The I-Hole and the A-Hall
There’s a hotel in Champaign called the I-Hotel, which I call the I-Hole because of its logo:
The “I” in the “H” reminds me of this:
Of course, the I-Hole is located across the street from the A-Hall:
I entertain myself how I can in this town.
The Internet Is Broken
The Internet is broken,
The Freedom Train has stalled.
The Netizens are woken,
The gardens all are walled.
If anyone’s outspoken,
They soon will be recalled.
The Internet is broken
and I’m sitting here, appalled.
The Internet is busted;
its people are at war.
The principles I trusted
I don’t trust any more.
Our minds are maladjusted,
but we cannot restore
the Internet we busted
to the one we had before.
This song actually has a cheerful melody, but since I can’t write musical notation you’ll just have to trust me on that, until I attempt to record it.
Radfem Texas for Hannah
I got this Hundred Dollar Drawing commission for “Radfem Texas,” but the requester’s email doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m posting it here in hopes she can find and download it. Thanks, Hannah!
Introducing Neenster
A new social media platform/fediverse instance!
Q. What is Neenster?
A. Neenster is an open-source social media platform aimed at my existing social media friends and followers, and their friends and followers, and so on. My hope is that an account here will offer a soft landing into the “fediverse”, a giant network of network instances like this one. Well, technically like this one, but in terms of personality and audience, very different; fediverse instances range from highly policed insular bubbles, to completely unmoderated ideological hazmat zones. Neenster is somewhere in between. Once you have a Neenster account, you can discover other fediverse instances, and even start your own.
Q. Do you moderate this thing?
A. I plan to moderate Neenster like I “moderate” my fecebook wall: mostly by doing nothing, but occasionally blocking particularly abusive and annoying people according to how much they piss me off. Ideally users will moderate themselves by using their god-given blocking fingers. Remember: MUTE and/or BLOCK. It’s like brushing your teeth, but for your sanity.
Q. Does Neenster cost anything?
A. Accounts are free, and there’s no advertising or data collection, or profit. I pay for hosting and the domain. It’s my experiment, and my responsibility. If you want to contribute to my expenses, you can donate via the left-hand sidebar.
Q. Why is it called Neenster?
A. It’s named after me, Nina Paley. The -ster suffix is because it’s based on Spinster, where I’ve been a moderator almost since its founding. Neenster is spelled phonetically because people wouldn’t pronounce Ninster correctly. The name makes it clear that this instance is my experiment and my responsibility. I’m not trying to do anything more than host a bunch of my online friends, acquaintances, and frenemies away from fecebook. A cooler name would imply greater ambitions and impartiality, which I don’t have.
Q. Is Neenster trans-inclusive?
A. Yes. Trans people are welcome here.
Q. What about women?
A. Yes, women are welcome here.
Q. And men?
A. Yes, men are welcome here.
Q. You said I was welcome but someone here hurt my feelings!!
A. People will hurt your feelings online (and elsewhere). You can ignore them, mute them, or use your god-given blocking finger to block them.
Q. YOU’RE A HATEFUL BIGOT!!
A. This is the sort of thing that’s not welcome on neenster.org
Q. Do I have to use my real name?
A. No, but I’d like it if you did.
Q. What is your biggest concern about social media?
A. Mobbing/dogpiling. Few individuals who make up online mobs break any rules, but as groups they wreak havoc. The loveliest, nicest people join mobs. I’m extremely curious to learn if anything can be done about mobbing, because thus far I’ve seen it on every conceivable online platform, even with the best possible participants and intentions.
Q. Why the fish?
A. Because they look cool.
Q. I notice a lot of animated gifs here
A. Aren’t they cool? I’m an animator, I love them.
Q. How do I turn off the damn gifs?
A. Under “Preferences”, uncheck “Auto-play animated GIFs”.
more at https://neenster.org/about
Resurrected Mosaics
Working on new tessellating animated gif tiles led me to revisit my older tile experiments, and repurpose for website backgrounds. I originally made these animated mosaics in Macromedia Flash 8 for my section of the feature film The Prophet.
I tried recreating the mosaics in Moho, but quickly became frustrated. Moho’s masking is very unlike Flash’s; in fact Moho’s everything is very unlike Flash’s, and where Flash excels at this type of mechanical construction, Moho favors the organic. Rather than figuring it out anew, I fired up the ol’ 2007 PowerMac and dug into my old Flash files. I exported as Quicktime Video with an alpha channel and copied to my less-ancient 2014 Mac Pro. Moho couldn’t read the old Quicktime format, so I exported again as Apple ProRes 4444, dropped it into Moho Pro, fiddled about with sizing, and eventually exported this transparent gif that will permit cartesian tiling even though the underlying shapes are hexagonal.
In the process I discovered this cool website that will generate a “sprite sheet” from your uploaded gif. This would have been convenient back when I was designing morphing tile fabric patterns, but back in those days – the days Flash still worked – I had to do it manually.
Speaking of Flash, Adobe just announced it’s dead forever. Wouldn’t it be nice if they released Macromedia Flash (you know, the GOOD version from before they bought and ruined it) so others could develop it?