Pori

~ a blog ~

I feel like the biggest difference between growing up in the 90’s/early 2000’s compared to now is the sense of optimism about the future. Everybody felt hopeful that the future would be better than the past, that technological advancement would elevate the quality of life for everybody, that science would achieve great things beyond our imagination. What is there to be hopeful about the future of humanity today?

We are facing, on multiple fronts, at best a question-mark about our future, and at worst, a near total collapse of civilization (omnishambles is a word that should really make a comeback).

Climate catastrophe

  • Temperature extremes
    • Climate change will drive some places to become too hot to live, while others become too cold. Or, in the case of Western Europe, some sort of superposition of the two depending on the effects of the weakening AMOC.
  • Natural disasters – fire/water/wind
    • Storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, mudslides; extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, causing death, destruction, and mass migration events. This will continue to get worse.
  • Rising sea level
    • As polar ice, glacial melt, and other factors cause global sea-level rise, coastal populations will suffer. Currently habited areas will become uninhabitable, entire island nations will cease to exist, causing again, mass migration events.
  • Depletion of fresh/drinking water
    • Global freshwater levels continue to decline, either as a result of climate change, or over-extraction. Without investment in alternate sources such as desalination technology, there will not be enough available to sustain the current water usage of the world.
  • Depletion of topsoil
    • While claims on the timespan for total degradation of topsoil might be overblown, it is clear that intensive farming practices, combined with other factors, are degrading topsoil worldwide. This will reduce food yields, food security, and again could lead to famines, death, and mass migration events.
  • Collapse of biodiversity – particularly pollinators
  • Pollution – air, water, plastics, forever chemicals
    • Despite the feel-good effort of individuals sorting their waste into different coloured bins for collection in developed nations, recycling is not meeting global waste production; pollution is ever increasing. Plastic and other waste is increasingly shipped to poorer nations for disposal (out of sight, out of mind I guess!) and often ends up in the sea. Forever chemicals (PFAS) and microplastic are now ubiquitous in our drinking water, food, and other life. Air pollution continues to be a problem, and is getting worse. All of these cause illness, reduce lifespans, and are likely contributing to collapse in biodiversity.

Economic collapse

  • Wealth inequality
  • The façade of eternal growth
    • Companies are driven by eternal growth, economies rely on growth. What is the end state when there are diminishing returns in a world with finite resources?
  • Subscriptions everywhere, the cost of living worsening
    • Perhaps as a result of the problem with eternal growth, companies are turning to ever more desperate ways to squeeze more money out of people. Either the price goes up, the size goes down, or subscriptions are added to products or services that didn’t have one before. Everything is increasing in cost everywhere, from food, to utilities, to rent, and wages are not keeping up. Again, what is the end state here? What happens when people simply can’t afford the cost of living? Food banks will not supply us all.
  • Reduction in workers rights
  • Aging populations testing the economic limits of social security
    • Western countries face long-term population decline due to falling birth rates. While this alone may not necessarily be bad, the impact of a disproportionately aged population is negative. There is growing pressure on public health services, growing pressure on social security such as national pension funds. If there are not enough working people to fund (via tax) the increase in aged people using these services, then they will simply not function at all. Is the future of social security a world where retirement age is pushed ever further back, or simply no longer exists until you’re physically incapable of working anymore?
  • Key jobs (teachers, nurses, care workers) not paid well relative to other industries
    • Across western nations in both Europe and America, key worker salaries such as those of nurses/care workers and teachers have neither kept up with inflation, nor with jobs outside of those sectors. For such key jobs (especially taking into account the aforementioned aging population, and the yet to be discussed decline in education) there is no incentive for anybody today to choose those professions over for example, a career in a safe office job that often pays double, triple, or more, and has less of the stressful downsides. If we don’t incentivise or value these jobs, what will happen to society when nobody (not even migrant workers) wants to do them?

