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So I ‘left’ Twitter. Like a coward, I didn’t actually go the whole hog and delete my account. Rather I stopped cross-posting to Twitter and instead started cross-posting to the Mastodon account I’ve set up at social.lol. This is meant less as an act of deprivation and more as an act of affirmation. While I recognise the user experience benefits of centralised services, I don’t especially like the way the experience of the Internet is dominated by a handful of giant companies. I do worry that the momentum that Mastodon has built up over the last week or so will peter out. Time will tell.
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One of the things that’s made switching difficult has been the lack of a high-quality iOS app for Mastodon. Metatext is the best I’ve seen but I’m most heartened by the news that Tapbots is working on creating an app that’s based on Tweetbot (my preferred client for Twitter). That said, the single thing I currently miss the most from Twitter is quote-tweeting. I understand this is somewhat controversial within the Mastodon community because people perceive it as encouraging negative behaviour like dunking. That may well be the case; the people I followed who used it on Twitter typically did it to provide context for tweets they were retweeting. On Mastodon, I’ve frequently found myself wishing for context to be provided when posts are boosted (‘retweeting’ in Mastodon’s parlance).
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It wasn’t all about Mastodon this week, though. I also came down with a cold that really knocked me for six. The symptoms have been so strong I wondered if it wasn’t COVID-19 but I took an antigen test on Monday and the result came back negative. Perhaps it’s the flu? Although, we were all vaccinated against that earlier this autumn so that doesn’t seem especially likely.
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Dave implored me again to watch Andor. I really do plan to do that but rather than be a good friend and do that right away, I instead spent almost two hours watching the latest video essay from Harris Brewis (AKA hbomberguy). It’s ostensibly about the ‘oof’ sound in Roblox but then transforms into something else entirely. It’s not his best video but if you’re a fan of his work, you’ll enjoy this one, too.
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For a shorter recommendation, You Can’t Unhear This has a 10-minute examination of the count-in to the Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ that also functions as your annual reminder that Paul McCartney is ludicrously talented. All props to Harrison for the song but McCartney is apparently responsible for both the track’s memorable bass line as well as the guitar solo that punctuates it because I guess sometimes he just wanted to remind everyone that he was only playing bass because Stuart Sutcliffe had left the band.
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The last two episodes of Law & Order have been better. Yes, I watched two entire episodes of Law & Order rather than Andor. I’m sorry, Dave. I’m a shitty friend, I know.
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I really liked Floor796. I don’t know anything about it and only came across it via Andy Baio’s blog.
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I feel like it’s lazy to make my musical recommendation this week be Fred Again…‘s third solo album, Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 22 2002) (Apple Music), because the truth is that I haven’t been listening to it this week and rather came across it via Brandon’s weekly update. So I guess this week you get a two-fer because the song that captured my attention this week was Wilco’s ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’ (Apple Music). This is one of those songs from the early 2000s that I’d completely forgotten about until discovering it in one of those decade-based playlists.
