Agora Road Travelogue (January '24)

[nakadashi]

Here's my first one:
Internet Dreams

 

[Eden]

Alright, yo. For your consideration:

The Pupil​

I had a webring neighbor email me over the break about being a teacher. He talked about how the profession kinda "spoke to him". I'm also hosting the IndieWeb Carnival for this month, Positive Internalization (have I mentioned that enough?) and so it was kind-of a great opportunity to combine these 2 things. I spent all weekend and ignored work yesterday and today getting it to the point I was comfortable shipping it. I don't think it's quite perfect, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say, traveler!

Also... it's officially been 1-year since I started blogging!In those 365 days, I wrote 20 blog posts. My ideal is one post every fortnight so my "final grade" for the year is 77%. LESSSGOOO, C'SSSSS GET DEGREEEEEESS, SONNNN!! I def wanna thank @Voicedrew for starting the Travelogue as it has definitely motivated me to write more. But, really, for anyone reading this looking for inspiration to write more, I can't vouch for community involvement enough.

Anyways, lemme see if I can get in some replies to what you mofos have been posting. Was reading dem Internet Dreams today on the move, really enjoying it, but then kinda felt "yo, I think I gotta sit down to read this one"

 

[nakadashi]

Got my first submission for this month's IndieWeb Carnival: The smell of firewood
EDIT: And the second! The Feeling of Being Myself

I've also added additional resources at the bottom the topic announcement, but I'll include them directly here for anybody even slightly interested in participating: Internalize the Good + How to Use the Good

Hope you consider taking part! It's an easy 2-for-1 deal!

That firewood post was very comfy ngl.

 

[Eden]

Here's my first one:
Internet Dreams

Dude, I loved this. And it would've been P-E-R-F-E-C-T, for basement community's blog event (I submitted it on the thread anyways). The comparison you made was awesome, yo. I'd have never thought that. Dreams (& Lucid Dreaming) are topics I reflect a lot about so I double enjoyed the post.

 

[nakadashi]

Playing DVDs and BluRay in Plex — Published January 5th. A bit technical and boring, but might be useful to someone.

Curiously enough, ripping blu-rays with MakeMKV is one of my hobbies. I guess we all Agorans truly think alike.

 

[Eden]

Playing DVDs and BluRay in Plex — Published January 5th. A bit technical and boring, but might be useful to someone.

This was great. I also enjoyed reading this one from SURAGU recently:

the process of ripping a VHS (2023-12-19)​

(translated to English via Google for your convenience)

 

[nakadashi]

Dude, I loved this. And it would've been P-E-R-F-E-C-T, for basement community's blog event (I submitted it on the thread anyways). The comparison you made was awesome, yo. I'd have never thought that. Dreams (& Lucid Dreaming) are topics I reflect a lot about so I double enjoyed the post.

Hey! Thanks for the submission, man! Glad you liked it. I also quite enjoyed your entries!

 

[Some_porcupine]

4/1/24, 4/16, Beware the "Aquarius"
(Agora road traveloque Query)

*now*
"Trends, social media, reality"
Trends i keep seeing:

citing from Decadology r/ sub, asking about "why (r) 2010 bad", you can see what people think (but beware, it is still >reddit after all, so there is no real guarantee this is Reality) :

e.g. "Technology like social media is making it harder to socialize
They see the country they live in is falling apart - the government is corrupt and works for corporate/special interests rather than the people. Most big businesses in america are just unregulated monopolies. The labor market is a basically a slave show where youll work for 40-50 years and not even get to retire comfortably.
America has simply become the housing colony for the elites worker bees. Who the fuck has a positive outlook on life when all they have to look forward to is 40-50 years of work, the inability to raise a family and build wealth, and the inability to retire
The young persons dream is to leave this fucking place. You cannot get ahead or beat the system here. The system is made to break you."

does *these* (similar ones) feel fake, or is it just me? (*)

While i get *you* (and many *such cases/posts), felt, feel the same - then, why do you lose hope ffs, if you literally said we "were made to be broken"! i am tired of types like you (and myself for lying to me than i am Different...), who can only type such things but when it is "about to cut a bread" (slovak proverb, idk the english version), you just passive-aggressively wait for asteroid, purge, hell incarnate or befallt of society... if you want it, do it!
but again, i get you; sadly.
you may be afraid that if you wish, then it will get good for a while, and then go topsy-turvy and backfires. well, you are not any Master (in high castle), to not be influenced by your actions, wishes... as they say, "way to hell is paved with/by good intendations"...
/ snarkiness, helplessness, complaining, hate, (unneeded hostility) (*1), aggressivity, mistrust about everyone and everything...
are we afraid of each other? or tired, of everything, of people, of... "facade" we see, feel from everything; that "it stands on water/sand"??!!...

(*1) https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.p...andard-knowledge-in-education.4818/post-49698 (take this as example) -

You should absolutely stop correcting people. / This is one of those cases where lying is actually the right thing to do.

- but i dont still know what caused this change in mood... >

i call it, this vibe, lifestyle, attitude "Let them cook", by the way it presents itself - twitteroos and some tumbl(e)rinas "existing" in this state of (their) reality - when someone "deserves" something (bad), but problem being, it is just minuscule, or grandiously mistaken/inflatted problem, and most of the time, those "problems" are not real! there are just basically Philosophical questions, wannabe stated as "friend of a friend" type situation/simulation. again, these can happen, but could be, most are - misunderstood. and revenge is never good. why to revenge, if they dont understand/dont feel/dont know... it is wasting energy on what you cant change anyways!

> what we lost, and who "got me", who share this same "memory"... (of future that is now lost)

(click on link/username under =this= message)

I think the 2000s prior to the 2008 recession are markedly defined by a kind of active denial of the state of the world- people were upset about 9/11, they wanted to react to 9/11 by engaging in unhinged levels of patriotism and hyperconsumerism, and so we were simultaneously pessimistic about the nonexistent threat of subsequent terrorism and optimistic about America's new marketed status as a rejuvenated world superpower that could kick ass across the globe (even though we never ended up doing that). so really, before the reality check of the recession, much of the 2000s felt like a manic-depressive episode, it was America's bipolar phase.

I would agree, generally, that the quirked-up pop science thing started in the 2000s. Maybe with the 90s (Bill Nye and all that) but I think it did ultimately start out with good intentions, and kind of became bastardized in the 2000s towards the science-industrial complex we see today. The 90s were more reasonably optimistic about science's potential. After all, we had the Internet by 1994, and that was a great moment for science.

i miss you, mighty wannabe future...

We had a good reason to invest in science- suddenly we had this insanely useful technology that could connect everyone globally, put the world at your fingertips- and that is, I think, the last great invention humanity will ever create.

where is my utopian scholastic and GVC at! give it back! warez! free knowledge to (eat the rich) make world better (so we can turn the table/monopoly game we are figures in)

I don't like being pessimistic, but after 20 years where all we have is roombas, and Juiceros, and Moneros- I don't think technology can reasonably progress any further than it already has, no matter how much money we pour into it, we've pretty much done it all. And that's OK, we're at a good point technologically. I don't think pop culture is out of ideas- I think science is out of ideas. We're not going to be building a Dyson Sphere anytime soon, so we should just save up our resources and make do with what we've got until the moment presents itself in a couple centuries, and focus on art instead in the meantime.

:'( - fuck that, why did scientists became sell-outs...

But as I said elsewhere, i think the main reason for the 2000s being so weird is that it's the first postmodern decade, and it took a while for us to acclimatize. I don't believe that postmodernism is necessarily regurgitative, or will only result in derivative material (as is often argued) only that postmodernism functions as a deconstruction and critique of modernism. It can be done well- as in the case of something like Beau is Afraid, which openly mocks and subverts basically every narrative trope possible- or poorly, as is the case with something like Birdman, which tries to mock the superhero genre but comes off as bitter and contrarian, and extremely pretentious.

i am nostalgic for this, but because it was pinpoint when world would turn back for a while and instead of nowadays "timeline" we would live in (ok i prolly lie to myself, but what if...) world people in 50s imagined - if you ever seen "meet the robinsons" or "metropolis 2001 (by manga, not by fritz lang)", you may know what i talk about, visually at least (most).

and (regarding to nerdture, changes and education cca...)

That's what always bothered me about "Nerd Culture" too. It's all about self-congratulating about how nerdy you are, and never about the niche interests themself.

