Bloglog

\ A fascinating article, eulogising the slow fragmenting of the X experience, the boon in Bluesky users, and how it's all ultimately fruitless anyway....

Chris McLeod is a software developer with over 20 years of experience. Sometimes he writes about it.

I recently got contact lenses, for the first time in 34 years, as someone who has required corrective eyewear since the age of 6. I have attributed the decision mostly to my ongoing midlife/existential crisis — as a way to prove to myself that I’m NOT set in my ways and I CAN do new things — and for whatever reason I had increasingly been thinking that my eyeglasses are my whole personality and I was interested in experimenting with a different look.

500 Social has been around for a few months now and things are going well. Here’s what’s been happening…

Screens. They’re everywhere. On your wrist. In your pocket. You name it. Could we do with maybe a little less? Probably. Let’s entertain Minimalism for a moment. Say you’ve got...

Dave Winer, OG blogger, podcaster, developed first apps in many categories. Old enough to know better. It's even worse than it appears.

I hate hate HATE that when huge companies make dumb, short-sighted decisions and then lay off people they don’t give a shit about and think of as interchangeable parts, those same people are then forced to go on social media to talk about how their “role has been impacted” and how grateful they are for all the wonderful experiences they have been granted by their former employers. To be clear, I am not criticizing anyone for making these sorts of posts.

Sarah Manavis, writing for The Guardian: A survey commissioned by the Booksellers Association ahead of Bookshop Day tomorrow has found that gen Z and millennials are more likely to buy a book based on a bookseller’s recommendation — in person, in a bookshop — than older age groups: 49% and 56% respectively, compared with 37% […]

Always pushing yourself to the max? Turns out doing a little less can still get you great results.

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the failure of all the major players to get social right. I have a very simple dream for how the social web should work and its baffling to me that many obvious use-cases have not been addressed at all by Facebook, Twitter, or Google. This is the first of two posts that will describe what I view as a viable framework for a social web experience.

It's been a long, long time since I wrote a personal blog post. A lot has happened, and a lot has changed. Most recently, I started taking ashwagandha aga...

We’re making our own internet out here and we owe it to each other to get it right.

Try to quit making assumptions and quit feeling like you have to live up to them.

One of the small pleasures, for me, about the web in 2024 is the sheer amount of interesting independent and niche products and services that are available.  There are some fantastic...

In recent years I've begun to develop an interest in the concept of endurance, be it psychological or physical. This is a response to a combination of recent world events, the imminent grief that...

Serendipity is the best algorithm.

A titleless post is not a micropost. By definition, a micropost is "a very short posted message." The hyponym is tweet or toot. Microposts are generally short, but titleless posts need not be. They can...

The process of building out this site has inevitably involved design choices about how to engage with various technologies and other people's web presences. It's a truism that you can't solve social problems with technology, but social media has made it just as clear that technology does shape the social dynamics that emerge in the spaces it mediates. This drives me to wonder: as more of my friends and friends-of-friends move to individual websites and blogs, what social dynamics does this give rise to? And what different technical designs could improve those dynamics? I think it's most interesting to approach this question from the social direction rather than the technological. Our first priority should be a set of social goals for interacting on the internet, and only with that understanding firmly in hand can we start usefully interrogating the way technology gives rise to or fights against the sort of…

A common complaint amongst the old guard bloggers is that the old web as we knew it is dying. This is false.The old web has actually been dead for many...

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, Australia. 🌻

Writing, blogging, life, tech and mental health with a philosophical/psychological slant

As the Election approaches, my anxiety rises. The world today feels chaotic: the genocide in Gaza, rampant nationalism spreading through Europe, and disinformation campaigns from China and Russia aimed at...

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, Australia. 🌻

The blogs I like are building blocks of something beautiful and heartfelt, not optimized, market driven revenue generators

In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held dire...

When it comes to political leanings, I’m probably centre/left. But I have a number of family and acquaintances who definitely lean more to the right. Of course, everyone is different, but certain of the mannerisms of the more conservative people I know are particularly distinct. To me, these seemed to go beyond regular personal preference. […]

Where are my internet friends? And where are their weird blogs?

came across this quote on twitter and it was attributed to Frida Kahlo: "I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must...

I was reading Let’s Go To The Old Posts Home and wanted to share my view, the post is also a reply for other posts so you can go down the rabbit hole if