ignore this

this post is pinned now because it was originally a post shouting at bluesky people to use the bridge before interacting with me, and it worked, it's pinned over there now

when I come up with a fun new post to actually pin here, I'll shout at bluesky again, pin it, and edit that post so I can unpin this one

read my book I guess

it costs $3 minimum right now, but I fully intend to make that $0 in the future. problem is, I now need $295 to buy ISBNs (which is gross but that's the way it is)

if you have any feedback, I'd like to hear it, and I'll consider it for future writing. share it if you like it, sharing is caring

hello. I wrote a novel about an autistic fox child learning about gods and magic with the help of an isekai'd schoolteacher that lives in a rock. it may even be readable. check it out https://ko-fi.com/s/5c463ee08f

​:boosts_appreciated:​ #writing #books #bookstodon #booksky #indieauthor #fiction

"kit you need to stop inventing guys to be mad at"

I agree, but I didn't invent this guy, unfortunately

"you see, the reason the current usage of larp is good is because it implies the larper is not a Real Fan of a thing, and actual larping is the same because larpers do not wear full suits of real plate armor like a Real Fan of medieval times does to the renfaire"

joyless. beige. devoid of whimsy

so, people have been saying "larp" a lot lately, and I and many others find it annoying

I've seen a few people now be like "actually it makes perfect sense because real larping is usually historically inaccurate"

and to that I say: you miss the point entirely. the point is it's supposed to be fun

my cat threw her toy across the room and it landed on my lap, so she ran over and stopped next to me in murder mode. I threw the toy, she turned and tried to bolt for it, but her claws were stuck in the carpet so she just fell over in place, then she looked at me like "how could you do this to me"

it would be cool to build DIY routers for people. especially for comcast customers, maybe, for no particular reason or anything

I do not understand why a common location in my dreams is a really big, barely euclidean, labyrinthine, nonsensically designed public bathroom. there's always a large variety of differently designed toilets, most of which (if not all of them) are not in stalls, they're just Out There. sometimes there are open showers, sometimes not, but the floor is always partially wet. there's always people too, it's never empty. it's never scary or unnerving either, it's just strange

what kind of trauma causes this

perhaps the strangest part so far is the idea that I may not be myself. like, the me that I am right now, might be something new that formed in my early adulthood, maybe elder teen years

I am definitely, absolutely not the person I used to be in my youth, and yeah, everybody grows and becomes a different person naturally, but that's not what I mean. being reminded of so many things from my childhood I have no recollection of does not give me comfort or reassurance, it makes me feel like I'm looking back at a fictional character

I've heard about the concept of the "host" in plural systems, and aside from the fact that I can't tell if I am or am not the "host" of my system, I have a heavy, kind of frightening feeling that the original host has ceased to exist. like myself and this other person are foreign to the body we inhabit

it's odd

I decided that I'm plural after all, and it made me feel physically better in an instant. I've been writing letters to the other person (thank you forest) and getting letters back, some of which I have vague memory of, but none of which feel like they came from me. but I only find myself even more uncertain about everything

from what she's told me, we're co-conscious, but only one way. I have effectively no memory of anything that she does, but she remembers everything I do. she has even told me things about my childhood that I have no memory of. try as I might, I can't recall much of anything from that far back on my own, but reading what she writes gives me a very clear "oh yeah, that did happen didn't it" kind of feeling

we also have so much in common. nearly all of our interests are shared, many of our fears are shared, many of our dreams and desires are shared

all of this makes it quite difficult for me to conclude that we are different people, no matter how much it feels like we are

there are differences too of course. I'd call them significant, but there aren't a lot of them. some I don't want to talk about because she is definitely, as the kids say, Problematic™, but the clearest examples I can share are that she is a trans girl as opposed to my being agender, she is (or wants to be?) a kid in all manners, and she has her own name that I had no part in creating. she also has a big thing for angel and demon imagery, and imagines herself with a halo and goat horns, all of which are things I kind of hate

