#is this what makes me actually use mastodon?
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2013 "I will go down with this ship" meme except instead of a fictional ship it's me parking on tumblr until it disappears for good
#where is everyone even going#discord servers are not the same#insta and TikTok are scary#is this what makes me actually use mastodon?#op#the tumblr experience
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As a twitter/tumblr user since 2010-2011, I believe I have sufficient grounds to say that currently we as a community are living through the scariest, shittiest time yet. This post isn’t trying to fearmonger, no I’m not leaving tumblr until it literally keels over, but I suggest that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket.
If twitter/tumblr stay usable, great! In the worse scenario, you’d have kept posting on a new platform and stayed ahead of the curve.
This post shares my personal experience with three potential “new”* fandom places, and is aimed to help fellow content creators. I’m an artist fully depending on internet to survive, my reasoning may not apply to you if you’re a hobbyist. Do your own research, it’s always healthy.
* Pillowfort and mastodon have been around for 5+ years, bluesky is ~2 years old.
Discovering new people to follow kinda sucks on all three platforms, twitter and tumblr are eons ahead, but, given the recent chaos and uncertainty, I’m willing to be patient, keep posting on those, and feel safer than I would’ve otherwise been. More baskets good, one basket bad.
All three have poor visual customization, don’t expect custom tumblr themes.
This list starts with the least popular, but most human and easy to join, and what I personally trust the most. All three allow nsfw if labeled properly.
✦ Pillowfort is a barebones tumblr. Intuitive, cozy, but currently very, very small. Be patient with its clunkiness or lack of some features, it’s made by an AO3-like team. I’d personally love if the fandom crowd managed to redirect its attention to it instead of the sus bluesky.
Joining: is free, invite-only, but the waitlist is nearly instant.
Lurk around on their official tumblr: @/pillowfort-social
✦ Mastodon, for me personally, is impossible to explain directly. I’ll use several comparisons.
- Discord but all servers can interact. You’re still on a server curated by some human(s) that might tell you what you can and can’t post, BUT, if you don’t like that server’s policy, you can move to a new one while keeping your followers.
- Email, users A and B may be registered on different domains, still they can talk. It’s a weird comparison, but fediverse (please I’m not explaining THAT but it’s a good thing) in general looks like another email story: unlike big sites that come and go, it might stand the test of time.
- Someone compared mastodon’s structure to xiv’s dc and servers, if you look at its domain names that way, it might be easier to understand.
Depending on user, mastodon may feel gatekeepy/snowflakey. I haven’t spent enough time on there to form a proper opinion yet, but a warning’s due.
An actually good and hopeful thing about mastodon AND tumblr: the two might start interacting in future. Ever lamented that your fav asian artists don’t use tumblr? If they use misskey, or any other place on the fediverse, it might be possible to follow them directly from tumblr in future, and vice versa.
Joining: is free, however some servers close for new members sometimes, and have human moderators reviewing your request.
✦ Bluesky is a twitter without Musk: today’s average internet user reads this, drops everything and already looks to register there. It’s still sus, but people flock to it like crazy. Most likely to become the next big fandom place in my eyes, even if I’m not happy about that.
I personally have no good feelings about bluesky. Same as twitter, which I hated even before the 2018 tumblr exodus, yet the crowd decided to make it The New Fandom Place, and, grudgingly, I had to give up and also join them in 2022. During the year I haven’t stopped despising twitter, yet, I can’t deny that it helped me survive. I estimate half of my patrons, and, hell, even tumblr audience, comes from twitter. So, if bluesky ends up being the next hot shit, I’ll have to keep up because internet pays for my living.
Joining: is free but hell, invite-only, the waitlist is a lie, your best chance to join is a direct invite.
This’s all I’ve got to say for now. If you have a correction or an addition, replies/reblogs are welcome!
Screenshots of the current interfaces under the cut, you may spy on my profiles o/
Pillowfort
Mastodon.art
Bluesky
#i grabbed a name on cohost and inkblot too but those interfaces instantly turned me away#also i'm not covering the mobile apps since i'm a pc-only user#social media#pillowfort#mastodon#bluesky#text post#long post#this already started making rounds but i wanted to add about algorithms#all three seem to have no algorithm atm#only 100% about pillowfort tho
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anyways heres my twitter exodus social media rankings as someone whos income is tied directly to my following so i am stuck in this hell loop until i get paid enough to hire a socialmedia manager for our game studio
tumblr - i mean come on guys. ive been here for 11 years. i met th love of my life and became her friend via tumblr ask memes here. whats more to say. theres obviously things i would change but out of all of them this one is the one i feel most comfortable using. you guys always have my back 7/10
twitter - awful. awful. awful. i hate you. you took everything from me. we used to have cotweets. i was going to collab with my friends and post them as a cotweet. you bastard. 0/10
cohost - favorite out of all the new sites. in terms of functionality i dont have too much reason to use it because its ux is super similar to tumblr but the community and vibes are great. its run by actually cool people. you can put css in posts. i have seen so many cool posts. 10/10
bluesky - honestly not too bad from the usability angle. big thing keeping it down is its another VC funded thing so it will eventually become awful but for now its decent. its basically twitter but before it got bought out by musk and also you can pick the algorithm your feed runs on kind of like tumblr (so like you can make your default a completely linear timeline of only the people you follow. or a completely linear timeline of only your mutuals). if any of them become the proper "twitter successor" i want to believe it will be this one . not that i Hope its this one but i feel like if it isnt this one its going to be threads and i dont want it to be threads. 5/10
hive - it was mobile only and i needed to update my phone to use it so i never did. i dont know if people still use this one i dont think they do ?/10
mastodon - idk why i cant get into mastodon i have tried so many times i am just not feeling it. 4/10 for me but 8/10 objectively
threads - bad. bad. meta product. privacy violations so bad its banned in the eu. algorithm driven feed with 50 million celebrities i dont know and dont care about. mobile only. pleae dont let this be the one. please i dont want to use threads. i dont want to have to use threads. please. please. please you guys
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What makes a good boot sequence?
