This for now is an attempt at a digital garden, where ideas are losely connected by tags to give an overall picture of interests.
Main tags include
Rat Blurb- These are just really long personal ramblings.
Seedlings- Beggining ideas that need to grow
Plants- These are longer and have more substance but are still growing
Evergreen- These are done growing, and I have nothing much else to add
@overthinkingrat
Rat Blog Attempt
I am trying a blogging platform but also wanted to add it to the digital garden. I am still feeling it out. aaaaaaa
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I have never, experienced blogs? Like what are they, they just seems like a long post. Is that what that is? Is that why tumblr is known as a microblog? Perhaps a blog is what you make of it cue whimsical breeze. Well whatever I can read what other people do and kind of form an opinion off that.
Let's see what to talk about...hmm oh!
I had a painting class yesterday so I was in a chair just painting the to go coffee cup I had brought in, since well I had nothing else to inspire me. Anyways, I had headphones on and usually I don't actually have music on since they have a radio playing, but I guess I was bored and turned on the following song.
I started swaying a little but eventually I was like "yo, I am enjoying myself why should I restrain myself" and so I started doing what I normally do and move my body as I painted. The next song came on and this had lyrics so I started singing, not very loudly but enough to satiate the internal desire to let out whatever emotion was within me.
Even at work as I am typing this, because lord knows I have little time elsewhere. I have a song that I was just tapping my foot too but then decided to just sway and dance a little as I moved around.
the song in question
to move or not to move, I don't know I find it silly to restrain myself to dance when I want to dance. Even if I have little to now rhythm!
I have been enjoying this podcast for many reasons, I like how they talk about books and introduce me to some I have never heard of.
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As with any explanation of mine it begins with a question and a weird rabbit hole.
So I cohost a book club and in one such occasion we were talking about the patriarchy and all that jazz and I realize. There are no men in our book club, there was one, but he was no longer there. So, I thought to myself, ok what books would pull men potentially. My goal was not really to reach out to men, but I wanted to include books that maybe were more in the scope of males. I say this because most books I see or have review channels on are mostly female presenting in some way shape or form so I thought. "is there books that are like top 10 reads of the summer" type deal. THUS I ADDED MY QUESTION TO YOUTUBE and I found a podcast talking about it. I don't remember the name but I recall seeing the host elsewhere which is when I remembered he made the google doc of "books around the world" in which he puts in top rated books based on his research and audience suggestion from, well, around the world.
Anyways, the video was more about "do men read less" they concluded no they don't, it was just hard to find people in their environment because other male hobbies are more prevalent and only after they get to know each other does the topic of reading as a hobby come up. The other speaker then started talking about a book he was reading and it was 2666. "oh!" I thought to myself "A book I never heard off before maybe this is the 'male book' I was searching for" Is it a male book, no I mean I am a rat and I enjoyed the book, but there was not a lot of videos talking about this book, there are 4 youtubers that talked about this and one of them was this podcast and so I saw the length said to myself "seems like a good time" and strapped down to listen to two dudes talk about books, and found I was enjoying myself quite a lot. I peaked around to other books they talked about and most were books I have not heard off, but are apparently very famous. Are they men books, eh Idk verdict is still out but it is a new group of “top reads” I have not heard off before so I was very happy to add some variety in my TBR.
At first I was not sure about this book, but I would recommend maybe reading papers about it or listening to videos of each part to really make you appreciate this book. I am very much hooked after part 1
I finished Part 1 About the critics and I knew I was missing something, I explained the basic events to my partner and they responded "It sounds dumb" and I responded that yes it does sound dumb but I know that I am missing context because there is no way that this is just the surface events, I was just failing to put it together
The Part About the Critics
So a quick summary of part one, there are four main characters we follow, three men a single woman. The men are from France, Spain, and Italy and the women is from London and all of them are obsessed with this fictional German author and it becomes the glue that kind of holds them together. The French and Spanish guy begin a romantic relationship with the woman from London, and she makes them aware of each other. They have this whole who will she pick as they try and find more information about this German author. Eventually they meet someone who tells them they know someone who saw them recently in Mexico, so they go and “kind of” try and look for him, well everyone except the Italian. They try very poorly, eventually the woman goes back and tells the other two she actually was in love with the Italian the whole time. The end. There is more but that is the gist of it.
