t-amadan industries

an intimate evening with nick

2026-04-06T00:00:00Z

our eyes catch from across the bar. you’re wearing what you usually do on a saturday night, whatever that is. i’m wearing a dark green (#03350) cheap polyester suit with a clearly unironed shirt, my tie is nice though; a herringbone burgundy (#660033). tied decently enough. i pull out a cigarette case, slyly gesture you to come outside to join me. against better judgement, you do so. it’s raining. near the end of fall, winter revealing its hand a little early for year. you find me on the balcony, a semi-private lookout over the city. the streets aint what they used to be, toots. i light mine, hand you one, and light yours by shielding the wind slightly with you, our hands touch, and for a moment we’re not strangers engaging in filthy habits, but two kindred souls lost in each others company.

after a long exhale, looking wistfully out onto the sea of the metropolis, i turn to you and give a sly little smile as you mutter something.

“what? no, i haven’t played disco elysium or whatever it is. oscar keeps telling me to. yeah. yeah nah sorry.”

“what do i play? ah mon cherie. the game of life. far better entertainment than i ever derived from a screen. sure, i can queue you in a little bit - your funeral. let’s see… what have i been indulging in recently that aren’t your eyes… ah, of course-”

Daniel Sackheim White Squares 2021

a briefing of my financial decision process

i'm not an expensive person. i don't buy myself new clothes often, i don't have subscriptions to anything but spotify and nicotine, i never picked up any hobbies built around consumables / collectables with ever-shifting goals, but i do have hobbies that require tools, and if i'm to buy tools, i’m to spend the extra bit of money to get ones that are solid and last. not cream of the crop, not complete overkill, but enough that they make the job reasonably pleasant, and have durability that guarantee some longevity, and a few extra features so i'm not having to upgrade in 3 years time. every 2 years or so, i'll sit down, tally what i've been wanting to buy for 6+ months at least, and do as much research as humanly possible to make sure i get the right thing at a reasonable price. here's how that went down recently -

bike

i got a bike! i live and work in the city, but a lot of the social events i tangle myself in usually end up being within 5km of my place. i used to (and sometimes still can be) a massive fan of public transport, but a grievance i have with it nowadays is the scheduling. since i can usually walk most places i need to, i find the bottleneck of conforming to the schedules and whims of a bus of all things a bit cumbersome for me. i like the ability to set off whenever i’d like to rather than wait around and have my plans purely at the mercy of the metro system. usually this results in 15-20 dollar uber trips that take around 10 minutes. and so, a bike seemed like an excellent investment to maintain a more self-paced schedule, have fun, look kinda cool and expand my mobility without sacrificing time or getting kneecapped by paying the price of fuel. i specifically got a foldie due to all my other bikes having been stolen within a few years of ownership, the convenience of having it in my apartment rather than needing to go to the bike rack, the politeness in not taking too much space in shared locales and the general ability to take it in combination with other modes of transport if needed. also, it’s fucking cute!!! after spending 2 days in constant research and browsing my options, i found someone selling a polygon urbano 3i, basically never used, brand new tires for just under half the asking price of it brand new. it has an internal 3-speed shimano hub, 20” wheels, rim breaks and a pre-mounted bag rack. hardly top-spec, not the most sporty thing, but mid level components, durable gears and still reasonably versatile. and man. what incredible fun it has been. after getting it home, buying myself the essentials and retuning the breaks, it’s been fuckin mint. sure! i notice other cyclists with larger wheels can generally go faster than me, it’s not the easiest to do the hilly outer suburbs in, but it does exactly what i paid it to do, and i get to assert dominance over everyone else by switching between being a vehicle and pedestrian at will. get fucked all of ya’s. i've named my bike minami after the bike in tatami galaxy.

yamaha seqtrak

i got a yamaha seqtrak! for those not in the know, it’s an 11 track groovebox and sequencer that has an inbuilt yamaha dx engine, sampling, 2000+ awm2 presets, 128 note polyphony, onboard effects, a 5 hour battery life and a companion app for a full wavetable / visualiser / project storage. originally, i was looking to get a teenage engineering ko-ii. i’m deeply fond of my po-133, but after some consideration, i came to the conclusion that for the same money, i could buy something that isn’t specifically designed around sampling; something i don’t do a whole lot of honestly. it’s fookin banging.. after i got it, i became obsessed with achieving the perfect setup. for maximum swag. i landed on this.

a usb c hub to negotiate all my devices
an akai mpk mkii mk4 to act as expressive input for the onboard sounds for the seqtrak.
a zoom h4n to recording the instrumental, record live vocals and monitor the complete work at red-book audio quality.
a 60,000mah powerbank to give the device 24 hours continuous battery life and deliver more consistent power to the midi controller.

essentially, i’m fucking steve jobs and created a full studio that can fit into a backpack and last long enough for even the heaviest of tweakers to cook beats up on. some might call this excessive, but consider i have uses for the individual devices, most of which i already owned, it was a fun experiment in modular design.

a big reason i purchased the seqtrak was due to a conundrum i have when making music. ableton is a piece of software that is so ridiculously powerful that i can’t help but feel guilty when i use it to sketch out ideas. it’s like driving a bugatti to mcdonalds. you know it’s capable of so much more, that it almost feels wasteful to use in such a trashy manner. the seqtrak however, is both powerful enough that i can create very competent ideas while also portable and accessible enough that it incentivises quick and simple ideas, rather than demanding or presenting me with tools to try and craft the perfect kick drum, the perfect reverb. fuck yeah!!!!!!!

other than that, i did a complete studio gear refresh. swap a behringer b1 for a rode nt2-a. some edifier 1280dbs for jbl 305ps. a focusrite scarlette solo for an audient id14. this wasn’t all at the same time, but it’s something i planned to do for a while. the b1 was too bright and cheap a mic now, the focusrite lacked stereo inputs, the ‘monitors’ were quite literal trash, and realistically all those purchases were all 8 - 10 years ago and came from a lack of financial leverage to do much better. no, i am a new man, with more means, more research, and larger projects that do necessitate better equipment, or at least more versatile gear.

the ritalin report

god where the fuck do i start. ritalin single handedly ruined my life for like 2 months. i was naive. deeply naive.

so! ritalin. methylphenidate. i got some. and let me tell you WOOO WHAT A WOMANNNN. ritalin was fucking awful. truly. i’ve been grateful for many years that adhd hasn’t been a particular barrier to living a ‘functional’ life. i’m working full time, i’ve lived independently. my room is generally always clean, i don’t struggle fulfilling any one need in my life. it’s alright. ritalin completely stripped that from me. see, when i ate or slept alright, it worked! kinda! not really! idk! but as an amphetamine, it actively disincentivises sleeping or eating. i would sleep 4 hours a night, eat one meal a day, and generally feel so tired i couldn’t function, but unable to stop doing things. i’d get home from a night out, and instead of dealing with the consequences and reset my room, i’d chuck my clothes somewhere, sit down, and doomscroll for 2 hours. at some point, all of my energy came from ritalin. cut to me absolutely crashing the fuck out, too tired to eat or engage in simple emotional regulation, my life constantly revolving around the next dose, flipping between states of hyperactivity, depression, agitation, excitement, numbness, every extreme of the human emotional spectrum. i did not have any sense of stability.

in essence, i’ll sum it up as so -

day to day your emotional state is generally speaking influenced by your needs being met. have you eaten? what sleep debt are you in? who are you being social with? are you giving yourself enough mental downtime? day to day, we all probably are lacking in one place or another, but the consequences are manageable. ritalin made me unable to regulate any of those needs, then gave drastic consequences. fuck ritalin.

thankfully i was able to go back to my specialist and grab myself a fuck tonne of vyvanse instead. and holy FUCK is that the shit. most of the time, idk. i’m still not perfect, i still need to form habits like every other bucko, but the ability to do things isn’t offset by becoming a fucking crackhead. as your local dj on their facebook page with 79 likes says, big things coming soon…

tid bits

psp camera get!!!
full time contract get!!!
winter is favorite season!!!
had some bomb ass fuckin fried rice recently

shadow of the colossus

shadow of the colossus is a game that i have absolutely adored ever since hearing about it. i nearly bought the hd collection on ps3, i tried to emulate it on pc and bought the ps4 remake which eventually drifted out of my possession, but i never took the plunge. that was until i was talking about it in great detail to oscar and let it slip that i'm a poser. oscar stared at me wide eyed. i nearly shat myself out of fear, and he demanded we played it together. luckily, i have a modded ps2 that has the iso sitting on it. i brought it over next time, and oscar and i set out to revive momo.

and what a fucking game.

i knew going in what it was, it’s a lonely trek through desolate but beautifully detailed work slaying majestic beasts while meditating on grief, wrath, but what i didn't expect is just how exhilarating it is to cling for dear life on the wingspan of an eagle as it barrel rolls through the sky, desperately trying to not kill you, but escape from you. the music kicks into high gear, your trying to find pockets of movement where you can stand up and catch your stamina. its instantly one of my top 10 gameroonis of all time!!!

but unfortunately for me, and more unfortunate for oscar, i had a broken r1 button. you know? r1? the grab button? one of the 5 buttons in the game, arguably the most important action. yeah. that one. randomly let's go at certain points.

for the first 15 colossus, it was tolerable, i could imagine it was a deliberate design choice to let go once in a while to accentuate the unpredictability and panic of the situation, but the last colossus. oh fuck. the last fucking colossus. every other colossi took around 20 minutes to an hour. the last one? 2 and a half hours. cue me getting more and more ragebaited to the point of nearly quitting. i didn't, i did beat it, but it was not pleasant.

all in all, amazing game. if you have any interest in the premise, understand the game knocks it's core concept out of the park. it doesn't try to do a wide variety of things, but what it does try it runs absolute circles around other games trying to realise a ‘concept’.

gorillaz

jumped back into gorillaz on a whim. i really do like the gorillaz! but unfortunately i have a very hit or miss relationship with their work after plastic beach. song machine is lovely, and meanwhile is a banger, but i also really don't care for humans or the now now. this time however, i actually decided to try and listen to laika come home after knowing what it is but not giving myself exposure to it. its a very interesting project that has a lot of the grungy and cross-cultural sonic textures i love with early gorillaz. it’s the perfect stoner music to bong on to.

daft punk

daft punk is something i always had an ephemeral relationship up until my first friend in highschool, lakshay gave me a cultural education in funk. since then, i keep finding more and more songs over the years i get steadily obsessed with, but a certain one always stuck out. touch. i need something more.

>the start of every new semester at uni, i would listen to touch on the train there. it’s funky, it captures the magic and pure joy of music, it’s heartfelt, and above all it’s reaffirming with the simple message “if love is the answer your home, hold on”. also helps that the last third of the song feels like both jumping into lightspeed, floating through a river of pure life, and a culmination of daft punk’s work. recently, at oscar’s we both got onto the topic of this exact song, and spent a night listening to all the weird and wonderful tunes of random access memories. subjectively? i enjoy listening to other music more on a daily basis. objectively? it’s one of the greatest pieces of art i’ve ever listened to.

“anyway…” i trail off, a bit lost as to what else there is. my cigarette has a nearly impressive amount of ash on the tip. “ah, it’s gone. just as well i suppose. and yourself?”

you’re slightly astounded with the lengths you have gone to trying to score a bump of ketamine for the night - and you have a feeling i am far too financially irresponsible to have the money required to possess some right now. oh dear.

diaries of a slug

2026-02-06T00:00:00Z

i come to you in this summer heat feeling like a little slug on a hotplate, my skirt gently sizzling, my pneumostrome clogged with olive oil, god watching over me, keen to saute me into a meal with eggs or something. the analogy is running out of steam. but generally, i struggle with heat like no one else. so, in my delirium, allow this little gastropod to recount how he’s been getting slimy with it.

the general new years romp

between the eldritch horror of working retail over this christmas period, i kept myself mercilessly busy with all the fun hallmarks of your 20s - friends, movies, substance abuse, paying off student debt. it’s a fun lifestyle for a time, but i’ve definitely felt a desire for things to regain a sense of stability, which i don’t believe i’m alone in - a lot of my friends are hitting the quarter life crisis stage it seems, and it has spared no one in its conquest of introspective thought and shifting priorities. it’d be nice to have a day where i’m not doing something or catching up with a person, perhaps even one in which i’m not stunlocked in bed in recovery. good golly, even the prospect of recounting all of my debauchery seems mentally exhausting, which is awfully convenient, as that leads me to my next point.

victory is at hand for this slimy lil fella (i’m finally getting my adhd medication soon).

i mentioned absolutely yonks ago that i got diagnosed with adhd, and that medication was within reach. turns out, no! the medical system is fucking awful!

exclamations aside, i’ve been locked deep in battle with my gp for over a year trying to understand the process, doing tests, filling out forms, eventually giving up trying to get access to medication due to my gp having zero understanding of how the system works, and generally not having the time / commitment to do so. at the start of the year i made it an absolute mission to get it sorted. i went into the office with no other ailments, and spent a frustrating amount of time bringing my gp back up to speed. after 20 minutes of trying to answer ‘what do you want me to do?’, i caught a glimpse of an email the specialist had sent him. it was an email dated APRIL OF 2025 saying they’d like to start me on medication, but needed his sign-off to initiate.

a long story short, i’m now dealing with the specialists directly, doing a lot of the coordination a gp should be able to do to keep this ball rolling. i’ve had hiccups. going through a private clinic isn’t cheap, i’ll need to see my regular gp to keep my prescription in check, my FUCKING MEDICAL RESULTS WEREN’T RECORDED OR SENT TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE, but i have the full backing of specialists whos entire occupation is wrangling together a pill bottle with my name on it. we’ll get there. i’m slithering to victory. i can taste the lukewarm water to wash the pills down.

*sigh*

the intense frustration i feel now is the lifesaving relief i shall feel later. that’s the deal.

i suppose my real frustration is that i’m having to actively chase up something that’s been honestly ruining my life recently. shit, even the specialist at the clinic was in disbelief that i’m only receiving care a year and 5 visits after my diagnosis.

this is the part where i talk about being neurodiv (again)

look, i get it, i’ll save you the crustiest specifics, but god damn. something that’s been observed about a diagnosis of adhd, asd, ocd ect (as in excetera), is that you typically see an immediate regression in ones ability to mask. i’ve gone through this with asd three separate times, but only now with adhd. i’ve been diagnosed for a year now, but only now that i’m seriously close to getting medicated am i noticing how much of my life this is raging throughout. i’ll save the self-pity, but basically for as long as i could remember i’ve had this intense hunger to be consistently productive - to create, optimise, move with intention, and an incredibly hard time in actioning any of that, and i honestly think it’s been my greatest downfall. and i’m truly at a point in my life where i’m prepared to use every tool and ounce of strength at my disposal to start living the life i (very potentially semi-delusionally) know i can make for myself.

dramatics and oversharing done. let's talk about something lighter.

loving to sing again.

i can’t remember if i’ve (and i kinda can’t be fucked to check if i have) mentioned i used to do jazz singing. more accurately, i’ve always been a passionate singer since i was little, and found jazz was the most suitable for my voice. stepping into production in my later teens however, i kinda moved away from it bit by bit. recently however, i’ve been frequenting a place that most of the queer/autistic/batshit insane people go to that hosts karaoke every wednesday. aside from keeping up appearances and descending into alcoholism, it’s reignited my passion in singing. i catch myself perfecting little melodic runs, running over lyrics, slowly learning how best to enunciate tightly-packed syllables. it’s helped i’ve earned a slight reputation. yes, i was the guy who did phill collins the other week. thank you for the complement. please, stroke my ego.

botempi

while a friend was clearing out their workshop, they offered to sell me a botempi b3 for 20 dollareedoos. for those not in the know, it’s an electro-acoustic wind organ from the 1970s, most practically used to teach children the basics of music. when i describe it as electro-acoustic, it means it has an electric fan that excites the acoustic mechanisms. it is indeed only passing air through tubes to create the sound of an organ, only using electricity to power the fan that creates the current. aside from being mercilessly cool, it means one can’t solder in a switched headphone jack, as there isn’t an electrical signal to convert back into acoustic sound pressure. no matter!! it’s rather adorable, creates the most authentic lo-fi organ/accordion sounds, and came with the original box in italian. very daniel johnson esque noises coming from da basement 2nite mamacita.

multi-tools

i seriously have no idea how i fell down this rabbithole but (AS EVERY STRAIGHT MAN DOES) i got into multi-tools. i’ve had a leatherman wave+ for around 2 years now, purchased for work after the shitty kinchrome - which i settled for in spite of my contract specifically naming a leatherman - fell apart and shed all its individual tools like a very metallic snake (yay! another accurate and poetic metaphor from nick!!). i absolutely adore the wave+. feels good. actually competent tools. cunty pouch. but very unfortunately, the carry of a knife in australia is banned, meaning i can’t go around performatively signalling general handiness by having it on my belt. instead, i opted to get a gerber dime, which i can carry more discreetly in my wallet in-case of the odd package to open, wire to strip, or bit to fasten. a few observant readers might remember an older post that went into the contents of my everyday bag. as those forlorn writings imply, i’m intensely invested in the feeling of being prepared. i’ve debated taking down that post only because i find it preferable to constantly updating the ship of theseus. maybe someday. anyway, on top of that i impulse-bought a gerber shard dt (nothing more than a glorified keychain), a mullet, which i spent an embarrassing amount of time finding local stock of, and some phillipshead / flathead keys, all hanging from my bag as little trinkets. great fun. very cute indeed.

a love letter to the central markets

since i now both live and work in the cbd, i’m blessed with passing through one of my favourite places in the whole world on my way to work - chinatown and conjoining multicultural markets. deeply, deeply nostalgic for me. maybe it was coming here almost every weekend to the same noodle shop with my mum and twin. maybe it was the precursor to my weeaboo phase in highschool. maybe it was the neverending quiet nooks and crannies of asian convenience stores, the occasional empty lot, maybe it was the flurry of delightfully weird and wonderfully independent businesses housed within the markets themselves, i’m not quite sure, but i’ve held that singular block deeper and nearest to my heart than anywhere, almost anything i’ve experienced. i’m very fortunate to have my place of residence and place of employment on the opposing ends of such a deeply beautiful accident of urban planning, multicultural trade and core memories. words cannot describe my truly unparalleled love and affection for it, and how being able to walk through it nearly every day has kept me shockingly grounded in a period of my life with much change and many questions. fuck the redevelopment though. fuck it to death. it genuinely makes me deeply sad to see something with something i felt represented everything i love about my city being completely annihilated to house both an incredibly ugly mid 2010s gentrified hipster take on a market and a soulless hotel owned by a corporation. i don’t care how many plastic vines you drape, heritage bricks you lay or pipes you leave intentionally exposed; go fuck yourself you spiritually lost financiers cosplaying as stomp-clap enjoyers. god.

vulfpeck

i did acid recently and listened to big dipper for 6 hours straight and it was great and i’d like to thank oscar for being the vulf aficionado that he is and i also find it very funny that ‘big dipper 6 hour mode’ is now locked in our vocabulary and hanging out with oscar is genuinely great and recently we watched the nintendo direct for tomodachi life 2 and the homoerotic tension in the live chat was aspirational.

balatro

speaking of that friend, they were also (un)kind enough to show me balatro, a game i knew going in would be highly addictive tapping into my ‘number go up’ lizard brain. what i didn’t expect is how it would actually persist beyond the point that i usually get turned off by that kind of serotonin. as an example i got hooked to, but barely to the end of borderlands 1 and promptly never picked up borderlands 2 despite being hounded multiple times. once i saw exactly what the game was doing it instantly lost all appeal to me. i typically get most engaged with games that have more abstract draws like a good story, interesting mechanics or high skill-ceiling. it’s good then that balatro has all of those features (provided you’re willing to extrapolate deep themes of addiction and self-destruction as a plot). the more i’ve played it and showed others, the more i appreciate the game as a dance of high-skill and luck wrapped in self-aware comedy. anyone who’s played it or passingly familiar with the rules of the game need no regaling of the virtues of simulated gambling.

leon massey

i’ve been getting into leon massey after a short while of not consuming their content. i jumped onto this guy when he had around 500~ subscribers and made his first few video-essays on the fighting game scene, which were a breath of fresh air, coming from someone who was obviously very competent in a variety of fighting games, but more than anything was just an average enjoyer for the genre. he wasn’t a pro with hordes of disciples looking to him for validation, he isn’t a bonafide ‘content creator’ with seed funding and forced energy, nor takes himself too seriously, just a down-to-earth guy who likes what he talks about. analytical enough you can tell he’s above talking out his ass, but normal enough to not use words stolen from fellow crackers making essays on youtube. it also helps that he typically has a good understanding of the average player, meaning he can break down concepts into a form that actually resonates with a new player’s thought process. coincidentally though, leon has started to move away from fighting games in a similar way to myself, and has expanded out into other fields. recently, he’s made a video describing the burnout many players of competitive games (myself included) experience. i still watch his videos on tekken and third strike, they’re all bangers, but i feel like this is the first time i’ve seen a youtuber slowly pivot in real time with sacrificing anything that made their original success. it’s good to see.

swallowtail butterfly

i caught up with wok again and watched swallowtail butterfly by shunji iwaii, the same director as lily chou chou. compared to his other work, it’s a bit of an unpolished mess, which by no means makes it the lesser film, just not as concise and focussed as hana & alice for example. an eclectic mix of drama, crime, music, comedy and stilted english dialogue, you definitely get the sense that this movie was just something shinji ‘wanted’ to make without a care in the world of narrative cohesion or making things easy for the marketing team who had to strongarm such an oddball film into a blurb, trailer or 30 second pitch.

anyway. this slug has places to grime up, fungi to eat, soil to turn over. thus concludes my sludgy story. i hope in the next life i get reincarnated as like a gibbon or something, that’d be freaking awesomesauce!

a guide to owning a psp in 2k25

2025-12-14T00:00:00Z

TLDR BECAUSE I GO AUTISTIC IN THIS BITCH

Buy a psp 3000, a 1000 if you don't really care that much, a street if you hate yourself or a go if you have a growth deficiency and lack taste.
Buy a psp battery (official or ostent brand preferred)
By a psp memory card or SD card adaptor
Buy a psp charger
Jump here

So! You want a psp. This is a definitive guide to all you need. Sourcing materials, custom firmware, some specs, and games.