A while ago, I had my first truly viral post on Mastodon. It was this:
You might've seen it. It got almost four hundred boosts and reached beyond Mastodon to reddit and even 4chan. I even saw an edit with a spinning frog on the left screen. I knew the post would go down well with tech.lgbt but I never expected it to blow up the way it did.
I tried my best to express succinctly exactly what it is I miss about BIOS motherboards in the age of UEFI in this picture. I think looking at a logo and spinner/loading bar is boring compared to seeing a bunch of status messages scroll up the screen indicating hardware being activated, services being started up and tasks being run. It takes the soul out of a computer when it hides its computeriness.
I think a lot of people misunderstood my post as expressing a practical preference over an aesthetic one, and there was at least a few thinking this was a Linux fanboy post, which it certainly is not. So here's the long version of a meme I made lol.
Stages
I remember using two family desktop computers before moving over a family laptop. One ran Windows XP and the other ran Windows 7. Both were of the BIOS era, which meant that when booting, they displayed some status information in white on black with a blinking cursor before loading the operating system. On the XP machine, I spent longer in this liminal space because it dual-booted. I needed to select Windows XP from a list of Linux distros when booting it.
I've always liked this. Even as a very little kid I had some sense that what I was seeing was a look back into the history of computing. It felt like a look "behind the scenes" of the main GUI-based operating system into something more primitive. This made computers even more interesting than they already were, to me.
Sequences
The way old computers booted was appealing to my love of all kinds of fixed, repeating sequences. I never skip the intros to TV shows and I get annoyed when my local cinema forgets to show the BBFC ratings card immediately before the film, even though doing so is totally pointless and it's kinda strange that they do that in the first place. Can you tell I'm autistic?
Booting the windows 7 computer would involve this sequence of distinct stages: BIOS white text -> Windows 7 logo with "starting windows" below in the wrong aspect ratio -> switch to correct resolution with loading spinner on the screen -> login screen.
Skipping any would feel wrong to me because it's missing a step in one of those fixed sequences I love so much. And every computer that doesn't start with BIOS diagnostic messages is sadly missing that step to my brain, and feels off.
Low-level magic
I am extremely curious about how things work and always have been, so little reminders when using a computer that it has all sorts of complex inner workings and background processes going on are very interesting to me, so I prefer boot sequences that expose the low-level magic going on and build up to the GUI. Starting in the GUI immediately presents it as fundamental, as if it's not just a pile of abstractions on top of one another. It feels deceptive.
There may actually be some educational and practical value in computers booting in verbose mode by default. Kids using computers for the first time get to see that there's a lot more to their computer than the parts they interact with (sparking curiosity!), and if a boot fails, technicians are better able to diagnose the problem over a phone call with a non-technical person.
Absolute boot sequence perfection
There's still one last thing missing from my family computer's boot sequence, and that's a brief flicker of garbage on screen as VRAM is cleared out. Can't have everything I guess. Slo-mo example from The 8-Bit Guy here:
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So, this is a scary headline so we're gonna read it closely.
TechCrunch managed to get an internal company memo that details a few "strategic corrections" for the myriad Mozilla products. Mozilla has a "mozilla.social" Mastodon instance that the memo says originally intended to "effectively shape the future of social media," but the company now says the social group will get a "much smaller team." Mozilla says it will also "reduce our investments" in Mozilla VPN, Firefox Relay, and something the memo calls "Online Footprint Scrubber" (that sounds like Mozilla Monitor?). It's also shutting down "Mozilla Hubs," which was a 3D virtual world it launched in 2018—that's right, there was also a metaverse project! The memo says that "demand has moved away from 3D virtual worlds" and that "this is impacting all industry players." The company is also cutting jobs at "MozProd," its infrastructure team.
This is specifically saying that they're just downsizing teams which are focused on things which are NOT the main firefox browser. quote "It now looks like Mozilla may refocus on Firefox once more". layoffs suck, yeah, but firefox doesnt seem to be affected. Mozilla's a small company and firefox is getting bigger, and it looks like this is just a move to shift focus away from the side projects
As for the AI thing, the AI company they bought about was simply one that used machine learning to detect fake product reviews. (what i would say is a good use of machine learning.). "Generative AI" is said thought, and that concerns me a bit, but there's one thing about Firefox that's makes me think it's gonna be fine:
no matter what it is, you can turn it off.
"Pocket" is the weird mozilla thing about saving news articles for later and it recommends you news. you can just turn that off. The home page has sponsored links. you can turn them off. nearly everything about firefox you can just turn it off and ignore forever. if it is some awful AI bullshit, an annoying feature, something whatever it is, you can turn it off. I think firefox would STILL be the best option even if it's worst case. for a private browser, the only other option really is Brave, which is LOADED with web3 and cryptocurrency features and we're at the same problem here, but you cant turn those off completely, you can only just ignore them.
Also it might not even be part of the browser itself, just rather a single website or an extra service that you'll forget exists and then like 2 months later you hear it shuts down. idk.
Let's wait until firefox makes an actual public statement about this shit before anything becuase we literally know nothing. it's likely they're already getting some awful feedback and this may not even make the light of day.
Mozilla is a non-profit organization. i highly doubt they're firing people to replace them with AI. but again. wait and see what they say publically because it's hard to tell
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Have we found a tumblr replacement yet? Apparently the latest “live” shenanigans were the thing that it took to break me. I’m not trying to stir shit, I’m just mostly here for you and a couple other blogs, so I’m going wherever you go.
I wish, but unfortunately not so far. I mean, I've talked a little about how I'd like to find one but there aren't really any viable ones right now, and there may not be a fandom mass-migration for years still. I'm more likely to follow the crowd than blaze a trail in this case, so it may be some time. For now my only real tactic is to simply not engage with staff or support at Tumblr in any way, and accept the changes as gradual steps towards the site's demise with as much serenity as I can muster.
I've already accidentally opened Tumblr Live twice while trying to navigate the app, which I'm sure is intentional, given I've now suddenly opened Tumblr Live twice since its inception instead of Zero. Relatedly, I would love to see them redirect that passion into making the "Mute Notifications" button actually work, but mine is not to reason why.
Anyway. There are options available, like obviously there are other social media platforms, but none have quite the combination of "easy to use" and "has a lot of people on it" and "Offers the same functionality" (photo and video hosting, an app, etc) even with an "ease of use" and "functionality" that are as crap as Tumblr's.
For example, Dreamwidth is great, but it's a Livejournal code fork so it's a very different format from Tumblr, more labor-intensive to make and share posts (no reblog function, image embedding can get a bit complicated, etc). CoHost is new and very promising but a bit of a ghost town right now -- I'm there and I've had a bunch of people find me there but still exponentially less than are on Tumblr. Pillowfort I still need to re-investigate; I'm there as well but it's been a while since I looked in, and I was struggling with the functionality previously. I had a look at Mastodon, but as positive as decentralized servers could be for the future of social media, I actively dislike the idea, and it also seems difficult to set up and complex to maintain. Discord is....there, and a lot of fandom stuff has shifted there, but its structure is very different and it's also decentralized, and also I hate it passionately and refuse to use it, so that's a no-go for me, though I suspect it's where fandom might end up.
If you're struggling with accessing tumblr directly, you might consider feeding the blogs you follow to an RSS reader -- I know people who do that and find it pretty functional, because then if they want to comment they can just pop open the specific post and deal with it directly. I don't know how much you know about RSS and I don't have the energy to fully explain it right now, but NetVibes is a pretty decent free RSS reader and it's what I use for certain blogs outside of Tumblr.
In any case, if I do find a place, or if I see the migration beginning, I'll sound the alarm :) In the meantime I'm still reading through my tumblr, stashing away posts to save off when I leave, even if that'll be a while.
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On the Nature of Tarnished Souls || The Battle of Malenia and General Radahn
“And now Caelid has been engulfed by the scarlet rot, even approaching the region is no mean feat. I've heard survivors of Radahn's army are still in the wilds, staving off the rot with fire. And if it's true, I suspect Radahn is still there as well, in Caelid. Though I doubt he much resembles his former self anymore...”
What chapter should this be?
I have noticed a lot of my friends on instagram hide their like count... and while I generally try to avoid getting too sucked into chasing numbers, it does bother me a bit at times since it feels like some kind of wider change happened due to that "ever so elusive Instagram algorithm". I'm going to have to focus a bit more on the real world rather than making any drastic changes online. Sorry if I'm technically following you but not interacting as much. I actually do feel that I use the app more yet friends that only sporadically post seem to get pushed down. Stay creative folks. I hope that my social medias and websites, are a nice experience for all of you.
Instagram
Mastodon?
Website: https://technomancer-01.com
#sketch#drawing#grimoire#elden ring#charcoal#tarnished#malenia#soulsborne#dark academia#elden ring fanart#dark souls#sketchbook#drawing practice#malenia fanart#malenia blade of miquella#malenia elden ring#eldenring
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Well, hello word, @jv here.
This is the blog for throwing some news about Goblin, the fediverse-based tumblr clone I'm working on.
The idea is to develop an open-source platform that replicates some of the most peculiar intricacies of tumblr, that anyone can upload to a server, and become part of a federated network that works, in a way, as one. A tumblr-owned tumblr, if you will, that is much more resilient to financial woes than our current beloved hellsite.
None of the current platforms running on the fediverse offers an user experience close to tumblr. And more important: all of them lack the features that make the magic of tumblr happen: Reblogs, html posts, talking in the tags, etc.
So ... let's make one ourselves. The idea is to take one of the mastodon clones and, add the missing features and launch it to the world to use. For purely personal reasons (I know javascript/node much better than any other language) I have forked Firefish, which is itself a fork of Misskey.
The development is being done at https://github.com/johnHackworth/goblin, and yeah, Goblin is the working name of the project.
I have an instance running at http://goblin.band/ . It's closed for new users, and it's extremely unstable at the moment, barely anything more than a very badly configured firefish server, but if anyone wants to poke around let me know and I can allow you to register.
So what it's in the plans for a version 1.0 that I feel confident doing myself (though any help is also accepted, of course)?
[done] Add support for reblog chains
[done] Add support for html posts
[in progress] Change the default editor for a block editor that allows to add content without having to write HTML
Manage notifications (especially what happens when someone reblogs a reblog, which is not supported by Firefish)
Review all the UI to remove any firefish or misskey references, remove unused sections.
Add tumblr-style tag system
Review the UI and polish it a little bit
What's in the plans for that 1.0 that I have no idea how to do / I know I'm terrible doing it myself?
Find a way to package everything so it's easy to install on a server without having to manually install a bunch of dependences.
Actually make my goblin.band server ... a proper server. With HTTPS and all the fancy stuff, you know.
Figure out if this thing actually federates with other servers out of the box or if I have to do anything to make it happen.
Figure out what's best for file storage. Probably disallow uploading anything that's not images, but see what to do with uploaded files and such.
So, if anyone wants to help, as we devs say, Pull Requests accepted!
/cc @echo @analytik2
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Meet Aether Beyond the Binary Contributors Flore Picard and Alec J. Marsh
We are 57% of the way to our funding goal for AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY, with 19 days to go!! This awesome anthology featuring non-binary and genderqueer characters in aetherpunk settings has been in the works for a year, and we’re optimistic that we’ll reach our funding target so that we can publish the book as an e-book, trade paperback, and hardcover. Slow and steady, race winning, you know the deal. 😀 Things have definitely slowed down, as is normal for this stage of the campaign, so just a note that we’d always appreciate your help with spread the word about this project so that more people will know it exists! You can find our “main” posts about the campaign on different platforms using these links:
Bluesky
Dreamwidth
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mastodon
Patreon (public post)
Pillowfort
Tiktok
Tumblr
WordPress
Thanks in advance!!
