Overhauls

Wednesday, January 22 was my first day at UIUC for my Masters of Science: Library and Information Science. So far, it's been pretty fun and has me considering further academic pursuits past this masters, maybe into industrial-organization psychology, which is what you can go into if you want to do management consulting basically. I've also considered a second masters in counseling at Northwestern. I don't know. Now I also kind of dream of getting a job at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and living somewhere in Delaware (a decidedly blue one).

I was offered a position at Northbrook Public Library joining their Adult Services team. There are so many benefits to this move, most imperatively: my preference to interact with mature humans (because children, while often cute and fun as heck in doses, exhaust me), and my disinclination for shifting inside a makerspace. The latter one may come as a surprise, considering I identify as an artist (of some kind). The bottom line is that I wish I could be part of an adult artists' studio co-op, not an all-ages public library makerspace. Fundamentally different spaces.

I joined Pixelfed on the gram.social instance. I've been keeping track of the features I've felt feelings about. Pixelfed allows for hyperlinks in post captions - huge benefit. I love linking people around the internet and Insta's lockdown on that made the whole platform insular: great for profits, bad for overall user experience of the internet. Next benefit: threaded comments, thank goodness. And I only discovered recently that because all content - including comments - is federated, you can see and repost them via an app or site that supports text-only content, like Mastodon. And then regarding gram.social in particular, they implemented a portfolio feature that allows us to distinguish our artworks from our casual posts (memes and casual photography, for example). Visit my portfolio on gram.social to visually explore my creative projects old and new.

Drawbacks of Pixelfed includes its current struggles to scale and support short-form videos. You're much better off right now posting that content to mastodon. You could try Loops, in development right now by the same auteur of Pixelfed, but it's still in beta and not federated yet. The other drawback is no notifications, but according to the documentation it's on its way (apparently notifications exist on the Pixelfed mobile app, but other Pixelfed features that're more important are missing from the app, so all in all not a great experience right now for those of us who enjoy notifications.

As noted in my masto post here, my new post flow will be: for text posts & short vids: glammr.us / #masto ; option to post short vids while #loops is in beta. Long-form #vids: makertube / #peertube. #Memes, #photography, visual #portfolio content: gram.social / #pixelfed

February 10, Good Omens began filming with David Tennant and Michael Sheen outside in public in Edinburgh, Scotland. I am obsessed with all the behind-the-scenes footage. It just makes me so happy. With Good Omens and Staged, these two actors are my Comfort People and anything with either of them in it, I am already 90% sold I will watch (they've both had stinkers though, I admit; I'm not that far gone). Sidenote: it's bittersweet that Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles have fallen so short as sources of good vibes or comfort for me. I can go on a lot of faith re: parasocial relationships but

I also read Good Omens fanfic to cope these days (reminder I keep track of all my reading of published books and recommended fanfiction in Lair), so I have some recs. During my last week at my former employer, I was reading The Rose and The Serpent by Atalan, which is a grounded, angsty, well-written and charming fairy tale. 55k words (120 pages-ish, so novella-length; thanks wordcounter.net). And then I found another amazing fic, Put Out The Fire by Aleakim which was a whopping 133k words, a nice long plotty and emotional novel-length fic you can sink your teeth into. Adorable story. I cry everytime Crowley's in peril, and also there's this one conversation between them that is so tooth-rottingly sweet AND angsty. I loved it, and especially because I was celebrating my father's 70th birthday in London at the time: nothing like loving your life exploring a new city during the day and then turning in with a delicious night-time treat to top it all off. Srsly omg.

London! What an amazing city. Traveled with my mom and dad for my dad's 70th, and we hit the Frameless Immersive Art Experience - a huge highlight!

Post by @librarymonster@glammr.us

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Choosing Keeping, a stationary and paper products shop, was magic. We visited a second time because so many things in there percolated with us overnight and we were like "we gotta go back and get that cigarette pencil," hahaha.

The British Museum - we had afternoon tea, then wandered around a few minutes and found the Gebelein Man, which honestly felt a bit ick. There was a spectacle aspect to it that turned me off. We left and I found the Atlantis Bookshop where I immediately knew I had to purchase the Cosmic C*nt tarot deck.

We visited the Tate Modern, which we loved.

And of course we can't forget the scene of Nye as a child, his friend introducing him to libraries and their subsequent sheer excitement over its existence. Fuck yeah libraries!

Go sign up for a month’s subscription to the National Theater at Home and watch it!