There's a few models of PSP. I'm going to list the key differences.

1000-3000 series

These are largely all the same model. I’d recommend getting one of these if you want a bog-standard psp. They all operate just fine, with the only difference being more RAM and internal memory (which from what I know affects next to nothing), some ports and the screen. Mainly, the 1000 has a serial port, the 2000 and 3000 have a video out port, and the 3000 has a microphone. The 2000’s screen has better image smoothening, while the 3000 has better colour depth, contrast and anti-glare.

Street

Basically a budget PSP. It has only mono audio, no wifi, a non-removable battery, lesser build quality and larger than the 3000. I would avoid this like the plague.

Probably the most interesting of the bunch. It’s a digital only console with 16gb of internal memory. It also uses a different memory stick format, M2, instead of the more available memory stick duo the other models use, which itself caps out at 16gb, making the max storage 32gb. The screen is smaller, it flips out, it has bluetooth 2.0, the aux and video port has been combined, the battery is non-removable. It’s an oddball console. I’d recommend this if you’re okay with a smaller display size, would like some more modern features, aren’t going to store a whole lot, and you’re okay with modding it. Personally, I wouldn’t go for it, but that’s just me.

I bought a 3000 myself, which is the model I had as a kid. Bluetooth was tempting, but the form factor of the go is really small, and they're usually 2.5x the price. Also m2 cards are real expensive compared to the memory stick duo the other systems. If you want to store games, music, videos and pictures, that really isn't a whole lot. Considering you’ll need to jailbreak it to get anywhere with the online shopfront down.

I'd recommend going to eBay to find these. Most of the resellers you'll see have extensively listed any flaws with units, and take their work seriously. Make sure you take note of the condition and any peripherals the listing comes with, and to check a sellers feedback percentage. You can also check Facebook marketplace, but these tend to be more expensive and less detailed listings. Its a gamble, but if you can crack it, you're golden.

As an aside, the PSP isn't region locked aside from the movies and music umds, meaning you can buy a Japanese one like I did which is cheaper due to the popularity of the console and a thriving culture of archiving gaming history. Only difference is Japanese models use the circle button to confirm and x to go back on the home screen, as is the norm there.

MEMORY

For memory sticks, you're going to want to grab a memory stick pro duo, or an SD adaptor for the same thing. memory stick pro duo was a proprietary storage format Sony used in the mid 2000s, mostly for cameras and psps. I recommend an SD adaptor, as it allows higher storage potential. If you're using a go, you’ll need memory stick micro M2, these go up to 16gb from what I've seen. The internet is the best place to source these, though some camera shops might stock some too.

BATTERY

The battery is a proprietary 3.6v battery, with the 1000 model taking noticeably thicker batteries. There's a few different variants, all with different capacities (mAh). The standard is 1200, but you can find unofficial ones online. These tend to have a higher capacity, but very dubious quality, with usually worse mileage than the standard ones. When in doubt, get an official one. The street and go models don't allow you to remove the battery so they can't be replaced. The one I've seen recommended on the aftermarket is the ostent batteries.

CHARGER

For a charger, you're looking to get a 5v 1.7mm diameter DC charger that's at least 0.2amp. You can get these off the internet or any decent electronics shop (they will probably come with interchangeable DC heads). They'll either come in the form of a standalone psu, a transformer that usually takes a figure 8 type power cord, but my personal preference is a USB to DC cable. If you’re getting a charger that plugs directly into an outlet, make sure it's the correct plug for your region. Different regions have different ratings for outlets, which many adaptors can't account for.

GAMES

The PSP uses its own format of UMD (universal media disk) as games. You can find umds online. Most are pretty cheap, but the rare ones jump in price. Note the PlayStation store is down however (along with other online storefronts), so if you want games digitally, you'll need to install custom firmware, which I highly recommend because The PSP can also play a litany of PS1 games! But these were online only, so again, you're out of luck for official channels.

That's all your sourcing. Now, I'm going to go through the process of installing custom firmware (cfw), upgrading it to a permanent install, and running games off an SD card in lieu of UMDs. If you're a purist, please skip these steps and enjoy.

CFW

Custom firmware is mostly used to run disc image files of games (ROMs, effectively) on a psp, but just as handily allows for plugins and extra hotkeys. Think jailbreaking for an iPhone.

Start by inserting your sd card into your adaptor, then into your psp. In the system settings there’s also going to be the option to format the memory stick. Do so. After this, update your psp to the latest version. You can either repeatedly run system updates via settings until you cap out at around 6.60 or 6.61, or you can manually load the update version from a computer, which I'll get into now.

Connect your PSP to a laptop or pc with a USB mini cable and select “USB connectivity” on your PSP to see the files on the memory stick. For faster transfer speeds, you can also use an sd slot in your computer or laptop, and just put it in the psp as needed. In the card, there shall be a folder called “PSP”, and inside that, “GAME”. Inside this folder, create another one called “UPDATE”. Download the official firmware 6.61 or 6.60 and move it to this newly created update folder. It should be called ‘VERSION-NUMBER.pbp.’. Rename it to EBOOT.PBP.

On your PSP under the ‘Game’ tab, there should be an option called ‘Memory Stick’. In there is PSP UPDATE VER XXX. Select it, the update should run. After you confirm it’s successful via checking system information, you can delete the file, but I'd recommend you keep it.

In terms of custom firmware, the most complete solution is ARK4, which we’ll be going through now.

Firstly, download ark4. This is a folder containing two sub-folders among other things, Ark_01234 and Ark_loader.

Move your copy of ARK_01234 to /PSP/SAVEDATA. Move the loader to PSP/GAME. There’ll be a new ‘Game’ to select in your memory stick, Ark Loader.

Run it. It will install Ark, which, after it's done you can check via the system information, which should show Ark.4.xx.xx Live.

This install is temporary, and will reset when the system restarts. To make it permanent, do the following. Make sure ark is installed temporarily first.

The following method has 2 variations. Either you can install ark4 to the system memory, or make your memory card a bootloader, meaning the firmware is dependant on having the SD card inserted. the steps are the same but use Ark_FullInstall for the system install, or Ark_clPL for the memory card install. I'm going to be using the term ‘install folder' to refer to both of them. Use whichever one you want.

Back on your computer, navigate to the downloaded Ark folder. Inside there should be a folder titled PSP. In that, your install folder. Copy this to PSP/GAME/. Back on your PSP, you’ll find this app now under games. Run it to permanently install Ark.

If for any reason you wish to remove this permanent install, you can follow this guide to revert back to 6.60 or 6.61, or reselect the permanent Ark installer in your PSP and select uninstall. Occasionally, you might find you can only see your ps1 games. This is fixed by reselecting the loader, then the full install. This has happened to myself as well as friends, I don't know the trigger. I've found installing the sd card installer makes it generally more stable.

CFW GAMES

Now that your PSP can load games from the memory card, you can load ROMS of games simply by dragging creating a new folder called ISO in the main directory of your psp and dragging the iso files into there.

When downloading ROMs, you might run into the terms ‘Redump’ and CHD. These are different formats of the same files, but they operate differently. For running on a psp unit, you’ll need to use Redump copies of games, as these download as iso files in a zip folder. That said, some fan translated games or homebrews only use the CHD format. If you're stuck in this predicament, please consult the FAQ on how to convert a CHD file to an iso.

For PS1 games, you can find them by searching up PS1 Eboots. Many of these will be official, many will not. Unlike the iso files, these are imported by finding the folder inside the Downloaded zip folder, which usually looks like a serial code, and importing that to the memory still under GAME. The only way I've been able to tell the two apart is seeing the preview screen once it's been loaded onto the PSP. Unofficial games will just be the cover art. Official PS1 ports will have some flavour text to go with them in the preview.

MUSIC + VIDEO

Hooray! The PSP natively plays MP3 files. Have at you. The video files are a bit more complex. Please refer to this guide, which is excellent.

To create playlists, create a folder called PLAYLIST in the PSP folder of your memory stick. Once inside, create one folder called MUSIC and one called VIDEO. These will act as folders for each type of media playlist. The steps for both are the exact same:

Create a .txt file with the desired name of the playlist.
Open it, and write in the file paths for each file you want to add to a playlist, all in order.
Click ‘save as’ on the file.
Instead of saving it as a txt file, select ‘all files’ below the file name to unrestrict what kind of file type you can define this as.
Add “.m3u8” to the end of the file name
Done!!!!

THEMES

Themes come in two file types, PTF and CTF. PTF files will work with your PSP natively, official or custom firmware. Simply drag the file in the THEMES folder of your PSP. CTF uses the CXMB plugin, which you can follow THIS guide to install. ARK also has a custom theme creator, which you can learn more about here.

HOMEBREW

These are games / apps / tools that have been created by the community. Here is an extensive list of homebrews. Its not everything though, so always be on the lookout! The craziest ones I've seen is a Dreamcast emulator, a Minecraft port, a port of half life, and MAME.

REPAIRS

Its actually relatively easy to replace a few of the parts in your PSP to fix some issues. While I was pulling this together and looking to refurbish my PSP, I found TotalKommando who has recently made a lot of great videos on the PSPs and how to mod / repair them. They're really well put together, and include listings for parts in their descriptions. I highly recommend watching a disassembly video for your model. It's not super hard, and it means if anything goes wrong, you’ll know how to take your device apart and reassemble it. You can find parts of Aliexpress very cheaply that come in different varieties for different models. This can include entirely different outer casings for the PSP, including special edition ones. Meaning, if you want the monster hunter PSP 3000, you can buy a regular model and find the case separately. It'll require a bit of extra work, but it's much cheaper.

You should be up and running! Please consult any guides linked for questions, as well as the FAQ.

Special Thanks

Team PRO for dedicating a lot of time and effort to development and support for Ark 4.
My job for giving me a tasty staff discount on a lot of the supplies (tools, sd cards, the like)
PsPunk for making a lot of really great guides on soft-modding
Total Kommando for doing excellent documentation on various aspects of PSP software and hardware
The awfully kind and humble Japanese bloke who gave me a pack of Pokemon cards with my first PSP I bought on eBay, a gesture communicating a desire to continue business.
The many giants in the modding scene whose shoulders have allowed this console to still have an active community.
Rockstar Games and Timberland, who created Beatorater for the PSP, the first DAW I ever touched.
Norio Ohga for being a personal idol of mine.

FAQ

psp faq

2025-12-14T00:00:00Z

How can I tell what model I have?

On the bottom of your PSP should be a barcode that ends in PSPxxxx. The basic model is the closest thousand (eg 3002 is a 3000 model). The last number in those 4 digits is the specific revision, which usually boils down to minor build differences for internal components.

Help! I can't connect my PSP to my wifi!

By modding your PSP it should be compatible with WPA2! But check here to set up your modem.

How do I convert a CHD file to an iso?

Download CHDMAN, put your CHD files in a folder with it, and create a blank text document. Put this in it.


    for %%i in (*.chd) do (
chdman extractcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.cue" -ob "%%~ni.iso"
del "%%~ni.cue"
)

Save the text file as a .bat file and double click on it.

How do I sort and organise my games?

Use this

How do you know which PS1 games are unofficial? Are they okay to play?

Ps1 games that were officially released for the psn will give off a grey background with a black text box. Unofficial ones usually have custom art or just the cover art on a black background. You can play these, but they're not optimised, and any games that need to use L2 or R2 won't have a corresponding set of shoulder buttons on the PSP.

I want to go down the path of repairs and mods - what tools do you recommend?

A small screwdriver kit that has at least Phillips, flathead and torque (T3 - T5) if possible. A silicon mat with screw holder, and a soldering iron, preferably a station if you can. Make sure it’s temperature controlled as a bare minimum. I'd recommend using a small conical tip, 1mm or below. Consider also investing into some flux, desolder braid (or wick), and an autoranging multimeter to test continuity and voltages.

Will you do other console modding guides?

Very most likely not. I've got into PS2 modding too, but that's a much more open-ended endeavour with many different models, region differences and desired experiences, and the methods to achieve the same functionality vary wildly based on those factors.

What about Nintendo consoles?

Please don't talk to me ever. I'd rather kill myself - save uuupah, everyone I know who likes Nintendo enough to mod their consoles is fucking insufferable. I'm not like the other nerds, I'm a cool nerd. Nintendo is bafflingly overrated.

OKAY some of their games absolutely fuck. Zelda is great. I'm yet to play a bad Mario game. The switch has some great indie titles and I mash up dem bloodclat Wii Sports bowling pins. But the hyperfan culture around Nintendo and the hypocritical justification of predatory practices is fucking insane. No, you probably shouldn't go into debt to buy a switch 2 on launch. I guess what I mean to say is - Kirby Air Ride will make a man out of you and Yoshi is unquestionably transfemme coded, fuck you. And mean-spirited theatrics aside I truly love everyone and what makes them happy, but Nintendo just isn't that thing for me. Sorry.

q4 earnings statement 2025

2025-12-08T00:00:00Z

aight gentlemen, time for the q4 business report. apologies in the late submission, i’ve been making major money moves, and, well, life sometimes gets quite busy without one noticing. missed you all terribly, and truth be told, i worried this blog would be one of the projects i take up for a few months before i quietly forget about it, silently vowing to make another entry. never doing so. but alas! my pride is too venomous to allow such a thing it seems. the shareholders require profit margins! i feel a distinct need to type into the void. i know for a fact some people read my blog, and i hope that those who i might regrettably not be in contact with consistently are about to use this as a window into my life. you may not believe me, but i do think of you often. yes, you. i promise. let me know how you are.

anyway. these halls are for business, money, and portfolios. so, shall we? please hold any questions until after the presentation. feel free to have anything from the very caucasian nibbles on the table.

i brought myself to the brink of burnout over basically nothing; and out of context, it looks rather silly, but i’ll try my best to explain.

i mentioned somewhere in a previous earnings statement that i work for a diy electronics shop. naturally, it’s something i have an interest in, to a certain degree. as i was studying music technology at university, one of my subjects was on prototyping music devices, typically with an arduino on a breadboard. i got vaguely familiar with some basic componentry. potentiometers, switches, leds, resistors, capacitors ect. after uni, i continued to do the occasional bit of work here and there in electronics. mostly fixing my own devices from time to time. it’s nice to feel semi-resourceful i suppose. that, and my grandparents grew up in the great depression, which imbued a compulsion to be self-reliant into my bloodline, continuing with my dad becoming a paragon of diy, and myself avoiding replacing items when practically repairable, almost perversely against spending money unwisely. that’s the romantic version of my psychology anyway. all this is to say, the staff discount at my job is comparable to amphetamines in how it suddenly gives one the motivation to take up a bunch of projects.

in the last month and then some, i took up the following:

source and mod some psps for a few friends that i want to gift and/or make a trade with
mod a ps2
set up a media server with remote access, and in the process teach myself linux
repair my old broken laptop for a friend

simple enough, right?

i’m here to report back that no. these very mundane projects completely took over my life for a month.

in my first draft of this earnings statement, i went on for multiple pages trying to communicate the many layers of frustration that i encountered in these projects. it certainly did communicate a slog. but too much of one. so, let me summarise the amount of hurdles i faced by saying i was scammed on ebay, spent night after night trying to brute force linux into cooperation (which if you know linux, is both incredibly frustrating and impossible), had multiple warranty returns to make, started from scratch more than once, and spent hours and hours reading guides only to realise they were massively outdated.

by itself, this is uninteresting. but, i have a chronic tendency to place undue importance on whatever i’m doing in my life and let certain projects utterly consume me. this was such an undertaking. i was so desperate to get it done, to move on with my life, to be able to focus on something else that all of my energy went into it. i was eating like shit, staying up so i could have just one more hour to grind away, not seeing friends, allowing myself no downtime or break between work, where i sold nerdy stuff, and went home to do more nerdy stuff. i stare into the void of a debian terminal. tux stares back, his eyes soulless and his smile permanently fixed, knowing his will is absolute and i cannot kill him in a way that matters.

this was married with the existential stress that i never wanted my life to be dominated by technology. that i might be wasting my time, that i should be seeing friends, or engaging with art. i never wanted this for myself. i studied music for christ’s sake. i don’t want to be reduced to spending all day behind a computer. above all though, there was the unyielding feeling that if i gave up, i’d be proverbially throwing a tantrum, and all the time i’d spent would've been for nothing, and lord knows i have a lot of ideas that i’d discarded already. partly, i wanted to prove to myself that i was capable of actually finishing something, trying something new, showing resilience, show some of my nerdy friends i too have tussled with the advanced package tool. meanwhile, i was secluding myself trying to brute force solutions to problems i barely understood. not seeing my friends, neglecting all my relationships. but it was okay, because it would prove one thing: i am nick. i am capable. i have projects that give my life narrative structure. i actually try to do things with my time. please believe me. fuck.

it’s almost as if i have a neurology prone to being overwhelmed and hyperfixations. i think there’s a name for that. hmmmmm…

lost in the sauce!

that’s right. i knew i’d remember.

in all, i got it done, but not without it being all i focussed on for a few weeks, and sometimes feeling incredibly stupid for not being able to replicate results from a step-by-step youtube video. but it was done. i went through the overly dramatic metamorphosis i deluded myself into. i could relax for a bit.

a few days later i was embarking on my first solo trip to melbourne.

while planning my trip over there, i was in the midst of a mad dash to finish off the media server and left all my planning a bit late. for reasons i see no need to disclose here, i wanted to avoid flying over there as much as possible. and so, i spent the week leading up to it scrunching up my mind into a ball of stress at the prospect of catching a greyhound bus from one city to another, spending days trapped in a metal tube with potentially hygienically subversive creatures, knowing my psp could only entertain me for so long, that i was nearly finished with the book i was reading before i left (and hate juggling media of the same format simultaneously). even worse, the prospect of not going was looming with each day that got closer to the leave i’d already booked out, that i’d throw in the towel and refute the opportunity presented.

something i’ve picked up about myself semi-recently has been that i can be an intensely risk-averse person. a true creature of habit. much like a hobbit, i can be quite content in the mundanity of a familiar way home. a detour of one street, and my sense of adventure is in full swing. i may as well be sir douglas mawson should i go to a new bar or find myself in a foreign suburb. so, as one could imagine, the idea of stranding myself in a new city without the economically predatory luxury of an uber home was well outside of my shire. as much as i can appreciate my natural sense of adventure spurred with nothing more than a few misplaced footsteps, i understand the developmental constraints of not being able to make such decisions and take such opportunities.

in the days leading up however, my dearest friend hannah had a bright idea, as they usually do.

