2026-03-18 14:58:00
Every once in a while, i see a blogpost like the one that chunk of coal recently made, treating bear like a social media platform. it's always a reminder that social media has kind of conditioned our brains to feel entitled to others attention on sites like these.
But here's the secret, right: You don't actually need toasts. They don't do anything. Bear doesn't even display the total number your blog has.
I mean, seriously. Noone is getting paid for this (apart from herman, i suppose) - it doesn't matter if people upvote your stuff. Your lifelyhood doesn't depend on it, there's no path to stardom here. It's a hobby. Who cares what number of trending your post inhabits.
If you don't like the content that's on trending, just use any of the dozens of content aggregation websites you can find on the web. Have a look at powrss or something.
Traditional social media has kind of conditioned everybody to see this sort of thing as their job, to sort of unconsciously put the people at the top of trending onto some sort of pedestal - "look guys, those are the bearblog celebrities!".
No, they're just random people that also do this as a hobby. You're not going to get "canceled" on bearblog, no one's gonna get their lives ruined by hundreds of people when a "popular" blogger calls them out. I don't have the numbers exactly, but there's like, what? At total of 500, 600 active users on here? People will get annoyed at your post and move on, there's no secret Bearblogging shadow cabal or whatever.
Trending doesn't always show the stuff that i most enjoy reading, heck, most of the time it doesn't do that. But that's what most recent is for. You're not owed attention, there's no attention economy here, because, again, you're not getting paid for this.
Sure, it feels nice to know other people like your stuff, I get that. But it doesn't serve anyone to get this upset over it, to try and act like simultaneously you don't care about toasts and they're Bad And Evil actually, and then to turn around and say you're also entitled to more of them. The existence of the toast system doesn't "force" you to do anything. Turn it off if you don't want it. There's a bunch of userscripts for that, i think I've even made one before.
Stop treating bearblog like a job. You're not gonna "hit it big" here of all places. Have some fun, enjoy your time here, maybe email some people with likeminded interests. Getting upset over the number of toasts other people receive is just about the most pointless thing you could be doing. You aren't entitled to other people's attention.
2026-03-18 08:54:00
How to propose in 8 easy steps:
Step 1: Give no indication that you are ready to propose. Act a little blasé or disinterested whenever any related conversations come up. Say that you're definitely not going to do it while travelling New Zealand and Australia.
Step 2: Order a ring and get it shipped to NZ. Faff around with DHL's unhelpful customs import process and get the forms filled out.
Step 3: Secretly hide the ring in a camera battery charging case.
Step 4: Wake up at 3am and drive down the coast to Kaikōura. Walk part way up Mt Fyffe to a wonderfully scenic view point.
Step 5: Set up your camera to "film the sun rising".
Step 6: Watch the sun rise. Enjoy the colours in the sky. Enjoy each other's company. Enjoy the moment.
Step 7: Get on one knee and ask the question. Hold back the tears and get the words out.
Step 8: Wait for her to say yes.
(She said yes).
2026-03-18 07:34:00
Last week J learned that he was to be laid off, not long after his five-year anniversary. A few days after that E found out that the company she and M work at is going to be laying off 20% of their workforce to offset AI spending, which by my estimates means that there's roughly a 36% chance one of them will be affected. E thinks her own odds are worse, since she's been struggling to keep up with pace. So J has been scrambling to get his last few medical and dental appointments in before his last day and preparing for interviews and E is mentally bracing to join him.
I learned some of this on a long subway ride this weekend, and the news hit a little too close to home. Two others in my close circle have also been looking for work for a while now; everyone else is worried about joining them. It's cruel, we say, looking back ruefully at how we all defected from what we wanted to do to computer science because it was supposed to be the safe choice. Now it's anything but.
I don't even work in the industry anymore and I'm worried. It feels like the walls are closing in. It's hard not to when you see people around you get laid off left and right. In a 1-on-1 this week one of the senior members on my team expressed that he was worried that our jobs might be made redundant by AI too, and that the only thing keeping us from getting replaced might be the higher-ups' unwillingness to do the dirty work of prompting these AI tools themselves.
While we haven't done layoffs at work, the pressure to use AI to increase our productivity at work is mounting. As someone who doesn't enjoy using AI, I find it hard to keep up. So much of my day is now spent looking for ways we can better cajole this probabilistic black box into simulating the work I was hired to do. I don't want to spend my hours doing this. I want to choose the words myself. Isn't that what you hired me to do?
