Relee Squirrel

Hi everybody!

I haven't been posting in here for a while. I ended up sort-of working on projects with others that are less open to talk about, and so I started writing a local 'private' journal for my work posts instead of putting them up here.

Even though I'm not on those less open projects anymore, I kinda like how the private local journal is going and it means that if anything happens, I don't lose my journals. Though, I haven't exactly saved any of the stuff here or way back on my LJ or anyplace else. ^.^;;

I might still post questions or updates here, but not the big long moment to moment work posts.

I only thought to post this when I came to get some of the information on the Public Domain Survival Game project. I have lots of notes for the Dommy Monsters project but not much onthe other. ^.^;;

Oh and if you are looking to follow or find me in other places, I don't know who might read this apart from a few folks who I think are already following me in other places?

Try these links:

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/relee

https://plush.city/@relee

I got seriously sidetracked from my work when I went to those sites so I'm going to leave it at that and post this and get back to work. ^.^;;

3:55pm - I missed a couple of On Days this week, but I'm back!

I already did a bit of work before getting in here, so I'm only planning to go to 6pm, though I may continue if I choose.

I think the first order of business is a bit of rubber duck with this journal, because I want to figure out why I've been struggling this week.

It started with a reasonable reason. There was a heat wave, and the new fan I bought turned out to have a non-working part. I wasn't able to work that day, and the next day I got the new fan but I wasn't able to work after setting it up, even though I was feeling better. Yesterday I had the fan and there were plans to go out with my Dad to pick up mail from the U.S. post office box, but that didn't happen, and I ended up diving into video games rather than doing the three hours I kept telling myself to do.

That last day is the one that is particularly bothering me because while the previous two days were misses, they had some sorts of reasons. Yesterday I had time and inclination and never did it.

I hate to say it, but I think the problem was playing video games. I can get really absorbed in games, and when I'm particularly immersed the tasks in the game feel as real as irl tasks, so my judgement of importance gets messed up and I have to remind myself it's just a game, most of them I can save and pause any time and nothing I do in them really matters; I can pick it up again later.

The other part of it though...

I keep saying that the things I do in these three hours are fun, just as good as the fun I do when I'm playing games or doing whatever. That's mostly true? But there's also an element of stress sometimes in what I do during these on-day sessions.

Doing research for community building and that sort of thing is particularly stressful for me, and less fun than coding or writing or sharing or coming up with ideas for social change or artificial intelligence.

4:03pm - With the reasons for that clear, I think I'll know better what to do or not do next time. For now I'm going to focus on that stressful stuff I just mentioned. Maybe I can get it out of the way? I also got a reply from Chocolate Kitsune, so I'll address that first.

4:18pm - The message to Chocolate Kitsune has been sent. Let's see where I was in my research, last time...

4:50pm - During the research, I took about 15 minutes to get a snack and help my Dad by cleaning out the air fryer's pan. It's a bit of work since the fat and grease congeals and then gets in the crevasses in the rotating part of the air fryer, and that needs to be cleaned too. ^.^;;

Back to research.

5:13pm - I have done research. Patreon is still Patreon. Subscribestar looks pretty good. Ko-fi looks better than both, and why didn't I know they did all the things? I thought it was only for straight donations, but they also do subscriptions and other sorts of things on top, and paying them for the service is optional.

I also looked at a more corporate sort of option, Chargebee. It does look like it would work too but I think it would scare off the indie type crowd. XD

One problem is that they all forbid adult content. Even SubscribeStar. I think they are forbidding it on legal grounds and aren't neccesarily actually going to do anything about it? Being required to say something isn't allowed isn't the same as being required to prevent it from happening. I believe there are cases where there are laws for both, demonstrating this.

I know that SubscribeStar has several major adult projects on it. So does Patreon, even. I don't know about Ko-Fi and that means I need to find out.

5:48pm - I ended up asking around, and doing some more research. It looks like Ko-Fi takes it more seriously, and so they'll be a no-go. That's a shame!

It's close to 6pm. I have to decide if I'm going to start another task or call my three hours finished for today.

Now that I've taken a close look at patronage/subscription services, I still need to figure out what I'm going to do for social spaces.

I figure the main thing will be a bridged asynchronous chat system, combining Discord, Matrix, and maybe Slack and Telegram.

I might also set up a web forum, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile these days.

Oh and I do still need to figure out if I can set up a bridged project on Github and their alternatives, which also means I need to look into their alternatives.

I think looking at Github's alternatives will be the least stress and work so I'll use my last four minutes and any bonus time I feel like using to look into that.

6:10pm - Alright, I looked into a couple but they don't seem any better. I wonder about rolling my own in regards to that as well?

Anyways that's going to be my three hours today. Thanks for reading!

8:36am - The last few days have been a big mess for me. I've been trying to do an on day each day and it hasn't worked out. Today, I took my meds and ate a muffin for breakfast, and I'm going to start with on day stuff because this schedule is important to me, as are the things I'm doing.

I decided to work from my bed today, at least to start, because I find it's a good place to think about social change. That's what I'd like to start with today.

In the long term, I'd like to completely restructure our economic system into something planned and more fair, but that's not something I can just flip a switch on. I do think having a solid idea of what we're aiming for is important too, but in the interim there are ways to make what we have better and closer to the sorts of systems I want to have.

There's an idea I've been thinking about for a while now, and I'd like to share it and flesh it out some.

In the current economy, I'm a big fan of crowd patronage systems. For many people and creatives in particular, you can switch from producing something and having to restrict access to copies in order to sell them as products, to just being paid to do what you do. Some folks choose to still restrict their produce to those who paid in, which I don't think is fair, but that's their choice. I just hope they'll change.

11:14am - Spreading the idea around and improving the way I describe it took longer than I expected, and more work. I'm almost out of time for today, but I think I did a good thing. I'm going to pop off early, I've only got 15 minutes left anyways, because I'm actually painfully hungry and have stuff to do in a little over an hour.

A problem with this logistically is that in order for people to use a crowd patronage system, they have to transfer money from the patrons, each individually. Usually this is done through a payment processor like Stripe, or a service like Patreon or Subscribestar, who handle the payment processor relationship for you. (They both also use Stripe, I think.) There is a cost to them per transaction, and for it to be worthwhile they have minimums. On top of that, most creators I've seen ask for a higher minimum in order to get their most basic 'perks' like seeing their work early and such, restricting it for a month or something after it's done so that there's a benefit to the subscriber, though it's more like they're creating a problem for non-subscribers to encourage them to join. ^.^;;

Generally these minimums are something like $1 USD. A bunch of creators I've supported on patronage systems asked for $3 CAD or $7 CAD. It's kind of strange to look at that and call it high, but it kinda is? It's nice we can support an artist, but supporting just one artist with a monthly payment like that, consider all the other art-related things that people pay monthly. Streaming services, game subscriptions... I pay ten bucks a month to Amazon Prime Canada, and the things they provide are kinda nuts, but that's only ten bucks a month, right?

