab3dea50d8.webp
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/924/343/791/580/270/original/b95ded7aaf380c2f.jpg

2026-01-19 23:22:02 UTC

its absolutely fascinating the the entire Jedi vibe that we have today, including a bunch of the lore, is the result of fans becoming accustomed to thinking of the ROTJ force ghost outfits as quintessentially Jedi, rather than as the equivalent of 1950s lounge robes as intended

2026-01-16 03:19:07 UTC

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this show is so bad i'd rather be watching Section 31

2026-01-16 03:05:41 UTC

im only 5 minutes in and Starfleet Academy is terrible lmao. who wrote this trash

2026-01-12 04:44:18 UTC

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honestly, some of the most interesting and delightful experiences in my life so far have been being deep in a DXM trip watching season 3 of Battlestar: Galactica or listening to gyuto monks chant

2026-01-12 04:36:20 UTC

i could really go for a dose of a nice dissociative right about now. where do we even get good dissociatives these days

2026-01-12 04:09:34 UTC

Season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery is the most insulting piece of trash, second only to Star Trek: Section 31

2026-01-11 20:44:34 UTC

the best thing you can do to your tomato based pasta sauce is dump gobs of spiciness into it. cayenne pepper, harissa, you name it. just make it spicy and itll be infinitely better

2025-12-22 19:51:30 UTC

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if your approach to revolution cannot win whenever capitalists defend themselves from your revolution, then you need to change strategies
anything less is masturbatory adventurism

2025-12-22 19:50:32 UTC

I love it when leftists make an argument that ends up with them saying "well if capitalists didn't ruin it, they would've won!"
like, buddy, capitalists exist and the whole point is to defeat them. of COURSE they'll try to ruin your revolutionary project!

2025-12-21 06:08:12 UTC

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i think a lot of this comes out of not really planning ahead. so people have clever ideas, maybe write them down, maybe not, cant fit them in with later stories, etc.
compare with Babylon 5, which would bring up 9 million interesting things and pay them all out eventually

2025-12-21 06:00:46 UTC

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another example of this is in Earth: Final Conflict, where the arrival of Be'Lai on earth reveals the existence of an entire Taelon dissident movement with complex difficulties due to the Commonality's psychic link

2025-12-21 05:54:52 UTC

so many scifi shows of the past raised really REALLY interesting plot elements and then just let them fall on the floor
two examples that come to mind:
in DS9, there Maquis were a clear seed of a storyline about the imperfections of the Federation, but that never went anywhere

2025-12-19 17:38:27 UTC

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but then he lists out his sources for these fantasies and its like 90% scifi
he doesn't even list out the more serious futurology work from the time period, like Futureshock, or the non-fiction discussions that folx like Clarke and Asimov constantly had in the public sphere

2025-12-19 17:36:49 UTC

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and like, before you can jump to the conclusion that capitalists had other priorities -- which is a very real thing -- you have to first ask, where did you even get the idea that this was the future?
he insists he got it from all the people that were trusted to predict it

2025-12-19 17:35:53 UTC

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and Graeber's answer is "well it might have been possible, we just don't know for SURE, but I think most of it was, and the main reason is that the capitalists didn't want to do it!"

2025-12-19 17:34:55 UTC

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he consistently wrote things like "It's the year 2000. We were promised flying cars. I don't see ANY flying cars! Why? Why! Why."
and while its funny when Captain Sisko says that while selling IBM's linux servers, it's not funny when serious social commentary has that form

2025-12-19 17:08:14 UTC

one of the things that was very annoying about David Graeber is that he seems to genuinely have been convinced by the utopian techno capitalist visions of the future from his youth