Notes from June 2024
2024-06-01
I injured my ankle yesterday. A dog pulled me and I lost the ground and fell. I can walk, albeit slowly, but driving a car is out of the question for a week, if not longer.
Over two decades ago, blogging (and the Internet in general) was a separate world. You could write stuff about people around you and they wouldn't know about it, thus, creating a safe space. I would even put details that would place me in a certain place at a certain time hoping that someone would read that and think, "Gee, I was there then." Now you write to leave as little details as possible. The safe space was an illusion. We were just too small to matter.
In the end, AI-generated content turned out to be a giant mirror pointed back at us.
Albeit after reaching their goal, but I have pledged support to @mirlo because as a long-time fan of Bandcamp, I was unhappy with the turn of events. I wanted to be a part of the change that I would have wanted to see in the world.
Also, if you're interested in joining, there's still time.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/mirlo/mirlo
2024-06-02
After two years break, I came back to recording CRINGE! playthrough and this time I invited my daughter to co-comment with me.
Cringe! E2M9 (CRING666.wad + D4V.wad): gameplay with two commentators
I have seen "Dune: Part Two," and Feyd-Rautha stood out for me the most. I wasn't into him when reading the book and Sting's portrayal wasn't memorable for me either, but Austin Butler's rendition is really something. I wouldn't want to neither have a life like that nor meet someone like that, but in the movie it works. There is something mesmerising in a beast like that. As if he embodied something archetypical.
2024-06-03
My ankle got better. Ninety-five percent recovery, I would say.
2024-06-04
I am watching "Ozark," and in season 2, Buddy said something that resonated with me. He says at some point that saying "I have no regrets" is just a different way of saying "I'm an asshole." That is an angle I have never seen before.
2024-06-06
As I posted here before, the beauty of a diet is [that] you cannot cheat on it. And I realised that I've been trying recently, so I'm going back to rigour. The only discipline that makes sense is self-discipline.
I went outside and it's hot.
2024-06-07
The best way to stop is not to start, I learned, which is a variant of "the best way to get out is to get out early" that I read in a book "The No-Asshole Rule." If I leave my phone out of reach, I will not spend my time on it.
I decided to go through Bush's discography, and the strangest thing: I found a song which I liked a lot and listened to a lot and even knew the lyrics, but then have completely forgot. "Letting the Cables Sleep." Around that time another two songs were released, with which that one created a sort of my personal trilogy of ballads, the other two being "Take the Picture" by Filter and "Re-arranged" by Limp Bizkit.
An entry from Fesshole
Before going to bed I always turn the TV remote face-down on the coffee table. This is so if our elderly cats were sick on it overnight, it wouldn't be on the button side. Both our cats died months ago, but I still do this out of some sort of act of remembrance. Miss those girls.
2024-06-08
I dusted the insides of my computer.
I realised a while ago that I wanted to see a new kind of movie. New to me. I'm an avid movie watcher aiming at weird movies, so it's not a trivial goal. While watching a short clip about adapting of "House of Leaves" into am movie, I found Orson Welles' "F for Fake" and decided to give it a shot. And I found it interesting. It reminded me a bit of Werner Herzog's document about volcanos. But to the point. When asked about the genre, Welles said it's not a documentary, but a new kind of movie.
A quote from Fallout
"Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time." (The Ghoul)
A quote from Dune
"There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind — we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life — we went soft, we lost our edge."
2024-06-11
I saw Harmony Korine's "Trash Humpers" a while ago, a movie telling the story of a weird gang, which could be either old people (how it was intended) or people wearing old people's masks (how it was shot). To me, in no small part to being shot on an old VHS tape, giving a pseudo nostalgic Backrooms-like vibe, and everybody treating them casually, they were rather like hungry ghosts wandering through abandoned, desolate streets and buildings and interacting with various outcasts.
We went soft, we lost our edge.
Apparently, Orson Welles invented in "F for Fake" a YouTube essay. Fifty years before its time. This shows that one should do what they feel because the recognition might come way, way later.
2024-06-12
I finished "The Fall of the House of Usher" yesterday. Overall, it was enjoyable, but I found pacing to be dragging a little. After the third child, I figured out the pattern, and it took a bit of fun off. Also, despite being gruesome, it's more of a mystery story where I wanted to put pieces together. I suppose, only the jumpscare with the jester was on the scary side. It did, however, inspire me to find and read "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket."
