Social media, sumo, and other topics

July 28th 2024
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Big shocker, right? Social media can be unhealthy.

But the issue I'm having is that I'm having a bigger and bigger number 
of people watching my words on the fediverse, to the point that I'm 
feeling like I can't just share my random thoughts or just talk with 
people, which is largely what I've always liked social media for. I was 
on twitter in the flipping 00s, y'know, and I got used to it being a 
place where I could braindump half-formed thoughts without it being A 
Big Deal. 

But now for the, like, 5th day in a row a random thought I have to get 
out of my head starts getting 100-200 boosts and my notifications become 
trash.

And I guess that's fine? Having a platform is useful? Probably? I don't 
want to just nuke my account or anything but I do wish I had the kind of 
features I proposed in a talk like 10 years ago, of a 
capability-inspired system for permissions on social media posts 
including a countdown for how far it can spread on the social graph.


I don't think anyone's doing anything wrong I just really wish I could 
easily express the intent of how I want my thoughts shared in the 
mechanics of social media.

Other things: so my spouse has really gotten into grand sumo over the 
past year. She's joined a really active discord/twitch community of 
western sumo fans. It's actually a pretty cool sport? It's very 
different than watching something like (american) football like I grew 
up with as a texan. [liking football isn't even a gendered thing in 
texas, it's the state religion, of which I'm now an apostate since 
learning that it almost universally is giving a bunch of young men brain 
damage for the profit of the hyperrich] 

But, yeah, sumo is so much more about the individual people and their 
stories than a lot of sports I'm familiar with. "Teams" (heya, often 
translated as stable but oh boy does that have a connotation in english) 
more or less live/train/cook/clean together, and one of her favorite 
teams posts regular youtube videos of them cooking and being silly 
together and it's very cute. 

Sumo competitions are also really different than other sports I've seen: 
there's a 15-day-straight tournament every other month all year long. 
Each wrestler will fight at most once per day. The lower ranks fight 
half as many matches as the top two ranks. Also the ranking system is 
super different? I thought it would be like other "fighting" sports 
where there are weight classes but, no, it's actually about how well 
you've done and if you've been out due to injuries you drop back down to 
a low rank and have an easier schedule as you get back into the swing of 
things.

But, yeah, I bring this up because a tournament just ended last night 
and since this sumo community watches live online she goes 
semi-nocturnal for two weeks every two months. I'll learn this morning 
about how things went after I went to bed, although I looked it up and 
saw terunofuji won the top rank title. Good for him, since carolyn's 
been watching he's been out injured for most of the tournaments.

There's *a lot* of injuries in sumo, which is the only hard part of 
watching it, but at least they're like "I can't pick up a 6'2" 300lb man 
and toss him out of a ring" injuries and these guys generally have 
normal careers after they retire from sumo and not, y'know, *repeated 
traumatic brain injuries*. Apparently two common things these guys do 
when they retire are (a) open a restaurant, because they spent years 
cooking (b) work in elder care or as paramedics and things like that 
where a big, conscientious, person who can easily carry people is 
helpful

----

I've still been feeling weird since midly caffeine poisoning myself a 
couple of days ago. I'm stressed because I have slightly under two 
months until the academic year starts again and I'm worried about losing 
out on time and not finishing all the things that I've been wanting to do.

I know I just need to let myself calm the fcuk down and accept time as 
the pace it goes.

I should step away from the internet and crochet more. Carolyn taught me 
the basic steps and I just need to finish the basic couple of projects 
and then I should be able to start more fun things. Finishing a 
washcloth should only take like an hour or two if I actually, y'know, do 
it.