Negate This

Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition Stuttering

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 20:38:37 -0500

If you experience game breaking stuttering in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on Linux, try switching to an older version of Proton, such as 3.x Back in 2013 or so, I played Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on an old VAOI laptop that at one point ran Windows, and at another point ran Linux Mint. Although it wasn’t the best laptop, the game ran flawlessly…wait no it didn’t.

What Is Old and What Is New

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:23:24 -0400

Every once in a while, I partake in interesting interactions between what is old and what is new. What is old: Apple Macintosh System 7.5.3 What is new: The Internet Archive webpage which allows us to run Apple Macintosh System 7.5.3 straight in our browsers. I found this page in my search for running MacPaint on my machine, an endeavour I ended up abandoning because I couldn't figure out how the fuck to install the MacPaint software in my newly-created old system.

Morality: Going From Here

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 22:01:42 -0400

I’ve done a disservice to the pages of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror and the works of Hadewijch by not etching them into my thoughts, into the folds of my brain. No matter, though, as Mechthild of Magdeburg suggests, “You should read it through nine times in faith, humility, and devotion.” Again, Nietzsche provides a similar sentiment when he states, “To be sure, one thing is necessary above all if one is to practice reading as an art … rumination.

Poem #2

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:43:37 -0400

All ascents, when given enough retrospection Are as the ascent to the last tree. The moon, the grass, the air, become one And acknowledge their meaninglessness in pure Love. However, the descent soon begins Where the false teachings of Reason return, So eager as to bring about a sadness Full of the negation of one’s humanity. But the Annihilated Soul knows That having one’s humanity Means that all sadness and grief Are desirable and sweeter than any pleasure.

Poem #1

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 13:58:13 -0400

The fair moon bathes the night scene, Pouring her soft light down on the open trees. There flies the battered yet proud phoenix, And higher still, the solitary bee. The solitary bee descends, Avoiding the smooth-surfaced lake nearby, And lands on a cape jasmine. To that cape jasmine, the bee remarks, “Hi.” But the cape jasmine remains voiceless, Unbeknownst to the solitary bee Whose life has been cut short After becoming the phoenix’s feed.

The Mirror and Nietzsche

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I was reading some work on Nietzsche’s ethics today, and some of it made me think back on the Mirror. Apparently, Nietzsche characterizes Christianity’s desire for the “otherworldly” as life-denying, likely because focusing on an afterlife and the system of moral values imposed as necessary for access to that afterlife denies the potential of life, negating the will to power, or life itself. The Mirror, while being a work of Christian mysticism, does not seem particularly concerned with the afterlife as it does with creating an ethic centered around oneing oneself with God and His will.

The Mirror of Simple Souls

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:55:24 -0400

“The Mirror of Simple Souls” is a heretical piece of work, and that Marguerite Porette was burned at the stake for heresy and for the circulation of the Mirror is no surprise. Holy-Church-the-little-with-all-his-rude-scripture realizes not that the naughting of the soul’s will and subsequent desires are the ways of coming into union with God. To not recketh hell nor paradise nor the virtues of the Church puts one in a more immediate position to God.

Response to Greenfeld's System to Stay in Touch with Hundreds of People

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 21:06:07 -0500

Recently, I was browsing Hacker News and came upon Jakob Greenfeld’s piece The simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people. Feel free to read this piece, as it’s not very long and it could prove useful to some people. A quick summary of it is that Jakob managed to implement Derek Sivers’s method of staying in touch with hundreds of people, by which you categorize people into four levels of importance that dictate how often you should contact them.

Gramsci on the New Year

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 21:05:37 -0600

Given that the New Year is upon us, I thought I would share Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s thoughts on the New Year. “Sotto la Mole” 1916-1920 Antonio Gramsci NEW YEAR’S DAY Every morning, when I wake up again under the vault of the sky, it feels like a new year to me. That’s why I hate these fixed-term New Years that end up turning life and the human spirit into a sort of business with a final statement and a balance sheet and a budget for the up-and-coming management.

