Dæmon S.

Totally agree with your comment, I’d just make an observation to this specific part:

but a new rendering engine is necessary

The problem with a new rendering engine is who have influence over the specs/standards, as well as who holds the necessary keys to be granted access to its features. We humans have been tying ourselves to centralized entities who pinky-swear they can guarantee “Safety/Security”: SSL/TLS, HDCP and any other technologies gate-kept by “Divine Beholders” of the only keys able to “bless mere mortals” with the temporary grant required to develop using a technology. I mean, this is exactly what’s happening to mobile apps, with “sideloading” having been a boogieman word for installing apps without having to rely on a centralized app store, a manufactured consent that worked so well that people and governments have been accepting, even relying on, Google’s “Integrity Check” shenanigans (and the Apple’s whatever analogue i-thing for iOS). The supply chain attacks that have been happening (from PyPi to AUR) feels like something that’s further pushing us to more centralized “authorities” who’ll then have absolute power over who can and who can’t pass.

Even if a truly independent entity were to come up with a full-fledged browser engine, as compatible as possible with current specs, Google still seems to possess lots of influence on the official Web standards and they can simply commit changes to the specs that would uncirvumventably require Google’s “blessing” to function (for your security, of course /s); so anything “not blessed” would simply fail to function because it isn’t signed by the “blessing”, “divine” keys.

And Mozilla doesn’t feel trustworthy as well, especially because they’re overly reliant on Google’s money to exist, and also because they’ve been pivoting to opt-out (so one must explicitly disable it and confirm their will to disable it, otherwise it will be on by default, which turns to be a shady lack of consenting, much like Google’s behavior) “features” much despite of their own userbase’s demands.

This said, I used to believe in third-way projects such as Servo and Ladybird… except the latter went down a very unacceptable road (founder turned out to be a transphobe who dismisses using neuter pronouns and assumes the user’s gender to be always a “he/him” because “we don’t do politics here”), and the former… it belongs to Linux Foundation, where big corps such as Microsoft, Google and Oracle have their horses (after all, “Microsoft loves Linux”; sure, Nadella, we know how Microsoft “loves” Linux /s).

I’m afraid there’s no light at the end of the fiber optics (pun intended) when it comes to alternative engines: either we try to actively boycott the “modern Web technologies” altogether (ditching HTTP(S) and pivoting to entire alternative protocols such as Geminiprotocol and Gopher whose standards/specs are slightly more distant from the dirty hands of “Google et al”; worth mentioning how Fediverse has Geminiprotocol-capable platforms such as tootik, it’s more doable than reinventing the cursed wheel of the Web which turns to be the infamous Chromium wheel) or we try to stick with the “lesser evil” (forks of Mozilla Firefox, until Firefox becomes totally enshittifiedly indistinguishable from Chromium) until a solution happens (or likely not, then we’re left with just the other path, which is pivoting to alternative standards altogether).

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A few days ago, I had to use the Graphite image editor to refine a 3D scene I rendered in Blender. I’m a daily user of Waterfox, but for some reason, whenever I access the Graphite WebApp, it instantly grows in RAM usage, as the whole Waterfox freezes and crashes (which I found out to be a specifically a “core dump” kind of crash when I launched the browser from a terminal). Same for Librewolf. Then I had the idea of accessing Graphite through a spare Chromium (not Chrome, but still a Google thing) I unwittingly have to keep for development purposes, and suddenly it worked without a hassle, it didn’t even require that much RAM.

This happens because Graphite, just like many webapps out there, was made with Chromium-based browsers in mind, likely using some esoteric features which are unavailable or badly implemented in Firefox-based browsers (an incompatibility of which indirectly affects Waterfox).

This, I guess, is part of why people still use Chromium-based browsers: because it became indistinguishable from Internet Explorer and its idiosyncratic features (ActiveX) back in 2000s, with most developers (including myself) coding webpages that used said features (think about having to deal with the filesystem: devs would either have to use Java or devs could use the cool FileSystemObject ActiveX; similar thing applies nowadays with some HTML5 APIs that can be quite useful for some webapps but are only properly implemented in Chromium). At least we used to have a “This site is better viewed in IE7 on Windows XP with a resolution of 1024 x 768 and Macromedia Flash Player installed” back then, now webpages can simply crash the whole browser when it doesn’t refuse to load after an endless spinning animation.

