My heart’s not on fire, but there’s smoke in my eyes

The past 24 hours should have been like that refreshing plunge into something cold after being in a hot tub or a sauna. Instead, every window is tightly closed because we’re still being blanketed with smoke and our air quality alert is probably going to be extended for another day. I’m hoping maybe it will clear up tomorrow, but this particular cloud ambled as slowly as possible across North Dakota before it showed up here, and I don’t have much hope that it won’t take its sweet time putting Minnesota in its rearview mirror.

Talking of other things that are being left behind, if anyone (I don’t know who is reading this blog besides my wife) would like to see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Bluesky I have another invite code burning a hole in my pocket. I think for the time being, Bluesky invites might be all that shows up on my Twitter feed, although, it feels like you have to talk about it in code or risk Twitter banishing your post to obscurity.

I’m not sure what we’re calling that place these days. I’ve seen it referenced as the following:

• Birdsite (sometimes un-named birdsite?)
• Hellsite
• Xitter
• Twixxer

Is anyone actually calling it X without mentally (or literally) rolling their eyes?

I did take off all of the blinders (read: Firefox extensions) I had employed to make the site bearable, which means now the stupid logo appears everywhere, and I am offered the useless For You page. I think this was sort of me putting some more nails in the coffin, because it’s time to stop closing the curtains to the ugly truth that’s been lurking outside for a while (I really need to stop mixing my metaphors…). Between the anti-trans and white supremacist rhetoric that’s run rampant there, Twitter is just one more place that’s not for me. Of course, there’s also a chance that maybe just the entire internet in general is not going to be for me if KOSA becomes an actual thing. It’s wild, the first place I actually started feeling comfortable enough to be myself and attempt to spread my wings could end up off limits, or at the very least severely restricted, and then what?

I suppose there’s still the option to just go outside and touch grass. Of course, the smoke needs to clear up before I feel comfortable doing that… and we’re right back where we started.