Dear community,

Special Fish needs your support now.

For the entire month of February, I'm asking the community to help keep Special Fish running. I run this site entirely on my own as a working artist, living off my work.

Special Fish depends on users like you for hosting, maintenance, and keeping the site running. Every user costs the site money. If you use Special Fish regularly or just don't want to see it go away, please consider supporting it. A yearly contribution of $40 is suggested (that comes out to $3.33 per month). Supporters pay for users who don't have the means to support the site.

~ Elliott

This message is temporary and will be removed at the end of February. Thank you for reading :)

kameelahr @kameelahr

4.23.2025 8:30 pm EST After three bedridden days with the worst ear infection, now I'm finally up, and I can't figure out what to catch up on next. [...] Just spent hours coding because somehow that made sense. 4.6.2025 8:40 pm EST Got the expected news, but it was still startling. 4.4.2025 12:07 pm EST So, I poked around on special fish, and this is a really special place. :-) It is quiet and gentle, with the right pace of interaction. I wanted to add images and realized I could not, so I brushed up on some ASCII art. Let's see how translating photographs into ASCII works. I haven't been able to program for a while, so I am excited to finally carve out some hours tonight to see if I can quickly build a bespoke cloud word processor. 4.4.2025 10:49 am EST I do not know why I am here. I think I am here because of excess - excess energy, excess thoughts...and maybe special fish was a sort of fun place to spill. Finding a home to spill I want to use this for random thoughts throughout the day. Back when I used Twitter, I just dropped random links or thoughts. Sometimes, I would text someone with no need for a response. I love sharing. It is my love language - how I love and enjoy being loved. When people notice my special interest and feed me fun bits, I feel very seen. And when I see you, you will likely suffer from/benefit from a deluge of links. An ASCII drawing of a text message I sent this morning. Today 7:52 AM /------------------------------------------\ |Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from| |the radio. | |https://tinyurl.com/yujhxrps \------------------------------------------/ /-----------------------\ |Thought you’d like this| \-----------------------/ /-----------\ |That’s dope| \-----------/ /------------------------------------------\ |You can unsubscribe from my links | |at any point. Once I learn someone’s | ________________|interests, I have a hard time not | | |collecting and sharing interesting things | | \------------------------------------------/ | | /------------------\ |I appreciate that | \------------------/ I collect my little learning trinkets, and I want to disperse them widely! Speaking of dispersal, I am thinking about what it means to have a centralized digital presence - a website, a social media profile. I was reflecting on all the little digital seeds I have planted and learned that they are certainly not growing in the same field, and something is charming about having to gather me (unsuccessfully) across many platforms, interfaces, and gestures. I didn't do this intentionally. When I exceed the affordances of one platform or interface, I attach another to form a little platypus of a digital presence. I had a studio visit with an artist, and we discussed how informal sharing has been supplanted by formal and monumentalized sharing. It then seems to make sharing difficult because you need a PR plan. No PR plans, just sharing a bunch of bits.
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currently listening...

  • Psychicemotus (Yusef Lateef, 1966)
  • When the Pawn... (Fiona Apple, 1999)