2025-05-10 05:23:00
(entries from here on down were documented retroactively post-change(log) birthing)
I'm exhausted by my near-compulsive need to catalogue and track everything in my life. This need is driven by necessity due to the executive functioning challenges of my neurodivergent brain—yet rendered problematically debilitating and convoluted due to those very challenges. I'm trying to order the chaos of my brain with the very chaos agent itself.
I abhor the time this tracking takes from me. How I sometimes feel my life slipping by as I spend time tracking and cataloging aspects of it rather than experiencing them. I feel simultaneously trapped in and dependent upon it. It feels so uninspired, isolating, and artless.
I've fought against this tracking need—this search for order—and the flawed way in which I approach it. I've fought against my own brain's chaos. I've treated my neurodivergence as a personal failing.
My website is the place for me to lean into (not away from) the parts of me I abhor the most. The parts of me I fear the most. So my website's changelog feels like the perfect place to lean into this aspect of myself.
With "Change(log)," I'm trying something new. Instead of fighting this tracking need and its flawed execution, I'll embrace it.
When I feel like a prisoner of my own brain, maybe the way out is actually relaxing into how I’m wired.27
(Note: this is the 5th footnote in the "Change(log) Saga Arc: Existential Email Footer Angst." Given the nature of changelogs, you're encountering the saga in a non-sequential order.) When I found the opacity of the subscribe button was problematic for accessibility, I started increasing it by 0.01 points at a time, and tested with Google Page Speed after each bump (as to why I wanted to see how almost-not-visible I could keep the subscribe button, refer to the angst-ridden-email-form-footnote-saga of the previous changes). As absurdly intense as my issues around this entire email form are (see voluminous other footnotes), I deeply value accessibility. So, despite the discomfort I felt with each 0.01 bump (🤢), I nudged that little button back into accessible range(🤮).
BUT THEN! I found that I could change the color of the text and maintain my desired level of opacity. It's still overall more visible than I'm comfortable with (just a brazen embodiment of my desire for readership, there in all its legibility...like some kind of writer who wants people to read the things she writes...🙄). Hasn't this been a journey...↩
(Note: this is the 3rd footnote in the "Change(log) Saga Arc: Existential Email Footer Angst." Given the nature of changelogs, you're encountering the saga in a non-sequential order.) My plan for this morning was to work on an entire other part of the website. But what did I do instead? Fucked around with making this form even LESS obvious. To apologize via CSS for even implying I may want anyone to read what I write...like the thirstiest human alive. You know what addresses deep-seated existential trauma-infused issues? CSS opacity!↩
(Note: this is the 4th footnote in the "Change(log) Saga Arc: Existential Email Footer Angst." Given the nature of changelogs, you're encountering the saga in a non-sequential order.) Thought I was done? Nope. Could have just used the opacity necessary for dark mode to be legible. But no...that make it TOO readable in light mode. And I want to deliver a consistent user experience of my degree of inner-angst.↩
(Note: this is the 1st footnote in the "Change(log) Saga Arc: Existential Email Footer Angst." Given the nature of changelogs, you're encountering the saga in a non-sequential order.) SO. I don't have the words for this yet. This is going to fall maddeningly short of what I'd like to convey. Generally, I'd just wait until I "have the right words," but one of the whole points of this website is to release things into the world while they are still "in process"...lest they never come out at all.
The "why" behind my existential battle with putting this is form at the footer of posts is...complicated. It's something I really want to dig into in my writing and art. But it feels (and is)...big. Explaining it is made all the more challenging by how vacuously surface-level and ego-based the concepts of "reach" and self-promotion angst can seem.
The greatest hindrance I face in creating and writing has always been "how do I get the thing I make out to people?" Even in the days before the internet, as a little overly-intense kid with dreams of writing books and making art, I agonized over "but how do you get things published or out to people?"
This wasn't from any desire for what we've come to term "a following," nor even for external validation (though I realize denying those motivations can't help but seem like "protesting too much"). From as far back as I can remember, my drive to create was innate...a necessity. I have no doubt that the journaling, essays, poetry, and art I made as a child had a huge hand in keeping me alive (literally).
And while I created and wrote because I needed to, I also wanted to create and write things that would touch other people. That would hopefully help other people. Especially because one of the other things that kept me alive in my formative years was the writing and art of other people. I knew that the words or forms one put into the world had the power to genuinely affect people's lives for the better.
But the "how" of "getting it out to people" always elicited a visceral dread and terror within my child self (that has stayed with me to this day). Looking back, I understand now that it's the same dread and terror of so many "how's" in this life. It's the dread and terror born of a little neurodivergent girl, trying to find her way in a world that makes no sense...that's an outright assault to her brain's wiring... A world where violating unwritten rules of human interaction result in baffling consequences. Where nothing and no one was predictable. And thus nothing and no one was safe.
Okay, this may seem way off track from putting a fucking email form at the base of every post. But it's all tied in there. And it's nothing I'm alone in. So many neurodivergent people struggle with navigating a world not built for our brains. A world wherein to "get anywhere" you need to know how to navigate networking, interactions, and ways of "presenting yourself" that are not only confoundingly unclear, but also profoundly damaging to "put on" for sustained periods. The cost of masking and passing has burned out so many of us...(if we even get through enough of the professional hoops to be in a position to mask and pass in the first place).
