@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

whitneymcn

@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz

Have enjoyed making and doing stuff on the majority of the webs thus far. Now working on web-related stuff for a book publisher. I like music. Brooklyn gardener. May or may not be notable.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

RickiTarr, (edited ) to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

This is probably my worst poll, but I'm curious, for science:

I have/had:

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@RickiTarr I'll go with "really good parents, but mostly emotionally accessible in complicated ways."

But many decades into this I'm still figuring out what part of that was them and what part was me.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What is the strangest thing you've ever purchased?

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@RickiTarr Not even close, but this is just in the room where I happen to be right now.

the_etrain, to random
@the_etrain@beige.party avatar

Stay in your lane, fortune cookie. I do the shitposting around here.

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@the_etrain @DemocracySpot I'm 75 and still super hot and I want to be sure at all the AI scrapers know that right now.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

The problem with federated alternatives to centralized services (and also one of the main problems with centralized services which lead people to look for an alternative) is Discovery.

Etsy and Twitch and YouTube provide an audience, supposedly. With the right pitch (and the right advertising dollars) you can get your own slice of that audience. (For as long as the algorithm graces you, and as long as you're willing to stomach the other things your viewers will be algorithmically suggested.)

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@djsundog @ajroach42 Pete Seeger once said "normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things."

I think about that a lot these days.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Maybe a part of what I like about mastodon right now -- as with Twitter a thousand years ago -- is that it seems so ridiculously impossible that anyone might make money, ever, this way.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

As a 50+ music nerd, I'm making the most of having teenage children at this moment: yes, I saw all of those bands, at least twice, back when none of us were old yet.

Also: no I don't know who that is, why are bringing up things that happened in the past couple of decades?

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How long has it been since your last subway ride?

https://evanp.me/pollfaq#never

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@evan Weird in the sense of a lot of people likely answering "I just don't have subways where I live, so rarely/never" which seems like it's just confirming that most people don't have access to subways, rather than anything about people's inclination to ride subways.

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@evan Seems like the results to this are going to be weird, since it's only a relative handful of cities, globally, that even have subways.

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@evan It feels to me a bit like asking "how recently have you been to the 30th floor or higher in a building?"

Most people just don't have the opportunity to do so regularly.

BlackAzizAnansi, to random
@BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

What's the most unhinged children's television show that you grew up watching?

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@BlackAzizAnansi I was born in 1971, so kind of all of them: that the product placement cartoons [G.I. Joe, He Man, etc.] were "edutainment" at the time now baffles me.

If you want "beautifully weird local programming," though, NYC had The Magic Garden in the late '70s, which was fantastic.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Making chili.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

One of my co-workers has a couple of friends staying with them, so there were other people having Zoom meetings in the background of our Zoom meetings today.

Me, at the beginning of a meeting: "Please tell your friends that they can't share any company secrets that you might accidentally say."

Co-worker, looking directly into the camera and not muted: "My boss just said something he thinks is funny, act like you're laughing."

I feel seen, in a good way.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

18yo, just getting home: "why are you building a guillotine in the back yard?"

15yo: "it's the frame for a pull up bar. "

18yo: "if the revolution is starting you have to tell me."

15yo: "...just help me with this bit, okay?"

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

If you listen to F1 on your phone cranked to max in public places (e.g. airports) you are a fucking war criminal and you are going to Hell for ten billion years when you die.

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@pluralistic s/F1/anything/

revengeday, to random
@revengeday@corteximplant.com avatar

This cat has spread spaghetti all over the kitchen floor.

He loves spaghetti more than anything.

It's his favorite „toy“.

I forgot to close the pot with the spaghetti.

Here is a picture of him.

I can't be mad at him.

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@revengeday

I have spread
the spaghetti
on the floor
and some other places

even though
you were probably
expecting
to eat it tonight

I don't ask forgiveness
because I am
so cute
and so fuzzy

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Making new friends in my early 50s feels as stressful as dating in my teens/20s was, plus everybody's partners and children ALSO have to get along, too.

There should have been a reality show about this, it could have been great.

whitneymcn, to Bloomscrolling
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

It's still very early for Brooklyn, but the crocuses are going for it.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

We have two Roombas that are empirically identical, and yet I am still somehow certain that "Albert" is dumber than "Victoria."

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Is web0 a thing yet?

I don't know exactly what it would mean, but I think that web0 should definitely be a thing.

whitneymcn, to random
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

I hesitate to dive into the platform wars, as I am old and tired, but I will say this:

  • The thing I saw most recently via my mastodon account was beautifully weird people trying to reproduce a medieval marginalia image.

The thing I saw most recently via Threads was a relatively famous person posting "Just here chillin".

The thing I saw most recently via Twitter is just exhausting and not worth repeating.

whitneymcn, to Bloomscrolling
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Trailing nasturtium in the front windows.

whitneymcn, to Bloomscrolling
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

Governor's Island, a lovely sunny day; some sort of phlox.

CultureDesk, (edited ) to books
@CultureDesk@flipboard.social avatar

Until high school, Kate Feiffer believed that her mother Judy's novel, "A Hot Property," was about real estate. Then a boyfriend plucked the book from the shelves, started reading passages aloud, and revealed it was a piece of 1970s erotica. From then until just a few years ago, Kate considered "A Hot Property" to be her literary Waterloo — the book she'd hoped to conquer but never been able to. But after her mother's death, she picked up the novel and — between bouts of screaming and cringing — found something more thoughtful and reflective than she was expecting. Here's what she wrote for LitHub.

https://flip.it/cbERa2

@bookstodon

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@CultureDesk @bookstodon When you look into it, an impressive number of people -- otherwise famous and not -- wrote '70s erotica under pen names.

whitneymcn,
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@CultureDesk Agreed, but my understanding is that the money was relatively good compared to the effort involved, so it's tough to know.

DrTCombs, to random
@DrTCombs@transportation.social avatar

That blissful sweet spot between 'we don't need to pay for childcare anymore' and 'competitive youth soccer costs HOW MUCH???!!!" did not last nearly as long as I hoped it would

whitneymcn,
@whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz avatar

@DrTCombs I was literally just thinking about this today.

But a variant, I guess, to be fair: "it's awesome that we don't have to pay for lessons or summer camp for the big kids anymore," and "oh, wait, college. Right, okay."

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