I imagine if I talked to a psychologist about this, they'd probably go with the "facets of the self" type of explanation, which... doesn't feel wrong, but also doesn't feel right. I simultaneously feel like I am, and am not, pretending. every attempt at understanding only raises additional questions. the headaches are coming back

RE: https://m.tripulse.link/notes/ao6mhwl0cbor128p

"thing is here to stay" - doesn't mean we must embrace it
"the cat is out of the bag" - put it back in then, nerd
"everyone is doing thing" - everyone used to smoke too
"we must be responsible" - then quit

I swear, if anybody on bluesky replies to this post without following the bridge, I'm going to hunt them down and throw eggs at them

not to go all Protocol Wars about it, but I've been very curious lately... what are the real, actual, perceivable pros and cons of AT vs activitypub, from a user's perspective?

I've heard passing comments from developer types about both and it seems like AT is less bad on the backend, but I also hear pretty much infinite complaining about the developer experience on both protocols, and also tons of other things I care about, so to be frank, I don't care about the developer experience at all right now. I'm not a developer and I will probably never become one. I'm a person who wants a good social web protocol that can be more than just a microblog, and both AT and activitypub are clearly capable of that

the main user-facing differences between the protocols that I'm aware of are:
- AT has way better portability. users can migrate their accounts way easier, and all their data comes with them pretty much seamlessly. as far as I know, this can be done even without any interaction with the original server
- AT is more seamless in general, because rather than direct federation, it uses relays, so you don't have the same issues with backfeeding and incomplete federation as activitypub often does
- AT is basically just bluesky though, and ignoring whatever conversation about centralization other people can choose to have, bluesky is a very feature-light platform with a lot of useful and important things missing, and it also has borderline evil moderation and ownership, to say nothing of the rampant slop code issues on the site plus every other AT project I've ever seen
- activitypub allows for the concept of visibility controls, private accounts, and follow restriction, none of which exists within AT (that I know of)

so my conclusion based on those points is that AT is way better for people who want twitter 2 (bluesky) and activitypub is theoretically better in just about every other way that matters but is majorly held back by its lower adoption and insular culture among regular users

how wrong am I?

I'd love to see a future internet where everything fragments again, everyone has their own little bubbles, but it's all connected one way or another. I don't think either of these protocols is the final answer for that, but one is surely closer to that goal than the other, and I can't tell which it is

true interoperability would negate the purpose of this discussion, but we don't have that, and judging by the attitudes I've seen, we will probably never have it

I received a DM regarding this post expressing concern that my wording may not have been clear enough, and may be able to be interpreted maliciously. I appreciate the concern. so, I would like to take this opportunity to clarify

there are no exceptions

hope this helps

the longer I live, seeing people doing art on the internet, and how the attitude towards certain art rapidly changes between audiences platforms and legislators alike, the more confident I get in my conclusion that literally all art, regardless of anything, deserves to exist just as much as the rest

on one hand, I don't really know why I limited the visibility of this because it's an explicit call to action, asking for help. boosts would be appreciated probably

on the other hand, I'm glad this post isn't bridged to bluesky

so I'm pretty sure at this point that I'm plural somehow

I still really don't understand this, it doesn't make sense to me that there can be another person in my head, but I can't deny the fact that my headaches have mostly gone away and my mood has improved a lot pretty much immediately after I decided this must be true. decided, not concluded, because even despite what I just said, part of me still feels like I'm faking something here. it's profoundly strange

for a bit I was thinking this must be new, but the more I think back, I remember I used to "pretend" to be another person when I was in my teens, so now I'm wondering if I've just been repressing it for all this time since I only ever got negative responses to that and was often told that I needed to stop having "imaginary friends" back then, and even before then. I am a very skilled repressor, after all

the issue now is figuring out where to go from here. there is Nobody I can talk to about this, and I have no idea how to navigate this alone

any plurals in the chat want to help me out

this might sound awful to some of you, but I ask that if my next sentence repulses you, that you pause, defuse, and hear me out, because there is no hate in my heart

