# Why is this here
I quit doing anything related to Project Gemini twice in the past because Gemini is both a wonderful and a pathetic project, with its wonderful part and pathetic part applicable to both the outcome and the community of the project. If we were truly in a fully-just world, I wouldn't have to any of this, but alas, I suppose you only get to deal with what you have to deal with.
I should explain my reasoning for why I still decide to set up a Gemini site here.
## Part 0: Reachability issues
From the number of emails I've received over the years things I put on the geminisphere seems to have more actual people (rather than bots) reading. As I have the unfortunate curse of "words not being listened to and considered seriously", I need to use everything in my power to get my message across, and Gemini is way too good of a channel to give up. I consider the fact that I've noticed the problems that I've noticed a sign (no matter how weak) that I have indeed been selected to receive the mandate of heaven to some extent, and to give up fighting in any front is not only in violation of that mandate but also not my style.
Speaking of the mandate of heaven...
## Part 1: Do You Believe In Mandate Of Heaven?
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https://sebastian.graphics/blog/mandate-of-heaven.html Original post in HTTP
Do you believe in Mandate of Heaven?
I do. I'm referring to a "derived" meaning of the phrase instead of the original notion that the ruler of China is chosen (and thus blessed) by Heaven - I believe that certain individuals are indeed secretly chosen by God to complete certain tasks, and that's the reason why they are the ones who did what they've done and no one else; and because they've clearly had the mandate of Heaven, whenever they are not carrying out the task God has offered them to complete, I get slightly annoyed.
I get the same feeling when I think of Project Gemini and certain geek communities.
Project Gemini is a community that comes into being around a protocol from absolutely nowhere; I envy its creator's such abilities. It could've served to take back the Internet, or at the very least create a new one that's just as capable; but no, they've decided that Project Gemini must be this limp flaccid thing that's good for nothing other than a very limited number of things and forces developers to do gymnastics when they wanted something that's only slightly more complex. I wish that I, too, have the mandate of Heaven just like them. I wish to have the power to actually move people to action for the greater good and elevate them to the heights they'd never believe they could be at in the process, so even if I'm in a really bad state I could at least convince myself to struggle a little.
I read two blog post yesterday (Note 2024.10.1: "yesterday", as in the yesterday to the day of writing the original blog post, i.e. 2024.9.15):
* "Paul Graham and the Cult of the Founder", by Dave Karpf
* "Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech", by Ian Betteridge
I align with most (if not all) of the views in these two blog post, and I would like to add a bit of personal tangent here. Some people would argue that there do be hackers (in the word's original sense) and they just need to look elsewhere, but I believe that (at least a good part of) the core problem is never about whether such people exist in the first place: I believe that most (if not all) the supposed-to-be modern hacker (again, in the word's original sense) or modern hacker "candidate" are way too comfortable about living a double life. It feels like they are all okay with the current state of the scene as it is because they created a separate world they can retreat into; and because they can always retreat, they will never have to work as hard and thus will never work as hard as needed to go against the "outside" world. Project Gemini, in my opinion, is the perfect example of this mentality: the Web sucked ass? It's fine, just setup a Gemini pod and hang out with the Gemini crowd; the Web could go an
d rot, we are safe within our social bubble here.
I dislike people who received God's eminent grace and yet casually let it go to waste like this.
What can I do? Nothing, other than picking up the jobs these people refuse to do and try to find other people who's in the same spot as mine, while praying to God for guidance or at least regards…
## Part 2: Email from a "reader"
A few months ago I received an email asking me to update my old Gemini capsule.
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https://sebastian.graphics/gemini-archive/index.gmi.html Content for the old Gemini capsule in HTML
He said he preferred Gemini so he "kindly" asked me to keep it up to date. I said no. He said if I don't want to I can take it down. I did not take it down; I switched to another server and didn't put it back up. To protect that person's privacy I will not put the name or the exact words of that person here, but I was and am being way too fucking nice here: seriously, what am I and my content to you? If he think he has the right to tell me how I should manage my content, then surely I should obviously have the right to tell him and any other similar-minded person to absolutely go fuck themlesves. Of course this exactly goes against my desire to be heard, but if people are listening to me only because I only say the things want to hear instead of what I want to say, am I really being heard at all?
