not feeling very human atm

May. 8th, 2025 08:29 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of two coils of an open reel tape player spinning (record)
  1. Real life is a bit of a pain. My mood swings wildly, as does my opinion of what I should currently do with my life. I haven't been very talkative online as a result of this and of a trip I took at the beginning of the month with the girlfriend (long weekend here in Italy!)
  2. I finally got around to set up my kobo so it syncs my wallabag articles via wallabako and it's a blast. It's still a bit buggy for me but I have an ancient Kobo Aura HD that gets very few firmware updates nowadays, so maybe it's that.
  3. Someone is researching fans' opinion of AI (via [tumblr.com profile] fansurveys)
  4. [community profile] femgiftboxes (fest focused on female characters) still has some participants without gifts
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I'll actually be pretty sad when tumblr dies

Apr. 22nd, 2025 07:17 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)

I know we're all joking about the curse finally lifting but it's the only "modern" social media site I get genuine enjoyment out of. And for all that I praise dreamwidth and mastodon to every fandom person I meet, there's a kind of visual fandom experience that only tumlblr is- I can't even say "optimized for," as tumblr is not optimized for anything. Mostly gif gazing. TikTok is for videos and Instagram is for carousels. Fanartists will migrate to even more inhospitable lands but I have survived that before. But where will I go to have narrative parallels highlighted via gifset juxtaposition? Where will I be graced with the sight of my blorbo covered in blood like I am graced by a freshly bloomed flower on my morning walk? Are you telling me I'll have to rewatch my shows??? Unthinkable.

(Not that I think tumblr doesn't have the addictive and enshittified social media features. I've looked up by an hour-long tumblr session with the same kind of malaise tiktok scrolling gives me, but overall the good has always outweighed the bad.)
  • current mood: pessimistic
  • current music: ghost, but only in my head
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community thursday 13.03.25

Mar. 13th, 2025 11:05 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pedestrian streetlight and blinking neon billboards at night (streetlight)

Doing the Community Thursday challenge originally started by [personal profile] goodbyebird: On Thursdays I'll make an effort to engage with communities on dw in one way or another, be it by commenting, posting, reccing, and so on.

  • current mood: tired
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my community thursday is that i founded one: promo for digitalminimalism

Jan. 9th, 2025 08:19 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)
digital minimalism community banner

[community profile] digitalminimalism is a community for people who want to re-evaluate, to varying extents, the space technology takes up in their life. This might mean spending less time binge-watching streaming shows, decluttering their smartphone from time-sucking apps or doing more things the analog way. The reasons for doing this are as varied as the rules people set for themselves: to feel more present in the moment, to curb bad coping mechanisms, to stop creating value for predatory companies with shady privacy practices.




I wanted to make a few more posts in the community myself before sharing it but I figured that if I kept waiting I'd be my usual self and never get around to it. There are very few rules (which can be summed up with "don't be a dick") in the profile section and a recurring monthly general chat post.

Why?



This has been one of my big fixations of late and my attempt at finding online community for it (which I realize is ironic) have gone... less than well. There was a worrying amount of alt-right-adjacent ideology, but my fault for thinking to try reddit and discord servers of youtubers, of all things. I just want to share pictures of my new flip phone with people who aren't white supremacists, man.

It might die in four months or never even taking off. But for now here it is!
  • current mood: bouncy
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End-of-Year Reading Meme 2024

Jan. 5th, 2025 09:13 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of wheat placidly moving in the breeze against a purple sky (field)

In 2024:


I Read: I was very bad at counting this past year, but it's gotta be about a dozen of things I read willingly + another dozen read for work/study reasons, which I tend not to consider towards my "reading goal."
My Reading Goal: 2024 was the year I switched between three different logging methods, from digital to analog and across various bookwyrm instances, so I didn't have a goal per se. I was very much below my average of past years however, so not too satisfied with that ):
I Challenged Myself: I tried to read more novels written (not translated) in my native language
A New Genre I Attempted: Not exactly "new," but I started reading graphic novels/memoirs again
An Author New-to-me in 2024 I Really Enjoyed: Luciano Bianciardi! Both incredibly funny and soul-crushing.
My Favorite Book of the Year: I always have trouble picking out favourite books, but it has to be either The Left Hand of Darkness or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Books I Read in 2024 That I Recommend: As above, plus most of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles (the first three, for sure) and It's a Hard Life by Bianciardi.

