Popagandhi

Finished reading: Fantastic Fungi by Paul Stamets 📚

As part of my new interest in mycology, I read the book by the supposed granddaddy of the field.

If you've watched the documentary on Netflix, this book is what started it all. Lately, I'm trying to read more about the perspectives of Indigenous people on mycology and nature, and their relationships with the mostly settler types who participate in mycology, whether in foraging, creating enterprises, or even in healing. I'm starting to develop a more critical view of some of the more well known faces in mycology.

The book is a little disjointed, in that it presents many different perspectives from all types of people who are in the field, some interested in the healing properties, some in the climate change fixing possibilities, some in the psychedelic aspects. I found myself most interested in the essays written by activists from other parts of the world, like the one from Chile who is working to see how mushrooms can help create interesting solutions for climate change, but am largely meh about an approach that is too psychedelic-focused.

Finished reading: Moyasimon by Masayuki Ishikawa 📚

I spent the latter half of 2022 reading widely on all things microbiome and mycology. I am fascinated by these two related topics, particularly by how little we seem to know about it. I certainly wish I had been exposed to these topics more extensively in school.

From a book about mushrooms, I was introduced to a manga about a boy who can see germs and bacteria. It's certainly a topic I never imagined I would read about in this format. It's very educational but also fun.

It's set in an agriculture university, and through a variety of characters tells you about the different types of bacteria in sake-brewing, bacteria that exists around us, as well as different fermentation practices around the world. It's fun, and quite action-packed for manga that's about something so.. unseen. Highly recommended, and I'm digging into volume 2 as we speak.

Finished reading: How Music Works by David Byrne 📚

David Byrne seems to like the same things I do, having written a book about bicycles, and about music. Or, I like David Byrne and the music he makes and loved seeing his thoughts on music in this book.

Part memoir (about his experience in the Talking Heads), part history and science of music, this book will be something I keep coming back to. A very helpful chapter describes the current state of the music industry and provides a cold hard glimpse into the numbers behind how professional musicians make music and money.

Almost exactly 16 years ago I signed up for Twitter, curious about what it might be. The social web was so young then. I was still in university. The hashtag had barely been invented. Technology seemed like it might change the world, and I was excited to be a part of it.

16 years later, I am midway through my career in technology and I am starting to feel like.. a lot of this was a mistake. Walled gardens were a mistake. Trusting people who wanted to move fast and break things were a mistake.

I can no longer abide narcissistic people who treat people cruelly for fun and profit. I was in Myanmar a lot in the heady days of 2013/2014 where the corporations were so excited about the Next Billion Users coming online in Southeast Asia, but they didn't care if they also inadvertently accelerated genocide. I didn't get a front row seat to that mess, but I knew many civil society activists who were working so hard to try to get Facebook to care.

I cut my use of Facebook and Meta-owned products as a result.

This week, the rocket man unceremoniously let go of many people, many of them people I know. There are no good layoffs or reorgs, but there are too many people who conflate cruel behavior with necessary behavior. Beyond the amorality of it, I am also concerned about security issues if a service like Twitter is left running but everyone's already left the building. As late as a few days ago I still imagined I would 'go down with the ship' or stick around to find out, but after (1) the unethical firings (2) realizing that the new owner was personally censoring things that painted him in an unceremonious light, I decided that I don't need to live that way and I don't owe him anything.

This is how I am going to reboot my social media use.

I am @skinnylatte@mastodon.social @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io on Mastodon. Mastodon is not for everyone. It needs a lot of improvements in UX and it needs to get better at explaining itself to less technical people. But I like what I see right now: if people were falling off the Twitter thermocline (and it feels like that in my own usage of Twitter, as I follow a lot of security and infra and general nerds who are typically at the forefront of the bleeps and bloops of computer work), I've seen a huge wave on Mastodon in the past week alone.

Where before, Mastodon felt lonely, the pace of adoption and follows and responses has picked up so much that it comes close to what I was experiencing on Twitter as a somewhat advanced user.

(Edit. 2 December 2022: I have deactivated Twitter completely. The antisemitism, transphobia and all-around incel-town nature of that community is not something I want to participate in. I downloaded a copy of my archives and I will be hosting a mirror of it here, quite soon. So not all past posts have been lost. BUt I refuse to have any content that one of the people I dislike the most in the world can use for advertising or other purposes. This post has been lightly edited to reflect this change.)

### Cross-post one way to Twitter only

I use moa.party to cross-post. Posting on one platform lets you automatically post the same thing to the other.

