2026-01-26 04:46:00
I used to lurk a lot, mainly on twitch streams, I remember feeling like my comment wouldn't have any value, so why even say anything in the first place? But aside from streams with so many people that you can't read anything, the streamer can benefit from your comment, as well as you can benefit from their reaction to it (for exaple correcting something you said, answering a question, making a good joke about it). Surely that are a lot of trolls, ragebaiters and people who just want to bring the other one down, but just as well as someone can ruin their day, you can also brigthen it up. You can say something funny or give some advice that helps them in some way, bringing more interaction towards the stream, everyone wins, or just be there, chilling, but present.
I see a reflection of that on bear. There's ragebait and bots, but there are also great posts that can actually help you in life, in the sense of reflections that you can relate to, or use it to see things more clearly, or "cozy" posts that bring a calmness to your day, like posts with nature pictures, or pictures of cats being silly and sleeping comfortably, or encouraging posts, they can all help you slow down your thoughts during a moment of stress or anxiety. There's also lessons and advice from people who have been through a bad (or good) experience or simply learned a better way to do something.
When I first started using bear I was just a lurker, I didn't think anything I could write could be like any of the above, but doing it made me feel better, brought me more mind clarity and is improving both my writing skills and creativity. It also lead to me connecting to other bloggers I like, and the interactions via email which have been recommended by a lot of bloggers do truly feel more meaningful.
So if you've been lurking, or have some draft that you're unsure of, I would appreciate if you published it, no matter if it has grammar mistakes, typos, or you feel like the post isn't "good enough", I want to read it! Even if it's just your thoughts (not even not thinking about anything is an excuse, you can put that on a post and elaborate from there). If you do, please email me the link, I would truly love to read it.
2026-01-25 23:03:48
We live in an age where everything demands a response. Immediately. Publicly. With conviction.
Silence is suspicious. Hesitation looks like weakness. And not having an opinion is almost offensive.
Which is odd, considering how many opinions we already have and how little they seem to help.
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Most of us don’t suffer from a lack of information. We suffer from an excess of reaction.
We react to news we barely understand, to people we barely know, to thoughts that appeared in our head five seconds ago and somehow already feel like our personality.
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What if the problem isn’t what we think, but how quickly we think it must be expressed?
Karl Popper once suggested that certainty is often the enemy of truth. Camus reminded us that the world is absurd enough without us trying to straighten it by force. And Jung quietly warned that what we refuse to see in ourselves has an annoying tendency to show up everywhere else.
None of them suggested yelling.
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There is a strangely radical idea making a quiet comeback: pause.
Not to withdraw from the world, but to meet it without immediately rearranging it.
To notice irritation without turning it into a post. To feel desire without mistaking it for an obligation. To encounter beauty without trying to own it. To sit with discomfort without upgrading it into outrage.
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This is not about becoming passive. It’s about becoming precise.
Reacting less does not mean caring less. Often, it means caring better.
Listening before replying. Allowing uncertainty. Accepting that the other person might be wrong — and still human.
A shockingly underused combination.
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In a culture that rewards speed, slowness looks suspicious.
In a culture that worships identity, changing your mind looks like betrayal.
But maybe maturity is simply the ability to hold an experience without immediately turning it into a statement.
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We don’t need better slogans. We need better attention.
We don’t need louder voices. We need more space between impulse and action.
And no — this will not save the world overnight. But it might prevent us from making it worse before breakfast.
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If there is a quiet form of responsibility left, it might be this:
To react a little less. To listen a little more. To take ourselves slightly less seriously without taking life any less seriously.
Which, given the current state of things, would already be a significant improvement
2026-01-25 19:37:00
Lately I’ve been experimenting with making a new ultra-minimal theme for my blog. I’ve also been doing some writing in Swedish, and played with the idea of starting a blog in Swedish.
All this seems familiar somehow. Like I’ve seen it somewhere before. Ah, right, it’s the pattern that comes right before I delete my blog.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve done it in the past. And not once have I been able to give a true answer to why I’ve done it. Not because I’m hiding it, but because I really don’t know.
I have answers and explanations each time, both to myself and others, but they never really feel honest, not even to myself. It’s just something I come up with. Something that could be true, something that makes sense, because a why needs a because.
I’ve been giving it a lot of thought over the last couple of days. Trying to find the real answer, and maybe this is it:
Believing and expecting blogging to be something it’s not. A substitute for something missing, or an escape from something that hasn’t been given the attention it deserves. An escape and a longing for home at the same time, in all its contradictions.
Or maybe it’s just me overanalyzing things. Again.
One positive development in the midst of it all, though, is that I haven’t hit “Delete” on this blog yet. Hooray for that!
Will it last? No idea.
