NearbyWiki

Wikipedia places nearby you on a map.

Showing your digital notes graph suffers from the same 'infinitely expanding list' problem of most ware: better to break things up around human fuzzy memory limits (maybe 5–12 things).

For my spicier content, follow me on RSS 🌶️

Link in bio 💋

How many HTTP requests does it take to read a blog post versus a thread? What does it mean when it matters? What does it mean when it doesn't?

Putting something on the internet is unfortunately default public (insecure / opt-out) unless you can personally verify that it's not, which might be impossible.

Rate my theory: I've seen an uptick in 'your year in review' summaries from apps & even phone providers. By packaging their surveillance of us in the form of pie charts & wacky slogans these firms are trying to normalize data extraction as a form of fun self-exploration

[RSS turns the web into tapas.]

The largest social network where I actually look forward to participate is the blogosphere.

Paying Netflix $0.53/h, etc.

[Divide the monthly price by average usage to get the hourly cost. Per hour, people might be paying about fifty cents for online streaming, a dollar or few for games and movies, five to fifteen for their creator subscriptions.]

The Cheap Web

The "cheap" web is a solarpunk philosophy of web design.

cheap ≠ free

cheap ≠ sleek

cheap ≠ creep

cheap ≠ deep

cheap ≠ dark

cheap = cheap

[cheap to maintain: should work indefinitely without falling over].

[cheap to access: should be compatible with screen readers and various devices.]

[cheap to explore: should be pleasant on low power devices.]

[cheap to contribute: creating and hosting websites should be easier than scrapbooking.]

1.8 Million Subscribers (and no one cares)

[Musicians can play until they're 98 years old and beyond, but nobody wants a YouTuber doing that.]

[Not making an industry money puts you in a somewhat adversarial relationship.]

[The YouTuber career inevitably ends in burnout.]

[YouTubers have no elders, only peers, and this is isolating. Musicians have those who have been doing it longer than them, and a community in the real world to engage with.]

I’m turning off my website analytics because I’m very brave and I promise I truly do not care about the numbers

Cosplaying internet detective doesn't do much to sate my curiosity, it just lets me spin my wheels and trick me into thinking I'm being productive.

I turned off analytics

I don’t care about what gets ranked on Google, I’m not trying to optimise for the people who come from that channel.

People who arrive via search are just looking to get a question answered and move on. That’s great and I hope I can help them, but they are not the reason I’m here. This site is here for the people who stay a while, have a look around and then send me an email to start an interesting conversation.

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I've been feeling similar lately, but erring on the side of continuing until there's a specific reason to stop; there's some underlying fear of losing something in the future that I can't describe. The data is kind of boring—maybe the whole notion of this analytics exploits a 'wanting to know where people come from' and the deep-seated desire for connection. I'm curious in your case, why not 'just' make a filter to see the non-search data?

I definitely believe in meaningful connections as the fundamental focus for myself; measuring this might be valuable but not necessary for me, I'd prefer to hear people's stories of change over seeing numbers. Wishing that your 'search query' returns results 🙏🏽☀️.

in search of a new tab

[Each new tab feels like a choice: how do I want to spend my time?]

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What a 'new tab page' this is! I prefer queries (via keystroke launchers like Quicksilver or 'Command-K') over big lists, but this is beautifully personal and makes me drool; stable options can leverage muscle memory and reduce distractions. 👍🏽

Provokes me to wonder about social patterns and 'formats' like /now or 'daily note', ways of organizing that many people can practice and share so that we can all learn from each other.

If you have a website, what are your earliest meaningful links that still work? I have almost no broken links since 2012.

The difference between a blog and journal is the title field.

Instead of queuing ideas onto an infinitely expanding todo list, blogging (or microblogging) about it can be a useful way to find synergy. If someone else had maximum information to pick up where you left off, maybe you'd be free to do other things?

Does broadcasting happen because others make copies of the post? Does something exist online forever because someone made a copy?

Twitter’s game mechanics select for a low-effort posting strategy, the dunking game. The rules are: find a way to misunderstand the tweet so that it is wrong. If you can’t, quote it out of context so that it is wrong. Tired.

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

a company with a billion-user product doesn't actually care about its billion existing users. It cares about the marginal user - the billion-plus-first user - and it focuses all its energy on making sure that marginal user doesn't stop using the app. Yes, if you neglect the existing users' experience for long enough they will leave, but in practice apps are sticky and by the time your loyal users leave everyone on the team will have long been promoted.

The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he'll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again.

Marl's tolerance for user interface complexity is zero.
As far as you can tell he only has one working thumb, and the only thing that thumb can do is flick upwards in a repetitive, zombielike scrolling motion.

You might think Marl just doesn't know about the settings. You might think to make things more convenient for Marl, perhaps add a little "see less like this" button below a piece of content. Oh boy, are you ever wrong This absolutely infuriates Marl. On the margin, the handful of pixels occupied by your well-intentioned little button replaced pixels that contained a triggering headline or a cute image of a puppy. Insufficiently stimulated, Marl throws a fit and swipes over to TikTok, never to return to your app.
Your feature decreases DAUs in the A/B test. In the launch committee meeting, you mumble something about "user agency as your VP looks at you with pity and scorn. Your button doesn't get deployed. You don't get your promotion. Your wife leaves you. Probably for Marl.

