Oceanside Nevada
The first gen unicorn goggles are rumored to be targeted at developers. I have no idea what a production level stereographic camera costs, but I’ll bet it’s more than $3k.
Gruber beat me to reminding y’all that the iPad was $1000 until Steve Jobs actually revealed one and said it $500. But, in regards, to Apple’s mythical unicorn goggles, I’ll say this: I suspect, utterly baselessly, that a core feature will be content capture/creation.
Nextdoor is what happens after Facebook and Walmart hook up after too many Coors at a MAGA rally and they make a really ugly baby.
Some ideas just need to be killed in the crib and “Facebook, but *hyper local*” is right up there with “edible shoes”.
I’ve had that Twitter account since the early days, back when “@“ and “RT” were little bits of user culture, not yet adopted by Twitter. Weird how hard it was to leave, even seeing how toxic it had become, years before that muppet took over. It was a form of self-harm for me.
Finally figured out how to deactivate my Nextdoor account. Probably could have found it sooner if I’d looked. Guess I got motivated when I also, finally, killed my Twitter account. Hearing that muppet was going to platform that former Fox muppet fired was the last straw.
Now that space Karen has thoroughly musked up Twitter by killing off third party apps in the shittiest way possible (I mean, I hope), I’ve been wondering about the unforeseen consequences. Like, I kind of feel like all the people whom I was interested in used third party clients. The only people I ever knew who used the stock app were the people too cheap to pay $3 for something better. And I don’t really recall that any of them were terribly prolific. Eyeballs are great when you survive by selling ads. Not so useful when what really brings people is content. That your platform doesn’t actually create.
But I wasn’t born rich so clearly I’m not smart enough to understand this kind of crap.
Currently reading: Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim, Book 4) by Richard Kadrey 📚
Now that the series is finally concluded, time for a re-read. I’d love to see this made into a film or TV series. Stark is maybe my favorite anti-hero of all time.
Currently reading: A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher 📚
A really charming read with real Discworld vibes.
Currently reading: A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher 📚
Second thought for the day: after a truly craptastic chain of events temporarily banned me from the timeline (some self inflicted, some dropped balls from other people) I’m back. And that is thanks to an email to the micro.blog help desk that was promptly addressed and resolved by @manton. I am still geeking out over getting my issue solved not just by a company founder but while he is on a road trip! I mean, wow, right?
Feeling much better about the future of the country today. It’s not as good as I might have hoped but neither is it as bad as I’d feared. I’d more or less quit listening to pollsters after they told us that fucking guy wouldn’t win and that opinion has only gotten stronger since the recent efforts by the Republicans to flood the zone with polls that made them look stronger than they actually were (shower thought: if your policies are so awesome, why do you need the constant parade of dirty tricks and straight up cheating?).
Then of course, this photo, in which I am constantly reminded that people are endlessly complicated and fascinating.
So, through a combination of inattention (me), bad UI (Hey) and unknown payment snafus (Hover), the former domain for this blog right here (my still current username.com) now points at a Chinese porn and casino link spam site. So that’s great.
Fortunately I still have this older domain that, while I like less, is still mine. Still, finding this out during my push to start engaging with, you know, people again was super triggering and my PTSD and ADD have been partying down ever since. I’m better now that resignation has set in but I’m still not really ok. In true ADD “FIX ALL THE THINGS NOW!” fashion, I decided to revamp my sprawling and chaotic email “solution” from multiple domains all forwarding to one address (because, to cap it all, Gmail has stopped forwarding my mail and , while it is still receiving, it archives it without ever hitting the inbox. Also: google is creepy and it’s long past time I cut that cord). Of course that means updating basically everything so I’m slooooowly going through 1Password and updating the important one and trashing the unimportant or unrecognized. Only 120 some odd items to go!
Email is the absolute worst thing that we still need, IMO.
I’ve struggled with returning to blogging for so long now, whether micro or full bore, heedless and headlong logorrhea. Many reasons. My therapist has been encouraging me so I’m trying. The ongoing Elonpocalypse which alternately horrifies me and fascinates me like a burning tower full of birthday clowns has got me thinking even more about blogs and blogging and the independent web. Trash fire or not, social media killed (or at least severely wounded) blogging not just because it made publishing simple for the common person but because it made discovery and curation of our personal cones of silence trivial. It was easy to surround ourselves in a warm blanket of common opinion, fellow travelers walking down the path alone.
As I was maundering over this, I came across a recent post from a blog that’s been silent for so long I don’t actually recall why I added it to my RSS feed. In the moment it struck a chord for me in a way that’s hard for me to articulate. It seemed fortuitous, the struggle to start over.
The door creaks softly as I push it wide.
It’s not complaining, really, just surprised
That anyone would come. I, mesmerized,
Breathe deeply, lift my chin, and step inside.
The house is still ineffably itself.
The places where we talked, or laughed, or wept,
Abide (albeit cobwebbed and unswept).
And written there atop the mantle-shelf:
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
Ah. This is why I came. It’s getting dark.
It’s time to light the world up with this spark.
To shine. To make some light. Illuminate.
For what has been, and what is yet to come,
Again the door is open. Welcome home
At this point I am more inclined to believe that Bigfoot crewed UFO’s are out there than I am to accept the existence of the mythical Xbox Series X or PS5.
When, exactly, did “We the people” become “Me. Oh, and all those other assholes. I mean, I guess. Whatever. ME.”?
I really like iPads but, once again, I find myself going back to a Mac. I’ve tried on a couple of occasions to go strictly iOS and mostly it works fine until that one little thing that’s trivial on a Mac and nearly (or actually) impossible to do on iOS.
