Muskrat, muskrat

I’m not quitting Twitter, at least not for the moment. I am, however, in the process of migrating to other platforms and using Twitter basically as a reposting service for content that’s primarily hosted elsewhere. That means, for now, this website and flickr (the latter for photos, obviously). I’m not sold on Mastodon yet, though I did stake out a territory there today (more when that territory is better occupied).

A little about how I use social media, just for context:

  1. As a publishing platform for brief thoughts, links, and photos.
  2. A way to promote updates on the site.
  3. As a reading list for other content I might want to see more of.

That’s pretty much it. I don’t generally “engage” on social media. I don’t get into long discussions and I avoid arguments entirely for the most part. Who has the time or energy for that? Life is way too short.

Interestingly enough, though, this is why Twitter works well for me. It’s easy to post links, photos, etc. when I’m on the road, and it allows me to pretty well curate what I see (or don’t see). It’s no different than handling toxic politics, white supremacists, homophobes and other bullshit every day walking down the street. My feed is pretty much buildings, retail history, a little music, some random Canadian pop culture, and a couple of friends. That’s it. No drama, no pointless arguments with idiots whose minds will never be changed anyway, and a lot of pointers to good content that’s posted somewhere else (and some that’s actually posted just on Twitter). I tune out the moronic conspiracy theories the same way I tune out the moronic “Let’s go Brandon” bumper stickers. They irritate and horrify me, sure, but they’re not the majority of what’s out there. We have to choose our battles and choosing “all of them” is invariably a losing proposition.

I’m the muskrat’s nightmare user.

I swore off Facebook a few years ago mainly because it was such a “walled garden” and because it no longer seemed like a good use of my time or something I enjoyed. I make no promises right now that I will or won’t be exiting Twitter altogether. There are things I like about it, just like there are things I like about the purple state where I live. Leaving either would be, in many ways, like cutting off my nose to spite my face. The muskrat doesn’t care whether I’m here or not. And there need to be people hanging around to balance out the crazy, in virtual environments just like in “real” ones.

I do think the platform will ultimately implode, which is why I’m also using others. Backups are good.

(Cross-posted from the other site.)

Ancient history

I did this over at the other site (you know, the one that actually still gets traffic) and I thought it might be fun to do it here too. This is what the site looked like twenty years ago this month, with all its typos and turn of the century elegance. I don’t think it looks too bad in retrospect.

 

 

Another year closer to the “sell by” date

Another birthday celebration for Rosanna Arquette and Herbert Hoover is complete.

This year I celebrated the big day with schnitzel and beer at the Black Forest Inn in Hamilton, Ontario, as part of my first visit north of the border since the Before Times. It was a nice if uneventful trip. I opted to explore Hamilton and environs because I’ve been wanting to spend more time there and because I still plan to make my big Thanksgiving trip to Toronto in October. I explored, I bought books, I saw good friends along the way, and I even had some actual down time.

I think my “sell by” date will arrive when I no longer have the ability nor the desire to explore. Losing one of the two might even be sufficient.

That doesn’t mean I won’t stick around anyway. After all, look at this site. Its “sell by” date was years ago and yet here it still is…