We took a break from the site and then got sick (just a cold but we still felt miserable), so we don't have much to write about right now.
The new blog theme ended up being fairly similar to the original nude theme. Making it more colorful seemed like it would lean too much in the direction of one of the branches. This version of the theme is inspired by Emilie Reed's Zonelet (Hotel Paintings) and Murid's neocities page, as well as news websites in general.
In an attempt to explain my experiences as part of a subsystem that is more median than the rest of the system, I came up with some ideas for descriptions based off of more well-known concepts in plurality that used star systems as a metaphor. Since the amount of separation between people in this system changes so often, having short ways to describe might prove useful.
Headspace is a commonly used term. It refers to the "internal world" some systems have, where system members can see/visualize each other to interact.
Identity space: the space in which identities are compared, as opposed to a headspace where peoples' mental-physical presences are compared in physical distance. Identity space is described more vaguely and with metaphors because it doesn’t translate to physical distances as well as a headspace does. For example, system members in a multiple system have identities that are distant from each other in their identity space regardless of how close they are to each other in their headspace. A median system may use a headspace where they can be distant from one another for functional visualization purposes but they are still close to each other in their identity space. A subsystem has an identity space of its own within the broader system’s identity space, where they can be relatively close or distant considering that the subsystem’s members are closer to each other than they are to non-subsystem members.
Identity mass: how much of a presence someone has in the identity space they occupy. Some system members, such as fragments, may have a small identity mass while having a strong presence in the headspace due to their strong reactions. Identity mass can correlate with how much distance they have from others in the identity space, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do so. People can be very individualistic while also blending with each other easily.
Integration (in this terminology): integration or fusion occurs when two identity masses are so close that they intertwine. Typically, integration refers to permanent combination, fusion refers to impermanent combination, and blending refers to combination that is both impermanent and incomplete. We don’t have much experience with integration or fusion. Our blending happens as a function of Fronting more often than it happens in our general identity space.
Describing the weight of identities as masses is difficult to use. It might be more helpful to use a different perspective to make descriptions like these if the comparison to stars is too limited. The terms are bound to have some limitations, however, since they are meant to describe system members relative to each other and not to describe them more objectively as individuals. The idea was to come up with a flexible way to describe the scale of multiple-to-median that allows for self-explanation instead of using rigid terms, but it may still feel rigid when applied to describing people.
Identity space is easy to use but describing one seems difficult. That may be because we just happen to have a very complex one, though. Our headspace is based off of things we know but our identity space isn't. It moves fluidly but isn't in our control.
Maybe these will be expanded on in the future if we decide to use them again. If we make an update on Front it may be useful. Most of us are used to how our system works enough to not need words for it outside of writing.
Thoughts
- Trying not to totally burn ourselves out of working on this website worked somewhat, but we did lose momentum.
- Apparently mix-blend-mode broke on Chromium and most everyone except Microsoft Edge fixed it by now. What a pain.
- The sections that currently use lists may need different formatting in order to be easy to read. Paragraph tags, maybe?
- It's easier to link things together in lists and show the steps of thought processes but paragraph spacing makes for easier movement from topic to topic.
- Making each bullet point into a section with a horizontal line divider would show which paragraphs are linked together and which aren't but it would also probably be overkill.
- Each first-level bullet point could be a paragraph including its own bullet points, since each bullet point is rarely more than a sentence, but it still feels like that would limit the amount of directions a single thought can go.
- It turns out that we had a OneTab list we forgot about. Even more to read...
- We tried out osu. It's a lot.
- Blending peoples' music tastes feels very odd.
- We get bored of looking at our Mastodon feed when we scroll continuously instead of checking it occasionally which makes it seem like a worse choice for us, but that's likely a healthier relationship to have with social media in the first place. It's a shame that few of the things we've seen there actually interest us. We like more multi-media posts and long-form writing.
- Some instances and parts of the Fediverse allow for longer posts but there's still a common culture of microblogging because of how large Mastodon and Pleroma are. Finding content relevant to our interests is also difficult because of a lack of community-based directories or whole-'verse searching. Instances and account tags are based off of who someone is more than what they post about.
- Part of our issue with this side of the Fediverse is likely the fact that most interactions are based on people instead of communities or shared interests. We don't have interest in getting to know anyone or directly contributing to anything as individuals. We only watch the timeline instead of following anyone because we don't want to see posts from any person in particular.
Things
This one is a little long because we sat on it for a while. Blog post drafts generally start with this section.
- "Why every browser switching to Blink could be bad news for the web" by Nick @ The Linux Experiment in March, 2019 and "Google Allegedly Slowing Down YouTube On Purpose When Using Firefox" by Carl Velasco in July, 2017
- Basically: Google.
