Welcome to volume twelve of Scrolls, a newsletter for sharing cool stuff from the IndieWeb, Fediverse & Cybersecurity realms. This week, we’re brewing web-potions, celebrating the Fediverse, and scrapping some funeral plans (for now).
IndieWeb
Welcome back to my charming li’l sanctum on the ‘net—here we remain spellbound, pressing ever deeper into the enchanting realm(s) of the IndieWeb. I’ve always ascribed magical metaphors to my site, hence the “Scrolls” wordplay. While others tend to their gardens 🪴, or furnish their homes 🏡, I always see this site as a place for incantations 🪄, potion making 🧪 and all manner of digital sorcery 🧙♂️.
Don’t get it twisted though, blogging is more than mere cosplay. Blogging helps us think and explore our own understanding of things. It helps us reflect and process. It helps us concentrate, extracting even more joy from the things we already love. Our web-gardens, homes and wizard hollows are quite literally “personal infrastructure”. What do you expect to get out of blogging—why do you do it? For me, it’s always been these things. Maybe it’s simple attention you seek, or a bit-o-money (just keep it classy won’t ya?). It doesn’t have to be one thing, it needn’t be shallow—but one thing it should be, is you.
It’s not shameful to seek attention though. To want others to see, and enjoy what you have created. As much as the IndieWeb is about you, it’s just as much about the larger community of personal sites—of real people, jus’ doin’ their thang and bein’ themselves. It should go without saying, we love blogs here. We really want you to start one. We want to read, save and share your blog(s) on our own sites. You’re not alone. Get out there! Network and participate in some good ol’ fashioned writing events. IndieWeb Carnival is a good place to start. In fact, I just got in on my first-ever carnival!
Some folks shy away from creating a personal website because they “aren’t strong writers”, or they feel they “don’t have anything interesting to say”. Let me just say, you don’t need to be some perfect writer, nor do you have to have literally anything novel or particularly interesting to say to have a blog. ‘Nuf said. More to the point though, having a personal website is so much more than just blogging! It’s about expressing yourself, and having fun. Here’s some ideas for things you could do on your site that are not just writing. Elle crafted up a custom 404 page, Ruben has a /museum page for all of their websites-of-yore, Éric coded up some cool text-rendering visualization, while Jeremy simply streams his life away. Just get creative! Break the “rules”. Do whatever you like. Share a recipe you love, or haul off and rewrite your whole dang site. Enjoy the journey—there is no “destination”. Your site can be forever!
Small Web Finds and Features
Looking for more inspiration or just want some awesome sites to add to your RSS feed? I’ll trade you some of my finds—send me yours!
- Analori Art by Analori
- People & Blogs featuring JEDDACP.COM
- Kurisu’s base of operation by Kurisu
- Jack Tries Linux from Jack Baty
- Thoughts of Thinkymeat by Jessie
- Maurice Renck by Maurice
- Imaginary Karin by Karin
- kening zhu by Kening
- Pensionista by Tessa
- So It Goes Weeknotes from Kerri
- Brad Woods Digital Garden by Brad
- varve’s burrow
- Small Web finds from disassociated
- Over/Under with R.L. Dane featuring R.L. Dane of course!
- The many, many sites of the Ye Olde Blogroll
- Why is there a “small house” in IBM’s Code page 437? from Glyph Drawing Club
Fediverse
Happy belated Fediverse Day everyone! 🥳 (In case you missed it, Korean-Fedi pioneered the idea for April 11th). Keep bein’ awesome!
Every week there’s lots to celebrate here if you ask me though. We’ve come a long way afterall—with even more exciting roadmaps ahead! So if you haven’t already, join the Fediverse, get in on the conversation, add your color—because things are positively blowin’ up right now!
Stormy Skies ⛈️
While the Fediverse parties on and continues to live up to its promise, I can’t say the same for ol’ Bluesky. Look, I don’t like to make this publication about any level of negativity—and believe me, there’s plenty I could “report” on in terms of Fedi-related drama each week. But I think it’s important to drive home the ever-salient point that Bluesky is not the panacea it claims to be. Specifically, around its claim of decentralization and that it is some safe haven from billionaires and oppressive governments. It’s not.
So here’s the story—in short. Reports indicate that Bluesky is capitulating to Turkish government demands to take down certain Bluesky posts. Since Bluesky is not decentralized, and subject to governmental orders from regions they wish to operate within, this means all members of the network are affected by such requests. In a true decentralized model, i.e. what the Fediverse has, you may have single instances subject to regional jurisdiction, but the wider network, which is spread across the globe would remain relatively unaffected. I.e. a Turkish Fedi instance could/would be vulnerable to these demands, but instances in say, the Netherlands could just ignore them. That’s one of the benefits of actual decentralization. So, be careful where you’re placing your social chips these days.
Cybersecurity
The big story this week is undoubtedly what’s been goin’ on with cve.org. I’ve got a whole writeup about CVE’s near-death experience if you’re interested in catching up or hearing my thoughts.
Beyond that, kinda a light week. I discovered a few cool detection rules resources—Rulehound & AttackRuleMap. Writeups.xyz looks like a great collection of bug-bounty writeups and Talos has published their year in review.
IndieSec Blogs
Much like the greater IndieWeb community, IndieSec too has so much to discover. Check these awesome sites out!
Thanks for reading Scrolls! Now back to my potions. 🧪 😃
