Month: July 2023

Errands complete

The following is from ivie-online on tumblr and explains some of the enshittification of the contemporary internet

 

 

– so between 2014-2016 facebook launches a massive ‘pivot to video’ campaign to draw media orgs to their video-based features. zuckerberg’s doing rounds, saying that in the near future, newsfeeds will mostly be video, and that video is the future of media. to back this up, they release tons of wild viewership metrics for ads on facebook, enticing advertisers to prioritize video, and as a result, the media that relies upon advertisers for funding began to do the same.

– this had an industry-wide impact, and media orgs, from established news, to humor websites, to smaller creators, fire writers and those primarily focused on print, and direct resources to their video creation efforts.

– around 2016, it’s revealed that facebook completely fabricated their original numbers, likely inflating them between 150-900%. additionally, their viewership metric considered 3 seconds of a person watching to be a ‘view’ (whereas youtube had a 30 second requirement for the same metric).

-Having totally restructured in order to pivot to facebook video, many media orgs were unable to recapture hard won (and sometimes decades old) audiences. College Humor, Funny or Die, MTV News, Vice, Mic, and Vox were among those that were seriously impacted.

– after a 2018 class action lawsuit, facebook (who maintain that the whole ordeal was caused by a simple error in calculation) was made to pay 40 million in damages, which 1, is a paltry sum when we consider the 22 billion they made in profit that same year, and 2, does nothing to bring back the jobs, audiences, and media orgs they destroyed. to make matters worse, many still posit that it was never the public, but rather advertisers that preferred video over text, meaning that facebook intentionally deceived everyone involved specifically to secure more advertising dollars. so yeah, fb is evil and… probably should be stopped

mornings like this

I’m really not very communicative because I’m really preoccupied with stuff in real life.

I have to work on a Katie etc family project (the garage sale) with basically all of my spare cycles until pretty much the end of the month, so I’ll be providing updates but not much else most likely.

I’m getting extremely positive feedback on advice I’m giving to younger women with ADD and other parents and you know what? I am fucking awesome, and a river to my people.

Dishwasher’s running, laundry sitch now critical, have to run errands for the garage sale today.

For you mom

Circular needlework showing Bayeux tapestry style characters and buildings, and in Bayeux style lettering says Behold the field in which I grow my fucks lay thine eyes upon it - and thou shalt see that it is barren

There are many versions of this but one of my filkacqs received this from a loved one and JUST YESTERDAY I was talking to you about that, so funny coincidence.

Ran over to help Keith do Alex coverage, we played games and watched part of a movie and I asked him to name all his family and that was VERY INTERESTING as a window into his mind. Also meltingly sweet.

When I was done, Paul was done with his errands so I picked him up and watched him throw his prescriptions into the trash. I briefly lost my cheese and then one of the gaggle of Desi girls who works at the Tim Hortons he was sitting in front of came out with the key and helped him get it out of the trash.  Honestly her kindness made my day.

Lovely wide-ranging phone call with Dave yesterday. He’s doing okay, it’s been hella hot in the Tdot.

Got both mOm and pOp on the phone yesterday. That was an unexpected happy note in my day.

Working on a new tune on the uke. Plugging away at both current writing projects. Must do laundry today.  Summer service at John H’s tomorrow – Keith’s going early to help Marilyn (they were in Philosopher’s Café together) set up chairs.

Offered Buster many options this morning but what he really wanted was snuggles from yours truly, so that was sweet. Then he went out into the kitchen and catched treats without training. He is a cat.

Love and soft hugs and warm thoughts for all 8 of you, my dear consistent readers. If you have grandchildren, I hope you take a minute to enjoy them. I enjoy mine. And my oldest child is 37 today, and he wants media. I will see about it.

were you born in an agricultural outbuilding or what

Picture shows a drawing of the traditional white Jesus fallen across a stone and splaying out his hand to ask 'why?' Text: Mom: SHUT THE DOOR, WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN? JESUS: picture as described

it’s like he’s saying WTF MOM I had nothing to do with that. Raywat Deonandan reposted that on twitter. I still go there, but bluesky, the TWITTER KILLER, (actually the smug social media dwarf kicking its immense moribund corpus) is SO MUCH FUN. It’s like early twitter and I am having a complete blast with the freaks, geeks, artistes and trans people. I have had more positive interactions there than on twitter and I only just joined and have hardly any followers.