Okay, rangy again...I get it.
Let's skip over the last decade plus, where I somehow found my way into creating educational videos, articles, and speeches for the nonprofit I formed. Where I had the noble concept of bringing solidly-researched information to the public "where they got their information"...with that "where" being (unfortunately) social media. I wanted to bridge the gap between solid information and the accessibility of social spaces. Noble, perhaps. Sustainable? Fuck no. Damaging to my entire being? You bet. I had to inhabit those spaces. And regardless of how hard I tried to not allow it, those spaces took and took and took from me...and I found myself contorting more and more. I desperately was trying to maintain integrity while also achieving "reach"—after all, I was trying to provide a public service of sorts, so getting it out to people was key. But as the platforms devolved, the methods of gaining "reach" became more and more antithetical to everything I was aiming to accomplish...and to everything I am.
Okay, I didn't really skip that...but that's a very, very high level peak into things.
What I find with creating and then releasing into digital spaces is that the moment I shift from the creation to the "sharing," I lose any of the joy, satisfaction, or peace with the creative process. I lose any connection and grounding to myself. And I'm right back to being that terrified, lost little neurodivergent girl, wanting so desperately to connect with others, but not understanding how—and having already been punished and burned for trying. No one ever explained what I did wrong. I'd just get the message that I was wrong.
ANYWAYS...email form. I do very much want people to find and read what I write. I don't need it to be everyone. (I really don't want it to be everyone) But I also don't feel satisfied writing or creating into a void. I do crave that connection. I crave making some difference for some person, like so many made for me throughout my life. That little girl still wants to help other people...even in the smallest of ways. (Probably preferring the smaller, quieter ways...) But I (like her) don't know how. And given my history in the social media hit-that-subscribe-button-give-it-a-like-get-a-free-ebook-when-you-sign-up-for-my-newsletter world, and how the last decade or so almost cost me my humanity...sharing my work, and trying to get others to find it feels...fucking gross. It feels...manufactured...fear-driven. It brings all the layers of preemptive consideration, crafting, manufacturing, optimizing🤮 that I have always viscerally abhorred. When I just want to be able to stay connected to my actual self and share openly and genuinely. But how? When it feels like every avenue we have to share our creative works are avenues that by their very nature kill (or at least deplete) the creative impulse and connection?
SO...I put the fucking form at the bottom of the posts because yes...I do want people to know when I make stuff. But I feel torn about that fucking form being there. Because now I have so many things at the foot of the posts...email reply link, like it link (🤢), subscribe form (🤮), next post and previous posts links (these are find, but just now there are just SO MANY "CALLS TO ACTION"). And I always give TOO MANY options, TOO MUCH information, TOO MANY words. I'm always TOO MUCH.
"Best practices" tell you to limit your "calls to action" so as not to overwhelm people. But I AM overwhelming. I'm overwhelmed by myself. So, part of me thinks "fuck it...just leave all those calls to action down there, cause you are fucking messy and too much." But other parts of me fear looking excessive. Looking desperate. Looking like I want people to read my work. That I want people to subscribe so they know when I make more work. (Well guess what: I FUCKING DO.)
I also have BIG feelings about anything that even vaguely approaches the hint of potentially approximating self-promotion. (See my note on my Subscribe page about the "gross" parenthetical.)
Look...this footnote is a lot. And there's even more with all this. But I'm writing this kind of stream-of-consciousness..and if I continue that, we will be here for a few years. So let's leave this here for the time being. It's something I'll be writing more about. (Also, enjoy the subsequent "tweaks" to the form...those are more light-hearted in their footnote commentary...oh hey...there's one below this footnote! And a few above...cause this just...kept...going...)↩
(Note: this is the 2nd footnote in the "Change(log) Saga Arc: Existential Email Footer Angst." Given the nature of changelogs, you're encountering the saga in a non-sequential order.) So immediately after putting this form and the RSS/Atom link on the posts, I felt it was TOO MUCH. Too crowded. Too thirsty. Too desperate. Too "in your face". Too evident that I actually want people to read what I write (like a fucking loser...).
So I tried to use the magic of CSS to visually reduce the evidence of my shame. I tried to make the form less evident, the text smaller, lighter. I then tried seeing if I could alter the button text from "Subscribe" to something like "Subscribe (if ya want)" or "Subscribe (gross)" (in line with my Subscribe page). (I cannot edit the button text...it's a Bear Blog-created element)
I then tried adding additional text like following the subscribe button with "if you want to!" Or making this all seem more human by putting something like "If you want some old-school email from a real human person" above the form, and "(it's me, Emily...I'm the real human person)" below the form. Is that more relatable? Does that make it okay or permissible for me to want you to read what I write? 🙄 (One thing it did was make the footer SUPER crowded so...nope).
So I went to bed to have dreams about this fucking post footer subscribe thing (yes, I absolutely did), and hopefully find some peace with it the next day (spoiler: I did not).↩
Have to say, I'm really getting in this ability to use var(--whatever-variable) to toggle different versions of things for light/dark mode. This is my first foray with light/dark modes and using var() in CSS. It's pretty delightful...feels a bit magic to me (as all coding does, to be honest...)↩
I don’t know how to structure & organize my website. So I wrote that I don’t know how to structure & organize it.
I don’t have much on my website yet. So I posted a list of what I have planned.
