If you liked The Wrestler and have not seen Beyond The Mat (1998), do that. Randy “The Ram”'s entire story is basically a straight copypasta of the section on Jake “The Snake” Roberts, one of the best wrestlers of his era. “Best” is used here in a very loosely-defined way, because well, we’re talking about Pro Wrestling.

But I was like 12-15 during the high years of the WWF, I was watching some of the most legendary names, and Jake was my absolute… ok well it’s a tossup between Jake and George “The Animal” Steele, who was older, looked like my grandpa a little bit, managed by Captain Lou Albano (both vintage heels turned face) from the Cyndi Lauper videos and had an excellent “crazy ape man” kinda schtick. He also would destroy a turnbuckle every match and I loved the vandalism.

For a kid of the right age, mid-80s WWF was the best entertainment going, in a time when you had 13 channels if you were lucky. VCRs weren’t even completely ubiquitous yet. What else going on? Family Ties, Growing Pains, Lawrence Welk…

But Jake was an absolute dark horse with incredible intensity, and totally unique - most were using steroids then, he had a very basic physique and didn’t give a shit. Most wrestlers would be high fiving and gesticulating and getting the crowd whipped up as they walked out. Jake would just walk out staring at the ring or his opponent, neither hurrying nor dallying, just a purposeful walk, with his grey sack containing a python slung over his shoulder. Great finishing move, great schtick, one of the absolute legends.

Finding out over a decade later that his life was this Shakespearean (think Titus, not Romeo) tragedy the whole time was just wild, but also not at all surprising, because anyone who watched his matches could see that this was a different type of dude from your typical wrestler.

Don’t sleep on Beyond The Mat. It’s also got some amazing stuff with Mick Foley and Terry Funk, two dudes who have done more damage to each other than the Romans did to Jesus, and who love each other intensely for it. Lots “holy shit what the fuck did he just do” clips.

It would be accurate to say that the Internet reached a critical mass of user in 1995. I was here in 1992, and 95 is when media started talking about the internet as a necessary thing for businesses etc to get onboard with, and by extension, when loads on servers started to get wild. A communal pool of servers for the web community to lean on during times of extreme demand is still an excellent idea that can solve a lot of problems, but not if we let capitalists run it for profit. Never work.

Windowpane is LSD, but like I said, mostly marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsV-VV-u1Lk

Thai Sticks are probably still available in Thailand and still probably amazing. And in the 70s when Mexican ditchweed was all you’d find in North America, it was worth the peril to import the amazing stuff.

Nowadays, anyone with a light can grow equally amazing stuff. I would love to taste some real Thai herb, but it won’t get me more stoned than my homegrown. Thai smugglers are welcome to come to Manitoba and call my bluff, DM me baby.

Windowpane was more or less a marketing label on the same Shakedown Street sheets that made their way around the country in the wake of the Dead. They arrived up here via letters sent home. You can still get sheets but I have no idea who’s making em, probably dodgy Russian chemists whose families are held hostage…

I know almost nothing about ludes.

If it’s punk yer wantin, you’ll want Dead Kennedys and MDC - both old bands (MDC is still kicking as I understand it, tho) but lots and lots of highly relevant stuff.

Notable: on their first LP, Millions Of Dead Cops, which came out in 1984 if I recall correctly, there is a trans-positive tune called America’s So Straight. You wanna talk ahead of the curve…

This is the guy who wrote “867-5309” and “Perfect World” by Huey Lewis. He’s also a friend of sorts, I got my dog from him and his wife. It’s not famous but it’s a decent tune, and anti-ICE as shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evwhdPn8ONk

Manitoba (rural) driver here. No electric buses whatsoever out here in the redneck sticks. A few very fucking annoying propane ones cause hey why not.

It’s rather deliberate at this point. They are at war with general purpose computers, because we depend on those in order to have GNU/Linux, just as we depend on a free and open Internet to have this platform. If they can get the herd to fully embrace these locked-down infernal machines, that will be it, on a certain level. We will have RISC-V and the ability to deploy to FPGAs, but the voice of Little Brother will be heard only on their whim.

I was reminded the other day that JMS was involved in Sense8, and a full five-year arc was planned, and I am angry all over again.

No.

Why not rsync directly? Why insert a network share to muddy the process?

Anyways, this is pretty much the “good” use of AI, as I see it. Indeed, if models are more tightly trained to focus on one specific bit of data, such as the manual for an application, a locally-run LLM could transform the help menu into a chatbot that teaches you the app.

This could be the future reality, if the “throw a firehose of money and a bunch of horrible code at it and hope we can charge people who have no money a lot of money to rent our bullshit” brigade are guillotined.

Whichever side of this you land on… confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

We are a nation of people who have no choice but to spend our workdays side by side with our high school bullies. Eventually, under them.

Someday, everyone will have always been against this.

It’s a question of people caring. Many do not.

My response was clearly addressed to people who give a shit, which by your own words, you do not. Why are you bothering me?

“FOSS” is itself Newspeak.

RMS created the concept of Free Software, which has an ethical basis regarding freedom, community, and your ability to use your hardware in any way you like.

“Open Source” was invented by a corporate scumbag who noticed that Free Software was taking over all the server rooms and desperately needed to keep things on a profit-seeking basis. So he lifted the methodology and jettisoned the ethics, and called it Open Source.

If you give a shit, don’t go along with the gaslight. Never say FOSS - software is either Free as in speech, or Open as in corporate bullshit.

The video linked in another comment is just a guy with an annoying voice reading the manifesto, which you can do yourself here. You can even follow down the thread and get a sense of where things are going. It looks to me like a fork is in the offing.

This: https://mwl.link/run-your-own-mail-server.html

I don’t have this book by MWL, but, when I got my first Sysadmin job in 2015, I took over a network almost entirely run on FreeBSD, and I was gifted a couple of other books of his, in particular his ZFS volumes with Allan Jude, and I can say that his work is easy to read and good at giving you the most basic raw facts of the matter. If you really want to understand email, read this book and I guarantee you will get all the information you need.

I am not his marketer, just a person who was helped immensely by his work. He’s on the Fedi as well, you can search in Mastodon.

If you have a fridge with an app

GET OUT