You can learn all about the campaign, the book, the merch, and the authors, by visiting our Kickstarter campaign page!
And, today we’re introducing two more contributing authors: Flore Picard and Alec J. Marsh!
The Light Organ by Flore Picard
About Flore Picard: I’m a linguist and translator who lives in France and I have been itching to write since I learned how to. I started writing (fan)fiction more regularly when I was procrastinating on my PhD dissertation, and I haven’t looked back since. I’m also an artist who loves drawing both fanart and original art, and I have a passion for patterns and systems, for the beauty at the edge of chaos and the complexity of being human. I tend to write about queer and disabled characters finding themselves and each other and learning to take up space in the world.
Links: Instagram | Twitter
This is Flore’s first publication with Duck Prints Press.
Title: The Light Organ
Tags: angst with a happy ending, capitalism is the real villain, coming out, disabled character, emotional hurt/comfort, family, fraught family dynamics, illusion, in the closet, magic use, mechanic, musician, non-binary, parenthood, present tense, science fiction with magic, teenager, third person limited point of view, transphobia (mentions of) (past)
Excerpt:
“No, no, no—the organ, the light ring—it’s all about the imagination, not the mechanics,” Kas exclaims, gesturing widely to encompass the aether pool behind the glass.
“I’m just here for the tubes,” the tech—Gilbert—says flatly.
His face betrays no emotions, not even annoyance. Kas almost wishes he would yell or be rude, if only for the sake of feeling like they’re having an actual conversation, but Gilbert has always been polite. He just never seems to care.
“Fine,” Kas gives up. “We’ve got glitches. They started about a week ago. It could be a leaking tube, I’m not sure.”
“What kind of glitches?”
“It’s as if… as if the story stops responding to me. I know how that sounds, but I swear that’s what happens. It doesn’t last more than a few seconds, but it’s getting worse. Earlier, I powered everything up to tune it and it kept flickering.”
“Flickering,” Gilbert repeats, mumbling into his neatly trimmed beard.
Kas grabs a cane in each hand and makes their way to the organ’s seat. “I can show you.”
You’re Gonna Get Older by Alec J. Marsh
About Alec J. Marsh: Alec lives in the Pacific Northwest, where they write romantic adult fantasy and self-indulgent fanfiction. They make candles inspired by their favorite characters.
Links: Etsy | Instagram | Twitter
Alec is one of the editors for Aether Beyond the Binary and has also published multiple titles with Duck Prints Press. His novella To Drive the Hundred Miles (modern, f/m, trans male lead) was recently successfully crowdfunded and orders fulfilled. His two erotica stories Heart’s Scaffold (sci-fi, m/m) and Study Hall (modern academia, m/m) are part of the Contributor Short Story Bundle add-on.
Title: You’re Gonna Get Older
Tags: arranged marriage, christian, coming of age, coming out, cults, fraught family dynamics, friends, in the closet, lesbian, midwest, misgendering, non-binary, north dakota, past tense, post-apocalyptic, relationship of convenience, religion, song fic, teenager, third person limited pov, trans man, trans woman, transphobia
Excerpt:
There was a radio in the room, an old two-way they had found on their last visit and hidden in an empty supply closet. It was still there. They slid open the battery pack and snapped in a fresh battery from their aether lantern. Chips of the meteor had been encased in metal tubing to mimic the lithium batteries of the Before, but they were precious and had to be used sparingly. Stardancer knew better than to use precious energy on something this frivolous.
They popped the battery cover in place and pressed the power button. It crackled to life. They cradled it like it was made from glass. The dials made a tak-tak-tak noise as Stardancer scrolled through channels. Music came through softly. It faded in and out, cut through with static, but it was music, and not the kind made on an acoustic guitar. They adjusted the antenna and turned up the volume.
It was like nothing they had heard before, fast paced with a heavy beat. Even over the fuzzy AM connection, it was invigorating. They wanted to dance. They wanted to sing along with words they had never heard before. The singer screamed their triumph, and Stardancer felt invincible.
There's no time like right now to become a backer and help us reach 100% funded! Check it out!
#aetherpunk#aether beyond the binary#aether punk#duck prints press#story teaser#alec j. marsh#alecjmarsh#flore picard#crowdfunding#queer crowdfunding#queer owned business
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Hi I'm Foone Turing. I've been here a while but never really did an introduction post, so...
Hi. Yes, that's my name. I'm an asexual trans enby (they/them pronouns), I'm married, and I'm both older than you expect and younger than you expect, depending on what you know me from. I'm a writer and programmer. I'm better known on Twitter, at the moment. I'm well known for being severely ADHD and I'm also on the autism spectrum, somewhere near ultraviolet. I live near Oakland, California, USA, but I grew up on a farm in the south. I'm a furry, but I don't have a fursona yet.
I'm big into retrotech stuff, especially floppy disks. 80s and 90s PC stuff mainly, but I have a passing interest in everything else. I loves me some weird tech that you have no idea ever existed. I'm also big into analog media. VHS tapes, laserdiscs, that sort of thing.
Fandom wise, I'm a Trekie from way back, primarily in the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era. I haven't yet gotten into the new stuff, and I have only a passing knowledge of the original series. I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who (4th doctor, and new who doctors 9,10,11). I watch a bunch of British panel shows: HIGNFY, Mock the Week, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats (primarily the countdown spinoff).
I am a Big Hater on crytypocurrentseas and AI art. I used to be famously mad at the JWST, but now that it's in space and functional, I've calmed down. They just need to rename it and I'm golden.
I'm currently splitting my social media presence across three sites:
* Tumblr, obviously. Shitposting, jokes, queer stuff, and queer joke shitposts are all going here.
* mastodon: I'm putting my tech stuff here. Teardowns, building new death generators, fun historical weirdness.
* Twitter: formerly my primary platform, but now I just use it to keep in touch with people and make fun of the impending collapse of Twitter.
Stuff I do and have done after the readmore.
