Alchemiculte

Society Must Be Defended

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

“Pathogens know no borders. All countries should share the responsibility for preventing terrorists and rogue actors from developing and using AI-enabled biology to perpetrate mass harm,” writes Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
https://t.co/hVWrM7djvY

[Mickey Petersen @mickeynp]

Emacs 31.1 is out. Here's my usual annotated post on what is new in 31.1

https://t.co/SCM1qlUX8S

[Xah Lee @xah_lee]

emacs 31 feature.
canvas (bitmap) in buffer.

[International Security @IntSecHarvard]

Articles from the issue include:

“International Security at Fifty Years,” by @stephenWalt
https://t.co/ezHgs1UNUu

Ungated thanks to @mitpress

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@CarlosL31742879 @CFR_org @RushDoshi 把我整笑了 🤣

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

https://t.co/iUkSsH8K7A

[david ⚔️🦭🇪🇸 @thundersteel747]

today marks 8 years since we lost one of the coolest and most badass dudes of all time, Mark Shelton from Manilla Road

he's not dead, he's just lost in necropolis 🗣️⚔️

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@geniusvczh 他好像是离婚住院三年没工作

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

.@neilthomas123 and @shuizaiping2 discuss how Xi is using discipline to reshape the Chinese Communist Party—and warn that “the deeper he embeds self-revolution into the regime’s operating logic, the more real its inherent risks become.”
https://t.co/SuXU8MhJF5

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

In response to my previous thread asking about the feasibility of switching to Arch, several people recommended NixOS instead.

That's not going to happen, and I'm sad about it. Because technically I'm extremely attracted to the Nix model. How could I not like declarative system specification with guaranteed safe rollback? That would be ideal.

As an old Lisp-head, I probably would have opted for the Guix variant that uses Guile/Scheme as an extension language.

Unfortunately, I have a friend who was a long time NixOS user who bailed out last year. He's given me a detailed and hair-raising report on why. I'll get back to that.

He says the design of NixOS is very Eric-shaped. He knows how much I like substituting declarative specifications driving simple engines for ad-hoc procedural logic (see for example loccount), and NixOS do be like that.

Unfortunately, he also says the NixOS developer community has become dysfunctional and insane. By his account, the woke mind virus took hold, drove away a lot of capable people, and addled the brains of most of those who remained. That's why he bailed out.

I have no reason to disbelieve him about this. It's a movie I've seen before.

He has a secondary technical criticism that Nix has a bad case of not invented here and builds a lot of bespoke machinery that would be unnecessary if it were willing to take full use of Linux's native namespace and containerization hooks. But they want to be fully portable to things like *BSD, so that hasn't happened.

The technical choice is defensible, and could be fixed. The mind-rot in the developer community probably isn't fixable. All you can usually do in cases like that is ignore the project and let it die.

So, no NixOS for me. Dammit. Communists ruin everything they touch.

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@skywind3000 https://t.co/FgVmsUgOpb

[Council on Foreign Relations @CFR_org]

"The United States ushered in the age of economic warfare by learning to weaponize chokepoints. Now, other countries have learned to do the same. Its advantages have eroded not only because others have built competing forms of leverage but also because Washington has too often used its own advantages carelessly," writes expert @edwardfishman for @ForeignAffairs. https://t.co/xSiSACNWwX

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@ForeignAffairs @junghpak1 😆🤣

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

牛逼！

[Andy Stewart @manateelazycat]

Emacs OS指日可待

https://t.co/zmWDMa4ukW

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@lidangzzz

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

“Tehran should use its upper hand not to keep fighting but to declare victory and make a deal that both ends this conflict and prevents the next one,” argues former Iranian Foreign Minister @JZarif.
https://t.co/L56Zt2Qdg1

[ClawHammer PR @ClawHammerPR]

Fantasy, heavy metal and the end of antiquity - the debut album from Chariots Overdrive is here!

Gates of Hell Records proudly presents this fantastical, over-the-top and majestically powerful album!
https://t.co/zJNljFMPAf

[Afshon Ostovar @AOstovar]

My new longform essay is out in @ForeignAffairs today. Here I examine Ali Khamenei’s legacy as both the architect of the Iranian state and its foreign policy. I also wrestle with what it means for the IRGC to now be ascendant and if there’s any room left for pragmatism in Tehran

[cryptotraderoute @CryptoTRoute]

@LundukeJournal Did not expect Arch Linux to lick the boot. 2026 is really exposing who the cucks are.

[Alchemiculte @0x87FICC]

@AP R.I.P.

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

“Taiwan is strongest when it preserves space to pursue its own needs, not when it becomes a frontline outpost for one country or a subordinate partner to the other,” writes Cheng Li-wun, chair of the Kuomintang.
https://t.co/KFw3AHP4VU