🐴🕺🏽🔥 new macroblog post: advice from a 47-year-old

🔫🔫🔫 It’s my birthday so I’m shooting my shot in re: finding new work.

🎉🎉☠️ new macroblog post about my upcoming birthday but also death: melancholia

❤️💛💙 new macroblog post about life, love, forgiveness, joy, and other things: if you are reading this

the things we hate in others are just the things we hate in ourselves the things we hate in others are just the things we hate in ourselves the things we hate in others are just the things we hate in ourselves the things we hate in others are just the things we hate in ourselves the things we hate i

😨😱👻 wrote a thing about writer’s block and fear and doubt and you can read it if you want to but you don’t have to okay bye

🔗🔗🔗 I used to write an email newsletter called DMail. I’m thinking about rebooting it. This blog post is similar to what a DMail issue looked and felt like so have at it or whatever: combatdavey.bearblog.dev/links-post-2

I’ve been building a little site over at Bear. It’s still a work in progress (and I still need to map combatdavey dot com to it) but I’d be grateful it if you took a look and read a few things: combatdavey.bearblog.dev

credit: ssangdoong_ on instagram
by way of: uroko on tumblr

Who are your favourite people to follow on Micro.blog?

jump shrimp

Made this for you @jsonbecker :)

Progress isn’t about perfection. Purity culture and holier-than-thou posturing slows progress. I’ve left scenes because leaders spent too much time arguing about whose way was purer and not enough time actually doing anything. Progress happens inch by inch not mile by mile.

I’ve been macroblogging again. My attempt at a weekend recap includes but is not limited to:

— my sluttiness (probably)
— a character named GF20 (but not really)
— my mother’s potential immortality (really)
— a show called Farm Crime (no, really)

You ever get the feeling that you just passed a save point, but in real life?

three minutes thought would suffice to find this out but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time three minutes thought would suffice to find this out but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time three minutes thought would suffice to find this out but thought is irksome and th

I’ve been working on a LinkedIn post for the last half hour but all I really want to write is “your aDaPt Or DiE posts are lame af and I hope someone drops a piano on you.”

noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noi

Do you ever look at your life dispassionately and think “When did I decide to be this person? Why do continue being this person? Could I be different? Could I abandon 50% of what I think defines me?” I get that this is a very YoU cAn JuST Do ThiNGs post. I’m just stuck in a moment.

Had a small but significant experience last night during a simple and unspectacular guided meditation I found on Apple Music. I’m not sure how to talk about it yet, but I’ve posted a few times about signal/noise ratio lately and I think it relates directly to that. More to come. Maybe.

Currently doing a massive rewrite on something I was pleased with last Friday. TL;DR I see the holes and weaknesses now. Frustrated, but undaunted. On y va!

Having to spend any amount of time with J.D. Vance would make me want to die too.

I know I’m turning into an (unpaid) evangelist but if you post to Bsky, Threads, or LinkedIn (or all three), I highly recommend using Micro.blog. It lets me post where I want to without directly interacting with platforms designed to suck time, emotion, and energy.

To add insult to injury, I’m having another “I can’t read the news because all it ever says is that the bad guys always win” day.

Last week I wrote:

“A lot of the time, the hardest part of writing is finding a way in.”

I only just realized I hadn’t been looking for the way in on a new task — I’d been dancing around the edges. In essence, I’d been trying to renovate a house without making a mess. The mess is necessary.

To the 4-10 people who will care: I will be rebooting DMail in the next few months.

I’ve been a bit flighty and distant of late. The combo of a new job (a p/t contract, but still), an old injury (x2), and the general state of the world has numbed me tf out. I need to do better, but I know I’m not the only one in the stuck/numb place. Maybe what I really need is to slow down. 🤔

You get one life. You may as well try.

Every time I read the news I want to scream. Like literally scream.

Who (else) should I be following on Micro.blog? I want some new blood in the timeline.

it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not ab

Reading the Atlantic piece about loneliness and feeling grateful. Without knowing the power of what I was doing, I spent decades building a life that prioritized a very active kind of friendship. I worried that my way was insecure. Pathetic even. In actuality, I was feeding my brain and my soul.

“We’re closing!” (9:02am)
“LOL actually we’re not closing!” (11:49am)

— brands on social today

noise signal noise signal noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise signal noise s

I have started, stopped, and deleted about 20 posts today. The gist of the deletia: I do not know how to function in a world where the bad guys always win and people are increasingly morally bankrupt and intellectually empty.

noise noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise noi

That these guys think asking AI to Ghibli-fy an image is the same thing as being creative and/or making art explains so much about their entire worldview.

