2026-07-20 12:30:00
As I mentioned in my IndieWeb Book Club post, I first read Fromm’s book more than 20 years ago. I was in my early high school years when I stumbled upon his work and was immediately intrigued by his way of looking at the world. The fact that he was not “just” a philosopher but also a psychologist and a sociologist meant his ideas felt more concrete and applicable in today’s world, even though his book was more than 30 years old at the time and is half a century old now.
In reading To Have or to Be a second time, I was surprised by a couple of things. I remembered quite well the core thesis of the book, this tension between the two fundamental modes of existence, one predicated on the idea of possessing things, while the other is built on the concept of living and experiencing things without feeling the need to have them. It’s a way of looking at the world that felt right in my youth, and it still feels that way now, probably even more so considering the state of the world. But what I didn’t remember was the second half of the book, where Fromm tries to outline what a new human being and a new society could look like if we ditched the first mode—which is basically the pure capitalistic and consumeristic mindset—and embraced the second.
He was certainly very optimistic, and there are passages that made me smile: seeing how convinced he was that the capitalist model was on the cusp of breaking down is heartwarming. But at the same time, there are thoughts in that second part that are shockingly accurate in describing today’s society. His thoughts about news, about the manipulation of people through advertising and propaganda, I was quite surprised to see how well they aged.
Reading the book again made me want to pick up a bunch of his other books I also read in my teens, from Escape from Freedom to The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, but also made me want to read some of his other books—The Art of Being seems very interesting—and also made me want to read Marx and Spinoza. I might add a bunch of those books to my reading list.
Overall, very happy to have read the book a second time. I’m not a fan of re-reading books, but this was definitely worth it.
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2026-07-17 14:25:00
Kevin sent me a link to this email from Linus Torvalds the other day, and I found that to be a great example of something that has been bothering me for a while now. It’s about AI—everything is about AI these days, so damn boring—and, more specifically, Linus’ position when it comes to the use of LLMs.
What I find bothersome is the lack of any consideration for the moral and ethical implications of the technology itself. The justification for its use essentially boils down to “it’s a useful tool”, which is a totally unconvincing argument in this context.
In his defense, Linus also mentioned that «There are other questions around AI» but it’s telling that the one example he picked was «what the economy of it will actually look like in the end» which, again, has nothing to do with anything related to the ethics around the use of these tools, how were made, and so on.
And look, I understand that this is a very complex landscape to navigate since it touches A LOT of different aspects. But to quote Linus, «the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La La, I can't hear you”». This is a technology that is deeply entangled with moral and societal issues, and you have to accept the fact that you need to confront those ethical and moral dilemmas. There’s no way around it. And if you decide to sweep everything under the “it’s useful” rug, well, that’s disappointing to say the least.
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2026-07-14 21:10:00
Matt asked me a question recently about the end of my People and Blogs run. The question was if I always thought I was going to hand it over at some point, and it’s an interesting question worth expanding on, which is why I told him I was going to write a post about it, rather than simply answering via email.
I started and ended more online projects than I can remember at this point. I bought a dozen domain names, coded way too many sites, only to have them all inevitably bite the dust, sometimes months later, sometimes years later. But I don’t think I ever started a project with a set deadline in mind. All the projects were open-ended, always.
Back in September 2021, I posted about the shutting down of my thegallery.io, a site I ran for almost 7 years, and in that post, I wrote
Once the passion is gone, it is gone. There's no point in dragging things until you reach some random date in the future.
When I started People and Blogs, the plan was to run it for a single year: 52 interviews, that was the plan. But then the end arrived, and people enjoyed the series, so I kept going. But at some point, I crossed the imaginary line that separates doing something because I enjoy it, and doing something because other people enjoy it. If you do something long enough, you almost always end up inevitably crossing that line. There are exceptions—there are always exceptions—but that’s what my experience taught me.
And it’s weird how the process of realising that something is done works. Because at first I was simply carried forward by the momentum, by the established routines. I was sending emails, posting updates, and scheduling interviews. But the moment I considered the possibility of stopping, it was almost as if a seed got planted in the depths of my brain. This process kinda reminds me of the plot of the movie Inception. And once that seed was planted, it’s incredibly hard to eliminate. And it’s almost as if deep down I already knew the right thing to do but was too busy dealing with the routine to realise it.
So to answer the original question, no, I didn’t know from the get go I was going to pass the series to someone else. But a part of me enjoys this process of seeing projects changing hands. I was happy to receive blogroll.org from Ray, and I was equally as happy to hand over peopleandblogs.com to Zach. It’s one of the many good qualities of this corner of the web I love to inhabit.
The lesson I learned this time around is that projects need an endpoint! I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I inevitably start something new in a few years from now.
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2026-07-11 01:40:00
With the 150th interview of People and Blogs now live, it’s officially time to downsize my online presence again. My digital life follows a somewhat regular rhythm and I alternate through phases of expansion, where I buy domain names, ship new projects, start newsletters, and chase a million ideas, and phases of contraction, where everything happens in reverse: domains are left to expire, projects are archived, newsletters are deleted, services are cancelled.
And my recent decoupling from the web was the beginning of one of these downsizing phases. The Dealgorithmed newsletter has been deleted; the domain is not going to be renewed, and it will expire later in the year. My From the Summit newsletter and my personal newsletter have been merged into a single new newsletter called “Thoughts and Walks”. If you were already subscribed to one of my newsletters, you can manage your preferences from the Buttondown’s Portal and decide what type of content you want to receive. I'll write a more in depth post about my plans for the newsletter.
The only project that has survived the cut—aside from this blog—is blogroll.org, and that is not going anywhere anytime soon because there are things I want to add to that site. But more on that at a later time. Decluttering is fun! It's a nice mental exercise to delete stuff and become lighter again.
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2026-07-09 19:10:00
I was down in Sesto a few days ago for Apparat’s concert. The new album is great, attending the event with family and a few friends was a very enjoyable experience, and the atmosphere was very blue!
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2026-07-02 00:10:00
This morning Mr Overkill sent me the link to the AI Compass test, which I guess is a spin on the famous political compass test. It’s a bunch of questions—27? 29? 15? Who knows!—and at the end you get your location on the map and your archetype, from a list of 30. It’s harmless fun, and I found the results so far to be fairly accurate. If you end up taking the quiz, let me know if your result was accurate. Or even better, blog about it!
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