Oookay, i think with the current surge of new users on the fediverse having the bigger instances under strain, it's time to finally put my money where my mouth ist and open the 12XU Pleroma instance for registrations! May the federated punk bubble flourish and grow. Oh and by the way, posts on elefant.onetwoxu.de can be quite looong… because character limits are for dickheads only.
You can simply use the registration function on elefant.onetwoxu.de but if for whatever reason that doesn't work for you (it's known, for example, that the likes of Gmail, GMX, etc… like to bounce many emails from unknown servers), then just shoot me an email at elefant@onetwoxu.de, tell me your preferred username and i'l provide you with login data. Also make sure to take a look at the instance code of conduct before you start.
For now, i can finance the hosting cost myself but in the long term - especially if bigger hosting upgrades become necessary - i'd be thankful if you could help me out with the bill (think something like a dollar or even less a month for the average user…), if you're able to, that is. But that shit's in the future. For now, everyone just have fun! :-)
…'cos you conformist morons calling yourself punk still don't get it. We won't ever have a better web with healthier communities unless you change your online habits and stop supporting disgusting and manipulative corporate social media empires. There are viable alternatives. What… but your friends are all on facebook/twitter you say? Well too bad for your friends. Convince them to come along then!
Um… so there's a new Escape-ism record out and the situation around last year's awkward self-cancellation of Ian Svenonius is still murky as fuck.
Quick refresher: Last year, around the time when it became known that the California garage label and record store Burger Records had been a hotbed for sexual predators and creeps for years at that point, reiginiting the discussion around sexism and predatory behavior in the punk scene (also leading Burger Records to cease operations soon after), Washington D.C. scene legend Ian Svenonius (of Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and the Gang, Escape-Ism, XYZ…) did a weird kind of self-cancellation post on instagram, admitting to predatory or at least very creepy behavior towards women in the past and apologizing for it, then deleting the whole thing soon after.
The reactions were varied. Merge Records seem to have gained some deeper knowledge about the accusations and deemed them severe enough to sever ties with Ian Svenonius. Dischord Records, on the other hand, who should also know a thing or two, are still working with him, keeping his old records in print and in-stock. The new Escape-ism record, while not a Dischord release, is being sold via the Dischord Records website right now. No clue how to interpret that coming from a label that has been so well known for their strong ethics in the past.
I'm just gonna say, the whole situation stinks. It's been over a year and we know pretty much nothing about what was happening around Ian Svenonius. As a fan, music blogger, webcaster, i am especially conflicted. What kind of person am i supporting if i buy his records? Can i still justify posting his stuff? Should i remove all of his music from 12XU Radio?
At first, i really wanted to give Ian Svenonius the benefit of the doubt. It seemed like he was actually feeling remorse for his actions (their severity still being unknown) and some dude actually apologizing, being honest about it and willing to work through his shit would have actually felt kinda refreshing at that point.
Instead, it looks to me like the punk scene has collectively agreed to shove the whole thing under the rug, not demand any answers and move on as if nothing actually ever happened. Once again, everyone gets the silence treatment. I think that's the worst possible way to go about this. This. Sucks. So. Much.
Yes, this is an intervention a.k.a. another one of these obligatory reader bashing posts. Because most of you still suck so bad at this. I shouldn't have to be telling you this anymore and you're making me so very sad. And no, i won't stop nagging about it anytime soon.
So here goes… Please, please, pretty please, for fucking fuck's sake please stop using these things:
Facebook
Twitter
Join the fediverse instead. As a starting point for my fellow music lovers: How about getting an account at linernotes.club? And when you've done that, tell me about it.
If you're using twitter or facebook to publish and/or curate stuff in a regular manner, how about starting your own blog instead? When you've done that, tell me about it.
If you totally can't lay off your bad internet habits for now, at least make yourself familiar with the alternatives and start using them.
Google Chrome
You have no fucking excuse. There are several equally good alternatives out there doing exactly the same thing. Some of them are basically just Chrome with all the evil parts removed. Firefox is way more sexy though.
Google Analytics
Aaarght! Bloggers and webmasters, cut that shit out for crying out loud. If you need statistics, you might wanna take a look at Matomo. It's free and easy to set up. Also looking at you, Bandcamp!!! I like you, but you're helping Google track your users. And you're doing it with your embedded player, on every fucking music blog in the world!!!
