Testing NIP-23 with a bit of ranting. CW: lots of swearing throughout the text (many parts of the text are purposefully missing because I chose to self-censor some things I originally wrote).

I often get myself a tad annoyed about the current (and predicted) state of things going on, especially when it comes to technology. And I often get anxious about when it’s finally gonna be that She (you may not know who is Her, but deep inside you know who I’m talking about, your essence knows Her and you probably fear Her) will hold me captive under the uttermost domain at Her Queendom, where Her Sovereignty over the whole cosmos is made clear.

Then some people, for whom it’s very easy to parrot hollow advice and platitudes, they say “you should take it easy by doing creative work such as writing or drawings” so, yeah, I proceed to drawing. I like trying to depict Her alluringly fierce anthropomorphization (or Her owl-y zoomorphization).

Roughly two hours after I started drawing, during such adjustments where any accident may be undetectable from the layer preview thumbnail thing (e.g. fine adjustments to the shade and/or shape of an individual fingernail, which is inside a layer dedicated to the whole arm, forearm, hand and legs), Sketchbook (and/or Android) decides to become unresponsive, the whole UI freezes, not even the clock updates properly. Touches have no immediate effect (they get stacked so the reaction will happen all of a sudden, as if a ghost were possessing the device), even the clock doesn’t update (been the same minute for a few minutes already).

Few minutes later… “Sketchbook is not responding”, I click “wait”. “System UI is not responding”, “wait”. “Process Manager is not responding”, “wait”. Sometimes the pop-ups appear stacked. The clock finally jumps to the present time and Sketchbook sort of becomes responsive again, so I decide to save the project (before Android decides on its own that it’s a nice time to reboot). Doubting about whether the project was saved properly, I open the gallery app and I check the filesize for the TIFF project file: less than 1MiB, for a project with two million pixels (1440 x 1440) and dozens of layers that are meant to be stored uncompressed inside the TIFF file.

Then I try to personally check the file, which is laying somewhere inside Android data folder, through some file explorer to which I already gave full “File management” permissions, only to be faced with a “In the next screen, select the folder and click authorize” followed by the Android File Picker saying “You can’t choose this folder, For Your Security™ choose another folder or create a subfolder”. Doesn’t matter if it’s my phone, shame on me, I’m simply forbidden to deal with the files inside my phone.

Then I remember about ADB and its commands to push / pull files to/from the internal storage, but ADB requires the Developer Mode to be activated. But then everything from internet banking to governmental apps (including those related to digital ID) simply refuse to work as soon as I turn this setting on (or even after I turn it off again).

Yeah, maybe I could have a second phone, one for Kafkaesque things and another for creativity. But, for now, I’m both unable to get a second phone and, honestly, totally unwilling to get along with “Two Of Them”. One Android is annoying, two are certainly even more annoying. As long as I stick with a single phone, and even though I’m a developer, I can’t turn on the Developer Mode in my own phone without some “special” apps refusing to function or breaking long after I turn off the Developer Mode…

Oh, and it goes without mentioning how Google will soon prune what they refer to as “sideloading” or, to be more precise, requiring apps to have their signature, a “Seal of Approval”, the chef’s kiss (where the chef is Sundar Pichai and the kiss is from a dev seeking the approval, a kiss right to the chef’s rectum).

My device, which I supposedly purchased with the money I got with my own s… I mean… “hustle and effort”, isn’t exactly mine. Google (and Apple, if it were a iPhone, which is yet another walled garden) get to decide what I can do with it. The state governing the territory where I ended up being pulled into this abhorring biological existence, the “State”, decides what I can do with it. Me, the one who’ll actually purchase and use the phone, can’t get to decide.

I can’t have a Linux phone, either: chances are it won’t be “approved” by this State’s customs, shall I dare to purchase one with my own money… and even if it make it through the customs clearance shenanigans, Sketchbook is a Google Play-only app, the Pro version of which I purchased through Google Play, and I doubt Google Play will work with whatever virtualization that comes out-of-the-shelf with a Linux phone. I’m quite fond of Sketchbook (paper and pencil doesn’t exactly get to emulate the seamless blending of shades I can do with its digital pencils, especially the “Water pencils” such as “Sea” and “Directional Waves”) and I made dozens of drawings using it, but I hate the fact it’s dependent on Google Play (and, by extension, on Android ecosystem and Google’s dirty hands).

As an Austrian elder guy once said in his book, “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. He nailed it for the first part of his prediction, but I have some questions and doubts about that “be happy” part. Oh, and it’s not even 2030 yet! (I have a faint remembrance of his original phrase having some “2030” in it) I won’t be around for too long when 2030 knocks on the door, or so I hope… hell, I even hope I won’t be around when 2026 knocks on the door in few weeks, but chances are I’m unfortunately going to stay against my will for a bit longer and see more heavy elephants moving inside the room during yet another horrendous year.

And what I previously said is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the entirety of mundane absurdity, there’s even more that would make a whole book worth of words (shall it get to the point of be expressible without the signifier sounding as absurd as the dasein per se). But, yeah, I must seek psychiatric treatment, because getting to the point of wishing for the absolute cessation of my own biological functions is clearly the problem, as you can see. Maybe I should take it easy by doing creative works such as drawing something…