New post: Your only sin was caring too much

2024_books.html

@@ -151,6 +151,12 @@
 					<td>Tori Telfer</td>
 					<td>Audiobook version. Most of them had it coming for them.</td>
 				</tr>
+				<tr>
+					<td>2024-W18</td>
+					<td>Luminary</td>
+					<td>Kate Scelsa</td>
+					<td>Very annoying how the author would yo-yo back and forth between making inane statements of genderism ("'Female' here should be understood as available to people of any gender, not a biological categorization." - quoted verbatim from the book) and then analysing how late stage capitalism contributes to feelings of inadequacy regarding one's body. If there's nothing wrong with you, then why transition? Hell, anyone who's known me long enough knows that I struggle with waves of severe dysphoria, but I've seen too many horrors of post-op complicatons to ever consider elective surgery for feelings that will likely fade once I start aging out of being able to "kin" pretty anime boys. (To anyone considering transitioning, I must ask you to consider - can you see yourself as an elderly person of the desired sex? Because choosing to live means growing old one day.) The author is too busy calling everyone with even a whiff of same-sex attraction "queer" to take this argument of bodily neutrality to its logical conclusion.</td>
+				</tr>
 			</tbody>
 		</table>
 	</body>

blog/2022/june/MUHWEBSITE.html

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 				<p>Online companies have <em>always</em> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220530225503/https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ftc-geocities-settle-on-privacy/">sold your data</a>. The Internet has <em>always</em> been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220531000621/https://www.cracked.com/article_27141_facebook-second-coming-crappy-1990s-aol.html">a collection</a> of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220531000317/https://dfarq.homeip.net/1990s-aol-competitors/">walled gardens</a>. <a href="https://archive.ph/https://www.wired.com/2010/10/1027hotwired-banner-ads/">Online advertisements</a> have <em>always</em> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220531000146/https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/history-of-online-advertising">existed in some form</a>. Yes, advertising has gotten worse with its omnipresent tracking, and social media networks are still for the most part non-interoperable, and, well, anyone who's been online in the past decade knows Facebook is practically shorthand at this point for collecting and selling user data. But the world of the online has improved in so many more ways. Most "normies" who've begun to give even a single shit about their privacy know about the Tor Browser and, even if for the infamous YouTube adverts, what a VPN is. <a href="https://letsdecentralize.org">Hosting a website is no longer reliant</a> on having a static IP address and money to purchase a domain, or, if one is using peer-to-peer software like Freenet, even a persistent connection. I can access the same websites on my shitty rural ISP's connecton as someone in an affluent area with Google Fiber or whatever can instead of being constrained to whatever my ISP's walled garden has to offer. Hell, you can talk on the phone and use the Internet <em>at the same time</em>, and it doesn't take several minutes to load a single image! (Well... maybe it does for <em>me</em>, since apparently my brothers have been using so much bandwidth that now our ISP is <em>purposely</em> throttling us.)</p>
 				<p>Having a website is not revolutionary. Making a Geocities-esque landing page that never amounts to being anything other than a placeholder because one got bored with it and abandoned it or a Carrd or Linktree knockoff because one ran out of space for "link in bio" does not help "freedom" or "creativity" at all. A shared hosting company or a VPS provider is not necessarily more freedom-oriented than a social media profile in terms of what can be hosted: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220530233108/https://nypost.com/2021/08/17/twitter-says-taliban-can-stay-on-platform-if-they-obey-rules/">the Taliban is apparently allowed on Twitter</a> if they follow the site rules, but <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220530233440/https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/taliban-websites-go-offline-broader-tech-crackdown-rcna1735">several of their websites have been shut down</a>. Some Twitter account somewhere making <a href="https://archive.ph/Sh5pQ">beautiful art</a> <!-- https://nitter.pussthecat.org/Lynncholy/status/991307493388234752 -->
  despite the stifling corporate interface they have to use to interact with the site (and even that drawback is mitigated via third-party apps and interfaces) is doing far more to make the Internet a beautiful and fun place than some half-baked cookie-cutter manifesto written by a person who apparently <em>just</em> discovered that their browser can go to websites other than those operated by GAFAM.</p>
-				<p>There is no need to "revive" the web. It never went away. It never stopped growing. There have always been personal websites and people living outside the zeitgeist of whatever social media site happens to be the most fashionable at the moment. If you're going to proclaim yourself the vanguard of the "internet revolution" or whatever, then act like a leader and lead by example. Put down the savior complex and <a href="../february/SHUTUP.html">make something worth spending bandwidth on</a>.</p>
+				<p>There is no need to "revive" the web. It never went away. It never stopped growing. There have always been personal websites and people living outside the zeitgeist of whatever social media site happens to be the most fashionable at the moment. If you're going to proclaim yourself the vanguard of the "internet revolution" or whatever, then act like a leader and lead by example. Put down the savior complex and <a href="../02/SHUTUP.html">make something worth spending bandwidth on</a>.</p>
 			</div>
 			<hr>
 			<div class="box">

