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00:00:08 Yaseen > Hello and welcome to another episode of the Yascast with me, your host Yaseen, but you should you should have known that by now that this is the Yascast by Yaseen. This is the second series of the Yascast and today is the first episode, no sorry, today's the second episode, the first one with an actual guest that I'm recording specifically for this season, if you have not listened to episode 1 I recommend you do that right now, but you are now listening to episode 2 so I guess just listen to this and listen to that afterwards, it doesn't really matter, there's no chronological order, it's like watching a sitcom.

00:00:50 Yaseen > Anyway, this is episode 2 Estrogen because E2 is the symbol for Estrogen and today's guest is none other than--you know, I just realized something that I keep calling myself the host right, but like the host is like an Americanism really, like I should be calling myself the presenter because that's like the word that we use, but it doesn't matter at this point I think, I'm just gonna use them both interchangeably and no one can stop me, but the word guest is the same in both American and British and today's guest is none other than the lovely Winter who is @winter@translunar.academy, hello Winter.

00:01:35 Winter > Hello.

00:01:38 Yaseen > It's good to have you on.

00:01:40 Winter > I'm very excited to be here on the Greatest Podcast of All Time.

00:01:44 Yaseen > Thank you, I'm glad that you're here on the Greatest Podcast of All Time, that's her words, not mine, and I think it's interesting to consider that, you know, podcasting really is like an evolution of ancient Greek theatre in a way, like if you imagine you and me in the forums of the oldie times and the amphitheaters, like this would totally be like a thing that you and I would do, just be like on the stage in the amphitheater, with the audience just like watching us while we talk about stuff.

00:02:25 Winter > Yeah.

00:02:26 Yaseen > I mean you can imagine it right, like you know, this is totally, this would not be our place. Like in fact we could go like all the way back to like, I know, like sitting around the campfire in like caveman times, talking about philosophy of mammoths or some some shit like that.

00:02:43 Winter > Telling stories.

00:02:45 Yaseen > Exactly, exactly, exactly. So how are you feeling, how are you doing?

00:02:51 Winter > I'm okay...

00:02:57 Yaseen > Did you have a good day today?

00:02:58 Winter > Oh yeah I'm having a great day today.

00:03:00 Yaseen > Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so Winter you are the writer and creator of Ætherglow, is that correct?

00:03:07 Winter > That’s right. That’s me.

00:03:10 Yaseen > Yeah, so can you tell the audience a little bit more about your beautiful storytelling?

00:03:15 Winter > Okay. Ætherglow is an interactive story that is presented as a little vignette--a little short page--every two days, and in between, an audience poll to decide what the main character does next. It's been running since 2022 I think, hell maybe even 2021. I think December 2021, it's been running a while and it started off just as a fedi thing with fedi polls. Eventually we started the translunar.academy website, it's based and themed around the setting of that story, and other stories I write in that setting which I call the Ætherverse, and...

00:04:16 Yaseen > That's really cool, so have you been, has it been updating every couple of days since 2021 then?

00:04:23 Winter > There was a long break after the original site it was hosted on went down.

00:04:29 Yaseen > Oh, that's rough.

00:04:31 Winter > But we came back from that and resumed and been going strong. Picked up quite a little community of wonderful weirdos like me and I think it's a really good project that's going great. I hope that a lot more of you out there will go check it out, because I think people who like stuff like the Yascast would probably like stuff like Ætherglow.

00:05:01 Yaseen > That's fantastic, okay, well I'll put a link down below in the, in the info box for the discerning viewer to click on.

00:05:10 Winter > I could talk a little more about the story itself because I've really only talked about the format. So this is a cyberpunk story. It's the 23rd century and most of humanity lives in space colonies. In the environment of living in a space colony people are totally dependent on technology at all times for their survival. They're in a thin line between life support and the cold uncaring void of space. Technology has also become so far advanced that it requires very specialized training and knowledge to maintain and build and operate it. And that in this setting falls into the hands of people called technopaths, who are Autistics who are taken from a young age and augmented and made into cyborgs and trained to interface directly with their minds to computers.

00:06:17 Yaseen > Wow, kind of like the, the, the Mentats from Dune, right?

00:06:23 Winter > Yeah, you could say.

00:06:27 Yaseen > That's, yeah, that's really cool.

00:06:28 Yaseen > Have you, has your experience of being like a trans person and having like autism and stuff like that, has that really, has it impacted the way that you view your work and the way you explore these kinds of themes within your work?

00:06:40 Winter > Yeah, it’s inseparable from it really, this whole setting is about being an Autistic trans person, and the way we relate to each other, other autistics and trans people, and the way we relate to technology maybe in ways that all the sticks don't get, and, also the ways we relate to the neurotypical society that we have to live within, and the conflicts that arise from that.

00:07:19 Yaseen > That's very impressive, I, I think that's a, you know, that's a good way of exploring that kind of stuff. And, and do you think that in terms of like the cyberpunk genre, do you feel like that is a break in a sense from the kind of traditional cyberpunk kind of works that have popped over the last 20, 30 years?

00:07:46 Winter > I would say in a way it's a break from what's become the mainstream in what we think of as cyberpunk in this century, which has become I think very estranged from it's roots, and...

00:08:00 Yaseen > Yep, yep.

00:08:01 Winter > Maybe better called neon-liberal, and...but cyberpunk in it's origins was a radical thing it was something focused on the working class, it was focused on the oppressed, it was--

00:08:16 Yaseen > Yep, yep, definitely. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just so you know audience, by the way, this is the third time I'm doing this bit. So when you talk about neon-liberalism, it reminds me a lot of the kind of the mainstream of kind of American cyberpunk fiction. And especially in regards to the way that it has a bit of orientalism in it, in regards to the rise of Japan at the time, we're talking about Japan becoming number two, and in many cases, a worry that Japan would usurp the United States as number one, and use its, use its economic power to dominate the United States, which is a interesting fear to have from the Americans, considering what they did over the past century prior.

00:09:10 Winter > That's how it's always been hasn't it, in science fiction and fantasy, it's always been about--at least when we're talking about western science fiction and fantasy by white people--it's always been about like an inversion of--it's always been about like the anxiety that like all the violence that the west has done to the world will turn back on them.

00:09:34 Yaseen > Right, yes, exactly, exactly. And you know, actually, you just remind me, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is kind of like a perfect example of that, but in a good way, because she explicitly acknowledges that this is the aim of her book, right? She explicitly acknowledges that the anxieties and feelings in the book are meant to be an exemplification of the kind of horrors that are already happening or did happen in the world. She explicitly says that in the foreword to The Handmaid's Tale, and I think that's a brilliant kind of like embodiment of what you're saying, but in a positive way, whereas most science fiction of the era, and especially even until today, that inversion of the kind of coloniser dynamic, if you will, is a core part of these stories, but yet never addressed in so far as to why this anxiety and dynamic exists.

00:10:40 Yaseen > And really that's, in my opinion, like all sci-fi and speculative fiction, some fantasy as well, is never about the future or about predicting a future. It is about expressing the anxieties of that time period in using the medium of fiction to express that accurately. I mean, when people talk about things like The Handmaid's Tale, predicting the future, it's not a prediction of a future. Margaret Atwood's book is explicitly about, one, it was explicitly a kind of relation to, at the time, the recent uprising in Iran with the Ayatollah, and turning it into a theocratic dictatorship, but also a response to the rising threat of Christian nationalism, empowered by Ronald Reagan. And in her eyes, it is like, well, there's really no difference between the rhetoric espoused by hard-line Christian nationalists, especially in the far right, and the rhetoric of the Ayatollah.

00:11:55 Yaseen > And, you know, in a way, like, obviously, Margaret Atwood was very prescient in that. I mean, you just look at the emboldening of right wing nationalists under Trump. Trump's recent victory. You don't have to look that far. But again, she was prescient, but she didn't predict the future. She was writing about something that was happening to her in America at the time, and it's just that history rhymes, you know, and the history of that period has never disappeared. The white nationalist Christians of today are the same as the white nationalist Christians that she was using as a basis for her storytelling.

00:12:36 Yaseen > And then you have other stories written in the kind of cyberpunk genre. Like, obviously, the most interesting example, I think, is "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson. It's a book that everyone says is good, and I absolutely hate. Like, it just sucks. Like, it is a phenomenal piece of work, right? It is seminal. It is a foundational text. But it sucks. He sucks at writing. He sucks at characterisation. He created this incredible world with an incredible plot, and it just sucks. There's like a, like, look, picture this, right? The United States has broken up into a series of corporate-controlled enclaves, right? And the story centres around a teenager who rides a, like, hoverboard, skateboard thing delivering pizzas for the mafia. Now, does that sound cool, Winter?

00:13:39 Winter > Honestly, like...

00:13:40 Yaseen > It sounds fucking cool, right?

00:13:42 Winter > Yeah, I mean...

00:13:45 Yaseen > But he fucks it up. He fucks it up. And it's one of those books you should read to get like an understanding of the shift in direction in cyberpunk fiction from the kind of '80s anxieties to more of a '90s internet anxiety, right? Because the world, the anxieties that Stephenson was writing in Snow Crash around the internet, and around the kind of fear of it being co-opted by governments, by malicious forces, is something that was never really worried about in the '90s. But it's something that we do definitely worry about today. And again, he didn't predict a future. He was just expressing anxieties about, that were present at the time, that were unrealised, and today are still unrealised. I mean, you know, when you think about, consider that Facebook's, you know, work in Myanmar, for example, or you consider, you know, Elon Musk taking over Twitter, is something that kind of sort of did happen in Snow Crash, right? The elites using the internet to manipulate public opinion, right? And when you consider the cyberpunk as a genre has this kind of power to really, and speculative fiction in general has this power to really talk about and examine the anxieties we face today.

00:15:25 Winter > Of course, that’s--

00:15:26 Yaseen > Then you have the flipside, which of course is neon-liberalism. I mean, the same kind of '80s anxieties appears in the Cyberpunk 2077, right? Which is the kind of the de rigueur of cyberpunk fiction in today's contemporary culture, right? And even in that game, there is still that oriental fear of Japan becoming number two. Now, that's necessarily an issue with the game itself, although its writing is very neon-liberalism, especially in regards to how you can interact with the police, for example. But it's also a kind of, again, a function of the original story, which was written in the mid-90s, just a little bit after Cold War had finished.

00:16:15 Yaseen > And I wonder, in that sense, what anxieties are you exploring in the work of Ætherglow? Is there anything kind of that you feel as an author that you are kind of making a commentary about your feelings about the contemporary era, using your work as a launchpad for that kind of critical thought?

00:16:42 Winter > That’s entirely what it’s about. ‘Cause I’m not writing about the 23rd century, like all writers I’m writing about the times I live in. But, speculative fiction, I think is a powerful tool to take something that’s current and put it in a different setting to analyze it, outside of its context, and I think it’s a great form of art.

00:17:12 Winter > So in the Ætherverse, in Ætherglow, it’s very much about colonialism. So what has happened in the course of the world’s history here in the Ætherverse is there was a civilizational collapse and there was the rise of a global power called the Earth Protectorate, and there was a forcible migration of most of the human population off of Earth into space colonies that are very controlled by corporate power. There’s no state in space, it’s entirely an anarcho-capitalist setting where the powers-that-be are corporate power entirely, and that’s a very familiar and personal thing for me to write about as an American in the 21st century. That’s practically what we already live in, but it’s just taking all the pretenses out of it, it’s being honest about what capitalism is. It’s not really some dystopian future, it’s just taking the pretenses off of what capitalism has always been.

00:18:28 Yaseen > Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Capitalism is intrinsically linked with colonialism and exploitation. It's just that we no longer think of capitalism in the same way. It's just that it's taken on a different form. I mean, capitalism is in its kind of early forms in the early 1600s, inexplicably linked with the colonialism of the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company. They were capitalist enterprises. They were given a monopoly, sure, but they were capitalist enterprises. They were joint stock corporations. Their sole duty was to generate wealth for shareholders, much in the same way that modern companies do today. It's just that they also had standing armies and occupied a huge chunk of the population and land mass of the world. You know, there is, in a sense, no difference between the way the East India Companies ran, both the Dutch and British, and the way that, for example, oil companies and run today. If you think about how companies like Shell, BP, Exxon, etc., will go into a country, exploit their resources, particularly around oil and gas exploration, and then bring those riches back to their shareholders, primarily in Europe and North America. What is the difference there between the spice trade and even a transatlantic slave trade that European corporations and companies embarked on for nearly 300 years?

00:20:11 Winter > Yeah, very little difference to be found, just a continuation. And when I’m writing about these corporate powers in the Ætherverse, I’m really looking a lot to things like the East India Company, how colonialism operated in the past because it’s the same patterns they keep carrying out. It’s a little different in space because you have to import your own population to colonize and oppress, but other than that, what you’ve got in space is the whole solar system full of vast resources to exploit, a need for a lot of labor and capital to exploit it, and very few people in whose hands that capital and power is concentrated.

00:20:58 Yaseen > Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, why is Jeff Bezos et al. investing so heavily in the space race? Like, one, yes, it is to win defence contracts from the United States government. Like, that is a huge, you know, honest to God, I mean, like, why would you set up a constellation of satellites in the Starlink arena? It is a way to prove to the United States government that, look, I can do this for civilian use only. Imagine what I could do for military applications. Now, I'm not saying, obviously, that Starlink has like, you know, each satellite has like a death ray inside it, but it is proof of concept in a very, very good way, right?