I'm really starting to revel in this "just say the thing out loud" approach...
...rather than wait for a polished product, I'm sharing the messy process.↩
"Stay large" is most definitely the official technical term...↩
I've been agonizing over how to organize, categorize, and structure the writing, art, and assorted drivel I house on this website. Organizing anything is a cognitive-gridlock-inducing nightmare for my brand of neurodivergence (just read about my BIG feelings about something as mundane as buying a BIG-ASS-BAG). The stakes are heightened further when I add in the import with which I imbue my website, art, and writing. Then add in the entire ethos of digital gardens, the arbitrary nature of reverse-chronological content display, the conflation of "new" with value in our ever-churning digital content machine world, and on and on... AND top it off with my inherent default of reacting to infinite technical configuration options with a visceral fear-response and it gets...intense.
The hiding of the dates grew from my consideration of whether to make my "art" content posts or pages here in Bear. Pages are more "evergreen" conceptually; they don't show a date and aren't in the automated blog list. However, they also don't allow for the use of tags. And I want (eventually) to use tags for visitors (and myself) to sort through and find the various kinds of things and topics I plan to house here. SO...make them posts, right? Well...then they have a "stuckness" in time that isn't necessarily appropriate. Especially if they are a "living document" like this Change(log) or the Website Manifesto. Also, posting a "post" triggers out to RSS, and that may not always be ideal/desired. BUT...I like the idea of everything I put on this site having "equal footing". I like the idea of fighting against any drive to create hierarchy. Let it all be a big mess in one BIG-ASS-BAG that you get to reach into and shuffle about and see what you find.
SO...ALL posts, yes? (maybe...) For now, I decided to at least hide the dates in the post lists. And put a little mess instead (hence the splatter that took me an absurd amount of time to accomplish). The rest of this organizational debate remains in process...↩
Went from #1e5c69 to #257080. Fucking. Mind. Blown.↩
Got the basis of this from Robert Birming's add-on. Took some doing to get the SVG splat to not kick the menu off its alignment...I had to create separate SVGs for the menu than the post list, which isn't ideal. But may revisit that.↩
Because we Need. More. Splats!↩
Okay, the splat creation got good to me...had to rein it in..↩
All HailL iOS glitches that will never be addressed because All Hail iOS!↩
All Hail Google Page Speed!↩
Okay, even Google Page Speed has a point now and then...I value accessibility of the web far more than I abhor Page Speed's many performance-metric-chasing-based grumblings.↩
This change made me disproportionately happy for such a tiny addition. I think it's because it feels more "me" to stain ANYTHING I have that's clean and new. (Also, while I call this a "tiny addition," it took me an absurd amount of time to achieve...as documented with the additional changes above).↩
I cannot decide what all to have in this bio. I want to fit too much. I also want it to be a one-liner. Not the mess it is. I also want to find a way to explain my struggles with Mastodon. With any social platform. How I yearn to connect. How I want to have a place for my work and myself to connect with others—and for me to discover and connect with other people and what they are putting into the world. Yet how, whenever I even approach these platforms (even the quieter, lovelier Mastodon), I lose touch with the very thing I'm wanting to share and connect with. I lose something of myself. I lose the grounding in myself that allows me to genuinely connect with others—rather than reaching out to them from a fear-driven clutching for connection that feels more like desperately clamoring for recognition/validation/approval than anything else. Mandy Brown said it all much better↩
Bear blogs have a little "toast" button built in at the bottom of posts. It's a little way to express appreciation for a post, and also influences that post appearing in the Bear Blog Discover feed for a time. I have mixed feelings about the toast button on my own posts. Coming from a decade+ of producing educational content released onto social media platforms (and, more so, the inherent necessity to therefore inhabit and contort myself and my work to those platforms), I have a visceral repulsion and disquiet to any kind of "like/follow/subscribe" verbiage or functionality. (see my Subscribe (gross) page...).↩
I did this after spending the greater part of my "dedicated writing time for my second-ever post" getting stuck on what voice/framing of myself to write from. After my first post, I felt I needed to write in that exact same voice. That same off-the-cuff rawness that people connected with. But the post I’m working on is evolving with a different voice. Different parts of me needing to be heard. And I so often too often almost always always end up silencing the parts of me that don't align with whatever framing I or others have chosen.
I'm adamant not to do that this time. Not here. Not on my website. As uncomfortable, un-unified, un-branded, and non-cohesive as it is. As counter as it is to everything that's been mind-fucked into my brain by over a decade producing content on social media (not to mention a lifetime of white-knuckling my way through "passing" as non-neurodivergent...desperately trying to figure out how to present). So yeah. I italicized and underlined that sentence instead of getting my writing done. But it did mean something to me.↩
I become overwhelmed with how to track everything I change on my website. (I DO NOT GET GIT). Really, though, I'm overwhelmed about how to track anything in my life—primarily because I feel compelled to track everything. And I do so with an intensity and level of detail that becomes problematic. My intentions are always to keep order, records...for the tracking to be helpful, functional. But I blow past functional/helpful and into a level of excessive and convoluted complexity that becomes its own problem. And then I'm "stuck"...beholden to continue the logging and tracking in the over-engineered system I created. I can't seem to find the "just enough" point for tracking. I have a whole database I made to track my health record (my symptoms, medications, labs results, visits, etc). And that IS important to have tracked. Because doctors want to know when X, Y, or Z, started/stopped. And I need to be able to (hopefully)↩
Okay, I'm trying really hard not to give any fucks about Google Page Speed. (Aside from if the website's performance is actually impacting real-world user experience or accessibility). But I still get a pit in my stomach if I run that test and see anything but green.
