May 2026 – Dickens of a Blog

Got to love it when they make it easy: Reddit’s App Push

On 2026-05-15

Over the past month or so, Reddit has been “trying out” a push for mobile users to pick up the app:

And like…sure. Fine. Whatever. You have to love it when they make it easy to leave.

It’s helpful for Reddit to be so accommodating. Since I got that alert a couple of weeks ago, it has been very easy to not spend time just chunking through bot-driven doomscrolling where most of the good content is just reposts from years ago. The amount of books and long-form media I’ve been able to consume with the freed up time is not inconsequential.

There’s a longer rant, here, but I’ll just give a short taste.

It is absolutely criminal that “new media” has actively colluded into a universal state where websites, apps, and other services assume that the wholesale relinquishing of our personal data is a ready expectation for which we should thank them. Even apps/sites/services for which we pay money, sometimes a lot of money. Doesn’t matter. “Add more friends to make it more fun!” “Make sure your location tracking is on and we’ll give you five free gems!”

All the behavioral scientists and marketers pushing this should be outright ashamed.

AND, it should be illegal for those profiting off this new cold war to not have to give at least 80% of all user-stolen revenue back to the users. Either its worth something or it isn’t. “If you are not paying for it, you are not the customer,” bullshit has forgiven grave sins against privacy and helped pave the backbone of ecological collapse and city-sized datacenters paid for with our tax money.

Who gives a shit about Reddit’s claims that this is for the user experience? Of course it isn’t. At least not outside of addiction driven tribal-brain behavior and bright lights and stupid meme videos. The last time Reddit had a good user experience was back when it was a terrible website full of terrible people around whom you shouldn’t be. At least then it felt like a reflection of its actual target audience.

Hell, I’m not even blocking ads on the site so it’s not even about recouping lost ad revenue, at least not the direct ad revenue.

It’s so they can get more data from our phones and sell more information about their user. Because the entire economy is being entangled into datamining and AI training and selling user data to data brokerages who then sell it to dataminers, AI trainers, and law enforcement.

Up my butt, Reddit. Up. my. butt.

Embarking on a mild (semi-)elimination era…

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-05-14

In Food, Health

Doesn’t really have anything to do with the post but Unsplash has been recommending me these abstract-ish green renders of vaguely scientific shape and I liked it. It’s a render from TSD Studio via Unsplash+.

Around two weeks ago (?), roughly corresponding to a period where I was having a lot of difficulty moving due to severe pains in my right leg, I started getting moderately severe gastrointestinal issues. I won’t go into all the nitty-gritty but sharp cramps, heartburn, constipation, and such severe bloating that it looked I had regained around 20kg were becoming something like daily symptoms. Oddly, and this might be useful later if this turns out to be a more serious issue, the bloating seems more prominent on the left-hand side.

Since my 2022 accident, it is not uncommon for there to be differences between my right- and left-hand sides of my body. It is clear that I walk, and perhaps even sit and sleep, with more stress on one side than the other. This is probably a big part of why my right leg has been giving me so much trouble this past six-months.

However, the sharp cramps and pains have gone on long enough that I have been trying to tweak a few things to test and with some gentle amounts of Miralax and a few other things was able to temper some symptoms, though last night they returned back with a vengeance. I felt simultaneously like I was hungry (an impossibility) and was also so full I was injuring myself (not necessarily an impossibility, but since I had eaten only a single serving of pasta with a correct amount of sauce and half-an-avocado, not very likely).

Last night I figured it might be best to make a cluster of changes to see if any of those help and if it does, then perhaps walk back one at a time until I had an idea of what might be going wrong. Note: the feelings are not really like when I have dairy exposure. That has its own flair of horribleness. I do not suspect an allergic reaction. It is more than I feel like something is triggering, especially late afternoon and early night, very severe inflammation that is strong enough it is interfering with bodily functions.

The changes are…

Smaller portions per meal with more meals, replicating my Wegovy diet [the symptoms are not unlike what would happen if I over indulged while on Wegovy].
- Pre-cutting the food.
- Making sure I chew slower.
No added sugar, though *some* sweets are ok (none sour, though).
Very little added salt, but none if the item already has “plenty” of salt.
Reduction of stuff with added-acidity.
- Including knocking out a bottled green tea I’ve been drinking). It has artificial sweeteners so I’ll add “no added artificial sweeteners.”
Stop taking a small aspirin I have been taking in the morning to counteract what I will call, very scientifically and medically accurately, “my thick-ass blood.”
Trying to keep my hydration more balanced and room temperature.