(I'm on mobile now but I'll get back to this on the desktop and add more links)
* I run lettuce.wtf, a webcam showing a lettuce to see if it will outlast Twitter. (My money is literally on the lettuce)
* my long running site The Death Generator: a tool for making fake video game screenshots, with user supplied dialogue.
* I run some Twitter bots, one of which is more popular than me, and all of which will need to be migrated soon: Gay Cats, WinIcons, Print Shop Deluxe, and Every Clue Line.
* I got Microsoft 3D Movie Maker open sourced
* I got rickrolled so hard that it ended up on national TV
* I ran doom on a pregnancy test
* I have made many horrible and weird keyboards. Keyboards with hair, keyboards which write poetry, keyboards that take 5 hours to say "hello world", keyboards with randomly placed keys, keyboards with 7 toggle switches instead of buttons, and many more.
* I tear down random electronics and try to figure out and explain how they work. (originally on Twitter, but moving over to mastodon now)
* I pissed off the FBI on more than one occasion. They tried to get me fired, they delayed my wedding by over a month, and they mentioned my 4chan nickname in a federal trial.
* I used to work for 4chan. I was a moderator and coder, I created /rs/ and /r9k/, and I convinced moot to destroy the original politics board (for obvious reasons). Things went further to shit after I left, but I am still glad I left. Oh and I also inadvertently prevented the creation of the 4chan dating/meet up site by being too ADHD to actually complete development of it. You're welcome.
* I ran a windows 95 machine for the maximum amount of time. There's a bug where it crashes after 49.7 days of uptime, so I let it happen. I livestreamed the end on YouTube.
* I've done exhibits at the Vintage Computer Festival on the history of floppy disks and optical discs.
* I've worked with the Video Game History Foundation (and others) to preserve old games and game development resources (source code and such). I'm big into archival!
* I wrote a really famous Twitter thread about the surprising way our vision works, which is still circulating in screenshots (including on Tumblr!) something like 5-6 years later.
* I made my old apartment play the Zelda Ocarina of Time shop music when you walked I the door.
* I run the Tumblr animefloppies, collecting screenshots and GIFs of floppy disks in anime.
* I run several other sub-tumblrs for collecting weird things, but I'll have to link them later.
* I am technically a speedrunner. I did the TAS of Duke Nukem 1, episode 1, and a joke speedrun of Solar Winds, where I beat the game by ignoring every single possible objective and just flying to the end, which takes over an hour.
* I used to make games. Some of them are available for download.
* but it still do, too: I'm working on a (currently unnamed) game about managing a dairy farm. Both the developers have ADHD. This is going to take forever before it comes out, if it ever does.
* I'm currently working on three books. Two are compilations of stuff previously twitterized, one is a novel:
- Always Screaming Forever: non-fiction, stories about my career in the tech industry and various other tech/science/history stuff I love ranting about.
- The Other Side of Screaming: fiction. My short stories.
- Mundane Kaya Sona (placeholder title): a linguist gets pulled into an FBI investigation into a car crash. An unknown language leads to the discovery of a wizard living in a forest in Oregon, and an interdimensional plot to smuggle nuclear weapons to another world, and break a cold war stalemate we (the planet earth) didn't realize we were in. I've been working on the setting for this story since I was about 7 years old, and I'm excited to finally get it out of my head and into yours.
* I'm probably forgetting like 5-10 major things I've done but ADHD is a hell of a drug. I'll add more as they come to me.
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Just a heads up, I'm gonna stop using tumblr for the time being.
I'm holding off judgement of the latest drama until we get the full story, but I have to say, I'm dissapointed in this fandom.
I've seen this happen many times before. Allegations come up. Two hours later, everyone is disowning their past idols and deleting their blogs. But then, after the creator accused had reasonable time to collect evidence, they disprove everything.
Will this accusations be disproved like the ones before? I don't know. But again, I'm waiting for more details, they might not be and I'm open to that possibility. But I'm dissapointed in this fandom. I'm dissapointed in the people who say "check your sources, wait for the full story, speaking first doesn't mean speaking the truth" when everything is fine, only to turn around and believe any claims the second they pop up.
Even if the real story turns out to be worse than the accusations, I'm still gonna be making rivals duo art, that I won't give up on. But I am taking an indefinite step back from tumblr. My queued posts will keep coming for a while, and I am posting art of fandom events I'm currently working on on my art blog, but other than that, I'll be more active on bluesky, mastodon and cohost for the time being. (and on the dreblrcord server too)
Edit: it took less than 48 hours to get a good response of what happened. I'm staying on my hiatus of tumblr because what really pissed me off was the fandom reaction, but I'll be back to dream team content as usual on my other socials unless something with actual substance comes up
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ME/CFS and being difficult
I've recently put together something that I always sort of knew but also sort of didn't. I mentioned it on Failbook because there were people there who needed to hear it, but it's probably also worth saying here too.
I have always had communications anxiety (well, as an adult, as a kid I was much more confident), but it's definitely got worse over the last ten years, and substantially worse over the pandemic.
Some of that is definitely psychological scarring. I can easily pinpoint specific events and people who made me more anxious and changed the ways I needed to communicate to survive. But.
But it's also because of the ME/CFS. Not just because I've experienced more trauma as a direct result, but because of the physical disease.
You've heard of spoon theory, but what I think a lot of people don't realise is that cognitive activities also cost spoons - not just physical activities like getting dressed and bushing your teeth.
Thought costs spoons
UNEXPECTED cognitive activities, and a requirement to suddenly switch context, requires EXTRA spoons.
You know how walking through a door can make you forget what you went in there for? Well, sudden changes in topic, needing to switch to a new environment (such as an inbox) in order to communicate, or the need to perform a new mental task is just like that.
It's like you forced me to walk into another room and I lost all the threads of what I was doing and now I have to pick up new threads connected to some new task and also I have to remember what threads are before I pick them up. It's part of why writing alt text is so much more taxing than just writing a post and adding an image.
The alt-text box is a new room and describing an image is a new task. Both are taxing.