It’s Raywat that got me writing about Guyana. LOL These foolish things. And the more research I do the more I get wrong. I mean, once I went to Iceland and learned JUST HOW BARREN THE RING ROAD IS I went back and rewrote Iceland scenes with that knowledge.

Pics as promised

Okay this one is not promised but I think my characterization of my mammogram as a ‘tittysmash’ appointment is CLASSIC.

I had literally just jumped out of the shower and not brushed my hair, but the all black outfits with Astronauts on them is pure fam and I make no excuse. Mine says “Earth to the Dandy Warhols” and Alex’s says Off to Space.

Barkeep, he seems to be saying. The soother comes into and exits his mouth on the basis of some arcane baby logic. He is STANDING ON THE CAT TREE which is lying on the ground because he kept climbing it. The cats KEITH VERY SAD have gone back to their original keeper.

 

Ryker equals Taz

Yesterday I helped out at my daughter’s place while my co-grandma-in-law Suzanne had an appointment, so I got to ‘care’ for Ryker. (By which I mean chase around the busiest toddler in 10000 years of human history.) He is 1.6 years old and can open doors already – that’s how tall he is.

Suzanne hung around for a while to transition the care over and I sat in the living room, touched my chest and said, “I’m GG”. (He knows who I am but he’s a human being and I was trying to be polite.)

A minute later he walked over to me, touched my chest, and softly said “GG”. Suzanne saw. I didn’t cry but it was a near thing. He used that name another time but I didn’t hear.

He is so close to talking in full sentences that it’s wonderful, and he puts two words together all the time – but he still uses baby sign for more – I was feeding him a cut up peach. Munch shudder munch shudder stuff munch shudder. It was hilarious.

When he was hungry, he climbed a bar stool -honest to god I was in the same room but not fast enough – and LAUNCHED HIMSELF into his ‘food appreciation chair – without toppling it, mostly because I finally found the JATO bottle and ‘hit it’ – arriving at the chair in time to ensure he didn’t fall off the FRONT of the chair.

In other grandson news, Alex and I were both wearing astronaut t-shirts and Suzanne got a pic (not available yet) and I got to watch Alex lovingly and appropriately interact with his brother (including carrying him out onto the deck so he could continue his passionate and one-sided love affair with the recycling truck) and okay, now I’m crying in earnest.

Ryker can also watch ‘Bluey’ (a recommended kids show, if you want to make your great grandchildren happy hint hint have some of it downloaded so they can watch it.) For twenty minutes at a time. He absolutely loves it and dances to the theme song. WHILE he’s jumping all over his mommabear’s bed. He fell off twice and walked it off. Fearless and self-soothing. TERRIFYING in other words.

AND I got to watch Alex playing a game, Carrion on Steam. It’s a pixellated horror side scroller and ‘not appropriate for my age’ as Alex sagely observed, playing the monster and casually eviscerating the security guards at the research facility. pOp, it would make you happy. I took my eye off Ryker for TWO FREAKING SECONDS (I was talking to Keith, who had just returned from Seattle and a visit to Hank and Janice and Laura with Paul) and he’s IN his brother’s room IN the computer chair (Keith says he has a thing for computer chairs) and PUTTING THE FUCKING HEADPHONES ON. He is the ultimate monkey. His new nickname is Taz, for the WB Tasmanian devil.

Jeff bought me a delicious chicken salad from White Spot yesterday. Honestly it’s one of the best I’ve ever eaten and packed with noms. And the air conditioning works, so again, thank you Jeff for picking out one of the most durable wheeled air-conditioning units ever sold. It was so hot the crows perched with their mouths open.

Jeff and Buster went for a walk this morning, I should find out how that went.

huzzah times four

The cone is off.

Buster immediately did two things; scream at the door (Jeff’s not letting him out yet) and insist on training. That was pleasant.

