But then again, poetry can be sexual, so who knows?
Scandalous furry, Why are you glitching like that? Haiku are lewd too! Art: AJ
The cowardice comes in with the fear of their peers or bosses judging them for *checks notes* the content and presentation that I wrote, and not them.
Which (if you think about it for any significant length of time) implies that they’re generally eager to take credit for other people’s work, but their selfishness was thwarted by a cute cartoon dhole doing something totally innocent.
Last month, I wrote a blog post about Aural Alliance, which caused a menace in the furry music space to accuse me of “bad journalism” for not verbally crucifying the label’s creator (a good friend of mine) for having a failed business venture in the past, or taking credit for donating to their cause early on.
Twitter DM conversation. Everyone I’ve talked to that has dealt with this particular person before responded with, “Yeah, this is typical Cassidy behavior.”
To which one must wonder, “Since when am I a journalist?”
I’ve never called myself a journalist. I’m a blogger and I don’t pretend to be anything more than that. I especially would never besmirch the work of real journalists by comparing it with my musings.
At times, I also wear the security researcher hat, but you’ll only hear about it when I’m publishing a vulnerability.
This is a personal blog. I will neither be censored nor subject to compelled speech. I have no moral or professional obligations to “both sides” of what amounts to a nontroversy.
Sure, I contributed to covering Aural Alliance’s up-front infrastructure costs when it was just an idea in Finn’s head. I’m not going to apologize for supporting artists. The Furry Fandom wouldn’t exist without artists.
It bewilders me every time someone reacts this way. Do you not know the community you’re in?
The most intelligible pushback I’ve seen over the years is, “Well if everyone raises their prices, low-income furries will be pushed out of the market!”
Setting aside that art is a luxury, not a need for a moment, that’s not actually true.
There are so many artists, and they’re so decentralized, that no coherent price coordination effort is even possible. It’s worse than herding cats. Some may raise their prices by $5, others by $500. If furries were organized enough to coordinate something like this, then we’d have a tough time explaining why there are still abusers in the fandom.
Also, it costs very little to learn to draw, yourself:
The demand for low-priced digital art incentivizes people to reach for theft enabled by large-scale computing (a.k.a. “AI” by its proponents).
A similar demand for cheap, high-quality fursuits (usually at the maker’s expense) will lead to a walmartization of the furry community.
If you listen to these hot takes long enough, you start to notice a pattern of short-sighted selfishness.
When you demand something of the furry community, and don’t think of the long-term consequences of your demands, you’re probably being an idiot. This is true even if it’s actually a good idea.
If me supporting artists somehow prices you out of commissioning your favorite artist, you still have other options: Learning to make your own, finding new artists, saving money, etc.
On the flipside, the artists you admire will suffer less due to money troubles. Fewer artists starving makes the world a more beautiful place.
Center of the Fediverse
If flame war and retoot count relieved desire In the comment thread someone must have known That the hottest takes truly leave us tired ‘Cause in the center of the fediverse We are all alone
If you’re on the Fediverse (e.g., Mastodon), and your instance uses a blocklist like TheBadSpace (TBS), you probably cannot see my posts on furry.engineer anymore.
(Spoiler: It was largely prompted by another predominantly LGBTQIA+ instance, tech.lgbt, being erroneously added to the same blocklist, which resulted in criticism of said blocklist curators.)
Be forewarned, though: Linking to Silver Eagle’s blog post was enough for TBS supporters to harass me and directly accuse me, personally, of anti-blackness, so don’t expect any degree of level-headed discussion from that crowd.
If you cannot see my Fediverse posts anymore, and actually want to see them, message your instance moderators and suggest unsubscribing from TheBadSpace’s blocklist.
If they refuse, your only real recourse is to move to another instance. The great thing about the Fediverse is, you can just do that, and nobody can lock you in.
Personally, I plan on sticking on furry.engineer. I trust its moderators to not tolerate racist and/or fascist bullshit.
The baseless accusations of anti-blackness are, unsurprisingly, false.
Burnout Isn’t Inevitable
A few months ago, I quit a great job with an amazing team because the CEO decided that everyone has to return to working in the office, including people that were hired fully remote before the pandemic. This meant being forced to move more than 3,000 miles, or resigning. I’ve been told the legal term for such a move is “constructive dismissal.”