But also, I have a pretty fixed budget, and a ton of artists I'd like to support. Having to pick and choose is something I kinda want to avoid, and as a result I often don't do any of it, due in part to the emotional labour.

You can divide a dollar a hundred ways. A penny might not seem like much, but they add up. Is there a way to get past the "You need to pay at least a dollar" limit on the transactions? Well, no, but there's a workaround. If you share a patronage system, you can split the income. For every dollar donated, a hundred artists get a penny. I think a lot of folks would be more willing to give, then, and so you might be able to go from having under a thousand one-dollar subscribers to over ten thousand one-cent subscribers, and make that money right back.

Functionally speaking, I can think of two ways to do this. Using traditional sorts of crowd patronage, you could pay for a bunch of artists from one subscription as a 'bundle'. You'd still have to pay at least a buck or whatever the transaction minimum is, but you'd be helping more artists to do their thing.

The other way would be to set up a different sort of crowd patronage service. Right now I'm supporting two artists on Patreon. I had to pull back because I was giving too much and I was facing financial danger. When Patreon charges me each month, it doesn't do two or a half dozen tiny charges. It charges it all as a single fee.

What if we set up a crowd patronage system where instead of having minimums for each patronage account, there's just a minimum transfer into a sort of 'patron wallet' on the site? Then you can give any amount to the folks you support without worrying about the transaction fee for each. The patronage target would still need to recieve a minimum amount to cover the transaction fee of getting the money, but I don't think that's unreasonable.

In my own case, I think I'd be comfortable giving $20 cdn split to a whole mess of artists and open source projects each month, to help them keep doing their thing. How about you? I definately know there are people with a lot of money who are eager to give, and a lot of people with hardly any money who can spare a buck if it gets split a hundred ways.

So, those are some ideas.

9:05am - All that in just a half hour. Now that I've written it down, I'm going to shop it around, post it to some places. Maybe format it better. Probably.

I expect it'll take time to get responses, but I'll deal with them as it goes on. I'll probably work on some other things after posting it places.

Uh, so I somehow got the names of Opensea and Digitalocean confused.

Digitalocean is a server hosting company, they offer packages they call Droplets. Opensea is an NFT trading service. Uh, I don't do that. ^.^;;

I've been saying Opensea droplet for a while now. Well, my mistake. Oops!

4:36am - I was pretty messed up yesterday, and a different sort of messed up when I woke up today. Now, I'm nolonger messed up, so I'm going to do three hours. <3

To start with, I got an email from ODSP about a question I asked. It's not exactly life-goals stuff, but it sort-of is, because it's part of getting my sweet-and-sour fiance here to Canada. Gotta figure out if it's even financially viable, first.

7:29am - Well, that's about three hours. I spent more than two of that doing research and stuff for getting Alex and I together.

Now I have a problem. I don't want to stop! I finished the work I was doing with regards to the marriage and immigration plans, though I didn't really post anything here while working on it. I didn't do anything else yet. I think the last half hour I've been somewhat distracted, doing non-work things?

It's not good to work more than four hours straight without a break, and even three hours is pushing it. I am going to do a few other things, and see if I still want to do more work. I might do some gamedev stuff after.

8:48am - I re-organized and cleaned the kitchen, and put the dishes etc. away. Now I'm back!

I'm still not sure if I'll keep working, but for the moment I'll try.

9:09am - I'm having trouble figuring out what to actually do, so I think I'll write about my thoughts here. That usually helps me figure it out.

First off, I was moving around my tabs and opened the game design document template I had been using as reference, but it's gone. Investigating, I found that the person who made it has make a new game design wiki, so the template is there now.

The wiki: https://rosacarbo.notion.site/Game-design-wiki-6902c5dc9d1242c9a70822f13e6c76b3
The template: https://rosacarbo.notion.site/Game-design-template-0132383574dd4c2dbff5d14e3a90761c

The things I was working on before were developing communities... Oh! I forgot I was going to talk with my bf about my ideas to help him with his work.

A lot of the things I want to do would also help him if he's doing similar things. He's a writer, and he's definately succeeded at writing a lot of high quality work. He has not succeeded so much at getting people to read it. He has like 20-30 dedicated fans, I think? But none of them have really been funding him, so he's made dick all. He doesn't publish his books through traditional means either.

The shorter version of what I want to do with my game projects and his writing is to make communities for them online, along with patronage systems tied in. Then people can pay us to keep doing what we do, and help us along. But also, it means they'll have a place to be, where they can interact with eachother and with us. That'll keep people interested and attentive and engaged, and help them know when we have new stuff to share.

The thing is, I kinda need to set up all the infrastructure for all of this!

So there's the option of just doing Discord and Patreon, but that doesn't have much coverage and there's issues with both platforms. That's why I'm focused on doing all the heccin' platforms I can bridge. So like, Discord, Matrix and Slack, but also maybe Telegram? I don't know what others.

Then there's also other sorts of social media like twitter and mastodon, facebook is still there even if it's mostly used by other people. If you can be everywhere, why not be everywhere? My games can be on github and the alternatives too, and then there's also sites for his writing to go where they aren't already. He's always focused on furry sites, and I made a site for him a long time ago but it isn't great imo.

9:32am - I'm going to be going out soon to do some errands. Before then, I have a bit more time. I want to examine the various things I need to do to get this stuff accomplished, so I know what options I have for things to work on besides the ambiguous "Community Building".


I need to figure out patronage solutions. So far I know about Patreon and Subscribestar. Are there others? Will either of those work out for us? There's also the option to roll our own, I need to investigate that more. The person I know who did that for themself is https://support.the.choco.one/ and I asked them about it before. I should contact them again to ask if they have any issues with international taxation. Maybe since they're only accepting money, not paying for things, that's not an issue?

I need to figure out what social platforms to use, and how to bridge them. Discord, Matrix, and Slack I have a handy youtube vid for how to bring them together. I mostly hear about Slack being used for professional communication, though. I'll have to learn more about all three. Most furries use Discord or Telegram, so I want to know more about Telegram, too. What other options are out there? I don't know.