A substantial fraction of the world's most brilliant, competent, and empathetic people, armed with near-unlimited capital and increasingly god-like computers, spend their lives serving Marl.

Tiktok’s enshittification

This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.

[The word 'monetize' implies there is no 'attention economy' in the pure sense: users need to pay fiat at some point.]

Exalting data, missing meaning

[Data-centric approaches might better fit fields like manufacturing, transport, and aviation, perhaps less so education, consumer products, and other domains involving messy humans; we risk depriving ourselves of insights from philosophy, intuition, and stories, as they may still be inaccessible through quantitative approaches.]

[Specific initiatives might appear to have no effect on engagement, but might unexpectedly and invisibly affect the actor's social or political over the long-term.]

On a whim, but a deeply felt one, I went live to share some impromptu thoughts on Israel, Palestine, condemnation, and context. Thanks for tuning in and considering.

[Might seem futile to add one's voice to the cacophony of others on social media, especially as it makes little difference to people suffering over there, but my voice is all I have.]

Image - Sublime

FROM "Pressure to perform" TO "Freedom to express"

FROM "Low-level anxiety" TO "Aliveness and possibility"

FROM "Immediacy and impermanence" TO "Slowness and contemplation"

FROM "Mindless consumption" TO "Mindful curation"

FROM "Loneliness and disconnection" TO "Connection to ideas and people"

FROM "Perpetual information overload" TO "Joy of discovery and insight"

FROM "Bogged down in irrelevant stuff" TO "The right information when you need it"

FROM "Exploiting our attention" TO "Living in healthy ways with abundance"

FROM "Linear and hierarchical interfaces" TO "Associative, context-rich digital gardens"

The Future of Search Is Boutique

[Makes little sense to search for recipes and freelancers with the same interface: better to create diverse experiences with specific affordances for each niche.]

Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster

[Instead of saving an hour from not having to walk an hour to work, speed and distance increases so that we spend a comparable amount of time occupied with new trajectories.]

How Close Is That Photo to the Truth? What to Know in the Age of AI

[The camera's photon sensor converts light into pixel data and makes guesses about how much red, green, and blue to represent in each one.]

[Breaking up the image into multiple frames helps better represent shadows and skies while reducing noise.]

[Cameras make choices about how to make photos more vivid or different skin colors better represented, and decide how to store them for maximum compression.]

Problems and Goals for Interoperability, Collaboration, and Security in a Solid Pod

Applications must have a shared understanding of data

Data must be discoverable.

Data must be durable.

Data must be portable.

Problem #3 - Disparate entities using different applications must be able to safely and effectively interoperate within their scope of authorization

Problem #4 - People shouldn’t need to think about how to physically organize their data to use Solid.

Principles for sharing on the Internet

[Your opinion has more credibility the better you can argue against your own points.]

[Social media systematically pushes you to ideological extremes.]

The Roads to Reaction and Response

[Doing 'something' as a reaction to moral injury isn't always the right move.]

[Hot takes feed the cycle of reaction.]

[Algorithms ensure everyone has an audience, no matter how small.]

[Your desire to 'just do something' will be co-opted by those in power to ends that aren't in your interest.]

The Oxymoron of “Data-Driven Innovation”

[What we label 'visionary' from the past was often an effort to center needs of the marginalized. At that time, as the privileged were unserved in ways similar those at the margins, making an app or internet product was an example of 'building those with special needs improves it for everyone'. But it isn't visionary any longer when privileged people do it because they're already marginalized. The 'data-driven' development popular today tends to favour majorities, and thus consistently results in bland, incrementalist ideas not serving the marginalized.]

['Do it for yourself' fell out of fashion because white cis men weren't getting visionary ideas that way. The potential is still there if the doer is a marginalized voice.]

We gotta get over this idea that we're being mensches by handing over our stolen power to unworthy or inexperienced charity cases. No. Marginalized people out-qualify mainstream existing leadership on injecting vision because only their perspectives can deliver a visionary product in an industry already optimized for mainstream perspectives.

In the same way that Instagram forces posting regularly in order to exist, perhaps all reverse-chronological timelines force ephemeral content. You can reference or quote to old tweets if you're lucky, but still feels like 'posting once makes it disappear' unless you repeat the same isolated fragment frequently. How can one get a sense for how another thinks if they only read one tweet at a time and those tweets are spread out over a year? Perhaps 'update platforms' are not designed to understand larger thoughts? Blog posts can also be reverse-chronological but each can include dense context and past references so that you can collapse time in order to understand larger thoughts. So perhaps 'update platforms' are best suited to your 'current status' and those might as well disappear after 24 hours like 'ephemeral stories'; if you want to get around ephemeral content, use a blog.

doing some programming after months of none, feels kind of absurd to do this regularly, takes so much to express an app, looking forward to something easier replacing this someday

(decentralize as) decomposing the remains of zombie networks too big to die so that new life can sprout everywhere like grass