The custom font on this site was (and is) causing delays and a layout shift as it's coming from a CDN rather than being hosted locally. I tried hosting locally, but as Bear media is itself delivered via CDN, I can't truly host the font. And, in fact, Bear's CDN caused a lower score. I did get some improvement by moving the font calling (is that a term??) to the header and some prefetch stuff (thanks to the very lovely Viktor Novikov) BUT...it still wasn't always a "green" scores. So, after much mucking about, I was on the verge of changing to a different font (a Google Font), that returned a better score but lacked the personality of my favored font (Satoshi) and just...wasn't...as..."me." Luckily, I ran this whole "existential font identity crisis" by my friend Keenan, who gave me the wise counsel to essentially fuck Google and stick with the font I like (though they said it in a much more thoughtful, thorough, wise, and well-composed way).↩
Amused if anyone actually come to see the deets on this. But here you are: h1: 2.6rem -> 2.4rem; h2: 2.3rem -> 2rem; h3: 1.9rem -> 1.8rem; body 1.3rem -> 1.2rem↩
So the font on this site is BIG. And I like it. It feels...welcoming and roomy. BUT, on my tiny-ass phone screen it was a LOT of scrolling to get through just the title of my first post (granted, it's an excessively long title...though shorter than the second...🤷🏻♀️)So, I did want to make it a little more manageable on tiny screens (even though I highly encourage Desktop viewing of the web). BUT, given my brain being my brain, I went down a lengthy rabbit hole starting with which breakpoint to use, then delving into debates about the use of breakpoints, and into more dynamic ways to size text like fluid type scales, flexible layouts, progressive enhancements, and letting the browser determine layout rather than using media queries at all, etc, etc, etc.
This is where I’d typically feel I needed to dig in and fully understand and implement high-level web development practices, taking a few courses and reading multiple guides...but for once I pulled out and chose an arbitrary media query break point (for now, I told myself), and made the font a bit smaller at max-width: 768px.🎉 (I also added a comment into my style.css at this point if you wanna hunt it down...)↩
If you're curious (but why?): h4: 1.5rem -> 1.7rem; h5 1.13 rem -> 1.5 rem↩
Okay, let' not get too full of ourselves...much of me thinks it is absurdly self-inflated to call this Change(log) art or poetry (even tough technically I'm saying I want it to be, not that it is...). But part of me thinks the art world is utter total subjective bullshit when it comes to who decides what is and is not "worthy".
So...¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ = ART!↩
I feel kinda disgusting about how self-help bullshit this sentiment sounds. I mean it sincerely, but good god...🤮↩
2025-05-09 01:41:00
Disclaimer: Ironically for an article about the widening gulf between substance and signifier, I'm obligated to point out the Use-Mention Distinction. In this article the word "Nigga" is only ever mentioned, not used to refer to anyone or anything material. I'll be discussing the word's usage and meaning as a signifier without using it. In our meta-ironic collapse state some would use this frame as a means to use the word immaturely, I will not. I've censored the word in the title for the convenience of users of the Bearblog discovery page. I encourage watching the piece before reading: Here
The chorus "Nigga Heil Hitler" in "HH"1 is, quite intentionally, an anti-authoritarian rallying cry against the liberal world order established in the mythologised post-WW2 western hegemony.2 It is offensive by design, cloaked in anti-aesthetic memetic camoflage so powerful as to make it essentially impossible to interact with for a member of this liberal hegemony other than to disregard it. Nevertheless, I doubt many can sincerely reject the libidinal power of the piece. It juxtaposes the most powerful possible combination of signifiers - "Nigga" a slur so potent that even post-reclamation by the black community it is unsayable in all but the most extreme communities, and "Heil Hitler" a salute to the Nazi movement liberalism triumphed over in the 20th century. These signifiers combined are incomprehensibly incompatible with any liberal structure, contradictory by design, they cannot be metabolized by the cultural system, only rejected and dismissed as insanity. There's a lot to unpack here, let's start from the beginning.
Liberalism is ostensibly synonymous with freedom of speech, yet these two signifiers are unspeakable in the wrong context. The black community can freely use "Nigga" post-reclamation and experience no ill effects, having a theoretical authoritative ownership over it. Yet this is a liberal structure, enforcing liberal systems, liberal values, by primarily white liberals - while the black community will often rally against this month's white microcelebrity being outed as an "N-word sayer" for singing along to a song or regarding a friend in a casual context, it is generally the white community that enacts punishment supposedly on their behalf. Some view this as rightful reparations, the white community finally providing support in the fight against racism, yet they reinforce it with the power of their backlash. By wielding the power to inflict punishment, the white community retains the power over the signifier itself, most obviously apparent in the case of Shiloh Hendrix.3 Ultimately the material punishment is defined by the wielders of the capacity for punishment, and white wealth holders maintain this capacity. In the wake of Trump's second term win, the previously uncontested liberal system holds declining cultural dominance.
