Hello.

So, if you are amongst the few people who still read this - 'Ello! o/

As the saying goes 'I Still Ain't Ded' BUT I am removing some of my older posts from full on public view to 'followers only'.

No specific reasons.

Life is .. well life finds a way eh?

No I've not met any Dinosaurs lately but tis' (still barely) early in 2024, who knows what might happen ?

I'd like to think I'm beyond capacity for shock and surprise in this reality now and yet ...

Don't mind me just archiving my Mastodon links because the friction of using it is rapidly making me v tired.

My account https://dice.camp/@Faintdreams

Profile page:

Joined - Dec 16, 2022

Pronouns: She/They

LGBTQIA+ - [TERFS! SUCK]

Neurodiverse - I do not follow/allow follows to blank Profiles

As of May 30th  2023 I had 3.k Posts, was following 109 accounts and had 125 Followers.
Just like on Twitter majority of those posts (toots) are reposts and replies.

Pinned post text:

Hello.
Nice to meet you.
I do not follow / accept follows from Blank Profiles.
I have no wish to 'debate' anyone's Human Rights with You.
The Failure mode of Witty is Asshole.
Have a Good Day.

May 2023:

- citycreator.com : isometric little in-browser city building block game

- Musing on Temu, suspiciously cheap (cheaper than Wish.com) shopping app that is being aggressively advertised at me seemingly everywhere online.

- Microsoft decides to just up and stop manufacturing it's ergonomic split keyboard
- US National Eating Disorder Helpline fired everyone after staff Unionised and decide to replace them with a dumb chatbot (not even an LLM) a standard dumb chatbot

- Teens and young adults ages 13 to 26 living anywhere in the U.S. can access the entire collection of e-books and audiobooks from the Seattle Public Library mostly because the Fash book banning is accelerating there.

- The Verge investigates the the odd appeal of absurdly long YouTube videos that play nothing on purpose

-  Sometime this month I looked up my Mother's religion official stance on LGBTQIA+ people.. and found out they simply maintain that they don't exists. Which is ..  HOW??

-  Apparently lots of people over on the service Bluesky (the newest 'replacement' for Twitter' ) are trying to send invites to people on Twitter only to find that the term Bluesky gets instantly deleted and never shows up. So people are having 'fun' trying to obfuscate the term whilst still sending out invites. Bluesky is a Jack Dorsey project (original founder of Twitter) so I am not interested in the service at all.

- Talking of Twitter, several cybersecurity people have noted that they left the service months ago, and deleted all their tweets and recently all those tweets came back. Sooo that's a thing.

- A lawyer somewhere in the US is being investigated and may be struck off because he used ChatGP to source cases that supported his client's case, and didn't disclose that the citations were from ChaptGP. ChatGP being  a LLM, cited cases that do not and have never existed. The Judge in the case is most displeased.

- Microsoft admits that Windows 11 is so fundamentally broken that there are parts of it even they cannot fix.

-  Over the May bank  Holiday weekend all the E-gates being used at every UK airport (and Eurostar) just stopped working. Chaos ensued.

- Darrington Press (the publishing arm of Critical Role) released their first TTRPG original system Candala Obscrua accompanied by an Actual Play mini series.

- Many entertainment sites reported that Disney was going to pull lots of original content that was not available anywhere else off of their streaming services, presumably to avoid paying Residuals to writers/producers/actors. This means that series such as Willow (2023) won't be available legally anywhere despite being less than a year old.

- RIP Tina Turner. what a phenomenal Human being.

- Hasbro announce a 20% price hike on all of their paper books, because they obviously hate D&D fans. At this point just give/sell the IP to someone who actually cares.

- Sony announced the Project Q handheld, because they see how much the Nintendo Switch and Valve Steamdeck are making and decide to copy them, while entirely missing the point of both devices. Most people react with scorn and bemusement and that is even before the retail price has been announced. If it's more than $100 this thing will be D.O.A.

- Someone realises that because of the very precise and copious usages of the term 'Omegaverse' by certain LMM's, that they must have scraped Fan-fiction archives such as AO3 to generate their language set(s).

- Boris Johnson .. I can't even finish this sentence. He continues to be a odious twit.

- Good news. Rolf Harris DIED.

- A survey of modern American children's name frequency, delights everyone by illustrating that people who call their children Maverick are not as imaginative as they think.

- I made and ate cake, it was good. It was Vanilla. I mixed it by hand and all the sultana's sunk to the bottom.

- I ponder getting a T-Shirt that just reads "Because Physics, Bitch!". Then decide I'm not brave enough to wear something like that.