I want to set up websites and blogs for each project as well as one for Alex. I don't know if he'll actually use it blog-wise, but we can use it for posting announcements and releases at least. Along with making the websites, I want to try out the indieweb stuff to post everywhere and also get backfeed.

Further, there's a lot of furry websites out there and such. I've advised a lot of folks to try Postybirb before, a tool for posting to a ton of sites all at once, but I've never used it myself. I only advise it because folks say it's too much work to post more than one place, and they're usually on Twitter exclusively and that's no good for me.

I need to figure out setting up an open source project on Github for the survival game project, and also find all the github alternatives and ways to bridge them.

Dommy Monsters I intend to be open source but more in a "You can read and use this source, I'm not looking for collaborators" way. At least to start, I guess? We'll see how it goes.

Alex's stuff isn't gamedev, but I know there are sites out there for writers. Royal Road is one I know, and I think I've seen others like it but can't recall. Even though he's a furry writer, I think there's a lot of places where people would appreciate his stuff. Tons of young non-furries loved the Warrior Cats books, or so I understand.

I really need to learn more about RSS and Atom, if I want to be able to push updates to them. Also I'd kinda like to use them myself? I really hate having only one 'stream' of posts on various social media, I want to seperate them by group or topic or other things.


I think that covers the social things. While I'm in this headspace, though, I also want to consider what needs to be done for the gamedev stuff.

Dommy Monsters, I still need to finish the design doc. That's pretty straight forward.

Survival Game, I'm not ready to write the design doc yet. I need to figure out some things about how it would work, make sure I'm capable of doing it all.

So, I need to figure out making multiplayer games with Godot. I want to have the options of solo, multiplayer with one player hosting the server, and a remote server option that all players connect to. I'm pretty sure Godot can do all of that, and I won't have to make a server code that isn't Godot based.

Speaking of Godot, I need to make sure their license will be compatable with my plans. I want this survival game to be open source and public domain, but I don't think Godot operates on a public domain license. I need to find out what their license is and if it'll work out.

After I'm sure I know I can make a multiplayer game like that, I will start doing a design doc for the Survival Game project. In order to ensure I can do that, though, I am going to have to make something basic to test with. I haven't actually used Godot since 4.0 came out. So, I'll have to see what I can do there.

Finally, there's the web development part. I've had websites up for a long time, and not used them much. I've been thinking of migrating to an opeansea droplet, but I don't know if that's a good idea or not. So, another research job there. Seeing if it'll do everything I need, and what things will cost.

I have a reserved url for myself, but I'd kinda like to have one for each of these projects, and that costs money. I want to figure out how much everything will cost.

10:00am - I think that's everything for now! I'm going to go do those errands and find something to eat. I'm pretty darn hungry now.

8:52pm - I haven't been well since my last entry. Not that I've been sick exactly, it's more of a mental health thing. I wouldn't say depressed, either. There's been irl work that needed to be done, that sapped what I had to make myself work on my other stuff, but also there's been emotional issues, that I've been struggling with.

I did find in the time I was off my schedule, that the improvements I had noticed were as real as I thought they were, and they went away sure enough. Even though I did do some things that I didn't post about here, I didn't do them with the scheduled "Three hours on" and that meant I didn't have the structure or clear achievement of having done it in a measurable way. On top of that, when I wasn't working, I didn't have that "I earned this, I already worked." thing to make myself feel better. I mostly spent my time playing X4: Foundations, and being sucked into it HARD. Even when I'm done this today, I'm going to avoid playing that today. I need to catch up on ARK stuff and Elden Ring. ^.^;;


Anyways for today's session, I've got a lot on my plate. I got contacted by one of my job search support people, reminding me that I am supposed to be searching for jobs, and that I didn't contact the other job search support person to set up an appointment after we talked via email before. Oops.

So I want to take care of that, though I'm getting a pretty big "Aversion" feeling in my head while typing this, so it's not going to be easy.

I also think I should do a bit of actual job searching, even though it's late at night and I can't call anybody.

Apart from that, there's the community building stuff.

I realized after my last entry that all of the things I have planned neccesitate forming and managing communities. I'm not really excited about that part. I don't know if I can do it well or not. It's basically going to be the "Hard Part" that I don't want to do, in between where I am and my goals that I want to achieve.

It'll probably be mostly or entirely online, especially to start, but I need to form communities for my games, both Dommy Monsters and the Open Source Survival Game project. For the latter one in particular, if I'm going to get anyone else to work on it open-source style, I have to lead the project. That means encouraging people, spreading the word, dealing with disputes, reading and approving pull requests and making sure they work, all sorts of stuff.

For the social revolution sort of thing, I still haven't found a community to join that doesn't seem to be based around taking advantage of people's anger to make things worse instead of better, and I'm not sure any of those are even real communities. I haven't finished looking, though, I have other ideas to try, but I'm not having much luck, and nobody I ask who ought to already be in one knows about any.

These socialists are way to independant, you know?

Then there's the AI stuff. Well, I really can't do that one on my own. I think it's far more likely that groups already exist for that one, but we'll see about if I need to form communities for that too. I don't really want to be a community manager or a leader, but that may have to be a collection of hats I'll be wearing some of the time.

Besides the front and center personal life goals stuff, there's also my fiance Alex. They're a writer, and they haven't had much luck getting readers or supporters. I haven't had much luck advertising for them in the past, either. I think that having a community would help them a lot, so I want to build and manage one for them.

For them and for myself, I also want to include patronage systems. I know about Patreon and Subscribestar, and I've heard of folks cutting out the middleman and making their own by going with Stripe, the payment processor for those sites. I've heard this can be an issue with international taxation, though, so research is a thing.


9:19pm - I actually told some friends just before bed what I need to do today. Let me copypaste that maybe.



That's what I told them. Also I can't believe I remembered the HTML and CSS to make that 2em margin with a div element without having to look anything up. XD

I haven't done anything like that in years, but I guess I did it a lot in the past. It's rare for anything to take html for formatting like Dreamwidth still does.

9:36pm - So as you can see, there's a lot of stuff I want to do. The starting points for that is mostly researching all the different things, what's out there, what can connect, what I want to use, that sort of thing.

Before I get too carried away, though, I want to do the thing I don't want to do, right? I'm going to email my job support people.

10:26pm - I've sent emails to both of them, though I've been getting distracted a lot. Unfortunately, I want to do a lot of my research in part by asking about things on Discord and other places that are distracting. It'll be difficult!

One more job thing, I'm going to look at job aggregators a bit, then move on to the community building stuff.