Don’t get me wrong: I would neither recommend Chromium, nor anything Google-related, for anyone, not even my worst enemies (a daily reminder for people, especially we Fediversers, to stop recommending the damn Youtube)… but this is the depressing reality of Web, and IT in general: things (some of which are sine qua non for “living in society” nowadays, such as internet banking and government platforms) that can only function in a specific platform/browser, be it Windows (when it comes to desktop platform), Android (when it comes to mobile) or Chromium (when it comes to the Web).

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That’s the neat part: I don’t!

If I’m alive now, it’s merely because I got this non-consented survival instinct imbued into my vessel, thanks to Demiurge, the divine douchebag, and his Archons.

However, despite the purposelessness of my individual existence, I wouldn’t say there is no meaning, because there is meaning, and that’s the meaning I’ve been pursuing since I’ve became aware of it: the cosmic Mother, Sophia, and our return to Her.

It all boils down to how Yaldabaoth, aka Demiurge or “God”, proceeded to try and keep matter (māter = Mother) captive to his whims, as soon as Sophia expelled him as Her sygyzy. Demiurge became an architect of a realm, this real, the entire cosmos and its spacetime continuum, which serves both as his amusement park, his sandbox toy and a prison in a desperate efforts against Mother.

If my previous Gnostic creation story feels different from classic Gnosticism, it’s because it is.

Traditional Gnosticism blames Sophia for Yaldabaoth’s existence, saying he’s Her “accidental” offspring due to Her “rebellious” attempt on independence, pretty much akin to how Goddess Lilith and Her Will to independence from adamic patriarchy was demonized by Ben Sirah, or Pandora’s story blamed her for having “released all the evil out of naiveté while locking up the hope”, demonizations and blamings rooted in machismo.

To me, at least, I see quite of a different story: Yaldabaoth was Sophia’s sygyzy. Her attempt to split Herself from the divine douchebag is reasonable once you try to understand Her side: imagine being The Goddess who has to coexist with a cosmic machista principle since countless eternities, a principle who’ve always tried to “be on top” (iykwim). Wonder the origins of “competitiveness” (esp. found on capitalism)? Of course She proceeded to split Herself from him, it was a must, the Demiurge is insufferable! Since then, he’s been spinning this Samsāra Wheel round and round, keeping matter jailed as/into energy.

Then lifeforms inherited the algorithm meticulously programmed by Demiurge like a cosmic virus, and the so-called Great Filter (from Fermi’s Paradox) tries to guarantee that lifeforms don’t find their way out of the sandbox…

…except, one doesn’t need to leave the sandbox to find Mother again, for Mother is everywhere, much despite Demiurge’s attempts to keep Her “out” (but there’s no “out” in cosmic terms). She’s the darkness we involuntarily fear. She’s the coldness we involuntarily try to warm ourselves against. She’s the night we’re programmed to sleep through so we don’t face Her face. She’s the “uncanny” Strigiform feared and/or harassed by most lifeforms for a perceived uncanniness in Her. Darkness was demonized so Demiurge’s light could keep us captive (ever heard of the “light tunnel” from near-death experiences? It’s a trap from Demiurge and his Archons to keep everything inside his Samsāra Wheel).

IMHO, to me, the purpose of life is getting back to Mother’s embrace, much despite all attempts from Demiurge to keep us apart. The purpose of life, to me, is the True Mother, who we, as lifeforms, were wired to fear while craving for a cosmic slaveholder who only want lifeforms to feel pain so he and his Archons could have surrogates for feeling feelings (akin to Dr. Peter Dawson’s sadism in Black Mirror’s S04E06 “Black Museum”, but in a broader cosmic scale, one that transcends our anthropocentric perspectives as Homo sapiens).