Category: whatever

I started watching the new Daredevil: Born Again series on Disney Plus. I loved the Netflix DD series. I have watched three episodes, weeks ago, and I feel no need to watch the rest. Which is weird, because not only is it great, but DD is my favorite Marvel character. Charlie Cox does an incredible job as Matt Murdock/Daredevil.

I’m sure that eventually I’ll watch it. This is not confined just to this show. It is almost any show on TV. I watched a couple of episodes of Andor. It was great. I never finished it. The list goes on.

I think there are a couple of things going on. First, over-saturation of the nerd media market. There’s just too much. Way too much. Second, I have my own creative endeavors and hobbies. I prefer to use my the precious few hours of my precious short lifespan to do those things rather than watch shows. This weekend I listened to a lot of music while I did some writing. When I was too tired to write last night I watched Aliens (for the 5 millionth time) on Blu-Ray. Watching something for the 5 millionth time is comforting. It’s still great but the fatigued brain doesn’t have to keep up with a lot of new stuff.

Honestly, the same thing is happening in most areas of interest, I think. In skateboarding you can watch completely nuts skateboarding 24/7 and never watch the same clip twice. All stuff that normal humans will never be able to and really why would anyone want to. I have no desire to launch myself down a set of 20 stairs, which is actually pretty tame compared to some of the daredevil shit going on now. It’s boring and not relatable. I always love seeing my friends skating. But that’s it. Even pretty tame stuff, like some kid learning a new freestyle trick — I’ve seen it all before. Not interesting. Don’t care. When I was 14 I didn’t try to force the whole world to watch my learning process.

Even with tabletop roleplaying games you can swim in the sea of new material, thoughts, opinions, and and media all day, every day.

In each of these areas I find myself reducing my circle of contact. Tighter groups. Fewer websites. Less social media.

I’m working from home today.

I had a pretty good workout at aikido last night. Enough to make me sleep really well, though I am a bit tired. So it’s nice to be at home, getting some work done, without the noise of the office  all around me. Sitting here on the couch while my wife runs some errands, with the dog and cat in here asleep. No TV on. Nice weather outside so the door to the patio is open. Peaceful. Easy to relax and get some things done.

The war against people working from home is bullshit. If people can work from home once or twice a week I think it is good for their mental health. It’s great to be able to get a load of laundry done during your work day. It’s nice to take five minutes too write a blog post or play with your dog. It’s nice to not have fluorescent lights assaulting your eyes all day. It’s nice to not have to rush out of the house in the morning and face traffic. Most of all, it’s nice to not have to “perform”, turn on the extrovert disguise, or otherwise meet the social expectations of the office once or twice a week. Even if you like your coworkers and your job, which I do,  everyone can sometimes use a break.

It’s Wednesday evening.

Work at the public library has been rewarding this week. Taught a Resume Design class last night at Workforce Solutions, which is really the Texas Workforce Commission. The people were nice, engaged, and appreciative, and we love doing that kind of work. For the people I work with creating a good resume is not a hard thing, but honestly for many people it isn’t easy and they can use the help. So we help. Being a public librarian makes me feel good every day.

My spouse has been sick with a stomach virus but is on the mend, but I’ve stayed home from Aikido this week to give her help at home after work and let her get the rest she needs.

I’ve been working on my Traveller RPG campaign in the evenings. That has been fun. Looking forward to playing in March, when we will revive our long-running campaign that has been dormant for the last year due to people moving and other examples of life getting in the way.

Saturday I’ll be interviewing someone for my Traveller podcast. Looking forward to that.

Found out today that a dear friend is looking at some serious health problems. Not happy about that.

That’s all.

Dear Jeff Bezos,

Go fuck yourself to death.

That is all.

Yes, it’s time for yet another weekend report.

Twas a busy but good weekend.

Saturday: Aikido practice (2 hours), nap, lunch, drove to Fort Worth to see our friend John’s band play. Great show. Having talented friends is really a good thing.

Sunday: Breakfast with friends William and Katie, then we played D&D all afternoon.