This part of book tackles many topics such as the “civilized” world of Europe and their view of countries like Mexico. The European professors have little regard for the academics in other countries of less renown. They are critical or Amalfitano who by the way is from Spain originally but since he now lives in Mexico that somehow marks his as beneath them. He gives the following long speech and it ends with one of the critics simply not able to understand nor wanting to understand what he is saying
"It's an old story, the relationship of Mexican intellectuals with power. I'm not saying they're all the same. There are some notable exceptions. Nor am I saying that those who surrender do so in bad faith. Or even that they surrender completely. You could say it's just a job. But they're working for the state. In Europe, intellectuals work for publishing houses or for the papers or their wives support them or their parents are well-off and give them a monthly allowance or they're laborers or criminals and they make an honest living from their jobs. In Mexico, and this might be true across Latin America, except in Argentina, intellectuals work for the state. It was like that under the PRI and it'll be the same under the PAN. The intellectual himself may be a passionate defender of the state or a critic of the state. The state doesn't care. The state feeds him and watches over him in silence. And it puts this giant cohort of essentially useless writers to use. How? It exorcises demons, it alters the national climate or at least tries to sway it. It adds layers of lime to a pit that may or may not exist, no one knows for sure. Not that it's always this way, of course. An intellectual can work at the university, or better, go to work for an American university, where the literature departments are just as bad as in Mexico, but that doesn't mean, they won't get a late-night call from someone speaking in the name of the state, someone who offers them a better job, better pay, something the intellectual think he deserves, and intellectuals always think they deserve better. This mechanism somehow crops the ears off Mexican writers. It drives them insane. Some, for example, will set out to translate Japanese poetry without knowing Japanese and others just spend their time drinking. Take Almendro - as far as I know he does both. Literature in Mexico is like a nursery school, a kindergarten, a playground, a kiddie club, if you follow me. The weather is good, it's sunny, you can go out and sit in the park and open a book by Valéry, possibly the writer most read by Mexican writers, and then you go over to a friend's house and talk. And yet your shadow isn't following you anymore. At some point your shadow has quietly slipped away. You pretend you don't notice, but you have, you're missing your fucking shadow, though there are plenty of ways to explain it, the angle of the sun, the degree of oblivion induced by the sun beating down on hatless heads, the quantity of alcohol ingested, the movement of something like subterranean tanks of pain, the fear of more contingent things, a disease that begins to become more apparent, wounded vanity, the desire for just once in your life to be on time. But the point is, your shadow is lost and you, momentarily, forget it. And so you arrive on a kind of stage, without your shadow, and you start to translate reality or reinterpret it or sing it. The stage is really a proscenium and upstage there's an enormous tube, something like a mine shaft or the gigantic opening of a mine. Let's call it a cave. But a mine works, too. Onomatopoeic noises, syllables of rage or of seduction or of seductive rage or maybe just murmurs and whispers and moans. The point is, no one really sees, the mouth of the mine. Stage machinery, the play of lights and shadows, a trick of time, hides the real shape of the opening from the gaze of the audience. In fact, only the spectators who are closest to the stage, right up against the orchestra pit, can see the shape of something behind the dense veil of camouflage, not the real shape, but at any rate it's the shape of something. The other spectators can't see anything beyond the proscenium, and it's fair to say they'd rather not. Meanwhile, the shadowless intellectuals are always facing the audience, so unless they have eyes in the backs of their heads, they can't see anything. They only hear the sounds that come from deep in the mine. And they translate or reinterpret or re-create them. Their work, it goes without saying, is of a very low standard. They employ rhetoric where they sense an earthquake, they try to be eloquent where they sense a fury unleashed, they strive to maintain the discipline of meter where there's only a deafening and hopeless silence. They say cheep cheep, bowwow, meow meow, because they're incapable of imagining an animal of colossal proportions, or the absence of such an animal. Meanwhile, the stage on which they work is very pretty, very well designed, very charming, but it grows smaller and smaller with the passage of time. The shrinking of the stage