It’s been tricky figuring out what to write for a few reasons. I’m rewriting the look and feel of my personal site and I wanted to write once it’s complete but that’s not going to happen until around my birthday this year. I’ve also have been waffling between books and papers on my to-be-read list that I want to weave into things I write about; especially in this era of the demotion of human positional power in society in favor of continuing the Babbage plantation-era of pushing invisible labor to everyday life. I also want to talk about the new comic book line that’s new canon to the Static universe and how that’s impacted me as a long-time fan and supporter of his story. But that’ll go on the site! For now, I want to talk about heritage and friendships, then on (yet another) reconfiguration of my online publishing.

Friendships in Your 30s

We can always attempt to find meaning in our life by looking at the reflections of those who came and lived to be of our age at one point in time. That reflection is limited - it won’t be able to provide the absolute answer you’re looking for since the environment in which folks existed was different. For example, I can’t relate to $400 rent or $10 utility bills that once existed in places like New York City (perhaps when the NYC-MTA was still two separate institutions). But I can reminisce on the once-faded office/uniform-adjacent attire folks wore to the backyard bashments blasting soca and reggae in Flatbush or Canarise. I do miss those days - and that mobility.

Now, as does a larger contingent of folks in the American and European world tend to, we meet online. It’s a launching pad to IRL events for folks. There’s even an app for that, as the saying goes! Despite what many folks might say, building connections with people online has been a surefire way to do so. That also has a negative side-effect of folks seeing the worst of people in high definition and indefinitely. It’s an age-old problem that didn’t begin with the Internet but has been emboldened by it - it really also has shown how violent patriarchy has become (and now how embedded into places folks never expect). I’m routinely reminded how fortunate I have been to make decades-long bonds with folks I travel with, worked with and broken bread with over and over again.

Reconfiguration

The avid reader of my blog will notice that I haven’t written anything since my initial exploration into generative AI tools for software development. Since that time, I have dove so much deeper that I’m starting to understand the brand of alcohol that Steve drinks on his blog (spoiler alert: it’s being a well-paid socially detached software engineer that makes the use of these tools more tolerable; if you pretend to move like that, everything is possible with Claude). I’m not the biggest subscriber of the “mainstream” version of tools:

• Folks like VS Code, I’ve stuck to Neovim

• Folks develop on Macs, I use my Pinebook + Framework, both on F/LOSS systems

• Folks like to use GitHub; I’d use anything else.

Am I a contradiction? Perhaps.

Thanks to everyone who’s been a subscriber; this newsletter now has 100 people in it! It’s an tributary number; going from two digits to three and could drop by the end of this e-mail but I appreciate each of y’all for sticking around.