when laid plans have to lie down

david wolfpaw

Issue # 🤷

25 Jul 2023

Reading time:

6 mins

I thought that this week was going to go a lot differently than it did. I say that a lot, don’t I? But still, when things go off the rails, what do you do beyond work through it and try to catch back up?

Last week I suddenly got rather sick for a day and a half, and it was rough. Based on others around me getting sick around the same time, and some before and after, I assume some sort of stomach virus is going around. I am good now but feel bad for everyone else getting sick too.

Yesterday I had a lot of plans, but they kind of went out the window with errands, as well as having to deal with our next-door neighbor.

I won’t put all of the dirty details here, but our neighbor is having some sort of mental health crisis lately and has been lashing out at everyone in our household. The threats yesterday got worse, and he physically damaged parts of the fence that separates our yards yet again.

Dealing with that has been stressful, and we’re taking steps to ensure our safety. In the meantime, I’m still working on some crafting, albeit with setbacks like my laser burner breaking and having to work out a warranty replacement. But at least I have other projects to play with offline!

Stay safe out there, and email back if you ever have anything that you want to talk about. I love hearing from each and every one of you 💝

📚

Don’t Join Threads—Make Threads Join You – Lily Hay Newman, Wired

It would be nice to have a populist uprising in social media, no? Somehow I doubt that it will come to pass.

Who killed Google Reader? – David Pierce, The Verge

A long look at the internals of a massive company where having 30 million very sticky daily active users makes a digital product a flop as opposed to a success.

Mark F***king Zuckerberg Is Not Your Friend – Catherynne M. Valente

He never was, and he never will be. Why do we keep giving him the benefit of the doubt, when there’s no doubt about this?

Dealing with the “webiness” of CSS – Kevin Powell

Not a new blog post, but I’ve been diving into the works of creators who focus on CSS and like the opening of this about the rigid thinking of compsci that doesn’t work well with the expressive nature of CSS. That’s why I like doing things with it!

📽

YouTube’s First Urban Legend | Username666

I’m kinda surprised how long this lasted, but I suppose that it was early internet, and this video does explain that trying to visit that username did in fact show a suspended account page, but not for the reason that you might think!

STUXNET: The World’s First Digital Weapon

Disrupt makes well polished videos about internet related events that you may have heard of but not really gotten a lot of detail on.

I ate at every Margaritaville in the Country

Eddy Burback did this with Rainforest Cafe last year, and this one somehow seemed more painful.

Five Stages of Watching Bluey (as an adult)

Good thing I’ve only made it to stage four and hope to stay there

Bearpuncher | Animated Short Film

This feels it would make a good mini series

🎧

The Families Suing Social Media Over the Teen Mental Health Crisis – 2 Girls 1 Podcast

It does seem like the only way hat change will be made is to sue these social media companies into submission with class actions. And I’m still pessimistic enough to think that it won’t really help much.

Do Generations Exist? with Jean Twenge – Factually! with Adam Conover

I can agree with Jean Twenge about the value of having generations for a few reasons, but making things as binary as “this generation does this/that generation does that” seems a better way to divide us than anything else.

“Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence [OTAMATONE COVER]

Otamatones are very expressive, but it’s the faces being made with them during the performance that really sells

Sub-Radio – Stacy’s Dad (Full Video)

This is turning into a new favorite band. Queer and funny. Thank you Tom Scott newsletter!

If you made it this far, why not share this newsletter with a friend? Or share with me some of the things that you found that you liked this week. Either way, I’m thrilled!