2025-01-29 01:05:00
Lovely clouds, a nice sunset, and a moment of peace after a full rainy day. I needed that.
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2025-01-28 02:20:00
If I was on social media I’d probably post this link there but I am not and so I’m posting it here. Ajazz has put together a nice resource called “Unplatform” which is, in their words, an interactive guidebook, online library, and research journal intended to help you escape social media and join the indie web. As you know, I’m a big fan of owning your own space and so I love to see this type of projects.
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2025-01-27 02:10:00
After more than a year I finally found a moment to sort out my list of blog platforms and I coded a proper table. The previous text list wasn’t exactly ideal. If you know a platform that’s missing please do let me know. I’d love for this list to be as comprehensive as possible.
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2025-01-25 18:20:00
The more I look around the web the more I’m convinced we should all treasure our own tiny corners of the web. My site is precious. Precious for me. It is mine to do what I want. I can build it, I can destroy it, I can shape it, I can let it rot. I can change it or let it stay still. I can make it super busy or let it go dormant. I can make it welcoming or hostile. I’m in charge of all those decisions and no one can come here and tell me what I should do with it. The only moderation rules are the ones dictated by my morals and I own the responsibility of my words. My name is on it, my face is on it. I write and say the things I want to write and say at this very specific moment in time, based on the person I am and the things I believe in, and no one can force me to do otherwise. There’s something incredibly liberating about all this.
This site is out there, accessible to the approximate 5.5B people with an internet connection—unless I’m banned somewhere, I guess. That is both scary and exciting. Because that means there are 5.5B potential random human interactions waiting to happen. Those are opportunities to grow, to learn, to discover, to share. Because for me the entire point of the web is to connect. It’s about personal expression, it’s about creativity, it’s about sharing openly. It’s about respecting others, it’s about listening, it’s about reflecting on what other people say. And all those things I believe are better done in a space I control, rather than in some soulless social media platform where my content is no different than everybody else’s.
Years of social media have managed to convince us that a scrollable timeline, a comment box with a characters limit and a like button are the tools we need to use to connect with each other. That is a big fucking lie and if you don’t believe me write me an email and I’ll be happy to show you.
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2025-01-24 20:00:00
This is the 74th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Ava and her blog, blog.avas.space. I found her site thanks to her bear blog question challenge and I'm glad I did.
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I'm Ava, from Germany and I am working with pharmaceutical databases fulltime. I'm also a parttime law student and enrolled in a separate course to become a data protection officer. When I am not studying or writing my blog, I like to do different creative things like pixel art or glitch art, sewing or embroidery, or I am exercising. I especially love the treadmill, indoor cycling, pilates and yoga.
I originally planned it as just a side thing to document my progress through completing The Odin Project, learning Rust, modding my Steam Deck and writing custom CSS themes for it, as well as any general tech things like my desk setup, my Linux ricing and more. But I got very sick, and I had barely any energy for any of this especially on top of my work and studies, so I opened it up thematically, starting with a post addressing my health issues. Slowly, I chose to share more, and documenting my coding process or projects have moved more in the background. But now that I am better, I might feature more of that.
I write them on the phone in the default Notes app. I often think of the best things when I try to fall asleep; then I write it all off my chest into my phone and when I'm done, I finally sleep. No bullet points, it's the full text, and I only read over it once or twice to catch mistakes or weird wording, then it's ready to go. I schedule many of my posts to release later, even if it's just an hour. If it's very personal or I'm not sure, I might let it sit in the drafts for weeks.
I'm usually in the bathtub or in bed when writing my posts, I am very rarely actually at the desk or on a laptop. I heard of people needing a very specific environment to write, like being on their desk, a specific time, coffee, quiet; it's not like that for me. When I get an idea for a post and write it down, it feels like being struck by lightning. Suddenly there's all this text in my head, and I can barely write as fast as the sentences run down in my head. So occasionally it happens that I am not in bed or in the bathtub during, and I just pull out my phone whereever I am and furiously type and I cannot stop or focus on anything else until that's done. I've jokingly compared it to being some kind of conduit.
The blog is hosted on Bearblog, the little coding I have to do for it is done in the on-site editor. The domain is from Porkbun. My website itself is hosted on Nekoweb, a static site hoster; I was previously on Neocities. I know some people prefer to host their blogs themselves and/or use SSGs to automatically generate and update their blogs, and I commend them for all that effort! But I try to make it as easy for me as possible without having to fix much, worry about rates and uptime or anything like that.
Nothing, I am very happy.
I paid a one-time lifetime payment for Bearblog that was about 190 Euro, I think. My domain renews yearly for $16.88. I pay a monthly fee of 7,99 Euro to a provider handling legal notice mail for me; in Germany, depending on your content, you need to provide your contact details, including your address, on your website. Since me and others don't want to doxx ourselves, there are services providing an address you can offer instead, and they'll send you any mail that comes in for you.
So all in all, recurring costs are low. My blog doesn't generate revenue, and that's fine, I find the thought a bit weird. When I see other people monetizing their blogs, I think that's good for them, but I'm not feeling it for my posts and don't like the potential of money transforming how or what I post.
I think Robert Birming of birming.com could be interesting, as well as Jedda from JCProbably.
I also have a blog where I review and talk about matcha. It's at emeraldsip.cafe.
This was the 74th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Ava. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
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2025-01-23 15:25:00
Rebecca has articulated this incredibly well and I also enjoyed Jatan’s addendum. There seems to be no longer a space for thoughtfulness, for true comprehension in the public online space. We’re all too happy to mock, to ridicule, to attack, to insult and in the process, we’re forgetting that we’re all in the same fucking boat. We all have struggles, we all wrestle with our inner demons. We might disagree—even on important topics—but that doesn’t mean we should hate each other.
Maybe it’s worth saying it out loud: you don’t know me. You don’t know probably 99.99999% of the people you interact with online. You have no idea what’s going on in their lives, you don’t really know what was like being them growing up, you don’t know their life situations, you don’t know what they’re struggling with. You fundamentally don’t know shit. You might think you do, but you don’t. And I don’t know shit either. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you’re going through. And that is why the only reasonable thing to do is to assume you’re trying to do your best and be kind and compassionate towards you. Because the alternative is just so goddamn exhausting.
I’ll start sounding like a broken record but, at this point, I don’t care: social media was and still is a mistake. Enough people all bunched together in the same space with the ability to quickly interact with each other will produce more harm than good. And no, decentralising this crap won’t make it better. You can lie to yourself and pretend it will, but it won’t. But hey, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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