Kagu's Corner

I Went To China, and I Have Thoughts

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In December I was fortunate enough to have a LOT of PTO banked up, and I spent almost all of it on 3 weeks in mainland China and Taiwan. I hit 3 cities in the mainland - Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhangjiajie - as well as Taipei in Taiwan.

This wasn't my first time in China. I actually went as a middle schooler for one week. It was an exchange program my middle school had with Beijing No. 5 middle school. This was in the early 2010s, over 14 years ago. My memory is pretty bad and obviously that trip was chaperoned and heavily coordinated, so it definitely felt like my first time in the country this time around. This isn't a travel blog, but I made a bulleted list of random cultural observations I have that might be interesting to go through. So in no particular order here they are:

The Coffee is quite bad
- Even really expensive $6.25 cups of coffee were pretty mid - the average cup from a Luckin Coffee was like $1.25. This is not surprising, as tea is vastly more popular in the land that originated tea, but there's SO SO SO many coffee chain shops and it felt like every upper-end mall store had its own cafe... yet all but two cups I had on that trip tasted like Nespresso. The best cup I had was a pour over on the 80th floor of the Taipei 101 at the fanciest buffet I've ever attended, on New Years day.</li> </ul> </li>
- Tea culture is not really what I thought it would be
 
 Based on Jesse the tea guy on Youtube and some of the tea experiences I have in Asian areas of the US, I'd have thought people would make tea part of their morning routine or go to nice tea houses for entertainment and stuff. This does probably occur, but it's way less common than I expected. People do value their tea, but more often than not the aunties I was with (our hosts and friends of my partner's parents) just carried a thermos of oversteeped leaves they would repeatedly add hot water to. Hot water, by the way, is free at most restaurants and tourist attractions that serve food. Iced or even fridge-cold water? Just as hard to find as in Europe.</li> </ul> </li>
 Everywhere seems to be BYOB, which is super cool. Some fancier restaurants like the famous Beijing roast duck places have a corking fee but it's fairly nominal (I think 25-50 yuan?).</li>
 They do not care for American culture
 
 This is kind of the opposite of Japan and a lot of Europe in my experience. Chinese people love American brands (most made in the mainland anyways) but I felt like outside of some hyper-trendy areas they could not give less of a shit about American cultural exports. They also don't seem to really find our country remotely interesting, either. In Japan or Europe, it's fairly normal to hear someone try to emulate the American accent for fun or tell us they've been to New York City and loved it; this never happened to us in China. In fact, the few inquisitive Chinese people that did ask follow-ups after learning we were American seemed to pity us XD. It felt like their questions about Trump or the cultural state of the US were more out of concern for our wellbeing than anything. The one place that felt like it was trying to emulate a little bit of American culture was the popular shopping districts in Shanghai, and even then it was really only emulating the overpriced boutique shopping experience of an NYC; I can't really say that's uniquely American.</li> </ul> </li>
 There is no such thing as being nosy
 
 This one is quite funny and somewhat endearing to me, and mostly applies to older folks (50+), but generally they do not GAF if they're looking over your shoulder at your phone or following you around because you look interesting. It's just normal to them to be nosy like this LOL. We had several older folks follow us from one photo spot to another and look straight into the phone's viewfinder as we posed for photos, sometimes making a "not bad" face as the photo was taken, or nodding in agreement seemingly at the pose we had picked or something. It was so funny by the middle of the trip we had started doing it to. Chinese people do take a lot of photos in public and wow their phones are quite cool.</li> </ul> </li>
 Personal space who?
 
 Yeah they'll stand in your breathing bubble even while fully outside, or they'll have full on phone calls on speaker while on the bus or the tourist trolley. They'll even speak at the same time as the tour guide. This one irked me like you wouldn't believe, but I guess interrupting people is just not that rude there? Or there's some social hierarchy I'm not understanding.</li> </ul> </li>
 Beijing pollution is still really bad. Kathmandu bad maybe, but thankfully not as bad as New Dehli. I do read that this has improved in the last 14 years, but it's still stark as soon as you look out a window and somewhat close buildings are foggy.</li>
 Giant Identical Housing Development Blocks
 
 I mean they have 1.3Bn people, so it makes sense that when they develop housing it's a fuck ton of units in identical buildings. This was certainly not the case anywhere downtown or in the shopping districts. In fact, they have some crazy cool large buildings that feel very modern. I think my western brain definitely just immediately jumped to "omg it's all the government", but I don't know if that's fully true. I will say, it does trigger the lifelong western propaganda of 'societies of control' that I grew up with, but I think there are other aspects of China that more starkly emphasize that. For now, I leave you with a meme about seeing 20 identical buildings in suburbs around the major cities.</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
 </figure>
 
 Copycat Economy
 
 Everything's made in China, and it doesn't take a genius to see that the IP laws in China favor local manufacturers. This results in the fact that every Chinese car and many Chinese products from Android Phones to clothing are very reminiscent of brands that manufacture in China but come from elsewhere. Xiaomi even cloned the iPhone and named it the 'Xiaomi 17 Pro Max' - which according to MKBHD</a> is actually a bit better than the original lmao. Every other chinese car looks like some weird amalgamation of design queues from Tesla to Chevy and everything in between. There are notable exceptions to this: China has crazy and amazing foldable phones, tablets, tech I've never seen in commercial use before, and a lot of their more modern car brands are making cars that are incredibly unique.</li>
 Sidenote on the car thing... holy shit the cars are so fancy and full of tech. We got in several ubers where the backseats of the vans had fully controllable in-seat AC/heating and every single part of the seat position could be adjusted through a built-in touch screen on the arm rests. Also half the cars don't have rearviews anymore, they are replaced with rear view cameras and digital displays.</li> </ul> </li>
 Insane amounts of surveillance
 
 It's actually way more stark than I thought it would be even with the western narrative about China. Cameras EVERYWHERE. Our host even said "theres no point in stealing in Beijing, some camera has spotted you and they will find you. There's almost no crime to the point people leave their cars running when they go pick up takeout."</li>
 The surveillance is so crazy, definitely higher than in the US, though I know for a fact (as I've mentioned Flock before) that the US does do surveillance just in covert and supposedly "public safety"-centric ways.</li> </ul> </li>
 The American starvation flight
 
 Something that traveling on foreign airlines has really really made me pissed off about is the uniquely bad American starvation flight. Wanna go from LAX to NYC? You get a little bag of peanuts. Wanna go from Shanghai to Beijing (2.5hr flight)? Well if it coincides with meal windows you get a free full meal... in economy class. This is also the case for flights outside of China, and most commonly with non-American airlines. I came back so pissed off hopping on a Un*ted flight and having to bring a sandwich on board so I wouldn't be pissy when I landed on the east coast.</li> </ul> </li>
 Being cold is the devil
 
 Chinese people believe that being cold is literally the reason for death or something. You can't even be a little chilly. Our first hotel in Beijing had our room cranked up to 26 deg C... (almost 79F). I was so sweaty I slept without the sheets on, and also the room thermostat pretended to adjust but in reality this hotel only had central heating and it was controlled by maintenance. The best they could do for us was open the window... which meant I was breathing smog all night. Rough one. Only the super fancy foreigner-friendly hotels we stayed in after Beijing had a functional A/C we could actually control.</li> </ul> </li>
 Shanghai and Beijing have opposite vibes
 
 Shanghai is the young, hip, economic powerhouse full of young business people and salary folk. Beijing is the old town full of history but really just slower paced and chill. Beijing is Kyoto without the nature, Shanghai is Tokyo without the insane density.</li> </ul> </li>
 Holy fuck the USA is technologically stunted
 
 I mentioned it a bit about the cars above and stuff. But holy shit we live in the stone age compared to China it's insane. The tech is mostly piggy-backing on old IP that Chinese manufacturers... acquired... but still. The proliferation and ubiquity of digital living is insane. You cannot pay with cash in most places. You must use a QR code with Alipay or WeChat pay most commonly. Most department stores accept credit cards. The cars are more modern, the phones are more modern (and cheaper), everyone seems to be online all the time and online shopping feels like the way 50% of commerce is conducted. We found almost no brick-and-mortar stores that weren't clothing stores.</li>
 China is pushing the AI bullshit just as hard as the US, but I'll be honest... at least it feels like the average netizen gets something out of it that's not a bad chatbot spitting out shit code. There was an AI assistant built into one of our hotel rooms in Zhangjiajie, which could take voice commands (in English too) to do everything from turn on or off different lights, warm the bath, close the blinds, turn on the TV and search for a program to watch. Also... mass surveillance + AI shit means that if you're a Chinese citizen you often don't need physical ID to board planes, buses, enter tourist attractions, pay for stays. Half the more popular tourist attractions just scan your face to let you in. Creepy, but at least convenient. All we get in the USA is the right to not strip down to our socks through TSA Pre-check or Global Entry, and that costs money!</li> </ul> </li>
 Taiwan is full of grating loud noises
 
 The buses play a loud high-pitched beeping noise anytime their blinker is on and you can hear it down the block. Every store seems to have a loud entry ding ding ding. The red light countdown beeps, the train doors closing beeps really loud. It really is not as pleasant as Japan public transit and I honestly was feeling overstimulated just walking around mildly popular streets.</li> </ul> </li>
 This one is hard to explain but just trust me bro: Taiwan is giving Japan with Chinese characteristics and therefore ends up being not as fun as Japan and not as interesting as China. The sad effects of colonization...</li> </ul>
 And that's the bulk of my notes! Long one but I was there for 3 weeks so makes sense.

Update on the Software I'm using

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There have been a few updates to the software I'm running on my personal machines over the last few months that I thought I should cover. I realized the last time I wrote about my DEs and stuff I said I was testing Hyprland.
Portable PC</h3>
I finally replaced my 2016 Dell XPS laptop with a Surface Pro 7 that was laying around in my partner's house. So yay, from 2016 tech to 2019 tech for my portable PC.
I immediately installed CachyOS on it, which had my XPS running smooth as butter. I switched to the surface anyways because the XPS does not have USB-C and has a proprietary charging port that is just one more power brick to travel with.
CachyOS on the Surface has been... fine. The touch screen does not work. I tried installing the Surface Kernel but ran into an apparently common issue where MOK Manager simply never appears during reboot so that the kernel secure boot keys can be signed. The forum solutions suggest booting from a Linux Mint ISO but those don't work because I'd have to turn off secure boot to use the Mint ISO anyways. Weird and frustrating, so I left it.
I run Niri WM on it, which if you ask me is really really well suited to laptops, since there's not a lot of real estate for a typical tiling manager, and it doesn't chug GPU memory like Hyrpland does.
I've had other annoying issues with Hyprland on my main Desktop PC actually...
Desktop Workstation</h3>
I fully switched back to Gnome on my Fedora workstation PC. I was fairly happy with Hyprland for a few weeks until one day I tried to set OBS back up and my logitech webcam for video capture.
Holy fuck is it completely broken. Maybe on Arch, with the ability to reference the wiki steps, I'd have solved the issue. Alas, on Fedora I did not manage to. Gnome is old reliable in this case, and I'd rather spend my time editing my footage than hacking up a solution to simply be able to capture my own screen.
As soon as I logged back into Gnome and removed Hypr packages, OBS booted right up in an XWayland session, showed me my screens, and my webcam was in full resolution and FPS without the weird FPS mismatch I seemed to permanently have on Hyprland.
/shrug IDFK but I am just sticking to what works
Using Arch</h3>
Arch (CachyOS in my case) has honestly been nice to work with despite the fucked issues with the Surface Kernel.
Having well-written and explicit guides for almost everything has been really nice and now I'm less pissed when I get threads that end in "RTFM" with a documentation link attached. No real complaints about Arch, but my use case - a laptop that plays youtube and writes blog posts - is so low stakes I'm unlikely to get tilted when something isn't working perfectly and takes some tinkering.

Re: Don't Become a Connoisseur.

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Joan Westenberg wrote a thought-provoking article</a> talking about how they believe that connoisseurship makes one "worse off".
I think Westenberg has identified a valid critique of connoisseurship but broadened it's application beyond what I find reasonable.
One thing I will absolutely agree with is the idea that a "refined palate" is not self-improvement. I talked about this in a different realm when I talked about conspicuous consumption</a> and how people define their identity around what they purchase and consume. I whole-heartedly believe it is better to spend time pursuing and refining an actual skill than to just label yourself as a "buyer of X". I haven't personally encountered any connoisseurs who sell their interest as being some sort of self-actualization/improvement, but if they exist I will gladly agree they are wrong.
Another piece of Westenberg's analysis hinges on the idea that a developed "palate" often leads to a significant restriction in what the connoisseur is able to enjoy. No longer is it sufficient for coffee to be "hot [and contain] caffeine", it has to be a special roast made a special way. I would agree that often a developed palate can lead to the pursuit of more expensive - and perceived as higher quality - goods, but I don't think it's a requirement. I think Westenberg even acknowledges this in the final paragraph when they allude to a distinction between a "connoisseur" and an "enthusiast".
A lot of connoisseurs will certainly pursue climbing up the consumption ladder for social capital. But something I have found in nearly all interests from tools to jeans to food is that the progression often returns the person back to their original baseline.
Take the biggest burger connoisseur on the internet: George Motz. He literally tells you "the best smash burgers are the ones that are made simply". This does not mean he has not developed a "palate". He has all the language of a real connoisseur and can explain every decision that goes into every aspect of his perfect burger, with reasoning. This is, from what I've seen, the end result of a developed palate: understanding and exploring so deeply that you've looped back around to simplicity with new perspective. Being a connoisseur or enthusiast does not necessiate overspending or being a snob.
Back to the coffee example: If the utility of coffee to the layperson is being a hot caffeinated drink, why don't most people just dissolve caffeine pills in hot water? It's even cheaper and more accessible nowadays than finding a "$3 coffee". Is the fact that people don't just do that evidence that coffee has utility, flavor, "hedonic" value beyond being a warm stimulant? What about decaf? Surely it's not all conspicuous consumption</a>?
I will readily tell you I am in my 'getting expensive and complex' phase with coffee. I will sometimes dismissively classify Dunkin and Starbucks as "bad" or "not actually coffee" - let's face it the drinks are 99% milk and syrup - but I do truly believe that you can and should enjoy coffee simply. Black coffee, made properly, can be very tasty even with inexpensive beans and equipment. If you enjoy that coffee even more with a splash of milk and sugar, that's great! But I think that having the experience to distinguish between burnt coffee and a well-made cup is not a detriment.
Again, if the only appeal of coffee was caffeine and warmth, we'd just drink caffeinated water.
The reason even "simple" burgers or "simple" black coffees cost more than McDonald's or free-refill Waffle House blend is because considerable effort has been expended to ease or automate away the manual effort required to make these simple items well. This is great for the budget conscious, but it's trivial to show it's had a negative effect on quality. If you want that quality back, your choices are sacrifice your time and effort or pay a premium so someone else expends the effort. I buy specialty coffee beans every month and I spend less on coffee than even someone getting $3 drip coffees from 7/11 every day. That is of course ignoring the up-front cost of my second-hand espresso machine, but that machine is unecessary for me to make good coffee. As I've mentioned in a recent blog I used to make solid coffee with a french press mug and pre-ground from a college dorm</a>, and can make it with a $20 pour over kit.
High cost is often an indulgence when it comes to interests like this, and not a necessity. I find higher prices to be an overstated negative in Westenberg's framing.

I find the paragraph about spending "200 hours learning to distinguish processing methods" when you could have "spent the time drinking coffee" a bit funny. What do you picture the coffee snob did for 200 hours... read wikipedia? They were likely tasting different coffees! 

Does the enthusiast now need to expend more effort to find things meeting their tastes? Undeniably. But I think Westenberg also over-extends when they imply the enthusiast/snob cannot appreciate anything but their ideal version of something.
If I form a really keen interest in authentic mexican food, it does not mean that I can never enjoy Chipotle again. Would an enthusiast call Chipotle "good Mexican food"? No. Am I certain this lack of substitution effect applies across everything? Also no. But I'm sure it applies to a good amount of interests. I even sometimes order a chain-cafe caramel macchiato when im craving something sweet.
For the connoisseur, the "hedonic pleasure" may now be derived differently or be greater when something meets some newfound standard, but that doesn't create a "floor" of enjoyment. It doesn't make "90%" of things unpalatable and reduce happiness the way Westenberg implies. I think if you're the type of person who can only be satisfied with the best version of something, you've got other problems outside of a refined palate.
I just cannot agree that people should stop thinking too deeply about the things they consume because otherwise they risk facing disappointment. Critique can be a pleasure all its own.

Good Turkey Really is About Preparation

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This year, my partner and I hosted a friendsgiving for her friends, and I committed to cooking the turkey and use my mom's lovely cornbread dressing recipe.
My mother has always signle-handedly prepared a traditional little feast at our house, even when we were kids and lived in a country that has no Thanksgiving holiday. She would typically serve turkey, cornbread dressing casserole, gravy, sweet potato casserole, and some kind of vegetable.
However, I've never really been a huge turkey fan. I've had it prepared by other people as well, with a variety of cooking methods from deep frying to grilling, but have always found it a bit dry and flavorless. It's why a few years back my mom started also baking a small ham to complement Thanksgiving dinner.
But I "know" that turkey can taste good. I've heard and read as much constantly on the internet. So I decided to try my hand at it, since I had time and have the passion. My work and research led me to make the tastiest turkey I have ever had.
My idea was to use my newfound interest in smoking to cook the turkey on my little Weber kettle grill. I loosely followed the recipe of one of my favorite bbq channels 'Fork & Embers'</a>.
</figure>
The core steps were as follows:

Buy a "nice" frozen 15lb Turkey from Whole Foods for $2.99/lb.

This is because we expected ~15 guests and 1lb of frozen meat per person is typically good.</li> </ul> </li>
Let the turkey thaw in the fridge for ~7 days before the feast</li>
The morning before the dinner, spatchcock the turkey and brine it for 24 hours. I very loosely followed Joe's recipe for the brine, and ended up using:

2 gallons of water</li>
1 cup brown sugar</li>
1.5 cups salt</li>
1 lemon, juiced and the carcass tossed in</li>
6 garlic cloves (I love garlic)</li> </ul> </li>
On the morning of, inject the turkey with a mixture of 1:1 butter:broth, and a tablespoon of bbq seasoning. Also cover it in your favorite BBQ rub.

