Saturday sailings
I deactivated my Twitter account this week. I've done that before, but this time I'm honestly not sure if I'll reactivate it.
Given that I get a fair few links through Twitter, I wonder if the kind of things I share in these weekly link roundups will change? We shall see, I guess. You can connect with me via the Fediverse: https://mastodon.social/@dajbelshaw
![33 Myths of the System (book cover)](https://thoughtshrapnel.micro.blog/uploads/2024/9eb16206cf.jpg)
33 Myths of the System
Drawing on the entire history of radical thought, while seeking to plumb their common depths, 33 Myths of the System, presents a synthesis of independent criticism, a straightforward exposure of the justifications of the world-system, along with a new way to perceive and understand the unhappy supermind that directs, penetrates and even lives our lives.
Darren Allen
While I didn't agree with absolutely everything in this free e-book, it's fair to say it blew my mind. Highly recommended, especially for thoughtful people. One of the best things I've read in the last decade in terms of getting me to question... everything.
A catastrophe at Twitter
In any case, Twitter’s response to the incident offered further cause for distress. The company’s initial tweet on the subject said almost nothing, and two hours later it had followed only to say what many users were forced to discover for themselves: that Twitter had disabled the ability of many verified users to tweet or reset their passwords while it worked to resolve the hack’s underlying cause.
The near-silencing of politicians, celebrities, and the national press corps led to much merriment on the service — see this, along with Those good tweets below, for some fun — but the move had other, darker implications. Twitter is, for better and worse, one of the world’s most important communications systems, and among its users are accounts linked to emergency medical services. The National Weather Service in Lincoln, IL, for example, had just tweeted a tornado warning before suddenly going dark. To the extent that anyone was relying on that account for further information about those tornadoes, they were out of luck.
Casey Newton (The INterface)
I didn't actually deactivate my Twitter account because of the hack — that was actually more to do with the book mentioned above — but as a verified user, this certainly reinforced my decision. Just a reminder that at least one person with nuclear codes uses Twitter as their primary means of communication.
This is Fine: Optimism & Emergency in the P2P Network
Centralised platforms crave data collection and thirst for trust from the communities they seek to exploit. These platforms sell bloated, overpowered hardware that cannot be repaired, vulnerable to drops in consumer spending or spasms in the supply chain. They anxiously eye legislation to compel encryption backdoors, which will further weaken the trust they need so badly. They wobble beneath network disruptions (such as the worldwide slowdowns in March under COVID-19 load surges) that incapacitate cloud-dependent devices. They sleep with one eye open in countries where authoritarian governments compel them or their employees to operate as an informal arm of enforcement. These current trajectories point to the accelerating erosion of centralised platform power.
Cade Diehm (The New Design Congress)
This is an incredible article that's very well presented. I keep talking about the importance of decentralisation, and this article backs that up — but also explains how and why decentralised social networks need to do better.
![CRT monitors on shelves](https://thoughtshrapnel.micro.blog/uploads/2024/c7c6c1e0a4.jpg)
Our remote work future is going to suck
While the upsides to remote work are true, for many people remote work is a poison pill — one where you are given “control” in the name of productivity in exchange for some pretty nasty long-term effects.
In reality, remote work makes you vulnerable to outsourcing, reduces your job to a metric, creates frustrating change-averse bureaucracies, and stifles your career growth. The lack of scrutiny our remote future faces is going to result in frustrated workers and ineffective companies.
Sean Blanda
I'm a proponent of remote work, but I was nodding along to many of the points made in this post. Context is everything, and there's something to be said about being able to go home to escape work.
CO2 emissions on the web
Your content site probably doesn’t need JavaScript. You probably don’t need a CSS framework. You probably don’t need a custom font. Use responsive images. Extend your HTTP cache lifetimes. Use a static site generator or wp2static.com instead of dynamically generating each page on the fly, despite never changing. Consider ditching that third-party analytics service that you never look at anyway, especially if they also happen to sell ads. Run your website through websitecarbon.com. Choose a green web host.
Danny van Kooten
This week I changed the theme over at my personal blog to one that is much lighter. When I shared what I'd done on Mastodon, someone commented that they didn't think it would make that much difference. This post was written by someone who popped up to rebut what they said.
Ask a Sane Person: Jia Tolentino on Practicing the Discipline of Hope
INTERVIEW: What has this pandemic confirmed or reinforced about your view of society?
TOLENTINO: That capitalist individualism has turned into a death cult; that the internet is a weak substitute for physical presence; that this country criminally undervalues its most important people and its most important forms of labor; that we’re incentivized through online mechanisms to value the representation of something (like justice) over the thing itself; that most of us hold more unknown potential, more negative capability, than we’re accustomed to accessing; that the material conditions of life in America are constructed and maintained by those best set up to exploit them; and that the way we live is not inevitable at all.
Christopher Bollen
I have to confess to not knowing who Jia Tolentino was before stumbling across this via the Hurry Slowly newsletter (although I must have read her writing before). This is a fantastic interview, which you should read in its entirety.
