The prehistoric elephant site

I joined Mastodon last week. I’m on some random server on the “fediverse” and the place is both completely different from Twitter and oddly familiar. More experienced users (it’s been around for a few years but most people never heard of it until the genius billionaire took over Twitter) are likening migration to Mastodon as a move to a new city - it seems overwhelming at first, but just take your time and explore and you’ll be at home in no time. And I do feel quite at home there now, but it’s not like a new city at all. It’s more like a countryside filled with villages, most rather charming but some less so, versus the sprawling monolithic metropolis that is Twitter. 

It took me some time to set up my account. I couldn’t upload photos for my profile avatar and header, which I first thought was user error but then came to understand was a result of latency arising from a huge influx of traffic on the Mastodon servers. There are a lot of people moving although I take issue with new Mastodon arrivals calling themselves “refugees” from the Twitter warzone. Given the number of actual refugees fleeing terrible places and clamoring to enter new places that mostly want nothing to do with them, this metaphor seems rather stupid and solipsistic. So I guess it tracks. 

*****

I joined Twitter in 2008. I was, uncharacteristically, a relatively early adopter. I say “uncharacteristically” because I’m usually the very last to pick up on a trend. I’m the one chasing the bandwagon long after it departs and moves on to pick up the early adopters of the next hot trend. But I was right on time with Twitter. Not the leading edge necessarily, but not late to the party either. 

At first, I really liked Twitter. I had a blog (still have it, as  you can see), and I used to have quite a few readers. They followed me on Twitter, I followed them back, I followed their friends and followers, and they followed mine, and we all shared our writing and posted pithy little jokes and comments. When I started on the hellsite, Twitter still supported only 140-character posts. I don’t remember when I saw my first thread; maybe around 2010 or so? You couldn’t post pictures or videos, and I don’t remember that there were any ads, either. The whole point of it was “what are you doing?” - 140 characters all about what you’re doing at that moment. Watching a movie? Walking around Manhattan during a snowstorm? Boarding a plane? Eating a snack? Getting married? Changing a baby’s diaper? Robbing a bank? Going to work? Going home from work? Any or all of it, from the mundane to the dramatic, was Twitter-worthy. Just write a very short and ideally funny or touching or thoughtful comment about what you’re doing at that moment, post it, and wait for people to react. And of course, read and react to everyone else’s funny, touching, or thoughtful observations about their daily lives. 

I tweeted on and off for a few years, and even made some friends. Then at some point, the combination of work, school (I was an adult student then, God help me), young children, PTA, swim team and baseball and school concerts and compulsive housekeeping made blogging and tweeting completely unsustainable, and so I stopped, pretty much cold turkey. I started blogging again, sporadically, in 2015 or so, but I didn’t go anywhere near Twitter again until years later.

Right in the middle of the pandemic year of our Lord 2020, with too much time on my hands, I installed the app on my phone (I didn’t even have a smartphone when I first joined Twitter in 2008 - practically no one did), logged back in, and found that I barely recognized the place. I avoided Trump, of course, but he still dominated the discourse - it was also an election year and most people on Twitter were reacting to him in one way or another. And a few huge accounts with tens of thousands of followers controlled everything else. Comment threads were either orgies of OMG-you’re-so-amazing fandom or delete-your-account pile-ons, sometimes (often) over the most innocuous things. It was entertaining sometimes but it wasn’t congenial. It wasn’t good for anyone’s mental health. 

*****

Just before I stepped away from Twitter for the first time, in 2013 or so, a mutual invited me to an “Elf” Twitter watch party. The host made up a hashtag for the watch party, asked everyone to start the movie at 8 PM, watch with family and friends, and live tweet their comments and jokes and reactions, using the party hashtag. 

It was HILARIOUS. The group was mostly (but not all) mothers with young and school-age children, so many of the tweets were about our kids' comments and reactions to the movie. During the breakfast scene, my youngest, who was 7 or 8 (so this must have been around 2012), said “He’s going to get dia-beet-ee-us.” My sons tried to recreate the Santa and Buddy fight scene. My older son took a flying leap at the tree to put a star on top. I tweeted about all of this, to the great amusement of the party attendees. During the mailroom scene, I tweeted “That’s the oldest-looking 26-year-old I’ve ever seen. Sunscreen. Antioxidants. SOMETHING.” About 35 people liked and commented on that tweet - probably my best tweet ever in terms of sheer numbers.

The thing about 2013 is that it wasn’t that long ago. Less than a decade. Of course, Donald Trump existed - he was very famous and had been for years. And I’m sure that he was on Twitter then, too - I think that the whole Barack Obama “birther” controversy started on Twitter. But no serious person took him seriously. You could follow him and read his stupid tweets if you liked that sort of thing but most of us on Twitter were there for fun. Most of us were there to try to make each other laugh while we watched “Elf” with our kids. Those were the days, I tell you what. 

