#streamofconsciousness — Public Fediverse posts

✮ Fear ✮

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Nessuno che scrive qui?

Ad esempio in un posto pulito come questo, mi piacerebbe scrivere una #poesia a catena, #versiliberi dettati da puro #StreamOfConsciousness. Chi vuole partecipare ? Lascio il post qui, poi chi ne prende parte, commenta, 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐠𝐨 𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢* e si comincia raggiunto un 5-6 persone che dite ? 👀

#scritturacreativa #flussodicoscienza

Is sugar a vegetable? This and other perennial questions answered:

Show 884: Misdemeanour Gang Tattoos And The Trolley Problem -Into Your Head #podcast

https://intoyourhead.ie/2026/06/09/show-884-misdemeanour-gang-tattoos-and-the-trolley-problem/

#absurdist #humour #Irish #comedy #podcasters #streamofconsciousness

The Shorts Omnibus Volume 6

Another non-stop omnibus for people who don't like video shorts. From Into Your Head #podcast #streamofconsciousness #humour #comedypodcasts #shorts #humor

https://intoyourhead.ie/2026/04/18/the-shorts-omnibus-volume-6/

Video Shorts 222: Excessive Control of Prison Yards and Imaginary Baseball

Excessive Control of Prison Yards and Imaginary Baseball (Video Shorts 222) from Into Your Head podcast - IntoYourHead.ie #comedypodcasts #streamofconsciousness #humour #prisonlife #basketball #prison

https://intoyourhead.ie/2026/04/16/video-shorts-222-excessive-control-of-prison-yards-and-imaginary-baseball/

Video Shorts 221: What the Hell Does Society WANT, Anyway?

What the Hell Does Society WANT, Anyway? from Into Your Head podcast - IntoYourHead.ie #comedypodcasts #streamofconsciousness #philosophy mindblown #absurdist

https://intoyourhead.ie/2026/04/14/video-shorts-221-what-the-hell-does-society-want-anyway/

Video Shorts 219: Stubbing Your Toe Won’t Necessarily Ruin Your Life Permanently.

Hear me out. from Into Your Head podcast - IntoYourHead.ie #IrishPodcasts #humour #podcastclips #positivity #feet #streamofconsciousness

https://intoyourhead.ie/2026/04/10/video-shorts-219-stop-worrying-stubbing-your-toe-will-not-neccessarily-ruin-your-life-permanently-from-into/

A raw report in accountability

Will admitting my lie    receiver of pain  I’m not finding inspiration in the creased skin of a chance any longer… Memory of love arrives in the desert   …

There is where   a care and not   such a dare    just  down the road  past hells painted face paces  faintly  bland boring foursome  fantasy

All is consumed that which was craved and most likely killed.  One simple statement…

I am here and in fear of where I’ve been. Fuck my writing panic sin incisions floss crutch skinless demons color for a queen finally fades behind the curtain  that seems like eyelid code   yell a bloated ‘yahoo!’ into the void  implodes and my espionage parade begins

Touched one of my OSS issue trackers and suffered some psychic damage as a result. Oops.

Doesn't help that I am a bit sensitive rn; I've been able to work out a switch to a devops role at work, which is more my speed than feature development has been. But we've got a dedicated developer-experience person starting in a monthish, and like. insofar as that's even a role that exists, it's /my jam/.

I'm terrified he'll be all "wow, what's this shitty bespoke CLI tool you're using, you should switch to $alternative".

Anyway BTW I PROBABLY HAVE A THERAPIST NOW so maybe that will help. Unless she recommends I just quit OSS for my mental health 😬

#Oversharing #TMI #StreamOfConsciousness #Hashtags

Touched one of my OSS issue trackers and suffered some psychic damage as a result. Oops.

Doesn't help that I am a bit sensitive rn; I've been able to work out a switch to a devops role at work, which is more my speed than feature development has been. But we've got a dedicated developer-experience person starting in a monthish, and like. insofar as that's even a role that exists, it's /my jam/.

I'm terrified he'll be all "wow, what's this shitty bespoke CLI tool you're using, you should switch to $alternative".

