2026-04-10 05:06:00
what if - hear me out - WHAT IF we don't send rude messages to strangers online? Yes, Bob (?), I'm talking to you. I don't mean to sound crazy, but sometimes it's ok just to think.
2026-04-10 01:36:48
Great books.
The numbers aren't how many awards they've won. And it's not how many million copies they've sold.
It's how many times they got rejected before being published. "Too pessimistic, too complex, too strange." And so on.
Turns out quite a few people begged to differ.
You may be a publisher too, of blog posts. Try not to be a rejecting one. There are people who would love to read what you have to say.
Hit publish.
2026-04-09 23:30:25
I was having coffee with one of my coworkers yesterday and he and I got to talking about the importance and beauty of life. How valuable our time on this earth is and why we shouldn't waste it. We also got into some other theological and philosophical stuff, but out of the conversation about life, I made the following statement:
The two events in my life that changed how I viewed life the most was the day my dad died, and the day my daughter was born.
The day my dad died showed not only how short life is, but how not even the next hour is a guarantee. How grief is love with nowhere to go. How important it is to make time for people closest to you, and even despite all the time you've spent with them, you'll always wish you'd had more.
The day my daughter was born showed me the importance of living in the exact moment you are right now. When she was born, nothing outside of this little bubble housing me, my wife, and this newborn baby in my arms mattered. Every other worry disappeared. Every insecurity gone. I only thought of what was happening right in front of me. And savored every second I could.
I find it interesting how the two moments also show a sort of circle of life in a sense. Death and Birth.
Anyway, just something I wanted to share.
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It's my daughter's birthday. Little girl turns 2 and I'm just blown away at how fast time has flown. I got to do work-from-home today and tomorrow so I could spend more time with them. My wife and I spent last night putting up streamers and balloons in the hallway and then sneaking balloons into her room so when she woke up she'd see them all. I got her a CD player for her birthday and I think she's gonna love it.
2026-04-09 20:56:00
When I woke up this morning I had a few emails from inhabitants of the small web. One of these emails came from a fine soul who asked how I accomplished the chevron changes on the upvoting system on Bear Blog. I made a quick Gist of the CSS code and sent off a reply, but before doing so I poked around on their website a bit.
It's called the The Rusty Ruin Journal, and I found the site fascinating. He's got a link on his navigation bar called 'Philosophy and Photography' and instantly I realized this guy is the exact kind of shooter who needs their words read more.
The text they have on their about page is nearly a mirror-reflection as to why I can't take up photography as a full-time gig.
"I've sold photographs and been paid at events, but I don't consider myself a professional. Photographs don't pay my bills. Besides, I'd not want the life sucked out of my photographic practice by turning it into anything other than a fun hobby." — The Rusty Ruin Journal About Page
and
"I try to approach the subject of photography as an honest communicator who continues to learn and change."
These are words not common for your average photographer. Another part of the reason I like to keep photography simply as a hobby fascination of mine is because it seems like a lot of photographers with blogs seem to present themselves in such a way that they come off as someone high on their ego. When they talk about the technical nuances of their workflow I sometimes think they bury their logic in big technical terms that will scare off the uninitiated and make eager and willing newcomers second-guess their choices in spending several thousand dollars on the most expensive hobby on the planet.
I haven't been out on a proper morning photo walk all year. I can't just grab my camera and walk out the door and expect magic to happen. I've gotta be in the "zone" or at least in the creative mood. There is no point in taking the camera out if I've had a bad day. It does not provide that kind of release for me, although, I sometimes wish it did.
But after seeing The Rusty Ruin Journal this morning, I've got my 35mm and 85mm attached to their own bodies, strap on the 85 and hip holster on the 35. The sun is piercing the ground with some hard shadows. Christina stayed back from work today. It's a crisp, lovely 51° here in Wisconsin this morning and I'm heading out on my first morning photowalk of the year.
A stranger from somewhere in the world emailed me this morning about my upvoting system on BearBlog. He has an elegant blog about photography and life, and he inspired another stranger, somewhere else in the world, to strap on his gear and go get after it.
Beware of your influence. ■
🎧 Fionn Regan - House Detective via Folk Forward on SomaFM
2026-04-09 11:40:00
...is the A line station at Lake Ave in Pasadena. It's a freeway median station, so it's got earsplitting traffic noise... but also it's got the procedurally-generated classical music that LA Metro tries to use to keep undesirables from congregating on the platform.
