I’m writing about the Eternal September in my thesis; it makes sense as a still extant metaphor. However, some of my research warrens pointed me at still-operational public NNTP servers, and postings as recent as last year, which surprised me, as I was expecting far less vibrancy. I’m a little intrigued by them now; there’s a strange atmosphere to them, of old internet, textual internet, with a parasitic uuencoded parallel layer not meant for human readers. I saw Hogwasher and Usenapp as current apps for macOS which handle Usenet, as well as having an old copy of Unison I was reading `olduse.net' with. Visiting the site, they’ve spawned a new replay of usenet, with a 45 year delay on it. My god.

Unison hasn’t been updated for a while; I was surprised to see it was made by Panic, who have accepted it’s existence as a reminder of gentler times and made it free, the kind of freedom granted by dismissal from a costcutting employer.