Posts by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
(DIR) Post #Ahw6Vj2eAH7zhcfhzM by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-05-06T08:03:38Z
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It is intensely irritating to me that the price of saving our species from catastrophic die-off from COVID was apparently fascism. It is not making me optimistic for what will happen when it fully hits people what climate change is going to do to us
(DIR) Post #Ahw6VlP3NwEv1hAdBw by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-05-06T08:11:08Z
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We so successfully marginalized fascism that Nazis became one of the default enemies it's OK to kill in video games, yet somehow it's come back. Meanwhile socialism never died despite centuries of capital trying to stamp it out, yet when the crisis comes we're factionalized, lethargic, and ineffectual
(DIR) Post #Ahw6VlP3NwEv1hAdBx by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-05-06T08:06:53Z
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(And before you doomer me, I'm trying to write a novel that's optimistic about the possibility of surviving that. It's some of the best writing I've ever done but it is HARD. WORK.)
(DIR) Post #AmKM3yXwWk8p9fIoVM by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-09-24T01:46:24Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
It's actually kind of fucked that the concept of self-care is now being sold to us as "you deserve the right to spend money on consumable luxuries like bath bombs" rather than "capitalism is destroying us mind, body, and spirit and will always ravenously devour all time and space we have marked out for the maintenance of our own health and sanity"
(DIR) Post #Ane6w9sL0NqEeqCu36 by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-11-02T04:43:12Z
3 likes, 2 repeats
People who wear glasses are disabled, BTW. We need disability aids to function as an active part of society. If you wear glasses, you are disabled; your disability is just one that happens to be highly (if not totally) accommodated. It is generally considered reasonable to insist that you need your glasses and cannot cope well without them, and glasses are readily available and prescriptions for them not heavily gated. Touching or taking them without your permission is considered rude and cruel.
(DIR) Post #ApT91Ab09tZ8Yazw24 by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-12-27T08:21:11Z
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@eloquence this is literally the premise of the sci-fi novel I'm writing right now
(DIR) Post #ApT91BTEuEx1GoNFZY by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2024-12-27T10:36:47Z
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@eloquence For more detail, it's a solarpunk story about the war against eco-fascism and climate change. The system in question is called OpenFederation: a decentralized web application for organizing direct democracy, mutual aid, and autonomous anarchist cooperatives.
(DIR) Post #ApfICGscrW1rwNgI0O by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-01-02T07:46:48Z
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@futurebird One of my goals as a writer is to someday publish a story worthy of having a map in the front. And I'm working on one right now!
(DIR) Post #Ats9RmsBx3hhFIGVMm by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-05-08T03:18:54Z
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Yell racial slurs at a 5-year-old and you get $500 000. Stand up to the fascists and oligarchs who are driving our entire fucking planet off a cliff and your crowdfund gets censored by the craven lickspittles in silicon valley for being offensive to ham sandwiches
(DIR) Post #AuGzMbwiskyZxy4sHA by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-05-20T02:34:11Z
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Us: We should probably reduce our consumption of animal productsRight: THE WOKES WANT TO BAN MEATUs: That's not what I'm saying. It's just that factory livestock feedlots are bad for the environment and the climate, not to mention cruel to the animals. If we shifted some of our protein consumption to nuts and pulses we could...Right: THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE US EAT BUGSUs: Nobody wants to make you do anything! But forcing the agricultural system to support this much meat production is inefficient and unsustainable. If you would just consider voluntarily altering your diet a bit, maybe go vegetarian one day a week...Right: I'M STARTING AN ALL-MEAT DIET! TAKE THAT, LIBTARDS (dies of malnutrition)
(DIR) Post #AxAL7UGOrHen3zySBM by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-08-14T07:19:16Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
I wish I had known in my 20s that selling science fiction to venture capitalists was way more profitable than selling it to publishers of science fiction
(DIR) Post #AydTSWR1PWomXhJksy by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-09-27T05:37:58Z