2026-01-25 18:00:00
“It was not Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, or whatever the others were called, who had me dragged away and beaten. No, it was the cobbler, the neighbor, the old man, the milkman, the postman, those without form suddenly given armbands and a cap on their heads and then they were the master race.” —Karl Stojka
it's midnight and i'm not tired. i am beyond angry—i'm infuriated, down to my cells boiling in my blood. i am inconsolable, a shaking mess as i write this. i've been trying to work all day and listen to people smarter and more well-read than me, but my mind cannot focus. i don't feel any better. i have been shaking all day—all day since i found out about the killing of alex pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse of a VA hospital who was executed in the middle of the street helping a woman up during protests in minneapolis, minnesota.
10 shots into a man on the ground. nine went into a lifeless body.
is this the tyranny that conservatives claimed was happening for wearing a fucking mask in a time of widespread disease? is this yet another notable murder of a someone in opposition to this regime? this time, someone who had a valid concealed carry permit who was not brandishing it nor coming at officers?
what does tyranny look like to you?
it angers me that i have to analyze a graphic video, scrubbing and combing through footage, to know the truth—that i have to verify the sources with such minute detail because i'm terrified of AI-generated videos being used to propagate lies (e.g. nekima levy armstrong) of protestors.
in response to an outpouring of lies from the united states federal government, alex's parents are begging the public to get "the truth" out about their son; to spread the word of his kindness and good-heartedness. the government claims he was a "domestic terrorist." someone who worked in the ICU at the VA hospital, who spent his waking hours helping others, our veterans. do you have a licensed, legal gun on your person for your protection and attend protests to exercise your first amendment right? you could be the next "domestic terrorist," shot dead while committing the crime of helping your fellow human from falling in the snow. isn't shooting someone on-sight for having a weapon the exact example of the future conservative gun owners "warned us" happening under the "tyranny" of gun ownership regulations?
federal agents have been inching this way for months. the increased violence, the chemical warfare inflicted upon and agitation of peaceful protestors, the declaration of anyone in opposition of trump's policies to be "domestic terrorists." when dealing with narcissists, every accusation becomes an admission.
from where i'm sitting, the federal government is declaring war on the american people and openly killing us. we are allowed to observe ICE raids. we are allowed to assemble peacefully to express our dissent. it doesn't matter how much they've chipped away at the meanings of language. that is part of their strategy.
the focus on ICE is not enough; while they are actively committing crimes against american citizens and undocumented immigrants alike, it was a border patrol officer who shot alex. it's the department of homeland security—it's kristi noem, it's greg bovino, it's white supremacist stephen miller, it's donald trump. they must be removed from their posts if we want to have a functioning democracy for the generations after us. authoritarianism thrives on fear—thrives on you staying home.
the american experiment has had a wonderful run, but having too much consolidated power like the federal government currently is exerting authoritarianism and rendering it complete. we have reached the endgame, and we are watching the results unfold. this is what happens when you slowly disembowel the checks and balances in favor of a blind faith in whoever becomes president. our congress flops about, dallying in issues of the nonexistent culture war as federal agents kill americans. the courts have been rendered useless in their efforts to combat injustice, practicing theory with no enforcement. they are aiming for the heads of protestors.
can you feel your heart beating in your chest? what is it going to take?
in a game i play called civilization, casus belli is the term used for justification of war. in real life, the UN charter prohibits participating countries from engaging in war except: "As a means of defending themselves, or an ally where treaty obligations require it, against aggression." what can we do? i believe we have a few options, and it requires large numbers of people and elected officials. peaceful protests get us out of this, yes, but not without also voting, also running for office, also calling our congresspeople, also contacting our state governments, also imploring local officials, also observing—in addition to peacefully protesting. we have to show up—in numbers.
i'm personally of the opinion that state governments, through legal means, should reduce their federal tax contributions in protest. tax collection might be our only leverage before all-out violent civil war. i'd love to see the federal government operate as a loose collective of states, somewhat like the european union. it has gone too far.
i want nothing more than to return to my work, but my heart aches for alex, his family, his dog. my heart hurts for renée good, for keith porter. i can't believe there's a wikipedia page for the shootings by U.S. immigration agents. i can't believe we're tracking "deaths, detentions and deportations of American citizens in the second Trump administration," because none of this should be happening. i want this to end peacefully, but i understand why violence has been used in the past when citizens are pushed beyond their breaking point.
i hoped writing this would feel cathartic and help me release some of this energy i feel, this weight on my heart. but i'm so, so angry. i'm going to channel this into helping my neighbors, and i hope you do too.
i can't believe i have to include this, but to be clear, i unequivocally condemn all forms of political violence & believe only in nonviolent protest and democratic processes.
2026-01-25 04:29:23
Taking a day off from posting my usual YouTube slop or gamer shit or photos of plants to remark that "Nuremberg style trials for ICE" is a moderate position.