I used a homemade rub with chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, coarse black pepper and sugar. The salt from the brine should have been enough, so I didn't add any more to the surface.</li> </ul> </li>
Form a loose (and as I will discuss shortly, bad) snake of coals around the outside of the weber and light one end</li>
Smoke the turkey at around 275°F for as long as it takes to reach 158°F at the breast, basting the turkey with seasoned butter (melted butter with seasoning in it) every 45-60mins.</li> </ol>
By all math, this should have only taken ~4hours. This was the part of my process where things started to go wrong. Ideally we would have smoked it solidly the entire time at around 280°F. But the snake that I made to start did not have enough height to hold temps properly. The fire was too small and advanced too quickly down the snake. Several times we were forced to open the lid and take the bird and grate out briefly to add more coals. We were actually struggling to maintain temps above 250°F for much of the cooking time.
Towards the end of hour 3, the breast temps stalled hard at 138°F. It did not budge for around 40mins. A little frustrated and quite hungry due to the delay, we transferred it to the oven at 350°F, until the breast read 150°F, and rested it for 15mins before slicing.
Now some people reading this may raise their eyebrow at the 150°F finishing temperature. Mainly this is because health departments in North America state that poultry should reach 165°F to kill off the salmonella bacteria that could be present - a.k.a pasteruizing. However, pasteurization is a relationship between time and temperature, not just a yes/no based on temperature.
</figure>
As you can see from the graph above, our accidental stall at 138°F for over 30 minutes meant we had already succeeded in pasteurizing the turkey, and did not need to hit any higher temperatures for it to be safe to eat. The reason we brought the breast to 150°F in the oven, with carry-over cooking during resting likely bumping the final internal temperature to ~155°F, was mostly to ensure the meat had good texture. At 138°F, we were worried it might be a bit chewy.
Let me tell you, the turkey turned out juicy, flavorful, smoky, and tender. The breast especially was unlike any turkey I've ever had before. It had absorbed the spices and smoke and had a really distinctive flavor, unlike the subtle herb flavor of most turkeys I've had. There was only one turkey leg left after us and our guests were done eating, and I never felt like reaching for the gravy I had made. This was with the fact that we also had BBQ ribs and TONS of sides on the table!
</figure>
</figure>
My core takeaway from the experience is that I will likely never let my poultry hit 165°F again, and aim for 155°F at most, at which temps the poultry will be pasteurized even if held only for one minute.
This cook hasn't made me a turkey fan by any means, though. I will still gladly eat it as deli meat and in sandwiches and when presented I will always be thankful. But it takes so much effort and time to make a turkey worth actually delighting in by itself... it will remain a once-per-year endeavour for me.

Interesting Things Around The Web Nov 2025

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Articles</h3>

Ayjay - Towards Old Man Willow</a>

A well put and succint piece that gives an interesting perspective to explain the pattern we have seen in the last decade of tech megacorps basically strong-arming the cultural zeitgeist into discussing only what benefits them. "People say, You can’t force this on us against our will, and the techlords reply, Of course we can, we always have."</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
Videos</h3>

Benn Jordan - We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds. 🫥</a>

The long-awaited follow up to Benn's orginal riveting video about creating adversarial noise patterns to confuse AI cameras. This video talks about some worrying security vulnerabilities in Flock Safety and other ALPR surveillance technology. Really showcases the dangers of surveillance capitalism. As someone who has seen multiple Flock cameras put up in my neighborhood, I've started writing to my city reps to try and get them to cancel contracts with the company. FFS THE CAMERAS ARE RUNNING ANDROID OREO.</li> </ul> </li>
Schnee - Protect Yourself From Media Like This - aka 'How to spot fascist propaganda'</a>

For as much as I love to discuss media, I'm not much into consuming media critique content. But the algorithm got me with this one and I think it is a cool informative video. I ended up watching the movie it uses as it's subject - Jet Li's oscar-nominated "Hero" - soon after. The final takeaway of the video was my favorite, but I won't spoil it here.</li> </ul> </li>
The Morbid Zoo - The Ritual of Debate</a>

Seems the theme today is propaganda. This video is really cool and provides a fun perspective I haven't heard on the Jubilee 'debate' videos. I don't love debate anymore but I have to admit part of what helped usher me towards the left were screaming matches between white men on youtube hahaha.</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
Other</h3>

Lucy Parsons Labs</a>

A wonderful organization that aims to 'expose the surveillance overreach by governments and corporations.' If you, my one reader, feel inspired by their mission, I recommend getting involved in what way you can. Surveillance companies are not gonna stop out of the goodness of their hearts.</li> </ul> </li> </ul>

Do you really need the best tool for the job?

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month my partner asked me something along the lines of: "What subconscious behaviors or impulses of yours do you think come from being raised under capitalism? And are you trying to combat any of them?"
It sparked a really interesting conversation about both our consumerist tendences and also a topic I've talked about before: commodities as hobbies. Here's the extended thoughts on that part specifically.</a>.
The question we tried to answer for the longest time was: "Where had we both learned or acquired the impulse to always seek the 'best version' of a product whenever we are attempting to get into a new hobby?". Both of us are the type of people who will scour Reddit threads for hours to make sure we're buying the right thing, the best version of a product, etc.
Currently, she's looking at saving up $1000 for a camera and lens for portrait photography. Fujifilm is going through a tiktok-fueled craze so those are sold out or expensive AF, but she's landed on some Sony camera that's not too crazy. Three weeks ago, I went through the same process for getting into BBQ - smoking specifically. If you ask Reddit "experts", smoking properly starts with a $600+ pellet grill or dedicated charcoal smoker. I will give redditors credit, many recommend finding them used, but the point stands.
I almost went that route, but I realized... why? I didn't even know if I enjoy smoking meats. Why would I drop that much money on something I may completely stop doing in a year? In 6 months, even? I didn't even go as cheap as possible, since I bought my Weber Kettle Premium brand new with accessories. It still cost me a good chunk of money!

Now obviously part of the impulse of researching before you buy is about buying something worth the asking price. Making sure others have had good experiences and that it's not some useless Amazon drop-shipped bullshit. But...

The more we discussed it, the more I realized that in the last maybe 2 years I've started to develop a contrarian sense of pride in doing things the "hard way". By "the hard way" I really just mean 'without having the peak optimal equipment and knowledge'. Learning if I even like a thing first by just... trying and struggling.
Looking back, that's honestly how I got into some of my favorite and most consistent hobbies or interests.
Cooking</h3>

Started in college because my mom told me it was not in the cards for her to pay all my bills AND for me to order out every day. She had me watch her in the kitchen, gave me one pan, one old pot, some utensilts, and an oven tray, and sent me off. Now cooking is my favorite activity. I have - over like 8 years now - slowly bought myself fancy equipment like expensive knives, pans, a sous vide, a nice blender, etc.</li> </ul>
Coffee</h3>

Started drinking it in late high school. Starbucks frappucinos, a sugary treat. Then a friend introduced me to black coffee and would bring it to school. I'd then make instant coffee at home, then in a drip coffee maker. The same friend bought me a $30 manual burr coffee grinder and my mom got me this weird thermos+french press contraption</a>. I'm now a coffee snob, I guess, and I own a fairly nice espresso machine. But I started with tap water, an electric kettle, pre-ground coffee from the eating hall, and that french press mug in my college dorm.</li> </ul>
If I rack my brain more, there's a few hobbies that I did splurge on and frankly just never got fully sucked into.
Mechanical Keyboards</h3>

I have two, my newest one cost me more than I'd like to admit, and I waited over 2 years for the keycaps, but I haven't felt the need to upgrade it at all since I got it. I don't even browse the forums or watch YT videos for the topic anymore.</li> </ul>
Video Editing</h3>

This one I want to pick back up but after using Davinci Resolve (free) for 2 years to edit some fun gaming clips, I bought the Studio version and literally have not published a video since...</li> </ul>
So my conversation with my partner concluded with the following consensus:

Being raised under capitalism has subconsciously taught us that some activities are undoable without the "right" equipment.</li>
The "right" equipment is usually recommended by online "experts" whose primary goal is flexing their expertise and not really getting a layperson into a true bare-minimum entry level version of the activity.</li>
A lot of "hobbies" are just euphemisms for impulsive chasing-the-dragon type collectible items</li> </ol>
Maybe one possible route of unlearning this impulse is to try new things purposefully with 'sub-par' equipment.
Now I hear you, 'you don't need running shoes to start running but they help'. I get that, I'm not saying build your own fucking grill, or use refuse from the junkyard.
I just think with the times we are facing - increased costs, waste, and climate catastrophe- isn't it better and less wasteful to reach the ceiling of the equipment you have and upgrading once there's a feature you will truly get the most out of, than to pay for belts and whistles you will never actually need if you stay at an entry-level?

First Weekend with my Smoker/Grill

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Haven't posted in a month, it's been a while. This month I picked up a new hobby. I was in Denver two weeks ago to go see Madeon (my favorite artist) debut his new live show at Red Rocks. During this trip I ate around Denver a bunch and went to this place that mostly specialized in Jerk/Jamaican food, but had BBQ on the menu. I was really really craving BBQ at the time so I decided we should go. We went, ordered the brisket, the ribs, the rib tips, and fried okra.
The brisket and okra were mediocre, and somehow the ribs and rib tips were the worst ribs I've ever paid money for in my life. Dry, tough, stringy. They tasted like they were blasted in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes rather than smoked on a grill for any reasonably long amount of time. The brisket scarcely had any smoke flavor to it, either.
I love to cook. I love to cook new things especially, and I get a chip on my shoulder whenever I feel like I'm either overpaying for food or could do something better at home. But I've never smoked meat in my life. This experience made me want to learn.
So three weeks later, I've bought a simple Weber Kettle Premium grill that can double as a low-and-slow-smoker and is very entry-level. It was $300 brand new with the accessories I bought, but I recommend you get one used because:

Grills don't decay so why buy new, save something from the landfill</li>
You save yourself like $200 and can get bonus accessories thrown in if the person is generous</li>
Used grills have a built up 'seasoning' layer that can actually protect the grill and make cooking easier by ensuring a better seal between the grill bottom and lid</li> </ol>
I bought some lump charcoal from home depot, some fire starters, and some pecan wood chunks. I decided I'd smoke this past weekend. I started with easier recipes at higher temps so that I could learn fire management. The food came out SO good first try even though managing the temps was surprisingly more difficult than I thought.
For example: I was under the 400F recipe temp for the chicken, hovering around 350-375 instead, yet somehow the breasts cooked to my desired temp of 158F about 30 mins faster than the recipe claimed they would. I'm hoping my brand new thermometers aren't off or something.
The smoked chicken came out so juicy and amazing but didn't have crazy smoke flavor and frankly the pre-made rub I bought had citric acid that really came across and I did not like. Regardless, a success and the meat underneath didn't have that nasty acidic flavor.
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Then I made a smoked lamb rack that I bought at Costco. I used a chinese-inspired cumin lamb rub that was spicy and delicious. The lamb also cooked very quickly since I cooked it to medium and it took on so much smoke flavor it was amazing. Cooked it perfectly at the recipe temps of 275-300F. Served it with some chinese veggie stir fried sides.
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Honestly if you like grilling and have a charcoal grill of any kind I think there's a way for you to use it to smoke meats just fine. It's incredible and kind of fun!
The goal now is to make ribs on this thing so I can prove that the restaurant was just being lazy and that it's not actually that hard.

Interesting Things Around The Web - Oct 2025

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past month I've been enjoying a lot of new content from across my interests. Namely cooking, as I'm hoping to try my hand at a few more awesome recipes I found, and also learn how to smoke BBQ!
There's also been some more drama around the white-nationalist views and asshole-ish nature of the creator of Omarchy and the core maintainer of Hyprland. It's something I used as a jumping point in my essay about why politics is an inevitable part of everything</a>. Either way a blog linked below has a good summary, and yes I do use Hyprland at the moment, but it sounds like that community is taking positive steps forward. ^{Remains to be seen about Varxy's transphobia tho}
Either way some drama for you to sip your tea to and some really really cool blogs to read. I've been finding most of my intereting articles through my RSS feed and powRSS, whereas Neocities I browse for really cool aesthetic designs and fun website ideas. If there are any neocities sites out there that are really dedicated to the writing bit, send them my way!
Blogs</h3>

Arya Bread Crumbs - Framework under fire for Omarchy/DHH/Hyprland support?</a>

A great summary of the situation with Framework, which I believe initially gained attention through the linked forum post</a>. To preempt the usual knee-jerk reaction I just want to quote the person from the forum:</li> </ul>

This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument. This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument. </blockquote> </li>

Joel Chrono - When a Tool Becomes a Hobby</a>

"What do watches, safety razors, and fountain pens have in common?" A very cool read that (in non-marxist language) touches on the commodification of hobbies. I've had similar thoughts before around how consumerism becomes a hobby and a hobby becomes identity</a>.</li> </ul> </li>

Prickly Oxheart - Envying The Simple Man</a>

This article is one of my favorites lately. It really challenged me. I think I do envy the simple man, and I love the conclusion this writer comes to about what to do about that. I will say similarly to Westenberg, this writer is very lofty and prose-like, but I can look past the pretentiousness at the surface, because I think what they are saying has value.</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
Videos</h3>

W2 Kitchen</a>

This is my new favorite cooking channel. It really reminds me of when cooking content wasn't all fucking "RATING EVERY FAST FOOD BURGER IN THE COUNTRY" and was about education and bringing new cousines in front of an audience that would typically never think about it. I particularly LOVE how Evan explains the why behind every ingredient, substitution, cooking time, technique, etc. The videos are also quite short for cooking content, which is nice.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Other</h3>

The Verge - Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account</a>

Microsoft and Apple have really been fucking up lately, let's hope it truly does mean people will be willing to try out Linux desktop.</li>
Something that a lot of folks forget to consider in this conversation is that a LOT of poorer people cannot simply afford to throw away the non-TPM2.0 computer they use for school or home just because MS doesn't want to support it. I'm actually part of a FIXIT community group that is going to conduct a Linux installation clinic to help lower-income folks or folks that simply don't want to deal with MS's bullshit. We are also going to be giving away old laptops with Linux on them so that kids in lower income families can use them.</li> </ul> </li> </ul>

One year on Neocities

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My first unique - i.e. not ported over from old writings - blogpost on this little site was on August 13th, 2024. This current post is a little late on it but it was a nice realization today that this blog is officially a year old.
Time dilation is a crazy thing but it definitely feels like less time, mostly because I took a long break from blogging late last year due to moving/life/technical obstructions.
It's fun that it coincides with the timeline of me starting the re-design. I'm not yet 100% happy with it but I felt like if I didn't just make it the official look now, I would just endlessly tweak it on my secondary branch and never merge it over. Now I can focus on making it prettier, reducing the pink glare to maybe be an accent color or something. I don't know.
Definitely enjoying doing pixel art, though I'm not showcasing all I have yet because I want to see if I can animate it. Also the new CSS is less mobile-friendly, and I think most people nowadays browsing things like powrss are likely doing so on their phones.
Ramble aside happy one year to Kagu's Corner!

