@simendsjo @jackdaniel #XMPP has all those features, and there's a fairly big #Lisp / #Scheme / #CommonLisp channel there - https://xmpp.link/#lisp@conference.a3.pm?join

It might not have everything that #Discord does, but it's vastly better than #IRC. And there's a cost to using #proprietary and #centralized services, which people constantly forget about in chasing convenience and shiny features.

Here's a guide to help you get started.
https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/the-quick-and-easy-guide-to-xmpp.html

@sigue @scream

Oh-kay. I have been foollowing the code down the rabbit hole, and I am a bit out of my depth here, but what I see are two things:

1) (ext:default-directory) calls another function CD, which can change the directory. If without an argument, the argument is created by merging (the non-argument) with defaults and doing logical path translation, then it actually changes the directory and returns the pathname calculated before (the new path to which it changed the working directory).

So querying the default directory comes about as a side effect, sort of.

2) I am not sure about what actually happens in this default thing, but what seems certain, we're doing a call to chdir(2) every time (which has no effect when the argument is the working directory already except when the dir is unlinked (**)). We would have to call 1 system call anywhere here, but this ... and then I don't know if it doesn't call getcwd anyway in this default/normalizing stuff.

And the version comes in from the place where the "empty argument" is expanded into a pathname.

I think I'll really be circumventing this all. Instead of UIOP:GETCWD (which calls EXT:DEFAULT-DIRECTORY) I'll just redirect my GETCWD wrappe to (osicat:current-directory). Which, BTW, does the right thing.

But really, I am not sure if I shouldn't try to raise a bug here (not for the implementation, I am understanding it not good enough to judge it, but rather for the spurious :VERSION which also cannot be deleted). Any advise?

@shapr Tooter (https://github.com/Shinmera/tooter, by @shinmera) is a Mastodon client library for #CommonLisp. Very scriptable.

I wrote a layer on top of it for more convenience in writing client scripts: https://codeberg.org/khinsen/malleable-message-manager

Using these libraries, I consume most of my Mastodon feed as a set of RSS feeds, defined by my own algorithms.

@screwtape

This will sound like sacrilege for #CommonLisp but in #DylanLang I no longer use plain symbols as a poor-man's enum. Instead I do this:

define constant $rock = #"rock";
define constant $paper = #"paper";
define constant $scissors = #"scissors";

define constant <tool> = one-of($rock, $paper, $scissors);

and then type things as <tool> where appropriate. Et voilà, I can no longer misspell symbol names without getting a compiler warning. More importantly, neither can clients of my library.

EDIT: fix Dylan bugs, add last sentence.

In 2009, I had to cancel a scheduled keynote talk at the European Lisp Symposium (ELS) in Italy because I was due to be in surgery at that exact time for my thyroid cancer. (Surgery went well, and I've seemed thankfully free of it since.) They were kind enough to ask me to speak in Lisbon in 2010 instead. But I didn't at the time, in 2009, speak publicly about the surgery or the cancer. Instead I made a vague excuse about an illness in the family (not technically untrue) being the reason I couldn't do the talk.

On the evening before the surgery, I wrote a somewhat metaphorically cryptic post to my blog that I figured would at least capture my apprehension in case the surgery did not go well, or even if it did, I suppose. It's still interesting to have a window back into my thoughts.

https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/05/over-edge.html?

Back to modern day, I do have a planned procedure (not tomorrow, not dire and far more routine, so not to worry, but please don't ask for additional details just now) that I've been reflecting about just a bit.

Though in all honesty, I and all of us are probably at more risk just walking around on the streets in our emerging fascism (here in the US, though other places are not exactly immune either), and that's on my mind all the time now as well. Any one of us could become an unperson, certainly anyone with decent ethics anyway, as that seems to almost be the criterion for who they're going after.

The tanka I wrote is not specific to one thing in particular, just the sum total of various such things that point to the ephemeral nature of each of our existences.

It's both frightening and infuriating to live in a society where we are at risk merely because of our very existence or nature being seen as a crime.

There may be some among us that don't feel at risk. I wish I could say that's good. But I worry it's obliviousness/denial, or privilege, or something darker, perhaps even being comforted by being on the winning side of bigotry. Maybe give it some thought, because I don't want people to be disempowered by what's afoot, but neither should they feel it's someone else's problem. We have real problems that need to really be addressed. It's a time to feel uncomfortable because no one should be comfortable with what's happening. It's a time for people to empathize and contribute to getting the world back onto an even keel.

Meanwhile we are all individually fragile, too. I had a philosophy class in which the professor told us we could not say with certainty that we would have lunch with someone tomorrow. The future is intrinsically less than certain, we're just talking degree here. But the things going on now are good cause to appreciate those we love, and make sure that we've got things in order in case things get wonky.

And even beyond the politics of the day, the state of climate is dire. I talk enough of that elsewhere, so won't belabor it, but its spectre is ever-present.

Still, it also makes it a time to live, not to put off living to some mythical future time when things will be better. (I wrote a different haiku about that earlier this evening as part of this same pondering.) Let's work toward creating a bright future, but let's also not fail to appreciate that today is all we know we have for sure. Make the best of it. And be the person you want others to remember fondly.