makz survives the apocalypse

Hathaway's Flash: People are changing

2026-05-17T22:00:04Z

Amazingly, I have not run out of things to talk about re: the comparisons I'm drawing in my brain between what Hathaway seems to be doing with its parallels between Char's singleminded and past-facing actions and Hathaway's hesitance to let go of the past even though he knows it's ruinous.

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Hathaway's Flash Rebuttal: But Director, I'm just not built like that

2026-05-16T22:39:40Z

Yesterday, I dismantled a thread of thought I've been unwinding lately in regards to Tomino's views on gender and connectedness throughout Gundam and expressed clearly in the most recent Hathaway movie. I want to expand on those thoughts, why they're contributing to what I called "the stress soup of my brain," and what's been bothering me as I try to write from Lalah's POV, keeping all those things in mind. But also, if we want to continue from the last topic, I need the reader to already have read that post, and to read that post fully presumes you've watched at least Counterattack and both Hathaway movies (or read the books — and if you have, please don't tell me what happens, as I haven't yet!) and will extend me enough grace to be a bad person, bullying the Captain.

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Hathaway's Flash: What is a woman? A miserable little pile of hope.

2026-05-16T02:52:13Z

I just saw Hathaway’s Flash 2 at my local AMC and all I can think about is Mr. Tomino’s views on gender as both expressed by, and expressions of, ways by which people relate to the unknowable bounds of the future and more knowable systems of violence.

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I'm a machine without a switch

2026-05-13T02:56:16Z

I managed to avoid typing up any of my thoughts on my last two work assignments, which is probably for the best, as they were so jam-packed full of activity that my head is still spinning, even though I've been home for almost a week.

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Workaholism and Astronomy

2026-04-09T03:00:45Z

My friends are mostly doing well.

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Org-Mode All The Things

2026-03-20T01:24:08Z

I hate leaving my journal off on a negative note, so even though I don't have any real updates since the last post, I have to say something to inject some positivity. (I have to! I am compelled! Am I feeling better yet? No!! I simply must Toxic Positivity my way out of this or I'm going to get hung up on the fact that I said some negative words on the internet somewhere and spiral out, ok??)

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Thoughts surrounding a first published work...

2026-03-08T02:09:08Z

Whoa, it's out. It's done. If putting it somewhere other people can read it is the last step in writing something, I have, for the first time, finished a piece of fiction meant for other people to read.

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The Smell of Sweat in the Computer Mines

2026-02-22T03:14:33Z

So, what's been happening with me?

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How to Live Inside a Song

2025-12-14T03:14:42Z

One of my friends thinks the things I have to say about music are interesting. I think they might find them interesting because I have a pretty varied background in the subject, not because any facet of my analysis is interesting in and of itself. In fact, one of my professors in junior college was fond of saying that he'd been chosen for his position at that school specifically because he'd once been in a rock band. "That gives me a different perspective than people who are solely focused on classical music, and it's something that's accessible to a different kind of crowd." Learning from that guy, amongst my other professors, allowed me to be really open to music as a varied discipline. I hope that I bring everything of myself when I look at a song. Certainly, I try to.

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Supernote, CalDAV, Self-host Nerdery in a Corporate World

2025-11-22T02:09:57Z

The Supernote is one of those pentab things. A digitized e-ink screen pen-based input tablet. (What a mouthful.) It's a kindle you can write on.

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Uma to Shika (Idi and Ot)

2025-11-16T20:57:27Z

I'm obsessed with a relatively new song.

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Hotelsville and a Break from the Apocalypse

2025-09-15T04:32:35Z

I literally can't talk about where I'm at (in exact terms) or what I'm doing (in exact terms) right now; I'm under NDA. However, it feels so good to have people acknowledge that I'm good at something. And, don't get me wrong; there's lots I'm not good at. I don't do well with the "layer one" part of the job (that's an OSI model joke), and I have to get better at it. But the fact that I have a niche at all makes me so happy.

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Ziggy Stardust and the Fall and Rise of the Sine Wave

2025-09-06T00:38:25Z

For no particularly good reason, I'm doing a deep dive into David Bowie and his various stage personas, concept albums, and lyrical elements. I'm a product of American radio, just as much as the next person, so it isn't as if I have had no exposure to the man. In fact, I remember precisely where I was when I first heard his very last single.

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Video Killed the Audio Engineer

2025-09-05T00:28:30Z

Hoo, boy.

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Scratch-and-Sniff Reality and A Wider World

2025-08-31T19:16:02Z

It's impossible to be jet-lagged from an hour-and-a-half flight that doesn't even result in changing time zones, but that's how I feel. It was a rough flight, and I ended up pretty sick by the end of it. I survived, but I still feel pretty "off."

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The Crying of Lot 49

2025-08-26T01:19:58Z

Surely it's just that I've spent too long staring too hard at historical accounts of the situation framing the 1960s student protests, and, much like the main character of The Crying of Lot 49, I find myself in a state somewhere between fictionalizing real events in a state of near-paranoia and denying reality itself in favor of remaining a cynic. Surely this book isn't actually trying to tie together the concepts of the universal nature of the human spirit and progressive movements, casting the conservative ideal of America as some sort of corpse of a concept that never existed. It's easier to think that I'm misinterpreting this.

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Toy Sales Underneath a Shattered Blue Sky

2025-08-24T21:45:37Z

My Bluesky App (Android) is having some major problems lately. Every few posts, it was saying "We ran out of new posts, but here's more from Discover!" and sometimes clicking into a post would cause every button to become unresponsive. While normally I'd be proactive about finding some fix for the problem (like migrating to a different front-end app or using the web version), I'm taking a short break from the app for now, mostly spurred on by having a new work computer to ruin set up how I like it.

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Public Entry!?

2025-08-19T23:35:25Z

A wild, public entry has appeared.

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From the Past to the Future

2021-04-09T21:46:27Z

I went through the list of nearly 50(!) people I've been following since the eljay days and peeked at everyone's journals. Most haven't posted since 2012 at the latest. Many stopped updating around '05-'08. Surprisingly, the community was still relatively vibrant during these mass exodus years, as posts from '08 and '09 still received a relatively large number of comments.

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Embiggener for the Planet Caravan Theme

2021-04-05T04:59:53Z

I'm using Planet Caravan as my theme here on Dreamwidth at the moment. I've extensively retooled its appearance using custom CSS. Although many of the changes I've made are to mimic the look of my website, others are just to make the text larger and the overall website more mobile friendly. I've copied my CSS edits for those purposes below, both for reference and in case anyone else hates staring at small text on their own journal.

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