My fave part of LinkedIn is when some influencer “realizes” something everyone knows and then posts about it like they’re Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant.

Bruce Eric Kaplan for The New Yorker.

noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise signal noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise sig

I need to torch most if not all of my social accounts. There was a time for those platforms and products, but they’re just no good for me anymore. I just don’t know what the point of anything is anymore, tbh.

It’s not the tools. It’s how people use them, and to what end.

I’m alive. I just haven’t been writing.

Saw the first pick and thought it was weird that Amazon was selling a 4th gen. iPod Shuffle. Clicked through. Realized they weren’t.

I’m at the point of applying for stuff and getting rejected before even getting to the interview stage where I’m like, “Do I just suck now? Were the last 20 years some kind of weird fluke? Were people paying me a bunch of money for no reason?”

I haven’t written an actual blog post (i.e. over 300ch) since joining Micro.blog bc my thoughts and ideas either come as pithy little asides or strap-the-fuck-in longreads. And I only write longreads when I get paid.

The first month on a new medication is either the best month of your life or the worst, huh…

I am wary of AI, but the LinkedIn hacks posting about bEiNg AbLe To DeTeCt AI by the presence of em dashes and Oxford commas all come across like they’re upset they don’t know how to use em dashes and Oxford commas.

wut

Having enough money and power to make the world a better, safer, cleaner, fairer place and choosing not to is a crime against humanity.

Whoever first said or wrote “everything’s a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works” truly cooked.

I wonder what I’m going to do with the money I’m going to save by never flying again.

A lot of NBA players have missed time with hamstring issues this season, and leading up to the trade deadline I wondered if some of them were taking their sweet time coming back bc they were getting traded. I’m stupid. I’m on week four of a pull/strain and I’m only like 25% of the way back. 🏀

A medication that was a revelation a month ago stopped hitting as hard and the drop-off from I am feeling better than I have in my entire life to same old has been brutal. It’s like I got a taste of the good life in first class and then a flight attendant caught me and sent me back to economy.

I’m currently writing a Linkedin “article” about a piece I wrote on Medium in 2013. The gist: nothing much has changed but, also, almost everything has changed. I’m really just trying to impress someone who can hire me, because looking for work these days means constantly auditioning. It’s lame.

My therapist low-key suggested that I stop reading the news and I think she’s right. On the other hand, I don’t want the money I’m paying for the NYT and Apple News+ to go to waste. #sunkcostfallacy #iknowhashtagsdontworkhere

Haven’t blogged in a while. Yes, I’m feeling the winter blahs, but, also, I’m kind of in awe of the people who don’t overthink what they write because while I have a million observations/day, I self-edit, even in the moment. I’m not sure what this means but I bet it’s not great.

Tired: Penguin Random House Wired: random penguin house

Been low-key run down for weeks. Not sick, something more halfway. I’m tired but not exhausted; I’m sore but not aching. I’ve been waiting for a second hit that hasn’t come. It’s a weird liminal space to be in. I watched all the NBA traded deadline drama from bed, though because #priorities.

I always forget how important Discord is to my day-to-day until it goes down.

Thinking of rebooting an old newsletter and I’m wondering if the Micro.blog Premium plan is right for me. If you’ve moved your newsletter to Micro.blog from Mailchimp, Substack, Ghost, etc, can you give me some feedback and/or show me what the finished product looks like?

Another consequence of Luka Doncic getting traded is that the most annoying people on LinkedIn are now going to write 1,000 tHoUgHt LeAdErShiP posts about how no employee is irreplaceable.

You better be watching this, @cheesemaker. Your Blazers have clearly figured something out.

They really don’t make games like Grim Fandango anymore, huh.

If you’re cool with letting AI replace writers in your organization, you can’t complain when AI replaces you. Solidarity in the workplace and class solidarity need to be more obviously entwined.

“i list watches. you’re on a watchlist." goes unbelievably hard (iykyk)

Just came up with an idea for a short story (or maybe something longer?) in the shower. Posting this here, now, so that I have no excuse not to write something right now.

Question for the Micro.blog community: if you had to write a book, what would you write about?

Reposting my 2025 resolutions here. I’m doing okay but I’m doomscrolling too much and the data issues at Shotcreator killed my learn-by-doing video editing project.

