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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Life Log #03: Strange Spines, Mites, and BEER!
Reading Time
The past five days have been…interesting. Yes. Interesting. Let’s go with that.
So, what happened?
I think that’s all of it.
Look, none of this is the worst thing in the world. I’m better off than a lot of people, but I’m also just stressed the frick out and exhausted. Some of this is my fault. I traveled this year, so that meant I spent money I probably shouldn’t have. But I also refuse to live like a hermit who just saves every dime with some vague hope that it’ll translate into riches. Frankly, I’ve given up on the “bootstraps” narrative. If hard work really mattered, my mother wouldn’t have struggled for so long just to get to a point of vague economic stability. If hard work really mattered, pretty much everyone I know would be independently wealthy. But pretty much everyone I know is either firmly lower or middle middle class OR straight up in poverty. Not a single one of them is a lazy loser. But I digress…
So, that’s where I’m at. I’m grumpy. I’m stressed. And I’m looking forward to not feeling that way.
Now for something happy:
An obligatory cat picture!
Winston is adorable. Admit it.
Culture Consumed!
Currently Reading: Starship & Haiku by Somtow Sucharitkul (still)
Currently Watching: Men in Black (1997)
Currently Playing: Nothing because I’m a sadpants
Currently Listening To: The Martin Garrix Show
Currently Drinking: Sprecher’s Mango Radler
Current Mood: Grumpypants
I continue my journey through the infinitely strange Starship & Haiku. How strange, you may ask? Just read this page and see for yourself:
That happens to be a conversation…with a whale. Yes. A whale.
This is a really strange book, y’all. I can’t stress that enough. STRANGE. I don’t know what to think of it. Is it the kind of strange I like? Is it the kind of strange an editor should have said “no” to? I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to finish it nonetheless! (Honestly, I’m probably going to have some issues with this one.)
Beyond that, I decided to re-watch Men in Black, both because I really enjoy that movie and because I get something else out of it each time. You should expect a post about that film in the near future. If you’ve never gone back, you might want to give it another look with an eye on the characterization. I noticed some things that weren’t clear to me when I first saw the movie 20 years ago. Good god…it’s been that long.
And on that note, I will sign off!
What about all of you? What are you currently enjoying?
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Recent Posts
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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