I don't get the text editor wars

kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

You browse Linux, productivity, or programming discussions online enough and I feel like you will come across some discussion about why Emacs, vim, or neovim is the best program ever created or something. Dozens of "this config unlocked my productivity" videos and posts. Arguments, threads, etc etc.
I will say this as a complete layman who does baby programming: I don't get it. Neovim came w/ my Fedora install. I've tried it. It does what it says on the tin. It edits files. I find the workflow clunky and unintuitive, personally. :wq</code> - what happened to ctrl+s? :y+"</code> to paste? Really?
I get terminal lovers. I do. When I need to quickly change one or two lines in a dotfile nvim does the job, especially if I'm going to re-load that dotfile right after. Don't have to leave my terminal! But nano does the same thing? AND nano lets me copy and paste with the same hotkey used on 90% of other programs.
So again, I don't get it. If I'm writing anything of significacnt length, I'm going to use an IDE or a proper text editor. Why would I proof read an essay in my unformatted, monospaced terminal? What about spell-check?
And before you tell me nvim can be extended to be a fully fledged IDE, I know. But you're telling me that it's legitimately better to spend an hour or two configuring nvim instead of just doing 'sudo dnf install codium</code>', waiting 2 mins, and having the industry-standard IDE ready and waiting for me? Or opening libre office to edit long form text?
Maybe this phenomenon is something akin to the endless "second brain" videos on Youtube. "If you spend 6 hours now and then 5 mins every time you want to save a file - Obsidian will skyrocket your productivity!". It's the easthetics of productivity.
I do still like this article from Westerberg on deleting their second brain</a>, where they mention: "The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it - and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored". The endless chase of the perfect tool just ends up replacing the task you were supposed to accomplish with said tool. If your nvim/Emacs/vim config is like a 3rd arm for you, please do enjoy. That's awesome. I just don't get the evangelism. It somewhat reminds me of that adage: "An amateur with the finest paints and canvas will likely still make shitter art than an expert with a cheap pencil". It's not the tool, it's your comfort, familiarity, and willingness to sit down and hone your craft that makes your "productive". I'm willing to be proven wrong about vim, but I also want to stress it's fine to enjoy configuring and endless customization for its own sake. It's fun! It doesn't need retroactive justification of "increased productivity". Capitalism loves to tell us the ultimate point of life is the creation of 'value'. That's bullshit. Just do shit you like, make your mud pies. Boot your PC, edit configs for 8 hours, look at your now prettier software home screen, go to bed. As long as you're a having fun and are a decent human otherwise who cares how 'productive' it is.
Always Needing Something Fresh kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Lately I've been noticing myself always seeking novelty. I'm re-styling this site. I switched from Gnome to Hyprland - and spent like 6 hours fiddling with configs and scripts to do so... I started learning how to draw pixel art. Etc etc I think - I'm hoping - it's a symptom that my plan to distance myself from algo-consumption is working? It's not new for me but my constant search for a new shiny has definitely heightened recently. I was even thinking of putting Arch Linux on my laptop, which is running just fine on Zorin (Ubuntu) and is incredible stable. I realized I would literally just be making it harder to use since I have no guarantee the touchscreen and bluetooth and webcam drivers would even work with Arch Linux. I know those are infamously tricky to get right on Arch. Sidenote: I even got to the point of booting into the cachyOS install media and lo and behold it's a fully online installer but inside the environment my laptop has no network drivers so I can't even install it LOL. Anyways, look forward to a new (VERY) pink look to this site in a week or two. I've been working on custom pixel art for it, so maybe it will take a little bit longer if I'm not super happy with it. Consequentialism goes crazy kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Consequentialism as a philosophical framework</a> is something that I think I've subconsciously leaned towards before I even learned the name of it in a college ethics class. Though I'd describe myself as a pluralist, the idea that an action's consequences heavily determine the ethical evaluation of said action seems very intuitively correct to me. So it's just odd... reading and watching people mourn someone who is responsible for the election and actions of the current President of the United States</a>. It's even weirder reading blogs and opinions online claiming this person was just speaking words</a>, weirder still reading blogs where the mask of liberal respectability politics isn't even present and the writer tacitly condones this person's words and actions</a>. "Lover of Jesus Christ" lmao. Certainly not a lover of his own neighbor. Certainly a lover of the rich, who will never get into the kingdom of heaven. Very christlike of positions to take, for sure. Anyways that is all to say that liberals never fail to dissapoint in eulogizing the worst people imaginable</a>. To extend an olive branch though: Mr Kirk should take solace in that he paid that 'worthy' price of "some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment"</a>. Maybe his conservative allies can honor his memory and finally release the Epstein files as he would have wanted</a>. Consequentialism here can kind of do the math for us. A person who was doing everything in his power to make the world a worse place for people different than him, no longer being able to do so, is net-neutral or good :). Shoutout the sane folk out there posting blogs like this</a>. What It Took To Revive The Music Page kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I switched this site over to using the Zola SSG around May of this year</a> because when I originally wrote the bulky-ass HTML files that used to be this site, I had a voice in the back of my head swearing that most people with a personal site were not, in fact, maintaining 4 different 500+line raw HTML files for their site. Feel free to look at my public Codeberg Repo here</a> to see that monstrosity. When I switched, my lack of knowledge of web development, already apparent, forced me to axe the music page that I had pieced together from JS tutorials and other pages. I liked it. It was the fanciest, most modern feeling part of the site because of the JS and animations and what not. It even had this awesome Apple Cover Flow-esque page for the albums that I love. So nostalgic. I had no idea how to begin to merge that into the new Zola structure of templates and markdown files. I honestly used to at one point believe that 'static' sites were sites with pure HTML/CSS, no Javascript. Funny, right? ^{Also Zola please update your documentation it's so bad I basically found more info asking around on Discord servers than in the docs.} Long intro, but that is all to say this post is to celebrate that I have managed to bring back the table view of the music page! Before you keep reading, go take a peek</a> at its beautiful simplicity! Now you can come back, unimpressed, and have a laugh with me about all the random struggles I had and the "tech" behind how it works. The front end is super simple, and is largely the same as the old version. The JavaScript loads a JSON file and uses the eventListener()</code> to load that JSON data into the table using the HTML structure that is pre-defined. It was a great feeling to load the page and see all my row headers loaded and styled the way I remember. What sucked was staring at this blank table wondering why a hard refresh made the data pop up, but a normal refresh made it all disappear. This is where I will shout-out my friend, who is an actual software dev, for helping me figure out that the fetch() async</code> clause that reads the JSON file needs to have an await</code> in front so that the page waits for the JSON file to be fully loaded before displaying the front-end elements. I really don't get JS, so that was really nice of them to just jump on a call with me and live-troubleshoot in the middle of the workday. So the HTMl for this page is the blueprint the JS renders the JSON data onto. It completely sidesteps Zola and Tera templates, even though I originally spent some 3-5 hours making a version that used Zola's load_data()</code> function to read and display a csv with all my ratings. I moved away from that fairly quickly because with over 400 albums rated, there was no way this page would be usable without pagination or the ability to sort the columns. (I'm still working on figuring out the pagination by the way.) So now you know I have some 400+ row spreadsheet (that maybe I need to turn into a proper database on my server at some point). The spreadsheet originally came from an 'Album A Day' group I was a part of in 2023. The group was ~15 people all listening to one album per day. The albums were also submitted by the members and we all took turns putting a new album 'on deck' and submitting our ratings for the album of that day. The sheet was hosted on Google Sheets, natural for collaborative work, and each person had a column to submit their score. The written reviews (if one wanted to submit one) were in the notes of each cell, so I had to find a google custom script to extract these notes into their own columns. After a little manual cleanup, I had a csv with the following fields for each album: Artist</li> Album</li> Musicbrainz ID (MBID) This was completely blank for all entries at this point, and not in the original Album a Day sheet.</li> </ul> </li> Score</li> Review</li> </ul> I then wrote a Python script that reads the csv, cleans it, and then queries the Musicbrainz API to grab the missing info. I'm not sure if it would be useful to anyone else but just in case it now lives in its own repo project here</a>. I think it's fairly neat, because if the artist+album query doesn't find a specific release/version you had in mind, it can be overriden with the MBID field on the CSV. It's a slow script, as it has to wait 1 second between each query to respect the Musicbrainz API call limits. Maybe someone who knows the MB API better than me can figure out how to pass multiple album+artist pairs per API request. I haven't figured that out. It also won't search a row if it already has all the columns filled in, meaning that adding new albums to the CSV won't cause the script to run longer and longer each time. One second per album with missing info. Maybe reasonable? I will likely be trying to make improvements to it, and I'll try to be a good little dev and document them in the repo. In the end, the script both populates the source csv with the found data, and generates a JSON that is more db-like for the JavaScript on the website. So when I want to update the music page, I will first update the csv with any new entries, run the python script, then run 'Zola build' like usual to update the rest of the site. Then, as I do, I will drag the static files generated into neocities. By the way, this last bit is another one of those "there must be a better way" moments, but I've not found some crystal-clear tutorial on how to automate the deplyment to neocities in some CI/CD way. Email me if you have one. I'm pretty useless. So that's it, used the process flow and data analysis understanding I have from being a SQl data analyst in my day-to-day to code some useful python. Beyond that, lots of trial and error, and feverish googling of simpler and simpler reductions of the problem to piece together the final script. I'll leave you with the ordered list of the "minimum viable product" iterative approach I took to arrive at the final version: MVP 1:</li> </ol> read csv to pandas df</li> query MB using artist+album</li> get MBID back into csv</li> </ul> MVP 2:</li> </ol> If MBID exists in csv, use that for query instead</li> </ul> MVP 3:</li> </ol> Get Zola to auto-read the JSON data</li> </ul> MVP 4:</li> </ol> Display all csv data in sortable table on //music page</li> Note, this is now the python script+JS loading</li> </ul> MVP 5:</li> </ol> If all columns except 'Review' are populated, skip that row.</li> </ul> Future nice-to-haves:</li> </ol> "read more" cutoff for reviews column</li> grab csv from G sheets or server file</li> run with 'zola build' command (I don't know any Rust)</li> Paginate every 25 rows</li> Grid view with album arts!!!</li> Download button for CSV/JSON</li> </ul> </figure> Reclaiming My Attention - Progress Report kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 It has been a little over a month since I set out to improve my focus</a> and attention span by setting myself a few rules. I'm on a plane without wifi and with my notebook so I thought I'd write a bit about how each rule has worked out and how my overall progress is. TL;DR: I've adjusted to this new normal, with less of a knee-jerk desire to pull out my phone, but I've certainly broken most of the rules many times. The explicit rules:</h3> Start every blog post in a notebook by hand</li> </ol> This rule I have followed perfectly so far, and it is my absolute favorite one. Something about being able to flow with my ideas and being forced to slow down to my writing speed - whereas my typing speed tends to be faster - has really helped my focus. I like it so much I take this blog notebook on trips like the one I'm currently on. I cannot recommend it enough.</li> </ul> No more phone during mealtime</li> </ol> This one has been a 60-70% success. There have been times at work that I've been so busy I either eat at my desk with my laptop out or have my phone out to respond to messages or listen to a presentation in the kitchen. Not ideal. I've also allowed myself to pull out the phone for entertainment. I will continue to try to cut down on it though.</li> </ul> Spend at least 15 mins outside every single day</li> </ol> This one I have struggled with the most. I've probably spent the 15 mins almost every day, but I've consistently allowed myself to count the 20 mins spent walking the dog, which I told myself shouldn't count. Need to keep trying with this one. It was definitely easier 30 days ago.</li> </ul> General goals I had:</h3> Stop using Youtube Shorts</li> </ol> This one never truly happened. I have a 30-min timer on Youtube and I use NewPipe to actually watch long-form content. I am glad to say youtube shorts is limited to 30mins before bed or while on the toilet, but the idea was that I would not spend 30mins before bed every day staring at my phone and either read or something. We'll see how I can manage to shift that habit.</li> </ul> Move away from link aggregators to RSS feeds</li> </ol> I've unfortunately realized that my Lemmy usage has not decreased since reducing my short-form video consumption. It still hover around 20-40mins a day on Lemmy. I think that is still maybe on-par or lower than the average Reddit user, but it's not ideal. I need to get my memes from somewhere else idk.</li> This last month I managed to get my blog into powRSS</a>! I was flattered by the comments the maintainer made about my site.</li> I have added and read so many cute, interesting, and thoughtful blogposts and have something fresh to read almost daily. I hope to continue on the RSS binge.</li> </ul> Other metrics:</h3> Screentime</li> </ol> My screentime has not lowered significantly. I still have 3-5 hours of time on my phone every day, but I do think the time has shifted positively in the direction of purposeful engagement, rather than algorithm-dictated scrolling.</li> </ul> I always do my best to keep a growth mindset, so I will continue to check in with myself and my habits to hopefully un-poison my consciousness and be able to be truly and meaningfully bored again without it being nerve-wracking. We should rate things from -5 to 5. No... really. kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I know how weird this idea sounds. "Let's all rate things on an 11-point scale with half-point increments where half the scale is negative numbers." I know how weird this idea sounds because I thought the same thing when I was introduced to the scale. But this neat little -5 -> 5 scale has, I've found, some neat cognitive effects on the person providing the rating. Especially if used long enough to start thinking in terms of this scale rather than 'translating' from a traditional 1 -> 10 or 0 -> 5 scale. The first cognitive effect comes from the fact that thanks to the scale having an odd number of points and negative values, 0 becomes an intuitive 'center'. The obvious middle that is nothing. This is where "did not like nor dislike" more naturally falls. A 5/10 is still a value. 0 is neutral, a starting point. I've found in my time (3 years now) rating albums using this scale, I now subconsciously think about what the album does to move it away from 0, either up or down, rather than starting from one extreme - 0 or 10 - and looking for reasons to either give it a not perfect score or a not perfectly bad score. It leads to many more of my ratings falling around 0, like a true normal distribution. The second cognitive effect is that the scale is so different from how North American education gives grades that people are able to more easily separate their thought process for rating things from grading things. No more "7/10 is mid because a 70% is a C". There isno 7/10 in this scale, it is too different from grades in academia. I've ranted about this at length before.</a> Lastly, I think it also helps that a positive (1-5) score on this scale generally denotes various levels of enjoyment while a -5 -> -1 negative score generally denotes dislike or lack of enjoyment. So yeah, consider breaking your patterns a bit give the -5:5 scale a shot. And yes me thinking about this now means I have been working on getting my music ratings page back! We're 75% of the way there I just need to make a template more or two. The PR-ification of Reddit kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I haven't really used Reddit in about 2 years, since reddit banned 3rd party apps. I used "Reddit Is Fun" for years, and hated the walled-garden Reddit was starting to create. I created a Lemmy account instead, which has since scratched the itch but I am considering deleting as well, as I mentioned in my blogpost about reclaiming my attention span</a>. Since then, I have gone to the website a couple dozen times for the sake of its best feature: honest, crowd-sourced reviews of products and services. I have noted something quite disheartening and almost infuriating some of those times: Reddit communities have become living advertisement and astro-turfing cesspools. Now before anyone accuses me of exaggerating let me caveat one thing: I am not referring to your favorite little <50k-sub subreddit. However, I am fairly confident that all the front-page subs and any sub dedicated to a product has a team of unpaid social media interns filling the comment sections with nothing but positivity about the product and either shooting down or outright mod-removing criticism. Beyond the obvious, provable presence of social media managers and 'official accounts', Reddit forum structure and culture has made it really easy to fall into the "criticism of what I like is criticism of me" mentality. I wrote about the phenomenon at length my essay on 'haters'</a> but it bears repeating that redditors have become so attached to the things they consume that they cannot separate criticism of the product or service from criticism of their own thought process or ability to reason. As people began attaching their identities to the products they bought or the media they were fans of, any critique of someone/something you stanned was no longer just someone else's analysis or opinion, it was an attack on you... Set aside the fact that someone calling your favorite show 'mid' was accusing you of poor taste - which your aristocratic sensibilities should be appalled by! - that person was now calling a part of you 'mid'. </blockquote> This makes them not only combative when criticism does pop up, but it also transforms them into the best promoters for the products they like. Reddit has always been a great platform for promotion; I remember a time when Barack Obama's "Ask Me Anything" was the top post of all time on the site. The sheer mass of users is Reddit's most valuable asset and, as it heads towards IPO, its largest product as well. I tend to belabor the point on this blog, so in an attempt to not do that, here are some examples of what I've observed lately with some short context. r/Kindle user top commenter dismisses concerns about Kindle being a locked-down ecosystem</a>: People who complain about the ecosystem are people that fail to understand what a kindle is for and don't want to accept the realities of the digital rights. I also get a feeling that there are several people that like to come here just to trash on kindles in general, a lot of them are Kobo users whom I guess are bored from using their Kobos and come here to trash kindles. </blockquote> </li> Found this thread when I was doing research on whether the Kindle Paperwhite SE is worth the extra money over the regular Paperwhite</li> </ul> </li> r/Privacy explicit rule against 'FUD' and regularly receives comments/posts from the official Proton team Please don’t fuel conspiracy thinking here. Don’t try to spread FUD, especially against reliable privacy-enhancing software. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Show credible sources and learn how to spot fake news. </blockquote> </li> Conspiratorial thinking is bad, but 'Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt' is a term typically used by communities like r/Crypto to silence legitimate concerns over issues with a product. It's just a bit eyebrow-raising that a Privacy community would want people to just go along with software they've deemed 'reliable' instead of allowing people to bring up concerns.</li> </ul> </li> r/NYC users praise the benefits of the Whole Foods Credit card, even going as far as to say Whole Foods is cheaper than most grocery stores</a> This one is just weird... comments read like bots or copy-pasted adverts but accounts have long comment history.</li> I just use my prime card and buy through Amazon and get it delivered tbh - same 5% and I don’t have to carry heavy groceries. It’s $100 a year for unlimited free deliveries over $35 —- pays for itself in convenience easily. </blockquote> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> Unfortunately I don't believe the 'Federated Internet' can change the overall I-am-what-I-consume culture, but maybe it can reduce the amount of corporate advertisements masquerading as discussion. Interesting Things Around The Web Aug 2025 kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Been browsing powRSS a lot more lately, and it's really helped fill out my RSS reader feed. I fee like I always have something interesting to read from a variety of bloggers and topics. Here's a few that especially seemed discussion-sparking or interesting. Blogs</h3> Quailblog</a> - The May-July Flower Report</a> MSD is a multi-talented artist and blogger with some of the most fun ?concept? art I've seen. They post little stories attached to the art they make and it really is fleshing out a little universe in each post. They also make music and take photos and stuff. Check em out</li> </ul> </li> Freddie deBoer's Blog - The Rage of the AI Guy</a> Yes I know Subtstack, ew. But I think this article specifically is a very impassioned discussion about a lot of the AI hype out there. The article largely responds to a Yascha Mounk post</a> that honestly reads like religious gospel to me - prophecies of a rapture to come and the boundless powers of God included.</li> </ul> </li> The Homebound Symphony</a> - Denialism and Its Counterfeits</a> Stumbling upon this blog has been a treasure trove of Anarchist thought and interesting discussion of various topics. The author appears to also have written some well-regarded political essays and has put a few books on my endlessly-growing to-read list</li> </ul> </li> The Naming Way with Ol' C.W. - Other Pursuits</a> C.W. is a rabid media consumer and it's really impressive to see just how much he is reading/watching/listening to. He posts reviews of all the stuff that appears to interest him or he believes is good. It raised an eyebrow when his lowest rating was an 8/10, but he has also mentioned that he simply doesn't finish things or post about most of the ones he doesn't like - so he gets a pass from my '5/10 is average' ass.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Articles</h3> From the author of The Homebound Symphony: Between Chaos and The Man</a> A discussion on anarchism as a political practice AJ's personal journey towards becoming one. Mentions a book I've been meaning to read: Ursula Le Guin's legendary work of fiction The Dispossessed.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> The Bare Minimum Relationship Mark kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 My partner and I recently formulated a barometer for analyzing (guessing), how good another relationship is. It's not meant to be that serious or some kind of "if you don't have this, break up" type thing. But I think it's kind of neat. The bar is pretty simple: If the couple can publicly disagree about something inconsequential and it doesn't ruin the vibes, that's a solid relationship and typically a fun couple to be around. By "inconsequential" I mean things like: what the best dish of the night was, whether the music at the club/bar/restaurant was good, what pizza toppings we should get, etc. By "not ruin the vibes" I simply mean that the disagreement happens, right in front of you, and then everyone moves on. No awkward silences, no "drop it please" or "we'll discuss this later". Nobody else feels compelled to change the subject and neither person in the couple feels compelled to simply change tune and agree with their more adamant partner. Don't misunderstand me; all of the strategies above are great conflict avoidance tactics, but the fact that they would have to be employed for something that - objectively - shouldn’t really lead to meaningful conflict in the first place is a failing grade on the 'test'. If this sounds like a low bar that's because it is. But think about how many couples you know that don't always clear it. In a deeper sense, my partner and I agree that this is just one (sometimes funny) way of determining if the couple in question are also friends with each other rather than just committed to each other. Think about it, you don't agree with your real friends all the time. You don't feel the need to suppress or change your true opinions on small dumb shit just because they disagree. One person goes "I think Marvel is the greatest movie studio to ever exist", the other person goes "you're fucking trolling me right now" and we all have a laugh. If that cannot feasibly happen between a couple, they may not be that fun on a double-date. Also yes typical caveats about mood, sensitive topics, past disagreements we don't know about, triggers etc etc. I said this was for fun ok? I'm not a psychologist. Reclaiming My Attention Span kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 My brain is fried. I think it has been since I was in college. I have vivid memories of having an anxiety attack in the back of my thermodynamics class and pulling out my phone to calm myself down. It also seems I'm not alone. It feels like everyone has become increasingly aware of how hard it is to focus or even simply exist without stimulus. The damn subway surfers memes are a thing for a reason, but I think most people would agree it wasn't always like this. I am old enough that as a kid I still played outside as my main entertainment. I didn't have a PC until I was 10 or 11, and my first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S3 when I was 14. So you'd think I wouldn't have iPad baby tendencies. Yet I do. I eat 90% of my meals with my phone out. </figure> So I've been trying to crawl back control of my own brain and my time. I feel embarrassed that I am so easily enamored with the endless scroll, dopamine hit feedback loop of Youtube Shorts and (before I deleted it) Tik Tok. I've been trying some things, setting some rules for myself all in an effort to become more disciplined and intentional with how I spend my attention. I am writing about it here both in the hopes of keeping myself accountable and to maybe inspire others. Personal Rules</h2> Inspired mostly by Joan Westenberg's Blog Post on Rebuilding their brain</a> I've set myself a few goals or rules that I try my best to follow so that I can take back my time. I will continue to add more constraints as I get used to the current ones or find that I need to adjust. As always, progress is not linear, so I've 'failed' in following my rules sometimes. It's all part of the process. Start every blog post in a notebook by hand I have done this for the essay on What Is Political</a> as well as this post itself. I also try my best to do it without other distractions. No music, no videos playing in the background, I even try to mostly write either in bed or on a separate desk away from my main PC. I agree with Westenberg's assessment that this method has forced me to really think through difficult arguments without just zoning out or giving up on making my thought process make sense on paper. It is slower, but it has felt worth it.</li> </ol> </li> No more phone during mealtime I'll be honest this one has been hard. Even during conversation with friends I have justified pulling it out and checking my notifications after "needing to google something" that was relevant to the conversation.</li> My hope with this rule and others I will try to follow in the future is to reclaim my ability to be fully present, even if I'm bored. It's something my partner has asked me for again and again.</li> </ol> </li> Spend at least 15 mins outside every single day Any time spent outdoors doing a chore or inevitable responsibility doesn't count. I have to choose to spend 15 mins outdoors, even if all I do is sit in a chair and sunbathe or listen to music. So no, getting the mail, walking the dog, taking out the trash, or driving to the grocery story does not count towards the time.