Notices by Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 09:33:23 JST 
Chris Trottier
Everyone gives me hell for clinging to physical media.
Well, look who’s laughing now.
My Internet has been DEAD for an entire day because some vandal cut the fibre and my ISP is still out there trying to stitch it back together.
Meanwhile?
Blu-rays spinning. CDs humming. Cartridges clicking into place.
Everything works.
“But Chris, you can download Netflix and Spotify!”
Sure. Did you download your whole damn library? Hook it all up to the television and stereo? Stock the bunker for the day the wire gets cut?
Didn’t think so.
Streaming companies don’t want you sitting on a mountain of their stuff forever. They demand that the pipe be open.
Well, mine is closed.
And I’ve still got movies on shelves, music in cases, games in cartridges and books made with paper you can flip.
Enough to keep me occupied for months.
That’s why I keep this stuff.
One asshole with a pair of cutters shouldn’t get to turn off my culture. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Monday, 17-Aug-2026 13:25:31 JST
Chris Trottier
Sunday morning at Tim Hortons and I’m trying to mind my own business.
Coffee smell. Grey light through the window. Three women at the next table, all solidly middle-aged, talking loud enough that minding my own business becomes impossible.
They weren’t born yesterday. Fleece vest. Rings. Reading glasses. Phones facedown beside the coffee. Women who’ve already raised kids, buried pets, and survived men.
Then Fleece Vest says:
“I’m just saying, if you had to pick.”
Her friend looks up from her phone. “Pick what?”
“Lord of the Rings. Hottest one.”
My ears wake up.
“Legolas.”
Fleece recoils.
“Legolas?”
“Absolutely. Look at him.”
“Too pretty.”
“That’s the point.”
“He looks like a doll.”
“He looks like a very pretty doll with a bow.”
Now they’re both grinning.
Fleece shakes her head.
“Aragorn. The cloak. The sword. That’s a man.”
Phone isn’t moving an inch.
“Nope. Legolas.”
Jesus. It’s 9AM. We got our own Battle for Middle-Earth going on.
Fleece gives her another look.
“You can’t trust a man that pretty. My daughter dated a guy like that. Nightmare.”
Phone shrugs.
“Still Legolas.”
Fleece makes a face like she just bit into something bad.
Then they turn on Linda.
Linda has been stirring her coffee through all of this. Slow circles. Eyes down. Linda looks tired in a way sleep probably doesn’t fix.
“What about you, Linda?”
Nothing.
“Linda.”
“Mm?”
“Aragorn or Legolas?”
She stops stirring. Thinks. Shrugs.
“Gimli, I guess.”
Fleece Vest chokes. Phone drops her phone onto the table. I nearly lose my coffee.
“The dwarf?”
“Sure.”
“Linda, that’s sick.”
“He’s shaped like a fire hydrant!”
Linda doesn’t care.
“He’s funny.”
“Funny?”
“And loyal. He’d stick around.”
Fleece pauses.
“You’re picking Gimli because he’d stick around?”
Linda takes a sip.
“Nowadays? That counts for a lot.”
Now I’m looking into my cup because if I make eye contact with anybody I’m finished.
Phone leans toward Fleece.
“Something’s wrong with her.”
“Ever since the divorce.”
Linda takes a sip.
“It’s not the divorce.”
“It’s definitely the divorce.”
There’s a little silence.
Then Linda shrugs again.
“He’d be warm in winter. That’s all I’m saying.”
That kills me.
Fleece Vest stands up with her cup.
“I’m getting a refill. And I’m not sitting next to her anymore.”
Phone starts laughing.
Linda doesn’t.
She just keeps drinking, calm as hell, like the matter has been settled. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Friday, 14-Aug-2026 06:01:44 JST
Chris Trottier
How I think and how I talk don’t line up.
In person, I’m the nerd with the fire hose. Facts. Details. More details. One thing hooks into another and suddenly I’ve dumped the whole damn attic at your feet.
I wish I could stop doing it.
But autism. The machine runs how it runs.
Inside my head, though, none of this stuff is just stuff.
