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Orion Ussner kidder

@OrionKidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy
93 followers 2 following 492 posts

English prof at FDU Vancouver, specializing in composition and comics scholarship. Dad, nerd, writer of SF/F fiction (see me on writing.exchange). 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mas.to/@OrionKidder, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026
You can also use this mode to work on two texts at once (which I've been using to rewrite scenes from scratch but keeping the beats and some turns of phrase from a previous version). I left the #Headers on because they contain some controls that you want when you're doing split-screen.
A screencap of Scrivener with everything turned off except the menu bar *and* there are two texts open at once.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026
I've been using #Scrivener for years, and I only just discovered the joy of "layouts." The built-in #CompositionMode is great, but you can make your own, as well, by removing everything but the menu bar. The bonus is that you can activate the #Binder and/or #Inspector as needed.
A screen cap of Scrivener with everything turned off There's a scroll of text down middle, a menu bar at the top, and a window bar above that. And that's all.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026
@Guillotine_Jones
A line-drawing of a "duckrabbit," which looks like a rabbit if you see its eye on one side and its ears sticking out, OR it looks like a duck if you see the ears as the duck's beak.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
I'm sure I'll get bored with it eventually, but for now, #DesktopCube for #Gnome is a delight. #Linux #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Computers #tech #technology
A screncap of Desktop Cube for Gnome. The "overview" is open, and the virtual desktops are arranged in a cube shape rather than a scroll, as if you were looking at an open-topped box made of your own computer.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Check this out: you can push your speakers beyond "100%" in #Gnome! If you have dinky little laptop speakers, as one does, then you can get a little more juice out of them.
A screen shot from Gnome DE's "Accessibility" -> "Hearing" section. There is an option called "Overamplification" with an on/off toggle. A screen cap from my desktop of the volume slider with a white section and then an "overamplification" section in red.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
[Lanterns s01e08: the lantern] #kintsugi #GreenLantern #DCU #DCComics #DCStudios #HalJordan #GuyGardner #JohnStewart #GL #Lanterns #TV #superheroes
A dark-blue/green bowl with a red interior just visible over the lip. The bowl is criss-crossed with cracks that have been patched with gold.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
@MrBerard
A screencap from Bluesky of a post from Dare Obasanjo. He posts a single-panel cartoon of a person standing in front of a desktop computer. The person says, "say 'i am alive'", then the computer replies ">I AM ALIVE" and the human remarks, "oh my god."
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026
@tante Those of us who are part of FOSS/FLOSS, even only as users, must not tolerate fascism because if we do, it will destroy us. #ParadoxOfTolerance #KarlPopper
A one-page cartoon titled, "The Paradox of Tolerance, by Philosopher Karl Popper."

The first panel starts with the words "Should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance?" Next are two white people, looking perhaps early 20th century European, with a single word balloon that has a swastika encased in a red circle with a line through it. Next is a man with a swastika on his forehead and shirt, holding a torch, saying, "You want more tolerance? Respect my ideas!" Last, more text says, "The answer is 'No'." (The torch is a reference to the Berlin Olympics, hosted by the then Nazi German government.)

The second panel starts with "When we extend tolerance to those who are openly tolerant..." and show a man dressed in a Prussian Imperial uniform saying, "Let's give them a chance!" next to a picture of a man in a Nazi uniform, next to a Nazi eagle with swastika. Last, is Hitler in silhouette "heiling" a crowd of Nazis, with the words, "... the tolerant ones end up being destroyed. And tolerance with them."

The third and final panel says, "Any movement that preaches intolerance and persecution must be outside of the law," over an image of a giant boot kicking Hilter in the butt (ha ha, fuck you, Adolf!), and then a picture of a man with grey hair, wearing a sweater, implicitly Karl Popper, saying, "As paradoxical as it might seem, defending tolerance requires [us] to not tolerate the intolerant."

At the bottom, the comic is cited, "Source: The Open Society and its Enemies, Karl R. Popper."
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026
@pluralistic
"AI" – chatbots that wake up, "set their own goals," and "spontaneously" start hacking servers – is fake. It doesn't have "a 10% chance of ending the human race." The Hugging Face hack isn't a mysterious, supernatural occurrence. It's a Python loop and a chatbot. The people responsible didn't accidentally create god: they created autonomous malicious software and then failed to closely monitor it, resulting in it doing something both foreseeable and bad.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026
Okay. I'm stuck, and I could use help: I'm trying to use the #WinAmp skin for #Audacious, but a) when I select that option in the Settings, all it does it reload the app, centred on the screen, and b) I cannot figure out how to load a new skin on #Gnome / #Debian / […] [Original post on mas.to]
A screen cap of Audacious on my desktop with the Settings menu on the left and the player window on the right. The Appearance settings include a drop-down where "Winamp Classic Interface" is clearly selected, but the player window looks like vanilla Audacious.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026
Addendun: I guess this makes Omarchy sound *good* to some people--fascism and capitalism are mutually horny after all--but this is exactly why most of us *don't* want to be on Windows and/or OSX: they feel like "products." #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Linux
A screencap from a Quant search, which reads: 

"dev.to ; dev.to › devopsdaily › omarchy-4-makes-the-linux-desktop-feel-like-a-product...
Omarchy 4 Makes the Linux Desktop Feel Like a Product, Finally
The foundation holds the trademarks, funds infrastructure, and, importantly, supports the upstream open-source projects Omarchy depends on, Hyprland and Quickshell included. Hardware is... "
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026
It's wonderful to see that even though #GloriaSteinam had transphobic views for many years, but she kept evolving her thinking and shifted her position. It's a great example for us to follow. #feminism #feminisms #TransRights www.them.us/news/gloria-steinem-tra…
From the linked article, a quote from Steinam: "I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives,” she said. “Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.”
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026
Holy shit! "postmarketOS Linux booted on iPhone 6s" When I started on Linux, about two years ago, this was "impossible." www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments… #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Linux #Debian #Gnome
A screenshot of a Bluesky post by ichitaso bot (@sideload.bsky.social): "postmarketOS Linux booted on iPhone 6s"

Below, that is a link to a Reddit post and two screen caps, one of an iPhone with an XFCE(?) login page, and another of that same iPhone screen showing the Linux boot code.
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026
Here's something I saw on Bluesky, and I want to post my thoughts about it here. #Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #AmWriting #Scriberspace #fantasy #magic #MagicSystems
@merrittk.com: heard two people on the train talking about books and being like "yeah he has a great magic system like it really makes sense" and im realizing i have extremely different priorities from a lot of readers
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Orion Ussner kidder @orionkidder.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2026
I used to think I was the only dumb kid who thought #vampires have straws in their teeth, so this gag is very satisfying: #PresidentCurtis #TV
A screen cap from the show PRESIDENT CURTIS. Curtis is on the left with his two supporting characters while a group of Victorian-looking vampires drink blood out plastic bags on the right. The background is a New Orleans mansion. A subtitle reads, "So, they have straws in their teeth? What?"
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