doesn't spoil it in any way. It simply gets smaller and smaller and the hall gets smaller too, and naturally there are fewer and fewer people watching. Next to this stage there are others, of course. New stages that have sprung up over time. There's the painting stage, which is enormous, and the audience is tiny, though all elegant for lack of a better word. There's the film stage and the television stage. Here the capacity is huge, the hall is always full, and year after year the proscenium grows by leaps and bounds. Sometimes the performers from the stage where intellectuals give their talks are invited to perform on the television stage. On this stage the opening of the mine is the same, the perspective slightly altered, although maybe the camouflage is denser and, paradoxically, bespeaks a mysterious sense of humor, but it still sinks. The humorous camouflage, naturally, lends itself to many interpretations, which are finally reduced to two for the public's convenience or for the convenience of the public's collective eye. Sometimes intellectuals take up permanent residence on the television proscenium. The roars keep coming from the opening of the mine and the intellectuals keep misinterpreting them. In fact, they, in theory the masters of language, can't even enrich it themselves. Their best words are borrowings that they hear spoken by the spectators in the front row. These spectators are called flagellants. They're sick, and from time to time they invent hideous words and there's a spike in their mortality rate. When the workday ends the theaters are closed and they cover the openings of the mines with big sheets of steel. The intellectuals retire for the night. The moon is fat and the night air is so pure it seems edible. Songs can be heard in some bars, the notes reaching the street. Sometimes an intellectual wanders off course and goes into one of these places and drinks mezcal. Then he thinks what would happen if one day he. But no. He doesn't think anything. He just drinks an sings. Sometimes he thinks he sees a legendary German writer. But all he's really seen is a shadow, sometimes all he's seen is his own shadow, which comes home every night so that the intellectual won't burst or hang himself from the lintel. But he swears he's seen a German writer and his own happiness, his sense of order, his bustle, his spirit of revelry rest on that conviction. The next morning it's nice out. The sun shoots sparks but doesn't burn. A person can go out reasonably relaxed, with his shadow on his heels, and stop in a park and read a few pages of Valéry. And so on until the end."
"I don't understand a word you've said," said Norton.
"Really I've just been talking nonsense," said Amalfitano
At first, I thought that the shadow was passion but instead it could be ignorance, like in Plato’s cave. I feel Bolano is criticizing two things in this novel. One is the overconsumption of one’s passion for a specific niche, or diving too deeply into academics and secondly our ability to understand the world around us. The first part of this giant monologue I see as a mockery of the academic, someone who simply just spends their days studying what is they want as they also do nothing at the same time. This can also be seen in the critiques who talk and think way too much that they do nothing at all. This can be seen in how they hand their relationship among this love triangle and then later when they over analyze a phrase said in passing. These academics lose their shadow (ignorance) and begin to speak about the knowledge they have gained, and gaze into the deep dark void, but eventually some go mad by what they see and onlly does the return of that shadow, that ignorance is it that these academics can stay sane. I really like this paragraph and thinking of it in this way allows me to appreciate it even more.
The second thing is how that seeking of knowledge and how it does not really “do” anything. The later part of this monologue explains the failure of the academic to translate the dark parts of the cave, the unknown whispers that is the human condition and why things such as serial femicides have to exist in the first place. You may find an explanation, perhaps not a good one, but then what. The cave will still be there, you may have translated, granted poorly parts of it, but how does that change the situation? I think these were the question Bolano was probing the reader to ask.
This novel in itself is that same what he seems to feel as a fruitless translation of human suffering. For example, I already talked about the inertness of the professors, but eventually this talking and talking and talking builds up between the two men, they are frustrated and angry and imagine harm would come to the other so that they would come out as the victor. Eventually that rage is unleashed once they were able to find a target for their aggression on a Pakistani Taxi driver. This can serve as a reflection for the murders in San Teresa where the powerful can not really do harm upon each other, so instead they take it out on someone else.