10:51pm - I found four jobs to apply to. We'll see how that goes.

Now we're two hours in, and I haven't touched on what I actually care about, and also am struggling with emotionally. So, I'll have to do some of that just to get the ball rolling, maybe out of the emotional thorns.


Let's make lists.

Discord, Matrix, and Slack - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLqQvt3aig

Mastodon, Twitter, Github, Facebook, Reddit, and my own Blog - https://brid.gy/

March 26, 2023, 5:36pm - A medical emergency happened at about the end of my third hour, so I spent most of yesterday in the ER waiting room with my Dad. He's okay and doing better. Hopefully it stays that way. Since I did do the whole three hours I'm happy to say "That Counts!" and that means today is an off-day. I just need to post this because I hadn't finished up and pushed post before we rushed off.

5:10pm - It's on day seven, and with a day-on day-off schedule that means I've been at this for two weeks now. That's kind of amazing? It does feel more like one week with days that are twice as long, but while that could be technically accurate it also doesn't make good sense.

I've got a lot on my mind today. I was driving around both to get groceries and get to the Tim Hortons where I am right now. I was thinking about trans issues, I was thinking about poverty, I was thinking about all the things I posted about thinking about last time I think?

I had a notable discomfort after an hour of writing about that stuff last week, though. I spent about 50 minutes writing about IP stuff though I barely scratched the surface. I'm not sure why I didn't want to continue after that. Usually when I get started talking about these things, it's hard to stop when I realize the person I'm talking to is uncomfortable. ^.^;;

I think I'll not write/talk about that serious business stuff today. I was thinking I'd touch on some things, but there's other stuff I want to do.

I think today will start with gamedev talk.

6:00pm - I've poked around a tiny bit but I've mostly been reading stuff I shouldn't and socializing. ^.^;;

I suppose I didn't mention it but today did have a 'bad day' feeling. I think I overworked myself with other work the last few days and I had planned to do more and had to cancel that plan. Still, I'm here and I want to do things!

There are a few ideas I've been toying with in my head. Before I get into them, a concern I have is trying to do more than I actually can. I'm doing actual work regularly for the first time in a while, but even if this continues I'm only able to do so much, and I'm already trying to dedicate myself to my Dommy Monsters game.

I'm very interested in Open Source. As a game developer, I'm also interested in Open Source games. As it happens, there's not a lot of really popular open source games, and they're mostly remakes of classic games. Stuff like OpenTTD or OpenRA or... I think there's a popular open source Doom? Though I also think they gave away the code for the original Doom after it got old enough.

One open source project I'm interested in is Vircadia, because I'm interested in shared online virtual world simulations. Vircadia is effectively an open source 'sequel' to Second Life though, a social virtual world. You can put game elements in there, but it's not made for them. More modern games that are in that space are things like VRChat and Neos, but they focus even MORE on the social aspects and barely at all on the world simulation. Second Life isn't just a place, it's a world. VRChat and Neos have lots of tiny worlds, but they're more like rooms or maybe a building or two in a small area.

I've been playing ARK: Survival Evolved lately. I kinda love it? A lot? I bounced off it the first time I tried it, and was frustrated because I liked the idea. As it turns out, ARK's onboarding isn't great. There's nothing that says, "Try the solo game first." If you play the solo game on ARK: Survival Evolved, you start off at the tip of a small penninsula on an island called "The Footpaw", in the south of the first ARK called "The Island". It's seperated from other portions of The Island by rivers, and the penninsula only has one non-water way in or out. There's hardly any violent or dangerous dinos there, and most of them you have a fair shot of defeating when you're new. You have space and time to figure out what's going on, to learn what those symbols on your HUD mean, and how much time you actually have for food and water, and how dangerous cold and heat are.

Without that time to calmly learn to play, the game is a huge stressor and you're gonna be running around getting killed a bunch and thinking it's way harder/worse than it is.

If you start on a server, and you're alone, you might choose a different starting spot, which has more dangerous dinosaurs. If you're on a server with other players, even a PvE one, there's a pretty good chance someone will either accidentally or on purpose lead extra dangerous dinosaurs to the newbie areas. Even Titanoboas, huge snakes, are way too much for a new player to handle. A snake or two on the beach is a really bad time, when you don't even know what you're doing.

So, when I tried ARK again, and suddenly got really into it, it's because I played the solo game first, for the first time. Oh my gosh it is so good when you do it that way. o.o;;

Even playing on official servers isn't that bad, after you've had time to figure out how the game works and what to do and what's safe and dangerous. I still think your hunger and thirst meters shouldn't even show up until you're at least half empty on food or water, though. ^.^;;

Really though, there's berry bushes heccin' everywhere and all the water is fresh and potable, you'll be fine.

So, now that I've gotten into ARK and HARD, I realized I'd like to contribute to this genre myself. See, there aren't actually that many games like this. Most survival sandbox games are semi-realistic, with more "Realistic" style graphics, equipment, they tend to take place either in the modern world or just after a recent post apocalypse, so there's normal clothes and modern buildings or ruins around. Maybe there's cannibals or just other players, or zombies?

ARK has Dinosaurs and occasionally man-made horrors beyond comprehension. It's a scifi/fantasy sort of story and setting. It's weird and a little cartoony, and I love it.

You know what I'd like though? Fantasy stuff. Some weird non-tolkien-esque/DnD fantasy would also be nice, but that's pretty good too. Moving to the adjacent space, there is a single survival game like that right now. It's called Conan Exiles, and I'm pretty interested in it too. I also bounced off of that one! But, one of my main issues with Conan Exiles is the slavery. See, in order to get any NPC people on your team in Conan Exiles, you have to basically capture/kidnap them, and then break their will by forcing them to push a wheel around in a circle. It's not terribly realistic though, so why did it have to be slavery only? Why a wheel of pain? When they're on your team, unmodded they just stand around like a game object, only doing anything when ordered. There are mods to make them do more, though. I was asking around if there were mods to make alternatives to slavery. It turns out that they actually added alternatives in the first expansion, Isle of Sitaph! There are NPC slavers, and you can buy slaves from them, but more importantly you can kill them and free the slaves, and they join you, giving you the same gameplay element with a much more righteous story!

7:26pm - I got really distracted and socialized more. I want to at least talk about my idea while I'm here, and I told my Dad I'd like dinner at 8:30 or 9 so I don't want to be late just because I was goofing off when I should be working. In case you're worried, the reason I'm goofing off is a bit unique. I had joined an RP discord and they started having the first session. I was trying to stay out at first, but decided that knowing it was happening would be too much of a distraction even if I closed Discord. The first session won't happen every day.