Social degradation

  • Algorithm induced polarisation and fractal social bubbles
    • Social media is causing a massive detrimental impact on society through its polarisation effects. It is a mutually reinforcing feedback loop of algorithms recommending content driving people into bubbles or echo-chambers that only consist of that content, which subsequently leads people to seek out such content driving further algorithmic polarisation. The effects of this are being felt everywhere socially. The obvious example in political elections and the inability for one side to even be able to have a productive conversation with the other, let alone reach bi-partisan agreement or compromise. The other obvious example is radicalisation into terror groups (either domestically or otherwise).
    • However, it also has more insidious consequences: as people are driven into ever more niche social bubbles, the very social cohesion of physical societies fall apart. The social norms in one group may not be social norms in another. The social topics or hobbies in one group may not be in another. If everybody has their own unique social bubble that predominantly socialises online and likely is not geographically located together, how can people that are geographically located together be expected to interact in a socially cohesive way if they share no overlap? The social makeup and shared culture of people is shifting to shared online spaces rather than in-person, yet we physically are not. It is, therefore, inevitable, that there will be gaps in offline social cohesion (or the social cohesion of “countries”) as a result.
    • As an aside (and this is probably a topic for an entire essay), I use “fractal social bubbles” here to refer to the ever reducing size, or increasing niche-ness of such bubbles. For example, if we compare social overlap with regard to tv shows over time. In the era of terrestrial TV where only a handful of stations existed, a particular show could be expected to enter the national social awareness, allowing for shared conversations (whether positive or negative). Then, with satellite/cable TV and the early days of online streaming, we could still see this on occasion with shows like Game of Thrones entering widespread global social awareness. However, fast-forward to today, and the proliferation of channels, platforms, and quantity of content is vast, and the fandoms smaller, such that even having conversations about something watched on a streaming platform is increasingly likely to be met with “I’ve not seen/heard of that” from those outside of your own social bubble. This may be one cause of increasing feelings of social isolation (that end up mutually reinforcing online social bubbles).
  • The post-truth era
    • It is clear we are entering into an era of post-truth, whereby the truth or actual facts spoken by our media, politicians, and even everyday people have become unimportant. Some are deceptive and outright lie or say things they know are false, but they don’t care, and the people that listen to them also don’t think truth is important. Where does this lead? What becomes of a society that shuns facts, science, and truth, and instead listens to only those that say what people want to hear, or say it in a way that makes people feel good?
  • Decreasing attention spans in a world trying to capture an ever slimmer chunk of your time
    • Everything wants your attention. Notifications, short-form content, endlessly scrolling feeds, recommended content, gamification, adverts everywhere, and all the other predatory tactics being used to keep you engaged. All of this is resulting in attention being divided into smaller chunks across more things, and ultimately a measurable decline in attention spans. How many books do you, personally, fully read (not listen to in audiobook form) today compared to 10 or more years ago? Who even knows what the long-term consequences of this will be, but it can’t be good to have an entire population of people struggle to digest long or deep content. How can people solve world problems if they can’t spend the time to deeply read, comprehend, and synthesise the underlying research. How can any problem get enough attention on it if it’s already forgotten by the next day because something else came and grabbed the attention (how often do we already see this in news cycles of world tragedies today)?
  • Downward trending technical capability of younger generations
    • Reports are surfacing both anecdotally, but also professionally that Gen Z are less technologically literate than previous generations, despite being raised natively around technology. There are even more worrying trends that suggest not only reading literacy, but also IQ is now in decline. If the current generation in power is unable to resolve current global issues, then we are relying on future generations to do so. A downward trend in capability makes this more difficult.
  • Aging populations with fewer people to care for them
    • Connected to both the lack of good pay for key workers, and the declining birth rate resulting in more aging people needing care, there is a looming time-bomb of too many aging people needing care, and not enough people to look after them. What happens then? We let them die? Perhaps supported by state sanctioned “assisted suicide”? To be clear here, when I say “them”, I mean “us”, who cares for us when we are old, when fewer people are being born, and even fewer of those are taking up roles in care work.

Technological advancement in opposition to the benefit of humanity

  • Enshittification everywhere

    • If there ever was a word to represent the current global zeitgeist, it is this. So much so that it has already been chosen as word of the year 2024 by the national dictionary of Australia.

    “the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”

    Enshittification of everything, everywhere, affecting all services, particularly those we were previously happy with. Tied to the façade of eternal growth, corporate greed knows no bounds. What happens when they can enshittify no more? What happens when there is no more juice to be squeezed?

  • The value of AI

    • Let’s be honest, a lot of AI (maybe most of) is of no value to humanity. While there are some interesting use cases for large language models, serving up false information, telling people to put glue on their pizza, please die, citing false cases in legal filings, and the countless other falsehoods peddled by such systems are not the ones we need. Not to mention as tools being used by an entire generation to bypass learning by simply submitting generated answers to homework and essays (thus also contributing to the decline in education). Hallucinations and incorrect information are a fundamental part of these systems that will not be solved without some secondary fact checking tool. Yet corporations are rushing ahead to either convert everything to AI, or add AI to everything (presumably out of fear they will be left behind in the façade of eternal growth). What benefit does any of this bring humanity? Progress for the sake of corporate bank balances? Move fast and break things doesn’t work if the thing broken is the entirety of society.