Nail on the head with these two sentences. Every gripe I've ever had with fandoms condenses into this, and it's the reason I believe some level of gatekeeping is necessary in online cultures. There are total normalfags out there who assume they hold esoteric knowledge of the Star Wars universe just because they understood a reference to it on The Big Bang Theory. There are people who only ever play AAA games and never played something from before their own time, yet assume they know everything about gaming because they played le nerdy Skyrim. It's that kind of attitude that gave Starfield the "most innovative gameplay" Steam award; not because Bethesda paid anyone, but because gaming has spread to a mainstream culture that doesn't actually understand the medium. - https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/fandoms-and-nerd-culture.6357/post-97882 (@GENOSAD)
or

Back when I joined in 2021, it wasn't actually that bad. Even for 2022 it was good, now its just retarded TikTok kids and essentially a site like Twitter but everyone can do HTML/CSS (or just steal layouts, lol).

Considering its been flooded with retards, no not really.

I wish it weren't flooded with those types, idc really if they're liberal as fuck but having the entire site devolve into retardation you can't escape sucks. Half the time its shit like "X is a *insert actually morally bad thing* who did *insert actually morally bad thing here*" so unlike DeviantArt, I can't really just look at the drama and instantly start laughing at it because of its level of autism.

I swear all these clones devolve into hell for no reason, I have no clue why. They either die from inactivity or turn to shit, what sucks is that SpaceHey is actually otherwise pretty cool but its so fucking annoying to use the site that its better not to at all.

too

and (23/54, 29/1/24)

also these

Your Local Idiot

www.tumblr.com

Your Local Idiot

www.tumblr.com

(22/24, 6/2/24)

Neil Gaiman

www.tumblr.com

AND!!!

Cultural changes you've noticed in your lifetime

The whole slacker thing, right? Being an old millennial, I might stick up for this a little. Apathy aside, it was at least based on a recognition that the prevailing culture was somehow inherently unhealthy and cynical, leading to a distrust of politicians, media and corporate culture. Along...

forum.agoraroad.com

World Economic Forum 2023

Found the 2023 participant list straight from the source, you can view the PDF HERE ZOOM! :Smadge:

forum.agoraroad.com

(it is bad)

Cultural changes you've noticed in your lifetime

The whole slacker thing, right? Being an old millennial, I might stick up for this a little. Apathy aside, it was at least based on a recognition that the prevailing culture was somehow inherently unhealthy and cynical, leading to a distrust of politicians, media and corporate culture. Along...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[LostintheCycle]

To be fair, I wasn't five years old when I thought MLG was funny, I was eleven, and that's about when kids turn into rotten little shits anyway. But anyone who calls it "nostalgic" should shove a cactus up their arse.

 

[Eden]

I'm gonna post here and on a couple other places but basically:

IndieWeb (Blog) Carnival is looking for potential hosts for the upcoming months, i.e. February, March, April, etc.

Ideally if you've participated in a blog carnival in any way beforehand, that'd be better, for the sake of confirming your commitment / discipline. But it's not the hardest thing in the world and you only do it for 1 month. I've gone 2 weeks now (of my 4-5) having to do absolutely nothing. Well, besides my post I guess, but I mean, your probably posting already anyways cause you're interested in hosting a blog carnival, so, posting doesn't count.

Anyways, IndieWeb Carnival hosting works as follows...

Step #1: You decide on a topic. If you don't want to join the IndieWeb Wiki, I'll post your site and your topic 4 u.

Step #2: On the first-ish day of the month, you post to your blog an introduction explaining what your theme is in more detail, not so much as a way of telling people what to write, but the opposite, hopefully giving them ideas / breadth of topic. Again, I can add it to the wiki 4 u. I've already linked mine, so here a few other examples: Holiday and December traditions + My Kind of Weather + Moments of Joy

Step #3: Throughout the month, as you receive submissions, I suggest posting them to your introduction. You don't have to, but I feel it helps the people that have yet to write anything to see what others have written.

Step #4: Don't forget that your introduction post isn't your submission. You still have to write that one. But it should be relatively easy; brah, you chose the topic.

