2025-12-22 02:35:00
Every now and again, a post I read on Mastodon weeks ago pops back into my head. It said:
We should keep the bigots out and let all the good normal folks in.
It does sound simple, doesn’t it? Everything is such a shitshow. Why don’t we simply keep the bad ones out and let the good, normal ones in? This was in the context of social media, but why stop there, I wonder? This solution applies to everything. It’s so simple and effective.
I keep thinking about this tweet because to me it embodies one of the core issues I have with general social media discourse: the lack of depth. The idea expressed in that single sentence is so devoid of details and substance that it is effectively meaningless.
Call me insane, but I believe two things when it comes to the other ~10 billion human beings out there:
The whole concept of being able to divide people into “the bigots” and “the good normal folks” sounds so insane to me. And by the way, I have zero doubts in my mind that I’d be left out and not be labeled as a “good normal folk” in this scenario.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-12-20 18:00:00
I was listening to a recent Vergecast episode the other day, and in there, there was a whole segment about MCP servers and AI-powered shopping. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been more confused about something tech-related. The more I read and listen about this whole topic, the more I think everyone is doing a marvelous job at gaslighting themselves. Or maybe I’m just too skeptical, that’s always a possibility.
There’s a passage in that podcast where they’re discussing the issue of current middleman apps, like DoorDash, taking a cut out of every transaction, and that being a motivating factor for stores to implement MCP so that AI agents can talk directly to them, skipping the DoorDash step, and in this way they can avoid having to give the middle man that %. Wonderful idea. This all sounds great in theory. There are a couple of issues with that plan, though:
Are we just assuming the AI companies are not going to become the new middleman? Because this is exactly what they are in this scenario. And I have precisely zero faith in any of these companies. They will inject themselves into every transaction if they can because it’s what every single company is attempting to do online since forever.
Are we just assuming the current middlemen are simply going to roll on their side and die? Or it’s more likely that they’ll work out a deal with the AI companies, and suddenly you have two middlemen instead of one.
This entire idea that we’ll just ask AI tools to place orders and buy stuff for us is so fucking insanely crazy to me. I hear people both criticize current tech companies for doing all sorts of shady stuff when it comes to online prices and then be on board with the idea of letting AI companies buy stuff for them, trusting that they're not going to do some equally shady stuff? Am I the only one who thinks this sounds insane?
And then there are the people who are confident that we’ll not be using AI tools powered by mega corps, but we’ll all have our own servers at home, with our own local AI models. And I don’t even know where to start with this one. Most people aren’t even capable of running a printer at home. There are precisely zero chances we’ll suddenly all have a server running local AI tools. Heck, most people don’t even have a computer at home. People use phones for the most part, and they’ll use what’s available on them. And you think Apple and Google will give us all AI tools that run locally on our devices and will not try to extract as much value as possible from them?
I don’t know, man, this whole scenario sounds like another nightmare waiting to happen to me. But maybe I’m just becoming a tired old man yelling at the digital clouds.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-12-19 20:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Kathleen Fisher, whose blog can be found at aspeckledtrout.com.
Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter.
The People and Blogs series is supported by Noahie Valk and the other 127 members of my "One a Month" club.
If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month.
My name is Kathleen and I am a Kansas City resident for over thirty years. I came to this area when my late husband was offered a job as a biochemistry professor at a university medical center. The initial plan was that this would be a 5-10 year stay before moving on to another opportunity. We had moved from the DC area and everyday living seemed so much easier which was a welcome change. We were both raised in the Chicago area and I still have traces of an accent and bouts of homesickness – most often in the summer when the Cubs are winning.
For the last five years I have been working for an interior design firm. We do residential design and I work on the admin side. It’s a combination of accounting work as well as doing all the edits on invoicing for designers’ billable hours. I love that part of my job. Designers write a brief description of what they’ve done for a client and I clean up the wording and grammar for billing purposes. I’m not sure that any of our clients look at it outside of the total but I am proud of the work I put into it and believe it has made me a better writer.
I have three grown kids – a daughter who is a school librarian and married mom of three, a son who is an interior designer, and my youngest daughter who is getting her masters in clinical psychology. They have weathered some tough storms due to their dad’s death and have maintained their kindness, their humor, and their empathy and are, without a doubt, my favorite people.