  • Energy consumption of AI, Blockchain, and data in general

Political degradation

  • Risk of global thermonuclear war
    • Not a day goes by without yet another authoritarian, or genocidal warlord killing people or making threats on the global stage, and the more countries that get involved, the greater the risk of a global interconnected war (if the asymmetric one we are currently in doesn’t already count). And to top it off: nuclear risks are rising. Maybe all of the above issues will be moot if we wipe ourselves out in a nuclear apocalypse first.
  • The rise of authoritarian regimes
    • Authoritarianism is rising, potentially to the point that democracy will no longer be the politically dominant social system. The previously mentioned social and economic problems combined with extreme polarisation are leaving people feeling disenfranchised and left-out from traditional political systems. As a result people are inevitably choosing to vote for authoritarian regimes that promise them the world. Once authoritarian regimes are entrenched, reverting to a state of democracy will become near-impossible in the short-term. It is a one-way street that we are already on a path towards globally, and it will continue unless the underlying economic and social causes are solved.
  • Political systems incapable of solving complex problems (both global and local)
    • Finally, and truly the most important problem of them all. Everything is simply too interconnected, and too complex to be solved by individual governments. To solve global problems we need global coordination. Given the geopolitical relationships this is unlikely, and demonstrably so with the lack of actual action on global climate goals. Even within countries, seemingly simple problems are too complex to be solved by a single government focused on short-term actions in winning the next election cycle. What could possibly be more damning for the fate of humanity than us knowing all the details of what our downfall will consist in (decades in advance in many cases), yet world governments not taking any actual action to solve it. Talk is not action, an agreement is not action (especially when they are broken without consequence), only actual concrete actions are actions.

There are no doubt subjects missed, and years worth of research dedicated each individual point above that have not been adequately summarised.

However, overall, it is clear there is a complex interweaving of global catastrophe on the horizon, likely within the remainder of our lifetime, and this only scratches the surface of disaster or downward trend we face.

Is there any room for optimism left for anybody at all? It certainly seems like there is no global coordinated progress, effort, or even the basic ability to solve any of these. There is only a downward trend in every single area.

Perhaps the only hope left an individual can wish for is this: they win a lottery with enough money to create a self-sufficient, off-grid house, in a location least likely to suffer the greatest impacts from climate, war, or other disasters. Living out their days, oblivious/head in the sand, and largely immune from the fall of humankind, just as today’s billionaires are already doing.

Failing that, maybe we could turn instead to John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.

…though in today’s world, it feels increasingly hard to justify.

#collapse #enshittification #future #climate

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…one feels that at times, quite frequently in fact. However, I think it’s more akin to zen meditation or stoic practice, letting go of winning, letting go of that good hand, accepting defeat, being one with the whims of the universe. Being one with the flow.

If there was a game that was a metaphor for existence, then mahjong is it.

Early Awareness

Growing up in the west I had never really heard of or thought about mahjong beyond “mahjong solitaire”… that tile matching game some PC’s came with for free. It wasn’t until the Saki anime aired back in Spring 2009 that I understood the existence of the actual game of mahjong.

While Saki was amusing, I felt like I was missing out more enjoyment of the show by not understanding the game or how to play. Thus, my journey into learning to play begun…

I seem to recall long hours pouring over large .pdf sheets of rules, yaku, and instructions for playing on tenhou.net that someone on 4chan’s anime board had compiled in the wake of Saki airing. At the time I grasped a basic sense of the rules, enough to win some games and feel satisfied that I “understood” the game (a far cry from the truth).

After that initial phase I didn’t go much deeper. I did, however, enjoy playing on the network mahjong machines in arcades in Japan while on holiday… you could get a good 30-45 minutes of game time from a single coin where every other game in the arcade would last a few minutes, if that. 😅

I played occasionally on Tenhou, on and off over the years, but never really in much depth (or with any great deal of success). The next real milestone for me was in Final Fantasy XIV. A few years back when the hype got the better of me and I returned to the game (after vowing never again since the 1.0 disaster). Obviously unlocking the gold saucer minigame arcade was a priority, and one of the games there was mahjong.

FFXIV – “Mahjong Master”

As a client, FFXIV mahjong is a bit more interesting, you can see your opponents and chat to them, and given the quantity of people playing mahjong there is relatively small… you get to know your regular opponents. There’s a community (multiple discord communities in fact). Beyond that, there’s a goal, a title you can display on your character, the coveted “Mahjong Master”, one of the rarest titles in the entire game.

How hard could it be, right? I mean I already knew how to play…

…

…

…2 full years later…

“Mahjong causes great damage to the human spirit without a single benefit.”