The thing about Lake Ave is that the "undesirables" just congregate on the sidewalk of Lake, which passes over the freeway. So the only people getting ear blasted on the platform are the people who plan to actually use the train. Not that anyone should get their ears destroyed... but it's definitely pretty funny that LA Metro thinks this station needs additional noise, and then continues to provide that earsplitting noise even while it fails to achieve their stated goals.
Every time I visit here, I feel like I should be packing noise cancelling headphones or simply bringing earplugs. Unfortunately the only headphones I use are a pair of "bone conducting" headphones designed to leave my ear-holes open, for biking safety. So they accomplish nothing.
Anyway!! This is just a rant post. I have nothing useful to add besides a complaint you've probably read many times before: that metro systems should never run in freeway medians. There are worse stations in the LA Metro system, but this is the one I often use, and it's the one I hate the most. Boo! Hiss!! It's both crazy and not at all unexpected that the nastiest station I use in the region is in the wealthiest city I regularly visit by train!
2026-04-09 09:40:00
I recently listened to an excellent podcast episode - "Social Media: Wie wir gleichzeitig unsere Kinder und unsere Demokratie retten" (Social media: How we save our children and our democracy at the same time), which is episode 10 of the "Wind & Wurzeln" ("Wind & Roots") podcast hosted by Marina Weisband. As you may have guessed, this is a German-language podcast; if you happen to speak German, I highly encourage you to give this episode (as well as really any other episode of this podcast) a listen.
While the entire episode is excellent and well worth a listen, there was one segment in particular that gave me pause.
As part of a conversation about how young people use social media - and the current flare-up of age gating proposals in many countries worldwide - the host Marina and guest Yvonne Gerigk, an expert and researcher on media usage and pedagogy, discussed results from a 2008 youth media usage study. The early days of social media.
Edited image of an old-timey computer screen showing the word "hello" in handwritten lettering. Original image by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash.
Back then, young people indicated that common activities they engaged in online, and aspects they valued about online communities, were:
Mic drop. Record scratch. That gave me pause. By which I mean, I literally paused the podcast and started taking notes ferociously.
I think we've always known, subconsciously, that this shift had occurred - from the more text-based, early online forums and instant messengers (for my fellow Millenials, think the MyBB's, phpBB's, ICQ's, and early MySpaces of yore) that have been described as "havens" for youth and other folks who might have felt ostracized in real life, like they didn't quite fit in with the popular kids - to the highly visual, highly polished, "modern" social media platforms (popular examples are algorithmic media platforms like Instagram and TikTok).
I had not heard this shift articulated this way, this clearly, before.
This absolute 180 - from online communities at first being the great equalizers in terms of looks and appearance, to them becoming highly visual media platforms where polished looks and identities sell and draw attention - is, in my mind, a huge puzzle piece at the heart of what algorithmic media platforms have become.2 And by "have become," I mean "how they have become massive sources of headaches for us as a society and as individuals."
As Yvonne says on the podcast, popular "social networks" have become platforms focused on self-presentation; digital marketplaces, essentially, meant for entertainment, attention, and capital. "Social media" have gone from being platforms of interpersonal exchange where looks were less important than in real life to looks being the centrepoint of some of the most popular algorithmic media.
For one thing, there's the fact that visual content tends to capture more attention than the average text post - it just tickles the brain in a different way.
For another, these platforms are partially a product of the technological evolution of the last two decades. It is hard to imagine a visual-first medium in the pre-smartphone era, when selfies were not a thing, and when we weren't all carrying computers with excellent cameras in our pockets everywhere we went. Fast, ubiquitous wi-fi and/or mobile data didn't exist. Once those things were in place, yes, the arrival of visual-first social networks was basically a matter of time. And that's not the issue.
It's another development, one that coincided with the arrival of the visual-first platforms that's the problem: Our attention started being commodified, on all sorts of social media platforms (including those more visual ones), and engagement - likes, follows, boosts - started to become a goal in its own right. A commodity, a currency to be extracted from users.
For "creators," an entirely new category of social media users, the goal then became ever more clicks, ever more followers, ever more engagement. For those operating the platform, which are mostly US American big tech corporations, "keeping eyeballs on screen for longer" is the #1 imperative, as that means more engagement, more market share, and more ad money. The goal is to push content to people and keep them glued to the screen, not to enable genuine interaction between people.