When we made our move to Kansas City from DC, we needed to let people know our new address and so we sent out Christmas cards with the dreaded newsletter. I wrote it as a spoof of what most people typically get and everyone loved it so it became an annual thing. I loved writing it and from there decided to start a blog.
For years I was on Blogspot and switched to Wordpress seven years ago. It was at that time that my husband ended his life. We had been married for 35 years and dated five years prior to that. It was devastating and a shock to everyone who knew him. He was my biggest cheerleader when it came to writing so it made sense that I would write the eulogy for his funeral and then read it in front of hundreds of people. To date there is no piece of writing that I am more proud of than that one. After that I kept writing and writing to try to process the all-consuming grief. What started as a light-hearted and fun blog became a real-time look into the life of someone whose entire life had been crushed beyond repair. I didn’t sugarcoat any of it and I think for many people it gave their own sorrow validity.
I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about a story and how I want to write it before I actually sit down and do the work. The best laid plans, however, can take unexpected detours. I think artistic people tend to be very observant to life and their surroundings so when I see something that touches or surprises me I file it away. It’s usually when I’m doing something mundane like walking the dog or driving to work. I have no idea why it has meaning or why I can’t stop thinking about it but I trust that it will be revealed when I’m writing. It nearly always is part of the detour and I have learned to get out of my own way, shelve my pre-conceived notions of how the story was supposed to go, and follow the fork in the road.
When my kids grew up and moved out of the house, I turned one of their bedrooms into a writing studio. It was a very creative environment and I rarely used it.
For the past two years I have been in a relationship with another scientist (a colleague of my late husband). He was building a house four blocks from the one I lived in for decades. When things got serious between us and before the house was even finished, we walked in each of the upstairs bedrooms and he asked me which room I wanted for my writing. To this day the memory of that night still touches me, how he wanted to make space for me, how he knew this was important. We took one of the bigger bedrooms and made it a dual office space. I rarely use that space either. I’m writing this at the kitchen island where the windows are big and the light is good which seems is the best creative environment for me.
As I previously mentioned, I have been on Wordpress for several years. Blogspot was easy for a beginner but I then learned they owned the content and knew I needed to switch. A friend did it for me and it has been a learning curve that has been incredibly frustrating at times. At one point all of my posts were switched to private so nobody could read them and my experience has been that their tech support is non-existent. Then my blog was hacked so it was a stressful few months to get everything worked out. That being said, I am considering moving to Substack based on reviews from other friends who are writers.
The only thing I would do differently is I would have started sooner. I took a creative writing class in high school where the teacher read a piece she’d written about eating watermelon on a hot, summer day. I was mesmerized and wanted to write like that, to be transformed into another place for a brief moment. There is so much self-doubt when you’re putting your work into the world. You daily think that you absolutely suck as a writer but if you keep at it you find your voice and if it’s authentic it will resonate and you will find your audience.
I pay about $70 a year for my domain. I don’t generate any revenue from it mainly because that has never been in my wheelhouse. As far as people monetizing their blog, I’m okay with that. I’m always taken aback when people complain that something is behind a paywall as if access to all creative work should be free.
Orlando Soria is a freelance interior designer who writes often about the field he’s in, financial upheaval, and observations about life. I love his writing for its authenticity and humor.
Anna Whiston Donaldson was my first introduction to writing about grief. She lost her son suddenly and her blog was a chronicle of that time when it was so raw and devastating. She doesn’t write as often now and I miss her voice. She made me unafraid to write about my own grief when my husband died.
Tom Pochapsky is a scientist and was one of my husband’s dearest friends. He’s a fabulous writer and his take on current events is spot on.
It has been my goal for a very long time to turn my blog work into a book. After my husband’s death I literally felt like I was losing my mind. Writing helped me in so many ways and I have found that most people are grieving something. We learn as we go how to carry our losses and my blog has shown me that there is an audience that is desperate to be understood. I hope I can shed a small light on them.
Secondly, we are living through such dark times so whatever your creative outlet is bring it out into the open. The arts help us make sense of the world. Become part of that company – you are desperately needed.
Lastly, thank you, Manu, for reaching out to me and inviting me into this club. I had to read your email three times to make sure it was legit because who does this sort of thing? Highlights blog writers? My sincere thanks to you. What a gift to be able to do this.
Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 120 interviews.
