JOMO

Joy Of Missing Out. I am totally into this. Or not into this, whichever is appropriate.

Sadly, I did not see any attribution to the concept or the illustration. Seen on Mastodon.

On artists suffering for their art

I’m pretty confident that the person who came up with the expression never fully understood the subtle interplay between the pain and discomfort of, say, a prostate infection, and the creation of art. In my sample1ew of one, suffering does not lead to art, it leads to wanting the suffering to stop. I could draw a big happy face right now, then splatter it with Jackson Pollock-style blobs of colour, and it would not make my prostate infection go away.

If it could make my prostate infection go away, I’d be up to my pits in art as I typed this. I’d be typing from on top of my giant pile of art.

Instead, I’ve been taking antibiotics and resting. Neither of these produces art, but they ease my suffering.

When the suffering ends, I will draw a Gum Gum Person.

The web has trained me not to click

Why? Because so much linked content (on social media, particularly, but not exclusively) is now paywalled, instantly pops-up SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER RIGHT NOW, has a cascading series of cookie warnings/options, and basically just a lot of clutter and nonsense to sift through before, possibly, getting to what you were actually interested in.

And you know what? I’m actually ok with that! By not clicking, and maybe by other people not clicking, we silently send a message, however vague, to maybe change things on the web to make them less awful, invasive, intrusive and annoying.

One can always hope.

Once again, saved by lack of information

I’ll never play this apparently addictive game!

The post, on Mastodon:

I realize the image of the game is rather small, but all you need to know is:

  • The author admits he is “annoyingly quite hooked” on it.
  • The author, other than providing a generic-looking screenshot that suggests it’s a phone app, does not in any way name or hint at what the game actually is.
  • There is no way, short of investigating the screenshot via reverse image search or something, or directly asking the author in reply, to risk getting annoyingly quite hooked on this game, because there’s no way to determine what game it actually is.

All of which to say this is one of my social media pet peeves, though to be fair, the same would apply in a non-social media setting, such as an online forum. And that pet peeve is talking about something neat/shiny/addictive/whatever, but without providing any context, so people don’t know what you’re actually talking about. I mean, sure, if you’re going to post a shot from the latest Mario game, with Mario in it and doing Mario things, people will probably be able to suss out what game it is, but something like the above? I can’t decide if people are being lazy, forgetful, or think everyone else just plays or enjoys the exact same things they do.

But, you know, it’s not like having my hair on fire (if such a thing were possible, given what currently remains), so it’s a minor complaint in the overall scheme of things.

The Culling: Instagram – update!

As of tonight, my Instagram account has been “deleted”. I put that in quotes for a few reasons:

  • I can cancel the process by logging in within the next 30 days, which could happen accidentally if I am very dumb.
  • I would not be surprised to learn that Meta does not actually delete user data, but just “hides” it while still keeping the sweet, precious bits and bytes for harvesting.
  • They say it can take up to 90 days before the account is truly gone, which means we could be on the verge of spring and it might still be hanging around in the ether.

Regardless of all that, I have purged the account and do not intend to go back.

I will never deliberately use another Meta product again. There are only a few companies I deem vile enough to warrant a total boycott, and Meta is probably #1 on the list. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg will be crying himself to sleep tonight. In his bed made entirely of money, in his giant money house.

This, of course, came into my inbox moments later:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed right up in my freaking grill. Stupid yesterday.

Although it feels like hundreds of years, it was probably a couple of weeks ago I noticed mild discomfort on one side of my abdomen. I’ve felt this before and it’s turned out to be that “men of a certain age” thing known as a prostate infection. After I got the first one in 2008, the doctor at the medical clinic reassured me there would be more to come.

He was correct. He’s probably old enough to be getting them himself now.

I ignored it for a few days, because it was very mild and I wasn’t sure if it was just my body being weird or whatever. This was dumb. I then made a doctor appointment and went in last Wednesday. The doctor poked my abdomen. It was unpleasant. He agreed it might be an infection and gave me some blood work to get done at a local lab.

This reminded me that the last two times I went to a local lab to get blood taken (the area is filled with them, since I live next to a hospital), the person conducting the procedure was apparently green and had difficulty finding a vein. In the second instance, the person (different each time) actually left the needle in my arm while seeking help from more experienced staff. This is like stabbing someone and leaving the knife in. I can’t properly describe how extremely unpleasant it felt.

Anyway, I delayed on getting the blood work done for a day because I got up and had breakfast. My doctor later told me I didn’t need to fast for these tests. Oops.

