Owls are adorable. They always look so stern and serious and then you see these videos of them on youtube taking a bath and realize they’re just little goofs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA2Iyw6V9gk

Ask a dozen people, get a dozen answers. I think the main tenet is just acceptance: if someone says they’re X species, then it’s true because they say it. And by that grace when I say I’m Y, so be it. I think most people realize it’s a silly game, but in that respect it’s a bit of a litmus test in that can you just play along or do you gotta be a dick about it?

Personally I used to take it a lot more seriously when I was younger. Staunchly a no-nonsense red fox with a back story etc. etc. I thought mythicals and hybrids were goofy, but it’s tiring to be so uptight. Tried to identify heavily with one thing because I thought that’s how you built a sense of self but eventually learned you can just do whatever you want, there are no rules. Cringe is dead, sparkledogs are unironically back in style.

Now I’m a sea slug. I don’t know if I think that reflects who I am or maybe just more what I want to be: stoic, cute, utterly devoid of bones. It doesn’t really matter so much as it’s just a thing I like. A little character to pour some of my creativity into. Whenever I’m having a bad day I can just go online and look at pictures of sea slugs and cheer myself up because it’s that simple. Sometimes I get a message from a friend with a picture of slug in it that says, “look it’s you” and it makes me smile. It’s a little bridge that keeps me anchored to the world when I got nothing else going on.

Posting from pawb.social, I don’t want this to come off as too self-aggrandizing, but there are two communities people should start watching and learning from for the post-corporate internet: furries and speedrunners.

1. Furries: If you’ve ever wondered why there seem to be so many furries in tech and cyber security, there’s a good reason. They were some of the first digital natives to colonize the early internet; use it to connect distant weirdos into an online community. The core pillar of the fandom is simple and non-commercial: be a silly animal. This is an important distinction to the Bronies and Juggalos (no shade, much respect, but I gotta call out what’s true). The overt horniness and subversiveness of the culture makes it impossible for marketing and outside interests to take hold. We chased Tony the Tiger off Twitter (RIP). I’m not saying things have always been perfect, I think in the earlier days of the 90’s and 00’s the push towards extreme inclusiveness prevented pushing out a lot of the worse elements, but the community has been much better about calling these things out these days. Extremely queer, socialist, and anti-fascist - these are the elements that build that strong sense of support.

2. Speedrunners: While it does break a bit from the core pillar of not being centered around commercialized products, I do think there’s still a great amount of leeway with how those products are used in the context and also good integration with the indie community. There is no one central product. And out of that has sprung an extremely organized, self-policing, self-motivated group. These people invest hours meticulously tearing code apart by the seams just because they can and if there’s anyone I believe can save us from AI through the shear brute force terror of human cognition, it’s the speedrunners. It’s no coincidence that the largest organization and charitable event is also very queer and inclusive with significant furry overlap.

I know furries are weird and not for everyone (although I do think it’s odd you don’t know what animal you’d be … come on, you don’t have one in mind?) but I think it’s very much worth taking a look at the community from a higher perspective and figuring out why it has succeeded and will continue to succeed and how you can bring those things to your communities, whatever they may be: climbing, cycling, coffee, crochet, DIY, etc.

Theoretically, I’m all onboard with the night shower arguments. I’d love to be a night shower person. But I don’t think I’m physically capable of waking up in the morning without the shower routine.

I appreciate how angry this post seems to have made some people. Maybe I’ve just been in the furry fandom too long. I feel nothing anymore.

Can you believe it guys? AGI, just a week away! AGI is in a week! Woo-hoo! I am so happy about this information. AGI, just a week away. Oh, wow! Can you believe it? AGI, just in a week! It got here so fast! AGI, just a-

Halo.

Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad game or you’re a bad person for liking it, but man, I have never been able to see the appeal. As someone who has played a lot of shooters (mostly PC) and read a lot of sci-fi, I find it exceptionally mid. And I’m not really fan of the militaristic reverence vibe it’s got going on like … bleh. Does it actually criticize this more as the series goes on or is it really just all oorah? I also kind of blame it for the trends of vehicle segments and only holding two weapons that leaked into other FPSes at the time (looking at you Bioshock Infinite - WTF), although I do admit that’s more of a petty, personal point. I respect that it pushed FPSes and online multiplayer forward on consoles, but when people tell me it’s their favorite game with one of the best storylines ever I’m like, “But have you played any other games?”

I used to work in a game store back when Halo 3 released and I was a much more fervent hater back then, I decided I was gonna play the original Marathon games so I could be a hipster snob and hate on them, too. Actually ended up really loving them, though they’re only loosely related, I think they had a lot more going on stylistically and story-wise even though the gameplay was more primitive.

I retry every few years, but never get very far. Maybe I should skip to 2 because one is so bland I get bored of it.

None. I’m a Millennial, I will burn any corporate loyalty I might’ve had in a heartbeat if you so much as think of crossing me. Do you know how many industries my generation has slaughtered in cold blood?! Watch your step and pray I don’t notice you enough to decide you’re next.

There are just so many things to be said about the ills of AI, but one of them is that it is very purposefully a liability laundering machine. The decisions and thought process are blackboxed and unauditable. We’ve been trained to dismiss any oopsies as an inevitable part of the system, both while it’s still “rapidly developing” as well as just inherent to the technology. Absolutely none of this is acceptable and yet here we are.

Alright, don’t take this diatribe personally, but it just set off a chain of thoughts for me I’m gonna post now because loudly hating on AI at all times is the morally correct thing. You don’t seem like a person looking to be convinced.

In a capitalist society our only real power is as consumers. I know even that’s not really terribly true these days as they largely dictate the markets at us but it’s all we’ve got. An overwhelmingly negative public sentiment does still erode value and makes it harder to support the illusion, we’ve seen that recently with the DLSS5 stuff. It also fortifies community opinion by creating a unifying front. It can slowly shame susceptible targets into changing their stance and help convince people who may be falling for it when they see their friends and respected individuals take a firm stance. Anyone who says armchair warriors can’t accomplish anything just wants you to shut up so you don’t accomplish anything. Ideally you do more, but what other options do we have against this currently?

I understand how AI works and what its legitimate intended use cases are (largely referring to the current crop of LLMs/GenAI here and not broader ML) and that’s exactly why I don’t use it. People who say that they have figured it out and that their specific use cases are legitimate are practically indistinguishable from those who have drunk the Kool aid. Are you one of those rare people I don’t even fully believe exist who has a valid use case or are you another mark who’s fallen prey to the lying machine that lies, was built off plagiarism, destroys the environment, and was purpose built to devalue labor? One of these things seems slightly more likely than the other.

Fuck AI.

I revisit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind every few years when I wanna get my guts all twisted into knots.

I think when Kaufman is left on his own he’s too much of a bummer and Gondry on his own is just too far out. But somehow they come together in a perfect balance with Jim Carey in perhaps his best serious role, IMHO. The soundtrack really takes it the extra mile.

I appreciate it because Joel and Clementine come off as just two kinda fucked up people having a kinda fucked up relationship; very relatable. Neither is perfect or completely at fault and the film very much leaves it up to your interpretation if they can or should work together. I don’t think it has a happy ending, do you? Compare that to something like 500 Days of Summer where you’re really supposed to sympathize with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character but mostly I end up wanting to push him into the mud. Hard.

The subplot between the doctor and his secretary is maybe a little unnecessary? But Kirsten Dunst is amazing so whatever.

I have considered that possibility, yeah. I’m not an expert by far, but it seems less likely.

Breaking from the US is going to cause an initial upheaval to the tech industry that the EU won’t be able to just immediately assert new anti-circumvention on while they are in the active process of a smash and grab. It’s going to take at least some amount of time for them to re-establish that on their terms during which people will become a lot better familiarized and practiced at what all this jailbreaking is going to look like.

People can resist during that time and while I don’t necessarily delude myself into thinking that’ll be super effective, it will also require legal coordination and brand new anti-circumvention tech. Could still be wishful thinking, but I don’t assume it’s just a done deal.

I am personally betting a lot that this is where it’s going (career development-wise, not prediction markets, ugh)

US tech has been absolutely awful and stagnating for awhile. It’s one thing to continue to deal with it when it’s actually offering good value, but it’s not. Between the data sovereignty concerns and tariffs, the EU is positioned to jolt its own tech market if it’s ready to take the opportunity, and I think they are.

