Linux Is Just Such A Good Special Interest. It Is A Never Ending Hyperfixation; There Is Always A New

Let's write a C++ program together. I'll start us off.

int main() {

coding is just an endless cycle of "i know nothing. i give up" and "i know everything. i am god"

be for fucking ℝ right now

every single thing involving a computer is designed to put something into our senses. until a human looks at it, and interprets it, it is nothing. it isn't 'data'. it isn't 'ones and zeroes'. it's just some electrons and photons moving around, as is their wont.

but if we arrange those electrons just so, and let them do their thing, we can create a pattern that someone will experience as bits, registers, numbers, letters, instructions, algorithms, messages, financial transactions, videos, thoughts, worlds, etc etc.

the whole project of computer programming is corraling the electrons into situations where they will obey rules we have in our heads. electrons are surprisingly predictable, so this isn't a fool's errand. but every layer of the stack of abstractions is something we built: arranging one thing to produce a pattern we want to see. the chip arranged so the 'high and low voltages' fit our idea of 'bits' and 'logic gates'. the screen whose lights create a 'field of colour' for an organism that has this level of visual acuity, this frequency response in its cone cells, this capacity to see shapes and edges. these bits and logic organised into an 'algorithm' that takes 'data' that we think of as 'vertices' and 'triangles' and produces the appearance of 'perspective rendering', which approximates our concept of a '3D object', of even a 'virtual world'.

we have gotten so very very good at producing these patterns that it's easy to see them as something natural, and miss all the layers of orchestration behind even the simplest operation. computers are a game played between humans.

I think about this post every time i have some difficulties with my linux setup (basically daily)

This is as unhinged as this laptop soon will be

Clockwork uConsole CM4