</li> Believe it or not this is difficult. I work from home, am a homebody, and most of my hobbies are done in front of a computer. I think the newfound interest in gardening will help, but I want to continue to do this.</li> </ol> </li> </ol> A lot of my other changes were small, gradual, and done over a long time, as in my opinion gradual changes are more easily sustained than trying to radically turn a 180 in my life. The changes listed below are some I've made over the years, my reasoning for them, and in what way they have changed how I use my time and more importantly interact with the endless attention economy: Social Media</h2> Deleted the Facebook app from my phone - ~2020 I got little out of Facebook at this time, as it was full of slop content, I had graduated college so the college meme pages were boring, and it was mid pandemic so we all had other concerns and lots more time. I thought marketplace was the only remaining worthy feature, but my mother insisted I not delete my full account because family in South America still used it. I also had major privacy concerns with the app, as even back then it was being reported that the app tracked your behavior across the web and other apps, even with restricted permissions and even when it "was not running" in the background. So now I typically deactivate the account for months at a time until I need facebook marketplace for something.</li> </ol> </li> Deleted my main Instagram account and the app off my phone - 2023 This was a move inspired and encouraged by my partner, who hasn't had social media since she was in early college, and preached to me the benefits of not participating in the performative aspects of it. It was difficult for me to delete it for a long time. The app felt like the best way to keep up with my friends; to this day, I continue to miss the big life events of old high school friends. However, I don't regret it one bit now. I remember the times I used to check my posts and count the likes, comparing my photos and uploads to my friends'. I remember feeling annoyed or sad when my posts would barely cross 40 likes, and then feeling frustrated at myself for feeling annoyed. I felt very fake on that site, like I was documenting and in some ways living my life for the sake of people's attention and approval. Deleting my account legitimately improved my mental health.</li> I still keep my "finsta" - 'fake instagram' for those who may not know, it's an alt account - and I transformed the account into a lurk-only account that follows community organizations and tattoo artists nearly exclusively. I never post on it, and since I don't have the app, browsing for tattoos or volunteer events has become a conscious choice. I much prefer it this way.</li> </ol> </li> Deleted my X/Twitter account - 2024 I was fed up with both the enshittification of the site as well as the right-wing oligarch takeover. It was honestly difficult not having it, as it was the site I used the most by FAR. I initially tried using Bluesky instead, but what I realized was that while my biggest annoyances with X were about the type of ideas being platformed and the garbage bots and ads, the style of "discussion" was no better on Bluesky. I could rant for hours but suffice to say that 280 character formats encourage inflammatory "hot take" type posting and the fact that Bluesky at the time had such a dearth of quality light hearted posters/memers/characters just made that flaw in design even more apparent. I read posts complaining about bad faith replies on Bluesky just as much as I did before on X, except on X they were sandwiched between popular shitposters and my friends' tweets. I eventually deleted both accounts and apps.</li> If I am out of the loop and need to read an X thread I just get the link for the thread and replace x.com</code> with xcancel.com</code>, which allows me to read threads and browse accounts even without having one. It once again makes looking at X posts and accounts a much more intentional process.</li> </ol> </li> </ol> Consuming Content</h2> Move away from link aggregators to RSS feeds This could feasibly be included in the section above, but I deleted Reddit when the 3rd party app ban came about, and I am so happy I did. Place is shit imo. I am working on a little rant about that</li> Beyond that, I think this has to now and in the future include Lemmy. I have enjoyed the communities there but frankly: like the Twitter vs Bluesky thing, replacing Reddit with Lemmy has been like replacing coke with nicotine - an improvement, but not exactly 'good for me'. I think moving away from crowd-curated or algorithmically-curated content feeds is a positive move towards the 'intentionality' with which I hope to one day navigate the internet. I think this video on ZIRPSLOP</a> was a great conversation piece that helped me arrive at this conclusion. I'm not sure if I will be fully able to accomplish it.</li> </ol> </li> Reduce short-form video content I do not have the self control to never hit that little shorts panel in the app, but I do truly think Youtube is valuable for a lot of thoughtful thinkpieces and education and entertainment content from small(ish) creators. A straight up restriction on app time would not really fit the bill, as I treat youtube video essays like podcasts sometimes; I listen to them when I'm doing other stuff. What I've settled on and seems to be working is a 30min timer on the Youtube app - and thankfully timers on Android really lock the app down, you can't easily dismiss the restriction like on iOS - and I downloaded NewPipe which is a Youtube front-end that not only avoids me seeing ads but lets me turn off shorts entirely in settings. It's been working relatively well. I use my 30mins of youtube time for shorts when im on the toilet and NewPipe has no 'suggested videos' section.</li> </ol> </li> </ol> The above is really the current baseline I want to maintain into the future. I will hopefully increase my attention span, ability to hold a thought in my head for more than 3 minutes, and ability to patiently work out a problem without the desire for outside stimulus. Maybe I will even set a maximum Youtube time at some point. 'Everything is Political now' kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 A few months ago, controversy stirred around one of the core maintainers of Hyprland</a>, the Linux window manager, facing backlash for their political stances. It has been extensively covered by a slew of "techtubers" and bloggers, and I am not interested in re-hashing the events here. However, the discussion bubbled up an all-too-familiar sentiment: "Why did they have to bring politics into it?" "It" here refers to whatever the topic of discussion is. This phrase, to me, reveals the continued misunderstanding of what is or isn’t "political". A typical topic the phrase is used against is video games. Often, people bemoan video games for being "political" when the themes or content of a specific game are perceived as such, but let's take a step back and look at the category more widely. Reasonable societies agree that young people, especially minors, should be shielded from experiencing content with "adult themes" - drug use, violence, sex - because they are typically impressionable and lack the life experience to contextualize such themes. Thus, governments, whose core goal should be to uphold the best interest of society, form regulatory rating agencies to help label, categorize, and restrict the sale of media with adult themes to the appropriate audiences. Media companies are thus aware that producing art (or "content") with heavy themes in it will restrict the audience they are able to reach. So they made a political calculation when they choose to fund projects that may avoid "mature" content. Video game creators navigate the political landscape of their desired target market and audience before a game's story is even written, and they make a political choice, even if subconsciously, every time they make decisions as to the game’s direction. One could dive much deeper into the politics, or even philosophy, that determines what themes are deemed unfit for children, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader. This is, obviously, one aspect of a highly simplified example, but you could go through this analysis for literally everything. This is the point I wish to stress. Politics is simply the systems and structures societies create to organize, actualize, and exercise ideology. These ideologies can be further broken down into philosophies, codes of ethics, etc. But there is no human-touched creation that lacks the influence of political thought or action. This understanding then raises the question: "If everything is political, why do people complain about things 'becoming political'?" To me, the answer lies in how people experience ideology itself. We are all born into and shaped by the most pervasive ideologies of our current times. We exist immersed in the theories, "common sense", and cultural aspects that make our society function. At one point or another, all of these aspects were explicitly ideological - ideas about how society should be. They became "reality", as Lacanian Psychoanalysis</a> would posit, through various historical movements and events. However, most of us simply experience this "reality" and do not in our day-to-day have to contend with or acknowledge the ideological aspects that maintain it. In this way, our "reality" and our "status quo" are very similar. Journalist Mark Fisher points out in Capitalist Realism that the ultimate success of an ideology is to reach this "naturalized" point, where we no longer even perceive the ideology that is functioning in the background. Quoting from philosopher Alenka Zupancic</a>, Fisher warns that we should "be most alert to the functioning of ideology" when that ideology "presents itself as empirical fact (or biological, economic...) necessity (and that we tend to perceive as non-ideological)." This "naturalized" state of ideology is what leads someone to bemoan something "becoming political". Let's re-examine video games and try to uncover the ideologies that might play a role in the space. Journalist Anita Sarkeesian</a> became the centerpiece of the "gamergate" controversy around 2012 for her critiques of the video game space as heavily reliant on misogynistic tropes. "Gamergaters", as her critics came to be known, claimed to be defending gamer culture and battling against "political correctness" and "feminist ideology", while promoting "ethics in video games journalism". Gamergaters perceived these movements (feminism, social justice) as uniquely political. They believed Sarkeesian and her ilk to desire to insert these politics into gaming despite the fact, as we have discussed already, that video games had already and were always politically charged before Sarkeesian ever came around. The problem for the gamergater was that Sarkeesian was poking and prodding at the edges of their gamer "reality". In the Lacanian understanding</a>, she was trying to get at the "Real"</a>. She was pointing out uncomfortable things about the naturalized ideology that pervades the video game space. It is easy to say this 13 years later, but "#Gamergate" was not truly about ethics in video game journalism or defending against some outside threat to the video game community. Gamergate is an extreme example of the knee-jerk "get politics out of my favorite thing" reaction. The reason we can perceive Sarkeesian's critiques as ideologically motivated, is because the ideology that she professed challenges the naturalized ideology that was already prevalent in the gaming community. Straight, cis men gamers were used to being the default audience - which youtuber Shaun covers well in this timestamped section of his video on Stellar Blade</a>. They did not have to ever choose to be straight men in their games, the idea that they would have to if Sarkeesian got her way, burst the bubble of their naturalized ideology. In this way ideology is like body odor; we all emit it at one point or another, but we all get a little uncomfortable when ours is pointed out to us. It may be helpful to remind ourselves that as much as it is “True” for our society that video games are a male hobby, so too was the divine right of kings “True” for a peasant in 1600. The true point I want to get across is that it is misguided to bemoan something "getting political". It is way more intellectually rigorous and interesting to analyze and break down the ideologies that are pervasive and lie unseen in everything we see and experience, and this can be applied no matter where you land on the political spectrum. Think of it as healthy skepticism, and try to uncover what "realities" and "empirical facts" obfuscate the "Real". Interesting Things Around The Web July 2025 kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I've been on vacation recently so haven't put much time into updating the blog but I did recently find some really cool websites that I wanted to share! Tools</h3> powRSS</a> This website is phenomenal, even if simple. It's basically an RSS aggregator but driven by a community of people who want to help others discover personal websites and blogs. They have a rotating monthly selection of blogs that they aggregate the RSS feeds for, so every month you can discover new websites to check out</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Blogs</h3> Elizabeth Tai</a> I found the article titled 'I support deleting your second brain'</a> through powRSS and really loved the subject of the article and the authors voice. Immediately added the RSS to my reader, and it led me to discover the second blog on this list!</li> </ul> </li> Westenberg</a> Westenberg's article where they talk about deleting their entire Obsidian repository of notes from over 9 years really stirred something in the internet. I ended up reading several more articles of theirs and the reddit thread on r/Obsidian</a> about their article. The reddit thread also inspired me to start writing a little bit about how much Reddit annoys me lately.</li> While I have some qualms about Westenberg's 'professionalized' website and what reads to me like 'thought leadership' and personal consulting services - something I ardently believe is for self-important yuppies who want to be the next Bezos - I cannot deny that their writing style and specifically this article that touches on strategies to reclaim your attention span</a> has been generally enjoyable I have started applying one of their rules to myself lately: I start all my essays on paper now. And I'm trying to force myself to write by hand every time I have an idea, rather that going straight to the computer. Their rule about one day without AI being 'strict' is hysterical because I avoid AI like the plague. Maybe if you need a robot to 'generate thought' for you, you aren't a 'thought leader'?</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> Self Hosting</h3> Kavita</a> A self-hostable e-reader. Has functionality to send books and manga to kindle! Very neat, started using it a few weeks ago, works a charm even if the intial book tagging and setup is a bit particular.</li> </ul> </li> LazyLibrarian</a> Readarr really didn't work for me and I got fed up, so I found this tool as a way to manage and acquire ebooks in a semi-automated way. I am not a fan of its UI and true true lack of good documentation. However, it works with some manual intervention for moving files (damn Docker volume mounts) and so I am now running it until I find something better. It's awesome that it has the ability to link to Soulseek for directl file sharing though!</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Gardening Upgrades and Plant Updates kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I was lucky enough to get Juneteenth off work and felt very motivated to do some work in the garden. There was a decent list of things that needed my attention: Two of the 4 tomato plants lacked any real kind of trellis and the 4th one had fruited and dried out completely</li> The walkways had become partially overrun by overgrown mint plant ground cover</li> There were lots of ripe garlic and shallot plants that needed harvesting</li> Though picked almost clean by the local birds, the blueberry bushes had ripened</li> </ul> I set about the work at around 10am, having given myself the morning to sleep in on my day off. First, I set about the easier task of cleaning up the walkways by simply grabbing a bunch of the overgrown mint and cutting it close to the soil level, trying to trim it away from the cement walkway. It didn't take long but I did squat to do it, so my knees were a bit sore by the time I was done with each section - the wonderful effects of now being in my late 20s and out of shape. Fig. 1: I think it definitely looks cleaner than before, although I completely forgot to take the 'before' picture</figcaption> </figure> Next I tackled the purple cherry tomato plant, which was growing beautifully and had some ripened fruits which I picked first, but which also had some dried/dead branches and was generally just bunched up near the ground with nothing to grow up against. I used a kind of fencing material that was used previously for some of the existing trellising. It is kept in the garage in a roll and required some light re-bending to straighten into the right shapes. I found and used an old flush-cutter to cut the lengths I thought I needed, though I confess I oversized too much for the first trellis. After trimming the plant, I hung the fencing using some left over zip ties - some which were brittle and unusable after being in the sun for so long - off of an existing frame made of metal tubes. It worked pretty nicely! It did make accessing the back parts of the garden a bit more difficult but since the trellis hung about 2ft off the ground it made accessing the plants directly beneath it a breeze. I threaded the various tomato plant branches through the fencing holes as gingerly as I could, and then was pretty satisfied with the result! </figure> Fig. 2: You can see that I cut the trellis a bit big, but the bottom is still accessible thanks to the gap</figcaption> </figure> For the fully fruited and dried up cherry tomato plant, I harvested all the tomatoes that seemed edible, even if underripe, and then I cut off everything. I cut it down to what essentially is just a little stump. From my understanding, in this climate the tomato plants are perennial, so giving it less mass to keep alive might help it sprout back up come next spring. At least, I'm hoping that's the case. In the worst of cases, I'll have to pull it out of the ground next summer and plant something else in its place. Fig. 3: Here is the tomato bounty after I sorted the unripe ones out. Most of the ones on the dried/dead plants were very ripe</figcaption> </figure> The other tomato plant, which is still very green but not fruiting yet for whatever reason (it's been fairly dry and I've not been the best about watering the garden more than twice a week), was actually planted in a raised bed. This made making it a trellis much easier. I stuck some stakes in the soil of the raised bed towards the back, bent some more of the fencing material into a wide U-shape, and then tied the fencing to the stakes using the same zip ties. I think it looks a bit industrial at the moment but maybe my partner and I can spruce it up with some wood decorations later on. I thread the tomato vines along this fence as well, and I'm hoping it helps it grow! Fig. 4: Here's all the tomatoes I harvested from both plants before I sorted out the ripe ones.</figcaption> </figure> I get the weird feeling that these tomato plants are suffering from scorch, since we've had a very hot summer. Maybe I will look into installing some partly-shaded netting above the trellises? Not sure, need more research. The plants are definitely producing fruit but the tomatoes seem stunted and fall off before they get very big. Lastly, I scoured the very overgrown garden - my god the mint spread everywhere - for any and all garlic or shallot shoots I could find that were either drying out or had fallen over. I dug them up, brushed as much dirt off as I could, and set the larger bulbs to cure in the pantry with a fan pointed at them. I read it takes about 3 weeks so I will try to write an update then as well. I'm hoping they do properly cure because I would hate for all that hard work to go to waste just because I didn't know how to use freshly-picked garlic. Didn't want to make this post SUPER long so I'll end it there, but here are the pictures of the final harvest! </figure> Self Hosting Guides and Resources kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I linked Servers @ Home Wiki</a> a while ago in one of my linkdumps, and it's been really exciting to see it and the related Youtube channel and Discord grow. Recently, the owner opened up their Wiki for contributions from the community, and I'm pleased to say I've contributed my first guide for the self-hosted soulseek server client</a>! As a newcomer to TrueNAS - having used Proxmox the first time I set up a home server - this wiki was truly invaluable for me to get my arr stack setup properly and shown me so many new and cool services I would have never thought about. The wiki generally includes guides for different dockerized and TrueNAS applications in the general structure of: Description of the app</li> Installation</li> Configuration</li> Best practices</li> </ul> It also sometimes includes a video walkthrough! Wanna spread the word since I guess now I'm a contributor to the site and also because I am hoping that with a larger community we can really turn it into a helpful resource in this age of enshittified cloud SaaS. If you self host already and run a helpful service you don't see, I encourage you to check out this video</a> on how you can contribute your knowledge to the project! Home Server Upgrades! kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 So last year I wrote about my cobbled-together proxmox server</a> that I started running and how I installed a Minecraft and the classic arr stack. It was my first foray into self hosting and ever since then I've wanted to stand up a new one with more storage, more power, more services. And since I recently upgraded my computer</a> I had a whole host of old but well-configured parts to make a more powerful one! I won't bore you with hardware details but I bought 3x8Tb drives and set them up using TrueNAS Scale in a RAIDZ1 array. I have 14.4 (effective) Tb of storage and one whole drive can fail without data loss. The one issue with the drives atm is that they are situated in the PSU basement of that old 'gaming computer' case, and thus run a bit warm. I am likely going to have to move them into the main case compartment where they will get more airflow. I also kept my old gaming GPU in my new computer, so I bought a second hand 970 from someone on FB marketplace just so that the computer had some visual compute power. I've gone through so much tinkering and troubleshooting I could write about it for pages. My biggest challenges, as always, have come with networking and permissions. But here are the services I'm running, almost all dockerized: Modded Minecraft Server</li> Full *arr stack with Jellyfin for TV and Movies</li> Soulseek</a> + Navidrome for Music</li> VPN container to mask both of the above</li> Immich</a> as a personal photo cloud I've seen nextcloud recommended a lot online and it looks like awesome software, but honestly it also seems overkill when all I want to do is save pictures</li> </ul> </li> Dockge to manage my docker image in stacks</li> Uptime Kuma to monitor my services</li> </ul> I was considering creating a private VPN tunnel using Netbird or Tailscale so I can access the server while outside the house, but my attempts at setting up the proper network bridges to get either service to work somehow broke the connectivity of all my docker containers and I got tired of trying to fix it by editing iptables and other things I don't fully understand. At the end of the day, if something in the server breaks while I'm not home, I probably won't even need that service until I'm home to fix it. The server has been so dope so far, we've manage to catch up on series that are no longer on streaming, I've had a blast looking back at the last 15+ years of photos myself or family or friends have taken and reminisce, and my partner and I have put like 50+ hours into building a massive minecraft castle XD There have been tons of cool and helpful resources I've used to get it all up and running. I linked some in my previous linkdump</a>, but I'm happy to share any findings someone might need or help troubleshoot. I'm not expert but I got this stuff going! Interesting Things Around The Web May 2025 kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 This week I've finally started up a new homelab server at my new place! Used my old, more proper computer, and tried a different OS! A few of the links in this post will be for the homelabbers out there, because I truly think well-written guides are rarer than people are willing to admit! Guides</h3> TrueNAS Scale Reverse Proxy with Nginx and DuckDNS</a> A guide on setting up Nginx Proxy Manager on TrueNAS using the app from TrueNAS Apps fully locally and without exporting any ports. I struggled using other OS-agnostic guides because what I didn't realize was that NPM needs to 1) run as root user and 2) use the default HTTP (80)and HTTPS (443) so you have to actually change the ports that your TrueNAS installation uses for the WebUI</li> </ul> </li> Servers @ Home Wiki</a> A fantastic wiki and associated discord and youtube with a wealth of information on setting up media stacks using docker in TrueNAS, even has a handy little install script that will do most of the standing up for you! Similar to YAMS</a> but specifically running on TrueNAS and not needing it's own VM</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Videos</h3> 7 Concerning Levels of Acoustic Spying Techniques - Benn Jordan</a> Benn is one of the most interesting people in the Youtube audio space. He's a musician but, as made clear in this video he could as easily have been an engineer or software developer. His videos are always so interesting even if the topic is completely non-applicable to my life</li> </ul> </li> your humor is inherently political - oliSUNvia</a> Olivia is a really smart 'video essayist' and student of philosophy. Her videos are always extremely insightful and attach a lot of interesting philosophical concepts to social media or real-world phenomena. Her channel is in my opinion one of the best gateways to leave the 'pop politics' youtube space and should be getting way more attention than the 'We must talk about the X situation' slop channels masquerading as political commentary. This video released at a great time for me, because I've been having a lot of thoughts about the resurgence of the 'stop making everything political' crowd around the internet. Definitely worth a watch.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Growing Some Plants kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 10 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I was visiting my grandmother and her caretaker around the holidays in 2024, back in my birth country. There, we eat a popular pepper called 'Locoto' which is a small pepper that can range in color from green to red and ranges in spiciness as well. You can google it but basically it's like a very small habanero with about 1/3 the spiciness. It's used in all kinds of dishes and even eaten together with bread or raw on the side of a warm dish. We also really love a fruit called 'Chirimoya' - Cherimoya for the anglos out there</a> - and my grandmother's caretaker had a bunch of seeds that she extracted from the day-to-day eating of both the Locotos and the Chirimoya. She sent me home with a ziploc baggie full of all kinds of seeds. I kept that baggie until I moved to my new place, which has a lovely garden space which already grows Tomatoes, Green Onions, Strawberries, Celery, and other delicious edibles! It's not the most productive garden ever - not like some of the youtube homesteads you'd find - but it is very nice to have a fresh strawberry or tomato every few weeks when the seasons hit right. The last maintainer of the garden had such a green thumb that plants have grown in it just from him burrying vegetable or fruit scraps. There's also some citrus trees! It's very wonderful, even if a lot of work, to take care of. But back to my seeds. I found a little container meant for seed starting that even included an LED growlight and decided to try my hand at growing Locoto and Chirimoya plants. I planted them with some standard potting soil and put 3 seeds in each of the squares. I placed the whole thing with the LED growlight in the warmest part of the house, the networking closet with the router and other home-theatre devices. After 2-3 weeks, I saw that about 1/3 of all the Locoto seeds had sprouted! Fig1 . 3 Weeks after spritsing with water every so often and keeping them in the warm-ish closet</figcaption> </figure> From the cells you can see that I stuck a little blank tag on one side. Those 3 cells on that side are the ones that received a single chirimoya seed in each. At this stage I was a little sad because I didn't see any growth from any of them. However, after 2 more weeks I noticed one of the seeds had somehow moved towards the top of the dirt, and a few days later it had also sprouted! Fig. 2 The picture is pretty terrible but in the bottom left cell you can see a little loop of what looks like a plant stem!</figcaption> </figure> Fig. 3 It's so interesting to me that the seed was on what looked like the leaf-end of the plant! So it was almost like it was growing backwards!