English
- FBI: Operation Ghost Stories: Inside the Russian Spy Case
- CNN Original Series: Operation Ghost Stories: The Spies Next Door
- Deleting the evil apps from my phone. I can still access anything from a browser, but it’s much less convenient and reduces usage a lot.
- Consciously avoiding the Discover tabs that are constantly pushed onto me. On the platforms that make it harder, I am barely going in anymore.
- Rebuilding my blogging habit (both from a producer and consumer perspective). In a way, I’m trying to put myself back in the 2003-2006 era (let me add the non-algorithmic social platforms, which give me some grace and let me extend this period to, let’s say, 2010).
- Going back to reading books. The internet has destroyed my lifelong habit of focused reading, but little by little, I am trying to return to it and spend more time with long-form texts.
First, Connection; Then, Approval
Evolution has programmed us to seek groups to join and then strive for rank within them. But, especially in the modern era, we’re not limited to one group. For those of us not in prison, a typical life involves the playing of multiple games. Wherever we connect with like-minded others, the game will be on: at work, online, on the sports field, at the volunteer centre, in the club, park or activist collective – even at home. The minimum requirement for play is connection. Before we can be rewarded with status, we must first be accepted into the group as a player.
Storr, Will. The Status Game.
Book: Russians Among Us
This was an educational read: Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories and the Hunt for Putin’s Agents / Gordon Corera (co-host of The Rest is Classified) 📚
Related resources:
Where Satisfaction Lies
Blogging just for the sake of it, without caring a bit about anyone’s interest in what I post, is a return to a freedom I had not felt for a long time. If someone reads it and is interested, great; if not, who cares? Satisfaction lies in just expressing oneself.
Related to that idea, I like what Robin Rendle says on So Many Websites:
perhaps the death of search is good for the future of the web. Perhaps websites can be free of dumb rankings and junky ads that are designed to make fractions of a penny at a time. Perhaps the web needs to be released from the burden of this business model. […] And perhaps we should let our websites be small and private things once again.
Rebelling Against the Algorithmic Shopaganda
Whose taste is it anyway, by Greg Morris, about how the current internet algorithms affect the content we consume:
You’re not seeking things out or deciding what you want to consume. You’re just accepting whatever appears in the feed. The algorithm does all the work, and you scroll.
We’ve been outsourcing things to the internet for years now. First it was memory. Why bother remembering facts when you can just look everything up? The information age meant we stopped retaining things and started relying on search. Now we’ve gone further. We’ve outsourced decision-making itself. We’ve outsourced taste.
It resonates. I am rebelling against that, even if it’s hard, because I was so used to being in zombie mode in front of my phone screen. I think the only antidote is to abandon social (sic.) media (at least the shopaganda part of it, which is the majority). To be honest, I’ve been in that fight for a few years now. I pretty much stopped actively posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other algorithm-centered platforms a long time ago. Then, little by little, I’ve been adopting measures to make it harder to access and consume algorithm-served content.
I realize that is not the best way to do it: just as with other addictions, there is a greater chance of success if you stop altogether. Anyway, some of the measures I’ve taken and am taking:
As I said, probably not enough and for sure not fast enough. But I am trying, and that’s something. Bear with me.
Finished reading: The Idaho Four by James Patterson 📚
Currently reading: The Idaho Four by James Patterson 📚
(Some) Questions to Develop our Baseline Creative Self
How do you view yourself as an artist and a writer and a creative person in the world? What are your desires? What do you want to get out of your work? What does it mean to you to do work? What are the goals –both big and small– you hope to accomplish? How do you feel about the story you have to tell?
1000 Words by Jami Attenberg. p. 25 📚
Life is Fragile
2025 is about to end, and my wife has decided this year’s Advent calendar will feature a daily question for each of us at home to answer. I don’t care about Advent calendars, and I don’t feel I have the energy to play that game right now, but she wanted me to be involved and make it a family thing, so I guess I’m in.
The second question she asked was: What is something you have learned this year?
My answer, which, by the way, worsened everyone’s mood a little bit, came to mind right away: Life is fragile.
Last Summer, I had an accident while trimming a tree in the front yard and broke a vertebra. As painful as it was (it was!), and as long and tedious as the recovery has been (too long), I was lucky because it didn’t affect my bone marrow. But with spine injuries, you never know… I could undoubtedly be in a wheelchair or worse right now.
It may sound dramatic, but it’s true. We never know how or if we will be in the next minute. Be careful and, at the same time, carpe diem.
It’s weird how I always crave silence, yet I need a podcast in my ears at bedtime.
I am having a hard time setting up the DNS for this thing to work in my own domain, when I’ve set up DNS several times in the past.
Shouts to the void: “Am I getting old, am I getting stupid, or both?”