*****

Mastodon is a quieter place, at least so far. It kind of reminds me of old Twitter. No one knows anyone, not yet, and you have to make connections organically. You have to find people and listen to them and talk to them. I use it the way I used to use Twitter. A funny thing will occur to me and I’ll post it. I’ll see something interesting or beautiful, and I’ll share it. I follow people who interest or amuse me. 

During my first few days on the site, the few political posts that I saw seemed jarringly out of place. Mehdi Hasan was yelling just as loud on Mastodon as he does on Twitter. But most people seem to get the difference between the two sites. This is not to say that people shouldn’t post about politics. People should post about whatever interests them, and the people who tell other people not to post about politics because it harshes their vibe should just calm the heck down. Filter out the terms you don’t want to see and just look at your cat photos. It’s fine. 

What I mean about the difference between the two places has to do with the tone. The tone is different. There’s not as much flamethrowing. There’s not as much trolling for reaction. There’s not as much anger for its own sake. You can’t see how many boosts (the Mastodon equivalent of an RT) a post has received unless you actually click on the post. You can’t see how many favorites (likes) it’s received at all, unless it’s your own post. There is really zero incentive for bandwagon-jumping or piling on. There’s no reward for sycophants or haters. 

There are definitely many things that I will miss about Twitter. Viral inside jokes can be really fun. It’s fun to get the joke, and then come up with another joke that amplifies and improves on the original joke, and then to see everyone’s reactions, and to be part of the party as every funny person on the internet jumps in and tries to one-up everyone else. Twitter is also really good at creating communities of shared interest around topics both really broad and really idiosyncratically narrow. 

But there are many other things that I will absolutely not miss. I won’t miss the bullies and their hangers-on. I won’t miss stupid people who disingenuously misinterpret every tweet or comment to find offense where none exists. I won’t miss the sad people who shamelessly beg for followers. I won’t miss “follow me, blue crew!”

*****

I went to the Capitals game on the night before Thanksgiving. It had been a busy few days and I was tired like tired has never been. I even thought about giving my ticket to one of my kids and just staying home but I really wanted to go to the game. 

Earlier that day, a Mastodon mutual had posted a hilariously silly thread about how much tea he drinks and how much he loves to drink tea and how he was going to stop posting that very minute and go drink more tea. I guess you had to be there. Anyway, I remembered that thread as I drove home from work in very light pre Thanksgiving traffic and thought that a cup of tea and a few minutes in front of my kitchen window watching a late November sunset would be just the thing to put me right. And it was, and 20 minutes later I was on the Red Line on my way to Capital One Arena. I posted a few pictures and comments on the game, and a few Capitals fans found me, and now I have a few more mutuals based on a shared interest. Yesterday, I watched “Elf” with my now-grown children, and I posted running commentary, cracking myself up the whole time. Last night, I connected with a few more new people, and we shared status updates on the massive power outage in Montgomery County (more about that later). 

No billionaires, no crypto, no Draft Kings, and no venture capital. It’s too soon to know for sure, but I think that Mastodon might be the new place to be. Look me up if you happen to be around there. 

Slow ride

Do you know how much IB exams cost? I learned the answer to that question the hard way (which is how I learn most things). The answer is “a shit ton.” Each IB exam costs a shit ton of money, and my son has to take a shit ton of IB exams. Never mind the cost of college. Let’s talk about the cost of getting ready to go to college. I can either support my ridiculous handbag habit, or I can pay for IB exams and university application fees. I can’t do both. 

*****

And do you know what I found in the mail today, right after I finished draining my checking account to pay off the shakedown artists of the International Baccalaureate? A speed camera ticket. A SPEED CAMERA TICKET! I drive like a blind old woman on her way to confession on Saturday, and Montgomery County Maryland expects me to believe that I was caught on camera doing 47 in a 35. On CONNECTICUT AVENUE AT 5:15 on a WEDNESDAY. People walk faster than automobile traffic moves on Connecticut during the afternoon rush hour. Bubba Wallace couldn’t go 47 on Connecticut Avenue between Jones Bridge and Knowles Avenue at 5:15 on a Wednesday. The whole thing is suspect. Suspect, I tell you. 

*****

I wrote this yesterday in a huff of righteous indignation. I was ready to contest that ticket. I was ready to fight City Hall. I was ready to stick it to the man. 

The thing is, I’d have to write emails. I’d have to talk to people on the phone. I might even have to go to court. Do I look like I have time for all that? I haven’t looked at the video yet, but today, I am just as strongly inclined to just pay the stupid $40 and get it over with as I was determined yesterday to fight like Norma Rae on the factory floor. 