- I ponder weather knitting a sock will drive me further insane, and decide that yes, buying a sock is a much wiser course of action. Well a pair but you probably understood I meant sock plural and not Sock singular.

- Bandcamp - a music service I value highly - was successfully unionised.

- The Teaser Trailer for a new film Creation pisses me off. Mostly because the entire premise is egregiously STUPID.

- RIP Jim Brown actor, and NFL star.

- Sometime this month I learn that zipper pulls have the Zipper Size embossed on the pull tab.

- Added a fried egg to a vegetarian burger bagel, and that was a damn fine idea.

- Disney announce that the Star wars immersive hotel 'Galactic Experience' is closing after less than a year.

- Mastodon suffers a spam-apocalypse. Mostly crypto.

- Someone  over at Metafilter pissed me off by saying that if I didn't want to be exposed to any AI Art / LLM tools I should just stay off the entire internet.  I did not converse with the Idiot.

- Saw the Dungeons and Dragons Honour Among Thieves film, and started having cosplay armour thoughts around the Regé-Jean Page's - Xenk Yendar - Paladin armour, and then immediately dismissed them because I don't go to conventions any more [Covid it still exists!] and me making cosplay armour will lead to madness.

- I lament the fact that I have to decide on something different and interesting to eat ~every day~ in order to have a balanced varied diet.

- TV set that spies on you overtly is announce, 40 thousand people sign up for one because it's 'FREE'.

- Millions of HP printer owners have their device Bricked by an official software update. HP do not apologise.

- Vice.com file for bankruptcy.

- I read the doesthedogdie.com entry for guardians of the Galaxy 3 and OOF never gonna watch that.

- The Eurovision Song Contest 2023 happened in Liverpool UK. Yay! UK was hosting because although Ukraine won last year they can't actually host because of ongoing war with Russia. Sweden won Eurovision.

- The long awaited Sequel to Zelda breath of the Wild is released. I still can't play it due to motion sickness.

- Blizzard announce 'season' details of Diablo 4 which basically mean they expect you to play Diablo like it's your actual job. FFS.

- Refreshed my undercut. Scalp Fuzz Good.

- Genevieve Cogman's book Scarlet (her version of the Scarlet pimpernel) comes out this month in hardback. I will buy it just not sure when.

- I rediscover La Roux. Still bops.

- Hasbro send Pinkertons 'detective' agency to repossess some early release Magic The Gathering cards that a YouTuber legally purchased from a retail store. The PR backlash from this is hilarious and also NOT GOOD. Mostly because people are now aware that THE PINKERTONS STILL EXIST.

- Had a kind of small intervention with my Niece. Seemed to go well. Her father remains a jackass, but is now upgraded to a jackass she must not hesitate to call the police on.

- I watch a single Warhammer 40K video and YouTube recommends me Fash videos for the rest of the month. ::sigh::

- Adobe gonna Adobe and sends cease and desists letters to their own customers who are still using older version of Adobe software that they paid for.

- At some point the US writers strike started?

- The King of England had a coronation but I mostly managed to ignore it. Did mean a single additional (not recurring) Bank Holiday weekend in may thought.

- News reports that a Pod of Orca whales have started deliberately sinking ships. because one of the Orca's was originally attacked.

- I refilled my Fountain pen and again stained my fingers temporarily purple.

- Secret Babylon 5 project announced - it's an animated movie. Unsure if writers strike will mean this ever sees the light of day, but it is finished.

- I discover via a Matt Colville Twitch stream, that Stephen R Donaldson books were never meant to be enjoyed - wish I'd known that sooner.

- Watched first episode of the Amazon original spy drama Citadel (apparently it cost $300 million to produce the six episode mini series) didn't make it to episode 2. Dire

That's it that's all of May 2023

So my 'reading page' only ever seems to go back a month. Is there any way I can increase taht?

Lost my Dreamwidth password and then had to 'upgrade ' (although it's really a  technical downgrade) of my desktop computer and (sigh) yeah.

I've finished a book and want to record that I finished another book, except I last noted what I was reading over on Mastodon - and that has no search facility other than hashtags and I didn't hashtag my book post.

Wait! no I did , but it's so general as to be useless. #Books2023 it turns out is used by lots of people.  Yay Brain.!

[note to self tag all remaining book posts on Mastodon with the following to allow searching for later. #BooksYearFD]

Fucksticks.

So far this year I've read 6 full books, and it would appear that my ability to read long form fiction drastically reduces at the year goes on. Hm.

