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re: politics, kind of a downer, worries, and my living situation 

@mynameistillian (Are replies wanted?)

Anyway! People talk to me about feeling weird about writing and there’s this whole complex about innate talent and like, “who should calls themselves a writer,” and meh, I’m not having it.

Clearer and more structured thinking through writing is our birthright, and although we all start at different points and with different brain architectures, if you want to write you should write! And if you do it like any other mindful and reflexive practice you will develop deeper and subtler power. 🌬️

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Tis the season again at work, I guess.

The season when the Covid-induced Angry get upset at the Covid-induced Forgetful and I have to manage personal expectations of each other.

The season when I have to cover for multiple absences, of either people actually out sick, or out caring for their sick kids, or for people trying to work with too much brain fog to actually accomplish anything.

The season of people’s smiles fading when they ask what I’m doing for the holidays, and I say that I’m staying home for another year.

Another year of wondering how long I can keep my job while acting as a reminder to everyone of The Thing That Must Be Forgotten.

Another year of wondering how long society can function like this.

#Covid #CovidIsNotOver #WearAMask #LongCovid

I want to think out loud about writing for a second before I go into proper weekend mode, so if you hate that and find it self-indulgent or whatever, this is your warning. (I think feeling weird about feeling weird about writing is what keeps people from writing, and I don’t think gatekeeping about it is anything but an unproductive and ego-protective bummer, myself, but that’s just me.)

relating to personal experience, writing 

@kissane I recognize a lot of this from the way I write; often when I finally write an article, it's the result of discussing a topic with people for years, to a level of depth that approximates writing ad-hoc articles each time. It takes forever!

I've been experimenting a bit lately with reviewing and editing less before publishing an article, and I've found that it doesn't seem to matter much for how much people appreciate the end result, and how effective it is. At least for me, it seems that the slowness of writing has been mostly to satisfy my own standards rather than that of anyone else, and at least some part of the lengthy process has been a matter of diminishing returns.

@jonty It often feels like there's a sort of bell curve where the most conflict occurs in the massive communities (because it's impossible to maintain social cohesion) and the tiny communities (because every disagreement feels like a mortal threat to the community's continued existence) and there's just one fairly small range of 'community size' where things can actually be stable, big enough to weather some broken ties but not so big that ties start breaking due to scale alone

"hmm it's been a while since I made any toots about technical stuff. a cute pun just came to me, and from it I could build a little emotional vignette that non tech people can also understand the pathos of. I think it's ok to post one (1) toot about computers this one time."

(goes to sleep before the USA people wake up)
(wakes up next morning)
(237 replies from men telling me how to fix a fictionalised version of an issue I had 2 years ago in the field I have 23 years of professional experience in)

"I have remembered why I stopped making tech toots"

Social Media Sites if they were Table Top Roleplay NPCs, a thread.

1) Tumblr. A very well dressed, witty and urbane goblin, that keeps stealing sandwiches and making a nest out of stripy knee length socks. Has ninety seven different celebrity shrines.

@reinderdijkhuis I submitted ten of my best puns to a pun contest, knowing that one of them would win. But no pun in ten did.

Tech (philosophy?) 

I admit that when I see nuanced takes on technology that rest on the defeatist assumption that technology is some sort of inevitable force of nature, I have a hard time paying attention to what is being said. Technology is built by humans for human motives. If we don't build it, it does not happen. We don't have to accept that the only thing to do is gratefully swallow whatever is being forced down our throats.

Was für Covid-Schnelltests (oder ähnliches) will eins denn aktuell haben?

@freakazoid Most of my experience in terms of 'garbage' is Steam (which doesn't seem to have the most basic dependency management functionality...) but if Nexus Mods' site is any indication, then I don't expect their mod manager to be any better, no

@Riedler I find it kind of baffling that this doesn't really seem to exist, to be honest

Are there any game-agnostic(!) mod managers for Linux that are compatible with the Steam Workshop and ideally also other mod sources, and that are not complete garbage?

i'm not citing shit and i'm not bringing receipts but we have the best in-character bot-like-but-not-bot accounts in the fediverse who will absolutely break character to share love and comfort when times are particularly hard. that's community shit right there. fuckin love it. hell yeah, y'all anonymous folk runnin those accounts. much love.

I wonder how many solutions to scientific or technical problems got dismissed and "lost" because they didn't quite have the right set of tradeoffs for the problem that someone was trying to solve at the time, even though they could've solved many other people's problems

I was doing two activities yesterday when I noticed I was getting tired of doing them. I exercised self control and stopped doing them even though that was very difficult. Today I am trying not to do them until I'm sure I want to do them and I'm not just trying to fill time.

i sent this devon price piece to a friend who has expressed stuff like this (i think archive .is is back up if you don't substack)

Dr. Devon Price - How Do I Become Less Obedient?
substack.com/@drdevonprice/p-1

talking about resistance but you're too embarrassed even wear a mask in public

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