About
Dalliance.net is Pre’s homepage, index of his projects, updates on his blog. That sort of thing. You can subscribe in various ways.
Projects
Blog
My blog, mostly monthly summaries of the Fediverse Account.
Visit at dalliance.net/blog
Or check out the categories index
Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny
Ongoing: An Interactive Sci-Fi story for Virtual Reality about the adventures of the crew of a flying saucer.
Visit at starshipsd.com
Wordcloud Tarot
Ongoing: My tarot decks have the meanings of the cards written on the card in a world-cloud. There’s also a video show with a reading about politics most weeks.
Visit at wordcloudtarot.com
Tentacles, After The End
A 30 minute animated movie about the last woman alive on a planet ravaged by tentacle monsters from outer space.
Tentacles is complete, visit the archive at tentacles.org.uk
Book: Do Dream Sheep Bleat?
A short story book about magic and memes and reality.
Dreamsheep is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/dreamsheep
Book: Yes, The Conspiracy Really Exists, And Furthermore It’s All Your Fault.
A long rant about how stupid humans screw up humanity.
The book is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/yes
Loopy
After the band broke up, I took to playing with myself via a loop pedal. Sometimes, very rarely, even in public.
Bookshelf
An album of songs inspired by some of the best books on my bookshelf.
The album is complete, you can listen to the songs at dalliance.net/bookshelf
Handsome Jack’s Showband
My punk cover’s band.
Despite some online-only gigs, the band didn’t make it though the pandemic, you can watch some old gig videos online at handsomejacks.co.uk
Joust Adventure
A little web-game I made back in 2011 with the hope people might pay me to make level 2.
I don’t think anyone ever finished level 1. Too hard.
Can you do it?
The project is abandoned, you can still play level one at dalliance.net/joustadventure. So far as I know, I’m the only person to ever complete the level. Let me know if you do!
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Diary
My diary from the Fediverse.Status at - Thu, 02 Oct 2025 16:00:06 +0000
Electric work apparently finished I think. Power only off for fifteen minutes or so.
As said, the existing sockets can't be removed for some reason but he's left 'em live rather than a blank face-plate.
Plenty of electric sockets in this room now! Fourteen! And eighteen USB power sockets too!
Face-plates not attached to the sockets yet, do that after the plastering I believe. So they look a bit shoddy for now.
Next up is presumably wall paper stripping and painting but electrician didn't seem to know if he was doing that or someone else or if it'll be done tomorrow so I guess that'll all be a surprise.
Status at - Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:19:58 +0000
BREAKING NEWS: We don't know anything but are going to cancel normal programming to keep saying the two things that we do know over and over again in a panicked tone of voice.
/me turns off radio.
Status at - Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:00:46 +0000
This week's Mindscape podcast is with Petter Törnberg who has been running agent based simulated social networks to try and figure out why they're so divisive and polarizing.
His models do apparently capture these features of the networks which promote the most popular posts to everyone.
Sad to learn that simply using chronological feeds apparently not only doesn't help he reckons it makes things worse!
Maybe his agent's just aren't smart enough to follow the right people, but then probably nor are mere humans.
🤔
Status at - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 21:42:48 +0000
Content warning:re: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Got to the end of it all. Cried a few times, laughed a few times, enjoyed it all.
Angel is at it worst in Season Four and possibly it's best in Season Five when they've all mystically forgotten about Season Four and turned more ambiguously evil.
Strange to bring Spike back for that season of Angel after he died so gloriously at the end of Buffy. That could be what made the fifth year the best one though.
Doubt it's possible to watch those 250 episodes much quicker without being actually unemployed. Fitted the broken-wrist convalescence period quite nicely though.
So long Buffy. See you again next decade maybe. Got a real life to get back to.
Might read some of the comics though.
Status at - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 21:37:15 +0000
Read the first of Martha Well's Murderbot books, "All Systems Red" in which a security drone rescues it's crew from violence and death on the planet they're exploring.
The robot seems barely distinguished from the cyborgs and the humans really. Certainly organic parts, autonomy, inner life. Seems to not particularly like the humans but also seems to be pretty much like one.
Seemed short, like the first episode of a show rather than the whole series. Which I suppose I should have expected if I'd noticed it was a novella. There is indeed a whole series of them. Given I bought 'em in a bundle expect I'll read more.
