This week in squirrels…

Summary

  • Journaling meta
    • This one is getting posted late, and has a lot of unanswered questions for myself.
    • I have a lot going on I am not willing to post about, but hopefully it ends up to be good stuff.
  • Streaming
    • I had an extra amazing stream to start. I hadn’t streamed in a whole week, yet still had a great one, with a bunch of fun chatting and serious hard gaming.
  • Next Actions
    • I still miss Omnifocus when it came to managing my next actions. It’s the solution that didn’t have me constantly changing things around, but I still struggle with my current one. I will meditate on the why
  • BlueSky
    • A lot of people in my circle were very skeptical about Bluesky when it kicked off because of the people involved.
    • Supposedly, last week BlueSky proved them right. After some user anger over some of the moderation decisions, the CEO and staff have started heavily lashing out at the community and cutting off prominent Black users and a swath of trans users.
    • AFAICT, this started back when BlueSky started banning people for the phrase “Rest in Piss” and has just kept spiraling out from there.
    • Guess we can’t have nice things. I doubt most people will leave over this, though
  • Fediverse/Mastodon
    • In response to the Bluesky issues, a lot of Mastodon Ubernerds have started up the cry of keeping the fediverse weird and that the jank is the point. Honestly, the justification for Mastodon’s design decisions and UX issues (and, in the end, much of the fediverse and its protocols) hurts my soul.
  • Social Standards
    • This one is a doozy.
    • I was talking with my bestie about somebody, and I recently casually said that “my standards have changed” to what I am willing to put up with. The bar is so low out there that I need to find allies where I can.
    • This also ties me back to this thread on fedi about the lack of compassion and being able to make space for people you don’t perfectly align with
    • I had another conversation along this line later in the week when a completely different friend was like I am surprised to see you talking about X and their problematic background. And I was right back to, yes they are kinda shitty but not in a taking a fascist turn kinda way, which is the bar rn.
  • Fan vs Stan
    • What is the tipping point between fan and stan, and how do people get to the point where a celebrity is beyond reproach?
    • I think this has always existed, but it feels so much louder than normal when stans treat critiques of their chosen ones as critiques of themselves.
    • What do I attach my own identity to strongly enough that I take offense to its criticism?
    • Does this attachment require us to change our beliefs to fight the critiques, or do we use cognitive dissonance?
  • community
    • We need to sustain and revive ways of staying in community that do not rely on companies and technology they control.
    • What does it look like to still hold community in person now?
  • NixOS
    • I spent almost too much time on this, learning some more nuances of it as a desktop.
    • As usual, when I daily drive something for a desktop, I end up wanting to break away from defaults and get everything working in a way that is most optimal for me, even like how I am doing startup items, or I want things spawning in certain places
    • But I am back to working from NixOS, let’s see how long this lasts before I get stuck on a task.
    • I had an excellent Luks2 encryption setup from an article I will post below. I might post an updated version too.
  • Niri & Scrolling vs Tiling
    • All this tuning got me to switch to Niri, and I am super happy with scrolling window managers. It works better for my brain than a tiling, and Niri has a lot of really amazing touches.
    • I am shocked how fast it got under my fingers, even with default keybinds. I was always slightly clumsy with a tiling window manager (sway), but Niri had me moving fast by the end of the first day
    • It has me spawning and destroying browser windows and terminals instead of using tabs and tmux as much, very interesting,
  • Terminals
    • OMG, are we talking about this? Yes, but it’s not really news persay. I switched to the cool-kid terminal ghostty from my terminal over the past few years.
    • The reason? Nothing about it being cool. Wezterm has a bunch of Wayland and Niri bugs, and Ghostty doesn’t. I set three config lines and don’t really notice the difference. 😆
  • Anime
    • Normally, I am a seasonally watcher. Still, the season just started, and I am way too deep in hacking on computers and learning as I hack. I also haven’t read as much these last few weeks.
    • I really hope to actually catch up, but we will see at this point. I am very behind on other things.

Books

I have not been sitting down and reading many novels, mostly manga

  • Futari Switch Vol 1: ⭐️⭐️
    • The body swap premise really feels like a pilot for porn; the art is fantastic, but the content is not for me
  • Common-Sense Monster Vol 1: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • Excellent art, a total page turner of a plot, and even though I quickly felt this was going to be a one-and-done for me, the ending hook pulled me back in.
  • Pink Candy Kiss Vol 3: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • As much as I really like the art and the general story, the glacial pacing in a manga isn’t excellent. We could’ve cut this entire volume without losing any of the story.

Music

  • Nirvana’s “In Utero”
    • I dunno what happened, but I got stuck on re-listening to In Utero on loop, which is the album I had growing up. A lot of the pain still holds up these days
  • Daniel Renfro’s “Settle Down Kid”
    • Still one of my favorite albums. I don’t think you can get it anymore, but I heard the artist is looking to do a remaster/rerecording to release under one of his newer projects
  • The Masamune’s “Empire”
    • Absolutely SLAY D&B, this dropped on Bandcamp Friday, and I stumbled upon it. It’s not long, but it’s an amazing all-bangers loop
  • Rebecca Black’s “Let her Burn”
    • This was my favorite album of 2023. I know a lot of people didn’t love it like I do, but it’s something I have to come back to on loop from time to time
  • Sewerslvt’s “we had good times together, don’t forget that”
    • An excruciating album about loss. A good loop when in pain (see listening to Nirvana)

Reads and Video

I don’t have a bunch of hard reads for y’all this week. How about some nerd stuff?

Quote of the Week

How can you call out the legacy of someone who has said so many things and yet repeat none of them?

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