Anyway BTW I PROBABLY HAVE A THERAPIST NOW so maybe that will help. Unless she recommends I just quit OSS for my mental health 😬

#Oversharing #TMI #StreamOfConsciousness #Hashtags

What to write in a bio about myself? I’m this, I’m that, BLA BLA BLA — this is how I used to write about myself. I have many hobbies that change all the time. I’m curious. I get obsessed with things. I’m this, I’m that.

But maybe I’m none of these things. Maybe I’m just me — Brett, a human who loves to experience and try on different things. Maybe I’m not any of these things. Maybe I’m just an idea.

#Identity
#SelfReflection
#HumanExperience
#StreamOfConsciousness
#WritingCommunity

What to write in a bio about myself? I’m this, I’m that, BLA BLA BLA — this is how I used to write about myself. I have many hobbies that change all the time. I’m curious. I get obsessed with things. I’m this, I’m that.

But maybe I’m none of these things. Maybe I’m just me — Brett, a human who loves to experience and try on different things. Maybe I’m not any of these things. Maybe I’m just an idea.

#Identity
#SelfReflection
#HumanExperience
#StreamOfConsciousness
#WritingCommunity

My PDS Doesn’t Participate in Bluesky’s Age-Verification Flow

So, apparently, with the last few updates Bluesky has done, they have expanded the regions that need to be age-verified to Ohio, and they are preparing to expand it to Australia. They have also made it so that people don’t have access to DMs or material labeled by Bluesky’s moderation services. I’ve been looking into the age verification system that Bluesky uses as I configure my own PDS. app.bsky.ageassurance.begin is an explicit API call that a client or PDS must intentionally call to start the age-verification process, hand the user off to the verification provider, and receive an updated age-assurance state.

Check here for the official Bluesky documentation:

This endpoint is part of the Bluesky application Lexicon APIs (app.bsky.*). Public endpoints which don’t require authentication can be made directly against the public Bluesky AppView API: https://public.api.bsky.app. Authenticated requests are usually made to the user’s PDS, with automatic service proxying. Authenticated requests can be used for both public and non-public endpoints.

https://docs.bsky.app/docs/api/app-bsky-ageassurance-begin

If a PDS does not call app.bsky.ageassurance.begin, the age-verification flow does not start. Age verification occurs on the client side, not the server side. If a PDS does not implement the app.bsky.ageassurance.* endpoints, it cannot interact with Bluesky’s age verification flow.

Georgia—where I currently live as of writing this post—does have age restriction and verification laws; however, they are weak, so Bluesky has not had to do much in my state. As a result, I’ve just been using Bluesky’s PDS. However, I have been setting up my own PDS. Since my PDS does not call app.bsky.ageassurance.begin, does not check getState, and does not read getConfig, it has no way to initiate age verification, determine whether a user is verified, or enforce or reflect any age-based restrictions. My PDS does not participate in Bluesky’s age-assurance system at all. That’s just one part of Bluesky’s moderation structure. Bluesky’s moderation services use labelers.

Labels and moderation

https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/moderation

Labelers are services or accounts that apply moderation labels. My PDS does not declare default app labelers, so it does not automatically trust any labelers. I have max user control with the minimum level of automated moderation.

If you do not want to through all of this trouble and want to keep using the native bsky.app, see here:

Bluesky’s age assurance sucks, here’s how to work around it.

https://gist.github.com/mary-ext/6e27b24a83838202908808ad528b3318

I am going to be honest. I hate Bluesky’s political, philosophical, and ideological values, think its moderation is heavily flawed, and am more closely aligned politically with the Fediverse. But… the Fediverse is not fun. It’s essentially people constantly commiserating, with no interesting or entertaining content, peppered with manifestos and “this bad thing happened in the news—be enraged by it” posts. I really wanted to love the Fediverse, but there’s nothing to do over there.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬: "𝘼 𝙋𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙜 𝙈𝙖𝙣" 𝙗𝙮 𝙅𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙅𝙤𝙮𝙘𝙚 -

If we allow the novel to work on its own terms, and quit asking it to meet our expectations of a common coming-of-age story, we can find that the style itself reveals the experience we seek.

https://waywordsstudio.com/general/reviews/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/

