— पाँच हजार चार सौ तैंतालीस —
So this week
Elon Musk is rebranding Twitter as 'X', maybe the biggest boneheaded move he's made in a long line of boneheaded moves since he bought the company. Many people jumped ship as soon as he took over, and I remained, with some ambivalence considering how awful a person he is and what he's already done to degrade the platform. I've been on Twitter for a solid 15 years and have loved it most of that time. But, if it's not even actually Twitter anymore, what is there left to love? Finally, this morning, I just closed the default tabs I have long left open to Twitter forever on my work computer.
There has been a string of new platforms popping up as either intended or perceived replacements for Twitter. I was on Mastadon for the past few months, cross-posting everything there. I find the site to be a bit too buggy, and I finally abandoned it when Meta released Threads
to great fanfare earlier this month, as an extension of Instagram.
I immediately abandoned Mastadon as soon as Threads came on the scene, the Facebook connection (and thus potential social media monopoly) notwithstanding. I kind of like Threads, but am eagerly waiting for critical upgrades, to such simple things as a usable desktop web application (right now it can only be used in mobile apps) or, even more important, the ability to view a timeline of only people you follow. Why that is not there is baffling to me, and being beholden to only algorithmic feeds is annoying as shit.
I've long been hearing good—or potentially good—things about Blue Sky Social, but for months now that has been invite-only, and I know no one who can send me an invite. Once that is fully public, if I like its user interface enough, I may abandon Threads for it. I just want a microblogging site that works as well, and as as accessible, as Twitter has been for a decade and a half. Right now there is none. But, this "X" bullshit is too much even for me, and I can't swallow Elon Musk's bullshit anymore.
That said, the final complicating factor to this is Shobhit's Seattle City Council campaign, for which he needs all the socials, rebranded or not. The app itself won't get deleted from my mobile devices until the campaign is over. But, it is indeed, finally, on the outs even for me. It was Twitter that I liked, not Elon Musk's Wasteland, which is now actually designed to
boost hateful content. It's never been clearer that it's time to abandon ship.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तैंतालीस —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तैंतालीस —
In other news, there's not much else to report on today: I rode my bike home from work yesterday, and had a rare, uneventful evening at home with no plans. I had leftovers for dinner; I made chai for Shobhit and me; we watched three episodes of
Night Court season six on Prime Video. That got paused for twenty minutes for a call from Gabriel, to talk about
Barbenheimer and the four-hour psych eval for a pretty notable state job he's applying for, which occurred for four straight hours this morning. I'll be eager to hear how that went, once it's over and presumably he's relieved it's over. It was giving him a lot of anxiety.
Once I'd had enough of
Night Court, I retired to the bedroom to watch one and a third comedy specials: John Mulaney and Amy Schumer. Both on Netflix, which I finally re-upped my subscription to, as there's now a backlog of things I want to watch there. My Apple TV subscription is now set to expire August 2, which should only barely give us enough time to watch the final two episodes of
Hijack.
After the downtime of last night, things pick up again for the week: I'm seeing
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One with Alexia tonight, my second viewing but I promised I'd see it again so she could see it; she was traveling so was unable to go until now. Tomorrow as Action Movie Night at the Braeburn. Thursday is Book Club with coworkers.
This weekend is the last weekend of the primary election campaign, with election day being on Tuesday next week, a week from today—and, the day I fly to the Twin Cities. I've basically cleared my schedule in case Shobhit needs me, if even only for moral support. Right now I know of one possibility for Friday night but that's supper iffy, and otherwise what I'll be doing all weekend is totally up in the air. At some point I suppose I'll start packing.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तैंतालीस —
[posted 12:27 pm]
