The first article I read in 2023 was this one: Bring back personal blogging. And it's interesting to me because every new year I debate whether or not I'm going to keep doing =waves arms= all this. The question has been especially wearing on me during the pandemic when I'm just not doing anything worth blogging about.
The article itself has some very good points though.
Social media, for all its popularity, simply doesn't have the community building that blogging did back in the day. I've made a lot of friends via blogging, and a handful of them are closer than many of my in-person friends. My guess is that this is because in-person friendships rely mostly on how often you see them, where blogging friendships rely mostly on how often you keep in contact with them. Even if you meet up with them in-person from time to time, your relationship goes beyond presence.
On April 18th, Blogography turns 20 years old.
Back in the day, I'd hold a week-long Blogiversary celebration with contests, new merchandise, and everything. Just look at this video from 2008 when the Grand Prize was me flying to wherever in the world the winner was so I could deliver prizes and have a party...
And so I did. I flew to St. Louis and had a great time!
I can't imagine doing anything like this now.
I mean, sure I still meet up with old-school bloggers from those early years. I met with one back in 2021, another in 2022, and will meet with another in March (proof positive that the article is right about the communities we built). But that's a far cry from all the "Dave Events" that used to happen... or even the larger gatherings like TequilaCon.
But it's this past community that still exists which makes blogging something I'm not quite ready to give up on yet.
So... here's to twenty years of blogging... and counting, I guess?
Wishing you and yours all the best in this New Year.
And... apparently my blog is borked again. I can update pages, but posts kinda fall into the void.
I used to use an app called "MarsEdit" which was a very nice composing tool. But it stopped working once the security on my blog changed because it doesn't support the required authentication now. I know that it was recently updated, but it doesn't look like the security was touched, so I started composing posts in WordPress directly. Problem is that WordPress doesn't like you to organize your own photos and wants to do that for you. I'm not a fan. This means I need to hand-code the photo HTML by hand. Also a pain in the ass.
AND THEN WORDPRESS EATS MY POST!
I wonder if it's a better option to compose the posts in MarsEdit and then copy/paste into WordPress? At least that way my posts wouldn't be lost if they didn't actually... you know... post.
=ponders-
Oh well. All that's going to have to take a back seat to fixing whatever is wrong with Blogography first.
The sad thing about the demise of blogs is that our online communities have been fractured.
Facebook is nice, but you can have friends half-way around the world living in the same city who don't even know that each other exists. Back when blogging was a thing, we'd regularly have meet-ups, and new friendships could be formed since everybody showed up to the same place and got to know each other in a social setting. There are days I miss blogging more than others (even though I'm still doing it)... and today is one of those days.
It's a lovely Spring day. As much as it can be, anyway. So I guess it's go time... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Opt-Out of Stupid! =sigh= The first Mother's Day without my mom was, as you can imagine, a soul-crushing event (and each one after is no easier). Not because it reminded me of what I had lost... because there wasn't anything that didn't remind me of what I lost... but because the weeks leading up to the actual day means being inundated with emails telling me to buy a gift for my mom. That's an assault that was incredibly difficult to deal with, because nothing would make me happier to be able to buy something for my mom again. Now-a-days, it's getting a bit easier because companies are allowing you to fine-tune your emails to not include events which my be tough on you. But of course there are total fucking assholes who want to make this kindness into something horrible. Because that's where we are now...
@jwilliamj “My political beliefs = anti 2010 meme”- @Matt Walsh #fyp #foryoupage #viral #foryou #leftistlogic #conservative #woke #stitch ♬ original sound - JJ
Just fuck you. Is there absolutely anything... anything at all... that can make you put yourself in somebody else's shoes for even two fucking seconds? I try to find the best in people, but I sincerely doubt it. Trading off of misery is apparently too profitable.
• Tattoo Me! I was outright called a "satan worshipper" once because I have tattoos. I told them that my tattoos have nothing to do with satan... only to be screeched at with "ANY TIME YOU DESECRATE THE BODY GOD GAVE YOU, YOU ARE WORSHIPPING SATAN!!!" And that's when I looked her dead in the face and said "Then hail satan and fuck off, I guess." Because I'm happy to confirm idiotic biases. I'm here to help. Which is why this resonates with me...
@nurse.alexrn My boss was crying laughing #nursesoftiktok #nurselife #nursehumor #nurseproblems #nursetok #medicalhumor #nursinghumor #nursetok ♬ original sound - Tank the GSD
People are so toxic now-a-days that unless you conform exactly to their ideals they go all asshole on you.
• Jenno! A conversation I had yesterday...
"Ooh! There's a new Hannah Gadsby special on Netflix!"
"You like Hannah Gadsby?"
"Sure. I mean, there's parts of her sets that don't hit with me, but that's okay."
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE A MAN!"
"I HAVE APOLOGIZED FOR MY GENDER MANY TIMES!"
"YOU CAN'T APOLOGIZE ENOUGH!"
"I'M SORRY!"
"Okay. You're good for another day."
"DAY? Can't we call me good for a month? Or at least a week?"
"No."
"Okay then, have a nice evening!"
"You too!"
"As good as the patriarchy will allow."
As it turns out, this is my favorite her specials.
