At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media. In fact, currently I’m off social media entirely (and I’m off a lot of other digital social venues, as well, including several Slacks, several email discussion lists, several Discourses, etc.), and that will remain the case until the first week or so of January. So, what follows are some notes I made for myself — a digital social network of one, though occasionally people do reply to posts I write — from the past week:
▰ I would like to meet the people who order Blank Forms publications through target.com. One-stop shopping for toothpaste, plasticware, Maryanne Amacher, and Éliane Radigue.
▰ Since I can’t solder, it’s usually not DIY but SDI4M (someone did it for me)
▰ Anyone who thinks contemporary children’s culture is too violent has not seen (or fails to remember) the Halloween sequence in the supposedly heartwarming classic Meet Me in St. Louis.
▰ Been watching the third and final season of the What If… ? series, all about Marvel alternate universe stories. I knew one episode was titled “1872” and had Kate Bishop in it, and so I allowed myself to hope it was Hawkeye as Emily Dickinson, or vice-versa, but it was a western. (There was one line about poetry, but unrelated.)
▰ Got a new household device, same manufacturer as one we already had (totally different types of device, one kitchen and the other living room), turned it on, and of course it makes the same startup sound
▰ Went to see Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors for the umpteenth time at SFMOMA. I swear it is better with each viewing. Each time I go I sit focused on a specific screen, this time on Kjartansson himself. The sound at his screen’s end of the nine-screen installation is a lot more sparse, as it’s further from the drums and the two pianos.
▰ I finished reading one novel this week, We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor. I picked it up based on the recommendation of the owner of a local comic shop, and I really enjoyed it. It has a reputation as funny, but the funny is really just part of what’s going on. I had a blast and will definitely read the next in the series. This was the 30th novel I finished reading in 2024. I thought I might finish one more by the end of December, but with my mom in town for a week it’s unlikely, and that is, of course, fine.