It is in this context that "Nigga Heil Hitler" was concocted by a deviant, self-destructive, clearly unhappy and unwell, but masterful cultural tactician. The phrase "Nigga Heil Hitler" cannot exist. The same group supposedly saved by liberal progressivism's overwhelming victory over fascism cannot salute a dictator that would have ostensibly had them put to death by virtue of their skin colour. This is incomprehensible without a single-minded focus on the signifier and its meaning today divorced from its attachment to historical context. A historical context defined by the white supremacist liberal structure that exists today.
Today there exists a single successful frame of rebellion against the structures of liberalism, and that is far-right fascism. The populist right-wing surge has dominated a decade of American politics, brought the old powers of the Republican party to heel and successfully placed their man in power. To contextualise the monumental achievement, consider what the equivalent populist leftist movement would look like - Bernie Sanders gains absolute hold over the Democrats, having narrowly failed to secure a coup at the end of the previous election cycle. He has unchecked power, with Democrats in the Senate and Congress following his lead on every issue. As the term progresses he teases running for a third term and prepares AOC for a dynastic rule of the far left over America. This is unbelievable, yet all happened for the right-wing in real-life.
In this frame, there are two systems in opposition - liberalism and antiliberalism, with the latter being entirely captured by fascist populists. Ye is subjected to oppressive structures in both, the former dismantling his family "Man these people took my kids from me, then they froze my bank account" and the latter emasculating him "Yes I am a cuck I like when people fuck on my bitch". He continues to countersignal both sides of the aisle, identifying himself with signifiers that are absolutely unappealling to both - "I am a Cuck" is to the far-right what "I am a Nazi" is to the left. ==This textual reading is incompatible with a declaration of allegiance to Nazi ideology,== and indeed the video reinforces the framing device for the song as a whole via this imagery:
This image is, in theory, utterly horrifying to Nazis - an organized group of powerful black men commandeering their signifier while dressed in the regalia of tribal warfare. ==The juxtaposition works in both directions, a libidinal hostile takeover of both the liberal fascism of dictatorship over signification and the fascist fascism of fascism.==4 The clever Nazis5 have, in their infinite pragmatism, recognised this as a further opportunity to seize cultural and libidinal fuel reserves from the logistic lines supplying the leftist front of the culture war. The dumbest Nazis are panicking about black culture being inferior and miss the antiliberal forest for the racial supremacy trees. The pragmatist fascists understand far better than liberals that they do not decide where libidinal energy stores reside, they must utilise these predefined sources of fuel wherever they become apparent. We've seen already from Shiloh that the reactionary backlash to the authoritarian language policing of liberalism is a region of great cultural power, already in use for decades by Nazis innoculating their new recruits in signifiers inaccessible to liberal persuasion and coercion - now reclaimed in full force by the populist right's advocacy for abject racism.
Ye's motivations have conveniently aligned with the antiliberals due to the failed promise of Capital to provide him unchecked power and freedom "With all of the money and fame I still can't get my kids back. With all of the money and fame I still don't get to see my children." The Liberals (always signified by Ye as "Jews"6) have dismantled his access to community, destroyed his family and toxified his image. In a theoretically free market he has lost access to the capital power he feels entitled to, and the capital power he wields is insufficient to give him the basics all people deserve. There are other rules at play than the ones laid out explicitly. This concept is explored in parallel within Jay-Z's "The Story of O.J.", which mirrors some of Ye's sentiment "You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America? This how they did it" but acquiesces to it. Jay-Z, one of fewer than 20 black billionaires, reads Jewish (Capitalist-Liberal) financial dominance as a playbook to follow, "Financial freedom my only hope, fuck living rich and dying broke" rather than one to oppose. He does so successfully, though "The Story of O.J." has a strange unresolved conflict between the verses of financial advice ending with the chorus declaring "Rich nigga, poor nigga, house nigga, field nigga - still nigga".
This mixed messaging is a precursor to Ye's work here - where Jay-Z's only self-proclaimed barrier to freedom is race, Ye's barrier to freedom is his incompatibility with liberal values restricting his artistry and expression. He rails against being misunderstood, pointing all but explicitly at the frustration that he is only interpreted via signalling "Niggas see my twitter but they don't see how I be feeling" the dismissal of his internal state and meaning leading to him adopting the most damaging signifier imaginable "so I became a Nazi bitch I'm the villain" in protest. In many ways this is an explicit declaration of disconnect between substance and signifier - a black man cannot be a nazi, the concept is so ridiculous (in the liberal frame) that it demands an analysis that separates the signification from the intended meaning.
Ye's goal here is to demonstrate the re-interpretation of a signifier in much the same way that "Nigga" was reclaimed by the black community. This is where "Nigga Heil Hitler" sources its critique - it attaches a reclaimed signifier to one that still contains great negative power. "Nigga" is a potent mechanism for this, simultaneously holding position as the worst possible utterance in some contexts, and a term of endearment and community in another. Perhaps controversially, I think this is in the pursuit of antiliberalism rather than the pursuit of fascism, though this rhetoric will shortly be co-opted by real fascists.7 For Ye, and for antiliberals (left or otherwise), liberalism is the fundamental source of community fracture, atomisation and collapse - so opposition to it is a pro-community retaliation. "All my Niggas Nazis, Nigga Heil Hitler" speaks to this sentiment, "All my Niggas Nazis" building an antiliberal coalition signified by the most powerful antiliberal label conceivable.
