Written In Cantor Dust

The writings and other creations of Rudy Cantor

...I'm lost. What does any of this mean?

A dim light shines through the windows as dusk falls. You run your thumb over the raised text of the shelf labels as you wipe the dust away.

Queer Terminology

Asexuality:
Aromanticism:
Nonbinary:
Kenochoric:
Cantorgender: A gender identity characterized by its composition from infinitely many other, smaller micro-identities, none of which are inherently linked to each other or in any hierarchy of influence over the presentation of the whole, but rather immutable and innate components of the larger gender gestalt with which the user identifies. From a broader perspective, it can appear very similar to being agender, but don't be fooled--it is both vast and infinitesimal at once.

Alterhumanity

Alterhumanity:
Archetropy:
Conceptkin:
Voidpunk:
Novashard:
Median:

Religion & The Occult

Witchcraft:
Kemeticism:
Wicca:
Pop culture paganism:
Conpantheon: Constructed pantheon, a tradition or system of divinity revolving around otherwise unrecorded or unknown entities, or nonstandard interpretations of existing ones. Can often overlap with animism, pop culture paganism, and other individualized or "niche" religious frameworks.
The Void and the Vastness: A homebrewed, conpantheon-esque, UPG-based faith of sorts, based on the shared experiences and philosophies of my dear friend Rowan and myself. We're both in the process of documenting what we have and building it into something vaguely comprehensible. When we do, the link to those pages will go here.

Allusions

Subject to expansion as more become relevant.

David Bowie:
HP Lovecraft:
The Magnus Archives:

Science & Mathematics

Subject to expansion as more become relevant.

Discrete vs. analog:
The Cantor set:

Miscellaneous Reference Works, Compendia, & How-Tos

The Ashley Book of Knots: A favorite of mine ever since childhood, and finally in the public domain. Necessary if you're the sort of person with strong feelings about knot tying, which I am.
FutureLab Wiki: Run by a friend, with contributions from across a shared Discord community. Has a little bit of everything, and always adding more. Firmly rooted in the solarpunk ethos, and geared towards all the various facets thereof.
Free patterns:
- Knitting:
  - Ravelry: Arguably the biggest source of patterns on the internet. Not all of them are free, but you can filter for them easily, and the advanced search mechanics are truly formidable. If you look hard enough, some of them might even sound a bit familiar...(I'll link to my own patterns on there once I've finished transcribing them, ideally sometime between now and the heat death of the universe.)
  - Knitting Pattern Central: I've been relying on this (and its sister crochet site) for projects for going on 15 years by now. The organization leaves a bit to be desired, and there might be the odd broken or miscategorized link, but in my opinion, it's indispensable.
- Crochet:
  - Crochet Pattern Central: I've been relying on this (and its sister knitting site) for projects for going on 15 years by now. The organization leaves a bit to be desired, and there might be the odd broken or miscategorized link, but in my opinion, it's indispensable.
  - Ravelry: Arguably the biggest source of patterns on the internet. Not all of them are free, but you can filter for them easily, and the advanced search mechanics are truly formidable. If you look hard enough, some of them might even sound a bit familiar...(I'll link to my own patterns on there once I've finished transcribing them, ideally sometime between now and the heat death of the universe.)
  - Free Vintage Crochet: Excellent for patterns from bygone eras, often in the public domain. Some may take a bit of work to track down, but very worthwhile--I've gotten some beautiful doilies out of it.
- Other:
  - Free Vintage Tatting: For when you need a different method of creating absurdly intricate bits of lace to soothe your soul.

Preferred Software

Linux:
- Distributions:
  - Gentoo: Our daily driver for the better part of a decade. Not the most user-friendly distribution in the world, and the learning curve bears a striking resemblance to the Appalachians (i.e. mountainous, ancient, incredibly long, fantastically varied, and won't hesitate to devour you if you don't respect it), but it can be configured to be minimal enough to run on basically any hardware, and for good and ill, it's a large part of what made this website's brain the way it is.
  - Arch: Current personal distro of choice. It shares many of the same design and moral philosophies as Gentoo, but tends to be a bit more manageable, widely supported, and intuitive. Surprisingly, not as elitist as you've heard, they've mellowed out considerably since debuting in the mid-2010s.
  - Linux From Scratch (LFS): The goal once Arch wears out its welcome for us personally. Does what it says on the tin--compile every inch of the OS yourself, only include exactly what you want it to in exactly the way you want, a bit like Gentoo for overachievers. Couldn't quite get it to work the first time around, but someday...
- Software:
  - Fluxbox: Current window manager. Very bare-bones, but very customizable, useful if you want to make your computer look and function like the inside of your brain without having to dedicate a ton of computing power to it.
  - vim: You'll never need to move your hands while editing text again. Or doing anything else on the computer, if desired, because if there is a program with more than a few thousand users, someone has probably written something to add Vim-style navigation to it. I would know.
LaTeX: This is what makes all those physics papers and math textbooks look like they do. It also typesets any other kind of document you can dream of, and a few that you can't, or at least shouldn't for the sake of your sanity. I've used it for academic writing, personal notes, knitting patterns, astrological charts, and probably others I'm forgetting.
Joplin: Our current repository for writing, brainstorming, concept dumps, that which man does not know, and that which man dare not know. Customizable, can be synced even if you're not willing to pay (albeit through external sources), it's a bit like what Evernote used to be back in the good old days before the Great Enshittification.
Browser addons: (All of these are used by me on Firefox, but should be available for other extension-supporting browsers as well--if not the exact same thing, then a close equivalent)
- uBlock Origin: Making the internet usable again, since 2014. Other prominent adblockers have come and gone, but this is the only one I'm aware of that's been not only effective, but able to be depended upon to not cave to pressure from advertisers, unlike certain...others.
- Ghostery: "But Rudy," you say, "why would I need another adblocker when I already have uBlock Origin?" Because this one also has other functionalities, like blocking trackers, getting rid of useless social integration widgets, keeping you from being redirected to advertisers automatically, and more.
- Dark Reader: As a creature of the endless abyss of space who spends all xyr time posting from the shadows, I greatly dislike the tendency for the default web experience to be retina-searing white. I've gone through several dark mode addons over the years, and settled on this one for how reliably it avoids making everything illegible or otherwise weird-looking.
- Tridactyl: I'm sorry, did you think I was joking when I said I use Vim keybindings for everything?
Web development resources:
- Mozilla Developers Network: If anything on this humble site works, it's because of MDN. HTML, CSS, Java, all of it. I promise you, MDN is your friend.
- W3schools: Anything on this site that I didn't learn from MDN came from here. They also have more languages (PHP, etc.) and incredibly helpful tools like HTML color references.

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