$40 is a strategic amount, isn’t it? If it was $50, even though $50 isn’t what it was ten years ago or even one year ago, more people would push back. “Fifty bucks,” they’d think. That’s midway to a hundred. That’s half a Benjamin. But $40? I don’t know, it just seems so much less than $50. If a kid tells you he needs $40 for a school fee, you just hand over the cash. If he needs $50, you say “What? Fifty dollars? Are they crazy?” 

Unless you just paid for a shit ton of IB exams, in which case $50 will seem like chump change. 

*****

“Chump change.” Now I’m a gum-snapping, fast-talking wide-shoulder dame from a 1940s screwball comedy. Which really is not a bad thing to be. I think I was born too late. I belong in a George Cukor-type movie with a script by Donald Ogden Stewart, playing the wisecracking best friend. They could have called me any time Rosalind Russell or Eve Arden were busy. That was a better time, assuming that you’re willing to overlook the racism and the sexism and the manual transmissions. 

OK, so it wasn’t a better time except for one thing: In those days, they had to actually see you speeding if they wanted to give you a ticket. 

******

I started writing this two weeks ago, and in the interim, I received yet another speed camera ticket. This time, I was allegedly driving 47 in a 35 in Darnestown, which is well out of range of my usual stomping grounds. I was driving to a friend’s brother’s funeral. No good deed goes unpunished, you know? 

I still haven’t paid the first ticket, and now I have two, and I’m thinking of contesting both of them. There is no video of either incident. There are photographs that prove that my car was near the cameras, but no moving footage showing how fast I was going, and I have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether or not the camera’s triggering mechanism is properly calibrated. If I contest the tickets and go to court, I could end up paying both the fines and court costs, plus I’d lose part of a work day. I don’t know if it’s worth the time or money. On the other hand, this feels very arbitrary and unfair and I find myself very much unwilling to remit $40 to the County every time they decide to drop a speed limit in order to generate some revenue. 

I think I’ll do some research on court costs and likelihood of a positive outcome, and then I’ll decide what to do. 

*****

Yeah, I paid them. I know.

I’m telling you, I was ready to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. And when I learned that court costs are usually assessed at less than $25, I was even more enthusiastic about this plan. Then my husband, a police officer, dissuaded me. “They will find you guilty,” he said. “They find everybody guilty - some guy from Safe Speed testifies that the triggering mechanism is properly calibrated and that the camera system is working just fine, and then unless you can prove exigent circumstances or that you were not driving the car, you’ll pay the fine and the court costs and you’ll have wasted half a day, at least.” 

“But...” I said. 

“No ‘but’,” he said. “That’s just how it works. That is how it always works. Do what you want, but when you sit in court all day and still come home $125 poorer, don’t think I won’t say ‘I told you so,’ because I totally will.” 

I’ve been married to this man for 22 years, so I didn’t think for a second that he wouldn’t say “I told you so.” And that is what decided it, really. I could live with the $125. I could even live with losing a day of my life to Maryland Circuit Court. But I couldn’t live with a week or more of “I told you so.”  Everyone has a breaking point. 

*****

The next day, Saturday, I was driving home from my son’s swim meet in Laurel. It was 6 PM, already dark, and my night vision was cooperating. I could see perfectly well, and I got us from the Fairland Aquatic Center on to Maryland 200, known around these parts as the ICC, with no difficulty whatsoever. I moved into the center lane, keeping my speed at around 62 as traffic whizzed past me on both sides. A few people honked as they flew by, obviously annoyed by my determination to obey the 60 MPH speed limit as closely as possible. But I didn’t care. People can climb up my bumper, they can pass me, and they can honk all the livelong day. I was already a cautious driver, and now I’m taking caution to a new level. I’m finished handing over fat stacks of cash to the extortionists at Montgomery County Safe Speed. It’s slow ride time, from now on. 

Julie and Julia

I was very sad to learn of Julie Powell’s untimely death last week. I’m not sure why, really, other than just normal human sorry-to-hear-that impersonal sympathy. I never read her work. In fact, food literature is one category that I generally avoid. Of course I’m sorry to hear of anyone dying an unexpected death at age 49, but I felt this celebrity death a bit more than I expected to. 

Last weekend, during a spare 30 minutes, I started watching “Julie and Julia” on Hulu. I saw the movie when it first came out in 2009 and I remembered really loving the Julia scenes and not really loving the Julie scenes. Quick no-spoiler synopsis in case you haven’t seen the movie: It is based on both Powell’s eponymous memoir and Julia Child’s My Life in Paris, and it alternates between immediate post-9/11 New York City, where Julie Powell lived and worked as a mid-level bureaucrat; and Paris in the 1950s, where Julia Child lived an utterly enchanted life with her diplomat husband, Paul Child. Meryl Streep’s Julia, as I remembered her, was energetic and funny and full of infectious joy. Amy Adams’ Julie, on the other hand, was a whiny, anxious bundle of ridiculous neuroses. 