“i hear the trains quite nice”

“ah,” nick thought, as he sometimes did.

the train seemed like quite the idea. after all, what could be less intimidating than a mode of transport i relied on daily for 3 years of my life. yes. it would be like that. instead of spending half an hour, i’d spend 10 hours instead. it would be like 20 train rides, one after the other, without any pesky platform changes. marvelous.

and i’m here to report back and say: thank you hannah. very much. it was quite nice. a bit long mind you, but i was able to comfortably relax, enjoy a scent not unlike an oilskin coat, read murakami, play crash bandicoot, listen to eden and have a butter chicken that was oddly competent for what is essentially in-flight food. after arriving in southern cross station, scarfing down the cigarettes of which i had been deprived, i was picked up by my friend phillip who i was staying with.

allow me to shamelessly steal a descriptor of traveling interstate that one of the gentlemen i was staying with relayed to me. it’s a surprising amount of waiting. allow me further to speed through this section of my report, as i have other assets in my portfolio for this presentation, and i think the lucky cat chinese restaurant secret society has this room booked at 4pm.

my first day was spent trying to make what i was doing now. hannah informed me they coincidentally were out of town for the period that i was in for, and phillip was finishing his thesis. a lot of cigarettes, coffee, fireball whiskey and very pleasant, thought provoking conversations with phillip’s housemate for a full day of settling in.
tuesday i decided to actually see the cbd, got acquainted with the main streets, did some very touristy sightseeing, and gave a cigarette to a local. the usual.
wednesday i challenged myself to find some good clothes, which was achieved in windsor, with some nike cargo pants, a storm-quilted adidas coat, and a carhartt shoulder pouch. after phillip was done with his thesis, we spent some time roaming the cbd, day drinking, eating, usual fella stuff. spending all night watching movies and getting drunk, only to crash hard on
thursday and have just enough consciousness to book a plane back. the train was lovely and all, but in my state of mind i couldn’t bother spending another full day of my life just to get home.

the flight home was a very smooth experience, aside from being pulled by security for unknowingly keeping scissors in my first-aid kit and having to abandon my mcdonalds order in fear of being late for departure.

a list of short other tidbits.

even if i’m not exactly where i want to be in life, i can tell i’m moving towards being the person i’d like to be.
i got a like-new dryzabone coat for 150, that was a steal
here is a really simple brownie recipe that you can make vegan super easily

consooming

while i was in melbourne, i found myself listening to toe, a japanese instrumental rock band i had a passing familiarity with due to cultural osmosis and a song featured in sonny boy. particularly, listening to new moon at 456am smoking a cigarette on a dew-laden porch after engaging in much debauchery felt like a great come down to a trip. calm enough that it instills a sense of tranquility, complex enough it gives your racing mind enough to content itself, getting lost in all the countermelodies and polyrhythmic drumming. the more i delved into their discog, the more it cemented itself as a “can’t go wrong” kinda vibe. you could put it on at any hour of the day really and focus or ignore as much of it as you’d like.

eden released the deluxe edition of dark, ddaarrkk. it became all i listened to for a month straight pretty much. really interesting to see songs either previously released in a demo album or leaked on youtube in finished form. spotify wrapped gifted me with the knowledge that i’m in 0.08 percent of listeners world wide, which if you know your maths is less than 4 percent - wow!!! A BLADE BETWEEN THE RIBS, I'LL COUNT YOU DOWN FROM TEN.

recently i’ve gotten back into sifu. i beat this game about a year and a half ago, and simply let it go after. recently though, i had the desire to play sekiro again but struggled with the fact sekiro isn’t a game you can really play in bite sized chunks. it’s one of my favourite games probably, but it really doesn’t translate to pick up and play when the zones are so seamlessly integrated without the bosses of the main story to act as capstones. sifu however is much more geared towards that casual engagement with its levels, arena challenges, set pieces, the various arena challenges and gameplay modifiers allow twists on familiar mechanics making experimentation the name of the game. sekiro is definitely the better game, it has a more engrossing plot, world, mechanics, and freeform combat, but sifu utterly smashes it in replayability.

i mentioned many moons ago i was reading haruki murakami's colourless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage. well! i’ve finished it. honestly incredibly moving, peppered with vignettes of the many odd experiences and idiosyncratic thoughts being alive entails. deeply sentimental.

---

he walked along the main street to tokyo station, passed through the yaesu entrance, and sat down on a bench on the yamanote line platform. he spent over an hour watching as, almost every minute, another line of green train cars pulled up to the platform, disembarking hordes of people and hurriedly swallowing up countless more. his mind was a blank as he watched, absorbed in the scene. the view didn’t soothe the pain in his heart, but the endless repetition enthralled him as always and, at the very least, numbed his sense of time. unceasing crowds of people arrived out of nowhere, automatically formed lines, boarded trains in order, and were carried off somewhere. tsukuru was moved by how many people actually existed in the world. and he was likewise moved by the sheer number of green train cars. it was surely a miracle, he thought - how so many people in so many railroad cars, are systematically transported, as if it were nothing. how all those people have places to go, places to return to. as the rush hour surge finally receded, tsukuru tazaki slowly got to his feet, boarded one of the cars, and went home. the pain was still there, but now he knew there was something he had to do.

---

alright chaps. that’s my report. i know i said there was time for questions, but i unapologetically end this meeting here. i could tell you a bahamian racoon was elected cfo by our board of directors (comprised of me, myself and i) and you’d still invest 1.2 trillion. none of this shit matters. my receptionist will hand out cards for all the nibbles you’ve eaten today. please fill in how much you ate and what. you will be billed accordingly. take care.

a quick op-ed on charlie kirk

2025-09-19T00:00:00Z

on one hand: dude was an absolute grifter shill who advocated for atrocities and everything i stand against. enabled the culture that led to his demise. i can get behind political violence when it is a fight or die conflict. the slaves did not negotiate their way out of servitude.

on another - children won't see their father again. wife won't hold her husband. immeasurably fucked. i don't agree with the death penalty. there's an underlying humanity that i refuse to let go, even if i understand charlie didn't share that same sense of humanity. i refuse to be reduced to his level like that.

utility - honestly very limited. kirk was largely a tool for re-election, the damage is largely already done. this didn't mean he was harmless, but he was no longer critical for maga operations. his removal of power is a good thing, but these are dangerous means. if anything, this is a moment for conservatives to rally around and use as a shield for more heinous actions. the moment (the now debunked) rumours of bullet casings with trans rights slogans started floating around i knew the play. we're seeing it now with the shooter’s girlfriend being targeted for being trans and the narrative of political violence being a one sided issue. they are gearing up to oppress. the music is stopping. the party is over.

violence will beget violence, and trust me, they are way more equipped and willing then we are to enact it.

emotionally - it's incredibly fucking upsetting to see people feel a need to slowly shed empathy to fight those who have all but cast it aside years ago. And i won't begin to claim any idea of how much of that is justified when it's clear that the barrage of moral grandstanding, politicians irl clip farming and worthless news anchor ‘analysis’ that always boils down to ‘nobody fucking knows what's going on / any day now this will magically resolve or backfire’ has brought us to where we are now. i have no coherent view to espouse.

IDK MAN ITS SCARY SHIT WE IN FOR DAWG.

winter 2025

2025-07-22T00:00:00Z

hey! it’s been a while. sorry. have a seat! i made you some tea. hold on, let me move some stuff and… there. how have you been? have you been well? have you been going through a series of metamorphoses? have you been the person your younger self needed? are you being kind to yourself? are you aware it’s not too late to make this life everything you wish it could be? hmm. yes yes. damn. sounds like a lot. especially the psycho-sexual freakout and freudian realisations. yeah. you’re so right! downloading hinge and hitting a weed pen would fix you. most geopolitical conflicts even. i really respect how right you are all the time.

how’ve i been? oh!! well.

so. my childhood home is being sold

i knew this was going to happen for a year in advance, but the speed at which it progressed was a bit confronting. my parents are retiring to the country, but went and bought unit in the cbd to act as a place to stay when they need, and where i’m staying until i can move out again. i got to stay at the house in the final few months before the plug was pulled, helping my parents who’re getting on a bit move boxes and pack away furniture, so i feel like i quietly grieved throughout without even noticing. like, i made my peace well in advance. i lived in that house all my life (or at least, it’s been a place i could come back to readily when i lived elsewhere). the day of moving everything out was surprisingly cordial. i woke up, went to work, came ‘home’ somewhere else. that was it.

allow me to expand on a single sentence from my last blog.

semi-recently, on election day no less, i went to my local bookshop, run by a local charity operating out of my kindergarten. i’ve only been in two or three times since it opened up a decade and a half ago; i have a love-hate relationship with second hand bookstores. on one hand, you’ll find books you never thought to buy browsing a chain store, on the other, five shelves dedicated to mystery or war thriller books (genres i have no interest in personally). last time i went in, i got a mini dictionary of music terms, it was the only thing i could think of i’d like. this time, i found a few other gems. edgar allen poe. arthur miller. joseph heller. a thick introduction to digital photography. the total was $10.

this aside, i found it a profoundingly weird experience. putting aside the fact i actually ran another chapter of this charity's organisation myself five years prior (a venture i left abruptly and now am completely alienated from), more jarringly i vividly remembered the rooms that were obviously repurposed into varying forms of bookshelves, my experiences as a toddler and more broadly, early childhood. i remembered playing in the sandpit with plastic brachiosauruses. taking a fat fucking chunk out of my knee when i was 4, looking at the crater of blood and seeing black spots floating in it. i remembered my parents making a certificate for my brother and i to welcome us to kindergarten. it had a sticker of an apple on it. getting mad when i realised school was in fact 5 days a week, and thinking it wasn’t fair how the weekend was only 2. the fact i would only eat dried fruits and nuts for morning tea because i hated everything else. wandering into the teacher’s office when she was out, going on the computer to find a word doc full of clipart of cheetahs, being confused i never saw it handed out later as a worksheet.

i guess my point is, or at least to wrangle one out, is that it’s awfully funny how some of our deepest memories can be right around the corner, both figuratively and literally, yet a world away. groundbreaking stuff over at t-amadan industries. we receive 4.3 trillion from foreign investors a month for this shit. top scientists. loudest gas. technology that won’t ever hit the public sector. all for: man nostalgia weird huh #throwbackthursdays.

tangent aside, i think part of the reason i’m not crying and shitting on the floor is i feel like i’ve made some amazing strides recently, my life is moving on, it’s only natural the surroundings would too. deeply sad!!! deeply, deeply sad. but it never was going to be otherwise, and atleast i have the confidence to know wherever i’ll go, i’ll be alright. it’s a luxury i didn’t have for a long time, so boy howdy am i going to capitalise off that.

on this shelf, i bare most of my worldly possessions, including my degree; censored for my convenience.

psp

i got a psp!! in the lead up to getting a ds as a young lad, my dad (who's remarkably queued into the tech space for a man 45 years my senior) kept recommending i get a psp instead considering it has all the bells and whistles a handheld could have in 2009. music, video player, photo browser, internet browser, online storefront, console quality capital g gaming. i of course got a ds anyway because it was all the rage in the late 2000s. 2 years later i got a psp 3000, partially on a whim, partially after regretting my decision when i realised i could listen to skrillex and smite the pantheon on the same device. i was absolutely glued to it until it died 3 years later.

i flirted with getting one for a while, i don't tend to make big purchases (read: over $100aud) for myself that often. a man can only satiate his desire for ridge racer 2004 through emulation for so long, until he dreams of tactile buttons and an xmb menu again. i got one from japan for a very nice bloke who gave me a pack of pokemon cards and a heartfelt wish to continue business. splendid. i learnt pretty quickly however that the cmos battery was causing some mad power drainage during off-hours, so i bucked the fuck up and took it apart, snapping off the contact that connects it to the motherboard, a perfectly viable solution in lieu of replacing it via desolder/re-solder. in the process though, the membrane for the face buttons / right button became faulty, and the screen took a tumble. i replaced said membrane and fitted it with the best aftermarket battery money could buy, which didn't solve the issue, instead fucking up the other buttons. a massive blow to the ego. a new unit it is.

i have a weird relationship with this very tech-y stuff. on one hand, i consider myself a creature of art, nature, whimsy, creation. when i told someone my current job (sales at a diy electronics shop) they described that as a ‘very nick job’ which made my skin crawl.

I WISH TO CONDUCT CONCERTOS OF MY OWN CREATION. BE A MAN OF THE ROMANTIC ARTS, EXUDE MUSICAL TALENT FROM EVERY PORE OF MY SKIN. BE COOL I GUESS. ABSORB MYSELF IN THE SPLENDOR OF THE ABSTRACT JOYS OF LIFE.

fuck

on the other hand, i must admit i quite enjoy taking apart these sorts of things. i feel knowledgeable. capable. i like to pretend i'm an engineer in the late 70s and early 80s at sony, nec, motorola. completely in the zone, soldering, assembling, inspecting with precision and intention unmatched by any assembly line. it's a late night, my tie is ratty, it's been a long day. the wife and kids are waiting at home, but not before me and seth from procurement and grab a hard drink from an establishment we can smoke in.

music stuff + a very raw confession

a few people have been asking to see my music recently. people i meet, those i tell of my escapades in the local scene. i have a confession to make.

i really don’t have much to show, but i’m trying.

i tend to get ideas quite easily for just about anything. a sick guitar riff. nice vocal line. a cool texture. but a full song? something i’m proud of that, something that is authentically me instead of just ‘here is me throwing together a yacht rock song because it’s easy and fun?’. no. i have little. its frustrating. i see people around me managing. people i’ve known for years, never noticing their musical streaks suddenly perform gigs. while i sit and spitefully (and quite selfishly) lament that somehow, it should be me up there, despite not ever fully committing to a project or wasting time on mindless distraction. truly ugly feelings, let’s be real. i need to be better. there’s a reason my soundcloud isn’t linked here, and that the bio for it is:

no, i’m not dead. yes, i’m trying.

up until now, i’ve been making many excuses for why i haven’t hit the ground running. i don’t have a space to record, this relationship is too draining, i’m going through transformative periods, i’m focussing on employment. not that any of these aren’t true, but i think it ultimately comes down to the fact i cannot be creative and myself when i’m under stress, and honestly? last few months have been the epitome of stress and dissociation. not noticing the beauty around me, just drifting.

but i’m starting to get it back. slowly. i’m romanticising the many aspects of my life, even if just for a moment. i don’t know what this means, i can’t make any promises, but i know i’m capable. idk. i want to believe i’m capable. and it just so happens i’ve gotten some recording work recently and been able to network, so being able to work in a studio has given me renewed hope that all is not lost. we’ll get there, slime.

blog meta narrative

i have a conundrum with this blog. i wanted to do a redesign in the new year, inspired by the work of kenji itoh. i spent a few hours in canva unable to make a focused concept, so it was largely scrapped. problem is though, i feel like this blog needs more colour. the layout is awfully basic. this is partially because the tutorial i followed when setting this up used this as the basic layout, and i’m scared of css. mostly however, it’s a functional setting that speaks to minimalism and requires little upkeep. the possibilities… they are endless… and i feel like i’d struggle to pull a more functional design from the ether with that lack of limitation. but still. colour. there could be some changes soon!!! i’m thinking about making a photoblogging section that could satiate my need to explore the visual palette more. i feel like i'm in a place of needing to flesh out the blog a little, but want to avoid my usual tendency to add idea upon idea and keep things neat, functional, tidy ect.

what else? work has been kicking up. practically full time. wrangling a theatre show together. going over to ika’s and watching king of the hill while she blasts through cones and we talk about love, life, family, self-destruction. some recording work. friends have been doing amazing shit. i’ll tell you next time i see you.

foxing self titled

i crashed into this while watching an 1886 video. never seen one? awh man it’s a trip. it’s fucked cunt, get amongst it. weirdly poetic. anyway, the opening song fucking rips, and it’s taken me a minute to tour the album in full, but i’ve cemented secret history, hell 99 and barking as my favourite songs off of this fucking banger. so many amazing quotes. sonically all over the place while being consistently well produced and realised. resonates with my deepest joyful reckless abandon, much like 1886 videos themselves. i also discovered neutral milk hotel through them. god damn dude. i fucking love this youtube channel so much. it’s fucked up, it’s chaotic, it’s deeply nihilistic, it’s destructive, it’s brilliant. fuck. fuck. fuuuuuuuuuuu-

more eden demos

i found leaks by complete accident. life is good. it feels like peering into an alternate universe.

a sailor song - gigi perez

UNRELENTING YEARNING MUSIC YESSSSSS. PRETEND IM LOOKING OUT ON A BAY IN MAINE DURING THE WINTER WITH SNOW GRACING THE SKY AND THE WIND BELLOWING. I NEED HER BOUNCING AND MOANING ON IT, AS THE KIDS SAY. FUUUUUUUUCK.

gamey gamey game

i caught up with a good friend of mine to do some mastering recently. or at least, i sat in while he very casually displayed great skill. after we went back to his, had some dinner, some ‘desert’ (read: drugs and debauchery) and he showed me this comedy show gamey gamey game hosted by an assortment of comedians in naarm, all roughly connected to aunty donna. the premise is simple. it’s a gaming talk show run by evan, a manager who has contributed a ridiculous amount to the australian comedy scene, keeping people on payroll during covid. it also happens that he is a horrible show runner, doesn’t know how to play off bits, and probably has no self respect. every episode, he’s joined by comedians far too talented to be on the show, but not successful enough to be doing anything else on a friday night and know it. put simply, it’s a beautiful mess of entertainers, desperately trying to make something funny while the person in charge just wants to talk about games, but has no real estate in the room, and has to be certifiably insane to be putting this much care and effort into something so unfocussed. the most aggressive pan- handling for comedy, vigorously rattling a steel tube with a shred of flint in it, trying to strike out. but god damn, every now and then, it’ll fucking strike. by itself it’s just entertaining background noise. if you have any interest in the meta-narrative and craft of comedy and production, it’s genuinely the funniest thing you’ll ever watch.

city of god

i’m gonna paraphrase the lettrboxd review. usually when something gets 5 stars for me it’s because i’ve sat with it for an extended period of time to fully appreciate it or because i’ve gaslit myself into fawning over it. city of god wasn’t like that. very quickly i could tell what it was getting at, and i was hooked. late night parties. vacuous brutality. skittish teenage love. vignettes of irrecoverable poverty. the strength to fight and dream anyway. shoutout hannah hains.

rei brown · take care

honestly, this is probably half of what i’ve been up to, but for now, i gotta go see a man about a dog. part 2 coming soon?? idk. a lovely chat as always, i hope that thing with that codependent situationship works out. until next time!

autism can suck - a postscript

2025-06-06T00:00:00Z

an aside about disability and capitalism that i can’t exactly put into its own post due to being too short, but too long for updates.

i have this working theory about disability. humor me. understand i’m not calling neurodiversity a disability, they’re both umbrella terms to me, just that these two terms have some parallel interactions with what i’m about to grace.

capitalism requires an underclass. we know this. queer people, people of colour, women, and disabled people. i find that last one particularly interesting (not that any class is inherently less oppressed or not in need of equal parts of advocacy). if you’re black, or gay, trans or femme - you are (and history has repeatedly shown you are) typically equally capable of contributing to the economy. you are not less ‘able’ to create value (i use ‘value’ in the most vacuous sense of the word). purely in the practical sense, you are physically and mentally capable of holding down a job.

being disabled however is different. you are more often than not unable to compete for resources the same way able bodied people could. if you look at other demographics and how they have taken a place in the bottom of the hierarchy of capitalism, it usually has some socially perceived inability to provide as much as a cishet white man attached to it.

“women are too physically weak to work at the same pace as men.”

“people of colour come from different cultures that are incompatible with western values”

“queer people are too outside the mould to conform to straight society”

“disabled people can’t work many of the jobs an able bodied person can”

one of those is true. undeniably.

you are valued when you are profitable, and of what lesser value could you ever be, if you’re never going to be profitable. not only that, but you require resources for your existence to be sustained. man, wouldn’t it just be better if disabled people themselves didn’t exist?

conservatives don’t lead with this. it’s hard to do so and not sound like a nazi (because boy howdy, there is a lot of overlap). it’s a byproduct that’s baked into the pie that is commodification. psychologically, it manifests like any other bigotry, without adequate reason or methodology. it would be, at best, very disingenuous to say that this isn’t somewhat within cognition.

to be very clear, i’m not claiming disability has supreme reign over oppression, just that its interaction with capitalism seems more direct and harder to untether. you can at least argue multiculturalism could increase globalism and international trade to a neo-liberal, or that you can market to the queer community. you cannot make an argument for disabled people within that same framework, because at its core, capitalism doesn’t give a single fuck about human rights or moral good, just a line going up. fuck bigotry. fuck capitalism. and fuck nazis.

autism can suck

2025-06-06T00:00:00Z

hi. i'm nick. i'm in my mid twenties. my pronouns are he/they. i like music, fighting games, audio technology in general, and i'm very politically left. i am also autistic. and sometimes i hate that. now i'm going to talk about that, but if this is your first exposure to me as a person or even just the first time you're engaging with this blog, this may not be the post for you. i’m about to come across as very jaded and bitter to some people, and i promise you that's not my default state of being.

a litany of content warnings before we continue. ableism and negative conversations around autism. i do think what i'm about to get into is really important, but if you're not in a headspace to deal with any of that, no offense if you call it quits. i won't think less of you.

i also want to take a quick moment to say that, i am not here to expressly spread negativity, nor am i here to challenge anyone who has accepted any neurodivergence or disabilities. this is not intended to threaten or otherwise take away your sense of peace. and for the 1% who inevitably who'll think so, no, i'm not a eugenics advocate. lastly, please don't read this as a call to action to try and help me. quite frankly, this is my journey to go on alone at the minute, and i understand how empathetic people on the spectrum can be, but this isn't something you should feel the need to do for me. i don’t consider that fair.

to everyone else, sorry for the 3 (three!!!) paragraphs of content warnings / disclaimers. autistic people tend to get really fixated on justice, but also defensive against perceived injustices. eh. this gets messy, it’s not quite up to my standards.

when i was 13 and freshly into the hell that was highschool, i made acquaintance with someone who very clearly was not like everyone else in the classroom we both shared. they seemed, for lack of a better term, odd to my 13 year old self. i found him hard to read consistently. spoke with an interesting tendency of trailing sentences upwards. obsessed to a fault with adult swim and ‘niche’ movies and music. loved to go into long winding diatribes about these interests. would become deeply self-deprecating on occasion without much warning. he was a really nice guy, we got along pretty okay, but something definitely stood out like a sore thumb.

i remember coming to my mum about it, not intentionally if i had to guess, probably an inevitability of the question ‘how’re you getting on in school?’ which was asked ad nauseam in the household. i told her about this person. she paused.

“does he get really into the things he likes?”

“yep”

“is his face always blushing? is he hard to read?”

“yes and very much”

“does he get upset easily”

“yeah he had a pretty bad reaction today”

“oh. he has autism, you have it too”

yep. no shit.

so, apparently between one of the many medical procedures and appointments i had growing up due to being disabled, i had a few visits from an occupational therapist and a childhood psychologist, who all gave varying accounts of my me talk state, ranging from having signs of adhd, autism, damps (a comorbidity between autism and cerebral palsy) and being a perfectly typical child. this purportedly culminated in being assessed by one of my former kindergarten teachers who described me as “knocking on the door of asperger's”. up until this point, my mum had seen no reason to tell me. unceremonious way to find out such a thing, one must admit.

now at the time, autism was not something that was accepted into straight society the way it is now. this was 2014. “autism” was bandied about as an insult used to completely write another human being in such esteemed locales as the playground, 4chan, youtube comments and other reputable venues. interchangeable with the r slur. dehumanising. such a prospect quite honestly terrified me, as someone who at the time was fighting tooth and nail to stay under the radar.

i told nobody about it for a few years. i, like my mother, wanted to believe that i could pass as neurotypical. i wasn’t that bad, surely. it didn’t help that most of my exposure to other autistic people were those further along the spectrum than myself (although, i consider it more of a radar chart, more on that later). i eventually started calling myself autistic semi-ironically. a way to deflect criticism of some of my behaviours that landed a bit poorly as a socially awkward teenager. by the time i left highschool, i had accepted i had autism, but not fully. like, i knew i had it, i saw how it affected me sometimes, but i didn’t think it would be a major barrier for any one field. if you picked my brain at the time, i would (and often still do) say that i’m autistic enough that it showed sometimes, but neurotypical enough that my brain was aware of when i was being autistic. it felt more like an involuntary filtering of a neurotypical brain through autistic habits. maybe not unlike someone with tourettes syndrome having a coherent sentence, but struggling to communicate it through ticks that they have no control over.

i drifted in this state until 2020ish. instagram reels was brought kicking and screaming into the world. i quickly started getting recommended reels from autistic influencers very vocal about their struggles. memes about being overstimulated. autistic concepts and vocabulary. infographics. candids of sensory episodes. met other autistic people on a similar wavelength, like going from seeing square waves to sines. it was only then i started to understand more of myself and look back on the many parts of my life that were invariably affected by being autistic. some negatively, others just a consequence of being different; not inherently bad. i love my queer autistic adhd creative media connoisseur friends!!!! fuck yeah!!!!

i started to understand autism not as a left-to-right spectrum, but as a radar chart, pictured below.

no, but seriously.

i hope i didn’t word anything insensitively.

as much as this newfound community empowered me to understand myself to an extent, i started to see some of the cracks of the conversation as i entered the workforce proper. after i graduated and a year of my life dedicated to romance, lsd, heartbreak, more lsd, quitting an incredibly toxic ‘job’, social outings and generally putting off the responsibilities of life, i started to work in the events industry. you'd think that with my degree, i would thrive in such an environment. spoiler: i absolutely did not.

for those who aren't aware, working as a sound technician is usually put into one of two categories, in-house and contracting. if you're in-house, you're employed by the venue itself on an ongoing basis, like being on retainer. if you're a contractor, you usually are hired just for that gig. furthermore, most large event companies have a mix of both of these environments. one company might manage certain hotel brands, a casino or a general function space in this capacity, while also picking up x amount of contracts to keep the blood flowing. what this typically means is every day is different. between the different venues, different configurations for the same venue based on client needs, and endless amounts of gear to achieve the variety of outcomes events entail.

and though many posts entered my feed about being autistic, there wasn’t a single mention of ‘my brain is not suited for a kind of work, i cannot do it. i really wanted to, but i have limitations. no mention of limitations. no mention of having to give up certain dreams. no mention of autism, actually kinda fucking sucking some of the time. at least not in a way that made me feel seen. but bro, it’s all good, this post says all my friends are autistic as fuck. haha. why aren’t you laughing twin?

this goes back to a previous blog post i made pointing out that the predominant conversations around autism tend to be ones that avoid any hard questions or feelings. a lot of talk about stimmy toys, being overstimulated at parties, social awkwardness, and every once in a while, the lack of diagnosis within the medical community, particularly against women. all of these are worth talking about, and i understand conversations tend to skew towards the most relatable and palatable of topics. i guess my critique is more that, even amongst the autistic community, there seems to be a lack of willingness to talk about the struggles of being autistic in fear of sounding like autism speaks or anyone else who calls neurodivergence a sickness or some sort of crippling affliction. we accept and celebrate autism, as long as it's palatable, relatable, marketable even. we neglect to talk about autism in a way that forces us to reconcile with some pretty brutal truths, with ourselves even. and this is only talking about low support needs. high support needs? fucking forget it. sure, may of these individuals struggle to communicate themselves in a way straight society understands, but when was the last time you saw someone in that rough category be highlighted in a way that wasn't inevitably washed down with how ‘special’ they were instead of candidly acknowledging their value as a human life and the many wonderful things they are, while also not shying away from the day to day difficulties. i'm not saying we should make autism out to be some fuckin leprosy, i just think acknowledging these things could have more solidarity and open up conversations around what it's like to be autistic.

let me be blunt

autism isn’t inherently crippling. autism does not make you value less. it doesn’t make you stupid. but god damn it. god fucking damn it. jesus christ. it can be a roadblock. it can, in fact, be debilitating. it can completely alter your life and what you are capable of. and i’m fucking tired of hearing that it doesn’t, that you can still be absolutely anything. to drown out the grief one feels for themselves with the infinity rainbow symbol and a favourite stim. that any impedance can be navigated with the right support from your boss, your friends, your sso.

AND I FUCKING GET IT. I KNOW, OKAY?

it’s hard. it’s ugly, it’s disheartening.it feels evocative of people who call autism a scourge on the earth. it makes you sound self-hating, and brings on a wave of sympathy from other autistic people or neurotypical allies. and there’s a place for that. but maybe, just maybe, once every now and then, what you want isn't for someone to say you have a superpower, that you are special, to look at all the other things you’ve done, to tell you it’s actually not that bad to be autistic. maybe, you just want to hear for once in your fucking life:

“it’s hard, i know. and i’m sorry. and i am here for you. not to tell you you’re wrong for feeling that way. but to tell you, that you are still worthy of love. and no, that doesn’t mean it can’t be deeply upsetting, but that it isn’t your fault. i hear you, i am here for you.”

i've lost friendships because of my autism, or at least the byproducts. i had to leave multiple jobs in a really cool space because my brain couldn't handle it. i've spent years trying to make music seriously only for my adhd to kick in and now i'm bedrotting. i’ve felt a disconnect from most of the people in my daily life because our brains are on different wavelengths. i've had to grieve the version of myself i thought i could achieve multiple times. i spent my childhood feeling completely alienated and i didn’t know why. i’ve struggled to keep on-top of chores, work, hobbies, friends, and now that i'm better i'm constantly terrified of regressing and burning out. but that's okay? because i get obsessed with music, tekken and pinterest? yeah. worthy fucking trade.

–

4 months later

oh. well. this all got a bit serious now hasn't it?

i apologise. it’s been a few months. i'm doing better. i promise. you could aptly describe what you just read as a breakdown, and part of me wanted to remove it from this piece, if for nothing else it bogged down the pacing and had no real point. i try to make my writings flow well, with everything building to a point, or connecting the dots into a web that forms a coherent view on what i want to say. this did neither of those, but, as the great abigail thorn said ‘if all of human knowledge is like a library, then when [we] don't leave our stories, how will anyone learn from them?’. well, this is my story. it has a happy ending, or at least does at time of writing, but like any good story, it's not without conflict, the hero’s low point before reinvigorating himself.

after writing this i took a bit of a break. i ran out of steam. i knew there wasn't much more i could write before it was an incoherent mess of concerning sentiments. maybe i fancied myself as an author in the mid twentieth century, suffering breakdown or writers block from the novel i'm writing. taking a holiday in some foreign destination to relax and inevitably be hit with a bolt of inspiration, perhaps on a beach on crete, a shrine in kyoto or on the brink of dying of thirst a few hundred miles from cairo.

who knows? am i that egotistical? i compared a blog post about autism to writing a great novel? probably. let’s refocus.

okay, what is my point?

the conversations around autism are dominated by placation designed to appeal to the masses, or at least those who are low-support needs. we’ve removed any trace of negativity in our attitude around autism in fear of mimicking those who actually do have regressive, demeaning views on autism. partially because we are hurting, and don’t want to admit to ourselves we struggle. partially because it’s hard to farm engagement with posts that can ask uncomfortable questions. partially because autism has been co-opted by straight society to mean unhinged, obsessive, the r slur or against the grain; bandied about like a conjoining word in conversations. partially because social media isn’t designed to be a wellspring of serious discussion.

and i guess i’m frustrated that a lot of the times i’ve tried to reach out to vent frustration, i’ve always stumbled into either straight doomerfuel chemically engineered to foster self-hatred or jigsaw pieces and rainbow infinities and recommendations to just buy a weighted blanket, eat ‘safe foods’, productivity hacks straight from tiktok. at best, a colourful infographic with corporate flat art that tries to explain my symptoms to me in a mess of invented vocabulary that doesn’t feel relatable. i think we can do better than that. there has to be a world in which we can equal parts validate the autistic experience, recognise the strengths it can gift someone, while also earnestly acknowledging that yes, it can be fucking hard. it is okay to grieve what you thought you were capable of. it doesn’t inherently make you ableist.

i'm not here to give detailed policing on how people want to talk about their autism. if you're happy, if you're thriving, if you've found self-acceptance, that's great. i'm getting there, but only because i've been able to talk to oomfs recently and share in some grief, some deeply vulnerable thoughts, and not be immediately drowned out with hollow reassurance.

i also think the way i’ve seen autism, or more broadly disability as ‘accepted’ in society has been very telling of capitalism’s views on disability. i had a chat with a friend the other day while drafting this blog. i observed that a big push in ‘accepting autism’ has been largely in how autism can be ‘productive’. like how one can still contribute to the workforce while being neurodivergent. i don’t think it’s inherently wrong to have that conversation. in fact, i do think a lot of people could benefit from that. but the fact in how it’s largely been contained to one’s ability to work is emblematic of the way a person’s value is dictated by their profitability under capitalism. i guess in a different sense though, work is such a large part of our culture and identity that it’s natural for people to desire a career in a field of their choosing, or at least fit in socially.

not to be that guy, but i know autistic people who personally struggle with employment. from ‘will never be able to hold a job’ to ‘can work to some extent, but not permanently full time’. like. being employed for too long causes their brain to break. not everyone has the capacity to fight in the trenches for the shareholders (sorry whitebois), and that conversation still feels a decade off. i’m not saying that people should just give up. like, if you want to work, or lead a life where employment is part of that, you should absolutely aim for that, and hot take, but society needs more supports for those individuals (fucking obviously). hell, i contrastingly think it's unquestionably a good thing to try and find mechanisms and strategies to cope with many of the daily challenges you face, which doubles as the challenges a person would face in the workforce, but i still feel this cultural shame is thrust upon people who reach a capacity. not actively choose unemployment or give up at the first sign of struggle, but have only so much they can give before their brain goes into self-immolation. i've had moments of that myself, albeit in specifically in particularly difficult work environments. there are full time disability support pension receivers, and there's no shame in that at all.

and yet. even that sentence, as factual and accurate as it is, evokes a sense of insult or implies further negative moral virtues. it shouldn’t, but the values of capitalism have been wired so deeply into the brain the everyman (or everyTRAN lol!!!) that even i had to unlearn a lot of deep rooted neo-liberal drivel when i first came into contact with some of these people years ago. it’s still a process. take note, this topic is an example of something i think is incredibly important about being neurodiverse that i have never seen been brought to attention. i’m not saying this to claim superiority (or even pretend i’m the first person to notice this trend), just some milquetoast food for thought that doubles as an example of the conversation i wish we could see more of.

if you resonate with any of this, feel free to reach out. i accept that in order to create the more nuanced culture i’d like to see, i need to be open to those conversations myself.

it’s been a journey, and i shall keep soldiering on. we all will. i know this road to acceptance is still winding off into the distance, lifelong, but i walk on with the wisdom of my past mistakes, and the hope of solidarity when it is needed. i invite you to do the same; never lose hope nor your heart. they will give you the power you need to see this through.

so, to anyone that is autistic or adhd, who feels lament take hold, even for a moment. i won’t tell you that you’re wrong, only that -

“i know what it’s like. it is okay.”

signing off.

a post script about disabilities under capitalism

essentialpilled bagmaxxing

2025-05-10T00:00:00Z

hi british vogue, i’m nick, and this is what’s in my bag

water bottle

a yeti bottle specifically. get one. they keep things cold for like 12 hours. basically everyone in the hottest parts of australia have them. i staved off the urge for a while, i’ve been awfully at keeping hydrated, bragged about it even, but at the start of the year i made a resolution to make small changes to my lifestyle to improve my health, and spending $80 on a water bottle is enough money to make me accountable to use it. it’s nice not immediately pruning up in the shower, skin so dehydrated it physically hurts after say 10 minutes from my skin contracting. water good!!!!

book

whatever book i’m reading at the second!! right now i’m in the early stages of this classic. my friend tanami gave this one to me along with clockwork orange and the great gatsby. i’m trying to read more. recently i’ve blazed through the tatami galaxy as mentioned, 1984, a collection of short stories by jorge luis borges. i also went to my local book shop, a rotary club operating out of my old kindergarten and picked up catch 22, the crucible, an extensive collection of edgar allen poe and a guide to digital photography. it was awfully strange seeing rooms i barely remember. deeply, deeply nostalgic. reminded me both of my time being a vice-president of a rotary club and taking a fat fucking chunk out of my knee when i was like 3.

cigarettes & lighters

:^3 cigarettes don’t count if you’re pure of heart.

mints

for after cigarettes. usually i get the grape ones, i fuckin love me some artificial grape flavour.

headphones

as mentioned in a previous post i got these recently. technics eah-az100s. mint. crisp. good sound reproduction, goes fucking loud when it needs to. i have to say however, the active noise cancelling is by far the most impressive feature. i can genuinely tune out everything around me if i want, even on lower volumes, and the ambient mode is perfect for when i need to be aware of an suv traveling at 70 kph in a school zone to avoid being hit. they’re almost eye-wateringly expensive, which on one hand is good because they’re fucking quality, but also because it disincentives me to drop the case, which is how the last pair i had broke.

ear protection

i go to gigs!! and occasionally still act as engineer for them. generally though, these are just decent noise protection. i had some over ears, but they’re sitting in a locker at my old job, along with a socket set, and i can’t be fucked going back for them. i actually stole like 5 pairs of these from my uni, which had them in a tub outside the studio rooms, very responsible. the moment i got an ear test and found out i was losing perception of the upper frequency register, i got scared straight into these fuckers.

leatherman

another recommendation, get one of these. there’s a reason my first technician job specifically listed a leatherman as required uniform and not a gerber or kinchrome. this shit will save your life. i’ve always absolutely adored high functionality in compact form. i used to binge watch micro-apartment tours. this got 3 knives, 2 files, tiny scissors, a phillips and flathead screwdriver, combination pliers with side cutters, a crimper, ruler, can and bottle opener, a wire stripper, eyeglass phillips and flathead, a larger flathead and i think that covers it? overkill, maybe, but when you have a loose screw or need to open a can and cut your nails that morning, you will come crawling to me. i keep that mf thang on me. makes me feel prepared for… something. i am diy capable.

powerbank

what can i say, i like to be practical. before i moved out for the first time, i decided to spend some decent cash repairing / buying all my essentials. this included my audio technica earphones, some bookshelf speakers, this powerbank, some quick dry clothes, and some other shit. i don’t remember. saved my ass many times.

scroggin

i love a good hike! but more than a hike, i love me some nuts and fuckin berries. it’s a good snack to have, definitely better than scarfing down 2 metres of licorice because i’m impulsively hungry. i’m still min-maxing my trail mix build, but i started off with the cape cod combination, almonds, cranberries and cashews. bianca (who you should remember from the last blogpost) recommended yogurt chips instead of the sprinkle of choc chips i put in. yummyyyy. i’d love to hike more, but last hike i went on i partially tore my acl in the middle of a gorge that required climbing over rocks on 45 degree angles to go both forward and back. i also got overcharged by the uber driver that helped us get back to the carpark. fuckin asshole. anyway. i’ve been meaning to go up one of the trails near my house recently. takes me back to eating dried fruits, nuts and banana chips in primary school because i struggled with the squelchy texture of fruits.

po-133 w/ wired earphones

the fun one. this, for the uninitiated, is a special edition of the pocket operator 33 by teenage engineering, called the po133. i got it shipped in from america right after they went out of production. it acts as a sampler and sequencer, allowing you to record either line in or via the inbuilt mic, chop, filter and repitch samples, and program basic sequences with them. this one is inspired by street fighter 2, meaning it obviously has the display with ryu and chun li, but also comes with a bunch of stock sfx from sf2. the default patterns are recreations of the ost too, by the way. unfortunately the memory is 44 seconds, and while it’s not brittle, it’s obviously a bit thin to withstand a beating. te sells protective cases, but i’d have to snap off the little hanger on the top, which i quite like. i also bring wired earphones to be polite to my surroundings. fuck i love this thing. i’m hoping to get the ko2, which is basically this on fucking steroids.

stimmy toy

eh. got this for $2. it’s the only stimmy toy i have. it’s aight.

moisturizer and sunscreen

part of going bald that big hairloss doesn’t want you to know is you need to put sunscreen on your scalp. it’s fucked. like my hydration, i also didn’t take sunscreen seriously, until i started seeing pictures of myself where i was visibly sunburnt. all the time. that and having a hot shower with sunburn is a certain hell reserved for the most heinous crimes. musilini would have hot showers while sunburnt. also moisturiser! keep that shit on lock. i use scent-free ones cause i try to be very intentional with my scents via bodywash, aftershave, beard oil, shave gel ect, and the idea of adding on another layer is another musilini-esque horror.

first aid

hey mang, you never know. i did scouts so i know the basics, and also did a first aid course when i was doing youth work ages ago. i also got a mental health first aid course, which was laughably simple. turns out ignoring depression is… bad?? bro what???

forks

i used to buy pre-made meals from the supermarket, katsu chicken, beef curry, and instant noodles. the holdover is that i still keep forks on me in case anything edible enters my immediate vicinity.

nail kit

i could use my leathermans file, but this one is much nicer. good if ever i notice my nails get rough. i actually like the practice of giving other people massages. i’ve taught myself basics, been told i’m quite good at it. having sharp nails don’t mix with that.

please like, share and subscribe lest i give up blogging forever and go back to my regular past-times of mixing nyquil and dayquil, posting in facebook groups for neighborhoods i don't live in, and casting customised and personal curses for fiverr money.

march, as well as april, 2025

2025-04-11T00:00:00Z

another blog post. let’s get cracking chaps.

work stuff!!!

new job has been good! it’s at a diy electronics store. or more aptly, it’s like a more nerdy jb hi fi (radioshack for all the americans that shall hypothetically tune in when i release a song that blows up on tiktok). it’s been odd. i feel like most of the jobs i’ve taken up until now haven’t been a good fit for my brain. i mostly worked in the events industry and trades before this, both industries that have minimal training and very unfriendly for beginners (or at least, the companies i worked for were.) i guess having a job where i feel competent has made me reflect on just how much i actually despised my previous jobs.

the events industry is a very active job that has inconsistent hours, minimal direction, quick turnover times and has a skill divide akin to moses parting the red sea, if that red sea was in fact the pacific ocean. i just found myself standing around a lot, knowing what was happening on a technical level, but not the workflow or order of operations. i was having panic attacks each shift on how little i was actually doing and feeling out of the loop. ticketing and concierging was fun though, but i mostly did the audiovisual shit.

my last job was more installations. speakers, projectors, receivers, grappling daily with microsoft's monopoly on video conferencing gear (no seriously it’s actually kinda fucked up). i despised it. met a cool bro there (shoutout kargo ent), but fuck everything else was awful. i was basically situated in a basement all day doing software updates and tagging gear. awful for one’s mental health. the few times i did go on site, i was given the most menial jobs. they offered me multiple variations of roles in the business to take on, and i approached it with gumption, only to never hear about it again. i absolutely fucking hated that job. immeasurably draining.

but, more positively, the current work environment is great. my manager is a g, everyone else is some variation of queer or autistic (usually both!!!!!!), and it’s honestly pretty cruisey. reminds me a lot of an interview yung lean did recently claiming:

that said i still have burning creative ambitions, but we’ll get to that in a sec.

tech stuff!!

my friend gilbert graciously gifted me an old mac mini from 2011. they said it didn’t work, so i took it upon myself to refurbish it. i’ve done some laptop repairs myself, always found it fun, so i thought it would make a neat project, plus free mac mini if it worked so idk. opening it up i found the hard drive and ram missing, and the sata port rattling loose below the logic board. after taking off many screws and using some hex keys in lieu of the logic board tool that was suggested for such a teardown, i was able to put everything back in place, slot in a 1tb hdd i had lying around, and an 8gb ddr3l stick i got for $10 from a local recycler. needed to replace the psu though, so that’s in the mail for another $25.

the whole ordeal reminded me of one of the last times i went a-tinkering in a clamshell form factor pc. the person i was seeing at the time had a surface pro that wouldn’t charge. i got the charging port replaced, at which point it would boot, but not retain charge, suggesting a new battery was needed. i’ve been thinking about that period of my life a lot recently. maybe it was listening to the soundtrack to eternal sunshine (of which they recommended to me the eponymous film years prior), maybe it was the fact we’ve got back into some semblance of communication recently. i have no idea, honest. we caught up recently for the first time in the 3 years since. it was nice. a lot of uncertainty and mixed feelings, but nice.

i also have an ipad mini from like 2019 given to me from a former workmate. has some mdm from the raa of all people. that’s been harder to crack, and i’ve shelved it for the minute, but i’d be keen to give it another crack soon, i got an idea of how to do a full reset on that bitch. my soul yearns for angry birds.

a bane of my existence is my lack of musical output, despite the many, many demos on my drive. i originally wanted to get on ritalin before i jumped hitting the studio, but i feel like i should get the jump on that now. expect…. something. not too sure what at the minute.

CRASH BOOM

oh fuck it’s the lightening round!! fuuuUUUU-

ah! ah! ah! new earphones! real expensive! technics! silver! good good yes yes! old ones broke! boo! make me feel so digicore y2k industrial audiophile fuckhead!! yipee!!

BANG

saw a house show with friends! got a burrito pie half way through with wok! wore completely the wrong outfit and got a lift back with the homie jackson flips! aka malcom turntable! aka one third of crunchy milk! aka one half of bart's nightmare! it’s fun to wear a tie and get litty off toki and jungle juiaaaaAAAAAA!!!!!

FLASH

been on that good kush and alcohol!! want to bake more!!! been reading in the park for hours!!! smoking darts on an overpass with the trains going below!! not volunteering anymore!!! tired of the same repetitive conversations around politics i am subjected to on a daily basis with no educational value!!! oh! OH GOD!!!!!!!

fading rumbling

man. zeus. what a guy. what a little freak. aim better next time you fucking nerd. i’m just trynna get geeked and you bitching my vibe out. ah well it’s over. i’m calming down. apologies. ah, speaking of calming down-

i'm calming down now :DDDD

in my last post i made a point of how reintroducing myself to the world has been stressful. that’s largely subsided. drama has been placated. these days i’m more trying to enjoy my own company (while still obviously seeing my friends), which has actually made socialising a lot easier. i feel more comfortable in my skin, which allows me to make others more comfortable in turn. just doing the shit i enjoy man. apologies if anything i wrote last post was off putting or rang some alarm bells. no, i'm quite enjoying just living a normal life for the minute.

consooming

i got a free ticket to a john waters double of polyester and female trouble. i think i hated it? i was happy to see queer media. or at least, queer people given the centre stage. the cinematography was interesting and i appreciate a filmmaker showing respect to their hometown (in this case, baltimore), polyester was funny????? but fuck man. i hated everything else. it’s just not my thing. yelling. so much fucking yelling. cheap gross-out humor. a cacophony of unpleasantness with no hold up. i understand why a person would like that, but unfortunately it wasn’t for me. a friend who i’ve had a prolonged chat to like twice in my life walked away and told another friend:

“i bet nick would give that a one star”

and.. well? let’s just say -

honestly a commendation of their intuition more than anything, but also a myopic self-absorbed pat on the back that apparently i leave such a strong impression of character that a person who i’ve spent maybe 20 minutes with could make such an assumption. but also astounded in their clairvoyance nonetheless, and uncertainty if it’s a mark of my simple nature that such proclivities could be deduced so quickly.

son of the white mare my love. holy fucking shit. beautiful. my 19 year old self would ejaculate all over this masterpiece. mid-twenties me was just close, but no cigar (another phallic object prone to expulsion). too much to gush about, so here's my lettrboxd review

aside from that, as mentioned, i had an amazing waffle with the moviejuice heads (save one mr tune) as well as an assortment of old friends and a new one (who i hope to see again very soon!) over a late coffee in a french drinkery. coffee was excellent. was an excellent opportunity to pick away at the brains of my comrades, gaining small glimpses of the art they admire and that which emotionally resonated with them: in other words, they themselves. truly i am blessed by gods most benevolent to have such esteemed individuals in my life at the capacity that i do. also yeah, shoutout bianca who showed great initiative and approached me and my dearest friend wok to say hi and introduce themselves, only knowing me through my penchant for formal wear to a club we both go to. a delightful new addition to the tapestry of my life woven together by the friends i have. would love to see them again in their scroggy glory (an inside joke, certified macadamia and sultana enjoyers only). fuck yeah, cunt.

i saw a minecraft movie with many friends a few weeks ago. it was… interesting. ironically it is the greatest film of our lifetime. unironically it was mildly enjoyable, obviously had some growing pains as a kids film with source material difficult to adapt to. had some jokes that were actually the funniest shit, followed by an onslaught of one-liners that made my depression metre gain points upon points. it doesn't know how to communicate any sincere emotion with any consistency, despite many opportunities to do so, only for potential cowardice and lowest-common denominator pandering to get in the way. honestly, spark one, hit the boof, you shall be in for the greatest cultural experience of your life. any other circumstance? you should probably claim that time on your taxes or something for the faint hope of compensation.

i’ve recently been rediscovering my indie phase. the wombats. macabees. two door cinema club. the other end. cape club. mountains of the moon. bombay bicycle club. in my teens i discovered new music purely through subscribing to a handful of music channels on youtube and checking in daily. it’s weirdly nostalgic. wearing hoodies. dreaming of portland or seattle or london or some locale with a recognised music scene. being 15. sigh. state lines by novo amor specifically caresses long forgotten recesses of my soul as deep as the mariana trench.

i recently stumbled onto a virtual band, lost souls. it's kinda a combination of metalcore and nerdcore, not that i care much for the nerdcore side. my greatest exposure to any form of metal would be royal blood (who i've been told many times isn't metal), but fuck there's something about this. it absolutely rips. i've taken it upon myself to expand my cultural palette into metal, so honestly metalcore has entered the function. specifically i've been obsessed with my curse by killswitch engage which i remember from sleeping dogs. it has to be chemically engineered to fit my brain, unparalleled yearning coupled with rage. gimme recs. idk.

---

and just like that, i'm done for the minute. see you all, dear friends. thank you for coming with me on this trip

january to march, 2025

2025-03-11T00:00:00Z

well shit!! here we are. personal rambling time. yes bestie. lemme just jump into it, ripping off my friend uuupah. i'm sure they wont mind.

i got diagnosed, bros

it is official. i have adhd. this is something i've suspected for a while, but really came to a head in my last relationship. as someone with adhd, they delighted in pointing out all the little symptoms. the assessment was fuckin scary. if you’re unaware, they tend to focus on your childhood symptoms and reports from like parents or whatever. however!!! unfortunately for me, i actually did pretty okay in school. my atar was below any selection rank due to scaling my subjects (i did all arts and humanities), but my grades were pretty good and my gpa was fuckin mint. i was exceedingly good at pacing myself. additionally, as much as i love my mum to death, she wanted to believe that i was ‘normal’ so she has blocked out a lot of the symptoms i have. so when it came round to talking about how i acted as a kid, i had to pray to fucking christ that they would listen to me when i talked about how it affects me as an adult. i mean, they did, thankfully, but still.

i think the biggest thing for me is how deadlines work for me. if i’m confronted with a task that has an immutable deadline with consequences, i’m on that shit like a motherfucker. hyper-functional. meth behaviour. the moment i set myself a task however which has no deadline or nebulous consequences, i absolutely fail. this to me is personified in how little music i actually make. it’s been torturous. my brain is so active i’m able to just imagine full on songs or orchestral arrangements, but the moment it comes time to actually sit down and work on anything, i’m out.

i’m going to be taking ritalin (dexys scare me beyond belief, i lived with someone who od’d on them multiple times) which i hope won’t stifle my brain’s ability to create. maybe the meta is taking them only after i’ve written down a core idea. who knows. i hope this gives me the strength to restructure my life.

i am single

on the topic of that relationship, i’m currently single now. i unfortunately realised my relationship (which was 1.5 years) had reached a rubicon. we had a lot of issues i wanted to believe would be smoothed out, and lord knows we both put everything we could into it, but i feel like our long term compatibility was diminishing with no sight of return. it was probably the hardest thing i ever had to do, i broke it off despite knowing she genuinely did care about me. it did not go well. i still catch myself pondering what i could’ve done, but i’m continually reaffirmed by my friends and indeed how much better my mental health is not stressing about an intimate relationship in freefall.

i told a friend a month after it happened that i still had moments of immeasurable sadness, they seemed to think that was ‘wrong’ for feeling that way. i feel kind off about that. missing someone like this is completely normal to me, and i would gladly throw myself into those feelings if for nothing else, the emotional exercise. of course i don’t want to dwell on things for years and years into the future, and i’m doing better now already, but i can’t help but feel this friend has developed a certain attitude to these things that is completely respectable and functional for them, but not for me, and they struggle to understand that. i really appreciate them and their perspective, but i don’t appreciate being told i am wrong for keeping my heart open instead of closing it off.

i think this relationship taught me more than anything the difference between self-awareness and actionable growth, and also the significance of emotional support systems, as well as lifestyle compatibility. like, i knew about these things before, but even more so now.

we ended up sending each other letters after a month of no contact. it smoothed some stuff over, but not everything. eh. what can you do. i started going to gym, got some new clothes, started seeing my friends more, cried like a bitch while watching eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, new job, all the cornerstones of any heartbreaking event, but honestly? i’m okay, and i know i made the right call.

“hell is other people” - jean-paul sartre

re-entering the various friendships i struggled to maintain in a relationship has been deeply, deeply stressful. i don’t really like who i’ve been recently, truth be told. manic. extroverted in the most strained capacity. very obviously looking for reassurance that yes, people still want me around, and they see something in me worth engaging with. not fun for anyone! if you’ve met me or interacted with me over the past 3ish months, i do apologise. my best foot hasn’t been forward. i met a really cool mutual in the club a few weeks ago, and 15 drinks and a whiff of poppers deep i made the most immaculate freudian slip and called them babe. i am ready for god to rain down lightning, fire, brimstone and much stepping on legos before taking me off this mortal coil, i tell ya. deeply shamed and lamentful. you know who you are. that was… certainly something. cannot overstate my apologetics.

for the past few years, my social life has been semi-dedicated to rectifying the mistakes of my early 20s. i will very openly admit that i was not a well-adjusted or mature individual. i’d argue that nothing irredeemable happened, but enough that i had a particularly painful period of growth at around 20. it was the most mentally unwell i have ever been, nothing comedic about it. life or death situations daily. ever since then i’ve been haunted both emotionally and relationally by a lot of my worst moments, which isn’t unfair generally, even if i’ve put in an enviable amount of work to be better.

i think the problem i face is that, while i don’t look for approval from absolutely everyone (a stark difference from my teenage years), i take threats to the approval of those i actually care about seriously. as deadly as possible. i’ve unfortunately been traumatised by people suddenly exiting my life without communication and feeling like all my friendships are a day away from being over with no discernable reason or conversation preceding it. i guess i feel like for the most part, the mistakes i made haven’t always warranted such a response. but then again, very few people have been willing to tell me what mistakes they're reacting to, so i have no idea. such a thing absolutely destroys one’s sense of self and trust. it’s fucked, would not recommend.

so uh, yeah. outside this, my life is pretty okay, but the current state of affairs socially leaves me feeling deeply unwell at the minute. sorry.

uhh what else is there to talk about? *sounds of mental rummaging* oh!

consooming, yes yes

i’ve been reading tatami galaxy. uuupah got me the original japanese copy while they were over in the land of the rising sun, between fucking up their shoulder and getting me twin fantasy on cd. thanks g. i’ve been a fan of the show for fucking ages. used to watch a questionable amount of amvs and pick out the most visually appealing shows to watch. it’s my favourite anime, probably next to aku no hana, your lie in april and sonny boy. the writing style is incredibly intimate, and conveys many sentiments familiar to an unfulfilled college student. it’s incredibly fucking good and nostalgic and funny and thoughtful and mature and- i also got the time machine blues, but i want to wait until i’m through the first one.

i’m playing final fantasy x-2 at the minute! love it so far. also recently waded through the saboteur, which was janky beyond belief. my backlog is insane, so i’ve had to straight up make a list of games i’m playing in order. also recently was we love katamari (one of god’s greatest gifts to humanity) and kingdom hearts re:com, which was…. interesting. next is yakuza ishin, then kh2. i have a weird nostalgia for both kingdom hearts and final fantasy. growing up i saw the art and music completely plastered all over the internet, and i played the absolute shit out of kh 365/2 days when i was like 11, completely contextless from the rest of the series. funny, cause i only played kh1 recently and final fantasy 7 three years ago. anyway. i’m trying to move away from gaming at the minute as my primary past-time. doesn’t represent what i’m about nor does it let me engage with the beauty of life in the way that i want to.