blog/2022/october/yggdrasil.html

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
 				<p>If that's too verbose for you, read this draft of the above I scrawled down in the park one day:</p>
 				<p><img src="../../../img/TechbroCycle.png" class="big" /></p>
 				<p>To counteract this, I've taken it upon myself to singlehandedly populate the <code>o/STEM</code> board of Ovarit with basic tech tutorials and what I feel are the actually good submissions on Hacker News. ("Good" excluding upwards of 99% of the content there, as Hacker News is basically "the tech startup advertising spam website", but that's a complaint for another day.) I don't feel it's productive to yell at random strangers, "What do you mean, you're not running FreeBSD with full-disk encryption and only FOSS software? <em>Clearly</em> you're using your computer wrong!" like how imageboard users like to sling shit at each other over ideological purity in their computing. I don't think the women of Ovarit are stupid. We just have different priorities and interests and hobbies. I chose tech. They chose something else. As the British like to say, "simple as."</p>
-				<p>So, keeping in mind that not everybody has the same level of technological knowledge of me (an autistic person having a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221006030338/https://dana.org/article/developing-a-theory-of-mind/">working theory of mind</a>? <em>SHOCKING!!</em>) I set the following constraints when assessing what this "female-only internet" I thought about <a href="../august/separatism-redux.html">a few posts ago</a> would look like:</p>
+				<p>So, keeping in mind that not everybody has the same level of technological knowledge of me (an autistic person having a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221006030338/https://dana.org/article/developing-a-theory-of-mind/">working theory of mind</a>? <em>SHOCKING!!</em>) I set the following constraints when assessing what this "female-only internet" I thought about <a href="../08/separatism-redux.html">a few posts ago</a> would look like:</p>
 				<ol>
 					<li>The software <em>must</em> already exist, because although I can write a mean Bash script and my knowledge of Python is passable, I don't trust myself to write anything that could potentially be the difference between life and death for someone.</li>
 					<li>The software <em>must</em> be available for Windows, and Android if possible, because it's not fair of me to expect the theoretical users of this network to learn how to use Linux or ditch their phones to be stuck at a computer for all communications or learn how to compile a program from source.</li>

blog/2023/october/urbit2.html

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
 			<hr>
 			<div class="box">
 				<h2>Recap</h2>
-				<p><a href="../../2022/august/urbit.html">I wrote a post about Urbit before</a>, so I don't feel like rehashing the entire intro for what is essentially just an update post, but in case you're too lazy to read it, here's a reminder: Urbit is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230921194025/https://wejn.org/2021/02/urbit-good-bad-insane/">a single-threaded interpreter for webapps that claims to be peer-to-peer</a> but in practice can't connect to other peers half of the time <em>and also</em> falls over if you don't have stable DNS or IPv4 connectivity:</p>
+				<p><a href="../../2022/08/urbit.html">I wrote a post about Urbit before</a>, so I don't feel like rehashing the entire intro for what is essentially just an update post, but in case you're too lazy to read it, here's a reminder: Urbit is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230921194025/https://wejn.org/2021/02/urbit-good-bad-insane/">a single-threaded interpreter for webapps that claims to be peer-to-peer</a> but in practice can't connect to other peers half of the time <em>and also</em> falls over if you don't have stable DNS or IPv4 connectivity:</p>
 				<pre>
 ames: czar at wet.urbit.org: not found (b)
 http: fail (14691, 504): temporary failure

