2026-04-18 04:13:00
A few weeks ago I went up to see that MAGA friend.🙄 I had written about her in the past, but after an unrelated post brought in some unexpected traffic, I unpublished that post about her since it suddenly felt too personal. Long story short, I have complex feelings about this person that goes a bit deeper than politics. But when I was up in NYC, I went to see her anyway.
Things were a lot worse than I imagined. She told me her doctors put her on Lithium and she's thinking of suing them because the original dosage was too high. She said she's on a lower dosage now, which is crazy because it was so obvious how strong the drug was even on the lower dose. She was aware of this and told me, "The lithium makes your body so stiff, it's hard to speak or move."
On the Uber ride away from her house, I kept asking my husband, "How is this different from a lobotomy?" I understand my friend has mental health issues, but is this seriously the only solution? Just turn people into zombies, sever them from the neurons that make them "act crazy," and then ignore them?
I've been thinking a lot about this after reading Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Dr. Caroline Leaf earlier this year. In it, the author describes how she disagrees with the current mental health trend of simply diagnosing and prescribing instead of treating. She explains how this system avoids treating the real issue by simply telling people their brains are "like this" and the only way they can fix it is to take drugs indefinitely. This might be true for some issues, but Dr. Leaf purports that this trend is failing people since a lot of the more common illnesses (like anxiety, depression, PTSD) can be healed in the brain instead of suppressed with drugs.
I'm not an expert on neurological issues, but I do have a lot of mentally unwell people in my life. When I think of a lot of my friends that are prescribed a cocktail of drugs, they're simply "stable." There's next to no improvement outside of that. They still spend all their waking hours on social media, ruminating, obsessing over the thing that traumatized them, and doing all the things that made them mentally ill to begin with. So what exactly is the drug fixing?
Dr. Leaf said our thoughts are like trees, and the more we focus on them they grow roots and spread. If you're someone with anxiety or depression or someone who had a traumatic event happen to them, whatever that issue is will consume you, to the point where you're no longer in control of your brain, your brain now controls you. And instead of telling you this, whatever specialist or psychologist you see will simply prescribe you something and then send you home. Oh, and there's also side effects to that drug, both from being on it and from when you try to wean yourself off of it. Addiction is likely as well. Good luck!
But of course, there's no profit to be had in teaching people to control and heal their minds, so why bother?
Isolation and rumination are two of the biggest mental health issues I'm seeing in almost everyone in my life. These people are on social media from sun-up to sun-down, have no hobbies, read no books, do nothing with their brains but obsess over the thing that ignited their downfall, and when they get professional help, they're prescribed pills but aren't told to change what they're doing. Now, a therapist might, but most can't afford to see one.
Technology also plays a huge part because it exacerbates people's obsessions. It feeds you algorithms that echo your narrative and cocoon you in your victimhood. And when you get hungry, you can DoorDash food to yourself so that you never go outside or get vitamin D or talk to any human being besides family members who are tired of your shit.
Modern psychology says these people can't change; all they can do is manage the illness. But I call bullshit. The current methods are, much like the lobotomy, looking more and more archaic. All I can hope is that the people in my life find the real help they need before it's too late.
2026-04-18 02:49:02
We're one month away from the release of 'Oxygen' and we couldn't be more excited!
As an independent band, everything we do only happens because so many of you come to our shows, buy our merch, and spontaneously send us gifts of support and encouragement - from our days as sidewalk musicians to the beautiful spaces we get to play now. It's humbling, and we're so grateful to be able to make music for you.
Making this album has been a dream, but we're not finished yet. If you'd like to financially support our project and help us produce vinyl records, CDs, promotional materials and more, you can Venmo us using the link below. We are thankful for your support, even if it's $1! That's a lot of streams!
This album was honestly a gift - we got to work with some of the most incredible creatives we've ever met, and were given the space to be ourselves with no compromises, crafting something that really blew our expectations out of the water. In this world of short attention and AI, it's really an honor to have the opportunity to create something with a team of this caliber that isn't confined to any sort of commercial limitation.
Of course, you can also pre-order the album on our webstore or just leave some love in our Guestbook. We love the community we've created over the years and cherish every moment we get to spend with you.