⬆️ sleep
⬆️ reading
⬆️ tattoos
⬆️ stretching

⬇️ red meat
⬇️ sugar
⬇️ delivery apps
⬇️ doomscrolling

📚 video editing
📚 python

Finally got around to reading Ed Zitron’s Never Forgive Them, an astounding and searing piece of writing that gets to the heart of how being on the internet is painful, harmful, and anti-user — and why.

Abandoning Twitter? Want to wipe all your tweets on the way out? This script will help you do that.

😐😐😐

These guys love creating features that no one wants/asks for, huh.

Are any of y’all Micro.blog users also Real Sports app users? If so, let me know.

Not jumping into the fray ≠ tacit support for bigotry. Just wanted to put that out there.

I joined Micro.blog to get away from the… temperature that’s characterized the discourse here the last few days (i.e. not the discourse itself). Reasonable people can disagree, and disagreement can lead to progress. But is that what is happening here?

The personal is the political. What we do, say, eat, drink, read, watch, wear, buy; who we love, hate, accept, reject, associate with, fuck; where we live and work; if and what we drive — can and will be viewed through a political lens by others. It’s unfair and reductive, but it’s where we are.

I’ve been dealing with an injury — adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulder) — and this is a huge, huge deal.

Pretty spicy day on Micro.blog so far, eh?

It was a Nazi salute and he did it twice because he knows nothing can or will happen to him.

I will forget my mother’s name before I forget about Jaboukie’s all-timer on MLK day five years ago.

Conversation from my 🏀 Discord:

Him: Too bad the US tanking won’t get us a top draft pick.

Me: I mean, it will. But Russia owns your picks for a few years.

Does anyone I know in Toronto have a regular poker game I could join?

In one of my group chats we’re discussing how our youngest (26) member and his cohort didn’t really get to be weird, messy, underemployed/broke 20-something dirtbags having wild mis/adventures in the big city while figuring out who they were.

Q: Was that a thing for you? Did you do this?

Everything feted as original in advertising has been done before and that’s okay. Ads don’t need to reinvent the game to be good or effective. There are only a handful of story archetypes and yet we still watch and read. Knowing the tropes of dystopian sci-fi doesn’t make me not want to watch Silo.

What are the dumbest domains you own?

My LinkedIn feed has become one long Boardy ad.

Progresso Soup Drops deliver the classic, hearty flavor of Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup in a format that will definitely SOUPrise fans — it’s a convenient hard candy drop — reminding you of the comfort you can find in a bowl of Progresso Soup.

I need help reacting to something.

I joined micro.blog in December and this week I started posting a lot, like I did back in the day (real heads know). And the more I posted, the more I wanted to post. This felt odd; I retired from posting when social got really awful. Today, the penny dropped. I want to actually write again.

Somehow, losing Bob Uecker and David Lynch on the same day makes thematic sense. Both were true originals who coloured outside the lines and not only were they not punished for it, they were celebrated. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure it is applicable to our terrifying present.

RIP David Lynch. 🍿

Just found out I didn’t get a job I applied to after receiving an internal referral. I didn’t even get an interview — and I have 20 years of experience. It’s rough out there. If you’re in the same boat, my heart goes out to you. Keep your head up, keep hydrated, and keep going.

Amidst the AI hype, I hear very little talk about how AI can/will be used to liberate humans from work. The convo is always about what workers/industries are fucked. OK, so, thousands will get replaced/displaced, and… then what? So many smart, hardworking people are scared rn — for good reason.

I should probably figure out how to add blogs to the blogroll plugin I have for this micro.blog theme.

Good posters write perfect little jokes that become part of the fabric of cultural reality (online and offline) while remaining niche enough to be a shibboleth for and between the right people. It’s actually pretty magical when you think about it.

Reading the Atlantic piece about loneliness and feeling grateful. Without knowing the power of what I was doing, I spent decades building a life that prioritized a very active kind of friendship. I worried that my way was insecure. Pathetic even. In actuality, I was feeding my brain and my soul.

One day we’ll all look back and realize how bad the focus on SEO copywriting was for the web, for search, for language, and for writers. And on that day I’ll smile (while doing my job as a blood bag in our Mad Max future).

I stopped posting on Twitter forever ago but can’t seem to delete the app or my 50,000+ tweets bc of all the bangers I’ve liked/RTed over the years. I basically only it for dynasty basketball research reasons, but, while there, I check the temperature of the zeitgeist. (Spoiler: it’s bad.)

Another day, another few hundred people on the social internet reposting the ol’ shoegaze/Fugazi bit as their own.

A relatively minor gripe considering everything else that’s going on but when did we decide as a culture that literacy didn’t matter?

