El microrrelato:

LA NOCHE ABANDONADA, REVISITADA

#relatos

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Portada del libro Microterrores XIII, publicado por la editorial Diversidad Literaria

—Vamos —dice al fin el hombre de las sienes plateadas.

La Bety y él cruzan el umbral. Dentro está muy oscuro. Bajan una escalera y ella da un traspiés que no llega a hacerla caer. Las paredes están totalmente cubiertas de carteles de conciertos.

A cada paso, la música de baile se va volviendo más y más ensordecedora.

Está en los dominios de Oleg Olégovich Tanareg. En el umbral no estaba escrito lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. El interior de La Basílica tiene tres pistas de baile, cada una a su nivel. Hay barandillas metálicas, pasarelas en ángulos improbables, grandes candelabros a diferentes alturas, jaulas con chicas bailando en bikini colgando de los negros muros. Un mar de gente baila en trance. Huele a desinfectante y a sudor. Unos enormes tubos como bocas exhalan chorros de aire frío. Un cartel publicitario de cerveza Totengarten, oblongo, enorme, parpadea en azul y magenta. El nitrógeno líquido flamea en fumarolas como fuegos fatuos.

Este pedazo de tierra olvidada es un exclave de la Rusia Blanca y bien podía estar a miles de kilómetros de esta ciudad o colgada de las nubes o sumergida en el mar interior porque su ubicación es ajena al tiempo y al espacio.

Cuatro tipos como hienas la rodean. Allí, delante de todo el mundo, la cachean con violencia y lascivia. Nadie se inmuta, el ritmo endiablado de la música bascula sobre sus cabezas, los cañones de luz se retuercen como faros desquiciados. La Bety alza las manos, saca del bolsillo la pistola con el índice y el pulgar y se la entrega a alguien.

Una mano firme le arrebata la bolsa.

Quizá esto es el final.

[...]

Debugging: the art of slowly realizing you're the problem.

*Has anyone ever actually played this, and is it a fun game

I was using mastodon before it was cool.

Narrator: that's currently.

BitTorrent never asks for age verification.

Icehouse - Electric Blue
Deleyaman - Electric Sky
Kraftwerk - Electric Café
OMD - Electricity
Anna von Hausswolff - The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra
Edgar Varese - Ionisation

Electronic - Getting Away With It (it's in the band name, but whatever)
Lightning Seeds - Pure (it's in the band name, but whatever)

Happy August!

Fediverse, have a great weekend!

[...] I’m in charge of feeding my sister-in-law’s cat. All of a sudden, he’s super affectionate with me and follows me everywhere.

@nazokiyoubinbou @DaveMasonDotMe If you think that the "focus should be on supporting users" before "keeping your website online at all", then I assure you, you *do not* totally get it.

Substack is terrible - but even people who know it don't want to leave the platform – a tale in 3 acts.

Act I

Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz published a scoop a few days ago, showing how "Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog" (if you don't want to give #Substack a click, here is an alt link https://archive.ph/FTjEH).

It was a terrific and disturbing piece - kudos to her.

Act II (plot twist)

People started pointing out that Lorenz herself is using Substack as the publishing platform for her blog - which she monetizes with subscriptions. So, very ballsy move on her part to criticize the platform that she relies on to make a living, but still, some people started pointing out the incongruity of this. What about her values? Why wouldn't she move her newsletter?

Lorenz was starting to get fed up with these comments and explained on Bluesky (alt link / snapshot if you don't want to give Bluesky a click: https://archive.ph/CePll)

" Them: Get off substack
Me: Ok I set up a Patreon. The features aren’t as good but I’m willing to take a hit and do a lot more time consuming work on the back end to make it work. Here’s where you can subscribe to support me. Once enough people hop over I’ll be able to make the jump
Them: *crickets* "

She followed up that post with the comment:

" A lot of people on here want to attack and punish creators (esp women and LGBTQ ppl) for being forced to rely on certain platforms to make a living, but aren’t actually willing to support those creators in a way that allows them to leave the platforms ur so critical of them being forced to rely on. "

Fair enough.

