I listened to the whole audiobook in a day - one of the best books I’ve purchased recently. As someone who has been very much into the techno-futurists over the last 15 years, I would suggest this book, along with Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics for a much needed reality-check.

Love it! I’ve saved a copy, because I think it’ll make future explanations a lot easier. Thanks!

Initially I did yeah, but eventually learned that different people use it differently. So good practice to never assume sarcasm through emojis unless you know the person well

Yeah ReNoise is great! Though since I’ve transitioned to a full-FOSS workflow, I now use OpenMPT as my main, and Furnace for Game Boy specific tracks.

I’ve listed my main tools here if you’re interested: https://johnoestmannmusic.com/tooling/

Will do! Wait, you know flight_school from somewhere? :o

As much as I love what they’re doing, tieing an OS to a specific region via name seems like the opposite of Open Source values… Then again, I suppose it could just be forked into a more generalized version

Ah, I missed that detall! https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs

Try an uncensored version, because everyone knows Communists hate Hexadecimal /s

Yeah agreed - anything not FOSS is just setting up another bad situation waiting to happen

These people idolize Henry Ford, so they should double check the history on how he tried and failed spectacularly at the same thing: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/19/lost-cities-10-fordlandia-failure-henry-ford-amazon

In other news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

according to the linked article, it sounds like it is for performance reasons.

I do suspect Qi is a useful abstract concept for focusing and activating parts of our physiology. But while it feels like a single thing (“energy”), it is more a very complex bunch of processes the same way our consciousness feels like a single thing, but is actually a very complex bunch of processes.

I’m just going to use this opportunity to publicly grieve again for Winamp fake becoming open-source: https://hackaday.com/2024/10/16/winamp-taken-down-too-good-for-this-open-source-world/

GitHub here: https://github.com/allenai/OLMoE.swift

Ai2 make as much of their training data available as possible: https://huggingface.co/datasets/allenai/OLMoE-mix-0924

Appreciate it! The last audiobook I picked up from Libro is Kara Swisher’s “Burn Book”. Not sure if it’s your thing, but was totally worth it for understanding more personal context around the big Tech CEOs from the last 25 years.

Yeah I’m super keen, but my lower-tier Samsung isn’t supported. I really wish FairPhone would offer a cheaper option :(

Ah okay, cheers for the info! I’m new to US-based sources

I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me “if I hadn’t been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?” Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”

So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

• 1. I couldn’t currently defend my faith reasonably
• 2. If God was actually real, he wouldn’t be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
• 3. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn’t call myself a Christian anymore.

Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a “spiritual pull” / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That’s been the most complex part of all of this.

I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw) But that’s how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P

The BRICS partnership (Of which China is a key player) encompasses almost 50% of the world’s population, and their Belt and Road initiative is a soft power wet dream.

The world has actually already become multipolar, but most Western media won’t make that clear because they are still stuck in the old Colonial mindset of Captialist-Democracy = 100% civilized / Not-a-Capitalist-Democracy = 100% backwards.