00:21:44 Yaseen > And when you think of the space race in the contemporary era, in that kind of corporate climate, rather than one of nationalist interest, as was with the between the Soviets and the Americans, you know, there could be a way in the near future, where one of these corporations finds an asteroid of some kind or any other kind of celestial body, claims it as their own--because remember, the outer space treaty applies to nation states. And while SpaceX, Blue Origin, et cetera, are beholden to the national space agency of the operating country, which of course, in this case, would be NASA, the minerals that they own, the minerals that they will claim in space. Well, the outer space treaty makes no reference to these kinds of things, because that didn't exist in the 1960s. So that could lead to something like Jeff Bezos essentially could becoming the world's first trillionaire, because his rockets stumbled upon like, you know, a huge chunk of natural resource that we cannot exploit on Earth in the same way.

00:22:50 Winter > Yes, that’s what they’re hoping for, of course. And of course it’s about defense contracts in the short term, but, and yeah of course it’s about US imperialism, the most profitable business in the world. But I do think these people like Musk and Bezos are playing a long game also, they’re not just building up space capabilities for the temporary gains, they do hope to actually be able to get ahead in the next frontier of capitalism, of colonialism, of domination, and put themselves at the top of it.

00:23:31 Yaseen > Exactly, exactly. The thing about these absurdly wealthy people is that you always get these kinds of questions, right, that asked, that asked them, like, they already have so much money, like, why do they want more, right? Well, the thing is, is that for people like you and me, coming into a lot of money will just be a way to solve the issues that we face, right, housing, buying nice things, you know, doing the stuff that we'd want to do, right?

00:24:00 Yaseen > That's how you and I would spend money if we came into it. We would help others, we'd help ourselves, and we would do the things that we would like to do, you know, I would buy the biggest fucking TV I could, I could get, right? Like, but, but, but for, but for people of that kind of wealth, they no longer have to worry about that kind of stuff. What really matters is the prestige that comes from having more zeros in that balance sheet than everyone else.

00:24:26 Winter > A lot of people just cannot fathom how much a billion dollars is, let alone the idea of a trillion dollars. It’s, a billion is one thousand millions, which is a thousand thousands, so it’s a million thousands, more than the human brain can really conceptualize a quantity of.

00:24:49 Yaseen > Like, there is no way that if you were born with a billion dollars, there is no way that you would be able to reasonably spend that within your lifetime on just buying things, right?

00:24:58 Winter > Never, it’s not possible.

00:25:00 Yaseen > Like, you could, you could buy, you know, you could buy, you could gold and crust every single thing you eat, and you'd probably not come close to spending all that billion by that time you die. Fuck, you could probably spend it on like, like extending your life to be able to continue spending those billions, and you still probably wouldn't be able to spend all of that. When it comes to obscene wealth like this, it is essentially becomes a dick measuring contest. It is about the numbers there. It is about how much you can accumulate. It is not about having, like, there are people who are millionaires, right? And their sense of scale is a completely different ballgame. Millionaires are closer to you and me in that respect than they are to someone like Jeff Bezos, right?

00:25:46: Winter > Right.

00:25:47 Yaseen > You know, a million can disappear quite easily. But a billion, I mean, fuck, I mean Musk bought Twitter for the full of those billions. You know, Facebook bought WhatsApp for one billion. Like, these are sums of money that the average person just cannot fathom being spent on things that don't necessarily have a value of billions. The cost of acquisition, when you're spending money in the billions, the value of what you're buying is no longer about the, in a kind of, you know, rhyme away, the value of the billions isn't about the actual value of the product. It is about the, I suppose, the symbolic value of the product. Facebook buying WhatsApp for like one billion, right? WhatsApp isn't worth a billion. Like all the stuff it has is not worth a billion. But to Facebook, that one billion is worth enough so that no one else has WhatsApp. When you and I buy something, we ascribe a value to it based on its capabilities and based on the value of the product, right? If I am buying a laptop and I want to make sure that it has the best value for money that I can get it for. But if you have, but if you're buying something more obscene than that, like a whole laptop company, then it's not just about the value of the company itself. It's about the value of what it means to buy that company. You can really explore the depths of that kind of stuff with cyberpunk fiction. And sometimes it boggles the mind when you read something in speculative fiction, in cyberpunk fiction. And it's meant to be a cautionary tale, right? The Torment Nexus style of books. Like this is the Torment Nexus. This is a thing that is very, very bad. And then you have actual companies in real life in the modern era making those things real. You know, like again, back to Snow Crash. I hate that book so much, but it's just so, it is just such a useful reference.

00:28:04 Winter > Yeah you can’t talk about cyberpunk and not talk about Snow Crash.

00:28:09 Yaseen > Snow Crash takes place in this digital reality called the metaverse. And all the fucked up shit that happens in the book is because of the metaverse. And then we come to the present day. And it is very clear that Mark Zuckerberg has read Snow Crash. Like no one would call it Snow Crash--no one would call it the metaverse without having to have read Snow Crash.

00:28:33 Winter > Yeah.

00:28:36 Yaseen > Honestly, the metaverse in our world is a very, very poor facsimile of the metaverse in Snow Crash. In fact, it's like an incredibly limp. Like there's no fucking, there's no legs or hands or some shit, but Zuck spent like bajillions on building the metaverse for nothing to happen, right? The most expansive part of metaverse is when I put on my quest headset and it keeps telling me to make like a 3D body of me, which I never do, because there's no point. Why would I do that? Zuck spent that much money to annoy me. That is the basis of the metaverse in today's world. But there's other stuff too.

00:29:30 Yaseen > On and off, I've been writing this piece of speculative fiction in a kind of alternate reality where there was no Brexit, right? But alternatively, the neoliberal policies of the 21st century still continue.

00:29:49 Winter > Right.

00:29:51 Yaseen > And one of the things I feature in the story is that--essentially the whole premise is that there is this very large city in England becoming a test bed of sorts for an all powerful, essentially controlled smart city kind of thing, right? So, you know, it's a trade-off between privacy and safety, right? Like crime is low, you know, the interventions are generated by the system, like, you know, every 20 minutes to save lives, you know, if you park your car incorrectly, it will be automatically re-parked and aligned. And just minor stuff too, like, for example, there's a bit where I write about how parking fines have gone up by 6,000% compared to before the system came into place, because now anyone who illegally parks has like a 360, 3D playback of them illegally parking and the fine is automatically issued. But one of the things I did write about was how the system has an air traffic control network that uses a system of drones to keep the peace so to speak. And one of the things I wrote, which I thought was outlandish at the time, was to have a drone that had a taser that could fire within its own programming. Like, it was supposed to be a kind of reference to some of the military applications of drones, which includes autonomous systems that could fire at a target without human intervention. And I wanted to include that, but in a domestic setting. So I figured that having a drone with a taser underneath would be analogous to that. And then after I'd written this whole, like, thing and I'd done, like, the legwork and explaining how the air traffic system and the drone system works. A few, like, like six months later, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco's police department decided to invest in the drone technology that I had invented in this story, that it completely made up. I had made up a drone that shocks you. This is a drone that shocks you if you are being bad. And the city of San Francisco decided that they would buy drones that would shock you if it determined that you were being bad.

00:32:30 Yaseen > And I was like, this is not supposed to happen in real life. This is supposed to be a cautionary tale against, this is supposed to be a message about, like, not handing control away from civilian authorities to remote operators who have no, you know, like, like, and I just, you know, it's like, I wrote the Torment Nexus, and then San Francisco was like, Hey, what if, what if we outsource police brutality to an algorithm that has drones inside as a taser that flies around.

00:33:10 Winter > That’s what it’s like writing speculative fiction, especially cyberpunk.

00:33:16 Yaseen > It's like, you come up with these ridiculously, like, outlandish ideas that's supposed to be a commentary on the thing you want to talk about, and it just happens in real life.

00:33:27 Winter > Oh yeah there’s nothing you could write that is too outlandish for them to actually do. Look at the terrifying kinds of weaponry that cops have today they have the LRAD--sonic weapons, they have a microwave gun, they have things people would have said are just absurd scifi weapons 20 years ago.

00:33:49 Yaseen > Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

00:33:52 Winter > There’s no limit they won’t go to. If they can figure out a way to create a new form of violence, they will.

00:34:00 Yaseen > They will, right. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, you know, when you consider a lot of the kind of technological innovation in terms of military tech, which we send trickles into the civilian realm. You know, if you think about it like the guy link gun at one point was considered would be scifi right? Here's a here's a here's a here's a machine that shoots bajillions of bullets each second, and how can you not be fucking terrified of it? But now that's like a mainstay in like every single like video game ever produced that has a has a weapon in it.

00:34:37 Yaseen > You know, um, before, before I keep--again, because I need to ask this question to every every--talking about cyberpunk stuff is really cool and stuff--but I do need to ask you, so how long have you been on the fediverse for?

00:34:55 Winter > I first joined in 2019.

00:35:04 Yaseen > Crazy. That was like before I even was born.

00:35:06 Winter > Waow.

00:35:08 Yaseen > Yeah, I know. So you joined in 2019.

00:35:17 Winter > Yeah, my first instance the tragically short-lived dykes.space, and--

00:35:24 Yaseen > Out of I know it's just it's just have all the instances I feel like you could have started your very best life on I dykes.space is truly like Winter-coded, like I feel like if I was wearing like a like a like a parody of the fediverse, dykes.space would probably be an instance that I would I would write as a parody and to know that that's where you started. I think that is very fitting that's very Winter of you.

00:35:54 Winter > Yeah.

00:35:56 Yaseen > What was that like well like how was it in like the olden days, I guess, of the fediverse.

00:36:04 Winter > It was a nice little pleroma instance, I wasn’t really very active at the time, so i couldn’t tell you much about what the experience of fedi was like then, it was comfy. I went, I joined, after that, plural.cafe, and then disqordia.space, where I became an admin, and that’s how I started adminning. And eventually we started the translunar.academy website and we started the social.translunar.academy akkoma instance and I moved onto that.

00:36:27 Yaseen > Okay, and when was when was that?

00:36:50 Winter > That was last April.

00:36:54 Yaseen > Oh, okay, so, wait, translunar.academy is that that young?

00:37:02 Winter > April 2023.

00:37:06 Yaseen > Okay no, that’s--

00:37:10 Winter > Last April.

00:37:10 Yaseen > Okay, no, that's last day for yeah okay that's just over a year okay. And, all right, I know it just feels like you guys have been there for like for like ages and stuff but but that's like my perception, I suppose.

00:37:20 Winter > Well I’m glad we have that reputation.

00:37:22 Yaseen > It just feels like that. I guess it's probably because you and I have been been friends for like a considerable amount of time like I feel like we've always been been friends. I feel like we have that kind of have that kind of bond I hope you feel the same way about me.

00:37:35 Winter > That’s true, we’ve always been friends, and translunar.academy has always been a website.

00:37:42 Yaseen > Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

00:37:43 Winter > But it also in fact has not even happened yet because it’s set in the 23rd century.

00:37:47 Yaseen > Right. Exactly. So we'll become friends in about 200 years from now then.

00:37:56 Winter > Yeah I’m really looking forward to it

00:37:57 Yaseen > It'll be in the history books or the future history books of that time period. Okay.

00:38:00 Winter > Yeah.

00:38:03 Yaseen > So in terms of of running an instance and things like that, have you, what, how have you found the experience so far?

00:38:11 Winter > I wouldn’t wish being an admin on my worst enemy.

00:38:17 Yaseen > I mean, that seems to be a common common theme with administration. It does feel like a very thankless--I mean it is a thankless task. I mean the closest I've gone to administration was moderating a large Facebook group. And man some people are quite entitled, obviously I'm not saying that your users are or whatever, but like moderating moderation is, I mean that's on Facebook right where where the moderation tools are quite quite broad I would say there's a lot that you can do in terms of moderation. But this was just the Facebook group. So imagine that moderating a federal instance is a lot lot harder with all the incoming stuff that you guys get and so and so forth. I have I have honestly full faith and full credit to you guys when you do moderation. It is it is a hard balancing act of trying to make sure that you are creating a space that is open and yet safe at the same time. While also juggling the fact that you yourself are a user and you yourself are responsible for like the whole thing if shit hits the fan. You know, like if something fucked up happens in Facebook, I can just leave it, you know, like it's not really a big deal. Like who cares. But if something happens in administrating an instance like you got the way of all those many, many users on your shoulder. You know, so I always have, I always, you know, rate you guys high for doing it. You know, moderates don't get thanked enough.

00:39:54 Winter > It’s true.

00:39:54 Yaseen > And I do remember actually like in the very kind of early, after the November 2022 wave. Like loads of instances that were like running off like laptops and stuff, by like one guy who was doing it like once a week for him and like 10 of his friends, suddenly becoming inundated with hundreds of thousands of users, and then people expecting the level of level of kind of service that you'd get on a corporate social media website from one guy who's running off of a decapitated MacBook in his basement kind of shit. Like, I don't know if you remember that kind of like like ??? stuff, but I do remember there was a lot of kind of like, well, you know, you made a moderation mistake here. You made this mistake here. Look, look, like last week, this guy was had like 10 guy people on his instance tops and now this has become like a full time like gig for this dude, you know. So I do, I do feel that running an instance is one of those things that you really, really want to do and really don't want to do at the same time.

00:41:04 Winter > Yeah.

00:41:05 Yaseen > Also akkoma as well, like you have to deal with akkoma to on top of all that stuff.

00:41:10 Winter > Oh yeah, akkoma will just break random things for no apparent reason.

00:41:15 Yaseen > I use akkoma, by the way.

00:41:18 Winter > Yeah, I know because you know how it is.

00:41:24 Yaseen > Speaking of akkoma, actually. So you remember I when I so on labyrinth.zone Vel has give me permissions to add emojis. And you remember how I was asking you how to add multiple emojis in one go.

00:41:40 Winter > Yeah.