I had home made ramen for breakfast – I made it lunchtime yesterday. Soup has such a mollifying quality to it. Ingredients: 2 litres of low salt chicken broth, two teaspoons of veggie soup stock, one teaspoon of hoisin sauce, one teaspoon of sesame oil, fresh parsley, sautéed garlic and onions, organic ramen noodles. (SO GOOD).

I’ve done my brain exercises. I still have a brain, it’s doing okay, I even got two top five scores for the first time in what feels like months. So whatever weirdness was happening seems to have lifted a bit.

Off this afternoon to mind Ryker for three whole hours. Alex has been abjured by his mommabear to assist me because I’m ‘worried I might do something wrong because I don’t have enough practice looking after him.’

 

well wow

ParticularSummer6019 on reddit ran ‘the opposite of the star spangled banner’ through chat AI and this is what happened. It’s doggerel, BUT WHAT DOGGEREL

Oh, the shadows we cast in twilight gloom
At the land that divides us, our hearts find no room
The stripes of discord, the fields of disdain
We March to the dissonance, a fractured refrain.

With no gleaming stars, just darkness above,
No unity we find, no binding love.
Where freedom falters, and justice bends,
In this shattered land, our hope descends.

The flag of division, we unfurl high,
A symbol of discord, where truth and trust die.
No land of the free, no home of the brave,
Only chains of discord, a nation enslaved.

Happy 4th July

so sad for Buster

The cone doesn’t actually come off until tomorrow morning. After the cone shenanigans when he was neutered, Jeff with my cooperation is being a stickler for following the vet’s instructions. Sutures are out at least so he’ll be less itchy. He healed like a total champ.

Here’s an interesting article about Indigenous accomplishments in Australia, dating all the way back to the dreamtime.

I’m helping look after Ryker tomorrow.

I won’t talk about it in public, but I did something very stupid yesterday and made myself barf again. Jeff knows about it.

Booked a mammogram for August. Still have not been able to get hold of the doctor’s office but hopefully they’re open today.

so happy for Buster

Today’s the day! CONE COMES OFF, STITCHES OUT. … also today I phone the doc’s office and ask why the fuck she didn’t email me my requisition which she said she would do on the phone during our last appointment.

Three months of rent cheques off to the landpeer this am.

Feeling pretty good, except my nose is running. The grass pollen is insanely high.

Still plugging away at TB (65K words and NO SIGN OF WRAPPING UP) and Handyman Special (12902 words DITTO)

a little context

Across the planet, police unions are more openly detaching from the justice systems they are embedded in. Case in point.

four continuous days of rioting in France after the police kill a young protester. A library (god damn it) is on the casualty list, as it was burned down.

Here’s the translation of a joint communiqué by UNSA and Alliance Police Nationale, the two main police unions in France. Translation provided by Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand on twitter).

“Now that’s enough… Facing these savage hordes, asking for calm is no longer enough, it must be imposed! Restoring the republican order and putting the apprehended beyond the capacity to harm should be the only political signals to give. In the face of such exactions, the police family must stand together. Our colleagues, like the majority of citizens, can no longer bear the tyranny of these violent minorities. The time is not for union action, but for combat against these “pests”. Surrendering, capitulating, and pleasing them by laying down arms are not the solutions in light of the gravity of the situation. All means must be put in place to restore the rule of law as quickly as possible. Once restored, we already know that we will relive this mess that we have been enduring for decades. For these reasons, Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police will take their responsibilities and warn the government from now on that at the end, we will be in action and without concrete measures for the legal protection of the Police, an appropriate penal response, significant means provided, the police will judge the extent of the consideration given. Today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in resistance and the government will have to become aware of it.”

The original document, in case of dispute.

Isn’t that nice? Not only do they want to kill protesters with impunity, they want the government to sanction it. I note the use of the word ‘savage’ which is global code for either Indigenous or brown. Christ wept. You may note some other locutions as being a veritable symphony of dog whistles for the racist & xenophobic hard right.

This is not the last time we’re going to see police unions pull shit like this.

For the last time: the police are public servants. If they don’t act or talk like it FIRE THEM