My word that was a struggle. For several reasons:

  1. The small quantity of players playing the game in FFXIV means that it can take hours to find a game depending on time of day, and some days no games at all.

  2. The ranking system gets progressively harder as you go higher up, to the extent than when you almost reach the 2000 rating required for “Mahjong Master”, you can lose rating by finishing 2nd, 3rd, or 4th in a game. Nightmare fuel compared to all other mahjong ranking systems where at least finishing 1st or 2nd usually guarantees positive progress.

  3. You actually need to be good to win enough games on average that your rank goes up

Shout out to the regulars I ended up playing with for that time, particularly the elusive and mostly silent Phoenix Silver, probably the best player on the EU data centre, as well as all those in the Mahjong of Light discord, the regular meetups organised by Ziggy, tournaments organised by RPGReki, the in-game cross world linkshell invites, and those that I probably annoyed by repeatedly winning against (sorry Joro Gumo if you’re out there somewhere!).

Anyway to actually get there, I had to invest time actually learning riichi mahjong theory. “Riichi Book 1” is essentially the bible for English speaking people wishing to learn the basics how to play well. It is by no means anything more than a beginner level book, but by reading this alone, and actually absorbing all it has to offer, you can easily reach Mahjong Master in FFXIV. To go beyond that however is a different story…

Beyond FFXIV

By this point I was clearly hooked by the game. The depth of strategy was endless, after 2 years of reading various books, and hundreds, perhaps even thousands of hours of practice… despite my title in FFXIV, I was still very much a beginner.

I was very aware that ultimately this is a game that requires a certain mental fortitude. You are essentially playing something where at best you have little more than 25% chance of winning, and little less than 25% chance of coming last. The effect of skill is there, but it is ultimately dominated by chance. The fortitude required to play safe, to fold good hands a majority of times, to avoid dealing in, to accept your losses, to even accept even wild loss streaks as a statistical likelihood at some point. It is a game of stoic zen practice, a game that would challenge even the great Marcus Aurelius.

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

― Marcus Aurelius

Alas, one cannot resign oneself entirely to fate, else in mahjong, that is to accept a 1st place rate of slightly less than 25%, and a last place rate of slightly more than 25%. A long losing streak does not happen entirely in a vacuum, entirely by chance, your actions were ultimately some input to tipping the balance towards that outcome. One must still introspect, and learn, and grow.

I knew that I was still a beginner. In order to grow myself I had to study more and get more games. This brought me out of FFXIV and onto other clients. I spent some time back in Tenhou, and a new flashy gacha mobile mahjong game: Mahjong Soul. The standard of play in these clients is generally higher, and thus more of a challenge, the ranking systems essentially go all the way up to Japanese Pro level.

How could I get there? A lot more time, practice, reading, reviewing my own games, and following a structured learning approach:– The Hopeless Girl on the Path of Houou has been an invaluable resource, methodical, and complete with electronic training tools. Ultimately, however, there is a very limited amount of intermediate to advanced level strategy guides translated into English (and most of it unofficial translations of non-English content), thus one ends up getting things like this from Amazon japan…

As of today, I’m still very much a beginner on the path: 2 dan on Tenhou, and Expert 2 in Mahjong Soul… a long way to go (though I am still proud of that Mahjong Master title, one of 0.3% of players 😂).

IRL Games

Other than online play, once hooked on the game I also started looking into where to play IRL. Suffice to say finding other players in the UK for irl games is somewhat of a challenge, the total pool of players is even smaller than the FFXIV community of players. However, they do exist! There are discord servers, facebook groups, and meetup.com arrangements, and much to my surprise, an official european mahjong tournament ranking system.

Simultaneously to the learning above, I set about trying to get some irl games. First step: get a set of tiles and a mat to practice with at home. On a computer everything is done for you, irl you need to know how to shuffle, build the wall, score hands (I’m not even going to go into the complexity of that here), know when you’ve won, and not make mistakes.

Ironically, the first time I found to play irl was actually at an FFXIV event: FFXIV London Fanfest 2023, a small group of people (by small I mean 4 people total) from the FFXIV mahjong community managed to get together for a single game in a library near Kings Cross station. My first irl experience, and I ended up in last place with negative points… as to be expected. 😅

After that I needed to figure out how to attend one of these EMA tournaments. Luckily, there was one coming up near me, and more importantly, the tournament community seems pretty welcoming to newcomers, even those that struggle with scoring hands!

Overall, a great experience, playing with other players of a high level, irl, in a welcoming environment for newcomers, what more could one ask for. I even didn’t do too bad, top half and positive points overall!