Act III (in which I insert myself)

I don't post on Bluesky anymore but I felt compelled to resuscitate my account to point out that Substack is not only terrible, but it's also very expensive and takes the BIGGEST cut out of all other newsletter platforms.

I wrote:

" With all due respect Taylor, moving away from Substack is the ethical choice and it also makes financial sense. The great Molly White compiled a detailed breakdown of how much money creators who rely on subscriptions could save... by switching over to other platforms. "

And I linked to Molly White's brilliant post: https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/114319870485786053

I also added a link to the article by @micahflee : "Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost" https://micahflee.com/not-only-is-substack-right-wing-broligarchy-garbage-its-way-more-expensive-than-ghost/

Lorenz responded:

"Again, I am on Patreon and have had the option to receive my newsletter directly outside of Substack since day 1. Only 3 people have ever taken me up on this. By the way I cover Substack and the only reason I got the scoop I got it from being in the platform. Hence why I’ll always have an acct"

I just replied to her that #Ghost offers a free concierge migration service (https://ghost.org/concierge/) where she could move over all her paid subscribers... and I said that IMHO she could still use Substack Notes to share her articles if she moved elsewhere... but staying on Substack and giving them 10% of her earnings feels like an implicit endorsement.

I meant that in the most empathetic way. I can understand her struggles but she has 87,000 subscribers and if she wanted to move she could simply ask for help and I'm sure people would volunteer to set her up somewhere else. If she did so on the Fediverse she'd have a self-hosted account on a VPS in less than 24 hours.

Lest you think I want to "attack and publish creators (especially women)" like in Lorenz's words on Bluesky, well, I'm a woman who started self-hosting only 6 months ago and I now run my own Ghost blog which I manually installed. It's not that unattainable.

Maybe it's just me, but I believe that the tech we use sends an important message about our values and the causes we support. Everything is politics now. Including our tech stack.

#DigitalLiteracy #DigitalCoup #A16Z #Broligarchy

@inthehands Or, the "save government money" stuff was just a cover story, and the real aim of DOGE was exfiltrating all government data to feed Elon's AI. Which he accomplished in the first week.

For #InternationalTigerDay... "Tigerlillia Terribilis" — from Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany (1871–77).

More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edward-lears-nonsense-botany-1871-77 #InternationalTigerDay2022

@mwl

Meanwhile…

FreeBSD: You need a processor, preferably something made in the last two decades with 1GB of RAM (although more is better)

OpenBSD: You need a processor, preferably made sometime since the turn of the century and maybe 256MB of RAM (although more is better)

NetBSD: You've got a dead badger you found on the roadside and have attached it to a dodgy 220V power-source? Sure, we'll run on that.

CC: @h3artbl33d@exquisite.social

BATISCAFO

   Del fr. bathyscaphe, y este del gr. βαθύ bathý 'profundo' y σκάφος skáphos 'barco'.
    1. 1. m. Especie de embarcación sumergible preparada para resistir grandes presiones y destinada a explorar las profundidades del mar.
       Sin.:
          + submarino, sumergible.

I'm trying a compositor called Wio, i never used Plan9 but if this is how Rio works on Plan9 then i like it, keeping in mind that Wio doesn't implement all the features that Rio has. The most interesting thing about the design of Wio is that when you make a window by defult opens a terminal and in there you run your graphical program, so i'm thinking, wouldn't be neat that you could switch between the terminal and graphical preview, and and then came to my mind "why not allow to do that on the compositor it self" because sometimes happens that the compositor breaks and you are locked in the sence that you can't change to another tty.
Idk i think that would be neat.
#wayland #unix #plan9

How Gustave Moreau’s Mystical Paintings Defined the Symbolist Movement

Gustave Moreau was the defiant visionary whose mystical paintings shaped a groundbreaking new movement in France and beyond.

by Kelsey Spicuzza

https://www.thecollector.com/gustave-moreau-symbolist-movement/

Symbolism in literature at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/7864