blog/2024/05/sin.html

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+	<head>
+		<meta charset="UTF-8">
+		<title>Your only sin was caring too much - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
+		<link href="../../../style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all">
+		<meta name="author" content="Vane Vander">
+		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
+	</head>
+	<body class="mayvaneday">
+		<article>
+			<div class="box">
+				<h1>Your only sin was caring too much</h1>
+				<p>published: 2024-05-01</p>
+			</div>
+			<hr>
+			<div class="box">
+				<p>I have to write this quick and rough before the extra-strength melatonin takes effect and I conk out for the night: most days nowadays are good, and I am happy to be alive.</p>
+				<p>I've tried to write this post many times, but every time I start, I almost immediately decide that it's not worth it and I close my text editor. Maybe because it feels hypocritical: <a href="../../2022/02/SHUTUP.html">I've taken quite a dislike to the "smol web"'s constant bikeshedding over the banalities of the author's personal life</a>, and I don't want to take up the precious time of my readers whining about things they can't control when they could be doing something to improve their own lives. Which is what I've been doing, slowly and then with more force, since I finally moved out of my parents' house last summer: I've been spending more time in nature and biking around town (I'm still trying to map all the Little Free Libraries) and I even got up the nerve to join the local library board.</p>
+				<p>That's right: I plunked down my $10 membership fee and got to hear <em>all</em> the upcoming changes the library was planning to make! And I even got to <em>vote</em> on them! And I went home afterwards, as it was quite late by the time the meeting adjourned, and I curled up on my bed and cried. For so long I'd been used to being iced out, if not immediately rejected, by whatever communities I'd try to join online. But I've been in this small town for almost a decade now, and most of the librarians know me by name, and for that night I was a <em>valued</em> member on equal footing with all of them and with every other member there.</p>
+				<p>And on many nights I have to resist the urge to break out into tears again. Not of sorrow, but of relief: I kept my promise to Luce; I got a steady job and I got to move out and now I get to live a life self-sovereign and free. I mean, it's not a feminagorist paradise, but the only things stopping me from going where I want to go and doing what I want to do are the stoplights along the highways and Main Street and the scheduled times each business is open. Not having a car doesn't impede me in the slightest; working from home eliminates the need for a commute, and everywhere else is accessible by bike.</p>
+				<p>The only things I miss are Independence Park and the library in the town where I used to live. But my life is a contradiction: back there, I had access to all the sprawling fruits befitting a Twin Cities suburb, but I felt constrained, crushed, trimmed like a bonsai tree; here, where you can drive from one end of the town to the other in the space of a pop song and the library rarely has any poetry that isn't public domain, I feel expansive, free, full of every emotion my family's hereditary depression threatens to deny me.</p>
+				<p>I turn to my wife and I thank her for her change of plans. I thank her for making sure I am alive to experience this moment where my heart is full of joy and gratitude. I feel at peace.</p>
+				<p>I lean out from my bedroom window, having finally discovered how to pop the bug screen out from the window frame. Just like in that old suburb, the sounds of the highway sing a furtive lullaby made of gasoline, although both there and here buildings block most of the glittering headlights. The librarians, my work supervisors (all women!), my friends - I carry them all in my heart wherever I go, and instead of dragging me down I feel the lightest I ever have in my life.</p>
+				<p>The troubles and wars of the alt-tech communities online seem so remote and trivial from this vantage point. Linux is dying? I burn a few Debian DVDs and go on my way. The Internet is dying? Well, the ACP is over with, but my connection will remain strong so long as I pay for it on time. Free speech is dying? <a href="../../2022/08/kiwi.html">Kiwi Farms</a> still stubbornly remains, and I've been writing under the banner of MayVaneDay for nine years now with no intention of stopping. My anxiety tells me that I'm going to be fired at any moment, and then my supervisor pulls me into a Zoom meeting for my yearly review and tells me that I'm nearly perfect. My only flaw, the only thing left to improve, is not taking so seriously the weekly feedback everyone gets. She reminds me that she is not out to get me, that she does <em>not</em> fire people unless they outright <em>refuse</em> to do their jobs properly, that the feedback is so I can get better. She reminds me that she is beyond grateful to have me on her team and that I will have a job for as long as I want one.</p>
+				<p>My only sin, in childhood and adolescence, in my failure to thrive and my newfound fervor for life, is caring too much.</p>
+			</div>
+			<hr>
+			<div class="box">
+				<p align=right>CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 &copy; Vane Vander</p>
+			</div>
+		</article>
+	</body>
+</html>