00:41:41 Yaseen > Right. So Winter said that I can upload a zip file and the akkoma--into the admin front end on the emoji panel--and the zip file should automatically unzip and the akkoma software will just do it for you automatically. For some reason, on my instance, that doesn't work. It uploads the zip file specifically as an emoji, which obviously--

00:42:07 Winter > Oh no.

00:42:07 Yaseen > Which obviously doesn’t work, right? You can even you can even like add it to a post, but it would just come up as like a broken image error, which so I was talking about this issue with sugar@sylveon.social, and sugar, curiously enough, works with Elixir in on in her day to day life. Elixir being that was it like the programming language or something that akkoma uses. Yeah, right. So I explained like what was happening. And basically what she worked out was that akkoma actually does support adding multiple emojis at one time, but for some reason it is disabled in the source code. I don't know why exactly. So what sugar did was she gave me she made like a little book marker, which I can activate and it will turn on the function to add more than one emoji at a time. The problem, the initial problem was that it was it would work too well. It would add so many emojis in one go that well, well, we had the comic sans incident where I had an emoji pack, which was the which was the letters and numbers written in comic sans. I added all of the emojis to the instance. And then after around about the letter F, the labyrinth.zone had a 502 error. In fact, it was so bad that Vel's personal website, which is hosted on the same actual physical server also went down too. So the addition of the comic sans emoji somehow killed the physical like disk or whatever that was hosting whatever it was hosting.

00:44:28 Winter > Waow.

00:44:30 Yaseen > Yeah, I know.

00:44:35 Winter > That’s terrible, emojis have always been something that Just Worked for me.

00:44:39 Yaseen > I know, but do you want to know the reason why it all fucking broke?

00:44:45 Winter > Why?

00:44:46 Yaseen > For some reason, akkoma does not like large amounts of webp. But also, I accidentally uploaded a pack.json file, which the, which akkoma decided to add to its own pack.json file for the comic sans folder. But then it would loop adding the pack.json to the pack json, which--

00:45:16 Winter > Oh no.

00:45:17 Yaseen > Which caused it to crash. It turns out that I guess akkoma is not expecting you to upload your own pack file to the emoji. But don't worry. Sugar went back to drawing board. And basically what she did was she essentially expanded the--I mean, it's all complicated stuff that I don't understand--but as the way she explained to me was that she basically made it so that when I add emojis in bulk, the delay between each emoji is long enough that it won't make the server commit suicide.

00:45:59 Winter > Ohh.

00:46:04 Yaseen > Yeah. I know. Thank you, akkoma. I mean, honestly, it is in my eyes, it is the least worst fedi software, despite the fact it is broken in many ways and really needs a lot of features from other software. I don't know. I think it has its charm despite its funny funniness.

00:46:38 Winter > Yeah, I agree.

00:46:42 Yaseen > So, one of the things I did want to talk about, which I think is probably something worth discussing anyway, is the recent recent election results that happened very recently.

00:46:56 Winter > Ahh...

00:46:59 Yaseen > So in fact, both of us have had fairly recent elections to go through. I had, the UK had its parliamentary elections in July, which Labor party won in a resounding landslide despite getting less shared votes than it did in the previous two elections, which it lost. Again, thanks to your first pass to post for that. The Labor government has been, it's been a mixed bag, right? Like there's been a lot of good stuff that they have done and announced and things that the Tories would definitely not have done if they had won. But there's also stuff that they have done that the Tories would have done if they had won. Things like, for example, really committing to the transphobia for one thing.

00:47:48 Winter > Yeah...

00:47:49 Yaseen > Secondly, is keeping the very, very hard line that the Conservatives had against social welfare policy, including ones that demonstrably would help with things like child poverty stuff, like, things the Conservatives did because they were fucking cruel that the government could reverse right now if they wanted to, that would have a positive impact, they just refused to do that kind of stuff. But on the other hand, there's like lots of other good stuff too. Like, for example, they reformed renting, so that is now much more secure and much more amenable to the tenant. They've added new worker rights protections. They've invested in public transport, for example, or will invest in public transport and things like that.

00:48:36 Yaseen > And it's frustrating, I think, to have, like not all governments are going to be perfect, right? And especially in a neoliberal, hyper capitalist economy like Britain. Like, none of them are perfect. But it is infuriating to me to have a political party that is very clearly invested in doing good things and is doing good things. But then you turn the page and they're doing things that are things that they don't need to do. They don't need to be so cruel. They don't need to continue with policies that only exist as an ideological cludgeon to beat poor people to death with, you know. It is essentially like, and you know, like, the previous life of government, of Tony Blair, was very similar in that regard. They did lots of good stuff. They interested in minimum wage. They invested in healthcare. They invested in education. They've reformed the curriculum so that you weren't being taught jingoistic bullshit every single day. Granted it's still neoliberal, but it was not jingoistic by any sense of the imagination. But they also didn't invest in housing or in public transport. And there was lots of transfers of wealth from the private sector to public sector. I'm sorry, from the public sector to private sector.

00:49:58 Yaseen > Really the only kind of good Labour government, I suppose, was the one that happened directly after the Second World War and with Clement Attlee in 1945, where he basically set the foundation for the welfare state, the NHS, the social welfare system, which kind of collected all these various social security welfare programs into one and made them expansive and cohesive. He, you know, he basically got the country to where it should be right now. He also was a big fan of colonialism, especially in regards to my ancestors, well, not my ancestors, but like my grandparents. So again, you know, not all things about it. But like, we are in a similar economic position where the economy is doing shit, and people are disgruntled and upset and it’s frustrating that the current government is taking more of a leaf out of the previous Conservative government and Tony Blair's government, rather than Clement Attlee's government by doing a whole bunch of state building stuff.

00:51:08 Yaseen > I mean, 1945 was like ages ago, you know, and all of that legacy is still here in that country. The government could do way, way more with its powers to have something like that again. And on the contrary, the Conservative party is so fucking demolished right now that they don't even have enough MPs in Parliament to staff all the committees that they're supposed to be on. You need about 100 MPs to staff all of the committees in the House and they have only 120 MPs and not everyone wants to be on the House committee, I guess. So they're basically like electorally dead for like the next five years, maybe longer, but that comes with the other problem, which is that lots of American money has been coming into the Conservative Party. And they have a new leader called Kemi Badenoch, who despite being against identity politics and wokeness, never fails to mention that she is a black woman at every single time whenever someone criticizes her policy choices. It is quite strange for her to say things like, "You're only attacking me because I'm a black woman," when the thing she said was that autism isn't real and maternity pay should no longer exist. And her brand of politics is known as national conservatism, which sounds very interesting to put the word national in front of another ideology. You'll never guess what the, you'll never guess what their pejorative term is for people who don't like them. If you don't like the national conservatives, you can call them the Nat-Cs, if you like, because that is pretty much almost their ideology. And oh, would you look at that, most of their funding comes from right wing think tanks in the United States that have links to a certain orange man. So yeah, they are electorally irrelevant for now, but I am kind of terrified as to where all this money is fucking going. But for now, we have a Labour government and they are doing not bad, not great. And while it still fucking sucks, it is, it fills me with a very small amount of hope, right? Like already the rental situation in Birmingham is actually getting better than worse. Last year, the affordability index was at like 35, and this year it is at 28, which is considerably good. So clearly something is happening that is good now. And I hope it continues in a weird, cautiously optimistic, but I still like kind of hate Keir Starmer way. That was kind of complicated, but yeah.

00:54:53 Winter > Yeah.

00:54:54 Yaseen > It is just a fact of life under like post-Brexit neoliberalism.

00:54:58 Yaseen > And then of course we get on to the United States, which has decided to go off in a completely whole new direction of fucked up. I kind of commend the American spirit in that regards to like do things differently to the rest of the world, but in like a very extreme way. Like inventing, for example, the chocolate covered Lays, I think is one of those kind of arenas of American life, where I'm like, wow, like this could only really happen in the United States. Like the chocolate covered Lays, I think is a great invention in terms of like taste palette. But I just like, I feel like that's a very quintessentially like American thing to invent. And while I appreciate its existence, it is kind of like kind of like the pinnacle of like the American way of doing things.

00:55:54 Yaseen > And I feel like Trump is kind of like that. But it is also terrifying because he has nice friends in Europe who like him a great deal. And those people didn't exist in 2016, but they exist now. And there's this old saying that when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold. So I guess, like in this case, America has like, I don't know, like, like COVID or something, and Europe is going to get like, West Nile virus and Ebola combined. But the only, I think, good thing about Trump winning is kind of seeing the tears on like #MastodonForHarris type people. Because they spent--

00:56:48 Winter > Those fucking people.

00:56:50 Yaseen > Their fundraiser, right, got to something like $680,000. And the sole reason why the fundraiser existed was to show Harris that she had fans on Mastodon and to encourage her to create a Mastodon account. Very obviously, she didn't. And in my opinion, that's why she lost. She didn't create a Mastodon account. You know, all of those, all of those, those, those swing voters are clear, fedi users. And they just didn't see her in the place that she was, they wanted her to be. And that's why she lost because, because she didn't join the fediverse. And those, those guys spent $680,000 on nothing. Like she didn't even acknowledge them, like at all. Like, I don't think there's anything more performatively liberal than spending nearly $700,000 on getting someone to notice you, that doesn't notice you, when that money could have gone to like people who are like one like, you know, pay slip away from homelessness.

00:58:18 Winter > Yeah, like, seriously, to anyone who donated money to that, fuck you. That was--

00:58:26 Yaseen > Yeah, seriously, like, and like I legitimately agree.

00:58:29 Winter > She had a billion dollars of donation from corporate sponsors. Like, we were talking about numbers earlier and how people don’t fathom what a billion is. $600,000 is absolutely nothing compared to a billion, it’s completely irrelevant.

00:58:44 Yaseen > Completely irrelevant.

00:58:45 Winter > But that money, all, my friends, all these trans women who are homeless and suffering and struggling could, that money would be lifesaving.

00:58:53 Yaseen > That $700,000 could have answered pretty much every mutual aid request for the next, for the, for the entire year, perhaps maybe, you know, and we had took.

00:59:03 Winter > Every mutual aid request on fedi and more.

00:59:06 Yaseen > And more, right.

00:59:08 Winter > Would’ve been filled for years. That’s just--what we were saying, you know those of us who were talking shit about #MastodonForHarris, that’s exactly what we were saying the whole time, and these liberals didn’t wanna fucking listen, and they still don’t, they still think, you know, they will blame anyone but themselves for this catastrophic defeat. I could talk about this election if you want.

00:59:35 Yaseen > Like, yeah, like, no, I agree. I agree. Exactly. Like, you'll see the blame game being played by liberals. Like, why did we lose? Is it because these people didn't vote hard enough? Is it because Harris didn't do this outreach or something? No, it is the real--look, there will be books, articles, think tank speeches dedicated to why she lost. But in my eyes, there's only two reasons why Harris lost.

01:00:00 Yaseen > One, to say she lost is kind of a misnomer, right? Both candidates didn't win. It's just that she didn't win harder, right? The loss, the collapse of her vote share is something like 10 to 15 million. For Trump, it was about 3 million. Just by the balance of that number is just that Trump just didn't lose as hard. Okay. He won, essentially, by a technic--by default, by default--by a technicality of just how numbers work, right? And so in that sense, like, Harris lost for two reasons. One, talking about how bad Trump is for democracy, while true, it is also the same tactic that Biden did in 2020. You cannot repeat the same tactic twice and hope it works twice in a row. Biden ran on the exact same platform and used that as a vote spinner and then did nothing about it at all. Like, the only thing they did was, like, tie in up some procedural rules or something. And it's like, well, if Trump was such a threat to democracy, then why didn't you do anything of much to strengthen it? I mean, fuck, the guy invited Trump to the White House for some transition of power bullshit.

01:01:24 Yaseen > I was like, bro, he didn't give that to you when you became president. Why are you doing that to him? You know, it's not like this is some kind of, like, it's not like he's Mitt Romney, right? It's not like this is like a political disagreement type shit thing here. You call this guy a dictator, you call this guy a fascist, you call this guy...many terms that are right to use against him. And then just invite back in? And so in that sense, like, that brings me to my second point, which is that Biden and Harris represent the establishment. And the establishment are saying Trump is bad. Then the establishment did nothing to protect the democracy and the institutions that they so cherished. And when voters see that you have done nothing on your word to protect them and you are so intrinsically linked with those concepts, why care about democracy institutions when the guy who is representing those things has done nothing for you? And it's not that Trump is better in that regard or anything like that. It's just that the people who would have voted Democrats to "safeguard democracy" didn't feel that it was worth turning up again this time around. That's pretty much it in my opinion. But like, obviously, you know, I would like to hear your take as a person on the ground.

01:03:00 Winter > Oh...this is, okay, so, I mean, I expected this result because I’ve been American too long to be hopeful about things. But it astounds me still how badly she lost. It, like, I expect the Democrats to fuck up, and it astounds me how they could fuck up this badly in so many ways. Like they lost every swing state that--they needed to win all of them to win and they lost every one of them! They could have lost one of them and lost the election, they couldn’t even manage to win one of them.

01:03:35 Yaseen > And you can see that collapse even in the safe states, right? Like, I remember reading somewhere that New York's, the percentage of the percentage delta between Trump and Harris was only about 10% in New York, which is incredible to think about. Like, these are voters that just didn't turn up because they don't believe in the project. And why should they? We talk about the economy, right? And the economy is usually number one on most people's priorities, right? Even Trump's rhetoric is about the economy. You know, he's raising tariffs because he wants to protect the American economy. He wants to kick out all the illegals because he wants to make sure that you, the American worker, has a job in this economy, right? It is, these reactionary policies are, yes, racist, bigoted, homophobic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they're an attempt to, in some way, shore up an economy even if the economy doesn't exist. If you look at every metric under the Biden administration, the economy looks great. Unemployment is low, growth is sky high, business is booming. But the thing is that America is a uniquely unequal country. And the growth of the economy...