In 2025:


My Reading Goal: I'm aiming for a book a week, which will be more or less feasible depending on how much I'll have to work this year.
I'm Going to Challenge Myself: I don't really do structured challenges, except that I'm always sort of trying to tick off books from the Gilmore Girls reading list, but let's say that that's more of a multi-year type of project.
My TBR List: I have a partial log of what I want to read on what has now turned into a 800+ line Excel spreadsheet...
Books I'm Especially Interested in Reading in 2025: Definitely more Le Guin, which is the most embarrassing gap I have in my knowledge of SFF. I also slept on The Book of Love by Kelly Link, which I shouldn't have.
A Book Coming Out in 2025 That I'm Excited About: Alecto the Ninth, should it get a 2025 release date. Besides that, I'm not reading many sagas, and I usually don't keep up to date with specific authors as to know with a ton of advance when they're coming out with a new book. I'm also just very slow at catching up with what I set my eyes on. Maybe the new Torrey Peters, but I won't rush to the shop to get it.
Other Book-Related News for 2025 I'm Interested In: The Raven Cycle graphic novel adaptation is coming out this year, which doesn't really register as a new release for me, but it's something I might even pre-order, even if only out of nostalgia and not genuine enthusiasm. Like, I'm sure it'll be great, they picked a beloved fanartist for it (best case scenario), and I'm sure I'll have an amazing time reading it, but I'm definitely not waiting for it with the same energy as I did with any Stiefvater-related property five years ago.

 

crosspost from [community profile] booknook

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regrettably very attracted to jensen ackles as soldier boy

Aug. 31st, 2024 02:45 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a black cat looking and touching the screen in a control room (screen)

sort-of relevant news

  • Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is shutting down next November 😭 Everything will technically move to a paid offline version of the app with no leaf tickets or microtransactions, which on paper is great, but I'm waiting to see how much content will actually make the cut to see whether I should cry or be happy. Also no more friends and visiting their camps which ): which is a bummer for an Animal Crossing game, a franchise that's always been about connectivity.
  • Automattic will move all Tumblrs to a WordPress backend 👀 Very curious to see whether this will make tumblr better or wordpress worse.

link dump

  • [profile] a11yawareness is a mastodon account sharing tidbits on accessibility in web development.
  • Finally getting around to tinkering with FreshRSS and there's so many settings I need to explore!!! I wish I could convince everyone to switch to RSS readers for their news but alas. I use the instance 32-Bit Cafe provides for free and you can read it on mobile via the webapp or a mobile app that supports Google Reader API. I've just set up ReadYou for this purpose, which is also FOSS and has a very pleasing material design UI.

media log

I was in a state after coming back from the holidays so I, huh, binged all of The Boys in like a week. It was fun and I love Karl Urban. He's perfectly cast, as is Anthony Starr and I'd say up until season 4 the plot is pretty tight and entertaining. S4 is a bit meandering and the shows's biggest flaw (thinking that simply referencing real life events in a superhero show counts as satire) is front and center. High production value but to think this is doing something novel with the themes/genre is definitely a stretch. This level of edgy was maybe vaguely subversive in the 90s, but this is coming from someone who could never get into Garth Ennis. Also, I thought AO3 would be full of Butcher/Homelander but it isn't?

I also saw Nightmare Alley, which was underwhelming but gorgeous, so definitely my least favourite of the Del Toro movies I've seen.

I've done quite a bit of reading, so I'll update on that with a dedicated post.