#bookreviews #literature #books #bookworm #read #book #readreadread #jamesjoyce #fiction #autobiography #irishliterature #modernism #streamofconsciousness

youtu.be/VF-Z4Tt_dzc

I may have found my book of the year

Also, congrats the author for her Walk of Fame star

#TheHeirsLair #Review #BookReview #Biography #Memoir #Autobiography #BiographyReview #MemoirReview #StreamOfConsciousness #BookSky

haven't been too well recently. i made some sketches last night and just now kinda stream of consciousness amateur graphic design'd it and embraced the serendipity. (I have a degree in this! lol) this feels a little nice to have made. you happen to like this, then that is a strange plus

This was a spur of the moment drawing I did on receipt paper for a medication, drawing an important friend as I we met and spoke at a housewarming party this May. That week ended up becoming one of the most important weeks in my life so far, one of constant tumult, but a tumult you can help but laugh at a few hours later.

So naturally i'm making that experience into a comic, keeping that same energy by calling it "Post Grad Clarity". iykyk.

Stay tuned for updates on it, i'm thinking i'll post the whole thing on GlobalComix when i'm done :)

Growing Older, A Short Story in X Paragraphs

Back when we studied poetry in school, I remember reading a poem that had a great impact on me. I now can't remember the author's name, or the poem's title, or any of the lines from the poem. But I do remember that it was about a Shropshire lad.

(You're such a lovely audience here on the Fediverse. Is there anyone here from Shropshire tonight?)

Many years later, I encountered a very amusing cartoon by an artist whose name I can no longer remember. Its caption was, "That OTHER Shropshire lad." I can't remember what happened in the cartoon, but it was not one of those laught-out-loud cartoons. It was one of those sideward wink cartoons that implied, "We're all sophisticates here who appreciate an ironic cartoon, and we're all in on this joke about multiple Shropshire lads -- or at least more than one Shropshire lad."

Quite a few years later, in one of the last jobs for which I was getting paid, I worked with a very nice co-worker whose family name was actually Shropshire.

He was an extremely friendly, interesting, talented, and pleasant chap with an offbeat sense of humor.

(He was the first and last person I'd ever met named Shropshire. Quite literally a Shropshire lad. In fact it suddenly occurs to me -- as I'm telling you this -- that he was ANOTHER other Shropshire lad.)

He was very tall, as I remember, and could dominate the conversation in any group by dint of his size.

I guess this just goes to show that life can be very strange. You read a poem about a Shropshire lad, later you see a cartoon about another Shropshire lad, and even later than that you become acquainted with a real-life Shropshire lad. (Even though he wasn't from Shropshire.)

I suppose that those of you who are from Shropshire won't find this chain of events about lads from Shropshire so strange -- there always being multiple lads who are from there at any given time. Yet here we are now on the Fediverse, and I think it would be cheating to look up the original poem to give you the author's name and cite some lines, and unfair to research the cartoon and attach it here for you.

It felt truer to me to just to tell you the story as it came to me. And that's what I did.
#Poetry #Cartoons #Aging #Shropshire #AEHousman #Literature #Comedy #ShortStories #Revery #StreamOfConsciousness #MicroFiction

Growing Older, A Short Story in X Paragraphs

Back when we studied poetry in school, I remember reading a poem that had a great impact on me. I now can't remember the author's name, or the poem's title, or any of the lines from the poem. But I do remember that it was about a Shropshire lad.

(You're such a lovely audience here on the Fediverse. Is there anyone here from Shropshire tonight?)

Many years later, I encountered a very amusing cartoon by an artist whose name I can no longer remember. Its caption was, "That OTHER Shropshire lad." I can't remember what happened in the cartoon, but it was not one of those laught-out-loud cartoons. It was one of those sideward wink cartoons that implied, "We're all sophisticates here who appreciate an ironic cartoon, and we're all in on this joke about multiple Shropshire lads -- or at least more than one Shropshire lad."

Quite a few years later, in one of the last jobs for which I was getting paid, I worked with a very nice co-worker whose family name was actually Shropshire.

He was an extremely friendly, interesting, talented, and pleasant chap with an offbeat sense of humor.

(He was the first and last person I'd ever met named Shropshire. Quite literally a Shropshire lad. In fact it suddenly occurs to me -- as I'm telling you this -- that he was ANOTHER other Shropshire lad.)