</figcaption> </figure> After about 5 total weeks since planting, and a phonecall with my grandmother where she very sternly told me I needed to "put them in the earth before they were no longer viable", I decided to plant them. I wanted to conduct an experiment, since I had never really done this before. We have a raised garden bed in the garden which I hoped would become the home for these sprouts but I feared it was simply too big and that the weather is too hot for them to survive without higher moisture brought on by being inside or by the plastic cover they had grown under. So I took the strongest looking Locoto sprouts and the Chirimoya sprout and put them in small plastic pots with potting soil. The other two locoto sprouts I planted in the raised garden bed and put a plastic cover over, hoping it would hold the temperature more steady. Fig. 4 The chirimoya plant (now the largest of them all) and the 3 locoto plants that sprouted in a single cell, planted into pots</figcaption> </figure> Putting the plastic cover over the plants in the raised bed was a massive mistake. After one day they were fine, but after one other particularly sunny and hot day, I came outside to find they had both wilted almost completely. I believe that the plastic cover, while it did retain moisture, overheated the plants as it did not allow enough air to cycle, so the plants died due to too much heat. I am really dissapointed in myself and should have just trusted what my grandmother said about putting them directly in dirt and not fussing over them too much. I have since removed the cover and watered the garden bed thoroughly in the hopes that one will bounce back from the brink. Thankfully, I still have the one that's in the pot. For the potted plants, I read somewhere that introducing them to outdoor conditions needs to be gradual, so I initially left them outside from 7am-noon (I wake up at 6 every day for work anyways) and I put them in the shade from noon to around whenever I remember to move them back to their original spot - usually once the sun is no longer at peak. I am going to reduce this activity in the next few days and simply leave them all day in one of the partially-shaded parts of the garden. Having lost all my 'backup sprouts' im really hoping they don't die in a single overnight cold snap or something. They seem resilient now. If you have any gardening advice for me, please share! Finally using a Static Site Generator kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 So in the spirit of my blog on Consistency</a> I spoke about how I wanted to be more consistent with posting and updating the blog. In the end, I want to just write and not deal with the as-it-was manual updating of this site. That's why I started looking into using an SSG instead, as I hoped it would mean I could write new posts and it could handle all the tedious tasks of assigning dates, updating the rss feed, putting the links and titles and text into the right places etc. It took a lot of learning and searching but I think I finally have the site in a good spot using Zola</a>, which is a SSG written in rust that I heard about through the blogs I follow. The documentation is frankly a bit lacking and for the most part doing things that I thought would be intuitive (like create a template for my footer and have it be included in every site) took me more than I thought it would. A lot of the tips and tricks are held in their forum or frankly in old reddit posts. I also removed the former //Music page because 1) it was a pain to update in the first place even though I liked the CSS I made for it and 2) it's not a page I know how to do purely with a markdown-based SSG, so more learning needed. Growing pains aside, it has so far worked well for what I wanted. I don't need to update 4 footer sections every time I post, I don't have to manually copy and paste my articles for my new rss feed, and I can simply type new posts in markdown without worrying about broken or old links to the other stuff. A couple things I can finally work on as well are: Custom tags and taxonomies allowing the blog to be filtered/searched for by topic</li> Adding back in the //Music page but with better organization and less fancy shit (no JS)</li> Improve upon the theme I'm using now that I can use SASS</a></li> Automatic 'Last Updated' dates on the footer</li> </ul> My hope is this will become a much more active site now that I've allowed myself to not overthink or focus too much on polish. Why 'Kitchen Sink' Minecraft Modpacks Fail kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I love Minecraft. I think Minecraft may be the best game ever made. It's not my favorite game ever made, that's reserved for the Witcher 3, but I cannot deny that Minecraft has had the impact, longevity, and community to truly put it at the top. Minecraft with mods is even better. System altering mods like Create, Farmer's Delight, Applied Energistics, etc can make the game feel new again even thousands of hours in. I have probably played over 300 hours of just the original Tekkit</a> modpack over the years. But I have a very specific gripe against 'Kitchen Sink' (KS) minecraft modpacks. To my understanding, KS modpacks are modpacks created with the intention of throwing in every mod possible as long as the game still launches and the systems don't clash too much. I think these types of modpacks are fundamentally flawed and make for a worse experience when compared to more narrowly-focused modpacks or even vanilla minecraft. The two pitfalls that almost every KS modpack can fall into are: One or a few of the system-altering mods -- e.g. Ars Nouveau for magic, Create or Mekanism for tech -- can end up completely outcompeting other mods for efficiency or ease of progression, thus rendering the pursuit of any other mod in the pack alternative at best or unrewarding and grindy at worst. This discourages play diversity, especially in a server setting where in a few days people can often get to flying-around with netherite armor whereas you are struggling to even make a full iron suit simply because you chose a slower mod to progress down.</li> The system-altering mods conflict greatly with other resource-alteration or world-generation mods, making it necessary to have light to moderate progression in several to many of the major mods in order to progress past a certain stage in any singular mod. I admit this is a bit confusing so here's an example: Say I really want to play X modpack for the inclusion of Ars Nouveau</a>, and progressing in Ars requires a significant amount of both Lapiz Lazuli and Redstone. However, the modpack also includes a world gen mod that makes redstone either exceedingly rare or impossible to find - like covering the world in water</a> because the world is pirate themed. I, as a good modpack creator, have thus altered some of the configs for Create Sifting</a> so that some of these exceedingly-rare resources are much more likely to come up when sifting. But what does this mean in the end? Well... the player has to go a decent ways down the Create progression tree in order to even start to use Ars Nouveau in any significant capacity. I'm sure you can replace this specific example with a myriad of different conflicting mods.</li> </ol> </li> </ol> The worst bit is that problem #2 can often reinforce problem #1 because any players that continue to give the modpack a chance will realize another system is simply more efficient, more powerful, or easier and switch to that. Now the obvious rebuttals to this can be 'skill issue, learn more mods' or 'a good modpack creator should be able to balance all systems' or even 'so what? You picked the worse system that's just how it is'. For those that instinctively thought the second sentence, I'd like to say that you're correct in theory. In theory, you could spend weeks on end modifying configs, drop rates, world generation files, hell even mod progression itself to balance all these systems and ensure one doesn't simply cannibalize or kneecap the others. But is that worth it? Do most modpack creators want to spend 3 weeks modifying and playtesting each one of 20-30 mods included in the pack just so that it's not a pain in the ass to pick that mod as your preferred progression method? I doubt it. Not only that, but why subject yourself to such a time consuming task, when you can spend that time creating a highly focused modpack that tightly integrates the 5-10 systems you've decided to include? I think again to the success of Tekkit, RLCraft, Feed The Beast, or even Integrated MC.. All of these modpacks include a variety of systems but all focused around one or a few fantasies. Tekkit for technology progression, RL Craft for hardcode 'semi-realism' (for that just play Vintage Story</a> IMO), and so on. This tight scope enables developers to spend time crafting a great experience, instead of trying to cram one more magic system mod in and making sure it doesn't break the others. /rant Interesting Things Around The Web kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Short list so far but hopefully as I get more and more into browsing the web, I will find more links I think others should take a look at. Blogs</h3> Interregnum</a> A generally leftist publication which hosts articles by a variety of authors. Recently discovered them through the article on Passivity Propaganda</a>. Thoughts on that specific article: Generally can't disagree with the sentiment or general thesis of the article. However, I feel like the article over-focuses on pro-china leftists to make its point. Leftsits can generally be dismissive of critiques of China and other 'commie' nations, but I think it's a general over-correction for the reality that anti-china, anti-cuba, and anti-socialist propaganda is literally the most widespread kind of propaganda in the west.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> Chinese Cooking Demystified - The 63 Chinese Cuisines</a> Along with their wonderful youtube channel and accompanying video, this is an incredible article that talks about the insane breadth of Chinese cuisines. Unsurprising for such a large country, but definitely an unknown to me as a Westerner. Was super interesting and as I am hoping to do some food tourism, I may put some of these dishes on my list!</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Other</h3> Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting</a> [Google Doc] A wonderful resource that has honestly helped me get out of some doomer spirals lately. The world is going to shit, but I've signed up to cook food (something I already enjoy) for the houseless in my community and it has really eased my consciousness. I encourage anyone reading this to get involved, there's all sorts of resources here from donating to offering completely digital, from-the-comfort-of-your-pc help for those in need. Strong communities are the only way we will get through this.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Consistency kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 First post in over 4 months. Honestly haven't even opened my note editor in that long as well. A lot happened in my life over the last 4 months, and while I've on and off wanted to write I simply haven't made myself do it. As usual, I've distracted myself with other things, new toys, new hobbies. It's truly a classic move for me. But I think more deeply there was this desire for every post on this site to be... useful or informative. To have utility to someone that wasn't me. To be worth someone else's time. I think that desire has prevented me from being consistent. I let perfect be the enemy of good, of consistency. I think this reflection has made me realize that I should probably just write, it doesn't have to be deep or take me an hour to edit and re-edit. I just need to do it. So the next few blog posts will probably be quite small. On that note, here's a bulleted list of the things that I've been experiencing and meaning to just word-vomit about: I've moved across the country a. It was fairly stressful, and I basically left behind all my family and friends but I'm not too bothered. It's not the first time I've done such a thing and I find that generally my relationships are not that high maintenance. I moved to be with my partner after a loss that required them to move home.</li> I tried building the new gaming PC that I talked about in a previous blog post</a> a. Unfortunately the MSI motherboard I bought was dead on arrival. And I've sent it back to them for repairs under warranty. Haven't heard back but it's been less than a week and they said it would probably take 2. Here's hoping I don't have to think about the MUCH heftier cost that it would now be to replace it. Not only due to tariffs but also because I got the original one at a discount</li> My job is threatened by the turmoil in the US government and general job market. a. Here's hoping I'm not laid off as I have a tooth cleaning I need to attend in a few months and I would like to have insurance so I can afford it</li> I've realized I've become unable to spend time not being entertained. I sit, I scroll YT shorts. I lay down, I browse BlueSky. I go to my computer, I must play a game or watch a video. I think the worst is just the inability to not pull my phone out when at rest. a. In the name of changing things, and through the inspiration of bloggers such as 82Mhz</a>, BASIC</a>, and that Technology Connections video</a>I like the idea of just going back to basics. Avoiding the endless scrolling, curating my feeds through forcing myself to use RSS and the small web to find things to read and occupy my mind rather than allow myself to just be fed entertainment.</li> I've been addicted to Final Fantasy XIV Online a. playing it with my partner has been great but sometimes I want to make so much more progress than they have energy for... I'm MSQ gated now HAHAHA</li> </ol> That being said hopefully I can just write short little posts that just share cool stuff I've seen without elaborated commentary and at least post once every two weeks like I told myself I would. I might even transition my little static site to use a builder so that the - frankly monotonous - work of updating a .html file isn't a barrier either. Buying new PC gaming parts? kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 With promised tariffs incoming next year a lot of tech enthusiasts in the US have been wondering if we should just be buying new hardware now while we they're not flatly more expensive than they would be after tariffs. This has me considering some things about my current computer. To start, the specs after a few here-and-there upgrades are: CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X 16-core</li> Memory: 4dimm x 8Gb DDR4 at 32Mhz - So 32Gb total</li> GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER</li> Motherboard: ASUS PRIME x470-PRO</li> </ul> This computer has been more than enough for the games I run since I built it in 2019 with money I made as a janitor over a summer. It runs most new AAA games fine at medium settings as well, but those I play fewer and fewer of nowadays, and I prefer higher FPS over things like ray tracing. I truly think for my use case I could get another 3 years out of this thing easily. So I have conflicting thoughts about upgrading. On the one hand, the only upgrade that makes sense is to move up to the am5 platform with DDR5, which entails buying an entirely new mobo, cpu, and memory. Black Friday deals and Micro Center bundles mean I could get a solid - but not top of the line - CPU, mobo, and 32Gb of DDR5 for under $800</a>. I would try to keep my current corsair all-in-one water cooler since it's worked so well for so long anyway, and I would also keep my case since it's just an NZXT H510 that I've sort of sticker bombed and want to keep. I would need to upgrade the power supply as well since new components require more than my puny 550W power supply can muster. The other obvious upgrade is my graphics card. It would easily be, and even now might be, my one bottleneck. But with the timing of the new 50-series Nvidia cards, the realization I will likely run Linux as a primary operating system for the foreseeable future, and the tariffs meaning newer cards might be once again in the thousands range... I'm thinking tossing this 2070 into the new system until the new card announcement and prices wouldn't be such a bad idea. Maybe the cards are ridiculous and so getting 50-series is totally worth it, or maybe they're a small leap and so getting a higher-end 40-series card might be more viable in terms of price-per-performance. I truly don't know. What I do know, is that if Trump gets his blanket tariff everything in tech is about to get way more expensive for north american consumers. A final, and admittedly much smaller, consideration is that because this upgrade isn't strictly necessary I am aware that I'd be feeding into the classic western consumerist tendencies as well as creating e-waste that's all but impossible to avoid ending up in landfill. Though I could curb that by tossing my old components into a cheap ass case and turning into my new home server this time with CUDA acceleration!!! Maybe someone out there with their finger on the pulse of computer hardware knows better. Campaign Strategy, Hope, and Other Thoughts Following the US Presidential Elections kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 As probably everyone by now knows: Donald Trump has now been elected to his second term as president of the United States, with likely disastrous consequences for minorities, immigrants, and working class people as a whole to come. Plenty of scholars, journalists, pundits, and online personas have spilled ink on the topic of how this happened when the mood in the united states on election day was much more optimistic as to the chances of Kamala Harris winning. I'm not going to pretend to know the answer but I do have some thoughts I want to ramble on... Some Things to Get Out of the Way:</h2> I voted for Kamala this year, Biden last election, and Clinton the one before that. Begrudgingly for all, might I add. To me, they all represented a center-right neoliberal imperial order that gave nothing but lip service to the downtrodden and truly only represented corporate interests. However, I voted for them because I have come to believe that a vote is not a moral act, but a strategic one. Elected officials will always be adversaries and the communities they 'serve' always have to fight and organize underneath the elected official; voting strategically in this reality means trying your best to elect your weakest adversary. For example, Kamala's role in the abhorrent Biden administration as it enables a genocide in Palestine is deplorable, yet I still voted for her because I believe that she would be more easily forced to change course through protest and direct action. That aside, I - the eternal pessimist - believed Kamala would lose approximately 2 weeks after she picked Walz as her running mate. Not because of the pick but because after what seemed to be a wave of support for her campaign</a> - due in part to excitement about Biden stepping down and Walz being relatively progressive, popular, and from a swing state - she made a series of unforced messaging and strategic errors that all but killed it. I saw it as a sign that this campaign was only paying lip service with Walz and would run an increasingly Hillary Clinton-esque pivot-to-the-right campaign. I'll get into some of the steps I think were critical blunders a little later. I want to make it extremely clear that I don't think Kamala would have won the election if she had just taken my position on each and every single issue me and my progressive buddies care and talk about. I understand that I am much more to the left of the average democratic voter let alone American voter. The argument I want to make is 'listen to the polls and meet people where they are instead of listening to overpaid consultants that have been using the same playbook since Obama and only narrowly won in 2020'. Listening to Black Voices:</h2> I am not black, but several people who I look to for black perspectives have generally reacted to the outcome by stating that racism and misogyny are the primary cause of the difference in the vote between Joe Biden's run and Kamala's. Among these, FD Signifier and Olayemi "Olay" Olurin who are public leftist figures. I actually specifically watched a discussion</a> among Olay and other journalists/pundits a few days before the election where the mood in the room seemed extremely optimistic, if not confident, in a Harris/Walz victory. At the time, I wondered to myself if I was just being too much of a doomer. While I do believe racism and misogyny played a significant role, it gave me a bit of pause to read FD and Olay's takes after the result because my initial gut reaction was that the campaign had made the same mistakes as the Clinton campaign had. It was just the classic 'the moderates are the key' cliche strategy that to this day democratic pundits believe is fundamentally good strategy</a>. My opinion on the matter was well condensed by the tweet</a> from @real_hotguts: "what lewis means here is harris adroitly followed the sensible centrist rules on winning elections and it did not work. and because all sensible adults in the room know There Is No Alternative, the point of failure must be elsewhere, perhaps in the hearts of voters themselves" </blockquote> This general idea is why I was surprised to hear FD's and Olay's gut reactions. I want to understand their perspectives better, but it's not like I can just reach out and ask in the horde of online comments they already receive. If I could, I'd probably try to get a sense as to how far this belief extends. If strategy was not the issue, and it was simply Kamala's race and gender, does this mean they don't believe the US could ever elect a black woman as president? If so, does that not imply that if we, as progressives, want our lesser adversary to be elected, we must always beg the democrats to run a white man, and therefore sometimes vote against the most capable candidate in order to ensure it is a white man on the ticket? Is that not a capitulation to the preferences of those same racists? Is that not simply throwing in the towel? Do we truly have to wait for enough whites to either develop a conscience or die (let's face it many are old, but there is a concerning block of young right wing men) before we can actually try to run the most qualified candidate, regardless of race or gender? I truly am struggling with this set of logic because - trust me - I am under no illusion that this isn't a deeply racist and patriarchal country, but I also don't think waiting around for some switch to flip and run more old white men in the meantime is the path forward either. We must look for other points of failure. Problems I Saw in the Harris/Walz Strategy</h2> Kamala's team campaigned further and further to the right of her relatively progressive campaigns of the past and gave up on plenty of popular measures - like the public option or universal healthcare, DACA, path to citizenship, restricting weapons sales to Israel, etc. They made Liz Cheney, daughter of the infamous war criminal and architect of the Iraq war Dick Cheney, a central campaign figure. The strategy, as I understood it, was that Liz would appeal to 'old guard' republicans in suburban communities displeased with Trump's harsh rhetoric and cult of personality. They got fewer republican votes than Biden did in 2020. In the end, if some voter is looking for a candidate with right-wing messaging, why would they pick the one that’s less to the right and perceived as tactically pivoting rather than having long-term beliefs in right-wing ideology? The Harris/Walz campaign also appeared to put very little distance between the administration they would represent, and the deeply unpopular current Biden/Harris administration. The only real time I saw Harris emphasize a difference in opinion she held was when she disavowed Biden calling republicans garbage</a>. She didn't distance herself on Palestine, economic policy, immigration policy, packing the supreme court, and many other key aspects that polls generally showed</a> were key concerns for core blocks of American voters. Whether the campaign wanted to or not, Harris is a part of the current administration, she was and will always be viewed as having a hand in its policies, outcomes, and problems. The simple math I want to demonstrate here is that if the Biden administration and its stances/policies/outcomes on these issues are viewed negatively</a>, then running on 'more of what you got the last 4 years but with a fresh new face' is not exactly going to inspire millions to 1) take off work, 2) wait in line for possibly hours, 3) tell their friends and go vote. The American people, regardless of positive economic averages</a> and overly-generous media coverage, have felt like things have not been going in their favor the last four years. We knew this during the final Obama term. And I had thought we had learned that lesson. Americans are very willing to throw a Trump-shaped grenade at their problem when the alternative is just 'more of the same you got the last 4 years'. This is not a winning message, and coddling the right isn't either. Loss kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I've been fortunate enough to not have experienced too much loss at this stage in my life. But watching someone I love experience possibly one of the biggest losses of life, and way too early at that, has been difficult to say the least. I know there's nothing I can to to 'fix' the situation. I know all they want of me is comfort and support and I am trying to provide it to them. But other than be there while they sob and trying my best not to empathy cry with them... I have no idea what I can do. It's such a weird conflict of emotions. I obviously am not here to whine this isn't that big of a problem for me - they're the ones that are experiencing this deep grief. But watching someone you care so much about suffer so, and wanting but knowing you cannot relieve their pain is a powerlessness I am finding difficult to sit with. I'm such a solution-suggester, advice-giver - and therefore frankly a terrible listener - that I just feel completely unequipped. Anyways, that's all I have had on my mind in the last two weeks so that's the 2-week blog update. Kind of a bummer I know. My Self-Hosted Media Server kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 So last time I wrote about my new proxmox server</a> that I started running and how I installed a Minecraft server on it that my girlfriend and I were enjoying playing. The other side of the server, after buying a bunch of storage for it, is meant to be as a media storage folder. My primary goals for it are: Enable me to stop relying on music streaming services and be a more reliable way to stream my bandcamp purchases, since bandcamp doesn't really have a ubiquitous app on things like SmartTVs and non-pc non-mobile formats.</li> Hold my photographs</li> Hold the pesky shows/movies that streaming services refuse to host or grant for purchase, or make otherwise inaccessible.