a stream

This site now aims to be the contemporary equivalent of enigmatic handmade publications hoarded in a drawer.

I’m curious how Mormons¹ who play Animal Crossing: New Horizons are responding to the new café.

Your art is more important than your audience.

– so says my A.I. / algorithmically generated horoscope today, the notification popping up while I was mid-contemplating just how to curate collections and microthoughts such as these on this website, and whether to continue to do it just for myself or reconnect somehow with a social media network for the possible benefit or irritation of unknown others.

Yay holidays! Yay traditions! Yay America! Yay humans! We’re the best! We’re smarter than turkeys!

I Made the World’s Blandest Facebook Profile, Just to See What Happens

by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic

It seems like not many people are talking about this aspect of why Facebook is so horrible because it is also horrible in so many other ways. This is actually one of the main reasons I finally deleted my Facebook account, though.

I didn’t have a ton of “friends” (230ish, which I’m sure is below average for someone on Facebook for over a decade) and most of them didn’t share much that was real (or if they did, the algorithm didn’t see fit to share it with me), so my feed was filled with so much inanity and corporate stuff, and I still just scrolled through it compulsively, hoping something interesting would happen.

Writing the Great American Email

(Published this new ‘longer thing’ in the Features / Longer Things area of this website.)

The last rays of the sun transfigured the water tower, the freeway overpasses, and the tops of the pins on the bowling alley sign, as I sat at my computer in an emptied office. I hadn’t noticed the sky darkening as I tapped away on my keyboard, compulsively shift-tabbing the cursor, re-reading, revising, substituting words, deleting phrases, and reorganizing paragraphs.

Teen Librarians are not Pornographers and Other Things You Should Know About the People Who Have Dedicated Their Lives to Serving Youth in Your Community

by Karen Jensen of Teen Librian Toolbox

Loved this blog post that I happened upon today – being on School Library Journal’s network she’s kind of preaching to the choir, so I don’t know if this will convince or speak to anyone outside of libraries, but it’s honest and heartfelt and made me personally feel just a little bit better about my life.

I wrote and had published on Granite Media a review of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Might as well reshare it here for a record.