The last Twitter lockout I remember is when the FBI seized the servers running predecessor code right out of Rackspace’s racks in 2004 😉(Indymedia and Cryptome were implicated/affected too).
Was never wed to Twitter, even before the drama that made me grateful to be here too—but the 2FA drama is enough to invest in more Mastadon subscriptions to make my feed here more relevant and informative.
If it weren’t for the occasional Aeon Magazine article I half-grok & whatever-the-fuck Meta & the web3 bros are doing that seems like they’ve read dystopian scifi as a manual, I’d consider the show based William Gibson’s The Peripheral a nice distraction. Enjoying it in spite of that.
All the local broadcast weather reports I heard the past couple of days celebrated the 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than normal temperatures. Which was depressing. Currently put it in real context.
"Mapping the most influential Twitter accounts during COP26"
At a quick glance, this seems to imply a reinforcement of a disparity I’ve perceived my entire life across all convenings of power I’ve become aware of: the popular and factually correct voices are effectively paid lip service and empty tribute, if not entirely ignored, by a small set of people with even less popular influence but far more official power (and responsibility).
Not feeling optimistic about COP27.
We’ve not really figured out printing, calendaring or email… what makes anyone think we’ve got the rest of this figured out is beyond me.
Suffering the Ed Sullivans and still failing at recovering some lost productivity on a Sunday night. But my desk is clean now.
Monday gonna Monday.
The problem with … bullshit jobs
Gave The Problem With Jon Stewart another chance this week. The Taxes episode was a classic redux of a fairly fundamental (and dare I say, potentially very non-partisan) analysis of an unresponsive government and corruption. It also came off like a validation of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs.
I keep placing my coffee mug on my wireless induction charging pad, as if it were a coaster. ☕️🪫
Not the most artful shot, but an accurate representation of “a day in the life” common event — a low-flying military helicopter over Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. October 14, 08:56 ET.
Currently reading: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow 📚
I first encountered Graeber (¡Presente!) on an Indymedia livestream giving an interview or speaking at a teach-in during a convergence to protest WTO or WEF. Something like that. Pre-9/11 revolutionary optimism on my part.
Catching-up with The Handmaid’s Tale and the end of Season 4, where Zoom gets a mention. This, for me, only makes the current reality, still dominated by Zoom and its competitors, feel like a continued dystopia.
The Browser Wars may be over, but ...
… the fiefdoms remain.
There doesn’t seem to be a combination of browser extensions that gives me the combination of features I want, in the experience I want, to have some parity across the multiple browsers I use every day.
The shortlist (this is not all-inclusive) might be:
- Safari’s “merge all windows”
- Safari’s “arrange tabs by web site” (or alphabetically by title)
- Chrome’s tab groups (Safari’s groups are closest, But I like the in-tab-bar experience a little better)
- Syncing of groups across instances/platforms on that browser (Safari does it best, I want the same experience on Chrome, Firefox)
- Firefox’s containers
I haven’t yet reached (or appreciated?) the level of enlightenment where this doesn’t have a massive depressing effect on me. I am also not very skeptical.
Just trying to figure out if I need to really be more zen or subscribe to Free Will Illusionism, or hope for more meaningful quantum randomness as my “religion” or spirituality.
There was a sliver of a moment, as I looked up while driving through Catonsville tonight and saw what turned out to be the SpaceX Starlink launch, where I thought “maybe Dad was right this time.”
I know I’m just a cantankerous and rather undistinguished Internet Old, but now that I am back in the digital agency space, I can’t help but think even the progressives on the web are missing the thing. The tactics still seem to be “be like the dark money, but better.”
I don’t have enough to expound on that, and I’ll be pressure testing it.
Stopping for a second to appreciate passing through the autumnal equinox.
A 🥃 to the equinox. 🍂
Our household has hit that stage in life where one inspects odd, dark brown-ish lumps of debris and asks oneself, “is it food? Play-Doh(TM)? Poop?”
Focus Mode might save my brain, but kill me in the short term anyway.
A brief respite
I am not a fan of the chumps who introduced and voted for this amendment, but I am disgusted with everyone—the other 97—who voted against it.
I gotta push it to the limit, and I keep finding the limit isn’t quite here.
My knuckles, my heart rate, the cortisol levels… why?