Make sure to also say thank you to Jonathan Kemper and the other 127 supporters for making this series possible.
2025-12-16 16:35:00
With the growing trend of countries proposing laws to restrict access to the web based on users’ age, I feel compelled to say two things:
A) No, age-gating social media is not going to kill what’s left of the internet. If you think “the internet” = “social media sites,” then that’s your fault, and you should be ashamed. But don't get it twisted: this doesn't mean that these laws aren't bad, because they are.
B) How about, instead of preventing “the kids” from accessing social media, we go in the opposite direction and keep all the adults out? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You also get the added benefit of kicking probably billions of people off social media, and that would for sure screw with the finances of Meta and Co.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-12-14 17:10:00
This is my entry for December’s IWC hosted by V.H. Belvadi. If you have thoughts on the subject, make sure to write a blog post before the end of the month, and join the carnival.
I’m not good at making predictions, so I don’t really know what the IndieWeb is gonna look like in 5 years. If I had to guess, I’d say it will probably look very much like it looks now, only with more AI-generated nonsense sprinkled throughout. But rather than making predictions, let me write about hopes and wishes. My feelings when it comes to the web can be described as a pendulum or a standing wave. I alternate between naïve optimism and endless pessimism. I’m writing this in my downward swinging phase, which means this post is gonna be kinda bleak.
There’s a post I keep thinking about. More specifically, this question:
In trying to escape the torment nexus, have we just built a nicer version of the torment nexus?
Here’s my hope for the IW in 2030: I hope that in 5 years, we have stopped pretending. Pretending that replacing corporate platforms with bad copies of the same platforms is a good and desirable thing to do. Pretending that what we really need to solve the issues that are plaguing the web is more tools and more protocols. Pretending that all the people out there who use the web on a daily basis care about the same things we do. Pretending that the fault for all this digital mess lies entirely on the shoulders of a few mega corporations, while the billions of people out there are just bystanders, caught in the crossfire.
But also stop pretending that everything is doomed, that the web is about to die, that AI will sloppify everything, that writing on a blog is pointless, that tending to a digital garden is wasted time.
Yes, a vast chunk of the 2025 web fucking sucks. It’s an unusable mess, and going in without adblockers, VPNs, and network-level filters is an atrocious experience. And that won’t change in 2030. If there’s one prediction I can confidently make, it's this one: in 5 years, the web is still gonna be a mess.
At the same time, though, the web is a marvelous place if you know how to navigate it. There’s still delight to be found out there, and it’s still full of genuinely kind and wonderful people. And that’s my hope, my wish, and my dream for the IndieWeb in 2030: that we focus less on what’s on the screen and more on who’s in front of it.
Because people matter. Because you matter. And in this idiotic AI age we’re going through, all this matters more than ever.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-12-12 20:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Nick Heer, whose blog can be found at pxlnv.com.
Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter.
The People and Blogs series is supported by Radek Kozieł and the other 127 members of my "One a Month" club.
If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month.
My name is Nick, and I have a blog named Pixel Envy. I live in Calgary, which has repeatedly been rated as one of the world's most liveable cities by people who do not live here. I went to art college and stumbled into a career in web design, front-end development, branding, and (begrudgingly) search optimization. I like to read, learn about music, cook, take photographs, and — occasionally — I enjoy writing, too.
I read quickly but write slowly; I can type much faster than I can think. I am glad this is a hobby and not my actual full-time job.
I began Pixel Envy by emulating successful writers and formats. Like many people in the mid-to-late 2000s, I created many blogging dead-ends. I overcomplicated past attempts. By simplifying to a text-mostly website without comments or pictures, I was able to focus on what I wanted to do. I cribbed the links-and-articles format from writers like Andy Baio and Jason Kottke; I built more comprehensive narratives with multi-link posts like those on Metafilter and the topical clusters on Techmeme.
I fell into writing about Apple because I find the company's unique identity fascinating. I have since grown to think more deeply about privacy and digital ethics; these subjects now represent the bulk of my work.
I found my identity and voice by doing a lot of things poorly for a long time.
My biggest regrets are in the things I wrote because I thought they were things I needed to do to be taken seriously or remain relevant.
