3Ts: tech recs, philip k dick nominees, discord hot takes

3 Things (3Ts): three thoughts. Maybe about one movie; maybe three snippets of my current WIP; maybe totally disconnected thoughts. All I can promise is there will be three of them, and it’ll be short enough to read over a cup of coffee.

• vinegar “tube cleaner” app — if you don’t have youtube premium, download this 1.99 app for iphone (2.99 for ipad). delete the youtube app, and run youtube through safari. no ads, videos keep playing when tabbed out/screen off, autoplay options, queue options. it’s a bit finicky, but nothing unreasonable for a two dollar app. hello?? this has changed my entire relationship to youtube. thanks Lo for the rec.

  • sidebar: youtube premium users, your money really does support the people you watch. i found this hank green video “the economics of a youtube white noise video” absolutely fascinating.

• nonprofit server to host your website — on the massive pile of author to-dos is to move my website. i’d like it on servers not owned by cartoonishly evil fuckwits. Lia recced the nonprofit server Heliohost. she said, “the johnny (free) and tommy (one-time donation) servers are a bit slow but i've found the morty server to be pretty quick especially for $1/month.” if you’re agonizing over where to host your site, there are better options out there.

• miyoo video game handheld — i don’t play video games, but Grace does. in her journey to de-big-brother, she found the miyoo: a great budget device with tons of community support. she set up her miyoo with onion OS, so now it plays up to ps1, is an e-reader and mp3 player, and a ton of other shit. she put together a playlist of guides she used/plans to use. what a legend. i might get one just for the e-reader/mp3 functionality.

The seven Philip K. Dick nominees have been announced for distinguished work of science fiction originally published in paperback in the USA.1 The award’s presented at Norwescon, which I attend, and this year there’s a Storygraph challenge to read all seven by the con. This feeds perfectly into my 2026 goal to read more ambitious/rigorous books, so I’m tackling the challenge!

I’m forcing one of my friends to read them all with me. She’s already at 6/7, I’m only at 2/7. my libby wait list is bleak; I might have to go to Anna’s Archive. iykyk, jfgi.

If you want to talk books, I’ve recently been really enjoying the Fable app. Its UX is leaps and bounds better than Storygraph. It’s clearly booktok oriented, with a lot of giveaways and influencer grift. But I’m really enjoying the book clubs, and the reading tracker is so pleasing to interact with. I’ve been thinking of setting up my own book club on there, but No New Things 2026!

Anyway, come be friends with me: Fable || Storygraph

recently, news that discord’s Global Age Assurance was rolling out to the USA hit all my newsletters, group texts, and irl convos. a lot of my life happens on discord, and i saw a lot of panic. since i have a reputation for 1) being somewhat alt tech literate 2) giving out “delete the app” advice, folks came to me asking if they needed to nuke discord and where they should go next.

the more you study history, the more you encounter stories of community not allowed to grow or thrive. from pre-industrial laborers organizing under collectivism and multiculturalism being forever branded “pirates” to the systemic suppression of AIDS education and medical help so that queer folks could be eradicated to, y’know, fuckin slavery. what we lose is multiple generations of growth. wisdom is clear cut.

that’s why this discord bullshit feels different than a spotify, or a gmail, which is purely transactional. we have very few public goods or public spaces in this country, and almost no online spaces actually belong to the people. one of the best ways to destroy community is to destroy its lodge, bar, club, community center. discord is one of those community centers. my experience of discord is queer, disabled, international/multicultural, multilingual. it feels important to not just let this global age assurance happen to us, and not to rush to the solution of “well, i guess we’re all moving again.” we’re growing something here. why should our growth be sacrificed?

this debacle made me think about the architecture of the internet, as i think we all are. in r/degoogle the other day, someone asked, “is anyone working on an alternative to the internet itself? It's not safe on any website anymore. Everything is tracked by somebody. I wish there was an alternative that's owned by the people and not the corporations...”

in the comments, folks mentioned Reticulum, and someone pulled a quote from their manifesto that resonated deeply for me:

Zero-Trust Architectures

We must unlearn our reliance on Institutional Trust.

For decades, we have been trained to trust authorities. We trust a website because a chain of Certificate Authorities (companies we don’t know) vouches for it. We trust an app because it is in an app store (run by a corporation we don’t control). We trust a message because it comes from a phone number assigned by a telecom. Yet, everything in our digital information sphere today is more untrustworthy and risky than a medieval second-hand underwear market.

it’s a question of trust. which of these feels riskier, giving out your phone number to:

• your local nonprofit when they ask for your number along with your donation?

• TikTok USDS when you link your tiktok to your phone number and they change the privacy policy to track users' precise location?

• a discord friend you’ve known for a year?

why do we trust human beings less than megacorps? because we’ve been trained? because they keep obliterating the human spaces where humans feel human?

loop back to discord. many are talking about going back to IRC, etc, and mass migrations can happen. probably should happen, eventually. but i feel like a rat scurrying from one bolthole to another: xanga, livejournal, aol chat rooms, dreamwidth, fuckin ao3 comments, whatsapp groups — and all the people lost along the way. i want to rest. i want to be assured the community i’m building will still exist in five years, fifty years, seven generations.

how? how do we keep our community structures standing?

the corollary of “we must unlearn institutional trust” is “institutions, if they must exist, must be built by and for the people, and fear the people.”2 all institutions (which are NOT human) built to serve the owners and shareholders must be dismantled, and replaced with institutions that serve the people; this happens on an architectural level with us, you and me, not compromising on the relations of production and distribution. That can look like mass strikes, overthrowing the government, intentionally crashing the economy… all the stuff that really spices up your otherwise boring weekend.

Anyway. don’t give up on discord. for that matter, don’t give up on reddit, either, or wherever you’re genuinely building connection with other people. while others build a better internet (like the nonprofit server hosts, like the vinegar app devs, like reticulum, like the miyoo mod community), we shouldn’t just give up ground in the community centers we currently use to stay connected to our humanity.

as for an action item. i’m quite surprised i haven’t seen calls for mass canceling of nitro. that tactic’s worked before. cancel your nitro and tell them why — be LOUD about why. tell your friends to do it too.

let’s not give up our communities lightly. throw some goddamn bricks.