Junited 2025
June is a special month to me, because I was born on the 13th (which is a Friday again this year!). And therefore, this is also a special edition of my bookmarks sharing post: I’ll be joining the Junited 2025 blog activity by Robert. To quote his blog post introducing Junited 2024 last year:
(…) let’s show a little extra appreciation for this lovely digital space of ours. Junited is a love letter—from one blogger to another, and another, and another…
It’s simple: just share links to blog posts or blogs you think deserve more love. A new post, an old favorite, or just a blog you enjoy.
So, that’s exactly what I’ll do! Well, technically, not all links up to now are to (unknown) blogs, because I only found out about this idea on the 11th. But I hope I don’t break too many “rules” to join in and I’ll follow the spirit of the challenge from this point.
Thank you Robert for the great idea and for hosting this. Be sure to read his post for Junited 2025 for the other participants and his own links.
I’ve also compiled a Junited 2025 in Dutch with different links, if you’re able to read Dutch.
30 June: closing thoughts
This was a really fun challenge, thanks for the inspiration Robert! I’ve found so many inspiring blogs, I’d say the personal web is alive and kicking. I’ve marked my calendar for Junited 2026! Will you join in next year as well?
Because I didn’t want to be tempted to share the same stuff, I didn’t yet go through the links shared by fellow participants. So I’m looking forward to making even more discoveries!
The links
Here are the interesting links that I’ve found. I hope they’ll be inspiring to you as well:
I’m just some guy on the internet — Mark Pitblado
Mark raises interesting points about the use of qualifiers in writing. We share that I also begin most of my sentences with ‘I think…’. To answer some of his questions at the end: I think (hehe) I’m not that great at writing, but I enjoy it and I enjoy trying to improve it through this blog. Also, English is not my native language. But my Dutch writing is perhaps even worse, because I’m less practiced with it.
Your blog is a vulnerability. — Anne Sturdivant
Anne writes how blogging can be a vulnerable experience, for yourself and others. Especially in the age of AI scrapers. Food for thought. Update 27-06: today I learned Anne passed away. I didn’t know her personally, but am deeply saddened to hear of this. She also wrote about long COVID and ME/CFS (among a broad range of topics) – which is how I found her in the first place. She was one of my inspirations to make this website gradually more personal and I’ll miss her. My condolences to her family and friends.
The Great Scrape — Herman Martinus
Herman gives a good summary of the challenges AI scrapers pose to the Indieweb community. On the one hand, you’d like to protect your site from malicious bots, while on the other hand, RSS and other benign uses of automated access need to keep functioning. I’m not sure what the best approach is yet, I’m using a combination of fail2ban and user agent blocking in Nginx, but it’s far from foolproof.
Scroll sēdecim — Mike - Shellsharks
The scrolls newsletter is an Arcane curation from the IndieWeb, Fediverse and Cybersecurity realms.
It’s a great collection of links to interesting people, posts and blogs. Highly recommended to follow (and check out the rest of the website as well).
Telescopic text: I made tea — Joe Davis
Today I learned about Telescopic Text: basically, you click on a word and the text expands in place. In this way, a story forms on the page, starting from just a short sentence. I think it’s a very interesting idea and I’ve wanted to experiment more with interactive posts. So maybe I’ll give this a try – it should even be feasible with plain CSS. Maybe the <abbr> tag is the best semantic HTML tag for it? I have to give it some more thought…
may 2025 garden log — Nannnss - pixel dirt
I love these type of garden updates and this particular garden looks like a big project. I’m looking forward to the future updates, it’s always nice to see gardens evolve in time. It’s also bittersweet for me, because I’m currently not healthy enough to work in our own garden, but following blogs like this one is a nice way to still be inspired by the work of other gardeners.
Pragmatic Humanism: My Philosophy — cliophate (Kevin)
It’s a beautiful idea to put your own personal philosphy in writing and refine it over time. I found myself nodding along to some points, while questioning others. And that’s great: a personal philosophy should be unique to you, but thought-provoking for others. This definitely goes on my idea list for new pages to add.
Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media — Elena Rossini
Elena has made a great video explaining the Fediverse, a social media network built and operated by people instead of Big Tech. I’m in awe of the love and attention that has gone into the video, so go watch it and join us on the Fediverse.
The magic of manicules: more pointing fingers from the margins of Cardiff’s rare books — Ken Gibb
Manicules are so cool! It’s a nice design element for a blog as well. Fascinating to see the various examples.☚
Curiosity as a compass — Robert Birming
Curiosity as a compass, to prevent your thoughts and feelings from spinning out of control. I love this notion. For me, meditation has been helpful to cultivate the required pause between an event and my reaction to it. That pause is needed, in order to be able to become curious about my initial knee-jerk response. And then – maybe, it’s ever a work in progress – to be able to choose something different, something better.
The Royal Road — Barrie Risman
I’ve shared before that I love Barrie’s insights in yoga and her writing style. This is another beautiful piece of wisdom. Her free video series What’s the Yoga we need now? is also highly recommended.
In Which I Defend Fruit’s Honor — Michael Dickens
I, too, love fruit and if someone (in this case Michael) defends its honour, I can only share it far and wide.
New on powRSS: Take me to a random site! — Pablo Enoc
I’ve found some great new blogs to follow via https://powRSS.com, a public RSS feed aggregator with a mission to make the independent web discoverable.