7:52pm - The RP is paused for now but I'm still super distracted. I'll try to hurry up and finish.

I want to make an open source multiplayer server-based survival sandbox game.

There's none out there I've been able to find, not even projects to make them. I did find someone selling lessons on how to make one in Unreal, though.

I want to make one in Godot, but I'm thinking even more than that. I'm a bit inspired by this creation of Game Maker's Toolkit. https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit

They went beyond making just a custom 2D character controller, and made a 'game' where you can tweak the values and see how all of the standards and customs of 2D platformers work, and how they feel if you modify this or that, right from the start. You don't import a character controller and jam it on whatever sprites or model you have and have to make your own level to test it. It's all in there.

What if I did something like that, but for each gameplay element of a 3D Survival Game? Culminating in putting them all together in a complete package open-source template survival game?

I heard some good advice recently that you shouldn't make a tool for others if they didn't ask for one. Don't assume people want another RPG Maker, or whatever you want to make, that sort of thing. Make what you want, not tools for someone else to make things they haven't asked for. They might just make their own or use others and your work was for nothing. They might not even find out yours exists before they start development!

For me, I want to make a survival game like this, but I don't think I can do what I really want alone, and I don't know if I can get folks to do it. I have an idea that I could make each part of the game as a seperate project like this. Further, I want to use really simple assets and design the game to be modded or total-converted. People should be able to make their own survival sandbox using this by swapping out the resources and changing values. I'm really sick of everyone having to reinvent the wheel every time they make another computer project.

I don't know if it's as important to me as the other goals I've listed, but I really want to fill this world with public domain open source "Wheels" that anyone can use and modify to their own purposes.

So, I can start a project of making this game, and intend to use simple, low-spec resources for it. Partly so it'll run on more things, but also so that I dont have to do the hard work of making good resources and making them look really nice myself. If possible, I'd also really like to convince people to make open source, public domain resources for the game that are higher quality, or more specific or thematic, so that I can have a better game for myself but also others can use and re-use them, and modify them too.

The main issue is that this would be a lot of work. Besides just making it, I'd have to start out managing the whole open source project. Make a home for it, like a website or something. Put it on places like Github and their competitors. I'm not sure who all is doing that now? And manage anyone who joins or submits pull requests, etc...

And each part of the game, especially if I end up doing it all myself, would be a lot of work. Would I be able to do that? Even if I didn't make Dommy Monsters and made this instead? And, do I want to do this more, or do I want to do them both at the same time, or is this all a pipe dream fantasy?

This reminds me of another project I started and abandonned early on a while back. I wanted to make a program for creating 3D characters. Models, animations, the whole thing. Inspired by the Spore creature creator, but taken even further. I ended up looking around, and there are some commercial software projects that aren't quite that, but are for making high quality characters in their own way. I ended up a bit disillusioned and I was worried about making money and surviving.

I guess I sorta still am? Part of the reason I decided to do Dommy Monsters was inspiration from Xey and their games To Love a Googirl and The Merging. https://xey.itch.io/

See, they actually make quite a bit of money from Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/XeyGames

They usually work on either game for ten days each month. One at the start, the other at the end. This is their 'job', their main source of income. They make two games, manage two communities in isolated parts of a single discord server, and livestream their development.

I've been on disability a long time and I'm not really making ends meet, so I want more money. I thought making erogames couldn't actually make me money, and nobody would hire me if I used them on my resume. But, now I don't think I can get a pro job anyways unless I know somebody, and I always loved that sort of thing too. But, I could also do something like THIS which isn't ero but also interests me. (or at least not on purpose? Surely folks will make ero mods like other modded games.)

So that's the idea that's rolling around in my head. I'm not entirely sure what to do, but I wanted to get it 'out there' and talk about it. I'll share this with some friends and see what they think.

I could probably set up a patreon and convince people to subscribe to me if I'm making clear progress on something they want, whether it's an erogame or a bunch of open source public domain game parts.

8:16pm - It's late, I've gotta go. Thanks for reading!

12:47pm - Today's going to be weird. It already is, I suppose.

I don't expect to get my full three hours, I really can't? But I'll have to accept it due to odd events.

When I started getting ready, I would have had three hours, but things happened. Ultimately, I had to take my car on a trip to a nearby town, to recharge the battery since it had been sitting. My roomie has an appointment at 3pm, so I've got less than three hours to the time when I have to be home, picking him up.

But, also, I've had interruptions of other things. Most notably, I just got an email from the property management company of the apartment I moved out of over a year ago, demanding over a thousand dollars for repair costs. OVER A YEAR LATER!?

My roomie was managing that and settled with them before we left. Either they're having a clerical error, and should've sent this to the next tennant after us, or they're doing some seriously shady shit. They may have held off on sending this for over a year, hoping that we would nolonger have the proof to show we don't owe it.

Either way, I'm upset now, and short on time. Not a great start to my work-day!

1:29pm - Things aren't going right at all today, and things keep happening. Given the time limit, and the unusual distractions like that email, I'm going to skip my gamedev today. I'm going to pack up now, go home, and make an important phone call or two, and that'll be all the 'life goals' stuff for this on-day.

I think Wednesday will be better.

12:25pm - I think I've been sitting in the library an hour now, which doesn't count as the first hour of today's three because I've just been socializing and such. Now I'm actually set up to work!

I also just changed my avatar on here, this is more modern and pretty closely resembles my squirrely self, at least in my imagination.

Last time, I did some research on AI and Cognition and talked about that sort of thing a bit. I also looked into publ a bit. I was having a bit of trouble with fluffy's website to find their posts about it, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with publ at present? I guess I'll find out.

I don't feel like researching AI today, so I'll start by looking into both publ and indieweb.

12:47pm - Just took a short bathroom trip. I'm reading this article I linked at the end of my previous entry. https://tracydurnell.com/2023/02/07/what-makes-rss-better-than-social-timelines/

It's interesting. RSS has been around for a long time. I think the main flaw is that it doesn't have big corporate backing? Like, a lot of folks never heard of it before, after or while they were using Google Reader, which was an RSS client, and when Google Reader poofed they didn't know what they were using was still there, just not the program they were using to access it.

It's basically a way to subscribe to updates from websites, usually blogs, and webcomics use it too. Anything can use it though? Heck, you could think of it as being similar to having people sign up for your mailing list.