He was very tall, as I remember, and could dominate the conversation in any group by dint of his size.

I guess this just goes to show that life can be very strange. You read a poem about a Shropshire lad, later you see a cartoon about another Shropshire lad, and even later than that you become acquainted with a real-life Shropshire lad. (Even though he wasn't from Shropshire.)

I suppose that those of you who are from Shropshire won't find this chain of events about lads from Shropshire so strange -- there always being multiple lads who are from there at any given time. Yet here we are now on the Fediverse, and I think it would be cheating to look up the original poem to give you the author's name and cite some lines, and unfair to research the cartoon and attach it here for you.

It felt truer to me to just to tell you the story as it came to me. And that's what I did.
#Poetry #Cartoons #Aging #Shropshire #AEHousman #Literature #Comedy #ShortStories #Revery #StreamOfConsciousness #MicroFiction

👩‍💻 Ah, yes, the age-old tale of #GUIs being built multiple times because once is never enough for the discerning software developer. Patricia Aas attempts to explain why Lean Software Development is all wrong, but let's be honest, her stream-of-consciousness style makes James Joyce look like Hemingway. 🧐💻
https://patricia.no/2025/05/30/why_lean_software_dev_is_wrong.html #LeanSoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareDevelopment #PatriciaAas #StreamOfConsciousness #HackerNews #ngated

👩‍💻 Ah, yes, the age-old tale of #GUIs being built multiple times because once is never enough for the discerning software developer. Patricia Aas attempts to explain why Lean Software Development is all wrong, but let's be honest, her stream-of-consciousness style makes James Joyce look like Hemingway. 🧐💻
https://patricia.no/2025/05/30/why_lean_software_dev_is_wrong.html #LeanSoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareDevelopment #PatriciaAas #StreamOfConsciousness #HackerNews #ngated

My Husband Turned Us Into Vampires

My husband took one of my favorite pictures of us, ran it through an AI filter, and turned it into a piece of AI-generated art featuring us as vampires. I’m the one with glasses on the left, and my husband is on the right.

Fediverse Reactions

today i'm going with my friend who I taught tennis last year (which means the last time I played was then).

Despite me being in good shape to play this game, I always find it challenging to return to the sport after a short break.

Prior to 2022, I always play year-round just to keep my skills current. I can outrun guys younger than me because I keep myself in good shape with fitness outside of tennis and drills on the tennis court.

Then, life got busier so since 2023, I skipped a year of tennis (prioritizing training in the gym with weights, outside with walks and jogs, and doing yoga or dance in the studio).

2024, I was thrown into an emotional year from family/friends unexpectedly passing away and i lost some motivation to consistently workout. I have maintained my fitness thru yoga and meditation, learning more about pranayama (breathing) and grounding exercises.

I played maybe 2-3x in 2024 so this year, I would love to play more tennis.

#StreamOfConsciousness #wrtiting #reflecting

HANK & Q
I've been thinking about the parallel lives of #HenryMancini and #QuincyJones in the last few days for no apparent reason other than Q's recent death. I love the music of both of them dearly, and I'm pretty sure I know more about their careers than you do (😁).

Parts of their journeys share some similarities, others are strikingly different. But throughout my life, Q has always struck me as a man of the present, and Hank very much as a man of the past. 1/

#Music #StreamOfConsciousness

HANK & Q
I've been thinking about the parallel lives of #HenryMancini and #QuincyJones in the last few days for no apparent reason other than Q's recent death. I love the music of both of them dearly, and I'm pretty sure I know more about their careers than you do (😁).

Parts of their journeys share some similarities, others are strikingly different. But throughout my life, Q has always struck me as a man of the present, and Hank very much as a man of the past. 1/

#Music #StreamOfConsciousness

"The bartender is wise: 'could you ever talk about a cat without saying anything that remotely alludes cats?'. He is purring... oops, can't say 'purring'. Let's try this: he is imitating a jackhammer... no, too big for a ca... ca... hm... cacophonous cute lazy animal. Welp, it alludes to them as well..."
#streamofconsciousness #deep #thoughts #philosophical #linguistics

" Though Virginia Woolf is often credited as the first woman writer to use a “stream of consciousness” method in her work, Richardson employed the technique some twenty years before did Woolf."

