Jamie Zawinski makes some solid points in PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet:
If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way.
In other words, don’t use Hive or Post. Let’s not make the same mistakes again.
It takes one person to knock down a silo:
Wherever you end up I want to offer an idea; you are the value. Your ideas, your insights, your compassion, your ability to help someone in need, your dumb puns and dank memes; that’s what’s valuable. This situation has me thinking hard about where I’m distributing my contributions, where I’m adding value (modest as it may be), and who is benefitting.
Try to join Mastodon. The tweets are called toots, and it looks like you need to know basic programming. Receive a message from someone in Germany asking for donations and explaining that the network discourages viral posts. Yell, “WELL, THEN WHAT’S THE POINT, JURGEN?”
This is my favorite photo of my dad, my brother, and I. It shows my dad in the exact spot where he was always most happy. In the dirt, in front of a fire with some wine, and surrounded by his sons. This is how I will always remember him.
Dad passed away on November 5th. I miss him.
For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
Can’t stop thinking about this quote from Lord of the Rings.
Sad news: he can’t play drums any more due to surgery.
Happy news: that’s his son playing drums.
This is a wonderful performance.
Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
This won’t convince anyone to change their minds about religion/atheism. But it certainly rang true for me.
Addicted to this album (and cover art) right now.
