Notes

When I was young, I picked out books from the library and bookstores based on their shelf presence. I later explored music by buying CDs from West End Wax based on their cover art. These practices led to discoveries that really shaped my tastes.

Today I’m much more sophisticated, depending on social popularity and recommendation algorithms to make my choices for me. And pick out wine based on the label.

When we first got to live in Europe, we landed in a place that was lovely but not quite our vibe. We visited many cities until finding one that felt right for us.

We made it home, and really enjoy both the comfort of being around like-minded people and the challenge of being in a new, diverse place. The streets are full of people with very different backgrounds, often speaking different languages. What we all have in common is a commitment to living in a just, peaceful, cosmopolitan society.

It takes some effort to build new social bubbles, but it is a delight compared to the “easy” hegemony of our prior homes in US cities.

Naturally, I find Europeans have been much faster to move to Mastodon and other services in the open social internet. Americans, to over-generalize, find it much more intimidating and prefer the ease of staying on Twitter, despite the oligarch-driven social decay.

I joined Twitter on October 12, 2006 (only a few weeks after Facebook).

I joined Diaspora on October 12, 2011.

I joined Mastodon.social on October 7, 2016.

This October, to celebrate Elon Musk buying Twitter, I created another mastodon account on chaos.social, and intend to finally make the fediverse a regular part of my umwelt. UPDATE: I did.

Our house features a view of the backstage loading area of the Carré Theater. It’s fun to watch the logistics of a wide variety of shows and their respective levels of technical support and security.

Today, I’m very amused to see the unusually nerdy crowd queued up for the Muse show, and lined up in front of our house hoping to see the band arrive. With lots of colored hair, slightly punk style, and not-very-Dutch somatotypes, they made me feel like I was back home on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Two podcast episodes brought tears to my eyes yesterday. First, John Green on sunsets is simply beautiful. Then This American Life documenting the end of Roe on the ground evoked that “you can never go back” nostalgia for a better America.

I’m getting used to riding on windy days, but it’s demoralizing when a wind turbine turns to look directly at me.