sigkill.sh This is my blog. There are many like it but this one is mine. latest {{ posts|limit:5 }} Other fun things to look at BearBlog Discovery ...
I have been loving all the new and exciting discovery tools in the smallweb space. The most recent is one that aggregates the BearBlog Discover page. It's called Bearroll . The advantage over the regular bearblog page is that you know you haven't missed anything if you don't look at it for a day. As someone who is trying to use the internet less rather than more, that's a great feature to have.…
Yesterday I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading and watching videos of early synthesizer artists. Most notably, I was fascinated by the story of Wendy Carlos . I was astounded I had not bumped into her story before. She also reminded me of a lesson I try to remind myself of every now and then. Wendy Carlos was, and still is, a pioneer in the field. She wrote the score for a number of great…
I was tipped off on the bearblog trending page about Bubbles , a fun new site for discovering good blogs in the indieweb space. It's sort of like Hacker News for small blogs. It automatically adds posts from a variety of sources and then sorts by upvote. The one major shortcoming of the smallblog movement is discovery. It's often slow and manual. In my shift away from traditional social media, I…
When I was younger, I was a voracious reader. I always had a book. I had a job at UPS years ago and hitting my head while walking the package center with my face in a book a very real danger most days. Since then, though, reading as a thing I do for enjoyment became less common. I'm not sure when it changed. As with most things, it was very slow and then all at once. Recently, though, I have been…
I know I am late to the party, but I have recently been on a sci-fi kick and, in particular, I have been enjoying both The Martian and Project Hail Mary . Both were deeply engaging and had excellent little bits of realistic science. I grew up on Asimov but this more grounded and realistic science writing is really up my alley. The movies were both great too. I wholeheartedly recommend anything by…
I thought it would be fun to try a different kind of post. Many days I just see a few things that strike my interest but I dont have enough to say about them to make a full blog post. in cases like that, I want to try rolling a few things up into one post. Let’s see how it goes. Cognitive Surrender A recent study indicates that a surprising number of users essentially disconnect their thinking…
Devon Sproule Head-Butting Sperm Whales How might humanitarian journalism be done better?
I have frequently ranted about the suffering induced by algorithmic news feeds. I'm even rantier in person, I can assure you. I found myself nodding vigorously as I read The war against misinformation is over. The lies won. on The Walrus . It described the problem very succinctly and points to what I hope is the real solution. The author argues that the billionaire class has hijacked the media and…
When I was young and the Internet wasn't broadly available yet, my favorite way to spend my time was digging through a bookshelf and reading whatever randomness I found. A lot of things I still love to this day were discovered with some oddball book in a library or used book store. One day, in my teenage years, I found a hardcopy version of the Jargon File . I have never been quite the same since.…
In my post yesterday, I included a link to an essay, Willingness to look stupid is a genuine moat in creative work . Since I read it yesterday, I keep coming back to that idea. I think fear of looking stupid is one of the biggest blocks I face on a regular basis. Part of the reason I started this blog was to force myself to just write something. I try to not over-analyze or over-edit. I try to…