This is not the only conversation revolving around violence, there is also the paradox of how some violence is seen as artful while other forms of violence are barbaric and uncivilized. Why is that chopping off your hand and putting it as an art piece beautiful, but someone beating up another is sees as not? This paradox can also revolve around the amount of attention this violence gets, the artist is praised, the taxi driver they beat up is barely a whisper. There is one more thing I found interesting about the violence enacted on the taxi driver and that is when Liz Norton screams at the two men to stop hurting the Pakistani as he will hate the British more. One, it was not the life of this man that was important but the reputation of where she was from. Second, the two men who are not British do not care if this man has a negative viewpoint because it not *their* country. If we move that view macroscopically, how much violence is enacted on someone else’s borders with little regard because they are simply “not from there” or the fact that morality can be tied up to one’s place of birth, to preserve its reputation. Many questions like these come from this book.
The Part About Amalfitano
Amalfitano is the Chilean professor that guided the three critics in the last book. A very short book, this book revolves about the downfall of Amalfitano into madness because well he does go a little loopy talking to voices and all
We start off with his wife’s madness as he goes off back to Europe in search of a professor that she may or may not have had relationships with, it is implied that she is making it up since the poet is rumored to be gay. The story does not indicate weather she was insane before the marriage or after. My assumption, based on crux of the novel, that being Santa Teresa is that the place was the cause of the madness, because as we see later in the novel Amalfitano becomes subjected to it as well. So for Lola it may have been her way to escape, she comes back once more to inform him of her AIDS and hang out with their daughter one final time.
Then there is the geometry book that Amalfitano begins to obsess over and we saw a glimpse of this book in Part 1, but here we get the story behind the book. He had books brought from Barcelona and he becomes fixated on the idea that he does not remember packing it. He recalls a strange story about someone leaving the book out on a clothesline and see how the it handles the elements. In a way this represent him and how he a professor, nor a geometry granted, but an intellectual is just thrust upon the elements of Santa Teresa with nothing to do but to be battered. He was placed here with no reason and he himself can do nothing about his situation. Well, he could, but seems to choose not too; however, that “choice” seems to be affected by the voice he begins to hear later in the novel.
What I mean by not doing anything is, he worries about his teenage daughter Rosa going off on her own, always late at night, but he simply lets it happens and instead begins to obsess with menial things like the book, like in a way the book will give him answers as his nerves fray. He listens to the radio for talks about the crimes in Saint Teresa but then turns it off and again goes to the book.
This is around when the voice begins to talk to him, it claims to be a male figure in his life, first his grandfather and then his father. As I see the voice could be the voice of Santa Teresa and perhaps what caused his wife Lola to also go insane, but instead of becoming obsessed with a poet this voice is telling him to relax. To be inert, because all other emotions have betrayed him. We see this as a very common trait for Amalfitano as he lets his wife just go, he let’s his daughter just go, he is the book on the clothesline where things happen to it, it does not happen to the world. The voice perpetuates this inertness with quotes like
“and you’ve also thought about your daughter. And about the murders committed daily in this city…But you haven’t thought seriously about whether your hand is really a hand.”
This diverges his thoughts and he begins to spiral in different investigations, he becomes fixated on a small book of the Chilean history and that becomes the focus at the end of this book, he stuck his head into a whole in order to tune out everything around him
The Part About Fate
Fate
If you will hear every reviewer, say about this part of the novel is that Fate is a guy and that is not even his real name, it is the name he uses for his newspaper. I am taking this little detail at face value and going with the idea that the author named his character Fate in order to demonstrate that Fate is not an untouchable force, it is every being that makes a choice. There are outside circumstances that bring Fate to his position in Santa Teresa but he also affects the situation he finds himself in. By choosing to go with Guadalupe she is able to come face to face with the suspected killer, even if we do not see what occurs from that and of course the big event, is the saving of Rosa. Taking the name fate and placing it on an individual works to mend the concept with a concrete object. It is Fate that saves Rosa, it is Fate that her dad gives her daughter too to potentially save.
There was a part in the novel in which Fate realizes that once he leaves U.S. soil he begins to call himself American and no longer African American. In a strange way you become one with your country outside of it. For example, I do not think many people would call themselves a certain subclass of American when they go overseas. They are American, and all that it entails. Which I found interesting to think about.
On his way to Santa Teresa, we hear a detective talk about the murders in a very casual and dismissive way, saying that no one cares about the femicides because they were outcasts of society. The parallel to this line of thinking is the book about slave trade that Fate was recommended in which the description of slave trading was treated with muted callousness. They were outcasts, so therefore their suffering even if in the thousands was not important. I think of this in light of current events, where the assassination of one individual is led with coverage and half masts and commentary from political officials, but the vast lives lost previous to that one killing, and the lives that continue to be lost in the future is met with silence. I will go further on about this in the part about the killings but it is interesting to see it set up now.
Next think that was brought to my attention is Fate being sick the entire trip after his mother passed away. The entire time there are flashes of his mother's memory that appear to him. I think this reflects how the people in Santa Teresa do not have time to mourn their dead, and perhaps even people outside of it. People die and we continue on, we do mundane things as though nothing major has passed. Perhaps his body was in grief but dissociation led to him separating that grief in order to continue his work. I point to the incident of the other reporter to further my point. At the begging in Fate is assigned this story because the other reported died. The sentence is brief and Fate is excited for this opportunity.
whiteness in mexico
Podcast I found interesting and funny. There are some points I see that they did not or interpreted differently, but that is what is really cool about books. Anyways I enjoyed them well enough to listen to other episodes
The Part About the Murders
This one was... and interesting read there are two things that stuck out to me
One was the just the how inconsequential the women are in this town. They get raped, beaten, killed obviously and, it's just. Well part of the reality.
I want to summarize this part in a coherent manner but I am not sure I can, ugh. Ok let me try. So there is a part here where the police officers are eating at a restaurant and one of the author's, I guess to buddy up to his fellow begins to make jokes. Well those jokes are about women, with the punchlines being violent. This goes on for an uncomfortable amount of time, and the text notes that there are some officers that laugh, and some that do not, but they also remain quiet. Kinda of a quiet acceptance, I feel that is how most people tend to be, they may not like what they hear from their fellow, but because they are in community they fail to say anything about it. I mean I do it and I am sure everyone else has that one situation where they just don't say anything because of whatever reason exists. Is that a fault, yes. Is that also just normal, yes. I don't have an answer here, but internally I am angry at myself so maybe it starts from there. There was a quote that resounded with me "How much of god's truth are found in jokes" in reference to the masogonist jokes that I was just subjected too. This was not a "well it is as god willed it" but more like, how much of our beliefs are in these jokes that we can still find them funny? I hope I am making sence, like perhaps when jokes are no longer laughed at, then that mean it is no longer a truth, no longer a real issue.
The big part that really stuck out to me is the way this chapter was organized. It had listings of women that were murdered in a very clinical sence, a simple police report, a very matter of fact paragraph. These paragraphs would go on and on and on, but sometimes there would be a story sprikled in to break the monotony. that monotony is what shook me. The fact that I found these killings boring to where I was excited to hear about the sidestories. I did not actaully yawn or anything like that, but my attention did wayne and was kept strung along with these characters stories. This is kind of how I feel we treat the many atrocities we are made aware of today. The genocide of gaza, the encroachment in venezuela, the ice kidnappings. Omg, school shootings has reached this state. It use to make headlines all the time, now it happens so frequently they may not even get airetime on national tv. These violent killings and they are considered "old news". Like they are now the "reality" they are now JOKES they are now truth. This part really took me down a dark mental hole. It was not even the murders it was just how I see this in real life and how it just IS. Oh another war? ha I still have to get up to pay my bills. Like how crazy is that sentence really. but it is a joke such as this world sometimes I feel. This is why I have a positive vibes journal yall.
I have heard about this movie and how good the second one was, I am halway through the movie as of writting this and man, I am entertained and having a good time.
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First of all I did not know that the kid was like three years old. Very funny to me. I am however a very big fan of fighting against your fate so this tickles my fancy quite a bit.
Honestly I thought the designs of the character would be so distracting but I have had no real problem with that as of the course of the movie
If this dad dies at the end, I will cry
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, i freaking knew it dude, I am crying at the club yall
Sound track, a freaking banger dude, huge huge fan of the suona
What a baller move, this kid is great
CRYING I DON'T CARE IF ITS YOUR BIRTHDAY
That was great and the second is suppose to be better? Oh boy I can not wait.