</li> </ul> I have no real plans to open the server up to the internet, since I don't understand networking security well enough to feel confident, and the readings I have done on reverse proxies and firewalls have generally left me more confused than anything. Most of them either assume I understand all their prerequisites or use terminology that is so generalized that I often can't find one single, reliable, or straightforward way to accomplish them in the setup I have. That is: proxmox hypervisor, LXC container running debian, and docker container applications. So for now I will settle for just having my services accessible locally. After a lot of searching for different tutorials and threads I stumbled across YAMS (Yet Another Media Server)</a>. It has an interactive shell script that made setup such a breeze I was up and running in like an hour after following the very well documented installation tutorial! If you're a complete beginner and want to self-host, I will say I can't recommend it enough. It has worked super well for me so far. Though I think that if you're a veteran it might be too restrictive for your tastes, as adding and configuring new services entails restarting the entire service unless you really know what you are doing with Docker. That being said, I have a request for my readers (if any): Do you know how I could somehow get local custom dns addresses for my services on YAMS? Right now I access them all through the IP:Port method in browser, and I looked into several reverse-proxy services and containers like SWAG</a> but they all seemed to either need me to port forward and, as far as I understand, open things to the internet - which I don't want to do - or run a local DNS on a raspberry Pi. The reason the latter doesn't work for me is that I believe my router, which is my ISP's, actually ignores any DNS settings I give it. I tried to use my raspberry Pi Zero W earlier last year to set up a PiHole on my network but it literally would not work and I believe it's because my ISP will default traffic to the Google DNS if it encounters something it doesn't expect, so my Pi won't work as a DNS. Would love any advice! How do you make sure you finish your projects? kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 A blogger I follow through their RSS feed at 82Mhz</a> posited a recent question to their readers and fellow bloggers. I found the question interesting and recently had a conversation with my mom about our different organizational styles and how we get through necessary but possibly unfun tasks. Andreas' prompt: Write about how you manage to do your personal projects. How do you organize yourself, how do you manage to finish things and when do you decide it’s time to stop working on something for good? </blockquote> As I mention in my little bio section I hop from hobby to hobby often. Obsessions with certain tech or new challenges tend to carry me forward quite a lot. I'm neurotypical, as far as I know, but I definitely will just obsess over one thing for like two weeks then hop onto the next shiny thing. << but it's so manual because of the way I have it set up I lost motivation after adding the ones you see. >>> So that brings me to the first and most obvious way I get my projects going and done. Desire and motivation. It is so so so easy for me to get something completed when I have this puppy eyed interest or desire to see something new come to life. It was like this with my minecraft server</a> or with the YAMS Media Server which I still need to post about. I literally got off work, booted up my terminal window and the install guide on another monitor, and suddenly it was midnight and I was excitedly celebrating being able to instantly download and tag my completely legal linux ISOs. The big downside to having these giant bursts of motivation, I've found, is that I truly struggle to do tasks that I simply do not want to do anymore. I have several projects that I've dropped without really intending to: Vlog of all the footage I recorded during my Japan trip earlier this year</li> Otome game my girlfriend and I were working on last year</li> Like 3 books I meant to finish reading</li> </ul> I didn't stop making the game or editing the vlog because I encountered some unsurmountable issue, I just ran out of steam to solve the small, mundane roadblocks one encounters during any task. So my motivation and passion-driven nature are double-edged swords. If I don't want to do something it simply might not get done, to be honest. The main exceptions of course are things like work, where the pressure to stay alive and have a place to sleep are more than sufficient motivators for me to get tasks done, and bodily needs like eating. Part of the reason I learned to cook well was because I like good food. So I've had to find ways to get things done that I don't want to do, and I've learned that momentum is a crucial factor for me when motivation is missing. After all these years I've learned that if I make something part of my routine, It's very easy for me to get up every day do it. It's easy for me to shower every morning because it just feels like what I do and my days would feel odd and truncated if I didn't do those things. A few years ago, the gym was such a core part of my routine that I was in the best shape of my life because, like clockwork, I would get out of my last lecture of the day, change, go to the gym for 2 hours, go home, shower, eat, play video games/do homework, sleep. If my day didn't align in some way shape or form with that schedule, it felt off. The downside? If I break that routine in some big way those momentum-based tasks can get completely derailed. Those years of working out daily got completely wasted because when I got a summer job as a janitor, getting up at 5:30am and home at 4pm meant I often felt too tired to go lift for an hour. So eventually I stopped going altogether. All of this is to say that there are so many non-desired and non-routine tasks that feel like pulling teeth for me to get accomplished. I needed to repaint the roof of my car because it was rusting and it literally felt like a gargantuan task even with help from my brother. I ended up sanding and priming it one day, then actually painting it a whole month later. Now I'm procrastinating putting the clear coat on it. I've had clothes for donation in a box in my closet for literal months because it's just not a routine task for me to drive to a clothing donation center. One other example is job applications. By god job applications suck so much and I hate doing them. I hate updating linkedIn, I hate the black hole of getting ghosted, I hate tracking them. So there's my momentum again. When I'm not making job apps part of my daily routine just thinking about them stresses me out and I won't start doing it, but with a big enough push - like feeling insecure in my current job last year - I started applying to jobs every day from 5:30-6:30pm. No matter how many or few got sent out, that one hour was simply for looking at job boards and sending out resumes and contacting recruiters. As soon as my alarm dinged for 6:30pm, everything was dropped and it was free time again. This helped, and once I had the momentum after 3-4 days, it just became mechanical. I applied to over 150 jobs that year. But job apps are fairly serious, right? I don't think I've found a neat solution to my resting inertia when it comes to doing non-existential tasks like my hobbies. After all these are my hobbies, so it's totally fine to pick them up and drop them as I desire. When speaking to my mother, she told me the way she gets through tasks she doesn't have desire to get done is to deny herself a reward until she gets it done. It can be something small, like a chocolate or getting to lay down and just scroll through her phone for an hour. But she sometimes rewards herself with new clothes or something she's been on the fence about getting, if it's a huge task. My girlfriend also says that she loves making checklists and to-do lists, as checking them off or erasing a task from her phone feels good. I've never truly tried this 'gamification' of tasks very seriously. I played around with it during the covid lockdown but I just don't have the discipline to deny myself things I want or to always write down every single thing I need to do somewhere. Maybe I should give it another try if I find a suggestion for some program that would make it easy to do so. So I pass on this question to you, reader. How do you get shit done? Home Server + Minecraft kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 This past weekend I was finally able to (re)build my homelab server. I said I'd write about it so here it is: Fig. 1 The Z230 Workstation in the closet after I got it running.</figcaption> </figure> I had one of my best friends, who is a programmer, and my brother, who works in tech repair, over since we all generally enjoy building computers and they had some experience with this stuff. The machine's specs are nothing too impressive, because it's an old HP Z230 that my brother got for basically free as an abandoned machine at work. He gave it to me because he wasn't using it and had better hardware. The specs are: Intel Code i5-4570 CPU running at 3.2Ghz</li> 32Gb DDR3 Corsair Vengeance RAM</li> Integrated graphics</li> 3x 8Tb WD Red's for storage</li> 1x 120Gb SSD for the proxmox install</li> </ul> Fig. 2 The guts of the server with the side panel off. Unfortunately, the drive cages stick out just enought that I can't close the side panel. I'll have to trim them somehow.</figcaption> </figure> There is a caveat: I discovered I didn't have enough sata power connectors available to plug all 3 WD Reds in... so right now it's just running two in RAID 0. LOL I'll have to get a molex to sata connector in a bit. The ultimate goal is to have all 3 in RAID 5. One of the first hurdles was that I was swapping in the new RAM I got second hand (also from a friend), and somehow the computer was not happy at all. We thought we might have a dead stick or dead slot but eventually as we were testing each stick one by one, the computer decided to post with all 4 sticks in. Hurray. We initialized it, flashed proxmox onto it, and then I disconnected it from the monitor we were using and just stuck it in the closet, as proxmox can run headless on the network. Problem was, we allowed the computer to auto-designate its IP and it's gateway while not plugged into the network, so it used the wrong gateways. We had to take it out of the closet, plug it back into the peripherals on my desk, and reconfigure everything so that we could see the UI in the browser on my other computer finally. Once that was done, it was time for my friend and brother to leave, so I was left with initializing portainer, docker, docker compose, and ultimately the minecraft server image that I found through this video tutorial from Raid Owl</a>. The video uses a docker image created by itzg</a>, which is a very popular docker image for minecraft servers and has support for every modloader I've ever heard of. It was helpful to have both the videos and the documentation for the image on github as I created this. I started by creating a vanilla server using the quick start docker-compose.yml from the github page, and it just immediately worked. It actually took longer for me to set up the volumes and containers than it did to get the actual server up and running. Once I got there, I started modifying the compose file to use a custom mod-pack my girlfriend had made on CurseForge. I had all sorts of problems with that. At first, I didn't want to use the AUTO_CURSEFORGE feature from the docker image because I really really didn't want to have to create a curseforge account to get the required API key, but the other setups I was working with were just not working. In no particular order I tried: Uploading the individual mod .jar files to the containers 'mods' folder and using 'MODPACK' in the compose file</li> Uploading the CurseForge-created client pack .zip file for the custom modpack and using 'GENERIC_PACK' in the compose file</li> Some frankenstinian combination of the above as I got more frustrated</li> </ul> What ended up working for me ultimately was the AUTO_CURSEFORGE variation while only uploading the 'manifest.json' from the CurseForge pack and mounting it to the 'manifests' folder in the container. Initially, this caused me a ton of issues where the server was still trying to load client-only mods like 'Oculus' and then crashing. I frankly do not know why this was being caused and I made a Discussion post on Github</a> for it. However, after completely deleting the container, attached volumes, all the mounted folders, and pinning the image to Java 17, the server just worked. For the curious, below is the (truncated) docker-compose.yml I ended up using: services: minecraft: image: itzg/minecraft-server:java17 volumes: - minecraftdata:/data - /home/Minecraft/manifests:/manifests:ro ports: - 25565:25565 tty: true stdin_open: true restart: unless-stopped stop_grace_period: 120s environment: EULA: "TRUE" SERVER_NAME: _______ MOD_PLATFORM: AUTO_CURSEFORGE OPS: _______ MEMORY: 12G MOTD: "Hello, gamers!" ENABLE_WHITELIST: "TRUE" ENFORCE_WHITELIST: "TRUE" WHITELIST: __________ VERSION: 1.20.1 CF_API_KEY: ${CF_API_KEY} CF_SLUG: "custom" CF_MODPACK_MANIFEST: /manifests/manifest.json CF_EXCLUDE_MODS: | oculus journeymap-integration RCON_PASSWORD: ______ volumes: minecraftdata: external: true </code></pre> You can see that I keep my api key in a .env file so that it can be a bit more secure and the java17 section was added to designate the java version used. This was something I saw in a few of the example compose files for other modpacks that use Minecraft 1.20.1, so I just tried it on a whim. I sincerely don't know if this was the primary issue - all I saw in the logs was that 'Oculus' was being loaded and it was not a server mod. Regardless, very happy to have the server working. My girlfriend and I were able to play last night for a few hours and the server remained very stable. I am hoping the backup cron job works well but haven't really tested it, as I am not the most experienced with cron. My ultimate aim with the server is to securely open it to the world so my friends can play on it remotely as well, and I can ensure nothing weird happens since I'm not super knowledgable on security. My next idea for the server, since I bought all that storage for it, is to run Jellyfin as a media vault as well as streamer, and the arr suite for maintaining it. I still need to figure that out so if you have any really good guides please send them my way! Right now I am looking at this Github Repo MediaStack Project (Docker)</a>. And also at YAMS</a> since it seems super quick to set up. Return to Office kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I graduated college into the start of widespread remote work. The lockdowns and pandemic made the company I worked for 'proud of our productivity as we all isolate' or whatever it was at the time. CEOs would literally brag on our monthly emails about how we had kept revenue streams even with the closing of offices and how they were hiring massive amounts of people back in 2020-2022. Fast forward to now and I'm now working for a sister company/subsidiary and we've been going in to the office for 4 days a month. It's interesting and I certainly see some positive aspects to working in person but after the long periods of bragging 2 years ago I still find in quite frustrating. We spent all this time proving we could be equally if not more productive from home, and companies had opportunities to adjust their costs to 'trim the fat' or whatever it was of office management. And yet, here we are 2 years later and my bosses just ran a poll asking 'What days do you most like coming into the office?'. Yeah... Not 'do you like...?' not 'would you prefer...?' but rather 'what days'. It's funny because they did make one of the poll options 'fully remote', and that option won 70% of the vote. It is clear that I am not alone in feeling like this weird tech job I have is completely doable at home, as my last 3+ years of experience have shown. I've heard people say the return to office (RTO) phenomenon is due to long-term building leases that would lose companies money, I've heard them say it's because highly-paid management wouldn't be able to justify their own existence in an all-remote environment long term, and a whole other host of "reasons" for RTO. I frankly do not know which of the explanations I've heard gets closest to 'truth', but I do know that sometimes it does feel like they just want us to commute and look over our shoulder so that management can retain a sense of control over their workers. God forbid my 40 year old single mom coworker steps away for 20mins to change a diaper without telling anyone, right? Management must - for some reason - know about it. RTO has also truly made work at this company less and less bearable. It has added a full 4 hours to my workday. 3 of those being commuting time and one of those being the fact that now if I'm at my desk at 8:50 instead of 9, my team is already expecting me to get to work even if the workday hasn't officially started. Not to mention they love to keep me at the office with last-minute requests at 5pm. I also get less sleep, as in order to be presentable for the office I have to wake up at 7am to shower, eat something, and drive my 1-1.5hrs to work, instead of being able to sleep until 30mins before the start of my day. Most in-office days I get home so exhausted I cannot even make dinner, and I have to hope that my girlfriend felt unusually motivated to cook or just have something really simply for dinner. I'm usually the cook of the house, and I can tell you I eat horribly during in-office days, whereas when I work remotely I make time and have time to eat healthy complete meals. All in all, RTO is a big L for workers, in my opinion. I'm sure it's a marginal win for companies and middle management, though. On Rating Scales kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 You may or may not have read my essay titled 'On Being a Hater - The Loss of Critical Consumption'</a>, in which I talked about how I am an advocate for critical consumption and believe people have become too attached to the media they consume to be able to critique it in a healthy way. One point that I left out, because I didn't want to muddy the essay, was about how this problem was evident in the ratings for media across different social media websites. Letterbox'd and IMDb for movies, Goodreads for books, Aniilist and myanimelist for anime and manga. There are tons of rating websites out there, even outside of these few examples, where people make accounts to rank, track, and discuss the things they consume. I decided to just do some cursory google searching - and I realize that most of these websites have public APIs I could possibly scrape in the future for more scientific results - to try and find the distribution of ratings across these sites . I wasn't able to find exactly what I wanted for every site, which was distribution graphs, but I did find the average ratings for the following: Aniilist average rating: 5.95 and</li> MAL average rating: 6.75 as of 2022</a></li> Goodreads average rating: 4/5 stars</a></li> IMDb average rating: 7</a></li> </ul> If you believe, like me, that quality tends to follow a normal distribution</a> - or more simply that for something to be good, something else has to be bad - then these numbers should raise some eyebrows. In a normal distribution, most content should sit at around 'average', with very few outstanding works and very few truly awful works. The distribution also follows a bell curve, where 8s are rarer than 7s, and 3s are rarer than 4s and so on. The aniilist average, sitting around a 6/10, seems to be the least egregious if we account for the fact that people don't tend to bother watching anime they truly think is awful. However, the fact that the average score for the other websites sits at around 70% or higher really calls into question the usefulness of these ratings and the reasoning of the users of these sites. This even applies to sites like Amazon, Google, Yelp, and other vendor websites for every niche product you can imagine! There is a great video, and attached article</a>, from a former audiophile reviewer called Crinacle</a> who covers how even vendor sites have frankly useless product ratings. A lot of his points are much more well laid out than mine, so I encourage you to watch the video. One critical aspect he covers and I wish to highlight is that when a 5-star rating scale has no scores below 3 stars, it ceases to be useful. If I wish to determine if a book is a must-read, it's not helpful to know that the highest score is a 5 and the lowest score is a 3. That basically only gives me 3, 4, and 5 as possible options, narrowing the scale and making the different between a 4 and a 5 so narrow it might as well be meaningless. For your scale to be useful, you need to use the entire range. Fig. 1 Goodreads ratings distribution from Adam Fontenot, 2022</figcaption> </figure> So why do people seem to automatically give something a 7/10 as long as they didn't hate it? I can tell you that for some of my friends, who tend to do this, it comes from the North American school system having conditioned them to believe that 70% is a C, which is average on a letter scale of A, B, C, D, F. This explains the phenomenon in some ways, but doesn't make it make sense. Tests and grades reflect your understanding of material (if we're being generous). If you only understand 50% of what you should have learned, you're certainly doing a poor job. But quality cannot be viewed the same way. If something is average, it should be in the middle of our distribution. It should get a 5/10, or a 2.5/5 stars, etc. As much as this is not statistical evidence, I was shocked and also impressed when I browsed Google ratings of restaurants in Japan and found that most places hovered around 3-3.5 stars! In the US, a place rated 3 stars barely gets orders right! So maybe it is the fact that in North America we are brought up believing that when we rate things we are giving them a grade, and therefore 5/10 is failing. But maybe there's just some other cultural force at play. Regardless, let me encourage you to stop rating things like you're giving them a grade at school. 5/10 should be average, not terrible. 7.5/10 is not 'mid'. And just because you like something, it doesn't mean it's at least a 9, or breaks the scale and gets a 13/10. I try to do my best to follow this advice in my album ratings, and I believe after running some quick stats on all my ratings I hover around a 5.5 as my average, which I would say is skewed but decent, especially considering that I would tend to only listen and be aware of albums from artists whose previous work I've enjoyed. Dual Booting Fedora 40 (Linux) kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 So I am now writing this from a Fedora 40/Windows 10 dual-booted machine using QOwnNotes on the linux partition. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster as it took me about 3 hrs of troubleshooting to get the dual boot to function. First some backstory: A few months ago I decided to dust off my old Dell XPS 13 from way back in college, since I almost never used a laptop and last I used that one, it was barely staying on for 2hrs on battery and lagged like a mfer. Well, I took a random leap back then and decided to install Zorin OS (Ubuntu fork I think?) while wiping the drive completely. I didn't really have much on it except old engineering homework and maybe some cracked programs. Plus all I was going to use it for was some on-the-go coding and for note-taking during my DnD sessions I was finally having in-person. I was surprised at how well it worked! Linux definitely had some growing pains as I had issue after issue trying to do regular things that I could do with my eyes closed on Windows. I don't remember exactly all the issues but one of them was that my wifi card drivers got completely erased in the migration and installing them again was a royal pain. Not to mention I accidentally pressed the wifi key on the laptop which usually just turns on airplane mode in Windows, but all Zorin OS was telling me was that there was 'no wireless card installed' on my system, which confused me even more. Thankfully the fix was just pressing the button again, don't ask me how long that took me to find out. This brings me to today: I guess I got bored waiting for server parts to arrive and my Windows install was working too well for me. So I needed a change. I play games that require kernel-level anti-cheat so uninstalling Windows was unfortunately out of the question, but my goal is to make this linux partition my default, while only booting into Windows when I get the summon from my friends to play League or something. I decided on Fedora because I heard it was similar to Zorin except that it was much more popular. No other reason really, I was kind of already used to Zorin but did want something a bit more tested. So here's where the 3hrs of troubleshooting come in: I basically followed this guide for installing</a>, if you care to look, but the problem started when I couldn't shrink my windows partition on my C drive because it kept saying I had 0 space available to shrink even though I had over 500Gb free on the drive! I ran windows disk cleanup, nothing. I installed and ran ccleaner overnight, which somehow took 3hrs to erase just over 2Gb of data, didn't fix it. Then I found some thread on the microsoft forums that told me that I had immovable system files at the very end of the volume. The steps recommended to fix this were to disable system restore, disable the pagefile, disable kernel memory dump, and hybernation mode. I did all this, then was able to shrink the volume to give my Fedora partition a decent 300Gb of space, and I re-enabled the memory dump, pagefile, and system restore options. Hybernation never really worked for me anyways. Once I had done that I was marvellously able to install Fedora from a boot drive onto that partition and boot into it... but then I had another issue. THERE WAS NO DUAL BOOT MENU. It just instantly booted into fedora while not even allowing me to pick an OS or partition from the Grub boot menu. I started panicking, thinking I had somehow nuked my Windows partition. Thankfully, I could still see the files and this thread</a> showed me that I had probably just installed Fedora in legacy mode because my BiOS was not in 'UEFI Only' mode. (Linux users: why the fuck would Legacy be default and why would Fedora not even present me with a warning or an option to pick the type of install?). So I took the steps recommended, deleted my Fedora partition, reinstalled with UEFI only mode in BiOS, and the grub bootloader would show at my next restart with the option to initiate into Windows! One last step was ensuring that my BiOS had the fedora partition as the boot priority so that it would boot into the Grub bootloader rather than directly into Windows with no prompt and boom! I am now typing this post on my linux partition. It's quite neat, I've installed some GNOME themes - which are just system themes for y'all who haven't decided to make your computer harder to use - I've installed all my usual dev apps, Discord, and will likely try installing some indie games developed for Linux or even Steam down the line. I just know for sure my Windows partition will remain as my gamer system cause live-service games are my only social life (kidding). Cheers! Plans for my Server and other updates kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Smaller update today just cause I felt like I should write something light as I'm progressing in my building of the site. I've been pretty lucky to start corresponding with someone else who has a really cool site! Won't name them yet just cause I haven't asked. It's been nice getting to hear from a stranger in this weird land of personal websites, especially someone who has been at it for a bit longer than I have. I have been waiting on an order of parts from Ebay for my server. I'll write a more in-depth article later but basically at first the server was just kind of running proxmox, portainer, and I was setting it up to host a Minecraft server! However, I realized that because of the way that RAID works I wouldn't be able to easily turn it into a NAS without having at least 3 drives at the moment of mounting the proxmox image. So I kind of put it on hold in my closet for about 3 months. I've finally gotten the 3 WD Red 8Tb drives I wanted, which I waited to buy second hand because the goal of the project from a hardware standpoint was always to do it with cheap or free components. For example, I got 32Gb of old DDR3 RAM from my friend who still had his old gaming computer somewhere in his parent's basement. It was nice that I could just buy him dinner for the sticks instead of paying some stranger for old RAM. I digress, the point of this is to say the last thing I'm waiting on is hard drive sleds because I don't exactly want to just toss the hard drives into the old computer case loosely. Unfortunately, ebay being ebay the shipment got delayed twice and now won't arrive until Sept 5th! I'm getting a bit antsy and I really hope my enthusiasm and motivation don't waver, as they have before with all the random interests I hyperfocus on. My plans for the server remain similar. I want it to: Run Proxmox, headless in my closet</li> Run a minecraft server using a secure DNS setup</li> Run Jellyfin for storing and streaming all my legally aquired Linux ISOs</li> Be a toy to play with and launch random crap on to see what sticks</li> </ul> As I somewhat promised in my about page I'm going to try to document the progress of the server as best I can. At the very least, it should be funny to see all the mistakes I will inevitably make. Last note: I'm having some CSS frustrations that are making me wonder if I should have started with a static site builder or something because it annoys me so much that the grid view in the music page has this weird extra space at the bottom of each album art even though I have aspect-ratio:1 set and all the other random pseudo-element tricks I found online just seem to completely break my grid. Here's hoping my list view is a bit easier to make and I can ensure I have a decent lightweight sorting implementation cause if not, I may lose motivation to manually log the 400+ albums I have rated on a google drive sheet. Also hoping to join a webring and add some buttons! Kagu's Corner - About kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I'm in my late 20's. ^{Oh god am I gonna have to update this part every time? My main hobbies are gaming, music, and weird niche tech generally. I am generally interested in techy stuff and pick up a lot of hobbies that provide me with a technologically-oriented creative outlet. Previous things I've tried are: Electronic Music Production, Video Editing and VFX, Photography and Photo Editing. So you can probably see why I would try to make a website. In terms of my opinions on things... I'm generally a leftist ideologically, a bit pessimistic, and a critical media consumer. That should be most of the disclaimer you'll need for my 'essays' (read: rants) as well as my reviews. Don't take things too personally with the media stuff tho, I'm just a hater, not a snob who thinks I know better. } On Being a Hater - The Loss of Critical Consumption kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ramblings on the word 'hater' and it's connection to conspicuous consumption I think the word 'hater', at least in colloquial use, has seen a large shift in connotation and a dilution of meaning. There was a time, confirmed by the most popular definition of Hater on urbandictionary</a> - which at the time of writing is the one by 'Metallurgy' - when the word was levied at people who disliked, put down, or talked excessively negatively about someone or something without any clear or well-developed critique of the subject. This was the definition and usage I was familiar with around my high school years, in the mid-2010's. I grew into a terminally online adult, so I know that now the word is often levied to silence criticism or used as a dismissal of criticism. Enough think pieces and video essays have been written about the rise of stan culture, and I think this shift in use of the word 'hater' can trivially be tied to stan cutlure. I probably don't need to convince you that 'stanning' has become a bit of an annoying phenomenon on the internet. I mean, some 'stans' even send out death threats to the people who criticize their faves</a>, and so many stans call any critic a 'hater' that it's certainly contributed to eroding the insulting bite the term once held. Now you might not have read my 'about' section on this site, so I should let you know that 'hater' is a label I often place on myself. When I call myself a hater, I use the term as a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the new use of the term. But I also think that in some ways I use the word to take the criticism-silencing power away from it. If I show that calling me a hater won't get me to stop criticizing that one show, then maybe in the long term we can all analyze, discuss, and critique it together. That can be fun, and that's what I want most of all back from my discussions about media on the broader internet. I'm not the only one who thinks so, which is why a lot of people have also started taking on the 'hater' mantle willingly. I'm not here to pretend I have a thoroughly-researched, anthropologist's answer to the question of "Why has 'hater' undergone this change in usage and meaning?", but I have a theory. It starts with commodity consumption as identity. What do I mean by this? In our late-stage capitalistic world people have attached meaning to the brands, products, services, and even media they consume. Name it, there's a 'fandom' for it. A community centered around the appreciation, discussion, and most of all ownership, acquisition, or intake of that certain thing. On the surface, there's absolutely nothing wrong with discussing and expressing satisfaction with something that has brought you joy, made you think, or otherwise engaged your emotions. Humans have been enamoured with objects since our species began. However, something I feel is unique to the weirdly permanently-connected, fast-paced age we live in is that we now attach identity to these things. Few are the folks who 'own an iPhone' or 'own a Samsung Phone'; they are 'iPhone guys', 'iPhone girlies', or 'Android people'. Likewise, it is no longer sufficient to buy and build an amazing mechanical keyboard to use with your computer, you have to post about it to r/mechanicalkeyboards, and then gasp at the realization that the top users there don't have just the one keyboard. They like this thing so much more than you, so much harder than you that they have an entire wall of keyboards, to the point where they don't know which to use each day. Joining discussions online, you realize people don't treat the purchase of mechanical keyboards as strictly consumption of a good. It's a hobby now; they call it as much. Hell, the word 'hobby' is now used to describe even Gambling On Counter Strike Lootboxes</a>. In these spaces, there is social capital that comes with being the most into it. The biggest fan often runs the group, is a founding member, or knows the most due to experience. But in communities where the subject of appreciation is a good, an object for sale? The social capital can be bought with regular old money capital. Seniority, clout, trust can all be purchased indirectly. This is part of what makes these communities explode and have appeal, as well. Why spend weeks, months, or years learning a new skill to exchange my learnings with others, when I can just buy the latest and greatest thing to show off? Why go through the insane effort of ensuring all my plastics are cleaned and dried before driving them to a recycling center, when I can get just as much environmentalist cred by buying 15 different tote bags? For my MMO folks: this is pay-for-progression, but in real life. The above examples are highly specific but I'm sure you can think of something you encounter in your corners of the internet that is analogous. Some product line that has become more than just that. Some consumer behavior that is not spoken of as such or has become the substitute for a tangible lifestyle change. In a weird way, the viral Tiktok from a while ago about "girl hobbies" such as "grabbing a coffee and pastry as a ‘lil treat'" and shopping, is another moment symptomatic of this phenomenon - albeit with much different implications about the infantilization of women</a>. In some ways, consumption as a means of gaining social capital is not that new. In The Theory of the Leisure Class</a>, Thorstein Veblen wrote at length about how aristocrats and other moneyed classes like business owners, participated in conspicuous consumption</a>. Conspicuous consumption is the practice of consuming goods/services at greater quantities, costs, or qualities than necessary, and using this "public display of discretionary income is an economic means of either attaining or of maintaining a given social status". The book was written in 1899, so you can tell this isn't a new phenomenon. In recent years, some studies have even found links between conspicuous consumption and economic inequality. Here is a very interesting one I invite you to read: Borrowing to Keep Up (with the Joneses) [2020]</a>. I believe that conspicuous consumption is a key component to consumption becoming so strongly tied to identity, and the way in which attaching oneself to this identity can afford social capital. This brings me back to the transformation of 'hater'. As people began attaching their identities to the products they bought or the media they were fans of, any critique of someone/something you stanned was no longer just someone else's analysis or opinion, it was an attack on you. Because the things you like, the things that make you who you are cannot be bad, cannot even be average. Set aside the fact that someone calling your favorite show 'mid' was accusing you of poor taste - which your aristocratic sensibilities should be appalled by! - that person was now calling a part of you 'mid'. So being a stan now required a show of devotion, and was equally self-preservation. 