shep, but online

For the last six months I’ve been debating on whether or not I would return to micro.blog. For one reason or another, I never did. After the news of Elon buying twitter broke, I decided to give it another go because my time on twitter had essentially become doomscrolling, with only a portion being devoted to interactions with others. I used to love the discussions and random thoughts from interesting people on twitter, but as time went on they were drowned out by retweets, hot takes, and whatever the current outrage of the moment is. I was guilty of it too. And it’s not healthy.

I’ve also wanted to get back into blogging. I’ve had a blog since college and have been running WordPress the entire time (over 15 years now!). WordPress has outgrown my needs as they move towards a more Squarespace-like experience. I miss the days of a simple publishing platform for creating blog posts. Micro.blog helps solve that issue. The focus is on the writing. I don’t know what the future of my current blog is, but I think this will be the place for my thoughts, quick and long, going forward.

The other thing that I love about Micro.blog is that I own the content. It’s my blog that I publish on my site. When I publish, it posts the content to the micro.blog timeline. The conversations take place on micro.blog with a great and welcoming community and appear directly on my posts. I can also cross-post the content to twitter, which I am for now.

What I find when starting from micro.blog is I don’t check in on twitter as much because the discussion is here. Less time on twitter is better for me. I’m excited to see what the future holds with micro.blog.

I remember the first time I saw a Batman movie. It was 1989 and Tim Burton’s Batman was literally everywhere. You could not go into a mall (remember those?) in America without seeing Batman merchandise in every window. I was 6 when my dad took me. It was unlike any other iteration of Batman I had ever seen. It definitely wasn’t anything like the Adam West TV show I used to watch in the afternoons after school.

From that moment on it became an unspoken tradition for my dad and I to see the Batman movies in theaters when they would come out. Yes, even the horrible Batman and Robin. The most recent iteration of Batman in the movies, The Batman, was the first Batman movie that we could not see in theaters together. Neither of us were comfortable spending almost 3 hours in a theater in an area where masks are rarely worn. I did finally see the movie, at home, on HBOMax, and I loved every minute of it.

The Batman that is depicted in The Batman is the most Batman Batman to ever Batman. If you grew up reading the comics, especially storylines like The Long Halloween, you’ll instantly recognize this Batman and this Gotham City. The movie is a detective noir story that oftentimes feels like the movie Seven, with constant dusk and darkness, torrential rain, and seedy alleyways. This is the comic. The Batman isn’t a gritty reboot of the franchise, this is what the franchise is at its heart.

I know DC and Warner Bros. has plans for a spinoff with the Penguin character. I just hope they stay true to the themes, ideas, and atmosphere that director Matt Reeves created. I wouldn’t mind living in this world for a little longer. 🍿