Other than that I’ve actually found some other avenues for playing irl… turns out some people at my workplace play mahjong (though with Hong Kong rules), so we’ve had a few games there. While enjoyable, there’s not really much strategy to Hong Kong rules mahjong, there’s no real defence, just go as quick as you can for any hand that gets the minimum score, and everything is pretty much up to chance. I feel like it’s probably an uphill battle to convince them to want to switch to riichi rules. 😅

WROTL – World Riichi Online Team League

Finally, and the real reason I wanted to write this blog post, we come to “wrotl”. The WRC (organisers of the biggest international riichi tournament) recently organised a tournament between Japanese professional players and international amateurs. This was a chance I couldn’t miss, the ability to play against serious professional players, some of the best in the world. Like if someone said “hey, do you want to play a few football games with Ronaldo and Messi?”, who could resist?

So yeah I’m in that, for the next few months, every saturday on ron2.jp (an alternative Tenhou based client), playing professional players worldwide.

…and so far… I’m not totally embarassing myself! 😂 Lamp- currently 570 out of 854 total players. If I can finish in positive territory then I’ll be happy. But even without that, just playing against this level of player is a really great way to learn and improve. I’ve already gone up 1 dan level in Tenhou since the start of this.

I might post an update here once it finishes, but judging by my overall posting activity, it’s unlikely right? Just check on twitter if you need to.

Despite all of the above, I’m still a beginner

I have a huge backlog of study material to get through, I’m definitely still a beginner.

Mahjong strategy has a depth I’ve not encountered anywhere else, in all likelihood I will be a beginner forever. There is always more to learn.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” ― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

#blogging #mahjong #ffxiv #finalfantasyxiv #tenhou

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What a difference a year makes, no words really need to be said.

🇵🇸

#eurovision

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Concert report inbound… Perfume @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, UK – 3rd June 2023

It’s truly comforting that Perfume still exist. Not only for nostalgia sake, but also for their consistency.

Halko Momoi introducing Akihabalove, back in the ancient days of 2005, was my first exposure to them (oh how I long for them to perform this live again… will it ever happen, are there contractual, or more likely style reasons they don’t?).

A lot has changed in those 18 years, (other than that being half my life away!). Bands I’ve liked have disbanded, some to do other things, some to disappear & never be heard from again. Even when the bands haven’t disbanded, their members have graduated, to be replaced by an endless churn of new faces. Music too has changed, genres come and go, styles change a little here and there. Maybe the music you liked back in 2005 isn’t so popular anymore. Even the delivery of music has changed, few people own any songs they listen to anymore, preferring the ephemeral streaming options instead.

In those 18 years I’ve seen them live 4 times now, twice in Japan, and twice outside, and I can safely say…

Perfume are still a shining beacon of consistency!

They are still making music. Not only are they still making music, they are still making good music. Not only are they still making good music, they are making music with a style that can only be described as “recognisably Perfume”. Their dance coordination is still top-notch. Their PV’s are still extremely well produced, along with the special effects on their live performances.

Even their hair styles, and introduction speech have not changed at all!!

There is something so comforting about their consistency. In a world where change is constant, having group like Perfume still here, and still touring outside Japan is a true blessing. ❤️

As for the concert today itself, I wondered what would it be like. It had been 10 years since I last saw them live. Was the crowd younger now, were they any different?

After navigating the UK train strike and opting to do the unthinkable and drive into London (complete with spending 30 minutes driving around one way systems in Shepherd’s bush to find the entrance to Westfield parking), me and another UK JPop concert veteran (LegionZero/MrTrainspotting/Matt_D) arrived at the venue ready to queue. Surprisingly, despite getting there not very early, we weren’t too far back. 😅

After a couple hours queuing we were inside, and basically at the front behind a couple of rows of people (this might have actually have been the closest I’ve been to the stage at any Perfume concert)!

The concert was brilliant. Perfume were brilliant. They played a mixture of new songs and some classics, as well as debuting a new single, and broadcasting the whole thing live to Japanese cinemas.

Not only were Perfume brilliant, the crowd were truly brilliant too. 2023, and there was hardly a phone in sight, everyone was jumping in time to the songs, the whole crowd in sync with jumps. It’s been a long time since I’ve left a concert dripping with sweat due to physical activity (and Matt leaving with a leg injury as is traditional). 😂

Chocolate Disco with 2000 people joining in shouting DISCO every time!! That too in London, absolutely amazing!

…and to answer the question, yes, the crowd were also the same as I remember, not younger, aged like a fine wine, still got the energy when it counts, and still a load of hardcore Japanese fans in attendance!