Share- and like-buttons provided by Facebook or Twitter
These are just another means of tracking users. If you can't live without that sweet little dopamine boost every share or like provides… take a look at Shariff. WordPress users: There's a plugin for that.
Everybody, please start doing this:
Use a decent ad-blocker plugin in your web browser.
This protects you from the bulk of trackers, all of the ad-industry brainfuck and it helps starve out said industry. If your browser doesn't allow it: Use a different browser! How hard can it be?
Bloggers and Webmasters take notice: Google wants to roll out its FLoC programme in the near future to enable tracking of Chrome users even in a world where cookie-based tracking becomes less and less effective. Please do this:
Learn how to prevent the FLoC functionality from being enabled on your website (for now at least).
Chrome users: Here's another reason for you to look for a different browser.
Please, folks, please start taking these things seriously. Please stop sucking so hard at every fucking thing involving computers and the internet. Please stop feeding the machine creating all these problems. Instead do the little things that help make the web more open, democratic and less reliant on major evil corporations. How many more crappy stunts and dirty tricks do Facebook, Google, etc. have to pull on you before you even consider pulling the plug? Are you a punk? Do a punk thing. Participate in some punk web shit. Thanx a lot in advance.
A good time to finally delete all accounts. Twitter.inc must suffer. For that to happen, us and everybody we know needs to GTFO. Same goes for facebook, btw. There have been better, decentral, noncommercial alternatives for quite some time now. We just need to start using them.
Just a quick announcement: Instead of taking care of this blog as i should, i recently procrastinated my own mastodon instance into existence. Or more specifically, it's actually a pleroma instance. Or for those who still don't get what the fuck all that gibberish is supposed to mean: Mastodon and Pleroma are two compatible server implementations of the ActivityPub protocol, which quite a few decentral social platforms are based on, mastodon being the most popular of those at this moment.
Also in the works is a Hubzilla instance, which is supposed to bridge the gap for me between Mastodon/ActivityPub and the incompatible Diaspora network. In the long term, my aim is to go fully independent of the big commercial platforms. I'd be delighted if a few of you dip their toes in the warm fediverse waters too, simply because the corporate web sucks so hard at this point anyway and i'd like to accelerate its death a little bit.
If you want a user account on elefant.onetwoxu.de, just tell me via the contact form… but be aware that this piece of shit might not be 100% stable yet, definitely needs a bit of fine tuning and you're basically becoming my guinea pig if you dare to register. That thing could explode at any moment. Thus, until i have that stuff under control, i'd rather recommend you register an account on the music-themed linernotes.club instance - or anyother inctance whose user base, themes and policies appeal to you. Mastodon allows you to move your account somewhere else at any point, just in case stuff didn't work out for you.
Arrived at my new cave, retained most of my sanity. Finally able to relax. Ass on my couch and music's running again, too. This week i'm plowing through all the good noise i've missed in recent weeks. Probably way to much to post here, so what i don't manage to get crammed in here will probably end up on a new Verspannungskassette-Mixtape. The blog machine should be rolling again by next week.
…12XU is taking a break right now and will continue to do so for another 2-3 weeks. This is for the simple reason that i'm relocating to some small and cozy shack just across the Rhine river, a few miles deeper inside the busy Ruhr area. Now i need to get some shit done and since getting shit done ain't exactly my forte (and also to protect my own mental health, which has become a rather fragile motherfucker in recent times), i'll take all the time i need and let this blog hibernate for the time being. To satisfy your addiction, you might wanna check out someotherhiglyrecommendedplaces in the meantime. 12XU will resume regular activity sometime around late February, or early March at the very latest. See you noise cowboy!
The old 12XU spotify playlist is long dead, so now i'm undertaking a second, more serious attempt with songs roughly divided into three playlists of new shit, older crap and classic diarrhea. Since the spotify catalogue appears to improve over time - more than half the songs i imported were available this time, hurrah! - this might even start to make a bit of sense.
To start with, this is based on an automatic import of 12XU Radio's playlists, which i then tried to purge of false matches. So please be prepared for a few duplicates, redundancies and other scary stuff i might have missed.