## Part 3: The afterthought
I don't know why I get so unreasonably angry there. Am I overreacting? I suppose I am. (Maybe I should also go fuck myself.) But I would like to explain myself here.
### Part 3.1: I don't like how text/gemini is restricting my writing
There are two things that I absolutely need/want:
* Inline link;
* Nested lists;
I can live with no inline emphasis, I can force myself to live without a sane blockquote construct, but to me these two parts are the absolute must. The first time I decided to stop doing anything Gemini-related, as I've explained in my blog post,
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https://sebastian.graphics/blog/farewell-to-gemini.html The said blog post
(I deliberately put links in positions that should be logically inline to show you how ridiculous text/gemini's restriction of not having inline links is. If you don't like how I write, you can go fuck yourself, because to quote the major leftard grifter asshole Drew DeVault:)
> Okay. Remember: what feels important to you doesn't feel important to someone else, and what feels important to them doesn't feel important to you.
there has been a time when people argued about adding inline styles to the text/gemini specification, and then this post came out:
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https://web.archive.org/web/20210628010010/https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2020/004055.html The post on the now defunct mailing list, archived on web.archive.org
I still thought it was to mock people who were demanding inline styles because that's the most obvious comparison, but it seems like it was about how people should deal with links in gemtext, which makes even less sense for such a supposed-to-be "shitpost" to exist. You can be against someone else's proposal, but doing it like this is absolutely childish and ridiculous in my opinion. This goes against Quakers ethics, but I seriously can't see how people who thought this is a suitable response deserve proper respect. I'm not allowing anyone to use stupid opt-out reasons like "oh this is just a shitpost" or "oh this is just a joke"; many of you fuckers are absolutely going to have the shits when people use the word "faggot" to only mean "asshole" and the word "retarded" to only mean "stupid" anyway. (And if you're gonna ask how is this relted - this has every single fucking reason to be related and I'm asking you not to only enforce your stupid moral when it suits you and be a fucking hypocrite.)
Anyway, to be brief: inline links, nested lists, absolutely needed. Gemini people don't think they need those features and they look down upon those who uses them, thus they can go fuck themselves in my book.
### Part 3.2: I don't like how Gemini is in the state it's in now
I shall quote another one of my blog post here.
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https://sebastian.graphics/blog/the-double-life-geek.html The blog post in question
> ...As I've said in Part 3 [Note: quoted as Part 1 here], I believe that the Gemini community (especially the individuals who have the ability to influence the community as a whole) actively rejected their mandate of heaven by rejecting proposals of reasonable extensions and restricting themselves into this tiny social bubble that, while being very robust against (sometimes imaginary) infiltrations from "the outside world", will never have enough power to push positive changes. The new thing that I'm going to talk about here, is that I suspect that almost none of the people who are truly devoted to the Gemini community would ever want to push real positive changes in the world they deemed so "dirty" that they created a completely separated space just to escape into. It's almost like they're telling you by the action they choose that the outside world can go and rot on its own accord as long as they can still have this tiny dream space that they could be in whenever they want; and because they have this drea
m space they could escape to they gleefully accept the lifestyle of enduring the shits of modern tech with zero action of going against it. I also believe that this is not a thing that only happens within the Gemini community, and there are modern "geeks" talked as if they're on par with the original masters like Douglas Engelbart and Ivan Sutherland while in reality none of them is.
> People talk about how bad a post-capitalist cyberpunk world would be towards individuals, like how a single person or a couple rebels couldn't possibly have enough power to go against whichever Big Corporation that would be ruling the world at that point; they talk about it as if they never had any responsibility for allowing things to become this bad by living inside their blissful escapism by having such a double-life. I have my respect only for those who willingly go against Goliath; I have no respect for any of these people.
> And of course someday someone's gonna be like "I never saw any of the people you described online what the hell are you piece of nobody yapping about" and pretend that I was just blabbering nonsense and never called them out for who they are. Oh well.
## Part 4: What comes after this
I found out SDF has a Gemini server - good thing I don't have to restart my own server again; I trust SDF more than anyone, including myself. As I've said, I'm not going to keep a blog here, and for the love of God, please check out my main blog on HTTP, if you're scared of using too much data, just use Lynx or Elinks, it's all HTML, it works mostly the same...
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https://sebastian.graphics The main blog
=> index.gmi Back