Book 6 May 29th
Old Man's War: The Human Division by John Scalzi book five in a Old Man's War series (at least book 5 of full stories and not shorts or novellas)

Really enjoyed this although it felt like it had the biggest 'main cast' of protagonists so far.

Book 5 February 11th
Saga graphic Novel Volume 10 Covered ongoing comics chapter/issue 55 -60

Book 4 February 11th
The Worriers Guide to Life bu Gemma  Correll

Book 3 & 2 Jan 17th
Audio books both by John Scalzi The Dispatcher and  the sequal  Dispatcher: Murder by Other Mean

Book 1: Jan 7th
"The Many Deaths of Laila Star"r by Ram V & Filipe Andrade. Beautifully illustrated, captivating and deeply philosophical graphic novel about Grief, the idea of personal legacy and Life itself.

Highly recommend

Recently came across this poem by Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) and I just want to put it here, because it is exceedingly high grade BULLSHIT..

[Text below is Poem's title, click for full poem.]


To which I say (through a megaphone if needs be) BULLSHIT.

If you want to write, or become a writer - then do it.

Don't listen to anyone who says you don't have passion, who claims that you're not an anointed Angel who is chosen by the Gods to be their emissary via text.
Write what you want, When you want, How you want.

Just write.

Gatekeeping. I don't do it.

Always imagined if I was ever lucky enough to be at the start of a Fandom, and saw the narrative adapted to a diff medium, I would be a gracious, welcoming fan - but it's finally happened - and I'm ~not~.

So I won't be talking to new Medium fans cause the ones I meet are mostly entitled Dick's

::Grump::


[Yes I know no Fandom is a harmonious monolith, but for while there I was in an enclave of superb]

I wish the New fans all the best but whoo boy are they tiring..

Happy New year y'all !

I hope you all brought in 2023 surrounded by people you love who love you back, warm and safe.

I spent the last few minutes of 2022 and the first few minutes of 2023 in Animal Crossing: New Horizons with the Boyf, watching the digital fireworks, and it was lovely.

We were also sitting next to each other on the sofa in meatspace - so that was also lovely.

Unless the world vastly improves (or something terrible happens) I fully hope that this years New Years Eve celebrations will be a rinse and repeat.  Once I find a thing that feels nice, I tend to turn into a creature of habit.

It is comforting to know that people who aren't 'too online' actually do realize that the likes of Musk and Zuck aren't the Big Lie they have been selling for years.

"When we think critically about these people, their power evaporates"

 Elon Musk is An Idiot (and so are Zuck and SBF)

-- Money saving expert Money dilemma:

Image description

-This was so funny in context, that I laughed until I was crying. This was so funny in context, that I laughed until I was crying.

- Prefer Phony Stark to Space Karen even though it took me ages to remember it and I probably will forget it unless I tweet it now...

- Seems Phony Stark is already defaulting on some bills/payments due. ".. The company’s philanthropic division, Twitter for Good, has lost many employees and checks promised to some nonprofit groups have not been received, two people said." - NYT article


- Apparently, since D Trump's official Twitter account has been reactivated a lot of accounts have been auto set to Follow his account without the account users knowing or being notified. Best check eh? Then Block just to be safe.

- A 74 long tweet thread? With images in every tweet? WRITE A GODDAM BLOG! ::sheesh:: ::grump::

- As every tweet could be my last one here, I just want it on record that Boyf IS A FREAKING WIZARD AND I LOVE HIM.
W I Z A R D.

- In response to someone asking ' Everyone Post your most salient line of code:
C/C++ = ' // This is a single line comment ' CSS = ' /* This is a single line comment in CSS */ Python & Perl = ' # This is a single line comment ' Java & JavaScript & PHP = ' // This is a single line comment in Java ' HTML = ' <!-- This is a single line comment in HTML --> '

- Have offered to make an article of clothing for Boyf and he has accepted and seems excited about prospect. I too am excite! [It's not a sweater, I've recently learnt about knitters sweater curse I ain't messin with such powerful mojo]


- Why have I never considered that any DIY sewing table should incorporate a slide out / snap out ironing board before? Why brain. WHY? If I ever do get a dedicated sewing space I'mma have the BEST - FRANKENSTEIN's MONSTER - TABLE EVAH!

- Someone who is now cast to play a role in Doctor Who (actor in mid 20's) said in an interview that they were first introduced to, and grew up watching David Tennant as Doctor Who and I just.. ::crumbles to dust::

- Welp, the start of the world Cup in Qatar *did not seem* to hobble Twitter, so maybe it can keep shambling forward a in zombified manner...?