01:04:46 Winter > The economy has nothing to do with the lives of people like me.

01:05:00 Yaseen > Yeah, like you're exactly right. Like I said, the U.S. is a very unequal country. So the gains of the economy are no longer felt by people like you and me. They are felt primarily by those who hold the capital. So, yes, while unemployment is low, most of that employment is going to be in precarious work. So while you may have a job, you also may not have a job in two weeks. But you may find another job afterwards, but it will be just as precarious as the one you had before and just as low-paying. GDP growth is high, good, that's great. But most of that growth is in things that don't really affect the wider economy.

01:05:39 Yaseen > Or put it another way, right? When a tech stock generates wealth, that wealth primarily stays within a tech company. Whereas if, let's say, a cinema chain booms in its economy, right? Then the growth will, yes, obviously be to the shareholders of the cinema chain. But the cinema will open more, more, more cinemas. They will employ more people. The effects of the growth of something like a cinema chain will be more widely felt in the economy than the growth of financial services and technology services and the defense industry, for example. So, yeah, of course, America has a booming economy and Trump will inherit it. But for most people, the boom doesn't really exist. I mean, are you better off today than you were four years ago under Trump? No?

01:06:37 Winter > No.

01:06:37 Yaseen > Then why not vote for the guy? If things are better off back then. Now, granted, that's not how the economy works. But the emotional pull of employment and buying things is such a ritualistic part of living in a capitalist society, and especially one like the United States, that when someone promises you a golden age, it's much better to go for that guy than for the guy who is promising you more of the same. But again, Trump didn't really win. He just benefited from a collapse in the support of...

01:07:19 Winter > Right, saying that he won is a stretch, like...

01:07:23 Yaseen > Yeah

01:07:25 Winter > The fact--the important thing here is that Harris lost, catastrophically, worse than I could have even imagined. And really, I could--so, the problem with the Democrats is they think they’re entitled to the votes of their base--or who they perceive as their base--and they don’t, you know, they think that as long as they’re running against Trump like they did in 2020. 2020 was a miracle, nobody--everybody thought Trump was going to win in 2020.

01:07:48 Yaseen > Right, right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

01:08:00 Winter > That was not normal. But the Democrats thought they just had this in the bag, they thought this was guaranteed, and they spent their entire campaign running as far as they could to the right in a desperate attempt to win over these--

01:08:16 Yaseen > Moderate Republicans.

01:08:17 Winter > These acclaimed “moderate voters”, yeah, which is absolutely hopeless. There’s nothing they can say that will win over the moderate right because what the right-wing propaganda says completely is, it completely overwrites whatever is fact, what facts are do not matter. People are totally convinced that Joe Biden is a communist and all these, you know? It doesn’t matter how right wing Kamala made herself. She didn’t get any votes from the right, all she did was, not only alienate the left but spit in our face!

01:08:58 Yaseen > Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:09:00 Winter > And say stuff like that the campus protesters against the Gaza genocide were like, “pro-Hamas” and shit like that, and, she just spat in our face and she expected us to vote for her anyway. And at the same time, like you were talking about, the conditions of elections in this country, and if Biden had cared so much about democracy then why were we still seeing people having to wait in line for hours in places that were democrat strongholds?

01:09:35 Winter > We’re not just talking about running out for five minutes and voting, in the US. Probably you have to go to somewhere that’s not even close to where you live and you might have to wait in line for a long time, and are people really going to do that for someone who talks down to them and spits in their face and just says fuck you, vote for me? Like, was that supposed to work?

01:10:00 Yaseen > Exactly, exactly. I agree completely. And I agree. It’s funny, it's kind of weird to consider that the only kind of person that Democrats have voted for in a positive sense was Hillary Clinton, right? People talk about how Trump won the election, but he only won by a technicality.

01:10:21 Winter > Oh yeah, he lost the election.

01:10:23 Yaseen > Like, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Like, she had popular support in a way that Joe Biden didn't even manage to achieve while he was claiming that Trump was a bad thing, right? And obviously we can criticize Clinton for her campaign and all kinds of things, but she actually legitimately managed to pull it off, you know? Like, if the electoral college didn't exist or it was better or whatever, like, we would be talking about completely different United States right now. But the fact is that Biden and Harris ran on a campaign that was--here's the thing, people believed that Clinton lost because she was presumptive. But again, like we've said, she didn't really actually lose. But the way people believe that Clinton ran her campaign is how Harris has--had run her campaign. It was presumptive. It was assuming that everyone would turn out again in the same way. It was running the same playbook. And most of all, it was relying on--votes are never earned, right? They are lent to you in the hopes that you will do something with it. Voters lent their votes to Biden. He did nothing with them. And Harris was the one who took the fall for that. Because, again, she is completely entangled with the Biden administration. Like, literally so, you know? Like, if she wasn't from the administration, if she was a different Democrat person, then, you know, we would say, oh, it's unfortunate that a fall guy. But Harris very clearly placed herself as the continuity choice, as the continuation of what has come before.

01:12:12 Yaseen > And this is the thing with liberals of the kind of Democratic flavor, right? Is that there is this reliance on believing that you are owed votes from certain groups. So in this case, of course, the Democrats believe that they are always owed the votes of union members and of ethnic minorities and of, you know, queer people, right?

01:12:37 Winter > Oh, why would union members vote for Biden or Kamala when Biden just a year ago shut down what was going to be a major rail workers’ strike in the name of the economy. And why would women care about voting for Biden when he hasn’t done anything, when on his watch we lost Roe V Wade, we had a catastrophic loss. He hasn’t, the Democrats have really done almost nothing to fight for abortion rights. On the state levels there’s been some important action, yeah, but--

01:13:18 Yaseen > But on a national level, there's been nothing there. I mean--

01:13:20 Winter > On the national level there’s very much the sense that all of the things that people care about, and all the things that really matter to people’s lives, the Democrats have completely abandoned.

01:13:33 Yaseen > Yeah, exactly. I mean, we can go all the way back to Bill Clinton, right? And how he did very favorably with Black and other minority voters. Because he ran a campaign that kind of spoke to them in a way that hadn't been kind of done before in that sense, right? Whereas with Harris, she never really--there's this kind of--I mean, I'm speaking for myself, of course, as an ethnic minority. But like, obviously, British parties are completely different from American politics in many, many, many ways. But there is always this assumption that minority voters are a monolith and they will always exclusively vote for the more liberal of the options available.

01:14:17 Yaseen > And really, when you think about politics as a marketplace, rather than the discussion of ideals, you get this sense that perhaps the parties of the liberal on the left take minority votes for granted too much. Let's look at something like immigration, for example, okay? And family stuff, too, right? Minorities are very usually a lot more religious in many ways than their white counterparts are. In Britain, for example, of course, you have the Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs who make up the vast majority of non-Christian, non-atheist religions. And they strongly believe in those religions far more than Christians would do so, okay? Which makes them prime conservative material, right? Because conservatism is about protecting the hierarchy of religion in that sense, right? Conservatism is very, very much linked to the church in that way. And then you talk about things like immigration, for example, right? So contrary to what everyone believes in some strange way, in my experience at least, that minority groups are more likely to favor stronger controls on immigration, not less. In a way, that's kind of like a drawbridge effect. So my mom, for example, she's a naturalized citizen. She moved here in the 90s and married my dad. And she has views on immigration that would put like the English defense league to shame sometimes. And that's, in a sense, a kind of function of the fact that if you choose to become a naturalized citizen, you are choosing that path, right? My mom chose to be British. And in that sense, she is more British than any white person could ever claim to be. She even believes in the conservative ideology far more than any conservative ever could. But she's also a trade union member. So she votes Labour because in that sense, it kind of protects her interests in that way, right?

01:16:28 Yaseen > And I feel like when you consider how powerful minorities are as a voting bloc in that sense, you really find it interesting how long the Democrats and the Labour Party and other left and liberal parties in Europe have relied on that vote when they never really had a justification to have them in the first place. But ultimately, the parties of the right are a lot more hardcore on race issues too. So now these voters are left stuck between parties who would want to lynch them and parties who only see them as free votes. And you can apply that to other minorities like queer people as well, for example, you know, it is the exact same way, right? The parties of the liberal and the left promise to protect minority rights of both ethnicity, disability, not both, of ethnicity, disability and sexuality and gender as well. You've got to include women in that. But don't actually do anything much at all about it. And you have the parties on the right who hate women, hate minorities, hate the homos, you know, hate the blacks and so on. No wonder turnout collapsed so hard and no wonder, you know, the Democrats did so badly.

01:17:57 Winter > The thing about this election, um, it was very dark because like, we expect the Democrats not to do anything for us as queer and trans people, but they didn’t even bother to pay us lip-service this time, she didn’t even mention us!

01:18:16 Yaseen > Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

01:18:19 Winter > While at the same time the party was completely assuming they could count on all of us to go through all the hardship in the world to vote for her.

01:18:27 Yaseen > Yep, yep, exactly, exactly. I mean, you know, I feel like Trump, in essence, is in some ways the kind of ultimate American president. In a way, I think, I think Trump really is the Puritan lineage of the United States come to life. Because, you know, the story of the Puritans who left England and later Britain to come to what is now the United States of America. They left because they were upset they couldn't persecute Jews and Catholics anymore. And the moderate Protestants were like, can you just fuck off, man? Just fuck off. And they did. They fucked off. They founded the British, the colonies of British America. And, you know, they fucking banned Christmas in the 13, in some of the 13 colonies, Winter.

01:19:28 Winter > Yeah.

01:19:30 Yaseen > Like, the Puritan work ethic is no fun, no sex, all work. And when you look at America today, what do you get? All work, no fun and no sex.

01:19:44 Winter > Right just to connect us all the way back to when we were talking about cyberpunk and how people like think that, where people see these things happening in the world today and they think that these horrible things are just now starting to come to pass and that the books predicted them, but, when the books were just describing them, that were already existing. And when we talk about stuff like Trump, yeah, it’s exactly what America has always been and people who think that this is new are just privileged enough to not to have had to experience it before.

01:20:24 Yaseen > Yep, yeah exactly, exactly, like Trump is the perfect continuation of that Puritan vibe. Like if you compare other British colonies from that time period, so obviously the United States split from British America, and what was left was British North America, right. So the settlers in Canada were primarily, less Puritan, just by pure luck really, the Puritans mostly settled in the good stuff, and everybody else had to move up north. And not to mention, the Nova Scotians were Scottish who weren’t puritans, they were Presbyterians I think.

01:21:06 Yaseen > So, so, you know, you can see that again in the way Canada’s modern history is, it is a little bit more progressive than the United States is in terms of its policy path, that is very very slowly changing in horrifying ways that would require another episode to talk about. Um, but and if you compare that to the colonies in Australia and New Zealand, where, one they were formed by criminals, so the religiosity was less devout, shall we say. But the United States is unique enough to be founded by Puritans. By the time Australia and Canada got independence, the religious movement had kind of moved to becoming less Puritan and a little bit less hostile to the ideal of not being a sore fucking loser that bans Christmas. Whereas, Puritanism has always been with the United States, and it is the reason why there is the religion clause in the original ten amendments, because they were worried that the Puritans would just Puritan everything up again. But the Puritans were the biggest force in the early United States, and in a sense they still are, right? The Christian evangelicals are really a much more extreme version of the Puritans of the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.

01:22:37 Yaseen > The Puritanism, you can even see it in so-called liberal states. Like if you talk about the Californian tech industry, or even just California in general right? The way that the tech industry moves and the way the tech industry approaches social and political events is again, goes back to Puritanism. No boobies, no fun, white supremacy is A-OK though, which the Puritans originally were. The US is a country founded not just on white supremacy but on a very particular strain of white supremacy. The puritanism of the original settlers was so extreme that they got fucking kicked out. They were so white supremacist and so racist and so intolerant of anyone that the other guys who were also racist and intolerant thought they were too racist and intolerant.

01:23:38 Yaseen > And Trump is the epitome of that, he doesn’t want women to have rights, he doesn’t want you to have an abortion, he doesn’t like the gays and the blacks and so on because those people are different, right, the Puritans didn’t like you because you were different, even if you read from the same religious book. I mean fuck, I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow one of Trump’s first orders was to round up every catholic and shoot them, you know?

01:24:03 Winter > Nothing would surprise me anymore.

01:24:05 Yaseen > It wouldn’t surprise me, you know? Trump's religiosity is something of a question mark, and I don't think it even particularly matters because he could pose to his base whatever they believe in. Trump is puritanism in its original form. I think Cromwell would be proud, really. Oh, Trump is, Trump is Cromwell. Holy shit.

01:24:30 Winter > Oh yeah.

01:24:31 Yaseen > That is, that is not a connection I thought I'd ever make. But yeah, Trump is, Trump is fucking Oliver Cromwelll. Holy fuck. The authoritarianism, the military dictatorship that he wants to set up. The hatred of women and Catholics. I mean, not Catholics, but the hatred of people who aren't white men. Wow, fuck man. That's crazy shit. I really wish the Levelers had that one in the English Civil War. Like there was a chance, right, that in the English Civil War, it was essentially people who didn't like the monarchy versus the monarchy. And the Puritans were the main, the Cromwellian folks who were also Puritans were like the main thing, right? But second to them were the, were the Levelers who I guess today you would probably call, we would call them like, I don't know, libertarians, I guess, but in a good way, in a good way. Like they wanted limited government. They wanted equal rights for all men, of course, equal voting rights for all men, something that wouldn't happen for another 300 years. That's how, that's how progressive these guys were. And because they were so limited government, they really weren't in the colonizing game, so to speak. I imagine that their ideology would kind of, would kind of, the idea was very much one of being, taking care of England and later Britain as a nation state. I imagine that would preclude them from at least the worst of the colonization we saw in the 15 and 1600s. But obviously this is just, but Britain would be a much better country if the Puritans never existed. That's why I'm saying, I think that's the central point of my thesis here.

