gnarly socket

Are any of us happy with the internet right now? I remember being very concerned about net neutrality; preventing ISPs from using their infrastructural power to back us all into closed platforms. But I never imagined we'd opt in to that reality – and get so wound up in it that we'd need to deploy increasingly exotic schemes to help us escape, apparently unable to wield free will against attention-optimizing algorithms. It's a mess!

I constantly catch myself unlocking my phone as a reflex. Checking for notifications as a reflex. Opening some stupid app as a reflex. It's a bummer. It is so weird to constantly be doing something I wish I wouldn't do, and to feel like I need to physically limit my access to that thing in order to wean off of it. Or rather, to be in that situation purely due to psychological habit rather than chemical dependency.

One of the many excuses I give myself for staying in the matrix is that I need to promote all my ridiculous projects. So, like many egoists before me, I present: a newsletter. Or a blog, depending on how you access this. Please be using an ugly open source RSS reader.

In this space, I'll offer updates on my new music (lots of which is coming this year), new comics, and various other goofs. Thank you for joining in <3