Gem Hell

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

“Inspired by The Hobbit or other books containing maps, create a map that could support a story. Include obstacles, geographical features labelled in cursive, and conflict relating to people or place”

Bear dreamily produced a map and proceeded to think of something else, until time was called and the children were told to present their maps to each other, justify, and grade them on the criteria. Flicking quickly through the criteria, Bear realised they’d forgotten to add any conflict.

So Bear improvised. The Goblin Kingdom and the Territorial Giants dislike each other heartily, but are thankfully separated by a mountain range, limiting their ability to be offended or aggressive.

In the mountain range is a cave network inhabited by a furtive and unpleasant (family? Species? Political affiliation?) of gollums, with one Gollum per cave.

The policy of the Goblins and Giants are to pay the gollums to prevent each other from crossing the mountains. The gollums do this effectively and it is a known barrier. In addition to not wanting to tangle with the Gollums by crossing, the factions do not want to offend them, as then the Gollums won’t block the other faction.

However, the factions cannot resist provoking each other, and so they pay the Gollums an even larger retainer to receive, remember and pass on verbal abuse aimed at the other side.

Thus, when you march up the mountain to visit the Gollums, you will be met with a delivery of abusive verbal messages from the other faction. You pay the Gollums and leave your own abusive messages to the other faction. You may not copy the content of any messages or cheat by asking the Gollum to repeat them to the other side; you have to accept your verbal messages and produce new ones. but that’s okay, as the malicious pleasure of creating your own is half the reason the factions are in conflict. If you’re drawing a blank, you can commission a gollum to simply hurl verbal abuse, but it isn’t as good.

Bear’s partner heard them out and ticked the criteria. Bear immediately forgot it, until I asked politely about their map, and their expression went totally blank, and they said “Mummy! I made all that up!”

You wonder how this was set up, politically.

You wonder if individual members of warring factions, in the process of leaving messages, have ever fallen in love.

Or if they’ve fallen in love with a Gollum.

What do the Gollums do with all the money?

How do the Gollums repel invasions so effectively?

What goes into the construction of a really good hatemail?

Does trade also happen across the barrier? Do the Gollums run a black market on the side?

Bear envisions the goblins as being gleefully quarrelsome and enjoying it. They pictured ‘giants’ as being only slightly larger than ordinary people, territorial, slow-moving and quite shy, which in addition to reminding me a bit of Diana Wynne Jones’ The Power of Three makes me wonder what this quietly obscure strand of humanity has within itself that is so continuously provoked by the goblins.

Because I do wonder what KIND of insults they trade, and why it’s so compelling to continue over long years of conflict. I expect the giants just don’t want to let the goblins have the last word.

The City of Wizards right spang in the middle of the mountain range is the only pass across the mountains accessible to everyone else, so I do wonder what the heck they think of it.

So after the grad student cut down the tree and discovered it was the oldest tree in the world he quit studying forestry and went to study salt flats (can’t cut down the oldest trees in the world on salt flats no siree none of that happening) and he was being interviewed about his research, but in the middle of the interview the reporter just stops and says “wait aren’t the guy that…”

goma-ramen　"After the rain"

tbh this post is Just for the it/its crowd now. keep shining.

this is actually not as good idea as it seems on the surface. making things that last is a good idea. necessary, actually. but using old patents from vintage appliances is not the best way to go about this as those things were not designed to be energy efficient (or water efficient in the case of appliances that need water.) not to mention all the heavy metals and forever chemicals in all that shit. most of that stuff was designed before they knew lead and asbestos and even radiation was bad for us.

what you need is not to look to the past (in america at least) but to look towards better ideas—maybe some ideas invented outside of capitalism. like, for example, modular appliances where the part within the appliance that is mostly likely to wear out is very easily replaceable so that you can easily replace that one part instead of throwing the whole thing out and buying a new one. easy repairs needs to become the norm, whether you repair it yourself or hire someone to do so, things should not only be repairable, but as easily repairable as possible with available schematics and whatnot to facilitate that.