2024-12-22 08:00:00
can i be real with you?
you may notice a pattern here, called ‘a lot of newsletters.’
You ask yourself: What would have made me jump off my chair if I had read it six months ago (or a week ago, or however fast you write)? If you have figured out something that made you ecstatic, this is what you should write. And you do not dumb it down, because you were not stupid six months ago, you just knew less. You also write with as much useful detail and beauty as you can muster, because that is what you would have wanted.
One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.” A high-gloss product that dissolves into air. Tide Pod cinema.
Honestly, the idea of finding WiFi routers based on the signal strength seemed pretty intimidating at the time. The idea impressed me.
But don’t get distracted by all this; the software was intended to kill people.
if you care deeply about something, you can compel other people to care through your work. You may find, too, that it may seem as if no one cares as intensely and passionately as you—but once you start writing, all these people come out of the woodwork who are just as invested as you.
I’m noticing this platform has become a really good way for women to monetize their diary entries — lists, random thoughts, and (easy to write) roundups of “what I’ve been doing” do really well on this site.
AI-generated images of celebrities or disasters are not meant to suggest reality. They diminish the value of reality in constructing opinions or informing decisions. To post this image is, of course, a manipulation of Swift’s image, a violation of her agency, and to be very clear, I’m talking about this specific “Uncle Sam” image, not the pornographic content with her in it. All of it points to the idea that if we share an illusion, that illusion matters in ways that are just as valid as any political reality. It is about controlling the symbols of the world, and it buys into a purely symbolic structure of power.
As you can see from those links, I fell into a weird Substack-shaped rabbit hole. I don’t subscribe to any newsletters but I do read individual posts when I come across them. I’m just terrible at Keeping Up—instead reading new blog posts via RSS, for example, I go through my browser bookmarks folder and manually click on the websites in it to see what’s new (lol), or I type the url into the address bar, or I see someone in my mastodon feed and think huh I wonder if they’ve published anything recently and go to their profile. Newsletter subscriptions would just die in my black hole of an inbox.
So I’m not very attuned to whatever is going on over there in newsletterland, which is apparently interesting writing about interesting things.
This started when I was reading Robin Sloan’s newsletter (robin sloan dot com, which I manually visited), who in turn highlighted this observation from Max Read’s newsletter:
My standard joke about my job is that I am less a “writer” than I am a “textual YouTuber for Gen Xers and Elder Millennials who hate watching videos.” What I mean by this is that while what I do resembles journalistic writing in the specific, the actual job is in most ways closer to that of a YouTuber or a streamer or even a hang-out-type podcaster than it is to that of most types of working journalist.
— Max Read, How to Substack
Which is. Yeah! Guilty as charged! I hate watching videos but if interesting videos were made available in text form, then I would consume that. This comparison of newsletters to video feels apt.
Anyway, I was reading a bunch of newsletters, and thought it would be useful to highlight stuff to save, which led me to downloading Obsidian.
My ‘personal knowledge management’ system is non-existent, which isn’t a huge issue because I’m not an academic, but sometimes I want to be a bit more—organized? about it? I chuck links into Raindrop out of convenience, write scattered notes in the apple notes app, and sometimes compile something in my digital garden, but there isn’t much rhyme or reason to it. I’m certainly not able to draw conclusions from stuff or form coherent arguments.
Obsidian seems like it can solve at least one specific problem for me: organizing highlights/notes from different sources about a topic. Like saving all my generative AI-related readings so I can one day synthesize that into a thesis (a blog post). Or whatever. Or just better understand things!
I feel overwhelmed by the software possibilities—there are plugins? and customizations? that I could be doing? but I’m going to hold off on looking into that. I want to use this until a need for specific solution x emerges, and then I will pursue it. In this house, we do not fall victim to premature optimization.
I googled various permutations of obsidian setup notes structure though, because after a little bit of notetaking I ended up with like, ten different notes in my root folder, one for each piece of writing, which seems like a wrong way of going about things, so at minimum I should figure this out.
Maybe I should put them all in one note by topic? e.g. my ‘Netflix’ note was me trying to fit all Netflix-related commentary into one note; versus putting different sources into their own individual notes and putting them all in…a folder? I found this post about the ‘SCTO system’ (Sources, Compendiums, Thoughts, Ontologies) by Ilya Shabanov that may be fitting.
I dunno! Feel free to @ me if you have concise suggestions about this specific thing. Because I don’t care enough, I am not too receptive to other optimizations at this time. There are apparently a lot of YouTube videos about Obsidian, but as I have mentioned, I am a hater of the Video so I will never watch any of that.
I went with my partner to their holiday work dinner, which is always fun—my company is remote so we have no such thing, so it’s nice to go to someone else’s, as much as I am an anti-social introvert. It’s a once-a-year affair, I can handle it. I also like to eat and drink on someone else’s dime.
Relatedly, every year I revisit the iconic Ask A Manager holiday story: ‘I will confront you by Wednesday of this week,’ about a holiday party gone off the rails, which lives on in my head rent-free.
The DC fanart continues! Honestly, I am having so much fun! It’s kind of embarrassing but also this is why I drew anime as a kid!! So I could draw my favourite characters in outfits and situations! Truly the meaning of life. I am cringe but I am free?
This week I watched Man of Steel, because the new Superman trailer looks fun, and I’ve never watched a Superman movie before. I had heard Man of Steel is dreary and unenjoyable, and I did indeed find that to be the case. I also heard about the city destruction / collateral damage aspect of it being pretty over the top and yeah wow, it really was.