Someone else was shot in Minneapolis today. A lot of people are going around saying to not watch the video, but I watched it, and I can tell you that it's a cryptic tangle of wrestling and punching bodies hunched over a guy you can barely make out. They hit him in the head several times with a pistol and then start shooting him a lot, but he's behind a car, and you can't even tell who is doing the shooting, or why. It's a non-sensical scene. This is what insanely evil crimes actually look like on video today - they're the kind of thing that makes you ask, "What's going on? Are they really going to-- what?? Huh????? How did that happen???"
I think a lot of people are waiting for some incredibly horrific gory imagery or some incredibly over the top insane testimony before they give themselves permission to realize what kind of country we've suddenly become. If you're holding your breath waiting for a moment like that, I think you need to reassess what you're waiting for. The evidence we'll be using to prosecute evil is possibly always going to be these cryptic, bizarre shots from odd angles, far away, behind a shop window, behind rows of cars, through a confusing tangle of human bodies, people and vehicles moving in ways you can't make sense of. There's no sense to make of it. The evil world we ended up with is the one where deranged, unforgivable human rights violations are filmed from sixty feet away, across a busy street.
If this second shooting doesn't teach people to understand what's going on here, I don't know what to say.
2026-01-24 21:13:00
Sometimes, I think about the fact that society at large could just stop caring about data protection and privacy, and there goes everything that I worked towards and am passionate about. Humbling.
These laws are young. Not that people didn’t want privacy before, it’s just that as more data was collected, recorded and then processed via the earliest information processing systems (card punch systems and early computers), more needed to be protected. The more is written down and stored, the more this need arises.
1890 saw the right to privacy emerge in the US. Later on, people were understandably more wary of governments collecting data on citizens after WW1+2. Still, the world’s oldest data protection law is from 1970. Important law work around the idea of protecting personal data happened from then onwards - Germany’s Volkszählungsurteil 1983, the US’ HIPAA 1996, the EU’s 1995 Data Protection Directive and 2002 ePrivacy Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being passed in 2016 and going into effect in 2018, just to name the big, well-known ones.
But governments, priorities and views change. This could be a blip in history.
You can already see a sort of resignation in many people (“They track us all anyway, what does it matter? I have nothing to hide.” etc.) and the selling of data is becoming a very established and acceptable practice.
The air around it is sort of like: “Oh well, we want to use these services and advertise on them, and they have a lot of costs associated with hosting billions of users and we want to target our ads better. If that’s the price we have to pay, so be it.”. I already wrote about data being the cookie jar, where even non-data-broker businesses now want your data to sell as an additional income stream.
Everyone nowadays has an incentive to collect as much data as possible, not just to sell it to AI companies for a good sum, but also to potentially train their own AI. Businesses feel pressured to implement AI into anything they can, which raises the risk of employees entering sensitive data into it and sending it straight to OpenAI et. al. for training - that is, if they aren't using unapproved, so-called "shadow AI" on shady websites or wrappers, unclear who receives the data.
Data protection officers and other privacy professionals feel coerced into going along with some dicey setups and risky processing activities because they can’t afford being seen as a Luddite who will advise against everything and “hinder progress”, aka cost saving via AI replacement. Even I was told that I should probably make a LinkedIn account so companies would get a signal that I am not the "activist type" and I have a higher chance of being hired!
Governments are also shifting more right and fascist in a lot of places, which goes hand-in-hand with less protections, deregulation, and increased surveillance and criminalization. These types of parties and leaders do not care about upholding privacy if it means they get to target groups more easily - just look at how ICE tracks people in the US.
I wrote about the EU’s Digital Omnibus a while ago, which threatens to severely weaken the GDPR. The parties backing this deregulation and even asking for more are far-right parties and fascist tech bros.
The unfortunate reality is: What would have raised eyebrows just 10-20 years ago is shrugged at now. We got used to a level of data harvesting that used to be unacceptable. I wonder sometimes if, or rather when, we will reach a point at which privacy is no longer even valued on paper.
A point at which EU governments value total surveillance under the guise of digitalization, immigration control and protection of kids over heeding the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights, specifically Article 7 and 8, which guarantee the right to respect for private and family life and protect personal data.
A point at which the majority sees so much value in extreme data harvesting tech like social media, smartphones and AI that no cost is too great and they’d rather give up privacy than lose access or have a slightly worse tool.
People sometimes say to me that this field is so safe, as tech will increase and always be very integrated into our lives. I wouldn’t be so sure about the first part; it assumes that everyone will always see personal data as worth protecting, and I don’t think that’s a given.
Privacy and control over your own data is not a natural law, it's a social and political choice that only exists as long as people care enough to defend it.
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