 - Finished another book!
Book ?? Of 2022 Graphic novel Gender Queer. Memoir by Maia Kobabe.
Took me about 40 min to read? 150 ish pages as an ebook. Powerful stuff.

- Things continue to not go well at Twitter; @Kylie Robison states:
"What I’m hearing from Twitter employees; It looks like roughly 75% of the remaining 3,700ish Twitter employees have not opted to stay after the “hardcore” email. Even though the deadline has passed, everyone still has access to their systems."

To which I state: Great google moogly. This will be in business textbooks for decades to come..!

- There are still people who seem to sincerely believe Mu$K is a genius and I just.. ::Firefly confused gif::


- If you follow an Artist / Writer / Creator / Twitter / Maker on Twitter, then while Twitter still exists take a minute to tell them. Show your appreciation while you still can.

- Furiously hugs everyone who wants hugs!! I'mma miss y'all! [I am not going anywhere but the Space around me might]

- Look, it's hard to take any kind of praise, and also am always worried I'll give praise incorrectly. It's hard to be liked and also very hard to tell people you like them! Feel like a inarticulate five year old :C [Made even funnier by the fact irl had a large vocab at age 3]

- No *you're* browsing books on ebay to try and mitigate being upset about the world changing in ways you don't like and can't actually affect. *YOU ARE*

- Boyf recently reasoned that buying second hand books is a good thing to do for the planet. Yesh but I LOVE BEING THE FIRST PERSON TO OWN A BOOK! I'm a terrible, book addicted person. [Ever buy an ex-library book and it turns out, it was never once checked out?] [Hits da spot]




-Hate to be Cassandra but calling it now. Anything International news worthy happens this weekend then this site is dead, done - *flatline* Presuming they *had* some form of Disaster Recovery response in place, most of the People needed to actually act on it - have already left

-Again THIS! Mu$k is systematically destroying a thing he (no one individual) should never have been able to own in it's entirety.

-Is Twitter still defaulting on the loans on it's Interest Payments? Does the HR and/or Accounting part of the company that ensures People/Services/Third parties still get paid - even still exist? Things will go pear shaped real quick if bills don't get paid on time ..

-Just watched the Anime Blame! On Netflix. Lots of style over substance but what a LOT of style. Apparently the original Manga which ran from 1997 to 2004(?) Was *very much* truncated in the 1 hour 20+ min Anime.. Lots of unanswered questions. ..

As the back-end of Twitter (presumably) slowly continues to corrode and crumble, I am relieved to say that I managed to successfully download an archive backup  on November 14th (?)

Howeve, as I continue to sporadically use twitter, I'm adding some backdated tweet aggregates here to try and capture stuff that wouldn't necessarily have been captured by the archive, but are more than retweets of other peoples stuff.   Things I want to remember.

I'm setting the correct dates but setting the time for everything to be 00:00 for that day, and tagging them all Twitter-Backup to make them easy to identify.

I am still not set up on Mastadon or any other site (I have an old Tumblr blog I think) but only because I simply haven't had the spoons to try and jump through all the hurdles required to start pick an Instance, set up a  Mastadon account, and find and follow people

 -"We've fired everyone who knew what they were doing and now we want to rebuild (from scratch) - with a live environment - by hiring people with little to no experience." Who..? What ..? Space Karen really does exist on an entirely different plane to the rest of Humanity..

-I don't mean to be so *Very British* but due to the Qatar World Cup, this year's (2022) Christmas Radio Times magazine *starts* on 24th December. THIS IS NOT IDEAL.

-Are there are any queer, poc, neurodiverse friendly, geek-pop-culture adjacent, mastadon instances ? [I got no helpful answers to this]

- There was a picture response to me inquiring if everyone was getting tweets from Elon in their notifications en mass, but as no-one answered me I guess it's just a glitch that only some people were experiencing. besides, I though I had blocked/muted him years ago..

- And so it begins.. the number of people leaving (or just stopping posting on) twitter and going to services I cannot (or will not) go to, has upped from a drip to a trickle..

-  Etsy.. classic case of harming customers and employees in endless search for 'line go up' unsustainable growth. Etsy recently removed everyones ability to search for items in favour of 'algorithmic' recommendations, meaning you can't exclude keywords for specific searches FFS.
[someone asked me how is anyone supposed to search for anything?]
- You either scroll through everything - or buy one of the recommended items which consist of most of the first few pages of every search. OR Search via Google t

- This might not seem like a big deal, but here's an example for you. Want to buy - let's say - an Adult Bucket hat pdf sewing pattern Except you can't search for that *without also seeing every* child/doll/knitting/crotchet/paper/origami/poster/bucket *also on the site*.