For me, the creative process is just a working process — utilitarian from start to finish. I am most often responding to something I see in the news. I check Techmeme throughout the day, I have something like 300-plus feeds in my RSS reader, and I have a Slack-based notification system. This is overkill for a hobby. The way I have it set up is thankfully not as much like drinking from a firehose as it seems in large part because I try to be quite focused in what I will write about.
Usually this comes in the form of little link posts — maybe a few per day — that are specific to topical news. I rarely link to something without reading other coverage or perspectives about the same news, and I do my best to verify what I read with primary sources. These posts help me stay aware of unfolding news, and they shape the longer-form articles I write less frequently — perhaps publishing a few per month. I have several articles I have been chipping away at for a while, and a list in Things of subjects I would like to write about one day.
I have no separate drafting stage; a post is a draft until it is published or, occasionally, deleted. The process of writing is, itself, a process of thinking, so the organization of arguments reveals itself as I put down more words. My workflow is informed by my dependence on documentary sources, and it looks mostly like reading. While I find writing a mostly utilitarian pursuit and avoid publishing anything that sounds too much like writing, I hope a shred of my personality reveals itself.
I proofread everything I write. Still, there is no better spellchecker than the "publish" button.
I am not too picky about my creative environment. These words are coming to you from beside a smouldering fire in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, but I am not a writer who benefits from seclusion. I like to have a reliable internet connection and to be relatively unbothered by the world around me. Depending on what I am writing about, it can take a beat or two to get into the right headspace. I am at my best on my Mac, and when I am a little bit sleep-deprived. Ideally, I am outdoors on a warm day, with a nice beverage and some great music.
I am a reluctant WordPress user. It, in the process of transforming into the CMS for the world, has betrayed its name in becoming worse for websites based on the written word. However, it plays extremely well with MarsEdit, which is a truly excellent piece of software. I designed and built my WordPress theme. I am working on a redesigned website; I am always working on a redesigned website.
I prefer writing on my 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is the best computer I have ever used. Longer-form articles are shaped in BBEdit and, infrequently, in iA Writer on my iPhone. Shorter-form link posts are written directly in MarsEdit. I have a handful of utility scripts to help me do things like converting quoted text into Markdown and finding duplicate reference links.
While I have experimented with various generative A.I. products, I have rarely found they improve what I have written or the process itself. I tried getting ChatGPT to give me headline ideas, but it has been trained on too many bad headlines to produce anything worthwhile. I sometimes paste articles into some generative A.I. tool or another for proofreading and it is occasionally helpful. Generative A.I. circumvents the process of thinking that comes from writing, however, so I find its utility limited, to say nothing of its frightening ethics.
How I had originally answered this question is that I would almost certainly have a bunch of changes as I have countless regrets. However — and this is one of my favourite things about this craft, as it encourages the writer to justify a position — I recognize I would probably feel the same regardless of the name I chose, the posts I wrote, or the technology stack I use. I do have posts I regret, and I have gone through different phases of what I believe or am willing to defend. I believe this is a process known as “learning”.
Though I have issues with WordPress, I feel certain I made the correct call from day one in using a CMS I control instead of a hosted and managed option. I understand why someone would choose to ease the technical burden. Not me, though. The customization it affords has been instrumental in building the kind of website I want to have.
One of the nicest things about using a text-based medium — as opposed to, say, audio or video — is that infrastructure can be inexpensive. I spend around $110 USD per year to host Pixel Envy, plus around $40 per year in related domain names. I do not use many images, so I do not need a delivery network or anything similarly intensive.
I offset those costs first with a small, unobtrusive, and non-behavioural ad, and then with Patreon and paid sponsorships. Sometimes I wonder if it is fair to do this for a hobby.
It feels trite to recommend Derek "Menswear Guy" Guy now that he has become a media sensation, but Die Workwear is an essential read for me. Guy's passion and ability to describe style as a language make menswear understandable and approachable.
I financially support several publications, including Defector, which is one of my favourite websites despite not being a Sports Person.
Frustratingly, a lot of good blogs are newsletters, which is just a blog delivered through email. I use Feedbin in part because it allows me to reroute new issues to NetNewsWire and treat them as standard blog posts. Anyway, I like Today in Tabs very much (and financially support it), and Web Curios.
Thank you, Manuel, for inviting me to share my thoughts here.
Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 120 interviews.
Make sure to also say thank you to Silvano Stralla and the other 127 supporters for making this series possible.