Social Media
These are my social media posts & updates. I write them here, and they are copied to my Mastodon and/or Pixelfed accounts. Magically, comments are imported from the Fediverse too. This is one way to take control back from venture-capital backed aggregator sites.
#POSSE #IndieWeb
One thing that really bugs me about #ChatGPT and #LLMs for #copywriting is theyāve been trained on a web full of crap articles written for #SEO purposes by people in #India who write in a forced style of conversational English. (NB: Iām #IndianAmerican.) Their writing is oddly long with way too many filler phrases and ChatGPT copies this garbage to a T. The second I see any sentence online start with āAs you knowā¦ā or some other filler garbage I know where it originated. Granted, how #Indians write English is just a variant of the garbage academic writing style in the US, which uses different and snootier filler phrases with even longer sentences. Itās writing meant to impress someone for a grade or a pat on the back, and it took me a couple of decades to write more concisely & to the point. I just wish I could figure out how to get an LLM to understand wtf an adverb is because telling one ādonāt use any adverbsā or ārewrite that without adverbsā does nothing. Yesterday I thought about #Hemingwayās concise, adverb-free writing style and mentioned that in a prompt and got a poem in response š¤¦š½āāļø (Sadly I was too in the zone to appreciate the absurdity and lost the creative masterpiece when I edited the prompt.)
#JohnCarpenter’s #Halloween is one of our favorite #horror #movies, and this is my new favorite scene š Also: I imagine #MichaelMyers talking to himself in #Beavis’ voice. #HeyLadies
One benefit of #thrifting is finding stuff I like that I would never have buying new since I donāt shop for clothes anymore. We found a pair of #LuckyBrand #pants in my size and I now have a favorite brand of pants. Theyāre straight leg, soft (kinda like brushed twill), stretchy (but donāt look like stretchy plastic), and so light and comfortable that it barely felt that I had pants on. Their only flaw is a lack of a dedicated celphone pocket, but I still want a few pairs for regular use. And since we were in the mall yesterday as our 18yo looked for places to apply for jobs, I noticed that straight leg & boot cut pants are back, and many have celphone pockets. I need to stock up on those for the next 25y before they go out of style again.
Itās morning coffee and reading time with this lovely lass and #ScottPilgrim (and yes, Iām totally psyched about the anime and am looking forward to seeing more from the #comics and more about the Evil Exes). #Cats #CatsOfMastodon #CaturdayEveryday #GraphicNovels
art, CharacterDesign, characters, HipHop, ODB, TMNT, WuTang
#TMNT was OUTSTANDING! Purty #art, well written, plenty of feels, great #characters, great #CharacterDesign – and it was FUNNY. The #90s #HipHop was cherry on the cake, with #ODB an unexpected surprise. #WuTang
#DaftPunk mixed their first two albums on a JVC #boombox like this. All the standard advice to ādonāt mix on this or thatā and they used a 10 year old boombox with a simple graphic equalizer. The lesson: Expensive equipment isnāt necessary; mix on something you use and know well. And donāt wait until you have the ārightā equipment. As #ArthurAshe said, āStart where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.ā https://musictech.com/news/music/daft-punk-homework-discovery-bedroom/ #MusicProduction #Quote #Wisdom #JustDoIt #MakeStuff
āOur life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. Thatās why itās good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.ā #JosephCampbell #Mythology
A belated #TuneTuesday as yesterday got away from me. The #FunSong theme made me think immediately of my newest #music obsession, #ElectricCallboy and their song We Got The Moves. Itās a song about partying and they donāt take themselves seriously in the least. 20yo me would likely sneer at ācommercialismā or some other nonesuch but 50yo me enjoys the hell out of this.
Ad-driven social media platforms are willing to tolerate monumental volumes of abusive users. Theyāve discovered the same thing the Mainstream Media did: negative emotions grip peopleās attention harder than positive ones. Hate and fear drives engagement, and engagement drives ad impressions. #Mastodon is not an ad-driven platform. There is absolutely zero incentives to let awful people run amok in the name of engagement. @malwaretech@infosec.exchange My microcosmic validation of this is my wife asking 2-3 times in the past month if Iām aware of [something negative driving engagement] and my response has been āNope, I donāt see anyone sharing that on the #Fediverse.ā I still use #BigMammoth (thx to @jensorensen@mastodon.social for that š) to keep up on politics daily so Iām aware of whatās going on. But the lack of an #algorithm or clear profit motive means the Negativity du Jourā¢ isnāt pushed to the forefront for everybody and comes to attention naturally if it has staying power. https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html
The goal of life is rapture. #Art is the way we experience it. Joseph Campbell #JosephCampbell #Mythology #Wisdom #Quote
Testing #Webmention & #bridgy support. If you see this post, could you comment or like it? #IndieWeb #POSSE
One aspect of #adhd thatās irritating af is forgetting to do the things I want to do for fun. I donāt need to keep the not-fun stuff I do in my head so it can stay in a task manager but do I really need to make reminders to myself for things like āRead for fun while drinking coffee?ā š¤¦š½āāļøš¤¦š½āāļøš¤¦š½āāļø #ADHDer #AdultADHD #ADHDLife
Itās not coincidental that one of my go tos for getting work done is listening to #DubTechno – a steady driving beat, no vocals, lots of staticky noise. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatry-and-sleep/202305/adhd-white-noise-could-be-an-alternative-to-medication #ADHD #ADHDer #AdultADHD #ADHDTips #POSSE
The influence of a vital person vitalizes, thereās no doubt about it. The world without spirit is wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and whoās on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if itās alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself. #JosephCampbell, from The Power of #Myth #Mythology
We need more focus on ācollective intelligenceā vs individual genius. Encouragement of collaboration & cross-pollination. Being around other creatives, in varied disciplines, is meaningful for the growth of oneās own #creativity. I recognize now that I lacked creative peers for most of my life so I was always flying solo, not getting ideas from others nor getting any useful feedback. My friends would sit around and watch movies while I preferred wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing what caught my eye. #BrianEno #POSSE Photo credit
Itās Friday, which means my #adhd brain is tired from the week as I worked a little too long on a couple of days. Itās a lot easier to get distracted on Friday morning and a lot less motivating to get the day going. I try to limit my hours of work per day but Iāve been experimenting with change the last couple of weeks. Maybe itās worth it to get what I can get done on some days, striking while the iron/hyperfocus is hot? It must all even out in the end. Or this could simply be the result of 3 straight nights of mediocre sleep. #ADHDer #AdultADHD