Well, now it’s perfectly obvious why I hated that character. Because it was like watching all the worst parts of myself, if only I looked like Amy Adams. 

Joking! Lol! Hilarious!

But in all seriousness, I watched part of the movie again, and as Johnny Cash once sang, I come away with a different point of view. I still liked the Julia parts of the movie better. Who wouldn't? Paris, international diplomacy at the height of the Cold War, glamour, mid century style, and what appeared to have been a perfect marriage vs. crowded subways, cubicles, yuppie bitch antagonists in place of friends, overwork, and domestic discord - really, no sane person would prefer Julie's life to Julia's. 

But the women themselves? Well movie Julie wasn't so bad. Yes she was whiny and spoiled and prone to temper tantrums but she was also compulsive and panicky and plagued with anxiety. 

Yes, I know. I keep coming back to this. She really is very much like me. I'd have freaked out over those stupid lobsters. I'd have dreaded boning the duck. Who wants to bone a duck for crying out loud? And I would for sure have pushed myself close to the brink of sanity to meet a fake, self-imposed, and entirely ridiculous deadline.

And besides, movie Julia (and I guess, real-life Julia) lived in Paris in a beautiful free apartment and she only worked because she wanted to. It was easy for movie Julia to be delightful. There would have been no excuse for her to be otherwise. 

*****

I never did read Julie and Julia, but now I think maybe I will. I’ll probably skip Cleaving (as the snotty-faced NYT called it, “Powell's sophomore and only other effort” - burn!) since I have already read one mercilessly honest exceedingly sexually frank overshare of a memoir this year. That one was enough for 2022 and it might have been enough of that genre for pretty much ever. But Julie and Julia is just my kind of thing - a memoir about a specific part of a person’s life and a story about a hard and exhausting though absurdly specific and quirky project. It’s a book about a person doing something that only she could have done. I’m going to finish re-watching the movie at some point, and then I’ll read the book and report back. 

EDT vs EST

I’m preoccupied with time; the limited quantity of time that I have every day and every week and really for the rest of my life. It’s Friday, and I worked in the office today, which I don’t typically do. I arrived home at 5:20 or so, did a few minor chores, and then changed into my sneakers to go walking. I had only about 30 minutes of daylight remaining and that daylight was the achingly lovely early November sunset light that creates a glow around everything including the trees that are already a riot of color. The leaves crunched beneath my feet as I walked as fast as I could, trying to outrun the waning golden daylight. I turned the corner back onto my street just a minute or so before it was well and truly dark, and just as I remembered that this will be my last after-work walk for a while. We fall back on Sunday, an extra hour of sleep in exchange for months of early darkness. 

Yesterday, I heard a news story about Daylight Savings Time on NPR, with a new angle on the debate about keeping the annual clock adjustments or dumping them. Like most people I know, I was delighted when the Senate voted last year to make DST permanent. An extra hour of daylight during the darkest hours of the year would be such a gift, and by late January, we’d have daylight until 6:30 PM or so. 

But I had to be at work by 7:30 on Thursday morning, which means that I had to leave the house by 6:45, which means that I had to drive to work in the dark, which I really really hate. I don’t just hate driving in the dark, I also hate feeling like I’m starting my day in the middle of the night. Although I have to admit, it was really nice seeing the sun rise over Walter Reed as I drove on to the base. 

The NPR story featured a doctor who believes that we should ditch the semi-annual clock back-and-forth, but that Daylight Savings Time is the wrong time standard to hang on to. I was working as I listened so I fogged out a bit during the part where he presented his evidence about circadian rhythms and sleep patterns. But he summed it up in a pretty compelling way, and he just about had me convinced. 

The thing is, though, that by keeping Standard Time, we wouldn’t be making winter any worse than it already is. But we’d be making summer less great. I love those weeks in late June and early July when the daylight hangs on until almost 9 PM. I’d hate to give that up. But I’d also hate months of mornings when the sun doesn’t rise until 8 o’clock. 

There’s no making me happy is there? I know. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, the first Sunday in November, and half of my clocks, the digital ones connected to the internet in one way or another, all read 9:18 AM and my old analog clocks all read 10:18 AM. Someone will turn those clocks back at some point. But we all know what time it is. And that was it - we fell back, we got our extra hour of sleep, and now it’s going to be dark before 6 PM for maybe the next two months. Blah.  

So my conclusion is that as terrible as it is to deal with the one-hour shifts twice a year, we should keep the whole Rube Goldberg spit and glue system in place because it’s the least terrible way to manage the daylight hours and make sure that as many people as possible get as much daylight as possible on both ends of the day. It won’t give me any extra time in a day but I’ll still get 24 hours, same as everyone else.