Letters From Somnolescent

5/30 – Underground, Dig Holes, Plant Seeds, Grow Old

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You feel that? That sunshine on your shoulders and that crisp, clean air in your lungs? That’s spring in full bloom, my friend, and that means flowers! Flowers, gardening, growing season, chamomile–wait, what the fuck dug all these holes?

• Recaps

Incomplete Eclipses and Muffled Screams

borb

I’m an artist who uses DeviantArt so I’m gonna tell you guys why you really shouldn’t force your site’s user-base to be beta testers.

• Essays

Somnolescent Radio: Spring 2020

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With three months or so to update the ol’ playlists, it’s about time to bring you another edition of Somnolescent Radio. As the first one went, each Somnolian has chosen a song dear to them at the moment and written a bit about it. Have a listen.

• Cult Activity

Tools, Toys, and You and I

mariteaux

Been thinking a lot about simplicity, entropy, and how we’ve come to rely on computers in the past few decades. Here’s an essay about how technology should augment us in being people and nothing more.

• Essays

4/29 – Obsessive Little Moths

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You’d think after Site Month, the Somnolians would slow down, right? Not quite, we’re just getting started. More redesigns, blog posts, art! It all needs a recap!

• Recaps

Old Macs!

mon

I still remember drooling over compact macs like the Macintosh Classic or the SE in my early years on the internet. When I rediscovered the hard drive from my first computer a little while back, I found (along with a shitton of malware) a good bit of pictures and MacOS “simulators” and multiple copies of Mini vMac.

…Which reminds me – if me from two years ago saw my collections now, he’d probably be pretty excited for the future. I forget to appreciate my belongings sometimes.

As promised, here’s my first update in a series of updates on my sizeable collection of vintage and not-so-vintage Macintosh computers. Feels good to finally get this out.

• Happenings

A circus or a seaside pier, a sausage or a can of beer

caby

Rambles about my childhood, triggered by the worldwide pandemic.

• Happenings

4/5 – Sites! Sites!! SITES!!!

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Okay, so the March recap is technically a few days late, but that’s only because we’ve been busy. I mean it. If August is Pennyverse Month, March is Site Month, because damn near every site and subdomain on our network got a massive overhaul. I think it’s safe to say we’ve kicked the winter blues, the cabin fever, whatever you call it–and now we recap.

• Recaps

Life ‘n Weeb Shit

borb

Y’all ready for my dick in your ass? Just kidding its borb ready to kick gum and chew ass 0w<

• Happenings

mariversary 2.0: I Actually Paid for This

mariteaux

Last year, I wrote a semi-sappy, emotionalish retrospective of my time spent on Neocities and how it lead to me meeting Caby. I think I sounded more guilty than I actually felt. There’s a lot more that went into “orange fox bad” than you can just sum up as “angry me” or “dumb kids”. Frankly, it was kind of the perfect storm of insanity. We still giggle about it.

This year’s mariversary (two entire years since I made my site there!), I thought I’d do something more fun. Every so often, I’ll see someone hold up Neocities as an example of the spirit of the old internet kept alive. I’ve talked at length about how bullshit that is, no, we’re not getting into it again. What never gets brought up though is how utterly broken Neocities actually is. Neocities is best described as a second-week Ruby on Rails prototype, yet Kyle Drake was ballsy enough to get people to pay for it anyway. Including me.

And prime example of why it’s so fucked: despite me getting banned, all my Supporter’s sites are still active. All of them. I thought it’d be fun to go back through all the ones I can remember and explain why I made them. Time for memories~

• Happenings