Header image by Fab Lentz
Friday facings
This week's links seem to have a theme about faces and looking at them through screens. I'm not sure what that says about either my network, or my interests, but there we are...
As ever, let me know what resonates with you, and if you have any thoughts on what's shared below!
The Age of Instagram Face
The human body is an unusual sort of Instagram subject: it can be adjusted, with the right kind of effort, to perform better and better over time. Art directors at magazines have long edited photos of celebrities to better match unrealistic beauty standards; now you can do that to pictures of yourself with just a few taps on your phone.
Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)
People, especially women, but there's increasing pressure on young men too, are literally going to see plastic surgeons with 'Facetuned' versions of themselves. It's hard not to think that we're heading for a kind of dystopia when people want to look like cartoonish versions of themselves.
What Makes A Good Person?
What I learned as a child is that most people don’t even meet the responsibilities of their positions (husband, wife, teacher, boss, politicians, whatever.) A few do their duty, and I honor them for it, because it is rare. But to go beyond that and actually be a man of honor is unbelievably rare.
Ian Welsh
This question, as I've been talking with my therapist about, is one I ask myself all the time. Recently, I've settled on Marcus Aurelius' approach: "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
Boredom is but a window to a sunny day beyond the gloom
Boredom can be our way of telling ourselves that we are not spending our time as well as we could, that we should be doing something more enjoyable, more useful, or more fulfilling. From this point of view, boredom is an agent of change and progress, a driver of ambition, shepherding us out into larger, greener pastures.
Neel Burton (Aeon)
As I've discussed before, I'm not so sure about the fetishisation of 'boredom'. It's good to be creative and let the mind wander. But boredom? Nah. There's too much interesting stuff out there.
![](https://thoughtshrapnel.micro.blog/uploads/2024/4fb375d38e.jpg)
Resting Risk Face
Unlock your devices with a surgical mask that looks just like you.
I don't usually link to products in this roundup, but I'm not sure this is 100% serious. Good idea, though!
The world's biggest work-from-home experiment has been triggered by coronavirus
For some employees, like teachers who have conducted classes digitally for weeks, working from home can be a nightmare.
Jessie Yeung (CNN)
But in other sectors, this unexpected experiment has been so well received that employers are considering adopting it as a more permanent measure. For those who advocate more flexible working options, the past few weeks mark a possible step toward widespread -- and long-awaited -- reform.
Every cloud has a silver lining, I guess? Working from home is great, especially when you have a decent setup.
Setting Up Your Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
Only you really know what level of clarity you want from each piece of your setup. Are you happy with what you have? Please, dear Lord, don't spend any money. This is intended to be a resource if you want more and don't know how to do it, not a stress or a judgment to anyone happy with their current setup
And while it's a lot of fun to have a really high-quality webcam for my remote work, would I have bought it if I didn't have a more intense need for high quality video for my YouTube stuff? Hell no. Get what you need, in your budget. This is just a resource.
This is a fantastic guide. I bought a great webcam when I saw it drop in price via CamelCamelCamel and bought a decent mic when I recorded the TIDE podcast wiht Dai. It really does make a difference.
![](https://thoughtshrapnel.micro.blog/uploads/2024/a0d20a2e85.jpg)
Large screen phones: a challenge for UX design (and human hands)
I know it might sound like I have more questions than answers, but it seems to me that we are missing out on a very basic solution for the screen size problem. Manufacturers did so much to increase the screen size, computational power and battery capacity whilst keeping phones thin, that switching the apps navigation to the bottom should have been the automatic response to this new paradigm.
Maria Grilo (Imaginary Cloud)
The struggle is real. I invested in a new phone this week (a OnePlus 7 Pro 5G) and, unlike the phone it replaced from 2017, it's definitely a hold-with-two-hands device.
Society Desperately Needs An Alternative Web
What has also transpired is a web of unbridled opportunism and exploitation, uncertainty and disparity. We see increasing pockets of silos and echo chambers fueled by anxiety, misplaced trust, and confirmation bias. As the mainstream consumer lays witness to these intentions, we notice a growing marginalization that propels more to unplug from these communities and applications to safeguard their mental health. However, the addiction technology has produced cannot be easily remedied. In the meantime, people continue to suffer.
Hessie Jones (Forbes)
Another call to re-decentralise the web, this time based on arguments about centralised services not being able to handle the scale of abuse and fraudulent activity.
UK Google users could lose EU GDPR data protections
It is understood that Google decided to move its British users out of Irish jurisdiction because it is unclear whether Britain will follow GDPR or adopt other rules that could affect the handling of user data.
If British Google users have their data kept in Ireland, it would be more difficult for British authorities to recover it in criminal investigations.
The recent Cloud Act in the US, however, is expected to make it easier for British authorities to obtain data from US companies. Britain and the US are also on track to negotiate a broader trade agreement.
Samuel Gibbs (The Guardian)
I'm sure this is a business decision as well, but I guess it makes sense given post-Brexit uncertainty about privacy legislation. It's a shame, though, and a little concerning.
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Header image by Luc van Loon