#228

drafts/Telegram.md

@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ Believe it or not, I, too originally sought the Russian-owned, cross-platform-as
 
 I’m bringing this up for a few reasons, and the fact that the very first digital decision of my personal hysteria was to set up a private Telegram channel is telling, though I can’t recall just how much or how little I actually knew about it at the time. I launched myself back to the channel’s very beginning (easier to do with regular URLs than in any other service I’ve ever encountered,) but was only able to bring myself to dig just long enough to grab the utterly absurd photograph above… Though I certainly did not consider myself actively *interested in automation* at the time,[^3] Telegram’s infamous bot ecosystem proved so prevalent (and accessible,) that I was able to configure at least three bots on that channel within days of first establishing it: a repeater hooked to DeVos’ Twitter account, an RSS-powered bot watching the main feed of a website set up by Senator Elizabeth Warren called [*DeVos Watch*](https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/devos-watch), and another republishing everything from [the Department of Education’s press releases feed](https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases). 
 
+https://twitter.com/ammnontet/status/1449594872139186181
+
 Was any of it genuinely useful in helping me maintain *Action Readiness* in hypothetical defense of American education? Most certainly not. It was, however, genuinely *comforting* to have such diligent, automated minions keeping watch - to have a centralized, private, reliable, and purely-chronological feed of information in a super-handy location, regardless of whether or not it was usable. As I began to unconsciously integrate Telegram into my day-to-day online life on both of my PCs and my iPhone, the usefulness of my private channel for *other* applications became rapidly apparent. On iOS, not even dedicated file managers like DEVONthink are capable (or *willing* might be a more accurate term) of handling the diversity of data Telegram will happily pass on for you, *especially* through the Share Sheet.
 
 https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/status/1442554265956986882
@@ -113,6 +115,7 @@ One of Telegram's most unique (and potentially powerful, I believe) community fe
 <audio controls>
   <source src="https://github.com/extratone/bilge/raw/main/audio/The%20man%20who%20wants%20to%20out-Uber%20Uber-CBC.mp3">
 </audio>
+*
 As for the persistence of *Live* location-sharing, I can vouch for its reliability on the Android side, at least, as per my aforementioned experience with a partner who used Telegram and shared their location with me for both safety and convenience. As someone with the most immense possible privilege regarding safety and dating, I would also like to suggest sharing one's live location with a private Telegram group chat with friends as an alternative to service's like [Tinder's Noonlight](https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039260031-What-is-Noonlight-).
 
 
@@ -151,10 +154,12 @@ Returning to the topic of their age… In its eight operating years, Telegram ha
 
 ![Telegram Desktop in Windows 11](https://i.snap.as/DFQzGGeZ.png)
 
-If you’ve stuck with me this far, perhaps it’s not too much to ask that we retreat a bit and ask ourselves **what we’d truly like prioritized in community chat software for 2021**. I really do show my age in my bias, here, as someone just old enough to have extensive experience using IRC.[^11]
+If you’ve stuck with me this far, perhaps it’s not too much to ask that we retreat a bit and ask ourselves **what we’d truly like prioritized in community chat software for 2021**. I really do show my age in my bias, here, as someone just old enough to have had extensive experience using IRC,[^11] I think there’s a less-than-adequately discussed division happening which its successors might benefit dwelling on. IRC was extremely frugal and it was easy to find a freeware or FOSS IRC client for one’s given platform which was well-optimized to sit in the background of their desktop operating system, completely untouched and barely acknowledged visually for days… weeks… months at a time. It was easy to find oneself a member of a dozen or so IRC channels for specific interests, projects, or organizations averaging a dozen or so actual updates/pots per day, each. It was distinctly low pressure - many of my channel memberships functioned more like a wire service or, much more contemporarily, like an RSS aggregator, than a local party line.
 
 ![Telegram for iOS Sharing and Notifications](https://i.snap.as/FltrCV6Z.png)
 
+As I see it, the ultimate shift dividing those solutions from these is the big fucking obvious one: IRC was conceived in a world where computers were mostly static objects associated by their intended use and physical dimensions with the referential, unmoving waypoints around which *we* orbited (the kitchen counter, the desk in your study at home, parallel series of workstations within the public library, etc.) The *entirely* contrasted needs of community engagement on a *handset* should have - in my opinion - done much more to break apart these communal contexts than they have. As prolifically and extensively as I have used Discord for iOS since before its official release, even, it is hopelessly compromised by its loyalty to the PC gamer’s paradigm. My 12 Pro Max is not just *capable* of keeping 100 Discord channels up-to-date in the background as I move about the world - it is all too fucking *eager*, and for not a one rational explanation. Going on down this vector eventually leads to an adjacent argument I’ll name but otherwise save for later: it is literally **over a decade** past the time when we should have ceased celebrating the fact that mobile computers had matched and outdone desktop computers! We have to snap the fuck out of our obsession with lugging desktop computing alongside our persons and refocus entirely (once again) on exploring what “mobile computing” can/should mean, going forward. Please Gourd, help us do so ASAP.
+
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 [1] I still have not accepted this, by the way. I’m still back there.