I recently had an idea/long form daydream about a durational art project. The idea is that I’d be there, pen in quickly cramping hand, rapidly ballooning amounts of paper notes spread across a table, as I try and find: The Ethical Consumer! Obviously they might not show up, might not actually be in the crop of people who deign to visit me during the length of the show, almost certainly have better things to do with their saintly time than view my attempts at art. Often, I’d remind myself, the fun is in the journey.

I’d whittle them down by asking a series of increasingly intricate questions and documenting answers by hand. I think a good gotcha for any even moderate internet users is AWS. For the caffeinated gourmand, where do they get their coffee or tea? What musicians do you like and support; in fact do you support them, besides the pittance the majority get for your streams?

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I recently listened to a Diabolical Lies podcast on consumerism, how the idea of “being a litterbug” was a corporate invention in the US (pushing responsibility from the companies to collect and reuse packaging, to the individuals, for being filthy and terrible people, littering), selling out, and lots of other stuff (it’s a long podcast okay). In the tech industry, some of my friends, colleagues, friendly colleagues and frenemies think deeply about their “carbon footprints”, another invention of unfriendly-to-the-climate companies to shift focus from their carbon-belching bottom lines to the fact we, the lowly individuals, all are constantly not doing enough to save the planet.

I have been stuck on the idea of the “systemic sublime” and how it relates to how we experience the “network nadir” (quote me, I dare you) on the other end of it. We are all apparently buying too much, buying stuff that’s complete shit, things that aren’t as described… But it’s barely any one individuals fault. There’s an obvious 1% to be pointing fingers, lawsuits, etc, at and I support that, but I think the over-focusing on what I, (puny, singular, broke, all derogatory) can do. Huge underemphasis on unions, communities, pressure groups of all types. I refuse to find the picture of the little fish being chased by a shark until they all gang up on the big fish by clubbing together, but maybe that’s where we are. If anyone else asks me what I (singular) am doing all on my own to tackle the trillion pound and billions strong industries oppressing the rest of us, I’ll scream.

Other stuff

• Merry Christmas for tomorrow! I hope you all have a great one if you celebrate. If you don’t, the days are slowly getting longer! The sun will return!

• Join UTAW if you’re in tech and not in a union, seeing as I was talking about that.

• I wrote about a CSS issue I had to do with fonts on my blog.