Train Art

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:28:30 -0500

__ /##\ \###| |##| \##\ )##| ________ ;--;/'''''\-'; \ /I | | ||)_(--._| | _||-. _:-`|| ,'O/ ;.-` |##|| :_.--._-'i |##|; ( __ ) | |,-`; | :__: |,_| ,-`_.;I ,O|______|O/,',.'.' J : ;:'`':i / ,`'---------';: ; ``` )o/ / / / o| |;`'` / / / / / / |,' \/ / / / /.'` `'~._.-'` I was bored in class the other day so I decided to try to make an ASCII train since it’s been so long since I last made ASCII art.

New Twtxt Page

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:26:42 -0400

I recently added a new page to my website that displays the contents of my twtxt file in a Twitter-like format. I did this as practice for what we’ve been learning in the Python course I’m taking in college, and also to have a page where I can throw out short-form thoughts for things that don’t merit a whole blog post. I decided to use the twtxt format because it’s super simple and has a wide network of people using it.

Gemini

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 23:33:46 -0400

Gemini is an Internet protocol made to address the current bloated and privacy-nightmare Web. What exactly do I mean by this? Think of the URL you are currently at: https://negatethis.com/gemini/ This URL starts with https://, which means that this site is being served using the HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP had humble beginnings, but has evolved as a spec to allow for complex web apps, like the oh-so beloved Google Drive, LinkedIn, or pretty much any website you view nowadays that does more than just show you some text and media.

ThinkPad T60 and OpenBSD Part 3

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the summer time! School’s out, so classes are as well. I was mostly using my ThinkPad T60 for taking notes in classes, so I haven’t used it extensively in a couple of months. I have started to use it again, though, and I’ve made quite a bit of changes since the last time I made a post. DWM and co. My last post about my ThinkPad T60 and OpenBSD involved me setting up FVWM, but I’ve since made the switch to DWM and I’m enjoying it quite a bit.

Autoimmune Hepatitis

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, I developed an angioma on the left side of my body. I developed one in that same location a couple of years ago as well, but I just picked at it until it went away. Feeling more responsible this time around, I decided to go to the doctor and get it checked. They didn’t say much besides telling me to go to a dermatologist, but I decided to go ahead and get blood tests done while I was there, just for the hell of it.

Nothing In Particular

Sat, 26 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Whoops, it’s been a minute. I don’t remember how I happened to stumble upon the Gemini protocol (sorry, Gopher readers) or how I decided that it would be a good place to “set up shop,” but here I am. As far as I can tell, I’m not really looking for anything when it comes to this protocol and the whole space it has created, or maybe I am and I don’t know it.

Continuing with my ThinkPad T60 and OpenBSD

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve set up my ThinkPad T60 to be my sorta daily driver, so I’ve had plenty of time to test things out on it and configure it to my liking. At the same time as I’m learning how to handle this old hardware, I’m learning all about OpenBSD. I definitely still have about a million more things to learn, but in the meantime I’m chronicling the setup of my ThinkPad T60 as resource for myself and others.

Writing and the Self

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When I choose to sit down and write, it’s a drawn out choice, one that I deliberate on for days on end before finally sitting down and doing it. Of course, time constraints definitely play a part in drawing out this process, but the main point is the avoidance of myself. My desire to write comes from everything within myself wanting to get out after swirling around inside of there for how ever many weeks.

"New" Thinkpad T60 and OpenBSD

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My current daily driver is a Thinkpad E590 that I was gifted /in order to/ have a laptop for college. I was running Windows 10 dual-booted with Linux Mint for a while, but I’ve been runnning strictly KDE Neon on it for a couple of months now. I tried running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on it as well for a bit, but the 5.10 kernel update, along with some stupid custom GRUB config on my part, broke my install and I had to revert back to KDE Neon with some of my files gone.

Beautiful

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Beauty and the beautiful aren’t often on my mind, in any sense of the terms. Although, as I typed that sentence out, I thought back on the day when I commented on how beautiful my partner looked in her new sunglasses and how pretty the day was thanks to the sun finally coming out after days of snow. Does that latter comment constitute “beauty?” Is there a difference between “pretty” and “beautiful?

Television Exists!