In hindsight, I was starting to burn out anyway, so leaving when I did was a great move for my mental health and life satisfaction.
I’m an introvert. I have a finite social battery. Because my work was split across three different teams at the same company, I was a necessary participant in a lot of meetings.
More than 5 hours per day of meetings, as an individual contributor. Sometimes as many as 7 hours/day of them. I almost never had a quiet day, even after blocking one day every week so nobody would schedule any meetings and I could get productive work done.
If you’re interested in being a people manager, or have an extroverted personality, you’re probably unperturbed by this account. But I was absolutely miserable. My close friends started to worry if I was suffering from depression, because of how socially exhausted I was all the time.
I took a few weeks off between jobs. My new role doesn’t pointlessly encumber me with unnecessary meetings.
Every day, I feel the burnout symptoms leaving my mind. I feel challenged and stimulated in a good way. I’m learning new technologies and being productive. I’ve never spent more than 3 hours of any given day in a meeting.
Different people burn out in many different ways, for many different reasons.
In my experience, the consequences appear to be reversible if caught early enough. I don’t know if they would be if I held onto my old job for much longer.
The job market’s tough right now, but if you’re deeply unsatisfied with an aspect of your current job, prioritize yourself and make whatever change is necessary.
This doesn’t mean you have to switch jobs like I did, of course. It was a good move for me. Your mileage may vary.
This post has been a collection of unrelated topics on my mind over the past few months. There is one other thing, but I was unsure if it warranted a separate post of its own, or an addendum on this one. Since you’re reading this, you’ll know I ultimately settled on the latter.
I started this blog in 2020 because I thought having a personal blog where I talk about things that interest me (mainly the furry fandom and software security) would be fun. And I wanted to do it in a way that was fun for me.
“Having fun with it” has been the guiding principle of this blog for over 3 years. I never intended to do anything important or meaningful, that sort of happened by accident. I didn’t care about others being able to use my writing in a professional setting (hence, my scoffing at the very notion above).
Lately, posts have slowed to a crawl, because it’s not fun for me anymore. I have a lot of ideas I’d love to write about, but when it comes time to turn an idea into something tangible, I lose all inspiration.
So I’m not going to force it.
This will be the last post on this blog for a while. Maybe forever, if I don’t feel like coming back. I recently tried to pick up fiction writing, but I’m not happy with anything I’ve been able to produce yet, so I won’t bore anyone with that garbage.
There are a lot of brilliant people that read my writing. Most of you are more than capable of picking up where I left off and starting your own blogs.
I encourage you to do so.
Have fun with it, too. Just remember, when it’s time to put the pen down and take a rest, don’t be stubborn and burn yourself out.
Several people have reported experiencing eye pain, vision problems, and sunburnt skin on Sunday after attending ApeFest, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection event in Hong Kong.
Dhole Moments is not a music blog. I will not pretend to be an expert on music, music theory, or music appreciation.
But it goes even further than that: I am so untalented at music that I exert a vacuum pressure on musicians who cross my path at furry conventions.
The end result of this vacuum force looks like this, naturally. Art: CMYKat
Regular readers of my blog would expect that, should I ever discuss any topic that intersects with computer audio, it would probably involve leaking the contents of encrypted voice chats through, like, compression oracles or something.
Not today, though.
Instead, I’d like to introduce everyone to the Aural Alliance, a furry music label that aims to disrupt the perverted economics of the music industry.
This predatory behavior isn’t exclusively weaponized against black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPoC) artists; it’s used against queer and disabled artists too.
Unless you have star power, you’ll take what you can get, because there are dozens of hungry upstarts ready to seize your opportunity if you hesitate to take it. Chase the carrot, mind the stick.
The Aural Alliance is a rejection of this traditional dynamic.
Traditional music labels will lend you money to cover the production costs of a musical work. Music sales will then be used to pay off your loan before you ever see a dime.
Aural Alliance straight up distributes 60% of its income to all artists, equally, and uses the remaining 40% to cover operations.
Just kidding, we also barely 2 months in managed to pay out over 250$ total to all our currently eligible artists in our first cycle, regardless of their number of streams, and I cannot put into words enough just how happy it made me doing so!
