Barbsart

Pathé Marconi VSM 3004 // portable record player (France, 1975)

One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.

(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)

This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”

Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”

It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

I still haven't watched Severance but congratulations to the fandom for getting a Blorbo who did end up crying, soaking wet in a suit and tie, and covered in blood at the end of the show. This is like getting a superbowl ring but for fandom I think.

sooooooooooooo many things to scream about tonight but number one on the list is the difference in the ways dylan and mark's outies talked to their innies. from the get-go mark scout is nothing but patronizing to mark s. he created mark s as an escape from his grief, and now he wants to use mark s as a means to an end to save his wife and pick up his life where he abandoned it. he gets helly's name wrong and calls her 'the person you're seeing' because he doesn't recognize mark s's humanity. he sees mark s as an extension of himself, and he only loves gemma, so of course whatever mark s feels for helly can't be real or worth fighting for. and when mark s understandably doesn't see it his way, mark scout lashes out, calling mark s a child.

but then you have the letter dylan george wrote to dylan g. in three paragraphs dylan george talks to his innie like an adult, like they are peers. he's angry at dylan g, but at the same time, he understands why dylan g did what he did. he would have done the same if he were in dylan g's place. after years of being jealous of his outie, dylan g learns that his outie thinks he (dylan g) is the one to emulate, the self-assured badass. and where helena and mark scout made their innie's decisions for them ("i am a person. you are not.") dylan george breaks the cycle: he offers his opinion, but ultimately puts the decision back in dylan g's hands.

at the end of this season, dylan g is gifted agency. and after fulfilling his purpose, mark s steals his agency back.

PSA: never discuss private affairs in your DMs, especially contraception and abortion. Social media moguls will absolutely sell you out to the government. There are already cases of people being charged based on evidence in their DMs.

@thevaguestoffeeling You're absolutely right.

If you are part of a vulnerable group - LGBT+, ethnic minority, women, religious minority, teen, anyone - do not think they won't hand your DMs to a government looking to persecute you. Yes, including feckin' Tumblr.

i figured this was common knowledge, but in case you don't know - NO social media messaging service like this is safe to discuss such things. i've heard signal is good and i know it has a great reputation, but never ever ever trust a company to not hand over your data and DMs in a heartbeat

are you an artist who wants to get away from big site-builders like squarespace & have a place to put your work that isn't social media? i threw together a super basic portfolio code template you can use to make your own website!

it should be easy enough to customize if you have a basic understanding of what html and css are. features include:

enjoy! if you end up using it, please let me know; i'd love to see what you do with it!

blog post ✷ live preview & code ✷ tip jar

coworker asks if i like harry potter and i have to make a disco elysium skill check to come up with a response

CIS COWORKER — Hey you seem really into wizards and stuff, I bet you love Harry Potter :)

EMPATHY — He’s just trying to be polite and make conversation. He doesn’t know about JK Rowling’s opinions on trans people. Let’s politely change the subject.

COMPOSURE [Trivial: Failure] — “Kill yourself.”

cartoons and anime on free websites is not piracy. thats where theyre from. they can run wild and free on websites like wco. stop putting them on streaming services. they are not domesticated. they should not be tamed

no offence but I hate when people my age start projecting their own fears and ideas about aging and youth onto me. girl sorry but I’m young and beautiful if you think women in their late 20s onwards are worthless old hags who have run out of time that’s a personal problem

If anyone talks with any amount of approval about the potential mass dying of humanity during climate collapse, you can punch that person in the face.

If that person is white, you can punch them twice.

(Technically, unless you are interrupted, nothing is physically stopping you from punching people who trivialize the mass murder of billions of people of color many more times. The ones or twice are just suggestions of what you could do.)

The world wouldn’t be better if a tiny population lived in the forests again.  Don’t fucking romanticize genocide.

Overpopulation is a myth. Resource distribution is the problem.

Humans aren’t ‘a plague’ or ‘parasites’. Capitalism is the problem. Comparing humans to animals or sicknesses has always been used to justify violence against populations. 

You’re not cool and edgy if you’d be okay with mass dying because you ‘hate humanity’.

Each of these statements is paving the way for very real mass murder and genocide. People of color are already dying in large numbers because of climate change and ‘western’ states are already militarizing their borders and getting rid of human rights in preparation for a situation where most of the world dies while the privileged survive. They really wanna do this and every time you say this shit you make it easier for them.

these notes should no remain just notes

out of context

spam emails are horrifying on an entirely different level once you actually begin to grapple with the material reality of ‘cyberspace’. how many servers were involved in dumping this message into my trash folder, where are they located, how much water goes into cooling them every day? where did the metals come from to build these facilities, who maintains them, how much labour and suffering and exploitation is required to bombard me with 50 messages a day i don’t even look at for products i will never buy? not just useless or a nuisance, but actively harming the earth & its people, and for what. zero social value, zero human communication, just capital trying to metastasise