Posting Less

a recurrent theme is a fatigue with the style of self-narration that the platforms encourage — which, whether we realize it or not, has been heavily influenced by brand storytelling logics. We talk about ourselves like we’re products.

IMG_0001 is a site where you can watch random (forgotten) YouTube videos from when iPhones had a built-in “Send to YouTube” button.

Organic Software Directory lists software that has no external pressure (eg. from funding sources) to chase funding rounds, grow unsustainably, or to get acquired.

Remind me later is a comic about “technological problems.”

I don’t need these people’s psychodramas in my head anymore:

“The closest thing to a political point I want to make is that I’ve dedicated far too much brain-space, in recent years, to marinating in the psyches of the angry, cynical and damaged men currently ascendant in our politics – which is basically what you’re doing when you spend time on Twitter, idly surf online media, or consume most TV news.”

Private “homemade” docs > AI slop:

While Google Docs and Maps are easily shareable, some creators keep them close to their chests. “The docs I make are usually a curation of my friends’, lovers’, and personal recommendations of the cities I’ve been to,” Held says. “For this reason, they’re kinda sacred to me.” She appreciates the time, effort, and gesture of a good city doc, and tries to repay the favor: If anyone shares a doc with her, she’ll offer one of hers in return.

The networks we use to communicate across fields and distances, to find our friends and learn from people unlike ourselves—and to organize ourselves to respond to acute crises and long, grinding institutional failures—are the same networks that are making so many of us miserable and/or deranged.

Into the wreck

ytch.xyz

Flip through (YouTube) channels like the old days. /via bencrowder.net

The internet isn’t for humans anymore. Bots use the internet more than we do; use shapes design.

The internet isn’t for humans anymore

If the web is now a metaphorical barren wasteland, pillaged by commercial interests and growth-at-all-costs management consultants, then I’m all the more motivated to keep my little patch of land lush, and green, and filled with rainbow flowers.

— My own little patch - Rach Smith

The scale of the algorithm exceeds even our own understanding; its returns benefit only its owners and leave the rest of us awash in noise and bereft of understanding.

— Unscalable, Hand-Crafted Lists of Links - Christopher Butler

Boring Sound Kit

A sound kit for prototyping and play.

Abandoned blogs

www.are.na/lucy-pham…

Surrounded by dreck, the digital citizen is discovering that the best way to find what she used to get from social platforms is to type a URL into a browser bar and visit an individual site.

The Revenge of the Home Page (newyorker.com)

Heat Death of the Internet

Enumerating all the ways the internet currently sucks. Example:

You buy a microwave and receive ads for microwaves. You buy a mattress and receive ads for mattresses.

No one wants this.

The article does end on a positive note:

You read the Wikipedia entry and there is a lot of useful information supplied by a community. One of the sources cited is a non-fiction book. You go to your local library’s website and although they don’t have the exact book, they do have others by the same author. You place a hold on two of them, then go get your shoes on.

/via Chris Glass

Is the kottke.org comment section the best community on the web? I’m not a member yet, but I have been a lurker and it seems like a great place to hang out digitally.

The Analog Web: “Owning your own piece of the Internet (to borrow a recent phrase from Anil Dash) is itself a radical act. Linking to others at will is subversive all on its own.”

The Death of the Follower: “Something that’s not contorting our online personas in the image of the algorithm to reach ~10% more strangers who probably don’t care, and won’t stick around.”

Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers

Knowing Machines “is a research project tracing the histories, practices, and politics of how machine learning systems are trained to interpret the world.”

The Golden Age of Web Design, some of these sites are still 🔥.

Some weird little things.

A collection of alternative or niche search engines.

Pixel Poetry let’s you release your inner Austin Kleon.