The singer whose most famous track is about a cheater singing at the Trump inauguration is wayyy too on the nose. The writers are getting lazy. This show is probably about to get canceled if they’re doing stuff like this.

Make time to hang out with your friends IRL. And if that isn’t an option, use the super computer in your pocket (the terror rectangle that brings the sadness) to call, video call, voice message, text, email, IM, or DM. You can also make new friends! You’re allowed! It’s not illegal (yet)!

Pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed that Mark Carney interview on TDS.

“We should trade (player/players who are bad and/or overpaid and/or hurt + some 2nds) to (rebuilding team with promising young talent) for (all their promising young talent). It’s so obvious!” — fans of good-but-not-great NBA 🏀 teams on social media

There exists no chance he will read it, but to the guy in the fancy cheese store in Etobicoke, Ontario whom I chatted with before the season: you were right about Bo Nix and I was wrong. 🏈

People with power/money stoke divisions between people with less/none to accrue more power/money. We’ve always known this. But why? Why do people with so much need more? It’s a sickness. They watch people struggle and suffer and fight and die and they laugh and count their gains. And they enjoy it.

Yesterday a pal and I discussed how the decrease in civic engagement and/or people generally doing things w/ other people IRL (including w/ strangers!) has led to lowered empathy across society. The disparagement and devaluation of the humanities is also a huge contributing factor. It’s dispiriting.

Being angry is the worst. I am angry right now and I hate it. It feels like poisonous syrup is coating my internal organs. It tastes like metal in my mouth. I will never understand people who like this feeling and court it. I’d pay thousands of dollars I barely have to not feel this way rn.

I have a friend with a small city worth of followers. I used to needle them about how they never seemed to get political on social. I thought they had a responsibility. These days they are very political on social, and I constantly worry some crazy man is going to show up at their house with a gun.

Apologies for the Toronto-specific post, but when you’re riding the subway eastbound between Keele and Dundas West, in the winter, during the late morning/early afternoon, the warmth of the sun on your face during those few seconds the subway is outside not in a tunnel is… quite something.

The older I get the more I notice when people in everyday life are exceedingly polite and pleasant without being saccharine or sounding fake. Just now, with her cheerful “take care” to the reception desk and then the pharmacist, this woman made a crowded doctor’s office 25% brighter.

Just went ham in a “tell us about yourself” section for a job, but this is what happens when you ask an open-ended question with no character/word limit.

Never seen someone not look at something harder than Bill Simmons is not looking at Nikki Bella here. (Twitter)

For the Dry January folks quietly thinking about quitting booze for good: I quit drinking in July 2020 after a lifetime of what I thought was normal use but what was actually dependency. The decision changed my life, and probably saved it. I’m down to talk if you have questions.

TIL the menswear guy was born in Canada.

The AI apocalypse is here and it’s far stupider and more depressing than we were promised. Instead of being hunted down by a gleaming metal skeleton in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we are surrounded by zombies endlessly repeating our own posts back to us.

Meta’s AI profiles are trash. (Gizmodo)

resolutions.txt

⬆️ sleep ⬆️ reading ⬆️ tattoos
⬆️ stretching

⬇️ red meat ⬇️ sugar ⬇️ delivery apps ⬇️ doomscrolling

📚 video editing 📚 python

I really like NYE as a middle-aged guy who doesn’t drink (anymore) because functionally it’s just a Friday.

Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media.

Still not over Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2024.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to micro.blog (and all the micro.bloggers. Very happy to be here. 🫶🏽🎄

Just found out a friend died. He was a good guy. Kind. Welcoming. We were part of an extended universe that revolved around a Montreal alt-weekly and a Montreal dive bar. Naturally, I looked at old photos tonight. Lots of stories in those photos. Lots of love, drama, and life.

Rest well, bud.

Noticing a distinct lack of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” discourse this December so maybe 2024 wasn’t entirely bad.

If you’re like me, when you get near the end of a series you are really enjoying, you delay and delay and delay and stretch those last few episodes out over a few months. If you’re not like me, and don’t do this, what’s it like having a brain that works properly? 📺

As a new user, I was instinctively discomfited by micro.blog’s whole feel because it’s not what I’m used to — i.e. big blogging/social media platforms. And then the penny dropped. NO. IT DOESN’T. THIS IS WHY YOU ARE HERE. THIS IS WHY YOU LIKE IT.

I finally joined micro.blog! Huzzah!

As it turns out, joining micro.blog is the easy part. Figuring out what I want to blog about, and why, and at what intervals, and to what end — that’s the other part.