Alexandria Catalogue - Highlights

By Zachary Addair

To get away from algorithms, away from being locked in and dependent on the platform, away from big tech chasing our attention, back to real connections as opposed to losing our followers with the Death of the Follower. We need open platforms such as Open Social Media and an open web, where the power isn’t in the platform, but in us as the producers. We need to get out of the algorithms, free from big tech, and back to real connections. But how?

We have designed a system that automates a standardised way of writing. We have codified la langue at a specific point in time. What we have left to play with is la parole. No language model will be able to keep up with the pace of weird internet lingo and memes. I expect we’ll lean into this. Using neologisms, jargon, euphemistic emoji, unusual phrases, ingroup dialects, and memes-of-the-moment will help signal your humanity. Not unlike teenagers using language to subvert their elders, or oppressed communities developing dialects that allow them to safely communicate amongst themselves.

This leaves us with some low-hanging fruit for humanness. We can tell richly detailed stories grounded in our specific contexts and cultures: place names, sensual descriptions, local knowledge, and, well the je ne sais quoi of being alive. Language models can decently mimic this style of writing but most don’t without extensive prompt engineering. They stick to generics. They hedge. They leave out details. They have trouble maintaining a coherent sense of self over thousands of words. Hipsterism and recency bias will help us here. Referencing obscure concepts, friends who are real but not famous, niche interests, and recent events all make you plausibly more human.

After the forest expands, we will become deeply sceptical of one another’s realness. Every time you find a new favourite blog or Twitter account or Tiktok personality online, you’ll have to ask: Is this really a whole human with a rich and complex life like mine? Is there a being on the other end of this web interface I can form a relationship with? “Relationship” in the holistic sense – friend, acquaintance, pen pal, intellectual interlocutor, frenemy, drinking buddy, and sure, maybe a lover. Before you continue, pause and consider: How would you prove you’re not a language model generating predictive text? What special human tricks can you do that a language model can’t?

The dark forest theory of the web points to the increasingly life-like but life-less state of being online. Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Yancey Strickler Most open and publicly available spaces on the web are overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait, keyword-stuffing “content creators,” and algorithmically manipulated junk. function l(o){const r=document.createTreeWalker(o,NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT,null);let t,e=!0;for(;t=r.nextNode();)if(t.textContent){const n=t.textContent.replace(/\s+/g," ");e?(t.textContent=n.trimStart(),e=!1):t.textContent=n}}const a=document.querySelectorAll(".intro-paragraph");a.forEach(l); It’s like a dark forest that seems eerily devoid of human life – all the living creatures are hidden beneath the ground or up in trees. If they reveal themselves, they risk being attacked by automated predators. Humans who want to engage in informal, unoptimised, personal interactions have to hide in closed spaces like invite-only Slack channels, Discord groups, email newsletters, small-scale blogs, and digital gardens . Or make themselves illegible and algorithmically incoherent in public venues.

I love Grimoire

PRs are cheap, humans who understand them are not.

Während durch einen Anschlag von Linksextremisten in Berlin 30.000 Haushalte bei Minustemperaturen weiter ohne Strom auskommen müssen, widmet die „Tagesschau“ Südafrika viel Zeit.

No nsec login = it's not even nostr.

Employment was associated with more weight gain and less weight loss. Among the employed, working longer hours was associated with more weight gain, especially at the higher levels of weight gain where the health consequences are more serious. These findings suggest that as women work longer hours they are more likely to make lifestyle choices that are associated with weight gain.

Heavy pressures at work seem to predispose women to weight gain, irrespective of whether they have received an academic education. This is shown in a study of more than 3,800 Swedes... ”We were able to see that high job demands played a part in women’s weight gain, while for men there was no association between high demands and weight gain”

Além de gratuidade, mordomia e justiça, uma estrutura para a beleza também deve incluir a noção de sacrifício

Nostr is for content, what Bitcoin is for value. Bitcoin doesn't need Nostr and Nostr doesn't need Bitcoin, but they work brilliantly together.

Nostr is for content, what Bitcoin is for value. Bitcoin doesn't

In Zehlendorf, Lichterfelde, Schlachtensee, Wannsee und Nikolassee sieht man nach dem Stromausfall die Reichen ihre Range Rover vollpacken und dann ab nach Mitte ins Hotel fahren, der Gärtner übernimmt die Wacht im Haus, und die Armen müssen sich irgendwie durchkämpfen. Die Linke ist in all ihren Erscheinungsformen voller Verachtung für die Unterschicht und die Schwachen.

