De-billionaire'zing and talking to Princess
Almost done with my departure from the wild world of White Men with Too Much Money and Power. Trying to spend my money and time wisely. The space I inhabit and the energy I exchange is my own power, and all I can do on the side of good is be extremely thoughtful with both, to not waste either on banality or evil. So I have been withdrawing from social media, so as not to feed the Meta beast, and have been de-Amazoning and de-Googling my online life, while shoring up my privacy standards. This has become an entire movement; there's a helpful subreddit at r/degoogle if you are interested in reducing your Nazi/money hoarder footprint.
The strangest transition was closing my Audible account. I have been a member since 2007. Habit is so intense and feels so safe, especially when it involves a special interest for me, and my life, as you know, revolves around books. I still own my Audible library, but clicking that button felt peculiar just the same.
But given Amazon's recent greedy behavior, I can't give them money or further time and resources beyond the books I already own. I am deleting my Kindle and Audible wishlists, and adding those book titles to my private app BookBuddy+. Because, yes, no Amazon means no more Goodreads. Not supporting them also means being thought-full about not letting them track me. I have never been okay with their purchase of GR; I should have acted upon it before now.
The only information collected by BookBuddy+ is my contact information, and the customer service (I had trouble with an import) is fast and friendly. It's shiny on my laptop, iPad mini, and iPhone, and syncs on either Dropbox or iCloud. Plus, I'm supporting a small, independent developer's work. I love the inclusion of both categories and tags; I reserve the categories for podcast, writing, and educational reading.
I'm going to continue using The StoryGraph, because I like supporting it as an independent POC-created entity, and I love its statistical and community features. Don't forget, I have a House of Leaves read along hosted there; please feel free to join and to follow me at theremightbecupcakes. Happy to have new bookish friends, always; I will follow you right back. I'm also hosting a reading challenge: Harvard University Bookstore's Top 100 Books. I'm at 35% completed right now. Please feel free to join up as well, and let me know if you do.
The only other place you can find me online right now, besides Pinterest (and, if things change, I'll close that and absorb the data I need into my private second brain), is the fediverse, which I am learning about slowly. I am on Bluesky at theremightbecupcakes.com, and Mastodon at the filtered server mindly.social/theremightbecupcakes.com. I'm learning how to automate the mirroring, but, for now, until I earn that particular badge, I (supposedly) have the website and both accounts set up at this bridge. We shall see. Feeling a little lost in this new universe.
So Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Amazon shopping, Audible, X/Twitter (that was a while ago), and Goodreads are all gone, and I'll be updating the show notes to reflect this. You can find me here, here received as an email newsletter, or on your independent Fediverse talker of choice. I felt so old typing that last part, and I never feel old. And on the podcast. I'm back. It's been a fraught time, complete with Covid and losing my voice (ha, universe, HA), but I am stubborn and I am back. Neat trick for Mastodon servers: there's an RSS account that will feed you podcast and website updates in your app. How to do this for There Might Be Cupcakes?
Mention the following to @birb@rss-parrot.net
the feed for this site/the newsletter: https://theremightbecupcakes.com/rss
the feed for the podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4761852/episodes/feed
my Bluesky feed: https://bsky.app/profile/theremightbecupcakes.com
So your toot (toot?) would just contain, for example, if you wanted to be updated about the newsletter on Mastodoon:
@birb@rss-parrot.net https://theremightbecupcakes.com/rss
I love this...I kinda feel like we're rolling backwards to the days of Usenet and BBSes...and I am okay with that. I think it's time to downsize and roll our own, decentralize...and look out more strongly for one another.
Here's tons more resources for both Bluesky and Mastodon, have fun.
Where to find Cupcakes now:
Pinterest/theremightbecupcakes
Reddit: r/theremightbecupcakes
The StoryGraph: House of Leaves read along
Litsy (as long as it remains independent; I need to update it)
I hope you all are well and safe. If you missed it,🎧I was recently on Bye, Pumkin again with Princess, and we discussed the book Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker and its companion documentary, Six Schizophrenic Brothers. She had to cut us off at 2 hours and 30 minutes because she has kids and a life. I had a blast, as always, and I was able to use my master's degree for once. (The other book I brought up is January First by Michael Schofield; and here's the new information that has come to light. This is why we don't diagnose growing, developing brains with adult disorders.)
And as for that second brain? Right now I am using Craft. I'm pleased with their ownership and privacy policy, and we shall see. I was using Notion, but their export does Not Work, and neither does their customer service. I've set up an Apple Shortcut as a web clipper, and so sending websites and YouTube videos of interest to Craft pages is easy as cherry pie (Happy Twin Peaks season). Yes, I am a data hoarder, which takes us full circle to how the world is changing and we have to change with it (and yes, there is a subreddit for that, and one for requests as well). But I always have been--I love research, and if my body and bank account allowed, I would dwell in academia forever. Alas. Talk to you soon.
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