The only downside of the concert was it finished too soon. Like it literally felt like they just stopped early for some reason, it was supposed to go from 20:00 to 22:00 according to staff, but they started about 20:10 and finished at 21:30, and this is the part that is almost sacrilegious……. with no encore. 😭😭😭 Everyone was so confused, why was there no encore, come back Perfume, did we not cheer loudly enough! 😭😭

Alas, no encore, and surprisingly they also didn’t play Saisei, I was sure they’d end (or start) with that (as an aside, the PV for that is awesome, made up with clips from all their old PV’s).

On the drive home it was hard not to feel a wave of nostalgia for them, and shed a tear all the other bands that are no longer around. I couldn’t help but wonder, would this be the last time I see Perfume live? Will they still be this consistent for another 18 years. I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this…

Music is everything

遥かなユニバース

Code of Perfume posterPerfume concert clothing

#music #concerts #perfume #prfm #jpop

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tl;dr I expect this will be rather long and rambling. I'll probably end up covering a whole bunch of topics in this one post: where did the site/I go, the trigger for posting here again, eurovision, nostalgia for lost fandom circles, people drifting with time, twitter, the value of online acquaintances, what even is “blogging” in 2023, and what am I going to use this for now?

I didn't forget about this place.

I had originally added “placeholder etc.” a year or so after deleting the site on impulse back in 2014. The intention was that I would revive it in some form or another fairly shortly after. Clearly that didn't happen. However, anyone who checked last year will have seen there was a slight update in wording to “forever placeholder etc.”, reflecting my resignation that the place would likely never be revived.

(As an aside, the only reason I never let the domain lapse is because it's actually my main email domain. >_< And, the reason that update in wording happened is because I realised that paying for a full package of web hosting at like £100 per year just for a bit of static text and email was a little crazy when it could be hosted free on CloudFlare and a much cheaper dedicated email host. Therefore, it felt appropriate to at least indicate something on the site had changed. It was after all the biggest change behind the scenes in a decade. xD)

What happened?

So first question: what happened to me, where did I go, why did I delete it and my other online accounts etc? Without going into specifics, I would say the root cause in 2013/2014 was a combination of naiivity, inexperience, and touch of arrogance in the face of complex life situations. My usual coping mechanism in the face of anything extremely negative is very much in the “flight” part of fight or flight. Withdrawing, curling up under the safe blanket of my own company, ultimately pushing others away, believing that only I can support myself or solve it. In the process I hurt some close friends, said and did a lot of stupid shit that I still regret, and while many of those friendships have since been repaired, no doubt they still retain the scars somewhere. In the midst of all that I felt what's the point of having a blog, social media etc, fuck everyone and everything, I'll go live on a farm somewhere far away and not have to deal with any problems, or with any of the people I hurt.

Suffice to say that didn't really work out. >_<;;

A year or so passed, now 2015, I realised that friends actually mattered a lot, tried to repair the damage with many, but perhaps not all. I recreated my twitter account (though under a slightly different name, perhaps out of a combination of shame in not wanting to just step straight back into things as they were before, but also out of a desire to not have decades of tweets easily searchable and identifiable to the same online account for anyone that looks you up). I tentatively started following people again on twitter and occasionally posting (and am still somewhat tentative even today). At that point I added the placeholder text to the site with the intention of reviving it in some way.

After that, more time passed, more positive life events happened: got busy with work, completed a BA and MA in philosophy, got married, got a house like 30 mins north of London, got a dog, flew some planes, grew a lot more tomatoes and chillies, and spent my spare time in FFXIV playing mahjong (currently expert 2 on Mahjong Soul).

Overall though, things were not the same as before, I watch far less anime than I used to, listen to less music, less JPop, spend less time at events and with friends. There are probably many factors contributing to this:

  1. Many in the circle of people I originally followed on twitter seemed to gradually be drifting away from posting there.

  2. Friends were getting older and doing their own life things, getting married themselves, having kids, and therefore less time for meeting up, or for the youthful consumption of all things Japan as before. Ayo, when are we doing karaoke again, last time was pre-covid. >_<;

  3. Members of favourite bands graduating and being replaced with ever younger versions, it's hard to follow the revolving door idol bands when the age difference gets increasingly large, and the music increasingly churned out at low quality. Hello Project or AKB members are pretty much alien to me today, everyone I knew is long gone. At least Momoi is still going (along with Perfume and a handful of others)!

  4. Watching less anime (largely due to getting burnt out by the sheer quantity of shite that was produced every season) and having less friends to attend conventions with naturally meant no longer attending conventions.

  5. The JPop club evenings in London stopped running (I think essentially the one guy from Japan that was running them went back to Japan, lol).