#Books #Literature #Symbolism #Art_criticism

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L'Apparition (1876), watercolor, 105 x 72 cm., Musée d'Orsay by Gustave Moreau Gustave Moreau’s L'Apparition is a haunting and richly symbolic watercolor painting that vividly captures a moment from the biblical story of Salome. In this striking scene, Salome stands transfixed before the vision of the severed head of John the Baptist, which hovers, radiant and bleeding, in the air before her. Salome is adorned in elaborate, orientalized robes and jewelry that shimmer with color, light, and texture—an opulent reflection of her allure and the decadent atmosphere of Herod’s court. Her expression is one of awe and dread as she gazes upon the miraculous apparition. The head of John the Baptist floats above a luminous nimbus, glowing with supernatural intensity, contrasting with the dark, richly patterned architectural setting behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau#/media/File:The_Apparition,_Gustave_Moreau_1876.jpg

Escape from the Land of the Dead: On Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door

"Magic and ideology are both practices of belief."

By Celia Bell

https://lithub.com/escape-from-the-land-of-the-dead-on-leonora-carringtons-the-stone-door/

#Books #Literature #literarycriticism #WomeninArt

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Leonora Carrington This evocative photograph captures Leonora Carrington, the British-born Surrealist artist and writer. Carrington appears poised and enigmatic, her expression calm but intense, often with piercing eyes that suggest her deep inner world. She has semi-long curly hair and wears a lacy midi-length blouse with a skirt (or black pants), her arms wrapped around one of her knees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carrington#/media/File:Leonora_Carrington.jpg

Welp. All that lovely "AI" derailment aside, we now have an answer:

It is literally impossible for XScreenSaver to lock the screen under Wayland. Cannot be done. None of the extant, spottily-supported "protocols" will allow the screen to be locked while an Xwayland surface is visible.

Great job, everybody. Perfect, no notes.

Everything i draw and make here is fediverse-exclusive-in-the-public-domain. That means you can use my work for anything you desire without having to ask for permission!

If you enjoy my content or have some kind of use for it, please, consider supporting my work.

https://analognowhere.com/support

or visit the store:

https://analognowhere.redbubble.com

Thank you!

Alt...

Generation 7 color palette'd Girl with a laptop.

Mientras Cristóbal Montoro asfixiaba a los ayuntamientos y les exigía recortes, maniobraba para que las empresas de gas de la trama pagaran menos impuestos locales.

Os explico cómo varios ayuntamientos perdieron más de 10 millones de euros. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/cristobal-montoro/varios-ayuntamientos-perdieron-10-millones-euros-impuestos-locales-caso-montoro

I had a small VPS with small filesystem space, and I (temporarily) needed much more. I also had a Wireguard connection from this VPS to a server in my own home under my desk, slow but with plenty of disk space. My home connection was a standard ISP fibre, dynamic IP, but very stable in time. So, I used sshfs from the VPS to mount a folder in my home server. It was not very fast, but got the work done.

CC: @contaminase@bsd.cafe

"If you ever touched a computer, chances are you are already my victim"

CC: @FreeBSDFoundation@mastodon.social

Wait... What the freaking effing Fick? It's Friday, my dudes and dudettes!

Wheee! Where did that week go?

Aren't we supposed to slow down during the summer months?

Schrödinger's backups

CC: @stefano@fedihome.stefanomarinelli.it

Me: Sync is also not backup.

Great article, Stefano, as always.

"Do not worry, this is a free service"

sample time

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/07/18/make-your-own-backup-system-part-1-strategy-before-scripts/

has a page with all her posts concatenated together

CC: @alderwick@merveilles.town @anarodrigues@front-end.social

ERRABUNDO

   Del lat. errabundus.
    1. 1. adj. Que va de una parte a otra sin tener asiento fijo.
       Sin.:
          + errante, errático, vagabundo.

CC: @stefano@journal.bsd.cafe

CC: @stefano@journal.bsd.cafe

CC: @AntennaPod@fosstodon.org

#FediMeteo

Have a nice weekend!