This ultimately, is the point of "Nigga Heil Hitler", contrasting the failure of liberalism to solve racism via the reclaimed signifier of liberal white supremacy, with the demythologisation of liberalism's foundation story of overcoming fascism. Today oligarchs throw roman salutes, a fascist failed coup turned into a successful overrun of the political establishment and online platforms are driven by far-right conspiracism. Liberalism has failed in both its promise to provide egalitarian assimilation8 to oppressed minorities and in its promise to defeat and repel fascism. It toxified its opposition as "Nazis" in much the same Christians have signified their opposition as "Satanic" - a catchall term for "not" supporting a hegemonic framework keeping fascism/demons at bay. If you're not with us, you're acting in service, unwittingly or otherwise, to the dark forces.
With all this in mind, we do now come to the portion of the song that uncritically reproduces a speech by Adolf Hitler.
"Whether you think my work is right, whether you believe that I have been diligent, that I have worked, that I have stood up for you during these years, that I have used my time decently in the service of my people. You cast your vote now, if "YES", then stand up for me as I stood up for you."
The content is dressed in an unacceptable signifier, once again draping it in an inaccessible barrier to liberal understanding, yet the content is meaningful. It is not disputable that Ye has been, like in Hitler's speech here, fighting for something at great personal cost to himself. He is not a Black Capitalist like Jay-Z, who seeks freedom through exploitation - nor is he adhering comfortably to one side for cultural capital (Again, his declarations of deviancy and being a cuck are not compatible with the Nazi aesthetic) following in the conservative cancellation pathway of figures like Russel Brand. He does believe he has been working "in the service of my people", by opposing the liberal structure that continues to subjugate them. Curiously the speech also relates to democracy, contrasted with its fascistic source. This time the subtance/signifier divide is reversed, Hitler paying lip service to democracy to mask fascistic intent.
No one can speak to the intent behind Ye's work here, but he's indisputably an effective channeler of art, memes and culturo-libidinous energy. His hyperposition in culture fundamentally entangles his personal struggles with cultural ones, a node through which relations to capital superstructures and the zeitgeist flow. Whether you believe Ye's cultural productions create these resonances or are sourced by them, they impact the communal psyche and represent genuine forces. Framelocked liberals will be unable to perceive the colossal energies behind these flows, assuming it to be toying with forbidden words for the sake of touching the hot stove. They fail to recognise the hammerblow to liberal-progressive structures of tone-policing and objective adherence, formerly upheld by the PMCs most responsible for the war on the working class and most offended by blunt assemblages like "Nigga Heil Hitler".
It is important not to dismiss powerful movements of libidinous energy, no matter the source. Disgust for Nazis benefits both Nazis and Liberals. Fascists benefit from the ratcheting effect that toxifying newly captured recruits offers, while Liberals benefit from the looming threat of fascism to justify their lesser evilism. By rejecting Nazi rhetoric, and by ceding rhetoric that looks fascistic to Nazis, you cede control of genuine cultural power. Anyone with genuine intent to apply force to the zeitgeist in any direction must contend with the existing flows within it - the population cannot horrify you lest you isolate yourself from it. Ye's work is representative of a real cultural moment and force - possibly one of the last pieces of art before the collapse of the real into the hypereal AI-slopocalypse.
The two-piece rhetorical instrument "Nigga Heil Hitler" heralds the manifestation of the antiliberal assemblage, containing all forms of opposition to the hegemony, including those the left wishes it had maintained control over. We have ceded almost all ground to the fascists, and must begin reclaiming psychic terrain in prepation for a post-neoliberal collapse state.
Previously discussed in Sociogenic Cancer↩
Shiloh is, for lack of a better descriptor, a random white woman who was recorded calling a young child a "a little nigger" and received half a million dollars in donations from white supremacist online organizers in opposition to the obvious liberal backlash.↩
Once "the fascist fascism of fascism" entered my mind I was no more equipped to rebel against it than Ye was against "Nigga Heil Hitler". It is the best line I have ever written. I will not be taking feedback↩
Fuentes, no surprises there, but more surprisingly Jake Shields, who I do consider to be a true idiot but has in rare form immediately backed Ye's project.↩
Depending on his state of mind, Ye fluctuates between an obviously sincere belief in the most potent anti-semitic conspiracy theories and a depiction of "Jews" as a signifier for liberal capital control and coercion. Like most members of the far-right when he says Jew he could be referring to either, and usually a mix of the two. The latter definition is a critique familiar to most leftists, the former a simplistic system of signification used by fascists to seize control of that critique for their racial supremacist worldview.↩
I have an intuitive, unfalsfiable belief that some fascists, like Fuentes', allegiance is more firmly antiliberal than pro-nazi. I believe some right wing populists fall into this category and are more interested in destroying the liberal world order by any means necessary than their specific brand of fascism. I do not think this distinction generally matters because they'll ultimately pave the way for fascists.↩
I'd love to mention the recent release Sinners as an excellent depiction of the well-meaning assimilationist tendencies of liberal capitalists (shrewdly depicted as cannibalistic vampires) offering a release from the raw racial oppression of Jim Crow-era America. The black community rallies and rejects these parasitic entities despite them bringing a utopian multicultural new world order and ostensibly bringing prosperity and freedom, the costs only perceptible outside their internal constructs. The film is excellent at depicting the genuinely positive benefits of becoming a vampire, and how this parasitic system of wealth extracts cultural value from black communities at both benefit and cost. There's a lot more to say on Sinners but sadly not quite enough for an article.↩
2025-05-08 22:55:00
Lately, I’ve been scrolling through 𝕏 and feeling this weird kinda thing.