  6. This is going to sound weird, but the changing way in which we listen to music via a variety of different, disconnected streaming services (YouTube, Spotify, Alexa etc.), rather than adding to ever growing .mp3 collections meant that my AudioScrobbler/Last.fm account was getting less and less use. I actually liked having a list of everything I listened to charted in a single space, and sharing this socially with others as a way of discovering music and understanding friends tastes. Indirectly I actually think this made me less motivated to put much effort into listening to new releases and such, I would now only casually pick up things on YouTube occasionally, or where someone sent me something directly.

  7. Work and life itself became pretty busy, with less time for personal hobbies. Having to “schedule” time for playing games with people, when once we just did it spontaneously. xD

However, my core was not lost or forgotten, neither were those friends that have been around for decades, or those folk on twitter that have been a constant name/avatar on my screen for an almost equally long time.

What was the trigger to start posting again?

Honestly, Eurovision. Attending the Eurovision Song Contest in person in Liverpool was truly something special. People who know me from here, or twitter, or in-person will know I have been a fan of Eurovision for a long time. To be able to attend in person, not only in person, but in the UK, not only in the UK, but in a city that put an immense amount of effort and dedication into the production of a week long festival, and not only that but to be able to share the excitement with others that share that excitement around you. It is cliché to say it was a dream come true, but it really was, the entire week feels so unreal that it even happened, I'm still simultaneously crying/smiling. :D

Anyway why was that the trigger to revive this?

Because this site was always a place where I posted event reports, where I could write down all my memories and love for an event and primarily have it recorded, and maybe also be read by anyone that might be interested.

If I didn't have here to post about it, then what would I have done: either gone home and just enjoyed the memories in my head only for them to gradually fade with time, or gush about the event to people around me in person that are basically indifferent to it. At least here it's recorded forever (internet archive, followed by being consumed by our future AI overlords as training data, lol), and there's the slight, very slight possibility that somebody will read it and also smile with understanding.

(Not only that, those that have read this blog before, or followed me on twitter will know that posting about Eurovision was quite a regular occurance. Even after I recreated my twitter account and have been only tentatively posting, the exception has always been during Eurovision, a lot of live tweeting with a handful of regulars every single year, cheering for the awesome songs, and sharing the disappointment when they inevitably lose.)

This event reminded me of attending my very first Ayacon, that feeling of speaking to people where you can make a joke about some niche fandom thing and they will not only understand what you're talking about, but they'll also laugh. Having people you can share your hobbies with is perhaps one of the most important things in the world. If we don't then we end up being passion hermits, we keep our passions to ourselves, and talk to others in person about boring things like the weather or work, and maybe find an outlet for those passions in an online community. Sharing things in person really makes you feel validated, that you're not alone, that there are real people like you out there!

So, of course I had to revive this blog.

Eurovision Review

I debated about having this as its own event review post, but given how intertwined it is in the reason for reviving the site, I think I want to post it within this page itself.

My earliest Eurovision memory Copying the question they asked the artists during the semi-finals. I was thinking about this myself and two things very clearly stand out.

  1. My first memory: me 10 years old, watching Eurovision 1997, liking Norway's entry, I only remember it because it was my favourite, and it got zero points. Welcome to losing every year!

  2. My first memory of the idea of an online Eurovision community: me 15 years old, watching Eurovision 2002 with a hundred other people on an MSN chatroom cheering for Malta and arguing with the Latvia supporters. Of course Malta lost and Latvia won, she was robbed!

Anyway as for the event itself, I went there for the whole week, tickets for the 2 jury semi-finals, and the live grand final, as well as a week pass for the EuroClub nights, and tickets for a couple of other things going on, already awesome on paper!

Before going I already had an idea of which songs I liked, my top 3 were:

  1. Finland (like there was anything else even remotely close xD)

  2. Norway

  3. Croatia

I wasn't fully anticipating the experience of seeing everything live though. The first impression of seeing the arena in person, the green room in person, the sheer quantity of lighting, screens, and electronics rigged up is far far beyond any concert I've ever seen, it might be one of the most technically complex concerts to produce in the world.

As for the music itself, in person was again absolutely amazing, being around people cheering for the songs, knowing the songs, singing the songs, sharing in that energy. Beautiful.