01:26:31 Winter > Well yeah I think that the entire world would be significantly better if the Puritans never existed.

01:26:37 Yaseen > Like so much, like we would be like 300 years more advanced as a civilization after Puritans never existed. I mean, they hated, I mean, these guys banned Christmas and football. Like how do you even, how do you even do this? Like, why do you hate fun so much? Like, who, who, like, and then you look at America and it's like, wow, that's crazy. Like, people work on Christmas Day? Holy shit. Christmas might as well be banned in the United States, I guess.

01:27:12 Winter > Yeah.

01:27:13 Yaseen > But anyway, we should move to a different topic because I think we could talk about this for like 10 hours and not even like touch on it.

01:27:20 Winter > Yeah, and I don’t really want to. I already have to live in it.

01:27:26 Yaseen > Anyway, let's talk about something a little bit more interesting.

01:27:29 Winter > Okay!

01:27:30 Yaseen > So I was thinking actually recently about British Indian Ocean Territory is going to legally disappear, good in an anti-colonialism perspective.But what is interesting, of course, is that the .io TLD may just disappear because, well, the country it represents, the territory it represents will cease to legally exist. And, you know, it just makes you think about actually how weird country codes are.

01:28:03 Winter > Yeah.

01:28:04 Yaseen > Like, like the only reason why TLDs even exist is because they're cribbed from the ISO country code specification, which is primarily was primarily designed for delivery of the post. So that's why every single little island territory gets its own country code, because, you know, like, the Indian Ocean territory is administered by Britain, but giving it a British international postal code obviously would not be very useful. Hence why every single little island that is owned by some other country gets its own little code.

01:28:37 Yaseen > And I think what's interesting is how these code points are assigned in terms of the code itself. And so one of the main things is that common words in a country name are not included when talking about the country code. So words like United or State or Republic or Federal or whatever, these are ignored for the purpose of country codes. So that's why, for example, the United Arab Emirates is .ae and .are. Or why the Republic of Congo is .c something, cg, I think, and con. Or why the Federated States and Micronesia is FM. OK, nope, that doesn't count. That's strange. Never mind that one, I guess. And how the UK, which is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is gb and gbr. The UK does have .uk. That's only because when the UK made its own version of DNS, they reserved the UK code for themselves, and basically when the DNS system was invented, they just kind of shoved it in there.

01:29:58 Yaseen > So, that leads to a very interesting one, which is, of course, the United States, because that is US and USA. But as the ISO specification very clearly says, words like United and State don't count for the purpose of the conference. That's why, for example, Korea, North, South Korea is the Republic of Korea, but their code is KR and KOR. So, I guess United States is just special. It gets its own exception.

01:30:30 Winter > Of course. Always gets its own exception.

01:30:31 Yaseen > Like, why? We're stuck with GB. Like, why? That's like the fifth word in the country name that they had to go for. And the USA gets US, just like that? It's not like Micronesia, where the F and M is from Federated Micronesia. The whole country code is made of exception words. Like, why? It just shows how American-centric everything is. Like I mean, they get to keep the .edu domain for only US universities. I guess only the US is allowed to have universities, right? Yeah, I think it sucks. I think it's terrible. If I was doing country codes all over again, I would give the United States the most, like, you know, a spiteful one. One that just doesn't make sense at all, just despite them. That's what I would do.

01:31:35 Winter > I agree.

01:31:35 Yaseen > Like, .ZB or something.

01:31:42 Winter > Yeah!

01:31:43 Yaseen > Just staring at my keyboard, trying to pick the two most random letters I can see. No, .ZB. I think that's what should happen. Yeah, it is funny, like, you know, how the internet just, like, functions, like, in general. Like, if you think about how much of it is just basically, like, the whole foundation of the internet was designed to let, like, five different universities talk to each other. Like, if you think about that, like, a lot of the weird wonky parts of the internet just, just makes sense, you know, like, all this shit about the internet just makes sense once you realize that. It's like, a system designed for five universities scaled up to, like, however many billion devices run Java.

01:32:35 Winter > Pretty much.

01:32:37 Yaseen > I love the internet sometimes. Speaking of the internet though, Bluesky has started to grow quite a bit now. Like, hideously so. And I think it is quite funny to occasionally go on threads to see them coping and seething about it. Like, they really, I don't know, it's like, well, I mean, like, there are many things you can say about Bluesky, but at least the moderation there isn't capricious and hates nipples. And also, for some reason, the Threads algorithm will deliberately downvote any mention of current affairs, no matter what it is. Like, if you would, if you even mentioned that you had an abortion or something, it would just downrank you. So, yeah, I feel like under balance of things, Blue Sky is better than Threads. Also, like, I don't think I’ve seen Bluesky help commit genocide yet. So, I think that's, that's a mark in the good books for me. But then, then you go on the fedi, and there are people who are also coping and seething quite hard about Bluesky. It is very weird to me, I think. I expect that from people on Threads, but fedi, I mean, it's like, it's the complete different value proposition, right? Like, Blue Sky is just Twitter 2, just with more, like, flowery language. Like, the fediverse exists beyond that and without that. So, people coping and seething about its existence. Like, yeah, I guess it sucks that all the artists and so on are going to Bluesky, but it's not really their fault. Bluesky just has better marketing.

01:34:37 Winter > Yeah, where are they supposed to go, mastodon.art?

01:34:40 Yaseen > Yeah, exactly, right? That's the thing, it's like, Bluesky, the thing I think people who are coping about it on fedi don't really want to understand is that a federation is simple, but it is a hurdle. And when you place, and whereas Bluesky is a centralized system masquerading as a decentralized one. That offers it benefits that are kind of difficult to have on fedi. Unless, for some reason, they all go to mastodon.art, which means that I won't be able to see them. So, that kind of sucks. Whereas at least on Blue Sky, I can definitely, definitely see them. But it is annoying to have to have another account and another app to do all that stuff. But, it's whatever, man. Like, I feel like it's not very productive to, like, discussing Bluesky and fedi is an interesting proposal because they have similar aims, right? But one is much more in tune with that aim than the other, right? Like, fedi is from the ground up, decentralized, de-everything, you know? Whereas Bluesky was initially designed with a centralized focus, with decentralized being an add-on later, and then all the other network effects happening just by chance.

01:36:16 Yaseen > The fediverse doesn't really have a network effect in the same way because of its decentralized nature. And that's fine. Like, obviously, having more people on fedi is a good thing because it expands everyone's social graph, right? And it expands the variety of people you can interact with and the variety of viewpoints that you can see and a variety of just things that you get. More people is, in my opinion, a good thing. Even if they are, like, I don't know, Normies or whatever. Like, maybe it's okay to have Normies on fedi. Maybe I do want to see some guy whose every second post is about what sandwich he has for lunch. You know, that's like the most authentic posting I could think of.

01:36:59 Winter > Yeah.

01:37:00 Yaseen > The fediverse is a good place to be if you're in the right place on the fediverse. It's just that Bluesky is just a bit more accessible. And that's really it. And that's not the fediverse's fault. And it's not even really Bluesky's advantage. It's just that they were in the right place at the right time to soak up the right things.

01:37:21 Winter > That’s pretty much it.

01:37:22 Yaseen > If all of this bullshit happened in November 2022, then I would guarantee you that the fediverse, well really Mastodon, would become the end thing like Bluesky is now. But it's not November 22. The fedi just got unlucky, I guess. Yeah, but it's whatever. I mean, what's your, like, take?

01:37:45 Winter > I don’t know, I’m on fedi ‘cause--

01:37:47 Yaseen > Because you love me the most.

01:37:49 Winter > Well yeah obviously everyone’s on fedi because of you Yaseen. But, you know, I’ve got a real little community there, I never had that on corporate social media. And also I just like, it’s hard for someone like me to stay afloat in an algorithm that tries to bury people like me and the kind of art that I make, and I have a lot less to worry about without some corporate moderators breathing down my neck, I can post whatever I want.

01:38:20 Yaseen > Yeah. Yeah, I mean, hey, on Facebook, I got a first, a second strike on my account for calling someone a silly goose. That kind of was like, hate speech. Do you want to know my first strike, by the way, was one of my friends had a particularly bad date. And she was, she said, "Ah, you know, I can't believe this guy. Like, it was so for the way he treated me." And I was like, "You know, honey, some men can be like that." And it picked up the men thing, and my negative comment, and I tripped, and like, that was also some kind of, like, protected characteristic hate speech kind of thing.

01:39:02 Winter > Oh no, “misandry.”

01:39:06 Yaseen > And I'm like, right, and it's like, that wasn't even misandry. That was me, like, like, that was like the most, like, soft-bore thing I could have said about the situation.

01:39:17 Winter > Right, doesn’t everybody say that?

01:39:18 Yaseen > And that got me, and that got me, that got me booted off Facebook for like, for like, for like 30 days, right? I couldn't post for 30 days. And that was crazy because as part of my job, I was responsible for posting stuff on Facebook. So my boss got real upset. I was like, "Look, boss, Facebook just fucking sucks, okay? Like, I can't explain this to you." And she was like, she was sympathetic and stuff, but it was like, in a technical sense, like, I essentially committed like, a workplace violation, right? Because I lost access to a tool. Like, obviously, in a literal sense, that's what I did. Obviously, in a practical sense, like, no one is going to, like, fire me because I lost access to Facebook. But when you think of, like, how many people's livelihoods depends on algorithmic social media, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Like, that small brush with that was just kind of horrifying, you know? Like, and all I did was post updates about the things that we were doing in the library. Like, I could just ask one of my other colleagues to handle that for me while I was in Facebook jail. But like, if I was a sole business and that knocked me out for half a whole month, like, what kind of shit would that get me into, you know? And that's the beauty of decentralized social media. No one can put me in Facebook jail for 30 days because I decided to be sympathetic and empathize with my friend, you know? Like, I got put in Facebook jail for being a good friend, Winter.

01:41:13 Winter > Yeah, that’s not allowed.

01:41:14 Yaseen > It's not allowed. Being a good friend, not allowed.

01:41:19 Winter > You gotta cut that shit out.

01:41:20 Yaseen > Mentioning men in any way, shape or form is completely wrong. But if I spread misinformation about Muslims in Rankine state, then that's totally alright. And in fact, I would get a bonus for it due to helping Facebook reach its growth in Myanmar. So, swings and roundabouts, I suppose, are enough, right?

01:41:48 Yaseen > Would you like to make a move on to the questions that we have received?

01:41:54 Winter > Yeah.

01:41:55 Yaseen > Great. Okay, I'm going to bring them up.

01:41:56 Winter > I shared it recently.

01:41:58 Yaseen > Ah, I got it. I found it. Oh, no, that was... Nope, this is the post where I talked about postponing my knee surgery. It's knee surgery day today, but I'm with you now, so knee surgery is tomorrow.

01:42:13 Winter > Oh! Well, good luck.

01:42:15 Yaseen > Oh, no, Winter, it's not real knee surgery. It's a meme. Don't...

01:42:20 Winter > Oh, what? I don’t get it, I’m too Autistic for this

01:42:22 Yaseen > No, literally, the whole meme is knee surgery is tomorrow. That's the meme. That's it.

01:42:28 Winter > Ohhh

01:42:30 Yaseen > Just saying knee surgery is tomorrow or knee surgery day, just talking about how your knee surgery is tomorrow. Despite, like, my knees are fine, by the way.

01:42:42 Winter > Oh, good.

01:42:43 Yaseen > If it was up to me, I would have unlimited knee surgery, so every day could be knee surgery day tomorrow. This is the most crazy unhinged thing I've probably said on this show so far. I'm mentioning some meme. You being confused. Yeah, this is great. Great, excellent. Okay, so we have 45 replies in total to this post, so that's probably not 45 questions, by the way, but it's a good sign.

01:43:17 Yaseen > Okay, do you have the post up as well, if you want to have a look?

01:43:21 Winter > oh, I could easily. Actually I don’t want to because RAM is a precious resource for me right now.

01:43:28 Yaseen > Yes, okay, good. I will just read them out. I'll read them out to you anyway. It'd be like a surprise for you, anyway, so okay, cool. So the first question we have is from Kuriko, who is @kuriko@wetdry.world. I saw Kuriko this weekend, actually, on Sunday, yesterday. It was pretty fun. He came in to town, then I went up to see him. We went to this Syrian place, which was really, really nice. In fact, it was so busy that we had to stand outside to queue, and it was pretty tasty. Then we came back to my house. We watched Akira, 1998--

01:44:07 Winter > Fuck yeah.

01:44:09 Yaseen > which, again, is such a fantastic film. It is truly, like, just thinking about the fact of watching it still sits with me right now, you know? Like, we just finished the film, and we just sat there for what felt like forever, just soaking it in. The film said so much, and yet not enough at the same time. And you can really feel the gravity, the weight, the coolness of that film, just sink into you, you know?

01:44:51 Winter > Oh it’s a masterpiece it’s a way better foundational work of cyberpunk than Snow Crash.

01:44:57 Yaseen > Yes, for sure, because I actually enjoyed Akira. And afterwards, we went to get some Italian food. But the Italian place was not actually an Italian place. It was just a cafe that had Italian food on the menu. Pretty sure the chef was not Italian in any way, shape, or form. And the hygiene rating of the place was below five. The tables were kind of sticky, and also our table had someone else's name carved into it. And the pasta was really, really delicious. So I don't know if there's a correlation between a place being kind of low rent and tasting good.

01:45:42 Winter > Oh yeah there’s definitely a correlation between those things.