PERMANENTE

   Del lat. permănens, -entis.
    1. 1. adj. Que permanece.
       Sin.:
          + constante, continuo, duradero, estable, perenne, incesante, fijo, ininterrumpido, persistente.
       Ant.:
          + pasajero.
    2. 2. adj. Sin limitación de tiempo. Se reunieron en sesión permanente.
    3. 3. adj. Dicho de una comisión: Que en el seno de una institución u organización asegura la continuidad de sus funciones. U. t. c. s. f.
    4. 4. f. Rizado artificial del cabello, que se mantiene mucho tiempo.
       Sin.:
          + rizado, moldeado, moldeador, peinado, tocado.

You own more than 75,000 books. Yes, they are yours! Come get them!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

#Ebooks #PublicDomain

Improbably Compatible #oldknees
This is one of ~140 comic strips that are in my new book 'Ew, It's Beautiful', available for preorder now! https://site.andrewsmcmeel.com/ew-its-beautiful-incentive

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Two crows are flying in front of a gray-blue sky. One says to the other "Do you think we're best friends in other universes too?" The second panel splits into a three by three grid of different reactions of "Um"s and "Well"s from the second crow, in a multiverse sort of way. The third panel is further split again by three, so there are nine by nine squares of the same two crows flying together, the only distinction between the squares is a different sky colour. In the fourth panel, the square are again divided by three so there are now 27 by 27 filling the panel. We can see now that there is a greater pattern emerging from the colours of each square, a pixelated form is starting to emerge. In the fifth panel, the many many squares of different universes is reminiscent of a painting using pointillism, which each dot of colour represent one of many thousands of realities. We can see now very clearly that the pixelated forms are the two crows, flying in front of a gray-blue sky. We return to the visual resolution as we saw in the first panel, as if no time has passed at all. The second crow responds "It doesn't seem likely".

I owe my career to the movie The Big Lebowski.

When I watched it as a young teenager, I wanted to find other people enjoying it so I did my best to setup a PHP forum hosted at home, there were not many choice early 2000 and I struggled a lot to figure how to make apache work with PHP, how to enable port forwarding on my router, how to make mysql work, how to get a domain name (from services like no-ip or dyndns ).

🎳

Tweet by PackyM: "pro tip: You can basically read >100 books per day by asking chatgpt to summarize them for you"

http://www.dpde.es/

Es raro y a más de une puede venirle bien.

‘Useful phrases for the murder mystery writer abroad’ (my cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books)

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Title: Useful phrases for the murder mystery writer abroad An eight-panel cartoon showing a writer in a series of situations in a foreign country. Panel 1: looking at historic buildings saying "Kia bela vilaĝo!" which is translated below as "What a lovely village!" Panel 2: in a pretty garden asking the gardener "Ĉu ĉi tiuj estas venenaj" meaning "Are any of these plants poisonous? Panel 3: in a bar asking the server “Kie oni povas aĉeti pafilon?" meaning " Can one purchase a firearm nearby?" Panel 4: on a beach asking a fisherman "Ĉu la tajdo povus forporti kadavron?" meaning "Could the tide carry a dead body away?" Panel 5: approached by a police officer and saying "Saluton, oficiro." which is translated below as "Hello officer." Panel 6: being marched to the police station protesting "Okazis miskompreno!" meaning "There has been a misunderstanding!" Panel 7: in the interrogation room the officer holds up a moleskine notebook, the writer explains "La murdo en mia notlibro estas fikcia." meaning "The murder planned in my notebook is fictional." Panel 8: locked in a cell asking "Mi ŝatus telefoni al la Brita konsulejo." which means "I would like to telephone the British consulate." Note: The foreign language used by the writer in the cartoon is Esperanto. It has not been proofread by an Esperanto speaker so there may be errors.

CC: @warandpeas@mastodon.social

What's that white shape under her elbow there?

Digo lo mismo todos los años, así que volveré a hacerlo: vería con buenos ojos que le dieran el premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (perdón, Princesa) a Stephen King, sería un reconocimiento justo a su carrera y aunque causara sorpresa de inicio (como cuando se lo dieron a Leonard Cohen) creo que pasada la sorpresa inicial se reconocería que es una elección buena y justificada.