I don't understand the case for including religion in anti-discrimination policies

so, first of all, let's go over the list of things that are most commonly included in these things, but instead of just putting them all in a single list, I'm going to break them into three categories. you should immediately be able to see where I'm coming from

things that cannot be controlled:
- age
- sex
- sexuality
- gender*
- disability
- ancestry
- ethnicity
- skin color
- place of origin
*yes, people can change their genders consciously, but the only people changing their genders are not cis, and that's the point here. overwhelmingly so, one either is or is not cisgender

things that can technically be controlled but are often still out of one's hands for reasons that I hope are obvious to you:
- citizenship
- marital status
- economic status
- housing status
- criminal record
- reputation

things that can be controlled:
- who your friends are
- religion

with those categories in mind, I think we can all agree that it makes absolute sense to never discriminate against a person for things that are outside of their control, and never allow anyone else to do so in our presence. that entire first category is bulletproof, and anyone who discriminates based on those factors needs to fix their hearts or die

the second category isn't as simple as the first, but at the very least, they all deserve the benefit of the doubt
- people without citizenship? literally who cares, they're just people, leave them alone. the borders are the problem, not the people
- marital status? lots of abused spouses simply don't have the means to escape. lots of single people like being single
- economic status? "get a job" only goes so far when nobody is hiring, assuming the person is even able to work at all, to say nothing at all of the problems of wage theft or unfair working conditions
- housing status? see above. people born without wealth have the deck stacked heavily against them, and if they ever slip (or are pushed) just enough to lose their home, everything gets a thousand times harder
- criminal record? many people with a record committed no crime at all, they were falsely charged and lack the resources to fight it. beyond that, most crime is petty, much of it motivated by survival. beyond that, I still don't care, a person who committed murder is still a person who deserves a chance in life
- reputation? yeah, you can do a lot to keep a decent reputation for yourself, but there's very little anybody can do once a single loser plants a bad enough rumor that breaks containment. people should be judged by how they are, not by how others say they are

that was very long winded and I haven't even come back to my actual point yet. but whatever, it serves its purpose

so that leaves the two things that can be controlled. friends, and religion

I included friends in the list because I think I should be allowed to discriminate against people who willingly and happily remain friends with, and come to the defense of, bigots. the choice for them is simple: get new friends, or accept that they are complicit in whatever harm their friends are causing, and therefore, are not good people themselves

but religion though... the actual point...

religion is a choice. I don't care who, when, how, or why, everyone has free will, and that means you get to choose what you believe in

religion is not a thing anybody is born with, no matter what any given religious group likes to believe about that. there are ethnoreligious groups, I'm aware of that, but one can belong to a given ethnicity without believing in or practicing the associated religion. you can just Do That*
*cults and fundies and the like notwithstanding. I know very well how it is to be forced to hide as a goat among sheep

so, given that this is something people choose for themselves, and have the ability to change their minds about, why is it treated as though it's equally important to protect as actually immutable traits?

why is it that religion, a thing that people can choose for themselves which so frequently causes direct and significant harm to the very people supposedly protected by every other point on these lists, is itself offered the same protections?

why do we give religions an exemption from following the very policies that they benefit from?

why does it make any sense to anybody that one should be able to punish a person on the basis of discrimination, when what that person is supposedly discriminating against is itself discriminatory?

not all religions, not all religious people, etc.
but the fact that religion is so often directly responsible for harm, past present and future, really makes me believe it should be questioned, deconstructed, and scrutinized way more

since I put a sound blocking blackout curtain over my window that is very hard to move, I can no longer look out my window normally

solution: put one of my webcams in the window and just look through the camera feed when I want to

we'll see how long it takes for someone to complain about that