Perfect for an afternoon of discovery!
Full of Feeling in Any Situation — cafebedouin.org
There are so many different approaches to meditation. All facets of the same diamond. This is yet another great perspective.
I want to comment on your blog post — David
David argues you should offer a registration free, public commenting option on your blog. I get the idea, but I’m still in two minds about it: 1) I’d like to keep my site uncluttered and consisting of my own “stuff”, without comments below each post. 2) I like having a conversation about the topics I write about, so I offer a Fediverse comment option. 3) This is not completely barrier free, because you need to have a Fediverse account somewhere. 4) If I would also make a comment form, comments are scattered across two places.
I’ve thought about a registration free, “reply to the Fediverse”-form, which could be called GoGuestReply. This is not trivial to implement though, if you want to get it right. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this dilemma.
The Unlisted / Quiet Public issue — The Expressiverse
I recently came across this issue: replies on the web frontend of my gotosocial instance were hidden, even though they’re just Unlisted. Now I know why. I agree though, that it’s weird you can’t quote unlisted posts: they should still be public, just not pushed to lists.
You’re not a front-end developer until you’ve… — Nic
Very cool quiz. I scored 19 points and web development is luckily not my day job. It used to be a side job during my University years and obviously now it’s a nice hobby. Also, this website design is next level. Such a cool idea and well executed.
Exploring the small webs with Marginalia, powRSS, and more — Bojidar Marinov
I absolutely frigging loved this post. The recommendations on finding websites are great and the meticulousness of the scoring system is awesome. And I was happily surprised to find a link to my website on another blog! Such a serendipitous moment.
Book Review — The Magicians by Lev Grossman — Thomas Rigby
I’ve missed good book recommendations ever since I’ve decided to stop using Goodreads. I’m on BookWyrm but haven’t found a lot of people with similar interests to follow yet. So I’m very happy when bloggers I already follow, review the books they’ve read. Like Thomas did in a short but enticing, spoiler-free review of The Magicians (be sure to visit his website, it’s great!). I’m a few chapters in and I like it, very curious to see where it’ll lead.
The blank whiteboard — James
James’ Coffee Blog has been a wonderful inspiration to me and is always a joy to read. So, sit back with a cup of your favorite drink and enjoy this piece on creativity.
How to title your blog post or whatever — dynomight
Obviously, this title worked: I clicked, read and liked this article. I haven’t given much thought to titles so far. Mostly, because this website started as my personal wiki: the title was just the topic of the page. As this site is slowly evolving, I’ll consider the titles more carefully going forward.
Happy Pride — Nick
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Pride. As it’s Pride month now, I’d feel wrong not to write something about it. This post resonated with me. Yes, I’m gay, but that’s not the sum of all that I am. I haven’t figured out everything yet, and that’s okay. Nick writes: I’m not shoving myself into a box I’m mapping my own sky.
– beautiful. Happy sky mapping and happy Pride everyone! 🏳️🌈
Getting through — Ayjay
I don’t get why people are eager to read ever faster – or even less of a book, by reading an (AI) summary. Books are meant to be savoured. Solid advice from Ayjay.
Digital chains — Manuel Moreale
It’s a very interesting experiment Manuel and Kevin are performing. It seems to me you get as much out of experiments like these, as the effort and commitment you put into them. And sometimes the conclusion can be that it’s not for you. I’m looking forward to the final takeaways. The observation that you always have a choice is very on point. It reminds me of people who always say they don’t have time for X or Y because they’re too busy. No, you do have time: it’s just that you’re conciously or unconciously choosing to do something different with it. Update: the recap post is here.
Mythical beasts of the Netherlands — Neil, Puća Printhouse
This is so creative! And I learned a lot of new names of beasts from our own folklore, that I’ve never even heard of before. The Kladdegat roams near my home, at least according to the map: a ghost dog that hounds the streets at night.
I Do Not Remember My Life and It’s Fine — Marco Giancotti
Today I learned about SDAM, Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory. I’m sure I have some degree of that, though I don’t have any problems with visualization/aphantasia as far as I can tell. But, like Marco, I’m often struggling to recall a “scene” or sequence of events
. I remember only general feelings, thoughts, habits, things we often did in the past: very little specific, actual moments.
It was a great help to me to read Marco’s well-articulated thoughts on this fascinating topic. To me, it was very comforting to read that I’m not alone in experiencing my life in this way. I’ll look into this to learn more about it.
P&B: Anne Sturdivant — Manuel Moreale
In memory of Anne Sturdivant (see my thoughts above), I’m sharing her People and Blogs interview. Also read the article by Adam. She will be missed.
Cultivating compassion (karuṇā) toward others and self for serenity of mind — Subhash
In depth discussion of compassion and how it’s related to sympathy and empathy. The whole blog by Subhash is a well of inspiration to me and highly recommended.
Granddad’s Cooking Notebook — Wouter Groeneveld
Such a nice discovery. The recipes and the food made by our (grand)parents take us back to the past. For me, it’s Oma’s pannekoeken (without the modern extra n!), i.e. grandma’s pancakes. What is your fondest memory related to cooking?
To experience, rather than record — Alex Onsager
I agree with Alex, it is much nicer to be present in the current moment, without having to constantly record or capture it in your notes or on camera. It all only happens once! This can either mean that therefore, you’d like to capture it and save it for later. Or experience it fully while it’s happening. Your choice.
