Wednesday, August 20, 2025

I've wanted to be more proactive about a blog for awhile, and a leaflet now page seems like the soft launch of that.

Original /now: https://sive.rs/now

I found Meadow somehow (are.na perhaps) https://meadow.cafe/now/ which was the true spur for this.

Now

Preparing for the semester; I'm teaching 4 classes this fall and 2 of them have new-ish syllabi. New-ish because one was previously taught by a friend of mine, and both are interpretations of previous classes I've taught. Will add finished links to next week's update.

Went to HOPE this past weekend and it was amazing. Queer, punk, hackers galore. I made some new wearables: watchy, an eink watch, and sd card jewelry. Also added bookbinding to my skill tree and will hopefully go stationary shopping tomorrow.

Rediscovered my love of physical planners.

Media

I am just about to finish Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.

Last night I saw pFarm, a bioengineering mockumentary about isolating the submissive gene, at Spectacle.

This summer has me going through The Atlantic archive, since I can read the print versions for free through some local library to Flipster pipeline. One of my schools has an institution account, but I like reading the full magazine on my tablet.

2025 has very much been a year of Vonnegut (probably because I watched the Hulu documentary in January), so Noah Hawley's piece was 👌:

What are our phones and tablets, our social-media platforms, if not technically sweet? They are so sleek and sophisticated technologically, with their invisible code and awesome computing power, that they have become, as Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, indistinguishable from magic. And this may, in the end, prove to be the biggest danger.

Because so little thought has been given to the Should we? of the Information Age (what will happen if we give human beings an entertainment device they can fit in their pocket, one that connects them instantly to every truth and every lie ever conceived?), we have, as a society, been caught unprepared. If the atomic bomb, riveted from steel plates and visible wires, was irrefutable proof of the power of science, how is it possible that even more sophisticated modern devices have decreased our faith in science and given rise to the wholesale rejection of expertise?

Research

Different blogging tools that I am tracking in are.na.

Getting back into RSS (maybe this is how I found Meadow), and here are feeds I'm subscribed to.

Making my way through some reading lists:

handmade web library

the internet is fun

Always thinking about the Fediverse, right now looking at Bookwyrm and other instances. I still don't have a Mastodon account though...