i saw the colours within with wok and huey the other day. felt a part of myself reattach, like seeing my younger self before i went through some truly awful shit and the light faded from my eyes. i was scared for my life when i told wok i’d give it a 4.5 on lettrboxd, this is their fucking favourite piece of media. they took it graciously though. i absolutely frothed the musical gear in the film, and how accurate the mixes and compositions were to being an amateur musician. we all crammed into a busy loft bar afterwards, wok got faded off 1 beer and we all waxed cultural analysis of all sorts until i headed out to a metal show (not my kind of music), and eventually a fringe show of a man in a gorilla suit rocking in a (surprise) rocking chair for an hour. good fucking times. if nothing else, i highly recommend you check out wok’s 3 part commentary on the movie.

as mentioned, i watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind after breaking up. ill advisable, some might say. but i’ve always been one to, against my better judgement, put myself in situations that force me to feel and reckon with my emotions. i once dropped acid and listened to blonde in a dark room right after getting out of a situationship, much to the chagrin of the people i was tripping with. worth every minute. i first heard about this one during that same situationship, actually. the person i was seeing at the time said they couldn’t watch it in fear of provoking some deeply sad and uncomfortable thoughts. i get that. i think for me it speaks to the near-universal truth of every relationship, no matter how bitter at its tail, came from a place of love and joy. boy don’t i know that feeling. some truly moving moments. sincerely funny and human.

i was chillaxing (hello 2011!!) at this creative commune that a few of my friends live at, and someone chucked on something by marco castello. first i heard of them. it wasn’t a complex work, but i kept coming back to it because of the simplicity and execution of concept. few weeks later, i saw a meme that had another one of their songs in it. i listened to that late at night, being in awe of the groove and funk my ears were witness to. it was great. they were both off the album pezzi della sera. very vibey. ~~no, i don’t speak a lick of portuguese or spanish, nor can i typically tell the difference (as evidenced by this sentence).~~ IT'S FUCKING ITALIAN I FUCKED UP. apologies for being white.

i’ve been following eden (fka the eden project) for a decade. seeing their growth has been mesmerising. i even have a photo album they put out with a bunch of demos. more recently however, i stumbled onto a few demos they put on their youtube that i must’ve missed at the time due to them not being on spotify, which has been a wonderful joy. nothing about them i haven’t said about eden’s music in general, just that it’s moar of my favourite artist. neat.

other tidbits

i’ve been able to write a few beginnings of demos recently. i’m hoping the ritalin will help me start churning out stuff. i’ve also got into djing a little bit. it’s been fun to just run sets off my laptop in my room for the minute. the gym has been fun, although it’s had its struggles. got a new job at a diy electronics store. gloriously nerdy. made a joke the other day that i am neither queer nor autistic enough to get into magic the gathering, which seemed to go over well with the coworkers. did a musical comedy set about the break-up of death grips recently. i stumbled through it, skipping over half of my set which contained setup for the other half. someone came up to me after to inform me my set was their first hearing of the band ending. a dream come true for me, but i couldn’t help like that was an awful way to break the news. proud of the acapella rendition of the ending song of the bear in the big blue house i did on my way out.

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speaking of endings and ways out, this post is ending!! oh no!! don't cry because it's over, cry because it happened. see ya. take care all.

politics: the right

2025-03-09T00:00:00Z

this is all heavy subject matter, so imagine if you will, university. i'm sure it's a fond place for many of you. a simpler time one might say. i personally went to adelaide uni (to study music specifically). between involving myself in more clubs than is advisable, buying cheap asian food from a takeaway place that no longer exists, burying myself in the library to study for hours on end or peruse the many books, and doing a lot of drugs on the weekends (unrelated to the ability to study for hours, that's just autism babey), i became roughly aware of the “political landscape” of campus. the sad and pretentious world of stupol. a bunch of parties larping as the real thing, all promising sweeping foundational changes that never happened. ah yes.

i won't go over the details, i'm sure if you ever went to uni yourself you’ve been bombarded by communists, chatted up to by hyper-capitalists, been dragged to a protest by a greens friend. got confused at the weirdly centrist labour party that ends up working with the liberal party more than the greens. bumped into a few groypers. what i will say, there was one party that always fascinated me: progress.

progress, despite the name, ran its entire campaign on being expressively ‘apolitical’. allow me to now break down why this is a non-identity.

i could start by gesturing to the typically conservative policies progress campaigned for, but allow me to try and illuminate the root of the problem. apolitical is, itself a political position. an ‘apolitical’ party, to be truly apolitical, would have to not exist, or exist in a way in which they have little to no values, or otherwise act amorally, which would itself completely invalidate the need for a political party. i can point out that in progress’ case, it was usually a cover for obstructionist policy. and really, what is politics if not the systemic representation of personal values? the only way to be apolitical, to my mind, is to be a valueless heathen, or just sit at home looking at rocks all day idk.

in the real world, we often see the word ‘political’ usually as a stand-in for ‘political ideology i disagree with’. the alt-right tends to frame the removal of poc, queer characters, or otherwise what they refer to dei from media as ‘removing politics’ from a franchise. i’d like to mention that this is such a fervent fixation due to parasocial contact hypothesis, the idea that positive exposure to underrepresented groups in media can reduce prejudice, similar to having real-life exposure (which is counter to their goals of dehumanising minorities, thus allowing more freedom in movement to right-wing policy) but i’d also argue the removal of black characters is so white audiences can forget that racism exists. the idea of making something ‘political’ usually means it evokes some level of critical thought or discussion around a topic that we face in the real world. it acts as a reminder of the social issues facing the world today, and that often invites one to think about their role in such a society. is silence violence? is not advocating simply complicity in systems and their systemic injustices? enough investigation, you might come to the realisation that what you believe is counter to what you value. maybe outlawing gender affirming care is at odds with your belief in bodily autonomy, the ability for adults to make their own informed medical decisions, and the government staying out of the lives of individuals, or even god’s issuing of free will unto the people.

it’s been observed that conservatives tend to fixate on a nebulous and ever-moving ‘30 years ago’ as a golden age. for the longest time, it was the jim crow era. it’s really easy to chalk this up to simply a desire to oppress people of colour, say, but i think the more appropriate read would be that issues like race, gender, sexuality, ableism weren’t the kind of conversations you might have on a daily basis. it was a state where one could exist in relative ignorant bliss, and be against prejudice in the abstract without having to follow that through with affirmative action. under such circumstances, such a lack of exposure, it’s really easy to believe that the issues themselves didn’t actually exist, or existed in such a capacity that it was limited in perceived consequence. everything was perfect. everyone was where they were supposed to be in the hierarchy. today is so fucking ‘political’. this is what people tend to mean when they say ‘nostalgia is inherently reactionary’.

let me ask you

if you were a racist, what would be easier?

living in a world people talk about race and you have to come to terms with your beliefs or have them scrutinised?

or a world in which racism isn’t even a concept or at the very least largely ignored and always out of frame?

would you rather see a person being brutalised by the police?

or only hear about it on the 6 O’clock news?

when i think of a period of my life i’m nostalgic for, i tend to fixate on my mid to late teens. there’s many reasons for this. i was in school, a very structured environment with clear goals and ultimately what felt like low stakes. binging anime, listening to endless amounts of jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, ruining my brain with videogames and not feeling guilty. but really, it was because in a way, no one took me seriously. i was a dumb kid. if i fucked up, that’s just part of growing up babey. not knowing what i want to do? who cares? it was a place in which i didn’t feel the pressures and responsibilities of being an adult. it’s easy to feel in comparison, that in my mid-twenties i have more stress, more eyes on me, more of my attention diverted, less time to fuck around, because i am responsible for myself properly, and the wellbeing of those around me, and i can’t escape that. i’m glad i have those burdens, because my life is pretty okay, and my friends are amazing, but i’d be lying if i said i never wanted to go back to my state of ignorance and lack of responsibility. those who claim to be ‘apolitical’ or detest ‘politics’ are kind of like that.

they want to live in a world in which they don’t shoulder a responsibility for what goes on in it. they don’t like thinking of their actions as having consequences. they want to live in a world where they aren't scrutinised for seemingly small mistakes. and they are absolutely fucking furious with you for trying to force them to acknowledge that world doesn’t exist. any attempt to get them to admit they could be doing better, is an attack on personal character of which you are trying to put the blame for societal issues at their feet. but just as much, they are scared of the expectations placed on them, and they are hurting deeply in the face of being told it’s time to move on and grow up. they are stunted, and i can’t help but see myself within that: the core anxiety that life cannot return to being simple, the aggrievement of innocence, both internal and external, robbed.

if there’s no other pattern you’ve seen, make it this. the left tells people to confront themselves, change, and acknowledge some harrowing truths. the right affirms that it’s okay, there is nothing to worry about. we are fighting an uphill battle. it is not an easy sell. peace is easiest achieved with no conflict to disturb the natural stillness of mind. one solution is immediate, the other, the dimmest of lights at the end of the longest of tunnels of which many cannot even see, let alone believe. that is how this pipeline starts. that is how all of this starts.

“That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe” - thomas hobbs (leviathan, chapter xiv, the second law of nature)

alright. where is this going?

hello, ‘[people] who, for lack of a better term, aren't politically engaged’

i get it, responsibility sucks. i wish i had something more affirming to give you. truly. i want to at least tell you, i don’t blame you. i don’t judge you. i think nothing less of you. in the slightest. i get that i have been morally grandstanding for at time of writing 2818 words, but i do not hold a single part of me as better than you. some of you, or people like you, have seen me at my biggest fuck ups. whatever slights perceived against you, i genuinely slight myself much more.

can i ask you something? no sarcasm, rhetorical nature, none of that mickey mouse bullshit. what do you value? what do you believe?

fuck party lines. fuck liberal vs labour, soc-dems vs gop. fuck irony. fuck geopolitical factors. fuck all of it. what do you think people deserve in life? what are a few core virtues you want to embody, or see in the world that you can jot down? i can go first:

humility

selflessness

equality

empathy

accountability

are there any of those you resonate with? okay. think about what they mean for a second, then let me follow you up. do you see whoever you vote for, as embodying those virtues? are they at the heart of what they do? if so, what can you point to? if not, why do you vote for them?

i understand the desire to look at some aspects of left politics. the nauseating policing of language. the petty bullshit that is the queer platonic group chat textwall (which yeah, i’ve fucken seen that shit irl), the eldritch horror that is the depths of the lgbtqia+ wikis with such terms as ‘emoticongender’ or ‘aegofictosexual‘. maybe you disagree on the fixation on political philosophy rather than action, or the endless hordes of people telling you you’re not left enough, the far-left’s resistance to forgive past mistakes. but are any of those enough to outweigh the core beliefs that you hold? is it worth jumping the fence to vote with people who you might find abhorrent? is the far end of your party much better? take it from me, i have issues with most of the shit i put in that list. my point is, when you vote for a party, you're not just voting for the points you agree with like the right for free speech, you're voting for the policies, aligning yourself with others who have voted for more radical reasoning than you. you don’t vote for a specific policy, you vote for someone who has a catalogue of policies with equal affect. neo-nazis voted for trump because they stand to gain with him in power, not because they want to make dark jokes on facebook.

trump for example isn't just ‘trolling the left' and fighting for the right for someone to be offended. he’s deporting us citizens based on the colour of their skin and where they were born, calling the education around race-relations and trans issues ‘anti-american’, creating deregulation in markets and stripping consumer rights, calling for spreading misinformation to be perfectly legal. he is destabilising a nation burning international bridges in his wake.

i understand, far too well, the desire to believe that none of this matters. that all this can be ignored. fuck man, sometimes i wish i truly was unaware of some of the shit that is happening right now. would make my life so much easier. but the people who tell you that’s possible, they don’t have any more dominion over reality than you or i do. saying you can live without that responsibility, doesn’t make it true. and i’m sorry. i wish i could soften that blow at its core.

all of this, and i do mean all of it, is a lot to take in. you might disagree with my assessments, i'm more than happy to have that conversation. i am not asking you to become left, i'm asking you to ask yourself some honestly pretty hard questions. and the answers will take time. you don't need to know right now how you should feel about any of it. but when you do, please report back to me. thank you for coming with me on this trip. seriously.

politics: the left

2025-03-09T00:00:00Z

a bit of pretext to this blog. you might read this and think i’m a spineless coward. fair. instead of thinking this is how you should approach everyone, think of this as how to approach those you can tell are politically disengaged, maybe those already learning left but with some caveats, or those you can identify as single-issue voters. undeniably, there are those who cannot and should not appeal to. you are not going to want to approach those who profit off bigotry, those who knowingly post misinformation, or people who are too far gone (yes, they unfortunately exist). take this all with a pinch of salt, and feel free to pick and choose what you find helpful. enjoy, i guess.

the first thing i want to flag is, i get it. i, and many people reading this, aren't from usa. i don't actually care though. i am the strongest proponent that the changes we are seeing in the world are not, and will not be, isolated. i understand the need to say 'we don't live in america, it doesn't matter'. it's both an invitation to stop the conversation, stop thinking about it and ultimately, not have to reckon with the very real consequences that on some level we feel hopeless about.

next, and of more contention, the incessant use of ‘left’ and ‘right’. i too think this simplification of politics is incredibly reductive. shit man, even the four-way axis of left v right, authoritarian v libertarian is incredibly shallow. my reason for the constant usage is largely because i understand communicating these ideas without a shorthand or something easily identifiable or relatable would only complicate the message more. it is a necessary evil.

i have many friends who, for lack of a better term, aren't politically engaged. i don't mean they don't protest or they don't go out of their way to post infographics on instagram, but more that up until now, haven't had a reason to think or even care that much about political issues. many of these people probably fit into a centre-left category. they aren't racist, homophobic, sexist or transphobic, at least not in pure intention. the fact this is now considered 'left' is a bit hard to stomach. they've probably never interrogated the base assumptions and values they have, and the sometimes deeper implications of some of those things, but they wouldn't tolerate any of the more harmful ideologies. the best way to describe these people is, they don't actively care about anything going on, usually because they don't see a need to. we have all been this person at some point, but for most of us, we came to a point where we actively formed an opinion on an issue, usually because it presented in our life, and wether we knew it or not, it was a political statement.

for me, that happened very early on. i am disabled. i have what is known as cerebral palsy (ataxia diplegia for those particularly interested), and while it was something i accepted without question and never felt shame over, i was aware that i was treated differently. even as a five-year-old, i knew it was wrong, ironically because i also did not understand why it was happening. when i made friends with kids from a variety of cultural backgrounds and saw how some people also treated them as outsiders. when i hung around girls, i didn't like how a boy who liked one of them could decide 'we are getting married', and then hold a makeshift ceremony on the cricket pitch without any input from the 'bride' who was at the very least, uncomfortable. when i went into highschool and met openly queer people, i saw how segmented they were from the rest of the school. a lot of my beliefs were just the offshoot normalisation, but more than anything it was empathy with those who were otherised, that i saw people experience the same targeting i received, and i knew it was not okay. over time, i saw how these basic issues became politicised, how they didn't fit in a vacuum. i came to terms very quickly with how my beliefs in fairness were not shared universally, and how that affected people in very real capacities. i saw name calling and a general sense of ostracisation become a hatred, a denial of existence.

i had a stint where i was consuming anti-sjw content when i was around 15, peak gamergate. at the time, i didn't see how incompatible it was to my core beliefs until i saw how my algorithm started suggesting content from figures further, and more openly right leaning, then what i was exposing myself to. the connections became more apparent when i saw how people who were advocating for 'common sense' and swore up and down they weren’t racist, align themselves with those who, at the very least, you could tell were somewhat 'okay' with it. the more 'centrist' takes sounded more and more like the extreme ones, and before i knew it, the veil had seemingly dropped. sure, i still saw a lot of behaviours from the left i either didn't understand or sometimes thought were unreasonable (and shit, i still see a lot of that let's be fair), but the backlash and its talking points all seemed to be designed to be set up for pushing people further to the right. i saw it naked. i saw the alt-right pipeline. it also helped that around the same time i saw content from people whose values more closely aligned with my own. it also helped they were profoundly less annoying in delivery (except for hassan. fuck hassan. i fucking hate that abrasive cunt.)

i outline my experience to introduce a concept that i'm sure has come up in discussion countless times. this was my left-pipeline.

when we think of political pipelines, we tend to fixate on the alt-right pipeline. in case you haven't seen it, i highly recommend you watch 'how to radicalise a normie', by innuendo studios. but if you're new, the alt-right pipeline is the path one takes between political apathy to right-wing extremist. it looks different for everyone, but consider how someone who may partake in edgy humour may gradually shift into communities where the line between racial humour and genuinely harmful opinions on race is blurred, almost indistinguishable. one might start to tolerate certain opinions that up until now have been considered ironic, and soon you're finding yourself in more and more radical circles. eventually the pretext of humor is dropped. you might think this is just all a coincidence, but that's the trick you see. the alt-right pipeline is designed so the shift in politics feels so incremental, gradual and impersonal that every step further feels insubstantial. in psychology, we call this gradual escalation, sunk-cost fallacy or irrational escalation of commitment. this is intentional. and it is a form of grooming. it cannot be stated enough that this pipeline is all manufactured, and has knowing facilitators at every step of the way. it is designed to work best when the possibility of becoming a facist seems ridiculous and hyperbolic.

