Things I Like
-
The premise at the heart of these conversations is that websites deserve and require a mass readership to be important or worthwhile. But what if they don’t?
This entire idea, that maybe we don't all need to be read by all the people is so good. I don't track anything about this site so I have absolutely no idea who reads it or even how many people do. It's freeing. I post and don't think much about it later unless someone contacts me about it.
-
Perhaps the reason the idea of an “interesting” life feels like a cop-out – compared to, say, a wildly successful or influential or joyful one – is that it lacks any sense of domination or conquest. We want to feel as though we were handed the challenge of a human lifetime and that we nailed it, that we grappled with the problem and solved it. Whereas to follow the lead of interestingness is to accept that life isn’t a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.
I really enjoyed Oliver Burkeman's latest on following what interests you. Doing so usually leads to good things, but those things may not be promotions, money, fame, or whatever particular thing you want to put at the end of this sentence. That being said, it leads to more satisfaction and I think it leads to more stimulation of the brain and excitement about what you're doing. I've been following what I find interesting more and more and it's leading me to all sorts of places I didn't expect to go.
-
I can’t help having the compulsion, but I can redirect it. So instead of scrolling down the news websites, I read a few pages of a book, or exercise for a few minutes; I pick up the ukulele, or simply be, with permission to be bored.
I'm keenly interested to read the book mentioned in this piece and found the idea of never reading the news interesting as well. I've been curbing my time just idly scrolling the past two days and while I haven't suddenly gotten a ton more done, I have let my brain rest and allowed myself to be bored and sit in quiet more. We'll see where this leads me.
-
This consistent misread is that no positive change is worth making unless you make it in a pristine, completely consistent, platonic final form. No. Not only is this characteristic of the main problem of progressivism today, this is also fundamentally untrue. No change is made in a vacuum, and no step forward in history comes perfectly. Believing it is true extricates you from your own responsibility and your own autonomy. It reduces your individual volition and humanity to a tool of large business. It is obedience in advance. It is an obscene mode of infantilism and not an honest position.
A good piece on how the choices we make do matter, they matter to us as individuals. I've been making a lot of small moves for years and I like feeling better about the way I'm spending money and the way I'm supporting (or not supporting) certain companies.
-
They also tend to want to work from home, DoorGrubDash meals, order from Amazon, stream all the things, and basically do anything but actually support things they should walk to.
A new to me site and person that I've really been enjoying in my feed reader lately.
-
As I’ve noted on several occasions, I’m thoroughly worn out by social networks and have been for many years now. I occasionally find myself keen to share something, and when I do, I almost immediately regret it, feeling that nobody saw it or cared; I tend to feel that I’m out on some weird limb, frustrating those who followed me for CSS workarounds twenty years ago. And so I retreat again.
I enjoyed this piece by Simon, how being quiet and doing work and not sharing is so valuable, but this particular passage about social media had me saying to myself, "it me."
-
I’ve always felt that culture is made of the accumulation of small acts of gracious leadership: acknowledging moments of bravery during a retro, teasing out a reticent comment during a product review, and on and on. It can come from other places too, but it is most effective when it comes from the top.
I've seen so many complaints about iOS 26, some of them happening in this very house, with each update, I keep hoping the details will be cleaned up. We'll see what happens, but I'm not very hopeful.
-
The less fortunate of the Instagram Mothers lost everything when their children sued. It began in France and spread from there. Mostly daughters and a few sons sued their mothers for mental health damage, the complications of a life lived online before one could consent to such a transgression of privacy.
Just read this one, I don't have anything else to say about it.
-
It’s in feeling all the above that I’ve come more and more to believe that (trigger warning: lots of loaded words incoming): It’s impossible to be “authentic” (to maintain some kind of “core integrity”) or to access anything resembling “true creativity” when plugged into social media. Social media destroys whatever it is I feel out, alone, in the middle of a big walk, connecting with people, writing, looking closer and closer still at the world (not the train-wreck version of the world; the world as it is in front of my eyes which is often magnificent and beautiful, full of kindness and compassion).