You can use it like a social network too, if you wanted to. I started using Mastodon last year, before the scandals that scared folks from Twitter all over the internet, and there as well. I've said that the thing most people used Twitter for was as a less functional RSS, and it seems pretty accurate. Folks weren't there to microblog, they were using it to publish updates on themselves, their work, their business... Businesses were sharing info. You could follow someone to effectively subscribe to their updates, like a mailing list, or like RSS. It's never been great though?

Most of the time it's been around, Twitter has been operating at a loss. It's technially inferior to RSS and it doesn't make money. There were two years where it did post a profit, but it wasn't much, and those weren't recent years. So, why do folks do it? It might have a lot to do with advertising.

RSS isn't owned by anyone, and it's not there to make money. It's not an organization or company, it's a technology. It's not trying to get people to use it, it's there for people to use. If people don't know about it, they're not going to be able to use it. If there's no people using it, there's no point. There's no profit incentive to get people to use it, so the only benefit is to those who already use it, so that more people use it and then there are more people who will see their stuff and so on.

Heh, I'm getting carried away here. Part of the reason I'm reading this is that I'm looking into indieweb, blogging, and so on. I'm hoping to set up another blog to talk about that sort of thing. This is actually a blog also, though I just took a look and I don't see any RSS feed stuff. I also looked at my "Reading Page" and there are two other people on there, both at least somewhat squirrels as well... I don't usually use Dreamwidth to look at other people. XD

So yeah it's a good idea to put my next blog somewhere else. Probably my own site, with an RSS feed. I've also heard of Atom. I think that's also a feed tech? A competitor with RSS? I guess I should look into that too.

You know, whether it's Twitter or Mastodon or any feed-based tech, what I really want is to seperate the things I follow into multiple streams, probably on the same page, based on what I'm subscribing to them for. Like, I want a feed for friends social accounts where they talk about themselves to be seperate from news or folks ranting about politics or another one that is brands talking about their business or making fun of eachother and another one that is just video game studios, and another that is dedicated to open source, all sorts of stuff!

I was looking into if there was a client for Mastodon that does that, and folks said that none of the alternative Mastodon clients were as good as the standard one, and maybe nobody else is looking for that feature?

Anyways I want to get back to reading that article.

1:30pm - I finished the article, then got distracted on Twitter somehow. I forget how and let's not think about it. I did have a friend who seems interested in doing an art/story trade with me, so that's neat. I'll try and worry about that when I get home.

Oh now I remember, after I finished that article, I started looking at the links from it I opened. The first was to the indieweb website, talking about RSS. There's a meme there I wanted to share, and clicking the image took me to the twitter post it's from!

Here's the indieweb page anywho. https://indieweb.org/RSS

Here's a nice quote from that page!

"RSS is a set of XML feed file formats of varying degrees of use for syndicating time-stamped content from web sites, and sometimes used to refer more broadly to feed file formats as a whole including Atom, or even more broadly in vernacular as a synonym for feed file or even feeds or syndication as a concept. RSS is an acronym that stands for: Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication)[1]. Atom is an alternative XML format for feeds."

It's interesting how they refer to feeds, and then silos. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I often refer to my timeline on timeline-based services as a stream, with the content scrolling by like leaves floating on the water in a brook.

1:41pm - After that page, I looked at this site. It's short, sweet, and helpful. https://aboutfeeds.com/

I also read that other article I linked at the end of my last entry. It's about as muddy as anything regarding trans folks and issues.

Next up, I'll look at https://indieweb.org/ as a whole. I'm curious what it is exactly.

1:51pm - Okay so far so good. It's a group of indie website owners and developers, and indieweb.org seems to be a wiki where all of the content is public domain. That makes me happy because I'm very in favor of public domain.

I just looked at this page, too: https://indieweb.org/principles

Those are some really good principles, which is something I am really glad to be able to say again.

1:56pm - A problem has occured. I've only been working for about an hour and a half, but my hunger just caught up with me. I need to eat. I'm going home for now, and I may do more after I eat, or not. We'll see how this situation goes.

2:56pm - I'm at home, I ate, and I'm hanging in my room-mate's room. I'm going to keep trying to read stuff at least, but we'll see how it goes. It'd be fair to say "Another hour and a half" though I do really want to get back to doing planning and math for ARK: Survival Evolved. XD

3:43pm - Well, it hasn't been a whole hour since then. I did read things, but it's also been distracting. Now I'm too tired to go on, so I'm going to have a nap.

7:39pm - It feels really weird that I only worked for a few days and only a few hours on those days last month, but it's still a vast improvement from last year's Strawberry Jam.

It's March, now. After getting the month's initial errands out of the way, I took some time to think about what I did last month, and what I want to do this month. I think this month I'm going to try a new experiment of doing a day-on, day-off schedule, where I'll try and do three hours of lifegoal work every other day. That is to say, not just errands, cleaning the house, hygiene or appointments. I need to schedule time to do the things I want to do with my life, and not just wallow in this perverse decadence of just enough poverty in a rich country. Otherwise, well, I won't do it! Self control has always been hard, but I think my latest med is lowering my self control. It did say it increases the risk of gambling addiction, why not any sort of self control?

My game development is one of the things I want to do, definately. There are other things too.

I want to study and contribute to the development of artificial intelligence.

I want to enable a peaceful social revolution to make the world a fair and just place, or at least start it on a path towards being that.

I want to contribute to my local community more. I'm not sure how, yet. There's various organizations that do useful and helpful things, but I don't know if they're also doing shady stuff. Like, I saw the Salvation Army handing out meals to poor folks the other day, but I have also heard that the Salvation Army acts to keep other groups from doing the same. There's whole charts of how the Salvation Army does something terrible and worse for every good deed they present themselves doing, ruining any good they did...

Most of the organizations are related to religion in some way too, and that makes me uncomfortable. Like, the local food bank is the Inn of the Good Shepherd. https://www.theinnsarnia.ca/ They also operate one of the two homeless shelters here. The other one is also a Christian organization called The Vineyard, which is located in an old YMCA building. https://www.rcv.org/

I looked into other groups, and some that stuck out to me are the two Rotary Clubs. I think they're service clubs, which is also a sort of religious thing? It's like, there seems to be two broad categories of "Christians", the burn in hell hateful ones and the sacrifice for the sake of everyone else super kind ones. There's still some weird crossover though, like sometimes folks will look down on you even as they give you handouts? It also always feels like a sort of cult recruitment. You're not being helped and saved by others in your community, IT WAS GOD!