*sigh*

the fact of the matter is, as much as we on the left understand this tactic, we have continually failed miserably to do anything substantial. the left is really good at identifying the endpoints of this journey: nazism, fascism, white supremacy, eugenics, and can often enough pick the starting points: the signalling of 'common sense', anti-woke conversations, a resistance to diverse representation in media. the problem comes that we are very bad at spotting the middle, sorting the facilitators from those being facilitated and distinguishing exactly where someone is on their journey, which manifests as a failure to act accordingly. worse yet, we often tend to see someone further along then they are, usually because our sense of scale is warped due to only seeing the inevitable results of where that road ends. we tend to either speak bluntly, tell people behaviour is outright unacceptable, which skips over the groundwork and base assumptions as to why that is, making criticism seem hostile, or we gesture to the end of the pipeline, something the right has specifically designed to seem alarmist. outside resistance only acts as a doubling of faith.

i was having a conversation with a friend around wording in a formal document that mentioned queer members of a club. they were concerned about how to word it in such a way that addressed both transgender and non-binary individuals, which queer could ostensibly do, if there was a more formal variant to use. naturally, i suggested gender-diverse, to which they countered that the term would only technically address non-binary individuals, because a good deal of trans people still inhabit the gender binary, they’ve just gone from a 1 to a 0. after this, a discussion ensued of finding the correct terminology, which if i remember consisted of ‘transgender and gender diverse’, as the output. as good as that conversation was, the thought hit me that this conversation was only possible because this friend and i both had that understanding of gender, the separation of sex, an understanding of what non-binary means, and the definitions of ‘queer’, ‘transgender’ and ‘genderqueer’. if i was in any other position, or only understood non-binary people as ‘the third gender’, i would’ve bounced off of the conversation just like that.

a similar thing happened later that week, where my mum and i were talking about gender affirming care being added to medicare, and the topic of non-binary people came up. my mum, a nurse, started to talk about how being non-binary was influenced by a genetic factor, something about a certain protein shifting from the ear to the pinky finger prenatal. i had no idea what she was talking about. i tried to refute it, and tried to defend non-binary existence. it wasn’t until about 5 minutes in, that i started to hastily recite the talk of gender being separate to sex, but at that point, it was too late. i entered the conversation emotionally charged and confrontational, it set up the rest of the chat. my mum for context would probably fit into a subsection of ‘moderates’ that have noticeably progressed since early adulthood, but have found it hard to keep up, and believe that they have already made enough concessions to solidify themselves as allies to the many social causes; that too much has been asked of them when we present the idea that the world is still changing.

this anxiety that the world is changing too fast is probably the biggest factor in a lot of roughly progressive gen x and boomers shifting to the right. back in 2016, when conservatism was beginning to pick up steam online, the political divide we were living in reached a point of criticality. saying you were going to vote for trump was a death sentence. concede any reasonable point he may have made (a single-hand count) and people would dogpile onto you, hastily applying the labels of racist, sexist, homophobic, the list goes on for agreeing with a man, who make no mistake, is all those things. the alt-right at the time had compiled a list of arguments or issues one could discuss to incite reactions and drive wedges, which the left handily fell for every single fucking time. bringing up transgender people in sports, long used as a dog whistle to rally transphobic sentiment, and suddenly having questions around trans women competing in power-lifting labelled you as transphobic. mention how a black person gunned down by the police was in fact pointing a gun at the officers that shot him, you’re now a racist. the way this works is usually, as a conservative, you bring up a topic that has, or at least seems to have a level of nuance. make your case, usually one that is oppositional to the left’s stance, some people not informed to the nuance at play or unaware that you’re not bringing it up to ‘’ask questions’ actually ‘ask questions’, watch as the people who are either more informed on your actual stance, or more likely, more defensive and stupidly reactive call foul, a wedge is created. yes, a person of colour holding a gun towards police is going to usually be shot. you could make the argument that colour is a relevant factor (and i would absolutely agree), but those looking at the pure facts of the incident are going to say ‘of course he got shot, he was pointing a gun’, and suddenly they’re called racist for not having the same base assumptions and understandings on race and the many privileges it affords a white person. this person knew no better, chances are. and now they have been called a racist. and people take offense to that. this is one of the key tactics of courting regular people into conservative circles. you alienate them from the outside, and make them feel like you’re both working on ‘common sense’. make no mistake. i seriously believe this was one of the biggest factors in trump’s first presidency.

i understand the anxiety that appealing to the majority, the straight, cis, white demographic is demeaning. i just simply come from the perspective that the support of a majority is statistically and socially invaluable. aside from pure numbers, it’s been observed that authoritarians require the belief that oppression is acceptable in order to act upon it. it only makes sense that someone like that would want to live in a fantasy in which they are ‘authorised’ to oppress. ironic, huh. this is why those drunk white people you see on the tram at 3 in the afternoon always finish their racist tirade with ‘i’m just saying what we’re all thinking’. it’s a thought terminating cliche that allows one to believe that society at large agrees with them, that their behaviour is acceptable, without having to actually read the room to check if that’s on jah or cap. more systematically, this is ‘the silent majority’ or ‘silent australia’. nothing takes the wind out of the sails faster for an authoritarian than to be confronted with the idea that their worldview is not acceptable in the eyes of society. you don’t need to change the mind of everyone, just enough people that those who are most concerned with staying the majority, have to switch sides (or at least pretend to) to be that majority.

things to remember when engaging in conversation:

you do not need to tolerate harassment. there is a stark difference between someone who might hold outdated views or red-flaggish opinions on race, and someone who is using slurs, will not listen to a person of colour, or views a certain race as ‘backwards’. it’s the difference between saying immigrants are taking all the jobs, and that they are rapists and thieves. one speaks to an economic narrative which can be disproven, the other to a moral failing that is immutable. similarly, you are under no obligation to allow transphobes into queer spaces. of course, exposure to the other is always valuable, and there will probably be a time where you may need to involve someone in a space to create a sense of solidarity, but that can only happen with a lot of preparation and acceptance from both parties. as hard as this all is, it should not reach a point where your mental health is taking a nosedive. the point of any conversation should be to question and ultimately dismantle the dog whistles, so a person is forced to consider and reconcile their underlying argument, not allow a conservative free access to vulnerable people. you also don’t ‘owe’ anybody these conversations.

meet people where they are at, or at least pretend to. what i mean by this is understand any concept you bring up is going to need groundwork laid. if i’m trying to have a conversation about non-binary people, i need to explain in very basic terms what the separation of gender and sex means. i’m not going to describe bisexuality as ‘the attraction to 2 genders’ i’m going to say it’s when a person ‘swings both ways’, because that first description requires a person to accept there are more than 2 genders. are they in the position to be receptive to what you’re telling them based off what they already accept about the world? the more you try to impose on a person in a single sitting without progression, the more you come off like vomiting word salad and more radical than you actually are.

don’t be afraid to call out disingenuous arguments. if someone was to ask me about transgender minors receiving gender affirming care, they might gesture to ‘studies say blockers are dangerous’. it’s tempting to come back with a study that says they aren’t. personally, i’d rather come back to say ‘yes, there are risks associated with puberty blockers. however, use of them needs to be signed off by a medical professional with informed consent. besides the point however, people make personal medical decisions every day that carry risks associated, and i personally think a human being has the right to make those decisions for themselves. the fact they carry risks does not change that core belief i hold. i don’t see how puberty blockers are different from say, plastic surgery, tattoos, or piercings in this regard’. suddenly, the conversation isn’t about trying to prove and disprove each other, rather making someone think about what their actual desired policy would be, and if that correlates with their value of freedom. it allows the conversation to progress to the root of the issue.

think of the incentive sets before you enter. is the person a friend of yours? do you have any power or social status over them? do they fundamentally have a reason to respect you from their perspective? if you answered no to all of these questions, you are a stranger on the internet. and when was the last time your opinion changed because a random showed up on your twitter threads? also consider their incentive to stay. they might have friends they fear ostracising, they might have spent the last decade spouting the same beliefs and feel shame, or they financially gain off of their beliefs. any of these can be barriers for a person to change their mind, especially, that last one. trying to have honest conversations with conservative debate-bros or grifters is a waste of time. lastly, consider what you ask of them. the goal of your conversation is a shift in opinion, even if only slightly, their goal is to remain where they are. by nature of the conversation, it is an uphill battle where you need to establish a reason to listen to you. also, let’s be blunt. being (or being able to pretend you are) straight, white, cis, masculine helps.

we like to think that every conversation can end on a satisfying note. a changed opinion. but if you look at how a person has first arrived at radical opinions, it was a series of interactions, potentially in the hundreds. the process of moving back is similarly arduous. you need to be comfortable with doing thankless work. attempting to force someone in your direction is ultimately harmful, and it tends to create adversarial reactions once they realise your intentions, and will look at them uncharitably, like they have been trained to.

we live under democratic capitalism. the left tends to think democratically (what is fair), right wingers tend to think like a capitalist (what is deserved). under this framing, a lot of your arguments may ring hollow, because your base assumption about what is right is different. by giving more funding to poor communities for example, you’re upsetting the natural state of capitalism and the hierarchy. it might create equality, but it’s only fair if your framework is based on the idea that everyone deserves opportunity, and not that such things need to be fought for and bought with purchasing power. it’s an advantage that is given on no merit that capitalism values. if anything, a capitalist would look at charity to the poor as giving money to those who obviously don’t know how to handle it properly like rich people, and of little weight in creating market value. naturally, people won’t say this out loud, they’ll look for proxy arguments to defend the outcome. most things decried as unjust by the right can usually be traced to someone moving to the ‘wrong’ part of the natural order of hierarchy. cue my jordan peterson impression and lobsters. you will need to acknowledge and explain this framework more often than not.

you *will* need to be educated on what you talk about. quite frankly, as many buzzwords as i’m cramming in here, i do not consider myself adequately educated on any one issue to talk about it in full. hypocrite that i am. i have so, so many lgbtqi+ friends in my life, and i can defend against most of the basic points spouted by grifters, but i am not the right person to talk about these things. i don’t understand policy, i haven’t had any lived experience, i don’t have quick and fact-checked defenses ready for ‘transgender as a mental illness’ or the debate around minors getting access to gender-affirming care. i don’t think it’s a mental illness. i think minors should have access to puberty blockers at the least under medical supervision, but if you were to pick my brain around why i think those things, or the extrapolation of those issues, i’d probably fall apart a little bit. writing that now, i feel like i should fix that. people will poke holes in your argument, if you’re not adequately prepared with facts and how people will respond to them, you’re open for ridicule.

lastly, there are undeniable ops. grifters, people with 88 plastered on their tl, people who genuinely are too far gone. you have my permission to be belligerent, be performative, emasculate, but only in doses. people will see how you ‘treat those you disagree with’ and believe that this is how the left is, that no one is welcome to change, that given the opportunity, liberals will have no qualm hurling the most vicious insults. you need to make clear it’s not because you ‘disagree’ with them, it’s that they are wrong, being dishonest, lying, disingenuous. people for better or for worse do respond to public spats. by all means, call nick fuentes for the virgin he is. capitalize off moments of weakness and breaks of character. it might not mean much to us, but the appearance of ‘weakness’ is poison to them.

this post is in two parts. the second is already up, but please. take a breather. look at some dogs. it’s a hike, but so far, i’m glad you’re with me on this adventure. please let me know what you think!

excerpts from my journal

2025-01-08T00:00:00Z

i have an outstandingly long google doc i use as a journal. here's some vaguely hopecore messages from that to lead you into 2025 wether you want time to move forward or not. find all the quotations from media and i shall personally award you nothing

i'm breathing

---

fuck em up, or go down trying.

---

always, i'll care

---

this anger is a cycle, and I have the power to stop

---

if love is the answer, we'll hold on.

---

wherever you are, i'm sending you love. thank you.

---

wholesome supervillain arc

---

love, not spite. take care of yourself.

---

chasing the sun that i can't see but i know it's there

---

just vibe how you are, love how you love and life will go according to plan.

---

through immense and vast darkness there still can be the slither of hope

---

“she gave a smile that looked a little bit sad; and the thought that i had such a beautiful person in my life once crossed my mind."

---

the cycle ends here. we must be better than this.

---

there is forgiveness in this world

---

something something laundry and taxes ect ect

---

i will show kindness, grace, wisdom, humility and talent the likes my bloodline has never known

---

everything, in time

---

I think,

the most important thing in this world

is to love

and be loved

which is simple

yet incredibly hard

how does one know love?

truly?

and that's okay

---

i refuse to let the ugliness around me desecrate the beauty within me.

---

“i want a job i don't hate!” i declare

“i want to see friends and go for 5am runs and feel my life is in fact lived!” i cry

“i want to make music and have a functioning website, something, anything creative to show that i am capable of even the slightest level of beauty and accurate self expression!” i proclaim.

---

I WILL LIVE FOR MYSELF.

I WILL CARVE MY LIFE INTO STONE.

---

end transmission

so there we are! i'm excited for the new year. not much else to say

Tips for Creatives

2024-11-18T00:00:00Z

nick's tips for all creatives everywhere

differentiate meaningful opportunities with toil. there's a lot of things that look like opportunity that are worthless and vice versa. usually you can tell them apart by how manic the personal at the helm is. the more grounded the better the opportunity. what was beneficial can turn to toil, that's okay, it's time move on.

you cannot do everything. the thinner you spread yourself the more outpaced you will be by people who can dedicate more time into any specific area. it can seriously distract from working on your core competencies.

'the grind' should never be about promotion or generating clicks. it should always primarily be about honing your craft. if you have quality content people will come. you can craft the best tik-tok or reel, but if what your advertising isn't resonating, it won't matter.

promoting your work through friends will only go so far, your audience will be reliant on knowing you, or knowing someone who does.

know that you can always outdo yourself. strive to do so. complacency will be the death of you. each success needs a follow-up in time.

criticism is only your enemy if you make it. it is the difference between growing and stagnating.

your branding is going to be received whether or not it's deliberate, so you might as well make it deliberate. your audience is going to be built off of an expectation they have of you and your product, and you need to meet or outdo it to grow. the people with money don't want to gamble on someone who may deliver what they ask, or may not, you need to establish confidence in those willing to give you money or attention.

every creative has a different monster they have to house. it usually your strength's worst habits. your strive for excellence turning into perfectionism. your willingness to experiment a lack of focus. you will never slay it, it is integral to its corresponding strength, but you will need to contain it.

you will have to deal with people around you in traditional career paths hitting the milestones while you seemingly struggle. this is normal. you are choosing the road less traveled.

if you only enjoy the result and not the process, you're going to struggle to stick through the periods of creative growth and compromise quality with the desire to see something released.

favourite things

2024-11-18T00:00:00Z

favourite listenables

frank ocean - blonde/endless

hard to pick between these two. blonde is undeniably the more rounded product with more polished recordings and mixing, emotional complexity and diversity sonically, endless however acts as more interesting listen, which unpolished nature doesn’t detract from the atmospheric nature of the contents.

eden - icymi

holy fuck. this album is everything to me. i've been following eden since 2015, right before they dropped their old moniker the eden project. i've slowly watched them develop since then to release this insane work of art. highly textured, the album iterates and reiterates the theme of love lost, each song presenting the same core ideas under such a different lens. emotionally devastating.

yeo - recovery channel

i got introduced to yeo by an old friend while playing tekken with them. this was the first album i was around for the release of, and i couldn't be more impressed in the growth of an artist in three years. recovery channel acts as a phenomenal piece of australian r&b while also having deep ties to yeo’s herstige as malaysian-australian. very tactile of a record.

brakence - hypochondriac

i actually found the closer track on this album before i heard anything else from brakence. i kept hearing whispers on forums and stuff about how dedicated his fanbase was, so i checked his most recent album out, this one. production is immaculate, with incredible attention to detail. takes its themes to their apex before ripping itself apart at the seams.

childish gambino - awaken my love!

for many people childish gambino’s departure from atlanta rap to psychedelic soul was probably the switch up they dreaded, but for me personally the more i listened to this masterpiece the more i fell in love with the beautiful themes of love, parenthood and police brutality contrasted with just some fucking hard basslines and soulful melodies.

honourable mentions

baird - birdsongs trilogy - industrial bossa nova pop
rich brian - the sailor - mind bending that balances hard hitting beats with emotional flourishes.
oh wonder - self-titled - started my long journey into discovering music outside basic edm. very sad ow has moved away from this style of music
joji - nectar - barely wins out over smithereens or ballads 1, but the most complete package.
brockhampton - ginger - deeply personal and emotionally charged

favourite playables

mirror’s edge/mirror’s edge catalyst

choosing between mirror’s edge and it's reboot (on the second instalment no less) is particularly difficult because despite having the same premise they function incredibly differently due to catalyst's open world structure. i won't do a full breakdown of both products (although i do have complex opinions), i'll say that both games have almost nothing to say in the way of story and everything to say in gameplay, although i would call the original a much more polished product. its length is probably it's weakest attribute, but the replayability is shockingly high. it's sequel has a lot of problems from a game design perspective that's offset by the moment to moment gameplay just being fun.

final fantasy vii

the stereotypical pic. i’ve heard the sentiment a lot of people like ffvii the most out of the series purely because it was the first final fantasy they played. not entirely untrue, but i feel like ffvii captures a brilliant mix of sci-fi/fantasy that creates a world that while having such insane variety in locations and vibes, also feels cohesive and consistent. try as i might i just haven't experienced the same sense of continuity in the other titles i've played thru (1, 4 , 6, 7, 8 and 9 this far). definitely lives up to the hype. fuck ffviii though. fuck it to death.

outer wilds

i understand that by writing this im intentionally violating one of the sacred rules of this game; that you don’t talk about it. so bare with me is i try to keep my sins to a minimum. outer wilds has a reputation for changing people’s outlooks on life, breaking what they think is possible in games, and having an amazing soundtrack written by andrew prahlow, one that i personally have shed tears to in its beauty. its a work that has affected me the most deeply of any medium, and the fact i can’t talk about it any further without whittling at the experience kills me.

sekiro

i know when people debate which is the best souls game it inevitably ends up being an armed conflict between the united kingdom of bloodborne and the people’s republic of elden ring but since i haven’t finished elden ring, i guess it comes down the ukb against the sovereign state of sekiro, and in that conflict i’m sorry to say, sekiro comes out on top. it’s easy to think that this is just because it’s set in japan, but i’d actually contend that it’s because combat is much more centred around creating a sense of mastery, learning when to push for an advantage, play patiently, and the best responses to attacks to create a much more intimate dance with enemies, feeling one with the flow of battle. deeply satisfying at the highest level

sleeping dogs

i almost put this in the honourable mentions list, but the more i tried to write a tagline for it, the more i remembered everything so great about it. its atmosphere and authenticity is staggering for something digital. i really have to commend the devs for taking such vivid inspiration from wuxia films and not grinding down its cultural roots like most other western martial arts media. i could say much more, but i'll leave you with the fact I've played it through 3(4?) times, and i very rarely play a game through twice.

honourable mentions

yakuza series - my favourites are tied between 0, 3, 5 and 7. i love shirtless japanese men fighting. no, i'm not gay (sorry). only here because i can't pick a favourite.
urumangi generation - a ridiculously cool photo sim from a maori dev. doubles as commentary on au/nz politics. highly recommend macro dlc.
persona 4 - i haven’t played 5 at time of writing, but 4 is such quality across the board
the last of us - not groundbreaking but a weird comfort game for me. i love how of its time it is, revelling in 2013.
hyper light drifter - ridiculously amazing art and music. beat it 3 times, still finding more stuff.

favourite watchables

all about lily chou-chou

most coming of age films are about explicit empowerment from disempowerment, usually with the protagonist either gaining a sense of control over the self or external surroundings. lily chou-chou is much more interested in the messy road between the two of those states, and mirrors the often unclear and emotionally confusing passage of reality. scored with some genuinely incredible music and cinematography choices that realise the emotional complexity of its subject matter beautifully. (thank you wok)

tatami galaxy

originally got into this anime cause i used to binge watch amvs and source out the visually appealing shows, which is the first thing anyone who sees tatami galaxy brings up. it contrasts incredibly textured backgrounds, including rotoscopes and straight footage, with expressive yet simplistic characters. it's premise is likely to resonate with young men, particularly those disenfranchised with the wasting of youth, more than any demographic, but that doesn't stop it from being a highly entertaining watch with comedy that actually made me laugh, and oh brother do i find most anime ‘comedy’ grating.

her

takes its honestly silly premise to act as a deeply mature view of relationships, what it means to love, to grieve, to move on. really well acted in typical a24 fashion. tied together with an amazing soundtrack by arcade fire. hard to believe this is the guy who wrote jackass

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

jesus man. male manipulator cinema!!!!!!! amazing soundtrack, fucking wonderful cinematography, writing that all come together to create the something that speaks to every part of my soul. cried like a bitch the first time i saw it. speaks to a lot of universal truths about relationships and the burning desire to try again. thank you laika. seriously.

sonny boy

really impressed with how the series intersperses typical isekai tropes with genuine philosophy and thought provoking fables. man vs nature, immortality, societal structures and the rules we create,the role of god. also some inspiring art direction that consistently outdoes itself with vibrant colours and mind bending worlds.