We now move to Friday of last week. I still need to get the blood work done, and I vow I’ll do it, very soon! Probably. I go for a walk on the river trail. On the way back, my entire body starts to ache.

I later develop a huge pressure headache, a fever, and that slight pain in the abdomen increases.

The weekend is a fugue of pain and delirium. Come Monday–yesterday–the pain in the abdomen, which I’d mostly only noticed if I was laying down, is now ever-present regardless of position, and much, much worse. I feel like there is nothing I can do to help make myself feel more comfortable. I want to leave my body, for a little while, and hop back in when it’s better.

My doctor agrees to prescribe antibiotics, even before the test results. By mid-evening, having taken the first pill, I am at least experiencing a placebo effect of feeling very slightly better, though the pain is still there. I am also very, very tired.

Today, the good news is my sleep score, which fell to a low of 31 when I felt hot enough (not in a sexy way) to set the bed on fire, rose to a mediocre, but much better 69. I feel a little more human. I am hoping I’m not allergic to the antibiotics, but if they work, I may still accept the trade-off.

Kids, the lesson here is: When you feel that weird little pain, get it checked right away. Don’t be macho and dumb and negligent like me! I can only imagine how much worse it would have gotten if the medication had come even just a few days later.

Anyway, that was yesterday. And I never liked the song much, either, so there.

Also, I already had a tag for INFECTIONS, which shows you how often this has happened.

Tom Scott on online communication, December 2024

In his current newsletter, Tom Scott talks about people playing around with Bluesky’s “fire hose of data” then ultimately comes to this conclusion:

The world’s communication seems to have moved on to group chats and Discords and other private groups; the days of “tell everything to everyone, what could go wrong” are past, and perhaps that’s for the best.

And I feel this is pretty much right. A lot of people are comparing Bluesky to early Twitter, but early Twitter was more than a decade ago and online communication has drastically changed since then–in most ways, for the worst. I think it’s great people are having fun and enjoying Bluesky, but we would all be wise to remember what has happened with bot armies, scams and the increased polarization of “open” online communities. Scott further makes the point by linking to Hank Green’s video on bots disagreeing with everything:

Book review: Burning Paradise

Yes, I know, an actual review of an actual book I read. I started reading it on January 19, so it took almost a year to complete (according to my Kobo it was 6.8 hours of reading).

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars (it’s 4 stars on Goodreads because they don’t do half stars)

It took me a long time to get through this relatively short novel, but that was entirely on me. My attention span has been depleted this year–and I don’t even go to TikTok!

That said, this is a weird story that combines alien hive minds with an alternate history version of 20th century and early 21st century Earth, in which a hypercolony of aliens in orbit have been intercepting and subtly modifying communications to prevent wide-scale conflict, so there is no World War II, relative peace has lasted a hundred years and people’s lives are relatively safe and secure, even if some technologies, like satellites and the internet have never been developed.

But with humanity’s worst impulses suppressed, a secret group called the Correspondence Society has been investigating and identifying what is really going on. From there, the story launches into following an extended family as they get involved in a gambit to break humanity free of the hivemind, regardless of the possible fallout. Wilson intermingles science fiction and horror here, with a strong “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” vibe (a good thing). The characters are complex and not always what they seem–a recurring motif.

That said, there is something so weird about the plot that it was ultimately hard for me to embrace–and I don’t necessarily see that as a negative. Wilson paints an alternate history that is peaceful, but filled with subtle repression, and seems to ask if that’s good enough for most people.

If you like Wilson’s work, you’ll likely enjoy Burning Paradise. Readers new to him may want to be prepared for a story that is at turns bloody, philosophical, and just generally a downer.

View all my reviews

The Death Generator

One of my gaming pals of yore posted this from a Bluesky thread, and it’s kind of delightful. It’s called The Death Generator, but despite the title, it just lets you change the text seen in a myriad of gaming screenshots.

I immediately went for the infamous Call of Duty “Press F to pay respects” interactive cutscene:

And discovered the generator preserves your text so you can re-use it:

This also made me nostalgic for the Windows 95 UI.

Check it out and make your mischief.

Shopping like it’s 1974 (but with 2024 prices)

Today I popped into Save-On Foods after toodling around Sapperton Landing for a bit, and bought some fruit and cereal and vitamins. I didn’t have my backpack with me, and didn’t feel coordinated enough to carry the various items in my hands, so I bought a paper bag for 25 cents. I can’t remember the last time I got a paper bag at a grocery store, but I’m pretty sure it was in the 1970s. It felt strange, yet groovy.