December 2, 2024 ~ 9 min read

Le bien qui fait mal

This is just a short(?) update, but I spent the last 2 days in a coding fever and finished a project I’ve been thinking about for a while. I present my Tadashi Kikuchi x Ainosuke Shindo (TadaAi) web shrine.

le bien qui fait mal :: a Tadashi Kikuchi x Ainosuke Shindo (TadaAi) web shrine Web shrine featuring Tadashi & Ainosuke

I had previously created and published a ship manifesto in print, and it was given away as gifts, traded away, or as a free add-on to zine orders from me. I had thought for a while about whether I should put this zine online as a PDF. In the end, I thought that web pages are by far the most accessible solution, and set out to build a website. I know some people post to Archive of Our Own, but since I got the Neocities domain, I decided to put it there. I’ll update it if I can think of what I’d like to write. Hope you enjoy it! The details and tools are listed on the Tools page of the shrine.

I did code it by hand with HTML, but immediately after I finished, I installed a NextJS project to work on. Probably going to try to work with a static site generator(SSG) for the next one…templates and components are really convenient, after all, haha. This site (AW Sketch) is built with Astro, which is also static, but I just felt like working with NextJS.

Also I found a really annoying bug that I actually have seen before, and it has to do with pages generated with markdown wrapping images in p tags. Blergh.

Deactivation of my BlueSky account

Please take the following with many grains of salt and I am attempting to describe something that I don’t fully understand yet.

Someone did already notice, but I’ll just down here that I did deactivate my BlueSky account. There wasn’t any particular reason specifically, but I chose to deactivate. I’m not an expert, I just want people to read about the AT protocol technology. The “open” aspect of BlueSky is both a blessing and a curse - one of the positives is not being controlled by one company and being able to port your content and your followers to the place you prefer.

(I am using “content” in the way that is intended in web development, as in the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” and HTML as containers for user’s content, and not in the sense of “content” as in churn and garbage.)

If you read the documentation, BlueSky comes with a “Firehose” API. It is titled as a “core primitive” in their documentation. If you’re not too familiar with what an application programming interface is, it’s a way for applications or computers to connect. A very basic API would be something, say, a meteorologist builds that outputs raw weather data through an API, and then you can build a local weather app that uses that data. So, all those apps that people are building that work with BlueSky, those use the API. It enables people to create cool things like labellers or custom Tweetdeck-like clones. The boon: fast development if you’re going to build your own things, and empowers your user base. The curse: it is an API and you get things like this - One million public Bluesky posts scraped for AI training.

As you can see, the curse partially the reason that I suspect that sites like Instagram and Twitter are “walled gardens” - as much as they are also into the “training AI” aspect, they are keen to keep you in so they can monetize the text/images/uploads themselves. BlueSky is open, so even if the creators of BlueSky say they aren’t into training generative AI, the fundamental design of BlueSky is “open” until they figure out what to do about it. The API provides the means to access the data because that is a fundamental part of the design that makes it open. It is very much like the issue with the open web and scraper bots ignoring robots.txt requests. I’m not pretending that having a personal website is any better or any defensive evasive action is going to be successful. At the very least, this will be the way I will continue to choose to build, even if it seems foolish and incredibly backwards in the face…I’m not sure. Everything.

I talked a lot. I am going to do more research before I continue writing about this. I had initially joined BlueSky because I was tired of the spambots and I had already locked my main account for 2-3 years already, so there wasn’t any particular loss to me. I am, however, very sad, about deleting all my art. I think my fundamental frustration isn’t with anyone in particular…maybe just big tech in general? The people that got us to this stage? I wanted very much to join in and repost my art that I am proud of, but I just got more and more frustrated reading people’s posts after the Hugging Face incident. It’s somewhat like people’s conflation of “AI” between generative AI and genuine programs that will benefit humanity. I don’t know. I just feel very frustrated right now.

I’ll probably reactivate later in the year or whenever, but I’m not in a rush. I also discovered that all public BlueSky accounts have a RSS feed and I have achieved true (sickos) mode by putting all the news accounts into my RSS reader. Cue cackling.

This video is actually very interesting, if you have the time.

The idea of a custom algorithm, hmmm. Is it strange that I already can imagine people shipping out an art algorithm that lets the owner “feature” specific people more (and then attempt to monetize it)? I don’t know why I think of these weird scenarios. Nothing wrong with promoting yourself or your friends more. The custom labellers are really cool. The block lists are yet another gift/curse - people realized that they were subscribing to block lists that they couldn’t personally verify if the intent was malicious or the opposite of what they want.

I still don’t know how to feel about not being on SNS right this second, but I’ll be back, hopefully. I’m maintaining the Instagram account as the main social media to use to apply to things. I’ll probably have to turn on the BlueSky account at some point. This is probably related to my struggles with writing a bio about myself. I don’t have much I want to tell people directly? But what purpose do I have if I’m not interesting in addition to my art?

I think this is the first time I’ve bothered to talk about tech stuff in my 13+ years of blogging. This is a sketch blog, I swear.

Broken Pencil

To end on another bad note, the thing I wrote about back in October about Broken Pencil being done has come to pass. You can read more about it on The Grind: “Broken Pencil Is Done. I did enjoy my time going to Canzine in 2022, experienced my rejection for the very, very small 2023 edition, did the online Canzine this year, and didn’t bother with applying to the 2024 in-person edition. Also I read this - Editor quits amid outrage after call for ‘Appropriation Prize’ in writers’ magazine. Apparently BP didn’t even bother to update the site to tell visitors that the two planned in-person Canzine events were cancelled.

Have some random photos to try to alleviate what I just wrote.

My zine collection as of now. A set of hand-made zines laid out neatly on a red background I really should stop putting the title on the bottom of the cover. A copy of Days Gone By sits on a shelf with other zines Random city photos that I thought were amusing. A copy of Witch Hat Kitchen volume 1 in a store window with the label "couples costume" A copy of the fancomic "Another Peak: a SVSSS Fan Comic Collection" by the cartoonists vi, onechrispy, Mitsuemachi, worm sits next to a stack of danmei novels with the label "Staff Pick" written in all caps under the fancomic pepperoni pizza with garlic oil A plastic skull is being held out in front of an art installation of the artist Van Gogh's face Takoyaki Borrowed this from a friend. How to draw manga illustrating battle book Crepes on my birthday. Tadashi and Ainosuke puppet charms sit behind a plate of savoury crepes A passion fruit cake for Tadashi’s birthday. Tadashi puppet charm sits next to a passion fruit cake. The cake is white and smooth. It was $8; a really good collection of one-shots and short comics. To Strip the Flesh Story and Art by Oto Toda manga