A record. A tea. An old machine. A bus ride. They’re little electric wires running backward through time. Touch one and something comes alive—a place, a person, an old version of me.
That’s what I’m always trying to explain.
Not the thing.
Why the thing has its teeth in me.
And somehow, when I open my mouth, out come the specifications. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 13:36:18 JST
Chris Trottier
Early Saturday morning.
The sun is up, the birds are screaming. Yes, screaming.
Seriously, I had a dream about sharing French toast with Jerry Garcia and he was screaming loudly in a panic—enough to wake me up, and I realized it was a sea gull above my window wailing and screaming its heart out. To hell with that bird.
And I had to SCRAPE MYSELF OUT OF BED like something they found stuck to the floor of a slaughterhouse.
Back to FOSSY.
Back to #Fedicon.
My carcass wanted sleep. My brain wanted darkness. But somewhere out there a bunch of beautiful internet freaks were already gathering, so I poured myself into some clothes and joined the living.
And so far at FOSSY?
Great.
I’ve met people from all over the world. Different countries. Different accents. Different projects. People building things, breaking things, rebuilding things, and arguing passionately about extremely specific pieces of technology that 99.999% of humanity will never know exist.
In other words, my people.
Some are perfectly respectable, some suspicious, some absolute freaks.
Freaks like me.
The good kind.
The kind who get obsessed with some strange little corner of the universe and start digging until their fingernails come off.
So here I am, early Saturday morning, running on fumes and whatever electrical impulses are still jumping between the wet wires in my skull.
Fedicon at #FOSSY.
The freaks have assembled.
And somehow I made it out of the crypt in time to join them. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 11:38:33 JST
Chris Trottier
Final night for #Fedicon (but not #FOSSY)
Speakers and panelists are meeting for one final meal at Big Way Hotpot.
Nobody here (except @julian) has yet had hotpot. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 10:18:16 JST
Chris Trottier
I’m so old, when someone just mentioned they’re an HP fan, I thought they were referring to Hewlett-Packard.
And I thought, “Who, in this day and age, loves Hewlett-Packard?”
Turns out “HP” means Harry Potter. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 09:55:54 JST
Chris Trottier
Hey, anyone remember Wildebeest?
That was Cloudflare’s Mastodon killer.
#Fedicon -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 04:40:33 JST
Chris Trottier
According to @dansup:
#Loops has a dead man’s switch. If an admin does not log in for a week, open registrations close.
This might seem like a small thing but it’s huge for trust and safety.
#Fedicon -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Aug-2026 03:33:29 JST
Chris Trottier
Just realized I need a new profile pic on #Loops.
Right now I look like some Depression-era rail-yard ghoul who sleeps under bridges, eats beans out of a tin can, and hops freight trains whenever the moon tells him to.
A real boxcar Romeo.
Which sounds like a hell of a good time compared to my actual life.
Unfortunately, I have hopped exactly zero trolleys.
The photograph is a lie. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 08:52:05 JST
Chris Trottier
Currently watching @evan. He has a talk about growing the #Fediverse.
This will be 10 ways to do this.
#Fedicon -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 08:51:08 JST
Chris Trottier
Because of @evan I discovered a great search engine for the #Fediverse.
Bookmarked, and I’m probably going to use it often.
https://discover.holos.social/
#Fedicon -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 08:49:47 JST
Chris Trottier
At #Fedicon, I’m hosting a panel between 5:30PM-6:15PM about “Building the #Fediverse”.
I don’t know how to build the Fediverse.
But I’m talking to experts who have opinions on how to do it.
-
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jul-2026 03:45:39 JST
Chris Trottier
In the 1890s, men feared women on bicycles.
It was thought that if women rode bicycles, it would lead to "hysterics"—which would result in them leaving their husbands. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jul-2026 01:34:01 JST
Chris Trottier
@dansup 🤔 -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jun-2026 03:08:24 JST
Chris Trottier
Best #WorldCup game so far!
And I can’t believe I’m saying this about a scoreless game.