I did gain a few other favourites after seeing them perform live:

  • Israel was mindblowing live, what a strong performance “Do you wanna see me dance??!”.
  • Poland, despite the controversy with her national selection and questions about her singing ability, and all the abuse online she was getting before the contest, I honestly thought she smashed it, really turned around the fandom in support of her (though that national selection process still needs investigating)
  • Austria, I mean I liked it already, but hearing an entire arena po po po, definitely something special. xD

Being in the arena for the final itself was a dream (I can't repeat it enough). The energy of the crowd, the performances, the voting, me madly waving the Finnish flag (kindly donated by a friend!) enough to get on TV for a single second despite being in the seating area:

Lampshade on TV

So sad he lost. Loreen's song was ok, imo it sounded pretty similar to Euphoria, yet more forgetful, she's clearly talented, but I feel like she already had her chance and won, let someone else, or if you enter again, at least try something a bit different.

Despite that, it will be honestly hard for any event to top this, and I've not even mentioned anything else from the week yet!

As for the other things going on. I arrived on the Monday, listened to some local bands in the village festival stage area they had setup (Zuzu was good, Crawlers were entertaining though maybe a little too emo for me), and promptly got soaking wet with the rain, took ages to find an umbrella too, and had to sit through the first semi-final show with wet socks. The village itself throughout the week was fine, but I didn't end up going very often as there was no clearly defined schedule that I could find, wasn't going to sit around waiting for something to happen despite wanting to see some of the artists.

The highlight of side-events were really the club nights featuring various old Eurovision entries performing. Seeing Emmelie de Forest sing Only Teardrops live was amazing, then Jedward were completely crazy, you can't help but like them live, and the highlight was the surprise performance at EuroClub after the final by Krista Siegfrids, the energy, so much fun! No Eric Saade attending though.

What else was there, hmm, I tried to do some tourist stuff, but didn't really succeed, too much else to do. The ferry trip was underwhelming, though I'm not sure what I was expecting, it consisted largely of grey skies, cold wind, and a view of a lot of warehouses and construction sites. Meeting Croatia's Let 3 in a bloody Lush store was just weird, Lush, actually Lush the soap shop, and they're serving prosecco like a fancy champagne event, while the band turn up in full on comedy military gear while exposing themselves for photos. What an event! xD

Other than that, actually being able to meet up with one of those online acquaintances from twitter, with whom I've live tweeted Eurovision every year, yet never really spoken to properly in person (apart from like saying hi once at a Hello Project event in Paris a decade or so ago). Feeling like you know someone fairly well despite never speaking is a kinda weird experience. Also, I suspect we were the only two in the room laughing and singing Dschinghis Khan in Japanese after getting the original Eurovision version played in the EuroClub on the last night. People with whom you share overlapping fandoms should be cherished, who else in life will you ever be able to share that kind of meta-joke with? :D

...and that brings me back full-circle to the reason for reviving this blog. I think online friends, online acquaintances should be cherished just as much as irl ones. There are many others I've known over the years online where I've attended events at the same time as them, yet barely spoken to, and always regretted. There are also many more I've only spoken with online and never been in the same country, let alone met (I always thought to myself I'd meet them if I ever visit there). I'm actually super shy irl and wished I'd spoken to more people in person over the years when the opportunities arose. The connections one makes when hobbies are shared are truly invaluable, be that either irl or online. Foster those connections, you never know how much seeing those avatars popup online over the years means to you or them. Stability and consistency, seeing the same names grow and change over the years, but still posting, still there! <3

Hence, this blog is now still here again!

Blogging in 2023?

So I didn't want to just restore the previous blog (despite having backups somewhere). I also didn't want to do WordPress. I was considering just doing a plain HTML page with frames for the menu and content... essentially exactly how the site was when I first published it (that Neopets shop html coming in useful for something at the time!). However, on thinking about it, it seemed like a lot of maintenance work, so I opted for the lightest of lightweight blogging platforms I could find, and landed on write.as. It's pretty minimal, didn't even include comments, so the comment system below is somewhat of a hack and may/may not work long-term, we'll see.

Either way, I do intend to continue posting various things. I want to write a full on essay on the whole Eurovision jury voting debacle and possible reform options. There's some philosophy papers I wanted to research and write without necessarily formally publishing them. This is a place I can do that.

I do lament the loss of the internet of 2005-2010, there was an innocence, it wasn't a mass consumer advert-fest, people were happy with their little blog, livejournal, tumblr accounts, just chatting away in their fandom niche. While that still exists, it feels like our little communities have had a city size metropolis built on top of them, concrete poured everywhere, and what was left of that internet has splintered into an ever decreasing attention span.

I feel like there should still be a space for blogs, even if it's only ultimately a personal diary written by someone narcissistically talking to the void believing that someone out there reads it.

If nobody else, at least it's more real content for the all-encompassing AI training data. :D

Tags

#blogging #life #eurovision #friends #twitter #music #concerts

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