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
Exocortex Log
Ongoing: A life-logging app, built as a progressive web app with all data stored on your local machine. Party for privacy, partly so I don’t have to run any servers. If you are interested in logging graphing and analysing your time as you spend it, this might be for you! But mostly it’s for me, I don’t care if you use it or not.
See the app at exocortexlog.com, or read the latest news blog.
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 - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:22:12 +0000
There's a bit in QualityLand [ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52394492 ] as everyone is kissing their tablet for payment. 💋
Which you think maybe it just a metaphor for the intimacy with machines or something but it turns out that the company running the fingerprint database got hacked so everyone had to stop using their fingers.
😆
Great book
Status at - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:08:22 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol kids banned
FWIW the reason James OBrian blocked me on Bluesky was for pointing out that its always centrists who build the machinery of the fascist state and they think they are doing a good thing while they do it.
Think that one was jury trials rather than internet publishing though.
Status at - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:33:32 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol kids banned SUBTOOT
Don't get me wrong, I certainly think y'all should abandon those ten apps and come join me on the free internet, away from corporate ownership in free unowned spaces where no big money players can control the playing-field. Take away from big money that feed that they use to point your kids and you at whatever scape-goat target they want, from migrants to trans people, from the disabled on benefits to kids using mobile phones.
But you're talking about installing a gateway on the entire internet and giving the government the power to decide who is allowed to use it or not.
That isn't going to get you away from those monopoly capitalists, it's going to entrench them and give them a cosy relationship with an authoritarian government that's about to change to being both authoritarian and also racist and sexist and nativist and far-right-wing.
We want to break up these monopolies and decentralize the power they have and destroy all advertising.
This will do the opposite of that. It is an attempt to enclose the internet commons for corporate interests. It will do that.
It can not be done in a way that protects privacy and anyone saying it can probably has shares in Palantir or similar who will expect to be paid to run these government gateways on internet publishing and who will then leak all your data that they lied about collecting.
Status at - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:32:03 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol kids banned
Sounds like now is a good time to re-up my rant about age-gating from a few months ago.
https://dalliance.net/blog/agegate/
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
Status at - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:12:15 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol kids banned
Sounds like parents are happy because now when their ten year old says "Can I have a phone, can I have instagram?" they apparently feel 'supported by the government' in saying no.
Could we not do that without all the surveillance infrastructure and corporate monopolies for ID-providing services just by having official government advice without any enforcement that children shouldn't have these ten apps until they are seventeen?
Seems pretty ridiculous that parents feel like they can only say no to their kids if it's backed up by the government and it's police and armies.
Status at - Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:43:04 +0000
Content warning:UKPol kids banned
OBrien on the radio thinks that its okay to ban kids from Youtube even though their exam revision videos are on youtube, because the revision videos will just end up somewhere else.
He thinks though that the suicide encouragement and terrible anorexia mutual support will not simply end up somewhere else I guess. 🤷♂️
"No downside to this at all" he reckons. 🤣
"Nobody sensible can be against this ban"
This is what irks me most. The absolute refusal to see any issues at all in the ban. Just refusing to understand that there's any support help or encouragement for kids on these forums. That they are only places for radicalisation and bullying.
TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, X, Threads, Facebook and Kick.
I note that Bluesky didn't make the blacklist. I expect it'll be added during debate. Can't list everything though, so the kids will surely just go to whoever isn't listed? 4-chan seems to not be included? What a strange list.
I don't use any of them besides Youtube so won't be forced into ID checks for them myself. My youtube account is itself over 18 years old so don't think they'll ask.
Status at - Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:59:54 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol Defense Budget Resignation
Then finally we have to remember that the reason he's quitting is as much to do with political posturing and rats leaving a sinking ship as Starmer's government generally collapses.
Andy Burnham will solve pretty much none of those actual defense issues.
Status at - Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:59:35 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol Defense Budget Resignation
So the UK ought to be reducing to almost zero spending on buying arms from abroad, nuclear arms, tanks, warship.
The defense spending should be on UK capacity to build drones and anti-drone tech. Which means British chip-fabrication plants, british motor -factories. British metals and plastic and screw factories and I dunno what else it takes to build a drone but some of that.
In-UK spending on UK workers to boost UK economy. Not abroad.
Whether building all that costs more or less than the wasted money we give mostly to our competitors now is hard to say, but none of it is really about what proportion of GDP the country gives to the defense.
Status at - Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:59:21 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol Defense Budget Resignation
Much defense spending is justified by a kind of Keynesian investment. The spending is supposed to grow the economy as well as defending the nation. But this only works if you use the money to build local factories and employ local workers and advance local capacity. If you just buy planes from the EU or America, you get none of that. You're spending to boost your competitor's economy instead.
