This week in squirrels… From Sun Jun 21st to Sat Jun 27th

Summary

  • Streaming once again
    • My opening stream was ultra draining, but it was still amazing. I took all the appropriate breaks to prevent issues.
    • Sadly i didn’t make another one all week.
  • Father’s Day with the family
    • Feeling pretty good after a transfusion, I spent most of Father’s Day with the family. Can’t say it went great, mom’s on a struggle and we fought for most of it. She’s in a shit mood, and I’m her favorite to fight with. Still, overall, I did get to enjoy spending time with my family.
  • Getting back into systems and a bit of tracking things
    • Look who did a daily review or two. Oh yeah.
  • Back to work
    • Kinda. I was getting on an extended pairing sessions to help train somebody on some things I was working on when this all went bad. Got them all up to speed and helped them get working.
    • I am hoping all next week I can help them and get more going.
  • Setting up my own scrobbler
    • Seems like the ListenBrainz main system is struggling to keep up. I haven’t gotten a stats dashboard update in over a week now. It had been showing some hard times, but now it’s just… a bummer.
    • I have the power to set up my own, so I found a super nice looking self-hosted one. Luckily, I can import data into it, so it’s not a complete loss like when I moved out of plexamp.
  • Fun fact
    • When looking up lyrics to songs by late 90’s nu wave bands, make sure to put “lyrics” in the search. “gender orgy” Did not produce the search results I expected
  • Nixpkgs whyyyyyyyy ugh
    • I am getting so frustrated with nixpkgs again.
    • A series of released nixos-26.05 builds won’t finish, but now instead of crashing out and leaving me to fix it, it instead burns up the CPU and power as one major build hangs forever, and it also decides that I now have to build the massive CPU burner of all of lix, which will fail due to a broken test.
    • And it wasn’t a single release but a series, since once again everybody is arguing how to fix things.
    • But as a bonus, I did a lot of optimizations to my Nix settings and removed a lot of old things I definitely don’t need.
    • And then a forced build pin in electron apps was suddenly marked insecure and broke compiles.
    • and now I have a problem where my server loses its network connection on the latest builds, pinning back fixes it, so time to debug all that.
    • I’m getting tired of how NixPgs supposedly has the most packages ever, but very frequently is missing plenty of common packages I want or use. I can become a maintainer of a bunch of packages, but it’s annoying that so much of this is repackaging other people’s appImages. Maybe I should get over my gripes and get with making Nix not just my OS but my whole hobby..
  • Spending spoons were we don’t have it, or, why mental health spaces are dangerous
    • I was supposed to stream one of these mornings but then things crashed out.
    • I admin and mod for some online communities; it is a constant theme throughout my life. And while I was asleep a mod chat was blowing up because somebody who regularly dumps in the mental health chat started venting about physical health emergencies, and this triggered quite the conversation and reactions.
    • Then I ended up burning so many spoons and a few hours on the back and forth, including going over this person’s vents when I was not really in the space for it, which, of course, means I took some emotional damage of my own. So I have kinda been doing some “mental cowering in a corner” for a while since then.
    • It brought up what I think is a serious issue in online spaces: The risks vs. the value of having chats for venting and also mental health support.
    • I have never run or seen one that had taken the time or expense to secure an actual crisis counselor to monitor it. In fact, nobody at all is dedicating their time to making sure people feel acknowledged & seen, and to redirecting them to qualified help if deemed necessary. It feels like a problematic misunderstanding of the term “holding space” for somebody. Sure, there technically is a space, but nobody is actually holding it.
    • In a fully online community, we can be a space for people to escape into and get a lot of, and hold space for their problems, but at the same time we can’t actually be there for somebody in a crisis. People need IRL resources like partners, friends, communities, professionals, and safe spaces.
    • It’s hard to even be a good friend even when we have the time, space, and spoons to sit with somebody on a call or something because of a lack of any personal non-biased view into their life.
    • I don’t think we should get rid of vent spaces. I am using this to vent right now, but I wish there were a better way of making space for people in OL communities.
    • And maybe there is, but I just missed it or haven’t seen the studies.
  • Dear God, every month, the bills.
    • Nothing more to say about this
    • Just, Fuuuuuuuuuck
  • Health and Chemo
    • My feet swelling going down… but not completely.
    • My blood numbers have been trash. I have had more blood put in me than i can even imagine. I am constanty dizy and crashing out.
    • Oh and my nausea meds are carrying me.
    • And I have about 10 white blood cells that have to duke it out.
    • But I FINISHED IT! I finished “phase two” of induction.
    • Next week we test

Books

  • Forgive-Me-Not ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • Fae, princess, rogues, gay. 10/10
    • I read this one three times in a row. I am not usually into damsel-in-distress enemies-to-lovers, but this one breaks some rules and is also so gay, so yes.
  • From Hell, With Love ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • A story-driven romance?! A complex and fun urban fantasy plot? Hot heck. This is the kind of book that elevates the fantasy romance style.
  • Pink Candy Kiss, Vol 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • Why do so many sorties about lesbians have women breaking up with each other when they aren’t even dating? Is this for real, or is this just how people see high drama queers.
  • Sweet Surrender ⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • Work-focused power mom bangs the nanny: 4/5
    • It was very short, and I felt it deserved a few more chapters; The ending kinda crashes in an unsatisfying way. While the main focus is a the heat of a “one-night stand to forced proximity” storyline the the secondary focus of the book is focused on on sharing women’s ADHD experiences and how they can be integrated into childcare and wlw relationships. And these elements are really well done.
  • Wicked Spot 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • A fun fantasy magic setup that I feel is a marred by one of the characters being little more than their trauma, to the point where it starts feeling absurd in the not-fun ways.
    • The setup makes me want one more volume, though. It looks like this could be fun
  • Mismatched ⭐⭐⭐
    • It’s maximum queer high school drama. It’s well-drawn and fun, but I kept getting this sneaking suspicion that I was seriously missing out by not having read Emma, which the book makes a big deal about retelling.

Music

  • Kneecap’s “Fine Art”
    • I adore Keeecaps’ second album, so I wanted to try the first.
    • This one feels more raw and goofy and all over in the sound, but honestly, the bangers come so hard. I love this one too, but for different reasons.
    • This dominated my weekly listens
  • Tierra Wack’s “WHACK’S MUSEUM”
    • This mixtape has her back to rapping, and while I wish she had more beats, the bars are 🔥🔥🔥.
  • Lauren Sanderson’s “Lauren”
    • Still my bad bitch music
  • Orgy
    • My random album feed brought up the Blue Monday single, and I was reminded how good their singles were. This then spiraled to a lot of listens to Candyass.
    • I still think a lot of their lyrics are a bit dadist, but y’all know how much I like that.
  • Milli’s “Heavyweight” & JENNIE’s “Ruby”
    • Speaking of bad bitches music, I prefer the heavier front of the album than the softer backend
  • Girlcop
    • Still in this glitch mood

Reads and Videos

Quote of the Week

The internet spent 20 years creating tutorials, open-source projects, blog posts, & answers for free.

AI companies turned all of it into products worth billions.

And now the same people who created that knowledge are being told they are replaceable.

We built the Library.

Somebody else started charging admission

- @suraj_sharma14