what i'm reading§
Twilight of the Machines by John Zerzand§
Language is conformist in the profoundest sense; even objective reality yields to its pressure. The so-called factual is brought to dissolution, because it is shaped and constrained by the limits of language. Under its reductive force, we forget that we don’t need symbols to be present to meaning... Primal existence has been ruled irrelevant, and indigenous lifeways are everywhere under siege, because of civilization’s pervasive over-valuation of the symbolic.
I've told multiple people about how anarchoprimitivists wants to abolish written language and everyone seems to have a hard time with that. IDK why because it's literally jsut acweicnqfp034n;ndo.f
"the rise (and fall) of discord"§
This was published just before the current Discord fiasco, and it's worth quoting here at length because it pretty much lays out the stakes:
All the “Discord-only” communities that currently exist will likely disappear, however. And unlike all the dead phpBB forums that nobody uses anymore but are still up for now, dead Discord communities will never appear on the Wayback Machine. A decade or more of the internet’s history gone. Sure, you can’t easily google search the Wayback Machine, but at least it still exists somewhere. Discords? Truly lost forever. Entire hobby communities that spent years of work discussing things, answering questions, a wealth of information… gone.
The above scenario isn’t even fixable anymore. Even if everybody agrees, right now, to switch to non-Discord alternatives, the decade is still gone. The only thing we can hope to do from here is to make sure that when Discord dies, we don’t just have a worse replacement repeat the cycle. And I don’t see one being made right now.
Discord created the last 10 years of the internet. When Discord dies, it will kill them. Arguably, it already has. Will we sit here and let it kill the next 10, too?
what i'm listening to§
Pan Sonic - Kesto (234.48:4)§
A kind soul who shall go unnamed dumped a trove of zipped FLACs into the music channel of a Discord server before canceling their Nitro. The trove included Pan Sonic's Kesto (234.48:4), a body of work I've been meaning to work through for a long time.
I love a textural soundscape with a minimal toolkit.
what i'm watching§
Frogman (2023)§
It's peak
Emesis Blue (2023)§
As far as I can tell there are no academic articles exploring the cultural impact of Source Film Maker. Doing a keyword search for "Source Film Maker" in JSTOR and Academic Search Complete leads to no results. There's a few non-English results on Google Scholar that seem mostly irrelevant-- I even had a friend translate part of a French dissertation to find out it says "SFM exists and people use it to make porn".
Emesis Blue is a feature-length film created entirely in SFM. It has an IMDB page. The internet is flooded in SFM porn. Why has nobody done their master's thesis on it or something? Why are we leaving the plumbing of these aesthetic depths to YouTubers?
Emesis Blue is a lot of aesthetic, vibey nonsense. It's overwrought with dramatic tension: every single character is dramatically betrayed and shot, then inexplicably survives and reemerges later in a twist. There's a lot of pointing guns and cutting to black with a gunshot sound-effect.
It's also a technical marvel. Source Film Maker (SFM) is an infamously clunky medium. The animators of EB manage to squeeze subtle, humanistic movement of a program better known as the medium of porn loops of your favorite cartoon characters and loud meme videos that middle schoolers think are hilarious. The voice work is incredible. Where they can, they've imitated the original voice actors' uncannily well. From the little I know about 3D art techniques, I think they must've done some custom texturing for at least the Medic model based on the level of detail, i.e. in the still used as the IMDB poster.
That being said, it's based on a lot of fan lore and original characters that feels like a lot of fanservice I have no context for. It also feels kind of like an extended joke-- take this famously lighthearted IP and slather it in blood and shadow to make it uncharacteristically grim.
what i'm working on§
Self-hosting a Bluesky PDS§
Bluesky deleted a tweet i made telling "all usamericans [to] kill [themselves]". That's some weak shit. So I'm gonna self-host my PDS. They can moderate me but they can't delete my shit (I think?). Right now I'm stuck on esoteric issues with the plc and I'm a little scared to rip it up and start over cuz I'm worried my data might be caught in limbo? IDK. I need rescued by someone smarter than me.
something i liked§
emails§
I love emails. I've sign up for all kinds of newsletters.
I get newsletters from musicians and record labels. I love ECM Records for its consistency, and Thrill Jockey for its unpredictability. The genres in the last Thrill Jockey newsletter I got swing from modular synth ambient to whatever this is, which is amazing.
I get emails from artists. @throatspit is currently posting pages of a comic they original sent through email over the course of 2024-2025.
I get emails from my local indie cinema. I learn about all kinds of awesome films. They're showing The Moment but I think I'd get hatecrimed for going.
something i hated§
emails§
I hate emails. I've unsubscribed from so many fucking marketing lists.
I have an investment account with the investment firm Vanguard-- the 2nd largest investment firm in the world, but better known as one of the top shareholders in the rail company that slathered biohazardarous freight all over East Palestine, Ohio in 2023. You can spill toxic chemicals over whomever you want-- it's a free country-- but Vanguard has crossed one line too many for me: not including an unsubscribe link in their marketing emails.
It feels like a clear violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, but according to the Compliance Guide, you don't have to include a link. The main guidance reads:
Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting marketing email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity.
"Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity". Are we just jerking our dicks here.
Anyway, in previous Vanguard emails their """unsubscribe policy""" was that you had to email them an opt-out request. As a supreme hater, I did it. The emails continued.
Now, in the latest Vanguard marketing email I received, they've included a "CLICK HERE" link to unsubscribe. It's a mailto: link. They've made their opt-out link a dark pattern.
It's the same delusional horseshit peddled by AI boosters about LLMs 'improving' customer service. Customer service is intentionally bad in order to slow the calving of customers once enshittification is underway. Even when they're not doing regime change and genocide, corporations ratfuck people in a million small ways every day, but they're legally empowered to throw earth-shaking tantrums the second a wrench is thrown into their bottom line.
a picture:§
meatception§
I redesigned my website with my e-ink phone in mind. Here's how it looks now.