And social media … has gone from a wellspring of deeply reported storytelling to what feels like a video-infested wasteland devoid of clear thinking, curiosity or compassion.
And social media … has gone from a wellspring of deeply reported storytelling to what feels like a video-infested wasteland devoid of clear thinking, curiosity or compassion.
What is the opposite of fascism? Living freely, colorfully, openly. Humanizing. Connecting with others. Gathering. Hoping. Following your dreams. Communing. Nurturing. Refusing despair. Laughing loudly.
– via Kottke
🔗
Fuck it man. Just put on some Grateful Dead. Put on some Aretha. Print some kind of zine. Paint a sign. Start a band. Write a manifesto. Bootleg a t-shirt. Hand out stickers. Throw a party. Keep it weird.
Finished reading: In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki 📚💙 great read on design and light. Reminds me of Alton Brown when he talks about heat
Finished reading: Humble Leadership, Second Edition by Edgar H. Schein 📚💙 another strong read from a class I finished. Being a humble leader isn’t being a weak leader. Strength comes from humility, as does earned confidence and honesty
Finished reading: Introduction to Leadership by Peter G. Northouse 📚💙A book leaders should read, reference, and return to. I learned a lot from it and the class I took.
Finished reading: How to Be an Inclusive Leader, Second Edition by Jennifer Brown 📚💙 finished this class. It’s another small book with actionable steps to being truly inclusive, not performative. It’s about taking personal risk if you’re coming from a place of privilege to make the workplace better. I learned a lot
Finished reading: Diversity in the Workplace by Bärí A. Williams 📚💙I did not like this book. It’s all anecdotes with a lot of interviewee ego stroking and self promotion. Waste of money
Finished reading: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by 📚 💙 Finished my class. EQ is something everyone can work on, and this book offers excellent actionable steps.
Finished reading: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 📚💙 Felt like the Mistborn books with different physics. I appreciate his books offering insights into how people operate. Lots of practical philosophy
Ugh. Digg: So much garbage, now with AI. Follow your joy; mine is elsewhere.
The Digital Packrat Manifesto by Janus Rose:
Amazon’s recent decision to stop allowing people to download copies of their Kindle e-books to a computer has vindicated some of my longstanding beliefs about digital media．Specifically，that it doesn’t exist and you don’t own it unless you can copy and access it without being connected to the internet
Let’s not call it content to start，shall we all？It is art，be it literature or music or cinema or TV or a podcast or whatnot.
Second，let’s stop renting our lives．So much of what we do and enjoy is licensed to us．Stand up＆take it back．Viva libraries!
Reminder: doesn’t❤️you, nor does any corporate entity or 1%er or tyrant, benevolent-ish or otherwise
Our changing relationship with Apple:
Apple’s going to do what it’s going to do. Mostly, all we get to decide is whether or not we want to play in their sandbox. If you do, make it about the satisfaction of what you’re building and about serving your customers and a community that shares your values. Apple should be seen as a tool to those ends, not as a parent or partner or religion. Such expectations will only lead to disappointment.
Friends, family, people treated kindly — they’ll❤️you
10 Observations About Tokyo - by Quico Toro - Persuasion
In fifteen years … it had never once occurred to us to move to Japan. Yes, my wife grew up in the Kyoto ‘burbs but she left in 2004 and had zero interest in going back. But … a too-good-to-pass-up job opportunity came her way last summer, and we soon found ourselves packing up our lives and moving to a city we’d only known as tourists.
Six months on, here are ten observations on life here.
Matches my experience nearly spot-on. They live near where I used to work: Nihonbashi (Hakozaki-cho, for those playing along at home).