blog/index.html

@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 		<div class="box">
 			<h2>2024</h2>
 			<ul>
+				<li>May 1 - <a href="./2024/05/sin.html">Your only sin was caring too much</a></li>
 				<li>April 1 - <a href="./2024/04/mnlink.html">The RIAA HATES her! Local Minnesotan uses tax dollars to get music FOR FREE!</a></li>
 				<li>March 1 - <a href="./2024/03/web-aint-dead.html">The web never died</a></li>
 				<li>February 1 - <a href="./2024/02/diamond.html">Adamantium Hands</a></li>
@@ -53,10 +54,10 @@
 				<li>September 15 - <a href="./2022/september/browsers.html">Fellas, Is It Fascist To Block Suspicious Web Traffic?</a></li>
 				<li>September 13 - <a href="./2022/september/boox.html">A week with the Onyx Boox Note Air</a></li>
 				<li>September 4 - <a href="./2022/september/gamutto.html">A Very Long String Of Gamutto Moments</a></li>
-				<li>August 28 - <a href="./2022/august/kiwi.html">The death of Kiwi Farms doesn't mean the end of free speech</a></li>
+				<li>August 28 - <a href="./2022/08/kiwi.html">The death of Kiwi Farms doesn't mean the end of free speech</a></li>
-				<li>August 17 - <a href="./2022/august/beres.html">I uninstalled my RSS feed reader</a></li>
+				<li>August 17 - <a href="./2022/08/beres.html">I uninstalled my RSS feed reader</a></li>
-				<li>August 6 - <a href="./2022/august/urbit.html">Urbit is still basically just a glorified chatroom</a></li>
+				<li>August 6 - <a href="./2022/08/urbit.html">Urbit is still basically just a glorified chatroom</a></li>
-				<li>August 1 - <a href="./2022/august/separatism-redux.html">Separatism: Redux</a></li>
+				<li>August 1 - <a href="./2022/08/separatism-redux.html">Separatism: Redux</a></li>
 				<li>July 11 - <a href="./2022/july/android_darknet.html">The state of darknet access on Android</a></li>
 				<li>July 7 - <a href="./2022/july/web3.html">Broke Dumbass Attempts To Web3</a></li>
 				<li>June 16 - <a href="./2022/june/mistakes.html">I Love Deleting Things, Actually</a></li>
@@ -66,8 +67,8 @@
 				<li>May 9 - <a href="./2022/may/divide.html">State of the Divide</a></li>
 				<li>April 11 - <a href="./2022/april/blood.html">Rivers of Blood</a></li>
 				<li>March 14 - <a href="./2022/march/digital-immortality.html">The quest for digital immortality</a></li>
-				<li>February 27 - <a href="./2022/february/spanish.html">Seven Spanish verbs to make your future-wife cry with</a></li>
+				<li>February 27 - <a href="./2022/02/spanish.html">Seven Spanish verbs to make your future-wife cry with</a></li>
-				<li>February 19 - <a href="./2022/february/SHUTUP.html">SHUT UP AND MAKE SOMETHING</a></li>
+				<li>February 19 - <a href="./2022/02/SHUTUP.html">SHUT UP AND MAKE SOMETHING</a></li>
 				<li>January 30 - <a href="./2022/january/sappho.html">Sappho Was A Right-On Woman</a></li>
 				<li>January 10 - <a href="./2022/january/vow2.html">Vow II</a></li>
 				<li>January 6 - <a href="./2022/january/pendulum.html">I don't trust technomancy</a></li>

css/bartz.css

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style.css

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 <!--
 
-/* "Bartz" for Layout V4 */
+/* "Kuja" for Layout V4 */
 
 /* https://web.archive.org/web/20240310130126/http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/ */
 
@@ -11,22 +11,6 @@
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@@ -90,7 +74,7 @@ hr {
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@@ -99,7 +83,7 @@ code {
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