01:45:46 Yaseen > I agree. Anyway, so Kuriko asks us, "Both of you are asked to stay in a supermarket, let's say a big one, for eight hours in exchange for a week's worth of groceries for free. What do you all do in that time to keep your sanity?" That's a very good question. Do you want to take this one first?

01:46:05 Winter > Yeah, okay. So, 8 hours, obvious the thing to do is to play D&D. I’m pretty confident that if we’re in a major supermarket I can find some dice and a notebook and a pencil and that’s all we really need to kill 8 hours, I’ll just take you through a great adventure. That’s my proposition.

01:46:26 Yaseen > Cool, cool. Well, yeah, I was actually going to suggest something very similar, which is that we go to the toys section and just play all of the board games that they had on offer. Like go through chess, go through checkers, go through Connect 4, so on and so forth. So I'm glad we had the kind of... like we could do...

01:46:55 Winter > We could do that, we could do that, but we could also open all those board games and put all the boards together and take all the pieces as miniatures and run the most amazing dungeon ever.

01:47:06 Yaseen > Yeah, good idea. Good. I'm glad that we managed to come up with very similar ideas for this question. And hey, it's a week's worth of groceries. Actually, you know what? I don't know if that trade-off is actually worth it. Like if it was a month's worth of groceries, then I would... maybe. But unless we do it every week, that might be okay. Like if we had to give it eight hours each week for groceries for free. Because if I think about it, like I work eight hours... I mean, I work seven hours, but whatever. I work eight hours a week. Eight hours a week. Eight hours a day. So an amount of money I earn in one day is not enough to buy a week's worth of groceries. So actually, if it was like... if we did it every week, then I would be able to actually get a week's worth of groceries for not much time spent. This is probably more thought than Kuriko expected us to have.

01:48:09 Winter > I think that we’re just reinventing wage labor here.

01:48:12 Yaseen > But...yeah, yeah, we kind of are in that sense. But yeah, okay, cool. Yes, we will answer that question. A cool bean, by the way, replied to that by saying, "Would eat a week's worth of groceries to win a week's worth of groceries." I think... yeah, that's a good way to spend eight hours. And then I replied with that by posting the female giga-chad emoji, which I think is worth it. Then I replied to say that I actually put a space in the content warning for some reason. Yeah, I don't know what happened, I think, when I originally posted the content warning field had a space in it. And so the post just appeared with a content warning for no reason.

01:49:07 Yaseen > The next question is from living in a gamer's paradise, who is at @gamer@fedi.bungle.online, who, by the way, mixes and masters this podcast. Gamer asks us, "Gaming?” Do you... gaming, do you... game?"

01:49:29 Winter > Hmm, uh, not much, gotta disappoint all the gamer listeners out there. These days I more watch my girlfriend and my other partners than play them myself. I have been lately playing a lot of Pokémon.

01:49:43 Yaseen > That's good. That's a classic. My answer to the question, gamer, is actually, I've been playing this game called Magical Delicacy, kind of pretty hardcore for the last while. Obviously I was sick for all of last weekend's while we had to postpone recording this episode, which actually doesn't really matter to the viewer, to be quite honest. But anyway, yeah, I've been mainlining this game called Magical Delicacy for a while. It's one of those games that is very frustrating at the beginning, but once you get over the hurdles and you actually unlock more things to do, more equipment and so on, the game becomes a lot more substantial in terms of beating and so on. So, actually, I think this is a game that you might enjoy, or at least one of your partners might enjoy playing. The basic premise is that you are a witch who cooks and you move to this town to open a little restaurant. And your main kind of way of communicating with the townsfolk is by cooking them meals that they would like using a variety of ingredients that are very fantastical in nature, that are, either you can buy from local shops or you find dotted around the world map. You do have to explore the world map. There are areas of the world map that you kind of access unless you unlock new abilities, which you unlock by cooking meals and getting closer to the townsfolk and so on and so forth. So I think I am about halfway through the story, or at least I'm getting closer to the ending kind of thing. The cooking aspect is interesting because you can experiment with different flavors and different ingredients to get the right kind of dish, and there are many times where I have fucked it up, but you can sell them for money and stuff. And it's quite a very fun game, very chill, very cozy. The problem is now that I've kind of, is kind of a bit of a chore now to cook because the recipes that I have to make are getting more and more complicated to balance out because there's different flavor profiles, there's different ingredients, there's different restrictions and specifications of each dish that means you really have to think about the kinds of things you're cooking. For example, if you have a taste that's too strong, all other power tastes out too weak, which will make your dish wrong to serve up and so on. So yeah, it is a good game if you like that kind of inventory management/cozy, charming, fun type stuff.

01:52:53 Yaseen > And before that, I played Call of Duty Black Ops 6's campaign, which is a completely different kind of game to Magical Delicacy. I think I could not think of two games that are like polar opposite in terms of mechanics and vibe. Black Ops 6, I played the campaign mostly, mostly, it's the only thing I played actually. It is a very good campaign in terms of storytelling. The characters are fine, like it is a fine story, it serves the plot, but the gameplay and the mechanics and the different level design is just so creatively done. You feel like the developers were meant to make a game that wasn't Call of Duty. That's kind of how good the level design is in the campaign. One of the levels is very clearly a homage to Prey and to Control, which is something I did not expect in a Call of Duty game at all. Another level requires you to not kill anyone, and to scope out an event where Bill fucking Clinton is at for some reason. That was very fun. The only kind of downside is that the story, despite being set in the 90s, does not make any reference at all to the 90s. It's set during the Gulf War and Bill Clinton is there, but beyond these two elements, there is nothing 90s at all about it. No one is wearing 90s clothing, there isn't a soundtrack filled with 90s bangers, right? There's no like Nirvana, for example, for some reason.

01:54:50 Winter > Well that’s disappointing.

01:54:51 Yaseen > But yeah, I know, right? Even the models for the cars are very clearly not from the 90s. I don't know why they set a game specifically in the 90s, but didn't do anything to make it appear so.

01:55:07 Winter > Yeah.

01:55:08 Yaseen > It's fun if you pretend that it's not set in the 90s. But yeah, obviously it's not worth buying a game for price to get the campaign. The campaign is like nine hours long or seven. I got it through Game Pass, hence why it was worth my time to play it. But yeah, it's fun. It's a fun little shooter and you don't even do that much imperialism in this one, actually. The story is actually just preserving the status quo in many ways, which I guess makes sense since it's 1991 and the Cold War just ended. But yeah, that's my answer to the question of gaming.

01:56:00 Yaseen > The next question is from V who is at @atlrvrs@translunar.academy. The question is--

01:56:08 Winter > That’s my user!

01:56:10 Yaseen > That's your user. The question is, what's your top 10 women? For me, obviously, my top 10 women's spots are occupied by the girl listening to this. And number one is Nepnep, of course. Winter, do you have a top 10 women?

01:56:37 Winter > This is a really hard question, especially because not all of my partners are women.

01:56:43 Yaseen > Right, sure.

01:56:43 Winter > But I can start out with Sparrow, Aliza, and Violet, uh, I love you, and...

01:56:55 Yaseen > Gaaay.

01:56:57 Winter > My other 7 top 10 women. Let’s see, I’ve thought about this for weeks and it’s a tough question. I want to shout out Valentina Tereshkova, and of course, Lyudmila Pavlichenko. Oh definitely gonna be Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. How many am I up to?

01:57:27 Yaseen > I think, was that 10?

01:57:30 Winter > No, I’ve got 7, so, three more.

01:57:34 Yaseen > Okay, three more, okay.

01:57:35 Winter > Who are the three more women of all time...

01:57:43 Yaseen > Whitney Houston, she's every woman.

01:57:45 Winter > No way, I don’t know anything about her sorry.

01:57:53 Yaseen > One of her most famous songs starts with the line, I'm every woman.

01:57:58 Winter > Ohhh

01:58:00 Yaseen > So, hence, she is every one, she's top 10.

01:58:05 Winter > I never knew that about her. Wendy Carlos. If I can just pick two more women of all time, I really look up to Maryam Molkara. Now maybe the hardest choice of all, but let’s go with Anneke van Giersbergen.

01:58:26 Yaseen > Cool. Thank you, Winter. @OctaviaConAmore@cutie.city says that she can't wait for an episode, that's very nice.

01:58:40 Winter > Awww, well she’s very nice too.

01:58:43 Yaseen > Anakita who is at @anakita@labyrinth.zone, my instance, asks “do you is like anime?” Yes I do is like anime. I haven't watched anime in a long time.

01:58:58 Winter > You just watched Akira!

01:59:00 Yaseen > Oh yes! I watched Akira, there we go great, I watched anime, I watched Akira yesterday. In terms of serialized, in terms of anything before Akira, it's been a while since I watched anything before Akira. But I do is like anime.

01:59:18 Winter > I do am like anime and I watch a fair amount of yuri lately--oh, we’ve been watching Rose of Versailles, that’s incredibly good, I highly recommend it, for all girls

01:59:30 Yaseen > Do you think it’s Yaseen friendly?

01:59:36 Winter > I dunno, do you like...lesbians.

01:59:41 Yaseen > Yeah, sure, why not. I'm a big fan of, I'm a proud support of lesbianism. I mean, I've watched Citrus and I've watched Bloom Into You, so I'm not a stranger--

01:59:56 Winter > Oh good you’ve watched Bloom Into You.

01:59:59 Yaseen > I’m not a stranger to watching lesbian stuff. I also watched Sakura Trick, which I found quite...

02:00:05 Winter > Oh, Sakura Trick!! What were you gonna say about it?

02:00:10 Yaseen > Am I thinking, wait, Sakura Trick was, am I thinking of the right one? Let me just double check, I got the wrong, because there's many animes with the word "Sakura" in it, so I'm trying to remember if I'm thinking of the right one.

02:00:17 Winter > It’s the one, it’s about these girls and they love each other!

02:00:20 Yaseen > Do you know how much that narrows it down to? Yes, I was thinking of Sakura Trick. So yeah I have watched Sakura Trick. I don't know, I feel like it wasn't bad per se, I just don't think it was for me in terms of the story. I respect, I think watching Citrus and Bloom Into You kind of spoiled me in terms of expecting something from story and Sakura Trick while not a bad anime by any means, very colourful, very good in that sense, just didn't do it for me in terms of story, whatever. It's not that I don't like slice of life because God, I do love slice of life stuff. I just think my expectations weren't quite right for it.

02:01:14 Winter > Right, oh, it’s cute, it’s hardly like a great story, but...

02:01:16 Yaseen > Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. But it was cute, it was cute, I just don't think it was quite right for me to watch.

02:01:26 Winter > The problem with yuri anime is they’re always just terribly incomplete and the manga is just always longer and better.

02:01:35 Yaseen > Yeah, that is true of a lot of anime actually.

02:01:40 Winter > I don’t know if this question permits me to talk about manga instead, but...

02:01:47 Yaseen > We could talk about Manga if you want. I've been reading Kaguya-sama and Oshi no Ko, which coincidentally are written and drawn by the same person, just by sheer coincidence that I was reading them both at the same time. I am nearly finished with Kaguya-sama and just a couple volumes in to Oshi no Ko. Kaguya-sama I think is very interesting in terms of being a romance anime where things actually happen instead of it being drip fed and nothing happens for like three seasons. Or it turns into a stupid harem anime which I never, never enjoyed as a genre of anime within the sub-genre of romance anime. I just never enjoyed the way that it works. I never enjoyed the male fantasy that it speaks to. I would much rather have a pleasant, pleasing, heterosexual or homosexual romantic relationship that develops and blossoms much in the way Bloom Into You did. And not quite in the Citrus way because that has a lot of issues that is not worth talking about. But Kaguya-sama does have the ability to actually have a sustainable working relationship that actually develops and grows. And Oshi no Ko is good because it has this, it's a new take on the whole woke up in a different reality type shit. I know that both of them finished very recently in terms of the manga and luckily I haven't been spoiled by the endings yet. So we shall hope that I do remain unspoiled and unsullied by writing issues. Have you read any manga recently, Winter?

02:04:03 Winter > Recently...what have I been reading...No, I guess I haven’t read any manga recently. I could certainly talk about some yuri manga though.

02:04:17 Yaseen > Yeah, go ahead. This is, this is the premiere podcast for discussing Yuri Manga at this point.

02:04:23 Winter > I really love Takako Shimura, and, especially one of my favorites is Aoi Hana, it’s a very good and complex story that covers some very serious themes and does it very well, and it’s wonderful. Also she wrote Horou Musuko which is just THE trans manga that every trans person should read. But my favorite mangaka right now and maybe ever has to be Tsukumizu, whose main works were Girls Last Tour and Shimeji Simulation. I can’t recommend enough, they’re incredible.

02:05:16 Yaseen > Good, good, good. Oh, I just remembered something. It's your birthday today.

02:05:22 Winter > Yes it is!

02:05:23 Yaseen > Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you, dear Winter. Happy birthday to you. Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray. How many times do we have to do it?

02:05:39 Winter > Uhhh...I don’t know, I’m Autistic.

02:05:42 Yaseen > I mean, how, how, how old are you? Because I got to do it that many times.

02:05:46 Winter > Oh! 35.

02:05:48 Yaseen > What, really? Okay.

02:05:52 Winter > Yeah.

02:05:52 Yaseen > We are about, we're almost the same age.

02:05:55 Winter > Oh wow.

02:05:56 Yaseen > Well, I'm 29 and a half. So that's close enough as far as--

02:06:00 Winter > Yeah it’s practically the same.

02:06:01 Yaseen > It's practically the same as far as like the fediverse is concerned. Anyway, I'm not going to do this five, five times, but just pretend I did. Okay. And one more for good luck. Hip hip hooray! I hope that you, the audience also sang along to wish Winter a happy birthday.