This holiday break, I’m hoping to reset my brain, which has sucked for weeks now. I feel like I’ve developed some kind of horrible work-life imbalance in my brain that is incapable of being normal about work. Not in the sense of working too much but more like, because of the overlap between work and hobby (websites), I’m unable to do hobby website stuff on a work day, even if I have the time and energy, because I feel inexplicably anxious about it. Like the residual anxieties from work seep into the personal, no matter how unfounded. (To be clear, my job is nice and I enjoy it, I’m just a needlessly anxious person and this is a me problem.) Then I get anxious about not being ‘productive’ and my brain suffers and it becomes a whole cycle. I would like this to not be the case? I hope the time off work will be a nice mental reset and I don’t have to feel so tense about it.
2024-12-16 08:00:00
I’ve started posting my art on Tumblr again as @vanhn. Currently, it’s just a bunch of DC fanart. thoughts about this:
anyway. I’m there now!
Here’s the latest DC thing I drew:
still trucking along with my media recap post. I’m a bit apprehensive that the end result will not look as good as any WIP screenshots that I share and I should just stop talking about it! But I feel pretty determined about it still!! I can do this!! I can make thing look good!!!
2024-12-08 08:00:00
Twenty-four is a pleasing number, so I feel inclined to make these weeknotes a bit Better, but not by much.
It is useless work that darkens the heart. But good work? Work that serves the living, that brings us into alignment with ourselves and with each other and with the earth? Good work lights us right up.
I like this tweet from @jasonsbmoc about music:
I spent this year paying more attention than ever and hunting for new releases and I have been blessed with so much amazing music as a result. I refuse to be poisoned by such jaded cynicism. great art is made every day if you care enough to look for it
And relatedly, a post on tumblr by @annabelle–cane:
niche indie art is great because most of it is very middling in a genuine and charming way. this song melody is kind of nothing but the lyrics are clever. this novella plot is flimsy but the prose has a lot of bounce. this video essay could have been a text essay and lost nothing but it’s still intellectually interesting. and then one day you take a gamble and click something that you don’t really know much about and you’re like. ah. they put some god in this one.
I finished watching Arcane season 2, which is the most beautiful show in the world. It’s so lovely to witness art like this. You know? What a gift.
I rewatched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, because I’m apparently in my Batman era. There are so many iconic lines and moments that invite pointing at the screen, Leo-style. Die a hero. The pencil thing. The voice. Watch the world burn. do u even lift, master wayne?!?!
I played a bit of Destiny—a two-hour stint in Iron Banner PVP, in pursuit of a Cool Reward. I suffered, gathered mostly L’s and then, finally, my reward, and absconded. Destiny is very backburner right now. I don’t feel like booting it up to collect More Loot, this specific reward excluded. I’m sure that fancy will strike me later, but right now I just—don’t want to.
Top artists:
Top songs:
Say happy birthday to my current site design. I published this redesign—‘version 6’, with the cozy brown autumn palette and rounded corners—last December 11, 2023! It feels like it’s been much longer. I also shoved an unfinished blog post about it into my digital garden last month, because I accepted that I will never finish writing it but I made too much progress to leave it in my drafts forever.
2024-11-30 08:00:00
“I am not going to get into the fountain pens question because it, like the paper discussion, is for sickos.”
Apologies in advance for talking about fucking Apple products here. God, ugh. I hate it too.
I bought the AirPods Pro 2 on Black Friday. I resisted for a long time, but my current pair—2nd-gen airpods that I’ve had for several years—were dying horribly in that one of them would lose connection within 5–30 minutes every time and I was rationing my use of them, which is quite frankly a ridiculous way to live.
I thought about simply buying another pair of 2nd gen airpods because they’re cheaper and like Fine, I don’t need the fancy new features anyway, but upon further discussion with a friend, I decided to get the newest Pro model because maybe I do need the fancy new shit—particularly noise cancellation and hearing protection.
And okay, my dudes: I have never used a noise cancelling product before. I legitimately did not realize how effective noise cancellation is until I put on my new airpods and it shut out the loud ass noises from my air fryer. Bruh. What the fuck. This surprised me so much I was kind of just sitting around staring into space, marveling at this, and then I forgot to flip my air fryer food. So you know. What the fuck.
Anyway. I’ve had these airpods for one day and I’m completely sold on them. I haven’t even worn them outside yet! But yeah okay I get it now. Noise cancellation is good. I hope these last me fucking forever, I am loathe to buy new electronics and I’m irate about the horrible working lifespan of modern tech.
In conclusion:
I finished Young Justice season 1! Shit’s fun, I love these superhero sidekick kids. I’m less a fan of how only season 1 is available on N*tflix—girl, what is up with this kind of licensing—so now I have to like, watch the rest of it somewhere else? It’s available on *squints* “”“fubo”“”?? Really?? Ugh.
As part of my horrible, embarrassing descent into DC comics, I’ve also been drawing Robin fanart.
I stumbled across a very old Marvel fancomic I made—dated November 27, 2014!!—and I feel like I need to redraw it. It’s from ten years ago! Jesus Christ. It tickles me that ten years ago I was deeply into Marvel, and now I am getting into DC after never having been interested in it. Life is so weird and delightful.
(to briefly summarize the comic: it’s like, 10 panels long and doesn’t make much sense. it’s vaguely amerikate. that’s all!)
No idea how my media 2024 post is going to actually turn out, but I’ve been having fun pushing some rectangles in Figma for it:
It’ll probably change a lot! My plan is to draw lots of art for it, and I’m an expert at being too ambitious and paring down my vision as I actually get into the thick of things. I like how it looks here though.
2024-11-24 08:00:00
November is the worst month. Cold and rainy. The days are short, and the holiday season hasn’t quite kicked in enough for it to be romantic.
2024-11-16 08:00:00