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Was there ever a point where television was an enjoyable experience? Was there some magical time, before I was born even, when the television gave people a legitimate welcoming feeling, or at least a feeling besides annoyance or pure indifference? Maybe at some early part of its life it gave a similar feeling that the small internet like Gemini does today, which to some is a feeling of comfort, while to others like Maya it’s a feeling of sadness.

People are Cool

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“Man is the greatest being endowed with independence, creativity and consciousness, and a beautiful creature who champions justice. Man, by nature, detests all that is evil and dirty. These unique features constitute his human traits.” - Kim Il-Sung I’ve thought about this quote a lot the past couple of weeks. The pure optimism and love for the people that radiates out of it is impressive. Even though I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that man has a natural disposition to detest “evil”, I still love the quote.

Kermit ASCII Art

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

... __-__ ... .:=o=: :=o=:. / `'' `'' \ ( . . ) \ `-------------' / `. `.`._|_.'.' .' / `. `.___.' .'`. //| `-.___.-' \\| .."": / /\ /\ /\ |\ ::"".. / : /.' V V \' \: : \ | : : | | : : | | : : | | : : | | : : | | : : | | : : | | |: :| | | \ : : / | | : `.

I Hate McMansions

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I revisted the McMansion Hell blog for the first time in probably a couple of years, and boy was it as “fun” as I remember. I think the reason I enjoy this blog so much is because I’ve come across these kinds of houses essentially my entire life, but it wasn’t really until I discovered this blog years back that I began to really LOOK at them and see them for what they are: hideous demonstrations of white middle-class decadence.

Dialectics

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier today I read a piece on the incredible Hegel’s Bagels site. The particular piece I read was “Introduction to the Dialectic of the Good” where Coleman Gariety describes the good and uses the dialectic to derive optimism, pessimism, etc. from the good. I do not yet understand the dialectic in a comprehensive way, but I plan to develop an understanding of it that will help me study dialectical materialism and, by extension, Marxism.

Finals are Finally Over!

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I apologize for the hiatus these past couple of weeks. My finals had just started and oh boy did they hit like a fire truck. I was writing pretty much non-stop, hence why I didn’t exactly feel like writing for this blog page. Sometimes you just feel pooped is all, but now that finals are done and I can relax a bit it is prime time to start writing for non-school related projects.

Flies

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

__ /`/ ) ___ /\/ ,` /` / ) / / / / \/ ,` __.-.__,*```'". _.'__/_/ /##\ /##\ ",-' _/_,-' \##/ \##/ " `---` ) `-. ._' " " " " ,' |_| `/..|...|..-' _/ / / | /| _/ \ `-. Lately I’ve been hanging out with some flies. A couple of days ago we left the door open for a while and accidentally let some flies inside.

Stars

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

✧ ˳☆ ˳ ✧ ✧ ༚ ✧ ✧ ☆ ˳ ˳ ✧ ✧ ༚ ☆ ✧ ༚ ༚ ☆ ༚ ☆ ˳ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆☆☆ ༚ ✧ ༚ ☆ ✧ ✧ ˳ ༚ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ༚ ☆☆ ༚ ☆ ☆ ✧ ☆ ☆ ༚ ✧ ˳ ☆ ✧ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ✧ ✧ ˳ ☆ ☆ ༚ ☆ ☆ ˳ ☆ ˳☆ ✧ ☆ ☆ ˳ ☆ ☆ ˳ ˳༚ ✧ ✧ ༚ ☆ ✧ ☆ ☆ ˳ ☆ I was out for a walk today when I heard a small bird chirping in the trees, so I went toward the trees and began looking for it.

Thoughts on Veganism

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I consider an important aspect of myself to be the fact that I’m vegan. I became vegan only recently, essentially about 7 or so months ago, and in that time I’ve managed to change so many of the views I have about the world and question the present relationship between humans and animals. It is a relationship of oppressive domination that needs to be abolished along all other forms of oppression, and considered in an intersectional manner with those forms.

First Piece

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hello whoever happens to be reading this! Welcome to my first little write-up to get things started here. I’m sure if you’re browsing Gemini, it’s likely you have some problems with how the current Web works. Maybe you have some underlying problems with the technology of the Web, or maybe the culture surrounding it, especially social media. I’m absolutely nowhere near smart enough to fall into the former category, I’m more of the lattercamp.

About Me