Up and Down and Up-via-down
Sep. 24th, 2023 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThings have been up and down this weekend. As it started, my RSS reader provided a link to Bluesky invitation codes. I’ve seen people on Twitter offering them, and having stopped putting links there to my posts here I’ve at least been conscious of that “escape route.” However, I’d been inclined to wonder just where there, if anywhere, I might have the presence to convert into “I’d like to ask for a code.” Of course, this new account might amount to “a few more years in one more place.” As far back as the days of Usenet, I have kept wondering about joining message boards and online services as their best days are passing.
In my first moments on Bluesky, though, I saw reports the Right Stuf online anime store is fading into history just as the “Funimation” brand name disappeared from Blu-Rays in favour of Crunchyroll (on what few discs are getting made in these past months, anyway). The immediate negative reactions about “a big company owning all the pieces of anime distribution over here” were depressing for being understandable. I am sort of stuck with the thoughts that “‘competition’ is said to be good, and yet sometimes ‘victory’ results” and “is another problem that Right Stuf had already been predominant?” Maybe my own thoughts about “obscurity equals worth” had been intermittent; maybe I still have a dangerous awareness of the underhanded escape routes a few were fulminating about.
While trying to grapple those thoughts into some sort of shape, I at least noticed an update a capsule loaded with asteroid pebbles had returned to Earth (with the probe that had collected those samples having changed its course again so it wouldn’t run into Earth as well). Remembering a previous sample-return mission where the parachute hadn’t opened, I was glad to see things appear to have worked this time. That’s at least coming up through coming down.
In my first moments on Bluesky, though, I saw reports the Right Stuf online anime store is fading into history just as the “Funimation” brand name disappeared from Blu-Rays in favour of Crunchyroll (on what few discs are getting made in these past months, anyway). The immediate negative reactions about “a big company owning all the pieces of anime distribution over here” were depressing for being understandable. I am sort of stuck with the thoughts that “‘competition’ is said to be good, and yet sometimes ‘victory’ results” and “is another problem that Right Stuf had already been predominant?” Maybe my own thoughts about “obscurity equals worth” had been intermittent; maybe I still have a dangerous awareness of the underhanded escape routes a few were fulminating about.
While trying to grapple those thoughts into some sort of shape, I at least noticed an update a capsule loaded with asteroid pebbles had returned to Earth (with the probe that had collected those samples having changed its course again so it wouldn’t run into Earth as well). Remembering a previous sample-return mission where the parachute hadn’t opened, I was glad to see things appear to have worked this time. That’s at least coming up through coming down.