'You're just a hater' became the natural defense. This style of dismissal worked for a long time. Being called a hater 15 years ago could make one wonder: "Was I really just being overly negative? Was my opinion not formed correctly and I was bullheadedly refusing to see any merit in what I was critiquing? Am I just being a contrarian? Maybe I should chill out." The one now-infamous 'just let people enjoy things' webcomic</a> that every millennial turned into a mug, shitty wood block print, or motto was also an effective call to 'please shut up and let me believe Marvel is the greatest cinema to grace my screen'. I'm here as a self-aggrandized and self-important ambassador for haters everywhere to tell you that you will probably have a much richer and fulfilling experience with media when you allow yourself to separate your identity from your enjoyment and consumption of it. This doesn't mean you need to stop being a fan. You can become a critical enjoyer, a critical consumer. Being able to clearly explain why you like or dislike something is a skill that can be developed, and can greatly enhance your enjoyment of media. It can also lead you to find and learn about the histories, traditions, and influences of your favorite things, deepening your connection with them. You might find that even if you form harsh criticisms of something you used to love, you will discover similar things that expand and improve the portions you loved about it. You will have discovered the best version of the thing you like! Fashion Advice! (If you live in my climate) kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Recently I have been following some more fashion blogs both in my rss reader and on the remaining social media I have. I really really like their content and find it quite fascinating to hear about fashion history from the likes of Derek Guy (@dieworkwear on Twitter and putthison.com), and to hear about others' experience with fashion on their blogs. A current favorite is a little bit of rest</a>. I have never thought of myself as particularly fashionable, but I have been trying to build a wardrobe of clothes that make me feel good and feel exciting to wear. A funny thing I have noticed, however, is that 'summer clothing' for both the bloggers mentioned above seemed to always be just... the same kinds of clothes as the rest of the year, except maybe dressed down, with lighter fabrics, and different colors. That always struck me because... if I wear anything that covers more than 50% of my skin on these hot ass 100-degree , 90% humidity days I would be a puddle of sweat at the end of a single block walk. Then I found out, both of these people live in San Francisco... a place famous for it's chillier weather, where the highs in the summer barely scrape 80 degrees. I imagine it's quite easy to wear a full linen suit when it's 78 and sunny. Or to toss on a wool knit with shorts. I invite them to try that shit on the east coast where it's muggier than a waffle house dishwasher. All this to say, I've learned that I need to find fashion writers that maybe have advice for how to dress well in the climates that I occupy. Also I think it's a lot easier to be fashionable, and even trendy, if you live in a climate where pants aren't a heat stroke hazard hahaha. Maybe that's a hot take, and I know fashion isn't limited to lots of layers. But trust me it feels like the only things I can wear are baggy shorts and a polyester t-shirt some days. CP:Edgerunners Review - So Much Potential Wasted kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Leave it to Trigger to absolutely fumble a solid world and story elements 60% of the way through the show. Y'all remember the DITFranxx aliens arc? Yeah😐 Characters 3/10:</h3> First I'll go over the minor problems - Most side characters in CP:E are expendable from the start and it's very clear. My hope was that the show would make me care about them in some way before inevitably killing them in a flash of cybernetic weapons and blood. With few exceptions, the attempts at accomplishing this come from training montages and 3-sentence "you're alright, kid"-type exchanges with the MC. Hopes = dashed. Now to the big issue(s) Most characters have extremely unclear motivations and/or act in ways that make no sense with their established backstory. The erratic writing is most apparent in episode 6. Maine's affliction and actions in this episode, especially, barely follow from previous plot points. The episode really hampered my enjoyment of the last 4 episodes, even though there is a notable improvement in the writing of these later episodes. The most consistent side character, Lucy, is underutilized and becomes nothing but the object of the MCs (and waifu-philes') affection towards the end. Reminds me of Asuna from SAO. Strong female co-lead becomes damsel in distress. This is all the terribly rotten cherry on top of David acting in whatever way necessary for the show to get some drama and tension, even if his actions or attitudes fully contradict his established backstory or demeanor. One minute he hates corpos, the next he is empathetic towards one of their leaders. Whatever Trigger needs to create tension. To be fair, I think if this had been a traditional 12-episode anime and the studio would have had two extra episodes to better establish motivations and pacing, the writing would have felt more cohesive and the events less jarring. Story and themes 5/10:</h3> Though David's tragedy is one which I find somewhat compelling and unique, the story overall hits familiar beats. Sadly (and I'm trying to avoid spoilers here) I think most of the positive feedback this show has received regarding its "emotional ending" ignore the themes I found most compelling, while praising the themes and events I found the most cliché. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but I can't believe anime fans are still not tired of the same 3 plot devices we've had recycled in mid anime for the last decade. Art 9/10:</h3> Fantastic animation and visual style. The flat colors paired with amazing VFX are a feast for the eyes. Music: 8/10:</h3> I really liked the soundtrack overall, though the main theme (not the OP) felt out of place in the moments in the show where it popped up. Overall 5/10:</h3> I wouldn't recommend CP:E to anyone but the most "I've seen everything worth watching and i need something to fill the time" anime watcher. I frankly think that having above an 8/10 on MAL is insane. I don't see what all these people see in this show to rate it so highly. David verbatim goes "I'm just built different", unironically! TWICE!! HOW ARE YALL TAKING THAT SERIOUSLY?! All the show accomplished is making me want to play CP:2077 again after all these years. I guess that was the whole point Rent-a-girlfriend Review: Bro why kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I can summarize this manga pretty easily: it's an incel self-insert rom-com that is at best frustrating and at worst downright infuriating. Story 3/10:</h3> If it wasn't for shoehorned forced drama and the introduction of multiple characters, this manga would have ended 3 arcs and two years ago. It kept my intrigue fairly well for the first 30 chapters or so, but since then every single chapter just feels like the publisher keeping the series alive because it makes too much money off of it. Art 7/10:</h3> No huge complaints here, the panels are well-drawn and the main characters get some good spreads. However, some of the side characters seem like they were handed off to an assistant and then pasted into the final copy right before the deadline. Characters 4/10:</h3> The MC is insufferable. He's every single low-self-esteem stereotype wrapped into one but somehow you never find yourself cheering for him. The only redeeming character is Kibe for actually having morals and a backbone. The main girls are just tropes brought to life, which is fine. !Special category! Enjoyment 2/10:</h3> Because I read 187 chapters I can't give it a 1. But for the last 50+ of chapters I've NEVER finished a chapter thinking "huh that was pretty good". Somehow, I can't bring myself to drop it because I have this weird hope that the MC will fail and I can move on. It's like watching a car crash, I can't look away. Overall 3/10:</h3> I can't recommend this to anyone unless your bar for enjoyable manga is "cute girl character". It does nothing new even for harem manga. I can't comprehend why its score is so high and who it's appealing to so much. Even if you self-insert, the MC does such cringe and borderline immoral stuff every single chapter that I get second-hand embarrassment just thinking about someone relating to him. He needs therapy, not a girlfriend. Kagu from the future (2024) here: While looking for images for this post I just found out about the infamous Chapter 218. All I will say is I told you fucking so. Loser ass manga for loser ass mfs. A critique of 'Capitalism: Do Young People Love It Unknowingly?' kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I wrote this way back on Nov 11th, 2020. This was around a year after I started learning about leftist politics, so brace for baby leftist talking points. I will probably write a critique of my own critique at some point. If you ever decide to discuss politics online, or even just scroll through political twitter threads or instagram story infographics, you’ll likely find that a good chunk of disagreements and fights come down to definitional misunderstanding and lack of clarity. Some (classical liberals) may think this is because we share the same ends, yet differ on the means. However, I hold that such disagreements occur because, put simply, semantics are easy to argue about. This kind of definitional vagueness is especially prevalent in the op-ed side of political discourse. It is rare to find articles, especially those written by pundits or pundits-to-be, that define the charged political terminology that they use before doing so. Often, you will find that the arguments these authors make fail to stand up to the slightest definitional scrutiny. Altman’s article, while it does not claim or attempt to be the be-all, end-all argument for capitalism, is one example of this lack of definitional rigor. She conflates terms that are not “one and the same”, and attempts to use the public’s differing attitudes towards these terms as a contradiction that demonstrates Capitalism is simply misunderstood and distorted. Altman’s article begins by citing a 2019 Gallup Study</a> in which ‘Free Enterprise’ is viewed positively by 83% of Millennials and Gen Z’ers, while ‘Capitalism’ is only viewed favorably by 51% of the same group. Altman posits that this is a contradiction, and even concludes the article by claiming “free enterprise and capitalism are one and the same”. This conflation is indicative of a broader problem that I find in online libertarian, conservative, and even liberal discourse: too often capitalist advocates do not understand what capitalism is, let alone critiques of capitalism. Altman’s article, and many others like it, use a definition of capitalism that is left to the reader’s assumption. I understand it here as “an economic system in which all goods and services are traded in a free market and produced by private individuals who have private property without state interference”. That is the only definition of capitalism that could somehow contain all the assumptions, reductions, and conflations Altman makes to claim that “free enterprise and capitalism are one and the same.” To anyone familiar with Marxism, or even classical liberal definitions of economic systems, this definition is woefully inaccurate. For the sake of brevity, I will provide the best brief definition of capitalism that I can, rather than scrutinizing all the factors that are contained within Altman’s own description. Capitalism is a system of economic production in which the means of production are privately held and owned. That’s it. Markets are a separate method of distribution (see: free-market capitalism, mixed-market capitalism, market socialism). Goods, or rather, commodities, do not have to be traded in a free market, hence the existence of mixed-market economies throughout the world and countries in which the means of production are privately held but the distribution is taken up by the state. Commodities produced under capitalism do not have to be produced by those who own the means of production, hence the emergence of a working class and an owner class. Unlike what Altman believes, this definition does not include “the philosophical foundation for personal autonomy”. Free enterprise is a feature of an economic system, not an economic system itself. It dictates that commerce be free of state control, and is thus not definitionally equal to capitalism unless you similarly stretch the definition. To claim that free enterprise is capitalism is to deny the existence of systems such as anarchism and anarcho-communism, which dissolve the state altogether. Would a commonly-held company in an anarchist society not also fit the definition of free enterprise? This definition of capitalism and distinction between economic systems and types of markets was largely agreed upon for a long time, and still remains the predominant academic definition. Yet somehow every few weeks you will see people, like Altman, who dismiss the problems that such a system generates as some aberration. Even prominent left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur maintains that the USA at the moment suffers from “corporatism”, not capitalism. Uygur claims that the outsized control of corporations over the state through lobbying and other corruption has created a different system. US Senator Elizabeth Warren coined the term “crony capitalism”; “our system is broken”, not designed this way, Warren says. Altman herself tells us that chattel slavery, during which humans themselves became commodities, was actually counter-capitalist. Essentially, the United States’ economic system is not true capitalism. This is wishful thinking. Lobbying, the military industrial complex, and capital's other forms of control over the state are logical progressions of a capitalist system. States under capitalism ultimately exist to protect capital, private property, and consequently the interests of the owner class that controls said property. Adam Smith established as much. For clarity's sake, private property is different from personal property. Generally, private property makes you money because you own it, not because you use it. Personal property is what you use. A good example is that if I have a laptop that I use for freelance work, it's personal property. If I have 100 laptops that I rent out to other people to do work, that's private property. Maybe deviations in beliefs between people of a relatively similar culture can stem from a disagreement over the meaning of fundamentally contested terms, but this is not the broader issue here. Contemporary proponents of capitalism have stopped defending the system despite the harms associated with it, like Hayek once attempted to do, but have now narrowed their definition of capitalism such that it does not include those harms. At best, they are using a different definition than we might be. At worst, their arguments boil down to “capitalism cannot have harmful effects because real capitalism solves these harms”. It’s the ideology of “market solutions for market problems”. These kinds of shallow defenses and stretched definitions cannot defend capitalism from attacks that focus on the actual system. If Marxists say “capitalism inherently leads to the alienation of the workforce because of the separation between them and the means of production”, or “a capitalist system of production inherently creates class conflict due to the differing relationship of different groups to the means of production”, or any other critique grounded firmly on what capitalism is, then pro-capitalists’ re-definitions do nothing but obfuscate the discussion. I believe these attempts at semantic and definitional sleight of hand are a result of a growing number of right-wing or right-leaning youth, who notice the problems currently facing our world due to our economic structure, yet are unable to find satisfactory arguments to defend why this should continue to be. If we wish to have real discussions about economic systems and ideology, we must strive to push past these misrepresentations. A good first step is to clarify or define the charged political terms you use. Fire Force Review - Flashy Like Fire, But Just as Vapid kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I have not read the manga so this review is limited in scope. Minor anime spoilers ahead Fire Force has some real moments of audiovisual brilliance. I want to say that this anime has hands down the best sound design I've ever witnessed. However, audiovisual spectacle cannot carry the incredibly poor storytelling and writing. Many other reviews have been more eloquent than I will be about this so I'll just toss a bulleted list of complaints about the story (3/10): Characters are 1-trick-pony tropes and it's painfully obvious every time they speak</li> The "growth" that even the MC experiences is limited to "gained more power" and "learned to persevere". That is to say, blase and stereotypical lessons on the level of Barney's Club House.</li> Some fights are incredible, and some fights have whiplash-inducing lack of visual continuity. (Especially egregious in Episode 21 where the villain is shown to have been thrown on the ground and deployed a helicopter contraption from his back, the scene cuts to our hero to say a quip, cuts back to the villain but somehow the villain is just standing facing away from the camera with no apparent damage and no helicopter contraption.)</li> Every single female character is treated as a damsel in distress at one point or another in the show. It's really boring and there's never any sense of real danger because you know from the start Shinra will evolve some power to save them.</li> Every single new companion added to our hero's party is tossed into a background role and their abilities and interesting characteristics are all but forgotten except for tiny moments in which they save themselves from certain death.</li> The "big twist" of the story is the most predictable thing I've ever watched</li> </ul> Good points (and there are few because again, Fire Force does nothing countless other Shounen haven't done before) Sound design, visuals, animation (for the most part 10/10)</li> Villains are not instantly redeemed before their defeat as many shounen do (makes some plot points enjoyable)</li> Character designs are really unique and work well with their abilities (caveat: the second part does not apply to the female characters. Too many of them are just "this ability makes me able to strip them of clothing once an episode" or "its a woman so her power MUST be about flowers and I will not elaborate further")</li> </ul> That's it. I don't hate this show. I don't like it either though. The definition of middling. Average. Overall: 5/10 NFTs and Economics kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com (Kagu) — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 This is a rant/essay I wrote back in July of 2021. There are a lot of errors and things I frankly disagree with in it. But as my first blog post on this site I wanted to archive it here. Image is from a dope tee from Crying In The Club</a> Recently there has been a huge influx of interest in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and many have pointed out various critiques of their existence. Most commonly, the critique lies in the huge environmental impact of NFTs and blockchain technology in general. I am more interested in discussing the philosophical and political-economic implications of NFTs. Specifically, how they are a prime example of how when something does not conform to an existing understanding of economics the primary reaction is one of denial, dismissal, or creation of structural fictions to “correct” for the aberration, instead of an analysis and adjustment of popular understanding of economics. I want to make it clear that this is not aimed at economics as an academic study, but rather at the pervasive and ubiquitous theories that are typically regurgitated by pundits, politicians, and anyone who took Econ 101 and believes they “basically know” how economics works. Theories of Value and Scarcity</h3> For my purposes I want to look at two widely-utilized (sometimes subconsciously) theories of value: The Labor Theory of value (LTV)</a>, refined by Marx and Marxian economists, and the Subjective (sometimes called the Marginal) Theory of value (STV)</a>, popularized by marginalist economists Jevons, Walras, and Menger. The LTV maintains that “the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it”. The STV maintains that “a good’s value depends on the consumers’ wants and needs”, prioritizing marginal utility of any additional unit of a good and determined at the point of exchange. It’s important to understand these two, at a basic level, to be able to analyze how modern mainstream economics contends with the digital age. We live in an age of information, and something that’s important to acknowledge about this age is that there are goods (e.g. digital art, music, e-books, etc.) whose supply is essentially infinite. How so? The cost of creating a copy of anything of a reasonable bit size for every single human on earth is tiny. The energy required to transmit one bit of information is 10pJ</a>. Taking even the domestic consumer price of electricity in the US (a high estimate), this means that making a distinct copy of 1 Terabyte of data for every single human being on earth is around $172,000. That’s 0.0000008% of the United States’ GDP, for context. The point is that reproducing digital media costs us very little, and because digital media is infinitely reproducible, the supply of this media is infinite. This has incredibly heavy implications for mainstream economic theories, especially the STV. Scarcity plays a role in almost all economic theory, but especially Marginal Economic theory and the STV. The basic logic contends that the value of something is contingent on a consumer valuing the marginal utility of an additional unit of that good (including if “an additional unit” just means your very first unit). This, I hope we can see, relies on the fact that goods are scarce, i.e. finite, and therefore someone could lack access to a good they seek the utility of, leading them to seek a market to exchange something they have for the good that they lack. However, if we are to take the case of a good that is essentially infinite (e.g. digital art), then by following the STV we arrive at the conclusion that the good should have no value. There is no reason that someone would exchange anything for it, because it’s infinitely available, so therefore it has no value. Yet in the material world, we can see that digital art is still valued. People still exchange money for it, they still pay digital artists, buy wallpapers, etc. at costs exceeding that of simply the electricity required to transmit the data. Now I understand this analysis of digital art specifically is not entirely correct, as often the reason that people pay digital artists is for the right to legally use digital art in products, services, advertisements, etc. However, I contend that the former counter argument is only valid due to legal creation and the legal structure of intellectual property laws and copyright. If copyright and IP laws are the only things holding up the STV, then marginal economists have a lot heavier things to contend with than just some blindspots in their theory. I also understand that my estimation of making 7 Billion digital copies is reductive, because digital media require a physical medium to be stored and consumed. These physical mediums rely on finite resources. I would have to dive deeper into the theory of post-scarcity</a> to contend with this critique, which I frankly don’t want to do in this essay specifically. I encourage you to read the wiki page at least. Suffice to say that post-scarcity reality does not mean there are no scarce goods, but that we generally have the resources to meet all the world's needs and most of its wants. The LTV, to its merit, does not struggle to contend with this post-scarcity world, as it places the origins of value separate from exchange (It actually differentiates between value and exchange value). Digital art requires socially necessary human labor to create, and therefore has value. An infinite good can still have value if it requires human labor to create. Wasn't This About NFTs?</h3> Now what do NFTs have to do with this discussion? Well, I believe them to be a prime example of how when faced with the complications of a post-scarcity world, the majority of those who subscribe to the idea that scarcity plays a central role in value (i.e. most people) find themselves forced to adjust the world to fit their model, rather than reevaluate the model. Artists, record labels, and crypto-nerds created NFTs to create artificial scarcity by declaring “this is the only copy that really counts”. You may have a digital copy of this good, but unless it’s got an NFT attached to it, it’s not the original and therefore is not worth the insane amount of money that the NFT is. It is the fact that this is a “1 of X” (x being finite) that makes the NFT valuable. I’ve seen other reactions including not buying into the idea that NFTs (or crypto in general) are actually worth anything. “It’s all just fiat money anyways. Just because someone paid for it doesn’t mean it’s actually worth that amount and they’re basically throwing money away”. There are two problems with this as a rebuttal. First, if your aim is simply to declare that value of exchange is not the same as real value, you’re already immediately detaching yourself from the STV, and making a distinction between exchange value and perceived value. Welcome to marxism, comrade. Second, if you say this to claim that just because certain humans value something, that something does not have capital-V Value, then you live in the realm of pure ideology (in the literal sense of an idealized reality detached from the material world). There is no conception of value wholly detached from human perception and behavior. All of these lines of reasoning and justification are examples of how material reality and social behavior are dismissed because they do not fit within common theories or models of economics. If something breaks the model, it’s not because the model has faults, it’s because individual humans failed to act as expected. If something breaks the model, invent something so that it fits, don’t question the model or the conclusions we derive from it. My goal in writing this is to show that maybe we should reevaluate how we view economics, and really analyze the base assumptions of how we organize resources. Specifically, we should realize that deriving value from the scarcity of something gives outsized control over our economic lives to an owner class, rather than those that labor to make the things we consume.

