Weeknotes 2023.6: No escape from drama
Some mid-2000s level Internet drama went down this week, and as a result, I’ve migrated my Mastodon account to another instance and can now be found there @joro@tech.lgbt. I missed the main thrust of what happened because I was at work, doing the job I’m paid for, but here is my understanding: on the previous instance I was on, the (single) admin’s patience was already wearing somewhat thin as the instance had grown; a procedural disagreement about whether people who posted about playing the new Harry Potter game should be banned from the instance led to the admin making an unpopular decision leading to people dogpiling onto them; the admin snapped, and announced the closure of the instance within three months. Harry Potter: still sundering online communities 20 years later. I’m half expecting an exposé in two years where it turns out half the accounts were Msscribe sock puppets. At least Mastodon gives you the option to move to a different server, even if the process is laborious, and even if there is a cooling off period (and even if certain instance moderators seem willing to defederate/block other instances over the most trivial of online beeves.)
Anyway, in some less chronically online news, a roll of film came back from the lab. My first time shooting FilmNeverDie Sora 200, and the results were gorgeous: a bit more desaturated and with more halation than I was expecting, but it leads to a deliciously and obviously analogue flavour.
I visited the heiroglyphics exhibition at the British Museum, and in the main I was not impressed. There was some interesting stuff I learned from the interpretation boards and the interactive elements, and it was wise to involve Egyptian historians in some of the interpretations, but the ergonomics were awful; there was a massive queue to get around a chronological display of the race to decode the Rosetta Stone. Even with some of the more magnificent displays of sections of heiroglyphic wall with the original coloured paint preserved, the whole thing felt a bit like a ploy to stick the Stone itself in a paid section of the museum. If you still fancy seeing it, you’ve probably missed your chance: the museum staff are on strike for the next week, and good for them.
Sometimes I think I’m getting bored of London. It’s been eleven years, now (previously, back when it was only 10.) But the place still has the capacity to surprise. A bizarre graffito here, a chicken place that’s been there for ages but I’ve only just got round to trying (Good Friend in Chinatown—great value), a building there that I’ve seen from a distance but only just got close enough to see the brickwork on while taking out the recycling… There’s a lot going on here. There are worse places to be.
