2026-03-28 05:53:32
I went ahead and grabbed my prescription today, and took my first dose! I'm so happy, I'm so excited to see where this will lead, and how I'll like it! I was a good creature and went ahead and put reminders in my calendar to remind me when to increase my dosage, and I set alarms to help me remember!
Today is a milestone, and I'm happy to keep forging ahead
2026-03-28 04:40:00
Well well, it's been over a month since my last post. I haven't felt like blogging to be honest, and each day feels like it's just blended into the next - I couldn't even tell you what the date is most of the time.
The good news is we're moving into a new home next week and it's actually pretty nice. The only real downside is that it's significantly smaller than where we are now and the rent is nearly £300 a month more. That's just how it is, the rent on the current house is way under market rate and we knew we'd never find anything this price again.
Prior to finding the new house, we got turned down for two others we applied for. It was really disheartening as you simply get told the landlord didn't choose you and that's that. There aren't enough rental properties to meet demand, so you have to apply as soon as you've viewed something and then your odds are slim anyway.
I mentioned a house we really liked in my last post. Despite having no other applicants for nearly 4 months, the day we put our application in two other people did too. Luckily by the time we got the rejection, nearly 2 weeks later, we'd found the house we actually got.
At the end of February, I was going through a particularly low patch and my anxiety was so bad I felt constantly sick. In desperation, I posted on a couple of local facebook groups, asking if there were any landlords wishing to let direct. I laid out our situation in detail - self-employed, on benefits, pets, tight budget etc. One person replied quickly, but the property wasn't suitable. Then another came in the next day, saying they had a property about to become available that met our requirements.
Two days later, we viewed it and fell in love. The landlord seemed to like us and then we got the amazing news it was also under budget. It's a beautiful 16th century period cottage at the end of a quiet rural lane. It's got a partially converted garage with a workshop for my hubby and a decent-sized garden across the lane. It has everything we need, albeit quite a bit smaller, but it's so warm and characterful - the upstairs is partially in the roof and wonky!
It's got a woodburner stove, which I've always wanted, and even an Aga-style range cooker!
The icing on the cake is that my youngest will keep his taxi to special school and my eldest has pivoted to an accessible sixth form for his A-Levels. I can't tell you how stressed we've been over the boy's schooling arrangements having to change.
I'm going to blog a bit about our move over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime here's a sneak peek of our little country cottage (it's all the cream-rendered part and one bit of the brick-rendered part) :
I also can't resist showing you the gorgeous beams and this wonky window in our master bedroom:
The view from upstairs is so pretty (minus the bins lol)!
Oh, and one other piece of good news. While dealing with all this, I had to do youngest's renewal for Disability Living Allowance, which I submitted early March. To my utter surprise, they made the decision barely a week later and have upped his entitlement to high rate care meaning a very welcome boost to our finances.
More soon!
2026-03-28 03:57:31
Browsing the discover feed and visiting many peoples Bear blogs has given me so many ideas. Both for my own blog and other things I have been struggling to give form over the past few years.
There’s so much individuality and creativity on display here that truly lets the individual shine through, it’s a joy to browse.
I have come to the realisation I have been trying to mash too many ideas together creating an incoherent mess. Instead, I should try separating things neatly in their own buckets while still being connected to a larger whole. Giving every idea focus and space to breathe.
I myself prefer using specific parts of bigger websites instead of the whole thing for specific things in my own RSS feeds, because some websites simply excel at one thing better than others. I should structure what I want to create how I myself would want to use it.
It also seems kinda fun keeping this project connected to my public life, completely separate from my anonymous Bear blog.
Food for thought.
2026-03-28 01:30:09
RAM prices are, frankly, insultingly high. Like so ridiculously high it's absurd. It's got me thinking: We need better software. Electron, Windows, Chrome, Discord - these are RAM hogs to the highest order. Single webpages require what an entire operating system required in terms of resources less than 15 years ago. Chrome is famously bad at memory management and eats it for lunch. Windows idles at 6gb RAM usage. Even Apple is hitting the upper limit on what currently runs smoothly at 8gb for some of their applications.
In short: we have a software problem more than a RAM problem. Maybe software companies should, like, care more about this? Dependency upon dependency eats away at minimum RAM requirements for software these days, and the entire chain is responsible for using this resource so inefficiently.
Well, here we are: RAM is no longer affordable. If you want to get lots and lots of people to use your software - reduce its RAM requirements now. RAM just became a very finite resource.
2026-03-28 01:06:00
So you've heard about all the data harvesting, ad targeting and surveillance, algorithmic rage farming, and all sorts of other things you really didn't actually sign up for when all you wanted was an email address - and you don't like any of it.
The good news: Alternatives exist!1 They really are out there. And you can switch to them today. A great many of them are a lot lighter on the tracking, better in terms of privacy, and, as FOSS apps, slower to enshittify (or even generally more resistant to getting enshittified). I mean - how can you not want that!?