I do this solely for archival, and for my 41K Twitter followers to know that I am somewhere else.

I do not intend to originate posts from Twitter after 31 December 2022, but I may sometimes respond to tweets.

For all intents and purposes, my Twitter account will be there, but in cryogenic sleep.

Mastodon scratches my itch for short form text posts, but that it emphasizes intentionality over virality will probably shift my text output into other areas.

Some people say that Twitter was amazing because it was like going into a crowded bar and being able to find the most random people shouting the most random and amazing things.

I was certainly happy to have come across people who baked bread with ancient yeast, the world's foremost lichen experts, people who knew more about pop culture than I can ever hope to in ten lifetimes, and many people who live and learn so differently from me.

My experience with Mastodon has been that once I crossed the 100 follower mark, and I did this by following many people early on and boosting toots, Mastodon became a good enough Twitter replacement for me.

That's the whole point! If you think about it, a tweet is also silly.

So is a google. I am personally rather fond of toots.

If you're as old as I am, practically deceased like the kids will say at the age of 37, you'll have lived through several iterations of webby things.

I was able to keep all my blog content because I always had text files and never invested too much in a hosted platform. Everything run by someone else feels.. ephemeral. If it means something to you, make a copy. Preferably in plain text format. There will be ways to export content, there usually are, but you must have a copy first. If photos are your thing, don't just rely on Instagram to keep the compressed files. Keep your photos somewhere you can access. Make copies.

Yes, I agree. Read fedi.tips. Ask questions. But don't just complain: I think we all need some time of active learning to un-learn the bad habits that big tech companies foisted upon us.

Will it ever gain mass traction? Maybe not. But maybe, just maybe, we don't need that.

I think I am done with being a consumer, the way I am done with being a product.

I pay for things where I can, I prefer it that way. I no longer use Google, I use DuckDuckGo. I prefer to have Fastmail or Protonmail over Gmail's many conveniences. I'd rather run my own Photoprism server than trust my photos to Google Photos anymore. I gave away all my Echos and Google Nests.

Surveillance technology is not for me, and algorithmic bias and fairness is something that I personally care a lot about, so don't want to be a willing participant of.

I will probably buy non-smart versions of things for as long as I can. I don't want to upgrade firmware on my car or microwave or bicycle.

I'm still excited about technology, but I am not excited about existing business models for it. So in many ways, Twitter's downfall feels like a fascinating, but messy time, to try to participate in social media with full intentionality.

I am done, I think, with the performative cruelty of early social media. No more dunks, no more subtweets, no more yelling. If I am angry about something, and there are many things to be angry about, I plan to log off and count to five and go for a walk and write about it later if I am still angry about it.

I am also noticing that in the three days since I've de-prioritized Twitter as a service, I feel... better. I feel less angry. I look forward to seeing what my friends have tooted at me.

I miss the random coming-across-of-something-great. I have not yet experienced that on Mastodon yet, but it's still early. But I suspect it's similar to what I am now starting to feel about music:

I don't need to listen to the latest and greatest music from artists and genres I don't particularly care for. It's great that Taylor Swift has a new album, but her music isn't for me. If I hear it in a bar one day, maybe I will enjoy it, but I don't need to stream it in lossless formats in many platforms I don't own.

I did recently inherit a used Rega Planar 2 from a very old man, though, and he gave me a bunch of his jazz records that he loved. He bought thousands of records from a jazz store that was closing down, he felt like it he was giving it a home. Now that he was getting old, he wanted me to give them a home too.

So while I still stream music when I go running, or when I am commuting, the music enjoyment I look forward to the most is when I sit down at my record player with the first good speakers I managed to afford, and play Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby. The record sleeve says, this record was recorded at the Village Vanguard, and shortly after, one of the musicians died in a car accident.

Some days, I log in to a private livestream run by some jazz musicians I learn jazz from (I am learning jazz piano and sax), and listen to them play their favorite jazz albums and talk about playing that music and how it's inspired them.

I realise that it is possible to choose to not consume, but to relish and savor.

Much like I have never been to an all you can eat buffet I enjoyed, I won't miss a whole lot of this unnecessary... cruft. But in opting for slow socials, I feel more empowered to share short posts sometimes, longer posts more infrequently, with fewer dopamine hooks to make me feel shitty about the world.

It's also in line with my overall life plan to make more music, eat more delicious food, meet more amazing people online and off, and just really focus on how when everything feels horrible, the most radical thing I can do for myself is to allow myself to enjoy beautiful things in ways which are still meaningful to me. If I can do all that while helping advertisers flee a platform that's become a vector for hate, and help lighten the pockets of a man I greatly disdain, that's even better.