Unsolicited tasks
It's also part of why unsolicited advice is SO harmful and so UTTERLY unhelpful. Now I not only have whatever problem I was already dealing with, I have to stop dealing with the problem, process what you're telling me, think about whether it's helpful, and then explain to you why it's not (it's almost never helpful, but I have explained why countless times and that's a different topic).
It's also why on the vanishingly rare occasions the unsolicited advice contains something relevant, I may not have the mental capacity to reflect on and accept it. You're asking me to spend energy I haven't budgeted for on something I didn't ask about. And every single day I am already running an energy deficit. You want me to spend essential food-making spoons on assessing whether your off-the-cuff suggestion is useful. That in itself automatically makes the suggestion harmful to me, even if the thing you were suggesting might have been useful for me to do.
Let me solicit advice before giving it - I do my best to only do so when I have the spoons to think about and respond politely to the answers.
Because being polite - filtering my responses - also costs spoons.
The cognitive tax of this disease is VAST, and it includes emotional regulation. If you give me a new cognitive task without warning, you can go ahead and assume I won't have the spoons to regulate my emotional response. If I somehow manage to anyway it's gonna be extremely costly.
That's why I ask people not to use messaging formats I know I find extra taxing. The loss of Tweetdeck as a messaging system where I can have my DMs and other notifications open in columns on the same screen is actually devastating. That was the only messaging system where I didn't have to 'change rooms' to respond to a DM. (Mastodon has something similar, which I am trying to adapt to, but it's not the same and the adaptation takes spoons, not least because strangers seem much more comfortable slipping into your DMs.)
It's why I ask people to not send even mildly critical comments on AO3. The only way I can manage to keep on top of that inbox is by knowing the content won't be emotionally taxing.
I don't *like* living this way. There was a time when I sent emails for fun. I can't even imagine *enjoying* emails now. But I have finite resources to get through each and every day, and they don't add up to enough to keep my body and my house clean - somehow I have to find a way to maintain social contact (which is just as important as food) anyway, so I just...
It makes me spiky.
Tidy thoughts and emotions are as difficult to maintain as a tidy house
I'm socially spiky the same way there is *always* stuff on the floor and unwashed dishes. And yes, I *can* tidy the whole house (eg I have my dad visiting next week and a house inspection a week after) but the cost of doing that is HUGE. It has the potential to knock me out for weeks or months. And during that time the whole house is gonna get worse.
The cognitive and emotional cost of unexpected new tasks and context switching are *just* the same as surprise house inspections. If it's essential to my wider wellbeing to look in an inbox and respond politely, I will do it - and I *usually* manage this for my work email, for instance - but if it's not an inbox I have specifically budgeted time for and the communication isn't essential for my wellbeing, I may not be able to handle it well. 'Not handling it well' can mean avoiding the inbox for months or being 'spiky' in my response. Neither is ideal, so I try to set clear boundaries and tell people about them, so I'm not caught empty-handed on the spoon-front.
It's not how I want to be - it's pretty lonely and depressing - I just have no spoons at all available for dealing with unexpected cognitive and emotional tasks.
So I guess I just wanted to raise awareness about the energy expended on cognitive tasks, in case it helps someone else, or at least explains my own weirdness.
I do in fact understand some of the science behind this (neural inflammation, cytokines, oxidation, broken mitochondria, the vagus nerve, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system - these are all involved). I have learnt a LOT this year, trying to find help where doctors aren't giving it, but this post is already too long, and I'm out of spoons, so I hope the tidy house metaphor is aenough.
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Solarpunk Naiveté?
Solarpunk opts for optimism—and action—over despair, but sometimes I wonder if we are just being naïve. It’s not just that most people don’t want what we want, which is a change on par with the Industrial Revolution, but for the sustainable, livable, and socially just, including the extinction of capitalism, patriarchy, and gender essentialism. We think that all we have to do is show how fun! (etc) the future could be to win over hearts and minds of the close minded and fearful who want to anchor us in the status quo or even drag us back into the past. But it’s not the poor (at least if we get our way), it’s the difficult, selfish, and sociopathic who will always be with us. These are the people that our currently crumbling democracies have failed to remain eternally vigilant against. These are the people who are the main obstacle to progress toward that beautiful future we’re dreaming of. But what do we do about them? What strategies do we have to take the sting out of the people whose sole intentions are to disrupt, destroy, seize power, and sow misery?
These people are rare and yet legion. We all know at least one. I mean, show me a family—or a workplace—that doesn’t contain at least one psychopath gleefully and intentionally capable of causing chaos and pain. A lot of us have had our lives upended by such people and/or carry deep wounds. I would definitely be a different, stronger person than I am now if it wasn’t for the things such people have done to me and to members of my family, even several generations in the past.
You’d think that would have armed me against such people. But over and over again I have found that if you’re not Machiavellian yourself, it’s all but impossible to counteract the willfully, savagely destructive. I don’t know about you, but I suspect, like me, you are just not devious enough to block, dodge, or defang their schemes. Which is the better way to be! But it means that we always think we’ve seen the worst these people can do and that there are no further horrors to come. Of course, we’re almost always wrong, at least until, having shattered us badly enough, they drop us as a plaything. Then, such is our propensity for amnesia and our belief in the goodness of the human heart, we forget that there are countless others like these people out there. And although we know that they blow through norms and fail to negotiate in good faith, our pitifully normal little brains will never really get our heads around what that means, except in hindsight… every time.
Or maybe I am a particularly lacking in guile.
So, anyway, here I have been, despite all my bad experiences with bullies and psychopaths, dreaming my cheerful little solarpunk dreams where everyone can just see how good it would be to be excellent to each other and stop fucking up the environment. I talk to people I like talking to—meaning people who see the world very much the way I do—and my social media encounters are largely confined to a hopelessly progressive Instagram feed and the soft, rolling hills of Mastodon, where everyone is so earnestly woke. So I forgot we’re not all in this together.
