Phire @phire@xoxo.zone

An #introduction post:

I’m a #softwareengineer who believes in labour #organizing, #antiracism, #decolonization, and #radicalleft politics more broadly. I occasionally write essays about the intersection of tech and society on my blog.

When I’m not at work I read (#sff mainly, but also any nonfiction about human systems and why they’re so janky), go #climbing, and attempt various forms of #crafting (most recently #sewing and #embroidery). On Fridays I post #memes. Nice to meet you!

a thought on being okay with being unoriginal. (I promise I'm done navelgazing about writing.)
https://phirephoenix.com/blog/2022-07-08/unoriginal

a meta note about wolves https://phirephoenix.com/blog/2022-07-04/two-wolves

I really enjoyed this piece on video game design philosophy, and how the prevailing risk-averse trend of making games only with mechanics that are already legible to players has stunted the possibility of an innovative future of game design https://blog.kylekukshtel.com/game-design-mimetics

I only discovered this when I was trying to tweak Byword/Scrivener to do what I needed them to do, and thought "I wonder if I can just find an Obsidian plugin", and the answer is yes. Open source is miraculous.

A few months ago I moved from Bear.app to Obsidian, because I wanted:

1) folders, not tags
2) easy access to the underlying files
3) more flexible UI

Obsidian did all of those things, and also has amazing community plugins (like custom data queries!!) that reminds me of the early Firefox days , but the thing that I did not grok until this week is that being able to theme using CSS means any theme I apply on my computer also syncs to my phone? It's like a build-your-own-iOS app!

Do I know anyone who's read the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein? I am 2/3 of the way through the third book and dying to talk about it

turns out sleeping 10 hours across two nights hits VERY different in your 30s than your 20s, who knew

I thought we had taco seasoning for making nachos but we don’t, so I improv’d some chicken stir fry with vaguely taco-adjacent spices for toppings and tbh it was great, but I ate too many nachos and need to pass out now

thinking about technology-mediated consumption is neat (when it's not horrific)

coincidentally I think getting the iPod is how I started listening to English music? I was pretty much exclusively into anime/jpop downloaded directly from webrings of fansites and lovingly burned onto CDs up till then, but 2004 was the Limewire/Yousendit era (for me, I know Limewire was 2000) and 2003 is when I started using Livejournal and meeting people who shared music, and having more than 700mbs meant I could throw a bunch of unknown music on my iPod and still have access to old favs.

man, my first iPod was a silver mini that my parents got me for Christmas through a grocery store points program and my current one is a 7th gen nano that I've been using daily to listen to audiobooks to fall asleep since like 2014. if I have to go back to a janky-ass mp3 player I will but I just want another iPod mini tbh tbqh https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/05/the-music-lives-on/

is it because I keep reading the news, could that possibly have anything to do with it

having a very high anxiety despite having slept a full 7.5 hours, I want my money back