In my years talking with people, many of the most fervent religious folks had some sort of miraculous experience. At least a couple times, folks failed to kill themself, followed by some sort of religious event. One fella told me he had his t.v. suddenly turn on to a religious program where a televangelist said something like "God is sending someone to you right now!" and then there was a knock at his door and there was someone there to prostelytize to them... I hear some wild stories you know? I'm very easy to open up to, so a lot of folks have told me their life story and deepest darkest secrets. Some of them are pretty wild, and if most of them aren't made up then the world is weirder than anybody knows.

I digress. There are two Rotary Clubs in my locale.

https://www.rotarysarnia.com/
https://www.rotarysarniabwl.org/

On reflection, it's kinda weird that I'm immediately suspicious of all these groups? But I am, weird or not.

There's also this group: http://sarniakinsmen.ca/
But I chanced upon this piece written by a local businessman when I was dealing with him before: https://bluewatertekcentre.com/misc

Noelle's Gift is out there, but I have a weird bitterness due to the murder that inspired that charity also causing the disillusion of a social group I went to regularly. Heccing murderers were using the same social networking site as us, even though they weren't part of our group, and so the police got all up in everybody's privacy. :/ https://noellesgift.ca/


It often seems like The United Way has provided financial support to every organization that's ever helped me, and I notice that. They also get a bad rap for hosting expensive galas for their members and paying their staff too well. Folks say they're too corrupt and not enough money goes to the charities. I don't really know.

It's a bit ironic, I actually really don't like the idea of charities. Not that I think they should go away, I think they shouldn't be neccesary. Any time a charity has to step up to help people is a failure of society and the government. We shouldn't need charities, but nobody is running a "Let's stop needing charities!" political campaign. Like they say, everybody wants to vote for the best candidate in the election, but they're never on the ballot!


I also learned about this organization in the last year. They're dedicated to helping prisoners and criminals, and basically anyone harmed, abused, or just inadequately helped by the justice system. https://johnhoward.on.ca/sarnia-lambton/

Even someone who has a built-in desire to do things that are crimes or otherwise unethical can potentially resist that, and most folks don't even have that sort of need; they're in a bad situation or have bad information. Sometimes the 'justice' system just makes things worse, and turns people into career criminals or sets them on a path of self destruction, and it's no good. Other times, folks just can't rehabilitate. So, this is really a cause that I feel is important. It's been a long time since I mentioned it, but one of my closest childhood friends had a tragic turn of events that ended one life and left his a wreck. I don't even know what's happened to him in modern times, if he's alive and safe or what.


Anyways I want to know if any of those organizations have skeletons in their closets, and what those skeletons are, if anyone reading this knows.


8:19pm - That's a good start to the contribute to my local community goal. Let's try the social revolution one next. I have a few websites I've been procrastinating on looking through for months. Let's take a look!

https://www.democraticsocialists.ca/
https://socialistproject.ca/about/leftlinks/
https://socialistaction.ca/about/our-program/
https://www.socialist.ca/

I don't know what any of these groups are actually like. There's a lot of different flavours of socialism out there, and there are folks who like to take advantage of idealists too. I've tried asking around, looking for groups that are working together to change the world, and nobody ever provides one. I eventually found these when I realized I could just websearch it. I don't know what path is right, maybe it's not Socialism but something else, but I don't think the path we're on is a good one.

A lot of folks talk about these things, like Capitalism vs. Socialism, and it seems like they don't know what either of them is, or that there's more than one kind. Any time I find myself talking with folks about Socialism in a positive light, they start talking about the U.S.S.R. and the Maoist revoultion in China and I'm like, those are two different forms of Communism, and I'm pretty darn confident the Communism part wasn't what led to their problems. There is no part of Communism or any flavour of Socialism I know that advocates killing folks off. It's supposed to be about helping everyone and making a fair society where people share. Capitalism on the other hand, folks praise it like crazy or say they hate it, and both ways it seems like folks generally don't know what it even is. I've also heard folks say Capitalism is Great it's Corpratism that is Bad and I don't think they really get what they're even talking about, but they won't listen when I try to explain. Either it's not worth their time since they're not doing anything about it themself anyways, or they just don't want to hear it.

I know a ton of folks who pay lip service to the idea of social revolution, and talk about hating capitalism, but if they're actually doing anything to change the world they're keeping it pretty hush-hush. And maybe they are! A lot of this is risky, dangerous, and potentially illegal too. It can be hard to support a family when you're on the lamb.

I don't really blame folks for not succeeding, but it does seem like most people aren't even trying. My own attempts to do things have been stumbly little baby steps, and it's frustrating how hard it is to do anything. But, at least I can say what I'm doing. I'm talking to people. Neighbors. Strangers. Anytime I can get up the nerve. We're all in this together, and it's crazy how afraid of eachother we all are. Acting like everyone else is the competition, or a likely threat, or something like that.

I often feel like the people I see in the world aren't any more 'real' than the rocks, trees, buildings and wild animals I pass by. But, they're all people! You could ask ANYONE for help, and if you need it and convince them, there's a pretty good chance they'd give it. Particularly if anybody gets injured in public, foot traffic stops, someone knows first aid, two or three people call emergency services, and generally a lot of people go out of their way to help. If you're on the street, starving? Don't die of pride, dreaming of crumbs. You're surrounded by people. They might not trust you asking for money, but I find both myself and others much more likely to help someone who asks for food specifically. Even when I'm heccin' poor myself!

So yeah, I try to talk to people. Get over my fear of strangers, help them get over their fear of strangers, and hopefully break down some of those barriers that make me feel alone when surrounded by potential friends and allies who feel just as alone.


This has gone a bit sideways, me talking about that sort of thing. It's been on my mind a lot. I want to find some way to express this that won't feel like I'm blaming folks or shaming them or saying something like "You're not doing enough!" or something. I'm sure you all have your reasons. A lot of folks I know, people depend on them, and they're just getting by. They can't risk stirring shit. I do wish people would say why they aren't doing, or what little things they're doing, so we can all see there are folks doing real things, or trying to.


All this talk is reminding me of how divided folks have become these days. I was watching videos on YouTube yesterday and saw this Chikn Nuggit video on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tnz7qjum3Ws

It's actually really upsetting to me that with all of these different pride flags, folks trying to celebrate and express their uniqueness have kinda ruined the inclusivity of the rainbow flag. It surely meant different things to different people, and there were at least two 'original' ones, but for me it always meant "Everyone". It wasn't just gays, or gays and lesbians, or gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans folks, or any plusses you wanna add. It wasn't even just queer! It was everyone, united.

The modern pride flags divide people. Suddenly the rainbow only means gay or lesbian. Trans? Different flag. Bi? Different flag. Lots of new stuff like Pan or Ace or AroAce or Neuter. Way more than that too. Folks went hog-wild with the alternate flags and identity tags.