My rude reawakening came after I happened to stumble across the farmers’ huge protest here in Germany that happened the other week. As one does with impressive events, I shot a short video and posted it to YouTube. (You are subscribed to our new channel, right?) Thus was I slapped back into reality. By trolls, of course. Not even many and not even particularly ferocious ones. Just a couple of them making some run of the mill disparaging comments designed to sow discord and undermine my credulousness, rather than start actual discussions.
Yes, particularly guileless little fluffball that I am, I was shocked by this. My video was pretty neutral... and less than a minute long. I pointed out that the way farmers are farming is ruining the environment, but I also pointed out that it’s wrong that they’re not being paid a fair price for the food they produce for us. If I was criticizing anything, it was the whole messed up system that so grossly underpays farmers it pushes them to overproduce food by pumping the soils full of pesticides and fertilizers and housing inhumane ghettos of livestock that only sees the light of day on the way to the slaughterhouse. But I got savaged for being a hypocrite... for eating food. And that’s when you remember that there are so many people out there who aren’t interested in solving problems. They’re in it to win, or to bully people, or—in the case of, say, Russian trolls—to destabilize the society of their self-identified enemies (in this case, Germany and the rest of the democratic world). Dividing and conquering, right?
So, dear solarpunks and everyone else who’d like to avoid a dystopian very near future, how do we neutralize the destructive effects of people like this? Especially when the “fight” is asymmetric, because we can’t resort to Machiavellianism, bullying, or steamrolling over norms in return?
Comment below... I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Provided, of course, that you’re not just in it to troll.
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Losing your Twitter Audience: Some Shit of the Top of My Head, by Me
Reposting a Twitter thread I just made because it's got a lot of thoughts I've had stuck in my head lately:
I don't have a fully-formed version of these thoughts, but I think what a lot of artist are asking when they say "where will we go after twitter" is actually asking "where are all of the normal people going to end up?" I can name a half-dozen sites that are ready and waiting for more artists to come flooding onto their platform. I'm sure there are just as many for writers, musicians, filmmakers, everything else. The actual question everyone needs an answer to is where is the AUDIENCE going.
I've been terminally online for well over two decades at this point. I've been obsessed with the internet since middle school and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like twitter's user base in my entire goddamned life. I've never seen a website that EVERYBODY uses. The closest comparison I have is Facebook, which was really the first internet community that normal people ever truly appreciated. At it's core though, Facebook was a tool that kept you connected with people you knew in real life. As much as it changed, that idea was its bones. Twitter isn't really like that. It doesn't have shared calendars or photo albums or a base instinct to keep you hooked into communities you're already in. Twitter has performance in it's core. It's a bullhorn you pick up to shout to as many people as possible. As much as it's changed that's still it's core feature, the thing it's always going to want to do. That's why it's so appealing for every performer in the world, and I think since most people who don't want to be on stage want to watch a show, that's why it got so huge.
So a bunch of performers can reach enormous audiences and a bunch of us managed to make a living off of it. The question now that this stage is burning down with us on it is where is the next one, and I just don't think this massive audience is ever going to move in unison. I think the thing we all need to be prepared for is that we're going to fragment. We're going to find our own corners again and the more savvy members of our audiences are going to find those same corners as they seek out what they love, but our causal viewers will veer off. Twitter has been an incredible tool for us to put our art in the faces of people who would never think to look for it. This was a big part of what the people who found success on Facebook benefitted from as well, the audience who treated social media like television.
The people who are just looking for an entertainment box to turn on and comfort them without effort are most likely never going to use a Pillowfort, or a Tumblr, or a Cohost, and DEFINITELY not a Mastodon, because they all require a base level of interaction and engagement. And to be clear, this isn't me calling those people stupid, or a "bad" audience. People have their own lives and their own interests. Curating a feed of content requires effort and seeking out new artists is a skill. A lot of people just want to crash after they got off work. So those people aren't going to follow us to new sites. Either because those new sites are improved, but more esoteric, or just because signing up for a new site is a hassle of it's own. We're going to lose that audience. Period. Mourn them if you need to, but accept that.
I think success for artists online in the future is going to look a lot more like what it was in the early 00's-10's. Artists and willingly-engaged audiences seeking each other out. I just don't think putting as many eyes as possible on our work will be a winning strategy. Instead of finding as many people as possible, we need to be focused on finding the right people. 100 followers who are excited that their you, specifically, just posted are as valuable as 1000 followers who don't remember you that well and just want to see some cool art. A lot of people stopped trying to find their 1,000 true fans and focused completely on reaching 10k, 50k, 100k followers, no matter how closely they're paying attention. Honest to god, I think the later is going to be suicide in five years.
FWIW, I've never actually been any good at doing that. The biggest following I've ever had in my life is a little over 3,000 followers in TikTok. I think I just feel weird seeing a bunch of artist who have "made it" panic that they'll be losing everything when Twitter's gone. If you have 10k, 50, 100k followers right now, I don't think it's useful to focus on how many you're about to lose. Instead focus on who the best 10% of those followers are, the ones who've supported you financially and by sharing your work, do what you can to meet them where they live.
Anyway this started as an attempt to excise a stray thought I've had stuck in my head all week, didn't mean to spend 45 minutes on it. The point is get ready to post like it's 2007 again. Best case scenario, the internet is going to be asking a little more effort from all of us pretty soon, but I think at the end of the day if things go right we're all going to come out the other side better for it. If you made it this far, dig through your feed, pick one or two of your favorite artists who have links in their bio to give them money, then give them a little money. I promise you they'll notice.
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A Non-Technical Review of Spoutible
I have been one of a handful of people that have been beta testing Chris Bouzy's Spoutible (Http://www.Spoutible.com) for the last few days.
Before I go too deep, I'll say this: I'm still on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and have a page on facebook. But... those are interconnected. Post one, it lands on the other. If you wanna find me, here's the obligatory linktree. I'll be adding to it, eventually.
I think 2024 is going to be the election where we have to utilize a lot of different social media platforms to get our messages out and organize.
So... This is a very non-scientific review but I'm not going anywhere. I hope to use Twitter (ugh), Mastodon (I use Ivory), Post (of course) and others. As easily as possible.