Tomorrow the War on Ignorance continues.

OK, it was a pretty normal weekend. Walked the dog. We have been watching a lot of MST3K on Twitch since the Orange Shitbag took office. There’s only so much chaos we can take.

We had a fun D&D game on Sunday. We’ve been playing almost every Sunday afternoon, and it has been nice for everyone to escape into a world where you can actively seek out and kill evil.

Aikido for two hours on Saturday morning is really good but also very taxing. I’m in good shape now, but truth is I am 60 years old now and I just can’t run myself as hard as I did 10 or 15 years ago, but I still try, and it’s keeping me kind of depleted. Practicing on Monday and Wednesday nights until 8:30, then Saturday 10am-noon, plus full time work, plus maintaining the rest of life is a lot. And I haven’t been been skateboarding in weeks. And I’ve not been reading. So I need to find a new balance for some of these things. Reprioritizing things. I want to have more energy to do fun things with my wife, to help with some of the meal planning and cooking, etc.

I know that the winter is not helping. Gray, wet, cold days are a bummer, and they seep into the brain. It’s not good. I must also admit that as devoted as I am to the idea of not letting the activities of Orange Shitbag and his dirtbag henchmen ruin my/our life, the feeling of chaos in the country is hard to escape. It creates a background haze of anxiety even when you aren’t paying attention. When you do “tune in” for a few minutes a day to make sure everything hasn’t been destroyed yet (why? I don’t know, because there’s not a fucking thing I can do about what’s going on except carry on being a reasonably good person) the background anxiety leaps to the foreground. Also not good.

My wife asked me over the weekend how to use RSS feeds to follow blogs. She want to spend more time reading blogs and actual quality websites than using social media, which I think is a good idea. Thinking I might offer to do a quick n dirty webinar for friends  who want to see how it works. Might help people escape the shit silos.

That’s all for now.

Every cute pet pic posted on the internet diminishes the powers of evil.

While the country continued to slide into a Chaotic Era (thank you, Three-Body Problem), I continued to do my best to ignore it. While maintaining some understanding of what is getting fucked up, and what I need to watch out for (though there’s not much I can do about anything), I am also safeguarding my mental health, which I’ve worked very hard for several years to regain. I have people depending on me – important people – and I’m not going to let the current situation give me a stroke. I am needed, and I’m going to be here — fully here — for them.

We are all in this together. Now as always we have to be there for each other.

So – yesterday I had a nice 2-hour aikido practice. Felt good. Then I came home, had some lunch, took a nap, then we took our sweet little sheltie dog for a long-line walk up at the local university. People love to see him and he loves to meet new people. Then a relaxing night at home. I started working on a simple CSS stylesheet and page design to which I’d eventually like to move this blog. That will be a long project, and I’m not in a hurry. Not trying to do anything fancy. Much the opposite. I want a a very simple blog, written by hand, on a static site that can be easily relocated.

Today – another nice walk with the dog and coffee, then we played D&D for a few hours.

For me that’s a good weekend. Enjoying my friends, my wife, our dog and cat. That is more than enough.

Not going to look at the news for the rest of today, and not going to look at it tomorrow (Monday). Gotta manage my intake of lunacy.

Oh, I found this blog post over the weekend that I found very insightful, about the nature of the “real” internet (my words) and versus the corporate “net”.

As I’ve written about extensively here, I’m moving all my creative output and a lot of my communications off of social media platforms.

Here are some issues that have come up with moving one of the two Facebooks skateboarding groups I am involved with off Facebook…

Over the last few weeks we’ve been moving Neverwas Skateboarding off of Facebook and onto its own blog with links to associated accounts and services. For example, we are no longer going to host our yearly videos on YouTube. We have a PeerTube set up. This is the direction we’re moving.