I’m developing Jumble in my spare time

If what we are witnessing is not, at heart, a political or cultural battle, but some manifestation of a spiritual war - well, then perhaps our time should be spent becoming the right kind of warrior. Because everything is currently set up to turn us into the wrong kind. The right kind of warrior takes on his own internal demons before he sails out to take on those of others. He takes his stand, and stands his ground, without giving in to the __nihil__ of the age. He cleaves to what he believes in without falling into traps laid by partisanship, anger and self-righteousness. Most of all, he works to clear out his own inner junkyard so that he can go searching for truth - and recognise it when he finds it. His war is against the worst of himself and for the best of the world, and what he is fighting for is the love he so often fails at. His most effective weapon is sacrifice.

Open is good, closed is bad. Why? Because closed things can't be harvested, exploited, or transformed in the image of the new world which the machine is building. 'Open' things, on the other hand; well, they're easy prey.

And that, friends, is one of the larger issues with AI writing. It tries to sound sophisticated without being sophisticated.

We're not trying to remove all negation from writing, we're simply elevating writing to a level that would make Hemingway rise from the grave and slow clap.

“Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.’ He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few people who were ill and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.”

Wenn diese "Polen-Böller" wirklich in Polen frei verkäuflich sind, und illegal über die Grenze gebracht werden, dann wüßte ich gerne, wie es sein kann, dass sie bei uns so großen Schaden anrichten, in Polen, wo es ja viel mehr davon geben muss, aber offenbar nicht.

Entire books can be written about the why of digital preservation in general, and pirate archivism in particular, but let us give a quick primer for those who are not too familiar. The world is producing more knowledge and culture than ever before, but also more of it is being lost than ever before. Humanity largely entrusts corporations like academic publishers, streaming services, and social media companies with this heritage, and they have often not proven to be great stewards. Check out the documentary Digital Amnesia, or really any talk by Jason Scott.

Als eines von vielen Beispielen erwähnt der 35-Jährige eine Sendung mit dem Titel „Radikale Christen in Deutschland: Kreuzzug von rechts“. Die Sorge kenne jeder, sagt er. Man sitze in der Bahn und denke: „Hoffentlich setzt sich kein radikaler Christ in meinen Waggon.“

I normally charge 500 sats for chimney puns but this first one is on the house.

[The Great Unsettling and the rise of the culture of the Machine] is part of a historical cycle, and that cycle won't be altered by any of us, however much we scream at each other. The human spirit, like water, will find the level of its times. This is how it must be. The only question worth asking in times like these is: How should we live? That in turn makes it clear that how and when and whether we engage with that cycle is largely our choice. It could be that even writing books about it is a trap. But if what we are witnessing is not, at heart, a political or cultural battle, but some manifestation of a spiritual war—well, then perhaps our time should be spent becoming the right kind of warrior. Because everything is currently set up to turn us into the wrong kind. The right kind of warrior takes on his own internal demons before he sails out to take on those of others. He takes his stand, and stands his ground, without giving in to the nihil of the age. He cleaves to what he believes in without falling into the traps laid by partisanship, anger and self-righteousness. Most of all, he works to clear out his own inner junkyard so that he can go searching for truth—and recognise it when he finds it. His war is against the worst of himself and for the best of the world, and what he is fighting for is the love he so often fails at. His most effective weapon is sacrifice.

The one thing I can say with absolute certainty about creativity is this – creating is always a journey into the unknown. No two books, businesses, symphonies or technologies are ever created the same way. Computers are things of rules and systems, but creating the computer was a terrifying walk into blind night for Alan Turing. Which is why we respect him, and other great creators, so highly. These great accomplishments that we term “creative”, and the huge contribution they make to humanity, lie on the other side of uncharted oceans of fear. Your chimpanzee-like physiology was simply not evolved to make that journey into fear. That capacity comes from some higher place (sometimes, often, called god…sorry again for those who hate the idea).

Privatanleger können Silberbarren und -münzen auch physisch bei Edelmetallhändlern erwerben. Dort gilt: Je kleiner die Stückelung, desto teurer wird das Silber relativ. Zur reinen Wertaufbewahrung eignen sich deshalb Stückelungen ab einem Kilo aufwärts. In den Onlineshops von Handelshäusern wie pro aurum oder Degussa sind allerdings aktuell viele Produkte mit dem Hinweis „derzeit nicht lieferbar“, oder „auf Anfrage“ versehen, andere sind lediglich mit deutlicher Verzögerung bis weit in den Januar hinein lieferbar.

