2026-01-26

I've come back around on qualifying posting as a sickness. As upbeat as I am on the broad potential available for open digital spaces, I am also tired of dropping messages in bottles that shatter instantly, and I am also tired of swimming in the great digital garbage patch of the last trafficked arteries online. There are three websites and one chat app left to see screenshots of posts from the assholes you have blocked on the other websites. Everyone gets their back scratched with nested quote posts quipping a little more than the last. Someone has a new Substack or newsletter to pitch me on. I may be too precious to do much self-promotion myself, but I am also sick of eating garbage. It would be nice if people also ate some of my garbage, maybe.

I'm back from Anime Otapia in Bethesda last week, which I'd like to give a writeup if I find the energy for it. I have no expectations for new frontiers in American fan events this year, especially given the current political momentーI'd really rather Japanese guests not risk traveling here given the circumstancesーbut there was every reason to believe a Chinese event like this one, running primarily on funneling barrels of cash into a furnace, was going to be dead on arrival. That is, apparently, enough to have one of the best AV crews I have experienced at any live event anywhere. It might be nice to couple a review of it to Chou Kaguyahime if I can find the right bent. Both exhibit a lot about where Vocaloid has matured inside this decade and how nostalgia can be effective currency rather than puff, though I am also fatigued on writing about Vocaloid. There is, with complete clarity now that I have done enough of it, almost zero appetite for written analysis at length for it English.

Back in 2020, I spent the year logging my mood on a calendar each day. It's a little less morbid than seeing every week left in your life laid before you, but it's also a grim cloud if you have a more developed depression than anything seasonal. I don't need a calendar to know I have also been sleeping away a lot of this year, less literally and more of a walking numb. Having to stare at mangled code reviews through the same rectangle begging me to check out to newest cellphone footage from another extrajudicial execution is a gore. There is no cushion or steeling to normalize them, and I don't feel any comfort in knowing we're all wearing this same rotten flesh together. I'd like to tear off the hyperreal before it suffocates me completely.

I'm not sure I remember how to sprint from a standstill anymore. I'm hoping I can remember the motion to cast at least one more bottle into waters with some glitter left showing on the surface.