Category: Vanessa’s Domain

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

My disrespectful shirt just arrived today. It amuses me; it’s just for laughs, but I created it out of my frustration. I’m making fun of the tech bros who love to hate on Apple who have clearly never used a Mac for any meaningful length of time. I designed the shirt myself. It’s a one of a kind and they are not for sale.*

The hate and misinformation about macOS that tech bros love to spread drives me nuts. So much of it just isn’t true and you’d know that if you’d do the research or even just use a Mac for awhile. For example they try to say you can only get software from their app store but that’s not true. You can download .app files from anywhere. They generally come packaged in .dmg disk images that you can just mount and copy the contents over to your applications folder. It just warns you that Apple can’t verify the app isn’t malicious if they haven’t signed it so you run at your own risk. All you have to do to get it to run anyway is right click and open. If they’d used one for any meaningful amount of time they’d likely know that. I ran tons of unsigned code on my MacBook when I had it and it didn’t give me any issue. It’s really not that far away from Linux in many ways. They also complain about the cost being higher for a Mac than for Windows but they fail to adjust for the full cost of what you’re getting. That machined solid aluminum chassis isn’t cheap to produce and it makes them so much more durable than the cheap plastic so many Windows laptops are made of. Hardware wise they’re actually pretty comparable to equivalent Windows laptops if you actually do the math. They just don’t sell budget models. That’s the biggest difference. But you can always buy refurbished and save there. That’s how I got mine.

I’m no Apple fangirl but I do prefer macOS over Windows if that’s my given choices. macOS is built on Unix architecture which is very like Linux, so it’s familiar. I can learn and use the same skill set across both platforms and a lot of it directly transfers. Windows is off in its own little world doing things its own way. Its based on nothing, really, beyond their arbitrary design choices. It’s for this reason that for me, Windows just feels so ass-backwards and it’s like pulling teeth to get it to work sometimes. I’ve all but given up trying to share the network printer with Windows computers. I’ve tried and tried and tried to get it to work and it just won’t, so I’ve given up. If people in my household want to print from my printer and use Windows, they can just give me the file to print from my laptop or my phone instead. On macOS, Linux, and Android, the printer just shows up the moment you connect to the Wi-Fi ready to go with nothing to do but just use it. It’s just already configured to work. Windows doesn’t even see that it exists and I have no idea why or how to fix it. It’s just broken. I’ve tried everything I know to do to try to set it up and it just won’t see it or interact with it correctly and I’m baffled. My only guess is that because it’s such an old printer there’s no modern Windows drivers for it but it still works perfectly fine for me on Linux and Android, and it meets my needs so it would be senseless for an upgrade. Plus I can still get toner for it easily and affordably, and it lasts a good long time when I do.

Beyond printing, compiling Python code on Windows is a pain in the ass compared to macOS and Linux. macOS and Linux can just run python scripts directly from the terminal without even needing to compile them. For some reason Windows can’t do that as far as I can figure out. (Or at least not without extra configuration I couldn’t reliably expect an end user to do.) On macOS and Linux all I gotta do is wrap it in a shell script and it’s ready to go from the terminal. I don’t even need a separate one for each platform. Since they both run bash**, they can both run the same bash scripts just fine, no big deal. On Windows I have to painstakingly manage all the dependencies and manually run python compiler stuff and configure it and the whole nine yards. It’s a pain but I have to do it since that’s the most common OS people use to run their computers and I don’t want to be a dick about it. It’s annoying to have to do but at least I know what I’m doing and can get it working easy enough even if there are a bunch of needless extra steps involved. I can do it all from a VM at least. I won’t do it for arbitrary commits but major releases I will.

At the end of the day though, you gotta pick the best tool for the job and unfortunately that means some people really do need to use Windows simply for that reason and I understand that. For me, right now, that happens to be Linux. In the past when I had a MacBook, the best tool genuinely was macOS. It gave me access to the many audio tools only available on that platform. I used them to work on my music.

I don’t really care that much in terms of brand loyalty or anything else along those lines; I just wish people would stop pretending like Windows isn’t the red-headed step child of the computing world that somehow inexplicably became the biggest name in town and refuses to play nice. It’s not that great an OS, its design specifications are a mess, and it works so terribly with what are common tasks for me specifically that it’s a constant pain point for me to have to support it at all. There’s so many unnecessary extra steps to get it to work with industry standards and I don’t understand why. It’s not like they could be that hard to implement and include with the basic OS package, so why don’t they? You need third party tools to do so many tasks that you can just run directly from the bash terminal on other platforms. Nobody in the server space would tolerate a Linux distribution that didn’t ship with ssh support by default, and yet Windows gets away with it. You need a program like PuTTY to connect to ssh on Windows. You need FileZilla to access an sftp share. Just extra gubbins on top that really should come bundled directly inside the operating system by default. Plus it comes with no tools or support to access files saved on other platforms. NTFS, the modern Windows filesystem, is supported nativity by macOS and it can be easily configured and mounted in the filesystem on Linux using ntfs-3g. Meanwhile, Windows doesn’t support Linux’s ext4 or btrfs at all despite it being an open standard they could implement with minimum effort and not even have to pay a single dime in licensing fees to include it. Why they still don’t in the days where Linux has completely taken over the server space is beyond me. They’re just making things harder on their users for no good reason. Granted, I’ll give you that such a thing would be considered largely superfluous in the home version of Windows since most average users wouldn’t need it, but for businesses it’s something that should be considered essential in my eyes. Plus, including more useful tools along with the package only makes it a better value for money anyway. It makes them look better and it can’t be that hard to implement easily. Windows doesn’t support macOS’s file systems HFS+ or APFS at all either. However, in that case there may be patents or licensing in the way that Apple doesn’t want to give up without a fight, or a fat paycheck so who knows? I can get that but not ext4 and btrfs. There’s really no excuse for not supporting it in my mind.

In any case, I didn’t create this shirt exclusively for Apple. I’m a Linux user first and foremost these days and I have just as much reason to wear the shirt in defense of Linux as anything else.

Anyways, use what you want but I don’t have to like it for myself. For now I’ll stick with my Pop!_OS Linux and keep macOS in my back pocket as a backup. Tech Bros be warned.

Love is the law, love under will.

Amused,
Vanessa

*The design incorporates the Windows logo, so I can’t legally sell it even if I wanted to.

**Yes, I know Apple recently switched to zsh over bash, but it still has bash as an option and can still run bash scripts by default, so there’s no need for a re-write. Zsh is still pretty close to bash anyway and a lot of the syntax is identical in both shells.

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

Social media has been a hot-button issue since it initially cropped up and continues to remain so as old platforms die and are replaced with newer ones. However, because of the nature of the beast, it’s hard to even learn from what the older platforms did wrong so the newer ones can learn from their mistakes. They just keep on making the same mistakes over and over, and with our over-reliance on them, and their monetization scheme, there’s little end users can do to influence the way the platform is designed. Topics will get raised or buried in algorithms completely transparently to the humans who use them. Rules and censorship is applied unevenly and for often arbitrary reasons. Some foreign interests have even been shown to have a pretty massive influence on what gets promoted, much of which is targeted at destabilizing communities and spreading propaganda.

Facebook is probably the most notorious for their rules being being arbitrary and applied unevenly. The worst part is when you get in trouble, you’re generally not even allowed to know why. The refusal to even say what was done wrong is so scummy. That shouldn’t ever be an acceptable answer. That’s some secret police fascist kind of nonsense. It rings of “There is no war in Ba Sing Se.” Just disappearing people without a trace, notice, or even an idea as to why. How can you be expected to follow rules that aren’t rules? Also, how do some people end up in Facebook jail or outright banned like that all the time and I’ve only ever gotten a warning once and it was presumably for something stupid? I really don’t understand why they think that’s an acceptable business practice. It isn’t and they said as much when they tell customers “We understand knowing the exact violation causing your account to be suspended would be helpful for you to understand what to avoid doing in the future.” They know it’s bullshit but they don’t care because they’re not forced to care. They’re unregulated and unrestrained and yet we give up so much of our lives to them. This is why a large number of people have been migrating over to Discord as an alternative. It’s way more straightforward and there’s no content algorithm that buries posts under piles of adverts, “suggested pages”, and reposed chain-letter type nonsense.

Then there is the dumpster fires that are Twitter and Reddit. Twitter, now X…kinda, I don’t even really need to explain because everyone pretty much knows how Elon Musk bought it and immediately started running it into the ground with such bad ideas it’s hilarious, but also frustrating. Pretty much every decision he has made since obtaining the platform has been a mistake and it’s just a matter of time before the platform crashes and burns.