Jüngere Menschen driften im Westen spürbar nach rechts, wie immer mehr Umfragen zeigen. Sie begrüssen Ideen und vertreten Haltungen, die der Mainstream gemeinhin als rechts taxiert – oder gar als kuriose Überbleibsel einer erledigten Vergangenheit abtut... Die Speerspitze der Entwicklung bilden die jungen Männer. Deutlich häufiger als ihre Geschlechtsgenossinnen und andere Alterskohorten scheinen sie angezogen von einem neuen Traditionalismus... Besonders eindrücklich schlägt sich der Rechtsrutsch in einem Comeback der Religiosität nieder... Was wir derzeit beobachten, lässt sich mit Oswald Spengler als die Anfänge einer «zweiten Religiosität» verstehen... Sie markiert eine Art Nostalgie, den Wunsch zu einer Rückkehr zur Blütezeit der eigenen Kultur.

But it is not enough. Not nearly enough. We have built communication rails and money rails. We have not built the society that runs on them. The gap between what exists and what a parallel economy requires remains vast. Closing that gap demands something the movement has always been short on: builders.

The final week of the year begins with silver adding to a stunning month of gains, topping $83 for the first time... Silver is probably going to bounce around a lot in the next week or so... All the silver is being sucked away, and when they run out, they say we will just pay you cash for these futures contracts. If that happens, that is basically the end of paper exchanges. We will just totally stop trusting them. Why would anybody want a long futures contract on an exchange that just defaults

A viral video that has topped 76 million views on X within 48 hours has significantly heightened public scrutiny of multiple Minneapolis daycare centers linked to Somali operators that received millions in state and federal funding despite showing minimal operational activity. The apparent mismatch between allocated taxpayer funds and observable services strengthens a recent report by Christopher F. Rufo, which alleges that Somali-linked fraud in the left-wing-controlled state may involve front companies potentially diverting taxpayer funds to at least one overseas terrorist network. "To date, the FBI dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during COVID. The investigation exposed sham vendors, shell companies, and large-scale money laundering tied to the Feeding Our Future network," Patel said on Sunday.

After the reduction of U.S. funding for programmes such as USAID, the Commission has announced it will double down to maintain this structure in Europe. Should we be worried? The Commission does not know any other way of governing. When something fails, it does not rethink the model—it intensifies intervention. If its policies do not work, the conclusion is never “maybe we are wrong,” but “we haven’t changed people enough.” That is why I do not expect a short-term shift. This approach—the idea that social problems are explained by individual behaviour and that the state must correct it—has been deeply entrenched in the political class for decades.

The result? We're not producing experts. We're manufacturing political operatives with PhDs, credentialed mercenaries who have learned that survival depends on compliance, that advancement requires ideological obedience, that the path to influence runs through institutional approval. Thousands upon thousands churned out annually, most producing research that will never be read, never be replicated, never contribute anything of lasting value to human understanding.

The result? We're not producing experts. We're manufacturing political operatives with PhDs, credentialed mercenaries who have learned that survival depends on compliance, that advancement requires ideological obedience, that the path to influence runs through institutional approval. Thousands upon thousands churned out annually, most producing research that will never be read, never be replicated, never contribute anything of lasting value to human understanding.

What makes this approach interesting is how it rewards organic participation. When a newcomer starts publishing and interacting with others, they begin to form connections in the social graph. As those connections grow and the pubkey becomes part of more relationships, the rank naturally rises through network effects. There's no manual approval process or gatekeeper—just the emergent result of participation.

I wish that on instagram you could turn off the entertainment aspect and filter it so you only see the people you are following posts. Instagram is far too addicting and they know it!

Jahrzehntelang behaupteten grüne NGOs und Brüsseler Bürokraten, die explosionsartige Ausbreitung des Wolfs sei gut fürs Klima – und ungefährlich für Kinder. Dass der Bund das Raubtier nun endlich zum Abschuss freigibt, hat mit Ursula von der Leyens Pony zu tun.

Increasingly, the EU stands for despotism, socialism, mass migration, the suppression of free speech and the destruction of national sovereignty. Many senior U.S. officials and Members of Congress rightly view the European Union as fundamentally undemocratic, run by power-hungry unelected bureaucrats with practically zero accountability.

Translation: Russian foreign minister says that there is now slow, but sure, progress in the peace negotiations. Das russische Außenministerium spricht von Fortschritten in den Gesprächen mit den USA über den Ukraine-Krieg. „Im Verhandlungsprozess zur Beilegung des Ukraine-Konflikts, ich meine damit den Verhandlungsprozess mit den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, sind langsame, aber sichere Fortschritte zu beobachten“, sagte Ministeriumssprecherin Maria Sacharowa nach Angaben der Staatsagentur Tass bei einer Pressekonferenz.