Then go to Etsy from one of thier 'offsite' ads - Wich cost the creators extra money but not Etsy.

- So, it would seem that one *particular* Courier, from that one *Particular* Courier company likes to place deliveries to my house specifically into any Puddles outside. Great. Greeaat.

- Attempting to download twitter archive as I type.. ::fingers crossed::

- I think, I think, I've successfully downloaded the archive ! yay me !

 - Spotted a Baby faced Chris Pine in an old episode of CSI Miami.

- Still mad that Netflix cancelled Sense8 in 2017

- Amused ( and perplexed) that Amazon is resurrecting the recently canceled Australian  Soap Opera Neighbors

-According to Wikipedia, Neighbors (the Soap Opera) ran for 30 seasons and a staggering 8,903 Episodes. That's very close to *Nine Thousand Episodes* (unless my math is very wrong). Perhaps it would be better to just *let it die*

It's been over 24 hours and my requested Twitter archive file is still not available for download. 
I do have an Archive from April this year (2022), but was hoping to get a more recent one.

I don't think I can do anything but wait.

 - It's been over 24 hours and my requested Twitter archive file is still not available. fucksticks
(several people assume me that they did manage to get their archive btu it too much longer than the stated 24-48 hours)

Zoe Schiffer Journalist again reported:
"Elon Musk asked Twitter employees who agreed to click “yes” on a form in the email. Those who don’t by 5PM Thursday will be let go with 3 months severance."

My retort: 
I AM NOT A LAWYER! - *BUT* Asking individuals to accept sweeping changes to their employment contracts in a yes/no button over email seems.. *SUSPICIOUS at best*

Retweeting and quoteing myself:

Faintdreams @faintdreams

·

Nov 18, 2021

And lo we are approaching the season I like to call "Schrodinger's Wishlist" *Especially for books* because books make excellant gifts and so none can be purchased (untill after Christmas) for fear of ending up with a duplicate!

-  Once again we have entered the"Schrodinger's Wishlist" time zone...

- Reading Starfinder for the first time and it has interesting Lore. Can't figure out if idea of 'The Gap' (resetting all non Personal knowledge back to only starting 300 years ago) is intriguing or just the publishers trying to get out from a potentially difficult Canon snarl..

- White Wolf / World of Darkness tried a similar thing by Nuking Thier setting due to very convaluted and contradictory Canon and Back Lore.. but I don't think it was a positive move with (then) playerbase.

 

Finished watching Dead End Paranormal Park Season 2 on Netflix:

- Long Live Captain Angel! (watching Season 1 Start Trek SNW with Boyf)
#StarTrek 
#StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds
#starTrekSNW

-fuxsticks. Ordered a bunch of stuff from a (highstreet retail) company I've not ordered from before, aaaaaand just received a tracking notice from Evri-we-used-to-be-Hermes, letting me know it's on it's way. fuckstix.

 - #Dreamspace She was wearing a dress made of Moonlight and crying a river of Stars. [Writing in my dreams again  :/ ]


- Also discovered that there is a UK company whose entire purpose is making replacement covers for IKEA couches.!

- Genevieve Cogman unveiled the Tor UK Cover for new Book Scarlet - scarlet Pimpernel + Vampires.

- Brushed against a large, open,hardback book and managed to give myself the *deepest* paper-cut across one of my index knuckles and ow, ow ow OW. I like BIG Books and I cannot Lie - but I have fallen in the reading wars ::sob::

Mentalfloss - Why Do papercuts Hurt so much ?

- Zoe Schiffer reorter states: 
"NEW: Twitter is getting ready to announce a massive reorg. The situation is fluid but here’s what we know so far: engineering will be divided into 3 orgs: product, infrastructure, & support. Bluebird & Goldbird are becoming one product org. No more bird names - those are changing"
 
To which I state:
Something, something, arranging the deckchairs, something something.. Titanic.. ?

- I share the image of a New York Public Library Plush called 'Amusable Sandwich' It is furry and a thing of Nightmare Fuel.

- Welp, humanity has reached 8 billion people alive at one time and I guess that's peak humanity so it was fun while it lasted y'all. Apparrently Russia has dropped bombs on Poland and killed civilians so.. yeah.

Huh.

I have forgotten how to do just about everything.

🫤

Much more 'friction' in posting than on Twitter, especially from my phone.

I suspect it will get easier but right now it feels like my blogging brain is full of rust - the oxidzing one, not the programming language one!