I've actually managed to *finish* 5 short stories in the last couple months. That's more than I've done in years. A couple of them might actually be decent? Hoping to keep that going, and then figure out what to do with them

It is mildly chilly in my house today. I am feeling the urge to don the first festive hat of the season.

I know a lot of folks don't prefer the fractured archipelagian nature of ActivityPub-based social media. Many folks really like the way Bluesky offers a central global view.

But, it seems like every time there's a system where there's a central global view, there end up being just a few central personalities running it.

And, those personalities almost inevitably decide to use their position to be jackasses at some point.

Fuckin' waffles.

@zigg ope, do not search further for blue waffles, i beg of thee

But, I think this is what kicked it off

https://bsky.app/profile/jay.bsky.team/post/3m25esnq4t22y

I think there's a squirrel building a winter hideout under our solar panels. That's.... suboptimal

To be clear: If I personally somehow found myself in the position of running a big central global system, I would most probably end up being a jackass at some point.

I think we need to have good people in positions of power, but we also need to have systems that don't entirely rely on a few people being good.

@benbrown home is where the pit is

@mdhughes Hahaha no no no not blue waffles. This is a play on the whole "I like pancakes!" "Oh so you hate waffles?!" trope, except somehow the pancakes are pleas to finally kick a transphobe off the platform and the response is "WAFFLES"

Oh no! Anyway... #xbox #microsoft

I mean, I know I'm a weirdo outlier: I switched over to Bazzite Linux on my gaming PC about 18 months ago, and #XboxGamePass doesn't work there.

I can do cloud streaming or an occasional reboot into a small emergency windows partition, but I haven't been feeling the value there for awhile.

It's just that I pre-paid for like 2 years of subscription at one point when it did seem like a good deal and that's running out now.

They sent me this email just *after* I cancelled.

"Your subscription price is changing from $239.99 to $359.99."

Haha, no it ain't, suckas

@aleen Yeah, can confirm this happened immediately after I bought my Tab Ultra C a few years ago

Just saw a song production breakdown of the theme from Flash Gordon by Queen and now I immediately must listen to the entire soundtrack and/or watch the movie

@jalefkowit Oh, I've seen the movie probably at least 30 times, it's permanently playing on loop in some corner of my brain

I think watching Flash Gordon (1980) when I was about 7 was ludicrously formative. To this day I am an enormous sucker for camp and ridiculousness

@jalefkowit Hahaha yes :blobsweats:

I still, desperately, want a revival of camp scifi movies but cast and directed entirely by the drag community with gratuitously over the top rock-opera men's choirs for the soundtrack

@skippy @mdhughes Well, the mocking came in continued replies and stuff like this

https://bsky.app/profile/jay.bsky.team/post/3m2a73ot5uk2e

@benbrown them slippers tho

Oh no: Steady Hands just dropped a horror collection with a bunch of spoopy cardigan sweaters that tell me they indeed Have My Number. I am in danger of engaging in commerce, here

https://www.steady-hands.com/collections/horror

@maya Yeah, I think I copy-catted you, because I now also have a purple Cult of the Lamb sweater from them. Which is how I got on the mailing list 😅

@sysop You should, in fact, change your own TOS to require you to be more annoying