Well, this is a new one. Today my gmail has started moving my emails out of the way to prioritize giving space to "AI Overviews" telling me what the email says. The summaries are longer than the actual email.
Imagine I started this three-sentence post with a "summary" that spent four sentences telling you what the post says. That's about how this strikes me.
This is a draf. Almost done. Check back in a few days.
I just read the piece "The Colonization of Confidence", a short story by Robert Kingett about the homogenizing effect of relying on technology for "cheap, fast, and easy" artistic expression, and it reminded me of a few things. What's interesting is that there is a strong parallel here to things that have happened before.
The most immediate thing that leapt to mind is the 13-page '80s Alan Moore comic book story "In Pictopia", which you can happily read in full at Forgotten Awesome, a response to that era's commercialization of comics, in which the residents of a seedy comic Metropolis full of superheroes and cartoon animals are one-by-one either removed or replaced by slicker versions of themselves, as an ominous, dark industrial mass closes in on the horizon.
The second is the work…
For those curious about how grisly the stock market has been lately, yesterday I got this news alert popup on a stock charting website I follow.
I hate to complain, but, I dunno, just very lately, I'm feeling something I haven't felt in a solid 4 decades: I'm bored. I'm telling you, that hasn't happened since I was 17, and now I'm 56 or 57 or something. I literally forgot all about boredom for 40 years. And now, I'm like, "Why is life like... what is it? Cardboard? Wait... it's boredom! Holy cow, I forgot about that!"
Seriously. This is weird. Like, I'm suddenly able to understand why people get married and get jobs and things like that. It must be to avoid feeling like this. Like, ok, what do I do, I've already played my lyre, my saxophone, and my guitar twice today, my website is up to date, I'm too hyper to read, what do I do now? Hey, maybe I should find a girlfriend and get married!" The whole picture suddenly makes…
This post is my very first "blog only" post on this site.
This site was originally intended as a static showcase of my creative art, but for while now I've considered adding more social-media-like features to the site. So now, I've added a Blog Feed page under the Home menu, presenting the site in more of a blog format. This will include all articles from newest to oldest, much like the /Latest slashpage and newest articles readout at the bottom of the home page, but also may include what I've called "blog posts", brief or timely posts not deserving to be permanently included in this sites collection of articles. This Blog Feed page is the only place those blog posts will appear.
This will enable me to begin to include more social features on the site, probably eventually including webmentions, which will allow this site to…
For confused first-time visitors and other people still acclimating, here is a description of these little tabs to the left, as well as some other features of the site.
Open "Expert Mode" CLI Navigation - this give you the option to switch your browser's display to an old-fashioned terminal mode where you may browse this site, view pages and images by typing text commands. Just like how we used to browse the web back in 1978!
Open Visual Settings - This gives you controls to customize the visual display of this website to your liking: turn up or down the brightness, contrast, color temperature, hue, saturation, dark mode, and earthquake. Settings are saved per browser tab, so they will be remembered for your whole visit.
Open My Eyes - Have you ever been engrossed in your work, when you suddenly realize someone is staring at your screen, watching everything you do over your shoulder? If not, this simulates the experience.
Open Help - This help popup, silly! You just clicked it! Do you not remember?
New - Draggable elements! Several elements on this website, including these tabs, this popup message, and the "Hire Mike" badge in the lower right, can be dragged around with your mouse, to avoid them blocking content. Positions are remembered per tab, so as you navigate around the site, they will stay in the same place for your whole visit.
Enjoy!
Are you sure you want to switch to viewing this website in the "expert mode" command-line interface?
This will switch to a terminal emulator, load this page, and allow you to browse this website and view its contents by typing text commands.
Plus there might be, y'know, some fun stuff hidden in there. Just for geeks.