A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
– John Burroughs (h/t Mitigating Chaos)
I’d buy that for a $. The double down is when one fails, then blames others & calls them failures. 🤔 I wonder what orange-faced octogenarian incompetent does that 🤔
This isn’t just an issue of forcing users to cede ownership and keep everything within Amazon systems — Amazon has demonstrated in the past that it’s not a trustworthy librarian. The company has deleted books that it said were offered for sale by mistake or replaced books with new versions without alerting readers. Amazon’s also not interested in selling their ebooks or audiobooks to libraries, keeping a monopolistic hold on some titles. This is most egregiously the case for “Audible Exclusive” audiobooks, which won’t be available to borrow from libraries or to purchase from other services.Tech companies selling books, music, and movies have long treated digital purchases more like rental agreements, which is nice for saving space on shelves and hard drives, but means that you’re locked in a strange, almost feudal relationship. The solution is to not give them your business — services like Bookshop.org and Libro.fm not only let you download your own, non-DRM-locked copies of what you buy, but also let you support independent bookstores with your purchases.
Skepticism becomes closed-mindedness when its categories calcify and become exclusively outward-directed; skepticism can be open-minded when it operates flexibly and leaves space to be reflexively inward-directed. “You don’t know” versus “I don’t know.”
The problem with the internet ＆social media is that they require incredibly sophisticated information literacy ＆critical thinking skills to use effectively；the powers that control them deliberately engineer to bypass the formation of information literacy ＆critical thinking skills
😖So frustrated with pihole’s breaking changes, esp the Docker container. Only recently got v5 working as I wanted; now redo the whole thing for v6. Need to figure out how they broke DHCPd; reverted back to my router to get things talking
Charts are a window into the world．When done right，we gain an understanding of who we are，where we are，and how we can become better versions of ourselves．However，when done wrong，in the absence of truth，charts can be harmful. This is a guide to protect ourselves and to preserve what is good about turning data into visual things. We start with chart anatomy；then we look at how small changes can shift a point of view；this takes us to misleading chart varieties；we finish with reading data and next steps. – via FlowingData
At first blush it looks comprehensive，cited，objective ＆factual
Currently reading: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 📚💙 Quick for a Sanderson read; I picked this up for Cosmere & it’s on my ereader. Following Welcome To The Cosmere: A Brandon Sanderson Reading Order Guide
Finished reading: The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe 📚💙 The first half of this book gripped me. The second half was a fever dream I could not follow easily. I worked hard to finish as much as I could, but it stopped being fun. Maybe I’ll pick it back up & finish someday ★★★☆☆
Amazon’s Kindle change is really about lock-in. They think we license ebooks from them, not that we own the ebooks we buy #enshittification
The problem is that if the ebook content is on a USB it can be transferred to a computer, and there the DRM can be broken and the book can be pirated and uploaded to a torrent and then downloaded by Meta to train its next AI.
My Applied Critical Thinking class assignment is “What information sources shape your worldview?” Fuck social media for news, fellow kids! was the gist of my epic essay of an OP and the subsequent comments on others' posts. In other news, damn kids on lawn; shakes fist at cloud
Next to the American death cult that is MAGA, the other American death cult that is 2nd Amendment gun-nuttery, and the other other American death cult that is our health insurance setup, the question my overseas friends ask about is why filing American taxes is so hard and stupid:
Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year. It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.Not paying your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine. It keeps the country running, though not because the government needs our "tax dollars" to pay for things. The government annihilates the money it taxes away from us, and creates new money to pay for programs. The USA needs US citizens' dollars to build highways the same way Starbucks needs its Starbucks gift cards to make lattes – that is, not at all:
https://theglobepost.com/2019/03/28/stephanie-kelton-mmt/
I'm talking about filing your taxes. In nearly every case, a tax return contains a bunch of things the IRS already knows: how much interest your bank paid you, how much your employer paid you, how many kids you have, etc etc. Nearly everyone who pays a tax-prep place or website to file their tax return is just sending data to the IRS that the IRS already has. This is insanely wasteful.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/11/doubling-up-on-paperwork/#rip-freefile
When I filed taxes as an expat, the heavy lifting E&Y did was not so much what was needed for the country I was working in but rather the byzantine IRS paperwork. That was expensive work and E&Y charged my employer an appropriate amount. But it was still ridiculous.
Being back in the States for five years, I rely on the IRS Free File. I’ve no interest in contributing to the nonsense racket that is Intuit or H&R Block. I’ll fucking print out and mail my tax forms like in the old days before I’ll throw those leeches another cent.