In the meantime, I will listen to records and go bleep bloop sometimes, or infrequently, or perhaps never at all.

Sometimes I think of countries as restaurants. Every country has a different concept. Every country has something to offer. Some have menus, some do not. Some are large multi-concept food halls, others are exclusive white tablecloth places where people have to fight for the scraps—outside.

My country, Singapore, is a prix fixe restaurant where there is a daily special. One soup, one main. You can take it or leave it. If you have more money, you can upgrade some parts. But it's still a fixed menu. You can't change it very much. You can't go anywhere. You can only stand up and sit down. The waiters are quick to shoo you out, or push you back down, whenever you feel like you might want to do something different.

I now live in the US, which feels like a multi-concept sort of place. On level 1, there's food hall like one of those in a mall with funny names. All kinds of things, but nothing that will keep you satiated for long. Just fast food and snacks. Make your way to the top, and you'll find a stuffy dining room. Realistically, most people will spend all of their time between levels 2 and 99. You can take the elevator, climb the stairs, do whatever you want. There are lots of ways to go anywhere and you can go at any time. You can do whatever you want. Some people throw poop into their food, and eat it, and that's fine too.

In the prix fixe restaurant, you eat the same thing everyday and maybe you get bored. You never get food poisoning. Everything is safe. In the food hall for insomniac people, you can eat lying down, shoes off, with your feet if you like. There are no rules, there are no bouncers. But you get food poisoning every other day. Unless you're on the top floor with all of the silver spooners. There, you get proper chicken, not the hormone-filled ones that taste awful. You get real vegetables. Life up there is pretty sweet, nicer than the top floor of any other restaurant in the world.

It's June 2022, and I am in Singapore. I am lying under my blanket feeling angry about the state of America. There are more mass shootings than I can count this week. I can't imagine what parents feel about losing their children to gun violence. I think about how when I walk by the thousands of homeless people in the city I live in, I see glimpses of their past lives. The backpacks they must have carried to work, and how they now store everything they own. The fancy camping tents they probably slept in when camping for leisure, that are now the only shelters over their heads. Why do I keep going back to somewhere where I get food poisoning all the time?

I don't have the answers. I think, though, that after a lifetime of being safe and repressed, it was interesting and novel to live somewhere that was the opposite. The country that always give us food poisoning also has delicious food and incredible experiences on every level between 1 and 99, whereas most other countries only have a few. A few ways of being. A few ways to exist. But the diarrhea is bad and sometimes there are no rest rooms.

That for people like me, who could never fit in the box of that my country demanded of me, I don't know where else I can go. That every time I board the plane between both cities, I am making the choice between physical and psychological safety, rarely both.

You learn to duck under the people flinging poop around. But at home, you can only sit down or shut up. Some people say surely there must be an in-between country that isn't either / or. Maybe. But what I'm afraid of is that many of the in-between countries hide their poop so well, and things look great, until you get there and then you have to sit down or shut up again because you're not from there. Because you should be grateful you no longer live in the other places.

I'm now of the opinion that there are no good countries, the best you can do is try to make a decent life for yourself anywhere. If you have the opportunity to pick, like I do, that's already a huge privilege. If you're queer, multi-national, like us, the number of possible places to live is tiny. You've got to make the most of the ones that work. But as the world turns hard towards authoritarianism and fascism, I don't feel like there are any good places to hide. I don't believe there is a single country worth moving to that is going to be able to avoid that wave. I also don't believe anyone who says, "my country is better than that one": they always come from a position of privilage, and my position as an immigrant to their country is never going to be the same. They also never, ever know what they are talking about, if they're not queer and intersectional in the same way we are.

On this trip home, it was nice to not have to think about food poisoning. I know exactly what my life back home will be, what it will look like, maybe even where I will live and what I will do. It's been tempting to imagine going back to that. But I also know that in a place where I can only sit down and shut up, repress my gayness, hide my photos of my family at work, where I must be gay but not too much, where I can be out but not too loudly, where I can live as a queer person but not have rights, I'm reluctantly crawling back into the place that gives me diarrhea every single day.

My country says: it's hypothetical that you'll ever have food poisoning here, because everything is perfect here, so why are you mad at me, and why do you leave me?

I'm mad that I have to live somewhere that gives me food poisoning. But at least there, my wife and I can be together, as my wife, even if we have to poop more than usual.