I canceled weekly #37 because it was just suicidal ideation. anyway.
what i'm reading§
The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry§
A book club pick. The title and cover are completely misleading. It's about a bisexual witch living a step above poverty who has to take a bodyguarding gig to cover her rent. Then they start getting into some Breaking Bad shit. It's alright.
Technologies of participation§
a history of the symbolic framework for networked computers as a speech system§
[S]ocial media companies, which emerged in the early 2000s, constructed the private architecture of public speech governance. These companies have enjoyed enormous power, able to claim speech rights in one breath and statutory immunity in the next, without any structure of accountability. Thus, implementing Pool’s dream of a liberal, expressivist democracy fuelled the rise of platform companies, which have been engines for libertarianism and, today, authoritarianism—the very political regime Pool fought against.
This article from the Internet Histories journal is a corrective for the history of First Amendment protections on the internet, which (I'm taking the author's word for it) tend to focus on Californian Libertarianism. The author lands on the figure of a Cold War cybernetician Ithiel de Sola Pool, who built on Norbert Wiener's work to theorize that a democratic, two-way communication medium between members of civil society could increase social cohesion. But the author argues that this framework breaks down because the online speech of corporations is granted equal rights to the speech of individuals, leading to the situation described in the quote above.
"Technologies of Participation" on Taylor & Francis Online
what i'm listening to§
lustsickpuppy§
Saw the thumbnail and was like "what the fuck am i looking at. that's awesome". It's LustSickPuppy's opening set for a Machine Girl concert. Couldn't be more blown away by the music. It's awesome.
what i'm watching§
Venture Bros§
Recommendation from a friend. Great background noise while I was repartitioning my laptop to run Arch Linux. Before I even finished Season 1 I turned into a hipster about it, 'cuz I started missing how bad and Newgrounds-y the early episodes were.
something i liked§
KDE Plasma Desktop Environment§
I'm dual-booting Bazzite from a spare hard drive my gaming PC. I figured it's low-stakes enough because all I do is play TF2. But I ended up really liking the KDE Plasma user interface so much that I decided to wipe my laptop and install Arch Linux with Plasma. It's tight. But I changed some of the keyboard shortcuts to try to make them behave more like Windows so it's less of a headache remembering how to maximize windows on different machines, but they just don't seem to work at all now. So that's annoying.
I'm also very much looking forward to Plasma Bigscreen, an HTPC interface for Linux. I love my new TV but if I never had to lay eyes on its Roku interface again I'd love it even more.
something i hated§
11ty rebrands to "Build Awesome"§
Eleventy/11ty is/was the static site library I am/was using for this website. Now it's rebranding under the Font Awesome family as "Build Awesome".
reasons i hate this:
- Vague promises of "Pro" features with no details. Is it ignorable extras like Font Awesome's duo-tone icons or are key features going to be put behind a paywalled API? If I need a token I'm bouncing.
- Font Awesome issued the prolegomenon "We're just 25 people". Don't sell yourself short, Font Awesome!; the executive cabinet of the U.S. government is just 15 people, and they can still get up to some world-historic evil.
- "11ty" sounds like a sleek hacker tool. "build awesome" sounds like the tagline for a Roblox ad campaign.
They've already taken down and re-published their Kickstarter because Gmail blocked their email campaign. Eleventy didn't need campaigns and Kickstarters to get where it is. The whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But I also have a really Freudian attachment to the 11ty developer because of his resemblance to the ex who put me on SSRIs, so my unconscious might not let me let go of it.
a picture:§