Young founders closing funding rounds.
Teenagers building ML tools.
Friends shipping projects at 3am with coffee-mug captions.
Everyone’s building something. Products. Startups. Personal brands.
And here I am, pausing- not burnt out- not broken— just... pausing.
And in a world that rewards motion, that pause can feel like falling behind.
But what if it’s not?
We live in a time where being busy is worn like a badge of honor. Somewhere along the way, “doing” became more valuable than “being” . Every time I hit pause, there’s this inner guilt saying that I should be learning a new framework,reading about Web3 or writing another blog. But I’ve come to realize that constant motion doesn’t always mean progress. Sometimes, it’s just noise. I used to think rest was just the absence of work. But it’s so much more.
Not comparing my Day 3 with someone else’s Day 300 softened my inner critic. I reminded myself that I’m not a machine. I’m a person with seasons, rhythms, and days where doing nothing is exactly what I need. So,if you’re feeling overwhelmed,if everyone seems to be sprinting while you’re just catching your breath—pause. This is for you:
There’s peace in ==stillness==. There’s strength in ==silence==.
And most importantly, there’s you—outside the algorithm, beyond the deadlines, just being. That’s enough. The noise outside will never end. There will always be another update, another milestone, another reason to hustle. But remember that your worth was never tied to any of it.
"You don’t have to bloom every season. Some days are meant for rooting, not rising❤️🩹"
Cheers to life🥂..!
2025-05-08 22:09:00
The most dangerous kind of fear is the kind that sounds reasonable.
It doesn’t shout, “You’re going to die!” It sidles up beside you, looking like a concerned friend: “==Be sensible. Stay put. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t be foolish.==” That fear is a liar — but a polite one. It shows up wearing a tie, holding a clipboard, armed with solid arguments.
That’s why it’s so convincing.
Jim Carrey, the actor and comedian, famously shares how his father chooses a stable job over his dreams — only to lose it anyway. A man who plays it safe, stays in the job he doesn’t love because it’s 'secure'. Fear dresses up as responsibility, and still? It fails him. In Carrey’s words: "You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love". His message? ==Fear doesn’t protect you — it only keeps you small.==
Joseph LeDoux, the neuroscientist, suggests that fear isn’t some primal reflex hardwired into your bones. It’s a mental construct. Learned. Conditioned. That also means — it’s trainable. Untrainable, even.
Here’s the kicker: the life you want? The work you’re aching to do? The relationships, the adventures, the art, the calling? They’re all waiting outside the lines fear draws for you.
Will Smith, the actor and storyteller, shares his epiphany after skydiving in Dubai for his 50th birthday — a story he tells in a YouTube video. He describes how fear consumes him before the jump, yet bliss follows after. His words: “Fear is not real. The only place it can exist is in our thoughts of the future.” His takeaway? The fear isn’t in the jump. It’s in the imagining. And when he leaps, the fear dissolves. Or as he also puts it: “==The best things in life are on the other side of fear==”.
It’s easy to see it in a skydive. But the same thing happens every day: the speech you don’t give. The move you don’t make. The love you don’t confess. Fear’s not in the moment — it’s in the waiting. It stretches five seconds of risk into a lifetime of secure dread.
Most fear doesn’t protect us from lions; real fear, the kind that signals actual danger, is rare. But the other kind? The ordinary, chronic fear of doing something unfamiliar or bold? It protects us from discomfort. From change. From feeling vulnerable, awkward, exposed. ==That’s the fear we obey without even calling it fear.==
We don’t say “I’m afraid”. We say “I’m being smart”. “I’m not ready”. “It’s just not the right time”. Fear hides behind these polite disguises, passing itself off as caution, reason, common sense. And ==because we don’t name it, we don’t question it. We don’t fight what we won’t admit is there==.
If fear is constructed, it can be deconstructed. If it’s learned, it can be unlearned.
In Susan Jeffers’s classic Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987), she points out something people still miss: the fear never leaves. “The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow”, she writes.
Fear isn’t a stop sign. It’s a signpost: “You’re on the edge of expansion”.
Underneath every fear, Jeffers says, is the same thought: “I can’t handle it”. We’re not afraid of failure or rejection — we’re afraid we won’t survive them. Her answer isn’t killing fear. It’s stacking proof: “I handled that”. Power grows with experience. Every choice either shrinks you or expands you. Every step moves you toward power — or away.
==Every time you act despite fear, you reclaim space.== Every time you name it, you deflate it.
And naming it? That’s where it starts.
We weren’t born afraid of everything. We were taught to be careful. “Don’t climb too high.” “Don’t speak too loud.” “Don’t risk too much.” The society trained us to shrink for safety. But playing it safe is really just playing it scared.
==Name it. Call it fear.== Because fear’s a master of disguise — it’ll show up dressed as doubt, caution, reason, habit, obligation. If you don’t call it by name, it keeps hiding.
==Write it down.== Every ugly part. Don’t tidy it. Don’t clean it up. Spell it out: what’s the nightmare? What’s the worst-case? What are you really afraid of? Then — write ==what you’d do if it actually happens==.