- On the other side, here's someone (a Whonix developer) who doesn't like Firefox or Linux because of security. We skimmed a few pages but we aren't as familiar with these things.
- Cover Your Tracks is a website for testing how much information trackers can get from your browser. You can view their privacy policy and uncheck "test with a real tracking company" before running it.
- Cookie Status provides information on how different major browsers handle cookies.
- Universal Bypass is an add-on for Firefox, Edge and Chrome/Chromium that skips link shorteners to avoid countdowns, ads and trackers. The source code is here.
- "I Scanned My Favorite Social Media Site on Blacklight and It Came Up Pretty Clean. What’s Going On?" by Aaron Sankin and Surya Mattu
'The cookie looks like it’s coming from the site displaying the ad, while in fact it sends data back to Facebook and, as such, performs functions typical of third-party cookies,' explained a blog post by the advertising technology company ClearCode. 'Abandoning the ‘legacy’ third-party cookie and switching to the first-party cookie as the default option for the Facebook Pixel”—a tracker that works in conjunction with the company’s third-party cookies—the blog post said, 'is intended to help businesses continue using analytics and tracking ad attribution, independently of the browser they’re using.'
- Emphasis ours. The context is that this "abandonment of legacy third-party cookies" is a response to many browsers blocking third-party cookies by default. The new cookies, then, continue tracking users "independently" of their (browser's) attempts to prevent tracking. An interesting choice in wording compared to how users would describe it.
- "No boundaries: Exfiltration of personal data by session-replay scripts" by Steven Englehardt in November 2017, and the list of websites that they found to be possibly using these scripts
- The study only looked for evidence of session recording or embedded scripts from specific companies known to provide session recording. Some of the websites using scripts from a company that provides session recording may not have it enabled, and there may be recent developments in what session replay tools are available or widely used.
- Discussion in the comments bring up some slightly more recent updates to this situation. Providers of replay sessions have been blocked by more tracking blockers by now.
- While this isn't recent news, it's not a good sign for the internet overall. In the latest post in the "No Boundaries" series, they say, "Our findings resulted in many fixes and privacy improvements to browsers, websites, third parties, and privacy protection tools. However, the root causes of these privacy failures remain unchanged, because they stem from the design of the web itself."
- "Fuck you, pay designers" by Dennis Hambeukers
- We've never tried to sell art or designs, but being around other artists who do take commissions is enough to be aware of how terrible some encounters with clients can be.
- "What Nook’s rate cut reveals about capitalism in Animal Crossing" by James Temperton
- We found this link on an Animal Crossing fandom wiki while trying to figure out how the gameplay works. Our game went unplayed for a very long time after we first tried it out, and it's once again becoming evident why. The "debt as motivator" isn't fun to us, we don't use any social functions or compare our island against those of other people, and the inability to do much with the environment other than take from it isn't appealing to us.
- Putting endless amounts of the environment into the black hole of Timmy's pockets just to put an even greater amount of money into Tom Nook's is a way to pass the time but it's not a preferable one. We'll probably just play it occassionally while sticking to Minecraft and seeing what nice-looking screenshots other people take.
- "There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing" by Adam Grant
- The Nothings Suite by Pippin Barr is a collection of games made by exporting the (almost) default settings of various game engines.
- "Skipping the First 5 Minutes of Tangled - Video Essay" by CJ the X
- "Games, Schools, and Worlds Designed for Violence" video essay by Jacob Geller
- "‘Lying down flat’ as passive resistance in China" by Oiwan Lam
- "Did Twitter Break YA?" by Nicole Brinkley
- "Owning Chinese Companies Is Complicated" by Matt Levine is about stocks, legal uncertainties and mathematical mistakes in contracts
- Why Artists Need Other Artists by Anna Johansson
- 5 reasons why being around other artists is helpful. Broad and possibly attempting to be more universal than it should be for some of these points (one of the sections is "empathy") but overall not a bad explanation for how artists can interact with each other outside of competition.
- "Don't turn your back on Instagram poetry" by Alexis Hancz
- This article seems to be more about the author's dislike of Rupi Kaur's poetry than what the title would suggest. The author says calling her poetry "Instagram poetry" is an insult to... Instagram? Or, at least, the phenomenon of poetry spreading widely on the platform. We're not a fan of Instagram and we don't think poetry shared on it has a special amount (positive or negative) of potential. Poetry on Instagram shouldn't be discredited purely for being on Instagram the same way other platforms shouldn't be discredited.
- This article is probably for a specific audience who thinks Instagram as a platform and culture makes anything that touches the platform bad. We don't hang around the space nearly enough to be familiar with that audience.