I do not remeber how I stumbled upon this video, but I remeber I very liked the message it contained and it very much reflected how I felt about the world, and still do at the time. Oh I remember,
it was a youtube whole about nihilism because as this video states "it begins with nihilism" and how everyone around us seems to be going down that path. So perhaps maybe some others will be walking a similar path as me here.
The summary of this very short video is the general school of thought by some Albert Camus about Absuridty in the fact that we are put on this planet and part of us craves a purpose but most likely you will never be "given" one and you will have died without that "purpose" fulfilled. It is a paradox and the idea of absurdism is to take these paradoxes of life, like are we here for a reason, how was the world created and live fully and happily in the face of the abyss that is unknowing.
Nihilism is looking at the samee abyss and giving in, existentialism is not thinking the abyss exists and absurdism is seeing the abyss and having a picnic with your friends as you laugh next to it.
The psalm of the wild being - from what little I know has a character that may represent all of these schools of thought, It is on my list and will add to this post once I read it.
Everything everywhere all at once is a movie that actually talks about nihilism "The nothing beagel" and mom's journey into absurdism...now I want to watch that movie again.
"Lawn Culture Needs to Die" I 100% percent agree, and I have a lawn! I hate it so much. I am not the one maintaining it because I find it so stupid to cut away nature and then water it to grow back again, only to cut once more. Like literally what are we doing here yall. It is a piece of land that we attempt to exert control over and for what, like we labor on it for what exactly? The really hard core lawn type don't even want people on said lawn so it's not like it is for others. It just keep feels like a weird power trip yall need to get over XD.
Like if you want a piece of land flat for recreational activities I get it, but to have a whole section of yard for that reason? no I don't believe you, in what world would you need that much space. They don't serve well for habitat because we destroy every so week. We pick up the grass clippings and THROW THEM AWAY in PLASTIC BAGS like we don't have a trash landfill problem.
Just thinking about how much water we just piss out onto laws makes my blood boil. Going down to street to see sprinklers go off when we are in a state were just last year we were in a water crisis that was going to affect our farmers. God the bigger the house the bigger the lawn, like can't you just have a big house, why do you need a big plot of land that you will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH and just take space away from the creatures and life forms that actually need it. You are the equivalent of a truck taking up like 6 parking spaces. who is you? just you know *waves off offhandedly.
I want to try and make this more like report like so I went to search for sources and other inspiration, but as I was looking I saw a quick blurb about how something or other was going to stop the irrigation of some California laws, like yes the yard will die but may the fact of actuall climate change may hit some people in the face when they can not manufacture evergreen lush green grass.
There are alternatives to just grass you can promote local flora, and if you live in the hell pit of Arizona, there’s the rock gardens with cactus and other succulents that can look appealing!!, it does not all have to be grass
Not only would it be environmentally friendly, but just think of how much time you will be free from weekly chores. Even if you don't gain back time because maybe you are tending a garden, or keeping up other sorts of vegetation, you would be able to see the benefits of your labor, maybe more birds and bees and other beings will talk about your awesome little plot of land. I don't know just not a grass yard yall
"When are we going to realize that everything plays a role
This quote, ugh just like yes for whatever belief there is like a "plan" for this earth and we can just see how everything works together, that is not just US HUMANS who live here and can do just literally fuck all with the land we have, we need to take care of it/ or take care of it less in this case. I don't know if there’s like an ingrained need for us to like "work land" or something, but like why why do we continue to do this.
So many resources go into this stupid thing and I would as mad if someone were to tell me like benefits to this, all I see are negatives
I have seen many videos saying this, but Khadija leaving really made me be like “…ok is the internet just truly garbage XD”
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“People are mean online” I think it is common knowledge that comments on youtube/Instagram/twitter, like all big social medias has some very WILD comments. Like the veil of anonymity really just brings out some nasty sides of people, and I have to ask like why?“
Like going outside in the real world, at least before no one would really say anything so wild to your face, and even if they did everyone else will see them with scrutiny, but even now I see internet talk and like that lack of social awareness peek into the real world.