And Reddit…well Reddit is a dumpster fire of bad takes, toxicity, and idiocy.

The biggest problem with them though is their monetization schemes. The users aren’t the customers. The users are the product. It’s a social contract we all begrudgingly tolerate simply because we have no choice. Advertising has always been the main way that web-based companies stayed afloat and that only increased with the ways they can harvest private information for profit. They will always tailor their product, you, for their customers, the advert industry, not the other way around.

There’s no easy answers but coming up with those are what we pay our legislatures to do. That’s literally the job they are elected to do after all. Unfortunately congress in the states seem completely disconnected from reality and have no good answers beyond just flirting with banning various platforms entirely for this or that reason. If you ask me, what we really need though is a extremely nuanced, fluid response team for social media not unlike the FCC but more focused and with clearly defined goals. They could set the standards by which the regulations are created and enforced and respond to changes in near real-time. Bad behavior must be punished in a significant way. Google has proven time and time again that It’s perfectly willing to break the law with their system until forced to follow it and fines are rarely ever sufficient. They just get included in the cost/benefit reports to be considered by executives. That should not happen. Breaking the law shouldn’t just be a part of a revenue equation. We need significant jail time for CEOs. We need to hold the board responsible when they drive people to break the law for their financial benefit. And most of all we need these algorithms to be tooled to promote content that upholds our values rather than just whatever clickbait happens to be popular at any given moment. The way that so many people have become so disconnected from reality because of them is a huge warning sign we don’t take seriously enough.

We need strong regulation and we’re not getting it.

Love is the law, love under will.

Frustrated,
Vanessa

Originally written as a response to a messages.

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

The Pentacle

Despite common misunderstanding, the pentacle is a defensive tool, not evocative. Likewise, the words “pentagram” and “pentacle” are not interchangeable but are directly related. The pentacle is the 5-pointed star-polygon itself. The pentacle is the same with the addition of the circle around it. (Although confusingly some magicians refer to the table of practice as the “pentacle” despite generally not bearing its simplified design.) You generally would not use a pentacle alone if you were intending on summoning something. Wiccans do tend to put a pentacle on their altar instead of a table of practice but their magick tends to focus on either energy manipulation, spell-crafting, or interacting with their version of the trinity. (God, Goddess, and Dryghten) You don’t exactly need it to hold a spirit in place when doing that kind of magick so rather than that they use it as a method of correspondence. Evocation is usually done with a table of practice featuring a completely different design such as the Sigillum Dei Aemeth or the various grimoiric or grimoiric-adjacent table of practice designs. They are designed to embody the universe or at least the planet earth in the form of a magickal metaphor.

Trithemius Table of Practice

This table of practice was designed by Johannes Trithemius. In this one, the inner circle is the names of the 4 archanges. Then you have the triangle of the art. Next you have the word “Tetragrammaton” which is the “ineffable” name of God. After that you have the 4 demon-kings of the four cardinal directions. Finally around the outside you have the angels of the 7 classical planetary spheres; those being the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

Sigillum Dei Aemeth

The Sigillum Dei Aemeth design is obviously far more complicated. It is typically only used when evoking the Enochean Angels which exist in a class all their own and which require a much more elaborate method of summoning including speaking in a language called Enochean. Enochean was created by the angels and given to Dr. John Dee to be a lingua franca between the angelic language and human languages. Dee mistakenly believed it to be derived from Hebrew but in reality it was more closely related to English, Dee’s native tongue.

It’s worth noting that these table of practice designs are also semi-defensive with the intent of holding the summoned spirit as if in a container so they don’t slip away during the operation.

Pentagram

To a Thelemite, the pentagram is the magickal weapon of Geburah. Geburah’s associated number is five and the spokes of the pentagram enumerate 5. Additionally, each spoke forms a V shape. Therefore the formula “Vi veri universum vivus vici” (V.V.V.V.V.) is invoked meaning: “By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe”. This topic is one that deserves to be expanded on significantly and it has been by Alister Crowley in Magick Book 4 • Liber ABA. It starts on page 95 in the Second Revised Edition. I highly suggest reading it.

Love is the law, love under will.