There's also the Progress flags. Actually here, I'll link a wikipedia article first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag_(LGBT)

They do mention this sort of controversy at the bottom so I guess I'm not the only one. They took the rainbow flag that meant everyone, then put triangles poking in representing trans people and people of colour, and then intersex was added as well, and those triangles seem to be in front, to me, or pushing their way in. Suddenly it's not everyone, it's "These groups are in need more, and need more attention, they're in front now." and I've even had folks say that to me.

There's always folks who need help, and we're all in this together. Help where you can. Triage. But please, don't put any groups in front of everyone. We're all valid, and we all need to work together.

That rainbow means everyone, you were already in there! Now folks think it doesn't represent them, because it's not directly targeting their specific situation.

It's okay to be different! It's okay to be the same! You're okay! We're all in this together.


8:47pm - So, that was a lot. I still need to look at those socialist websites.

9:06pm - This one was first: https://www.socialist.ca/ourstand

I went through the site. That link is to their page of things they stand for, rather than their about us page. There's really not a lot of info on there, it seems to be mostly news and emotional pleas. There doesn't seem to be an organization doing things, though they have a newspaper and some sort of membership. I don't see how they're actually helping.

Looking at their Our Stand page though, there's stuff on there that doesn't feel right to me. Like, the first thing they have is Territorial Aknowledgement. I feel for the first peoples, but is that what they really want? Do they even have unified wants? I would like to ask them, but I don't know how. Can you ask a whole people something? If someone asks me something, I don't think it represents the people of Canada, of Ontario, of my city Sarnia or even my neighborhood.

I don't know what the first peoples want. What I want, with regards to the first people, is for them to join us. I don't know if they want to, but I want them to want to. I don't want to force it. I want to be good enough that they want to be part of our organization, if that's Canada or something else. I think the first step would definately be to stop fucking with them. The Wetsueten situation is a huge mess, and I don't like the way the government handled the train blockades or anything else. They keep doing bad stuff to the first nations, and folks wonder why they don't get along or feel oppressed? People who are being oppressed tend to feel that way. I hear they tend to oppress themselves too, though. Any time I hear about first nations governance, it seems to be someone talking about corruption. I have no idea if it's true, of course, but I've lived next to reservations all my life and went to school with a lot of first nations kids, and it often seemed like they were set up to fail by everyone, including themselves. It's no wonder I've heard they have the highest suicide rate of any racialized group.

I will say this though. The sort of reverence placed on that Territorial Aknowledgement isn't good either. There's only one planet. It really doesn't matter that their ancestors started living here before mine. We're all living here now, and we need to find a way to live together. I'd really like that way to be fair for everyone, including them, and that won't happen if we can't even get them to the table to talk.

Otherwise, the website makes a lot of emotional declarations about Capitalism and Socialism without ever defining the sorts they're talking about. There's also a lot of alarmism about climate change and other things. It does seem like they're trying to get people scared, or to get scared people to support them, without actually elaborating on what they're talking about. It's buzz words for counterculture people.

So I don't think that's a good group for me.

9:16pm - The next website is https://socialistaction.ca/ and I like the action part? Let's see what they're about.

Looking at their "Our Programme" section, there's a lot of similarities to the first one, though there's definately some better parts. https://socialistaction.ca/about/our-program/

It seems to me like both of these sites and groups are primarily villifying the bourgoise rather than trying to find and carry out solutions to the situation. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. What matters is fixing this situation and making things fair for everybody. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do and everyone has an excuse. Let's focus on solutions rather than punishments. We aren't going to fix oppression by oppressing people we think are oppressors.

It looks like this group, Socialist Action, is at least getting some folks to run for municipal government positions under their banner. https://socialistaction.ca/our-initiatives/municipal-socialist-alliance/

I do want to try and change things, but these groups seem way too angry and not focused on solving problems. I don't know if they're more interested in social revolution or getting revenge on people who they think oppressed them personally.

I also really want a social group where I can discuss the ideas I have for social change, find out if they've been thought of before, find flaws and get advice, and ideally, find other people to work on putting those ideas into action. I'm not sure I'll find one, and I kinda dread having to make one myself.

9:30pm - This website has a ton of links. https://socialistproject.ca/about/leftlinks/

Well, it looks like that's their link page anyways. Let's look at their main page. https://socialistproject.ca/

So this seems to be another news site. It's still pretty aggressive but maybe less than the others so far. Again it seems to be mostly about supporting other groups or folks doing socialist stuff than about doing socialist stuff themselves. Maybe I should dig into these news sites to find real organizations with feet on the ground?

One thing I've noticed on all three is this implicit assumption that folks will know what they're talking about, and in particular, folks who are new to these ideas, which seems terrible. Like, why would people already know these things? You're not talking like you're talking to people who are already socialists, you're trying to convince people, but then you use a mess of jargon terms that have many potential meanings and don't explain which ones you're using. Most folks don't know what capitalism even is, in either practice or theory. Likewise with socialism. These sites so far have done what I had to, and immediately dismiss any connection with Stalinism. I'm not a specialist in history or the U.S.S.R. though from what I understand, Stalin kinda stole the country and corrupted and perverted their revolution. I've also heard it called Bolshevism. Folks can't break the idea of gulags and bread lines out of their heads when they hear about socialism or communism. :/

Now that I think of it, none of these groups have a social space like a forum, discord or alternative like matrix, noplace to talk to other people and organize.

10:01pm - There's a fourth site to look at, but I've run out of time. The Tim Hortons closed and I had to leave, as did the fellow doing mysterious stuff in the bathroom.

I was working for close to three hours, so I think it's safe to call it for today and take tomorrow 'off'. This has been a good start, so far. Clearly, I didn't do any gamedev work, but I worked on other life goals.

Next time, maybe I can look at that last website, it's https://www.democraticsocialists.ca/ btw, and see if it's any better.

I also have a bunch of places to look into artificial intelligence development. It's a bit tricky these days since there's so many sorts of AI and there's a lot of focus on things like AI art generators, where as I'm primarily interested in creating artificial people.

I will admit I'm curious about AI art tools, though. I understand there's a lot of trouble due to OpenAI, but it's my understanding that some AI tools like Stable Diffusion are open source, and I want to know if they work using different principles and where Stable Diffusion got their data set from. Are they using the same data sets as GPT-3? And what else is out there?

Mostly I want to make artificial people, though.

For now, good night and thank you for reading.