I would not even say it is just social awareness; it is also a mix of attention seeking I believe up to a point. Like to incite the most rage in someone to cause them to like to clutch their pearls some might say people say the craziest things. I am just speculating but, it does feel like people just want rile each other up
The internet is also very algorithm oriented and unfortunately for human nature hate really gets put on the forefront of everyone eyeballs, so then if people think everyone hates them then they will hate back
And this is not the first video on this, there are many videos in the reasons why the internet sucks with similar points but still we are here talking about it.
Dasia has a whole video about this that I might revisit when I have time but for now I will leave it here as a note
Khadija also makes a point that resonated with me about like all the panhandling online and how we are just washed over with all of these stories and that even being understanding of their situations how much can an internet community do? How much can a single person too, when presented with so many unfortunate cases everyday it is draining to say the least, because you can emphasize with everything but that exhausts a person. I have seen many a person tear themselves up because they could not help every single person they saw in need of help.
Sometimes this time of content does seem like voyeurism like I get trying to find the comfort of people but to make these raw emotions as “content” a product essentially feels odd. There is another video that goes into this idea as well.
“They are asking for help in a place that gives the illusion of community and care, but it is really just a void.” Like I understand people can make friends online and then that is a connection that can happen, but thousands of strangers, that don’t know you or your circumstances I don’t think that will help anyone.
Again I will put this here for now and expand on it later
I did not know what this type of style was until a friend explained it me, I quite enjoy this type of story.
I think it is because the setting of the world is grasped into little snippets and your mind fits in the puzzle pieces, it also focuses more on the characters I would think
I saw this and sure I could use it as a mini blog but I was aslo thinking of it as maybe a "digital garden" I have seen differnt takes on it, but from my understanding it is a collection of ideas that upon a macroscopic view interconnect with each other
I could just use my unlocked tumblr but thought I would share some stuff here something about a community garden, each of us having our own plot but still connected in some way. I don't know its a theory.
How to do nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
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The first stone
I stumbled upon this creator when I was actually looking at mindful consumerism content, you know not buying the new fad, be aware of how your purchase affects all. That kind of thing.
What caught my attention was when they mentioned that the advice of "Create more than you consume" was incomplete. How as creatives we can't help but consume in order to create. Simply stopping our consumption would not be ideal.
They then went off about being present the some thing that you do consume and as an example they mentioned how when you read a book it sticks with you but when asked more in depth questions your mind is blank. That is me and why rating books is difficult.
Back to the creation and consumption, I realize that I want people to see more than the end product of what I make, because yes there is so many other variables that come in to an idea to form it into a product. That is the whole point behind my Art pages on this website.
The way they do their process seems like a lot of work, I will be honest and I am not sure I will go in as hard-core as this creator goes, but it did start make the wheels in my head beging to turn, so I made this mini blog template into a digital garden template where the tags are the "roots"
Side note, I hate this type of video, it is what I have been watching but I hate it, the lady with a title surrounded by screenshots? I look at my history and see video after video with the same thumbnail and something inside me becomes ill. Dramatic? yea but true XD
the youtube rabbit hole
This whole video was very relatable and it is also what I would call a "evergreen" content, where I will go back to watch over and over without it loosing it's value.
when he talks about buying headphones when he forgets his, it was like a lighbulb went off because that has been me, the amount of money I spend because I Needed sound. I have gotten better now.
I still have headphones on most of the time, but at home I will simply not, I have music on durig certains times in my day but not all the time like I do at work.
"Thinking needs to be treated as a skill. This was what connected this video to the first one, or at least I recalled it while watching the other video. So that is what I think the goal has been, to work those thought muscles.
This is where I should have taken notes because the book "How to do nothing" has something similar about this, or at least I think it does but I can't remeber clearly. I wll have to revisit it once again.
I agree to some points, but I agree in the way that it sounds true but am unsure how true it is, so that is what in the end this page is for. A testing ground. Already I see how hard this is going to be, but I need to realize that not everything is meant to be analyzed.
Like mindful consumption or mindful spending it directs my attention and effort to things I really wish to persue, perhaps it will show me what that is.