02:06:19 Winter > You better.

02:06:20 Yaseen > If--you better have done so. I just remembered because I remembered that when we talked about this episode, you said it was my birthday. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, I wish you a birthday. And I did. So great. So the next question is from Lucretia, who is at @lucretia@final.town. I think she's very, very cool. “When you get access to the orbital laser weapon platform, what is the first thing you are going to write on the earth and where?”

02:06:49 Winter > I’m gonna write “read Ætherglow at translunar.academy, and I’m gonna write it across Washington DC.

02:07:00 Yaseen > Good, cool. I would write the Loss symbols. And I would write them on the largest open plot of like I would write it--I would, I was going to say the Sahara desert, but it would probably get like blown off or something. So I would write it on them. Like the, I'd write it basically the biggest I could make it in like some big area of land somewhere, like a big like forest or like some park or whatever. I would write the Loss symbols.

02:07:41 Winter > A fine choice.

02:07:41 Yaseen > Just to confuse everyone, just to confuse everyone for some reason.

02:07:45 Winter > I really like actions that will confuse future archæologists.

02:07:50 Yaseen > Like what are these symbols mean? Why are they everywhere? The next question is from @pi55d@yourwalls.today as a follow up. “Will you use the orbital laser weapon platform to piss on the moon?”

02:08:10 Winter > That really depends on if you could consider photons to be piss.

02:08:18 Yaseen > Yeah I would probably use it to piss on the Moon.

02:08:20 Winter > If so then yeah I would use it on the Moon.

02:08:24 Yaseen > Cool. The next question is from magic like who is--how the hell am I supposed to pronounce this--@MagicLike@soc.sekundenklebertransportverbot.de

02:08:46 Yaseen > What is with Germans and having like excessively long compound words? Come on, man. I'm not going to be able to pronounce that much.

02:08:53 Winter > I dunno, I think English should have more long compound words.

02:08:57 Yaseen > Yeah, you know what? We should, we should. He asks us, “Are you being held against your will? If so, blink twice. If not being held against your will, meow once.

02:09:13 Winter > Wanna answer this, Éowyn?

02:09:15 Éowyn > meow

02:09:17 Winter > Did you get that?

02:09:19 Yaseen > No, I don't think so.

02:09:21 Winter > Oh well. Meow. I have with me my faithful beloved companion Éowyn.

02:09:31 Yaseen > Cute.

02:09:31 Winter > I wanted to give her a chance to talk on the Yascast too.

02:09:36 Yaseen > Of course, Yascats are welcome on the Yascast. The next question is from @clover@clover.akko.wtf. “Going by episode name, I'll ask an on topic question.” Don't worry, clover, every question is both simultaneously on topic and off topic at the same time. “What are the best ways to secure a longer term supply of HRT? Is there some cool guide someone you know is making about the topic? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Read the winks and nudges out loud, Yassie.”

02:10:10 Winter > Okay, yeah, let’s talk about estrogen. This is very extremely important for so many girls really in so many places in the world right now. But, we’re actually in a good era of technology for being a trans girl. We have good opportunities, if we can build the networks that we need to take care of each other. But, for, considering for an individual or someone who wants to make estrogen and it somehow ends up in other people’s hands by non-illegal means. Um. It’s still quite easy to get a huge amount of raw materials, of estradiol from China.

02:10:04 Yaseen > Interesting, interesting.

02:10:06 Winter > You can get about a five year supply for one person for just a few hundred dollars.

02:10:13 Yaseen > Wow, impressive.

02:10:15 Winter > Then what you have to do is you have to put it into a form that you can take, you can’t just eat estrogen powder, but--because the oral route of administration has very low bioavailability, if you just asked “why not?” But, there’s a lot of people who will compound it into injectable solution. But this is--can be rather dangerous if you’re not really good at chemistry and have really expensive equipment and really know what you’re doing. So, you’ve got to be careful with getting DIY injectables and make sure you’re getting it from a trustworthy source, or be someone who is really good at chemistry and able to buy the materials you need. Luckily though, you don’t have to do that, you can do transdermal route of administration, which is through a gel that you put on your skin. It’s almost as good bioavailability as intramuscular injection, and it’s so much safer to produce DIY. Now, my friend Clover who asked this question is working on this amazing guide on how to do this. It’s going to be ready in a few months and I’m going to host it on my website, translunar.academy, you will be able to find it there, and every girl will be able to have access to this life-saving information.

02:12:45 Yaseen > Sounds good. I hope your friend, who is totally not at all related to the person who asked this question in any way, shape or form, does a good job with the guide, I'm sure they will. If I know them or not is a different question, of course. The other question that Clover, who is obviously not at all related to the Clover that you mentioned, who is a friend of yours and may or may not be a friend of mine, but no comment on that. The fun question that Clover asks us is “Catboys/girls/enbies or doggirls/boys/enbies.” I think this is a very tough one for me to answer. Obviously, I'm into the women, by the way. This is a well-known fact about me Winter actually, not sure if you knew this, that I enjoyed a company of women.

02:13:34 Winter > That’s great, I like women too!

02:13:47 Yaseen > This is exactly why we are friends, of course. Our shared affection towards women in a romantic and/or sexual and/or greater than these feelings, manner. Anyway, so, cat boys or dog girls. I think it's an interesting question, because obviously it's a dichotomy that one should never have to think about. And if we're considering both categories, catgirls are clearly more culturally relevant in the sense that they are much more culturally pervasive, both, of course, in eastern culture, in anime and in other eastern cultures. But also in western culture too, the catgirl is a common thing in western TV and films as well, whereas the doggirl is primarily an anime and eastern trope, whereas in the west the doggirl is more seen as, I guess, like a lesser of the two. It's mostly using a kind of, not mockery, I suppose, but you see it in a less positive light than cat women and catgirls are in the west. But that's just me talking about culture. It's not actually relevant to my decision. I just wanted to say things like that.

02:15:25 Winter > Interesting.

02:15:27 Yaseen > But yeah, you know, obviously you cannot extricate your opinions on different archetypes of women from the cultural context that you exist in and the cultural content that you consume. But also I feel like a dog woman would be a different kind of girlfriend and a cat woman, not to be confused with Catwoman, the DC character. I mean, she'd be a completely different kind of woman in ways that would require this podcast to have a parental advisory warning on it. I've been thinking about this way too much. I'm going to pick doggirls because they are underappreciated in the west and I will bat for them in this instance.

02:16:32 Winter > For me it’s gonna have to be catgirls. I just, cats are maybe the only thing ever evolved in the universe that’s as good as girls. If not better, I mean, it’s hard to decide. But, and I like dogs, but, ahh, they’re very overwhelming to me in a sensory way. I can’t be around them too long. But cats, cats are absolutely perfect wonderful creatures that have never done anything wrong. And catgirls--

02:17:06 Yaseen > Yeah, actually, yeah. Me and cats get a little bit better than me and dogs, I think. So I agree.

02:17:14 Winter > A special shoutout to wolves--uh, enbies, and, who are also--so wolf enbies who are also mechs, um, very special shoutout. Je t’aime beaucoup aiméEVAmour <3.

02:17:27 Yaseen > I do. You are right. Wolf woman, wolf girl, that's like top of my list. Primarily because I don't know, there's something quite powerful about a wolf and I would like that kind of woman to protect me, you know, Winter. I feel like that's the optimum kind of creature I would appreciate in my life. And it also helps that wolves are the kind of creature that mates for life. And I think that's kind of cute. I would like to do that. Hmm, that sounds kind of weird if I express it like that. But honestly, isn't that what getting married is? If you think about it, you know, you're picking someone that you want to mate for life with.

02:18:24 Winter > Yeah. For life or for five years or whatever.

02:18:26 Yaseen > Or for like five years or whatever, I mean, I would like to stick to forever to be quite honest. Actually, you know what you just reminded me? I did read somewhere recently that there's a common statistic that like 50% of all marriages end in divorce or whatever. I remember reading somewhere that that statistic is one of those things that they extrapolated from like a small sample size and then pulled it out to extend to like more than it really should do. In the same way that, for example, like, like people say, yeah, the UK is full of CCTV cameras, but really all they did was they picked like one street in central London and then expanded that out to the entire country, thereby implying that like some rural village in like Hartfordshire has like 400 cameras. So this is kind of like that in that they took a sample size that had a very high number of divorces in it, and extrapolate that number out to a bigger, broader number. I don't know what my point there was. I would just like to be married to someone forever and ever and ever. You can come to my wedding when I would appreciate that.

02:19:45 Winter > Wow!!

02:19:48 Yaseen > You can give a speech if you'd like to. I don't know if that's a thing you'd want to do.

02:19:51 Winter > Oh if you want me too.

02:19:54 Yaseen > Yeah, sure. Why not? I'm sure it would be great. Like, I'm sure you would think of something completely out of left field that would take the bride's family by surprise. But a bride would probably not be surprised because I'm assuming by the time like I'm at the point where we're getting married, she would like completely be unfazed by the fact that this creature is speaking and they are not like a normal human being at all. So yeah, I appreciate you, Winter.

02:20:28 Winter > Awww.

02:20:30 Yaseen > The next question is from April the Pink who is @april@donotstar.re. She asks us meow.

02:20:39 Winter > Meow.

02:20:41 Yaseen > Cool. Next is from @zaki@plasmatrap.com. “Toaster noises.” Zaki is indeed a toaster.

02:20:49 Winter > Well, I agree, yeah, I can get behind that.

02:20:53 Yaseen > The next one is from Roz who is @gardencourt@tech.lgbt. “Favorite family of periodic orbits in the circular restricted three body problem. I certainly suspect Winters will be one of the synodic resident halo orbit families but discussion could be interesting.” Roz, I appreciate that you think that I know what you said enough to make for an interesting discussion. I am aware of what the three body problem is in like a very vague general sense. And I have of course read the Three Body Problem series. It is an interesting look into Chinese science fiction. My favorite family is one I kind of answer because I have no idea what you asked. But Winter, if you would like to take this question and run with it, you're more than welcome to.

02:21:44 Winter > Okay, I’ll make sure you leave this Yascast with a much better knowledge of halo orbits than you went in with.

02:21:52 Yaseen > Good.

02:21:52 Winter > So, basically, halo orbits are incredibly stimmy and it’s the best way to orbit something if you can, but you have to be in a three body problem to do that. Now...

02:22:05 Yaseen > Right.

02:22:05 Winter > So, you understand the basic premise of a three body problem?

02:22:10 Yaseen > Yeah, sure... But for the audience who might actually not know what it is, I think it's probably worth describing.

02:22:15 Winter > Right, for the viewers at home, um. So suppose you have a system, such as the Earth-Moon system, where you have a larger body and a smaller body--Earth and the Moon--Earth is the dominant body in the system, you can consider it the gravitational center, you can oversimplify it a little and do that. But the Moon is also a massive body itself with a large gravity well, compared to like a small spacecraft that you might be piloting. So when you’re in this system, you’re always under the influence of both of those bodies’ gravity wells. That makes orbits very complicated especially when they come close together. So, you can imagine a point between Earth and the Moon, there’s a specific point where you can be where you are under exactly the same gravitational force from both bodies in opposite directions. That’s called a LaGrange point, point L₁. And there’s another--that’s about 60,000km from the Moon, on the side facing Earth, let’s call it Earthside. And there’s another point on the opposite side, spaceside, 60,000km further from the Moon, that’s point L₂. There’s five LaGrange points but let’s focus on those two. So, you take a spacecraft into that area, you find this nice gravitational balance that you can take advantage of in order to get into an orbit that will have the same period as the Moon’s orbit while being closer or farther away from Earth than the Moon is. That’s because you’re taking advantage of the Moon’s gravity well as well, and you’re, in effect, you’re orbiting both of those bodies at once. You can look at that, by centering your frame in different places, you can see yourself as orbiting either of them. And if you put the center--if you do what’s called a rotating frame and you center yourself on neither body but allow the frame to rotate with the orbit of the Moon and yourself, you can see that you trace out a pattern continually drawing circles around that LaGrange point. And that’s why we call it a halo orbit.

02:24:56 Yaseen > Yep. Interesting.

02:24:57 Winter > So, there’s a lot of different halo orbit families, you can do a lot of really cool and interesting things with halo orbits. It’s a big part of what NASA’s planning in the Artemis program. They’re going to put the Gateway station in what’s called a near-rectilinear halo orbit at L₁. And that’s an orbit that will come really close to the Lunar north pole and then it will go very far from the Moon out south, above the Lunar south pole where the exploration site on the surface will be, that way the station will be in constant communication and it will take relatively little energy to transfer between the station and the surface compared to having the station anywhere else. Another type you could think about is the type of orbit that Translunar Academy is in in the Ætherverse. It’s in a planar Lyapunov orbit around L₂, on the far side of the Moon, which is why it’s called Translunar Academy. In that case, its orbital plane is parallel to the Moon’s and not going far down south of it but staying in a relatively flat plane in a relatively small halo orbit. But my absolute favorite orbital family, to answer this wonderful question, would have to be butterfly orbit. It is just so unique and interesting, there’s nothing else like it in the whole spectrum of halo orbits. In a butterfly orbit, it’s an orbit primarily centered around the L₂ but it also wraps around the L₁. Its effect--it makes a halo orbit shape that has two lobes, one on each side of the Moon, kind of like butterfly wings that envelop the Moon.

02:27:12 Yaseen > Interesting. That's really cool.

02:27:15 Winter > It’s incredibly cool. It’s a good way to transfer between a halo orbit at L₁ to a halo orbit at L₂ or back. NASA also considered this for applications in Artemis and other missions. But I just think it’s a really cool and stimmy orbit and there’s just nothing else like it, you can’t do this at the other LaGrange points, you can only do it there, at L₂. I’ll send you some resources to include for people who want to learn more about halo orbits.

