# Winter Nights 2024 - Oaths and Deleting My Mastodon Account

2024-10-15 - [53] 7:29

Starting this next nightfall is the start of Winter Nights, which lasts 3 nights. It is a time for making oaths and resolutions, a time to respect those who came and left before us, a time to celebrate the start of a new year. Winter is coming. May we hold fast as the cold and wild hunt approach. May we celebrate another year finishing. May appreciate the experience and wisdom gained, along with lessons learned.

Last Winter Nights, I made a few oaths related to determining time from first principles. The post describing my oaths is linked below.

Winter Nights New Year Oath - Determining Time From First Principles

I am also going to be deleting my Mastodon account before I celebrate Winter Nights. As I write this, it's about 19-ish hours before I delete my account. While I will mention my oaths in a bit, I want to mention my reasoning for deleting my Mastodon account first.

## No More Mastodon

On election day 2022 in the US, November 8th, I deleted my Twitter account. The reason for this is because of how much of a political cesspool it became. Many opinions ended up calling for violence towards people the poster disagreed with and many of those posts ended up getting a LOT of engagement. While I don't want to sound like I'm equating "both sides", I will say that it was the extreme rhetoric of "both sides" that kept bubbling to the top for me. My timeline used to be folks I was following, then eventually it became what the algorithm pushed folks to push the algorithm to push to me. The algorithm and the tiny minority of folks with megaphones seemed to push those folks to be the worst versions of themselves for clicks, views, likes, retweets, and quote tweets. Much of the vile energy of Twitter started pushing towards the "right" side of the US political landscape, which seems to have continued to this day, but I was seeing vile calls to violence and dehuminizing from the incredibly tiny minority of folks with megaphones throughout the political landscape.

Mastodon has gotten bad... it became an echo chamber creator just like other social media, just like facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok... Before someone bugs me about it, yes, I know Mastodon is less of a "platform" as it is a federated "program", but at least with the instances that haven't been defederated by the big instances, it's become a left wing echo chamber. I don't mean that in a "leftist content is there, so it's bad because I don't like it" sort of way. I mean it in a "Some left leaning folks with the megaphones are getting very high off of getting clicks, likes, and reposts, and starting/fanning flames seems to be a cheap way to get that engagement" sort of way. A popular poster would create some strawman post so they could knock down the strawman and get a lot of likes and reposts. Fair enough, that's just what social media tends to trend towards. The big issue for me happened on July 13th. I started seeing a lot of posts either from or boosted from folks I was following calling for actual death and violence. I saw people happy that death happened and disappointment from those same people that the death they wanted to happen didn't happen. I saw the spirit of so many people who would consider themselves generally good people turn disgusting. I was and still am incredibly disappointed in those people... I blocked a lot of people within 24 hours of that... I blocked a lot of people I was following and people who were following me.

My original plan was to delete my Mastodon account on November 5th, this election day, but with Winter Nights happening, which is my new year, I figured I would start this new year off without Mastodon. That will also lower my amount of accounts I need to store passwords and 2 factor authentication data for!

There is another account that has an incredibly beardless grayscale SVG image of me in a suit jacket and dress shirt on mastodon.social. I haven't had access to that account since I started it in 2017, as a weird bug happened back when I started it that set up 2 factor authentication for me even though I didn't set up 2 factor authentication. My @vi@mastodon.social account also had that issue for some reason, but I was eventually able to get Eugen to reset my 2 factor settings. I will not try to get access to the other account, as I abandoned all hope of getting that account back in 2017. Funny enough to me, the only post I did on that other account was a reply to someone that was brainfuck code. Yupp, that definitely sounds like me, heh.

## Oaths

This lunar year I want to focus on things that I should have focused on for quite a while now, along with 1 thing related to determining time.

- Find and listen to at least 6 barely listened to albums from start to finish in the order intended by the artist without skipping through any songs (album song order)
- Actually read through all of "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" instead of constantly starting over and stopping at chapter 3 or 4
- Crochet a Winter hat by Yule (3 full moons after Winter Nights)
- Heavily clean my living quarters by Sigrblot (6 full moons after Winter Nights), to the point where I'm not ashamed of people entering those living quarters
- Build a functioning sundial from scratch, no matter what material, and get an accurate time reading, accounting for the Equation of Time and Longitude

Below is a bit more context and reasoning for these particular oaths.

