hi. this is the newsletter of beesmygod (bea). if you don't want to be signed up to this and forgot about it, you can scroll to the unsubscribe option at the bottom of the email; the process should be as easy as just confirming your email address. this newsletter does not gather any meaningful information from you except your email.

i'm reviving this for a few reasons:

1. it's an informal way to keep in touch in people without imposing on them; it's something you can opt in and out of as you please.

2. it's an easy way to draw direct attention to things i think are neat.

3. the internet is getting harder to navigate as a result of automation, which means it's time to adapt to these challenges. it looks like we're returning to the age of the newsletter, the RSS feed, and checking your bookmarks manually every day. i might need to start cross-posting effort posts from tumblr, the only social media site i post on, to my own website if i want to meaningfully contribute to a shrinking sphere of people who actually create real things online.

i would be very flattered if you considered allowing me into your inbox semi-regularly to shoot the shit about whatever. i am currently doing bad, but trying to cultivate something for people to laugh at and think about is at least something worth working toward. it makes me feel a little better.

thanks again for all your support.

-bea

the previous name and "branding" (ugh!) of the newsletter "shitty garbage" was way too similar to the far superior garbage day newsletter by ryan broderick. it was somehow a complete coincidence (i was just using the same name as my bad movie review .pdf and used lucy as a mascot) but way, way too close for comfort. so now we have a new little CMYK devil thing and a comics based pun.

An ashcan comic is a form of the American comic book originally created solely to establish trademarks on potential titles and not intended for sale [...] At the time, garbage cans were commonly called "ash cans" because they were used to hold ashes and soot from wood and coal heating systems.  The term was applied to these editions of comics because they had no value and were meant to be thrown away after being accepted by the Trademark Office.

apologies again to mr broderick my casual thievery.

i posted about this on tumblr, but 404 media is a journalist owned media group that reports on tech news. after 6 months of operation, they are profitable and they have been putting out banger after banger every day. they have a non-intrusive newsletter they ask you to sign up for in order to protect their work from AI scraping. they discuss their reasoning in greater detail in an article that more or less explains why the internet is becoming the way that it is.

the internet becoming flooded by automated shit is not really a consequence of AI (this has been a problem since e-mail spam was legally permitted on the web and fashioned into a massive industry), but a consequence of advertising based revenue. it's a system that explicitly rewards work without merit or integrity and the faster we move away from it the happier we will all be.

but it looks like things are going to have to pop first.

oh boy, its time for bea's medical history corner. look, i haven't been well. for a while. a long while. the shortest possible answer is still long, but i only discovered last year that i have been inadvertently harming myself for an indeterminate amount of years by:

1. routinely eating foods i did not know i was allergic to in an anaphylaxis-inducing way. probably since childhood. i don't think it should have taken me until adulthood to realize that my "seasonal allergies" were actually "strawberry and raw tomato allergies" but regardless the end result is that i have been cutting off oxygen to my brain for like 30 years straight. so, i stopped doing that recently. the vast majority of my physical problems stopped after that. it turns out you need oxygen to live.

2. for the past 2 years i've been on effexor, an anti-depressant to be used in conjunction with my wellbutrin. in december, the cons finally started to outweigh the pros, so i started working with my doctor to taper off of it. this process is fucking terrible. it is a notoriously hard drug to get off of, but holy shit. i'll spare you all the laundry list of complaints and just say i've been in some advanced form of pain and discomfort for 2 months and had a split lip for a year straight. i'm nearly done with the process, but it has not become any easier.

3. it still seems like i have some kind of auto-immune-ish thing happening. BUT at least that one is way more under control compared to last year. the symptoms have been much more manageable this winter and haven't required any doctor visits. its a mild inconvenience. okay, moderate inconvenience. my shoulder is fucked up AGAIN. but its just annoying and hurts a regular amount. whatever. its another thing i've had my whole life and will continue to have. i made it this far and i'm not dead.

no matter how i try to talk about this its kind of crybaby shit. but for a while my average "being alive" experience was staring at a wall trying to think of anything at all while struggling to breathe and hurting literally everywhere. it was really bad. and i wasn't sleeping bc of the effexor. anyway: i'm getting better now.

but my comics pace is still dogshit. mostly because now i have a bunch of open side projects to complete. please bear with me as i try to recoup my life from nearly killing myself 80000 times in a row.

science youtube channel "the thought emporium" tried really hard not to make a pipe bomb. click the image below for a very interesting video about a silly hot dog device.

that's enough for now. next time will have less navelgazing now that i've explained the reasoning behind this revival. well. bye.