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Governmental Systems ExplainedMonarchy: One person has all the power, but of course this is impossible so mainly their ministers and bureaucracy have the power. However, they make all the *big* decisions. They typically rule for life and inherit the position from a parent or other relative. Hope they're not crazy!Aristocracy: A small number of people have a massive amount of power, usually inherited through a family line. How did they get so much power? Usually by being good at killing and/or stealing. They tend to make up stories painting themselves as inherently better than everyone else and thus destined to ruleDemocracy: Power is shared by all of the people equally. They usually exercise this power by voting for things, so people who can convince them to vote for things are the ones with the *real* power. Civic officials may or may not be chosen by random lotteryRepublic: The people hold elections to designate representatives who then hold power and make policy decisions on their behalf. This has the advantage of allowing the average citizen to not be too concerned about politics, and the disadvantage of allowing the average citizen to not be too concerned about politicsDictatorship: Whoever can force others to do their bidding has the power. Kind of like monarchy, but less stable without a justifying myth like the Divine Right of Kings; if it's nakedly obvious that force is the only determinant of power, people start getting ideas real quickConstitutional Monarchy: There's a monarch, but they have no power and nobody quite knows why they're still there. Tourism seems to be the major justificationTheocracy: Those who know the divine will are the ones with the power. How do they know the divine will? Part of it is written down in ancient books, part of it is creative interpretation of those ancient books, and part of it is "divinely inspired", ie. made up. How do we know they know the divine will? Usually because they wear an impressive hat
(DIR) Post #AydTSbysn3sHkACMrI by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-09-27T05:45:48Z
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Meritocracy: Those who are best qualified are the ones who have the power. How do we know that they're the best qualified? Generally it's because they fulfill criteria that were decided on by the ones who already have power. This is an extremely fair system that cannot possibly produce bad resultsTechnocracy: Experts on the creation of effective policy are the ones who have the power. This is generally intensely unpopular because nobody likes a know-it-allOligarchy: The people with the most money are the ones who have the power. Most other forms of government are a special case of thisKleptocracy: The people in power took it purely for the purpose of enriching themselves and their families and cronies. See aboveKakistocracy: The worst-qualified people are the ones who have the power. See aboveAnarchy: Nobody has more power than any other person. This is either a perfect utopia or lawless chaos depending on who you ask
(DIR) Post #Ayxl0dTbJxkwbrZi0u by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-10-07T00:00:40Z
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I'm probably going to need to replace my laptop sooner rather than later, and I'm interested in getting one preloaded with Linux out of the box and never touched by the scourge of Microsoft. Are such things sold, and if so, where does one get them from?
(DIR) Post #AzIVteo8YSCtibYMoC by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-10-16T04:36:05Z
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I know we Xennials have been furnishing an overabundance of "the new generation will never understand this" takes recently, but I feel the need to bear witness that there was a time period between the enshittification of every conceivable tech product and the necessity to understand coding to even use a computer in the first place when our technology just *worked*
(DIR) Post #AzIVtldl9R46uRkg6a by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-10-16T04:42:10Z
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Hot take: the reason elderly boomers can't keep up with technology isn't just because they're cognitively declining. They can't keep up because technology today is objectively bad. It's overcomplicated, it does things without you asking it and doesn't do what you want when you want because somebody other than you is the one in ultimate control of it, and people are deliberately making even simple programs and websites require ever higher specs because it drives sales of new hardware. We could have made much different choices about how our society uses technology, and the ones we made were made because that's the best way for wealthy ghouls to pry more profit out of us
(DIR) Post #AzIVtvCTbjBQYj41y4 by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-10-16T06:08:14Z
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(And though I love the idea of FLOSS and much as I hate to disappoint my fellow Mastadionians, you need to clear the usability bar before you will get any kind of mainstream uptake whatsoever. These companies have legions of people working hard every day to make the user experience as seamless as possible. Most people will choose a shitty but easy-to-onboard product over a good but weird and crunky one every time, and will also resist changing from what they are already using to something new if there is the slightest friction. Try to sell them primarily with ethical arguments and they will throw up their hands and say "it is what it is". Your thing needs to just work out of the box and have a low learning curve. I know that sucks, but short of sending the whole population to a reeducation camp it won't be changing anytime soon.)
(DIR) Post #B1GYBYnXi4AXN3omwq by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-12-15T06:06:21Z
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It was pretty inevitable that the IP cartel would start pouring money into AI the second they got their licensing terms figured out and realized how many people they could stop paying to make movies
(DIR) Post #B1GYBaKY0qAE7iGf20 by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-12-15T06:16:21Z
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A prediction: if the AI bubble doesn't burst and take our entire economy with it, by this time next year the big tentpole Marvel movies will be end-to-end weird slop that like 5 prompt engineers were involved in making
(DIR) Post #B1QzSppAIh7VRVdcFk by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
2025-12-20T07:59:30Z
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Which would you prefer as a follow-up to your favourite video game?