Triumphantly,
Vanessa

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

Recently Facebook has gotten some weird ideas of what it thinks I want to see. Lately it seems to think I want to read business management articles. I don’t know why Facebook got the idea that I want to be shown this kind of stuff but it’s given me a window into a very disturbing lack of humanity. The way these articles talk about people is just plain disgusting. Human lives aren’t just tools to be exploited. How has this species gotten so self-destructive? So self-cannibalizing? We’re a herd species. We’re supposed to be on the same side, struggling as a family for survival, not exploiting people for cheap labor to obtain hoards of useless wealth like a bunch of dragons. If I had so much money I’d be putting it towards improving life for the species as a whole. I’d see to it that nobody ever died of hunger. That nobody would ever go homeless. That nobody would be put in debt for getting sick or trying to become educated. To hell with yachts and fancy gowns. Give me a campfire, the love of friends, good food, and songs long into the night. If more people valued things like that, the world would be a better place.

Every man and every woman is a star. –AL. I. 3

These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools. Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! –AL. I. 11-12.

Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me. –AL. I. 51.

There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accurséd! Accurséd be it to the aeons! Hell. –AL. I. 41.

Love is the law, love under will.

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

If you as a nonbeliever tell that to someone representing a Christian organization, they will usually take to love bombing you in the name of Jesus.

When I first showed up to the OTO after the COVID restrictions were lifted, I was told “We actually don’t care.”

On the surface that might seem like the opposite of a good sign, but in reality it’s a massive green flag because a common cult recruiting tactic is love bombing newcomers in an effort to convert them. The OTO did the opposite.

I came back to the OTO because I found it personally gratifying. I appreciated what it offered and the challenges it posed to me to overcome and I welcomed them gladly. Nobody was trying to entice me to do that. Nobody was trying to flatter me into sticking around. I was there because I liked being there and I found what it offered to be valuable and not because anyone made me feel a certain kind of way about any of it.

To me, this is a great litmus test for joining any organization. The more desperate they seem to have you join the more red flags you should be raising.

Love is the law, love under will.

Happily,
Vanessa

For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union. —AL. I. 29.

Do what thou whit shall be the whole of the law.

The idea that you have to pick just one lover is absurd to me. How could I ever be expected to choose? My heart never can be contained to just one person like that. It loves so many and to force it to detach from all but one seems cruel and unjustified. That’s like a mother being asked to choose among her kids. I’m so much happier with myself, my life, my love, and my future when poly compared to when I tried to limit myself based on societal expectations. I can just love freely and openly and it’s ok. For me that’s just so much better. Why should I have to leave one behind to chase another? What good could that possibly serve? This level of happiness, contentment, and excitement simply cannot be achieved when I’m trying to be monogamous. It’s not even just a sex thing I’m describing, it’s just love. Cuddly love. Tender love. Sharing and caring love. The kind of love that can give a kiss on the check and a kiss on the head then turn around and be as lusty as ever and it be ok. There’s a calm in that. There’s a comfort in that seldom felt elsewhere and it’s wonderful. Why would any god, much less a loving god, deny thee for this?

Love is the law, love under will.

Consumed by love,
Vanessa

Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.

There are a lot of GOP pundits and Christian pastors who are secretly LGPTQ . I was actually proposed sex by one. Republican getting paid an absurd amount of money by day but liked to hook up with trans women at night. I declined his offer and I told him off for not living authentically. This is far from an isolated phenomena. There’s countless examples where they got caught. So if you see a right wing nut job hating on LGPTQIA people, it’s extremely likely that it’s a case of Jungean shadow projection. To say nothing of all of the prominent GOP figures found to be child predators that have been caught over the years. If the GOP wants to find its groomers, they need to stop looking at LGPTQIA people and look in the mirror.

Love is the law, love under will.

Matter-of-factually,
Vanessa

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW73Y17S8ZU

BREAKING: In response to overwhelming pushback from the community, the Ohio Department of Health has announced that it will drop the proposed requirements as they pertain to adults. There’s still tons of work to be done, but this is HUGE.
Memo: Response to Public Comment to Gender-Related Rules

–Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social

Do what thou whit shall be the whole of the law.

The various official additional episodes for Doom 2 frustrate me so much. They can’t seem to get it right or respect the proper order and value of each. I don’t understand this nor why they can’t seem to get it right. It should be relatively easy to establish. Either take the BFG path, take the chronological complete path, or make them all free add-ons but for goodness sakes don’t be so arbitrary.