Cabo Verde—an island African country with a population of 500,000—came into this match ranked 67th best #soccer country in the world by FIFA.
Spain, meanwhile, is ranked 2nd in the world by FIFA and are favourites to win the whole tournament.
So what happens?
Vozinha, a 40-year-old goalie playing in the 2nd tier of Portuguese pro soccer, puts on the performance of his life. It was a god-like performance. He stopped everything—all that Spain could dish out, he just smothered.
We have ourselves a legend!
RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/82aa7e12-e597-4ba4-896f-6f0f6f534c56 -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jun-2026 15:37:47 JST
Chris Trottier
Plantation Simulator was advertised as a game in which you could buy and abuse black slaves. This isn’t that notable. There’s lots of edgelord games out there made for and by terrible people.
What is notable is that, a few days after it was launched—allowing for playtime outside Steam’s refund window—the dev issued a patch that turned all the slaves white.
This upset a lot of awful people who bought the game with the expectation that they could enslave black people only to realize they could no longer do this. They were now stuck with white slaves. The whole thing was a rug pull.
As of May 24, the dev has since removed the game from Steam, claiming he’s said everything he wanted to say.
But before it was removed, this game had overwhelmingly negative reviews on Steam. But not because it was racist. No, it was because racists could no longer live out their fantasy.
https://kotaku.com/racist-plantation-game-trolls-valve-watches-2000698673 -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 08:59:54 JST
Chris Trottier
This is a RCA SelectaVision CED video disc player.
It’s selling for $15 at a thrift store—so I must buy it.
Why my excitement? Because this absolute unit plays the ill-fated CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) format.
In terms of tech, CED is mind-boggling: it’s a vinyl record for video.
Inside that slot goes a massive plastic caddy containing a 12-inch vinyl disc. When you push the caddy in and pull it out, the bare disc is left inside the machine. Unlike LaserDisc (which used lasers to read data optically), CED was an analog, mechanical system. It used a diamond stylus riding in microscopic grooves, akin to a standard phonograph record.
The story behind this machine is one of the greatest, most tragic in AV history—and directly led to the decline of RCA.
It took RCA 17 years to design CED. By 1981, they spent $200M—thats $732.7M after inflation—on R&D of this product.
Maybe it would have been a success if CED released in 1964, when they first started work on it. But by the time it came to market, it was competing against VHS, BetaMax, and LaserDisc.
And while CEDs were cheaper to manufacture in 1981 compared to all the other home video formats, it was the most prone to failure. While it looked better than VHS under ideal situations, the reality was usually less than ideal. Just a little bit of dust caused the video to skip, loop, or violently glitch.
The death knell for CED was the drastic fall in price of Beta and VHS. Their superior quality, combined with the ability to record, proved devastating for RCA.
All CED players were pulled from the market by 1984, three years after their introduction. RCA would soon no longer be a major tech company. This SelectaVision is a remnant of that history. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jun-2026 13:45:53 JST
Chris Trottier
Look what I found for $2 at a thrift store!
No one cares about classical vinyl, especially old vinyl—never mind something as obscure as this.
But it features both New York Pro Musica Antiqua and W.H Auden, and I’m such a sucker for this kind of antiquarian weirdness.
I suspect whoever bought this previously acquired it simply as a status symbol because the vinyl is unplayed. But I’m giving it a solid listen for the next week. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jun-2026 13:45:52 JST
Chris Trottier
@kotaro By the way, your critique of Western music is bang on because I think many people would agree that the idea of harmonic equivalence has held “Western” music back.
I have a collection of old enka on vinyl. Stuff from the 1940s-70s. And something that always impresses me about it is how singers allow themselves to hit notes that a lot of Western singers just wouldn’t because we haven’t trained our ears to do that. -
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jun-2026 13:45:52 JST
Chris Trottier
@kotaro You would be correct, and I use the term “classical” music quite loosely, because technically, it’s not classical.
That said, I think “Western” is a confusing term from an ethnographic standpoint but I don’t deny it touches upon a specific tradition everyone just assumes.
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