A post from frog mia
chat is this real. chat is anything real. chat can i find truth in this age of lies. chat why do i find myself in a world where the wealth of human knowledge is at my fingertips, and yet the systems by which i access it are slowly withering away. chat was it even real in the first place, what i used to use, what i used to learn from. chat is our species plagued with an incipient rot, tearing apart all which we told dear. chat please answer me. chat please. chat
2024-06-13
Here goes my hubris (potentially). I decided not to use tags and lean solely on being so awesome that the followers will start boosting my posts, which will attract new people to follow who will further boost another posts, and so on, and so on. I tried that in the past, and I ended up with a website that had like four visits a month. And yet, this is who I am. Also, it allows me to weaponize all 500 characters. Otherwise, I would be tagging only shorter posts and that's not fair to the others.
2024-06-14
The <hr> element would be more popular if the default styling had more margin on top and bottom. As is, it's squished between others and it's not an intuitive divider. It's a shame.
That moment when you find your Doomworld post linked on TV Tropes. It was so unexpected. Wow. Let's say I had this on my bucket list without realising it.
Just so I don't lose the track of it easily, here is the TV Tropes page: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Doom. If you scroll to the "Cliffhanger" trope, there is a link to: www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1376566. And that is my post from 9 years ago.
2024-06-15
I saw Mindy Kaling's "Late Night" yesterday. The idea was to see a comedy and the bit on Netflix suggested as much, but it turned out to rather be a drama about comedians, hence, there were funny bits there. It's not a bad thing, just the genre surprised me. It was an interesting story about communication and getting old.
I usually play Doom without pistol start as this gives me a sense of continuity, but I read recently an old post from Reddit that this is more challenging and something clicked in my head, and I realised it's like a heist game because you need to plan your actions carefully. And suddenly, I was sold on the idea. This also made me realise that this way, I can just play selected levels from megawads (because the continuity is gone, anyway). And thus, I found freedom in it.
2024-06-19
A thing I like about the English language is its analytical character. The order of the words in a sentence defines what meaning emerges from them. There is some leeway here, but much less when compared to other languages. Thus, when composing a message in English, it feels more like a functional-programming composition, whereas in more synthetic languages, words rather flow. There is no better or worse solution here, English just has this mathematical accuracy.
The exercise with writing daily notes shows me that it's a bit like with drawing, dancing, or discussing libertarians, and it looks or sounds perfectly in my head, but when poured down on this virtual paper of a Mastodon post, it's as clumsy as fuck. But that's why I should keep doing it, to get better and leave potential readers with a wow impression. Rome wasn't built in a day.
There is a lot of joking and mockery of Americans using seemingly weird comparisons instead of measure units, e.g., "it's the size of six football fields," but it struck me today that's because they're storytellers. I am accustomed to being handed down a value in meters which then I need to translate to something. They skip that step and give the story directly to the reader. Perhaps, if they were using the metric system, they wouldn't have to resort to stories, but still. More cute than lame.
2024-06-22
I stopped using Copilot six months ago and never looked back, and I didn't notice any drop in productivity.
2024-06-24
I realised that when I read something, even the lamest piece of shitposting, I am looking for connection with the author. And that's what lacking in all the AI-generated content. There is no human behind that. There is no connection to be made there. As I read somewhere recently, "Thanks to AI, I started to believe in soul because AI showed me how lack of it looks like."
2024-06-25
I think I got sick.
2024-06-26
I read yesterday that Paramount, the new owner of MTV, evaporated 30 years of news and articles on mtv.com and replaced it with a placeholder for a reality show. I didn't make much of it at first, but commentators called it unprecedented. All lost because the Excel sheet for the next quarter said it was not profitable. Now that I think of it, it feels like a huge decline. I posted before that the Internet already peaked, and it feels like a natural yet sad progression.
2024-06-27
I started paying monthly for Wikipedia. I got an email from them a little over a month ago because I donated in the past, and I was going to do another one-time donation, but the form suggested to pay a smaller amount but monthly. And I thought, "Why not?" I've been using Wiki since the beginning, so I know its worth, and this aligns with my recent donation for mirlo.space. I decided to take a more active part in the Internet/change that I would want to see in the world.
2024-06-28
I feel weird. So I got sick for sure, though, with what, I don't know. After three days, it's getting better, and I don't know if it's just me getting better or all this caffeine and medicine on top of that, but I feel much better, as if I was fully capable, but the moment I try to actually do something, I get the impression of being the dumbest person alive. As if I tried to walk but was stumbling on my first step and falling down on my face.