the map is the territory

The system in your computer started out in a giant mainframe meant to be used by many people at once, and developed alongside the internet. And, as much as a computer can want, your computer wants to connect to things outside itself and be connected to. In the source code of the command line is the memories of a community mainframe, of a info-rich spore in a network of spores.

There’s a host of spirits intended to stretch this world of text beyond just your computer. One of my favourites is curl. Curl will bring data from another location to your computer to join that stream of energy, ready to be directed and transformed as you please.

We can curl the data from websites as easily as curl + website address.

In your terminal, type:
$: curl -L https://solarpunk.cool

You’ll be greeted with the source code that makes up our home page, including all the comments that don’t appear on a browser screen^▣.

You can do this with any site. Try it with google.com^◥ and see the mess of javascript hidden behind their minimal search bar. Try it with johnclilly.com^◥ to see how sites used to be made.^▣

There are some sites that are designed for the terminal first, a whole underground of webpages. My favorite is wttr.in^◥.

Type:
$: curl wttr.in

You will see a beautiful printout of the weather in your city. Wanna see the current weather in my beautiful hometown of Tumwater, Washington^▣? Type: $: curl wttr.in/tumwater

For the hardcore weather report, try:
$: curl v2.wttr.in.
And for the beautiful moon, try:
$: curl wttr.in/Moon

We will use curl (and everything else) for our final spellwork.

Footnotes