D&F 11-22-20

Ah the start of my birthday week.

Birthdays aren’t my favorite thing, but this year it’s nice I get to celebrate living another year instead of the holiday wherein the US celebrates our subjugation and theft of land from thousands of nations of indigenous folks.

Fuck Thanksgiving.

I wish we celebrated other fall holidays instead, like solstice or 추석 or even 勤労感謝の日. Plus, Turkey is a low-tier bird. If you’re going to eat a bird, roast a duck.

Feel free to raise a glass to my birth if you’d like to—no sacrifices or animal products required.

Here’s a birthday soundtrack for you:

My plan is to drink a little wine or something outside with a friend, quietly. Alameda county just instituted a 10pm curfew, which I am not sure will be effective in curbing COVID cases. It seems like the jerks who have indoor meals and gatherings will continue to do so. I have a couple friends who are seeing their families during Thanksgiving, but they’ve been quarantining and will do so again afterwards.

I hope this can get better sooner than later, tbh.

Hope you’re staying safe!

Let’s link it up.

Links

• Are your parents boomers? Have you wondered what the Internet might be like for them? Wonder no more. The short version is they see a vastly different internet than most of us, with a strong and upsetting trend towards right-wing misinformation from all sorts of shitlords. Instead of keeping the previous generation from installing spyware and malware from email links, it is now a responsibility of their kids to keep them from fully joining the death cult.
• I got my new M1 Mac this week, and it’s so, so fast. I wrote a bit about it on my site, but the short version is it does everything my old computer does faster, and with a significantly lower power requirement. Because of the redesign of Rosetta to be a translation layer, things even run faster through it too. I get the sense there will be a few months between now and when all apps are updated for Apple Silicon, but something like 90% of what I use is already there.
• Do you feel a little lost in the surreality of the modern internet? Here’s a travel guide. We’ve come a long way since BBS and alt.mac communities, and I’m curious to see if we move back into a world more focused on small private communities instead.
• Maybe we’ll print out zines again instead. Who doesn’t wish there were more issues of Mean Dyke? What about Camp Trans? There’s so much more awesome stuff out there, and much like Geocities, I love seeing wild creations of folks not limited to 280 characters or being responded to by folks who don’t bother to understand nuance.
• Pour one out for a website that was too expensive, but I still browsed through occasionally in fits of capitalist pique.
• We may not be able to travel right now, but we can go back in time a little and view Tokyo through one man’s camera. It’s fascinating to see how little parts of Japan have changed since the 80s.

In Closing

Listen to some calm music:

Love yourself and your friends.

Get real, real cozy.

I’m talking wool and nog. Candles and cats. Fireplaces, trees, baking a pie. This is truly the best season or hunker down and stay safe. I want to see all of your shining faces next summer.

I spent a lot of Saturday talking with my friend Lena on a hike about getting older and learning to appreciate who we are at our core. Her friendship continues to be such a boon. I hope you have a close pal you can just be yourself with over the phone, on a walk, or even as a partner.

Make something this week that smells amazing, space cowgirls~