On algorithmic platforms, what matters is content that performs. Seeing the Numbers Go Up on a post that maybe you didn't love, but that is "performing well," will have an effect on your future postings. This becomes a self-sustaining loop, one that does not favour experimentation, eccentricity, or being a regular human being with weird3 hobbies and niche interests. It favours conventional beauty, hype, curation, and performative content. You know, "building a brand."
Driven to extremes, this may then beget disturbing phenomena like body image concerns, teenagers being enticed into developing eating disorders, mental health struggles, and addiction-adjacent problematic usage behaviours. This type of content preys on our individual insecurities, our wish to be desired, to be popular. It evokes strong emotions - and thus, it bubbles to the top of the vicious cycle that involves human psychology, content sharing, engagement, and reward.
Truly a far cry from the text-based exploration of interests and communities, undistorted by algorithms deciding what we all should want to be seeing on our screens.
I do not think that it is purely the visual nature of some of the most popular algorithmic visual-first media platforms, nor the availability of excellent portable cameras or ubiquitous fast data connections, that are at the core of where we find ourselves today. In my mind, it is their visual nature coupled with the extractive, enshittified, "addicting" nature of those platforms that has gotten us where we are.
I don't think we'll ever go back to message boards or bare-bones, text-only instant messengers being the primary means of online networking.4 That's not necessarily a bad thing; being able to send voice messages, videos, and images is obviously a very useful thing, and not in and of itself problematic.
So what if we kept the visual-first platforms, but made them:
These are lofty goals, but - at least concerning the platforms currently at the top of the popularity pyramid - they may never come to pass, or, if they do, it would involve legislative and/or cultural change. Let's demand better even of those existing platforms, but - might be a while.
So let's move on to what we can do, right now, as individual users, without massive technological or societal change.
If this isn't your first Technically Good ✨ rodeo, you probably know already what one of my suggestions is going to be:
Explore different platforms.
Explore platforms that are not owned by billionaires, and whose most defining feature isn't their extractive algorithm. There will be a broader post coming on Social Media Alternatives, but for now, alternatives to explore in terms of visual-first platforms are:
Beyond suggestions for alternatives to explore, I would like to leave you with a small thought exercise. You can do this one by yourself, right now, or later today, and it doesn't require any signups or - anything at all, really. Not even a massive technological overhaul, or the ripping-out of all known algorithmic networks overnight, or the magical sudden end of enshittification. Or capitalism.
I've found that a lot of folks think that the Big Tech algorithmic platforms haven't changed all that much since their inception. This is very far from the truth.
The good news is, we do have agency over some of this. Like, for example, which platforms we use. We can demand better.
We can refuse to use platforms that make us feel shitty and worthless, and that make us feel like they do not value our time. We can dial down our use of platforms that make use feel like a product, or like an entity that only exists to have ~value~ extracted from it. We can remember that it was not always thus, and that there was a way to exist in an online world that wasn't dominated by algorithms and constant pressure and comparisons and a never-ending onslaught of "tailored content."
And then maybe we can inch back just a liiiittle bit closer to the positive aspects7 of what what social networking used to be - where looks mattered less than in real life, and where we can explore our weird hobbies and niche interests, and find like-minded folks. As people. Not as customers - or, worse, the product - to be squeezed for attention and ~value~.
If I am not mistaken, this was from the 2008 JIM study, which you can access here (in German).↩
For a note on why I prefer the term "algorithmic media" over "social media," see Feeding the Fire: Psychology, Engagement, and Algorithmic Media and 🕸️ Caught in a Multi-Billion Dollar Web: Why Leaving the Legacy Algorithmic Media is So Hard.↩
... huge air quotes↩
Unless, uh, that apocalypse does happen and we're back to slow, flakey internet... and a whole host of other problems. But I digress.↩
Proposals for regulation - regulation of the platforms, not the users; a very important distinction to make, especially in the current digital landscape that seems to run head-first towards a future of age-gating, and that is dominated by billionaires - would go beyond the limits of this post, and are a topic to explore separately.↩
They're like genAI, that way.↩
There were, of course, aspects in which the olden networks were worse than the ones we know today. Access was more limited, the technology was often trickier to use, and thus less open to regular folks. We don't need to bring all that back - let's pick the good stuff and check the crap at the door.↩