In the original retail version there was only one episode and it didn’t even prompt you to pick it. It was called Hell On Earth. Pretty straightforward. They replaced the episode structure with a single path version breaking them up into sections by text screens used to break up the monotony and give the player an idea of what’s supposed to be happening in the plot of the game. There’s an argument to be made that these mark the end of chapters or episodes of their own but just aren’t presented that way. After all, that one huge episode spans longer than any found in Doom 1. In any case the order, story, and gameplay was straightforward and easy to understand.

Then Id hand-picked popular community levels to include in The Master Levels which was an add-on with a menu interface that lets you select which one to play and it will configure and launch the various levels in Doom 2 to be played. It was a bit of fun but I believe it was not intended to be canon and each level reset the game so there was no level progression from one to the next like in other games.

Later console ports modified this behavior to effectively create an order to them and make them more like their own episode but they released two different versions of the level order between the console ports.

Next, Id pulled a couple massive community projects by the same developers intended to each be a standalone new episode for Doom 2 and published them together as an official release called Final Doom. They were standalone, meaning they would run without needing to own Doom 2. They could be argued to be two new independent games but they were built on the Doom 2 engine utilizing Doom 2 assets so they’re effectively an expansion pack for Doom 2 but sold as a standalone release of two independent episodes. Why they didn’t combine the two to be listed as episodes I’m not sure but it is what it is. It could be considered its own release not being canon episodes or not. It’s kinda the player’s job to decide.

Then they released Doom 3 and on some of the console ports included the original Doom and Doom 2 as additional bonuses. They did not ship Final Doom however. Then when Doom 3’s expansion pack was released, they included Final Doom as a bonus on that. I’m unsure if The Master Levels were included at all.

Well then years passed and eventually they re-released an updated and remastered Doom 3 called the BFG edition fixing various things and including various quality of life things. It also included new re-releases of Doom 1 & Doom 2 with some relatively minor changes plus an official brand new canon episode for Doom 2 as a bonus. It was called No Rest For The Living and actually lived on the episode selection screen of Doom 2 missing from the original release. It did not include Final Doom at all nor The Master Levels on that episode list. To me, that inclusion and omission makes it clear that No Rest For The Living was always intended to be the first cannon expansion to Doom 2 with Final Doom being considered its own standalone release, just one that used a lot of Doom 2’s assets.

At this point the arrangement was relatively simple, No Rest For The Living was the official canon additional episode for Doom 2, the master levels were not canon, and the other releases in Final Doom were to be considered standalone games in their own right.

More recently, creator John Romeo created Sigil, a semi-official add-on for the original Doom that’s supposed to come after the bonus episode of The Ultimate Doom. Even more recently, the was another in the form of a sequel titled Sigil 2. These two wads have proven to be really popular in the Doom community and are largely treated as official and canon since they were released by one of the original developers, albeit not one working for Id anymore.

Now here’s where things get complicated. Bethesda somewhat recently released an array of updated and improved brand new versions of Doom and Doom 2 (plus the first official PC version of Doom 64). However, Doom 2 is a hot mess. The Master Levels serves as its second episode while No Rest For The Living and Final Doom are both added on the add-ons section of the game implying they’re not canon. This makes no sense. No Rest For The Living was supposed to be the canon second episode but they effectively cast it aside for the one Doom 2 expansion that was the least canon of all of them. Why!? This makes no sense! Why is No Rest For The Living relegated to add-on content in favor of a retail compilation of random user levels? Sigil and Sigil 2 are there as add-ons too but at least that makes sense given the circumstances of their creation, but No Rest For The Living was clearly intended to be official and canon. All release of Doom 2 after that should have included it as the second episode, not The Master Levels. It troubles me on a deep level. I can understand doing that with Final Doom since they were standalone games in their own right but why do it this way? It makes no sense!

If it were up to me, I’d list them like this:

• Hell On Earth
• No Rest for the Living
• TNT: Evilution
• The Pluetonia Experiment
• The Master Levels

So in conclusion, Bethesda’s updated Unity-based version of Doom are a welcome change with some great quality of life features and the like, but they must’ve been high as fuck or something when they made that choice for now to handle Doom 2’s episode progression because it makes no sense.

Love is the law, love under will.

Frustrated,
Vanessa

P.S. Doom 64 should have also seen a PC release and be called Doom 3, and then the Doom 3 we did get should have been called something like Doom: Origins since it’s effectively a reboot. Doom 2016 should have been called Doom 4. Naming it just Doom causes confusion and it’s not even a reboot.