And while you’re writing? Write one other steady line beside every fear: ==“I can handle this”. “I’ve handled worse”. “I’ll figure it out”.== Building that inner supportive voice isn’t about pretending things are fine. It’s about reminding yourself: you’re standing. And standing means: you’re not out.
Your journal isn’t just a page — it’s a tool. Writing down your fears, you’re not confessing weakness. Every word you write traces the wires back to fear’s fog machine power supply. And once you find the source? You know exactly what to do: walk up and ==pull that plug==.
In the second part, coming after the weekend, we’ll go further. We’ll talk about what happens when you start training it. I’ll give you a glimpse of what it looks like to untrain fear by acting through it. ==Because fearing less? It’s a skill.== And skills aren’t handed down. They’re built.
Meanwhile, if this feels like a full meal, upvote it, pass it to someone who needs it, and if you want to write to me, please do. I want to hear what you’re working through next.
2025-05-08 18:39:00
During the wedding ceremony, our registrar held a speech. We were notified of this plenty before and even got to submit more info about how we met to personalize it. We didn’t know the speech itself though.
So, on the fateful day, we were surprised by an overall really nice wedding speech. The guy has always been enthusiastic and very forthcoming and he clearly loves his job, and I don’t think I would trade him for another one. However, there was one part that made me cringe a little: Opening the speech with acknowledging and mentioning homophobia.
It’s not super bad, and acknowledgement of that does have its time and place, but I am echoing a sentiment here that I also see among fandoms of TV shows, music and the like: Sometimes as a queer person, you don’t wanna be reminded of that all the time. Because we know! It’s impossible not to.
Sometimes you just wanna watch media with queer characters without something homophobic happening to them, without the characters being used to beat “love is love” down the throats of straight viewers. No attacking on the street, no hateful family member, no teary eyed coming out, just normal stuff happening that happens to the straight characters too. It’s annoying to have to see this stupid baby lesson on basic human respect all the time, and be reminded of your own trauma all the time, as if being queer just consisted of these unhappy moments. We want more queer joy and peace in media.
And during what’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of our life, do we need the reminder that this marriage was only legalized in 2017? Sometimes you just wanna marry in peace and joy without remembering that until 8 years ago they openly permitted discrimination against you?
I mean, these parts about homophobia, no matter if speech or media, are never really for us. It’s for the writer to take a stand, to perform allyship, and it’s for the straight audience. The takeaway for them is “See, queer people are normal too and you shouldn’t be mean to them!”
But why on a wedding? I sure hope any attendee of a gay wedding is fine with a gay wedding? What else are you doing there? Are you gonna yell “Boo!” when we kiss? Are you gonna shake your head during the entire ceremony to show to everyone how not okay with it you are?
It’s a little alienating too. We are going through a process that is so common, so normal, so traditional in our society and something that also the straight people who are married can relate to. We’re on equal footing during that ceremony in regard to marriage. So why include something that feels othering again? We don’t always want to be reduced to suffering and fighting for rights or be a stand-in both in real life and fictional to teach the audience a lesson on the horrors of humanity. We wanna move on some time from always regurgitating historical wrongs.
It also begs the question: Does he always pull that one? We can’t possibly be the first gay marriage there. What does it say about the whole thing that maybe all gay couples get this part of the speech?
The intentions are absolutely good. The delivery wasn’t horrendous, and it was short, but it still took me out of the moment. This is just a gut feeling, but I think this is the stuff you write that, while supportive, comes from a place of seeing queer people as the exception, a rarity, a chance to pull out the well-intentioned but slightly cringy straight anecdotes (iykyk). I don’t think you’d do this if you have normalized them in your head and if they are people you are surrounded by daily. Then it would just be a wedding, and you’d do your normal wedding stuff. I doubt he brings up the oppression of interracial couples.
This is also why people saying “Stop making everything political and stop talking politics with friends” falls flat for me. Hey, I can’t even marry without it being political. I can’t even marry without the registrar mentioning politics in the speech. And that’s just common, that’s how it is. It shouldn’t be, but as long as my existence is politicized, politics will be brought up in connection with it.
I’m not mad at him and he didn’t ruin anything. But I was a little taken aback. I don’t think this was a popular part among the audience either.
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2025-05-08 11:02:00
Last week, I launched an iOS app called SuperDose — a simple medication reminder that sends notifications to users when it's time to take their meds.
For the app to function properly, it needs access to the Critical Alerts API. Critical Alerts allow notifications to bypass silent mode and Do Not Disturb, which is essential for users who take life-saving medications like those for hypertension.
Apple’s own Health app uses Critical Alerts for its medication reminders, so I assumed my use case would qualify. I submitted a request for access to the API, but it was rejected.
The rejection email said, "Apps that can't enforce that usage are not likely candidates for this API." That reasoning makes no sense to me — Critical Alerts can only be enabled with explicit user consent. If Apple’s concern is abuse, the opt-in mechanism already covers that. By this logic, even the Health app shouldn't be allowed to use it.
What’s even more confusing is that I’ve seen general-purpose to-do or reminder apps on the App Store that somehow got approved for Critical Alerts, even though their use case seems far less urgent.
Without this permission, my app is incomplete. Users might miss critical medication reminders just because their phone was on silent. That’s potentially dangerous.
Honestly, I’m a bit frustrated.