Next single is dropping in a week! Stay tuned! 🩵
2026-04-18 02:28:02
I've just about had enough of almost getting run off the freeway or almost collide with a car while, for some stupid, inane reason, they are preoccupied with looking down at whatever bullshit is on their phone.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, should be distracting you when you are actively operating a vehicle that requires your full attention. Don't give a shit if you've got some convo going on and it's oh so urgent, or you've got the latest and greatest dumb safety features and you only do it at stoplights and blah blah blah.
I swear, people just get worse and worse about this kind of thing. And it's not even people of a certain age range. I see everyone all over the spectrum, from young kids to older people, all looking down at their crotch without thinking of potentially smashing their stupid car into the semi truck barreling down the freeway at 90 miles an hour.
It's already stressful enough that I have to drive a car in general, which is something I'd rather not be doing. I would prefer public transit a thousand times more. Gas prices, car maintenance, insurance are all just the kind of leeching money from my wallet that I am forced to endure. But this kind of shit tips me over the edge. If you can't be away from your phone for more than a second, reconsider having a vehicle and turn in your driver's license.
Ugh.
Thoughts? Leave a comment in my guestbook or shoot me an email.
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2026-04-18 00:45:00
So. The Liberal party here in Canada - the party that now has a majority in the federal government - has adopted a motion to ban children under 16 from social media. This was a matter of time, seeing the recent developments in a similar direction in many other jurisdictions worldwide. 1
I think we can all agree that we want the best outcomes for all children and youth in Canada. This includes their safety and mental well-being. However, the way to achieve these outcomes is not through age gating on social media.
Photo by jim on Unsplash. Glitched.
Age gating is thinly-veiled surveillance of users of all ages that is:
The process itself, by definition, requires handing over Canadians sensitive, private, and often immutable (in the case of biometrics) information to tech companies who we know cannot be trusted with our data. And this holds for everyone wishing to use social media, so, uh, pretty much everyone at this point.
It is not a question of whether, but when this data gets stolen through hacks or leaks. Two recent examples include the Discord hack, and the AU10TIX incident.
We're already seeing fine-grained location data harvested from ad surveillance being used against users - why layer this mess of more potential for data loss and data misuse on top of what's already there?
Plus: Biometrics. Your password gets leaked, you get yourself a new password. And hopefully you've been using unique passwords and 2FA, so nobody was able to access your account, or any other account with the same password.
Your biometrics get leaked? Good luck getting new fingerprints, a new face, or a new iris.
I don't know if you've ever had to deal with identity theft or fraud involving your person, but it is a headache and a half that drags on for years, and is potentially never-ending. This is not something you just shrug off and move on from without huge investments of time and effort.
Most of Big Tech and “age verification” service providers are not Canadian.
Given the strained relationship with the United States that we find ourselves in, and the fact that most of these companies are headquartered there, digital sovereignty should be top of mind.
I know that the government knows that this concept exists, because this is from their own web page on Digital Sovereignty:
Digital sovereignty means Canada stays in control of its own digital future—including its data, technology and essential online services—instead of relying on foreign companies, foreign systems or foreign laws.
For a lot of young people, the communities they are part of online provide a highly positive environment and social support, 23 often especially so for marginalized youth, and youth who feel like they don't "belong" in whatever current school or out-of-school environment they find themselves in.
This can be for all sorts of reasons - Niche hobbies that you don't have in common with people in your area or at your school. Identity exploration. You just moved away to a new place and don't see your old friends in person anymore. Difficulties in your home life that you'd like to talk to someone about, but not someone that knows the people at the heart of the difficulties. The list goes on.
We would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater by banning young people from accessing these supportive communities.
There's "working" in the sense that "this will, on a technological basis, do the thing we want it to do, ie. keep children and youth away from social media." And then there is "this proposal will accomplish the overarching goal, which is to improve the lives of children and youth."
I'd argue this has a low likelihood of working in even just one of those two ways.
Prohibition, famously, had all sorts of unintended consequences, besides the fact that it didn't totally work, and also was later repealed.
Also, kids & youth will absolutely find ways around age gating. You've met teenagers with smarts, sufficient time on their hands, and a desire to be a part of a thing, yes?
This entire age-gating push the world over smacks of the "won't somebody please think of the children!" meme come to life. Which brings us back to the beginning of this post - age gating is predominantly a surveillance-based information grab that, at the face of it, pretends to be about online safety for children and youth - and anything that's done purportedly to keep children and youth safe of course has to be good, right?