#bookstodon #writing #StreamOfConsciousness #fiction

Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness - JSTOR Daily https://daily.jstor.org/dorothy-richardson-and-the-stream-of-consciousness/

#AlternateFridayMusic
Aug 16 2024
The prompt is Questions
Tricky, “Christiansands” from Pre-Millennium Tension, 1996

Lyric:
“Is it getting better?
Wrote her a letter
Asking questions
Baby steps in sections”

I’ve referred to some albums as trips; here’s one that’s a drug…and this track this track this track, hypnotic narcotic, with its mumble-growled #StreamOfConsciousness vocals, repetitive melodic line that somehow feels strange at every turn, so dense but lightened with airy vocals by frequent Tricky muse #MartinaTopleyBird.

#Tricky came up in #Bristol as a member of the Wild Bunch collective that evolved into #MassiveAttack as the #TripHop scene emerged, but his cutting edge could not be contained; he went out on his own making solo projects marked by his knack for making #downtempo feel foreboding, even aggressive. Pre-Millennium Tension, his second solo album, is still my favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SNaCgDp-Q

#AlternateFridayMusic
Aug 16 2024
The prompt is Questions
Tricky, “Christiansands” from Pre-Millennium Tension, 1996

Lyric:
“Is it getting better?
Wrote her a letter
Asking questions
Baby steps in sections”

I’ve referred to some albums as trips; here’s one that’s a drug…and this track this track this track, hypnotic narcotic, with its mumble-growled #StreamOfConsciousness vocals, repetitive melodic line that somehow feels strange at every turn, so dense but lightened with airy vocals by frequent Tricky muse #MartinaTopleyBird.

#Tricky came up in #Bristol as a member of the Wild Bunch collective that evolved into #MassiveAttack as the #TripHop scene emerged, but his cutting edge could not be contained; he went out on his own making solo projects marked by his knack for making #downtempo feel foreboding, even aggressive. Pre-Millennium Tension, his second solo album, is still my favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SNaCgDp-Q

busybee: fluffy rambles: Yet another car update (and other stuff) https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/11815-Yet-another-car-update-and-other-stuff #StreamOfConsciousness #Pottery #Matrix #Garden #Blog #Cars #Kia

busybee: fluffy rambles: Yet another car update (and other stuff) https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/11815-Yet-another-car-update-and-other-stuff #StreamOfConsciousness #Pottery #Matrix #Garden #Blog #Cars #Kia

#streamofconsciousness #writing

The frenetic energy in shaping a creative work is both spark and flame is both seed and flower is both lust and love. It’s the brief sprint and the long marathon. It’s the breath and the lifespan; it is nothing else.

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
Poll: Which '80s Thrash Band Had The Best First Four Albums?
Not an easy choice.

https://metalinjection.net/news/poll/poll-which-80s-thrash-band-had-the-best-first-four-albums

#ThrashBands #FirstFourAlbums #Poll #Annihilator #AliceInHell #NeverNeverland #SetTheWorldOnFire #KingOfTheKill #Anthrax #FistfulOfMetal #SpreadingTheDisease #AmongTheLiving #StateOfEuphoria #Artillery #FearOfTomorrow #TerrorSquad #ByInheritance #BACK #CrypticSlaughter #Convicted #MoneyTalks #StreamOfConsciousness #SpeakYourPeace #DarkAngel

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
Poll: Which '80s Thrash Band Had The Best First Four Albums?
Not an easy choice.

https://metalinjection.net/news/poll/poll-which-80s-thrash-band-had-the-best-first-four-albums

#ThrashBands #FirstFourAlbums #Poll #Annihilator #AliceInHell #NeverNeverland #SetTheWorldOnFire #KingOfTheKill #Anthrax #FistfulOfMetal #SpreadingTheDisease #AmongTheLiving #StateOfEuphoria #Artillery #FearOfTomorrow #TerrorSquad #ByInheritance #BACK #CrypticSlaughter #Convicted #MoneyTalks #StreamOfConsciousness #SpeakYourPeace #DarkAngel

#streamofconsciousness #writing

And when the towers fall and defenses crumble and all of these trappings designed to make us feel safe dissolve like a sheet of paper in the river—and humanity is dust that’s covered in dust—will we then realize that our fears were unfounded? The lizards in our brain define an other and want to keep the other away but doing this makes us worse off, not better.

