Hello, friends and enemies. In my recent Facebook “memories,” I discovered this gem (side note: it’s not really a “memory,” it’s a record of posts I’ve made. It’s not the same thing. Stop trying to emotionally manipulate us, facebook).
It’s funny to me that, by the time I’m asking a question like this, I’m already planning to do it. Once I start saying “Wouldn’t it be cool if …,” know that I probably already have a website purchased, a spreadsheet compiled, or damning evidence available. While a blog isn’t exactly a newsletter, you can subscribe (see the Subscribe! tab on the top-right of my website), so in that way I’m not doing anything different than Substack is. I’m actually really happy I started writing regular blog posts. It’s helped me think through a lot of issues and I’m able to share what’s happening in my life in a way better form than what a site like facebook or instagram limits me to. The only thing I miss about writing more on social media is the discussion; although most of my friends aren’t spending a lot of time on facebook these days anyway so it’s kind of moot. People don’t comment on blog posts like they did in the 2010s when blogs were in their heyday. Most conversations I have about what I write are in text messages, which is fine. I just miss the communal discussion options, but the way we use the internet has been broken so I will take what I can get. Writing more here has also led me in directions I did not expect at all, like making voter guides or pulling together resources on various topics. Somehow just having a website seems to grant a certain air of authority when all it really proves is that I pay money for my domain and hosting. Although I’m sure whatever authority (lol) I have on any subject is not just from my beautiful web-log (lol again) but because what I say resonates. Anyway, I’m five years deep into this style of chronicling events and here’s to another five.
On a completely unrelated topic, I do try to confine the blog to my personal business or things happening in public. People in my life aren’t necessarily consenting to be discussed online. That said, I’m really feeling for Kirk and his family because his mom is dying. She’s had dementia for a while now and her body is giving up. I won’t get into details but Kirk has spent most of the last week at his parents’ house, which has left me riding solo (plus cats). It’s definitely the most time I’ve spent alone since we’ve lived together, which we’ve been doing for over ten years. So, in a way it’s a little weird but in some ways it’s nice. My routine is absolutely thrown off though. For example, I’m writing this at 8:30 on Saturday evening and I have not made or eaten dinner (proofreading at 9:45 … still have not eaten dinner). We’ll see what happens. I may be feral by the time Kirk returns to me.
Books and Other Words
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott has been described as “gender-bent Alexander the Great” in space, which sounds cool but I actually know very little about Alexander the Great so I’m just taking in the work on its own merits. Sun is the daughter of the queen-marshal and heir to the militaristic Chaonian empire. This first book in the series focuses on her, her companions (all young peers from other noble houses), and the interstellar conflict with the Phene empire. I liked the story I think it’s an interesting world. I always enjoy a space opera although sometimes I have trouble getting into the military sci-fi side of things. This story was centered enough on the human activity and not on the ships and the war effort to still be interesting to me. I’m in the middle of the second book now but it’s more than 700 pages long so it’s a bit of a long read.
I picked up Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture by Jenny Odell because I really appreciated Odell’s first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. The new book is about work, time, and money, and our relationship to all three. I find philosophical books like these hard to describe, even when I really like them and spend a lot of time mulling over the concepts. It’s hard to distill observations that the author takes an entire essay to develop into something pithy to say here, so I will instead recommend you read the book for gems like “What first appears to be a wish for more time may turn out to be just one part of a simple, yet vast, desire for autonomy, meaning, and purpose,” “Sociologists have observed that once assembly-line jobs made it difficult to see how well or how hard someone had worked, what became visible instead was how much someone was able to consume. This consumption, in turn, became the new way to signal how hard one had worked,” and “Time is not money. Time is beans.”
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- How Google is killing independent sites like ours and why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google via HouseFresh. Here’s another one for the “why the internet sucks now” file and the “death of the media” file. So many media companies are collapsing and using affiliate links to bring in revenue, so their parent companies are churning out “review” articles that are not based on actual testing and seem to contain bad information (the article cites the example of an air purifier company that has filed for bankruptcy yet appears on recent lists anyway). The internet is getting harder and harder to use and unfortunately I don’t know of any solutions.
- California plans to enlist AI to translate healthcare information via the LA Times. I get that using AI seems cheaper than paying people, but the translations will be wrong. I have reviewed some machine-translated articles on Wikipedia (as in, compared the Google translate output in English with the original Spanish to see if things are correct), and they are not good. The machine does not understand the concept of false friends and can’t figure out which definition of a word is best based on context. And in health care? Not to be dramatic but this could get people killed.
- AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution via The Washington Post (gift link). Speaking of AI, it uses an inordinate amount of electricity to create so much digital garbage. The new tools require so much power that they’re turning on coal plants to meet demand. Tech companies are hoping for a fusion breakthrough. That would be great but in the meantime … what? We’re just gonna use even more fossil fuels to produce important AI-generated shrimp jesus pictures? Is this necessary?
- ‘We’re writing history’: Spanish women tackle Wikipedia’s gender gap via The Guardian. This is about a group of women in Spain getting together and writing or editing Wikipedia articles so women have better representation on the site. From the article, “Just under a fifth of Wikipedia’s content, including biographies, is focused on women, while women account for just about 15% of the site’s volunteer editors.” It seems unfair that women always have to make time to reset the imbalances that we did not create, but I’m glad this group is doing it and I’m happy I’m a part of this work too.
Doing Stuff/Music
I rarely go to concerts because they generally seem overwhelming to me, but this week I made an exception and went to see Vision Video. They’re a gothy, post-punk band from Georgia. I really like their music and their political message. I expected the show to be good but the lead singer, Dusty, gave us some commentary between each song that really made the show amazing. He started off very strong talking about how our political system is broken, but at least something is still working since Trump got convicted of 34 felony counts. He made some comments about protesting and how important it is to be “non-violent but non-compliant” and suggested that wearing a balaclava is a cheap tool for evading facial recognition technology—then introduced a new song called “Balaclava.” Dusty also talked about some of the darker shit he’s been through like the PTSD from being an EMT and firefighter and disillusionment from deploying with the army in Afghanistan. When things got to heavy, he asked the crowd “Who here likes The Cure?” (certainly every single person at a goth concert does) and we got a cover of Just Like Heaven, which obviously everyone enjoyed. It was really powerful to not just hear great music but also have someone be like, yeah it sucks and we all see that, but you need to get organized instead of depressed. They literally have a song called Organized Murder about the military-industrial complex. But we all contain multitudes so they also have a song called I Love Cats and Dusty asked everyone to show him their best cat photo before they played the song.
Languages
I am very proud to announce that I translated a whole 5,000-word article from Spanish into English: LGBT literature in Argentina. I stumbled on the article and was like, wow, seems like a good topic to translate. It’s also led me to some other articles—I’m currently working on LGBT literature in Mexico, which also doesn’t exist in English Wikipedia! On a related note, I’ve learned that Wikipedia has a Guild of Copy Editors, which I obviously joined. You might think I don’t want to do more work in my free time. That is true but I think editing Wikipedia is fun and interesting so it’s okay. I am using my powers for good. Though I did overdo it and get a little tired of it this week. The Copy Editors’ Guild had a week-long editing challenge to clear out part of the editing backlog (users can tag articles in need of editing and those articles are in the Guild’s to-do list). If you edit a certain amount during the challenge, you get a “barnstar,” which is effectively a digital sticker that goes on your user page. Apparently I will go to great lengths for a fake sticker, so, among other things, this week I copy edited the 18,000-word article List of coups and coup attempts by country. I don’t think I would have been so afflicted by Wikipedia editing mania if Kirk were here, but I thought, I’m alone with nothing better happening, why not do a little hyperfocus as a treat? Wikipedia would literally fall apart without autistic people, that’s all I can say.
Kitchen Witchery
I have been continuing to try to find the balance between low-key and novel food options. Last week, I wanted to try this corn butter farro recipe and grill something so I did both and served the farro with grilled chicken and zucchini. I do not have a recipe for the chicken or zucchini, only vibes. Another vibe-based meal, which I made for just me, was pasta with chickpeas and feta, served with some roasted vegetables. I had leftover chickpeas in the freezer (thank you, past self) so all I had to do was cook pasta then mix it with a little olive oil and seasoning (I used pizza seasoning!). On Friday, I made this cheesy, spicy black bean bake and the southwestern corn spoonbread recipe (kind of like cornbread but a higher corn-to-bread ratio) from The Bread Bible. The beans were good but I was tired and distracted and forgot to put them in the fridge afterwards, so farewell to this batch of beans. Finally, because it is summer and zucchini is cheap and plentiful, I made this version of zucchini bread, which I really liked. This produced a really nice texture and was very simple.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
