I hated Twitter before it was cool
My RSS reader this week contains no less than three stories about how Bluesky is the rightful successor to Twitter and will, furthermore, save the internet. Despite this, I will not be signing up for Bluesky because I've determined the ideal number of Twitter-alikes in my life and it's zero.
(I also have a hard time believing the thing that will "save the internet" is yet another corporate-owned, venture capital-funded walled garden, especially one packed to the gills with Twitter's most annoying millennials.)
I had to to quit Instagram because it was trying to give me an eating disorder. I lost interest in TikTok after about a month. Facebook is so choked with bot traffic that it's functionally useless. So in terms of social media I can use, I guess that just leaves Tumblr — which is allergic to both reading and clicking off-site but at least contains Harlan Ellison forcemasc content.
New on Ko-fi: "Sebastian Moran Inflicts Six Traumatic Brain Injuries," Chapter 3
Chapter 3 of "Sebastian Moran Inflicts Six Traumatic Brain Injuries" is now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. If you don't want to wait for the next chapter, you can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
This Week's Links
Does the UK’s liver transplant matching algorithm systematically exclude younger patients?
Younger patients are (correctly) predicted to be more likely to survive 5 years without a transplant, and about as likely as older patients to survive 5 years with a transplant. So younger patients’ predicted net benefit (over a 5-year period) is much less than older patients’. Over the entire course of their lives, younger patients would likely benefit more, but the algorithm doesn’t take this into account.
The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire
Moreover, as control over our own material realities becomes less and less feasible, the last lone place we believe we can exercise agency is within the landscape of that which we consume. This has resulted in the consuming public approaching all media and art with a moral imperative — that which we consume must be perfectly virtuous, sanitized of all problematic or complicated ideas and depictions, because it has become the stand-in for our very realities, our very political action as citizens; consuming has become our praxis.
I'll Let Myself In: Tactics of Physical Pen Testers
A really great presentation from penetration tester Deviant Ollam on various physical tactics for breaking into places. He doesn't just use lockpicks. In fact, he very rarely needs to use lockpicks.
It turns out I recommended my dad's book right before a Canadian postal strike that prevents him from shipping any books until it's over. I'm sure this will only further convince certain parties that I have reality-warping powers.
-K