#streamofconsciousness #writing

To feel the breath and beat of the heart and flow of oxygen into the blood and understand that by some cosmic luck of dead stars and chemical dances is to kiss the liminality of life. Impermanence is our one long deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. And when there is no more room in the lungs, we scatter to the winds.

#streamofconsciousness #writing

The halls of history are littered with the detritus of scared egocentrism. Capitalism has seduced everyone with the promise that they can become a king—as long as they kill themselves and rape the earth in the process. In a hundred years, the unlucky survivors will cut each other’s throats over the rights to buy the island of plastics floating in the long-dead ocean.

#streamofconsciousness #writing

There is a small, comfortable room in my mind with a small library and plenty of traditional and uncouth places to sit—where when cracking open a book while upon my perch, I am thrown into folding seas of someone else’s mind.

#FortnightFridayMusic
February 23 2024
The prompt is Wild

Holy Wave, “Wet & Wild” from “Relax” 2014

Bless #AustinTX for being a bastion of free thinking in the midst of a state about which I shall not editorialize here.

This last track on #Austin's Holy Wave’s second album ends it perfectly, its melody suggesting a coda. This is #PsychedelicRock that just drips essence of #60s, complete with what sounds like a classic #farfisa organ; maybe it’s the disaffected #StreamOfConsciousness lyrics that keep it feeling modern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPWeI5VQTHA

#FortnightFridayMusic
February 23 2024
The prompt is Wild

Holy Wave, “Wet & Wild” from “Relax” 2014

Bless #AustinTX for being a bastion of free thinking in the midst of a state about which I shall not editorialize here.

This last track on #Austin's Holy Wave’s second album ends it perfectly, its melody suggesting a coda. This is #PsychedelicRock that just drips essence of #60s, complete with what sounds like a classic #farfisa organ; maybe it’s the disaffected #StreamOfConsciousness lyrics that keep it feeling modern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPWeI5VQTHA

#streamofconsciousness #writing

I glare at the hands that type this, noting the dry cracks on the back of the left one and the oven burn on the right. I feel undeserving of the luxury to eke out a thought or two with these hands that I've neglected.

A student of mine wants to practice the steps of descriptive phenomenological analysis.

Does anyone have an interesting suggestion for about 2000 words of #StreamOfConsciousness narrative for trial analysis?

Bonus points if content is #Health or #Diabetes -related, but not a necessity.

#QualitativeMethods #Phenomenology #DundeeUni

Weak Note V: This time in short-form!

On the main site:
https://sarajoy.dev/blog/notes/

More basic but also rainbows:
https://sarajoy.dev/basic/notes/

#weekNotes #bulletPoints #unorderedLists #streamOfConsciousness #climateDoom #soreFeet #keyCaps #meetUps

Please download a free PDF copy of my syntaxicon book. Boost appreciated, not required. Not recommended for smartphone display. Free! No signups, no gimmicks, just click for the free PDF and enjoy.

https://steve.ws/wp-content/uploads/syntaxicon.pdf

#poetry #photography #streamofconsciousness

School holidays and I've lost the desire to do anything for the moment, including posting... and yet, I suddenly find a bunch of people followed me (sure, some "commercial") but I suddenly feel a pressure to post... well, I felt it for a couple of seconds before reverting to my usual 🎵 "I'll post when I want to!"🎵 (to the tune of Lesley Gore's: "I'll cry when I want to!")... Lesley Gore??... I remembered the song but not her name (had to search).

#StreamOfConsciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIsnIt1p978

Went over to the #localtimeline for a minute. It's a very odd #streamofconsciousness feed, with multiple languages, lots of cats, way more nudes than I would have expected, all interspersed with interesting Toots.

March 2023 - starts my last revolution around the earth as a 50 something. I am surprised sometimes that I am still here. So many close calls over the years over dumb stuff.. tripping over air that kinda thing. I'm blessed with six wonderful adult progeny who have successfully launched. I have a great job, fantastic friends and working on my health. What will this next decade hold? #retrospective #gettingolder #streamofconsciousness