02:27:53 Yaseen > Okay, I'll pop that in the show notes, which you can see underneath the episode that you are listening to.

02:28:01 Winter > Also put my website, translunar.academy, if I haven’t mentioned it.

02:28:07 Yaseen > Oh, yes, I will definitely put that in the show notes, too, as well. Don't worry about that. Great. Okay, cool. The next question is from @desea@akko.cuddlegirls.cafe. “Top free, maybe not easiest, but undisputably coolest places to build habitats in the solar system.” Oooh, hmm, top three, huh? Well, I think, I think coolest would be, I'm trying to remember the name of the Moon.

02:28:46 Winter > Maybe I can help you out with that. What do you know about it?

02:28:52 Yaseen > Yeah, it's the big ice moon that has a hole in the bottom.

02:28:59 Winter > A hole in the bottom?

02:29:01 Yaseen > Yeah, it has a hole in the bottom that shoots bajillions of tons of ice into the solar system.

02:29:10 Winter > Enceladus!

02:29:12 Yaseen > Yes, Enceladus that's right. I think that would be a very cool place.

02:29:17 Winter > You’re thinking of a cryovolcano at its south pole.

02:29:20 Yaseen > That's the one. Yeah. That's right. That's one of, yep, yep, yep, yep. I think that would be very cool to build a habitat on. It'd be completely impractical for all intents and purposes. And I wouldn't build one on the volcano site, for sure. But it would be, it would just be very, very, it would be cool in a literal sense, but also cool in like just like a, wow, we just have a place here for no apparent reason. Like I feel like that should be just like, we should just do more things just because, you know, like want to have a base, base, base there, just, just because.

02:29:50 Winter > We really should.

02:29:57 Yaseen > Right. And I feel that's like, that's like number one for me. Number two, I think would be...okay, so hear me out here, right? So there's this little rocky planet. It has a very interesting surface. There's a lot of solid mass and a lot of liquid mass too. I feel like if we built a habitat there, it might even be possible to claim the entire surface of this body. Just saying, just saying. I know it seems far-fetched, but it could, it could honestly be a place we could actually call home, just putting that out there.

02:30:37 Winter > Which body is that?

02:30:39 Yaseen > It's just, it's just really niche one, third from the sun. It's a really niche one. It's one you've never heard of before.

02:30:46 Winter > Oh. I dunno, this just seems unrealistic.

02:30:52 Yaseen > Yeah, like, like who would even go there? I know, but I just think, I just think it'd be a really interesting place to go to. I mean, there's loads of activity underneath the crust of this planet. So like, it actually could be really dangerous in many places. Like, we're talking like, I mean, even the surface is shifting all the time. You know, like, what if we fall in the gaps? I don't know. But I think it might be worth, worth checking this one out.

02:31:28 Winter > Wow. You really dream big Yaseen.

02:31:32 Yaseen > And number three, I am going to pick, I'm going to pick one of those little potato moons around Mars. I think, I think not Mars itself, right? Cause that's passé. Like everyone wants to pick Mars. I just feel like one of those little moons around Mars would be like, would be nice.

02:31:47 Winter > Fuck yeah. Which one?

02:31:50 Yaseen > I think, I think Phobos, Phobos would be, would be the most, most apt, I think. Cause that's, that's, that's the bigger one, right? Phobos is the bigger one, isn't it?

02:31:58 Winter > That’s the bigger one. Bigger and closer to Mars.

02:32:00 Yaseen > Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's perfect. It's like, like, why be on Mars when we could be off Mars and just looking at it all the time, right? Cause, cause to be honest, like Mars is just like a big ball of brown, you know? When I just look at it, it's like, it's like being, it's like, it's like being in Paris, right? And having a view of the Eiffel Tower rather than being on the Eiffel Tower. That's my, those are my choices. What about you, Winter?

02:32:33 Winter > I’d wanna be on Phobos because everything beyond Phobos is transphobic space.

02:32:42 Yaseen > Okay, okay. That's--

02:32:43 Winter > You know, like translunar.

02:32:44 Yaseen > yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it.

02:32:48 Winter > But to answer the question. That’s a very good question, let me answer, let me start, first of all, with Venus. This is an amazing planet that’s terrible in many ways. The surface is completely uninhabitable, anything you put there will be crushed by the sheer pressure of the atmosphere and subjected to extreme heat. However, the upper atmosphere of Venus is a totally different story. The upper atmosphere, I think maybe around the 70km region, off the top of my head, um, we could live there. We could live there in a floating habitat. See, at that altitude, the atmospheric pressure is very similar to that of Earth. The amount of energy we’d receive from the Sun there, Venus is actually inside of the habitable zone of the solar system, but it’s because of its atmosphere and its greenhouse effect that it is so hot and uninhabitable. But up in its upper atmosphere there’s a lower air pressure so it’s cooler. It’s receiving more energy from the Sun than Earth, so perhaps it would be hotter but it would be manageable, perhaps more manageable than the cold environment at Mars.

02:34:25 Winter > Also, Venus’s atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide. And in a CO₂ atmosphere, a breathable Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere like ours would have neutral buoyancy. So in effect, we could live inside of a big bubble of breathable air. Not like having an airship on Earth where you need a lighter-than-air gas like Helium and that takes up a vast majority of the volume of your craft. On Venus the lifting gas could be the air that we breathe, and we could just live inside of that volume of air and use all of it. And the air pressure outside would be about equal to the air pressure that’s comfortable to us so we wouldn’t need this really strong pressure vessel or anything, it could be lightweight, we could count on it to remain at that altitude forever. And also, we have a huge amount of CO₂ to access, and Carbon and Oxygen are very useful resources for colonization, very useful for plants, and other things we need for life. There’s any number of reasons why the upper atmosphere of Venus is I’d have to say one of my top picks for colonization, very cool place, very challenging because of the environment around it but, once you get there, very sustainable. What I also like about Venus is that every feature on it is named after a Goddess or a woman. Another challenge is it doesn’t have a magnetosphere like Earth protecting it from the solar wind. It does however have what’s called an “induced magnetosphere,” which is its ionosphere being very very strong pushing back on the solar wind. It doesn’t work as well as what Earth has but it would give us some protection from radiation.

02:36:48 Winter > Second, second place. I wanna talk about Titan, moon of Saturn. One of--second largest moon in the solar system, it’s very large, big enough that it might even could be a planet if it wasn’t a moon. It’s got a dense atmosphere but only a few times as dense as Earth’s atmosphere, not like Venus which is like a hundred times as dense. The main challenge to colonizing Titan is it is extremely cold, one of the coldest places in the solar system. Not only, it’s already out at Saturn so it doesn’t get a lot of sunlight to begin with. But the entire moon is also constantly covered in very thick hazy cloud layers that block almost all sunlight from ever reaching the surface, making the surface of Titan substantially colder than the space around Titan. Cold enough that methane exists in a liquid state and exists in liquid lakes on the surface. If we can manage to deal with that extreme cold, though, we would have access to a huge amount of energy resources from the hydrocarbons on the planet, and global warming would be the absolute least of our concerns. Another cool thing about Titan is the gravity is only about 1/3 of that of Earth and the atmosphere is three times as thick, so the body of, something massed like a human body, you could actually strap on wings and fly in it. Because the gravity is low and the air is thick, flight is trivial on Titan.

02:38:39 Yaseen > Right.

02:38:43 Winter > Of course, it’s a methane atmosphere, so you could never be outside without an EVA suit, you would still always be living in a self-contained pressure vessel environment, like most planets.

02:39:58 Yaseen > And do you have a third pick?

02:40:00 Winter > Yeah, for my third I wanna name something a bit more unconventional and consider the dwarf planet Sedna. It’s one of the farthest candidate dwarf planets in the solar system from the Sun, it’s beyond the Kuiper belt in the region known as the scattered disk, which is a very sparse region in between the end of the Kuiper belt and the beginning of the Oort cloud, and its orbital period around the Sun is 12,000 years(Earth). I think it’s a very nice place because you’re very very far away from the Sun, and I really hate the Sun. The Sun is just another star in the sky there, it’s irrelevant to your life. The whole moon[sic] is covered in ice most likely. And ice is a great resource for colonization--water ice in particular, because, I don’t know if you know this, but water is really good for Earth organisms.

02:40:08 Yaseen > Oh, good. I do like drinking water. Especially at night.

02:40:14 Winter > And it’s always night, so, it’s great.

02:40:18 Yaseen > Every, every, every drink is night water.

02:40:21 Winter > Yeah, who wouldn’t want that?

02:40:26 Yaseen > Exactly. I mean, the night water just hits different, you know, the taste is just different. The taste of water at 3 a.m. is enough to send you back to sleep.

02:40:37 Winter > I can only imagine that the water on Sedna would taste even better. But in addition to dealing with that extreme cold environment, and obviously way too far from the Sun to use solar energy, you pretty much need nuclear reactors. And, with that perhaps you could generate enough heat to barely keep yourselves alive. And otherwise it's a nice place. There's no atmosphere most likely and there's very little gravity. I think it would be really fun and stimmy to move around and go outside and everything's covered in ice and it's probably really pretty there. I would live there.

02:41:31 Yaseen > That's good. Yeah, I, I mean, ice planets, I think, just have this kind of draw to them. I don't know, maybe just like this, because, because we have this natural affinity to water. They're like, ice planets have this kind of like deep-seated thing about them.

02:41:50 Winter > Yeah.

02:41:53 Yaseen > Okay, we are getting close to the free hour mark on the recording side. So I think we'll, we'll skip a few questions and call it if that's okay with you.

02:42:05 Winter > Okay.

02:42:06 Yaseen > Okay. So apologies. So we'll take this one from, we'll take two more. So the two I can see on screen right now. So that's from Sparrows who is @DangerDyke@translunar.academy. The question is, "Ask why it's so cute and perfect and amazing and beautiful?" I think that question is for you.

02:42:34 Winter > Awwwwww Sparroooowww I love youuu <3

02:42:40 Yaseen > Unless the question is for me, but it's probably not, which is, which is fine. That's okay. I can, I can live, I can live. Maybe, maybe, maybe if I go on the WinterCast, I'll get that question.

02:42:54 Winter > Yeah, you gotta go on the WinterCast. First it has to exist.

02:42:58 Yaseen > Next, the final question I'll take is from Smitten who is @smitten@key.portend.place. Smitten asks us an interesting question, which is, "Would you say you are from the distant future or the distant past and why?" Well, I am obviously from the distant Yast. As to why, well, scientists are working pretty hard to, to uncover that question. But what about you, Winter?

02:43:37 Winter > Definitely the distant future.

02:43:40 Yaseen > You do have that vibe. I feel like, I feel like you were sent back in time, but like but only but but but like you didn't bring any memories or in technology or anything like actionable from the future you just brought the vibes from the future to the present, like the vibes, the aura, the the the rizz if you will, back to the present day.

02:44:05 Winter > That’s definitely what I did.

02:44:08 Yaseen > And that is all the questions we have time for our parties to order ones I have unfortunately had to miss out it's just that the timing sucks sorry.

02:44:17 Winter > Sorry, all questions that didn’t get to get asked, my answer is yes to all of them.

02:44:25 Yaseen > Yeah I agree with Winter on on that one too, answer is yes to all the questions that were not answered by me great excellent thank you so winter it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on here for the opening of season series 2 of the Yascast

02:44:45 Winter > It’s been amazing and long awaited to appear on the Yascast. Thanks for having me.

02:44:52 Yaseen > You are very welcome.

02:44:55 Winter > Everyone also, also read my new book, White Smoke and Black Death, I didn’t mention.

02:45:00 Yaseen > oh right yes of course yes yes you do have a new book out when's it coming out

02:45:06 Winter > It’s out now, yeah, you can find it on my website and at itch.io, there will be a link.

02:45:13 Yaseen > Yes of course I will make sure to put a link in the show notes for you dear listener. This has been the ass cast this has been series 2 episode 2, E2, estrogen.

02:45:26 Winter > Best hormone.

02:45:27 Yaseen > Best hormone according to Winter, you heard it here. Guest starring the lovely and very wonderful winter@translunar.academy, she has been an absolute blast to be on the show with this episode was hosted--presented, actually, presented, directed, produced, edited by me Yaseen, not written I don't write these.

02:45:56 Winter > But I will write a transcription to make this episode accessible, don’t worry.

02:46:01 Yaseen > Oh wow that's really that's really good of you, thank you Winter, I can, I can give you the raw transcript that gets generated if you'd like. I don't know what format it will be in but I will aspire to get you a raw transcript, it is very basic, when I edit the episodes Audacity has a tool that generates a transcript for you, very, it is like 60% accurate I would say, good enough for for editing work not good enough to rely what totally as a living transcript but I can totally get that that to you.

02:46:42 Winter > Great. Accessibility is important.

02:46:45 Yaseen > Actually the podcast apps like Apple and Spotify do auto generate a transcript for for users which, the Apple ones the only ones I've seen so far and they are very they are actually relatively good they even get my name right, which is you know crazy considering it's not an Anglo-Saxon name so so kudos to Apple for that I guess.

02:47:12 Yaseen > The theme song the opening theme tune to this episode was composed by Ellie who is @ellie@yearning.gay. Winter has not heard it so but you will obviously once you get back this episode this episode was mixed and mastered by gamer at fedi dot bungle dot online this episode was recorded in front of a frozen studio audience they will awaken soon and will--

02:47:51 Éowyn > meow

02:47:54 Yaseen > Oh, your cat meowed, I could hear on the recording, also featuring winters cat. This episode was recorded in front of a frozen studio audience soon they will wake up, inshallah, and be able to establish a new ruling paradigm led by me and Winter.

02:48:15 Winter > Looking forward to it!