The biggest reason for this change is the acceleration of changes for the worse on the various Meta platforms. My own personal feed is now full of actual propaganda clickbait. I mean FULL of it. I understand the need to generate adverting revenue, and I can accept seeing ads on the page. What I can’t tolerate are images, posts, and reels about Elon Musk, Zuckerberg and his new buddy Dana White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and other people I detest. Reels about “how to get women”, “why the bible is wrong (inserting some super wacky shit)” are common. But the overall tone of what I am shown has changed dramatically to the “let’s get him mad so he’ll click this” manipulation.

But beyond that fact this all this bothers me, it is pernicious and harmful to society.

So yeah, it has been bad for a long time. It’s worse now.

As a group, the admins of Neverwas decided we could  not ethically keep the group on the platform. Yes, some of us as individuals have not completely extricated ourselves from Meta. But we can move the group.

Beyond our newfound contempt for Meta and the big social media silos in general (I shouldn’t speak for everyone, so let’s call it MY contempt), the main admin and I know there is a better way forward. A way that is more true to the way skateboarders used to do things. Flexible, non-corporate, grassroots, decentralized systems. No, we can’t have our own actual internet infrastructure that transmits data, but we can run our own installations of Mastodon, PeerTube, etc. We can host the blog on an ethically run small company’s system. If that company goes belly-up or sells out, we can easily transfer our pages to a new host.

This is all part of the IndieWeb philosophy – which harkens back to the early web, the pre-social media web. The web on which I ran Bob’s Trick Tips years ago. It’s just a better way to do things.

In moving the group to the blog, we spelled out very clearly our stances on a few things like homophobia and transphobia (and hate), MAGA extremism, and pervaders of conspiracy theories. Those ideas are not welcome in the group. We’ll not platform someone just in order to appear tolerant. Private groups do not owe anyone a venue to espouse their beliefs. It was felt best that the group, moving forward, be clear about the overall inclinations of the members. We all have different religious beliefs, various political persuasions, etc., but we all draw the line on these topics.

This has upset a few people in the group, who have left. They felt targeted. I’m not happy about that. The various ethical stances we have taken on the blog’s “Ethos” page are a direct reflection of the reasons we are leaving Facebook and Meta, not a targeting of individuals.

As I write this, today on January 20, 2025, there is a good chance an executive order will be signed by the new President that dehumanizes trans people in the eyes of the federal government. Make no mistake. Under the guise of some sort of  logic, such things are intended to dehumanize one group and please those who don’t want them to exist. So yes – we have stated our position as the admins of the group. If you disagree with that position(s), you may not be a good fit for this group.

All that being said, we don’t even have a “space” dedicated to the discussion of politics and social issues. And we never will.

Personally, there are a few people who may not wish to stay associated with Neverwas because they don’t like the way we are doing things, but who I still like quite a lot. People with good hearts who view the internet as a place for not just discussion but debate. To them I say — I still love you – but NW is not going to be a place for debate. There is nothing unethical about a group stating its ethics, be it a skateboarding group, club, or religious organization.

In all of my hobbies, skateboarding, blogging and web development, tabletop role-playing games, nothing that’s actually interesting is coming from a huge companies. All of the cool stuff is coming from very very small companies or just simply individual enthusiasts.

It has been snowing here in the Dallas area for a couple of days. Not a huge amount, but enough to make the streets icy.

I generally hate cold weather and snow, but there is one thing I love about snow. When it snows or we have ice, it is super quiet outside. Hardly anyone is driving. The drone of air conditioners disappears. Even the sounds from the freeway about two miles away is lessened significantly.

Snow days are the quietest days in Dallas.

I’m composing this using voice dictation, so I’m sure there will be some mistakes. Tonight I watched the old Hammer horror film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Slight spoiler. The monster isn’t actually from Hell.

The movie stars Peter Cushing, so you know it’s going to be pretty good just because he’s in it. While not particularly terrifying, the movie does take place in an insane asylum. So the depiction of seriously mentally ill people in this old horror film was pretty interesting.

This is the kind of film I would’ve watched on a Sunday afternoon when I was a kid. I’m surprised I’d never seen it. It would’ve seriously disappointed me. However tonight I was not disappointed, but delighted