Kagu's Corner

I Went To China, and I Have Thoughts

Update on the Software I'm using

Re: Don't Become a Connoisseur.

Good Turkey Really is About Preparation

Interesting Things Around The Web Nov 2025

Do you really need the best tool for the job?

First Weekend with my Smoker/Grill

Interesting Things Around The Web - Oct 2025

One year on Neocities

I don't get the text editor wars

Always Needing Something Fresh

Consequentialism goes crazy

What It Took To Revive The Music Page

Reclaiming My Attention - Progress Report

We should rate things from -5 to 5. No... really.

The PR-ification of Reddit

Interesting Things Around The Web Aug 2025

The Bare Minimum Relationship Mark

Reclaiming My Attention Span

'Everything is Political now'

Interesting Things Around The Web July 2025

Self Hosting</h3> Kavita</a> A self-hostable e-reader. Has functionality to send books and manga to kindle! Very neat, started using it a few weeks ago, works a charm even if the intial book tagging and setup is a bit particular.</li> </ul> </li>

Gardening Upgrades and Plant Updates

Self Hosting Guides and Resources

Home Server Upgrades!

Interesting Things Around The Web May 2025

Growing Some Plants

Finally using a Static Site Generator

Why 'Kitchen Sink' Minecraft Modpacks Fail

Interesting Things Around The Web

Consistency

Buying new PC gaming parts?

Campaign Strategy, Hope, and Other Thoughts Following the US Presidential Elections

Loss

My Self-Hosted Media Server

How do you make sure you finish your projects?

Home Server + Minecraft

Return to Office

On Rating Scales

Dual Booting Fedora 40 (Linux)

Plans for my Server and other updates

Kagu's Corner - About

On Being a Hater - The Loss of Critical Consumption

Fashion Advice! (If you live in my climate)

CP:Edgerunners Review - So Much Potential Wasted

Art 9/10:</h3> Fantastic animation and visual style. The flat colors paired with amazing VFX are a feast for the eyes.</p>

Music: 8/10:</h3> I really liked the soundtrack overall, though the main theme (not the OP) felt out of place in the moments in the show where it popped up.</p>

Rent-a-girlfriend Review: Bro why

Art 7/10:</h3> No huge complaints here, the panels are well-drawn and the main characters get some good spreads. However, some of the side characters seem like they were handed off to an assistant and then pasted into the final copy right before the deadline.</p>

A critique of 'Capitalism: Do Young People Love It Unknowingly?'

Fire Force Review - Flashy Like Fire, But Just as Vapid

NFTs and Economics

Art 9/10:</h3>
Fantastic animation and visual style. The flat colors paired with amazing VFX are a feast for the eyes.</p>

Music: 8/10:</h3>
I really liked the soundtrack overall, though the main theme (not the OP) felt out of place in the moments in the show where it popped up.</p>

Art 7/10:</h3>
No huge complaints here, the panels are well-drawn and the main characters get some good spreads. However, some of the side characters seem like they were handed off to an assistant and then pasted into the final copy right before the deadline.</p>