Hello all! Today we have a TUI Signal client, and an interesting mechanic of medieval power projection.

Tool of the Week: Gurk

I'm a huge fan of Signal and its highly security-conscious approach to communication. And admittedly, 90% of the time I use the mobile or desktop apps. But sometimes, you just don't want to climb out of the terminal -- and that's when you use gurk-rs.

Gurk is a TUI Signal client written in Rust. It caches your messages locally in an encrypted store (you have to type in a passphrase every time you fire it up), and authenticates the same way desktop clients do -- run it the first time and you'll get a QR code, which you can scan with your mobile device to log in.

Installation on Linux looks to be pretty easy, but if you're on Mac like me, Cargo is probably your best bet.

Something Interesting: Messengers as Medieval Power Tokens

In the middle medieval period, as power began to consolidate but before the later centralization and systematization of communication, the power you held could be measured by the number of messengers that accompanied you at all times. A dedicated messenger was the only way you could send an order quickly, and you could only send as many orders as you had messengers.

Nobles, bankers, abbeys, and even some town governments employed one or two messengers for this purpose. The King of England at one point had twelve who accompanied him at all times. The King of France eventually peaked at over a hundred.

Messengers were paid per day when traveling, and given a yearly allowance for new shoes.

I have always thought this would make an interesting mechanic in a game set in this time period.