Monthly Archives: May 2026

2 posts

The Big Purge of 2026

Essays Personal

Operation: De-Google-Fy!

So it’s come to this; the state of enshittification has become so entrenched that even Google can’t just do the job it was made to do without turning to an AI summary-bot to break a search into tiny nuggets of almost-info that feels designed to discourage deep dives or inspire curiosity. And worse, the last update made it so Chrome has eaten up all the space in my storage and is making my computer run very slowly.

I’m tired, y’all.

There’s AI in my search, my email, my cloud storage, my calendar… all places that I don’t want or need it to be, while using up massive amounts of water and electricity. So what’s your intrepid writer pal to do? Burn it all down!

…well, not exactly. But I can and will remove all traces of the Google platform from my computer and my life, even if it takes me a little while to research options and de-entrench myself.

Here’s the funny thing: I have been using Google for my email and storage and calendar for a loooong time. I’d thought about weaning myself from them for a while, but put it off because I thought it would be a pain to do.

Y’all. I was SO wrong.

After some research I decided on trying Zen Browser, which is a free and open source app which runs on Mozilla account but you can choose the search engine it uses, and I went with Duck Duck Go. You can easily import all your bookmarks, passwords, and other info saved in your Chrome browser, and there are multiple workspace options where you can break your most used tabs into separate folders. I imported both of my Google accounts and split up the various tabs I usu regularly with each of them into separate folders, easy peasy. The learning curve was tiny and my only complaint so far is that certain media websites are not usable with Zen, because of DRM restrictions. That’s not a deal-breaker, because with the ENORMOUS amount of room I have on my laptop now that I’ve removed Chrome, I can download the apps and run them directly.

Did I mention that now my laptop has PLENTY of storage and is running smoothly and faster than ever? Yeah, fuck Chrome.

Next step? New email!

I already have an “official” email that all my newsletters come from, but my day-to-day stuff comes from two different gmail accounts. Surely switching from those would be a pain?

Hahaha NO. It was SUPER easy, thanks to ProtonMail. Again, it was a one-click import that brought over all my contacts, emails, and labels with no issues at all, and now I’ve been using it for a day and love it already. Calendar, the same. Next up is switching my storage and exploring the other Proton offerings. You can use the free tier or if you want more perks you can pay, but there’s plenty of usability on the free tier. I am thrilled by this.

No AI in my tools!

So that’s it, that’s the story of purging my computer of AI bullshit and the giant energy/space suck that is Chrome. I can’t completely eliminate it just yet because of some shared folders/etc with groups I work with, but soon enough I’ll be free.

[ironically, WordPress just added AI tools, but so far I’ve been able to avoid them being any kind of issue. I don’t want to go back to hand-coding my website again, but if I have to, I will. AI might not be totally avoidable in the programs we use, but there are options and we can avoid using AI in programs we need to keep working with. I’m not interested in GenAI anything and I hope the bubble bursts soon so that we can get into actual advancements in our programs.

If you’ve switched to something new to avoid GenAI, feel free to comment! As for AI fans/people in a rush to cape for AI… don’t bother. I’ll remove anything that gets through my filters. Go sell your thneeds to someone else.

My notes for Fatphobia in SFF

Panel Notes

Hi friends! You’re probably reading this after attending the Fatphobia in SFF panel at Balticon 60. Or maybe you stumbled onto this post while doing research about the subject. I wanted to provide my notes from the event in a simple post for those who want more context, thinking material, or further reading. I’m just simply dropping this in for now and will fancy it up later. The most important part are the links!

Fatphobia in SFF 

SFF has a dreadful legacy of fatphobia. Fatness often is equated with villainy and sloth, or with a helplessness to be shed over the course of the story. If they’re not dying first, fat people are usually the butt of the joke. Who is writing these types of characters better, and more importantly, how can the genre world follow their lead?  

With Pallas A. Bane, Jen Finelli, MD, Christiane Knight, John Robison (Father John) moderator

Fatphobic character portrayals:

  • Dune – Frank Herbert. Baron Harkonnen, specifically designed to not only be “grossly” fat but to revel in it, a bit meant to disgust the reader
  • Thinner – Richard Bachman/Stephen King featuring a curse that causes a lawyer to drop pounds rapidly
  • Jabba the Hutt – pretty much the same kind of tropes as Harkonnen, using fatness/grossness to signal evil
  • Wall-E – fatness is used as a metaphor for sloth and overconsumption/consumerism and often fat characters’ weight is used as the butt of jokes [and I did like this film, but *despite* that] [oh yeah, and fat=disability also which is problematic at best]
  • Harry Potter, which has WAY more wrong with it than Dudley Dursley but we’re here to talk fat

Depends on how you feel about it:

  • Fat Thor, which was played for laughs but also felt to some folks like representation
  • The Adipose in Doctor Who, “Partners in Crime” 
  • Kingpin, called “The Fat Man” but is also incredibly strong
  • Ursula in The Little Mermaid – a character with agency and wit, iconic, but also monstrous, someone who stole Ariel’s voice for her own agenda 

Some positive portrayals of larger bodies:

  • River of Teeth – Sarah Gailey. Archie is a gloriously well written fat person. 
  • “Cloud Dweller” – E. Catherine Tobler
  • “Maggies” – Nisi Shawl
  • Dust Bowl Revival – Marianne Kirby – Henrietta Goodness is a fat hero that other fat folk can relate to
  • Six of Crows – Leigh Bardugo
  • T. Kingfisher, Terry Pratchett’s books
  • Brimstone & Roses by Mei Rothschild on WebToons – MC Bea is definitely flawed [I mean she summoned a demon to be her date to her ex’s wedding] but lovingly written and drawn
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender – Uncle Iroh

Some thoughts I only shared in part on the panel:

Humanizing people, instead of othering them, is the key to writing well balanced fat characters. Their fatness shouldn’t villainize them or be a characteristic that demonstrates their vileness. Nor should it be the most notable thing about them. If you wrote me as a character, how would you describe me? More importantly, how would I describe myself? Is my fatness important to the roles I play in my life? If it’s notable as more than a description to round me out [yes, I chose this wording on purpose] in the reader’s mind, why? What does my fatness as a character serve? These are all important thoughts to consider when writing a fat character. At the end of the day, in this world at least, my body size and shape are the least interesting things about me. In a science fiction or fantasy setting, that may differ but there had better be a good reason to dwell on it that doesn’t diminish me as a person.

Leaving out fat characters is also fatphobia. We are everywhere in daily life. We deserve to be on the page and the screen, but as fully-formed people, not a distillation of our body shape and the usual tropes that go along with fat characters.

 

Please investigate the essays and writing of fat activist and excellent writer Meg Elison, author of the Road to Nowhere series. Also, she and Marianne Kirby offer an on-demand master class on writing fat characters over at Writing The Other. 

Also worth checking out: the Fat Books Database, hosted on Google Drive
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10W6b3Dmeh6xCv4rQlScVDgXPFXQQisJIF6DaZBYooPw/htmlview


More Links:


Writing Fat Bodies w/ Marianne Kirby and Meg Elison – https://writingtheother.com/writing-fat-characters-2023/

A scathing critique on The Whale from Lindy West – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/10/lindy-west-on-the-whale

SFF’s Big Fat Problem by R.K. Duncan : https://www.tor.com/2022/10/25/sffs-big-fat-problem/

The Fat Body Problem by Meg Elison: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-fat-body-problem/

A Small List of Large Characters: Fat Representation in SFF by Jessi Cole Jackson: https://www.sfwa.org/2017/11/28/small-list-large-characters-fat-representation-sff/