You may have heard that it is difficult to switch away from Big Tech. Yes, network effects exist, but those don't matter for things like browsers, web search, or email. And:
You do not need to be a rocket scientist or have a degree in computer science to switch a daily driver away from Big Tech. I am not a rocket scientist, nor do I have a degree in computer science, and I don't use Google search or Chrome for my browsing. I haven't had a Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp,...) account in over three years, a twitter account in over five (I think!? I don't really remember). My instant messaging app of choice is neither WhatsApp nor Instagram, and my main email provider is definitely not Gmail. And I do not feel like any of the above are making me have a socializing deficit, or miss critical emails, or bang my head against the wall due to missing functionality. This is all very doable.
This is part one of the Alternatives series, and we'll cover, very broadly:
Edited image based on original work by Mediamodifier on Unsplash.
Links, as well as apps, can (and often do) change. While I have done my very best to only select apps that have a very good track record in terms of privacy, security, and trustworthiness, an app I recommend below may change course down the line.
As with all web links and downloads, do not blindly trust anyone's recommendation, or download something via a link that someone tells you to click, before checking the link. Cross-reference what you read here with other reputable sources (I'll put a few that I like at the end of this article, but I would encourage you to also use one of the privacy-friendly search engines to ~do your own research~).
Furthermore, especially if some time has elapsed since this article was published, always check what the developer of an app has been up to since. Orange flags that are worth getting more details on before you proceed can include:
Always be on the lookout, do your due diligence, and only install apps or sign up for services that you have vetted, and/or that someone you know personally and who you really really trust has been using, and has recommended to you.
This ties in, to an extent, with the note above:
Apps can, and do, change. All the time. This also means that apps may go from Great to Not So Great in just a few short weeks (things move fast in the big city.) This then can mean that apps and tools that have been amazing for decades suddenly aren't, or that software that wasn't on our radar is suddenly the top privacy dog and becomes everyone's pick.
Related to that, you will probably not find an app in this list that is 100% perfect, at all times, in all things, and in all contexts. Likely because that is a unicorn that doesn't exist.
But: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I see a lot of talk out there that says, "But that one time, SecureAppXYZ gave away someone's email address in court!!1!", which is taken to mean that SecureAppXYZ is 100% the same as insert big tech company here whose entire business it is to sell your data to ad brokers in terms of privacy. Not so. There are obvious differences and gradations at play here, between ecosystems whose entire business is to harvest and sell our data, and ecosystems that are not built on this premise and that have shown a commitment of privacy. Gosh, I do love me the smell of nuance in the morning!
I will do my best to call out current "disputes" that I am aware of where applicable, but: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
If you're wanting to go privacy-conscious, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram may not be the way to go. I'm sure I don't need to recap why that is, but if you'd like a refresher, start here.
There are extremely capable alternatives out there that you can start using today:
Avoid Chrome, and consider instead:
The above do not mean that all browsers are created equal, and you "might as well just stick with insert data harvesting machine here". Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Much like Chrome in the browsers section, Google Search is probably best avoided. It's not really even that good anymore.
This is the category where I don't have a consistent "daily driver." My browsers of choice let me configure my search engines, and the ones I regularly go between are:
If you use a free email account with one of those companies whose main line of business is ads and ad tracking, it is extremely likely that your data - harvested from your emails, contacts, and calendar events - is used for ad targeting. From there, it is but a short trip for your data to land in the hands of data brokers, who sell that stuff to whoever pays for it.
As an example, Google itself may have stopped, or claimed that it stopped, scanning email content for ad targeting, but third-party apps are still allowed to do exactly that.2
There are many other guides of this type out there. I would encourage you to give them a read - some of them list more options than I did here, others go into greater depth for a few options, and others have a set of suggested steps you can follow to get off of Big Tech incrementally.
There is, of course, a lot more to online privacy and deshittification than this. We'll cover more areas (social media, news, podcasts, your web presence,...) in the next parts of this series - and of course, you are always encouraged to follow the work of the great privacy thinkers & writers of our age, and see what else is out there!
Questions or thoughts - you know what to do. Just please don't blast my inbox with "but that one time, Proton/Firefox/DDG/Ecosia/... did xyz and NOBODY should EVER use it" Thank youuuu 💜
Side note, I've named the series thus because, well, these are alternatives and they do exist, but also because a lot of the current slop-related pushiness from on high makes us believe that there truly is no alternative. That AI is inevitable. Which itself is related to this political concept of yore.↩
Yes, this is a Proton article - they are, of course, providing a rival service to Google. However, I am linking it here as the article contains a number of great links where you can read more about Gmail and privacy. And this article is from 2018 - Imagine how much, uh, "better" the situation has gotten since then.↩
In my mind, the reporting on this - and on other, related privacy "incidents" - from a lot of large-scale outlets was disingenuous. Based on the reporting, a lot of people assumed that Proton was giving the contents of their communication away. No.↩
2026-03-27 20:57:00
Breader is an Apple Shortcuts "app" that pulls together ten Bear-related features in one handy place. No switching between tabs or bookmarks, just run the shortcut and pick what you need.
Here's what's on the menu:
Grab Breader here and start browsing.