Back when I was interviewing for this job I have now, one of the many hoops they made me jump through was a set of asynchronous, unproctored recorded interview questions and writing assessments. They notified me that I had two days to do all this in an email I received an hour before I was supposed to leave for vacation. What the hell, I thought, as I put my bags down and pulled on a collared shirt. In my hurry I answered the canned interview questions in a single take, used ChatGPT to help me with the writing prompts (this was the first time I had ever used the tool, mind you), and sent them off before I jetted off for vacation.
Later, they asked if I had used AI on that writing assessment. I had completed it in "significantly less time" than the other candidates. I saw no reason to dissimulate and told them that I had. I thought that was going to be the end of the road then, but it didn't end up mattering because (i) they would put me through another proctored writing assessment later, and (ii) I later found out that my current director defended my AI use as "productive" and said that it showed I was resourceful.
He brings this tale up along with my technical background every time he taps me to spearhead AI initiatives. It is difficult not to choke on the irony. Even as an avowed naysayer and skeptic I use these tools so much at work, much more than I would like. I worry they are eroding my ability to think (and consequently, write).
From the outside I write for a living. What really happens is I go to work to coax what looks like writing from a black box and then I go home to practice the actual work of writing. It is a strange, strange existence. Of course I wish it weren't so but I also wish that we wouldn't drop bombs on children in foreign countries and ravage the one planet we can live on — in the end, what good does all this unfulfilled desire do?
2026-03-18 05:45:59
It's been fun so far. I wrote in my last post... that I have actually been surprised at the fact that people actually see my posts, that they "toast" them, and that even sometimes drop me an e-mail. It's a nice way to get plugged into a community, which is what I felt when I blogged circa early 2000s, but I think it took a bit more time back then. So this is a welcoming surprise.
I kind of went into this as a fun little experiment. I randomly found the platform surfing through neocities sites. Bear seemed like something I could set up pretty fast and keep it pretty minimal if I wanted to.
Six posts are up already, and this will make 7.
I didn't post anything over the weekend, and over the past few days. Not because I didn't want to, and not because I didn't have a topic to write about. There were a few topics that I REALLY wanted to write about. But I found that the urge to write them was more reactionary, than motivated by the fun of blogging and posting, or writing to express something that is on my mind.
I really like how people write reply posts and you can see them sometimes on the Discover page. I think I was wanting to write a couple of my own reply posts, but I decided to step back and think through them a little more, and see if I could make my points coherent. And decide if I even want to post blogs about these topics at all. I might still write about these topics.
Even though Bear can be a low friction platform that reminds me of early 2000s Blogger (Blogspot), which I found really fun, it still exists in 2026. So from my lens, I don't want to bring over any unconscious "Social Media" type pressures and impose them on myself. Especially on something that brought me joy and satisfaction in the past. If you read my last blog post then you would know that I have a way of transferring habits to different platforms. Don't want to do that with this one.
One of those habits is feeling the need to post everyday. As you can see, I've gotten over that. But it can become one of those things that if I don't post for too long, days can become weeks. And blogging for the sake of blogging, like creation for creation's sake is something that I do enjoy. So I'll try to keep focusing on the enjoyment of blogging, and try to let go of those habits from social media.
2026-03-18 01:20:00
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
It’s said that Ernest Hemingway once described writing like that. Exactly what he meant, or if he even said it, we’ll never know.
But I think many of us recognize that feeling. We sit down and pour it all out. Or we try to, but not a single word comes. It’s all just clogged up.
Maybe the latter is connected to the former, just like coagulated blood is related to what once flowed freely. We don’t want to bleed. We want writing to be pure bliss, so we shy away at the thought of blood.
But does writing always have to be painless and fun? If it stings a little now and then, does that mean it’s bad?
“This may sting a little”, like the nurse says when you’re donating blood. It hurts a bit, but it’s for a good cause. Your effort helps others, even if you never meet the receiver.
You can be a blog donor too.
2026-03-17 23:00:00
Every now and then, Noyb (European Center for Digital Rights) highlights some of their volunteers for their GDPRhub project. Now I got my entry :)
Check it out on Mastodon and LinkedIn.
Fittingly, one of my translated and summarized decisions finally made it into the weekly newsletter last Thursday!
Also, they give you some goodies when you reach some of the volunteer milestones they have. I received mine :)
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