Febuary 2026 Summary

March 02, 2026

Tags: Monthly Summaries

This month's post is a little late, as you may have noticed. That's because Febuary was capstoned with a virtual convention and the only way to include it was to put off making this post by a few days.

With that, let's get into the summary!

Starting wuth some bad news, just because I'm annoyed and need to vent lol. I've been job hunting since I've grauated, which has been very rough (as it has been for most Americans). Had two nearby places reject my application in less than a day each, meaning that a human most certainly never saw those applications. One I had to send in twice because I never even got confirmation it went through the first time. Then I had a remote job drag me along for a few weeks promising they'd eventually get back to me, only for them to eventually go radio silent. So that's cool. Very cool.

At this point a remote job would work best for me because I'm set to move in mid-May!!! Yippee!!! I have plenty saved up, so I can do the move just fine, but an income would be so beneficial for so many reasons. But because it's already March now, I think it's best to focus on jobs I could take with me to the new place between now and then. So uh, fingers crossed. Though I do have an idea now... hmmm...

I've also gotten back into finding and reading academic articles, because I am a nerd. I've only read one of my collection so far, which is listed below, but I still have the others ready to be read B) I also want to re-read my media text books from when I took media studies classes. Yeah.

This month I also tried out the Mojeek search engine. I'm trying to de-Google as much as I can, and the fact that bing sometimes blocks search results for no reason (see: Bing blocking all of Neocities makes Duck-Duck-Go (DDG) less than ideal. Plus they jumped on the whole AI thing. I tried Startpage for a while, but then they got an AI thing too and constantly advertize it despite me requesting that they stop. Thus: Mojeek. So far it's... not perfect. Some of the results could use some tightening up, as I don't always get what I actually want. But it does show a lot of promise and I enjoy it quite a bit! Right now I use it whenever I can and, when it doesn't pull up what I need, I switch to the no-Ai version of DDG.

Lastly: Citris Con. This is a Boy's Love/Fujoshi/Fandom focused convention that now happens late Febuary. And it was incredible. I attended pannels about the history of the Star Trek fandom and how it served as the begining of fandom as we know it. I went to a BL writing workshop. I went to a zine workshop where I made a very self-indulgent 8-page folded zine, and then another, and I still have two more blanks to fill! I learned about ship manifestos and comfort character letters and archiving fandom history. I got book reccomondations and show reccomondations and got to be around other freaks /affectionate. I even got to help with FujoCoded's pannel a bit by answering some questions. Point is, I had a great time and my only regret was being too shy and overwhelmed to talk in the actual server. I only really stuck to the panels. Oh well.

Read

'Self-host it' is not the answer - Self-hosting is a really cool thing if you can do it. Hell, I want to self-host if I can manage it. But not everyone is capable of it, so offering "just self-host it" as a solution to how others manage their tech isn't a great answer. Especially when the actual answer is seeking better legal protections for the average person.

What is the Indie Web? - On a similar note to the above, how should we define "indie web"? How much do you have to own for it to be "independent"? Or should we think of it more as "individual"? Honestly a post that deserves a full response I think, but worth a read.

The Political Effects Of X’s Feed Algorithm - Freely available academic article that goes into the ways X/Twitter's algorithm effect people's political views. In short, switching from a chronological feed to a algorithmic feed pushes people's opinions further to the right. Switching to a chronological feed has no effect on your political view, meaning influences done by the algorithm cannot be undone by X itself.

Gemini Takes Flight - The Gemini Protocol is a cool little protocol separate from the internet/https that offers a more laid back experience. While not perfect (I'll probably make my own post on it later), it's very fun and worth a peek. This post gives you a bunch of resources to get started!

The Open Source Design Stack - Software as a Service (SaaS) has ruined a lot of once-good programs. Open source software isn't a silver bullet to this problem per-say, but it doesn provide a good alternative. Just research all mentioned programs before using or disregarding them, I don't agree with all opinions here but the article as a whole is very good.

The Slow Death of the Power User - Fun facr, I worked as a writing tutor for a university for a while. Some of my Freshman students didn't even know how to open their damn emails, having grown more accustomed to social media and text messaging as communication options. Growing up, the excuse for not being taught digital literacy was that we would simply absorb this information by being around technology. Lol. I was fortunate to grow up around normal computers, including dad's boxy Windows 98 desktop, but I still had to teach myself so much when I decided to get into webweaving. While there are genuine discussions to be had regarding "where should the general tech lit. level be?" and the clear (in my opinion) distinction between someone who simply is technologically literate and someone who is a full-on power user (as I would consider myself the former but not the later) this is still a very good read.

Why I Can't Trust You With The Term "Purity Culture" and It Has Come To My Attention That Some of You Have No Idea Where The Term Purity Culture Comes From - Two posts by Coyote on the same topic -- the misuse of the term "purity culture" by the internet at large to mea "you are saying xyz is a bad thing and I don't like that" when it really refers to a very spesific cycle of abuse. Both focus on very diffrent misused of the term, one a far bigger stretch than the other (being against AI is "purity culture" now, I guess?) and both are absoluetly worth a read.

Watched

Trans Music and The Desire to Exist - Video going over various trans musicians that make music about being trans, for tans people. All with the core idea of wanting to just exist and love yourself. Warning for flashing lights.

I stream nothing, and I am happy. - Algorithms suck. Shocking statement from local smoll website. Veronica here just goes over some issues with algorithms that many in this space are familiar with as well as how to start backing up your DVD/Blu-Ray collection digitally. Absolutely watch it for the latter point, its super helpful for that.

How Steam Became The Only Good Monopoly In Existence - Despite the title, this video is very critical of Valve. Almost like Monopolies are inherently bad. Talks about what choices Valve made with Steam that lets it be a good service, what traits Valve has that lets them make those choices where other tech companies fail to, and the shady shit Valve still does that lets the CEO have enough money to build a mega yacht. Anyways, whenever possible, buy games from itch.io or (even better) straight from the devs.

Why Do Arcade Games Boot Up Like This? - Explanation for how Arcade games boot up and how they are debugged. Very cool little video. Has flashing lights, but gives ample warning for flashing scenes.

What If you Can't Reject Convenience? - The concept of "convenience" is one I plan on making a post on someday, eventually, I swear, but this video does present a problem with how people often view privacy as an "all or nothing" affair when it really isn't. While completely removing privacy invading aspects of your digital life is better (for your privacy) there are middle grounds that exist if the cost is simply too high.

Listened

femtanyl Interview - The Backlight Podcast Ep. 37 - Interview with artist femtanyl. I don't have much to add to this, but it's good B) This is in "listened" but it is a YouTube video.