Consider all the helpful things that people do even though they don't have to and aren't getting paid.

Now imagine they didn't also have to have jobs in order to survive.

#hopePunk #UBI

DG posted this on Facebook (Can someone please drag him over to fedi?):

I recommend rewatching the amazing TV series of I, Claudius starring so many great British actors that it's a landmark.

It's also a warning.

Before the series starts, Julius Caesar marches army across the river Tiber. Oops, a conquering hero is not supposed to do that -- but Caesar declares himself emperor, and in that action, he destroys the power of the senate.

Later on, Caesar is assassinated by the Roman senate, and while much has been made of Caesar's death as a tragedy, I always root for the senate. Caesar was a dictator.

After some unpleasantness with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian becomes the emperor. He does not restore the senate's authority, he becomes Augustus, the emperor.

That's where I, Claudius begins and we see Augustus (Brian Blessed) trying to be a good emperor, but he is succeeded by Tiberius who is a terrible emperor who is succeeded by Caligula who is an even worse emperor. The Praetorian Guard assassinated Caligula and by all accounts they did a good thing.

Caligula was succeeded by Claudius, who ruled for over two decades. Rome settled down for a whle. Despite the portrayal of Claudius as a very good emperor, that's a fiction created by the author Robert Graves. More likely, Claudius was somewhat deficient, and the empire ran itself.

Unfortunately, Claudius was succeeded by Nero, about whom nothing flattering has been written.

We have enough fragments of the Satyricon by Petronius to get some sense of the time, but Petronius apparently pissed off Nero and committed suicide before the Roman guards could arrive to kill him. (The Satyricon, both the original story and the Fellini movie developed from it, suggest that homosexual relationships were commonplace and easily accepted in ancient Rome.)

The real tragedy here is that we really do not have enough information about the history of Rome, literacy was not common.

Future generations will find much more exhaustive records of the collapse of the American empire. Trump's name will probably rank with Nero or maybe Caligula -- and future generations will have mountains of evidence to demonstrate just how our particular empire collapsed -- and will argue at length whether or not we deserved it.

Or ... we can turn this thing around before it goes over the cliff, and future generations will read a much more admirable history of this time.

#USpol #IClaudius #empire

RE: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117439273169225397

Shorter Torvalds: "Guns LLMs don't kill people projects -- people kill people projects!"

Gee, I guess there's nothing we can do to stop people from submitting slop; maybe we should arm all the coders with slop-detection tools... [/s]

RE: https://mastodon.au/@Heliograph/117435944551788199

Image-description correction: the rook says "I forgot you move in an L-shape" (to the knight, which does).

Is it worth linking to my BandCamp even if I haven't added any new tracks in, what, a couple of years now?

(Creative slump slumps creatively.)

Corporations are a fraud.

(This is a side-toot.)

@Serena @brooke @fluffgar @joshsusser @violet @joewynne @rnd @jalanhenning @emptytank

So now I have to figure out a venue, and that depends on what folks are good with.

Immediate options:

• here on fedi (either mention everyone in a thread, or try to find a group-bot -- but I'd also have to decide exactly how "secret" this should be... which might be "not at all"; I really haven't decided)
• Discord (ugh but also easy)
• Signal (differently-ugh, less community-ish)
• other...?

I could even split between different venues -- e.g. post stuff both here and on chat, and just deal with there being different discussions.

Thoughts, suggestions, cheese?

"They've put fungus on my fungus!"

#sporespondence #fungibleAssets #lichenSubscribe #DurhamNC

#Gimp has taken to just crashing randomly, and I am not loving it.

I tried to use #Krita -- for one thing, it can save all your open images as a session -- but I couldn't figure out how to do some very basic navigation stuff.

So... back to Gimp.

If they'd only submitted one request, I would probably have approved it...

I don't suppose there are any #StarTrek fans (especially if steeped in TOS) who might enjoy being a test-audience for a parody-comic I've been working on.

Code too spicy? Use open sauce.

#lowQualityPost

I don't suppose anyone on fedi has used the city-bus system here in #DurhamNC ...?

I'm trying to find out whether it's even a practical alternative for when the routes happen to go between where you are and where you're trying to get to/from -- which is the case for at least a couple of common destinations we have, which means that the non-driving members of #HyperttwinManor might be able to use it...

(I also thought it would be faintly amusing to do some video-blogging about it -- kinda like White Person Columbuses Public Transit in The South, or something. >.>)

#publicTransit

TFW you can't find either of the things you know you have which would solve the problem more elegantly, so you have to kluge something by opening a virgin unopened bag of parts from #RadioShack.

...and then it turns out you didn't need them after all. I have needlessly defiled a sacred relic, and I hate it when that happens.

(Who among us has not experienced this tragic turn of events, I ask unto thee.)

So, anyway, the office's hifi amp (Yamaha CR-600), which weighs at least as much as your average laser-printer, is now in the equipment loft overhead -- so I can finally get this goldang full-height equipment rack outta here...

So, our 2010 Honda Odyssey has this weird feature(?) wherein anytime the battery gets disconnected, you have to enter a PIN for the nav system and another one for the radio.

CarMax didn't know what the numbers were when I bought it.

I took it to our local Honda dealer, and they reset them for me but wouldn't tell me what they are.

I figured out on my own that they're based on serial numbers -- I found the numbers and was able to derive the correct PINs, and we now have them both stuck on the dashboard for easy reference.

(Once you enter them, they're both unlocked until the next time the battery gets disconnected or discharged. You don't have to enter them whenever you start the car, even many days later.)

What I really want to know, though, is this: WHO EVEN THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA???

#firmwareGripe

RE: https://mastodon.social/@In_Otter_News/117241778530997601

post describes video content, but does not adequately convey adorbness

are otters really just watercats?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/117218444824347718

This essay is almost a year old, but a lot of the same territory is now being relitigated...

This seems like a particularly good definition:

Elected Republicans have an ought-to-be [which is basically] that some people matter and other people do not matter, and that life must be earned by generating profit for people whose lives do matter

#USPol #metaPol

So, Twitter 2...

I want to believe their intentions are as they say, but I Have Questions...

...starting with: why would anyone with truly good intentions be building YACS (Yet Another Centralized Service) in this day and age?

My top theory now is that they're using "record label" tactics: hire and deploy a bunch of truly sincerely well-meaning kids to write your promotional copy, interface with the potential customers, and build the initial service. (...while making sure the fine-print lets you enshittify it all later without let or hindrance.)

...but I'd love to be proved wrong.

If anyone knows anything about the people behind this, please feel free to pass it along.

...and now I want to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show but with Muppets (except for Brad & Janet).

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@rzeta0/117167053434966332

They haven't enshittified LibreOffice! (This shouldn't need to be a cause for celebration, but here we are.)