The idea is to give this around a week or so. If the symptoms persist, I am going to try removing other stuff but unfortunately the other stuff tends to be outright staples. That’s getting more into food allergy territory and so I will likely try and consult someone.

Also, I am keeping an eye on the left/right divide. If someone continues to bloat more than others…yeah, likely going to see a professional. Or, you know, ask ChatGPT. Whichever comes first.

A nice trip down memory lane, Google says…

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-05-14

In Humor

I’ve been using Google Photos for a LONG time now, probably too long, because it has all the ammo in the world to incriminate me. Which it does on a regular basis through its various “take a look at these wondrous photos of yesteryear, kind sir!”

And yesterday’s “3 Years Ago” was headlined by this absolute beauty:

First off, how dare you?

Second, just in case there is some confusion, this is from some Swedish movie, likely horror. “The End.” Pronounced “sloot” (or, for the Dutchies, “sloet”).

My all time favorite of this comes from the last moments of The Phantom Carriage. While it wouldn’t have been my first time experiencing it, it was probably the first time where my brain semi-broke while it happened.

Oeps! De afvoer is ontploft!

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-05-06

In Daily Life, Home Care

This past weekend, a pretty notable stormfront moved through and not only dropped a good amount of rain, but also did weird stuff to the pressure.

Somewhere in there, plus an undiscovered bit of blockage in our outgoing pipes (presumably), the extra water + “wax-sealed bottle” effect + pressure ups-and-downs resulted in several liters of rancid water burping back into our garage.

To quote my description shared with a friend at the time:

I could tell you what it smelled like, but you’d never eat Taco Bell again.

It was rank and it covered most everything in the garage.

Kaz took charge and got a lot of stuff cleaned and since then I’ve done spot disinfecting as I locate a place that obvious needs it and, frankly, it all needs it. Spiritual taint abounds.

We called a professional who came out and got the pipes cleaned out and washed back out the sediment and such that had been shoved forcibly into our system.

Now I’m washing dishes with a sense of dread. Just waiting to hear The Burp again.

Last Week’s Top 10 (a slight test)

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-05-04

In Music

I’m not 100% sure I can make sense of a regular “Last Week’s Top 10” because (a) I listen to a lot of [self-curated] playlists and (b) I listen to large swaths of background music. In both cases, just letting the PLEX Algorithm Gods take the wheel. There have been a few peak songs this past week, though, so this is one of the cases where it might work.

Going to start a record and see if there’s anything interesting to note in a week or two.

The Top 10 last week (27 April to 03 May, 2026)

Yorushika – Bubbles
tuki. – Zero
tuki. – Bansanka
majiko – Kurai Kurai
Yorushika – Amy
Yorushika – In May, From the Emerald Green Window
krage – Request
Sawano Hiroyuki (feat Tomorrow x Together) – LEvel
Bear McCreary (feat Serj Tankian) – Godzilla
veno – Becoming

Overall Analysis and Comments

There is only a slight surprise, here, which I will discuss.

March and April have largely been the “Months of Yorushika” for me — second person has topped monthly plays for both March 2026 and April 2026 by a margin — and their new single, “Bubbles,” is backed by a fun music video.

Likewise, tuki. — a fairly new artist to me — was first picked up pretty hard by a clever video for “Zero” which plays a singer revealing their face.

As for majiko’s “Kurai Kurai,” the video is quite fun but the song continues just to show up near the top top since it was released.

The surprise, though, is that Ado’s “Kira” isn’t on the list. In this case, it might because I’ve mostly listened to it via the music video, but it feels like it should show up.

Oh, speaking of surprises, there was definitely a fair amount of listening to Oliver Tree’s new album. And I would have guessed Brandy Senki’s “End of the F***ing World” would have been there since that’s cropped up multiple times in the playlists.

I’m also not 100% sure what counts as a play, here. I feel like I’ve listened to several of those songs more than given. Anyhow, I’ll keep tracking it as it goes and it seems interesting I’ll keep doing it.

2026 so far…

Lots of Yorushika and with majiko up top. I guess the main two that have “dropped” off in the past couple of weeks are Pami’s “Candydate” and Zico’s “Duet” with Lilas. A couple of weeks ago also had a fairly heavy Gorillaz rotation which has slowed.