562 words on the WIP, working title 'The Cold Room.' Not exactly flowing, but the first act is starting to take shape.
Remote
Antony
@afb@mastodonapp.uk
mastodon 4.6.8he/they
Tech hobbyist/horror nerd
152 Followers
717 Following
50 Posts
Joined September 17, 2024
Blog:
Horror stories:
Updated my /now page: https://antonyfb.com/now.html
Finished reading Mark Fisher's 'The Weird and The Eerie.'
Really thought-provoking. I'm glad I took my time with this and read it in short chunks. I'll be drawing on these ideas for my own writing for quite some time, I think.
Replying to
I, for one, will not be clicking on a single link today.
Happy April Fools etc etc
Starting reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division' by QNTM. First section is decent enough, keen to see where it goes.
Given that it's #worldautismawarenessday I'll repost this blog entry: https://antonyfb.com/blog/am-i-autistic.html
Thinking about provisioning another VM from @OpenBSDAms@mastodon.bsd.cafe when I've got a bit of spare coin. I'd like to move my personal blog over there.
There's nothing wrong with my Debian box from Hetzner, I just prefer OpenBSD and I like that the lads in Amsterdam pipe a bit of their earnings to the upstream project.
Parenting a toddler while being a person with anarchist leanings and just a smidge of nihilism is kinda funny sometimes. He's sitting there playing with Silly Putty, I'm thinking about possible applications for Serious Putty (C4). Purely theoretical, of course. Personally, I strive for nonviolence. The toddler? Not as much.
Going to get my knee x-ray'd today. Trying to work out if there's a way I could act like the titanium plates and such are news to me. 'Not even sure why I'm here, never had any surgeries or anything.'
Reworked the landing page text on my horror fiction site a bit. I still need to pretty up the header, but I think I'm moving in the right direction.
#geminiprotocol - gemini://ferenbrooke.com/index.gmi
I've learned that when making a social faux pas at work, telling them I have autism is a much less effective strategy for resolving the situation than saying I'm a Taurus.
New sofa. Our old one was a two-seater that was begging for death. Had a good run but nothing lasts forever. This new one has the toddler seal of approval, it appears. I'm in love with the earthy green colour, personally.
I'll most likely be voting Green in the next GE. Been a loyal Labour voter for my entire adult life (except my first election – 2010, I voted Lib Dem. Whoops!) but we need to pull the Overton window back to a sane position.
Replying to
@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange All that said, we're way too far from a GE to really make any firm predictions. We could be too busy fighting off an alien invasion in the latter half of the decade to bother with the election.
RE: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@82mhz/116138397359698786
Definitely gonna steal that idea for a blog post.
There's nothing on the ballot for my constituency today. Nevertheless I hope all who can participate in either the Scottish elections, Welsh elections, or local elections get out there and vote.
I'm particularly interested in seeing what happens in Wales. Cymru deserves so much better than it's getting from Westminster and Welsh Labour have shown they don't have it in them to demand it. Plaid might offer some hope. I'd be voting for them if I lived there, no doubt.
Replying to
@jasonrush@social.horrorhub.club A horror lit podcast called Talking Scared did a good interview with her recently. I need to get into her work, I keep hearing good things.
Replying to
@FlashMobOfOne@mstdn.social Oh no, I've read it. Not for a good few years, though. Pretty sure I've got an anthology containing it lying around somewhere.
Replying to
@FlashMobOfOne@mstdn.social I don't actually remember where I got that from but I think it's a quote. The Simpsons, maybe? 😂
Kettlebell workout this morning was rough going. Did Dan John's Running Back Complex for five rounds with 2x 16kg bells. That's descending ladders of clean and front squat; I did 4-3-2-1. It was actually my rack position that gave out before my legs. I'll put it down to all the pressing I did yesterday.
RE: https://mastodonapp.uk/@afb/116328899954840392
Turns out I'm actually clicking on quite a lot of links.
April...fools?
Replying to
@DreamRedo@zirk.us I'd definitely recommend it. Lots of good book and movie analysis, it's added a lot to my to-read/to-watch lists. Obviously a lot less overtly political than the other Fisher I've read (Capitalist Realism) but very valuable in its own way, I think.
One minor parenting perk: my three-year-old has these tiny fingers that make my crusty little rat paws look like normal-sized human hands by comparison.