• Lord of the... Rings?! These Wes Anderson parodies just keep coming. And are fantastic...
As always, I would pay serious money to see this film if it existed.
• Dooce. One of the most famous bloggers ever, Heather Armstrong, died this past week after losing her long struggle with depression (a battle she fought very hard, even going so far as to undergoing experimental treatments where her brain activity was stopped then restarted). This is awful. I think she wasn't even 50 yet? She's one of the old school bloggers who started around the time I did. I wasn't into mommy-blogging, but I ran across her posts from time to time and she was about as real as you could get online. Which is probably why she was so popular. I'd read things she wrote and think "Wow, I could never get that personal so publicly!"... and I'm betting that's what made her so relatable and beloved by the community that formed around her (even though lately she became infamous for blogging some pretty heinous things that I disagree with vehemently). Rest in peace, Heather. You can't get Dooced in heaven. Thinking of her two kids today.
• Tour of Wealth! Architecture YouTube is a bottomless pit of amazing homes and buildings for me. I can get lost there for hours. This one popped up this past week, and I honestly don't know how to feel about it...
If I had the money? Sure! I'd live there! Except... I just don't know how I could sleep at night knowing that I've used $250,000,000 that could have gone towards helping people. AND STILL HAVE MILLIONS LEFT OVER TO SPEND ON A NEW HOUSE... OR TEN! It's just so unfathomable to me.
Wishing you a good rest of your Sunday.
I do not take blog hiatuses very often. It's actually pretty rare.
Other hiatuses aren't nearly so dramatic. A couple times because I had things to deal with. A couple times because my blog was broken.
But this past week? There really isn't a reason. I just needed a week off. I have entirely too much on my plate to write about anything so I just... didn't.
Let's see what happened...
Since blogging is pretty much... well... dead... I might have to take a minute more often. I always thought that if I took breaks I would just stop altogether, but it hasn't happened yet. So maybe?
Remember back in the mid-2000's when I was having annual Blogiversary contests and creating cool Blogography swag for prizes and purchase?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
And so do I every time I open my closet. That's because I kept a number of the T-shirts for myself. Most of them I wear only on special occasions because I'm down to my last shirt. But others? I wear to death. They don't look all that great now because the ink is flaking off, but the shirts themselves were quality and are still in good shape so I am happy to wear them anyway because they're darn comfortable.
There is one of my designs from 2006 that actually looks better the more it ages...
So cool. If I could have found a way to print like this when they were new, I would have absolutely done it!
Interesting to note that at the time I designed the shirt, Bad Monkey looked quite different...
And that was when Lil' Dave still had "mitten hands" as well. In-Between when I designed the shirt for the contest and actually printed it, Bad Monkey had changed to his current, thinner version... and Lil' Dave has actual fingers.
Good times. Good times.
Something I need given that there's no new episode of Ted Lasso tomorrow.
I am really torn on this whole "link tax" bullshit that's getting signed into law by certain countries.
Essentially this boils down to governments forcing major media companies like Google to strike agreements with news organizations. That way, when you search for something on Google (or Facebook or any company that monetizes results based on another company's content) and a result from a news organization pops up, Google has to pay them money because their content has been monetized by Google.
On one hand, it's like... okay... Google is making money by serving ads in their search results or news feeds, so why shouldn't the news organizations showing up in those results get paid for making Google rich with their hard work?
On the other hand... why the fuck should Google be held responsible for other companies not monitizing their own content? If you don't want Google to make money off of you, then no problem. Add code to your website's HTML instructing Google bots to not crawl your content. Problem solved. Why in the hell are governments getting involved in this? And if you're going to pass laws for news organizations to get paid for making Google money... why not everybody? Why not bloggers? Blogography is heavily indexed by Google, and I have a lot of content that gets looked at by Google search referrals. So where is my money??
I have to say... I am kinda on Google's side this time.
Which is something I haven't said very often.
Google is merely refering people to your content. It should be up to you to monetize everything once somebody clicks through to visit your site and read your stories. Run ads. Offer subscriptions. Whatever. Just be grateful that Google is sending you the business. How else will people even find you if you're not getting Google search referrals?
With the recently-passed "link tax" law in Canada, Google is telling the Canadian government to fuck off. They will just remove all Canadian news sources from appearing to Canadians who are now legally required to be paid. Sure Google will have less content in their search results to monetize... but they won't have to pay anything out either. I'd argue that this doesn't benefit Canadians at all, but what do I know? Google said the same thing to Australia and France, but eventually capitulated. It will probably be the same for Canada.
And the USA is likely going to be adding a "link tax" soon.
If I were Google, I'd do some things...
Ultimately I think it's important that news organizations get paid for their work. But to put that responsibility on Google is outrageous. That should be up to Google. And if people don't like it... then everybody can tell Google bots to not crawl their site until Google agrees to fork over the money and share their success. That's how the market works. If governments wants money to go to news organizations, then have that money come from the government.
Regardless of how this all shakes out, to have governments jumping in the fray is a terrible precedent. Today it's Google... what's tomorrow? Me? Every time I share a news story I'm going to be responsible for paying them money? I call bullshit. They should figure out their own monetization just like I do (which is $0 since I don't charge for anything, but still).
Have a government-mandated monetized weekend, everybody!