I am making a point of figuring out which of these Twitter alternatives I want to park on and use the most. I'm looking for familiarity, all the best tools of Twitter, without the "Tools on twitter." It's vile, and I tire of the pale emperor.
So I'm looking for a good service that is run by someone with good intentions. And that's what I think Spoutible is.
It has all the stuff i like on Twitter. Threads. Character limits. DMs (except they're encrypted!) Trending topics.
I'm enjoying the diversity of opinion there even in the beta. I am hoping that stays the same. I know that's part of Chris Bouzy's vision. I am hoping that I am part of a wide variety of opinions.
And yeah, that includes the right, as long as it's not the racist, trolling right wing (OR left wing). I don't need another bigot thunder dome and it seems as if that's the goal. I'm not looking for a silo but I am looking for civilization.
The site itself is beautiful and clean. Pictures load. Links load. DMs are private. You can easily follow, share or quote. Obviously, right now it has that new car smell and we'll see what happens when the flood gates open. Like other services, I (and I hope you) give it a chance to have and overcome flaws.
I also hope that it allows connections between Twitter, Mastodon, Post, Instagram, Counter Social and more.
You can find all my links here: https://linktr.ee/stevemarmel
Twitter was great when it was the giant public mall we could all safely hang at but... let's be honest. That twitter is on life support. It's like we're all communicating in a war zone. It's still necessary for activism but man, it's a slog.
Will Spoutible be a tool to organize and activate in 2023 and 2024? I hope so. I believe in it. I'll ride the roller coaster with the rest of you... I think there are at least 150K waiting to get in when the doors fly open on Feb 1.
I know this isn't a TECHNICAL review. It's a personal one. I made a TON of actual friends on twitter. Real life people I'd never know were it not for the service. I miss that the most.
It's what I hope for the next wave of social media. I saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once" a few days ago and resonated with the character who begged "Please Be Kind."
And fighting unkindness with kindness.
#BreachDay is coming. (Well, that's what I'm calling it). I look forward to seeing you there. I am Marmel (surprise!)
P.S. I coined "#Spoutipets" - here's Lambeau as they anxiously await the launch.
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Queer books, day 31/30
Turns out I like writing about books in this format, but I read a lot more slowly than I write.
I asked on Mastodon for everyone's favorite romance novels with an NB character in them. Partly because I'm in the process of writing my own NB character and I wanted to see how other people had dealt with sex scenes (in the anatomic sense). Partly because I just wanted to see how anyone else conceptualized nonbinaryness*. That request led me to Sword Dance by AJ Demas. It only sort of answers my questions, but that's okay because it's amazing.
In an alternative version of the Mediterranean, Damiskos is an ex-soldier (now disabled) and current quartermaster who has been sent to visit an old friend (Nione) to secure a contract for fish sauce. At her house, he meets: a bunch of tedious philosophers led by Eurydemos (who seems to preach a very anti-alien, anti-LGBTQ agenda, and yet is writing poems for...), Varazda (a sword dancer and eunuch from Zash, another country in which Damiskos was once stationed and for which he harbors a deep affection), Varazda's "owner" Aristokles, and a few others. Quickly, Damiskos surmises that all is not as it seems--first, he foils an attempt on Varazda's life, and it becomes apparent that the relationship between Varazda and Aristokles may be a lie--in fact, they are conspiring to hide something far greater than the fact that Varazda is not actually a slave. Soon, Damiskos is teaming up with Varazda to solve a murder, then to avert a war and recapture Nione's villa from the philosophers. Oh, and falling in love.
Varazda is an interesting character. He (Damiskos's POV is the only one we get, and he uses male pronouns for him, although he says he thinks of himself as both male and female) was made a eunuch after his father lost a military engagement of some kind. He was then enslaved for a while, until he was sent to the Zashian embassy in Boukos, and then he was freed. This is obviously a major source of trauma, and Damiskos is in a unique place to appreciate that because of his time in Zash. As a result, Damiskos is extremely careful in their nascent relationship to let Varazda lead. Their relationship is very sweet in part because of this deference, and they deal with consent very well.
Key quote: (Varazda has been discussing how he doesn't always achieve an erection because of being a eunuch.)
Rather boldly, Damiskos said, "Want to see if we can make it happen again?"
Varazda looked up in surprise. "What--right now?"
"Yes, of course right now! Immortal gods. We're sitting on your bed, talking about how beautiful you are and whether or not you like sex--it's surprising I even need to say anything."
"I am literally a eunuch, First Spear."
After that they were both laughing...
As you might have guessed from the summary above, this is a world in which there is violence, homophobia/transphobia, and slavery, including sexual slavery. Women have some rights to own property, but they aren't voting citizens. The implication, reading between the lines, is that in the world generally, same-sex couples aren't too uncommon, and it's just Eurydemos's students who have a problem with them. (Eurydemos and his students reminded me a bit of Socrates and Plato, but of course Plato doesn't care that much about same-sex relationships, c.f. that one story from Symposium that got turned into a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. But I've been privileged to hear some angry Jesse rants about Plato since doing the podcast, and it reminded me of that. Anyway, as Plato says a lot, philosophers with bad opinions were a dime a dozen back in Athens, so.) Also, warning for explicit on-page sex.
*: Is Varazda nonbinary or is he gender fluid? I don't know. At one point, he says, "I never really think of myself as a man, but most of the time I'm quite happy for other people to think of me that way." Elsewhere, he implies that he doesn't want to be neither male or female, so he tries to be both. Maybe genderfluid is a better word for him. Maybe he can't articulate exactly how he feels, because he's not speaking to Damiskos in his first language, or because there isn't a word for how he feels. Either way, I enjoyed the way the character was portrayed.
That's it. Lots of action/plot, a good amount of romance, very engaging, love the setting. 10/10, go read it.
#pride#queer books#thirty days of books#lgbtq books#book review#queer fiction#lgbtq fiction#novel#aj demas#sword dance#alternative history#greek-adjacent#disability rep#nonbinary romance
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