The Only Home of Whatever It Is

The VR Future I Want

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

I want the ability to travel virtually through the world’s museums, as well as the world’s cities to see significant architecture, etc. through a VR headset. I want the ability to choose the venue or category similarly to on-demand video selection. (Would I rather travel there? Yes. Is there a cure for long covid yet? No.)

I want to be able to get close to the artwork in the same way as one would want to in life. I want to be able to enjoy these things without my fellow humans–or perhaps just digital ones around me for flavor who won’t disturb my experience. I want to linger as long as I want to. I want to juxtapose experiences–why not have famous sculptures from around the world in a giant sculpture garden of my choosing?

Why can’t we be enabling that?

Oops

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Looks like I forgot to blog in January. Holidays can be tough, and these political times leave me with fewer things to say. I’m still around, and I’ll try and write some more expanded “this should have been a blog post” entries in the days to come. It may almost be mid-February, but Happy New Year!

Protecting the Creative Spark

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Watching an interview with a music producer right now, and he’s expressing how he’s able to access his own vulnerability to make the kind of art that’s only accessible once you have. I’m not jealous–I celebrate anyone who made it to adulthood with their vulnerability intact and are still functional. If someone’s art comes from that place, I celebrate it even if it’s not my cup of tea. Often the sense of someone really going for it translates even if you can’t follow them entirely.

I remember being able to access that place and create before I had the certitude of inevitable rejection. When I didn’t find a home for those ideas with family, peers, or (what) friends, after giving up the struggle I elected to close that door. While I think you can reopen it, you’re never going to be able to regain what was lost, which for me is the excitement of sharing something you’ve created without needing to protect against being hurt for it.

I'm Good, Thanks

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Every now and then, I have little daydreams about what it’d be like to be someone/something other than what I am. Think famous or any number of other fantasies like being uber-attractive, mega-wealthy, musically exceptional, etc., the kinds of things that require luck and genetics as well as the hard work and persistence.

In truth, I’m curious about it because I have no idea what it would be like. I don’t stop traffic when I walk on the street. I don’t have staff planning my every move and taking care of the small details. I don’t have hordes of fickle fans or media people who’re waiting for my next emanation to guide their lives or those of their readers.

To be clear, I don’t want to be that kind of person. I never did. I have good reasons for why I am who I am, where I am, doing what I do. I know deep-down that I don’t want that kind of attention, and in all likelihood I wouldn’t handle it well. I don’t have the performer gene. I also know that problems are merely different in the situations I describe, not nonexistent.

Just Because You Can't Do It

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Oof. Sometimes the gap is too big and microblogging is the wrong venue for bridging it. I’ll do it here out of respect for the etiquette of not persisting in disagreements in someone else’s replies.

My take:

Someone’s personal experience at being bad at something does not negate the utility of it for others–or even for them if they did it well.
A sweeping value judgment of an entire practice based on personal experience should be tempered with observations of other people–else you’re chumming the waters with your hot take because you’re looking for disagreement, not discussion.
It’s ironic to denigrate or trivialize attempts between humans to connect through using a site designed to connect people.

Sure, a practice may be something you’d never do, but that’s very different than saying that widespread practice should discontinued globally when others find value in it. Your sample size of one is valid for expressing your preference but insufficient if you purport to judge for others.

I try to never be too sure I’m right, but I have reactions like these when another party appears too confident in their opinion while seemingly ignoring some easily ascertainable flaws in their reasoning.

Still Working On It, Not There Yet

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Every now and then when I see two men doing the mature thing by talking through their feelings honestly and candidly, I’m reminded that the toxic masculinity of my upbringing isn’t completely eradicated. I wonder if it can be, perhaps it’s contagion that you cannot purge once infected so you must focus on quarantining it as not to infect others.

As I think about it, my reaction is not that men are having that conversation at all, it’s more that they’re having that exchange publicly. I think I’m used to two men stepping aside and having a quiet conversation, and rejoining the group once accord is reached. It’s an issue of privacy, possibly underpinned by protecting their vulnerability or the sensitivities of other men’s discomfort with the display. That’s most definitely a me issue, because it involves an assumption that expressing one’s feeling is a vulnerability. It shouldn’t be. Modeling good behavior is important, especially in spaces where people are inundated with countless examples of bad.

