Last evening I was headed home from prayer service, and I saw the Alaska range was visible. So I drove up to the lookout point on the west side of UAF and took a few photos with the S5300 and the tripod. I did not do any post-processing of these photos, except that I cropped them to emphasize the most interesting features of each photo.
The ##forth crumudeons were talking about the (supposed) recent decline of writing in books and TV series. One might expect this (supposed) trend to continue, especially if something begins to regurgitate a (supposedly) endless stream of statistically relevant Mammon-enhancing prose. Hence the cringe title of this posting.
I suspect the reliance on machines factor is negligible compared to the too-bad-we-can-no-longer-bring-ourselves-to-say-it gluttony forbid.
But there's nothing new about humanity diverting itself from actual root causes to avoid personal responsibility.
Today is the sixth anniversary of my phlog! For some reason, this year I am totally on top of noticing my various online anniversaries coming far enough in advance that I can prepare a little fanfare. I did it for the fifth anniversary of the Zaibatsu back in March, and I'll do it again in June for the fourth anniversary of Gemini. It blows my mind that I've been active in both gopherspace and Geminispace simultaneously for longer, now, than I was active in gopherspace alone. That doesn't match up at all with how large those times loom in my mind, but I guess that makes sense when we consider how active I was then, and how active I have been lately.
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But, really, these numbers are a silly thing to be paying attention to anyway, and after this paragraph I pledge never to do this kind of tedious introspection regarding my posting rate ever again. Nuts to this! Quality over quantity, for one thing. But for another, looking at the last three years as a unified block of time is severely misleading. I spent a good chunk of that time in a really bad headspace, though that situation was more or less entirely limited to personal use of computers or the internet. That sounds weird, but it's true. My life was otherwise fine, at least as much as life in 2021/2022 was "fine" for anybody. I was fully functional, professionally and privately, I did stuff and and went places and met people and I got plenty out of all that. It was just that most days I genuinely couldn't face the prospect of opening my laptop and checking my email, never mind anything more socially demanding than that. I have, obviously, managed to turn this around of late. I am surprised by how suddenly and with how much enthusiasm I have managed to do this, but it's not at all unwelcome. I'm wary of overdoing it and burning out again, but right now I honestly feel pretty good. I have written more posts in 2023 so far than I did in all of 2022 or in all of 2021, and it's not even June yet. So I don't think my phlog is in terminal decline, far from it. If anything, I feel like it is about to enter a new phase.
The Censorship-Industrial Complex is the new monicker for those sprawling startups in the business of reality-perception curators. Matt Taibbi (et al) just published a top 50 list, out of which only a handful have been dissected here in the media guide (part 4).
But I can imagine the textural real estate being bought back by a proportional font being extremely pleasant to experience.
I'm tired of humanity.
Tired of the news, because it's about humanity.
Except it isn't. It's humanity making up stories about humanity.
That's how fucking pathetic humanity is: that it can't even just say what it actually is and/or is actually doing.
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Gemini has been a little bit of an escape from that. It doesn't seem nearly the incessant barrage of lies. Feels more like accurate accounts of actual daily lives, and the inner worlds going through them.
Regarding the convenience of communication, I too initially found it challenging. My brain, accustomed to the instant gratification of social networks, protested against the leisurely, Ent-like conversations of the Gemini space. I advise you to simply relax and perceive the emptiness of solitude as the cosmos. Distant beacons of gemini-capsules, akin to celestial abodes, eagerly await your messages.
It's rough oscillating between that understanding, and being lost in samsara, so to speak.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