And then there is the overall premise of age gating. “Here, kid – this was too horrible for you to see at 15, but now that you’re 16, please wade into the cesspool that is hate speech, looksmaxxing, and other questionable content specifically tailored to you so that you’ll spend more time on this platform!”
We know that these platforms are bad for us as individuals, and for us as a society, no matter our age. Why are we drawing this arbitrary line in the sand that is based on whether you've had 16 candles on your bday cake or not?
Why are we dancing around the real issue, which is that we have let Big Tech corporations build up platforms that make them millions/billions of dollars, that are hard to leave, and that we know are not good for our young people?
Instead of regulating users, we must regulate the platforms that make money off of pushing questionable content onto users of all ages. I'd say I cannot believe that that is not the issue being addressed, but sadly, I very much can.
We need to hold the Big Tech companies accountable for the mess they made, and address the real underlying issue:
Why do we let Big Tech run roughshod over our society with their questionable practices and extractive algorithms that produce addiction-adjacent behaviours, which we know are harmful to users? We should start by curbing that behaviour, and the influence these platforms have on our society, instead.
The only problem is... one of the groups at the potentially receiving end of new legislation has boatloads of money and power and armies of lawyers - and it's not Canadian youth.
This post is loosely based on messages I wrote to my federal representatives regarding an age-gating proposal that started floating around Canadian politics in April 2026. If proposals are suggested or planned for your country or region, consider getting in touch with your representatives as well - that way, at least they can't claim they "didn't know their constituents were opposed to this."↩
McAlister K, Beatty C, Smith-Caswell J, Yourell J, Huberty J. Social Media Use in Adolescents: Bans, Benefits, and Emotion Regulation Behaviors. MIR Ment Health 2024;11:e64626. https://mental.jmir.org/2024/1/e64626. DOI: 10.2196/64626.↩
Agyapong-Opoku N, Agyapong-Opoku F, Greenshaw AJ. Effects of Social Media Use on Youth and Adolescent Mental Health: A Scoping Review of Reviews. Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 Apr 24;15(5):574. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12108867/ doi: 10.3390/bs15050574.↩
2026-04-17 04:30:00
If you have not discovered Bubbles yet, then I suggest you go and have a look.
The Bubbles Team (of one!) very own words:
Somewhere out there, someone wrote a really good blog post today. You'll probably never find it. Bubbles tries to surface it. Community voting applied to thousands of personal, independent blogs, with identity and discussion routed through the Fediverse.
I've been watching this for a few weeks now, and I am loving the simplicity, honesty, and hand curation for indi-blogs.
The team have carefully vetted thousands of independent blogs, automatically publishing new posts from these. Users can then up-vote blogs to bubble them to the surface, spreading the joy with more readers.
There's various timelines: top, new, hot, and your own list from blogs you follow (if you choose to login). All blogs are categorised, so you can filter results.
It's an interesting service, and I am enjoying discovering new posts, blogs, and people.
Get bubbling at bubbles.town
There are currently 4800+ blogs being bubbled. Here's the list -- your blog may well be on it already!
If you want to create an account to store your own bubbles you just need a Fediverse account.
UPDATE: I like it so much, I bought the dev a few coffees. I'm always keen to support independent developers.
FURTHER UPDATE: In the spirit of openness and honesty, Ben (the dev) contacted me to note that an initial batch of around 4k+ blogs were categorised with a little support from AI. I have therefore removed my own words "(by humans)" from the post as I do not wish to deceive anyone, nor does Ben..
2026-04-16 14:29:00
For the last year or so I've been tracking this bizarre product, a "Gen Z" water, which appears in a specific grocery store on the west side of LA. I have seen it nowhere else.
One of the funniest things about Gen Z Water is that its website is doing that "Gen z/a nostalgia for millennial youth" thing... by looking like an old web page.
I assume that these kinds of things happen here because I'm in LA and LA is full of bizarre and unpleasant rich person products and hobbies. Rich people in LA are always launching preposterous products which appeal to nobody. Every once in a while, one of them becomes a sort of Goop, but that almost never happens.
However, this water's been at the grocery store for a surprisingly long time. Either these six bottles have been here for nearly two years, or someone's actually buying it. I can't imagine who. Maybe a parent for their child? I don't think that I've often seen anyone under the age of 40 at this particular grocery store.
I have never bought the water because I'm certain it just tastes like water and because I do not want to support whatever deranged rich person hobby this turns out to be. I do check up on it every time I see it, though!