Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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Man, having a job that actually involves doing engaging work and being around other people really keeps you from getting too absorbed in your own thoughts. That's definitely a benefit, even if it comes with the downside of commuting on a known hell road twice a day. But there is another downside, and it's this - it doesn't let me get so bored & isolated that I start to think of topics for this blog.
There were a few that popped into my mind - the reactions to a cherry-picked quote from an animation figure that spoke more to the zodiac-ification of therapy & the willful gullibility of people who do it than what they were getting from the quote; documenting the war of one man playing Classic WoW & talking with his chat, who cannot & will not accept that the world has never operated in black & white; debating whether asking for crafting advice on Reddit is worth the experience of using Reddit & talking to Redditors; and various other things. But being in an environment where I'm not isolated from other less online human beings & actually actively doing the work that I was hired to do, I don't have the time to let these thoughts stew/ferment/fester into an entry here.
Honestly, that's probably a good thing.
There is value in online connections, but when those are your only connection, things can go sour VERY quickly. And combine that with overwhelming boredom & an increasing sense of pointlessness, and you get the recipe for frustrated ranting that is ultimately the foundation of these posts. I have my doubts that it's engaging to anyone except for a handful of people who are just reading to be polite (and they're slowly drifting away from the online world as well). Finally, spending my non-work time doing things that are a bit more substantial, be it cooking actual meals or getting the garden ready or working on my various WIPs, has been better than the online alternatives.
There are more things to focus on in life (especially if you're switching jobs & the things that come with jobs, like new insurance) than the internet, and that includes this. I'll probably have some things to say here & there with one of these (I definitely have something planned to speak about circa May 23rd, IYKYK), but I can't justify doing these in this same format anymore. Maybe I'll do weeks of just the mental hiccups & venting that is the Lightning-Squared round here & there.. We'll see.
For now, though, I wanna link back to a few pieces that I really liked.
- It's not the main piece, but it felt good to get all of my frustrations with Pop Arena & how his weird blinders are undermining his "Nick historian" work out in the open.
- Again, not the main piece, but I feel the section on suicide prevention efforts & their (hopefully intended) side effects on people like myself who have lived with ideation is worthwhile.
- Probably my favorite entry, on knitting's weird elitism & need to be "legitimized" as a "science"; giving up on Bluesky (and it only got worse after this was posted), and sharing the rare finished yarnwork project.
- A post about a lot of things but chiefly about learning someone that you used to respect has become such a gooner brain that they're into VERY pedo-adjacent diaper stuff and how people need to learn the concept of 'private topics' again.
- The Ace Week mega-post, reposting cuz it all still applies AND cuz this will be relevant for International Ace Day.
- My definitive thoughts on fandom and how it's pretty much ruined everything it touches.
- I miss the old internet, and since this was written, there have been a lot more videos & sentiments along the same line.
- Finally, 30 years' worth of thoughts about liking the "bad" season of my favorite show more than the supposedly "good" one. I hope someone from the JQML days stumbled on this and immediately got flashbacks, especially if they were the weirdo who was convinced he was totally gonna make the movie adaptation someday with his lousy fan-script.
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Lightning-squared round! Cuz ... THIS.
- First time since 2019 that I want to go to a movie theater to watch a movie, and it’s for… the Umas. I’m turning into Agnes Digital’s auntie. I’m sorry, have you SEEN any of the trailers? They’re gorgeous!
- Also, thank you, RNG for the Umamusume trainee gacha, I’ve gotten way WAY more featured new characters than I expected. Still waiting on Tamamo Cross, though…
- Fuck you both, AI & AI hunters, you’ll never take away my em-dashes. I’ve been using ‘em for DECADES.
- Oh hey, not only did the person who popularized the flag that gives me flashbacks to the worst era of aphobic harassment online turn out to be a massive lying scam artist, she also plagiarized the flag wholesale down to the hex codes from someone else.
- I will share one Reddit horror story. I occasionally check the South Jersey subreddit for local info, even if 99.8% of the place is.. well.. Reddit-y. And I stumbled on the most Reddit-possible post. Do you know that if people are complaining about the construction of new affordable housing, it’s not because of taxes/classism & racism/general snobbery, but it’s because they’re morons who keep having children, and apparently, so long as they do that, they’ll keep having to build places for these children to live? I know that the archetypical Redditors always somehow default to weird personal philosophies, but “NIMBYism would stop if you just stopped breeding” is an amazing new example.
Sometimes I think whoever made this was being too kind.
- I’m used to online animation fans having zero chill, and I get that the slow rollout is very frustrating, but constantly pestering Tubi (including in social media DMs) to put that one show that you really really really want to watch on their service is not gonna make it happen any faster. If anything, it might trigger someone’s “fuck you” impulse and just delay it more. Also, it’s super entitled & annoying. Just wait like the rest of us.
- Is it spiteful to say that I hope that stupid Finch app is selling its users’ data behind their backs? Cuz everything about that app disgusts me on a moral & intellectual level, and the handful of people I’ve seen using it have all turned out to be… how to put this… inspirations for previous focal topics.
- You know winter is over when the scam con horror stories start up again. Starting to think running one might be a viable career option…
- Anyone who knowingly buys this stolen artwork is a scumfuck.
- Someday… I swear, someday I’ll be able to pull this off, even if it’s just with Owen’s colors…
Maybe one side swatch could be Owen’s colors and the other one Koko’s colors…? Also, this is the second time the High Energy promo photo has appeared on this blog.
- Oh, ever-increasing scaffolding of the 30th Street Station renovation, I think I miss you least of all. Even the worst afternoon traffic is less soul-crushing than your presence.
- Dear horrible online Zoomers: Please go back to ignoring us. Signed, Gen X.
- Nothing has turned me off from the new DC stuff quite like learning that they’re using Tom King’s crap as a basis. Seeing all the promos for the "drunken surly frat-girl" version of Supergirl based on his run built around Krypto during Puppy Bowl this year was especially bad, cuz guess what oh-so-dramatic-and-edgy thing happens to him at the start of that run! And that's to say nothing about how every single one of his works shows his issues with women, with minorities of any kind, with his weird view on mental health, with his own past record with the CIA, with being criticized at all over any of that... Also, dude has fanboys who make the Snyder guys look rational & pleasant. I won’t go as far as saying he deserves to die like I've seen, but if he could just never touch comics again ever in my lifetime, that'd be super. Hell, at this point, I'd settle for the ghost of Jack Kirby giving him infinite kidney stones as paybacks for what he did to Kirby's Fourth World.
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No cat pic this time, mostly because they haven't let me take any new ones. All I can say is, see ya around.
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