Step #5: Finally, on the first-ish day of the following month, you post the round-up which is where you summarize (in your own style), and absolutely link to, the submissions you received. You don't have to comment on them, or compliment them. I do advise to clearly demonstrate that you read them. It's the classy thing to do. Again shouldn't be a struggle, YOU chose the topic. Finally, I'll add that to the wiki as well if you need me to. Corresponding examples: Holiday and December traditions + My Kind of Weather + Moments of Joy

1 Month, 3 Posts. I don't think they are super strict on the topic, but it's the IndieWeb, yo. It's got a bit of brand. Just saying cause I know some of you mofos are unhinged. So if you are interested just have that in mind.

 

[Eden]

Our Brave New World. A post I wrote about how we now live in the world envisioned by Huxley in his '30s era book "Brave New World".

Man, if you told me I was going to sit down and unironically read an essay on 'Brave New World', I'd have laughed at you. But it was very good. Well done, @microbyte you have made countless high-school English teachers proud.

No, but on a more serious note: My parents and closest friend use marijuana on the daily. They're not doing terribly, but it feels like such a crutch. Like they can't / don't want to deal with things as they are. And I can appreciate that a little bit. I am the kind of person to live in my head and kill myself from the inside. There is indeed such a thing as too much awareness and I understand wanting to bring that back down to balanced levels. But the way we can become so dependent on drugs, and alcohol and social media. It's like it kills the soul because it suppresses you.

I'd sooner die unhinged than suppressed. It feels more honest.

 

[andreixyz]

This was great. I also enjoyed reading this one from SURAGU recently:

the process of ripping a VHS (2023-12-19)​

(translated to English via Google for your convenience)

Know what, I have some VHSs at home, I think I'll write about that too, thanks for the tip! xD

 

[shrapnelnet]

@Eden blog is back up and running. will hopefully have some consistent articles being pumped out. also i did a quick rewrite in react, can you let me know if it works for you?

 

[Eden]

It's funny how the least present Agorans were the ones to step-up for the IndieWeb Carnival:

• Next month (February): @niuenso / Manuel Moreale will be hosting. He's offering to give you his topic ahead of time via email, for those of you who feel you need head starts, I'd ask him for it if I were you. February is a short month.
• Following month (March): @agoratoad / Basement Community will be hosting. He seemed to have enjoyed running the 'birthday blog bonanza' so he was happy to accept the offer.
• Subsequent month (April): @RisingThumb / risingthumb.xzy who isn't even on the road anymore has agreed to take up the mantle. He mentioned some interesting topic ideas in our correspondence, so I'm looking forward to it.

We still got 8 months to fill (May through Decemeber). It's not urgent anymore, but if you're seriously interested, let me know.

 

[LostintheCycle]

It's funny how the least present Agorans were the ones to step-up for the IndieWeb Carnival:

Their schedules aren't taken up by important shitposting

 

[andreixyz]

Another technical itch (heh) that needed to be scratched:

HP Dynamic Smart Array Is Not So Smart - January 20th, 2024

 

[ZinRicky]

quick rewrite in react

 

[ZinRicky]

By the way, here is my second entry: "Love Over Gold" by Dire Straits, another (very late) Music Wednesday entry.
Edit: a bonus entry (in Italian) about using Publii to escape from WordPress: https://tilde.team/~zinricky/it/creare-sito-personale-facile-senza-wordpress-publii/

 

[macrobyte]

#3 IndieWeb Carnival (Deadline: February 1st)
None other than yours truly is the host for the month: January 2024 - Positive Internalization. Just like the Travelogue, you don't need a blog to participate! Follow the theme, get it to me and I'll publish it at the end of the month in the roundup post.

Just wrote my submission about running

 

[Eden]

Just wrote my submission about running

That was incredible, yo. It's funny because what you've written IS Positive Internalization. There's multiple methods / strategies for it. The one I emphasized in my prompt was the 'Positive (Feel-Good) Memories' but another strategy is 'Positive Visualization', where the idea is you meditate / daydream / fantasize about doing the thing you want to do more of, NOT the thing you want to become. People tend to fantasize more about outcomes, for example: someone on a weight loss journey might fantasize about becoming thin. But it'd actually be healthier to fantasize about the process: working out or eating healthy.

But I think you have a bit of a combo here: you love it, you have good memories about it, but it also reads wonderfully as a visualization.

EDIT: I didn't mention other Positive Internalization strategies in my intro cause I felt the topic was complicated enough / wanted to keep my intro brief.