(no subject)

Happy birthday, denise!

Does it feel like things starting up again?*

From all overish:

Grab the nearest book.
Turn to page 126
The 6th full sentence is your life in 2026.

Huh. The nearest book is (probably) Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974), and the sentence is

'And songs.'

Hmmmmm.

Alternatively, the nearest book is Callum G Brown, 90 Humanists and the Ethical Transition of Britain: the Open Conspiracy, 1930-80, in which p 126 is a blank page between chapters.

***

I rather liked this, because it accords with a lot of my own feelings that The Internet is not entirely a seething pit of toxicity and there are, actually, benefits:

[A]s someone who, like millions of others, lives in a different place to where I grew up, interacting with other people’s lives online and posting about my own could still provide a surprisingly wholesome function. It’s not just about bitching about my ex-classmates being arrested or getting into multi-level marketing scams. It’s also a way to stay connected, to feel less homesick.
During the pandemic, and before that when I had to isolate myself during chemotherapy, social media wasn’t just a distraction; it was a lifeline. It was a way to feel sane and engaged with people I couldn’t reach out and touch. If we couldn’t be together in person, I could at least see snippets of their world.
Even now that I am free to be out and about, I miss those snippets. I wish we weren’t too cool or too bored or too frightened of being judged to invite each other into our online lives a bit more. I think it’s time to bring back that connection.

***

*Though I had a version of 'the place that was there just now has disappeared' dream last night, where I was in some kind of train station, or maybe it was a platform with indicators, and saw a destination and time that I didn't need at that moment, and went back again because that was now what I wanted, and of course it was all different. Symbolickal?