Los motivos por los que creo que podría ser merecedor de este premio:

1. Se reconoce el género literario del #terror, incomprensiblemente ignorado. Y dentro de este género, Stephen King es el rey absoluto, rey mundial y quizá de todos los tiempos junto a Lovecraft y Poe. Ya es difícil ser el rey absoluto de un género literario, Stephen King lo es.

2. Por su impacto e influencia en la sociedad, habiendo popularizado el género del terror e intregrándolo en la cultura de masas, con multitud de adaptaciones cinematográficas y televisivas.

3. Por su larga, prolífica y dilatada carrera, en la que ha plasmado como pocos la naturaleza, idiosincrasia, aristas y contrastes de la sociedad y la cultura estadounidenses, siendo un completo espejo en el que mirarse.

4. Por la profundidad psicológica de sus personajes, indagando en su historia, sus circunstancias, sus anhelos, sus miedos, que eleva la novela de terror al nivel literario.

5. Porque ya tiene 77 años, está en la edad en la que los escritores reciben los premios importantes si no se han muerto antes; ya no le queda mucho de caminar entre nosotros.

Además de todo esto, es un hombre sencillo y humilde y buena persona. A ver si este año me lee alguien y le conceden el premio antes de que se muera, porque creo que se lo merece.

#libros #literaverso #bookstodon #StephenKing #PrincesaDeAsturiasLetras

❤️

People who should: fill your list or scumbags here

Everyone, have a great weekend!

I love it!

Seen in a post by @bruces

Added alt-text

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A photo of the Fellowship of the Ring from the Peter Jackson "Lord of the Rings" film. Every person is labelled: Boromir: Quasi-Royalty Legolas: Literal-Royalty Gandalf: Literal Angel Aragorn: Literal Royalty Gimli: High-ranking Aritocrat: Pippin Quasi-Royalty Merry: High-ranking Aristocrat Frodo: Low-Ranking Aristocrat Sam: Works for a living Caption: Really, the most surprising part is that it takes three whole months before Sam has to start physically carrying people

The conversation:

Cat: meow
Me: Wow, really?
Cat: meow
Me: This is incredible stuff
Cat: meow
Me: First I've ever heard of it
Cat: meow

The conversation from her viewpoint:

Cat: I'm hungry.
Human: hønk
Cat: Feed me, you big dumb kitten.
Human: hønk
Cat: Look here you dumb shit, I'm a regal predator and I deserve your respect!
Human: hønk
Cat: Your curtains will hear about this

#CatsOfMastodon

Y eso me ha vuelto a recordar a mi amigo el psiquiatra y a su teoría de cómo la extrema derecha ha monopolizado de manera total al espectro demográfico de gente que está cucú.

This city is made of light 🎵🎹

CC: @nigel@quiescent.cafe

CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe

And here's another issue with passkeys. Many of us have had the experience of having to help a less technically inclined friend or relative, often remotely, who has had access problems with an account. This can mean resorting to the undesirable but in some situations necessary practice of using their login credentials to get into their account and straighten things out for them. How is one going to do this with passkeys, that may be on a device thousands of miles away? Passkeys will inevitably mean more users locked out of their accounts and at the mercy of the terrible account recovery procedures of firms such as #Google.

BTW, when the Big Tech bros wax poetic about eliminating passwords by requiring passkeys, you can bet they probably don't deal with anyone who doesn't have a phone and whose only access to the Internet is public computers like in libraries. And please don't suggest that someone who may have all their possessions in a shopping cart carry and use a Yubikey (even if USB ports weren't blocked on public computers, as they often are). The Bros often don't have a clue about the real world.

this feels weird to explicitly ask, but if you've had a positive experience with ur #tangara can you get in the comments? it's hard to keep my head in a good place when i'm struggling financially and yet still spending a large chunk of my time assembling units and responding to issues/emails and so much of what i see about it is where it's gone wrong or someone is unhappy. some positivity could really help me rn i think.

CC: @mms@bsd.cafe

It's a 15th century wall

CC: @mms@bsd.cafe