KD^3C^3 - 20260719 I like a place where the furniture's identically matched
In grad school I went to a local renaissance fest and I decided I wanted to dress up. Going to ren fests in costume is always fun, although I don’t do it often enough to have anything ready to go for the task. But I do have an 18 foot long scarf, lovingly made by my sister and matching the pattern of the one worn on screen by Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor on Doctor Who. With some creativity, I pulled in other pieces of clothing to match (or at least vaguely resemble) other aspects of the Doctor’s outfit in different forms. I had the scarf, a straw hat vaguely reminiscent of Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor, a long coat like the 10th (David Tennant) and a jaunty cravat like the one worn Colonel Baker’s 6th Doctor. And to top it off I pinned a stalk of celery to my lapel like Peter Davidson did in his time as the 5th Doctor. I might have carried an umbrella, but I don’t actually remember. I also wore a vest. I don’t recall a doctor who wore a vest (at least at that time) but it seemed to cut the vibe. This Amalgamated Doctor worked well enough; at least one person asked me about my blue box, and I got compliments from others. It was a fun time.
As me and some friends wandered around the fairgrounds we came across a leatherworker’s stall. There were dozens of very nice objects, but I was immediately entranced by a book with a hand stitched leather cover with the words “Don’t panic” in large friendly letters on the front. As a sci-fi inflected character it seemed like it was meant to be for me to pick up my very own copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yes I know those are different franchises, and I also don’t care. I didn’t care then and I still don’t care now.
I’ve only ever been a dabbler in blank books. I don’t really journal (unless you count this thing here) so I never know what to put in a blank book I have filled a few when trying to bullet journal, but I never got that system to work for me, and when I’ve played around with drawing it’s been nice to have a single e volume where I could see what I;ve worked on.
But my Don’t Panic book got used as a media log. I would write down everything I watched or (or read?) in it with a little note, and maybe a five star rating. It was fun, although I only dd it for a few months. But eventually, I switched to a website called Get Glue, which has since shut down. Which means all the logging of tv shows I did there got lost like tears in the rain. Of course I’m not really sure where that Don’t Panic book is now, but I have a better idea of how to find out, and I know it likely still exists, which is at least a little bit better.
After Get Glue, I switched to Letterboxd, not immediately, so there was a gap of. few years where I watched things without creating any sort of record (again, besides the occasional “what I’m consuming” section of this newsletter, back when it had sections.) But I did eventually sing up for letterbox, because I knew people there. It was a space for community and watching movies near my friends. I made lists, a d checked my stats, and even got a paid membership because I wanted to support the project.
Letterboxd is probably going to be sold. By which I mean one group of investment bros is going to sell the website to a larger, company that is also full of investment bros.
I control my own social media space, as I’ve talked about before. I don’t own the hardware (although I would like to) but I pay for the hardware I’m using and I have complete control over the software I’m running. I don’t actually know how to fully use that control, but I also don’t know how to fix an internal combustion engine, and that’s never stopped me from owning a car.
I switched away from corporate social media slowly, but over the course of a few years And it’s been close to a decade now since I have been mostly in non-corporately owned online spaces. But that does make me more aware of the spaces I am in that I don’t control.
I use discord, but I don’t really like it. I don’t think it does much of anything that I couldn’t find elsewhere, but it’s where people I know are, and the advertisement hasn’t gotten so ridiculous that I’ve been compelled to leave. This newsletter is on a domain I don’t control, and I worry about that every time I send a letter. I have backups of everything saved locally, for that very reason.
I’ve looked into ways to take that control back. I know how to set up a matrix server, I kind of know how to set up an email server, but that’s basically impossible for someone of my very limited skillset. I know how to host a spreadsheet where I can track the movies I watched.
But the thing is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to know how to do that. I don’t want to do that. Setting up GoToSocial was a fun little experiment when it was a $5 monthly turnkey service, but it’s not that anymore and I’ve had to learn more about how things work. I just want a website that doesn’t participate in a genocide and where I can talk to my friends where what I say isn’t harvested for advertising or for feeding into the plagiarism machine that spurs global warming.
I remember when tumblr banned “female presenting nipples” and a lot of people fought back, and a much smaller number of people stuck around. And the website itself got passed around to a bunch of different owners and did nothing but lose value. And that’s funny.
But for some reason the venn diagram of people who know how to build and run this sort of website and the people who are so capitalism brained that they chase infinite growth instead of making something that just works and is sustainable is almost just a circle. There are edge cases, but those are the weirdos.
But we don’t get that. The internet is mostly 4 websites which post screenshots from the other websites. There are people who made the internet worse. They have names and addresses and bad haircuts. They exploited you and me and that gave them money and leverage over the people who wanted to make things better, because making things better does not make them more money.
