Hey Fam, I've been getting on the BlueSky train in recent days. I love y'all, and I still think it's better here on principle, but BlueSky is more the environment I'm looking for.

I know it has its problems (Twitter always did too, even in the before times), but all I can say is I'm having a pretty good time there.

I don't think I'll be posting much here in the future unless shit hits the fan over there. If you'd like to follow me, I'm
@westmeadow.bsky.social

As corny as it sounds, I'll always fondly remember my time here and the people I interacted with.

This is not important, I’m just genuinely curious…

If you had to have one chronically, would you prefer…

Brushing up on Spiral Dynamics. Get into it if you’re not familiar. Very useful framework for understanding and interacting with others and yourself.

Then again there have been other fascist regimes throughout history where this wasn’t the case. I don’t fuckin know.

I’m sure people have written a lot about the common factors in societies that embrace authoritarianism. Time to study I guess.

Still processing a lot, as so many are. I’m sure there are lots of ways to explain what’s going on, but here’s something I’ve been thinking about.

A big issue is we are disconnected from each other and from the land. We’ve lost connectedness. This is honestly a natural consequence of developing technology, especially industrialism, combined with Capitalism. Life is increasingly about working and soothing ourselves, and we’re able to do both in increasing isolation, from others and from nature.

In this reality, what tangible incentive do we have to want what’s best for our neighbors, for the planet, or for future generations? We feel like we aren’t needed and don’t need others.

On a relevant note, I want to share a light-hearted interaction we had with my six-year-old son this morning.

As he is six, we still try to generally shield him from politics. We mute political ads when they are on TV. However, we did talk to him about how we voted – he understands what voting is as much as a young child can. He knows there was "a girl and a boy" both running for president. He told us he wanted the girl to win. Apparently he saw a political ad at my mother-in-law's and he said he wants the girl to win because the ad said the boy has lots of bad ideas.

This morning, we informed him that the boy won, in case it comes up at school, and that most people voted for the boy even though we did not, and that some people are happy with the result and some are sad.

His reply was that more people should watch football because when football was on TV at Granny's house an ad kept showing about how the boy's ideas don't work very well.

Whatever happens, it's going to be much, much worse this time. Working to wrap my mind around that.

Update: They're sending me replacement switches! Shout out to Epomaker!

To be honest, I'm not happy that three of my switches are faulty after about seven weeks of use. I've asked Epomaker to send me replacement switches to resolve the issue, so hopefully that goes well. I have read their customer service is sub-par, so we will see.

But I'm a huge fan of being able to easily fix my tech! I know replacing a mechanical key is about as basic as it gets, but I think this is my first time opening up a piece of a tech device, replacing a small, relatively cheap part, and having the device be once again usable. It feels great! I'll be continuing on with mechanical keyboards in the future for the ecological effects alone!
#righttorepair
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One thing I mostly love is the ability to easily repair individual keys! I had three keys that were noticeable "sticky." E.g, I would try to type "t" and "ttt" would appear. I emailed Epomaker about it, and they gave me some suggestions for fixing it. Their final suggestion ended up working, and it was to replace the switch under the keycap. I switched out the three letter-key switches for those of lesser-used keys, and it did the trick!
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About two months ago, my basic-but-solid bluetooth keyboard's Enter/Return key stopped working. I decided it was a great opportunity to pick up my first ever mechanical keyboard. I picked up the Epomaker TH80 Pro at a steep discount. Overall, I've been liking it!

Honestly, while I love the *feel* of the keyboard, I think I could do without the noisiness, which I know is a big mechanical key selling point for a lot of people. It's not a dealbreaker, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I expected to. Maybe there are quieter switches I could use (using Brown now)? There's a lot to learn.
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I have some strong political opinions, but honestly – and I know this is a cliche, but *I* never say it out loud… I’m tired of the division.

I long for a society where we can all be neighbors and love and take care of each other. All kinds of serious reasons exist for this division. Doesn’t mean I’m good with it.

Discovering Jason Hickel. Good stuff.

Really feeling the effects of the post-truth society today. There are so many facts I want to just share on Facebook to my mostly conservative "audience" (like how all of them will benefit more from a Harris economy vs. a Trump economy, or about expecting the Red Mirage), but I genuinely believe they will not only not sway a single person but also alienate me. I feel helpless. What would you do?