Status at - Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:59:09 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol Defense Budget Resignation
Next remember that tank warfare is last century's warfare. Tanks last like a day in the battlefield now before they're blown up by drones. To the extent you're spending on tanks, you're wasting money. Especially if you aren't even building the tank and so building sovereign expertise, just buying it.
Likewise warships really.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Reinventing Entropy | Compression is Intelligence Part 1 - YouTube - Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:37:50 +0000
3 Blue 1 Brown really is great isn't he? Part one video this week is on shannon entropy and the limits of data-compression but he's heading for something deeper by part 3.
Price of Eggs by Carsie Blanton and The Burning Hell - YouTube - Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:29:08 +0000
Nice little revolutionary song with puppets: "What are we gonna do about these elites? / We’ll all get together and hit the streets. / We’re never gonna break! / We’re never gonna bend! / That’s what we’re gonna do about them."
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious - The Atlantic - Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:01:01 +0000
The Atlantic's argument that AI isn't conscious has the right conclusion and is mostly good but some of it's arguments are pretty poor. "So, given that Claude is not conscious, what are we to make of Claude’s
constitution? Perhaps the most fruitful way to think about it is as an
84-page character sheet for a role-playing game. LLMs can generate
dialogue for Julius Caesar because many books about him exist in the
training data those models used. Claude’s constitution serves a similar
role for delineating the helpful-chatbot character that customers
interact with when they’re using Anthropic’s products. To do this
effectively, Anthropic does not simply add the document to the training
data, or include it as part of the hidden stage directions that preface
each conversation a user has. The company says it uses the document when
fine-tuning the model; this involves an automated process where the
sentences emitted by the model are checked for consistency with the
document and the model is u…
Media Myopia As We Hurtle Towards Climate Oblivion – Media Lens - Sun, 31 May 2026 11:02:20 +0000
Our media continues to report on bullshit while ignoring the story: "Imagine that, instead of focusing on
short-term melodramas, leading news organisations rigorously probed
politicians, day in and day out, about the climate crisis.
Imagine that news editors and journalists
relentlessly challenged the government about current policies that are
bringing us closer to the brink of climate chaos.
Imagine that reporters investigated and
exposed the deep reluctance and state-corporate obstacles, including the
establishment media, that are blocking alternatives to climate
Armageddon.
Imagine, in other words, that we had a
sane media system. That could just mean the difference between human
survival and human erasure."
The economist billionaires fear: this is how we get a wealth tax - YouTube - Mon, 25 May 2026 13:45:19 +0000
Gary interviewing Gabriel Zucman on wealth taxes and the distribution of the tax burden between the mage rich and the poor.
Nobody Wants To Come To America, Mate - Mon, 18 May 2026 10:31:52 +0000
Professor Jiang Xueqin let Keen do the heavy lifting on the empire
question, then came in with the kill shot dressed up as polite analysis: “If you’re going to see regime change to stop this war, forget about seeing it in Iran. You need to see it in America.” --Pause on that for a second.That
is a Chinese academic, on British television, telling Piers Morgan that
the path to global stability runs not through Tehran but through
Washington. That the bloke in the Oval Office, the geriatric grift
artist with the Diet Coke button and the nuclear codes, is the
destabilising force. Not the Ayatollah. Not Xi. Not Putin. Not Kim. The
bankrupt steak salesman from Queens.And what’s wild is, he’s not wrong.
The Boring Internet | Terry Godier - Thu, 14 May 2026 22:31:51 +0000
Nobody can sell it. Nobody can pivot it. Nobody can take it public and
gut it for shareholders. Nobody can call an all-hands meeting and
explain that, going forward, the protocol will prioritize video.
You’re about to feel the AI money squeeze | The Verge - Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:02:17 +0000
Gartner forecasts that large AI companies would need to earn cumulatively close to $7 trillion in AI-driven revenue through 2029, which is close to $2 trillion per year by the end of the period. In order to achieve “historic returns,” the providers would need to earn nearly $8.2 trillion in the same period.
Nuclear Genocide – The Threat And The Ceasefire – Media Lens - Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:27:59 +0000
"Despite all the madness, horror and killing, Trump’s genocidal threat
provoked a display of deep-seated solidarity and compassion that defied
decades of propaganda demonising the Iranian people as ‘animals’,
‘savages’ and ‘primitives’. Clearly, very few of us are willing to
tolerate the threat of nuclear genocide. In these grim times, when it
sometimes feels like humanity has completely lost its way, that is
something to celebrate."