Not all of us can take the types of walks Mod takes, but I do think that in the day-to-day there is a lot we can do to create space for thinking and creating. I do that by walking and running without headphones and it's me and my thoughts alone and I have no phone with me. This is a small way, in my daily life, that I leave things behind for a bit.
-
The friction that the political project of AI promises to remove is, by and large, the same friction that authoritarianism promises to remove: other people. You don’t have to build a relationship with other human beings who are just as complex and contradictory as you and who will probably frustrate you in all sorts of ways, maybe by challenging your preconceptions or expecting you to follow through on your commitments.
I've seen this piece quoted a lot because it's that good. Friction is necessary and we live in a world that is trying desperately to get rid of it and make everything efficient and easy even though that's not what's best for us as humans.
-
I now needed a new sound to fill the air — I don’t always listen to music when I’m knitting, writing blog posts, or performing administrative tasks for our household. And sometimes silence (albeit punctuated by city noise) is deafening.
Jen's posts lately have been hitting me and so I'm linking to her in case you haven't read her or don't know about her. That being said, this has been me, looking for what to watch that I can have on in the background or have on while knitting or whatever else when I don't want silence. To be clear, I do a lot while it's silent, but knitting is when I most want something on in the background. I'm watching formulaic shows, mysteries, and since it's November which means its Noirvember on Criterion, we're watching old movies. But unplugging from what's happening in the world is a must and older shows and older movies are definitely helping me with that.
-
I used to like technology. The only reason it frustrates me is because I secretly believe it can satisfy me. Perhaps it once did, but the machine is not enough. Is that technology’s failure or my own growth? There are better things to suffer for.
I've seen this post linked by many different people, it's worth your time to read Frank's thoughts on AI and the current landscape and I really appreciated how much he's in the weeds and still thinking about these things. It, along with the follow on post, are both worth your time. I picked a small quote, but there is a lot of different parts I could've pulled out of this piece. I'm in the same boat with Frank, I don't think I like tech all that much anymore and I'm living my life further removed from it and I've been so much happier.
-
I am comfortable with doubt and am constitutionally resistant to moral certainty, herd mentality and dogma. I am disturbed on a fundamental level by the self-serving, toddler politics of some of my counterparts – I do not believe that silence is violence, complicity, or a lack of courage, but rather that silence is often the preferred option when one does not know what they are talking about, or is doubtful, or conflicted – which, for me, is most of the time. I am mainly at ease with not knowing and find this a spiritually and creatively dynamic position. I believe that there are times when it is almost a sacred duty to shut the fuck up.
This letter by Nick Cave reminded me of a line that Ta-Nehisi Coates said to Ezra Klein as they talked recently, "But was silence not an option?" I've been quiet more often than not this year and in this particular space I'm often quiet for weeks at a time, mostly because I'm away from my computer, but also because I'm not really sure what to say and I'm OK with that. Silence can be a good thing, especially in a world that is oversaturated with content and noise.
-
This reflects a business culture obsessed with outcomes while treating outputs as speed bumps. But outputs (code, design, the products themselves) are the load-bearing work—the actual prerequisites for the outcomes desired. Focusing on outcomes while ignoring outputs means hiding in abstractions and absolving oneself of accountability. If any output is acceptable to hit your targets, what awful things emerge at scale? What horrors happen when success detaches completely from the necessity of being good—having both skill and ethics?
A great piece by Frank Chimero that's worth your time.
-
I spent more than a decade engaging on social media as a representative of The Post, explaining the news and presenting my perspective. I was there as Twitter collapsed into X (he offered with the affected world-weariness of a combat veteran) but even before that — even before Elon Musk’s accelerations — saw how toxicity poisoned efforts at discussion. There’s value to debate and conversation, of course, but that isn’t what’s fostered on Twitter or (in my limited experience) on Substack. Instead, conversation occasionally glimmers through a waterfall of bad-faith, uninformed trolls and attacks. It’s an effort to play a college football game after the crowd has stormed the field.
Really interesting piece about power and how you contribute to it and who you give it to as you use social media and other online software. I've been thinking about this a lot as I've stepped back from being online as much and for me it also applies to how I use my time on any given day. I may not think in terms of power quite the same way, but I do liken it to the idea of what I give my attention to and how that affects me.