What with being born in the '90s and growing up in Cambridgeshire, this guy was basically the boogie man to me.
https://www.elystandard.co.uk/news/25913037.soham-murderer-ian-huntley-declared-blind-attack
Replying to
@izder456 I think I've seen the same xenodm behaviour, also on an integrated Intel GPU. I'll have to see if picom is still running next time I see it.
Replying to on mastodon.bsd.cafe
@peterkotrcka@mastodon.bsd.cafe I'm curious, which features in bash convinced you to use it rather than the default korn shell? Or is it just a familiarity and compatability sort of thing? Reason I'm asking is that I use bash on my Linux boxes and ksh on my OpenBSD boxes, can't say I really notice a lot of difference in interactive use. Wondering whether I'm missing something.
Replying to on infosec.exchange
@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange Not necessarily. Tactical voting is quite common and becoming more so. It's possible we end up with no party having a majority due to the anti reform vote coordinating on a constituency-by-constituency basis*. I consider that the most likely outcome, probably with some sort of 'progressive alliance' coalition government as a result (Labour PM, mix of Green/Lib/Lab ministers). Labour+Con is also possible as an 'establishment coalition' but that'd be lab signing their own death warrant.
*If Reform were more popular it'd be more of a concern, but they've never hit polling above 33% so they likely just don't have the support to capitalise fully on a split left, bearing in mind that the 33% peak was a one-off and they usually poll about twenty-something. The right is less popular and almost as divided as the left, what with the Tories and Lowe's new outfit, and a lot of people really dislike Reform and will hold their noses and vote for whoever will keep them out.
Replying to on ibe.social
@theresmiling@ibe.social I've got a personal blog at https://antonyfb.com and a horror fiction site at https://ferenbrooke.com – both also on the Gemini protocol (nothing to do with the chat bot if you're not familiar) at the same URLs.
Bottled it. The tech lined me up perfectly for a spot of tomfoolery but I opted to act like an adult. I'll endeavour to do better next time.
Replying to
@pikzim@hcommons.social Yeah definitely. One of very few shows where I was actively waiting for new episodes. I was sad to see it go.
Listening to 'Love Like Blood' by Killing Joke. It, like most of the music I listen to on a daily basis, was released in the '80s whereas I was born in the '90s. It's got me wondering if there were people born in like 1961 who spent the '80s and '90s listening almost exclusively to 1950s acts like The Cardinals. Must've happened, but I find it weird to imagine for some reason.
Replying to on hachyderm.io
@clareburgess@hachyderm.io This question will rattle around in my head for a good while, I can tell.
On international women's day, I'm thinking about two women in particular:
My wife, whose strength and compassion amazes me. She works in A&E at the same hospital which has failed her in terms of treating her endometriosis. An incredibly painful lifelong condition which receives a fraction of the funding/research that male pattern baldness gets.
And someone I won't name. She's passed now, but growing up she was a big presence in my life, one of the kindest and most positive influences on me when I was a kid. I don't remember how old I was when I found out she'd done time for murder, but as soon as I heard the story I was on her side.
She'd been beaten by her husband for years, told she'd be killed if she tried to leave. The police refused to get involved in a 'domestic dispute,' ignored the threats and broken bones. So she ensured her freedom through the only route that remained. This was before I was born. Would the police do better now? I don't know.
We've still got work to do.
Catching up on the new Mock The Week. Hadn't realised how much I missed it.
Replying to on mas.to
@famousblueben@mas.to Never heard of 'em, just threw on a track out of curiosity. Definitely got something.
RE: https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUK/116147553248382659
I'm just an autistic layman with a contrarian streak, so I could easily be talking out me arse, but I can't help but feel 'theory of mind,' a bit like the concept of 'general intelligence,' is psychological dark matter.
It looks like there's something there but we don't know what it is or how it works, or even whether it's one thing or a bunch of phenomena we don't know about interacting in ways that are unclear to us, so chuck it in the neatly labeled box and let's all pretend we have some sort of coherent model of how things work. The big difference is that physics is a lot more easily testable and far more objective, so even if nobody knows what dark matter is, we can be pretty sure it's there and not just the tester's confirmation bias wearing Groucho Marx glasses.
I might be being really unfair to researchers here, I don't know, but I keep seeing headlines like, 'It Turns Out Autistic People Can Feel Complex Emotions' and it's giving me acid reflux.
Replying to on beige.party
@GramrgednAngel@beige.party I've only read one of his, 'The Only Good Indians.' I did really like it. I need to read his more recent stuff. Seems like he releases books more often than I get a good night's sleep.
