Greetings and salutations during this narrow window of clean air. The recent weeks of wildfire/smoke season have been wreaking havoc on my lungs, so the inhaler is back out en force and the humidifier is running at a low volume 24/7.

Sometimes even I am impressed by the myriad of ways my body finds to throw a hissy fit when something in its environment is ever so slightly askew. Such a drama queen.

My past week wasn’t terribly productive in any single realm, but a little bit here and there adds up. Mostly I tried to keep my head down and avoid getting swept up in any chaotic eclipse energy (did it work? eh). I know we’re still in the middle of summer but I started autumn-ifying my space recently. Just doing some mental health nesting and trying to make things clean and cozy; maybe if I can get that done by the time the true autumn weather hits, I’ll have the time and energy to hit the ground running for a solid Q4? Idk man I’m figuring this shit out as I go, every month of every year. I do know, however, that I’m very, very much looking forward to the later months of the year, this year.

Although I say that knowing full well that my building is going through a big tenant transition, and by the fall I will have not one but two new neighbors. So, no idea what to expect there. Over the past two weeks contractors have been working to renovate the vacant apartment below me; I don’t entirely understand what they’re doing down there but it literally sounds like they’re just… sanding…? Sanding every damn surface. The floors? Yes. The door frames? Why not. The walls? I dunno probably! What is there in the bathroom to sand? That’s between them and God, I suppose. I just want the damned noise to stop.

Yet it’s been several months and they have hardly touched the empty apartment directly next to me, where the guy died and spent a month sealed in his earthly tomb before anyone checked on him. Is there a legally mandated waiting period before renting out an apartment someone died in? You’d think they’d want to flip that thing asap so surely there’s a reason nobody is working on the unit. Maybe it’s haunted. I do wonder if they’ll tell the next tenant what happened. Should I?

But then… given my own experience with delayed maintenance in my unit that I’m actively living in, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and try not to jinx anything. 😬 Big mood these days.

☑️ Done and Done - Movie theater and bar hangs. So much Burger Week. A Star Trek-themed birthday party. Started that big file organization project. Shot some content. Rearranged some lighting. Spent a few days pet sitting for a friend.

📋 Coming up - Checking out a street fair today. Plans for a couple of movies. Dinner (or just drinks?) with friends. Maintenance visit to fix my ever-clicking ceiling fan. More time moving files back and forth on the computer, keeping myself sat via bad movies on the second monitor. Much paperwork to prepare for an upcoming medical appointment.

Right at the end of July, 404 Media published an article about some ASMR creators being suddenly banned from YouTube. Basically YouTube decided that certain creators were using the site in a way that goes against their policy on “sexually gratifying content”… which was confusing and disheartening for people who have kept their channels very clean. Even the creators who do run a page elsewhere for spicier content were surprised by the sudden channel closure, citing that they have been extra cautious about keeping the two content styles separate.

It’s yet another example of the way even censorship comes for everyone, in the end. People tend to be understanding when a spicy creator or literal pornography gets censored, filtered, or outright banned. Because obviously! That’s what censorship is for! Nevermind that what counts as “pornography” these days is an ever-shrinking circle of themes, words, and visual depictions.

The censorship machine is always hungry, and eventually, it’ll come for you to.

For example, this past week I, like those ASMR creators interviewed by 404, received an email that my YouTube channel had been permanently closed. The communications claim “severe or repeated violations of our sex and nudity policy.” But unlike the ASMR creators, I haven’t posted any content to YouTube in… oh I don’t know, at least 10 years? I wasn’t actively using my Channel to publish any form of content, let along stuff that contained or promoted sex or nudity. Anything that was posted to my account was so old I barely remember how it might have violated even modern policies; was it the group call videos of the comic book I hosted? The pet videos? Since I received no warning that my channel was in violation, and because now the entire account is locked down, I have no clue why my channel is closed now.

Oh, yeah, because it’s not just that they “closed my Channel”… my entire YouTube account is locked down to a blank screen. And that’s the tricky part that isn’t mentioned in that 404 Media article is the larger ramifications of a channel closure: as long as I’m logged in to my Google account, I’m locked out of the entire platform.

I’ve had my Google account for over twenty years, and like most folks I connected it to my YouTube when that became a thing. So my account had 20 years of watch history, upvotes, comments, subscriptions, playlists, even movie rental history. Now, the only way I can watch a video on YouTube is to open the link in a private browsing window, or just hope that the link preview embed is large enough to see the info. I suppose that, since the Google search engine serves up entire videos in the search results, that’s also an option? Or I can log in to another Google account not directly associated with my work, and hope that they aren’t monitoring their users so deeply that they somehow connect one to the other.

If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if sex work was the entire reason I and other, more active creators are having our channels and our whole accounts shut down. Because my username on YouTube was the same as on OnlyFans and Fansly and, well, literally everywhere else on the Internet. The argument could pedantically be made that by using the same username as my adult work, and by having videos available on the YouTube platform, that I am attempting to covertly promote myself as a spicy content creator. I mean, I’m not, I’m just trying to exist on the Internet. But the powers that be and the systems they’ve made sure are doing their best to make that impossible these days. 👎

If you’re on Bluesky, I have a couple nested threads about this, including screenshots in the main posts and in the comments. Feel free to chime in or just like, share my experience as a cautionary tale I guess.

🎬 Movie Watching - I Want Your Sex (2026). Fun and very light-hearted, but with some good deep drops into weighty topics. Haven’t seen Doomed Generation but want to. Regret to inform you I also watched Water Park Sharks, which I can’t recommend, but if you also make bad choices at least watch through the credits for all the David Chokichi jokes.

📺 TV Watching - Ride or Die. Old Hallmark/NBC production of Merlin with Sam Niell and a whole mess of other people you didn’t know were all in a thing together.

📘 Reading - I finally—after checking out the ebook from the library three separate times—finished Sarah J. Mass’s Crescent City Book 1: House of Blood and Earth. The big battle at the end was impressive in both scale and intensity; I immediately moved on to book 2.

🍹 Drinking - I have now had not one but two boozy slushees this summer. My favourite summertime drink! I’ve always enjoyed a blended margarita but I don’t understand why that’s the only one you can get year-round. Gotta take advantage of the frozen alcohol season while I can.

👕 Wearing - My sunburn has healed enough that I can wear tank tops. It’s still miserably warm out, so that’s a win. But I’m still thinking about getting some self-tanner to ahem smooth out the very square tan line on my chest.

Slowly but surely, things are getting back on track. The weird eclipse this past week didn’t do much to make the energy Out There any less crazy than it’s already been. Buuut there’s a month left of “summer” (jk it’ll be hot well into October, it’s just that we’ve been programmed to think summer ends when the kids go back to school) so you still have time to go enjoy at least one summer activity with your friends. Touch some grass OR a fresh source of water. Go on; I’ll wait.

A couple folks wrote recently to let me know that they weren’t aware sunscreen can expire (re: my recent allergic reaction to sunscreen from—oops—2018). So if you haven’t checked the date on your SPF, do so now, and maybe swing by the corner pharmacy before engaging in aforementioned summertime. See you next week (unless you’re on YouTube, ah well).

xox,