We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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The Status — A Very Long Summer and the WISB Funding Update
Reading Time
Two things:
1. The Lizards and Financial Mumbo Jumbo
The last couple weeks have contributed tremendously to my long history of garbage-ness. I had to have one of my lizards (Taj) put down, today marks the day when my other lizard is expected to go into surgery (Noodles), and so on. Emotionally, I’m in one of those “well, life kinda sucks, but at least I woke up today” moods. Such events also have other ramifications — namely, financial ones (my vet has been very kind to me and allowed me to defer payments on some things; they’ve also reduced the cost of some of the bills when they didn’t have to — but cremation services and the like have still put a strain on my financials). I’ve got about $5 until next Friday, which I hope will
be a large paycheck, because I really don’t need any more small ones; the first was pitiful considering that most grad students have nothing to work with over the summer. I’ve never understood why the University of Florida pushes back the payment process by several weeks so that you don’t get paid properly until a month into your teaching job, followed by a month or so of left over payments that they might as well have made during the semester. It’s the most bizarre payment scheme imaginable, and it causes a lot of grad students a lot of stress, since their financial situation prior to arriving here didn’t exactly make the transition easy. We start poor, we stay poor, and re-orienting the bills doesn’t exactly change this cycle…
In any case, that’s sort of where I’m at. I’m sitting here, in my apartment, hoping that when the phone rings I don’t end up with a “so, he passed away during surgery” call. And I’m worried about whether what I have in my cupboard can keep me fed, or if some strange charge will throw me in the negative on my bank account, and so on.
This must be what real life feels like. I don’t like it. But I’ve learned a life lesson, which is one I won’t forget any time soon. I’ll be better prepared next year.
2. The Funding Project (The World in the Satin Bag and “the Status”)
In other news, since I’m rambling a bit here, I’d like to let you all know that I will be making a video of myself doing embarrassing things, as per our public agreement for reaching my funding goal of $1,000. You can still donate to the project if you’d like; I will honor the original fundraising scheme I set up here, so any donations will still earn you free stuff. I intend to spend the next week practicing, because I want to be really good at the Truffle Shuffle and Peanut Butter Jelly Time before I record myself doing it. This means I have to watch The Goonies and stare at every rendition of PBJT available on YouTube over the next few days.
I want to thank everyone who donated, even if you only gave me a few bucks. You helped me a lot during a difficult time and I appreciate that. I’ve got all sorts of other things in works, such as stories with characters based on folks who donated, and the editing process is still underway. Once I finish this next edit (and then one more major pass with a friend), I will get the ebook compiled and sent to everyone who donated $10 or more. My hope is to have all of these things done before my birthday (Oct. 6th), and at the very least, in the event that I get run over by a bus or aliens abduct me and put me behind, it will be finished before the year is out. If the project is delayed until the end of the year, I will make up for it by doing something more for you all (free fiction, another embarrassing video, or whatever you’d like). I don’t want it to be delayed that far out, but life has been giving me whatever the hell it wants at the moment, so it’s always possible.
Anywho! Have a good one!
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A Reading List of Dystopian Fiction and Relevant Texts (Apropos of Nothing in Particular)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
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Duke’s Best EDM Tracks of 2024
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
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2025: The Year of Something
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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