I’m not sure I’d expect anything big or grand, much like the “year of the Linux desktop” I don’t know that there will really be a breaking moment. Just slow building of momentum in that direction. And that’s all it really takes, once that momentum takes hold it’s not going to start flowing back to Microsoft. These greedy corporations overplayed their hand, they broke the agreements, and now there’s really no going back.

So I hope …

OK, I apologize. That first post was overly negative so allow me to offer some real hope and advice. (I was sitting in the middle of class when I typed that up and needed to get it off my chest. I moved to a new country and started uni again, which is maybe not the best way to deal with burnout. It’s helped in some ways but hurt in others. That’s my problems though, a story for another time.)

Let’s go back to the fire metaphor for burnout, I think it’s more apt. Not necessarily through any fault of your own, that fire is burnt out now. Someone careless came along and doused it in gasoline until it flared up and dissipated. That first fire was built out of the kindling of you, not intentional but incidental over a lifetime as you slowly piled things onto it. This new fire you need to build is going to have to be more intentional. You’re going to have to pay attention, put thought and care into it. That’s going to take practice and possibly several failures first until you get the hang of it, don’t give up.

This new fire won’t be the same. Not in composition or how it burns; that’s just life. It’s OK if you need to take some time to mourn that, I think it’s only natural. But just like a forest fire sweeping through it leaves fertile ground for new things to grow again. Time and patience which sucks because it runs counter to a lot of what we’re dealing with, but just know it as a fact.

For something concrete to begin with, focus on your self and your interests. It’s hard to sit down and focus on just reading a book when you feel like there are so many dozens of other things you need to tend to, but just take that time for yourself. Speaking personally, if you’re anything like me you got some part of yourself wrapped up in that job/career even though you didn’t want to, even though you didn’t ever see yourself as that kind of person. You need to fill that back in with yourself and if that takes the form of books, or comics, or movies, or videogames, or bike rides or whatever silly thing it is that makes you happy, you just need to do it. Trust me, this is important.

Keep going, you got this.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long while. I like to use the analogy of RAM because I’m a nerd.

When I was younger I felt like I had 32GB. I couldn’t even fully load it, I was into so many things I’d stuff it full and still be running at half capacity.

As I got older, more processes began to run long. Taxes, relationships, the tedium upkeep of life. Then work takes a big bite. You have the space so you run it. 24GB, 24/7. And they run it hard.

But then it gets burnt out. It’s just … fried. You can’t load things into it anymore, they don’t hold. Your memory or attention or energy or some combination of all three fail and the task fails. You had 4x8 but now you’re running on 1x8. For everything. The life tasks build and then there’s more: all the services, the nags, the endless notifications on endless apps, a million group chats buzzing by and the ever growing fascism.

But it’s not RAM. You can’t just go to the store and buy new stuff and replace it. You can’t just take a week off and relax and expect that it’ll start working again. It’s … unclear what will make it work again. Is it just broken now, forever???

You try to load stuff into it anyways, because you have to. Hobbies you used to enjoy. But the memory is still no good so it gets corrupted. That thing you used to enjoy now feels like an obligation and trying to engage with it feels like the memory of touching a hot stove. It slips away. And the entire social group you built around that interest? That slips away, too. It’s all too hot to touch, you don’t have the room and it feels bad: it’s tiring and draining and too much for you anymore.

I used to think burnout was a check engine light. I’d notice it go on, I’d recognize it happened, then I’d get to the shop and fix it. It took me years to figure out what was wrong and I still don’t know what to do about it. And the work just isn’t designed to let you deal with this stuff.

“since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family”

Yeah, because cats know how to evade the fascist state. All Cats Are Beautiful …

Oh yes, I think Peter Watts is a great author. He’s very good at tackling high concept ideas while also keeping it fun and interesting. Blindsight has a vampire in it in case there wasn’t already enough going on for you 😁

Unrelated to the topic at hand, I also highly recommend Starfish by him. It was the first novel of his I read. A dark, psychological thriller about a bunch of misfits working a deep sea geothermal power plant and how they cope (or don’t) with the situation at hand.

Blindsight mentioned!

The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.

This has been my biggest problem with it. It places a cognitive load on me that wasn’t there before, having to cut through the noise.