I'm tired boss.
So will I leave letterboxd? Maybe. Maybe I'll switch to neoDB, which is the fediverse version. And building on a protocol like Activity Pub is. a good thing, open can't be bought by tech bros, because it's feasible to spin up your own version and keep all your stuff. But mostly I'm tired of having to do it. Either Way I'm not jumping ship immediately, but I am keeping a close eye on the life boats.
Maybe I'll just buy another blank book, write Don't Panic on the cover, and see where that takes me.
As me and some friends wandered around the fairgrounds we came across a leatherworker’s stall. There were dozens of very nice objects, but I was immediately entranced by a book with a hand stitched leather cover with the words “Don’t panic” in large friendly letters on the front. As a sci-fi inflected character it seemed like it was meant to be for me to pick up my very own copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yes I know those are different franchises, and I also don’t care. I didn’t care then and I still don’t care now.
I’ve only ever been a dabbler in blank books. I don’t really journal (unless you count this thing here) so I never know what to put in a blank book I have filled a few when trying to bullet journal, but I never got that system to work for me, and when I’ve played around with drawing it’s been nice to have a single e volume where I could see what I;ve worked on.
But my Don’t Panic book got used as a media log. I would write down everything I watched or (or read?) in it with a little note, and maybe a five star rating. It was fun, although I only dd it for a few months. But eventually, I switched to a website called Get Glue, which has since shut down. Which means all the logging of tv shows I did there got lost like tears in the rain. Of course I’m not really sure where that Don’t Panic book is now, but I have a better idea of how to find out, and I know it likely still exists, which is at least a little bit better.
After Get Glue, I switched to Letterboxd, not immediately, so there was a gap of. few years where I watched things without creating any sort of record (again, besides the occasional “what I’m consuming” section of this newsletter, back when it had sections.) But I did eventually sing up for letterbox, because I knew people there. It was a space for community and watching movies near my friends. I made lists, a d checked my stats, and even got a paid membership because I wanted to support the project.
Letterboxd is probably going to be sold. By which I mean one group of investment bros is going to sell the website to a larger, company that is also full of investment bros.
I control my own social media space, as I’ve talked about before. I don’t own the hardware (although I would like to) but I pay for the hardware I’m using and I have complete control over the software I’m running. I don’t actually know how to fully use that control, but I also don’t know how to fix an internal combustion engine, and that’s never stopped me from owning a car.
I switched away from corporate social media slowly, but over the course of a few years And it’s been close to a decade now since I have been mostly in non-corporately owned online spaces. But that does make me more aware of the spaces I am in that I don’t control.
I use discord, but I don’t really like it. I don’t think it does much of anything that I couldn’t find elsewhere, but it’s where people I know are, and the advertisement hasn’t gotten so ridiculous that I’ve been compelled to leave. This newsletter is on a domain I don’t control, and I worry about that every time I send a letter. I have backups of everything saved locally, for that very reason.
I’ve looked into ways to take that control back. I know how to set up a matrix server, I kind of know how to set up an email server, but that’s basically impossible for someone of my very limited skillset. I know how to host a spreadsheet where I can track the movies I watched.
But the thing is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to know how to do that. I don’t want to do that. Setting up GoToSocial was a fun little experiment when it was a $5 monthly turnkey service, but it’s not that anymore and I’ve had to learn more about how things work. I just want a website that doesn’t participate in a genocide and where I can talk to my friends where what I say isn’t harvested for advertising or for feeding into the plagiarism machine that spurs global warming.
I remember when tumblr banned “female presenting nipples” and a lot of people fought back, and a much smaller number of people stuck around. And the website itself got passed around to a bunch of different owners and did nothing but lose value. And that’s funny.
But for some reason the venn diagram of people who know how to build and run this sort of website and the people who are so capitalism brained that they chase infinite growth instead of making something that just works and is sustainable is almost just a circle. There are edge cases, but those are the weirdos.
But we don’t get that. The internet is mostly 4 websites which post screenshots from the other websites. There are people who made the internet worse. They have names and addresses and bad haircuts. They exploited you and me and that gave them money and leverage over the people who wanted to make things better, because making things better does not make them more money.
I'm tired boss.
So will I leave letterboxd? Maybe. Maybe I'll switch to neoDB, which is the fediverse version. And building on a protocol like Activity Pub is. a good thing, open can't be bought by tech bros, because it's feasible to spin up your own version and keep all your stuff. But mostly I'm tired of having to do it. Either Way I'm not jumping ship immediately, but I am keeping a close eye on the life boats.
Maybe I'll just buy another blank book, write Don't Panic on the cover, and see where that takes me.