Scratch Pad: Vader, HDD, Terminator

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I also find knowing I will revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ On a walk yesterday evening a guy passed me in the opposite direction wearing a large, faded “Darth Vader Lives” pin. Mourning takes many forms.

▰ It’s only Tuesday but I’m still listening to Thursday Afternoon (the Brian Eno album)

▰ Pedestrian of the day: guy with using his bulky feature phone as a portable speaker to play the Grateful Dead as he walked around in the afternoon

▰ I know it’s windy out, so what I don’t know is if that sound is the wind, the nearby high school’s marching band practicing, or both

▰ I got a hard drive to accommodate my ever-expanding digital music library but I accidentally got HDD instead of (silent) SSD, and I’m sure if you don’t mostly listen to super quiet music it wouldn’t matter, but that thing was making a subtle rumble I just couldn’t live with. Filed under: #ambientworldproblems.

Note: A reply from novelist Robin Sloan led to this instant transforming into being the source of this week’s Disquiet Junto project.

▰ I made a list of some writing-related software I use regularly but in the end so much of the use of software is muscle memory and intricate little settings, and the simple fact is that no setup is perfect, and you’re always iterating and adjusting.

▰ One of my favorite works of unintended public art apparently received a new paint job:

That’s a slightly different photo than the one I posted on Instagram this week. Neither capture the bright white of the wall. This is essentially the raw photo. The one on Instagram was my attempt to use filters to approximate what my eyes saw. None of which matters. Mostly I’m in it for the concept of “unintended public art.” Maybe “unintentional public art” is a better way to put it?

▰ I’m four episodes into the Terminator Zero cartoon, and so far my favorite moment is when (shortly after the start of episode three) the time-traveling villain opens its mouth wide and … makes the modem sound (and brings to mind Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers)