I'm just a 40-Something gamer, writer, editor, role-player, multi fandom nerd. This blog is a wacky mix of anything that happens to catch my fancy so hold onto your butts.
OP: The way of wearing the Tang-style hanfu (Qixiong Ruqun) may look simple, but it actually involves multiple layers. Some Hanfu studios now add shoulder straps to make it easier to wear. People who prefer a more historical style still favor the traditional way of wearing it. The types of Hanfu pieces that can be layered(mainly focuses on three representative dynasties: the Tang, Song, and Ming):
I feel so insane about ai. I’ve had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say “I guess I’ve used a lot of water.” and I’ve been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I’m THE ONLY PERSON who doesn’t use chatgpt. it’s turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don’t you people see??? why don’t you understand??????? this bullshit didn’t exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything
So in my city, we have a weekly Society for Creative Anachronism meeting, on Fridays at 6:30 in a church building downtown. Originally, I believe, there was a sign in the elevator saying “SCA Meeting, 2nd floor” or something similar. At some point in the last few years, however, I came to the meeting, and while being let into the building, I told the secretary I was here for the SCA meeting, and she vigorously responded “The medievalist meeting?? Second room upstairs.” I thought nothing of it until I stepped into the elevator and saw a sign posted that said “Society for Creative Anac., 2nd room, 6:30. S. C. Anonymous, 1st room, 6:30.” I quietly googled S. C. Anonymous, and found it meant Sexually Compulsives Anonymous. I was welcomed into the medievalist meeting after carefully double checking the room, and mentioned the sign. Apparently one or two new people had accidentally joined the S. C. Anonymous meeting by getting the wrong room, and sat there with their knitting project in a circle of exclusively men for a few minutes before realizing they may be in the wrong meeting. I just can’t get over the coincidence of this. How is it possible that TWO deeply different groups, both with the initialism SCA, would be renting space at the SAME church, on the SAME day, at the SAME time, one room apart?
Once upon a time, Google “wasn’t evil.” Now it’s too big not to be. When a company has this much power—too embedded to boycott, too rich to punish, too essential to regulate—it becomes a monster of itself, mowing down anything that stands in the way of profit.
This year we switch. We know, we know: deGoogling’s a chore. But, like cleaning your room, we promise you’ll feel much better when it’s over. (The difference is, cleaning your room could never, you know, save the world…)
As motivation, we’ll be showcasing Google’s (staggering) assortment of evil deeds this month. From privacy and data misuse, to environmental and social malfeasance. It’s all good (bad).
Today’s post asks… Did we ever really choose Google? And when did it get so… gross?:
