Turns out going from an active to sedentary lifestyle for 2 years plus a lot of grad school stress isn't great for your health but yay now having health insurance so I could do tests and actually spot things nice and early
I will be! It's nothing that can't be fixed with diet and exercise which was already my plan (in action!) but good to know where I am at and how vital it is for me to be on top of those. Plus if I'm having surgery in a few months (May's light surgery experiment was unsuccessful) it's good to know those for the anesthesiologist!
I think people and conversations will return once there's an actual distance from the bullshit of the last couple years. From COVID straight to Ukraine, now another not-war brewing... dunno about all y'all, but my day-dreams all too often construct self-sufficient cloisters from first principles.
I think there's a bigger issue at play. Rid makes an insightful point that I've mentioned many times before: free societies pay a heavy penalty when their governments lie because adherence to the government is based on trust. Autocracies pay no penalties when their governments lie because adherence to the government is based on fear. As a result, any conflict between an authoritarian society and a free society will involve the authoritarian society spreading as many lies as they can - if your opponent relies on integrity to rule, damage their integrity. They have no counter. Any thoughtful wonk tasked with coming up with a "public square" social media platform for a free society would make it a utility, monitored by public health and safety officials, with surveillance and enforcement that matched that society's civil standards. Remove the phrase "free society" and you have VK and WeChat to a T. On the other hand, the principle task of social media platforms within Western, capitalist nations is "engagement" ie outrage in order to drive advertising dollars. As a result, the madder it makes people the richer the founders become. This, of course, creates a feedback loop: if you want clout on social media, you make people mad. If you want to get rich with social media, you maximize anger. Before too long your metaphorical corner coffee shop has become Thunderdome. I remember when the Internet was a lovely place to meet interesting people; my web designer (22) holds as her mantra "never become a main character on the Internet." The overlap is complete: social media becomes a mechanism whereby Enrique Tarrio and "Donbass Devushka" are your advertising dollars. Then you add in the right-wing takeover of Facebook, Musk's Thiel-led takeover of Twitter and the psyop known as Tiktok and it becomes pretty clear that the current utility of social media is for totalitarian societies to stir shit up in free ones. And I think people are fucking sick of fighting. We've slowly learned that social media is where you go to get mad. I think we can unlearn that? But I think it's gonna be even slower. I've taken to telling people that Russia must fall in order to keep Donald Trump off of fucking Facebook and I mean it. Until social media can be turned into a utility good for something other than chaos agency, it's fucking done. We've turned it from a place people go to talk to a place people go to laugh and point. Conversations have been replaced by clout-chasing. Moderation is utterly lacking - I posted an interview with a formerly-Russian band to my I-fucking-hate-having-it page for the show and the result has been daily battles with Russian trolls trying to take my page down. Any actual engagement? Naah. An opinion is an excuse to get kicked in the nuts. So the people with opinions are the ones who want nothing more than to encourage nut-kicking.
You're probably right, especially since I haven't been to facebook in years and tiktok ever, but there are places like tildes and other curated communities that allow users to moderate by flagging content. I've been a sporadic user there for about two years, and 1) removing any total karma score reduced clout-chasing, 2) having the option to flag something as joke, malice, exemplary, off-topic or 'noise' has really reduced the need for people to engage with nothing but angry ass-blasting, 3) abusive users and persistent trolls do get banned. Not ideal, kinda too big to get a sense of individual people as people, but pretty good. I also wouldn't mind that kind of culture back when I joined Hubski, 'cause jesus christ, this place bordered on unbearable until I blocked a whole buncha cunts.
Got myself another Pfizer. Was the only one under 60 there. Caught myself wanting to work last weekend. That’s a good sign I suppose. There does seem to exist a Law of Continual Work Suck in our household, as whenever I have it easy or good at work my SO has a hard time and vice versa. Right now she’s considering jumping ship.
Tomatos? In. Chilies? In. Pumpkin? In. Will Pumpkin or chilies grow in southern NZ? Dunno, let's find out. Cucumbers? Going in next. I was sent to a course this week, covering ITIL. That was some dry fuckin' content. Passed the exam comfortably, but wow... I spent three days trying to keep my eyes open. NZ held off the strongest Irish rugby team in history to go through to the Semi-Finals of the World Cup. I had money on Ireland winning, they were looking imperious and had been the last 2 years. But somehow we fended them off. I really feel for Ireland. They've made it to the quarter-finals in all but one World Cup, and every time they get beaten. This was the best equipped they'd ever been but the curse remains. I'm going in to town to watch the Semi tomorrow morning 8am kick off for us. Bars are open, though I'm unsure if I want to start my day with a beer. The garden calls to me, afterall.