So I got the entry level M1 MacBook Air. After I trade in my iPad Pro I’ll have paid about half the list cost. I’ll just pick up an iPad mini when Apple updates them this fall.
I mean, at the least, let me indicate somehow that, yes, I am actually paying for this content somewhere else. Seeing “You have x free articles left this month” when I am paying for it and it’s not my fault that you maintain two separate subscriber lists.
To be fair, Apple News isn’t the only place this happens. I run into this all the time when subscribing to a “channel” somewhere and then trying to do something in a corresponding native app or site. Washington Post is a good example. I subscribe through Amazon and while it works now, I actually had to delete a subscription and resubscribe just so I could read linked articles without using the WaPo app.
One of those many really tiny things that, over time, is just like sand in your bathing suit.
I subscribe to Apple News but I do most of my reading in NetNewsWire. Why, oh why can I still not open a link from anywhere else in Apple News?
Really frustrating to come across a link to, say, a story I want to read in The Atlantic and be utterly unable to find that same story in Apple News.
I used to feel a low boil rage at folks following the spirit but flouting the letter of the guidance on masks in public. You know who I mean, the ones hanging their snot spout over their mask or wearing a face shield without a mask. Also, the folks who always have a drink in hand so they can leave their mask hanging because they’re “drinking”—seriously, how hard is it to pull down your mask and pull it back up afterwards?
Well, anyway, now that I’m fully vaccinated I’m a lot more relaxed in the face of ambient assholery.
BTW, I’m waiting on a flight and, wow, the stuff some people wear to fly. Whoo-boy!
Why can’t I use a different name for Siri? It’s super frustrating to think I’m talking to my phone (as evidenced by the fact that I’m holding it in front of my mouth) and hearing one of the HomePods say “I’m sorry, you’ll have to do that on your iPhone.”
If I could give each instance of Siri it’s own name I can’t imagine any way that wouldn’t be better.
My current favorite weed is an indica dominant hybrid from Sweet Water Farms. It’s called “Slap and Tickle” and, yeah, I bought it based on the name.
A comeback implies you were ever anywhere of note in the first place, so that doesn’t sound right. Reboot? But that’s when you start over with the same initial conditions and see what happens this time around and that doesn’t sound quite right either. A new start would suggest that I’m leaving the past behind. But how could anyone really do that?
I read back through my previous posts and two things jumped out at me: a drift toward link blogging and so much anger. Not that link blogs are bad, I follow several of them, so that makes me more of a link blogger blogger and that’s just a waste of time. Anger, though.
So I burned it all down. I don’t know what to call this. Restart, maybe. The problem I have is that I don’t really know who I am. Everything I know about myself is defined in relation to someone else. TJ’s husband. C’s father. F’s caregiver. I don’t know how to introduce myself without including another person.
I want to do it differently this time. I want to be myself, the guy that lives inside my head, not who I’ve been before. Authentic is what I think they’re calling it now. Which is a trick when all you can think to tell someone about yourself is “I’m just some guy.” I can’t write a bio for myself, I’ve tried for years and I can’t believe it. It’s boring or it’s bullshit or both. But mostly it’s that I don’t know what to say because I’ve never thought there was anything to say.
I’ve learned a lot about myself the last three or four years. I hit the wall as a single caregiver and, in a fit of panic that I was going to lose my wife, I earned myself a visit to a psychiatric hospital. I was admitted with suicidal ideation though, to be honest, it was more that I didn’t care if I died, not that I was actually intentional. I never had a plan. Am I trying to make myself feel better? Maybe. There’s a lot that I’ve learned that I don’t know, if that makes sense. It’s part of the identity thing.
Anyway. So I had a breakdown, spent a week in a psych unit. Not too long after that I was tested to see if I was autistic, something I’ve wondered about for a long time, at least as long as I’ve been able to look at myself and think, ‘dude, something is fucked up here.’ Well, I’m not autistic. The testing psychologist said I’m pretty nerdy, but I am pretty far from autistic. Rather, her impression was that I have PTSD. So there’s that.
PTSD is my official, recognized by all the publications diagnosis. But in reading up on it, I’ve come to believe that I have CPTSD, or Complex PTSD. CPTSD is a variation on the theme that is seen mostly in children who’ve been abused or neglected. Unlike PTSD, people like me rarely have one single catastrophic trauma like a rape or a war. CPTSD is built on top of lots of little things, early events that persons might not even remember. And I don’t remember a lot of it, but I do remember some. Enough.
Turns out that I actually do have ADD too. I was treated for ADD as a child (they called it hyperactivity disorder then) but, I thought, “grew out of it,” only no. Turns out that CPTSD and ADD frequently go hand in hand such that I’ve read some speculation that one predisposes the other.
So I’ve been looking back at my life through that lens and pieces are starting to fall into place which isn’t actually that satisfying. A lot of times it really fucking sucks. Like this last therapy session I had on Friday. I spent most of it recalling how badly I was bullied and how no one ever really did anything about it. I mean, I didn’t just have a bully, I was the town punching bag. My one “photo” in my sophomore yearbook was a picture of three or four of the boys who terrorized me standing in front of lockers. The caption read “fucking assholes ABC&D have Darrin Blankenship trapped in a locker.” Yeah. The part that really hurts, aside from there being a couple of hundreds of these out in the world, is that at least one adult signed off on that, didn’t think it was a big deal.
So, yeah, school was fucking bullshit and I am trying really hard to not fall into a spiral of angry and futile revenge fantasies. Because I don’t want to be that guy anymore. It’s hard, though. Really hard.
I don’t know. Maybe this is therapy, maybe it’s just more jerking off. Maybe I’m showing up, like my therapist says. So, this is me. Whatever that means.