### Album Listening

It's frequently wonderful to listen to an album in its entirety for the first time. Sure, some albums are a miss for me, but I don't know unless I listen to the whole thing. When I was younger and listened to cassettes and eventually CDs, I'd grab an album because the cover art looked cool and would listen to the whole thing, usually on the car ride home from the city where we'd pick up the album. There was something magical about having little to no light while having my eyes closed and listen to an entire album from start to finish in the order the artist intended.

Very recently, I listened to the album "Overturned" by WATERSTRIDER (linked below). I found the album from a particular trail of relations... Jacob Collier released a video on YouTube (I know I wrote a post talking about how I'm going to stop using YouTube so much... I searched out Jacob Collier though, not that that's a good excuse) that featured AURORA, which ended with the chorus of AURORA's "The Seed". After listening to that video, I searched "AURORA The Seed cover" and found "Waterstrider - Wanderings - The Seed (Aurora Cover)" and was enchanted by their voice. Eventually I figured out that they did a few albums and I decided to listen to their most recent album, "Overturned". After turning off my lights and my monitors along with shutting my eyes, I let the music play in order and didn't open my eyes or turn on any lights until the album was done. I am incredibly happy I did that. This album was beautiful.

Overturned | WATERSTRIDER (Bandcamp) [HTTPS]

It's important to me that I experience this more, so I'm making an oath to do this at least 6 times this lunar year. Not every album is likely to be to my taste, but that's alright. With any luck, I'll find some wonderful needles in the haystack.

### GEB

This book... I keep putting off reading this book and I need to just get through it already! So many people have mentioned that it changed how they view things. Folks I know read through the entirety of Godel Escher Bach in middle school or high school, so I know I can get through it. This oath is likely going to be the most difficult for me, as I keep stopping at about chapter 3 or 4 each time I start.

I might appreciate some poking and prodding from folks over email or misfin asking me about my progress in finishing GEB... The book is thick and considering I haven't finished the 290 page book I have been working on finishing for a year now, I might need some help to guilt/motivate me...

### Crocheting

This last year, I crocheted a Skjoldehamn hood that I have been using for ritual ever since. The goal was to finish it before last Yule, which I succeeded in. I wanted to make a hat, mittens, and a scarf to go with it, but this last Winter has been incredibly warm and dry here in Minnesota, so I didn't need the hat, mittens, and scarf. While I can't promise mittens and a scarf, I make an oath to crochet a Winter hat.

### Cleaning My Living Quarters

I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but I let my office room and my bedroom become a total mess since 2017. It looks like a tornado went through them... I have been spending time cleaning both rooms for the last few weeks and will be making sure I continue that. Things like work and projects just kept getting in the way and I just let things pile up so I can work on other things, especially because I preferred doing work related things instead. This needs to be worked on and will likely be good for my mental and spiritual health.

### Sundial

This last lunar year has been quite an adventure in determining time. So much of my waking moments has been dedicated to tracking and understanding the movement of the Sun, Moon, and Stars from my immediate location, no matter where I might be. Even in other cities, I have been able to determine time and my location from the celestial bodies, even when indoors and only being able to look out a single window. I have the knowledge required to build a sundial from first principles and the knowledge to build a sundial based on other designs. Instead of buying a sundial, I can build one that is tuned to my location exactly. I make no promise on the materials used or the structural integrity of the sundial. It might end up being made of cardboard, pen marks, and duck tape. That is fine if it is, but I make an oath to create a sundial that is accurate in time to a high level of accuracy, accounting for the equation of time. It's honestly a bit surprising to me that I haven't done that already this last lunar year.

## Ending Thoughts

I know some folks will be sad that I'm leaving Mastodon. Sorry about that, but I think things will be better for me if I leave. A new year is quickly approaching and I am looking forward to the refresh that brings. I also look forward to cooking these next few days, with Supper in a Pumpkin later today, Pumpkin Bread tomorrow, and Pumpkin Soup the next day. 3 pumpkin recipes for 3 nights of Winter Nights! I'll grill before I go to bed tonight, taking advantage of the last moments of the lunar year!

Be good to each other and have a wonderful year. Make your own blessings, fate, and fortunes. Step into this new year with renewed energy to make this world better, even if that only means making yourself better little bits at a time. Afford yourself some love, maybe even some appreciation.

## Contact/Reply

If you would like to reply to this post, feel free to send me an email.

Email: vi@vigrey.com [Email]
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