  • current mood: hot
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i can't seem to get the cut working on this

Aug. 9th, 2024 11:13 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)
I think I've definitely settled on making these compilation posts rather than posting links/things as I come across them. I want my overall internet experience to feel slower, so it makes sense that the rhythm at which I spew out content into the world should also slow down. Not that I'd been doing much posting these past few months but still -- I should aim for less fedi, less DW, less tumblr, or at least a more thoughtful version of them. Now that I'm on holiday I've been forced to think again about my relationship with my phone and I don't like what I see (30 hours weekly screen time).

And speaking of slowness and internet and social media --

articles that hit lately

  • You; Sitting With Yourself – time spent offline: There weren’t enough tips, tools, tricks in the world, no amount of gimmicks that could save me from the thing that kept me running back to the noise, to the avatars: I disliked myself. which ended up reminding me of -
  • How to live without your phone - by Sam Kriss: A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive. This is what all its functions and features ultimately achieve: cameras deliver you from time, GPS abstracts you out of space, and an all-consuming screen that keeps you a constant safe distance from yourself. If there’s something you’re worried or upset about, you can simply hide behind your phone and it will all go away.
  • Why do we use social media? - by Max Read: As everyone who’s had pain in their thumb from scrolling knows, the actual point of “screen time” is the time part--the hours it allows you to numbly burn up. There’s no “more efficient” version of social media because you can’t pass time any more quickly.
(emphasis mine)

sort-of relevant news

  • Internet Archive "glitch" deletes years of user data and accounts | Hacker News or: Literally My Number One Fear. I don't keep anything worth salvaging in mine but apparently this fucks up the discoverability of certain files (uploads don't seem to have been deleted). And also, well, it just raises questions about how safe IA storage is.
  • I totally missed that someone spent thousands on fraudulent votes to rig the Hugos. They haven't shared the name fo the finalist favored because they can't establish whether they were aware of anything but I'll be 👀 looking (also, I mean. who spends thousands on rigging an award for someone they don't have a connection with unless it's some 4D chess move to try and get them disqualified?)


media log but it's just me complaining about TUA S4 for 800+ words

So I wasn't in love with season 3, but that was still an entertaining watch compared to season 4.

( spoilers spoilers spoilers )

Originally I closed this post with a bunch of thoughts on Neil Gaiman but I think I might like to keep those in a separate, locked post. Partially because it ended up being more personal than I thought it would and partially because it focuses on fan response, which is already dominating the discussion too much at a time when we still don't even have a public statement from the guy and half the SFF world is pretending nothing's happened. Like, it's impossible to keep up with the news browsing the Neil Gaiman tag on tumblr because of the amount of GO fans talking about what this means for their enjoyment/follow up seasons of the show and I don't feel like adding to that energy. But also I'm going to have to vomit my thoughts somewhere at some point or I might implode. So friend-lock it is.

  • current mood: disappointed
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too cranky to come up with a title

Aug. 3rd, 2024 08:36 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)
links first


media log

I'm caught up on season 2 of Interview with the Vampire (and rewatched the first) and I still can't believe this got greenlit. Some exec was like "Ah, yes, the Gay Vampire Sex Extended Universe, we're pouring a ton of money into that, we're making it one of our juggernaut productions" and so far it seems to be working. I love what an established fandom can do -- which is ironic, since I have yet to spot a VC book fan who likes the show. I *would* consider myself a VC book fan, but it's been so long since I've read them. My only holiday plan was actually to reread them all at the beach, but so far 1) I haven't found the box they've been exiled to, and 2) it's been raining since I got here.

I've been reading manuscripts for a publisher as a side gig, which has slowed down my reading for pleasure. I'd finally started Maurice before my latest assignments because, no nicer way to say it, I feel like I've been exposed to too many contemporary novels lately and I needed a detox via something from an era when we still believed in the value of descriptions and SAT words (I may be using this word incorrectly because I come from a country without SATs). Also every single one of my friend told me to read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which I'm finally doing and it's totally living up to the hype for me. I love reading about cerebral obsessive people not talking about their feelings and if you're like this too you may want to check it out.

Also, my new TV-as-background-noise of choice is Friends, because it's on legal streaming and it's got a ton of seasons, and I realized I somehow Mandela Effect'd myself in remembering Chandler Bing as a nice guy, which he isn't at all on rewatch. Huh.
  • current mood: aggravated
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someone help me budget this, my website is dying

Mar. 23rd, 2024 12:08 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)

Hey. Long time no see. And I'm unsure whether I should start posting again right now since I'll be going through some major life changes that might leave me with very little free time to be consistent with it (maybe I'll write my first friends-locked post about this) but I had some links piling up in my drafts.

said links

  • [personal profile] thebiballerina posted a fandom-focused guide to cybersafety
  • Curlie - The Collector of URLs is a human-curated directory of links for various purposes. I'm hopeful of seeing more projects like this spring up with the current rise in AI-generated SEO-bait content polluting every other search result.
  • GoblinTools is a set of single-purpose tools to help neurodivergent people with things like better evaluating the tone of a text and breaking down a task into smaller steps. I've only tried it out a few times but it seems pretty neat.

sort-of-relevant news

  • A write-up on Cohost by @lori@hackers.town which takes a look at the financials and sustainability of the site. I'll admit I'm sharing this having basically skimmed 2/3 of the math, because what was most concerning/entertaining for me was stuff like one of the owners posting publicly about Cloudflare making a mistake and never billing them or the encouraging parasocial bonding in order to be less accountable to your users (whether intentionally or just by having internalized the behaviour of certain online communities). I'm trying to focus on the "funny internet drama" side of things in order not to get depressed once again about how a fundamental part of our digital life is a money pit impossible to sustain without VC funding and predatory privacy practices. There's more personal thoughts on lori's mastodon and cohost if you like me enjoy reading in-depth about intra-community drama of communities you're not actually part of.
  • Gumroad bans "pornographic" content, intended as content primarily for "sexual titillation" which is very easy to distinguish from content that only incidentally titillates, I'm sure /s
  • I stopped reading it years ago but as a guy of wlw experience it was still sad to read that Autostraddle is probably shutting down

media log

  • My girlfriend got me hooked on BoJack Horseman (have to start season 3) and I've been catching up on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel after having dropped it years ago (I think pre-pandemic? wow) (I have about two episodes left). When I first watched it I binged three seasons and was very into it right from the start, so maybe because of that initial enthusiasm the flaws of the show (basically the same ones as Gilmore Girls) got particularly grating for me very fast. But I was surprised at how entertaining I'm finding it now, probably getting into it more resigned about what the lows of the Palladinos look like (for the record they're still one of my favourite team of writers on television and I'll certainly be watching that new ballet show they're working on).
  • I'm also reading Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who's far from my favourite author prose-wise but who always comes up with great premises and characters so gets a pass on everything else. I like novels with precise aesthetic ideas and that give me a glimpse in what are clearly the author's hyperfixations, which has been true of what I've read of hers so far. I'm also finally this ridiculous knowledge gap of mine that was never having read Dykes to Watch Out For save for the few strips that often get reposted online (I know). It's hilarious and everyone should read it.
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End OTW Racism initiative

May. 12th, 2023 09:03 pm
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (antifa)
from [tumblr.com profile] end-otw-racism:

OTW needs to act on racist harassment & abuse on AO3. Read our manifesto & join our two-week action on AO3 from May 17-31, 2023 to #EndOTWRacism!

tbh already changed my propic as I'm likely to forget by the 17th
  • current music: dream on - dio + yngwie malmsteen
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hex {he/him}

over 25yo. mostly into fandom in a meta way, nowadays, but i also like SFFH books & tv. sometimes (very rarely) I write fic. currently into digital minimalism and looking to be less on social media and more on here or on the indie web.

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