Status at - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 14:07:50 +0000
Lots of channels cut into the walls ready to be wired and have new plug sockets added.
The existing plug socket's back-boxes are apparently stuck or important for the wiring or something so can't be removed. Can't just expand those holes to have 2-gang sockets in their place. I'm told that we'll have to put a blank face plate on them and add the new 2-gang sockets above instead of to replace the existing ones. Won't really matter at all, they'll be behind the drawers or inside the sideboard cupboard anyway.
Status at - Sat, 27 Sep 2025 13:59:29 +0000
Of course ironically it'd be easier to sign this government petition against a digital ID if everyone had a digital ID they could sign it with.
Status at - Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:46:32 +0000
RE: https://boing.world/@pre/115260507005295305
Upgraded the Glitch instance here so I can quoth and quoot now like this.
Upgraded the GotoSocial instances running the project accounts too, and yet still can't quote-boost them because GotoSocial I guess doesn't have the permissions stuff yet.
Nice to see it all evolving though. We'll get there one day. Without anyone owning it all.
Status at - Thu, 25 Sep 2025 17:56:37 +0000
If you think the fact it's "digital" will stop me burning my ID card in protest then you can think again!
Phones burn up nicely if you get them right.
They recently decided that company directors have to prove their digital ID. My company turnover is like 500 quid but I'm still a director of it.
So I had to prove my digital ID.
To do this, I had to take my driving license to a post office.
Which means it's no more secure than the driving license I already had, surely?
Wonder if I can sell a digital ID on the black market and then keep getting a new one.
Status at - Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:42:43 +0000
"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.How Labour Sold Their Souls To Billionaires | Gary Stevenson | Zack Polanski - YouTube - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:40:56 +0000
Gary Stephenson talks to Green-Party-UK leader Zack Polanski on Zack's podcast. He thinks we should look at economics like a car mechanic, no wait, like a medical system. They congratulate each other a lot and chat about Gary's one topic focus, inequality. Gary doesn't want to reduce inequality he says, just stop it getting worse!
Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:13:59 +0000
Bain & Co says that the only way to make today's AI investments profitable is for the sector to bring in $2 trillion by 2030 (the Journal notes that this is more than the combined revenue of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta):
What Fresh Hell is This? - Craig Murray - Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:09:54 +0000
"The calculation is that Reform will oppose the measure on libertarian
grounds, and that this will allow Starmer to show himself as tougher on
immigration than Reform."
The Man Behind Blender, Ton Roosendaal | Bad Decisions Podcast #69 - YouTube - Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:18:37 +0000
Ton Roosendaal is great, he is why Blender is so great and why the organization he has built is so perfect an example of Free Software doing well. Always wants to do the right thing the right way ever since buying his own software from his bankrupt company to make it free.
It's Your Party and I'll Cry If I Want To - Craig Murray - Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:20:51 +0000
I cannot stress to you enough that this is not a glitch it is a feature.
Nor is it a teething problem. Those who currently hold the reins are
determined to make sure those reins cannot be voted out of their hands. I
have had a number of conversations with people actually in charge of
instituting all this, and the prevention of direct democracy and the
structuring of the party instead through controlled committees and
caucuses is for them a given.
How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory
How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory
AI and the Urgent Need for a Politics of Altruism - Craig Murray - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:08:18 +0000
"Take the UK’s richest citizen, Jim Ratcliffe. What is the basis of
his wealth? Did he invent something? Did he pioneer a new form of
management? Did he build vast new industrial plants that employed tens
of thousands of people?
No, he did none of those things, and indeed arguably he did the very
opposite of those things. All he did was acoounting tricks with
digitised currency units, and then indulge himself in football clubs and
LandRover nostalgia."
How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult - YouTube - Tue, 02 Sep 2025 09:17:40 +0000
Love it, the film-noir monotone voice over, the mood music, the thesis, the surreal otherwordly description. Great hour of radio. How Joe Roegan destroyed comedy and reality.
Mastodon Isn't Complying With Age Verification Because It Can't - Freezenet.ca - Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:47:03 +0000
Another interesting platform in all of this is, of course, Mastodon.
Unlike Bluesky, Mastodon is actually decentralized. There is no one
person that can make a decision on how the whole platform operates
(which is what is happening on Bluesky right now). Servers are
independently operated and run and spread throughout the world. So,
first of all, who does the government sue when they believe there is
non-compliance?