Unlike many bloggers, it’s difficult for me to classify my regular audience with one simple label or categorization.
Dhole Moments is a furry blog, sure, but not everyone who reads my writing is a furry. I write about computers, security, and cryptography, yes, but not everyone who reads my blog is particularly interested in those topics either.
It might be tempting to read about a furry music label built on socialist principles, shrug, and say, “So what? I’m not a fan of furry musicians or socialism. Where’s your post about key management you promised, dhole?!”
To understand the impact and significance of the Aural Alliance, some knowledge on current events and technology culture is needed.
Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe a phenomenon that happens to online platforms. The cycle goes like this:
A new platform is operated at a loss, to gain users. This is usually the Venture Capital funding stage of a “start-up”.
Then once they have enough critical mass to exploit the Network Effect, they sell the startup to the public stock market.
This sale is eventually followed by a shift in priority, where they take away the parts of the platform that users loved (usually following the boiling frog strategy), in order to make it a better deal for their new owners.
This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
Last month, Epic sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, a music licensing service that basically acts as a vampiric middleman: Squeezing money from sellers and buyers alike while providing nothing of value. Songtradr is the outcome of an economist thought experiment, “What if landlords existed for our ear drums?”
Bandcamp: extremely profitable company, uniquely beloved of musicians and music fans alike, riding a wave of public goodwill, decides to sell themselves to a billionaire who then dumps them off to another billionaire who now fires half the company t.co/YZK3dlTkt7
Archived Songtradr’s business model is the end goal of every Silicon Valley start-up that receives VC funding: Capture near-monopoly power through technology and the network effect, then become a middleman that only exists to add a transaction fee while a tangled web of contractors that compete with each other actually fulfill the services rendered. And they want to do this while driving positive exponential year-over-year growth, to keep investors happy.
Time and again, this happens to industries that affect millions of peoples’ lives, and we’re all the worse for it.
Any company that calls themselves “Uber for ___” is confessing to this business model. Art by AJ.
Exit, Bandcamp
The enshittification of Bandcamp is well underway by its new masters. Independent musicians the world over would benefit greatly from a good alternative.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a recommendation to offer today.
Bandcamp had too much goodwill with its community for a serious competitor to emerge from the noise floor. The Internet got complacent.
In another business vertical, Itch.io currently has a similar vibe with the indie game dev community: It has fostered tremendous goodwill and treats creators fairly.
In 2021, itch.io properties were added to the Epic Games Store launcher. Thus far, it has remained undisturbed. Who knows how long this will hold out?
(Especially considering the abundance of LGBTQIA+ content hosted on itch.io.)
Rather than focus too much on OCB or his other contributions to computer science, he chose to talk about what he called Radical CS: A rejection of the Standard Technological Narrative (STN) that technology is an apolitical tool that only improves things for everyone.
(TODO: Add video here when it’s public.)
PhilosophyTube recently tackled the topic of Ethical AI, which is way more interesting than you may suspect.
Many of the people behind the hype of large-scale computing (which is what we should be calling it, not AI), whom are trying to influence public opinion and legislation in order to maximize their own profit, are the exact same people that are driving the enshittification of platforms.
They’re also largely the same people that hyped blockchain too. And you best believe I got a video for that one:
Silver Eagle is the lead developer of Internet radio software, AzuraCast. They have been working with the Aural Alliance on a furry music database project.
If the Aural Alliance is successful in their goals, it will serve as direct, living proof that a better business model is possible; that artists and musicians can get a fair deal from their craft.
If their projects like the furry music database take off, this may also plant the seed from which tomorrow’s Bandcamp alternative will sprout.
And even if that doesn’t happen, at least some artists will suffer less as a result of the Aural Alliance’s work. That’s a win-win to me.
Regularly check out the Aural Alliance’s Releases calendar for new songs, albums, etc.
Request your favorite Aural Alliance artists at your favorite furry convention
Finally, I’d like to close with sharing an excellent work from one of the Aural Alliance musicians, Tonya Song, that every LGBTQIA+ person can definitely relate to.
If none of my words can sell you on the value of what the Aural Alliance is doing, this is sure to do it:
The end result of this vacuum force looks like this, naturally.
The Aural Alliance funding pipeline (source)
Credit: CMYKat