honourable mentions

flcl - classic, steeped in late 90s / early 2000s vibes
eighth grade - equal parts deeply funny, relatable. the only teen movie that gets being a teen.
community - a great comfort watch. gets surprisingly real for a sitcom. (thank you lily)
aku no hana - a deeply uncomfortable watch that shoots me right back to being an awkward, sexually charged and pretentious 14 year old. fucking tacile
akira - can't say anything that hasn't been said ad infinitum

favourite readables

kenneth grahame - wind in the willows - a beautiful comfort read that lives up to every cottage core fantasy
john nathan - sony - despite being a biographical account of business dealings, keeps it pretty brisk and entertaining
edgar allen poe - the adventures of arthur gordon pym of nantucket - despite being relatively unfinished and unfortunately racist, still is a gripping cacophony of shit situations housed in marine adventure
sui ishida - tokyo ghoul (+ re) - favourite manga, the anime doesn't do it justice
george orwell - 1984 - queue the most quotes about censorship or something
taiyō matsumoto - tekkonkinkreet - a visceral coming of age thats art style compliments it's vibe excellently
joseph konrad - heart of darkness - problematic but an enthralling descent into madness
yann martel - life of pi - yann martels choice of making the protagonist religious but a man of science gives the writing this incredibly curious and spiritual nature.
j. d. salinger - the catcher in the rye - relevant both in your youth and retrospection, with the stage of your life at which you read it drastically changing what you take away from it
yoshihiro tatsumi - good-bye - thoughtfully captures the lives of japan post-nuke
jean-paul sartre - no exit - the implications of which destroyed my brain and completely reframed how i viewed the concept of the self

the voice

2024-11-08T00:00:00Z

so. the voice. man. what the fuck could one start.

if i were to break down the demographic of the 'no' vote, i'd say 1/3 were genuine, no bars held, no shame racists. people who genuinely just didn't want indigenous people to have rights. i don't have anything super profound to add to this statement. fucking white people man. homie at work once said he has a hatred for about 70% of the white race over their ignorance for the plights of poc, and at the risk of sounding extremist, damn he kinda right tho (he is also white).

the next 3/6s were people working off misinformation, often sewn by the first third mentioned, but to totally alleviate blame, to say that this wasn't racially motivated in any capacity would be at best disingenuous. the fact the liberal party sent out texts openly telling people to vote no if they didn't know is so wild to me. like those conspiracy theory fucks always lead with the idea there's something the government isn't telling us, and that the labor and greens were scheming to brainwash the population, as if their party of choice didn't literally advocate for suppression of voter knowledge and sheep mentality. you know, that thing that all good democracies run on. my partner and her family got a few books on the voice to at least see the arguments on both sides. i had the great displeasure of 'reading' some 'arguments' for the no campaign, and to no surprise, all of the evidence was either half researched, where statistics were mentioned, but the socio-economic causes were disregarded and a narrative spun, or completely anecdotal. one chapter in particular was written by a greek immigrant comparing his experience as a reason that 'anybody can make it as is'. i shouldn't need to explain how utterly insane that mental gymnastics routine is. i could critique the book at length, let me just say, the yes book? published by harper collins. the no book? some private firm i have never come across browsing academia.

jacinta price for example has made her stance be one of neoliberalism, that aboriginal people didn't need a 'voice' because it would create unequal footing, that indigenous people would magically gain 2 votes in the elections and some shit. and if that was true, yeah i'd argue that's reason to vote no, but that was not at all in the brief included. her stance at large we're all technically on the same footing, so welfare, community programs and other aid to aboriginal peoples is giving them a free pass and an unfair advantage against the white folk or whatever.

now, imagine you were lining up for a marathon, you're prepped, you've put on your lynx africa, chalk on your hands, idk what athletes do bro. and your opponent pulls out the glock and shoots your fucking kneecap. the ref, not at all concerned with the unregistered firearm, goes 'woah woah woah guys we don't do that here'. everyone line up again.' and then you have to run a race with a fucked leg. yes, everyone now is again in roughly equal positions, but you're now only able to limp over while bradley smith over there is fucking killing it. that's what racial inequality and generational trauma is like. no matter how equal the footing may be, the damage is already done and will continue to affect the communities.

the last sixth, and the audience i have unrelenting frustrations for, are (at the risk of a generalisation) white liberals, those who voted no because 'its not enough'. now, if anyone was to ask why in some cases i'm moderate in some of my left ideals, i'd probably coin a term 'toxic idealism', the oppositional stances that people take when the functional solutions aren't 'enough'. the argument the voice wasn't enough is particularly frustrating because yes, it wasn't enough. we're literally a colony built on the blood of first nations people. a prison state. factually, the statement is true. a committee to address over a thousand years of racism would never be enough. the solution however, was not to vote no. a vote no aligns you with dangerous people, and they're voting no because it furthers the dangerous goals they have in place. i'm baffled that anyone claiming to be for indigenous rights could comfortably sit and say 'our plan to address racism is to agree with pauline hanson's verdict and vote no so that in future a better deal will magically come up.' like that doesn't set a precedent. because now, whenever that referendum comes up, a new scheme whatever the fuck, the argument will always be 'well we asked last time and the people said no, so they've already spoken, this is too radical, you liberal fucks.'. the argument that feels painfully weak to make is 'this is the best that's on the table right now' but it unfortunately rings true. toxic idealism on the left has been a recurring issue surrounding changes in policy. it's something that the greens are unfortunately notorious for, sometimes unfairly, but that stereotype came from somewhere.

there's long been a culture of white liberals overriding issues surrounding communities of colour. key distinction, it's perfectly fine to campaign, express opinions and stand with poc. there's this mentality that white people aren't 'allowed to have an opinion'. that's bullshit. the support of white people, or the otherwise majority is an invaluable asset, both statistically and socially. when i say 'white liberal' i'm referring to the subsection of white progressives who, in the process of pearl clutching, genuine virtue signalling and sometimes even white guilt (another incredibly cringe approach to race relations) drown out the voices of poc, lgbtqi, the disabled and other vulnerable people. while ultimately well meaning, they, to use bo burnham's description 'view every socio-political conflict through the myopic lense of their own self-actualisation'. these are the motherfuckers who saw the ads of some indigenous people saying to vote no immediately bought their word for it in fear of being racist despite the 83% approval rate and the fact those ads were overwhelmingly orchestrated by white people using poc as props.

sigh. i fucking hate white liberals. stop trying to be fucking martyrs.

as for now, the important thing is to not lose hope. i know that's a tough ask coming from someone who can't speak think the mental anguish to indigenous australians. it's the times where hope seems the most dire that we need it the most. please be kind to one another.

always was and always will be.

nick butterfield

karuna land

some short thoughts

2024-11-08T00:00:00Z

a series of short thoughts recently.

i think the mobile games have caught onto the fact that neurodivergent people exist and have put all their fucking chips on making genuinely addictive games littered with ads as an infinite money glitch. yeah, mobile games have always been a dumpster fire of quick-fix dopamine but the amount of games that fit that 'oddly satisfying' subgenre have skyrocketed both in quantity and exposure. additionally the amount of ads that have deliberately trash gameplay which could've been outperformed by a racoon on adderall work incredibly well, i'm sure, but i honestly just get frustrated looking at it without the followup need to play the game. lastly, fuck the new model of in-game advertising where you get the shit gameplay, a "playable ad" and then a prompt to download it. i said no shithead. i think it's not exclusive to mobile games tho. like the first time i saw a sensory toys showbag i lost my shit. there's this sense of autism and adhd being a marketing demographic more than it is a classification of behaviour and brain activity that brings its own challenges being in a world that has very little accommodation for it. i can't tell if it's just my circle or my internet algorithm, but the fact autism is now just being thrown around like a meme (me and the boys have autism lol. my friends are undiagnosed lmao. i was neglected as a child rofl), and when it's brought up seriously it tends to be this incredibly cheerful, rainbow, 'special', 'stimmy toy' way just feels kind of off. like we advocate for autism as long as we can make content from it and make it fit an aesthetic. there's this resistance to talk about how it actually can be an incredibly frustrating situation to be in, and has genuine lifelong challenges that can and does affect a person's ability to function in society. i mean, i get it. it's a hard truth to swallow. i guess i'd much rather we were able to acknowledge there are genuine struggles with autism, it's not all fun and 'quirky'.

to be fair, at least the memes around men having autism are actually kinda funny and speak to the truth of being a silly boy. my point is i feel like most of the content around autism, and thus our cultural perception, is limited to being memes or pandering to autism as #relatable, and not about the actual challenges in a way that matter, or to understand those who are high-support-needs (fka low-functioning). i guess my real point is, fuck sia. her making music and defending it the way she did was the most brownie points scoring, pandering "im an ally of autism #speciallyabled' dumb cunt behaviour and everything wrong with discourse around neurodivergence.

---

i keep up with this circle of culture like a quadriplegic keeps up with usain bolt but i find jojo siwa's metamorphosis incredibly interesting.

the way she's expressing herself now has been described as "she thinks she's just invented the colour black and emo culture", which as comedic as that statement is, probably isn't far off. i mean, she's spent the past decade essentially having this super family-friendly image that has required her to effectively code herself as a pre-teen girl, a modern day take on bubblegum pop as a marketing strategy, filled with rainbows and sketchers and ponytails. while it is true that other child stars have had to position themselves as younger than they are, especially through their teenage years, i feel like at least they were allowed to grow up. i mean, hannah montana was a character, miley cyrus was allowed to exist, and other teen stars have been allowed to mature their image in-line with their actual age. when i see jojo go through what looks like a 15-year olds personality shift, i can't help but feel like only now she is going through what i feel a lot of actual 15 year olds went through. she's developmentally stunted, and her continued efforts to come across as edgy or different or new are probably just her desperately trying to escape the image she cultivated, and i guess grow up. i mean people aren't wrong, it is kind of cringe. she ain't gene simmons. but to see her talk about how in her world, people hate on her and gatekeep her, it's probably just the way she's viewed the world after being denied changing for however long. she struggled to differentiate people clowning on her and what are objectively cringe things she's doing, because again, she's a 21 year old acting like a 15 year old, and the pushback she's probably received from a lot of people in her career. at the very least, while i think the optics of what she's doing is ridiculous (and her ep felt more like an attempt at being lady gaga with very little substance), i don't think it's her fault. the only feeling i really have is a profound sadness and a loathing for the child-star industry. show business is ridiculously pedophilic.

---

you ever scroll in reels and then once in a blue moon instagram will show you one from like an account with 10 followers, it has 1 like and it's just like a popular song over contextless footage and / of facecam? that shit weirds me out.

i guess building off a short segment from the video i put up last post, i find people who post the most random things on social media interesting. more specifically, things that you have to look at and say “why would anyone like this/why post this?”. i'm far from thinking social media should be a competition of likes and that you need to make everything competitive, but when it's overlaid with a popular song in particular obviously to boost attention, i'm just kind of lost. like, you posted what could be forgiven by the outsider for being 'my camera went off at a completely random point or i accidentally hopped on facetime or this is b-roll for an experimental mockumentary of the everyman'.

people should be allowed to express themselves, but the need to post absolutely everything on social media or otherwise farm engagement with what seems to be a child's idea of 'influencer' content honestly annoys me. it shouldn't, but it does.

since frank ocean has stopped posting music, there's been a litany of leaks. every new song, people will scramble to find copies, usually because the old ones get taken down. there's an entire strata of content that is “here is the song you're looking for but i've added my own vocals or it's a vlog with constant talking making it obviously not about the music”. one i saw for 'these days' was titled after the song alone, and was footage of this dude who literally did nothing aside from pet his cat twice, go outside for a total of 30 seconds, and every 5 seconds was a shot of him adjusting his hair. the audio had random dips. nothing was said. and i'm just like 'honestly who the fuck cares about you adjusting your fringe, what is the point of this vlog. i could not tell the difference after you put you hand through it like 5 times.'

or on soundcloud, rappers started uploading these days but it was an 'edit' by or 'featured' the rappers on questions, usually adding a shitty vocal line on the top of the original song.

i guess the thing that stumps me about this particular phenomenon is, people are trying to elevate their brand or get exposure off work that is completely someone else's, and are trying to foster an audience by attracting one that doesn't (and shouldn't) give a shit about them. like, if i was on soundcloud and wanted exposure so i posted a leak, yeah, i'd get crazy numbers on that track, but at the end of the day, they were listening to it because of nothing that i was doing, and i doubt it would bring attention to things that are actually mine, so why bother? i couldn't imagine a more hollow feeling. the answer is money, but to get to that point would be in defiance of what art is all about, the expression of the self.

---

similar vein, i've always had a fascination with the fracturing of audiences of online content. like, say you create a video that blows up. it wasn't meant to be a series, it's just a thing you did. you suddenly have a massive audience for something you made, but it might not be the thing you want people to notice you for. do you a - try and capitalise on this lightning in a bottle and create more/rehash content in that style, or do you b - try to migrate your audience to this other form of content. do you do a combination of both? how do you deal with this newfound fame?

it's really interesting the different ways creators deal with this, and how universally it almost never works out. the creators that try to replicate their success again and again usually suffer burnout and see their numbers decrease over time. the creators who try to persuade their audience to check out their other work usually do so heavy handedly in a way that comes across as naive or bitter. like their understanding of their audience is that it can be easily manipulated (in the purest sense of the word), that this engagement will be transferable to new ventures purely because the audience will recognise their face and tag along, or that they feel upset that what they might've worked their whole lives towards and their passion, is being passed up for a comparatively throw-away gag, and that people keep wanting them to 'say the line' so to speak, instead of be themselves. i feel like i'd rather be cynical, at least then i'm not naive or foolish.

off the top of my head, i think joji is probably one of the few to master it. dude is bigger than he ever was when he was doing comedy as filthy frank. dude was doing work as joji as early as 2013 under the radar and garnered a deeply loyal if not niche fanbase (one i gladly consider myself part of, shoutout chloe burbank), and made a transition so great that his music has overshadowed any of his original work. and good for him. but i think his success story is vastly out-shadowed by the mountains of other creators that have fallen to the wayside. a truly enviable position.

as a teenager i had this compulsion to follow all associated ventures to the channels i watched on youtube. a music promotional channel started a vlogging channel? i'd follow it. a personality started a gaming channel? sure. over time, i found myself clicking off a lot of these videos and channels just because i didn't care at the end of the day. i liked alex rainbird when he was posting music, not when his girlfriend took a camera into their everyday lives. i'm fully part of the problem.

what i feel like many don't understand about online fame is that it mostly happens one of two ways, even if they share a lot of traits. you either have a moment that comes and goes, a 5 minutes of fame, or you have a dedicated audience that you cultivate over a long time. we like to think of these as mutually exclusive, but the truth is they're not. a lot of people have gained a career off a smaller bit of fame. the difference is, those who keep their fame usually do so because they have a strong enough personality when their regular output is different from their viral moment, or because the content they make is in line with what that moment was about. donald glover keeps his acting relatively separate from his music, but is able to create a career doing both because he has that strong personality, and either section of his career could easily stand on his own. he just so happens to do music and acting, and happens to be (in my opinion) very good in both. i think principally, the multi-disciplinary types understand that each new venture is a new beginning for their art with new challenges and progression, much like how being good at tennis didn't make nick kyrgios good at soccer, nor leffen good at tekken.

a brief talk about gender

2024-11-08T00:00:00Z

(content warning: the mental image of a man's ass)

as some of you might know, i got my ears pierced recently. i wanted to talk about that.

my partner lily got her thirds done a few months ago after getting a gift voucher for skinkandy, and while i was in there the thought hit me.

"i always kinda wanted to get me ears pierced, why don't i???" it was the same reasoning for my first tattoo (i have 2 now, and hopefully more soon).

the first part of that statement can sit on its own. i thought others looked cool with them, i thought i could dig it, it's a medium for self-expression, as pretentious as that sounds. the second half... a bit more complex.

it took me until about 18 to start really thinking about what kind of clothes i wanted to wear. up until that point, i mostly wore graphic t-shirts, chinos and connie's, the kind of manufactured cool that came with 'boston street skate club est. 1968' that only out-of-touch adults could could come up with at a board room. i also had a brief floral shirt stint, bit we don't talk about that. not helping, my parents quite 'conservative' and more moderate. my mum's a nurse and my dad was in government and law. and while my dad has a very 'do as you please' approach, he always made sure i knew how he felt about what i 'pleased'. my my mum on the other hand was a lot more hands-on with her commentary, telling me i couldn't wear such-and-such, that looked ridiculous looking like that, that at 20, i was still too young to get a tattoo. a lot of this, was lack of agency. i didn't have a job in high-school, so any money i got went to other more pressing 'needs' like eating out with friends. the rest was just not consciously thinking about it, i only needed clothes for weekends, every other day i was wearing the same catalogue of uniform.

when i got into university, i quickly realised that i not only had more money at my disposal to buy clothes, but that as an adult, i needed to start thinking of what it was people saw me in. i decided to be a bit androgynous. sweaters, cardigans, corduroy, nothing particular feminine, but not covered in testosterone either. partially, i just liked comfy clothes. the larger problem though, is that i never really liked the idea of being 'hyper masculine'. i wrote essays in high-school which dealt with topics such as men's mental health, toxic masculinity and 'left'-leaning politics. looking back, a lot of what i considered 'left' could probably have me classified as a white moderate, but i was trying. to really interrogate my fashion proclivities though, is to talk about how:

i think hyper-masculinity was (and still is) highly insecure in nature.

i find the categorisation of something as masculine or otherwise incredibly stupid and of no social value

and not to contribute to the right's freudian view of gender and sexuality but,

my dad, the masculine figure in my life growing up, had a short temper that made me actively not want to be like him. (he has since gone to therapy, i love him very much)

so getting earrings, something that can considered step 1 of gender non-conformity seemed like a no brainer. so i got them pierced.

i'm at the stage now where they've healed, at least enough to put other ones in. i've got some coming in the mail of my own, and i'm borrowing my partner's for the meantime. but when i looked in the mirror after putting my first pair on that wasn't a standard ball, something happened. i saw the dangle on that made me feel like a mage in final fantasy; and i felt like i had reclaimed some of that femininity that i lost in recent years.

quite frankly it's absurd to me that people have met me after i shaved my head in october 2022 (a response to the dreaded norwood scale), and even more people after i grew my beard in september 2020, two very masculine features. i wouldn't call myself and insecure person typically, i have aspects of my body that i don't particularly like, same as everyone, but insecure to the point that i try to hide or cover up aspects? no. going bald, while certainly not ideal and not my first pick for a hairstyle (see also: hozier probably), is something that i realistically can deal with just fine.

that isn't to say i don't think about how other's perceive me. a running joke i have is that i look like the average redditor (not helped by having aeroplane over the sea on vinyl), and like a younger version of a coworker i hate. i look at my pot-belly, a tragedy of genetics and bad habits, and go "fuck, i want to sort that out". my teeth need braces, my ass is ridiculously flat (told ya). but i don't feel 'ashamed' the same way others do. for that i am grateful. i am simply aware that people will make judgement calls on what kind of person i am at a glance, same as everyone, and i try not to value those opinions. i value the opinions of people who know me. because those who do will know my hyper-niche light-academia, goblincore, aryan trapstar, sadboy, pinterest-obsessed, mid/late-century jazz, weeaboo, dedicated leftist, modern romantic, postmodern-industrial, shit-posting self. and if you do, then thank you, and i'm deeply, deeply sorry.

that idea of perception has always been interesting. as someone on the spectrum, i tend to also out people in boxes to easily figure out who i might get along with, usually a combination of fashion and music taste is my starting point. but i realised recently my closest friends, the people i like spending the most time with, are those who have proved me wrong, refusing to be categorised. people who are probably aware of the mould they 'fit' to the outside eye, but not apologetic about when they do something against it, non-conformist if you will. it was a real eye-opening thought about the complexity of human beings, and considering how i don't appreciate being 'boxed' made me really reconsider my approach to others.

all of this, is to say that

1. you've spent however long reading about me, i am truly sorry i made you expect greater, deeper insights.

and

2. after a long time, i think i'm finally comfortable in my own skin.

except the redditor thing. fuck reddit. blog on that one soon.

until then, be kind to yourself, and trade your upvotes for bitches or something idk please get off r/gaming i guess.