I think I’m taking the time to post this for anyone else who struggles with the legacy of toxic masculinity in their culture. The discomfort is learned, and it’s centered on “men don’t do that” bad programming. If like me you have the bad programming, let’s start with not shaming anyone who resolves their conflicts publicly, and we’ll work our way up to being able to emulate it if possible. I’m not sure it is for me, but I’ll keep trying.

Short One, Testing Something

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Key management is hard. If I managed it, this post will reflect it.

But Does It Move You?

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Idly, I was thinking about music that had qualities that I would have thought I would have liked when I was younger but didn’t. It just made me think that no matter how popular, innovative or provocative something might have been, that alone probably wasn’t enough.

This thought comes back to me from time to time, usually when I watch videos featuring those artists who’re now reminiscing about those days. I keep trying to figure out why I can’t seem to appreciate some of their music, no matter how well-regarded by music folks in the know. I can only contextualize that inability in terms of lacking concomitant experience of the moment when things changed, i.e. what music was like before. I know that sometimes it seems like everyone pivoted overnight to copy what the new hot band was doing, and you can pinpoint the recording that changed everything. It’s not just about the recording specifically, but also the aftermath and the ripples that their music caused. If you weren’t there for the prior experience, you can’t really feel when and how it changed. This is especially true if, after the fact, you’ve heard a cacophony of the influenced before you heard the music that spawned those imitators. Instead of hearing the innovation, you may just hear what is now dated and cliche.

I know when I started paying attention to music, so any music that came out before that time was “the way it always was” to my ear. If it was dated when I finally heard it, I still think of it as dated, no matter how novel it was at the time of its release. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do about that. We’re of the time when we clued in, no earlier.

Not sure, still working on these thoughts in a odd moment. Too long for a short social media post though, so I’ll put it here.

Electrician's Blues

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 15:00:00 +0000

The electrician sub on site appears to be unmedicated but very ADHD. Now, some of the finest people can be ADHD, and I’m not saying medication is mandatory or even warranted in all cases. However, there’s only so much singing, constant need for attention, forgetfulness*, and general annoying behavior I can stand.

Maybe it’s a millennial thing, but as a GenXer I had to cut out that shit right away when I entered the working world. No idea why nobody hasn’t clunked him on the head metaphorically–he’s not the kind of rock star where you’d put up with the quirks because the work product’s so good.

*He (1) almost burned the place down because he left a light on with the bare bulb sitting against the wood and forgot about it, (2) left us without heat for 1.5 days when he turned off the boiler and forgot (a) to turn it back on, and (b) to tell us it was ok to turn back on, (3) regularly has grease on his head or his gloves, and is leaving shiny handprints on the low-sheen paint.

I looked in the site foreman’s eye and told him that if they keep this guy on site, I will be holding them accountable for every last thing he does. They already know they’re going to have to repaint in a few places, so their choice in continuing to use this guy will be balanced by the cost of the remedial work they need to do because of it.

Time to Make the Piper Pay

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:00:00 +0000

If people behave irrationally–and we do–there’s little value in merely calling attention to that fact when it comes to how folks get bamboozled by what they read or what they watch. We know people are easily influenced by algorithms that send them down rabbit holes. I don’t accept shrugging and letting content providers continue to radicalize because it’s expensive or hard to solve.

Ads are really lucrative, so the money’s there. It’s not as if companies change up back to an uncurated timeline sorted by date/time, or that it’d be that hard to put the ad preferences in the hands of users instead. If someone wants to find radicalizing content, they’ll still be able to, but it’ll be their choice and not being shoved in their faces. They’re never going to choose it of their own free will, but I’m not sure it’s such a stretch to say Section 230 doesn’t protect feed curation when it’s controlled by the social media company, not by the user.

I’m just not that sympathetic to the “think of the internet companies” perspective. If the pursuit of profit headling creates these terrible outcomes–because people just cannot handle the subtle (or not so subtle) manipulation of their timelines, time for those companies to be held liable for it.